Comments on: On Dealing with Atheists

By: Alex

Alex — Mon, 20 Oct 2008 20:38:33 +0000

Bodybuilding Is An Answer
Hi Bill. I would like to put in my ‘two bob’ on the matter. I agree that responding to atheists like Catherine Deveny should certainly involve prayer and careful consideration. We can do more harm than good if we are running off of our emotions. I’d like to bring another suggestion to the table- one that is probably not controversial among believers but one that I believe calls for consideration and perhaps discussion: bodybuilding. We need to be co-laboring, building with God what Jesus Christ said He would build- His Church. He said “…the gates of hell shall not prevail against it.” (Matt.16:18). I believe ‘giving an answer’ (1 Pet. 3:15), by writing blogs and letters to editors, but I think we can all see that sometimes they are trampled underfoot. I would point out that the rest of that verse (1 Pet.3:15) says that we are to give an answer to those that ask! Many times our opinions are not wanted and are utterly despised. The Church may also be despised but the gates of hell shall not prevail against it. Sometimes it seems that hell is prevailing over e.g. our letters to the editor.
Alex Parer

By: Roger Marks

Roger Marks — Sat, 02 Aug 2008 06:59:16 +0000

“I’m confident the safeguards built into the Constitution, along with the efforts of those more knowledgeable and articulate than myself, will keep the US the kind of place where I can live and raise my family.”

I am very interested in this comment by Steve Weekes, since in the last 30 years the secular humanist/atheist has fought an all out war against the US constitution which is squarely based on the Christian Faith. They have successfully taken control of the government, education and the media. And what is the end result of their wonderful theology of self? Situation ethics, permissivness, free love, sexually active youth, adultery, fornication, perversion, abomination, abortion, rampant STDs, epidemic HIV/AIDS, increasing teen crime, marriage breakdown, rampant alcohol abuse, child sex abuse, paedophillia, suicide and now homosexuality.

All a result of a failed theology that some evolutionists don’t believe. Thomas Huxley said “Evolution was not an established theory but a tentative hypothesis, an extremely valuable and even probable hypotheisis, but a hypothesis none the less.”

Dr. D’Arcy Thompson concedes “In the study of evolution and in our attempts to trace the descent of the animal kingdom, our scores of years’ study of The Origin of Species has had an unlooked for and disappointing result…This failure to solve the cardinal problems of evolutionary biology is a very curious thing.”

Homer Duncan, a biologist from the Smithsonian Institute said “There is no evidence which would show man developing step by step from lower forms of life. There is nothing to show that man was in any way connected with monkeys…He appeared suddenly and in substantially the same form as he is today…There is no such thing as missing links….There is not the slightest evidence that one of the major groups arose from any other.

Roger Marks

By: Edi Giudetti

Edi Giudetti — Sat, 02 Aug 2008 02:51:21 +0000

There is a time in all our lives when we have the opportunity to believe, our first rejection of faith in God certainly occurred when we were much younger. This decision, often based on nothing other than the in the words of those around them, and often compounded by the little time spent in quiet contemplation (think of todays distracted i-pod generation, just one of the numerous mechanisms influencing the ‘dumbing down’ of society) render’s further enlightenment to truth impossible.

The Bible teaches that we have no excuse, all can believe, but all won’t: “O Jerusalem, Jerusalem, which killest the prophets, and stonest them that are sent unto thee; how often would I have gathered thy children together, as a hen doth gather her brood under her wings, and YE WOULD NOT!” (Lk 13:34)

Rather, when their arguments are realized for their baseless positions they place their fingers in their ears and “la, la, la, I’m not listening” as a child who would hear nothing but themselves.

We need to pray for Steve and the other atheists here.

Edi Giudetti

By: Peter Newland

Peter Newland — Sat, 02 Aug 2008 00:47:07 +0000

Ben, you are on the right track. Viruses: introduce information new to a specific individual organism; may transfer info from one type of organism to another, different type of, organism; but the info is pre-existing info rather than first-time-new info. Most viruses, zillions of them, are harmless or beneficial. The harmful ones that have been researched, like the harmful bacteria tested, tend to be mutations of good viruses/bacteria that have lost information, often lost control of something. So instead of producing a beneficial protein they produce a harmful one, or they just never stop producing a ‘good function’. Too much growth causes cancer or tumour etc; too much secretion of fluid can cause death by exhaustion, dehydration etc.
The Bible says that everything God made was very good. Presumably God loves variety and made all creation to be flexible; able to cope with a wide variation of conditions. Hence the original gene pools would have been super rich and could cope with anything – so there was no disease. But with sin and the ‘fall’ I assume that mutations occurred and then natural selection resulted in the impoverishment of the gene pool. Hence devolution, sickness, extinction etc. Chance can result in loss of some genes from a particular individual, so some organisms will lose resistance to a particular disease. Some will be immune to Leprosy, others to HIV etc. Natural selection can make this better or worse, but it does not give truly new genes. All this is consistent with what we observe in the fossil record.
Evolutionists have a problem if they are unable to demonstrate how new functions (the first: life; fin; leg; wing etc) came into being. Without such evidence, evolution remains a fairy tale for adults who refuse to consider the obvious – that perhaps life is actually designed. The evidence seems conclusive: if no evolutionary trend can be identified in experiments with zillions of generations of super-fast-breeding bacteria tested over many years, then there is zilch chance of the first mammal (with breeding times of weeks) could ever have enough time to evolve. Minor detail also that all known mutations are devolution rather than evolution.
Peter Newland

By: ben

ben — Fri, 01 Aug 2008 13:14:08 +0000

Hi Ewan and Peter,

You both made reference to an organism acquiring new information. I am not really sure what you mean by new information. Within the family of one specific bacteria for example, there will be some that have immunity to antibiotics while others will not. This we know. I am curious to know your explanation as to why some have immunity and others do not if they are all from the same gene pool? It is also interesting to note that some people have immunity to the HIV virus. Why?

Now if your definition of new information relates to the expansion of the gene pool within a species then I suggest you have a read about retro viruses. Apparently our own DNA contains up to 8% of these. There is also a disturbing but never the less interesting integration of a retro virus (KoRV) occurring to our beloved Koalas as we speak. The problem is there are no positive benefits to this virus so the future of the Koala maybe bleak. If a retro virus integrates itself into the germ line of the host (ie egg, sperm cells) then all it offspring will carry that extra DNA. Now as a theory, imagine that this retro virus had some positive effect on the host and the environment had changed in a way that suited this change. What might you think would happen? Am I suggesting a new species here? Not at all but it will be slightly genetically different from other Koalas. Only time will tell us what happens after that.

The truth is we will probably never witness the evolution of a new multi cellular species because of the lengths of time and environmental factors that are needed for it to happen. There is no experiment that I am aware of that will demonstrate it either. The best we can do is look at what has happened over time and try and makes some sense from it.

I am currently reading through various articles on CreationOnTheWeb to get a different view on things.

Ben Green

By: Catherine dodd

Catherine dodd — Fri, 01 Aug 2008 12:59:30 +0000

Dear Bill, Thanks again for the enormous effort you put into this site, I have only briefly broused this argument as my baby is keeping me very busy, but I have a few small points I’d like to make.
Firstly, one of the most overworked atacks against Christianity is the ‘I/my family member/friend/ were abused or mistreated by a Priest/Christian/in a Christian school. I do not dismiss their suffering, but I find the utilisation of it as an excuse to attack Christianity hypocritical. Do these people deride and condemn education as a whole because of the abuse in schools, or homosexuals because of the high incidence of homosexual pedophilia.
People who choose to reject Christianity because it’s teachings make them uncomfortable will find any excuse to do so. Many even go as far back as the reformation.
Secondly the attacks on WYD and its pilgrims are a gross embarassment for Australians. Almost every nation in the world was represented at this event, you would imagine that we would want to give the pilgrims a good impression of our country. Instead, a vast proportion of media reports spoke of bratty sooking and complaining, along with offensive comments. We had two pilgrims from a small community in New Caledonia called ‘The Beatitudes’ staying with us. They were the most grateful, polite, innocent women you could meet. In the week they were with us we were introduced to the other members of their community. One of these members was a deightful, gentle, shy french nun. You can only imagine our disgust and embarassment when this nun had a condom thrown in her face by an ‘anti Pope’ protestor. In her graciousness the nun smiled at them and kept walking. I ask you to consider honestly and without bigotry whether the atheist or the Christian is truly ‘insulting, offending and vilifying’ as argued in the first few comments in this piece.
Catherine Dodd

By: Bill Muehlenberg

Bill Muehlenberg — Fri, 01 Aug 2008 05:47:02 +0000

Thanks Steve

But I am afraid your final parting shots also backfire big time, and do great disservice to the atheist cause. Consider your mention of medicine, and your silly implication that faith is anti-intellectual and therefore anti-medicine, while unbelief is somehow rational and therefore pro-medicine. Let me refer you to just some Bible-believing scientists and their contributions (directly or indirectly) to medicine:

Louis Pasteur (bacteriology, pasteurisation, vaccination and immunization)
Joseph Lister (antiseptic surgery)
Rudolph Virchow (pathology)
Robert Boyle (chemistry)
Georges Cuvier (comparative anatomy)
Gregor Mendel (genetics)
James Simpson (chloroform, gynecology)

And then there is the creation of the Red Cross, the founding of hospitals, and the charitable works of many, all springing from a robust Christian faith. But since you obviously have a built in bias against people of faith, then I guess you prefer that all these contributions to medicine were not made?

As to Constitutional safeguards, you are again out of your depth. It was the Judeo-Christian worldview that gave rise to the US Constitution, and the many benefits derived from it. It is exactly because of biblical Christianity that you enjoy the many blessings of Western democracy in general and the US in particular.

So respectfully, I can see why you are bowing out of this debate. Your dwindling supply of threadbare atheist cliches and objections really do not measure up (these atheist red herrings and straw men never were very persuasive).

May I humbly suggest that in the name of intellectual integrity and rationality, you reconsider your blind faith in scientism, and let the evidence lead where it may? Having a faith-based opposition to evidence which rattles your naturalist worldview is simply going to be too hard to sustain, and will cause you a lot of grief.

Bill Muehlenberg, CultureWatch

By: Peter Newland

Peter Newland — Fri, 01 Aug 2008 04:49:57 +0000

Thanks Steve,
MRSA is real PROOF of natural selection for a beneficial mutation. MRSA’s has an impaired ability to absorb food, and so is safe from a fatal dose of antibiotic! It is less fit than it’s cousins with a healthy appetite. I.e. it shows devolution not evolution: it has no new info.
Can you find “an example of a genetic mutation or an evolutionary process which can be seen to increase the information in the genome”? Prof Richard Dawkins couldn’t answer! Can you? If not, maybe you should question your faith in evolution and check out the Bible.
Peter Newland

By: Ewan

Ewan — Fri, 01 Aug 2008 04:22:13 +0000

The other mechanism involved in the development of antibiotic resistance in bacteria that I should have mentioned, is that of selection working on a population that contains a pre-existing percentage of resistant bacteria. In this example too there is no nett gain of information.

Ewan McDonald.

By: Steve Weeks, DDS

Steve Weeks, DDS — Fri, 01 Aug 2008 03:40:38 +0000

Well, Bill and Ewan,
You can give yourselves a mutual pat on the back. I do not have the necessary patience to carry on a discussion here. Others more knowledgeable and articulate than myself would probably not do much better. Enjoy your world view, and feel free to avail ourselves of the fruits of the labors of those who use their minds to improve the human condition. I’m thinking here of medicine, in particular. I’m confident the safeguards built into the Constitution, along with the efforts of those more knowledgeable and articulate than myself, will keep the US the kind of place where I can live and raise my family.
Best regards,
Steve Weeks