How many jellybeans are in this jar?

Dr. Michael Shermer has a video on the OxfordUnion YouTube channel titled, God does NOT exist.  Yawn.  The video is only about 16 minutes long and you can watch it for yourself but the point I'm interested in is only in the first few minutes. Shermer introduces his argument with the following observation:

Worldwide, there are about 10,000 distinct religions each one of which may be further subdivided and classified…. From a skeptic’s perspective (which is what I do), what are the chances that these guys got the right god and the right religion and the billions of other people in the world, that don’t believe what they believe, got it wrong?  When you leave the house tonight just ask yourself that question, “What are the chances that they just happened to get it right?...”  Or, is it more likely that all of these religions and god beliefs are socially constructed - psychologically constructed - and that none of them are right in any reality sense?

It’s a rather flimsy argument.  I don’t want to put words into Shermer’s mouth but he seems to be saying that, since there are so many religions in the world, the odds of any one religion being the correct religion is very small.  It smacks of an argument from incredulity where Shermer is basically saying that since something seems unlikely, it must not be true.  Remember, too, that the name of the video is that God does NOT exist.  So Sherman seems to want us to believe that since we can’t absolutely know which religion is true, then none of them are true!  That doesn’t quite seem to work.

I love using analogies and sometimes try to use analogies to show the weaknesses of certain arguments. In this case, I'm going to use a jar of jellybeans to demonstrate why I think Shermer's argument fails. 

Imagine there's a jar of jellybeans and we're given the task of guessing how many there are. The rules are pretty liberal; the only restriction is that we're not allowed to open the jar. If everybody made a guess, I'm sure you'd have a very wide range of answers. Of course, they can't all be right.

 

Just by looking at the glass, I could come up with a guess that might be reasonable. But if I were really determined to know how many jellybeans there are, I could go to greater lengths:

• I could count how many jellybeans were visible at the very bottom, count the number along a straight line up the side, and multiply the two together. This could get me pretty close.

• I could find an identical jar and count how many jellybeans it would take to fill it. That would be a very close estimate too.

• I could weigh the full jar, weigh the empty jar, then weigh an individual jellybean. The difference in weight between the full jar and empty jar, divided by the weight of an individual bean should tell me about how many jellybeans are in the full jar.

• I could compare all these different methods and see if any or all of them arrived at the same number or a very narrow range of numbers.

As I narrow down my estimate, I could also rule out other people's bad guesses. I know the guy who guesses there's only 1 bean in the jar is wrong because I can see more than one through the glass. I know the guy who guesses a million jellybeans is wrong because a million wouldn't fit inside. Furthermore, I could focus on those guesses that are close to mine and ask those people how they arrived at their number. Based on what they say, I might think of other experiments which might give me even more confidence in my estimate.

My point is this: there is a correct answer. There is an objective answer that could be known if I were allowed to open the jar and count the jellybeans.  There is a number that is correct and, even if I could never prove my estimate is correct, I could have confidence that my estimate could be the correct number or, at least, be very close.

When we apply Shermer's argument to the jellybeans, he seems to suggest that any guess is as good as another but because we don't have the actual number, then all guesses must be equally wrong. It's like he's saying that, since I can't ever be sure of the exact number, my guess can't be correct nor even close. In the case of beliefs, Shermer is literally saying that, because there are so many beliefs, mine cannot possible be true. How does that follow? At best, Shermer might say we should all be agnostic but he isn't arguing for agnosticism – he's making a case for atheism. That would be like saying since we can't know how many jellybeans are in the jar, then there aren't any! You can see how that doesn't work.

There are lots of religions in the world. There are a lot of ideas about God. I admit, they can't all be right but that alone doesn't prove they're all wrong. Reasonable arguments can be made that God must exist. Reasonable arguments can be made that the Bible is His revealed word. Reasonable arguments can be made that Jesus lived, died, and rose again. Even if I'm wrong on some minor detail here or there, I am confident that I am very, very close to the Truth. What is not reasonable is to say that, because other people have different beliefs, then we shouldn't believe any of them.

The dangers of scientism

According to Wikipedia, scientism is the opinion that science and the scientific method are the best or only way to render truth about the world and reality. Followers of scientism tend to be zealots, more devout even than the average followers of traditional religions. What makes them especially stubborn is that they tend to not think of their beliefs as their “religion;” instead, they think scientism is simply the default way of thinking for any person and so they cannot comprehend any argument made from a different point of view. To them, if something can't be examined scientifically, it can't be true.

Now, you would think that people who practically worship science would welcome scientific debate. They say they do. Actually, they brag that they do. In the new Cosmos series, Neil deGrass Tyson offered these five, simple rules for science:

 

(1) Question authority.

(2) Think for yourself.

(3) Test ideas by the evidence gained from observation and experiment.

(4) Follow the evidence wherever it leads.

(5) Remember: you could be wrong.

Ignore the self-contradiction going on here, like in Rule #3: how can someone test the idea that we should test ideas by evidence?  My point in citing these “rules” is to show how skepticism is supposed to be at the heart of science. According to Tyson, I'm not supposed to accept a conclusion just because someone in authority says it's true. I'm supposed to think for myself. Right? I could be wrong but maybe it's the person making the claim who is wrong.

There are real scientists who are skeptics. At the risk of sounding cliché, scientific advancement often comes when people think outside of the box. Science Alert once published a list of 8 scientific papers that were rejected during peer review before going on to win a Nobel Prize. Obviously, these authors were on to something and the scientific establishment just couldn't see it. How often has one radical idea, one that other scientists may have thought sounded crazy, turned out to be true? Maybe we should ask Galileo.

Devout members of scientism aren't skeptics. They claim to be but they aren't. They blindly follow the majority opinion without question. You can often identify them by their frequent use of the phrase, “The science is settled.” To them, truth is whatever is accepted by a majority of scientists. Anyone who disagrees is considered a heretic. Actually, they don't call them heretics – they call them, “science deniers” but, in scientism, it means the same thing. Doubters of some scientific theory aren't ever called “skeptics” or “free thinkers;” they're “deniers.”

One ardent proponent of scientism is a YouTuber who posts under the name King Crocoduck.  Some time back he did a video series called, The Arrogance of Creationism.  By “arrogant,” I could only conclude he meant that we dared to object to the conclusion of secular scientists about evolution.  I was especially amused by the 4th video in his series.  I literally laughed out loud about 58 seconds into the video where he said, “Science works. Hate the method for being so rigorous – hate the conclusions for not conforming to your expectations – but do NOT deny its power!” He sounds like a super-villain.  Anyway, at one point in the video, he asserts, “Theology and philosophy simply cannot compete with science if the goal is to construct accurate models of reality.”  Yep, that’s textbook scientism all right.  This is the kind of attitude you can expect to see whenever you try to discuss any topic with a science zealot.  To them, science is the only way to learn about and understand reality.  

The failings with scientism are myriad but I’ll try to cover a few of the most obvious difficulties.  Take morality, for example. Is there really such a thing as morality? Certainly the universe doesn't care what we do. Science can only describe what happens but can't say if a thing is right or wrong. What some might call “murder” is just one animal killing another. It happens all the time in nature and it's no more wrong than an apple falling from a tree.  Theology and philosophy are far better tools for examining the reality of good and evil.

Science is also limited when examining history. Pick any person from history and try to prove – scientifically – that he really lived. The best evidence we have for people or events of antiquity is what has been written down about them. The evidence we have for the life, miracles, crucifixion, and resurrection of Jesus is the same type of evidence we have for Columbus having sailed to the Americas.

The worst thing about scientism, though, is that it retards critical thinking. Skepticism is supposed to be at the heart of scientific inquiry. In practice, though, once a majority of scientists accept any particular conclusion, it becomes, “settled science.” After that, any expression of doubt about the conclusion is met with ridicule, insults, and the label of being called a “science denier.” 

Let me give you a few examples of scientism's doctrine. The first is obviously evolution. I cannot tell you the number of times I've heard rabid evolutionists defend their theory by saying no credible scientist denies that evolution happened. Note the use of the word “credible,” but never mind blatant No True Scotsman fallacy. Truth is not decided by popular vote. Evolutionists often refuse to debate creationists on the grounds that “the science is settled,” “there is no debate among scientists whether evolution is true,” and debating the theory with creationists gives the impression there is still doubt over the theory.

Another long standing doctrine of this godless faith is climate change. Once upon a time, it was called “global warming” but after decades of no noticeable increase in the global, mean temperature, they had to replace “warming” with the much more ambiguous term, “change.” Actually, none of the dire predictions made by these alarmists have happened. In 2008, ABC aired a video montage showing all the terrible things that would happen by 2015 because of climate change: New York flooding, hundreds of miles of scorched earth, and skyrocketing food and fuel prices. I remember 2015. It was nothing like the predictions made by the video but followers of scientism aren't embarrassed by their failed predictions; The “science is settled” concerning climate change and bad things are going to happen unless we do something now. //RKBentley shakes his head//

A while back, Bill Nye was embarrassed by Tucker Carlson when he tried to pull that “the science is settled” crap. Carlson was asking basic questions about climate change and Nye was obviously making up the answers. Before we spend trillions of dollars on this “crisis,” we need to have some answers: the most fundamental question is, is there even any warming? If it is happening, to what extent are humans causing it? If we could stop warming, should we? What is the earth's temperature supposed to be?  Plants require CO2; what would happen to our forests if we could reduce the amount of CO2 in the atmosphere? These are legitimate questions but they are heresy to dogma-driven zealots like Nye.  We are not allowed to ask any questions.  For me to even bring them up puts my own social media accounts at risk.  The expectation is that lay peasants like me need to shut up and trust the scientific elite!  

There are many other scientific issues that have become political - things like vaccinations, masks, and gender dysphoria.  We have been told by all the big tech organizations that simply asking questions about these topics means we’re spreading misinformation.  Mr. deGrass Tyson, where are you now?  You should be leading the charge against such censorship but you’ve been strangely silent.  How can there even be science if no one is allowed to ask questions?  This type of belief actually hinders science.  What has been passing as science in the media is simply blind allegiance to religious dogma.  Believers in this brand of “science” aren’t “scientists” - they’re zealots!

What the Bible really says about slavery

 If you were to do a Google image search for “slavery Bible,” you'd get hundreds of images showing mostly dark skinned people chained, whipped, and tortured. Completely absent from the criticisms are Scripture references supporting the things the critics portray. There is no passage in the Bible, for example, that talks about putting slaves in chains. Why, then, are there so many pictures of blacks in chains with Bible verses written beneath them? Whether it's done out of ignorance or intentional deceit, it doesn't matter.  It’s a dishonest criticism.

When we hear the word, slavery, we immediately think about the subjugation of blacks in the South. It's a highly, emotionally charged word which is the impression critics want us to have. It's an unfortunate consequence of translation that words of different languages seldom have exactly the same semantic range of meaning. It's nearly unavoidable that when we substitute an English word for a Hebrew or Greek word, we interpret the text according to our understanding of the English word. In English, slavery sounds like a terrible thing which makes this criticism seem to have merit.

This is not a trivial point. This criticism's entire weight rests upon the negative connotation implied by the word, slavery. Critics routinely beat this drum by using disparaging language. It's a type of straw man argument - the argument by outrage - where the skeptic simply uses loaded words to describe the thing he’s criticizing.  It would be like a politician who might describe his opponent’s plan for Social Security reform as, “wanting to kill old people!”  The problem for the critic here is that the slavery mentioned in the Bible doesn’t remotely resemble slavery as the typical, modern reader understands it.

Some examples of the differences between the kind of servitude described in the Bible and the cruel slavery seen in other parts of the world are these:

• People could not be kidnapped and sold into slavery against their will. Exodus 21:16. 

• Slaves who ran away could not be forced to return to their masters. Deuteronomy 23:15-16.

• Slaves were required to be given a Sabbath day of no work, just like free men. Exodus 20:10. 

• If a master kills a slave, he is guilty of murder. Exodus 21:20.

• If a master permanently injures a slave, such as knocking out a tooth, he must free the slave. Exodus 21:26-27.

Nowhere in the Bible are masters commanded or even allowed to chain, torture, and kill their servants. Nowhere! Yet that is exactly the false impression critics want to portray when they show dark skinned people in chains.

When the Bible talks about “slaves,” it is primarily talking about 2 groups of people. First, a tiny minority of slaves were prisoners taken in war. War was a grim reality at the time of the Old Testament and conquered kingdoms meant defeated populations that needed to be dealt with. If you defeat an enemy, you can't simply pack up and go home or else you'll be fighting the same enemy again sometime later. The Law gave instructions in dealing with enemy prisoners that was more practical than internment camps and more humane than summary execution. This doesn't mean that God condones war or slavery. Just like Jesus said about the law allowing divorce (Matthew 19:8), laws dealing with captured prisoners were merely allowances made for people living in a fallen world. It doesn't reflect God's perfect will.

The more common type of slavery mentioned in the is what we might call indentured servitude. In biblical times (both the Old and New Testaments), there were no such things as government welfare or bankruptcy. Out of economic necessity, a person could pledge his future labor in exchange for things like forgiveness of debt, a lump sum of money, and food and shelter. Slaves in the ancient world were a socioeconomic class. They were chronically poor or indebted people who voluntarily entered indentured servitude because they could either not take care of themselves or they could not repay their debts.

Usually, entering into this kind of servitude was a lifelong commitment. If the master died, the slave would continue in the service of the master's family. This was also true of foreign slaves living in Israel. Jews, on the other hand, were required to forgive the debts of other Jews every 7 years (Deuteronomy 15:1-2) which also meant the debts owed by servants.  This was really the only difference between Jewish and non-Jewish slaves.  But even a freed Jewish slave could choose to remain in his master’s employ and serve him for the rest of his life.

In general, the Bible tries to make the arrangement more professional and less like slavery as we typically understand it. Colossians 4:1 commands masters to treat their slaves “justly and fairly.”  God ultimately does not distinguish between slave and master – both are equal in His eyes (Galatians 3:28).  In his letter, Paul tells Philemon to receive Onesimus, not as a slave but as a brother (Philemon 1:16).  Paul even refers to himself as a “slave” to Christ (Greek, doulos δοῦλος, [Strong’s 1401], Romans 1:1, et al). Indeed, Christ Himself gave us the parable of the unprofitable servant, Luke 17:7-10. He has forgiven my debt, paid the penalty for my sins, and given me eternal life. He is my Lord. I owe Him all I have and could serve Him my entire life and still never repay all He has done for me.

When asked to cite specific verses where the mistreatment of slaves is allowed, critics really can only resort to one verse, Exodus 21:20-21:

 

“And if a man smite his servant, or his maid, with a rod, and he die under his hand; he shall be surely punished.  Notwithstanding, if he continue a day or two, he shall not be punished: for he is his money.”

 

The verse is cited to make it sound like it's OK to beat a slave as long as he doesn't die immediately; if he dies later, it's fine. This is another example of taking a passage out of context. The passage isn't talking about murder but about what happens if you injure a man but he doesn't die. In verses 18-19, the two verses immediately prior to the above verses, the Bible proscribes exactly the same punishment for fights between free men. The only difference is that if you strike a free man and he doesn't die immediately, but only remains in bed for a while, he must be compensated for the time he was injured. A slave that is struck but doesn't die immediately doesn't have to be compensated for the time he was injured because his work belongs to his master anyway!

In spite of all the things I’ve shared already in this post, I still understand that the idea of permanent servitude still will sound strange to a lot of modern readers. I've tried comparing it to something like being a squire or vassal – words that are less emotionally charged – but even these types of service don't exist anymore. It's just hard for some people to think of a being a “slave” as anything less than repulsive. They can't imagine being a slave as being a kind of job. They can't imagine a person wanting to be a slave. It might help if you think of the parable of the Prodigal Son (Luke 15:11-32).  A man's son asked his father for his inheritance now. He took the money and went into a foreign land where he squandered it all. When the money was gone, he began to starve and considered returning to his father as a slave. Read the boy's thoughts (Luke 15:14-19):

 

“And when he had spent all, there arose a mighty famine in that land; and he began to be in want. And he went and joined himself to a citizen of that country; and he sent him into his fields to feed swine. And he would fain have filled his belly with the husks that the swine did eat: and no man gave unto him. And when he came to himself, he said, How many hired servants of my father's have bread enough and to spare, and I perish with hunger! I will arise and go to my father, and will say unto him, Father, I have sinned against heaven, and before thee, And am no more worthy to be called thy son: make me as one of thy hired servants.”

10 Scriptural problems with theistic evolution

I believe the Bible so obviously tells us that Genesis is intended to be literal history that evolution believing Christians have to ignore or reinterpret whole passages of Scripture in order to make it fit with their secular understanding of our origins. A while back, I wrote a series rebutting a video titled, “10 Biblical Problems for Young Earth Creationism,” by a group called Inspiring Philosophy.  It was actually one of many examples of similar claims, where old-earth, theistic evolutionists try to convince us that the Bible really doesn’t endorse a recent, miraculous, sudden creation. 

To me, the fact that so many such claims exist are evidence that the Bible seems to plainly confirm a six day creation.  It is only for that reason that evolutionists have to go to great lengths to explain why the Bible doesn’t really mean what it so clearly seems to say.  Rather than waste my time rebutting any more of their questionable hermeneutics, I thought it would be fun to point out ten passages from the Bible that are extremely problematic to compromising Christians.

Let’s get to it.  Here they are in no particular order:

#1: 2 Peter 1:20, “Knowing this first, that no prophecy of the scripture is of any private interpretation.”

We see here, immediately, that the Bible was written to mean what it says.  There’s no hidden meaning.  There’s no secret code that can only be uncovered with scientific inquiry.  The most obvious meaning of any passage is likely the intended meaning and there’s no need to look for a deeper meaning - especially a completely contrary meaning - every time a passage doesn’t comport with our personal beliefs.  

When Jesus was criticized by the Pharisees, who would accuse Him with some minute point of the Law, Jesus often responded by saying, “Haven’t you read….” followed by a passage relevant to the subject at hand.  In every instance, He relied on an ordinary understanding of the passage to prove His point.  He never had to say, “What that really means is….”  

Keep this first point in mind as you read through the rest of the verses on this list.  You may have heard responses to some of these points before but maybe you will see how many sound like “private interpretations” of Scripture.

#2: Exodus 20:9-11, “Six days shalt thou labour, and do all thy work: But the seventh day is the sabbath of the Lord thy God: in it thou shalt not do any work, thou, nor thy son, nor thy daughter, thy manservant, nor thy maidservant, nor thy cattle, nor thy stranger that is within thy gates: For in six days the Lord made heaven and earth, the sea, and all that in them is, and rested the seventh day: wherefore the Lord blessed the sabbath day, and hallowed it.” 

In the midst of the Ten Commandments, when the LORD gave the Law to Moses, He commanded that His people should observe the Sabbath.  They should work for six days and rest on the seventh in the same way He worked for six days and rested on the seventh when He created the universe.  Do you think the Jews had to stop and ask themselves, “How long does God mean by a ‘day’?”  

To say this passage somehow means billions of years is the epitome of a private interpretation.  A billions of years old universe is a relatively new idea, one that has only existed a couple of centuries.  The modern methods evolutionists have used to guess at the age of the earth are methods that weren’t available to the ancients.  Theistic evolutionists must believe in an interpretation of this passage that the first readers could not possibly have known.  

#3: 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.”

To believe in evolution, a Christian must believe that death, disease, and suffering existed millions of years before Adam appeared.  They mock creationists for believing the sharp teeth of T-rex would have originally been used to eat plants and not other animals.  Of course, creationists believe this because that’s exactly what this passage says.  God gave every single beast of the earth plants to be its food “and it was so!”  It is not creationists who should be embarrassed for believing this; it is the compromising Christians who should be ashamed for denying the clear words of the text!

#4: Genesis 7:21-23, “And all flesh died that moved upon the earth, both of fowl, and of cattle, and of beast, and of every creeping thing that creepeth upon the earth, and every man: All in whose nostrils was the breath of life, of all that was in the dry land, died. And every living substance was destroyed which was upon the face of the ground, both man, and cattle, and the creeping things, and the fowl of the heaven; and they were destroyed from the earth: and Noah only remained alive, and they that were with him in the ark.”

Some evolutionists claim the Flood is a completely fictitious event.  Theistic evolutionists, on the other hand, aren’t so quick to completely accept that such a vividly described account is mere storytelling.  Instead, they assert that the Flood was a local phenomenon, limited to the Mesopotamian Valley.  It was only “universal” in the sense that it killed all humans - because all humans lived in just that area.  

I agree that if there were 1,000,000 people in the world, and they all died in a single catastrophe, you could say that event killed all the people in the world - regardless of how widespread it was.  However, this same passage says every animal outside of the Ark also died.  Did every beast and bird in the world also live in the Middle East?  You can see how this seems to confirm that it was the entire world that was flooded.

#5: Genesis 47:7-9, “And Joseph brought in Jacob his father, and set him before Pharaoh: and Jacob blessed Pharaoh. And Pharaoh said unto Jacob, How old art thou? And Jacob said unto Pharaoh, The days of the years of my pilgrimage are an hundred and thirty years: few and evil have the days of the years of my life been, and have not attained unto the days of the years of the life of my fathers in the days of their pilgrimage.”

When Pharaoh met Jacob for the first time, he apparently took note of Jacob’s great age.  At 130 years old, Jacob may have been one of the oldest people Pharaoh had ever met.  However Jacob claimed his days were “few” compared to the long lives of his forefathers.  

The Bible attests to extremely long-lived people from before the Flood.  Genesis 5:27 tells us of Methuselah, for example, who lived to be 969 years old.  Theistic evolutionists claim these seemingly long lives are actually symbolic numbers that convey some deeper meaning (i.e. some private interpretation).  In this passage, Jacob seems to confirm they’re meant to be literal.  He is saying his actual age of 130 was small compared to the antediluvian saints who lived for several centuries.

#6: Luke 3:23-38, The genealogy of Jesus

There are two genealogies of Jesus given in the Bible.  Most scholars agree one is maternal and the other paternal (by Joseph, the husband of Mary).  The genealogy in Luke traces all the generations of Jesus back to Adam, “the son of God.”  If the generations are meant to be consecutive (which I believe they are), it would be difficult to stretch them out a couple hundred thousands of years to when evolutionists claim the first modern human appeared.  Besides that, though, Luke is confirming that Adam was a literal person, created by God.  He had no ancestors before him.

Here’s the real problem that Luke’s genealogy brings to old earth interpretations of the Bible.  Most critics claim many figures of the Old Testament were fables or symbols.  My question, then, is when did these generations stop being myths and start becoming real?  Was it Adam, Noah, Abraham, or David?  Were they all myths all the way down to Jesus?  If that were the actual way to understand the Bible, how could I be sure Jesus was a real Person?  He could have been a “mythical character used to convey some deeper meaning!”  I have to shake my head.

#7: Mark 10:6-8, “But from the beginning of the creation God made them male and female. For this cause shall a man leave his father and mother, and cleave to his wife; And they twain shall be one flesh: so then they are no more twain, but one flesh.”

When asked about divorce, Jesus answered the Pharisees by quoting from Genesis.  Not only does He talk about Adam and Eve as though they were real people, Jesus also asserts they were made at the beginning of the creation.  Adam and Eve were made during the creation week and marriage has continued since then for all of history.

According to theistic evolution, the universe has existed for billions of years and the first humans appeared only 100,000-200,000 years ago.  In other words, the “creation” happened a long time ago and humans only arrived at the tail end of history.  This secular idea is in direct contradiction to the plain words of Jesus.

#8: Romans 5:12,17, “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... For if by one man's offence death reigned by one; much more they which receive abundance of grace and of the gift of righteousness shall reign in life by one, Jesus Christ.)”

The Bible is clear that death is the consequence of sin (Romans 6:23) and that sin entered the world by one man, namely Adam.  Death has reigned since Adam but Christ has conquered death and we shall reign with Him in life in the New Jerusalem.  Amen!!

According to theistic evolution, death was in the world long before Adam.  It was not the product of sin but the deliberate method that God used to create everything.  Death reigned long before Adam because that was how God wanted it!

These two views are diametrically opposed and we must decide which is correct.  I will side with the clear words of the Bible.

#9: Acts 17:24-26, “God that made the world and all things therein, seeing that he is Lord of heaven and earth, dwelleth not in temples made with hands; Neither is worshipped with men's hands, as though he needed any thing, seeing he giveth to all life, and breath, and all things; And hath made of one blood all nations of men for to dwell on all the face of the earth, and hath determined the times before appointed, and the bounds of their habitation;”

According to the evolutionary idea of human origins, there was no literal Adam.  Homo sapiens are an evolved group that descended from a “not quite human” species of Homo and no single being could be identified as the ancestor of all modern people.  

When Paul was speaking to the Greeks on Mars Hill, he was preaching to them about the one, true God.  In this passage, he seems to confirm the creation account - that God made the world and everything in it and that all people of the world have descended from a single man.  

#10: Genesis 1:5b, “... And the evening and the morning were the first day.”

In the entire first chapter of Genesis, the Bible punctuates each day with a similar phrase - it was evening and it was morning, the first day and et cetera.  Some critics will claim the word day can mean something other than an ordinary, 24-hour day.  That’s true, but when it’s modified by the words, “evening and morning,” as well as with ordinal numbers, “first day, second day,” it becomes extremely difficult for day to mean something other than an ordinary day.  

Consider 1 Samuel 17:16 which says, “And the Philistine drew near morning and evening, and presented himself forty days.”  What can this mean except that Goliath came out every morning and evening for forty days?  Consider, too, the reverse; what would the terms “evening and morning” mean if the days are meant to represent long periods of time?  

To suggest the days of Genesis are meant to be anything other than ordinary days is a textbook example of assigning a “private interpretation” to the passage.

CONCLUSION

Just as Jesus said to the Pharisees, I say to you now.  Read these passages for yourself and ask yourself what they mean.  I’m not claiming there is a secret meaning.  I’m not telling you there’s a different way to understand the plain words of the Bible.  I’m telling you the Bible speaks for itself.

There is no “real theory” of abiogenesis!

I've talked about abiogenesis many times in the past. Abiogenesis is a term used to describe the necessary beginning of life from non-living matter that would have had to have happened sometime in the earth's past. It's an idea that is virtual indistinguishable from “spontaneous generation” and was discarded by science about the same time as blood letting.

The origin of life is a conversation evolutionists probably wish they could avoid having. But if they're going to assert that all life on earth is descended from a single common ancestor, then to ask where the supposed first ancestor came from seems a rather obvious question. As much as they may want to avoid the subject, they're dragged kicking and screaming to the debate to defend their theory.

The simple fact of the matter is that secular scientists really have no evidence showing how the supposed first life form began. All they have is conjecture. Actually, even conjecture is too generous a word – it's more like story telling. They're making up possible scenarios about how life could come from non-life but, thus far, they haven't thought of any that could actually work. In light of their long history of failed guesses about abiogenesis, evolutionists are left with no other alternative than to criticize creationists for bringing it up. The usual claim is that abiogenesis has nothing to do with evolution. Another tactic they sometimes take is to make a straw man out of the creationists views of abiogenesis.

I found this cartoon (I'm not going to dignify it by saying it's a chart) on TalkOrigins.org some time back. It compares the “Creationist idea of abiogenesis” to the “Real theory of abiogenesis.” Now, I always try my best to keep up with evolution in the news but I must have missed something. Since when is there a “real theory” about abiogenesis? Did they take a vote on this or something? It sounds more than a little presumptuous to say this is somehow the "real" theory when there are some many competing theories being tossed about by scientists. It's even more ridiculous when you consider that we haven't yet discovered a successful pathway from non-living chemicals to life. How can they even claim this is the path the first cells must have taken?

According to the article [bold added]:

Note that the real theory has a number of small steps, and in fact I've [author, Ian Musgrave] left out some steps (especially between the hypercycle-protobiont stage) for simplicity. Each step is associated with a small increase in organisation and complexity, and the chemicals slowly climb towards organism-hood, rather than making one big leap.

Excuse me while I have a chortle.

From Scientific American we read this: “According to the National Academy of Sciences (NAS), a scientific theory is "a well-substantiated explanation of some aspect of the natural world that can incorporate facts, laws, inferences, and tested hypotheses.” In the case of this cartoon, they're obviously being a little loose with the word “theory” (something they usually complain about creationists doing). There is no well-substantiated explanation or tested hypotheses that demonstrates how life could arise from non-living chemicals. Therefore, there can be no “real theory” of abiogenesis. What they mean to say is that it's just a “guess,” right? Ah, but this is the “real” guess. It even says so in the title! And even though there is not one shred of evidence for their guess of abiogenesis, it's still the “scientific” model because... well, because it's not the view held by creationists!

Sometimes it's difficult to take evolutionists seriously. Just where do they get off saying this is the "real" theory of abiogenesis? They usually make bad arguments but I can see they're at least sincere most of the time. When they make illustrations like this, though, I'm not sure they're even sincere. Oh, let's face it – they're not being sincere. When they invent things like this, they're just plain lying.