Friday, July 20, 2007

A Message to all Christians.

Before you read the message below please follow these simple instructions:

The link below is to an image. Please open it in a new window and once it has loaded be sure to zoom it to original size. Spend a few minutes looking at it, scroll around and admire the detail. Then come back to this window and read the message below.

Here is the link.

The image you've just seen is from the Spitzer Space Telescope. It's an image towards the galactic core of our very own Milky Way. Every single spec of light that you see is a star. How many do you think there are in that image alone? They seem innumerable don't they?

That is just a tiny fraction of the stars in our galaxy. There are some 400 billion in total. To give you an idea of what sort of fraction of those stars are shown in the image there are more than 45,000 times as many stars in our galaxy as there are pixels in that image. I'd estimate that there are about 100,000 stars visible in that image. So, if you printed that image out 4 million times and laid them out side by side then you'd have an idea of how many stars are in our galaxy alone. Printed on A4 and then laid out in a grid your final image would cover 38 square city blocks. If you piled the paper into a stack it would be 121 stories high - 19 stories taller than the Empire State Building.

Around many of those stars are planets and around many of those planets are moons. To give an idea of just how many, there are at least 63 moons around Jupiter. We've so far discovered some 246 similar planets in other systems and we have great reason to believe that they are common around a very large proportion of all stars.

I want you to get an idea of just how much is out there. I want you to try to consider just how many other suns and other worlds there are, regardless of whether they have life or not, but just to consider the sheer amount of stuff out there. It's incredibly beautiful isn't it. And like I said before, that image is just a tiny fraction of our own galaxy.

Now open this next image in a new window, zoom in again and take a look around before reading on. You can also view this Hubble image here in a zoomable format that's great for exploring in greater detail.

This is an image from the Hubble Telescope. It's called a deep field image and basically what you are seeing is a view beyond our galaxy. What you see in the image are other galaxies. There's so many of them aren't there. Each one of those contains hundreds of billions of stars; some contain a trillion or more. And if you want to know how much of the sky that is imagine holding up a quarter (the coin) about 70 feet above you. The amount of sky blocked by that quarter at that distance is about the same amount you are seeing in the image. Imagine how many quarters you would need to form a 140 foot diameter ball around you, with you in the middle and behind every single quarter around 10,000 galaxies that Hubble can see and each and everyone of those full of hundreds of billions of stars. Most of those stars with multiple worlds around them and most of those worlds with moons. Are you getting the picture?

Now, being honest, can you really claim that we are so important in this entire incredible universe that it all exists for us? Can you really put your hand on your heart and say truthfully, without the slightest tinge of arrogance or doubt, that the Bible contains a single phrase that demonstrates an awareness of all that is out there, all that we exist within?

I don't see how that is possible for an honest mind. But perhaps someone can tell me how, after understanding a little of where you are, you can truly believe without the slightest doubt that a book that mentions none of this can be the ultimate truth.

Do you really think that Genesis is an accurate account of the creation of all of that? Are you really satisfied with that truth?

Think about that when you close your eyes tonight.

If you enjoyed this article please feel free to digg it down below.

13 comments:

Anonymous said...

Ps 19:1-3
The heavens declare the glory of God;
the skies proclaim the work of his hands.
2 Day after day they pour forth speech;
night after night they display knowledge.
3 There is no speech or language
where their voice is not heard.
NIV

chooseDoubt said...

Not exactly as awe inspiring as the images is it. Really, what a shit if that's the best the bible can do! And what a shit if that's enough of a description for you to describe that beauty.

To me that's a tragedy. An ultimate truth that is ultimately empty. I'd recommend you look again and try harder not to cloud what you see.

Anonymous said...

Romans 1:25

25 Who changed the truth of God into a lie, and worshipped and served the creature more than the Creator, who is blessed for ever. Amen.
KJV

chooseDoubt said...

The lie of God was proclaimed as truth by the ignorants of the past. The ignorants of today continue to believe that lie.

Enough with the random bible quotes. It's meaningless nonsense and all that you achieve by quoting such is demonstrate how little of your own thought you have left in your brain. This is thanks to having been conditioned by religion to substitute scripture for thought.

If you have an argument to make, make it. If all you can do is quote then kindly fuck off and bore someone else.

Reason's Whore said...

Well, you're not wrong...but actually I think telescope images of the beauty of space tend to support the theological view of the universe. It's when you actually understand what the nature of space IS - a mega-giant fucking vacuum filled with billions black holes and probably 99.9% of star systems unsuited for ANY kind of lifeform including single-celled crud - that you start to realize it's not so much the kind of thing and INTELLIGENT designer would come up with.

chooseDoubt said...

Hi Slut,

I don't think I could disagree more. The sheer enormity of the universe makes a complete joke of the Bible and the Koran by showing the pettiness of their gods and their concerns in comparison to reality. I've always thought that the fact that I was introduced at a very young age to size of the visible universe was a big help in inoculating me against religion and nationalism. It's impossible not to consider the Biblical god as ridiculous when you put it against the backdrop of this reality.

It is true that there are more stars in the universe than grains of sand on all the beaches and deserts of our little planet. The religions just can't adequately explain that. Why, if this little planet is the focus of all divine interest, would a god have created so many countless billions of billions of other suns and other worlds? Why would it not think to mention any of it when dishing out "ultimate truth"? What possible reason can it all be there for if, if we believe the religions, the entire story starts and finishes here, on this little rock? That in my mind is one of the greatest problems for religion. The religions utterly failed to appreciate the scale of things which truly demonstrates that they were the work of ignorant men and not an omniscient god.

I also suspect that many more star systems are suited to life. In fact, we've already found an exoplanet which may have liquid water only 20.5 light years from home. And our exoplanet detection capabilities are still very primitive. Furthermore we already know that amino acids naturally occur in abundance in interstellar space. The stuff of life is quite literally everywhere and not only that but radiation in space actually selects specific isomers of those amino acids (left handed versions – right handed tend to be destroyed) which are the basis of all life on this planet. Over the next 10 to 20 years we're going to answer some truly amazing questions about just how unique our Earth really is.

There's a very high probability that our galaxy and the rest of the universe is teaming with life. I remember in an episode of Cosmos Carl Sagan calculating that there are likely millions of civilizations in our galaxy alone. Of course, we don't know that yet but this "we're so important" idea of the religions is simply put to shame by the probabilities and the facts. All of which are so much more amazing, awe inspiring, and beautiful than any of the ignorant and brutal superstitions that we are supposed to believe are divine.

The truth will set us free and I suspect that most educated theists are probably secretly aware of that. They just can't turn their backs on their investment in their faith. They can't face up to the fact that their cherished religion is certainly wrong and so their efforts have not only been wasted but frankly misdirected with brutal result (Aids in Africa for example). This is why they are fighting science and trying to deny exceptionally well supported truth (evolution). They have to be dragged kicking and screaming into the future because they want to go back to the past where there is no knowledge to challenge their consciences about how they have been truly wasting their lives and trying to convince others to waste theirs also.

I challenge absolutely anybody to be able to look at this universe in such images and then seriously tell me they believe it was all done in 6 days and then all doomed because someone listened to a talking snake. The truth, thanks to such images, is obvious. Anyone that can still opt for the talking snake theory is either a lunatic or a liar – lying to themselves because they are too proud to admit how truly ridiculous they have been.

All the best,

CD

mothpete said...

Sigh, uh-huh yep, our galaxy is just one collection of spinning matter in what is an immeasurable expanse of space and 'stuff'. And it's not actually all that big... it seems big because we're so small, it's relative, it's not huge and it's not immense. The incredible amount of galaxies that make up what we can see of our universe may in fact be just one cloud amongst many universes.

All these balls of light and matter are moving, colliding and collapsing all over the shop and has possibly been doing so for countless billions of years.

There's no need to mystify the idea of time... eternity isn't a supernatural concept best left for the gods... like the size of the universe, it's relative and conceptual. The universe simply was and is and always will be - no matter how many pigs fart methane into the atmosphere of our little blue green orb.

Douglas Adams joked that the universe is so big and so randomly chaotic that chances are somewhere somehow there are lifeforms growing that could be useful to any interstellar hitchhiker. One planet somewhere surely has shifting spanners growing from trees, and animals that could easily be used as mattresses. I think it's amazing that this planet was lucky to have a temporary run of life on it long enough for its inhabitants to actually design and use a shifting spanner themselves. When you consider the incredible numbers of planets spiraling and circling throughout this vast cosmos you must entertain the thought that for some bursts of time a planet would be in the rolling in the right place at the right time with the right conditions to allow moss to gather on it.

Now, if I were lucky enough to have been born into a planet that had the 'golden' measurements of being close enough to a sun, and protected by various larger planets around it, I'd feel very fortunate, and I do. This particular planet probably isn't the first to have encountered such idyllic conditions but you have to stand in awe of the probability factors involved when you happen to be on it. Of course, it seems like someone created it only because you aren't one of the impossible inhabitants that couldn't have possibly lived on the multi-billion other planets that can't sustain life.

You're bloody lucky to be alive and I seriously don't us for inventing a god to praise to concerning the delights of simple existence. Every culture we know of usually does this very thing. It's perfectly natural to sing to the sky in appreciation.

Many people I've spoken to recently say that there must be a god, because the scenery here is bloody tremendous and a lot of female boobs look really really good. But this planet actually looks like crap compared to watching the Wallom beasts swimming through the molten mountains of Somtranus V in the Andromeda galaxy (pause). We have no basis of comparison and of course every type of vegetation filled crevasse looks quite interesting to us. The rock and continents have been shifting and eroding for billions of years to make many varied and interesting formations. It's a weather beaten planet that has evolved wildlife and vegetation over an unbelievable amount of time. It's when we try to fit it into the mythical six days and six thousand years of bible time that it seems beyond belief.

And boobs look wondrous because if our programming didn't allow them to be then we would have died off ages ago. Of course boobs don't look appealing to all mankind, but that's ok... there's enough of us who do to keep the population rolling along until we collide with another planet and simply cease to be.

Rhology said...

Hi CD,

You're addressing this to "Christians", so I'll take a stab at responding.
First, that first image is awesome! It's my PC's wallpaper now. :-D

can you really claim that we are so important in this entire incredible universe that it all exists for us?

Biblically, the whole incredible universe exists not for humans, but for God who made it all for His glory.

the Bible contains a single phrase that demonstrates an awareness of all that is out there, all that we exist within?

It points to someone even greater, the Creator of all that. That's one reason I think the Bible is so cool.

Do you really think that Genesis is an accurate account of the creation of all of that?

Yes, the account it gives is a heck of a lot better than any other idea for the origin of the universe that I've seen come forth from any atheist/naturalist so far, since they're all logically impossible. But the challenge remains open - maybe you could change my mind.


As for the other commenters, I'd echo Psalm 19. Your response is "not as awe-inspiring as the image, is it?" No offense, but, 1) why should I care about YOUR ideas of "awe-inspiring?" 2) Anyone reading that would know that the night sky is BEAUTIFUL (especially at a time where there are no electric lights to provide light pollution and obscure the view). 3) The God who made all that is infinitely more awesome than the view itself.

You said "tragedy," but you're an atheist and have no basis for judging "tragedy" or "blessing" beyond your personal preference. Sorry it's a tragedy TO YOU, but sorry, it makes no difference to me.

The sheer enormity of the universe makes a complete joke of the Bible and the Koran by showing the pettiness of their gods and their concerns in comparison to reality.

Just b/c you say so? Please. Where's the argument for that?


there are more stars in the universe than grains of sand on all the beaches and deserts of our little planet. The religions just can't adequately explain that.

Um, yes they can. God made them b/c He's that much bigger. Just b/c you don't like the answer doesn't matter rationally. But part of the problem you have is that you let your emotions cloud your judgment, like here.

Why, if this little planet is the focus of all divine interest, would a god have created so many countless billions of billions of other suns and other worlds?

1) To show forth His glory.
2) B/c He obviously likes to create cool stuff.
3) Why don't you ask Him?

Why would it not think to mention any of it when dishing out "ultimate truth"?

He did in Psalm 19 and numerous other places.

What possible reason can it all be there for if, if we believe the religions, the entire story starts and finishes here, on this little rock?

If it did, if it didn't, what basis would there be for an atheist to judge it stupid/irrational/morally wrong?

Of course, we don't know that yet but this "we're so important" idea of the religions is simply put to shame by the probabilities and the facts.

Now you're just speculating. "What if, what if?" To the thinking Christian like me, to see you the Big Shot Thinking Scientific Totally Rational Atheist type making stuff up like this is funny.

All of which are so much more amazing, awe inspiring, and beautiful than any of the ignorant and brutal superstitions that we are supposed to believe are divine.

Again, an ignorant, question-begging value judgment.

The truth will set us free and I suspect that most educated theists are probably secretly aware of that.

Oh, I guarantee you that I'm very aware of the freedom-granting ability of the truth.

This is why they are fighting science and trying to deny exceptionally well supported truth (evolution).

I love how you put so much stock in evolution when it's so full of holes.

MOTHANDRUST: Of course, it seems like someone created it only because you aren't one of the impossible inhabitants that couldn't have possibly lived on the multi-billion other planets that can't sustain life.

Yes, it just couldn't possibly be that we see design reflected not only in a machine made of gears and steel but also in cellular contexts as well, among other things.

You're bloody lucky to be alive and I seriously don't us for inventing a god to praise to concerning the delights of simple existence.

Yes, let's just give our thanks to "luck" and be done w/ it. Less accountable for your actions that way, for one advantage.

But this planet actually looks like crap compared to watching the Wallom beasts swimming through the molten mountains of Somtranus V in the Andromeda galaxy

Now you say the earth's cool stuff is not actually as cool as it seems when you compare it to imaginary stuff. Wow, that's deep.

It's when we try to fit it into the mythical six days and six thousand years of bible time that it seems beyond belief.

Yes, b/c you've a priori ruled out an all-powerful Creator accomplishing it. When I hear naturalistic scientists proclaiming a new age for mankind and how science will lead the way, thinking about these kinds of statements make me chuckle and smirk. Chirk? Smuckle? Smuckle.

Peace,
Rhology

chooseDoubt said...

Hi Rhology,

You say:

"Biblically, the whole incredible universe exists not for humans, but for God who made it all for His glory."

That's rather like me making a trophy for myself to reward myself for how wonderful I am. What an inane god that is.

Now, I said:

Can you really put your hand on your heart and say truthfully, without the slightest tinge of arrogance or doubt, that the Bible contains a single phrase that demonstrates an awareness of all that is out there, all that we exist within?

And, then in response, you said:

It points to someone even greater, the Creator of all that. That's one reason I think the Bible is so cool.

That may well be your belief, but it doesn't actually hold true in the book itself. God supposedly uses comparisons multiple times in the Bible to highlight just how wonderful he is. I find it staggering that, since he is such a blatant and excessive egotist, he didn't consider introducing humans to some of the amazing truth of the universe outside the scope of their desert bound, Bronze Age knowledge in order to self-promote himself even further. Isn't it telling that there is not one shred of knowledge contained in the Bible that was outside the scope of the knowledge of those that lived at the time in the Middle East? And no, fantasy to do with a god itself doesn't count – let's stick with real knowledge – such as for instance the existence of galaxies and the actual scale of the universe. Let's face it - they got the age of the universe ridiculously wrong.

If you think Psalm 19 is an adequate rival to the awe delivered by either of those images then I can only think to request that you never attempt to write a book or take up any artistic or creative undertaking. It's a qualitative assessment, I know, but I am thinking of how much more beautiful I would personally find a tree than whatever you could possibly think it worthwhile to turn it into paper for.

It is a tragedy to me that so many people spend their whole lives with their brains in a parking position, missing completely the joy of understanding. I think Douglas Adams put it rather nicely:

"So, I was already familiar with and (I'm afraid) accepting of, the view that you couldn't apply the logic of physics to religion, that they were dealing with different types of ‘truth'. (I now think this is baloney, but to continue…) What astonished me, however, was the realization that the arguments in favour off religious ideas were so feeble and silly next to the robust arguments of something as interpretative and opinionated as history. In fact they were embarrassingly childish. They were never subject to the kind of outright challenge which was the normal stock in trade of any other area of intellectual endeavour whatsoever. Why not? Because they wouldn't stand up to it. So I became an Agnostic. And I thought and thought and thought. But I just did not have enough to go on, so I didn't really come to any resolution. I was extremely doubtful about the idea of god, but I just didn't know enough about anything to have a good working model of any other explanation for, well, life, the universe and everything to put in its place. But I kept at it, and I kept reading and I kept thinking. Sometime around my early thirties I stumbled upon evolutionary biology, particularly in the form of Richard Dawkins's books The Selfish Gene and then The Blind Watchmaker and suddenly (on, I think the second reading of The Selfish Gene) it all fell into place. It was a concept of such stunning simplicity, but it gave rise, naturally, to all of the infinite and baffling complexity of life. The awe it inspired in me made the awe that people talk about in respect of religious experience seem, frankly, silly beside it. I'd take the awe of understanding over the awe of ignorance any day."

On a personal note, I have been lucky enough to experience the moment when more than one person of faith has first seen the universe free of that limiting affliction, like a cataract of the mind, and I remain convinced by their reports of amazement that what Mr. Adams said above is what pretty much everybody would say having tried both types of awe.

Moving on to the argument for the Bible and the Koran being a joke due their petty gods I think it might move the argument forward faster if you simply attempted to counter my assertion by showing any passage that hints at anything other than a petty, man-made god in either of those books. I will then show you that both contain many more verses on the subjects of committing war, subsistence agriculture, and slavery.

As for god as an answer to the universe then it has nothing to do with whether I like the answer or not. It has everything to do with the claim of a god as responsible that is utterly unsupported by any evidence, the scriptures being clearly internally contradictory, there being thousands of equally baseless god hypotheses and the small matter, as I have mentioned, that god and his prophets appear to be totally unaware of natural laws and morality which we all agree to be common and good today – such as the abolition of slavery.

Moving on – I said:

"Why, if this little planet is the focus of all divine interest, would a god have created so many countless billions of billions of other suns and other worlds?"

And you countered:

1) To show forth His glory.
2) B/c He obviously likes to create cool stuff.
3) Why don't you ask Him?


My answers to that:

1) Why show forth his glory? It's a simply absurd argument. In your hypothesis you have an infinitely powerful and knowledgeable and moral being creating an infinitely inferior species so he can show off to it. It's absurd to the point that even children won't accept that as truth without having it repeatedly drilled into them with fear of eternal hell and suffering.

2) It's not obvious since there is absolutely no reason at all to believe that a god had any part in it.

3) For the same reason as I do not ask unicorns if that horn in the middle of their foreheads makes them go cross-eyed. Unlike the unicorns your god is alleged to have inspired a book that contains all the answers and yet there is absolutely no explanation given as to why he supposedly created any of it.

As for mentioning the sheer scale of the universe and the stuff in it in Psalm 19 and numerous other places, please do share? I'm not aware of any of it. My 13 year old son could have written a far more revealing tract back when he was 8 years old and it certainly would have demonstrated a far better knowledge of the visible universe. I'm sorry but it is just nonsense. If you are going to make a claim that the Bible reveals any of this then please provide a list of chapter and verse. There are more verses regarding oxen than there are regarding the rest of the universe. God surely could have settled this whole thing by just once mentioning pulsars, or a cure for cancer, or atoms, or electricity, or any number of things that the people of that time could not otherwise possibly have known. Instead he chose to flagrantly misreport history, contradict himself frequently, and rant about killing women and mutilating baby's sexual organs.

There is nothing in a scientific view of reality that prevents speculation. In fact all scientific progress includes speculation as part of the process by which hypotheses are proposed. What scientific thinking does rule out is stating facts where none exist and claiming knowledge where there is no reason to state knowledge - where there is in fact only ignorance. That is why I included the "Of course, we don't know that yet" but the speculation is quite valid and even supported by the evidence to date. However, I openly admit, as I did in my original comment, that we do not yet know.

You say:

"Again, an ignorant, question-begging value judgment"

In that case please share some questions - there is no need to beg. I'll offer the answers freely. With regards to the charge of being brutal I will answer with the numerous murders, rapes, and genocides of the Bible. With regards to the charge of being superstition I shall only need to point you to a dictionary which will contain a definition along the lines of this:

"An irrational belief that an object, action, or circumstance not logically related to a course of events influences its outcome."

You say:

"I love how you put so much stock in evolution when it's so full of holes."

I've previously offered to fill those holes for you and I'm refreshing that invitation with these words. It would be useful first if you could point out those holes please as in the 30 or so books I've read on the subject written by the leading scholars in the field I have yet to hear a single one of those holes mentioned. Likewise those holes are absent from the many thousands of peer reviewed papers that have been published. Conversely in every creationist propaganda I have read regarding such holes I have noticed that every single one of their alleged holes is actually nothing more than their refusal to acknowledge the fact that their complaints have been very thoroughly addressed by evidence many years ago.

And this does seem rather hypocritical to me and remarkably unfair. Not only is the theory of evolution supported by every piece of evidence that exists, not only has there never been any evidence presented in contradiction of it, but not once has any creationist offered any evidence of a talking snake, a god, a devil, of how more than 6 billion individuals of different races and wide geographical distribution, or their recorded history and varied theological beliefs managed to descend so rapidly from Noah and his family in just a few thousand years.

Now, I am more than happy to submit both the theory of evolution and the hypothesis that god did it to the same scrutiny. Evolution has already passed such scrutiny. Talking snake please? Noah's ark please? Some sort of evidence demonstrating how all the marsupials ended up in Australia and how Moses managed to collect 350,000 species of beetle from all over the world before the flood anyway? Evidence please?

Oh, you haven't got any? Then try investigating the evidence that says very clearly that you are wrong. The world is quite literally full of it – you yourself are part of it.

So in summary, you claim that there are scientific reasons to demote evolution from theory to error yet provide none. You deny me the right to use qualitative language to boot. In the spirit of fair play let's both stick to the same rules then. Provide me one single reason to believe in your god, not the god of Islam, or the god of Catholics, or the gods of anybody else, but just your god. Show me the evidence and show me the evidence for why evolution is wrong. Show me the evidence for your talking snake.

Patiently yours,

CD

(NOTE: I have updated this comment to correct my previously awful punctuation and spelling.)

Anonymous said...

Dear Choosedoubt,

I had to laugh when you made the statement that the theory of evolution has “no holes.” I will never forget when I was a boy visiting the Field Museum in Chicago. Two scientists were dusting dinosaur bones and gradually removing them from casts that had been shipped from Utah. It was a special exhibit and school groups were slowly passing as I stood my ground in amazement watching my new heroes unearth the fossilized remains of a T-Rex. A school of Catholic students and their nun paused in front of the table I had been observing for quite some time. One of the students asked a general question about dinosaurs and paleontologist number one immediately began to wax eloquent attempting to explain to this grade-schooler the theory of evolution in a nutshell. Of course the nun immediately instructed her students that it was time to move on and paleontologist number two quickly blurted, “that was rude, to leave in the middle of your answer.” Paleontologist number one replied with an answer I will never forget. “Ah, that’s OK, I don’t believe all that stuff anyway.”

As a Junior High youngster, my life stood still for a moment. Did he really say what I think he just said? I realized that I too needed to determine where I came from for myself. Was the theory of evolution true? Did it have holes? Were there any alternatives to this theory? Please allow me to share some quotes with you spoken or written by men that DO NOT believe in the Genesis account of creation.

“Often a cold shudder has run through me, and I have asked myself whether I may not have devoted myself to a phantasy.” (Charles Darwin, Life and Letters, 1887, Vol. 2 p.229)

“Evolution is the backbone of biology and biology is thus in a peculiar position of being a science founded on unproven theory. Is it then a science of faith? Belief in the theory of evolution is thus exactly parallel to belief in special creation. Both are concepts which the believers know to be true, but neither up to the present, has been capable of proof.” (L.H. Matthews, Introduction of the 1971 edition of Origin of the Species pp. x,xi)

“To suppose that the eye, with all its inimitable contrivances for adjusting to the focus of different distances, for admitting different amounts of light, and for the correction of spherical and chromatic aberration could have been formed by natural selection, seems, I freely confess, absurd in the highest degree.” (Charles Darwin, Origin of the Species
I did not write down the page number. I’m sure you can look it up in your own copy. I believe it is from the chapter entitled, “Problems with the Theory.”)

“Evolution is unproved and improvable, we believe it only because the alternative is special creation, and that is unthinkable.” (–Sir Arthur Keith, a Scottish anatomist and anthropologist, and was a leading figure in the study of Human fossils.)

Any logical, honest person must admit that neither evolution nor creationism is an actual science (– Knowledge gained through observation and experimentation). No human being was there “in the beginning.” Only one doctrine can be true, and whichever one you choose must be accepted by faith. Rhology looks at the night sky and says “the universe DECLARES! The glory of God, and the firmament proves what a tremendous Artist/Creator He is.” (Psalm 19:1 paraphrased). You look again at the same sky and say, “Is that the best the Bible can do!” Friend, the theory of evolution is not just full of holes – it is a hole. Many scientists have privately come to this conclusion and some have even dared to say it.

You have decided to put your faith in a theory that Darwin “often” feared, and admitted, might be a “phantasy” (– fiction with a large amount of imagination in it; imagination unrestricted by reality.) Lining up a bunch of fossils and saying this evolved in to this and this evolved into this is no different then me going out to my work shop, laying out a handful of my nails and screws out on the work bench and saying, “This one-inch nail evolved into this two-inch nail and this two inch nail evolved into this two inch screw and so forth.” Darwin’s theory of evolution and my example of the nail progression are both “phantasy.”

Have you ever visited Mount Rushmore? I have been blessed (or lucky from your perspective :) to have had the opportunity of visiting 47 states, most provinces in Canada and several foreign countries (I am currently composing this message in Africa on my laptop computer and will send it thought an MTN antenna). You would call me a fool if I looked at Mount Rushmore and tried to convince you that water erosion had carved those faces over billions of years. And yet, you choose to look in the mirror every morning and convince yourself that the living, breathing, wonderfully designed image you see in the mirror is a fabulous miracle of natural selection having happened without design over billions of years. [Pause] OK, you have the right to believe that, but please change the name of your blog to something like “choosefaith.” -Because truly your faith is far greater than Rhology’s or mine.

In closing, (and please forgive me for the length of this message, this is my first blog experience) let me leave you with this thought. If your faith in the theory of evolution pans out to be valid, the best you have to look forward to is dying and becoming mushroom fertilizer. However, if God did create the vast universe and everything in it for His pleasure, as He claims (Revelation 5:1 Thou art worthy, O Lord, to receive glory and honour and power: for thou hast created all things, and for thy pleasure they are and were created.), then you are accountable to Him, and your life is not your own.

From the moment I heard that paleontologist at the Field Museum in Chicago admit he did not believe in evolution I have sought for the truth. The most believable truth I have discovered is the Truth of John 14:6, “Jesus saith unto him, I am the way, the truth, and the life: no man cometh unto the Father, but by me.” I don’t expect this biography of my life’s journey to change your mind. I understand that you will evaluate my writings as foolishness (1 Corinthians 1:18-25), but I wanted to weigh in on the other side and compliment you for your great faith.

Sincerely.

Ben

chooseDoubt said...

Dear Anonymous (Ben)

I am going to perform for you the most gratuitously amicable favour of introducing you to reality. There will be no need to thank me afterwards.

You will find my response here: A Message to all Creationists.

I will continue to await these mysterious holes I have seen mentioned so frequently but have yet to be shown.

All the best,

CD

Rhology said...

I responded on that linked-to post as well.

Anonymous said...

Ben/Anonymous - as a child, you misunderstood a JOKE by a worker at the Field Museum, and now you think there are doubters of evolution in every scientific field? An off hand remark by a guy unloading a crate didn’t give you much an explanation of evolution, and the rude, ignorant nun wasn’t doing much for her students education.