faith – J.R. Cooper

Dark Matter; Why Does It Matter?

Disclaimer: I am not a cosmologist.

But here is what I do know. The model used to get from the Big Bang explosion from nothing to today’s observable universe, via naturalist or materialist means simply does not work without Dark Matter. (well, it doesn’t work for a myriad of other reasons too, but even assuming the rest fit, the naturalist needs Dark Matter).

Definitions are important, and sometimes I take for granted that everyone knows what I mean when I say things. So let’s take a second and define what I mean when I say a few terms:

Cosmology is a branch of astronomy concerned with the studies of the origin and evolution of the universe, from the Big Bang to today and on into the future.

When I say naturalist, or materialist, it is simply a person who supports the theory that nothing exists except matter and its movements and modifications. Things only developed through natural means, without a designer. Essentially this is the normative atheistic point of view.

And Dark Matter? What is it? Well, the definition provided is “a nonluminous material that is postulated to exist in space and that could take any of several forms including weakly interacting particles or high-energy randomly moving particles created soon after the Big Bang.”

These “particles” mind you, are not detectable by any means we now possess. Not visible or observable on any known spectrum. Can’t see it. Can’t feel it. Can’t hear it.

Then how, you might ask, do we know it is there? The answer is, it has to be, because if it wasn’t, the Big Bang model falls apart. In other words, those who operate under the presupposition that the universe propagated itself via natural means know that Dark Matter exists, because it has to exist for the presupposition to be true. This is the atheist’s own version of the “god of the gaps” argument. There is a major scientific gap in how stars can form and how galaxies have been able to maintain their shape (the wind-up problem) and in order to add the correct amount of gravity necessary to make the computer simulations work, they have invented, made up, concocted, pretended, that Dark Matter exists so that the observable universe is more mathematically feasible.

You see, without Dark Matter, the first stars could not have formed in the vacuum of space. If Hydrogen and Helium were floating around in a vacuum, physics tells us the particles would expand. Certainly if they were somehow inclined to coalesce into something more dense, and the temperature would rise, making them expand more, curbing any tendency inorganic, purposeless particles might have to form into a star. A star that must get so dense that it weighs 4,400,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000 lbs, the weight of our own sun. Out of Helium. And hydrogen. In space.

The solution, enter Dark Matter. A plugged in and specified amount of un-detectable, un-observable gravity, that is there, simply because it must be, that would push these air particles together hard enough, and long enough to force them into creating the first stars.

I’d like to point out here that this is the self-same scientific community that prides itself on being the paragons of logic, who have market cornered on beliefs that are securely moored to facts, and who are quick to point fingers at believers in God as anti-science. The Berkeley science website even states, “Modern science does not deal with supernatural explanations because they are not scientifically testable.” – (understanding science, 2014).

And what is supernatural? It is defined as a force beyond scientific understanding, or the laws of nature. A force beyond observable nature.

A good example of such a supernatural force would of course be Dark matter.

Why am I so adamant, and even occasionally snarky about this subject? Because I feel the ridiculousness of these theories are obvious. The fudge factors are well known within the scientific community, and yet these obvious pleas for legitimacy are never presented to students. Only big words, and the repeating drums of the big bang being fact, along with great animation, and spectacular fairy tales propped up by eons of time. When spoken of in common language, explained in laymen’s terms, and splashed with the cold water of reality, with the physical laws of the universe, scientists are knowingly making up different types of matter, that no one can see, with the exact properties they need them to have, so that they do not have to be wrong. Dark Matter is one of several.

When I explain the reality of Dark Matter theory to my nine year old, she has the common sense to laugh at those silly scientists. Of course the atheist who sees Christians raise their kids with the notion that stars are a special creation, just like humans are, accuses the Christian of child abuse, negligence, and bad parenting.

But the materialists make up fudge factors with impunity, and without compunction. They call it good science, because it supports their idea of a Godless universe, and they manipulate data and simulations to tell the story they want to believe in. This has not been a search for truth. This has instead been a scramble to defend a dying cosmological model. Dark Matter, and it’s perfect and uncanny gravity, is just another example of this dishonest practice.

My question is, how many made up components of the Big Bang model must their be, before the materialists admit that they too are faith based, and that their faith is in that which is beyond nature, beyond the ability to observe, and in that which contradicts the laws of physics? The difference between concluding that there is a God and concluding that there is Dark Matter, is that the heavens declare the glory of God, it is obvious to any nine year old who looks up to the heavens in awe. Dark matter is declared by no one but the scientists who invented it, and use it in hopes that it will keep the truth of God at bay for a little while longer.

UPDATE: In addition to this article, I will add here an excerpt from the article, “Evidence for dark matter in the inner Milky Way”, sciencedaily.com, February 2015.

““The existence of dark matter in the outer parts of the Milky Way is well established. But historically it has proven very difficult to establish the presence of dark matter in the innermost regions, where the Solar System is located. This is due to the difficulty of measuring the rotation of gas and stars with the needed precision from our own position in the Milky Way.
“In our new study, we obtained for the first time a direct observational proof of the presence of dark matter in the innermost part of the Milky Way. We have created the most complete compilation so far of published measurements of the motion of gas and stars in the Milky Way, and compared the measured rotation speed with that expected under the assumption that only luminous matter exists in the Galaxy. The observed rotation cannot be explained unless large amounts of dark matter exist around us, and between us and the Galactic centre,” says Miguel Pato at the Department of Physics, Stockholm University.” (emphasis added).

This statement, “The observed rotation cannot be explained unless large amounts of dark matter exist around us”, is the obvious and continual bias coming from the scientific community. The effect of the presupposition of deep time is pervasive, and endlessly sabotages attempts at good science. It is the reason they must cling blindly to faith in made up fudge factors.

Also, this author claims “direct observational proof!” Of a substance they cannot detect! How did they directly observe it? They measured the rotation speed of heavenly bodies while assuming only detectable matter exists! In other words, they simply observed the natural universe. And since the conclusion makes deep time impossible, they know dark matter is proved! Are you kidding me?!

Here, from their own lips, you have faith in a made up element, rather than ever consider that their underlying assumptions about the universe are dead wrong.

He is Risen, Indeed!

Happy Resurrection Sunday! He is Risen!

A fellow church goer friend of mine wrote, “To my atheist friends:
Atheists spend a lot of time and energy attacking the Bible, complaining about Churches and pointing out the flaws of Christians in an effort to bring an end to Christianity. There is only one thing that needs to be done in order to bring Christianity to its knees. It’s simple, too. Prove that Jesus’ tomb was not empty.”

In instances where Jesus Christ prophecies His demise, He always references that He will again rise from the dead, but of course, those closest to Him were plagued with disbelief, even after seeing Him with their own eyes! They just knew that this type of miracle couldn’t happen, but after many appearances, mending Peter’s broken heart, letting Thomas touch His wounds, eating with them, and ministering and appearing to hundreds of witnesses, His defeat of death itself was realized.

History already knows Jesus was real and historical, and we, through evidences and eye witness accounts know more about Christ’s death than the death of any other one man in the ancient world.

My friend is correct in his challenge, that all it would take is to prove that Jesus Christ the Messiah did not defeat death. There are many articles and books on rebutting the skeptic arguments, but rest assured, the challenge exists, for any and all to seek, to knock, to research so that you can find truth for yourself, for as the word says, it shall set you free. And when faced with the historical truth of a real and physical resurrection, you will be then faced with deciding whether you choose to love Jesus or hate Him.

The Bible even claims if you can do this one thing, prove He never rose on the third day, it would make all of Christianity empty and worthless.

1 Corinthians 15: 12 But if it is preached that Christ has been raised from the dead, how can some of you say that there is no resurrection of the dead? 13 If there is no resurrection of the dead, then not even Christ has been raised. 14 And if Christ has not been raised, our preaching is useless and so is your faith. 15 More than that, we are then found to be false witnesses about God, for we have testified about God that he raised Christ from the dead. But he did not raise him if in fact the dead are not raised. 16 For if the dead are not raised, then Christ has not been raised either. 17 And if Christ has not been raised, your faith is futile; you are still in your sins. 18 Then those also who have fallen asleep in Christ are lost. 19 If only for this life we have hope in Christ, we are of all people most to be pitied.

Many are already familiar with Lee Strobel, who wrote the case for Christ. An investigative reporter, who was challenged by his wife to actually seek and try to disprove the Resurrection, only to find it was undeniable. This led to his book in 1998, as well as a follow up, The case for Faith.

Two men at Oxford, Gilbert West and Lord Lyttleton, were determined to disprove the bible as well. Lyttleton set out to prove Saul (Paul) was never converted, and Gilbert set out to prove Jesus never rose again.

Sheepishly meeting some time later, they had discovered that each had failed in their attempt. Saul of Tarsus had become a radically new man, and evidence unmistakably pointed to the fact that Christ rose again. The book that emerged from their study was, “Observations on the History and Evidences of the Resurrection. 1747.

One final story, (out of many converts who came from setting out to destroy the bible’s credibility), is from Frank Morison, from England. An unbeliever, Frank promised himself that one day he would write a book disproving the Resurrection. In the early 20th century, he was granted enough downtime to study, and make his case.

His book that emerged, after he accepted Christ as his savior, was the paperback, “Who Moved the Stone, published in 1930.

William Lane Craig points out “Without the belief in the Resurrection, the Christian faith could not have come in to being. The disciples would have remained crushed, and defeated men.”

So in strange and unprecedented times, on a holiday where we are all forced to take a look at our own mortality, and the relationship we have with God, the world, and those closest to us, on this Easter Sunday, my fellow brothers and sisters in Christ proclaim triumphant, in love, hope, faith, and truth, He is Risen Indeed!

And my friends who do not believe, all you must do is prove that the Historical Jesus never predicted His own death and Resurrection, and then fulfilled that very thing. I must confess in love though, that I do hope all who take this journey in earnest, reach the same foregone conclusions that these men mentioned in this article did, and that it plants a hope in your heart that will never be taken away. Happy Easter.

Archeological/Geological Response to Atheist Part 5 of 5

Atheist: Here’s a very incomplete list of things that cannot be explained by your flood or fit into the young earth creationist’s timeline (continued):

(for part 1, click here)

(for part 2, click here)

(for part 3, click here)

(for part 4, click here)

nor [evidence for] the global flood,

As you can see from the many examples given in this 5 part series (not exhaustive by any stretch) we can be encouraged and edified in trusting the word of God to be accurate, and to be a realistic telling of the events that occurred in history, as it is embedded within observable science and laws. Many of our major geological features are not only explainable in a deluge model, but this is in fact the easiest way to explain them all at once! If someone says, there is just no evidence of the flood; its ridiculous.

Particularly difficult to apply the principle of uniformitarianism to:
1. Cause of mountain building
2. origin of geosynclines
3. origin of petroleum
4. Cause of continual glaciation
5 overthrusting mechanics
6 cause of peneplains
7 volcanism causing vast volcanic terrains
8 origin of mineral deposits
9 saline deposits
10 granitization
11 origin of coal measures….. and others….

One geological note about where I live specifically:

There are over 1700 water gaps in the Appalachian mountain ranges alone, where water should have gone around, not through mountains. This could only happen if water was carving valleys while over the mountain tops such as in the great flood of Noah’s day. Water doesn’t run uphill, and takes the path of least resistance, an embarrassment to uniformitarianism. The geology of the Blue Ridge Mountains could not have been formed, except through this catastrophe.

Geological evidence is being pointed to, forcing geologists to admit to catastrophism and the quick twisting and reshaping of the earth’s surface. Evolutionists such as Gould, and Krynine admit to it, stating uniformitarian thinking is contradicted by facts. Gould says “”present is key to the past” is a smokescreen hiding confusion for both teacher and student.” – Is uniformitarianism useful?- 1957

Evolutionist and geologist, KE Caster states, “the vast bulk of stratified rock is shallow water deposits.” These layers are riddled with fossils. FOSSILIZATION DOES NOT NORMALLY HAPPEN TODAY. IT REQUIRES SUDDEN DEATH, SUDDEN BURIAL, AND GREAT PRESSURE. There are no fossils in the bedrock granite. Fossil creation is so rare, and yet Millions of animals died SUDDENLY! Evolutionist Colbert states,”At this spot in Wyoming… the concentration of fossils was remarkable; a veritable mine of dinosaur bones; piled in like a log jam.”

The many fossil graveyards means, at some point in history, vast amounts of animals were buried suddenly, all over the earth. For anyone to look at the earth’s crust and state there is no evidence… must be trying very hard not to see it.

I encourage more study into any areas of interest, but in regards to the flood being actual history, one note to be made is that we have presently over 270 ancient flood legends from different people groups around the globe! There are over 270 ancient flood legends and traditions recorded in ancient history, 80% of them mention a large vessel saving the human race. 88% involve a favored family. In 70%, survival was due to the boat. In 95%, the flood was responsible for the death of mankind. This is remarkable evidence that a flood occurred to the ancestors of all people groups. In fact, you could even imagine if there were no flood legends, this would be quite the effective criticism from atheists, saying how come there is no written or oral history to back up the story other than the bible?

Also, the city of Nineveh in the Bible had its Library of Ashurbanipal excavated in the 1850’s. But in 1872, George Smith of the British Museum discovered cuneiform writing that had to be deciphered. It said, “The mountain of Nisir stopped the ship. I sent forth a dove, and it left. The dove went and turned, and a resting place it did not find and it returned.”

This Babylonian flood legend, along with the much older Atrahasis epic, and Sumerian deluge story, make up some of the over 270 legends we have catalogued in archaeology, all having astonishing areas of agreement with the Bible, lending veracity to its historicity.

nor a couple million Hebrews wandering in the desert (zero trace of that), and in fact contradicts several parts of the bible, like cases where the stories reference a city that did not exist at the time the story supposedly took place (but DID exist hundreds of years later when the bible was actually written).

These points were mostly addressed. Often critics accuse the bible of being written later than what is reported, therefore explaining the exactitude of its prophecies. Unfortunately for the critic, this doesn’t hold water either. Again, archaeology proves time and time again that even the people groups, cities, economies, and famines described were true. From the price of a slave, to the grave of Joseph, to many eye-witness accounts, we do not have to fall for the critic’s accusation here. These continue to be either arguments from silence, or in most cases now, ignorance of the embarrassing amount of evidence we have.

They try this with the New Testament as well, since it predicts many things about Jesus’ life in great detail. How accurately was prophecy fulfilled? Could a book have predicted accurately over 500 years before in OT: Zec: 11 “I took the thirty pieces of silver and threw them into the house of the LORD to the potter.”
NT: Matthew 27 – Judas returns 30 silver coins to the chief priests and the elders, they decided to use it to buy the potters field.

Micah 5:2-5 But you Bethlehem Ephratah, though you are small among the clans of Judah, out of you will come for me one who will be ruler over Israel, whose origins are of old, from ancient times…

Fulfilled over 500 years later: Matthew 2: 1-6 After Jesus was born in Bethlehem in Judea, during the time of King Herod, Magi from the east came to Jerusalem and asked, “where is the one who has been born king of the Jews?”

Born of a virgin Isaiah 7:14 Matt. 1:18, 25
Born at Bethlehem Micah 5:2 Matt. 2:1
He would be preceded by a Messenger Isaiah 40:3 Matt. 3:1-2
Rejected by His own people Isaiah 53:3 John 7:5, 7:48
Betrayed by a close friend Isaiah 41:9 John 13:26-30
His side pierced Zech. 12:10 John 19:34
Crucifixion Psalm 22:1,
Psalm 22:11-18 Luke 23:33,
John 19:23-24
Resurrection of Christ Psalm 16:10 Acts 13:34-37

So, it must have been written after to be so accurate, yes? Josh MacDowell teaches us this:

“If you are not satisfied with 450 BC as the historical date for the completion of the Old Testament, take into consideration the following: The Septuagint, the Greek translation of the Hebrew Scriptures, was initiated in the rain of Ptolemy Philadelphus (285-246 Bc). It is rather obvious that if you have a Greek translation initiated into 250BC, can you had to have The Hebrew text from which it was written. This will suffice to indicate that there was at least a 250 year gap between the prophecies being written down in their first fulfillment in the person of Christ.”
There is nothing scientifically accurate about the bible.

This absolute statement shows the bias against the bible. Even scientists who believe in evolution have used the accuracy and history of the bible to find many discoveries. To say there is “nothing” is to show the true and emotional disdain towards the idea of a creator God. That being said, evolutionists and materialists often criticize the bible for its belief in miracles at large. If something is claimed to be a supernatural event, science will automatically dismiss it, and therefore, if anything supernatural exists at all, science will never find it. But consider, if the first verse of the bible is true, that means all miracles within it are indeed possible. This goes not only for the creation itself, but miracles like the parting of the Red Sea, healings, Sampson’s strength, and of course the Resurrection. So with the realization that the bible is a book about a supernatural, or beyond-natural being who is above space time and matter, we can conclude that He can act supernaturally within His creation.

But there is more evidence within the bible that proves its natural scientific accuracy as well. It spoke of many things long before science proposed it, or understood it to be true:

Stars are innumerable (Genesis 22:17; Jeremiah 33:22)
Stars differ in glory (1 Corinthians 15:41)
Stars follow a predictable pattern (Jeremiah 31:35)
Earth is round, not flat (Isaiah 40:22; Psalm 103:12)
Earth hangs on nothing (Job 26:7)
Water cycle (Ecclesiastes 1:7; Isaiah 55:10)
Sea currents (Psalm 8:8)
“Fountains of the deep broken up” (Genesis 7:11)Job 38:16, God asked, “Have you entered the springs of the sea? (water coming up into the ocean from the crust)
Life in the Blood, Blood circulation (Leviticus 17:11)

Many of these may seem obviously true to us now. But much of history was ignorant to these simple truths. We thought the world sat on the back of a tortoise, and blood letting was performed even up to recent history.

Considering these biblical truths, inspired and breathed by the God who created them, we would expect them to be accurate. And as it turns out, that is precisely what we find. As I always state, the bible is not a science book, nor a book on taxonomy, biology, or geology. It is much much more. But nevertheless, if it is full of true history, and we would expect to find a great many explanations in it that fit with what we observe today. After all, science just means knowledge. For one to claim that within God’s word there is no knowledge… well, we can only pray that one day, like it says in Phil 2:12, that the atheist who said it will continue to work out his salvation with fear and trembling.

Science tells us it is impossible that the current human population of the world came from a single breeding pair, or even three pairs. The minimum estimated population during the most severe bottleneck in our past was at least a few hundred, and probably closer to a few thousand individuals.

Our final point, and again the more ludicrous of the two options is the evolutionary premise, which would have us believe that mankind in one form or another, has existed between 1 million and 7 million years, depending on who you ask and when you start counting them as man rather than some ape ancestor. The premise is that in these pockets of slowly evolving people lived in nomadic tribes, and that life was so harsh that the population remained stable until about 5000 years ago when agriculture was discovered. This is the catalyst that skyrocketed the population. As you can imagine, this creates a long, long, long long long, ridiculously long timeline of no population growth until just about the exact time that the flood occurred. According to creationists, the population sprang up from the 8 people on the ark about 4500 years ago. Tracking basic population rates, longevity in different periods, death rates, etc, we easily and rationally can surmise the 7 billion people of today coming from just a few people a few thousand years ago.

“In the “out of Africa” model of genetics, evolutionists say that humanity went through a near-extinction bottleneck before a population expansion. Why is the bottleneck part of their model? Because they are trying to explain the lack of diversity among people spread across the world. The diversity is much less than they first assumed. The bottleneck is an ad hoc addition to evolutionary theory. But low diversity, and all coming from very few (a bottleneck) has been part of the creation model from the start.” -Dr Robert Carter.

The fact is, the creationist population growth analysis makes perfect sense, and what’s more, the history laid out within the word of God supports what we observe in genetics as well. It would be quite unreasonable to assume a mankind only slightly more sophisticated than apes, with no art, or music, or play stations, or golf clubs, and virtually no forms of escapism from everyday life, to not do the one thing that seems to come naturally to all mammals. The math here is unmistakable, which is why we have the agriculture story to try and prop up the cave-man mythology. If the population doubles 29.5 times between now and the flood (once every 152 years) we have achieved the current population. (The world’s population was approximately 600 million in the year 1650 and increased to about 2,400 million by 1950. This means that it would have doubled twice in 300 years, at an average rate of once every 150 years). It fits perfectly.

So again this point is slung like so much spaghetti against the wall, to see which strands stick. Unfortunately it isn’t rooted in facts. This is why evolutionists must assert presumptions into an un-testable model. Agriculture, nomadic tribes, population wiped out several times. At the end of the day, I would hope that hanging one’s faith upon the hopes of a weak evolutionary model isn’t the determining factor on whether or not that person considers a relationship with a God who loved us enough to come die for us.

Again, these 5 articles are not meant to be exhaustive. But as an enjoyable exercise for myself, and hopefully to bolster the faith of other bible believing Christians who are constantly being told that the bible is ridiculous and inaccurate, it was neat to counter typical atheist criticisms for a bit. I would encourage you to keep reading, keep praying, and keep building your relationship with God, or if you haven’t then start by reading of His love in the word. We know by now Romans 1:20 – “For from the creation of the world the invisible things of Him are clearly seen, being understood through the things that are made, even His eternal power and Godhead, so that they are without excuse.”

We know there exists within us a moral law, a realization that design and beauty is all around us, that it couldn’t be random chance, and that God wishes for all to come to know Him. I pray you keep studying, keep seeking, keep searching. The answers are out there. But remember, if the supernatural does exist, and you refuse to believe it possible, you will of course never find it. Not in this life. Your faith instead will be in chance, in time, and in self, three things that cannot offer salvation.

Archeological/Geological Response to Atheist Part 3 of 5

Atheist: Here’s a very incomplete list of things that cannot be explained by your flood or fit into the young earth creationist’s timeline (continued):

(for part 1, click here)

(for part 2, click here)

huge amounts of chalk,

These are exampled by the thick chalk beds of Dover, England.

The first thing to note is that these chalk beds, like many other large sedimentary examples, stretch across vast areas, even continents! These great rock formations, and how they cover so much land is a great sign that they were laid down not only catastrophically, but that they were part of a global event strong enough to spread them over large territories. Millions of years of slow local processes would not, and could not accomplish this.

“The Cretaceous chalk beds of southern England are well known because they appear as spectacular white cliffs along the coast. These chalk beds can be traced westward across England and appear again in Northern Ireland. In the opposite direction, these same chalk beds can be traced across France, the Netherlands, Germany, Poland, southern Scandinavia, and other parts of Europe to Turkey, then to Israel and Egypt in the Middle East, and even as far as Kazakhstan.

Remarkably, the same chalk beds with the same fossils and the same distinctive strata above and below them are also found in the Midwest USA, from Nebraska in the north to Texas in the south. They also appear in the Perth Basin of Western Australia.” – Dr. Andrew Snelling, Geologist, https://answersingenesis.org/geology/rock-layers/transcontinental-rock-layers/

Dr Ariel Roth of the Geoscience Research Institute (Loma Linda, California) and John Woodmorappe are two of several doctors that again provide math that allows for their thickness, once scientists are willing to see past their uniformitarian assumptions. (Article on Chalk beds by Snelling)

Rather than rehash the same response as with syntectonic deposits, and dolomite, it might be interesting to point out here that a major problem with the two opposing views is interpretation of what we observe. We all have the same facts, large chalk formations, sediment in the ocean, the moon and its features, and we must interpret them depending upon our world view. This has been explained several times, and in several different ways, so I won’t re-explain here. But what one must also do is then weigh these theories, these models, these interpretations, and decide for one’s self if they hold water collectively.

When taken as a whole, the obviousness of the order in our universe is apparent, from the solar system to our DNA, evidence of biblical history, evidence of the resurrection, and the numerous factors that can be viewed easily from a biblically historic perspective, where what we observe matches a history written so long ago, and is still proven reliable and verifiable over and over. Or we can believe that humans have no soul, that life, and reason, and art, and music, and love were accidental. And in believing so, we must adopt mental gymnastics, and propose great gobs of time to develop the godless model of our existence.

So the common argument, in order to hope there is no god, is to say, I have a plausible explanation for everything being random if we add enough time, despite obvious signs of catastrophism the world over.

Dr. George Wald, Professor of Biology at Harvard University, and Nobel Laureate espoused well the necessary belief to convince oneself of such incredible explanation: “The origin of life” Scientific American, August 1954 “However improbable we regard this event [origin of life], or any of the steps which it involves, given enough time it will almost certainly happen at-least-once. And for life as we know it, with its capacity for growth and reproduction, once may be enough.”

“Time is in fact the hero of the plot. The time with which we have to deal is of the order of two billion years. What we regard as impossible on the basis of human experience is meaningless here. Given so much time, the “impossible” becomes possible, the possible probable, and the probable virtually certain. One has only to wait: time itself performs the miracles.”

Sounds like faith to me.

offset of sediments along faultlines like the San Andreas,

Don’t know much about this, or why it would mean the world is millions of years old. Would have to research, however the conventional opinion of creation scientists is that most or all of the fault lines were created when the fountains of the deep broke open, allowing subterranean water chambers to flood the earth, and forming plates.

the amount of oil and coal in the earth’s crust,

Answered regarding biomass in part 1.

the mere existence of oil and coal,

Previously addressed numerous times. Here is an excerpt from Diamonds Have Carbon 14:

“Consider this as well: Scientists in a lab made coal in 6 hours. At a different time, in 1982 the British made oil in 10 minutes. Noel McAuliffe of Manchester University triumphantly stated, “We are doing in 10 minutes what it has taken nature 150 million years to do.” This is yes another stellar example of our presuppositions determining our interpretations. Another, more obvious conclusion, if one were not blinded by evolutionary theory would be to instead triumphantly announce, “It doesn’t take nearly as long as we thought for coal and oil to form!”

So what we have is, depending on conditions and pressure, the scientifically proven ability to form these things quickly. Furthermore, we have evidence that they are from not long ago, with artifacts from mankind having been found in them, such as bells and figurines, as well as having found carbon 14 in them, diamonds, and bones that should at this point be carbon dead.

I would submit that the existence of coal, oil, and the fossil record prove that millions of things were buried quickly andglobally, since this is how they are in fact formed, and do not detract from the reality of a flood, but support it greatly.

the absence of soft tissue in older fossils,

This is an argument from silence. A few years ago, the argument would have been “you don’t have soft tissue in fossils at all!” That of course has changed, since many examples of soft, stretchy tissue have now been found, in T-Rex samples, in triceratops horns, and many others. Now the criticism is, we don’t possess soft tissue from things older than “60 million years” or “older fossils”. The mineralization of organic material is evidenced all over the earth; millions of animals and plants buried quickly by mud and water. The very nature of how they were buried provides us with our ample fossil evidence. We know again from observation that most things that aren’t buried do decay quickly, and are consumed by the natural recycling of nature. Any soft tissue of extinct animals would be rare indeed. Soft tissue of such examples only verifies the creation model. A better question for atheists is, why do we have this many fossils at all?!

early fossils found in gastroliths in the bellies of dinosaur fossils,

Interesting assertion here. A gastrolith is a rock swallowed by a dinosaur that is used to aid digestion. As they roll around in the belly of an animal, they become polished and rounded. Evolutionists have found some of these with fossils already in them, so as you can see, if the fossils within the gastroliths were formed before the dinosaurs, then how did the the flood cause both samples to be fossilized at different times? The solution, as verified by Zaleha, M.J. and Wiesemann, S.A., (Hyperconcentrated flows and gastroliths: Sedimentology of diamictites and wackes of the Upper Cloverly Formation, Lower Cretaceous, Wyoming, U. S. A., Journal of Sedimentary Research 75(1):43–54, 2005), is that these gastroliths with fossils are not gastroliths at all, but merely akin to the river rocks of today. Polished, smooth rocks washed miles and miles by water. We can easily imagine in a receding flood, many rocks being eroded and deposited all over the land. Why then are these classified as such? To promote evolution? Perhaps. Or perhaps an evolutionary scientist gets more kudos by reporting on a supposed “proof” of anti-creation, and a rare gastrolith, then reporting on some river rocks?

(Continued in Part 4)

Archeological/Geological Response to Atheist Part 1 of 5

The list that follows is copied and pasted from a comment in a small debate with an atheist. Though science wasn’t the original topic of the feed, rather it was the hopelessness of atheism, this list was presented as a sound refutation of why creation and the flood couldn’t possibly be realities. I thought rather than get into a tit-for-tat debate in someone else’s comment feed, which tends to by highly unfruitful, I would address the list here. Less emotion, less noise, and a teachable moment for anyone following, that much of the criticisms fired at Christianity are not proofs against it, but are assertions based on the presupposition that their world view is correct, i.e. “there is no God”. In this way, maybe bible believing Christians can be edified by knowing that regardless of the other side’s presumption, there has historically been great reason to hold fast to the truth of the word. Since “there is no God” must be true for an atheist, everything they observe in nature must not support the bible, or the biblical world view, but only materialism, which means an evolutionary explanation. Out of respect for the atheist and his list, I would state that I am not implying his list was exhaustive, and I am quite sure there is a rebuttal for each comment made. The point here is to realize evidence must be interpreted based on world view.

Admittedly, I have similar biases, for all that I see in nature screams loudly that there is in fact a God, and that the Bible’s history is accurate down to minute detail. I am a firm believer that people are saved through the hearing of the gospel, and the Holy Spirit moving in or softening their hearts. But this doesn’t exclude facts, logic or reason. How could it if God is the creator of our organized reality? My faith in God and His word is the filter through which I see the observable world. One thing biblicists will admit, and which is an obvious truth, is that “scientists don’t say anything – scientists do.” What we then observe, based on presupposition, is our interpretation of hard facts. Let’s explore!

I’ll put atheist comments in Green, and my responses in Black:

Here’s a very incomplete list of things that cannot be explained by your flood or fit into the young earth creationist’s timeline:

Varves, the Green River Formation,

What the heck are varves?! Varves are sedimentary rock formations, ripples, or laminae that are thought to be annual deposits. At the Green River, geologists can see millions of these varves, and it is often pointed to in much of evolutionary literature as proof the world is very old. When clinging to the presupposition of uniformitarian thinking, an evolutionist would certainly try to claim these must be annual. The truth is, in field observations and in labs, varves have been seen to form very quickly, especially in storms and unusual conditions (aka. a global deluge). In many observations, multiple ridges form instantaneously! Plus at Green River, we find a great many perfectly fossilized fish with great detail preserved in the varves, down to the eyeballs, scales and the like. More than even this, we find a great many fossils there from different ecosystems; plants, and birds (shore birds all the way to forest birds all in the same formation). We know, again from observation that fish rot and are consumed by nature quickly upon death. If we cling to the millions of years to form the Green River Formation theory, we must try to explain how these fish didn’t rot long enough over the millions of years, to form such detailed fossil samples, or why there are fossils at all. Using common sense, I believe we can safely deduce a great catastrophic event not only caused these sedimentary rock formations, but also buried life from a wide area in this one place. Most geologists don’t cling to the idea that each varve equals 1 year.

ice cores,

This theory of annual ice rings has been smacked down like a jump shot defended against by Lebron James. The best and most obvious example is the famous lost squadron. It is worth researching yourself and is a fascinating tale, but to make a long story short – A WWII squadron was lost in 1942 over Greenland. These planes were recovered in 1988, only 46 years later. Due to the shifting in ice, and to the great surprise of the search teams, the squadron was finally located 250 feet down below the surface, and through hundreds and hundreds of ice rings in the mere 46 years. Rings are formed during hot and cold, and are not a product of deep time.

the sheer amount of buried biomass,

This argument is unfortunately due to ignorance of the creation model. Creationists do not have issue with the huge amount of biomass (oils, coals, natural gases) found in the earth’s crust, but evolutionists think we do. This is because there is great misunderstanding as to what the pre-flood world looked like. Again, blinded by the present-being-the-key-to-the-past assumption (an unscientific one), if one imagines all the organic material on the earth today being used to form coal, we would fall desperately short of what is in the earth’s crust currently. And that would of course be correct. The problem is evolutionists assume the present land area of the earth is the analogous to the creation model’s pre-flood world. They assume every and all creationists believe in a Pangaea arrangement of continents, and that, like today’s world, the earth back then was only habitable on about 3% of its surface area. But God’s word clearly teaches that not only was the original design supposed to be conducive for man to spread out and subdue it, as well as enjoy its bounty and ability to provide longevity, but also that the post-flood world dramatically changed the earth, as evidenced by plummeting ages, fossil records, and plant material even under the icecaps. In a proper understanding of the pre-flood world, one that fits with the evidence, we would have a surface covered with land, springs underneath (as described in the Garden of Eden [different hydrological cycle], and plentiful biomass, which easily explains the amount of coal and oil in the earth’s crust without resorting to billions of years of assumption. Imagine a world where 65% of the earth is habitable? With better growing conditions, denser atmosphere, and higher magnetism, we have the potential for a great amount of biomass, much of which would have been buried in the earth’s crust quickly. In other words, this criticism of the bible is based on assumption, an observation of what we see today pushed through the filter of an evolutionary world view. Biomass does not pose a problem to the creation model at all.

ocean sediments,

A surprising factor for an atheist to present in my opinion. Ocean sediment is a factor that fits much more comfortably in the creationist model. Here is what we observe: Water and wind erode 24 billion tons per year. The sea floor should be choked, but average height of sea floor sediment is only 1300 ft
Therefore the limit based on current erosion rates is 12 million years (much shorter when catastrophic events are factored in) not in the billions.
North America should have been leveled in 10 million years if erosion has continued at the average rate. Mathmatically, and again based on observation, a height of 150 kilometers (93 miles) of continent would have eroded in 2.5 billion years
crumble the concept of ancient mountains. Now of course the evolutionist will counter by saying uplift replaces that which is eroded. But if this were true, uplift from the earth’s crust would not carry with it fossils, or sedimentary rock layers. Therefore after 10 million years, we should no longer find these “old” rock layers on any of the earth’s continents, especially the fossils we find in mountainous regions.

river deltas,

Again, a surprising factor to be presented. River deltas are the fanned out erosion formations at a river’s termination point. The flood accounts for a wide variety of erosion rates, depending on the type of rock and mud in an area, and current river flow in the last 4500 years, but more importantly, the river deltas we do see should be way larger than current sizes if the world was millions of years old. This is another limiting factor. The most striking example of this is the Grand Canyon, a huge evidence for a global catastrophe. This giant spillway has left relatively no river delta from the over 1000 cubic miles of earth that has been removed. If this is slow time, the base of the Colorado River should be the most epic river delta the world has ever known. It is simply not there. The rock and mud has been washed out of this enormous spillway, leaving a great many evidences of catastrophe.

caves, coral reefs,

I am not sure how to address “caves”, as they typically do not present a geological conundrum for creationists. Regarding reefs though, we can look at The Great Barrier Reef, which is dated by greatadventures.com to be 18 million years old. Livescience has it at both 500,000 years old, and 8000 years old. News.com.au has a writer who says it’s 25 million. Now, we could get in to the weeds on this topic, but for the sake of brevity, science has observed its growth patterns, which vary widely, depending greatly on how much fresh water runoff there is from the continent. There are of course, newer and older segments of it, and where it is thickest, The Great Barrier Reef reaches a thickness of 55 meters! Now, growth of coral has been clocked at 5 mm per year and at 25 mm per year, with an average rate of approximately 15 mm. This means that despite its vast size and impressiveness, the reef in its entirety could have been formed in only 3700 years. The new parts being clocked now, are only about 660 years old. This is not a factor that is a friend of evolutionists.

fossilized forests,

Like a broken record, I question the wisdom of using this factor as anything but proof for a world wide deluge. The obvious response is to point out the many polystrate fossils, or trees that pass through more than one geological layer. Some of these pass through rock, then coal, then rock again, and still others are fossilized upside down, clearly pointing to catastrophism. The obvious question would be, how does one imagine a tree standing upside down for millions of years so that sediment can slowly cover it? If the evolutionist asserts that fossilization of these forests must have happened slowly, I would suggest examining the quick and complete fossilization of many modern objects, such as hats, boots and pickle jars, which would shed light on it. Plus, again via observation, I would suggest examining the fallen trees of today on a hike or some such thing – take a second grader, not an evolutionary scientist. You will most likely get better observations. (I kid). Then examine these fallen trees, rotting, full of mushrooms and fungus, brittle and decomposing, and try to imagine how given enough time, they might slowly become fossilized. You can do this observation experiment with many fossils. Then see if God’s explanation, or man’s seems like truth to you.

To be continued in Part 2

Don’t need God, Just Add Time…

One of the arguments apologists make is called the teleological argument, or simply stated, the argument from design. The old adage goes, if I were to come upon a pocket watch laying on a beach, I would quickly observe the dials, the polished metal, the small bits of assembly required to make it run. It would be clear to me that it had a designer. In much the same way, we can observe the infinitely more complex information, and organization of nature and confidently say it has a designer as well. DNA language, irreducible complexity, biodiversity. These are things we instinctively realize are not accidental, though some may hope them to be. As Romans 1:20 says,

For the invisible things of him from the creation of the world are clearly seen, being understood by the things that are made, even his eternal power and Godhead; so that they are without excuse.

But since Sir Charles Lyell’s book, the Principles of Geology, where he imagined the geologic column, and perpetuated the idea that the world was much older than the bible chronology reported, we have been adding great amounts of time to the theory of molecules-to-man evolution. Sir Charles Lyell who wished to “save the sciences from Moses”, and was a contemporary and major influence on Darwin, proposed that the world was at least 35,000 years old after his trip to Niagara Falls in 1841.

The story goes that upon his visit, with the firm desire to “prove” the world was older than the bible said, he visited the falls to test the erosion rate. Rather than wait and measure, he asked the locals their opinion on how quickly the falls eroded per year. A collection of reports from locals that had lived near the falls for years stated that the erosion rate was probably about 3 feet per year. Measuring back to Lake Ontario at this rate only gave him a date of around 12,000-15,000 years. Lyell, needing the dates to be much older, assumed this was an exaggeration, and when he ended up back in England to write down his “research”, he felt the more likely rate of erosion was 1 foot per year. The seven miles from its beginning therefore allowed him to assume it had taken the falls 35,000 years to reach its present position.

As it turns out, the actual median erosion rate of the falls is 5 feet per year, which by that measure would have brought the date to only about 9000 years old, or even younger when you figure the beginnings of that erosion were caused by the fast moving drainage of Noah’s flood. But Lyell had a uniformitarian view to prop up, and it was his hatred of the bible that motivated it. Incidentally, by the end of his career, Lyell presumed the beginning of life was 200 million years.

This idea of long time didn’t start with Lyell, though he was the one that popularized it. James Hutton, who was died the year Lyell was born, suggested a long time frame and wrote that the present was the key to the past, which of course led to uniformitarian viewpoints. Before him was Comte de Buffon, 1707-1788, who first proposed broad scale mutability of species. In Epoques de la Nature, he suggested the Earth was torn from the sun 75,000 years ago.

As we know now, the assumed time for the age of the earth is around 4.5 billion years. The more fossils that were found, and the slower it seemed evolution took place, so slow in fact that evidence for it was non-existent, the dates of life’s beginning moved from Lyell’s 35,000 years to 2.1 billion years. This is the time frame that evolutionists believe is necessary to evolve humans from a one celled organism. So slow in fact, that evidence for it is completely un-observable. Sounds a lot like faith, doesn’t it?

Dr. George Wald, a Professor of Biology at Harvard University, and Nobel Laureate wrote “The origin of life”, and article in Scientific American, August 1954. In it he states, “However improbable we regard this event [origin of life], or any of the steps which it involves, given enough time it will almost certainly happen at-least-once. And for life as we know it, with its capacity for growth and reproduction, once may be enough.” He goes on to say, “Time is in fact the hero of the plot. The time with which we have to deal is of the order of two billion years. What we regard as impossible on the basis of human experience is meaningless here. Given so much time, the “impossible” becomes possible, the possible probable, and the probable virtually certain. One has only to wait: time itself performs the miracles.”

Sound like faith?

You see, time itself is the miracle worker in evolutionary theory, not God. Time can do the impossible. Time fixes all the issues, the lack of evidence, the problem of entropy. Time, with no purpose, intelligence, or reason, has somehow created all we see, and done so opposite of the laws we observe today. If you add enough of it, that shouldn’t matter, as long as we have replaced faith in God with faith in something else.

Why? I will let Dr. Richard Charles Lewontin, from Columbia University, an American evolutionary biologist, geneticist, academic and social commentator answer that question:

“Our willingness to accept scientific claims that are against common sense is the key to an understanding of the real struggle between science and the supernatural. We take the side of science in spite of the patent absurdity of some of its constructs, in spite of its failure to fulfill many of its extravagant promises of health and life, in spite of the tolerance of the scientific community for unsubstantiated just-so stories, because we have a prior commitment, a commitment to materialism. It is not that the methods and institutions of science somehow compel us to accept a material explanation of the phenomenal world, but, on the contrary, that we are forced by our a priori adherence to material causes to create an apparatus of investigation and a set of concepts that produce material explanations, no matter how counter-intuitive, no matter how mystifying to the uninitiated. Moreover, that materialism is absolute, for we cannot allow a Divine Foot in the door.”

Or perhaps Nagel, Thomas could give you extra insight as to why:

“I speak from experience, being strongly subject to this fear myself: I want atheism to be true and am made uneasy by the fact that some of the most intelligent and well-informed people I know are religious believers. It isn’t just that I don’t believe in God and, naturally, hope that I’m right in my belief. It’s that I hope there is no God! I don’t want there to be a God; I don’t want the universe to be like that. My guess is that this cosmic authority problem is not a rare condition and that it is responsible for much of the scientism and reductionism of our time. One of the tendencies it supports is the ludicrous overuse of evolutionary biology to explain everything about human life, including everything about the human mind …. This is a somewhat ridiculous situation …. [I]t is just as irrational to be influenced in one’s beliefs by the hope that God does not exist as by the hope that God does exist.” – The Last Word, pp. 130–131, Oxford University Press, 1997. Dr Nagel (1937– ) is Professor of Philosophy and Law at New York University.

So the premise maintained by the goo-to-you believers is that given enough time, disorder, without any intelligence guiding it, will become order, opposite the Laws of Thermodynamics, Motion, etc. The opposite of entropy.

To conclude, I will give you the example Dr. Ron Carlson gave during one of his lectures. He says, go up in a plane to 5000 ft above the Space Center Complex, take some neatly stacked index cards and toss them out. You must do this over and over until they land in the Kennedy Space Center Visitor Complex parking lot so that they spell out “Welcome to the Kennedy Space Center”. (This simple phrase of only 30 letters should be easy, as compared with the perfectly ordered 3 billion letters of our genetic code).

We observe at 5000 ft that these cards are not organizing, but instead ending up all over the place. So in order to produce more of a chance to organize in a way that makes sense, we will now follow the theory of evolution’s assertion and give these cards MORE TIME.

We will now take the plane up to 25,000 ft, so they have more time to fall, take our neatly stacked cards, and toss them out. With all this extra time to fall, we must conclude that eventually they will organize into a proper sentence, or word, or even one letter. We have added the magic of time like evolutionists!

But wait – the cards are now spreading out in an even more disorganized radius of chaos, some landing even 10’s of miles from where the plane dropped them!

How then, my friends, do we explain the beauty and exactitude of nature with this process? The answer is, we cannot. It is impossible.

I submit to you that this scientific experiment will provide us with more truth about our reality than any of the postulating, question-begging, circular reasoning, and assumption of our evolutionist friends, who like Dr. Nagel, hopes there is no God.

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