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It will be observed that an indiscriminate use is made of the word "Science," and that witnesses for the correctness of Science are motorcars and bicycles, radios and aeroplanes and the like. But bicycles and motor-cars and the other inventions enumerated, did not spring fully fledged and mature from the intelligence of a body of scientists. They were slowly and painfully built up, the product of a multitude of brains, some of which knew nothing about Science or its laws. The correctness of each idea as it took shape, could be and was verified by experience, and at every step and every stage of the development of the model, experience was both the judge of its correctness, and the guide to further modifications and developments. So it is always with inventions. The shelves of the Patent Office are crowded with a hundred thousand, and more, specifications of inventions describing ingenious devices, which have been abandoned because they have not stood the test or trial of experience; and let us remember that these Patent Office failures were usually based on some recognized fact. So it is obvious that the Science which is credited with producing these witnesses to testify to its excellency, was moulded and shaped with the aid of concrete facts of experience from start to finish.

But there are other Sciences which have had so little contact with experience that their teachings do not possess the certainty of Mechanics or Electricity; and even the Sciences of Chemistry and Physics, which have had any amount of contact with experience, have both recently had to undergo considerable modification. For example, Einstein's Theory of Relativity has completely revolutionized the Science of Physics.

Again, the word "Science" is applied to highly speculative theories, which have little or no basis in fact, and whose verification is extremely difficult. So the identification of the word "Science" with Reality, in the present state of human knowledge is entirely erroneous; and the analogies of motor-cars and bicycles, radios, aeroplanes and electric inventions, completely fall to the ground. For the word "Science," although it represents much that is true, also shields much that is doubtful, and much that is altogether false. Analogies based on the Sciences of Mechanics or Engineering, or of Electricity, cannot yet be used by those who desire reality, to justify an assertion that Science has shown the Bible to be false. For it may well be that the particular kind of Science involved is itself at fault, and its conclusions of no account. Examples of this are given in the next chapter.

Then said the Proconsul [threatening Polycarp] 'I have wild beasts; if thou repent not, I will throw thee to them.' But he said, 'Send for them. For repentance from better to worse is not a change permitted to us; but to change from cruelty to righteousness is a noble thing.' Then said the Proconsul again, 'If thou dost despise the wild beasts I will make thee to be consumed by fire, if thou repent not.' And Polycarp answered, 'Thou threatenest the fire that burns for an hour and in a little while is quenched; for thou knowest not of the fire of the judgement to come, and the fire of the eternal punishment, reserved for the ungodly. But why delayest thou? Bring what thou wilt.' [1]

• Will making a profit be considered a good thing?
• If I am allowed to make a profit, how much profit will I be allowed to make before I am punished?
• Will I need to get permission from the government in order to be productive?
• Will there be any private industries and businesses?
• Will my paper money be worth more as currency or as fire-starter?
• From whom will we borrow money when we cannot pay back the Communists?
• Will I get any of my tax money back if the social security system falls apart?
• What will we do if green energy cannot sustain our needs?
• Will it be more advantageous to be unemployed than employed?
• Will the government be able to make personal decisions for me, such as what I am allowed to eat and what medical treatments I am allowed to have?
• Who will receive better treatment from politicians: our allies or our enemies?
• Who will receive better treatment under the law: citizens or foreign terrorists?
• Will white, male citizens need to start a civil-rights movement?
• Will aborting children become more popular than giving birth to them?
• Will protected free speech include speech that is offensive?
• Will it be legal to criticize another person's religion or beliefs?
• Will there be any class rooms left that teach a Biblical world view and fundamental American values?
• Will there be anything special about being an American?
• Will anyone care if a politician lies?
• Will politicians live better than regular citizens?
• Will anyone "trust in God"?
• Will there be enough freedom left to be worth dying for it?

Then the Lord God said, "It is not good that the man should be alone; I will make him a helper fit for him." Now out of the ground the Lord God had formed every beast of the field and every bird of the heavens and brought them to the man to see what he would call them. And whatever the man called every living creature, that was its name. The man gave names to all livestock and to the birds of the heavens and to every beast of the field. But for Adam there was not found a helper fit for him. So the Lord God caused a deep sleep to fall upon the man, and while he slept took one of his ribs and closed up its place with flesh. And the rib that the Lord God had taken from the man he made into a woman and brought her to the man. Then the man said,

"This at last is bone of my bones
and flesh of my flesh;
she shall be called Woman,
because she was taken out of Man."

Therefore a man shall leave his father and his mother and hold fast to his wife, and they shall become one flesh. (ESV)

In the same chapter, the creation of man gets a single verse, describing how the first man is formed by God from the dust of the ground. But the creation of the first woman becomes a sort of story by itself.

In the first chapter of Genesis, God's creative work is described as "good" six times and "very good" once. But for the first time in Scripture, something is described as "not good," which is that man is alone, without "a helper fit for him."

The idea from the context is that there is no helper suitable for man because there is nothing like him in the animal kingdom. [1][2] And so the "animal parade," in which God brings the animal kinds to the man to see what he will name them, with the additional purpose of helping him to see that there is nothing in the lower orders like him, and thus nothing capable of being a suitable counterpart to him.

The purpose of emphasizing this fact to Adam was, I believe, to help Adam fully appreciate the gift he was about to be given - his wife, the first woman. This supposition is borne out by the context, for after Adam meets his newly created bride, he exclaims:

"This at last is bone of my bones
and flesh of my flesh;
she shall be called Woman,
because she was taken out of Man."

Notice the expression "this at last" which is captured by a few translations. This evidences that Adam "got the point" of the animal parade. Under this realization, he meets his bride, and she fills the void of companionship that could only be filled by someone who was fundamentally like him.

But why all the drama of removing the rib? Why does not God just make woman from the dirt, as he made the man? The reason is clear from the context: this emphasizes that she is indeed like him, and thus a suitable companion for him. The differences, in characteristics and in physical makeup, are important. But they are both fundamentally the same in constitution - they are both human, made in the same image and likeness of God. (1.27) He must recognizes that she is, indeed, "bones from his bones" and "flesh from his flesh."

But why does man need woman? Why is it "not good" that he be alone? There are at least several reasons that could be given. The first is obvious from the context: without the genders there is no family and no procreation, and thus man cannot fulfill God's intention that humanity should multiply and fill the earth, serving as lords and stewards over God's beautiful creation. And man needs someone to help him do the tasks God has laid out for him, to be his "helper."

Another is to provide him with companionship. The writings of Solomon and the other sages bear out how the virtuous woman has the power to make a home more than simply a place to live, and how that she brings both joy and pleasure to her husband.

There is another benefit which is not mentioned here, but receives treatment in later Biblical teaching, especially in the New Testament epistles. A man finds, in caring for his wife, a higher satisfaction than when caring simply for himself and for his own needs.

As Christ taught us that "it is more blessed to give than to receive," so Paul writes (in the context of ecclesiastical discussions):

Husbands, love your wives, as Christ loved the church and gave himself up for her, that he might sanctify her, having cleansed her by the washing of water with the word, so that he might present the church to himself in splendor, without spot or wrinkle or any such thing, that she might be holy and without blemish. In the same way husbands should love their wives as their own bodies. He who loves his wife loves himself. For no one ever hated his own flesh, but nourishes and cherishes it, just as Christ does the church, because we are members of his body. "Therefore a man shall leave his father and mother and hold fast to his wife, and the two shall become one flesh." This mystery is profound, and I am saying that it refers to Christ and the church. However, let each one of you love his wife as himself, and let the wife see that she respects her husband. (Ephesians 5.25-33)

The reader will forgive my lengthy exposition, but it was necessary to make this point: when the feminist throws out the Biblical perspective on gender, she gives up the significance of what it means to be female. She removes herself from that special place she has in the created order which makes her an exalted object of love and attention, a source of joy, and a reason for thanksgiving. And she does this, all so that she can achieve this so called ideal of being treated exactly the same as men.

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[1] An interesting Vulgate translation: faciamus ei adiutorum similem sui with similis meaning "like, similar, or resembling."

[2] Contra evolutionary dogma.

According to creationist and biologist Robert W. Carter, the reason that evolutionists need junk DNA is this: the alleged generation of genetic information is such a slow process that for the generation of our genetic material to fit into a feasible time line, most of our genetic material must be non-functional. In other words, evolutionists are attempting to simplify the scope of their problem by reducing the amount of genetic information they have to explain.

In Carter's own words:

Based on the work of J.B.S. Haldane and others, who showed that natural selection cannot possibly select for millions of new mutations over the course of human evolution, Kimura developed the idea of "neutral evolution". If "Haldane's Dilemma" were correct, then the majority of DNA must be non-functional. It should be free to mutate over time without needing to be shaped by natural selection. In this way, natural selection could act on the important bits and neutral evolution could act randomly on the rest. Since natural selection will not act on neutral traits, which do not affect survival or reproduction, neutral evolution can proceed through random drift without any inherent "cost of selection". The term "junk DNA" originated with Ohno, who based his idea squarely on the idea of neutral evolution. To Ohno and other scientists of his time, the vast spaces (introns) between protein-coding genes were (exons) just useless DNA whose only function was to separate genes along a chromosome. Junk DNA is a necessary mathematical extrapolation. It was invented to solve a theoretical evolutionary dilemma. Without it, evolution runs into insurmountable mathematical difficulties. [1]

Then he comes to the heart of the matter:

Junk DNA is not just a label that was tacked on to some DNA that seemed to have no function, but it is something that is required by evolutionary theory. Mathematically, there is too much variation, too much DNA to mutate, and too few generations in which to get it all done. This was the essence of Haldane's work. Without junk DNA, evolutionary theory cannot currently explain how everything works mathematically. Think about it; in the evolutionary model there have only been 3-6 million years since humans and chimps diverged. With average human generation times of 20-30 years, this gives them only 100,000 to 300,000 generations to fix the millions of mutations that separate humans and chimps. This includes at least 35 million single letter differences, over 90 million base pairs of non-shared DNA, nearly 700 extra genes in humans (about 6% not shared with chimpanzees), and tens of thousands of chromosomal rearrangements. Also, the chimp genome is about 13% larger than that of humans, but mostly due to the heterochromatin that caps the chromosome telomeres. All this has to happen in a very short amount of evolutionary time. They don't have enough time, even after discounting the functionality of over 95% of the genome--but their position becomes grave if junk DNA turns out to be functional. Every new function found for junk DNA makes the evolutionists' case that much more difficult.

So, as I understand it: the more functionality we find in our "junk DNA," the more difficult it becomes for evolutionists to explain how that genetic information could be generated inside the time lines that they laid out for us. How dreadfully inconvenient.

[1] Robert W. Carter. The slow, painful death of junk dna. Journal of Creation, 23(3):12-13, 2009.

Be of good courage: God will still preserve
And greatly help all those who so deserve.
If no promotion waits on faithful men,
Say what advantage goodness offers then.
'Tis granted -- yet I often see the just
Faring but ill, from ev'ry honour thrust;
While they whose own advancement is their aim,
Oft in this present life have all they claim.
But we must look beyond, and wait the end,
That consummation to which all things tend.
'Tis not, as vain and wicked men have said,
By an unbridled destiny we're led:
It is not blinded chance that rules the world,
Nor uncontrolled are all things onward hurled.
The wicked blinds himself with this belief;
But be ye sure, of all rewards, the chief
Is still reserved for those who holy live;
And Providence to wicked men will give
Only the just reward which is their meed,
And fitting punishment for each bad deed.

Theophilus of Antioch was a Christian apologist who lived shortly after the Apostolic period, and so as an early writer his views have much significance for the Christian theologian. In a letter to Autolycus the pagan, Theophilus lectures on the necessity of faith. He writes specifically here in regard to the resurrection:

But you do not believe that the dead are raised. When the resurrection shall take place, then you will believe, whether you will or no; and your faith shall be reckoned for unbelief, unless you believe now. And why do you not believe? Do you not know that faith is the leading principle in all matters? For what husbandman can reap, unless he first trust his seed to the earth? Or who can cross the sea, unless he first entrust himself to the boat and the pilot? And what sick person can be healed, unless first he trust himself to the care of the physician? And what art or knowledge can any one learn, unless he first apply and entrust himself to the teacher? If, then, the husbandman trusts the earth, and the sailor the boat, and the sick the physician, will you not place confidence in God, even when you hold so many pledges at His hand? For first He created you out of nothing, and brought you into existence (for if your father was not, nor your mother, much more were you yourself at one time not in being), and formed you out of a small and moist substance, even out of the least drop, which at one time had itself no being; and God introduced you into this life. Moreover, you believe that the images made by men are gods, and do great things; and can you not believe that the God who made you is able also to make you afterwards? [1, 91]

It is obvious here from Theophilus' illustrative explanation that he understands faith to be fundamentally the same thing as trust. The significant aspect of his presentation here is not, however, his presentation of faith per se, but his presentation of the basis of faith.

There is no evidence here of the modern understanding of "faith," that damnable idea that faith is essentially a blind commitment to the least logical course of action. In contrast, Theophilus presents a reasonable faith, in which one trusts because it makes the most sense to do so. As Theophilus would say, you trust yourself to the physician because you know the physician is skilled in healing, and you trust yourself to the boat because you know that the boat was designed to float. And why, says Theophilus, should you believe that God will raise you from the dead? Because God has created you, and formed you in the womb, evidencing his power and capabilities. So in short, you have faith in God regarding the resurrection because of the reality that he is your trustworthy Creator.

If you will bear with me, I will transition into another very important concept: the fundamental doctrines of creation (general revelation) and the existence of God are not articles of faith. That is, it does not take faith to believe that there is a Creator God. Rather, this fact is evident from all the creation that we see and experience around us (Romans 1.18-20.) This basic understanding is implied even in the same writing of Theophilus:

Consider, O man, His works,--the timely rotation of the seasons, and the changes of temperature; the regular march of the stars; the well-ordered course of days and nights, and months, and years; the various beauty of seeds, and plants, and fruits; and the divers species of quadrupeds, and birds, and reptiles, and fishes, both of the rivers and of the sea; or consider the instinct implanted in these animals to beget and rear offspring, not for their own profit, but for the use of man; and the providence with which God provides nourishment for all flesh, or the subjection in which He has ordained that all things subserve mankind. Consider, too, the flowing of sweet foutnains and never-failing rivers, and the seasonable supply of dews, and showers, and rains; the manifold movement of the heavenly bodies, the morning star rising and heralding the approach of the perfect luminary; and the constellation of Pleiades, and Orion, and Arcturus, and the orbit of the other stars that circle through the heavens, all of which the manifold wisdom of God has called by names of their own. He is God alone who made light out of darkness, and brought forth light from His treasures, and formed the chambers of the south wind, and the treasure-houses of the deep, and the bounds of the seas, and the treasuries of snows and hail-storms, collecting the waters in the storehouses of the deep, and the darkness in His treasures, and bringing forth the sweet, and desirable, and pleasant light out of His treasures; "who causeth the vapours to ascend from the ends of the earth: He maketh lightnings for the rain;" who sends forth His thunder to terrify, and foretells by the lightning the peal of the thunder, that no soul may faint with the sudden shock; and who so moderates the violence of the lightning as it flashes out of heaven, that it does not consume the earth; for, if the lightning were allowed all its power, it would burn up the earth; and were the thunder allowed all its power, it would overthrow all the works that are therein. [1, 90-91] [2]

Theophilus couches his explanation here in a lot of Biblical language, but nevertheless his point here is that God makes himself known to us through his work in creation. This is ultimately the basis for our faith: the God that makes promises to us in his written word is the same God that has revealed himself to us through his glorious creation.

[1] Alexander Roberts and James Donaldson, editors. The Ante-Nicene Fathers, volume 2. Eerdmans, 1962.

[2] A brief note on Theophilus' last argument: it is evident that Theophilus does not have the clearest understanding of the physics of lightning, but this detracts nothing from his argument. His point is that if God had made the lightning more powerful than it is, it would destroy creation. As the power of the lightning is restrainted, it is evidence of balance and order in God's delicate universe.

I considered an alternative title to this post, which was "Pro-choice Advocates: Eternally Obscuring the Issue." But somehow "Perpetually Missing the Point" sounded a little more natural to my ear.

To get to classes at the University of Alaska Fairbanks, I park on the far side of a university parking lot and then walk for about five minutes across the parking lot and up a hill. During one walk last week I noticed a small car (liberals seem to like small cars) with a sticker on the right side of the bumper stating boldly:

FREEDOM

MEANS

CHOICE

Under this declaration was the address of some abortion-promoting organization, and of course on the opposite side of the bumper was the customary Obama '08 memorabilia.

Liberals are fond of borrowing conservative and religious terminology, beating them over peoples' heads in quick political statements, and then tossing away or completely ignoring the ideology behind the words. This would be a classic example.

Anyone who really cares about the idea called freedom understands what it means to live in a free society. In a free society, we strive to allow people to exercise freely certain fundamental rights that belong to each of us as human beings. However, we understand that we can not allow one person exercising his rights to trample over the rights of another person. From the Declaration of Independence:

We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness. -- That to secure these rights, Governments are instituted among Men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed.

The fundamental reason that conservatives are opposed to abortion is that they believe the fetus or embryo in a mother's womb is a living human being, and as such, that being's most fundamental right - the right to Life - must be protected. In contrast, pro-choice advocates represent themselves as protecting a woman's right to exercise control over her own body, implying (when it is not stated outright) that the organism growing inside of her is not really human nor truly a distinct individual.

This is the heart of the debate. The "Freedom Means Choice" message, on the contrary, is a deceptive trick - a sleight of hand, if you will - meant to distract from the real issue.

The pro-choice movement needs to keep people distracted if legalized abortion is going to survive in the United States. It is a bit speculative of course, but I suspect that if every mother considering having an abortion took a serious, deep look at the question of whether or not her child is a human being, the periodic number of abortions in the country would drop to a small fraction of the original. I think that the average woman, after looking at reconstructions of the child in the womb, reading about the intricacies of each stage of development, listening to a young heartbeat, and pondering the philosophical implications of the decision, would not have the willpower needed to have her child crushed to pieces and sucked out of her womb with a vacuum pump.

Whenever I hear the word "uniformitarianism," the first image that comes to mind are layers of sedimentary rock, like those of the Grand Canyon. Doubtlessly this is because it has been pounded into my mind since grade school that each of those layers represents millions of years of earth's history.

Grand_Canyon_2.jpg - released into the public domain by Jon Sullivan, pdphoto.org The views of the author are not endorsed by Jon Sullivan.

Recently, however, I read an interesting article in the Journal of Creation by Ariel A. Roth, a biologist and student of sedimentary geology. [1] I found the article interesting not because I am an expert in geology but because the fundamental concepts appealed to my common sense as a layman. My summary of his article:

In Ariel A. Roth's article on "flat gaps," Roth indicates that the flat gaps, or paraconformities, between sedimentary sequences (layers) are a severe problem for long-age, uniformitarian geology. He argues that the large periods of time allegedly indicated by the gaps would produce evidence of erosion in the removal of "vast depths of sediment" and the production of "a highly irregular land surface," but such evidence is not present. He indicates that flat gaps "are very difficult to explain within the long-age uniformitarian paradigm and severely challenge the concept of millions of years" but that they "provide strong evidence for a young earth and are easily explained within its paradigm of the global biblical Flood."

So, a paraconformity (a type of unconformity) is a gap between parallel sedimentary layers. These gaps are supposed to represent millions of years where erosion took place or build-up did not take place. The problem, writes Roth, is that if these paraconformities really represented such long periods of time, they would not be as straight or uniform as they are. The many normal forces of erosion that are at work today, which often make our own land surfaces so complex and irregular, would also have been at work during the time represented by these gaps. And so these paraconformities would not, as a general rule, be straight or uniform but rather highly irregular in direction and shape.

Biblical creationists believe these sedimentary layers are more convincingly explained by the global flood described in Genesis. That is, when God miraculously covered the entire planet in water, that same water stirred up massive amounts of rock and minerals and then, through natural processes, laid those materials back down into the fairly even and orderly layers that are visible today.

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[1] Ariel A. Roth. "flat gaps" in sedimentary rock layers challenge long geologic ages. Journal of Creation, 23(2):76-81, 2009.