An Open Letter to a Flat-Earth Denier.

First of all, I need to explain why I'm writing this. Harrison Cother, an ex-Jehovah's Witness turned atheist, had recently posted a video on his YouTube channel. It contains a very plausible set of explanations on why the Bible must be discredited as historic. His presentation is so powerful in making sense that anyone unwary is likely to be convinced that the Bible is ridiculously unscientific, and even accuses God, who inspired the Bible, of deliberate falsehood by telling the ancient Hebrews that the Earth is flat, thus presenting a small but significant social and spiritual danger. I feel that it's the right thing to stand up for Jesus Christ and the Faith delivered to His saints.

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Dear Harrison Cother,

May I, first of all, say that you're the sort of chap I would feel privileged to have as a friend, a man I can trust, someone I would respect, the person I'm quite happy to have a chat with at a Costa or Starbucks. And, in no way would I feel that whatever you say to me would pose any threat to my faith in Jesus Christ and my belief in the truthfulness of the Bible. Also, I'll be the first to say that your videos are well and professionally made. A skill which, unfortunately, I don't have. Therefore, I fully commend the skill required for your presentation.

However, on Twitter, you asked me how I accused you of mocking the Bible after reading the title of my last blog, How an Atheist Mocks the Bible. I was unable to answer your question on Twitter due to the website's restricted input. Therefore I thought it would be better to answer your question here on this page.

Why am I writing an open letter instead of a private one to you?

It seems fair to both of us that since you posted a video on YouTube to be viewed publicly, it's also appropriate to write an open letter in reply. But I have wondered whether I have used the word mock correctly in the title or not. If I rightly understand the English language, the meaning of the word is either to tease, to poke fun at, to scorn with sarcasm, or even to treat a serious matter as a joke. It could also mean to imitate. For example, a recently-built property could have its exterior facelifted to make it look as if it was built during Tudor times. Therefore, we refer to that house as mock Tudor.

Cother's Video from his channel, The Truth Hurts.

After I read your question on Twitter, I watched your video again to get a better idea of what you're trying to say. Afterwards, I realised that it might have been better had I titled my blog as How an Atheist mocks the Christian Creationist, or How an Atheist Mock Modern Christians. However, I still feel that the word mock was correctly used in this context, even if I should have been more accurate with the object of the title. As such, I apologise if you find my blog title disturbing.

Harrison, I'm aware that you have bad feelings against the Watchtower organisation. I wouldn't be surprised if you're harbouring a feeling of bitterness or even anger over your realisation that you grew up under a deception. And I'm also aware that your motives behind the making of your video were not poking fun. Rather, it was to expose a supposed fallacy of the Bible teaching or endorsing a flat-Earth cosmology. Therefore, I ask you to keep on reading what I'm writing here. With as much kindness and fraternal love I have for you, I would like to demonstrate that the Bible does not teach or imply a flat-Earth model. Indeed, it cannot.

In your video, you centre your argument on the belief that the ancient Hebrews thought that the Earth was a flat disc under a vaulted dome you call the Firmament, implying a hard inverted bowl which within, the sun, the moon and all the stars rotate. Here, I come straight to the point. No way does the Bible endorse your interpretation of its texts! And here is the reason why I used the word mock in my last blog title. I sincerely believe that you are more intelligent and have more common sense than what you allow me to see in your videos.

Here, I'll illustrate what I mean. You say that the ancient Hebrews believed that the Earth is flat, and furthermore, God inspires his prophets to endorse this cosmological model and then, years later, inspires Paul to write that all Scripture is "breathed" by God and therefore, He cannot lie.

Take another look at your flat Earth model, Harrison. You see that the sun, moon and stars are all inside the dome, and the sun and moon are moving on a level circular path some distance above the Earth disc. This results in multiple problems - the main error is that no ancient Hebrew would have backed your theory nor testify of any truth in it.

In your model, the North Pole is bang at the centre of the disc. There is no South Pole. Instead, Antarctica is presented as an ice ring marking the edge of the Earth, and it's on the edge where the mouth of the Firmament meets, thus resulting in a sealed vault enclosed by the dome. Since the sun is always above the surface of a flat Earth, there cannot be any sunrise nor sunset. 

Yet the Bible says,

The sun rises and the sun sets - and hurries back to where it rises - Ecclesiastes 1:5, also Psalm 19:1-6.

Ecclesiastes 1:5 is exactly how any ancient Hebrew would see the sun - it rises from the horizon towards the East and sets at the horizon towards the West. This is a poetic statement rather than a scientific one, also known as an idiom, but it always was, and is, and will be seen by every human.

But your flat-Earth cosmology does not allow for this phenomenon. Imagine yourself standing on the Shard lookout in London. At 309 metres high, the Shard is the tallest structure in London, if not in the whole of the UK. Then imagine a friend of yours in New Zealand, standing on the summit of one of the Southern Alps mountain peaks. Assuming it's a clear day and, to make things a little easier, it's March 21st, Spring and Autumn Equinox in the UK and New Zealand respectively.

It's 12.00 noon in the UK. As you face directly North, the sun would be just behind you, positioned directly towards the South. However, your friend in New Zealand can also see the sun above the horizon, far in front of him whilst facing North. Across a flat Earth, the sun never rises or sets. Instead, the sun would always be in the visible sky. The sun, being so far away, would be seen by your friend as a very bright star, but considerably smaller than the sun you can see from your angle. Neither would it be totally dark over New Zealand. Rather, the twilight from a faraway sun would still be strong enough to obliterate all but the very brightest stars. If both of you remain standing where you are for the next twelve hours, then the whole scene would be reversed. You will see the faraway sun as a bright star while your friend will have it just in front of him, positioned directly towards the North.

That contradicts Ecclesiastes 1:5. Apparently, Harrison, the Bible does not teach a flat Earth.

Back in 1994, I was a volunteer at a Christian Conference Centre near Haifa in Northern Israel. It was late June and the sun blazed down as I worked around midday. I looked down at my own shadow. It appeared directly below me. Actually, the Centre was located in a small village of Isfiya, which is 32.43 degrees north of the Equator, or approximately nine degrees north of the Tropic of Cancer. A vertical pole fixed to the ground where I was standing would have thrown a short shadow pointing northward, with its tip forming an angle of nine degrees from vertical. If I was to return to the same spot six months later in late December, assuming it was also sunny, the shadow cast by the pole at midday would be considerably longer, with its tip approximately 55 degrees from vertical, as the sun would be directly over the Tropic of Capricorn, 23 degrees south of the Equator.

And it was precisely that which inspired the ancient Greek astronomer Eratosthenes. In 240 BC, he used the angle of the shadow at two locations to work out the circumference of the Earth. Therefore, it must be assumed that the Greeks at that time had already known that the Earth was spherical. If ancient Greeks, Babylonians and Egyptians going as far back as Abraham's day and beyond, knowing that the earth was spherical by their accumulated knowledge of astronomy and astrology, then there is no reason why any Hebrew throughout history would believe that the Earth is flat.

Erastothenes' demonstration.

Eratosthenes had most likely believed that the known Universe was geocentric. He, along with all other ancients before Galileo, thought that the spherical Earth was at the centre of what we now call the Celestial Sphere, and the rotation of this imaginary sphere is why the sun rises and sets. Astronomers of the present use this model as a means of studying the stars, and the famous London Planetarium is also based on geocentric cosmology.

Harrison, you should also note that the flat-Earth theory arose around 1880, and that was to counter Charles Darwin's evolutionary theories. The original idea of the Hebrews believed that the Earth is flat was concocted by Darwin's followers to specifically ridicule the Bible and deny its historicity, thus enforcing Darwin's theories as truth. But before Galileo, the Church always taught that our planet was spherical. This was taken from Aristotle (born 384 BC) who taught that the Earth was spherical, and he might have influenced Eratosthenes more than two hundred years later. Until Galileo, the Church believed that the Earth was round and geocentric.

When Galileo observed the moons of Jupiter through a telescope for the first time in 1609 AD, he thought up the idea that, rather than the Earth being geocentric, instead, the then-known Universe may be heliocentric. This brought him into conflict with the Church, who believed that the Bible taught a geocentric Earth which was backed by the pagan Greek philosophers of ancient times. Actually, the Bible doesn't teach either a flat Earth or a geocentric Earth.

The Celestial Sphere is used as a model by today's astronomers.

As for the Firmament, you mention a great deal about this in your video. The first chapter of Genesis correctly refers to it as expanse, rather than firmament, as in a hard or solid dome. Also, God calls the firmament heaven. Yet, Paul refers to "a third heaven" that one of his associates had experienced and lived to tell his story (2 Corinthians 12:2-4.) This says a lot! If there are "three heavens" - then one can conclude that:

The first heaven is our atmosphere. Within this zone, all the "birds of the air" fly. Above the atmosphere is "the abode of the sun, moon and the stars" - that is, outer space, but included as within the "expanse" -as, from ground level, the first and second heaven is indistinguishable, especially at night. Then the "third heaven" - this is the spiritual realm and therefore not physical to our five senses - is where the throne of God is. If this is all true, then to make the language fully understandable to the ancient Hebrew and at the same time also scientifically verifiable, the "waters above the firmament" refers to a layer of water vapour in the primaeval atmosphere that was separated from "the waters below" when God created the Earth's atmosphere on the second day of Creation. 

The collapse or a partial collapse of the water vapour above the atmosphere was most likely the source of the waters "from the windows of heaven" - from above the firmament. If the waters were "restrained" rather than fully emptied when the windows were closed, that could mean that not all of the vapour had dispersed, as you insist.

Also, you should consider, Harrison, that most of the Bible references you have quoted in your video were poetic idioms. The Bible is not a science book. It was never intended to be. Therefore, God had to communicate to His people in a way they can understand. One example is the Hebrew word raqiya, meaning to beat into shape like gold being beaten into sheets. Since the expanse is not solid, God used a Hebrew word as an idiom to represent that once created, no other agency can change the properties of what he had made. The same applies to the "pillars" of the Earth, set on a firm foundation and thus immovable. The ancient Hebrew understands the word "pillar" far better than if he would understand the words "mantle" and "core" of the Earth.

Yours in Christ,

Frank.

How an Atheist Mocks the Bible

How fortunate I was to enjoy a warm, sunny day for my birthday earlier in the week. Smack in the middle of September and just a few days before the Autumn Equinox. Officially, it's still Summer. Yet so far, September has proven to be more summerlike than August here in the UK, the latter with its daily overcast sky and almost cool enough to turn on the central heating. 

And so, a trip to London to visit a very unusual shop located right in the heart of the city, a privately-owned business, London Fossils Ltd, just behind the British Museum. Here, I bought two rather outstanding fossils to add to our four smaller specimens already at our home display.

Our Home Fossil Display, taken Sept 2021.

Perhaps, the best one of the six on display is the superb preservation of a petrified Trilobite. The specimen is exactly 7 cm long and 2.7 cm across the widest part of its head. I would say that its overall length is roughly half of a fully-grown fossil Trilobite I have seen on display at the University of Oxford Museum of Natural History. I try to imagine it when alive. Quite likely, it was fully submerged in the mud of the shallow ocean floor, and with a higher likelihood to escape the attention of predators and - had it survived to this day - also escape the attention of scuba divers.

According to the Palaeontologist, the Evolutionist, and the Historical Geologist, the Trilobite is classed as an Index Fossil, and it thrived throughout the entire Paleozoic Era, a duration of 300,000,000 years between 500,000,000 and 200,000,000 years ago. The Trilobite marks the beginning of the Cambrian Period, and it survived through the Ordovician, Silurian, Devonian, Mississippian, and the Pennsylvanian periods - only to die off during the Permian Period.* Bad luck for the Trilobite, as it did not survive long enough to appreciate the rise of the wonderful coral reefs which started to form during the Permian Period of the Geological Age! To be fair, 300,000,000 years is a long time for the species to thrive, and even over such a long span, if you place the youngest fossil next to the earliest specimen, both would look exactly the same. Indeed, the Trilobite seems to have shown hardly any signs of "evolution in action."

Along with the two Trilobite fossils, I also have one complete fully petrified remain of an Ammonite Dactylioceras, along with what looks to be a petrified mud bed with many broken Ammonite coils piled on it. It's a shame that all the shells are broken. Had they remained intact, the fossil would have looked beautiful - almost artificial.

When I was a teenager, I had an interest in fossils. I was also an atheist and a very keen evolutionist. Even then, I instinctively knew that I couldn't reconcile my love of Science with Religion. It was during my adolescence was when I hated anything to do with the church. As a Roman Catholic, I found God to be quite distant and unapproachable! How could I believe that God loves me if all he does is keep a record of my sins - unless I go to confess to a priest, take Holy Communion every Sunday and on every holy day, and do penance whenever I'm called to carry it out. Or else it would be an eternity of unbearable suffering in Hell if I were to die with even just one mortal sin in my spirit. I realised that I could be a devoted Catholic all my life - and still end up in Hell! When the priest once tried to reassure me that God loves me despite my sins, I was unable to believe it. I just couldn't see myself going to church every week for the rest of my life.

Therefore, in a way, I subconsciously perceived God as an uncaring father-figure and Science as an all-embracing mother - a comforting female deity from whom I can expand my knowledge and the pride that comes with it, to give me something to live for, and to build enthusiasm for, a reason for living. For me to look around at the natural world and marvel at how everything, including us, had gotten here by chance, the amoeba-to-man progress spanning billions of years, and wondering how our distant descendants may look like and behave. As such, fossils played a role here, and during school breaks, I used to examine each of the many pebbles placed around the perimeter of the playground to drain away rainwater. Very rarely, an imprint of a scallop shell appeared on a stone picked up at random, which I took home and added to my measly collection. 

I had never kept the original collection for long. Maybe, with tiny, insignificant-looking fossils, I eventually scattered the stones across our back garden flowerbeds (discreetly!) Perhaps, it was just as well that, back in the sixties and early seventies, the Internet hadn't yet existed. Had it, chances were I would never have become a Christian towards the end of 1972. I can now click on a video made by a former Jehovah's Witness turned Atheist. Had he been around more than half a century earlier, I would have continued to laugh with scorn at religion by following his lead that the Bible teaches a flat, disk-like Earth, supported by enormous pillars and covered with a solid dome. 

Taught in the Bible?

After just six days after publishing his video on YouTube, ex-JW Harrison Cother had collected 17,000 views on that video alone, out of the 1,748,000 total views on all his mere eleven videos he began posting on YouTube since the end of January 2021. In his latest video, he insists that the Bible teaches a flat Earth.

Using Scripture verses such as 1 Samuel 2:8; Job 9:6, Job 26:7-10; Job 37:18; Psalm 75:3; Psalm 93:1; Psalm 104:5; Psalm 148:3-6; Isaiah 40:22 - this YouTuber sets out to prove that the Bible teaches the Earth as a flat disk covered by a solid dome, or the firmament, on which the "waters above" still fully submerging the outside of the dome, according to Psalm 148:4. Although by checking out all the other verses and seeing that they're all poetic, with Psalm 148:4, he relates this to Genesis 1:6-8 - the initial Creation of the firmament dividing the waters above from the waters below, as factual history, and this water above the firmament is still there, according to the Psalmist, and therefore, never collapsed during the Flood, believed by many Christians and theologians as the source of "the windows of heaven opened" - of Genesis 7:11.

Also, that the Earth is firm and immovable, according to the YouTuber's interpretation of the Bible. By using Psalm 104:5 as a proof text, Harrison Cother then insists that 1 Samuel 2:8 (KJV) and Job 9:6 teaches that the flat Earth rests on pillars as its foundations. Also, he mocks at the Christian's attempt to read the flat, disk-like circle as a sphere in Isaiah 40:22. A thought crossed my mind. Indeed, if he's referring to looking directly at the disk at a 90-degree angle perpendicular to it, would he be actually looking at a hemisphere - if the flat Earth has a dome over it? Surely, to the uninformed observer, he'll be looking at a sphere and not at a flat disk. Yet, as a child, I thought that both the sun - seen through the thin cloud - and the moon were flat disks. How would I know they were spheres unless I was taught that they were?

Anyone watching this video would be thoroughly convinced that the Bible is so unscientific, that it's laughed at to the level of derision if used as a science guidebook. For example, how can the Earth be "firm on its foundations and immovable" when it actually whizzes around the sun at 107,208 km/hour, or 66,616 mph, and rotates at 1,670 km/hour, or 1,037 mph at the Equator? Little wonder that it takes just one atheist to mock the Bible, and the rest of the unbelieving world laughs with him.

As for the fossils, they could either testify for my faith or against it. For example, the rock strata at the Grand Canyon. They're all water-laid deposits that hardened into rock. Geologists say that each layer was gradually formed in a shallow sea, lake or river. Any thoughts about a widespread or a universal Flood is looked upon with contempt. It is as if the scientific world is hostile towards God and His Biblical testimony.

This hostility towards God by secular scientists, I think, has placed many Christian graduates in a very awkward position. I, for one, refuse to feel embarrassed and I will confess my allegiance to Biblical truth. The most likely outcome to this is to be ignored, to be brushed aside. However, throughout the seventies and eighties, I met and associated with many Christian graduates who solved the problem by embracing Theistic Evolution. It's their attempt to compromise and to look acceptable in a scientific world and not face ridicule.

But I have nothing to worry about. Nor do I need to fear the mocker. I don't have to defend the Bible either. Rather, the Bible defends itself. Anyone who reads the above verses - and many others found in Scripture - can see that much of it is poetry. It seems as if the writers had deliberately put it that way so the reader, who did not possess the scientific knowledge in the same way we do, yet can still understand that the natural world he lived in was created by God for Man to inhabit. And man was originally created for intimacy with God. God had inspired the writing of the Bible as a revelation on how a sinful man can be reconciled to a holy God and enjoy eternity with Him.

One example is the criticism made by Sam Harris in his book, Letter to a Christian Nation, concerning the measurement of a circular bath installed by King Solomon near the newly-built Temple in Jerusalem (1 Kings 7:23.) According to Harris, this ratio of Pi is the worst and the most inappropriate approximation even in ancient times. The Babylonians can do a far better job in calculating Pi than the Israelites did, and thus proves his point in the way the Bible deals with maths.

But such criticism isn't necessary. The Bible is not a science book. It was never meant to be a book on science. Rather, it's a revelation on who God is and why we are separate from Him through sin, and through faith, we can be reconciled to God in Jesus Christ, who was crucified, buried, and three days later rose physically from the dead. And He gives eternal life to everyone who believes.

And the origin of fossils? Even the Bible gives a scientific explanation for that.

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*John C. Whitcombe Jr. and Henry M. Morris, The Genesis Flood, 1961, nineteenth printing, 1975. Baker Books. Page 133. The figures detailed here are American numerics.

The 5 Animals that Disproves God?

I recall one Sunday evening at Bracknell Baptist Church sometime in the late eighties. We were at that time meeting at a school assembly hall. This was due to the size of the congregation that has outgrown its old building on Church Road. Soon, a new permanent meeting place was to be built and opened, to be called The Kerith Centre. 

In the meantime, we met in a nearby school assembly hall. On the front stage stood two women who had just returned from one of the charismatic revivals that were taking place in North America. One of these I have heard about was in Toronto, Ontario, and the other one in Pensacola, Florida. Which one of the two churches these married women flew across the Atlantic to visit, at this time, I can't fully remember, but that doesn't matter. However, the effect their testimony had on us cannot be forgotten.

After several minutes of talking, all of a sudden, the whole congregation went berserk! All around me, people - fully grown adults - started to wail, to cry, to laugh, to scream, to make strange noises. There was violent body shaking, trembling of the hands, and people falling to the floor. The whole scene of pandemonium was so chaotic, any child or unchurched would have doubled up in fright.

I was the only person who sat there stone-cold sober! I looked around. If this whole scenario was a visitation of the Holy Spirit, then why did He bypass me entirely? All I did was sit there and said or done nothing but watch and listen to everything that was going on around me.

It was tempting, at the time, to believe I was ignored by the Holy Spirit because I was still in my sins. Unlikely. Even back then, I was familiar with the Bible, and I was already aware that there is nothing in Holy Scripture, whether in the Old Testament or the New, that had anything parallel to this "revival."

I recall the husband of one of the women on the stage. He didn't think of me very highly, and I doubt whether he thought highly of the senior pastor, either. But each week, he could be seen "dancing in the Spirit" at the back of the church while everyone else remained at their place during worship, thus giving the impression of being at a higher spiritual level. Then, some years later and after I left the church for the one at Ascot, I heard through the grapevine that his wife - the one who stood on the stage - attended a house party and has met another man with whom a relationship between them has begun. This led to her divorce from her husband.

As already mentioned, all this came through the grapevine and as such, I can't verify the story. But having known her husband for quite a few years, I wasn't too surprised. If a spirit of self-righteousness had developed in him, and that was something I also saw, it would come to no surprise that sooner or later, his wife would find solace in another man who showed her enough affection as not to be so judgemental over her.

If such a revival had carried with it a sense of optimism for the church - never mind the scandal that followed. At least that can be swept under the carpet. If I wish to believe that the hysteria was of God, despite having no backing from the Bible, and so, in today's Daily Mail, the Saturday Essay was about the glorious optimism for the English. After developing a successful vaccine rollout which is paving the way to freedom after sixteen months of lockdowns, everything is looking up. Then, after a quarter of a century of losing to Germany, England knocks out its enemy from the European Football championships. As we eagerly wait for the final whistle that will end tonight's game against Ukraine, the nation is optimistic enough for our team to play in the semi-finals. And who dares wins? Perhaps the Final too? After 55 years since 1966 of missing the Final altogether, England is optimistic.

England is also proud, due to Brexit, that big international firms such as the Japanese Nissan carmakers choosing to set up a factory in Sunderland, northern England, thus providing jobs for many. And so, also due to Brexit, the economy will recover at a fast rate - not that surprising really - when considering market demand. After months of not spending on non-essential items, people will be ready to open their wallets. I tend to believe that it was the mass vaccination and not Brexit, that will springboard the economy to health.

If England frees itself fully from the pandemic by mass vaccination, wins the European Cup, and experience a thriving economy mainly due to Brexit, then indeed, the nation has reasons for pride and glory! But something is missing. Just as the "revival" was raising hopes for a higher spiritual ecstasy in the church, the woman on stage who ushered in the hysteria was herself already finding godly living at home difficult.

Likewise, the hopes and dreams of a golden age for post-Brexit Britain has a gaping hole in the middle - a lack of faith in God. And as this national apostasy is accelerating, I actually dread rather than anticipate the future. Will a new variant of the virus, totally vaccine-resistant, finally wipe us all out? Or a national takeover by a foreign power so strong, all we can do is submit without a fight?

Who knows? Earlier this week, I watched a video by Harrison Cother, an ex-Jehovah's Witness. He has made only eight videos but between them, he had already collected 1,238,984 views since he joined YouTube on January 31st 2021. His latest video, 5 Animals That Disprove God, had already collected 114,000 views since it was posted just six days previously.

Harrison Cother is a very handsome young man with a gentle spirit, and I believe it's that, rather than the video's content, which drew in an audience with astonishing rapidity. An ex-Jehovah's Witness turned atheist, his growing knowledge of the natural world was not only the reason to renounce his faith but also leaves any Christian apologetic in a difficult situation. The five animals he refers to are the bed bug, the snake, the box jellyfish, the mosquito, and the human being.

Cother refers to the bed bug as a blood-sucking parasite that feeds on human blood whilst the victim is asleep. Designed by Jehovah to creep up in the darkest night, and drawn by the carbon dioxide in the exhaled breath, this bug gorges itself with blood during the night - such is God's creation - the same God who has forbidden the consumption of the blood of other animals by humans under the penalty of death (Genesis 9:4, Leviticus 17:11-14).

The box jellyfish is another mentioned by Cother. He even mentions a dispute between the Father and the Son on this issue! Why on earth did you create such a creature? the Son asks, Oh, because I am God, the Father answers. I can create what I like! And that is despite that many humans, whom God loves, were badly hurt by the jellyfish's ferocious sting and many had died of it, including children.

Another pest, according to Cother, is the mosquito. Whilst also sucking human blood, this insect has spread malaria throughout history. Countless people had died of malaria, especially children. Yet, God sees fit to create such an insect with the foreknowledge of the lives these creatures will take through such a horrible disease.

Harrison Cother, here on Twitter.

The snake is another. Many species of snake consume eggs laid by other animals, or if the egg is too big, then it eats the hatchling. Other species of snake strangle their prey or injected it with poison. As for egg-eating snakes, this is strange when foretold and designed by a loving God when he says that if an unborn child dies as a result of a blow to the mother's tummy, the offended must be punished by death - a life for a life -Exodus 21:22-23.

Finally, Harrison Cother ranks the human being as the number one animal that proves the non-existence of God. And the failure of God's pinnacle of Creation lies with pregnancy and childbirth. Here, he names 31 ailments that can occur during pregnancy and childbirth, along with the death rate of mothers giving birth. He quotes that in the present 21st Century estimate made by the World Health Organisation, up to 300,000 deaths occur during childbirth every year worldwide. That is one death every two minutes. He then gives an illustration of flying to Saudi Arabia to cut off a man's hand. When the innocent victim asks why his hand was severed, the explanation given was that his great, great, great...great...great...grandfather once stole something and as such, his descendant must bear the punishment. Hence Eve's sin and the punishment suffered by all her descendants.

As a JW, Cother used to quote Genesis 3:15 - I will greatly multiply your pain during childbirth, in pain, you shall bring forth children...and he accuses Creationists of blaming him for ranking the human being as the worst example of God's creation. He then blames God for saying, "I will multiply your pain in childbirth..." rather than merely "Your pain will merely be a consequence of your sin."

As a Christian and a creationist myself, I'll be the first to step forward and ask: how can I give an answer to such an intelligent and observing atheist? The only thing I can say is at the Edenic Curse, which is what this is, there was a dynamic anatomical change that not only took place in Eve's body, but in Adam's too, and in every animal alive at that time - on land, in the sea, and in the air. Personally, the need to defecate might have arisen from this curse, and some species of animals that were vegetarian before the Curse became carnivorous afterwards. And the Curse of Genesis 3:16 is well known by Harrison Cother.

Also, there are several things, in my mind, that's worth considering: One is the time the Curse was passed. Unfortunately, we are not told of the time-lapse between the initial creation and the Fall. And also worth considering that by comparison to what we see today, there weren't that many land animals back then, either. For example, the question of speciation. The feline family, for one, has at present, the lion, the tiger, the leopard, the cheetah, the puma, the wild cat, and the domestic cat. All these seven could have arisen from just one pair - a male and a female - during Adam's time. The Equine family is another example - the horse, the pony, the zebra, the onager, the kianger, the ass, the quagga, and the mule - all could have arisen from the one pair. The same applies to the primates, starting with just one pair of ape-like creatures. Even the elephant, the mastodon and the mammoth could have arisen from the one pair. And so, I can go on and on. For a further example, could the brontosaur, the diplodocus and the brachiosaur have arisen from just one pair? (By the way, is the Behemoth in Job 40:14-24 a description of a Brontosaur?)

We are not told how long it took for Adam to name every animal that God brought to him, but assuming it took a considerable short time may indicate that in their original state, for some to turn into carnivores most likely occurred before the birth of any of their offspring, therefore, this might not have been a big issue as one can imagine when examining speciation that exists now.

I agree with Harrison Cother that there are many bad things in the natural world. such as the Cotesia wasp which larvae burrow into a live caterpillar. By contrast, the fossil record shows how ancient organisms, including dinosaurs, died by violence and drowning. Several fossils were found of one creature in the process of eating another when it came to a sudden end. Cother even holds one such fossil up close for us to examine. Or a pregnant ichthyosaur meeting its sudden end, found, I believe, at the Jurassic Coast of Southwest England. I have visited the Natural History Museum in Oxford. At one gallery, there is a rock slab with many fish fossils preserved on it, all fully complete with their scales. Dead fish don't settle to the seafloor. Instead, they are normally eaten by scavengers, or they decompose entirely. These fossil fish were preserved intact as if met by some sudden catastrophe.

Could the record of Noah's Flood be the making of the entire fossil record?

Next, I would like to say to Cother that he was lied to by the Watchtower Society from childhood. With all matters relating to topics specified by the Watchtower, the issue with the Trinity, I feel, is of the most importance.

Jehovah's Witnesses deny the Trinity - that is, the Father, Son and Holy Spirit are all equal in the Godhead. The Father is God, the Son is God, and the Holy Spirit is God, but these are not three gods but one God. This is the central doctrine of the Christian faith and sets it apart from all other religions.

Tied with the Trinity is God's plan of salvation. If the Son Jesus is not equal to the Father, then he is not capable of saving anyone completely. The Watchtower knows this and plays a very subtle psychological trick - that if Jesus Christ cannot save fully, then it's up to man to save himself. Therefore, absolute obedience to the Society - in door-to-door work (known as a Kingdom Publisher) - along with accepting everything handed down from the Society's table without ever questioning what they say. In other words, for the hope of salvation, you must be a slave of the Watchtower Society!

If Jesus was truly God and truly man - in theological circles, known as the Hypostatic Union, then He's able to save completely. And if God can save completely, then the organisation would crumble.

True salvation involves justification by faith - or imputed righteousness. That is, the Righteousness of Christ imputed into the sinner's account. That means the Father seeing the believer in exactly the same way He sees His Son! To be in Christ and Christ in you. The Watchtower doesn't teach any of this, indeed, it cannot, or it would fall to pieces. But it's clearly taught by Paul in his letter to the Romans, chapters 3, 4, and 5. Romans 8 is also worth a read - without any of the Watchtower's interference.

If this wonderful plan of salvation is to be set in motion, then Jesus had to die by crucifixion on a cross (note: not merely impaled on an upright stake!) Then He was buried and on the third day, rose physically from the tomb. The Watchtower denies a physical Resurrection. Instead, they promote only a spiritual one, the ghost of Jesus rising from his dead body. But the physical Resurrection of Jesus Christ is absolutely essential for salvation, as Paul writes in 1 Corinthians 15. Again, that's worth reading on its own. If Christ did not rise physically, then there's no salvation.

I have a lot of respect for Harrison Cother. His gentle spirit while explaining why he has turned to atheism had earned my respect and not any form of judgement. If only he understood the very glory of God in his plan of salvation, that is way, way better than what the Watchtower can only offer. Who knows, he can see how bad our present natural world can be, and still trust in his Triune God for his wonderful salvation.