By Larry Taunton

Traffic and the weather were terrible.  Worse, I was in a hurry.  Pulling my car into the service bay at a local dealership, I gave the keys to a young man who promptly put a card on the front dash reading “repair: roof leak” and drove off.   

“Can someone give me a ride?  I have a meeting in thirty minutes,” I inquired of another uniformed fellow. 

“Sure.  Speak to that guy over there.  He’s our shuttle driver.  He’ll take you wherever you need to go.” 

A man wearing jeans and a John Deere ball cap stood at the bay entrance.  With a broad gesture he pointed me to a van designated for such purposes.  Getting in, he asked where I was going and then drove us off in the unhurried manner that often characterizes older men. 

Up close, it was clear that he was well beyond retirement age.  I reasoned that this had not been his career, but served to occupy his time and supplement a pension. 

After telling a joke or two—the sort that men tell only in the company of other men—he turned the conversation to current events.  “What do you think of that story of the man who murdered his wife?  Don’t you think he deserves the death penalty?” 

“Yeah, sure,” I said, only half listening. My mind was already focused on other tasks. 

After a pensive silence he declared evenly “Many years ago someone murdered my daughter.”  The words were spoken casually, but they jarred me out of my conversational slumber. 

My mind was reeling.  What?  What do I say to that?  

It is natural in these moments to resort to trite, stock responses like, “I know how you feel” or “I’m sorry to hear that”—sincere, but otherwise useless replies.  Immediately, silently, I began to pray Matthew 10:20.  Lord, give me the words!   

“By God’s grace I have been given three fine, healthy boys,” I began.  “I hope to never know the pain that you have suffered.”  The thought of it ached. 

“Oh, well, that was a long time ago and I’ve dealt with that.”  He was convincing.  So much so, that I believed him and wondered at how calmly he spoke of it.  “She was about your age,” he added.  But then something like a cloud rolled over him and his profile darkened ominously leading me to withdraw my initial assessment.   

Through clenched teeth he continued, “But I’ll tell you this, if that (expletive) who murdered my daughter was standing in front of this van right now I would drive over him and feel not the slightest remorse.  I know I could kill him!  Sixty years ago today I was fighting in the Battle of the Bulge and I killed Germans who never did me—me personally—any harm.  So I know I could kill a man who murdered my daughter.” 

I wasn’t sure if he was conversing with me or simply working out a private thought, so I said nothing, opting for respectful silence instead of a banal quip. 

For a moment he sat lost in his own thoughts and then, just as suddenly as it had come upon him, the cloud dissipated and he brightened.  Changing the subject, for the remaining ten minutes or so of my ride he chatted about sports and the weather.  My mind, however, remained no less fixed upon his early remarks.  Give me the words, Lord, I prayed again. 

Arriving, he pulled the big van up to the curb to drop me off, his face showing no signs of its former—how does one describe it?—agony and rage.  Indeed, a grandfatherly smile hung naturally upon his face as he bid me a good day. 

I turned to him resolutely and said, “Sir, I am a Christian minister of sorts and, if you’d permit me, I’d like to pray for you.”  In apparent confusion, he nodded his consent and bowed his head with mine. 

“Father,” I began, “I do not know the depths of the anger and sorrow that this man has suffered, but you do. I ask you to heal his broken heart and to give him the grace to endure.  Let him know that you love him.  Amen.” 

Having finished, I looked up.  He sat gripping the steering wheel with both hands.  His body convulsed as tears poured down his face.  “Thank you, thank you,” he said sobbing. 

Not wishing to compound an already awkward moment—with men, such moments are always awkward—I prepared to get out.  Placing my hand on his shoulder I said, “God’s grace is sufficient even in circumstances like this.”  He didn’t move, but held fast to the steering wheel and wept.  It was like an exorcism had been performed where all the hatred and anguish that had tormented his soul fled before the light of God’s grace.   

As I got out he repeated the refrain “thank you” over and over again.  I gave a weak smile and then sprinted through the rain into the building that had been my objective. 

Gathering myself, I walked to a nearby window and looked out.  From my vantage point I could see that the van was still there.  After a lengthy interval, he released a hand from the steering wheel, put the Dodge in gear, and drove away until I could no longer see him through the downpour.

---

Shortly before this occurred, I had been studying John chapter 4 and the story of Jesus and the Samaritan woman at Jacob’s well.  Somewhat ancillary to the story (I am aware of no commentary that speaks of it) is a fact of some interest to me: the apparent inconsequential nature of this profoundly significant encounter.  Jesus was, after all, traveling from Judea to Galilee. Samaria was no more his ultimate objective than the dealership was mine.  It was merely a rest stop; a place in between two points of ministry.  Yet Jesus used it to reveal his divine identity to this woman in terms more explicit than any theretofore.  As a consequence, she and many in her village believed in him.  After reflecting on this, I prayed that God would help me to see the people “in between”—that is, the people between “ministry” points—that I might otherwise overlook.  I asked Him to use me in their lives.  It was only a short time later that he put me in a van with a gentleman with whom my contact seemed insignificant.  God had a plan for him that day.  That he used me to accomplish it is, really, the only insignificant part of the story.  He could have used anybody or, for that matter, no one at all.  But he wants to use us, imperfect creatures, to fulfill his perfect plan.   

Let us ask God to open our eyes to all of the hurting people sandwiched in between the “important” events that choke our calendars.  I think you’ll be surprised by the results. 

 

By Chuck Missler, Ph.D.

One of Christianity’s most controversial issues - and one of our most frequently asked questions - involves the concept of Eternal Security. There are good scholars on all sides of this issue, yet we felt it would be useful to explain our own views on this highly charged subject.We believe that the root problem stems from a lack of precision in our definitions. Earl Rademacher brings this to light when he declares that, “I have been saved; I am being saved; and, I will be saved.” He is simply highlighting the three tenses of “salvation.”

1. We have been saved: positionally from the penalty of sin (Ephesians 2:8, 9). This is often called justification salvation.
2. We are being saved: from the power of sin, operationally, by the Holy Spirit, moment by moment (Romans 6). This is usually called sanctification.
3. We shall be saved: from the presence of sin; after the resurrection, often called glorification, or “the redemption of our body” (Romans 8:23).

Can a man (or a woman) lose his salvation? Yes! If it depends on him (or her).

The Arminian denies that the true child of God is eternally secure. The Calvinist (i.e., “Experimental Predestinarian”) insists that, if he does not persevere in holiness, he was never regenerate in the first place. It seems that 400 years of doctrinal disputes - with outstanding scholars on both sides of this continuing issue - appears to be the result of a failure to adequately distinguish between justification salvation and the possibility of several different kinds of inheritances or rewards.

There is an alternative view which lies between these two extremes. The Partaker, the metachoi, as a true child of God, is “obligated” to persevere (Paul’s word, Romans 8:12), but he might not. If he does not, he does not forfeit salvation but faces divine discipline in time and the loss of reward at the judgment seat of Christ (2 Corinthians 5:10; 1 Corinthians 3:11-15). (We’ll take up some of these issues in subsequent articles.)

Click here for the full article.

Review by Ed Morrisey

Last week, I received Dinesh D’Souza’s newest book, What’s So Great About Christianity?, and found it immediately intriguing. The atheist movement has gained tremendous strength and intellectual vitality in the past few decades, and now features such luminaries as Christopher Hitchens and Richard Dawkins among its rhetorical front line apologists. The apologetics of Christianity have had fewer bright lights, and certainly none as intellectually prepared as D’Souza in this comprehensive refutation of the atheist argument.

It would be impossible to offer a comprehensive recapitulation of the entirety of D’Souza’s argument in this space. In fact, that’s what has kept me from reviewing this book until now; the sheer breadth of D’Souza’s argument goes well beyond a blogpost or a newspaper review. He draws from a wide variety of resources from the sciences, philosophy, and apologetics, and derives an argument so interdependent and so solid that taking it a portion at a time diminishes the whole.

Some of the basics can be addressed. D’Souza argues that the scientific argument for atheism simply doesn’t address the entire human experience. First, he reviews the history of science and argues that reason only takes one so far. It never answers the question of why, not even in the human experience. Physics can explain, for example, the motion of a glass of water when struck by a human hand and predict the outcome, but it can’t answer for why the hand struck the glass.

Similarly, one can explain the Big Bang’s physics, but no one can answer for the why, which creates a large problem for atheists. The Big Bang and the implications of Einsteinian physics show that the universe had a beginning. Something with a beginning has to have a causative event — but if the universe is all that is, what caused the Big Bang? What caused it, and what lies outside of the universe that could have sparked it? Physics can explain the universe, which acts in very precise and predictable ways, but it can’t explain the why.

D’Souza also addresses the difference between evolution and Darwinism, at least as he perceives it. Like the Catholic Church, he sees no conflict between evolution and Christianity. In fact, he argues that the Book of Genesis actually aligns itself well with the Big Bang theory, offering that Light came first (the Big Bang initiating event) and that Day and Night came later (the formation of the Sun and the Moon). He decries the Darwinist movement in science which has at its basis an explicit bias against religion, and which therefore rejects any evidence of God or a metaphysical reality, and has a compelling argument for this from the mouths of the scientists themselves. In doing so, they have rejected the scientific method itself, D’Souza insists, turning Darwinism into a religion rather than relying on evolution as an explanation limited to the physical reality of our universe.

In this, D’Souza attempts to point out the fact that while the physical sciences can explain the universe, it can only explain the universe. He relies heavily on Immanuel Kant in this area by reminding us that science remains bound by human perception. Humans experience the universe with their five senses, and scientific exploration — conducted through experimentation — has the same limits. We cannot perceive the why, and being physical creatures in the universe, cannot use our physical senses to perceive anything beyond it. These are the limits of reason and science — certainly nearly boundless in a vast physical universe, but not limitless.

The book makes a fascinating counterargument to atheism, perhaps the best from the secular world I’ve yet heard. D’Souza does not remain satisfied to argue on his own intellectual turf in terms of religious doctrine, but instead boldly uses science and philosophy outside of religious territory to take the argument to the opponents’ home field. D’Souza provides a breath of fresh air to the faithful, and an accessible if complex support for religious belief.

Posted at Captain’s Quarters

 

Review by John Fernandez 

In The Barbarian Way, Erwin McManus explains that a vibrant Christian faith is not evidenced by a quiet, protected life, but rather by a life of risk living on the edge in a foreign land, complete with danger, trials and troubles. McManus points out that the contemporary church has become harmfully domesticated, and because of this it lacks appeal to the unsaved. Those who enjoyed John Eldredge’s Wild at Heart and Waking the Dead will love this book.

Here are a few quotes:

“The claim to believe is simply not enough. The call of Jesus is one to action.” p.5

“Perhaps the tragedy of our time is that such an overwhelming number of us who declare Jesus as Lord have become domesticated - or, if you will, civilized. We have lost the simplicity of our early faith. Beyond that, we have lost the passion and power of that raw, untamed, and primal faith.” p.12

“When you join the barbarian tribe, you begin to live your life with your eyes and heart wide open. When the spirit of God envelops your soul, your spirit comes alive, and everything changes for you. You are no longer the same.” p.69

About the Author

Erwin Raphael McManus is a native of El Salvador. His family immigrated to the United States when he was very young. McManus earned a Bachelors degree from the University of North Carolina and a Masters of Divinity from Southwestern Baptist Theological Seminary in Texas. He currently pastors Mosaic Church in Los Angeles. 

By Steve Jeffery, Andrew Sach, Mike Ovey

Doctrinal controversy has plagued the church from the earliest days. Debate raged about the deity of Christ in the fourth century, about justification by faith alone in the sixteenth, about the credibility of miracles in the first part of the twentieth.

In recent years, dissenting voices have been raised against a central aspect of the atonement, namely penal substitution – the doctrine that God gave himself in the person of his Son to suffer instead of us the death, punishment and curse due to fallen humanity as the penalty for sin.

Although there had been murmurings for a while, opposition to penal substitution burst onto the popular evangelical scene in 2003 with the publication of Steve Chalke and Alan Mann’s book The Lost Message of Jesus, which likened the doctrine to ‘cosmic child abuse’.¹

A storm of protest about the book prompted the Evangelical Alliance (EA) to organise a public debate in London in October 2004, attended by several hundred people. The following year the EA hosted a symposium at which proponents of penal substitution, including I. Howard Marshall and Simon Gathercole (Aberdeen University) and Garry Williams (Oak Hill Theological College, London), debated with Steve Chalke and a number of other critics of the doctrine from both sides of the Atlantic, including Stuart Murray Williams (UK Anabaptist Network), Steve Motyer and Graham McFarlane (London School of Theology) and Joel Green (Asbury Theological Seminary, Kentucky).

Although the EA’s own research showed that the vast majority of those present at the symposium affirmed penal substitution, there is nonetheless an increasing number of people who claim the label ‘evangelical’ while openly denying a doctrine once described by J. I. Packer as ‘by and large […] a distinguishing hallmark of the worldwide evangelical fraternity.’² Others have had their confidence shaken or are simply bemused that something so much taken for granted in our gospel proclamation could now be denied.

Many of the negative assessments of penal substitution resort to caricature. Steve Chalke and Alan Mann’s ‘child abuse’ image is perhaps the most notorious, but it is far from unique. Colin Greene claims that the combination of an exclusive him-for-us swap with the notion of punishment makes ‘Christ […] the whipping-boy who appeases the wrath of God,’³ while Joel Green and Mark Baker argue that ‘the popular model of penal substitution […] represented in songs and sermons’ suggests a ‘startling drama in which God takes on the role of the sadist inflicting punishment, while Jesus, in his role as masochist, readily embraces suffering.’⁴ These misleading images perpetuate serious misconceptions about penal substitution, and create more heat than light.

Yet objections of this kind are merely the tip of the iceberg, for opposition to penal substitution is rooted in the scholarly academy, where far more extensive and cogent critiques have been gathering pace for many decades. We found ourselves thrown off balance by the force and sophistication of some of them, and realised that the theological ammunition we had to hand was not up to the job of defending the traditional view.

It was not enough to point to the atoning sacrifices in Leviticus, for some are arguing today that the very vocabulary of atonement does not mean what it has been assumed to mean. It was not enough to argue that God must punish sin in order to uphold his justice, for some have argued that for God to punish a third party in our stead would be a worse injustice than punishing no one at all. It was not even enough to appeal to penal substitution as the traditional view, for some have argued that it was a late addition to the pages of Christian history.

A far more substantial response was needed; without it, the criticisms of penal substitution would rumble on, bolstered by the liberal scholarship that underlies them, and unperturbed by the traditional replies. Reassuringly, careful study did provide satisfying answers, and our confidence in penal substitution has been strengthened as a result. We have space in this short article to give only a few examples.

Historical objections to penal substitution

Many critics argue that penal substitution was virtually unknown in the early church, but arose out of a very particular (and not necessarily biblical) conception of justice prevalent during the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries. This view is supported by many of the standard works on church history. For example, L. W. Grensted asserts that, ‘Before the Reformation only a few hints of a Penal theory can be found’,⁵ and J. F. Bethune-Baker insists that ‘in the earliest centuries […] the sufferings of Christ were not regarded as an exchange or substitution of penalty, or as a punishment inflicted on him by the Father for our sins.’⁶

If true, these charges would be weighty: it would be hard to maintain that penal substitution is taught clearly in Scripture if it had remained undiscovered for nearly 1500 years.

However, an examination of the original writings of the Church Fathers reveals this view to be entirely mistaken. Penal substitution was taught by many of the leading theologians of the early church as far back as the beginning of the second century, including Justin Martyr, Eusebius of Caesarea, Hilary of Poitiers, Athanasius, Gregory of Nazianzus, Ambrose of Milan, John Chrysostom, Augustine of Hippo, Cyril of Alexandria, Gelasius of Cyzicus and Gregory the Great.

To focus on one example, Athanasius’ treatise On the Incarnation contains a persuasive argument for penal substitution based on Genesis 2:17 – a text largely ignored by recent studies of the atonement. Athanasius reflects on the fact that Adam’s sin seems to place God in a dilemma:

It would, of course, have been unthinkable that God should go back upon His word and that man, having transgressed, should not die; but it was equally monstrous that beings which once had shared the nature of the Word should perish and turn back again into non-existence through corruption […] what, then, was God to do?⁷

Notice that God cannot ‘simply forgive’ people in such a way that the judicial consequences of sin are waived: in the light of his promise in Genesis 2:17, that would make him a liar. But nor can his creative purpose be allowed to fail. The only solution, according to Athanasius, was for the Son of God – ‘the Word’ – to take upon himself a human body and allow God’s promise of death to be fulfilled in him as our substitute, whilst at the same time overpowering the corruption of death through his resurrection.

The Word perceived that corruption could not be got rid of otherwise than through death; yet He Himself, as the Word, being immortal and the Father’s Son, was such as could not die. For this reason, therefore, He assumed a body capable of death, in order that it, through belonging to the Word Who is above all, might become in dying a sufficient exchange for all, and, itself remaining incorruptible through His indwelling, might thereafter put an end to corruption for all others as well, by the grace of the resurrection. It was by surrendering to death the body which He had taken, as an offering and sacrifice free from every stain, that He forthwith abolished death for His human brethren by the offering of the equivalent. For naturally, since the Word of God was above all, when He offered His own temple and bodily instrument as a substitute for the life of all, He fulfilled in death all that was required.⁸

Thus the penal substitutionary death of Christ, according to Athanasius, was central to the purpose of the incarnation, and was absolutely necessary in order to vindicate God’s truthfulness and his creative power. Given that Athanasius was writing in the fourth century, the recent scholarly consensus regarding the doctrine’s supposed lack of ancient pedigree seems rather difficult to defend.

Click here for the full article.

This video lasts 8:55

 

The Church is the Body of Christ, and the Spirit is the Spirit of Christ. He fills the Body, directs its movements, controls its members, inspires its wisdom, supplies it’s strength. He guides into truth, sanctifies its agents, and empowers for witnessing. The Spirit has never abdicated His authority nor relegated His power.

Samuel Chadwick (1840-1932)

Part 3

By Rich Deem  

Part 2  of the introduction for non-believers provided a survey of the evidence suggesting that the universe was designed by an intelligent agent. I came to that conclusion in 1973 as a result of my studies as an undergraduate at the University of Southern California (not exactly a bastion of religious fervor). However, it took another 15 years before I identified the Designer. Like many other skeptics, I assumed that one could not determine which god (if any) were correctly described by any of the world’s religious traditions. Looking back, the primary reason for my failure to identify the Designer was due to a lack of diligent research on my part. The intent of this page is to get you started on your research.

How does one test religious claims?

When I was a young adult, I thoroughly enjoyed watching Carl Sagan’s Cosmos specials on PBS. Sagan had a way to make cosmology interesting even to biologists. I waited all week to watch his program. Later, in his Gifford lectures, Carl Sagan talked about how to test religious truth claims:

“Now, what happened before that [Big-Bang]? There are two views. One is ‘Don’t ask that question,’ which is very close to saying that God did it. And the other is that we live in an oscillating universe in which there is an infinite number of expansions and contractions. The former of these views happens, by chance, to be close to the Judeo-Christian-Islamic view, the latter, close to the standard Hindu views. And so, if you like, you can think of the varying contentions of these two major religious views being fought out in the field of contemporary satellite astronomy. Because that’s where the answer to this question will very likely be decided. This is an experimental question. And it is very likely that in our lifetime we will have the answer to it. And I stress that this is very different from the usual theological approach, where there is never an experiment that can be performed to test out any contentious issue. Here there is one. So we don’t have to make judgments now. All we have to do is maintain some tolerance for ambiguity until the data are in, which may happen in a decade or less.” (Carl Sagan, 1985 Gifford Lectures).

Guess what? Sagan was right (although it took a little more than a decade). Sagan’s second alternative, the oscillating universe model has been discredited by a lack of sufficient matter to cause a contraction.¹ It was further discredited by the discovery of dark energy, which shows that the universe is actually expanding at an ever increasing rate.² So, Sagan’s first alternative is the one that turned out to be true. My guess is that he was betting on the second. Of course, the atheists haven’t lined up to become Christians, but instead have invented their own form of metaphysics (i.e., religion). The multiverse sounds scientific, but it is really philosophical wishful thinking, since there is no evidence supporting the idea. If one really thinks about it, the multiverse is impossible over the entire period of eternity (which is what atheists would propose for the age of the “invisible” part of our universe - if such a thing exists at all). The problem is that our part of the multiverse has managed to make itself completely inaccessible to contraction and future expansion. If it were possible for one part of the multiverse to become thermodynamically dead, it would be expected to be possible for others. Even if entry into such a state is extremely unlikely, eternity is a very, very long time. Certainly by now (over all eternity), the entire multiverse would have entered into one of these thermodynamically dead zones. So, one would expect the entire multiverse to have suffered thermodynamic death by now. Therefore, it makes absolutely no sense that the universe is eternal with the characteristics that we observe. We are left with Sagan’s first alternative - God did it. Atheists like to say that there is no evidence for God’s existence and pretend it doesn’t exist. However, Sagan realized that science could judge between religious claims.

More religious claims

The example of distinguishing between Hinduism versus the Judeo-Christian-Islamic creation account is just one of many ways to examine the truth claims of the world’s religions. Since most of the world’s religions developed hundreds to thousands of years ago, it is a fairly trivial matter to examine their material for scientific and other errors. It would not be expected that ancient peoples would be able to accurately describe all modern scientific principles. Only those individuals who were given divine revelation would be expected to give an accurate account of our world.

Science and the Quran

For example, the Quran³ says that the heavens and the earth were once joined together as one unit before it was split into two parts.⁴ Obviously, this creation model could never be applied to any kind of Big Bang theory. However, the Bible clearly presents the creation of the universe as an expanding universe model in which God spreads out the stars.⁵ The Quran says that Allah created seven heavens⁶ and that the stars are found in the lowest heaven.⁷ In addition, the Quran says that earth is like a carpet⁸ that is held in place by the heavy mountains, described as being like tent pegs,⁹ so that it won’t move or shake.¹⁰ In contrast, the Bible associates the mountains with shaking¹¹ and says that, instead of placing the mountains on the earth, God caused the mountains to rise up.¹² So, the Bible accurately describes the mountains as being associated with tectonic activity and volcanism whereas the Quran says that the mountains were placed on the earth to prevent shaking. The Quran says that the Sun “sets in a spring of murky water.”¹³ In contrast to the Bible¹⁴ the Quran presents a flat earth model for the earth and universe, which is clearly at odds with the facts of science.

Science and LDS scriptures

When dealing with more modern religious traditions, tests of scientific accuracy are more difficult to deploy, since those religions have the advantage of scientific revelation since the Enlightenment. Surprisingly, even some of the more modern religious traditions make claims that can be disproved through the discoveries of modern science. A prime example of this principle can be found in the religious writings of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints (Mormons). Although calling themselves “Christians,” LDS theology is radically different from historic Christianity¹⁵ and contains its own set of religious writings (in addition to the Bible). Even though written in the 19^th century, LDS religious writings make numerous scientific errors, including astronomical errors,¹⁶ archeological and historical errors,¹⁷ and genetic/hereditary errors for people groups.¹⁸ Because of these problems, the LDS religion can be safely discarded from accurately representing the true nature of God, having been shown to not be divinely inspired.

Click here for the full article and footnotes.

Introduction - Part 2  

By Rich Deem 

Part 1 of the introduction for non-believers showed that strong atheism contradicts its own worldview by believing the universe has a natural cause despite the lack of observational evidence for such a belief. However, since there is no direct observational evidence regarding the origin of the universe, why should one believe the equally unobserved hypothesis that God created the universe? Although there is no direct evidence for the cause of the universe, we now have a fair amount of knowledge about the early history of the universe and the laws that govern it, which provide us with indirect evidence that a super-intelligent Agent designed the universe. In order to keep this essay brief, much of the supporting information will not be included. However, you can click the links to the full-length articles for the details.

Evidence for Design?

The best evidence for design can be seen in the nature of the universe and how it came to be. The process of discovery continues, since one of the fundamental properties of the universe, dark energy (or the cosmological constant), was discovered late in the last century. New studies continue to add to our knowledge about the universe and its extremely unlikely makeup.

The Big Bang

The Big Bang theory states that the universe arose from a singularity of virtually no size, which gave rise to the dimensions of space and time, in addition to all matter and energy. At the beginning of the Big Bang, the four fundamental forces began to separate from each other. Early in its history (10^-36 to 10^-32 seconds), the universe underwent a period of short, but dramatic, hyper-inflationary expansion. The cause of this inflation is unknown, but was required for life to be possible in the universe.

Excess Quarks

Quarks and antiquarks combined to annihilate each other. One would expect the ratio of quarks and antiquarks to be exactly equal to one, since neither would be expected to have been produced in preference to the other. However, miraculously, quarks outnumbered antiquarks by a ratio of 1,000,000,001 to 1,000,000,000. The remaining small excess of quarks eventually made up all the matter that exists in the universe.

Large, Just Right-Sized Universe

Even so, the universe is enormous compared to the size of our Solar System. Isn’t the immense size of the universe evidence that humans are really insignificant, contradicting the idea that a God concerned with humanity created the universe? It turns out that the universe could not have been much smaller than it is in order for nuclear fusion to have occurred during the first 3 minutes after the Big Bang. Without this brief period of nucleosynthesis, the early universe would have consisted entirely of hydrogen. Likewise, the universe could not have been much larger than it is, or life would not have been possible. If the universe were just one part in 10⁵⁹ larger,the universe would have collapsed before life was possible. Since there are only 10⁸⁰ baryons in the universe, this means that an addition of just 10²¹ baryons (about the mass of a grain of sand) would have made life impossible. The universe is exactly the size it must be for life to exist at all.

Early Evolution of Universe

Cosmologists assume that the universe could have evolved in any of a number of ways, and that the process is entirely random. Based upon this assumption, nearly all possible universes would consist solely of thermal radiation (no matter). Of the tiny subset of universes that would contain matter, a small subset would be similar to ours. A very small subset of those would have originated through inflationary conditions. Therefore, universes that are conducive to life “are almost always created by fluctuations into the[se] ‘miraculous’ states,” according to atheist cosmologist Dr. L. Dyson.³

Just Right Laws of Physics 

The laws of physics must have values very close to those observed or the universe does not work “well enough” to support life. What happens when we vary the constants? The strong nuclear force (which holds atoms together) has a value such that when the two hydrogen atoms fuse, 0.7% of the mass is converted into energy. If the value were 0.6% then a proton could not bond to a neutron, and the universe would consist only of hydrogen. If the value were 0.8%, then fusion would happen so readily that no hydrogen would have survived from the Big Bang. Other constants must be fine-tuned to an even more stringent degree. The cosmic microwave background varies by one part in 100,000. If this factor were slightly smaller, the universe would exist only as a collection of diffuse gas, since no stars or galaxies could ever form. If this factor were slightly larger, the universe would consist solely of large black holes. Likewise, the ratio of electrons to protons cannot vary by more than 1 part in 10³⁷ or else electromagnetic interactions would prevent chemical reactions. In addition, if the ratio of the electromagnetic force constant to the gravitational constant were greater by more than 1 part in 10⁴⁰, then electromagnetism would dominate gravity, preventing the formation of stars and galaxies. If the expansion rate of universe were 1 part in 10⁵⁵ less than what it is, then the universe would have already collapsed. The most recently discovered physical law, the cosmological constant or dark energy, is the closest to zero of all the physical constants. In fact, a change of only 1 part in 10¹²⁰ would completely negate the effect.

Click here for the full article.

 

By Peter May 

At the start of the story is the tantalising phrase in Genesis Chapter 1, ‘God created man in his own image: In the image of God he created him.’

Of course, it does not occur in a vacuum. It is the climax of the entire creation narrative. The Earth, which was formless and empty (v1), was first given shape and was then filled: with good things, initially vegetation and then animal life.

Verse 26, ‘Then God said, ‘Let us make man in our image, in our likeness, and let them rule over the fish of the sea and the birds of the air, over the livestock, over all the earth and over all the creatures that move along the ground. So God created man in his own image, both male and female he created them.’

Two points of reference

In trying to understand what is implied here, I take it that there are two points of reference. Firstly, the Image of God marks us out from all other living creatures, which by implication are not made in the Image of God. Genetically, we may be almost identical to our nearest animal relative, the Chimpanzee, but spiritually we are poles apart. So we will gain insight into understanding what the Image of God means, if we explore the differences between mankind and the rest of the animal kingdom.

The second point of reference is of course God himself, so we will also understand the meaning of being made in his image if we explore what he has revealed of himself – in nature, in scripture and most especially in Christ.

The image of God in man therefore distinguishes us from all other animals on the one hand and shows our family resemblance to our heavenly father on the other. I take it that the words ‘image’ and ‘likeness’ amount to the same thing. They are not referring to different categories but are intended to emphasise & clarify the central idea.

I believe this process leads us to focus on 6 distinctive characteristics of Humanity. Firstly, we are…

1) Creative
Animals are wonderfully uncreative. They do not change the world they live in. The creativity we observe in them is instinctive. So birds build their nests but every year it has the same design. They never think to build on an extension, create a loft conversion or develop their skills. They just do the same old instinctive thing.

God on the other hand has been creative beyond anything we can comprehend. Both science and the Bible testify that the entire universe came into existence - out of nothing! Our knowledge of the expanding universe traces everything that exists, including time and space, back to an unimaginably small ‘singularity’ which came into existence from nothing. A humanist put to me recently that we have a straight choice – to believe in an eternal universe that has always existed or an eternal God who created a finite universe. He was wrong. We do not have that choice. The idea that the universe is an eternal static entity died in 1929 when Hubble observed the Red Shift – a Doppler effect in light from distant galaxies – which demonstrated that the universe is expanding. Atheists have being struggling to come to terms with this discovery ever since. We haven’t always had the universe. It began – apparently out of nothing, some 15 billion years ago. This is a major problem for atheists.

Now human creativity is of a different order from God’s, not least because we lack his astonishing power, intelligence and artistry. But none the less, we have original, creative ideas. I am currently responsible for winding up the estate of my late uncle, who designed the power plants for BP’s first North Sea oil rigs. Similar scientific and industrial adventures are everywhere to be found. Last week I went through his library of scientific and technical books. The research and understanding of a vast array of people led to those particular North Sea adventures. So secondly we are…

Click here for the full article.