Podcasts

There is an errant concept of ‘creation with apparent age’. A hypothetical modern observer who travelled back in time to see Adam and Eve at the end of Day 6 might infer that they were 20-year-old adults, but in reality they were less than a day old. Similarly, the trees on Day 3 would be mature trees, and a time-traveling observer might infer that they were hundreds of years old. So the question has been asked, “Why would God deceive us with apparent age of past events before the week of creation?”

There are several things we can learn from detectives like Colombo that we can apply to the enterprise of Christian apologetics in general, and creation apologetics in particular. The next time you’re in a discussion or debate with a skeptic, ask them The Big Question, and push for a real answer.

Before the use of hymnbooks in the 18th century, the main form of musical involvement by English congregations was to intone paraphrases of the Psalms. One Sunday, Isaac Watts opined that the way the Psalms were rendered lacked the dignity and beauty that he felt should characterize every part of Christian worship. His father challenged him to produce something better. In 1707, Watts published his Hymns and Spiritual Songs. These were set to music by a host of later composers, and came to be sung all over the English-speaking world. According to Watts, the systematic study of the heavens enlarged his understanding of the immense power of God and the magnificence of His creation.

The Denisovans are a fascinating subject. It is known from ancient DNA studies that the Denisovans interbred with ‘modern’ humans, and so by the biological species concept that makes them the same species, i.e., Homo sapiens. Hence, by logic the specimens in Homo erectus must also have been fully human, and part of the human kind.

Liligers, ligers, and other cat hybrids are testimony to the fact that all 39 extant cat species alive today (including the domestic house cat) likely came from one original feline/cat kind on board the Ark, which rapidly diversified soon after the Flood.

With so many areas for the church to deal with we need to ask ourselves, how do we make a difference? Where do we focus our efforts? Many Christians believe the creation/evolution issue to be a side issue, an unprofitable area on which to focus. To many it seems divisive, and has little relation to proclaiming the Gospel. Far from being a side issue, the creation/evolution debate is at the forefront of the assault on the Christian worldview.

In an encouraging turn of events, a secular peer-reviewed paper published in eLIFE, written by a team from the NMBU Centre for Applied Philosophy of Science at the Norwegian University of Life Sciences, backs up this understanding of the importance of worldviews. In their article, the authors make some very salient observations that few other secularists seem to like to openly discuss.

In today’s episode I’m going to read not one but two articles about butterflies.

We had a discussion with Tim Barnett from Stand to Reason, who was giving multiple presentations at the Great Homeschool Conference in Greenville, South Carolina. It turned out that Tim believes in an old Earth, implying that death, disease, suffering and pain all came before Adam and Eve in the garden of Eden. We wanted to know more, so that’s why I attended his presentation titled “If God, Why Evil?” The main focus of this talk was to discuss the issue of why a loving and omnipotent God would allow suffering in the world.

Those who believe life evolved on the earth usually see it as virtual ‘fact’ that life has evolved on countless other planets. Many Christians think, ‘God must have created life elsewhere, otherwise this enormous universe would be an awful waste of space.’ The Bible’s ‘big picture’ seems to preclude intelligent life elsewhere in God’s universe. But what if we just found bacteria on other planets? What would that mean?

The myth of the ‘kindly slow-witted naturalist stumbling across evolution’ was fostered by an autobiography Darwin wrote as a deliberately self-effacing moral homily for his children, not intending it to be published. Darwin was fully aware that his idea was a frontal assault on the very notion of an intelligent Designer behind the world. In fact, he might very well have formulated it precisely for that purpose.

Nothing on today’s Earth matches the geographical clues provided in Genesis. Any proposed location for Eden must include four rivers originating from one source. Contrary to common opinion, the Tigris and Euphrates of Genesis 2 cannot be the modern rivers flowing through Syria and Iraq today, because they do not share the same source. The Flood caused massive changes to the landscape, to the point where there should be no correlation between pre-Flood and post-Flood geography.

We continue our response to the 2019 BBC-TV series The Planets, presented by Professor Brian Cox. In this article, we are considering the fifth and final episode, Into the Darkness – Ice Worlds. God has provided a marvelous solar system for us humans to marvel at and explore—by instruments such as telescopes, unmanned spacecraft, and eventually perhaps even interplanetary travel. Contrary to atheistic evolutionary theory, life is much more than what can be measured by technology.

After the Resurrection of Jesus and before the blessing of the Holy Spirit, the disciples commenced fishing again. Jesus appeared to them and they ate fish together. What was this fish that was so popular that they could make a business from catching? Those were probably tilapia, ‘St Peter’s fish’ (or mango tilapia, Sarotherodon galilaeus). And today, we see how a common fish that was eaten in Galilee can also provide healing benefits that were not realized for many years.

We continue our response to the 2019 BBC-TV series The Planets, narrated by Professor Brian Cox. In this article we are considering the fourth episode, titled Life beyond the sun, Saturn.

We continue our response to the 2019 BBC-TV series The Planets, presented by Professor Brian Cox. This time, are considering the third episode, The Godfather – Jupiter. Jupiter is the largest of the planets in our solar system, and the fifth out from the Sun. Prof. Cox tells the evolutionary story for the origin of this planet and what it does in the solar system. We present the biblical creation account and we invite readers to judge which best fits the available evidence.