Atheists are the champion spin doctors

I strive to be a good writer. Like any skill, writing improves with practice, and over my many years of blogging, I believe I’ve made progress. Some posts I've made are better than others, but I feel I’m able to string a few sentences together to make a good point. That being said, I have to doff my hat to atheists.  When it comes to verbosity and word-crafting, there are few people who can compete with them.

Consider how most people understand evolution to be the transformation of species, such as dinosaurs into birds or apes into humans. They might define evolution as “the process by which different kinds of living organisms have developed and diversified from earlier forms throughout Earth's history.”  However, if you use this definition when debating an evolutionist, stand back lest their frothing at the mouth should splash on you.  To an evolutionist, evolution is precisely defined: any change in the frequency of alleles within a gene pool from one generation to the next (TalkOrigins). So if a population of mice is 50% gray in one generation, then 55% gray in the next generation, then the mice have evolved!   Evolved into what remains unclear, but evolutionists insist on this vague definition.

They apply their wordsmithery to many terms. Science is no longer simply a quest for knowledge; it now seeks to explain the universe purely in terms of observed or testable natural mechanisms (Scientific American).  Notice the shift: science is framed not as a pursuit of truth but as an exploration of the natural.

Skeptics even seek to redefine Christian concepts.  In the Bible, faith means “believe.”  The two words are literally the same word in the Greek (pistis, πίστις, Strong’s word 4102).  It’s where we get the English word epistemology.  I believe in God and the Bible for the same reasons I believe anything - I’m convinced of the truth of it.  In contrast, atheists want to define faith as “belief without evidence,” suggesting that when Christians assert faith, they are admitting a lack of evidence.

Perhaps the most notable redefinition is that of “atheist.”  Many people understand an atheist as someone who denies the existence of God. However, atheists typically assert that atheism simply means lacking belief in a god. This distinction, while subtle, is significant: denying there's a god versus not believing in one.

Atheists may be ignorant, but they’re not stupid (maybe some are).  They recognize the challenges of claiming there is no god, as this asserts a universal negative. Instead, they prefer to identify as lacking belief, allowing them to act as if there is no god without actually having to prove there’s no god.

However, this definition has issues. First, it lacks rigor. If atheism is merely a lack of belief in God, then a rock can technically be considered an atheist, right?  Consider this, if a vegetarian is defined as “someone who doesn’t eat meat,” then rocks also qualify as vegetarians. Perhaps a more accurate definition of vegetarian should be “a person who chooses not to eat meat” which would now exclude rocks since rocks don't decide to not eat meat. I don’t think, though, that atheists would be happy if we changed their definition to, “a person who decides not to believe in God.”  When you equivocate on the meaning of words to prop up your argument, you’re opening a can of worms.

Second, a term already exists for those uncertain about God’s existence: agnosticism. I suspect that atheists avoid this label because it allows for the possibility of a god, which they want to stubbornly reject.  Atheists want to pretend they’re open minded.  It’s been my experience that atheists aren’t open-minded at all.  They want to put the burden of proving God on Christians, while they sit cross-armed and scoff.  It doesn’t matter what evidence they are shown, they will always say it’s not enough.

Finally, those who embrace this vague definition of atheism seldom live by it.  They might say they merely lack a belief in god, but if you debate with them long enough, most will usually admit to believing there is no god.  They rarely recant their definition, instead revealing their stance through statements like, “If there were a god, why is there so much suffering?” When an atheist says something like this, he tacitly admits he thinks there’s no god because of the suffering in the world. Sometimes, though, they make more overt statements like “there is no invisible sky daddy” which removes all doubt about what they truly believe.

Let me ask a question: if an atheist simply lacks a belief in God, what is the word that describes a person who actually believes there is no god?  Words have meanings but unbelievers want to continuously muddy the waters.  The reasons atheists foist their meaningless definitions on the rest of are many:  they want to create a red herring to derail conversations with Christians; they want to excuse themselves from having to justify their disbelief; and they want to present themselves as enlightened thinkers who are only withholding their opinion until they see the evidence for God.  //RKBentley rolls his eyes//

To all the skeptics out there, if you are sincerely open-minded, then you’re agnostic.  If you believe there is no god, then you’re atheists.  Stop playing word games.  You’re not seekers of truth, you're spin doctors!

God commanded killing?

I came across a thread in an Atheists debate Christians group on FakeBook that was getting a lot of comments.  The opening post included a thumbnail (which I’ve included here) that began, “The Bible commands us to: Kill witches, kill adulterers, kill blasphemers,...” followed by about a dozen other alleged commands, and concludes with “Kill anyone who kills anyone.”  The seeming point of the thread was to make the Bible look like a “bad” book and…  well, I’m not sure what else.  Actually, I’ve never really understood this kind of argument.  Is the Atheist trying to say that there is no God because He’s mean?  That sounds non sequitur to me.  

I’ve written before about how unbelievers reject God because they have a wrong idea about who He is.  They create this false idea in their heads about how God should act if He were real and, since God doesn’t act that way, He must not be real.  But they’re not rejecting the true God; they’re rejecting a straw god of their own making.  I get the impression that’s what’s going on here.  The atheist who posted this is trying to suggest that the Bible isn’t true (or God isn’t real) because a “true” Bible wouldn’t have passages about killing witches!  

If we look carefully at the list, we see that some of the criticisms are misrepresentations of what the Bible is saying.  Nowhere does the Bible say, “Kill non-Hebrews,” for example.  Deuteronomy 20 is actually talking about specific peoples occupying the land God has promised to the fledgling nation of Israel.  The same list also cites Deuteronomy 20 as saying to “Kill all males after winning battles.” In other words, they are taking 2 passages describing one particular event, and claiming the Bible commands these to be universal rules.  Also, the list has “Kill gays” and “Kill men who have sex with other men” and even cites the same passage for both (Leviticus 20:13).  These are exactly the same things so why are they on the list twice?  It looks like items are being reworded, reinterpreted, and rewritten simply to bulk up the list.  It’s like highschool kids who fill up their research papers with nonsense sentences simply to reach the required word count.  In this case, the author of the list is padding the list simply to make the Bible sound worse than it actually is. 

It’s hard to take arguments like this seriously because atheists lack credibility.  They have a worldview that is built upon billions of years of death and struggle.  “Survival of the fittest” is the unofficial motto of evolution and killing off the “undesirables” in a tribe or village isn’t really any different than predators picking off the weakest members of their prey.  If the universe were all there is, the universe doesn’t care what happens.  It’s only because there is a Christian worldview,  one that values human lives above animals because we are made in God’s image, that criticisms like this have any weight at all.  In other words, it’s only because the Bible is true that these claims seem horrific!  Ironic, huh?

But what about these claims?  Do they contradict the idea of a loving God?  Do we hide from them and hope no one finds out about them?  Do we say, “that's the Old Testament so it’s not true anymore?”  No, no, and no.  What we should do is seek to understand God better and stand boldly on His word.  The answers to these criticisms are right there in the Scriptures and it is our job as Christians to be ready to respond when unbelievers speak them.  In this post, I hope to point to a few passages that might shed light on this subject.

1 John 4:8 tells us that God is love.  Some people seize upon this verse and others to try to portray Him as some namby-pamby kind of god.  They try to make God seem like a hippy whose only response to sin is pacifism.  If an earthly judge freed murderers because he “loved” them, we’d be outraged.  He would be an unjust judge.  If that’s what unbelievers think about God, then it’s no wonder they reject Him!  

The Bible also tells us about God’s wrath.  Romans 2:5-6 warns us, “But after thy hardness and impenitent heart treasurest up unto thyself wrath against the day of wrath and revelation of the righteous judgment of God; Who will render to every man according to his deeds:”  How frightening is the thought of standing before an angry God, knowing I am guilty of my sins!

You see, God is not only love, He is also just.  He is also patient and long-suffering.  He is merciful and good.  He is perfect in all of His ways.  The creatures around the Throne don’t sing, “Love, love, love.”  They don’t sing, “Wrath, wrath, wrath.”  They sing, “Holy, holy, holy, Lord God Almighty” (Revelation 4:8).

Let’s get to the real meat of the issue: The penalty for witchcraft is still death.  The penalty for adultery is still death.  The penalty for blasphemy is still death.  The penalty for lying or stealing or looking at porn or cheating on your taxes is death. Need I remind you that the wages of sin is death (Romans 6:23)?  It is the only penalty for sin and it has been that way for the entire history of man. But here’s the good news: “God commendeth his love toward us, in that, while we were yet sinners, Christ died for us” (Romans 5:8).  In this single verse, we see the love of God, the wrath of God, and the mercy of God.  Praise Him!!

Now, I know what the skeptics are saying: what about the list?  What about killing false prophets?  To that I would ask, where are all the true prophets?  Where is Moses and Daniel and Jeremiah?  In case you haven’t noticed, they’re dead too.  Romans 5:12 says, “Wherefore, as by one man sin entered into the world, and death by sin; and so death passed upon all men, for that all have sinned:”  So, yeah, the Israelite armies killed all the Amorites and Hittites but all the Jewish soldiers are dead now too.  All the prophets are dead.  Samson and all the other Judges are dead.  David and Solomon and all the other kings of Israel are dead.  

Do you see where I’m going with this?  Hebrews 9:27 tells us that it is appointed unto men to die and afterward is the judgment. God is the author of life so it is His right to decide when we die.  Some people die very old and some die very young.  Some die peacefully and some die violently.  When and how they die might vary but just as all have sinned, so all die.  The mortality rate among humans is 100%. When you think about it, it's sort of silly to say that there's anyone who doesn't deserve to die. If everyone dies, then how can we say that a rebellious son or an adulterer isn't worthy of death?

No sin is “trivial.” The list might dismiss blasphemy, sexual immorality, and rebellion as harmless but any transgression of the law earns God's judgment and the wages of our sin is death. Nobody is stoned anymore but we all have the same destiny - a grave. We all also have the same opportunity - salvation through His Son. When we stand before God in judgment (and we all will), I'm going to receive mercy because I have believed in His Son. Others are welcome to tell God He's being unfair.

God created all animals to eat plants… and it was so!

 Genesis 1:29-30, And God said, Behold, I have given you every herb bearing seed, which is upon the face of all the earth, and every tree, in the which is the fruit of a tree yielding seed; to you it shall be for meat. And to every beast of the earth, and to every fowl of the air, and to every thing that creepeth upon the earth, wherein there is life, I have given every green herb for meat: and it was so.

Creationists are sometimes chided for believing that all animals were created to be herbivorous.  The usual criticism is that the fangs and claws of predatory animals that exist today were obviously designed to kill and eat the flesh of other animals.  Furthermore, due to the design of their digestive systems, most predatory animals couldn’t even survive on a vegetarian diet.  In summary, the sharp teeth of the T-rex weren’t designed to eat coconuts!

The assumption that sharp teeth = predator is overly simplistic.  Evolutionists seem to have a superficial grasp of advantage or adaptation - that is, they look at the survival benefit of a particular trait, then claim that trait evolved in order to convey that benefit!  For example, some might say male birds evolved bright feathers to attract a mate or male lions evolved large manes to protect their head and neck when fighting for dominance.  It’s about as scientific as saying Michael Jordan grew tall in order to play basketball.

Another misunderstanding held by many is the belief that the highly adapted creatures we observe today aren’t substantially different from their ancestors.  Critics have asked, for example, how did freshwater fish species survive the Flood when all the fresh and salt waters were mixed together?  The flawed assumption behind this criticism is that the modern species of fish have exactly the same range of tolerances to salt and temperatures as their ancestors had in Noah’s day.

I believe the creationists’ understanding of Scripture better explains what we observe in the world today.  God originally created plants and animals “after their kind” (Genesis 1:11, et al).  Every modern species we observe today belongs to one of these originally created kinds but modern animals are the products of centuries of changing environments and adaptation.  Today, the species that exists may not look like any of their created ancestors.

I sometimes use bears as an example of kinds and species.  Both creationists and evolutionists agree that all modern species of bears are descended from a common ancestor.  Creationists might call this the “bear-kind” (ursa).  What did the original bear look like?  If we could see this creature now, I think we could probably identify it as some kind of bear but did it look like a panda?  A grizzly?  A polar bear?  It would have shared characteristics with each of these species but I suspect it wouldn’t have looked exactly like any of them.  

God created a bear-kind with the genetic potential for diversity.   As bears spread out around the world after the Flood, natural selection began its work.  Traits well suited to one environment allowed members with that trait to survive while members without that trait died.  Eventually, all the cubs born in that environment possessed only the most beneficial and the population became a new species.  In Asia, some bears became pandas; near the North Pole, some bears became polar bears.

Here’s a question, though: what did the ancestral bear eat?  Pandas almost exclusively eat bamboo while polar bears primarily eat seals.  Both species have sharp teeth and claws.  Both have descended from the same common ancestor.  So, clearly, the ancestral bear did not have the same dietary restrictions as either of these descendants.  Likewise, sharp teeth on a dino or fossilized dung containing bits of bone may be evidence that a critter ate meat, but it’s not proof that it always ate meat or that God always intended for it to eat meat!

I’m not surprised that unbelievers believe in a theory that is so muddled and unconvincing.  What surprises me more, though, is that people who claim to be Christians also believe the same things.  Theistic evolutionists often apply the label of “myth,” “allegory,” or “parable” to the creation account.  They do this to try to make Scripture compatible with the corrupt theory of evolution.  But when we read Genesis 1:29-30, where God clearly tells the man that plants would be food to him and every animal, what do they do with the phrase, “and it was so”?

When God created the animals, He commanded that plants were to be their food.  The Bible clearly says, “and it was so.”  In other words, God said it and it happened!  All animals ate plants - even the ancestral bears, cats, wolves, and other predators.  I believe this comports with other passages that say death follows sin and was not what God intended.

Some people may ask why I would make a big deal about this point?  I believe that evolution is a religion of death.  The very idea of the “survival of the fittest” requires that the unfit don’t survive.  It is the struggle to live that supposedly drives evolution.  The death of one species, gives rise to a new species.  It’s the circle of life.  Evolution almost makes death seem noble which makes evolution one of Satan’s most successful lies!

The Bible says the wages of sin is death (Romans 6:23).  Death is the judgment that God spoke to Adam because of his disobedience.  But the judgment wasn’t on Adam only, but on the entire creation.  God also cursed the ground for Adam’s sake (Genesis 3:17-19) and even now, the whole creation groans under the Curse (Romans 8:22).

Evolution makes the Bible seem nonsense.  Evolution says that the history of the earth before the appearance of man was defined by death, disease, and struggle.  Death is the way things are and, when Homo sapien finally appeared, they were mortal just like everything else.  This backward way of thinking has led many Christians into gross error in their interpretation of Scripture.  The YouTube channel, Inspiring Philosophy, made a comment bordering on heresy.  In a video titled, TOP TEN Biblical Problems for Young Earth Creationism, they made the following claim:

The implication numerous scholars have pointed out is Adam and Eve were already mortal and the only way they obtained immortality in the Garden was eating continuously from the Tree of Life. To make them mortal again, all God had to do was prevent access to this sacred tree. But that means humans were already mortal before the Fall and only granted immortality through a special fruit – not because they were created with immortal bodies….  This is also supported by the fact that Adam is called dust, which is an idiom in the Bible to denote that one is mortal. In Genesis, it might just be metaphorical language to denote that he was a mortal human – meaning Adam was mortal before the Fall which implies death was a possibility before sin entered. [bold added for emphasis]

Yikes!!  What terrible hermeneutics!  

The gospel is seen in the entire Bible, even in Genesis.  When Adam and Eve disobeyed God and ate the forbidden fruit, they were ashamed and tried to hide themselves.  They tried to cover their nakedness with fig leaves but the Bible says God killed an animal and covered them with the skin of the animal.  What a sobering realization must have set in for the first couple when they looked upon that dead animal and saw the terrible consequence of their disobedience. 

That act ushered in an era of sacrifices where the shedding of blood was made to cover our sins (Hebrews 9:22).  The practice continued until the appearance of Christ - the Lamb of God who would take away the sin of the world (John 1:29).  His was the final sacrifice and now our sins are covered by His blood and righteousness.  Praise God!!

So you see, it is a big deal.  Understanding that God commanded the animals to eat plants was part of His plan that there would be no death - not even the death of animals.  The death of animals is evidence that He judges sin.  Christ’s death on the Cross was His plan to deal with sin.  We also have His promise of a restored creation where there is no more death.  

God said it, so I know it’s so!!

They’re looking in the wrong place!

 

I know I'm dating myself but here's a joke you may not have heard in a while:

A man was crawling around looking for something. Another man walked up and asked, “What are you looking for?”

The man answered, “I dropped a dollar. Would you help me find it?”

“Sure. Where were you standing when you dropped it?”

“Over there by those bushes.”

“Then why are you looking here?”

“Because the light is better here.”

I shouldn't have to explain what makes the joke funny: it's ridiculous to search in the wrong place simply because the light is better. No rationally thinking person would do that, right? You'd be surprised. Evolutionists do it every day!

I've cited this quote before but let me remind my readers of it:

“"Creation science" is a contradiction in terms. A central tenet of modern science is methodological naturalism--it seeks to explain the universe purely in terms of observed or testable natural mechanisms.” Scientific American Magazine, July 2002

The obvious question is: why does modern science look for only “natural mechanisms”? That sounds like a bias to me. It's a bias toward naturalism where they intentionally exclude any possibility of a supernatural explanation in favor of natural one. 

When Bill Nye toured the Ark Encounter with Ken Ham several years ago, their quasi-debate was captured on video.  Several times in the debate, Nye made the same point as Scientific American, that science is the search for a natural explanation.  At one point, while Nye was waxing on about the account from Joshua and how science does not allow miracles, Ham interrupts him and asks, “Why should I accept your definition [of science]?” Nye pauses for a moment, then, with a straight face, replies, “Because we have so much evidence for it.”  

Regardless of how a person wants to define science, it does not change what is true.  According to Nye, any time someone invokes a miracle, it's not science.  If God created the universe in six days, then that is what happened regardless if Nye thinks it's scientific. It’s true regardless if it’s “supernatural.”  Nye desperately wants people to believe that, if something isn't scientific, it's not true. I’m sorry, Nye, but there is no evidence for your definition of science.  On what grounds can anyone say that every phenomenon must have a natural cause?  Nowhere in the universe can methodological naturalism be observed or tested so the idea even contradicts itself. This is why they call it a tenet – a belief or principle, similar to religious dogma.

In the case of origins, I’m not sure how secular theories are any more “scientific” than creationists’ theories.  We didn’t observe the origin of the universe, the origin of life, or even the origin of the natural laws that unbelievers rely on for their theories to work.  

Sometimes, evolutionists ridicule creation by calling it, “magic.” It's a rather blatant attempt to make creationism sound unappealing by describing it with loaded words. I usually try to avoid using such a lazy argument myself but, in this case, I'm not sure how else to describe it. People who deny a supernatural origin of the universe are believers in poofism.  They believe there was nothing, then POOF! there was everything.  Ah, but their theories are “scientific” because they’re natural.

Every time I hear an evolutionist tell me there is no evidence for creation, I remind myself of Scientific American's quote. When evolutionary scientists study the issue of origins, they do so starting with the assumption that everything must have a natural explanation. They admit as much.  They say it is only the natural that can be observed and tested, while the supernatural lies beyond our ability to examine it.

I see a striking similarity between the attitude of evolutionists and the man looking for his dollar. They both claim to be earnest looking for something but they both search in vain for the sake of convenience: the man in the joke searches in the light for something that was lost in the shadows and the evolutionists search only in the natural realm for something that was supernatural. It's funny when you think about it. If the miraculous explanation for the origin of the universe happens to be the correct one, it's no wonder evolutionists can't find it. They're looking in the wrong place!!

Creationists: Stop using the term “Microevolution”!

Populations change.  I get it.  And sometimes, populations change enough that we might say the group has become distinct from the ancestral population.  We might even call this group a new “species.”  Again, I get.  It would be nice to have a convenient term that describes the type of changes that turn a wolf into a dog and many evolutionists call this “microevolution.”  Even some well meaning creationists have latched on to that term and have made comments like, “I believe in microevolution but not macroevolution.”  In this post, I’ll explain why creationists need to stop using that term.

To evolutionists, the only difference between micro- and macroevolution is time and scale.  The small changes that we observe happening can amount to big changes if they just go on long enough.  It’s like taking a few steps and moving across the room;  However, those same small steps could take a person from Miami to New York if he just continued walking long enough.  So, when someone says he believes in microevolution but not macroevolution, to the evolutionist, that’s like saying, “I believe in little steps but not big steps!”  It doesn’t make any sense.

You may remember reading about the peppered moth in your biology textbook in school.  I don’t have time here to talk about the whole study but let me recap briefly: the peppered moth is a species of moth that ranges in shades of dark to light.  In the late 19th century, a British biologist observed a population of moths over time and noticed the population changed from mostly light, to mostly dark, and to mostly light again in response to changes in the environment brought about by the industrial revolution.  Concerning that study, Bionity.com said this:

Critics have pointed out that the "peppered moth story" showed only microevolution, rather than the important macroevolutionary trend of speciation…  Biologists agree with this point, and accept that correlation between soot on tree trunks and observed melanism in the moths is not proof of the theory of evolution as a whole. However, many do not accept the supposed distinction between "microevolution" and "macroevolution" as being part of the modern evolutionary synthesis which equates the two, instead taking the view that the mechanisms of microevolution and macroevolution are the same, the only difference being of time and scale.

So here's the question: It's been more than a century since the peppered moth study. What "macroevolution" has occurred? Now, I know what you're going to say. 100 years isn't enough time. But think very carefully and tell me this: what "microevolution" has occurred in the last 100 years? Don't think too hard because I'm going to tell you. None. The ratio of light/dark moths has changed back and forth to a net change of ZERO! There was not even microevolution!  The change is not accumulating nor can it. If birds continuously ate one color of moth, it will never add new colors to the population no matter how long it occurs.

Here's a quote from Berkley.edu that echos the same point made by Bionity:

Microevolutionary change might seem too unimportant to account for such amazing evolutionary transitions as the origin of dinosaurs or the radiation of land plants — however, it is not. Microevolution happens on a small time scale — from one generation to the next. When such small changes build up over the course of millions of years, they translate into evolution on a grand scale — in other words, macroevolution!

At first hearing, arguments like this can sound very persuasive. Don't be fooled.  For evolution to be possible, new traits must be added to a population.  To turn a dinosaur into a bird, for example, you would have to add feathers.  To turn a reptile into a mammal, you would have to add hair.  The supposed first living ancestor of everything didn’t have feathers, scales, hair, or even skin.  It didn’t have bones or blood.  To turn a microbe into a man, it would require a billion-years-long parade of new features being added generation after generation.  

The only “changes” we observe in nature are the reshuffling of traits already present in a population.  We also observe traits being removed from a population.  We don’t observe novel traits being added to a population.  The small changes we observed in the peppered moth, will never make the moth anything other than a moth - not even in a million years!

Evolutionists give no consideration to the types of changes we observe. By their own admission, the only difference they see between micro- and macroevolution is time and scale. They believe the same mechanisms drive both and the accumulations of small changes (micro) will amount to big changes (macro) over time. That’s like believing you could turn a molehill into a mountain by continuously removing dirt; you just have to dig long enough!  

Natural selection can make a group of creatures well suited to its environment.  A well adapted group might even earn the moniker of a new “species.”  However, natural selection can never add things to a population.  Natural selection is the opposite of evolution.  So even though the population has “changed,” it still hasn’t “evolved.”

Let me be clear: evolution does not occur at all - neither micro nor macro.  To use these terms at all tacitly yields ground to evolutionists that isn’t theirs to claim.  If they want to prove their theory, they need to show clear examples of animal populations acquiring novel traits.  Stop showing me examples of natural selection and calling it “microevolution.”  In the meantime, creationists need to stop calling it microevolution as well.