Hyper-Creationism - A Great Shame

A was a beautiful clear mid-Spring afternoon in the late 1980's. We were at a Christian Conference Weekend which was held annually at the Links Hotel in the East Sussex resort of Eastbourne. Being Saturday, it was a couple of hours after lunch when we took a rest from ongoing worship, sermons, and note-taking. Whilst many in our group decided to visit a farm nearby, I preferred a lone stroll along the top of Beachy Head Cliffs, just west of the town. These chalk cliffs, being 162 metres (531 ft) high, making these the highest cliffs in Britain. From the summit I was able to look westwards over a wide expanse of sea to see the spine of the Isle of Wight, more than sixty miles away (100 km). This was possible by the coastline receding slightly northwards between Beachy head, itself a promontory jutting into the Channel, and that of Ballard Down, a chalk cliff at the start of the Isle of Purbeck (a peninsula) some eighty miles (approximately 130 km) as the crow flies, west of Eastbourne. The Isle of Wight, unlike Purbeck, is an island proper with ferries linking it from the mainland.

Beachy Head dwarfs the Lighthouse.

If it wasn't for the ridge of the Isle of Wight, there was that distinct possibility of just making out the summit of Ballard Down from where I was standing. Nevertheless, I was still impressed with the island itself within visibility across sixty miles of uninterrupted water. Then as I walked on, the cliff got lower until I wasn't that far above the beach. When I turned towards the where the spine of the Isle of Wight is located, it was gone. It was as if the entire island had just sunk beneath the sea.

This of course, isn't true - or was it? A repeat of history: the sinking of the island-continent of Atlantis? Or maybe the Isle of Wight remains exactly as it always has been - with myself moving in relation with the curvature of the Earth? If the latter explanation is correct, then this might explain the odd phenomenon I have noticed in the sky. Where I live, I have always been familiar with the Constellations of Orion, the Big Dipper and the Polar Star. Then how I could forget such a magnificent sight as I stared up into the night sky from the bottom of the Grand Canyon in 1995? (That was on the second trip - during my first trip in 1978 the sky was overcast with rumbles of thunder echoing through the vast natural chasm.) A magnificent display of countless stars, the vast majority I had never seen from where I live! My home in the UK is about 51 degrees North of the Equator. The Grand Canyon is 36 degrees North. So not surprising that from where I was standing near the Colorado River, all the stars appeared to have shifted North by about fifteen degrees. So where angle is concerned, it's not much of a difference to write home about. However, far more astonishing was when I was backpacking Australia in 1997. Right above my head was the Southern Cross, immediately recognisable by the same pattern on the Australian and New Zealand flags. Also a misty band of the Milky Way crosses the entire sky. The sight was stupendous, and there were many nights during that trip when I stood on the beach with my neck craned to stare into the heavens.

But all these experiences I had strongly suggests a curvature of the Earth. In other words, our home is a spinning ball orbiting the Sun, as the third Rock in the Solar system. And that was the belief held by the ancient Greek philosophers, at least that the Earth was round rather than flat. One Greek, by the name of Eratosthenes, who lived around 200 BC, not only knew that the Earth was round, but he actually calculated the circumference of the Earth without leaving his homeland of Egypt. He did this by measuring shadows during the Summer Solstice, when the sun was directly overhead at an Egyptian city of Syene, very close to the Tropic of Cancer, and comparing the length of a shadow cast by a vertical pole driven into the ground at the port of Alexander, some 500 miles (810 km) to the north, and by measuring the angle of the shadow's tip from vertical, which was just over seven degrees, an angle which was 1/50th part of a circle of 360 degrees, which gave an approximate answer of 25,000 miles (because 500 miles - the approximate distance from Syene to Alexander - times 50 {that is ~7 degrees} equals 25,000 miles). The actual mean circumference of our planet is 24,900 miles (40,075 km). I can't help but stand back and gasp in astonishment at this ancient Greek's intelligence, his mathematical and astronomical abilities, who was also able to work out the angle of the tilt of the axle from vertical.

Another Greek of superb intelligence was Pythagoras, who was living around 520 BC. He was the one who calculated that the hypotenuse of a right-angle triangle was equal to the square root of the two adjoining sides squared. To take a school-level example: a triangle with one angle of ninety degrees has one side three cm. squared, and the adjoining side four cm. squared. The combined total of the two areas - that is one square measuring nine square cm. and the other measuring sixteen square cm. is equal to 25 square cm. The square root of 25 is five, which is the length of the hypotenuse. However, although it was Pythagoras who made the calculation, many scholars are aware that this theorem was well known by the Babylonians long before Pythagoras' day.

Then whatever happened some time after the Crucifixion, Burial and Resurrection of Jesus Christ of Nazareth? How could the Roman Catholic Church usher in the Dark Ages? Could the Bible be so scientifically ignorant as to teach that we are living on a flat world? This blog is written after a website link came up out of random from a You-Tube advert slot, and it was titled Celebrate Truth, whilst browsing the main video website. It was a serious two-hour documentary detailing by means of interviews with serious-looking professional men who wholehearted believe in the historicity and the truthfulness of the Bible. And this included belief of a gigantic Satanic conspiracy to deceive the entire human race, getting us to believe that NASA has lied to us about sending men to the moon, and the photo-shopping every photo taken of earth from space to deceive us that the Earth is round. This conspiracy affecting the whole of the Media, through all television, newspapers, and textbooks alike to make us all believe that we are accepting a lie. Celebrate Truth was certainly hostile to Pythagoras and Eratosthenes, as well as assigning numbers and mathematics in general as the work of the Devil to keep us from knowing God.

Celebrate Truth is by no means the only website available. Just type in Flat Earth on You-Tube, or simply Google Flat Earth, and a long list of websites and videos advocating the Flat-Earth theory comes up on the screen, from five minute clips to two-hour documentaries, all favouring the idea being linked to what the Bible teaches. Celebrate Truth lashes out against Darwinism, and fair enough, I'm a Young-Earth Creationist myself, who don't have a problem with the six literal days of Creation some six millennia ago. Nor do I have a problem with believing in Adam and Eve being our first parents, and the non-existence of death before the Fall. But to advocate that NASA has deliberately lied to us, along with labelling "Satanic" great men such as Pythagoras, Eratosthenes, Aristotle, and for that matter - Galileo - is what I have labelled Hyper-Creationism. Don't bother to Google it, it was a title I coined up myself for want of a better description. 

Of the documentary Celebrate Truth, I felt so discouraged that I turned it off after about ninety minutes. There was nothing edifying about the documentary, nothing to rejoice about, nothing to praise God for. There was nothing about God's love for a helpless race of mankind, and nothing about the Atonement Jesus Christ has made by dying on the Cross and his bodily Resurrection. On the contrary it was all about a worldwide Satanic conspiracy of universal deception, and I felt my spirit deflate as one interview followed another, and even feeling a sense of condemnation for believing in a round Earth and in a way, calling God a liar. It was also rather boring to watch, with no drama to illustrate their opinions. Other Flat-Earth videos I have watched has enabled me to build a picture on what they believe the Bible teaches. Much of this is based on Isaiah 40:22 which reads:

He sits enthroned above the circle of the earth, and its peoples are like grasshoppers. He stretches the heavens like a canopy, and spreads them out like a tent to live in.

Fig 1. The Medieval interpretation of the Universe. 

Fig 2. The modern Flat Earth Model

Flat-Earth advocates links this verse of Scripture to that of the first chapter of Genesis, where on Day Two, when God separates the waters above from the waters below, with what the King James version calls the Firmament, implying a solid shell-like dome over the Earth. The Septuagint, which translated the Hebrew into Greek between the third and second centuries BC, translated the Hebrew word Raqiya, which has a meaning for expanse, into the Greek word Stereoma, which implies something solid. And since these Christians believe that the Bible is infallible to the extent that every scientific evidence and proof are all Satanic lies and deception, the concept of the entire Universe contained in a solid dome as illustrated in Fig 1 is held as Biblical truth above everything else.

And here is something I consider an issue with the model depicted in Fig 2. The modern concept does not look at all like in Fig 1. First of all there is no dome, or firmament covering the flat disc, and secondly, all the other heavenly bodies are spread out across the vastness of the Universe, as taught by modern science, and not all contained within a solid dome. And thirdly, Fig 2 shows the Sun and the Moon orbiting each other on a fixed plane some distance above the disc. The sunlight distribution would have posed massive problems in defining day from night, as well as looking at a completely different sky over Australia from over the United Kingdom or from over America. Yet Fig 2 is as much Biblical truth to the Flat-Earth advocates as in Fig 1, although how will all the stars fall to Earth in the Fig 2 model, I cannot even speculate. Yet rather than thinking that our Earth is flat and is covered by a solid shell and the entire Universe is within that shell, I have always accepted that the firmament depicted in Genesis is merely a zone of the antediluvian atmosphere, enveloped by a sphere of dense water vapour, or expanse, as translated in the New International Version of the Bible.

It is this vapour which may, in my opinion, be the reason why man was able to live as long as 960 years, and the canopy might have made the antediluvian sky red rather than blue during the daytime. If this is true, then there was the likelihood that all the colours of creation were enhanced to a level we cannot experience at present. I wonder if this was why the fruit of the Tree of Knowledge looked so appealing to Adam and Eve? The collapse of the canopy, probably caused by volcanic dust particles thrown up when the fountains of the deep were opened, and the condensation which resulted, brought on the Deluge. And a quick read of post-Diluvian genealogy listed in Genesis 11, revealing the rapid shortening of human longevity. Put in proper scientific context, I find the Bible verified by Science when put into context of a spherical Earth orbiting the Sun within a vast Universe.

Over forty years of being a Christian myself, I have never come across a single brother or sister who believed in a Flat-Earth theory. Conversely, the majority of graduates I knew personally over those years were advocates of Theistic Evolution, which is Darwinism under the supervision and direction of God in opposed to being by chance alone. This line of reasoning is no doubt an attempt to present the Christian faith to the unbeliever without sounding or appearing out of touch with reality, or to feel foolish or ridiculous. But if death was not brought into the world through the Fall of Adam, but instead existed for countless pre-Adamic generations, then the Atonement made on the Cross by Jesus Christ would be totally ineffective. Really, it is impossible to be a true Christian and still believe in Evolution, theistic or otherwise.

But the rise and revival of Flat-Earth theories is just a click away on the Internet. It is so easily accessible. And it is dangerous. Dangerous because these videos and websites have followers by the multiple thousands. If there is a Satanic conspiracy going on around us, it is through these videos themselves promoting a flat Earth. The conspiracy is to make the Bible appear all so more ridiculous in content in the eyes of unbelievers - whether they be scientists or laymen. And the more ridiculous the Bible appears to unbelievers, even honest enquirers, the less likely for conversion and faith in God. Far more of the unsaved would scorn the Bible if they thought it taught a domed flat Earth. It would be flammable fuel for the fires of Richard Dawkins and other noted atheists.

The result will be that the scientific truth of a spherical Earth will always be advocated by unsaved academics to a vast crowd of unbelievers, confining the Bible and its believers to a realm of pseudo-science and crackpot ideas on the level of ancient space-god theories and the like. Indeed being a true Bible-believing Christian may be a source of shame and embarrassment within a well-educated and science-based world.

"How" - Yes; But No "Why".

One of our church Elders sat across the table at a Starbucks coffee bar adjoining our nearest superstore to my home. As I sipped through a Cappuccino Grande, we enjoyed a hearty conversation over various church issues, perhaps also wondering whether to thank the Americans for allowing us to sample their culture here in the UK, or to rebuke our cousins across the Atlantic for stealing an Italian recipe and making it their own. It was probably midway through the conversation when he came up with a statement which made me consider whether on this blog page I demonstrate a dislike for educated men, or of education itself. On the contrary I have a strong respect for educated people, or else I would never visit my GP, or that matter, submit myself to the knowledge and experience of the cardiac surgeon and his team that morning last year I had open heart surgery.

But much has to do with the the academic's attitude, especially towards us "commoners" or "plebs" which makes up a large percentage of the population. Here, in this part of the world, traditional manufacturing industry has been replaced over the years by high-tech offices, where production is centred around computer programming, various services, and administration. The grease stained boiler suit has become as rare as an oasis in the desert, replaced by the business suit - although ironical, the tie looks to be heading the same way as the boiler suit. Living within a geographical strip roughly located between the A3 and the A4 motorways, the British equivalent of the Silicon Valley, I can't help noticing a high proportion of well educated people, particularly in the churches. For someone who has struggled at school back in the sixties, living in such a modern environment can test one's self-esteem. One of the benefits of being in a local church is to experience a society free from any social, academic, and ethnic barriers, and for everyone to be seen as equals in God's eyes and the eyes of the fellowship.

One of the men I have come to admire is Professor Brian Cox, at present on a series of weekly BBC programmes Forces of Nature. I think it's the way he presents himself that has drawn out my attraction towards him. Always appearing casually dressed in front of the camera. So far I have not seen him wearing a shirt-and-tie throughout any of his scientific presentations. Rather he tends to be drawn towards wearing a crew-neck tee shirt. To me that says something. In fact, I believe it says a lot. That is, he prefers to identify himself as one of us rather than way up there in a cliquey "them-and-us" sphere of attitude. This along with how he explains his theories. Easy to understand without any patronising.

Brian Cox at the Grand Canyon.

On one of his previous presentations, he explained the meaning of entropy. In one visual demonstration, he was at a semi-desert environment near an abandoned mining town, with derelict buildings slowly filling with sand blown in through shattered windows. He crouched down and started to sift the dry sand making up a sand mound. He explained that the natural mound was high in entropy, since despite his rough handling, it retains its natural shape. Then he picked up a sandcastle mould and slapped it on the ground. When lifted, a castle consisting of damp sand remains standing, like on any sandy beach. This has low entropy, because, as he explains, this ordered structure can only become disordered through time. Even if he does not touch the castle and spoil it, the wind will blow away the sand grains until the castle disappears altogether. 

This is school-level education which unfortunately, the staff at my school considered the whole class too slow-learning to understand. Or to put it bluntly, too stupid. So it was never taught. Only the brightest students had the privilege to learn the meaning of entropy and its mathematical relation with the second law of thermodynamics. An easy explanation delivered without the need to wear uniform - no school jacket, no school badge, and no school tie. Just good knowledge delivered over the airwaves in a way the uninitiated would understand.

Like the explanation of why a snowflake always have six sides yet each looks different from each other, and why a larger heavenly body is always spherical. The first is to do with the structure of the water molecule, and the flake's unique journey to the ground from the clouds, and the second from the forces of gravitation at work within the formation of the star, planet or moon respectively. Thanks, Brian.

The scientist is intrigued with the vast complexity of the Universe as well as with natural wonders here on Earth. But with an apparent obsession with entropy, he gives a large segment of his presentation to the end of the world, the end of the Solar System, and the end of the Universe as a whole. Since everything starts off in an orderly state, then gradually decline toward disorder, he was apologetic for delivering a dire prophecy that trillions upon trillions of years into the future, not only our own Sun will be long gone, having burned all its hydrogen fuel into helium and then exploding into space as a Nebula, but the time will come when every single star will cease to exist, leaving the entire Universe as a dark, cold empty void, with all atoms gone forever. A very dire prophecy indeed, which he delivers with absolute certainty.

Which to me, leaves me to ask: If everything in the Universe was orderly, then how did it all begin? Cox advocates the Big Bang theory. But the energy needed to start off the explosion, along with all the gases, clouds, and other substances that will eventually form stars, planets, and smaller pieces of rock - how was this energy activated in the first place? I don't think the physicist has an answer, for practically nothing was said about what was already in place prior to the explosion. But to give him credit, he along with other scientists when confronted with a problem of such nature, he will admit that Science cannot explain everything without further research, and they are happy to wait until such appropriate evidence emerges. As an atheist's point of view, Science remains open to research and debate, while they see the theist having everything explained cut-and-dried, and therefore evidence supporting their theories must, sooner or later, emerge.

Then on September 28th 1969, a meteorite fell to Earth near the Australian town of Murchison, Victoria. Examination of the surviving fragment has revealed the presence of amino acid within the rock structure. This came at a time when the theory of evolution was under scrutiny by various academics, including geneticists, along with individuals such as Michael Behe and Fred Hoyle. It was Hoyle, atheist, astronomer and mathematician, who calculated the mathematical impossibility of just the enzymes to have evolved by chance. The enzymes is just part of the protein chain found in the nucleus of every cell in the body. Yet the probability of just the enzymes evolving naturally stands at one chance out of a number consisting of one, followed by forty thousand zeroes, which is considerably more than all the electrons existing in the entire Universe!

Fragment of Murchison Meteorite.

The Murchison Meteorite must have been a vital lifeline thrown to Darwin's theory of evolution just in time, otherwise before suffering its final throes which would have led to it's impending death. At present, the idea of some form of basis of life embedded in a meteorite as it fell into the primeval ocean is now the accepted possibility. I have seen a bizarre cartoon appearing in a national newspaper promoting the idea that we are originally from outer space, a theory I understand to be embraced by Brian Cox.

I enjoy watching Brian Cox and his scientific presentations. I love his informal casual dress and appearance. I love the way he identifies with one of us rather than one of the aloof elite. There are lots of things I could learn and understand without struggling to comprehend. Entropy is one of them. So is the unique structure of the snowflake. And gravity, with its effects on why our planet is spherical. But he always remains within the sphere on how all these things come about. He stays clear of the inter-relating sphere on why. This, I think, is because why will involve religion. And Cox, along with Hoyle, is an atheist. They both reject the Scriptural record of Divine Creation by an intelligence greater than themselves.

Cox's delusion with religion most likely originated in his teenage years as he attended Hulme Grammar School in Oldham, Greater Manchester. Most likely at morning assembly, where worship was conducted under Church of England liturgy. This was something I remember quite clearly at my own school back in the sixties. Church of England liturgy. And on the staff platform stood the deputy head. He did not lead the assembly himself, but this man was the most feared by all the pupils. Nearly every day he dispatched a hapless boy to wait for him at his office. When he arrived, the student received a caning. Just for talking briefly when he should have been listening. This caused my own perception of God to be very bad, and I ended up hating him, and my only source of consolation was to deny his existence, and stay well away from any church building. I even recall my first day at college. At the front of the main hall stood what looked like a pulpit. I felt my spine shiver at the thought of the possibility of another morning assembly. Furthermore, I wasn't alone at school. I recall a number of boys who went down the same road towards atheism as well.

I can't say whether Brian Cox had a similar experience at school or not. But I wouldn't rule it out.

A popular Atheist's Poster

At present, how I would love to sit at table with Brian Cox. But not to discuss the origins of the Universe or the origins of life. Brian would run rings around me in an instant! But instead to ask him:
What is your thoughts on the Death, Burial and Resurrection of Jesus Christ?

I would keep the conversation solely on Jesus Christ. His death by crucifixion, his burial, and on his resurrection. His Resurrection. That one event in the whole of cosmic and human history which is defiant of all scientific reasoning (together with his miraculous conception, that is, to have conceived without fertilization from a male sperm.) The Resurrection of Jesus Christ sets this faith apart from all other religions. If Cox were to ask me to prove his existence and his resurrection as factual, which would be the likeliest direction he would take, then I would ask him to check and verify his knowledge of human history. For example, in 1555 Bishops Nicholas Ridley and Hugh Latimer were burnt alive at the stake outside Balliol College in Oxford, with their strong conviction that Jesus Christ was crucified, buried, and rose again physically from the dead. These two preferred to give their lives than deny the truth.

But if Cox was to push the idea that the disciples, or even the Pharisees, had stolen the body of Jesus from the tomb, such reasoning would not stand the light of day. The Pharisees would have quenched the growing movement instantly by producing the body for all to see. But as with the disciples, of the twelve, eleven had willingly given themselves to martyrdom, along with the apostle Paul, and many others, including Stephen, who allowed himself to be stoned to death by the Sanhedrin, for testifying that this Jesus of Nazareth had indeed risen from the dead. If, on the other hand, Jesus did not die at all whilst on the cross, but merely passed out, then assuming he recovered on the third day and disappeared to some unknown location - a theory once advocated by The Sun newspaper around 1980 - then the martyrdom of so many would be based on a lie, as with the other two theories. Surely nobody would ever give his life to something he knew to be untrue.

Multiple thousands have given their lives to the truth of Christ's Resurrection throughout history. Churches grew, even divisions occurred, and the Reformation happened. Churches exist to this day - all advocating the truth of the Resurrection of Jesus Christ of Nazareth as a historical fact.

This is very important to someone such as Brian Cox. He needs to believe in the truthfulness of Jesus Christ - his supernatural birth, his existence, his death, burial and resurrection, and to trust him for his wonderful gift of eternal life. Only then will his brilliant knowledge of scientific origins of the Universe will fall into its proper place.

Feeling Fearful

What is it like to have someone you love and cherish, and to commit the whole of your life, for better or worse, for richer or poorer, for sickness and in health - to fall ill to the point of inability to sit up, let alone stand up and walk, and to have a continuous searing pain along her spine?

 

How does it feel to have this cherished one loving you, accepting you as you are, being a thorough helpmate, and hold no reserve in exchanging affection, devotion and love - only to find out that as she lies crying and in fear in a bed at one of the nation's top hospitals, we are told by a couple of its doctors that all tests applied proved negative and any attempted treatment, some very costly to the NHS, have not brought on the expected recovery? She is then transferred back to a more local hospital, having no idea of her future outcome. This, I think, is what fear really is. It's of the unknown, the uncertain welfare of my beloved, of our future together as husband and wife and what this could involve.

 

Last night in bed, after her transfer back to Reading from Oxford, I was gripped by cold, naked fear. Alongside this, all the good times we had as a couple, both at home and on our travels, stirred my memory. The house is quiet, even when I'm at home, and when I turn on the telly or listen to music on the hi-fi, these are not real people, just images and past recordings. I don't have the proper feeling of company. Despite the sight of people and the sound of voices, by the end of the day I'm still at home alone.

 

Yet I should be used to this. I lived alone at a bachelor apartment for 23 years. Those were the days of freedom, to come in and go out whenever I wish, to buy what I desire as well as what I need, the ability to work long hours, to save up and travel the world. Also to take a day off if I wanted to (the benefit of self-employment) and if I couldn't be bothered to wash the dishes after a meal but to leave them dirty overnight, there was no one to reprimand me. Bachelor life was good in many ways.

But fourteen years of happy marriage had changed all that. Because as a bachelor, there were times I felt lonely and unloved, along with a good dollop of boredom. Love and marriage had filled in those gaps left unfulfilled as a single. Of course, as in everything else in this fallen world, nothing is perfect, and we had our share of disagreements and woes. But overall, it has always been a strong, robust marriage, each supporting the other during down times as well as celebrating noted moments together. In all of these, I made it my aim to love my wife in the same way Jesus Christ loves his church - sacrificially, with the ability to pass over any shortcomings she has. For an example, as a bachelor I loved independent travel, world backpacking and hosteling. At the same time I shunned package holidays with their luxury hotel accommodation. I also believed back then, that escorted tours were either for the elderly, or for wimps who did not have the bottle to look after themselves in a foreign country. But after marrying Alex, we went on five package holidays, including the Canary Island of Lanzarote, where I booked two escorted coach tours to explore the island.

Backpacking days: Singapore, taken May 1997.

Alex is everything to me. Her love for me and her devotion to our marriage had made a massive impact on my life. Even to the extent that independent travel is now by comparison seen as undesirable. As I sit here alone at home, with the recording of the pop band OMD playing through the high-fidelity speakers, I type this blog with a desire for a good cry. The emptiness, along with the fear of uncertainty, can be almost unbearable.

I call out to God to help us, and for Jesus Christ to save us, but even God seems far away, as if on some sabbatical holiday. When I call out, it is into empty air, with not even an echo to answer back. My feelings, my fears and anticipations are not soothed but continue on, unabated.

It is the time like this that it's so difficult to grasp the reality of Psalm 139, for example. In the opening verses, it reads:
O LORD, you have searched me and you know me. You know when I sit and when I rise; you perceive my thoughts from afar.
You discern my going out and my lying down; you are familiar with all my ways. Before a word is on my tongue you know it completely, O LORD.

Although I know that such words are true, it is times like this, I tend to wonder whether such atheists such as Richard Dawkins, Christopher Hitchins and Sam Harris may have had a point after all - that all I'm doing whilst praying, is talking into thin air, with the complexity of the vast Universe too large and myself too small and insignificant to be heard, let alone listened to and taking heed. There are times I feel life is like that, a grasshopper walking on a comparatively huge planet orbiting the Sun, which within - compared to the size of the galaxy - even the whole Solar System looks microscopic as it whirls on its orbit around the nucleus of the galaxy. I tend to feel: Is God elsewhere, carefully adjusting and fine-tuning the mechanisms of another more distant galaxy, and too busy to hear a plea from an insignificant guy from across the other side of the Universe?

Times come and times go, and there are moments when I can lift my hands into the air during church praise and worship, feeling the strong presence of the Lord. Then there are times like these, where my pleading does nothing but disturbs the silent, still air in my bedroom, and remains unheeded. Yet believing that God is Infinite, whose wisdom cannot be fathomed by mere mortals such as us, and yes, he could well be fine-tuning the complex fabric of a long distant galaxy, yet at the same time hold together and sustain the life cells of a bug crawling on the carpet, and also looks into our hearts, knowing more about within ourselves then we ourselves do.

These are the times to reflect on the omniscience, omnipotence and omnipresence of God Almighty, whose love for us was demonstrated by the crucifixion, death and resurrection of Jesus Christ to atone for all our transgressions and shortcomings. No matter what the atheists say, it was right here on earth where Jesus atoned for our sins, not on a remote planet at some distant galaxy. God also sustains the very breath of life in our nostrils. As we go about our daily lives, we take for granted that within our chests, each lud-dum, lud-dum, lud-dum, of our beating hearts sends red and white blood cells coursing through our arteries and veins, bringing life to every tissue of our bodies, surely the very proof of the living God.

As we are living in an age of Science, knowledge, including the marvellous mechanism of the genome and microbiology in general, our sinful nature denies God as the Maker and Sustainer of such wonders, and resort to Evolution, with Charles Darwin being the new messiah of the likes of Dawkins and Harris. But it takes distressing times like this that such ideas, false as they might be, offering absolutely no hope, no shred of comfort, no stirring of any other emotion. Rather, Evolution would coldly insist that Alex and her ilk be eliminated from Natural Selection and allowed to die. It is unfortunate that the majority of the medical profession are unbelievers in Christ and of the Atonement, and instead see the wonderful, vastly complex fabric of the genome as having evolved, instead of manifesting the very glory of its Creator. For I believe that God has given mankind an exceptionally intelligent brain which allows study of microbiology and allied sciences to reveal God's glory in creation and to be converted and saved. Yet as they instead remain as unbelievers, we put in our full trust in their knowledge that they can treat such as my wife of a certain illness, and come out mystified, without a diagnosis. And I, for one, fall into despair.

Once again, as I have expressed so enthusiastically in previous blogs, there is that one key verse which Paul wrote in his letter to the church in Rome:
For we know that all things work for the good of those who love God, and are called according to his purpose. Romans 8:28.

And no medical doctor can deny that.

Vanity of Vanities, Life is Vanity, says Brian Cox

Last night my wife and I watched The Wonders of the Universe, presented by the ever smiling, smooth-talking ever-so-lovable Professor Brian Cox. Not a dour looking middle-aged gentleman with a moustache and in a grey suit, as one could imagine a professor to look like, but a youthful looking chap, some fifteen years my junior, and casually dressed to the extent that some diehards would call "scruffy" for his profession.

We enjoyed his one-hour long presentation. But as the programme progressed, I began to feel low, depressed. And Cox himself actually admitted that this part of his presentation would depress his audience.
For he spoke about the great age of the Universe, about 13 billion years old, and the coming death of the Universe as each star dies after burning up all of its fuel. This including our Sun, which when its fuel, which is Hydrogen, runs out, would then grow to a Red Giant, then shrink to a White Dwarf and eventually explode into a dust cloud.
And that is the fate of every star in the Universe. The brighter stars would die first, as they burn fuel at a much faster rate than the red dwarfs.
But over trillions, trillions and trillions of years into the future, only a few red dwarfs remain, as they were the slowest to burn their fuel reserves. But even they will turn into white dwarfs and explode into gas clouds and as the clouds disperse, the whole Universe will become a utter black void, without any source of light and heat, as eventually every single atom in the entire Universe becomes non-existent.
He even demonstrated this theory of the second law of thermodynamics by standing next to a rusting hull of a ship beached many years earlier. Gradually the hull was being eroded away and will, over time, disappear altogether, as the second law requires, as every matter deteriorates from order to disorder. The same applies to the Universe.
Depressing stuff!

This morning on Radio 2, I heard presenter Chris Evans quip that life was purposeless, for we are all doomed, after watching the same programme the evening before.
And this is the final fruition of great intellects such as Charles Lyell, Jean Baptiste Lamark, Charles Darwin, Richard Dawkins, Sam Harris, Christopher Hitchens and now Brian Cox. All of these guys, five British, one French and one American, either denied the existence of God or presented an alternative to Divine Creation in the name of Science. And the end result, a feeling of a depressing sense of purposelessness, acknowledged both by Cox and Evans.
And this sort of atheistic knowledge has swept across the Western World mainly from this nation, from where this knowledge had its origin from Lyell and Darwin respectively.
Does it matter?
Yes, I think it does. The thought of a dying Universe where eventually every star will fizzle out like a fading ember, to me at least, robs all sense of worth and purpose of living. We are reduced to a mass of atoms arranged into molecules by chance over millions of years of evolution. Having faith in God was nothing but an evolutionary hiccup, maybe to help with our survival as a species, but now, according to Dawkins and Harris, it's high time to throw all this into the dustbin and move on. Divine Creation is just a fairy tale. And the cause of a tremendous waste of hard labour endured by many generations.
After all, for example, because the Pyramids of Egypt were a burying place for the kings to enter the afterlife, they were of a religious significance and therefore a waste of time and energy in their construction, ditto with the giant statues of Buddha.
But more touching, would have been the birth, growth and history of the nation of Israel, and eventually its capital, Jerusalem. Totally purposeless would have been a need of a burial cave that would stand as a sentinel to testify that the land of Canaan was given to the children of Israel by divine decree.
It would mean that it matters not a jot whether the Palestinians succeed in pushing Israel into the sea, and grab back Jerusalem and return it to its status of a provincial city under the administration of the Islam capital of Mecca. But the fact that this had always been the wishes of the Palestinians, backed by the United Nations, along with superpowers such as Russia, as with all Arab nations. Thus Jerusalem has become a cup of trembling, and one day whose right to possess that city will be the cause of the greatest war fought by the nations, threatening the extinction of the entire human race. For what purpose? Religion? Something now proved pointless by science?

And again, if we are here because of an evolutionary stroke of luck in a slowly dying Universe, what purpose was the Crucifixion of Christ, and the Church he said he would build. From the churches comes the teaching that by having faith in the death and Resurrection of Christ, one's soul will be saved by having all sins forgiven, and to love and serve God and each other, to show compassion to the less fortunate, to give more freely, to do good to those in need and most important: to have a sense of purpose - which is to spend eternity thoroughly partaking and enjoying the love that has always shone so brightly between Father, Son and Holy Ghost, the three persons of a Trinitarian God! And to enjoy it in a re-created Universe and a world so astoundingly beautiful, that it is totally impossible to imagine it.
With this faith comes the assurance that as long as God keeps his Covenant with Israel, the Earth will never be destroyed. And he has also assured us that he will only break his covenant with Israel if we successfully achieved the impossibility of counting every star in the Universe, or cause the day and the night from following each other (that is, to stop the Earth from rotating) or even boring a hole down to the core of the Earth, literally. As for the great war over Jerusalem still future from this point in time, God will intervene before mankind is wiped out, and the Son of God will claim his throne of his father David in Jerusalem.
With all this in mind, I recall one particular evening at my bachelor pad some years ago. A member of the Bracknell Community Church (back then it was Bracknell Baptist Church) who himself was a graduate, came to visit me with a question:
Why are we here?
Without hesitation I quoted Revelation 4:11
For thou hast created all things, and for thy pleasure they are and were created.
For thy pleasure. It's a beautiful reason, and one given only in the Authorised version of the Bible. (All other versions use the word "will" instead of "pleasure".)
The visitor was stunned. He then explained that great minds have written volumes in attempting to explain why we are here, and I did it in a single stroke.
No, the Bible did.
Here we have it. Faith in Jesus Christ as Saviour and trusting the Bible as authority has and always will spare me from the depressive sense of purposeless and doom propounded by the likes of Brian Cox and his ilk.