Missing God in Baby Jesus

Missing God in Baby Jesus

by | Jan 1, 2020 | Apologetics, John Tarr, Talking With God

Missing God in Baby Jesus

Christmas time is a time for celebration. As humans, we look for things to celebrate or to party for. We want a break from our normal lives and want to participate in something larger than ourselves.

As Christians, our focus should be on the birth of Jesus and not Santa Clause, gifts, Christmas lights and a tree to decorate. We reflect on the baby in the manger and we may even understand what it took for Mary and Joseph to arrive at that place in time and space along with the shepherds and wise men.

“The Word became flesh and made His dwelling among us” John 1:14

This baby had made His entrance into the world in all the usual ways that all human baby’s show up. He had grown inside of Mary from the smallest organisms. Did God inject Himself as a sperm into her womb and then fertilize her egg that started the whole process? We know Jesus grew all his body parts in His human mother and when He had come to term, He was born on a specific moment in time.

If so, that sperm made Him fully God and that human egg from Mary made Him fully human. That sperm had all the DNA and knowledge of God Himself in this teeny tiny package that would mix with the human egg cell with all of the DNA of humanity.

Wrap your head around that.

Why God decided to design human life to exist on this planet in this solar system in this universe is only something He knows. The possibilities must have been endless. God’s Middle knowledge is something only He has. When you factor in man’s ‘free will’ this existence that we are living in realy is the “Best Possible of All Worlds”. 

I know I am playing Monday morning quarterback here because I know how this story ends but for all those people that lived and had contact with Jesus, I do not think anyone truly understood what they had in their midst until He died and was resurrected from the dead.

Here was a small helpless baby with many different types of people staring down at Him. Each one of them had thoughts dancing in their heads of who and what this baby represented and meant for them and everyone else, but I think the full understanding was elusive to them.

Missing God in Baby Jesus

Missing God in Baby Jesus

 

Can you imagine being right there and hearing this baby cry or watch His mother feed and change His dirty diaper? God in the flesh? Who can grasp that concept? One moment you could gaze down on this little helpless human baby wrapped in small blankets and the next you could walk outside of their dwelling and look up into the nighttime sky and realize that baby made ALL of that!

A sky that was so clear and, in a place, and time that no city lights could dim the view of the universe. An amazing perspective with the billions of galaxies all swirling about just out of reach above your head.

“The heavens declare the glory of God” Psalm 19:1

To many of us, we have heard this story of the birth of Jesus so many times that its true impact can be lost on us in the mundane. I try to unpack this truth not only at Christmas time but at other points in time when I am trying to understand the creator of this universe and what He has done for humanity and me in particular.

I am trying to make it fresh. Peel away the God onion and look deeper into what it is we worship. I love exploring God’s universe and checking out all His creative ways. The natural world just cries out Intelligent Designer from the largest to the smallest and everything in between. The complexity of it all is truly breathtaking in its scope.

Who is this entity that we call God?

“When I consider Your heavens, the work of your fingers, the moon, and the stars, which you have set in place, what is mankind that you are mindful of them, human beings that you care for them?” Psalm 8:3

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Two Measures Foolish are a Christian Apologetics group of writers that write from a Christian Perspective and Christian World View using the Bible as our core.

We all travel on an individual journey on this planet earth that God has put into motion from the day we were formed in our mothers’ body. We all have deep questions that need to be answered. Why are we here? Is this all there is?

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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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Two Measures Foolish are a Christian Apologetics group of writers that write from a Christian Perspective and Christian World View using the Bible as our core.

We all travel on an individual journey on this planet earth that God has put into motion from the day we were formed in our mothers’ body. We all have deep questions that need to be answered. Why are we here? Is this all there is?

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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.  

 

Go here for many more Interesting Articles on our Blog

 

Evolution and an Age of Confused Children

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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?

 

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From Atheism to Intelligent Design

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