Evidence for God from Science Newsletter June, 2008

Greetings in the name of the Lord! This is the latest update for the Evidence for God website. Welcome to our new subscribers.

Contents (scroll down for descriptions)

News

I have been looking for an easy way for users to change the font size on the website and came across a short, elegant PHP script that switches style sheets with a click. Many visitors have complained about the small font size, so you can now change it to suit your preference.

I receive lots of emails. Most are questions from atheists (where all the "answers for atheists" come from) or theology questions from fellow Christians. Occasionally, I get emails that really touch me. Recently, I received an email from Paul, whose wife had died about two years ago from cancer, leaving him to care for five children. He asked the question, "...how can I raise my children to believe in a God who left us?" Looking on Google, I found that Paul's wife had been a very strong Christian, who wrote about her faith right up until her death. There are no "right" answers for people who have lost loved ones, especially when their loved one dies at a relatively young age. Please pray for Paul and his children - the need is great.

Reviews

The Cell's Design

Fazale Rana (Ph.D. in chemistry), vice president of research and apologetics at Reasons To Believe, has written a new book, The Cell's Design: How Chemistry Reveals the Creator's Artistry, that attempts to show that cellular biochemistry points to the existence of the Creator who designed it. Whereas most intelligent design books attempt to show the existence of design by demonstrating the existence of irreducible complexity, Dr. Rana examines the cell's biochemistry with broad strokes of how everything works together with such marvelous fidelity. So, even if a single piece or line of evidence might be dismissed as a statistical outlier, the weight of evidence makes a powerful case for design by a Creator. Each chapter begins with an analogy from the art world that relates to the topic at hand. Apparently, Dr. Rana is quite an art enthusiast. More...

Book Review: The Cell's Design: How Chemistry Reveals the Creator's Artistry
http://www.godandscience.org/evolution/the_cells_design.html

The Irrational Atheist

The Irrational Atheist by Vox Day is excellent at examining the arguments of atheists Richard Dawkins, Sam Harris, Christopher Hitchens, and Daniel Dennett showing where those arguments are contradicted by the facts or logic. In a rather humorous section, Day quotes Christopher Hitchens saying, "what can be asserted without evidence can also be dismissed without evidence." Day takes him quite literally, and list 51 assertions that Hitchens fails to support in any way. According to Hitchens's own logic, all those claims should be dismissed without evidence, which Day promptly does. The book is one of the best at dissecting the arguments of the "new atheists." More...

Book Review: The Irrational Atheist: Dissecting the Unholy Trinity of Dawkins, Harris, and Hitchens by Vox Day
http://www.godandscience.org/apologetics/the_irrational_atheist.html

The Third Jesus

In his book, The Third Jesus, Deepak Chopra attempts to show that Jesus Christ was teaching what is now known as Buddhism/Eastern Mysticism. This claim can only be accomplished by twisting and/or redefining what Jesus said. Mr. Chopra takes this one step further by questioning whether or not Jesus Christ said anything that is recorded in the New Testament, and draws from Gnostic writings for support as to what He supposedly said. He needs to appeal to these extra-biblical documents to help prop up his theology, because if the author doesn't use those documents his argument will be even weaker, if not collapse completely. More, by guest author, Frank Desparrois, Jr...

Book Review: The Third Jesus: The Christ We Cannot Ignore by Deepak Chopra
http://www.godandscience.org/apologetics/the_third_jesus.html

Answers for Atheists

Roman Catholicism & AIDS

HIV Prevalence in Africa

The Catholic Church's opposition to condom use is often cited as the reason for the spread of HIV and AIDS in Africa, since Catholics are told that they shouldn't use condoms or any artificial form of birth control. If Catholics are so eager to follow the teachings of the church, what about the commandment not to commit adultery (which is the primary cause for the spread of HIV)? Do African Catholics gets AIDS more than non-Catholics? More...

Is the Roman Catholic Church's Condom Policy Responsible For the Spread of HIV and the AIDS Crisis in Africa?
http://www.godandscience.org/apologetics/catholic_church_aids_africa.html

Christianity too old-fashioned?

According to the Barna Research Group, 78% of young people believe that Christianity is too old-fashioned to be relevant. Yes, the stories involve donkeys instead of cars, fishing nets instead of Gordon's Fish Sticks, grinding flour with stones instead of Wonder Bread, and dirt roads instead of freeways. However, the teachings of Jesus are no more irrelevant now then they were when first explained in the first century. More...

Is Christianity and the Bible Too Old-Fashioned to be Relevant in Today's Society?
http://www.godandscience.org/apologetics/christianity_is_too_old-fashioned.html

New Testament Corrupt?

Misquoting Jesus According to Bart Ehrman, not only was Jesus misquoted, but we have no real way of knowing anything He said, since the apostles and scribes basically wrote whatever they wanted. Accordingly, these people, and later Christian leaders, chose from among a plethora of writings to "create" Christianity. Does the evidence show that this is how Christianity originated or is Ehrman just reflecting his own personal biases? More...

Misquoting Jesus: Does Bart Ehrman Prove the New Testament is Corrupt?
http://www.godandscience.org/apologetics/new_testament_corruption.html

"Partial free will"?

Evil email

I have been struggling with the problem of receiving a lot of evil email from atheists and have been attempting to limit it by numerous means. The last technique gave me the idea about how God might eliminate evil and still allow free will. However, I have run up against a wall in my personal efforts to eliminate evil, which reflects some of the same problems God would have encountered in eliminating most, but not all evil in the universe. More...

Is it Possible for God to Provide 'Partial Free Will' and Eliminate All Evil?
http://www.godandscience.org/apologetics/evil_free_will.html

Design vs. Evolution

ID is anti-science?

Many scientists and science education lobbyists have written articles claiming that intelligent design is just a backdoor approach for religious fundamentalism that is aimed to close off scientific inquiry. Most individuals who make these claims are avowed atheists, who hate religion and wish to exterminate it altogether. They hope that use of this red herring argument will generate hatred against the "evil" intelligent design proponents. The anti-intelligent design movement is running scared, since their vision of a God-free world is collapsing all around them. More...

Religion and Intelligent Design Impede Science and Close Off Inquiry?
http://www.godandscience.org/evolution/intelligent_design_religion_science.html

Abortion

Abortion as art

A senior at Yale was going to submit her art project, "Abortion as art" to be exhibited at the university. However, university officials found the project to be unacceptable. The controversy soon erupted all over the Internet, causing even "pro-choice" groups to comment on how evil it was to repeatedly attempt to get pregnant and then abort the fetus. However, if abortion were a good thing, as they claim, then more abortion should be even better. The student should be applauded for doing good. More...

What's the Problem With Yale Student, Aliza Shvarts, and "Abortion as Art"?
http://www.godandscience.org/doctrine/yale_abortion_as_art.html

Misc

Colliding galaxies

Interacting Galaxy UGC 8335

The team from the Hubble Space Telescope has released several dozen new images of galaxies that have collided with each other. You can now view these images, or send an online greeting card using these images. It is a good thing that we are in one of the less crowded areas of the universe. Good luck or design? More...

Tour the Universe: Pictures of Interacting/Colliding Galaxies
http://www.godandscience.org/love/interactinggalaxies.html

Out of This World Hubble Greeting Cards Pictures of Interacting and Colliding Galaxies
http://www.godandscience.org/interactinggalaxycards.html

Pictures of the Universe Slideshow
http://www.godandscience.org/love/tourjs.html

Slideshows

Flash Slideshows

In looking for a reference on the web, I discovered that somebody had converted one of my slideshows to Adobe's Flash format. The slideshow was very easy to use and retained the animations found in the original PowerPoint file. Taking the hint, I have converted all the PowerPoint slideshows to a corresponding Flash version. The Flash files are smaller and load quickly so that you can begin the slideshow without waiting for the entire file to download. They even look reasonable at full screen mode.

Slideshows from Evidence for God from Science
http://www.godandscience.org/slideshows.html

Articles in Preparation

Why Overlapping Genes Discredit Neo Darwinism (Mutation and Natural Selection)
The Origin of Homochirality: A Major Problem for Origin of Life Theories
Book Review: Greater Than You Think

Newsletter Info

New Pages

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

Newsletter Editions

Read this or previous editions online, subscribe or unsubscribe:

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

Get new article notification automatically by subscribing to Feedblitz e-mail notification

http://www.feedblitz.com/f/f.fbz?ListHTML=96720

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 no one repays another with evil for evil, but always seek after that which is good for one another and for all people." (1 Thessalonians 5:15)

In Christ,
Rich Deem

Evidence for God from Science respects your privacy and online time and plans to send updates no more frequently than about once every two months. Subscription information is available online.

If you can receive e-mails, but have difficulty getting online, e-mail us with the page you would like to have sent to you and we will do our best to get it out to you in a timely manner (Please specify "plain text" or "HTML text").

Evidence for God from Science
Website: http://www.GodAndScience.org

http://www.godandscience.org/newsletters/2008-06.html
Last Modified June 1, 2008

Evidence for God from Science: Christian Apologetics