On Creationism

Chimps have 48 chromosomes, humans only 46. How can they be closely related? Despite the difference in chromosomes, chimp DNA is nevertheless closer to human DNA than it is to gorilla DNA. One Fusion Event First of we need to realise the chromosomes are paired, so this is a jump from 24 pairs to 23 pairs.  What we are talking about is two pairs of chromosomes fusing - joining end to end - to produce one pair. It is like having two sections of string, tying the right end of one to the left end of the other, and ending up with one string approximately as long as the two originals combined. Imagine three consecutive strings: abcdefg + hijklmnop + qrstuvwxyz This is analogous to the ancestor with 24 chromosome pairs, but just looking at three of them. Some mutation happens, and joins two string together. Now there are only two consecutive strings: abcdef@hijklmnop + qrstuvwxyz This is analogous to the ancestor with 23 chromosomepairs, but just looking at two of them. If you look carefu...

 Christians have been predicting the apocalypse is any day now pretty much from its start, Jesus We only have Jesus' words filtered through the hands of the gospel writers, but I strongly suspect he expected the apocalypse to be just days away. Here is Jesus' advise for his followers: Mat 6:25 “For this reason I say to you, [q]do not be worried about your [r]life, as to what you will eat or what you will drink; nor for your body, as to what you will put on. Is life not more than food, and the body more than clothing? 26 Look at the birds of the sky, that they do not sow, nor reap, nor gather crops into barns, and yet your heavenly Father feeds them. Are you not much more important than they? 27 And which of you by worrying can add a single [s]day to his [t]life’s span? 28 And why are you worried about clothing? Notice how the lilies of the field grow; they do not labor nor do they spin thread for cloth, 29 yet I say to you that not even Solomon in all his glory clothed himself ...

Dispensationalism is an important theology in the US, though seems less common outside there. The basic idea is that there are seven (or between three and eight anyway) ages, or dispensations, with these being: Innocence, or Adamic Law , in the garden of Eden Conscience , from the Fall to the Flood Human or civil law, or Noahide law , from the Food to the Tower of Babel Promise or Patriarchal Rule, or Abrahamic Law , from Adam to Moses Law or Mosaic Law , from Moses to the crucifixion Grace , from the crucifixion to the rapture and the wrath of God Millennial Kingdom , from the rapture until 1000 years have passed History The roots of this are quite interesting. The very earliest concept of the resurrection was that the nation of Israel would be raised again by God, and was not about the righteous coming back to life at all. Isaiah 32 is very much about that: Isaiah 32:1 Behold, a king will reign righteously, And officials will rule justly. 2 Each will be like a refuge from the wind An...

This is a response to an article on the Discovery Institute website: https://evolutionnews.org/2023/11/fundamentals-friday-the-logic-of-intelligent-design/ The point of the article is the claim that ID is not simply a God-of-the-gaps argument. Instead: In reality, the logic of ID theory is this: Premise One: Despite a thorough search, no materialistic causes have been discovered with the power to produce the large amounts of specified information necessary to produce the first cell. Premise Two: Intelligent causes have demonstrated the power to produce large amounts of specified information. Conclusion: Intelligent design constitutes the best, most causally adequate explanation for the origin of the specified information in the cell. Is that good logic? I think not. Consider this argument: Premise One: Despite a thorough search, no non-human causes have been discovered with the power to produce the large amounts of specified information necessary to produce the first cell.  Premise...

Plantiga's argument can be found here: https://www.bethinking.org/atheism/an-evolutionary-argument-against-naturalism Now for the argument that it is irrational to believe N&E: P(R/N&E) is either low or inscrutable; in either case (if you accept N&E) you have a defeater for R, and therefore for any other belief B you might hold; but B might be N&E itself; so one who accepts N&E has a defeater for N&E, a reason to doubt or be agnostic with respect to it. If he has no independent evidence, N&E is self-defeating and hence irrational. It can be summed up (from here ): (1) P(R/N&E) is low.  (2) Anyone who accepts (believes) N&E and sees that P(R/N&E) is low has a defeater for R. (3) Anyone who has a defeater for R has a defeater for any other belief she thinks she has, including N&E itself. (4) If one who accepts N&E thereby acquires a defeater for N&E, N&E is selfdefeating and cannot rationally be accepted. To explain "P(R/N...

 Most Biblical scholars believe Paul's epistles were written AD 50-60, Mark AD 65-80, Matthew AD 80-100, Luke AD 80-130 and John AD 90-120 (dates from here ). This is, in my view, very important in understanding what might have happened. Jesus' crucified? I am not going to dispute the crucifixion; I find it perfectly reasonable. I find it hard to see how Christianity could start without it and no reason for anyone to invent it. However, it is important to realise that Jesus was crucified for claiming to be the messiah (or perhaps for being proclaimed the messiah). The messiah was understood to be the new king who would lead the Jews to glory - and from the Roman perspective that meant someone who would lead the entire Jewish people into rebellion against the state. Mark tells us clearly what his crime was: Mark 15:26 The written notice of the charge against him read: the king of the jews. To be sure, the gospels do also put the blame on the Jews, and there is a definite trend t...

This is a response to an article by  Jason Dulle. You Can't Know Atheism is True Unless God Exists It tries to make the argument that without God to create us, we could not have the ability to reason. It is an argument CS Lewis also tried, but to my mind it fails badly. The nature of wholly material entities is that they function according to predictable patterns as determined by natural laws. This is simply not true. At the quantum level, it is all random. See here for example, which discusses using the unpredictable nature of quantum mechanics to generate truly random numbers. For example, consider the boiling of water. ... We might also consider a chain of dominos. Chaos theory tells us this is not true either. Complex systems can behave in strange and surprising ways. That the author can think of some analogies where the consequences are predictable is hardly proof that that must always be the case. This is just shoddy thinking, and all to common among those wanting to shore u...

 The Background From Wiki: After the Battle of Carchemish in 605 BCE, the Babylonian king Nebuchadnezzar II besieged Jerusalem, which resulted in tribute being paid by the Judean king Jehoiakim.[1] In the fourth year of Nebuchadnezzar II's reign, Jehoiakim refused to pay further tribute, which led to another siege of the city in Nebuchadnezzar II's seventh year (598/597 BCE) that culminated in the death of Jehoiakim and the exile to Babylonia of his successor Jeconiah, his court, and many others; Jeconiah's successor Zedekiah and others were exiled when Nebuchadnezzar II destroyed Jerusalem in his 18th year (587 BCE), and a later deportation occurred in Nebuchadnezzar II's 23rd year (582 BCE).  What I want to discuss here is how the Babylonians treated civilians after conquering another nation. I do not doubt women and children were killed during the fighting; the Allies killed women and children in WW2. After the fighting, the Babylonians did not slaughter the entire ...

There is a theological reason and a historical reason, and while the theological reason is arguably more important, this is about the historical reason. Was Jesus executed by the Jews or the Romans? And on what charge? Blasphemy? The Jews may have convicted him of blasphemy, but Jesus was crucified; it was the Roman's who did the did, therefore he necessarily must have been found guilty of breaking Roman law, and the Romans would not care one jot if he blasphemied against the Jewish religion - Pilate did that himself! That is not to say the priests did not find him guilty of blasphemy, and then frame him for sedition; that is a possibility. But even if that is the case, he was not executed for blasphemy, he was executed for sedition. Note that the Bible tells us the Jews were allowed to execute blasphemers; if Jesus was accused of blasphemy, they had no need to hand him over to Pilate, they could deal with it on there own, just as they did with Stephen. Acts 7:59 They went on stoni...

 Pilate was an extremely powerful man. He answered to the Legate of Syria, who in turn answered to Emperor Tiberius, so was far, far up the chain of command. He was in charge of a region that encompassed, butwas larger than, the Jewish kingdom of Judah. He even issued his own coins . He was a long way from being merely a petty Roman official. But what was he like? Josephus mentions him in both Antiquities of the Jews and The Jewish War. He recounts the same events in both works, and we read of a man who did not care about Jewish sensibilities and had no qualms about killing Jews who stood against him. 1. But now Pilate, the procurator of Judea, removed the army from Cesarea to Jerusalem: to take their winter quarters there; in order to abolish the Jewish laws. So he introduced Cesar’s effigies, which were upon the ensigns, and brought them into the city: whereas our law forbids us the very making of images.6 On which account the former procurators were wont to make their entry into...