Evidence for God from Science Newsletter June, 2002

Greetings in the name of the Lord! This is the latest edition of the update for the Evidence for God website. Here are the news items and recent additions to the site.

News

New Eye Design Website

A longtime friend of this ministry, Curt Deckert, has recently completed a new website that answers many intelligent design and evolution questions about vision. Opinions and research are technology- based for a better understanding of vision. Besides containing many helpful illustrations, it asks many compelling questions to challenge readers interested in science and technology. It contains examples of scientific findings that indicate creative intelligent design in eyes of all kinds. This website makes a case for a master eye designer who is our Creator God. It can be used to help people realize that we have a Creative God who is the Ultimate Intelligent Designer. Here everyone can enjoy almost 200 pictures and diagrams of many types of eyes.

To make this research more accessible to students, teachers, the home schooled, scientists, and others with an interest in eyes, it has been published on the Web as:

www.eyedesignbook.com

"Apologetics for the New Millennium" Conference

Idea Center.orgA couple months ago I told you about the Idea Center, a new intelligent design website. They are holding their first conference in San Francisco, September 27-28, 2002. The conference will feature Michael Behe, Paul Chen, Edward Peltzer, and other scientists who are involved in biological research. The conference looks nothing less than spectacular, and I hope to be able to fit it into my schedule and budget. For more information, see Intelligent Design and Evolution Awareness Conference.

College student challenges evolutionary theory

Mike, a student in a college speech class recently contacted me for advice about giving a speech presenting the evidence against evolution. When the professor was presented with the speech idea, she responded by stating that no evidence against evolution existed. She went on to further state that just because certain things are not scientifically explainable now, they probably would be in the future. Despite an obvious uphill battle, Mike chose to go ahead with the speech. Here is Mike's account of the speech:

Thanks for giving me a direction in my 'challenge to evolution' speech. My classmates were left speechless. No one offered a rebuttal. They were all very appreciative to have been presented with the overwhelming flaws of evolutionary theory. Most of my classmates told me they had heard that evolutionary theory had flaws, but that they had never had them presented to them. My teacher, who had previously championed Darwinism, was at a moment of epiphany. She gave us a very high score but I give all the credit to Jesus. I was nervous about this speech because I had never challenged such a firmly entrenched concept in a university setting. I prayed and my prayers were answered. I didn't care about the grade, I just wanted to let my classmates know that evolution is far from a fact.

I wish that more people were willing to challenge evolutionary dogma and stand up for their faith. Way to go Mike!

Prejudice against whites

Prejudice is a word that people don't want to hear, much less experience themselves. As a white male in California, I had experienced prejudice only a couple times in my lifetime. Andrew, my middle son, recently experienced prejudice from an unexpected source - Cub Scouts from a Buddhist temple. Our Cub Scout Pack recently went to Camporee, which is an annual outing where Scouts can test their knowledge of Scouting and have some fun camping. After being tested in the morning, Scouts were doing what boys do best - running around and playing. At one point, the Bears from our Pack (including Andrew) went up to boys from another pack that was chartered through a Buddhist temple. When boys from our Pack asked if they could play together, they received the unexpected response, "We don't play with you - different culture" from one of the boys from the Buddhist temple. Our boys were shocked and reported the incident to anybody who would listen. It was a good "teaching moment" to discuss sin and prejudice. Many who reject Christianity lean toward eastern religions, such as Buddhism, where "moral living" is stressed. Although prejudice is not a moral value in Buddhism, it was obvious from the Scout encounter that Buddhists are not exempt from the classification as sinners.

Design/Evolution

It has been a while since I updated the design/evolution department, so there is a lot to report. A new page has been added on Intelligent Design. The page discusses some of the failures of ID theory and how to design an ID theory that can be tested and verified or falsified.

     Can Intelligent Design (ID) be a Testable, Scientific Theory?
     http://www.GodAndScience.org/evolution/intelligentdesign.html

Several updates appear in the Problems in Evolution page. On the evolution side, the technology used to disprove the presence of fossil life in the Martian meteorite ALH84001 has been applied to layers of ancient rock thought to represent the earliest life on earth with the same result. It now appears that layers of carbon formed 3.8 billion years ago was formed at a temperature incompatible with the existence of life. The previous "evidence" for ancient life had been cited on many pages, so those had to be updated. Unfortunately for the evolutionists, a new study has put a big dent into the most popular abiogenesis (naturalistic origin of life) theory. Scientists had thought that the most likely place that life could have spontaneously appeared were the thermal vents of the oceans, which are rich in chemical energy sources. However, it now appears that primitive "cell membranes" cannot form in salt water (i.e., the oceans). There are even more studies that will be added to the page in the coming weeks.

     Abiogenesis- Is the Chemical Origin of Life a Realistic Scenario?
    http://www.GodAndScience.org/evolution/chemlife.html

Other topics pertinent to the creation/evolution debate include:

     Recent Problems in Evolutionary Theories
     http://www.GodAndScience.org/evolution/evolprob.html

     Origins News!
     http://www.GodAndScience.org/evolution/originnews.html

Doctrine and Theology

In response to an e-mail supporting the Roman Catholic interpretation of the Eucharist, I have written a piece examining the doctrine of transubstantiation from a scriptural viewpoint. The page primarily examines the sixth chapter of John, which is often cited as evidence for the Catholic doctrine. I had not really examined the issue too deeply before, so it was good to look at the Catholic arguments in detail. Jesus Christ made it very clear that he was using a physical metaphor to discuss spiritual truth. It is difficult to understand why he would be telling a group of non-believing Jews about an ordinance of the church that had not even been instituted yet (this confrontation occurred before the Passover "Last Supper").

     Transubstantiation- Does the Eucharist Become the "Real Presence" - the Body and Blood of Jesus Christ?
     http://www.GodAndScience.org/doctrine/eucharist.html

Aberrant Theology

I have written a page in response to an e-mail claiming that the Bible has an error regarding the presence of corn in the Middle East at the time of the Old and New Testaments. Sure enough, the King James Bible uses the word "corn" over 100 times, claiming that the Hebrews were eating it before the time of Christ. How is this possible when corn was not discovered by Europeans until the 16th century and did not make it to the Middle East until much after that?

     The Bible has errors, since it says that corn existed in the Middle East over 2,000 years ago
     http://www.GodAndScience.org/cults/corn.html

Personal

My wife Carole (who has a brain tumor) and I had the opportunity to go to a brain tumor retreat in early June. The setting was Big Bear Lake, a community located 7,000 feet above the plains of Southern California. We had a good weekend away from everything and got to share with a number of other brain tumor patients. In the new page, I present some of my observations about the retreat and patients who have brain tumors.

    The American Brain Tumor Association (ABTA) Retreat at Big Bear, June, 2002
    http://www.GodAndScience.org/personal/retreat.html

Webmaster resources

NASA has released a Windows (actually implemented through DOS) version of their famous compression software, DCTune that has been used to transmit their images through space to the earth. The program calculates the best JPEG compression for a specified perceptual error, which can be targeted to a value of 1.0, which means that the compressed JPEG image is perceptually lossless, that is, it will appear exactly the same as the original uncompressed image. More information can be found at the page below, and example images can be found at the updated Tour the Universe Slideshow.

    NASA's Image Compression (DCTune) Comes to the Web
    http://www.GodAndScience.org/general/dctune.html

    Tour the Universe Slideshow
    http://www.GodAndScience.org/love/tourjs.html

Abortion

A common complaint of pro-abortion ("pro-choice") advocates is that crisis pregnancy centers (CPCs) (which try to get women to give their babies life instead of taking the "easy" way out - abortion) use deceptive methods to get clients into their offices. Although there have been some problems with this is the past, these kinds of problems have virtually disappeared. Despite this, many pro-abortion organizations are encouraging their members to pose as clients to try to get them to say something inappropriate. Recently, the attorney general of New York went on a fishing expedition to try to intimidate CPCs. His subpoenas were dropped after much adverse publication. The tables have now been turned on Planned Parenthood and other abortion providers. Life Dynamics, a prolife group, ran a "sting" operation to determined how abortion clinics would comply with the mandatory child abuse reporting laws of their states. Personnel from Life Dynamics, based out of Texas, where secret recording of telephone conversations is legal, called 800 abortion clinics around the nation using the following scenario. The caller claiming to be a 13-year old girl who was pregnant by her 22-year old "boyfriend" asked the clinics if they did abortions. The information the girl gave indicated obvious evidence of child abuse, since the caller was a minor and the "boyfriend" was an adult. However, in over 90% of the calls, abortion clinics around the country counseled the girl not to mention the "boyfriend's" age or bring him to the abortion clinic. They were, in essence, protecting child molesters and encouraging the continuing abuse.

     Planned Parenthood Gets Caught Protecting Child Molesters
     http://www.GodAndScience.org/doctrine/plannedparenthood.html

Newsletter Info

This and previous newsletters are available online. Go to the URL below to read the current and past e-mail newsletters:

     http://www.GodAndScience.org/newsletter.html

Those are the most recent updates and changes since the last e-mail update. If you would like to see anything in particular at Evidence for God from Science, let me know. "See that you do not despise one of these little ones, for I say to you, that their angels in heaven continually behold the face of My Father who is in heaven." (Matthew 18:10)"

In Christ,
Rich Deem

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http://www.godandscience.org/newsletters/2002-06.html
Last Modified June 25, 2002

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