D43cREATION EVOLUTION pOSTS

tHEY ARE SCATTERED THROUGH MY BLOG OVER ABOUT A MONTH NOW AND MOSTLY ARE JUST SKETCHY ACCOUNTS OF MY ARGUMENTS AGAINST EVOLUTION, THREE GEOLOGICAL AND THREE BIOLGOICAL.  tHE MERE FACT OF THE HUGE SLABS OF TABLETOP FLAT SEDIMENTARY ROCK SPANNING WHOLE CONTINENSTS SHOWS THAT THEY CAN'T POSSIBLY REPRESENT TIME PERIIODS OF HUNDRED  NO, SORRY, TENDS OF MILLIONS OF YEARS PER TIME PERIOD.  tHAT'S ONE.  tHE FACT THAT THE STRATA ARE COMPLETELY UNDISTURBED INTHEIR INDIIDUAL EXISTENCE, ONLY THE WHOLE STACK BEING DISTUBRBED AS   AFTER THE WHOLE THING WAS LAID DOWN, PARTS OF IT SCATTERED IN SOME PLACES SUCH AS ACROSS THE eNGLISH iSLAND, AND THE STATE OF tENNESSEE, SOME OF IT TWISTED INTO PRETZELS BUT ALWAYS IN BLOCKS, NEVER IN THE INDIVIDUAL LAYER AND CERTAINLY NOT AT THE TIME OF ITS LAYING DOWN.  tHESE ARE SIMPLY NOT TIME PERIODS.  aND i ALSO DECIDED TO ADD THE FACT THAT THERE ARE BOTH SEA CREATURES AND LAND CREATURES FOSSILZIED TOGETHER IN A SINGLE LAYER HERE AND THERE, WHIC HIS IS IMPOSSIBLE UNDER NORMAL CONDITIONS.   sURELY ALL THIS HAS BEEN NOTICED BY SCIENCE BUT NOBODY EVER MENTIONS IT AND IT LOOKS TO ME LIKE IT KILLS THE WHOLE IDEA OF AN ANCIENT EARTH.

tHE BIOLGOCIAL ARGUMENTS START WITH THE ONE i USED AT EVC FORUM FOR YEARS, THE FACT THAT VARIATION OF TRAITS IS ACCOMPANIED BY THE REDUCTION IN GENETIC DIVERSITY, ILLUSTRATED BY DOMESTIC BREEDING FOR STARTERS AND YOU LOSE THE TRAITS FOR OTHER BREEDS AS YOU ARE WORKING TO ESTABLISH  A PARTICULAR BREED.  tHE SAME THING WOULD HAPPEN IN THE WILD IF THERE IS SUCH A PERSISTENT VARIATION WHICH i THINK WOUDL HAPPEN IN RING SPECIES IN PARTICULAR, WHERE A FEW INDIVIDULAS MIGRATE AWAY FROM AN ESTABLISHED POPULATION TO FORM A NEW ONE AND DEVELOP NEW CHARACTGERISTICS FROM  A NEW SET OF GENE FREQUENCIES, LOSING THE TRAITS BEHIND THAT ARE NOT BEING BROUGH T TO THE FORE IN THE NEW POPULATION.   eVENTUALLY YOU'D HAVE TO RUN OUT OF GENETIC VARIABILITY AND THAT IS NO FORMULA FOR EVOLTUION.   tHE NEXT ARGUMENT IS THAT ALL VARIATION OCCURS WITHIN THE GENOME OF A SPECIES, THROUGH SEXUAL RECOMBINATION IN SEXUALLY REPRODUCING SPECIES, VARIATIONS BEING A MATTER OF RANDOM PAIRING IN THE FERTILIZED OVUM.   yOU CAN'T GET NEW TRAITS JUST VARIATIONS ON THE TRAITS THAT BELONG TO THE SPECIES WHICH IS WHAT THE GENOME CODES FOR AND NOTHING ELSE.  eVOLUTIONISTS ACT AS IF VARIATION CAN JUST GO ON AND AON ALTHOGUH THEY SURELY KNOW THE LIMTIS DEFINED BY A GENOME.  jERRY cOYNE ACTUALLY SAID THAT THE DIFFERENCE BETWEEN A WOLF AND A CHIHUAHUA IS TO HIS MIDN EVIDENCE OF EVOLTUION WHICH IS JUST GPLANIN RIDICULOUS.  tHE TRAIT VARIATIONS OF BOTH ANIMALS ARE BUILT INTO THE GENOME OF THE DOG.  THEY ARE DOGS THROUGH THE CSHARED GENOME.  GOOD GRIEF THIS IS OBVIOUS.  

tHEN THERE IS THE BODY PLAN WHICH SEEMS TO ME TO BE CONSISTENTLY DEFINITIVE OF A GIVEN SPECIES, RECOGNIZABLE AS THAT SPECIES IN SKELETON FORM, AND NEVER VARYING IN AN WAY THAT HINTS AT ITS EVER BECOMING SOME OTHER SPECIES.  a DOG BOY PLAN I ALWAYS A DOG PBODY PLAN, ERECOGNIZABLE IN WOLF OR CHIHUAHUA OR GREAT dANE OR lABRADOR ETC.    a CAT SKELETON IS ALWAYS A CAT SKELETON WHICH OF TIGER OR HOUSECAT OR BOGBCAT OR MOUNTAIN LION.   eTC.  a BIRD IS A BIRD IS A BIRD WHIETHER IT'S A PENGUIN OR A HAWK OR AN OSTRICH OR A CHICKADEE, IT IS ASSEMBLED IN THE SAME PROPORTIONS WITH THE SAME POSITION OF APPENDAGES IN EVERY BIRD.     tHE BODY PLAN OF A CHIMPANZEE IS NO AT ALL THE SAME AS THE BODFY PLAN OF A HUMAN BEING, PROPORTIONS ENTIRELY DIFFERENT.  tHE KIND AND AMOUNT OF CHANGE TO GET FROM ONE TO THE OTHER IS SIMPLY IMPOSSIBLE.

nO TIME WON'T DO IT, YOU NEED A CHECHANISM FOR SUCH CHANGE AND THERE ISN'T WONE.  yOU NEED IT WHETHER YOU HAVE TEN YEARS OR TEN MILLION FOR THE CHANGE.

the Octovr Seventh Horror Show

 The date almost went by without my noticing it, sad because it really should be remembered as a day of horrors hardly maginable in our civiliczed times.  the hatred Islam holds againt the jews isn't going to go away unless the religion or ideology goes agway, although the hatred is so ancient it's pretty much built into the the Arab poulation as well since they are relatives going back to Abraham.  Or some of them are anyway, ti's hard to sort it all out.  Israel was given by God the child of promise, Isaac, but Hagar the egyptuian had a son by Abaham called ishmael who would be blessed by God with many sons and princes and wealth in this world.  isaac was to be in the line to the Messiah.  At the time the hatred was fairly subdued but in recent times it's become the ause of general conflict in the Middle East, many wars so far and no end in sight.

the viciousness of the attack on the jews on Octover seventh of last year is really hard to wrap one's head abround.  how does usch barabarity exist in our age?  And yet the world is siding with Hamas against Israel, that's even more astonishing.  University students in the US are joining with Hamas supporters here too.  It's almot beyond belief.    then the world sends aid to Hamas, or at least the people of Gaza supposedly and Hamas intercepts all the food sent and keeps the people in starvation.  They also refuse to get their people out of harm's way although israel announces its   Israel warns them when they are about to attack a site in Gaza that is known to hold many hHamas but Hamas won't let the people leavw so the people have to surffer with them.  

And yet in a way the whole world is going barbaric, including the US.  At lest we might take this as a sign of btter to things to come, meaning of course Jesus soon return.

More bleating Against Jerry Coyne. Sigh.

 Here we go again.  I just keep taking the bait and need to stop eventually.  Jerry Coyne popped up again as I was cloicking through You tube so of course I had to listen.  An interview about his book faith Versus Fact, how religion and science are incompatible or something like that.    

Thereare confusions in this topic that need to be sorted out eventually and I don't thinkk I'm up to it, at least not now.  I certainly don't defend the kind of faith that denies a child a blood transfusion and that sort of thing, and I don't see that as a legitimate sort of faith either.  Biblcial Chrisitianity is quite rational it seems to me and true faith is very appropriate to navigating its revelations, and I would never think of faith as applicable to any kind of scientific question.  In fact I do accept the historical understanding that science became possible in the west because of the bible and would otherwise have never developed, and that's because the bible and the bible's God IS rational and points to a lawful physical world that can be emprically studied.   

Coyne is a spokesman for evolution and that's where the trouble comes in .  Evolution is simply not a science in the sense I'm useing the term here.  There is really nothing that can be ointed to that amounts to a genuine factual evidence for it.  Nothing about evolution can be witnessed or studied as say the law of gravity can or the fact of bacterial infection and all that sort of thing.  Coyne makes no such distinctions of course.  He really thinks he's talking abourt science when he talks about evolution and he really thinks the facts he pints to as evidence for it really are evidence for it.   

So off we go with the first kind of evidnce he points to which is not evidence of evolution and that is the fact that there is great variation within any given species, that populations change ovcer time.  this continues to amaze me.  All that variation is so clearly guilt into the genome of the species and he himself must know that as it's common knowledge that it just continues to be inexplicable to me that they can think such variation can just go on producing change that change the species itself into something other than that species.  

He really thinks that great degree of variation is evidence for such neverending change.  And so does Richard Dawkins.  But of course they neve rever try to demonstrate it, try to show how it works genetically, they just keep pointing back tot he mechanisms that are built into the genimome as if they could somehow jump ship as it were and start producing something that isn't that species.    this idea is so entraenched I guess I'll just be called crazy for trying to make a case out of it.  Sigh.

then there is the fossil record of course.  And over and over here I keep trying to explain how that is an illusion, which will jut succeed in getting me another dismissive chortle by many.  Butg again, all the fossil recod amounts to is a plausbile observation that mentally arranges the fossils in the geological column from simple to complex and declares it a fact that one evolved from the one earlier in the stack although there isn't one shred of evidence that this in fact actually ever happened.    they are relying entirely on an imaginative construct that seems plusible and that is really all there is to it and yet they call it fact.

but beyond that I've also tried to point out that the sedimentary layers in which the fossils are found , thjat are taken to reprensent time periods on this planet of tens of millions of years per layer in most cases, couldn't possible ever have been formed by normal processes at any time on this earth.  Getting somehoone to think this through may be impossible, I don't know.  the strata re tabletop flat when they are laid down and remain so in many parts of the world where they stayed more or less intact, such as in the Grand Canyon.  Tabletop flat ove may thousands of square miles, covering the entire north american continent in the case of those seen in the walls of the Grand Canyon.  Think think think, there is no way this earth was ever covered by a cthick layer of one single sediment ove such a huge area tabletop flat.  Think think think.    One single sediment, say sand which got compressed within the geologial column over time to sandstone, or limestone formed in the same way, a single sediment, just one.  Neither at the bottom of the ocean nor on the surface of the earth nor even some distance beneath the surface could such a sdedimentary layer have formed by normal means.  

Change in populations isn't evidence of evolution, and neither is the fossil record.  What else.  Well I cover all this in other posts and don't feel up to repeating myself right now.  It's just so discouraging .  Yes of course you'd think if these things were true that serious scientists woudl have noticed.  Of course.  that's why I'm so astonished that they don't seem to have noticed.  I don'tknow why nowt.  And I suppose that they have some kind of answer to snap aback at me but I really don'tknow what it is because I can't see that coudld be an snwer.  

Anyway.  Fatih is the way Christians know God and His revelation, His word to us, we don't use to it to understand gravity or bacterial infection or atoms and molecules and so on.  hThat is what empriical science is for.  But the confusing thing, again, is that evolution is taken to be science when it really is not science in the sense that is amenable to that sort of empirical study.

The Star of Bethlehem

 Thinking  about the Jewish holy days I was reminded of Rick Larsen's study of the Star of Bethlehem in which he retty much proved that Jesus was conceived, not burn but conceived, on Rosh Hashana of two BC, no sorry, three  B C.  That means He was born in early June of two bc, and on that date it just happenes to turn out that there was a conjunction of Juperter with Venus that was so bright that even today it is regarded as the brightest start that ever occurred in the sky.  Not a star of course but it looks like a star and that's what cscripture calls the celestial object that heralded Jesus birth.

I love that study and have watched the video probably thirty times by now.  It took a while to digest the facts because he moves too fast through it all for me.  he gives background starting with Kepler who looked fo rthe star in his own time but didn't find it, and when Larson investigathates the sources Kepler was depending on he find out that Kepler was misled by a tupe on a historical document.  When Larson used the right date he found a lot more going on in the sky at the time of Christ's birth than Kepler was able to find.   Larson of course has astronly software, while Kepler just had his mathematical ability to depend on.  Just as reliable as the softewar e of course and in fact the software is based on itl.

I used to be able to watch the Star of Bethlehem on You Tube but can't find it any more.  Just as I can't find some politial videos I'd depended on to prove how wrong the libs are about Trump.  They aren't there aym more either.  Gosh I wonder why.  

Anyway Larson's astronomy program turned up a fascinating event in the sky in three BC in August of that year, the planet Jupiter making three passes close to a star called Regulus, the King Planet in three conjunctions with the King Star as he puts it.  this occurred in the constellation Leo which prepresents the tribe of Judah, which also has the emblem of the lion, so the most condegenial onterpretation of this even t is that it's a sort of announcementg of a coming king to be born in the tribe of judah.  The wise men of the east would have recognized the meaning of these things.   

Then right after the sun finishes its yearly pasage through Leo it moves into the constellation Virgo which is now rising on the horizon, and this is particularly pfascinating because as it rises the figure of the virgin is shown with a new moon at her feet and that immediately calls to mind the verses in Revelation Twelve about the wonder in heaven:  a woman clothed with the sun and the moobn at her feet who is about to give birth.  Clothed with the sun is immediately understood to reference the sun in Virgo as Larson has just found out with his astronomy program, and the moon at her feet is a sign of the shchild she is to give birth to.  It's a new moon, the very beginning of that life, and the deate is Rosh Hashanah or Jewish new Year of Three BC.  Pretty fascinating,m right?

So it's not the date of Jesus' birth but His conception, the time when Gabriel came to tell Mary that she would give birth to the Messiah.   His birth would have teen nine motnths later, in June of ttwo bC.  That could have been pentecost since it occurs about thta time of year but Larson doesn't mention that.  he does mention that the conjunction of Jupiter with Venius occurs then and it is so close it becomes the very brightest object ever seen in the sky ever.    

I couldn't help noting that June is the month of Gemini which is the Twins, and Jesus has two natures, both God and Man.  

But Larson doesn't hang out very long on thse facts because he's discovered other interesting things about jesus' life as reflected in the sky.  Some six months later for instance, as the wise men are traveling to give honor to the newborn King of the Jess, he discovers that the planet Jupieter which they have been folloiwing "stops" over the town of Bethlehem whicher they are living at that time.  after puzzling it out Larson realizes that the way the "star" could "stop" is by reaching the point in its movement where it turns retrograde and travels backward, so it had to have been at that point that the wise men saw it stop right over the place where Jesus was living.  AND, oddly enough this turned out to be the date December twenty fith two bdc.  A date which of course has nothing to do with scripture but there it is.  Kind of amazing.  The astronomy program turns ed it up, it's not something Larson came up with on his own.

He speculates that the wise men might have been Jews who were descendants of a group that had gathered around the prophet Daniel at the time of the Babylonian Captivity, during that time I swhould say, and became tie astrologers and wise men of the region.  This woulde make sense because even if other wise men might notice all that interesting celestial activity around a big even t in Judea surely it would only be the Jews wouwho would particularly care about it since they would know their scriptures and the prophecies of the coming Messiah and know that this is what it was all about. WA abig enough even to get them to travel a very long distance to pay respects to the new King.

Larson also went on to discover that at the time of Jesus' crucificxiaon there were also very interesting celestial events and he refers to this whole astronomigcal story as a celestial poem of great beauty.  

Even if the Star of Bethlehem isn't on You Tube any more there may be other places it can be found, maybe even AAmazon.  It think it's worth it for anybody who might even only be interested in the astronoomy study part of it.

Of course I think this is all great evidence for the truth of scripture and the gospels but I also know that a determined atheist can find all kinds of ways to discount such things.

 Oh but I would like to see evolution theory blasted into the outer dark before I go.

Rapture Mimblings

Jesus made it clera that we would not know the time of His return, which mot of the prophetic ministries thinki of as the Rapture of the Church followed by seven years of the great tribulation for the rest of humanity followed by His descent to the earth to reign.  I keep having problems with this end times secenario but I also don't have a better way of thinking about it all so I just hope they are mostly right and I can look forward to the Rapture if we really are as close to the end as it feels.

Asfor notknowing the time it's seemed to me that an event as momentous as the Rapture of the Church wuld have to occur on one of the Jewish holy days.  Jesus was crucified on Passover, which was of course given to look forward to that event for the fifteen thousand or so years since the Exodus from egypt, and then the Church as born when the Holy Spirit descended on His followers assembled in the upper room in Jerusalem, which occurred on the Jewish holiday we call Pentecost though it has another name in Hebrew.  Two big events in Church hisory marked by Jewish holy days, so why shouldn't the Rapture also be slated for a holy day?  Rosh Hashana is the one that comes to mind, especially since it involves trumpets, but the one yethis year just came and went with no ratpure.  So maybe the Day of Atomnement?  The Feast of Tabernacles?  Or even Hannukkah or Purim?    I can't help it, those days just seem the most likely time for Jesus return.    

I'd love to go on one of them soon of course.  I've pretty much given up on having more of an effect here than I've already had if I've had any and that's iffy.  I can count three people I've influenced toward becoming believers and that's been a long time.  If people aren't going to come to belief before the Church is raputred or beofre teh tribulation comes crashing down it's going to be very hard on them though they can be saved through all that, or so the prophetic ministries say.  The pre trib pre mill ministries I mean.  

I've become more or less reconciled to the idea that I'm not going to be able to influence anyone at this point so all I can so is hope for the bewst for those I care about.  It's in God's hands.

One World Order Update

 This week's Understanding the Times radio show by Jan Markell..  Guiest Gary Kah on the one world order.    It's on You turbr this week or as always at her website Olive Tree Views, g\ot to Radio

One of her powerful ones.

Points that particularly captured my attention:

Kamala slated for a big role as of four years ago.

Pope Francis out front in a new way, confirming me in my view that he is the coming world leader known as theAntichrist.  I'm one of few yowho see it this way, while Jan and other prophecy teachers think this figure is still to be revealed.  Nope, he's here.

Kah announced a big prayer meeting online, forty days usa with a different big name leader every day.  I have no way of finding out from where I am but as usual OI worry that they have probably included some so called Christian leaders who aren't really Christains, hin which case they've sabotaged the whole effort and God isn't going to hear us as we'd hope.  Well, maybe I'I'm wrong, I certainly hope I am.  Because prayer is about all we have left, there is nothing left we can do humanly dspeakihng about any of this.

Have mercy on us Lord.