What Makes an Atheist?

What Makes an Atheist?

by | Mar 23, 2021 | Apologetics, Evolution, Intelligent Design, John Tarr

What Makes an Atheist?

Are we born not believing in God or an intelligent designer of the universe?

Is it something else or a combination of things that come to a head in people’s minds that helps us make that fateful decision?

I am sure many reasons are closely related because it may not be a simple process. Is it an intellectual process or something more profound, like an emotional response that clouds our minds that happened from the past?

This world we live in is a tough place for many people and always has been. Life has been physically hard in past generations, but it has also been brutal to the human psyche.

It still hard for many people in our modern times depending on where you live, but even in the best locations, such in the USA and Europe, the human psyche is still a struggle.

One question that one of the top Christian apologetics, Dr William Lane Greig, at Reasonable Faith, asked: “Is this the best of all possible worlds?”

Considering freewill, it appears that this is the best possible of all worlds. 

Why God has decided to make our world this way, becomes more evident as time goes on in human history. 

To me anyway.  

Also, how and why He takes an individual spirit and drops it into a human shell of a body at a particular moment in time and space is an interesting question that only God Himself can answer.

I think it is called Middle Knowledge or Molinism in the apologetic Christian world, meaning only God would have this understanding because He has omniscience.

“First, it is assumed that for an action to be free, it must be determined by the agent performing the action. This means that God cannot will a free creature to act in a particular way and the act still be free. 

Free actions must be self-determinative.”

I tend to think it has something to do with our success in this life that we live in. 

By success, I do not mean how much stuff we have accumulated or how successful we were in rising to the top of whatever human station that humans would consider a success, but what God Himself would consider a successful life. 

From God’s point of view, success would be if we connected with Him, at some point in our temporary life span, for the sake of eternity, together, for the both of us.

Is that not what He designed us for in the first place? Spending eternity with Him so we can share His kingdom with Him? 

Why else would he create us?

What would be the point from His perspective?

My Battle Was an Emotional One 

As for me and my life, I was an atheist until I was thirty years old, so I will come from my perspective and experience. 

I have a feeling many people will identify with me. 

Being raised Catholic from a German background, I attended Catholic grade school in the late 1950s.

I was a tough kid in that I had specific disabilities that Catholic nuns were not equipped to handle.

Even today, most teachers are not.

They resorted to physical and emotional abuse to get me to function like the rest of the kids in my classroom.

It did not work and only scared me emotionally for many years.

When I came of age to make decisions for myself and my well-being, I jettisoned all belief in God. 

The word Jesus Christ was a cuss word to me. 

Not only did I discard the Catholic and Christian version of God, but I also dumped the mere thought of an intelligent designer behind the making of the universe itself.

Who needs a powerful being behind the curtain like the Great OZ, when Darwin came up with a perfect solution that proved a god was not needed?

Evolution was my god and how we (all life) came to be in this universe we live in.

It was a done deal, or so I thought.

Star Stuff

American astronomer Carl Sagan was my intellectual hero. I would follow him and all his books and writings. I looked forward to his programs, especially the one called Cosmos: A Personal Voyage. 

When he said we were all just star stuff, it made me feel I was worshipping at the feet of an astrophysicist and a cosmologist icon that had ALL the answers to human origins. 

In college, I would attend debates between scientists and atheists versus bible thumpers. I would root for the atheist and think how little understanding the religious bible believing people had on the workings of life around them. 

I finished school, got married, started a business, had children. My life came to a stop when my marriage came crashing down. I had a hard soul, and my wife wanted nothing more to do with it any more.

Hard questions were being asked of me from the inside-out because of the pain I was in. 

The oldest question that has haunted mankind since the beginning of time, emerged from me.

Is This All There Is? 

When we die, is that just the end, and nothing more.

The answers that I got from science did not help at all. The universe became a dark and cold place without any real rhyme or reason.

True meaning was nonexistent. Survival of the fittest was an empty phrase.

God cracked my shell and used the tough things that turned me into this empty atheist into an individual asking more profound questions for the first time in my life.

On a lonely journey, far from those I loved and cared about, God heard my feeble call and answered me.

I had no idea what I was doing when I asked him into my heart the first time. All I knew was I was empty and needed BIG time help, now that I think back on it. 

I still had a conflict with science and Christian belief that would take many years to resolve.

I had a hard time resolving evolution and Darwin’s version of how life came to be versus Genesis in the bible.

I knew the Christian worldview answered so many questions about so many things, especially why men are and have been so evil towards each other since the beginning of time, and it was not just survival of the fittest.

I found an organization called Reasons to Believe, led by astronomer Hugh Ross.

For the first time, I ran into Christians that believed that science and religion could live together. 

Their subtitle is “Where science and faith converge.”

I joined a local science group that is an offshoot of Reasons to Believe in Phoenix that I attended every month.

I also began following Christian Apogeic teachers like Dr. William Lane Craig of Reasonable Faith. 

Dr. Craig is a philosopher of the highest order and will make you stretch your brain to Christian circles and bonder life to its deepest depths. 

He debates many atheists regularly and has left me thinking about what it was that attracted me to being an atheist in the first place.

As I dug deeper into Darwinian evolution theory, I realized there turned out to be many problems with it. 

Today, many scientists turn their backs on it because they believe life is too complex to come from an unguided force of nature.

To this day, no scientist has life come from non-life, even in the perfect conditions of any laboratory on our planet. 

“Too Complex” are the two words that you hear again and again.  

I recently found a website that has over 1,000 scientists in the world today that no longer believe in evolution called A Scientific Dissent From Darwinism.

It shows that even scientists have an ax to grind when it comes to the truth.

 

Going back to the original question, What Makes an Atheist?

For me, it was not an intellectual search for the truth but an emotional cloud that blinded me from digging deeper into things that I held dear. 

My childhood wounds blinded me if you want to know the truth. 

When I found God and Jesus in a small church in Oregon, I learned for the first time who Jesus Christ was and not from some abusive nuns with an agenda. 

I believe that is what makes most people, young and old, male and female, rich or poor, and atheists. They cannot lean on intellectual arguments because they do not exist. 

Only emotional wounds from the past that blind us.

Psalm 19:1 Says 

“The heavens declare the glory of God; the skies proclaim the work of His hands.”

I look up in the night sky, and all my old intellectual arguments are laid to waste.

I am what is called an Old Earther, meaning that I am a Christian who believes that the universe is 13.8 billion years old. I have found out that I am not alone, and many Christian scientists believe the same thing.

If you look in Genesis, before the first day was made, the universe was already here. Please read it for yourself.

I believe in the Big Bang or the Cosmological Singularity. Albert Einstein discovered it when he worked on the Theory of Relativity.

The Big Bang states that the universe started at one point in time. Most scientists, up until the time Einstein discovered it, believed that the universe had always been in existence. A Steady State. Always been here.

If the universe started at one specific point in time, who or what pulled the trigger on the Big Bang?

Genesis says God spoke it ALL into existence. Therefore, He spoke the universe into being at one point in time.

Science did not even know that until the 1930s.

A illustration of what the Big Bang may of looked like over time.

I ask people if they know how big the universe is?

Here is something that will blow your mind.

There are more stars in our Milky Way Galaxy than there are grains of sand on all the beaches on planet earth. The number: 10 to the 15th power.

But, did you know there are more Galaxies in our universe than grains of sand on the beaches on planet earth?  The number: 10 to the 120th power.

Wrap your head around that.

Who is this Intelligent Designer we call God, that could do such a thing?

 

Mad at God

To be honest with myself, I think I was mad at God for letting me be abused by people that confessed they were followers of Jesus, even though, I would say that I did not believe in Him.

Crazy, I know.

Anger and hate can cause an unstable mind, void of rationality in certain areas of one’s own mind, even in the most rational of people.

You find scientist are like this all the time. They have preconceived beliefs even in the field that they have undertaken.

Albert Einstein was one of these people. When he came up with the Big Bang, he spent a number of years trying to find holes in it because he knew what the implications were.

Who was behind the Big Bang?

It was not until the 1930’s that Edwin Hubble, the great astronomer, invited Einstein out to California for the summer, and proved to him that Einstein’s mathematical equations for the Big Bang where correct when viewing the universe through his telescope.

The universe did start at one specific point in time.

If that is true, who pulled the trigger and got this time and space rolling.

Things do not just pop into being from nothing!

 

Check out the other blogs I wrote. Life from Non-life. Is it possible?  or Who Made God?

 

What Makes an Atheist?

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Who Made God?

Who Made God?

by | Jan 27, 2020 | Apologetics, Atheism, Intelligent Design

Who Made God?

Who made God? Where did God come from? This question are asked by many Christians and non-believers alike. Everything had to be made by something and had a starting point in time, right? It’s very hard for us to wrap our heads around something or someone that was not created.

We have been taught all our lives of this logical fact. The largest object in our human knowledge, the universe, came into existence at one point in time from the big bang or cosmological singularity. Who made that? Who pulled the trigger?

The universe could not pop into existence from nothing. Nothing can. When have you ever seen something pop into existence without explanation?

Everything in this universe had a starting point no matter how large or small. Some objects came into being at the Big Bang, but many things started sometime after.

Who made all this stuff?

Stuff like gravity, planets, stars, galaxies, and atoms. Its ingrained into our brains that everything has been made or designed by someone or something.

If God created everything who created God?

Dr. William Lane Craig (one of the top analytic philosophers and Christian theologian) said it best: “God is the only self-existent source of everything other than Himself”

In other words, a timeless, immaterial, eternal being cannot have a cause. Nothing could bring into existence a being into reality who transcends space and time.

How could something be made inside of our universe that made the universe itself? That makes no sense. It would have to be a being outside of our universe that made it in the first place. Something powerful enough and smart enough to create something of this magnitude and complexity.

Everything that begins to exist has a cause.

Something could not come into being out of nothing. If something is eternal and timeless it does not need a cause.

Think of it this way: where did the sun get its light? The sun is its own source of light. Same way with God. He is His own source of life.

When atheists think they have Christians on the run when they ask who made God, it really exposes their ignorance on who God is.

The simple answer to who made or created God would be God is not caused but self-existent.

The best part of all this is that this Christian God who is the uncaused cause desires the perfect relationship with me and you!

“Father… you loved me before the foundations of the world.” John 17:24

“When I look at your heavens, the work of your fingers, the moon and the stars, which you have set into place, what is man that you are mindful of him, and the son of man that you care for him?” Psalm 8:3-4

Watch a very good short video on this topic, go to Dr. William Lane Craig 

 

Who Made God?

 

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Intelligent Design and Irreducible Complexity

Intelligent Design and Irreducible Complexity

by | Dec 11, 2019 | Apologetics, Evolution, Intelligent Design, John Tarr, Science

Intelligent Design and Irreducible Complexity

“If it could be demonstrated that any complex organ existed which could not possibly have been formed by numerous, successive, slight modifications, my theory would absolutely break down.” — Charles Darwin, Origin of Species

 

Irreducible complexity is an argument, by some scientists who believe in intelligent design (creation/God designed), that certain life systems are too complex to have evolved from simpler organisms, through natural selection or evolution.

Bacterial Flagellum

Modern biology has discovered that cells are like tiny factories that function using machines. So, irreducible complexity means that inside all living things are very small machines that perform complicated and extremely detailed tasks. Bacterial Flagellum are tiny machines that are living and breathing.

Intelligent Design and Irreducible Complexity

The bacterial flagellum is a cellular outboard motor that bears the marks of intelligent design.

Long before today’s modern technology, students of biology compared the workings of life to machines and recently, this comparison has become stronger than ever.

Why is all of this important?

Because origins (beginnings) do matter! How we look at how the world and how it functions matters just as much. The universe is very complex, in not only size but how it functions. The universe of the small cell is also very complex – complex beyond all understanding, even for our scientists today.

Darwin’s Black Box

In his 1996 book, “Darwin’s Black Box: The Biochemical Challenge to Evolution”, biochemist Michael Behe explained the surprising discovery that life is based upon machines!

“Life is based on machines – machines made of molecules! Molecular machines haul cargo from one place in the cell to another along highways made of other molecules, while still others act as cables, ropes, and pulleys to hold the cell in shape. Machines turn cellular switches on and off, sometimes killing the cell or causing it to grow.

Solar-powered machines capture the energy of photons and store it in chemicals. Electrical machines allow current to flow through nerves. Manufacturing machines build other molecular machines, as well as themselves. Cells swim using machines, copy themselves with machinery, and ingest food with machinery. In short, highly sophisticated molecular machines control every cellular process. Thus, the details of life are finely calibrated and the machinery of life enormously complex,”

Amazing! All of this is going on inside of my body? In the body of every living thing? Wow!

Behe then posed the question,

“Can all of life be fit into Darwin’s theory of evolution?” and answered, “The complexity of life’s foundation has paralyzed science’s attempt to account for it; molecular machines raise an as-yet impenetrable barrier to Darwinism’s universal reach.”

Again, I ask, why is all of this important?

Psalm 19:1 says “The heavens declare the glory of God; the skies proclaim the work of his hands.” We, as humans, do not need a telescope to see the glory of God. All we have to do is look at the nighttime sky and gaze out at the stars and marvel. A telescope does help to see how absolutely huge and complex it is.

In the same way, the inner workings of life on a very small scale, with the use of microscopes, has also unlocked this vision of complexity. You could say, “The living creatures declare the glory of God; the molecular machines proclaim the work of his hands.”

Fine-tuned for Life…

…is another term that is used by believers of intelligent design, including many scientists today. It means that a fine-tuned universe, to have life, has to have conditions that can only occur when found or lie within a very narrow range, so that if any of these conditions were only slightly different, the universe would be unlikely to have life.

This fine-tuning is found not only on the very largest element, like the universe itself, but also found in the very smallest cellular level of all life. When they talk about a very narrow range that life can be sustained or even form, it is very narrow indeed. One example would be planet earth, where we call home.

As you begin to take in all the different parts of the complex puzzle that make up life you have to ask yourself a question. Can an unguided theory like evolution and natural selection account for life on any level?

To this day scientist have no idea how life got its initial start.

They CAN NOT reproduce any kind of life in a laboratory from non-life. They have not figured out the mechanism for triggering life from non-life. Whole life forms turning into completely different life forms as in Macro-evolution is also not been proven.

They can test small adaptations as in Micro-evolution and watch small changes occur within animal and plant life. That is one species adapting to its environment but not one species turning into a new species.

Many scientist across the world are coming to this same conclusion about Darwinian Evolution and are now making their voices heard. Dissent from Darwinism are over 1,000 scientist with objections. 

Fine-tuned is also found in the universe on a much more massive scale but that is for a future article on The Big Bang and Intelligent Design.

Today I was just staying in our own backyard.

Video on Amazing Flagellum : Michael Behe and the revolution of Intelligent Design

 

Intelligent Design and Irreducible Complexity

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Evolution and an Age of Confused Children

Evolution and an Age of Confused Children

by | Nov 8, 2019 | Atheism, Evolution, Intelligent Design, John Tarr

Evolution and an Age of Confused Children

The theory of evolution has brought confusion in many people’s minds and nowhere is it more apparent than our children. Many adults suffer from this confusion also, especially in the last 60 years.

Darwinian Evolution has been taught in all our school’s science classes at the high school and college level as undisputed fact. Sometimes it is being taught even earlier in grade school. 

Natural selection (the process of evolution) promotes that all life forms sprang up from some sort of primordial ooze as basic life on a bacterial level and then began to slowly evolve into more complex forms of life over millions of years. It took many different paths as it mutated into fish and birds to land-dwelling creatures and millions of other combinations. We have been told by scientists, that this is what the fossil records show.

Evolution at its core teaches us that there is no need for some sort of Intelligent Designer. Life came about through many mindless mistakes over all these eons of time to where we are today. No need for God. 

We go to church and send our children to Sunday school and we are told that there is a God. The Bibles tell us in Genesis that God Himself made all life forms and also how He designed the universe by speaking them both into existence.

Evolution and an Age of Confused Children

Evolution and an Age of Confused Children

 

When our children start going to public high school, they are being taught something completely different. When adults tell them two different things that are so basic as how life came to populate this planet, how can they not be confused? Two different messages. How can adults not be confused? How can we trust the rest of the Bible if it can not get this basic fundamental truth correct?

I was an atheist until I was 30 years old. When I did become a Christian I still wrestled with these elemental questions. Was Genesis true or was it a fairytale, or some sort of metaphor written thousands of years ago. 

Can science and faith coexist?

I needed to know ‘BIG Time’. My doubts were overwhelming to the point, that I stopped going to church, praying and resumed pursuing a secular lifestyle once again. I became an angry man again and made living with very hard for my family and myself. I had to know if this is all there is in life and when we die, is that it? Nothing beyond this very temporary life. We live for a few decades and then we are gone like billions before us.

God brought me back through a series of hard events. I missed Him! I also started to research more on some of my doubts like evolution. What I found surprised me. I found and joined a Christian organization that is led by astronomer Hugh Ross and a few other scientists that make their home at something called Reasons to Believe. I joined their local organization in my hometown and found I was not alone on many of my questions and doubts.

I felt liberated to connect with God again and not be ashamed of the doubts that were plaguing me. I began to follow a number of Christian apologetic leaders that were on the internet like Dr. William Lane Craig at Reasonable Faith. He is one of the foremost Christian debaters on the planet. He uses logic and reasoning to prove the hope that we have within us. There are many others that I follow and will leave a small list and links for you to check out at the end of this blog.

Evolution and an Age of Confused Children

Some of The 1,000 Scientists at Dissent from Darwinism

Evolution and an Age of Confused Children

 

 Is evolution an undisputed fact? 

When I comes to evolution, I have found that in spite of what the prevailing push of what many scientists say, Darwinian Evolution is not a done deal. Far from it!

There are many objections by scientists that work in the fields of Microbiology, Biophysics, Bacteriology, Biochemistry, Quantum Chemistry and the study of DNA that are ringing the alarm that evolution has many problems and they are voicing their concerns.  

I found a website that lists over 1,000 scientists worldwide that have come together to voice their objections called “Dissent from Darwinism”. I was shocked at how many there were and the diverse scientific fields they came from.

Dr. Stephen C. Meyer has written a book that has taken the science world by storm called “Darwin’s Doubt”. A scientist himself, he points out from a scientific standpoint why there are many problems with this theory.

It is a hard book to understand, in that he goes into detail on many aspects of how life works and functions. 

One of the things that caught my attention from his book was how all life is very complex and it was right from the beginning right down to the smallest cells.

If it is so complex and was from the start, how did it get going in the first place?

The scientific world still has no idea how life first began. They have never been able to duplicate the start of life in a laboratory. 

Questions on the Cambrian Explosion
Questions on DNA

What are they hiding?

Why is the evolutionary world hiding the fact that evolution is not a done deal or a fact beyond dispute? First, many scientists are atheists and will not even entertain the idea that there is an Intelligent Designer in our universe and will fight back tooth and nail at the very idea. Many evolutionary scientists have spent their whole lives as professors in universities teaching that evolution is beyond dispute. 

The ACLU has entered this fray. 

Whenever a teacher brings up doubts about different aspects of Darwinian Evolution in high school or college, they will sue them, so they are silenced. So much rides in our culture today on the belief that there is no God. Abortion has a lot riding on it. It is easy to kill an unborn human if you have convinced yourself deep inside that there is no God to be accountable to. 

The USA has truly become a post-Christian culture.

We have followed Europe in this regard. If there is no God, then there are no true objective morals to follow and nothing but our own opinions as to what is right and wrong.

Our Christian churches have ill-equipped our children.

When our young adults enter college many things will demand their attention. We have not made them aware of the push back they will receive on many issues about being a Christian. When they object to different things like evolution, they will be accused of believing in a fairytale and anti-science and looked down upon by fellow students and professors. They will have many doubts about their Christian faith, because they had no answers to this onslaught and many of them will walk away from the faith, they grew up in. 

So many adults have these same doubts just as I did. Churches need to address these hard questions of our faith through the study of apologetics. A safe place, that we can ask tough questions and discuss them with one another. A safe place, that we will not be looked at as if we were some sort of heretic, or told we just need more faith. A place where logic and reason are used to dig deep into our Christian Faith.

Make it safe and interesting for our children to learn about the hard and uncompromising world they will face. Treat them like adults and have them stretch their minds and logically look at things from God’s perspective. Promote the asking of questions. Many of our Church leaders and teachers are uncomfortable with talking about these hard issues because they do not know how to answer these questions.

The Bible Tells Me So

That answer is not good enough anymore. It never was good enough. All it tells someone is that you have no answer to what they are asking. You have not really studied the issue and want the easy way out. They are not worth your time to go into detail. 

How would you answer these next set of questions if someone asked you?

If He is such a great God, why did he make a place called hell? 

How do we know Jesus really walk this planet?

Can you have morals without God? 

Why do bad things happen to good people? 

Did Jesus really rise from the dead?

Is the universe only 10,000 years old?

Can science and faith coexist? 

Why were certain books put in the Bible and why not others?

These are just a few questions that Christian Apologists confront and try to answer. I find it exciting and very thought-provoking to listen to different people that are involved in this field. Some are debates between individuals or groups (my favorite) and others are articles and blogs like this one you are reading from. 

They stretch my perspective on how and what I believe. Sometimes I do not know how to answer a particular question, but I try to be honest and ask if I can get back to them. Then I will do research and try and figure out what it is I believe in a certain subject. 

I think apologetics is a form of worship. We are learning about God on how and who He is. What makes Him tick. Looking at the universe on a dark night and be blown away at His creation. 

Evolution and an Age of Confused Children

Evolution and an Age of Confused Children

Related Christian Apologetic Websites

 

Reasons to Believe: – Astronomer Hugh Ross – Where Science and Faith Converge.

Reasonable Faith: – Dr. William Lane Craig – One of the top Christian Apologetics. His debating skills are second to none.   

RZIM: – Ravi Zacharias – Difficult Questions. Thoughtful Answers.

The Case for Christ: – Best Selling Author Lee Strobel Center for Evangelism and Applied Apologetics.

Discovery Institute: – Dr. Steven Meyer’s – Scientist – Books – ‘Darwins’s Doubt’ and ‘Signature of the Cell’.

Cold-Case Christianity: – J. Warner Wallace. The Evidence Whisperer.

Cross Examined: – Dr. Frank Turek. Free Apologetics Resources.

Dissent from Darwinism: – 1,000 Scientist World Wide Voicing Their Objections to Darwinian Evolution.  

 

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Evolution and an Age of Confused Children

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God Is the Author of Creativity

God Is the Author of Creativity

by | Oct 29, 2019 | Christian Thought, Intelligent Design, Randy Williams

God Is the Author of Creativity

Allow me to share an experience that I had on my way back from East Tennessee to Phoenix this summer.

I took the Southern route through Dallas, Texas and decided to stop at The Dallas Museum of Art. I wanted to make this more than just a 2000 mile “drive back” trip.

The museum had a special exhibit on “Dior, From Paris to The World”. Needless to say, nether words nor images can adequately capture the sheer beauty of the magnificent pieces they have on display.

73 years of genius from the Dior creators. This is high fashion as art.

God Is the Author of Creativity

So, as a Christian I get my clues about beauty, art or esthetic design from God Himself.

God Himself is infinitely beautiful, but also creates incomprehensible beauty.

He is the author of creativity.

Look at the splendor of His creation.

Even though sin entered the world and infected everything we see, we still get glimpses of the extraordinary beauty God designed into creation.

Beauty is for God’s glory and is good:  beauty in and of itself is not a bad thing. I believe Satan hates any beauty unless it is corrupted to only glorify man.

As we are created in His image, we have the gift to create and some of us can create quiet beautiful works of art.

We take the raw materials God created and recombine them into something unique and with talent, and sometimes by accident, we create something extraordinarily beautiful like the Dior show.

“Satan became so impressed with his own beauty, intelligence, power and position that he began to desire for himself the honor and glory that belonged to God alone”. – Ron Rhodes

God Is the Author of Creativity

“We have only seen a creation affected and corrupted by the fall”

God Is the Author of Creativity

 

I enjoyed this spectacular exhibit of the design and craftsmanship of thousands of people who worked for Dior. 

It took various crafts to bring about the vision of the Christian Dior designs.

This artwork is not like looking at a painting by a single artist. It’s seeing the humble seamstress who knows the fabric and how to sew the perfect seam. 

The worship of what man creates is vain and empty because the very ability to create is merely a gift from God. Paradoxically, I still enjoyed and was overwhelmed by an exhibit that for all purposes “glorifies man”.

I dare say it was all done for the glory of man and the creators. And that cast a bit of a stench, almost like a wet dog smell, on the whole thing.

It was not right.

If the loveliest High Creator of all color, material, movement, texture, shine, sparkle, even softness of material is neglected it is a waste!

I really enjoyed Dallas but there was a better show that God had planned for me to see in Midland, Texas.

There is a museum called the “Petroleum Museum” that was created by 5 of the bigger oill firms in the U.S. In terms of museums, this is a real gem.

No expense was spared. The exhibits are massive and 1st class. They cover the history of the petroleum industry and of course, all of its geology.

The best part for me was their mineral and gem displays procured, from underneath the earth. I had no idea they had such a world class exhibit of gems and minerals! 

I can’t say that minerals and gems are a hobby of mine, but as I began to move through this exhibit, I was suddenly overwhelmed at the overall excellence of the collection the scope, and extraordinary beauty of these samples.

God Is the Author of Creativity
God Is the Author of Creativity
God Is the Author of Creativity

God Is the Author of Creativity

 

Specimens ranged in size from an apple to a basketball. Every subsequent glass showcase became more and more beautiful to me; more exotic, more extravagant.

And then… Boom!

I realized that I was looking at a display of God’s design sense and handcrafted beauty; far more extraordinary than what man can create and to beat it all, hidden under the earth, in the dirt! HIDDEN!

My eyes and my soul filled with gratitude and praise for this display of our Heavenly Creator then I realized I seen the best of the best that man could design in Dallas at the Dior show then in the middle of nowhere the greater show, the greater display, of beauty was to be found. I knew that neither stop was an accident as God intended for me to see both exhibits.

I felt God say to me: “Randy be grateful to Me for all of My gifts and remember you are only imitating your Heavenly Father.”

Only God as unique. Only His creation is original.

We are mere toddlers in the playpen. Children in a sand box.

 

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From Atheism to Intelligent Design

From Atheism to Intelligent Design

by | Sep 17, 2019 | Atheism, Evolution, Intelligent Design, John Tarr

From Atheism to Intelligent Design

“The heavens declare the glory of God; the skies proclaim the work of his hands.” Psalm 19

 

I was an atheist until I was 30 years old. My decision to be an atheist was emotional and not an intellectual one as I look back on my life. I suspect most atheists have become atheistic because of an emotional event or events that has happened to them in their lives.

Something that occurred when we were children or even later in our adult years. Painful experiences that have colored our view to such an extent, that we are no longer willing to even entertain the idea of a God. Angry at what has happened to us in this life at the hands of others or events out of our control.

 

How could there be a God if He would let this happen to me?

 

Many times, our anger is so great it turns into rage. A quiet rage is still rage nonetheless. The rock group Pink Floyd said in their song, ‘Time’, “Hanging on in quiet desperation is the English way”. Quiet desperation is deep seated repressed rage and it’s not just the English that suffer from this. Almost all of us have at one time or another in our lives.

God cannot get past this rage that has turned into ambivalence in many, unless we fall on hard times once again in our lives. Funny how bad things that turned us away from God have a way of turning us back to Him once again.

Everyday life has a way of beating down on us as we grow older, to the point that we start asking questions we thought were long gone.

 

There has to be more to life than this! 

The great Christian writer and philosopher C. S. Lewis once said, “God whispers to us in our pleasures, speaks in our conscience, but shouts in our pains. It is His megaphone to rouse a deaf world”

The pain I experienced later in my adult life helped me to think a bit more clearly about this person called God. A crack appeared in my emotional front.

I began to slowly investigate with questions about An Intelligent Designer in this universe. I put my deep-seated anger on the back burner.

From Atheism to Intelligent Design

That is not to say I did not pick it back up again from time to time.

 

I wanted to be angry and pissed off. I wanted to be angry at humanity in general and my childhood. I became co-dependent to rage as that was the only emotion I trusted to make me feel alive. I trusted no human. I trusted no authority because I felt they had all lied to me throughout my life and could not be trusted. That is also how I felt about a supreme being called God. He was right at the very top of the list. I remember flipping Him off in the worst times of my life.

Sound familiar?

I caused so much pain and left a wake of destruction in my life from this anger that I harbored. I consider myself a smart man, but you would never know it from all the bad decisions I have made in those angry times. I was emotionally spent. I wanted peace in my life. I wanted to breathe.  

 

Why are we here? Is this ALL there is?

 

When I finally took a breath, those question surfaced among others. What was behind ALL of this. I always believed in the Big Bang or the start of the universe, but I did not really understand much of the science. How did it start? Who pulled the trigger? Was there an Intelligent Designer behind it or did it just pop into being all on its own? That didn’t make much sense.

To be honest, as I investigated my atheism, I realized that it did not make much sense either. It raised more questions than answers. My atheistic logic was failing. The crack was becoming wider and wider.

I began experimenting in different new age religions to see which ones fit my mental framework. It was like a buffet table of attributes that my mind could entertain. God could be like this and he could be a little sprinkle of that. I liked some of attributes of Hinduism and Buddhism especially reincarnation that they both shared.

There were many off shoots of this new age religious movement and I wanted to check them out since my mind was open to a god like entity. Could I be a god too or work my way to nirvana? 

I was exploring God or so I thought. At least now I was becoming a theist or someone who at least entertained the thought of a god behind the curtain. This was my first step and I think God honored that to some degree because I was now open to go much further.

 

From Atheism to Intelligent Design

From Atheism to Intelligent Design

When I deal with atheists,…

 

…I first deal with the idea of Intelligent Design behind the very fabric of the universe and life on this planet. I have heard some astronomers say the universe looks designed but its not. Biologist say plant and animal life looks designed but its not. Scientist say DNA and RNA looks designed, but they are not.

Where else can you go on this planet at look at something and in your mind say it looks like it was designed by something or someone, but it was not. What kind of mental gymnastics do you have to play to come up with that conclusion unless you have already come up with a conclusion without really look at the proof.

One of the things that archaeologist does when excavating past civilizations at an archaeology site is to look at artifacts and other physical remains and decide if these objects appear to be different from the surrounding ground. In other words, were they designed or come from something else? What sets these things that they are searching for apart from the natural surroundings?

When the probes landed on Mars and began roving around this planet and snapping photographs, did they detect anything that looked like it was designed by other civilizations?

 

Now that would been BIG news!

 

Not only is the start of this universe a BIG question and how it began but also the question of Fine Tuning or the razor edge that all these elements sit to make life possible here on earth. The Fine Tuning of our small solar system on the edge of our galaxy called the Milky Way is truly remarkable in this Fine Tuning. All these pieces have to fit in just right without much playroom or life does not happen.

That is how you detect if the universe had an intelligent design behind it. When you take these and many more proofs of design in our universe and reject them out of hand then another emotional bias is taking hold.

 

From Atheism to Intelligent Design

Woman's Face Breaking Up

The story goes that the great Albert Einstein…

 

…and virtually all the scientific world believed that the universe was a static universe or cosmological constant meaning that the universe had always been here and not moving.

When he met Alexander Friedman in 1922 and then George Lemaitre in 1927, they introduced him to an expanding universe which would later be called the Big Bang.

The cosmological singularity is at that point at which the Big Bang got its start. In January of 1931, astronomer Edwin Hubble meet with Einstein and personally convinced him that the universe was in a state of expansion.

 

Why is this a big deal you might ask?

 

The fact that the universe began at one specific point in time was hard for many scientists to deal with because it came with a huge question. Who and what started it? Who pulled the trigger on the Big Bang? The expanding universe theory was not fully excepted by astronomers and the scientific community until the 1970’s for pretty much the same reason. Most scientist and astronomers are atheists and believe in natural causes. Darwinian Evolution piggy backs off this natural cause belief system.

That was the question that I had to grapple with just like the scientist and astronomers. I may not be as smart as them or have prestigious degrees like they do but, can reason things out really well once I study and research the core of something. Most people have this ability also if they really want answers.

Atheists have faith that there is no God and faith that the natural world will hold all the answers. Is it not interesting that this faith resembles a religion?

My next step went from Intelligent Designer to Jesus Christ. But that is for another time and blog post.

If you would like to read some interesting history about Edwin Hubble, AlbertEinstein and George Lemaitre and the Big Bang. What does it take to convince Albert Einstein he was wrong?

 

Go here for many more Interest Articles on our Blog

 

From Atheism to Intelligent Design

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