Please continue to pray for Larry and Susan as they continue to travel and preach God's Word, as they tell the stories of God, and ignite fires in the hearts of people who will listen. Amen.
Saturday, May 05, 2007
More and more of the scientific community are beginning to view intelligent design as a valid scientific theory.
- The Evidence in Cosmology
The Kalam cosmological argument is espousing a more powerful and compelling impetus. - The Evidence in Physics
The "Anthropic principle" lead Patrick Glynn to abandon atheism. He says, "Today the concrete data point strongly in the direction of the God hypothosis. It is the simplist and most obvious solution to the anthropic puzzle." - The evidence in Astronomy
"If the universe had not been made with the most exacting precision we could never have come into existance. It is my view that these circumstances indicate the universe was created for man to live in." -John A. O'Keefe of NASA - The evidence in Biochemistry
Michael Behe has demostrated that Darwin's theory has broken down, through his description of "irreducibly complex" machines. - The evidence in Biological Information
Stephen C. Meyer (Cambridge) has demonstrated that no hypothosis explains how information got into biological matter through naturalistic means. - The evidence in Consciousness
"You can't get something from nothing. If the universe began with dead matter having no consciousness, how, then, do you get something totally different--consciousness, living, thinking, feeling, believing, creatures--from materials that don't have that?" -J. P. Moreland
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Thursday, May 03, 2007
Origins of the argument
Plato and Aristotle both posited first cause arguments, though each had certain notable caveats. Plato (c. 427–c. 347 BCE) posited a basic cosmological argument in The Laws (Book X). He argued that motion in the world and in the cosmos was "imparted motion" that would have required some kind of "self-originated motion" to set it in motion and to maintain the motion. Plato also posited a "Demiurge" of supreme wisdom and intelligence as the creator of the cosmos in his work Timaeus.
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Given the extreme simplicity of the universe at the start of the Big Bang, the friendliness of the universe to complex structures such as galaxies, planetary systems, and biology is unexpected by any normal model of turbulence driven structuring that science has been able to derive.
The idea evolved from the so-called "Dicke's coincidence", and has subsequently been reinforced by the discovery of many more anthropic coincidences since Robert Dicke first noted that the evolution of the universe is not random, but is coincidentally constrained by biological factors that require that the age of the universe had to be roughly this "golden-age". Much younger, and there would not have been time for sufficient interstellar levels of carbon to build up by nucleosynthesis, but much older, and the golden age of main sequence stars and stable planetary systems would have already come to an end.
Wednesday, May 02, 2007
Larry and Susan had a good trip. Excellent Men's Retreat teaching on "David's Mighty Men"...tremendous response from many guys... 3 states and 6 churches, ages 16 to 83 at the meetings.
Larry is again off to keynote another Men's Conference today...here in central WI. He will be back for church Sunday, then he and Susan are off for a two day mission meeting in the LaCrosse area (WI) representing Timothy Ministries.
Keep praying and we'll keep traveling and preaching/teaching! Love you guys!
Tuesday, May 01, 2007
The most famous statement of the teleological argument using the watchmaker analogy was given by William Paley in 1802. Paley's argument was seriously challenged by Charles Darwin's formulation of the theory of natural selection, and how it combines with mutation to improve survivability of a species, even a new species. In the United States, starting in the 1980s, the concepts of evolution and natural selection (usually referred to as "Darwinism") became the subject of a concerted attack by Christian creationists (see creationism). This attack included a renewed interest in, and defense of, the watchmaker argument by the intelligent design movement.
The Watchmaker argumentThe watchmaker analogy consists of the comparison of some natural phenomenon to a watch. Typically, the analogy is presented as a prelude to the teleological argument and is generally presented as:
- If you look at a watch, you can easily tell that it was designed and built by an intelligent watchmaker.
- Similarly, if you look at some natural phenomenon X (a particular organ or organism, the structure of the solar system, life, the entire universe) you can easily tell that it was designed and built by an intelligent creator/designer.
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Monday, April 30, 2007
Due to the nature of this, the term is often used in creationistic arguments, as some religions believe that God created the universe from nothing. It has also been argued that this concept cannot be deduced from the Hebrew and that the Book of Genesis, chapter 1, speaks of God "making" or "fashioning" the universe. However, Rabbi Schneur Zalman of Liadi (1745-1812) refuted these arguments in section II of his book titled "Tanya".
Arguments in Favor
Typical verses from the Christian scripture (i.e. the Bible) cited in support of Ex nihilo creation by God are the following:
- Genesis 1:1-2 - In the beginning when God began to create the heavens and the earth, the earth was a formless void...
- Proverbs 8:22-24 “Jehovah himself produced me as the beginning of his way, the earliest of his achievements of long ago. 23 From time indefinite I was installed, from the start, from times earlier than the earth. 24 When there were no watery deeps I was brought forth as with labor pains, when there were no springs heavily charged with water.
- Psalm 33:6 - By the word of the LORD were the heavens made, their starry host by the breath of his mouth.
- John 1:3 - Through him all things were made; without him nothing was made that has been made.
- Romans 4:17 - ... the God who gives life to the dead and calls things that are not as though they were.
- 1 Corinthians 1:28 - He chose the lowly things of this world and the despised things—and the things that are not—to nullify the things that are,
- Hebrews 11:3 - By faith we understand that the universe was formed at God's command, so that what is seen was not made out of what was visible.
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Creation is a doctrinal position in many religions and philosophical belief systems which maintains that a single God, or a group of gods or deities is responsible for creating the universe. Creationism affirms this belief, but the doctrinal belief is not necessarily synonymous with creationism.
Judaism & Christianity
Genesis 2:4-25
Mainstream Biblical scholarship maintains that the creation story found in Genesis 2 is the earlier of the two Genesis accounts. Filled with ancient and rich imagery, it is believed that the basic story once circulated among the early nomadic Hebrews, told perhaps around simple, intimate campfire settings, answering questions about life and the origins of humankind. The story also reflects Israel's belief in its covenant relationship with God. The concern in Genesis 2 is not in the creation of the cosmos but in the origins of humankind and their environment. There is a clear connection between humans and the land (Gen. 2:7) and the notion that people are a special creation of God. "Jehovah" is that name of God, which plainly means that he alone has His being of himself, and that He gives being to all creatures and things.