I have been delaying writing this review because there is so much to write about, so many things to discuss that it’s almost overwhelming.  Where to start?!  First off, let me just say that I loved it.  It was fun and beautiful and funny (the whole audience was laughing out loud all throughout the movie) and fantastically creative and generally very clean[1] with some positive messages, and to top it off, it is pregnant with rich opportunities for discussion about faith and God and worldviews and prayer and miracles and … well, like I said, it’s just pregnant with opportunities.

How Oz Connects with the Bible

Let’s start with some parallels between Oz and the Bible, more specifically Jesus.

Oz and Jesus both save people.  They both set captives free (Finley, Isaiah 61:1) and make the lame to walk (China girl, John 5:1-15).  They both are a fulfillment of prophecy (Isaiah 61) and acquire followers (Finley and China girl, the disciples).  Both have very public deaths and resurrections.  And in both cases, it’s important people believe in them to be saved (Glinda tells Oz that belief in him will be the people’s salvation; John 3:16).

Oh and this was too cool not to at least mention even though it’s not about Oz and Jesus:  the scene where Evanora eats the poisoned apple and transforms bears striking parallels to when Eve at the forbidden fruit in the garden—not just because they ate forbidden fruit, but why they ate it, and what changed when they ate it, and the loss of innocence, etc.

How Oz DOESN’T Connect with the Bible

For all the parallels between Oz and Jesus however, there are some major, significant differences.

I would say there are three major differences between Oz and Jesus.

1. Their power:  Oz was a fake and Jesus was not.  Oz’s “miracles” were all scams, tricks and cons.  Jesus’ miracles were actually miraculous – he even raised the dead.
2. Their hearts:  Oz is a man of very, shall we say, questionable morals who is redeemed (or at least much improved) in the end because of the support and belief of others who are better than he is.  Jesus is a man of UNquestionable character, morals and integrity.  He isn’t in need of redemption, yet he saves and redeems all who would look to Him.
3.  Their death and resurrection:  Oscar Diggs (aka Oz) faked his death so that Oz the Great and Powerful Wizard could live.  He never truly died, nor resurrected, but faked it all.  He then got his closest followers to lie and hide the secret.  Jesus did die, an excruciating death.  And Jesus DID rise from the dead.  He died and rose so that others could live (so different from Oz who faked his death so that he could live on as the Wizard).  And Jesus’ followers didn’t have to lie to cover for him; it was the truth – a truth they died defending, not pretending.

All that Oz pretends to do or be, Jesus does and is.  Oz pretends to love; Jesus IS love.   Oz pretends to do miracles; Jesus does them.  Oz manipulates and lies, Jesus is the Truth.  Oz is motivated by greed, Jesus by love.  I could do this all day, but I think you get the point.  Their actions are similar, but the heart and motivation behind those actions is so different, it’s polar.

In fact, given the differences, you could make a good case for saying Oz is more closely related to (or symbolic of) the anti-Christ.   Of course, that makes it sound like I think the movie (and Oz) was evil…and that’s not what I want to say – but it is an interesting thought for discussion, depending on who you’re talking with.  It’s just an interesting thought to consider that the anti-Christ is expected to come in a way that is deceptive, and makes people think that he is the Christ by doing things Christ could do and so forth…

What’s the worldview of Oz?

A worldview is just the overall perspective from which you or I see and interpret the world[2].  Sometimes it’s difficult to figure out the worldview of a movie or a book.  Sometimes it’s hard to decipher what perspective the author or story has and how they are interpreting God and the world and how it all works.  Other times however, it’s pretty easy to sort out.  Oz is one of those easier ones (which means it’s a great opportunity to have this discussion with your kids and help them learn to discern – a habit which will serve them well in life!).

In the movie, you have a group of people who believe in miracles, prophecy and a wizard who will save them.  However, we get a look behind the curtain, so to speak, at the wizard and we see that he isn’t what he appears to be, or what they think he is.  The wizard is a fraud, his miracles are just tricks and his motives are usually very selfish.    If the wizard is analogous for God, and it seems he is, then the worldview presented by the movie is that God isn’t real.  He is just something people believe in because it makes them feel better and gives them courage.  It would even appear that the movie is suggesting that Jesus’ disciples lied to cover for him and that He never rose from the dead.

The movie suggests that the only real magic (or religion) is science (oxymoronic, right?!).  Oz tells China Girl, “I’m sorry.  I can’t grant wishes.  I’m not that kind of wizard. Where I come from there aren’t any real wizards, except one, Thomas Edison.  He could look into the future and make it real.  …I can give gifts though.”  Oz himself seems to value science more than magic and considers it the true magic.  This is very much a product of the Enlightenment.

Interestingly enough, China Girl shows her disappointment and resignation to this new system of values where science is the highest “magic”.  “I wish you were the kind that granted wishes, but that’s almost as good.”  It’s not that she thinks gifts and logic and science are bad, she values them.  It’s just that they aren’t as good as wishes and faith and magic.  She settles.  She resigns herself to it, but she is truly a little disappointed.  I think that’s a pretty telling statement about humanity.  We are made for the divine, made for faith in God, made for a God of wonders.  He Himself made reason and science and nature and those are truly good things, but they aren’t higher truths or better things.  They are the created, and whenever they usurp the Creator we will feel a sense of loss and disappointment.

Summary

As a man, I love Oz’ progress – because he really does grow and mature.   As a god, however, I am bothered by his fall, his failure and his deception.

Questions for Discussion based on the review:

• Is belief in God just something that helps the masses?
• In the movie you get real magic and power (from the witches – both good and bad), and you get Oz’s cheap imitations which aren’t magic but science (with a little con thrown in).  When something appears miraculous in real life, how do you tend to perceive it?  As miraculous, or are you looking for the logical explanation behind it?  Do you believe there are real miracles, instances of divine intervention in the world, or is it all a matter of science and nature?
• What do you think?  Is Oz good or not?  Why?
• Oz faked his death and resurrection.  Do you believe Jesus died and rose like the Bible says?  Are you aware of any of the evidence that it’s all true?  (There is a lot!  If you are curious, Lee Strobel has written several books that give the historical evidence.)
• Would you rather have a God who grants wishes or a good man who gives gifts?
• Would you be disappointed if you were told there was nothing but science, that God wasn’t real and miracles didn’t happen?  Or, if that’s what you believe anyway, would it excite you to learn that God and miracles are real?
• How does your opinion of Oz change based on whether you see him as a man, or a god (or symbolic of a god)?
• It’s also a great exercise to walk someone through the idea of worldview and challenge them to discern for themselves how the movie perceives the world, god, religion, etc.

Additional Questions and/or Topics for Discussion from the movie:   

• The dangers of misleading someone’s heart:  What did Oz do that hurt Theodora?  Did he wrong her?  What things should he have done differently?  What was Theodora’s role in her own heart ache?  Is there anything she should have/could have done differently?  Is she partly to blame?
• Theodora was a model of belief in the beginning, but she was transformed by anger when she was disappointed.  Have you known people (or even professing Christians) like her?  What does that tell you about the power of disappointment?  How can you guard against it?  Are there right ways and wrong ways to keep yourself from being disappointed?
• Is it ever OK to lie or deceive?  (Glinda the good seemed to think that it was good to deceive the people by letting them think the Wizard was really great and powerful.)
• Glinda ended up with a wizard that wasn’t quite what she was expecting, yet she made the best of it.  How can she inspire you to make the best of your surprises and disappointments?
• China girl was the smallest and definitely the most fragile in the group, yet she ended up being significant, if not key, to everyone’s salvation.  How does that encourage you?  How does it challenge your perceptions of others who seems “less”?  What did Jesus have to say about the smallest and the least?
• Is faith all that matters, or does it matter what your faith is in?  Is faith just a tonic for the masses?

Click here to see quotes from the movie.

 by Stacey Tuttle 

The post Oz the Great and Powerful – Review appeared first on Shepherd Project Ministries.

by Craig Smith, Ph.D.

It’s that time of year again:  time for Hollywood to crank out the horror fests, TV series to run spooky specials and retail stores to plumb the financial depths of our fascination with the macabre.

Halloween is a strange time of year.   Otherwise normal neighbors suddenly transform their homes into celebrations of the ghoulish and gruesome.  Sweet-faced little children dress up as ancient hags or painfully departed spirits.  And it all centers around getting sugary confections in enough quantity to keep the dental industry afloat for another year.  Can you imagine a better illustration of the old adage “a spoonful of sugar makes the medicine go down”?  But in this case, it’s not exactly medicine that slips in with the candy, is it?

My goal here isn’t to bash Halloween or to argue that Christians have no business letting their children go trick-or-treating.  I do think these are important questions, but there are lots of resources out there to help you deal with those questions.  In fact, we’ve set up a webpage that pulls together a number of helpful resources for you to consider (http://www.shepherdproject.com/resources/wordpress/?p=624).  But my goal here is to use Halloween as an opportunity to delve into a much deeper issue, an issue that continues to impact our culture long after Wal-Mart has torn down the cobwebs and put up the Christmas trees:  our dangerous fascination with the occult.

The word occult came into the English language from the Latin term occultus, referring to knowledge of hidden things. In the strictest sense, it is used to distinguish between scientific knowledge which is measurable and the knowledge of metaphysical/religious/paranormal things which are not thought to be measurable.  In that sense, the word occult could refer to Christian beliefs along with pagan beliefs.  However, among Christians, it usually has a more specific meaning, referring to a wide range of beliefs and practices that deal intentionally with supernatural forces that are not aligned with God.  This would include Satanism, of course, but also witchcraft,[1] necromancy,[2] magic,[3] et.al.  In this sense, then, the word occult refers to anything that traffics with demonic spirits.

The connection between the occult and demons is not always overt, of course, and many people who are happy to consider themselves “occultists” would take serious issue with this association. However, there is good biblical grounds for equating the two.

To begin with, God’s position on these practices is quite clear:

When you enter the land the LORD your God is giving you, do not learn to imitate the detestable ways of the nations there.  Let no one be found among you who makes his son or daughter pass through the fire, who practices divination or sorcery, interprets omens, engages in witchcraft, or casts spells, or who is a medium or spiritist or who consults the dead.  Anyone who does these things is detestable to the LORD, and because of these detestable practices the LORD your God will drive out those nations before you.  You must be blameless before the LORD your God. (Deuteronomy 18:9-13)

You shall not allow a sorceress/witch[4] to live. (Exo. 22:18)

Of course, just because God is opposed to something doesn’t necessarily mean that it is directly connected to demonic forces, but this association becomes clear at other points in Scripture.  For instance:

“But for the cowardly and unbelieving and abominable and murderers and immoral persons and sorcerers and idolaters and all liars, their part will be in the lake that burns with fire and brimstone, which is the second death.” (Revelation 21:8)

Here, the eternal punishment for such people is said to take place in the lake of fire, imagery which is consistently associated in Scripture with the devil and his fallen angels (cf. Mat. 25:41, Rev. 20:10).  Of course, the above list also includes several kinds of people such as the cowardly, the unbelieving, the immoral, etc. who are not necessarily occult practitioners. But a consistent, though often overlooked, teaching of the Bible is simply that the world is divided into two kingdoms:  the kingdom of darkness (over which Satan rules) and the Kingdom of God.  This is spelled out in Jesus’ famous either-or statements, such as: “He who is not against us is for us” (Mk. 9:40).  Contrary to some popular interpretations, this does not mean that anyone who is not blatantly anti-Christian is part of the Kingdom.  Rather it means that there are only two kinds of people in the world:  those that are for Christ and those who are against Christ.  And, as Ephesians 2:1-10 makes clear, anyone who is not with Christ is enslaved by and under the control of Satan and his forces.  Consequently, it must be recognized that the Bible consistently associates the occult practices we’re talking about here with demonic powers.

Now, just because these occult practices are associated with Satanic forces doesn’t mean that their practitioners are aware of what they’re dabbling with.  In my opinion, most demonic spirits are intentional about hiding their true nature and, by extension, the true nature of the occult practices that so many people today are interested in.

And the interest in occultism is at an all-time high.  In some ways this is surprising given the scientific bent of our present culture, but in other ways it’s not surprising at all.  A heavy-handed emphasis on naturalistic science as the only way to know anything worth knowing has spawned a back-lash interest in more arcane subjects.  The fact is that naturalistic science’s answer to the great questions in life – questions like why am I here? what is the significance of my life? – is profoundly unsatisfying.  Naturalistic science says that we are nothing more than the by-product of random forces and that, consequently, there can be no transcendent meaning to our lives.  Is it any surprise that, in the face of this teaching, people turn to forces that purport to give them some control over the world?  Perhaps more importantly, the interest in the occult is a sign that most people don’t really buy into the meta-narrative that science offers.  Most people cannot escape the sense that we were made for a purpose and that there is more to the world we inhabit than what can be put under a microscope or subjected to a chemical analysis.

If there’s any question that people believe – or at least need to believe – there is more to life than naturalistic science teaches, take a look at the TV Guide.  Current or recent shows include Supernatural, The Vampire Diaries, Ghost Hunters, Ghost Adventures, Paranormal State, Haunted Travels, Destination Truth, Fact or Faked, Charmed, A Haunting, Sabrina the Teenaged Witch, et.al.

But as Christians we must ask:  why do people turn to the occult rather than to Christ?  Unfortunately, part of the problem must be laid at the feet of His followers.  We have not always done a good job presenting the meta-narrative of Christianity in a way that really conveys the biblical truth or resonates with a culture starving for meaning and significance.  When the Gospel has been reduced to “you get forgiven of your sins and you get to go to heaven why you die”, is it any wonder that people turn away in disappointment?  Is it any wonder that they turn in desperation to charlatans and quacks – and occasionally the real and very scary deal – looking for hope that their lives here and now can somehow be more than an exercise in pointless futility, an endless experience of being cosmic flotsam, tossed to and fro by forces outside not only ours, but everyone’s, control?

The Gospel is so much more than a fire insurance policy.  It is so much more than the mere offer of forgiveness.  In fact, the Bible never once mentions “the Gospel” and “forgiveness” together.  Instead, it speaks regularly about the Gospel of the Kingdom.  In other words, the heart of the good news is the announcement that because of what Jesus has done on the cross, we no longer need to be enslaved to the kingdom of darkness and its forces.  Instead, by trusting in Jesus’ sacrifice we can be set free to be participants in the now and coming Kingdom of God, living a radically different life now and forever, entering into a relationship with a King who not only longs to relate to us personally, but who can provide for us whatever we truly need.  His is, after all, real power and of a kind that dwarfs the pathetic promises held out by horoscopes or psychics or mediums.

Though our culture’s interest in the occult seems to peak around Halloween, it never really wanes all that much the other eleven months of the year.  And there is an unexpected upside to this interest:  it provides us a natural point of conversation with so many people in our culture.  They are already interested in spiritual things, for the reasons discussed above.  And because they are interested, we have a natural starting point for sharing the good news with them.  Not the fire-insurance good news but the real good news that the Bible teaches:  news of redemption and of hope and of meaning, significance and power that transforms life not only our here-after but our here-and-now.

For more in-depth discussion of the fullness of the Gospel as Jesus proclaimed it, pick up Craig’s book The Kingdom for the Kingless or the video series Freedom From & Freedom For at the Shepherd Project resource store:  www.shepherdproject.com/shop

[2] Necromancy is a form of magic in which the practitioner attempts to communicate with the spirit of a deceased human, either as an attempt to gain knowledge or to control them for the necromancer’s purposes.  Séances and the consultation of Ouija boards fall under the broader category of necromancy.

[3] Magic is a rather broad term that relates to the use of supernatural methods – rituals, spells, the invocation of spirits, etc. – to manipulate natural forces.

[4] The Hebrew word here (kashaph) refers to a female practitioner of sorcery which is essentially equivalent to necromancy (see above).

The post Something Wicked This Way Comes… appeared first on Shepherd Project Ministries.

Movie Review

Don’t ever doubt that God has a sense of humor. In case you’ve ever doubted, this should settle any lingering uncertainties: God has used Ben Stein to offer what is quite probably the most significant contribution to the evolution/creation debate ever: a documentary entitled Expelled: No Intelligence Allowed.

I should probably clarify that a bit. By “most significant,” I don’t mean most exhaustive or well-reasoned or logically rigorous. What I mean is, “most likely to have a far-reaching impact.” Fast-paced, funny and wide-ranging, Expelled is a surprisingly engaging treatment of the current debate about the legitimacy of intelligent design theories in the classroom, the laboratory and in our culture.

Ben Stein is hardly the guy you would pick to do this. I’ve always found him a bit quirky. Intelligent – certainly. Quick-witted – to be sure. However, I’ve never pegged him as a particularly religious fellow and certainly not one to get caught up in what is commonly perceived to be a battle between the scientific establishment and Christian fundamentalists. Stein, as his name suggests, is Jewish, but I’ve never seen anything in his game-show hosting, news commentary, speech-writing or political activism to suggest that he is a practicing Jew. Still, Stein has definitely made an important contribution that people of faith will undoubtedly find themselves indebted to in coming days.

Essentially, Expelled documents the current climate of hostility and suppression that is faced by any scientist whose work leads him or her to contemplate the possibility that life on earth is the product of design rather than random chance. Through a wide range of interviews and amusing visual illustrations, Stein introduces viewers to an under-acknowledge fact: the scientific community in the United States has consistently and systematically censored, blacklisted and punished anyone who dares to question Darwinian evolution. Viewers unfamiliar with this debate will also be introduced to the surprising truth that such dissenters are far more common, and more impeccably credentialed, than we have been led to believe. Stein doesn’t interview pastors or apologists or seminary professors. He interviews world-class molecular biologists, physicists, mathematicians and medical doctors. These are not just people who got their degrees at prestigious schools, they are people who taught at some of the most respected scientific institutions on the planet: the Smithsonian, Oxford, Rutgers and Princeton to name but a few.

Note the past tense of the term however: they once taught at such institutions. This is no longer the case and the evidence points to the fact that they were dismissed because they had the courage to suggest that many empirical observations cannot be accounted for apart from the “design hypothesis.”

If there is a weakness in the film, it may be that Stein is a bit heavy-handed in his presentation, such that some of hard-core evolutionists look a bit silly. However, since his own commentary is fairly sparse and it is the words of the evolutionists themselves which are laid out for viewers to interact with, it’s difficult to find much fault with Stein at this point. Where the scientific establishment looks intolerant and even diabolic, it is their own statements, always presented in context so that no-one can cry foul, which are to blame for this fact.

And make no mistake about it, the Darwinian evolutionists are given at least their fair share of opportunities to tell their side of the story. Stein has done an impressive job of collecting interviews with some of the best minds in science on both sides of this issue. His interviews with Richard Dawkins, author of The God Delusion, are particularly fascinating. In fact, an extended conversation with Dawkins is the last interview in the film, so the Darwinian evolutionists were even given what was essentially the last word, at least in terms of the technical discussion. Ironically, Dawkins is seen there to make an inadvertent argument in favor of the scientific legitimacy of intelligent design (which he vigorously opposes), though it is done in reference to the possibility of the pan-spermia theory. For those of you unfamiliar with it, this theory hypothesizes that life arose on earth after having been seeded here by intelligent beings from another world. While this may sound like science fiction, a fact Stein cannot resist commenting on, this is an accepted, respected scientific theory which is discussed, and even favored, by some of the world’s most respected scientific minds. This theory begs the question, of course, of how this “parent” alien life came to be in the first place. Dawkins’ answer? Something to the effect of: “it would have to have arisen by Darwinian  evolution…because something can’t just spring into existence from nothing.”

Wait…but isn’t that exactly what Darwinian evolution believes happened? It is. Yet Stein resists the urge to point out such glaring inconsistencies, leaving it to the viewer to catch and consider them for his or herself, another point in favor of this excellent documentary.

But back to Dawkins: so, while Darwinian evolution may be unable to explain life on this planet, which Dawkins seems to accept as a genuine – though unproven – possibility, it is assumed that it will be sufficient to explain life on some other, unobservable planet. Hmmm…and it’s the intelligent design theorists who are being Expelled! for being “unscientific”!

This is a movie worth seeing. It is one of the most interesting documentaries I’ve ever seen on any subject and the fact that it is playing in major theaters around the country is simply astounding. Whether you’re a six-day creationist, an atheistic materialist, or anything in between, the societal implications of the facts exposed in this  movie are both alarming and thought-provoking. Though I’m sure some will accuse it of being such, this film is not religious propaganda by any stretch of the imagination. It is simply good journalism: solid research, excellent interviewing and a top-notch production that keeps the viewer engaged from beginning to end.

See it!

by Craig Smith

Shepherd Project Ministries

The post Expelled: No Intelligence Allowed! appeared first on Shepherd Project Ministries.

(By Stacey Tuttle)

Shepherd Project last month featured a video interview with Craig Smith regarding the book and movie Angels and Demons, with a follow-up in his blog. These are still available on line. In light of these resources, this movie review will simply list a few quotes from the movie and some additional questions for discussion. This movie provides so much fuel for provocative discussion that this list will be shamefully incomplete, but hopefully get you started.

Quotes:

• “Do you believe in God? … Not what religion [or man] says about God…But do you believe in God?” Camerlengo to Robert Langdon
• “Faith is a gift that I have yet to receive.” Robert Langdon
• “All believe God is on their side – Allah, Buddah, God – they always say it’s in God’s name.”  Hitman
• “Science and religion are not enemies.”
• “The church is flawed, but only because man is flawed.” Cardinal Strauss
• (After Cardinal Strauss thanks God for sending Langdon to protect the Church) “I don’t believe he sent me, Father. (Strauss replies, “my son, of course he did.”)”
• Camerlengo describes a “modern miracle” as “simple faith and men working together.”
• “If science is allowed to choose… power of creation, what’s left for God?”

Questions:

• Science and religion – the whole movie centers around whether or not they are opposing forces.
• What is your perspective? What do you do when science seems to contradict religion – does one “win” over the other?
• The church (or at least its leaders) in the movie appears to be threatened by science. Do you think God is threatened or challenged by science?
• Are science and God both such huge forces that there isn’t room for both of them in the universe?
• Camerlengo says to “open the doors and tell the world the truth” – ironic statement coming from someone who is lying. However, it does raise the issue of honesty in the church (and within science as well). Do you feel that religion (or science) is less than honest? Is it hiding something?
• Is it the same for things to be hidden verses lied about?
• Cardinal Strauss seems to prefer hiding some things or at least limiting some public knowledge – which seems dishonest and wrong at some points in the movie, but is there possibly some wisdom in limitations? Is all knowledge valuable for everyone to have?
• (Think back to the Garden of Eden, Eve, Tree of the knowledge of good and evil…) What are the applications for this in your life?
• It is said that the truth will set you free – is Camerlengo right to encourage the church leaders to make their decisions, processes, etc. more public?
• There is a strange way in which the outside world keeps the church honest in the movie (Robert Langdon has a key role in that) – do you feel this happens in real life too?
• How do you feel the movie portrays the church and its leaders? More importantly, how do you feel about the church and its leaders?
• Is the church a good tradition, or is it something more?
• Are church leaders men of God who seek to truly do his will or do they simply use his name and “will” as a licence to do their own will? (The hitman says that the men who hire him always claim god is on their side.)
• Are they men who seek to defend a tradition or a person?
• Charismatic leadership – what does the movie imply about leadership and how easily we are duped into believing in someone?
• The church elders were nearly all very eager to bend the rules and make exceptions to promote the Camerlengo because they were so impressed by his recent acts of bravery. However, he hadn’t necessarily proven himself through the test of time as tradition required. Yet, isn’t there a pull toward youth, appearance, charisma and charm which seems to trump age, wisdom, steadfastness and discipline? Do you feel we are generally quick to overlook any flaw (or at least many flaws) if only a person is charming and attractive – or do you think we are really character driven in our choices for leadership?

The post Angels and Demons – Quotes & Discussion Questions appeared first on Shepherd Project Ministries.

The post Legacy of Darwin Intelligent Design Conference Interview appeared first on Shepherd Project Ministries.

by Craig A. Smith

On Monday, March 9, 2009 President Barak Obama lifted restrictions on the use of federal funds for human embryonic stem cell research. Reaction to this move has been understandably mixed. On the one hand, some feel that removing these restrictions may lead to significant advances in the treatment of a wide variety of medical conditions. On the other hand, some feel that they are now being forced to contribute tax dollars to research which requires the destruction of human beings. Unfortunately, the national media coverage of Obama’s decision and the reactions to it have not adequately represented the complexity of the ethical and theological issues involved.

As Christians, it is important that we be able to make informed decisions about where we stand on this debate, not only so that we can stand firmly on what is right, but also so that  we can take advantage of this strategic intersection between our faith and our culture. Many non-Christians are currently willing to talk about the moral issues raised by this debate and this can easily serve as a natural bridge to sharing the Gospel. This short article is intended to serve as a primer to help Christians understand the basic terms and issues involved in this conversation. It is also intended to be a resource to help Christians take advantage of the opportunity this issue provides for making an impact for the Kingdom in our spheres of influence.

What exactly did President Obama do?

On Monday, March 9, President Obama issued an executive order reversing a previous ban President George Bush placed on the use of federal funds for research on human embryonic stem cell lines created after 2001. In effect, Bush prohibited researchers from obtaining federal funds to create new lines of human embryonic stem cells or to do studies using lines that were created by private companies after 2001. By lifting this ban, Obama has opened the door for federal funding to again be used to create and study new lines of human embryonic stem cells. How much federal money will actually be spent on this kind of research and to precisely what ends cannot be known until grants have been applied for.

What is a human embryonic stem cell line?

Human embryonic stem cell lines are cultures of cells derived from early-stage (i.e. 4-5 days old) human embryos. At this stage, human stem cells are pluripotent, meaning that they have the potential to develop into any of the 200+ types of cells which make up the human body. This characteristic has long been thought to be lost once a cell differentiates into a particular type of tissue, although very recent discoveries have now shown that even differentiated cells can be reprogrammed to return to their original pluripotent state (see below). Until this new discovery, stem cells were the only known source of pluripotence. This is the primary characteristic of stem cells that has made them an object of such intense interest.

At present, human embryonic stem cells are produced via a cloning technique that produces exact genetic replicas of the previous cells. For this reason, stem cells are said to belong to “lines”; e.g. since all cells cloned from the original human embryonic stem cell “X” derive from, and are genetically identical to, that original cell, they are all said to belong to the “X” line.

What is the interest in human embryonic stem cell lines?

Because they are pluripotent, stem cells can theoretically be made to turn into any of the 200+ types of cells that make up the human body. All that is required is knowing which chemical factors cause a cell to become, for instance, heart tissue rather than skin tissue. This means that potentially any kind of needed cell can be produced: new heart cells, new skin cells, new bone-marrow cells, etc. In theory, then, stem cells might someday make possible the replacement or regeneration of lost or damaged tissue or even of whole organs. Treatments or cures for everything from cancer to diabetes to asthma are envisioned.

What is the source of the controversy?

Human embryonic stem cells are obtained, as their name suggests, from human embryos: essentially human eggs fertilized by human sperm.1 However, obtaining the stem cells requires the destruction of the embryo. Since many people consider human embryos to be human beings, albeit at a very early stage of development, obtaining stem cells in this manner is thought to be done at the cost of a human life.

How should Christians view human embryos?

It is clear that the Bible places a high value on human life which the Bible seems to understand as beginning prior to birth. Exo. 21:22-25 mandates that if someone’s actions lead to an injurious or stillborn birth, the guilty individual is to be fined or executed accordingly, in keeping with the eye for an eye, life for a life system of restitution. Psa. 139:11 and Jer. 1:5 indicate that God takes note of – and is involved with – individuals while they are still being formed in their mothers’ wombs. Neither the Old nor New Testaments make a clear distinction between human beings in utero and ex utero; i.e. between the unborn and the born. The same words are used to describe human beings both before and after their birth.

However, it must be admitted that the Bible is not a scientific treatise on human development and that the number of applicable references is limited. Thus even Bible believing Christians can and have advanced arguments for treating human embryos differently than human fetuses or infants. In technical terms, zygotes are fertilized eggs from fertilization to implantation whereas embryos are that phase of development from implantation (which occurs within the first week after fertilization) to about eight weeks, at which point all of the major structures and organ systems have formed and the fetus stage begins. Because their major organ systems are undeveloped, embryos are not capable of developing or surviving on their own and this is often a major factor in the argument that human embryos are not really human beings. But is this a solid argument?

In the opinion of this author, the most logical point to identify as the beginning of human life is the moment of fertilization. Developmentally, there are significant differences between not only zygotes, embryos and fetuses, but also between just-born infants and post-pubescent adults. The former is not capable of reproduction whereas the latter is capable of reproduction. Surely this is to be considered a major developmental difference, yet we consider both just-born infants and post-pubescent adults to be human. It is true that embryos cannot survive independently, but this is also true of just-born infants as well as even relatively late-stage fetuses, whom almost no-one hesitates to designate as human beings. Neither are human beings who have sustained major injury and require the use of life-support systems considered non-human.2 Thus, distinctions made on the basis of development or independent viability do not seem to be solid ground for distinguishing between what is and is not human life. Rather, as George and Tollefsen ask in their non-Christian exploration of embryos: when is there a single biological system with a developmental trajectory, or active developmental program, toward the mature stage of a human being?3 Their answer – which it should again be noted is made on the basis of scientific rather than Christian considerations – is that this moment is the point of fertilization:

…the zygote does not itself serve a functional role in the biological economy of either parent; it is a separate organism, distinct and whole, albeit at the very beginning of a long process of development to adulthood. If it is provided with resources needed by all organisms, namely nutrition and a reasonably hospitable environment, it will continue (assuming adequate health) to grow and develop.

In this sense, George and Tollefsen argue, a human embryo is an independent organism that differs from an adult human only in the degree of progress towards a goal that will not be fully attained until years later. This very practical definition strongly argues that human life, at all its various stages, is precisely that: the life of a human being. Consequently, any scientific research which depends on the destruction of embryos in actuality depends on the destruction of human beings and should be, for this reason, morally objectionable to all Christians. Even if all the hypothetical benefits of human embryonic stem cell research actually come to fruition (about which even many secular researchers are skeptical), the manner by which these benefits were realized will always be problematic. How many people would be comfortable receiving medical treatments developed as a result of the horrific experiments conducted on Jewish concentration camp prisoners by their Nazi captors? If there is a substantive difference between these two instances, it is not immediately obvious.

Is there a middle ground?

The national press has concentrated on the ways in which President Obama’s executive order will advance research that was hindered by President Bush’s policy. However, there have been recent advances in this field that have been significantly underreported, and which may make Obama’s actions essentially irrelevant. In 2006, Sinya Yamanaka, a Japanese researcher announced that he had succeeded in turning the skin cells of a mouse into what are, essentially, pluripotent embryonic stem cells. In 2007, he repeated this success with human skin cells. Researchers in other countries have replicated his work.

There appear to be several ways of producing what are known as induced pluripotent stem cells (IPS cells), but all of them involve the introduction of chemical factors which force a differentiated cell to return to its pluripotent stem cell state, from which it can then be made to turn into any type of cell desired. While some difficulties of accuracy and efficiency in this process remain, the advantage of this approach is obvious: stem cells can be obtained without the destruction of human embryos. Given the current state of research and the wide-spread confidence that stem cells will be shortly available without the destruction of human embryos, President Obama’s recent executive order seems premature at the very least.

Taking advantage of the faith/culture intersection of stem cell research.

The news of President Obama’s reversal of Bush’s policy on federal funds for stem cell research provides an opportunity for Christians. People are talking about the ethical and moral implications of stem cell research and attempting to think through the complex issues, often without any clear sense of how to go about navigating this minefield. Here are some questions you can ask that may prove to be a bridge to sharing the Gospel of Jesus Christ:

What possible advantages have you heard that stem cell research may provide us?

Note: As of this writing, there are no approved treatments or human trials using embryonic stem cells. However, treatments using adult stem cells4 or cord blood stem cells, which do not require the destruction of embryos, are numerous. The possible benefits of embryonic stem cell research are, to this point at least, entirely hypothetical.

Why do you think we even have a need for treatments for all these problems?

According to the Bible, the problems we are facing now are the result of human sin corrupting the natural order of things (Gen. 3, Rom. 2:20-22).

Are you comfortable with the idea of receiving medical benefits that depend on the destruction of human embryos? Why or why not?

Be ready: this might lead to a discussion of what makes things right or wrong. Many people in our culture hold to a kind of Star- Trek morality: the good of the many outweighs the good of the few or the one. In other words, a thing is considered right if it benefits more people than it harms. There are two problems with this theory of morality. First, there is no way to know of the balance will ultimately tip out. Perhaps the destroyed fetus would have grown up to cure cancer and perhaps one of the people saved by an embryonic stem cell therapy will be a dictator who launches a nuclear war and kills millions. We simply can’t judge how much good or evil will result from a given action. Second, people who hold this view will often abandon it if it is they themselves who face harm or death for the benefit of others. And even if they stickto this theory, the question still has to be asked: isn’t there a difference between sacrificing yourself for others (possible Gospel connection) and being sacrificed without your consent? The former may be noble (John 15:13), but who doesn’t consider the latter to be a wrong?

When do you think human life begins?

See the article above for some ideas on how to address this issue.

Did you know that the Bible not only says that all human life is equally valuable, but also that God is involved with us even before we are born?

Read Gen. 1:26-28, Exo. 21:22-25, Psa. 139:11, Jer. 1:5 and be prepared to show people these verses and talk about their implications for the value and beginning of human life. And, of course, be ready to give the ultimate proof of God’s concern for human life: He sent His only Son to die on the cross as a substitutionary sacrifice for our sins!

Want to discuss this article with others or interact with the author? Visit the Shepherd Project online community group: http://shepherdproject.ning.com/group/embryonicstemcellresearch

1 It should be noted that, in the case of existing human embryo lines, each embryo is produced by cloning rather than the normal fertilization process.

2 The debate about euthanasia is not about whether such individuals are human or not but about whether or not the maintenance of human life under such conditions is ethical.

3 Robert P. George and Christopher Tollefsen, Embryo: A Defense of Human Life (New York: Doubleday, 2008), 39.

4 Adult stem cells are undifferentiated cells found in specific tissues or organs which can differentiate to yield the major cell types of that tissue or organ. They are not fully pluripotent, but they do allow for the repair or regeneration of the tissues or organs in which they are found.

The post Understanding & Taking Advantage of the Stem Cell Debate appeared first on Shepherd Project Ministries.

Jeff Stauffer

In the recently released fourth installment of the Terminator movie series, we see the continuing development and aftermath of a world taken over by robots. In these movies, research in artificial intelligence advances to the point where these machines become “self-aware,” and as any good antagonist should behave in a blockbuster film, they immediately begin destroying all human life. Yet, there is something still unique about humans that allow a few stragglers to survive and organize a resistance movement to defend themselves from extinction. This concept is not new; similar story lines have appeared in classic movies such as “2001, A Space Odyssey,” “The Borg” from Star Trek, or more recently “I, Robot.” We have this odd juxtaposition of having great faith in science and progress, yet also suspect it will be our ultimate undoing. Movies like these cannot help but cause people to ask certain questions: Could things really turn out like this? How realistic is this vision of the future? Will robotics advance to the point where machines become thinking, self-aware beings? Given the break-neck advancement of technology, the idea of conscious computers doesn’t really seem all that far-fetched and may in fact seem like an unavoidable development. But is this really the case, and how should we as Christians think about and respond to such issues?

The issue of artificial intelligence crosses multiple disciplines ranging from neuroscience to theology to the philosophy of mind. Regardless of which discipline is weighing in, it is obvious that there is a central underlying question concerning the nature of the brain and the mind. How does the brain function? Is the mind different than the brain? And if so, what kind of a thing is the mind?

To begin, I’d like to summarize the three main opinions on this issue.1 The first group would be those who hold to a purely materialist view of the world. In this view, because physical matter is all there is, the brain must therefore be a purely material kind of thing. There is no separate “mind” in play here; it is simply the result of a complex, highly organized set of neurons, synapses, and other anatomical features of the brain. The brain, and humans in general, can ultimately be explained (and thus “reduced”) through talking about physics and chemistry. Those in the materialist camp have no problem in assuming that artificial intelligence will eventually develop. Since we as humans are the result of a materialistic evolutionary process, there is no reason to doubt that we can essentially duplicate the process that gave rise to us. Eventually we will mimic the structure of the brain well enough to reproduce its behavior on a silicon-based chip.

The second opinion concerning this issue is what I would call the “emergence” camp. Those who hold this view believe that the mind is in fact something distinct from the brain, bu that the mind is dependent on the brain. The mind somehow “emerges” as a result of the brain’s development. This group believes minds something greater than the sum of its parts. They recognize the psychological aspect of the mind as something more than just grey matter in such-and-such configuration. However, they typically believe that the mind and brain are forever intertwined; meaning that when one’s brain dies, the mind dies with it. Like materialists, the emergence view would not typically have an issue with the concept of machines becoming self-aware.

The final option is the “dualist” camp. The Christian view has traditionally fallen into this camp, though Christians are not the only ones who hold this belief. In the dualist view, one’s mind (or soul, depending on a more technical discussion of terms) 2is separate from one’s brain and therefore lives on after the body dies. Somehow the soul/mind interacts with the brain to produce physical effects. Dualists see the problems caused by a materialist view as being so great that they can only be solved by proposing a non-physical thing called the mind/soul. As a result of this view, the idea of a Terminator becoming self-aware is a logical fallacy called a category mistake: consciousness is not an issue of a difference of degree, but an issue of difference of kind. The mind and brain are different kinds of things. So different, in fact, that one can’t turn into the other. Therefore a computer, which may be considered analogous to a physical brain, can never develop a mind.

As you might imagine, each of these three options has its share of advantages and hurdles to overcome and it may be that we haven’t even come close to framing the question in the right way. Scientific discovery may in the future take us in an entirely new direction. But, given what we now know – or perhaps we should say what we do not know – there are several reasons to believe that the dualist option is the most rational one to hold, and as such lends support to a Christian worldview. This evidence takes the form of what our best scientists recognize as “mysteries” that cannot be accounted for by the materialist or the emergence views.

1) The Mystery of First-Person Experience

We all experience the world around us through our senses. We have a first-person description of “what it is like to” eat an apple or smell a rose. This is a very difficult thing for a neurologist to explain. You could be the world’s most knowledgeable neurosurgeon, able to explain in the most intricate detail what occurs when the eyeball receives light signals from the color red. But if that neurosurgeon was color-blind, they would never be able to experience what it is like to see red. I would like you to attempt an experiment to help illustrate this: stand in front of a mirror and think very hard about the color blue. A blue sky may come to mind or a juicy blueberry. Now look in the mirror and see if any blobs of blue are oozing out of your ears. No? Let’s imagine you were able to slice open your brain while thinking these thoughts, do you think (no pun intended) you’d see anything blue inside your head? Of course not. That is because these experiences are a different kind of thing than the physics that describes them. So while a neuroscientist might be able to describe how a blue light frequency reacts with the chemistry of your brain, it’s not the same thing as experiencing it.

What these examples show is that our first-person experiences seem to be something other than merely physical events. We are unable to provide any empirical data on the question of “What is it like” except for simply asking the person, “What is it like?”!! There is a subjective side to this issue that doesn’t show up on any CAT Scan. A dualist approach would seem to fit the facts in this case as it provides an explanation for both the physical world as well as our experience of the world.

2) The Mystery of Consciousness

First-person experiences are but one issue related to a deeper problem, that of consciousness. Just what is consciousness? Can you inspect it through a microscope? How much does it weigh? Neuroscientist David Eagleman has called consciousness “one of the major unsolved problems of modern science.” He goes on to say “If I give you all the Tinkertoys in the world and tell you to hook them up so that they form a conscious machine, good luck. We don’t have a theory yet of how to do this; we don’t even know what the theory would look like.”3 Another neuroscientist, Mario Beauregard, has stated that “No single brain area is active when we are conscious and idle when we are not. Nor does a specific level of activity in neurons signify that we are conscious. Nor is there a chemistry in neurons that always indicates consciousness.”4 In other words, consciousness cannot be observed. A materialist would have to conclude that there is no scientific evidence for it! Perhaps what makes us self-aware is something entirely different? When we think abstract thoughts, or solve a math problem, or recall a fond memory from years ago, we can see where each of these acts takes place in the brain. However, there does not seem to be a physiological source for the act of being aware of the fact that we are performing such acts. In other words, adding 2 plus 2 together lights up a specific part of the brain, but being aware that I am adding two plus two together does not. Consciousness is not something to be poked or prodded within the grey matter between our ears.

3) The Mystery of Free Will

A chilling result of the materialist view is the elimination of our concept of free will. A materialist must explain all current brain states in light of prior brain states. Like a series of billiard balls following the laws of physics, the brain is merely a product of its present environment and its prior states of being. Where does this leave “the will”? Morality? Ethics? Justice? They cannot exist in this mechanistic cause and effect continuum. But if none of these concepts exist, why do we all have a sense of what they are? Wouldn’t we all agree that there are some things that shouldn’t be done no matter what, like torturing babies for pleasure? How could you say this was wrong without the ability to choose otherwise? There is a reason we use the phrase “heartless” to describe someone without compassion. But in the materialist view, all human beings are really no different than a Terminator who does not think or feel, but merely follows preset programming. If this were the case, then we could not hold anyone accountable for their decisions. And yet, we do hold people accountable for their actions. Why? Because we nearly universally believe that human beings do have a free will. The dualist view of the mind/brain question best explains this belief in a free will and the experiences which give rise to that belief.

4. The Mystery of Mental Images

There is some empirical evidence that suggests something more is going on in the brain than can be explained through physics and chemistry. Traditionally, science has tended to construct theories from the “bottom-up.” This means we use the parts to explain the whole, such as describing planetary motion through the collective forces of gravity on individual particles. But in the cognitive sciences, something else appears to be going on that is better explained through “top-down” thinking, in which the whole is used to explain the parts. For instance, some brain studies suggest that “forming a mental image comes first and is reliably followed by changes in patterns in brain activity.”5 Thus the whole (here the mental image) does not arise from the parts (the brain activities) but rather the whole gives rise to the parts. An example would be the well-known, yet often overlooked, phenomenon known as the placebo effect. This is the phenomenon of a patient with the mental belief that they are being treated for an illness, actually experiencing the positive benefits of that treatment even though they were only being given a benign sugar pill. This continues to baffle materialists because, according to that view, changes in mental images (i.e. beliefs) should arise from changes in the brain state, but not vice versa.

5. Other Mysteries

There have also been numerous studies on people’s near-death experiences that suggest something beyond the physical realm is at play. These include cases where people report seeing objects/events in their immediate surroundings while in deep comas or considered clinically dead; observations that could only have occurred while they were unconscious. These and other lines of evidence, I would suggest, point to an intelligent whole, rather than a collection of parts, responsible for life as we know it.6

These are just a few of the unsolved mysteries in the science of the brain. I won’t try to presume that assuming the existence of a soul solves all of them (it even creates a few problems of its own), but allowing for a non-material explanation for our experience of the world seems like a reasonable thing to do, given the data.

As a Christian, I believe in the existence of a non-material side of my being, my soul. In the Old Testament, God is frequently described as breathing life into creatures. The word most often used here is the Hebrew word nephesh, which carries with it the idea of a life force or spirit, our source of identity. It is also what makes us alive. For example, we see this word often translated as “soul” as in passages including Gen 35:18, 1 Kings 17:21-22, or Ps 16:10. The central connotation here is “the continuing locus of personal identity that departs to the afterlife as the last breath ceases.”7 In philosophical terms, the concept of identity is important. Our soul is what makes us who we are, it is a necessary component of what it means to be “Me.” Things like bodies are merely transient and change over time, but the soul remains. So in effect, it would be accurate to say, “I am my soul. I have a body.” This is an important distinction, for the soul lives on after the body dies. My body appears to not be necessary for me to exist, though it is a key feature in what it means to be human.8 Of course, God may decide in the future to breathe life into a robot…. I suppose it’s possible. But this would require God to create a new thing. Robots will never gain minds by us fiddling around with neural Tinkertoys.

So can the Terminator scenario really happen? I seriously doubt it. I do not think it’s merely a matter of time and faster CPU’s or bigger hard drives. It’s an issue of kind, not of degree. We are in essence immaterial beings who operate in the world through physical bodies. Arnold Schwarzenegger (most likely) has a soul, but it wasn’t created in Hollywood or through software developers, it was from a loving God who created all that is seen and unseen.

1 I owe these categories to an article by Michael Dodds, “Hylomorphism and Human Wholeness: Perspectives on the Mind-Brain Problem,” Theology and Science, ed. Ted Peters, (Abingdon UK, May 2009) 148-151.

2 The terms “mind” and “soul” are somewhat interchangeable. Some use the term “soul” as the foundational element of a person, or what gives life, whereas “mind” is often used as the mental faculty of the soul. But for our purposes here they can be thought of as the same basis concept.

3 David Eagleman, “10 Unsolved Mysteries of the Brain,” Discover Magazine, August 2007, 75.

4 Mario Beauregard, The Spiritual Brain (New York: Harper Collins, 2007) 109.

5 Michael Dodds, “Hylomorphism and Human Wholeness: Perspectives on the Mind-Brain Problem,” Theology and Science, ed. Ted Peters, (Abingdon UK, 2009) 148-151.

6 For more on this subject, read Mario Beauregard’s fascinating book, The Spiritual Brain (New York: Harper Collins, 2007). Also Dr. Michael Sabom, Light and Death (Grand Rapids: Zondervan, 1998) who is a cardiologist who has studied near-death experiences extensively.

7 J.P. Moreland, Body and Soul (Downer’s Grove: IVP, 2000) 28.

8 God made humans with bodies in order for us to carry out our task of representing Him/manifesting His presence in the physical creation, and he will restore believers to physical bodies (though transformed ones) at the 2nd Coming of Jesus.

The post The Soul & the Machine: Can the “Terminator” Movie Really Happen? appeared first on Shepherd Project Ministries.

Craig A. Smith (from the book, The Search)

These type of arguments are named for the Greek word teleos, which literally means “perfect.” For the ancient Greeks, something was “perfect” only when it fulfilled its intended purpose.

As you might guess then, teleological arguments attempt to show that various features of the universe can only be explained if we accept that they were intended for a particular purpose. In other words, teleological arguments show that various systems in the universe have been designed, with particular goals in mind, rather than springing into existence and evolving randomly.

People who work with teleological arguments tend to spend a lot of time demonstrating that random chance is simply incapable of producing the systems we see operating in the natural world.

Currently, the leaders in the use of teleological arguments are part of a group referred to as the Intelligent Design Theorists. This is an impressive group of individuals with loads of academic credentials. They’re medical doctors, physicists, mathematicians and philosophers. Most of them are Christian, but that’s not the case for every one of them. What they all have in common, however, is a deep-seated conviction that the universe is filled with systems that cannot be the product of random chance. From the smallest parts of the cell to the massive collections of stellar material we call galaxies, there is an astounding amount of evidence that our universe was designed.

Now, follow me closely here: where there’s a design. there’s a designer.

Teleological arguments take several forms, but the most scientific ones on two basic concepts: specified complexity and irreducible complexity.

Specified Complexity

Imagine someone has thrown a bunch of alphabet blocks onto the floor. If there’s enough blocks, it wouldn’t be all that unusual for a couple of them to end up next to each other in ways that make simple words: AN, BE, OR, etc.

We can say that such arrangements are specified, because they accomplish something specific. In this case, they accomplish the specific task of representing simple words.

There’s no question that chance can produce systems that accomplish specific things. What our examples above lack, however, is complexity. AN might be a word, but it’s not a very impressive word. It only has two components, the A and the N. The simpler, or less complex, that a system is, the more likely that the system itself could be produced by chance. That is why teleological arguments don’t look for things that are just specified, but for things that are both specified and complex.

Imagine that most of our imaginary blocks are A’s and B’s. In that case, throwing the blocks on the floor might well produce a sequence like this: AABABBBAABA. Is this sequence complex? Yes, because it contains many components. But is it specific? Probably not1.

But suppose our blocks contain not just A’s and B’s but all the letters of the alphabet. Imagine that we throw them all on the floor and then leave the room without looking at them. After a few hours, we come back and find that some of them are arranged as follows COCA COLA, TELEPHONE, HOW ARE YOU. What would you conclude? Would you say to yourself, “Isn’t it amazing what random chance can do?” or would you assume that someone had come along in your absence and arranged the blocks in these ways on purpose?

The answer is obvious. You would naturally assume that someone had designed these particular sequences because the arrangements are both specified and complex. They’re specified because they communicate meaningful things in your own language. They’re complex because they contain many components, which means that the particular arrangements themselves are extremely unlikely to be produced by chance. For instance, think about the arrangement TELEPHONE. Even if your collection of blocks only contained nine blocks, each with one of the letters necessary to produce this word, you could only expect to get this specific arrangement 1 out of every 362,880 times you threw the blocks down.

So, these arrangements possess what we call specified complexity. Could chance produce such arrangements that are both specified and complex? Obviously this is unlikely and the greater the degree of specified complexity, the less likely that the arrangement could be produced by chance.

Now, there are lots of systems in the universe that possess specified complexity. In fact, most systems in the biological and physical realms are complex, in the sense that they depend on several components and specified, in the sense that they accomplish very specific tasks.

Not even the most hard-core atheists will deny this fact. What they will do, however, is toss out something called survival of the fittest. You’re probably familiar with this idea. Basically, it says that whatever works best in the environment where it operates, survives. What doesn’t work best, dies off or disappears.

See, atheists don’t claim that all the systems we see operating in the universe today sprang into existence with their current level of complexity. What they argue is that each complex system we see operating today began from radically simpler systems that gradually grew more complex as billions of years passed. As changes happened to the various systems, because of random occurrences, the principle of survival of the fittest selected systems that offered some advantage.

So atheists tend to say, “Of course the systems are complex, they’ve been changing and getting more complicated for a really long time now. And yes, they’re specified because only the arrangements that can actually accomplish something that benefits the system or the organism as a whole will survive.”

There are several problems with this kind of reasoning, but the most important is the second concept on which the teleological arguments depend: irreducible complexity.

Irreducible Complexity

Irreducible complexity is a characteristic that belongs to systems with multiple parts that are completely useless unless all the parts are present and working at the same time. The classic example of irreducible complexity is the mousetrap. Think about all its parts: a base, a spring, a catch, a trigger, a wire snapper. Which one could you get rid of?

If you get rid of the base, you’ve got nothing to attach anything to. Without the catch, the snapper won’t stay “loaded” until it’s time to go to work. Without the spring, the snapper has no power. Get the picture? Get rid of any of these things and you don’t have a mousetrap that works partially. You have a mousetrap that does nothing. Actually, you really can’t say that you have a mousetrap at all. You just have a bunch of useless junk.

In more technical terms, what we’re saying is that the complexity of the system cannot be reduced beyond a certain point without ceasing to function.

Now, many systems have parts that can be removed without destroying the system’s ability to function, at least partially. For instance, most mousetraps have manufacturer info printed on the base. If we think of such information as a part of the system, we could say that it is possible to remove some parts of the system without affecting the trap’s performance. But, there’s a limit to how many parts we can remove and still have a working trap. In other words, there’s a limit to how much the trap’s complexity can be reduced without rendering the system non-functioning. This is what we are talking about when we use the phrase irreducible complexity.

Together, specified complexity and irreducible complexity form a powerful argument for the existence of a Designer who is responsible for the universe and everything in it.

Remember, there is a vast array of systems in the physical and the biological worlds that possess specified complexity. Naturalistic evolution (which says that everything can be explained without referring to a Designer) acknowledges that random chance could never have produced such systems right off the bat. So, they argue that these systems evolved bit by bit over long periods of time where they gradually got more and more complex.

This is extremely unlikely, to be the sure, and that alone makes the concept pretty hard to swallow. However, the real clincher is that so many of these systems are also irreducibly complex…unless all of the basic components were present at precisely the same time, the system would have been non-functional; not partly functional, mind you, but completely useless. And at that point the whole of idea of survival of the fittest comes back to bite the evolutionists and atheists just like an out-of-control watchdog.

Take the eye for instance: for a functioning eye, you need a photoreceptor of some sort, a way to get the information from the photoreceptor to the brain and a portion of the brain that is capable of interpreting the data in a meaningful way. Now, each of these three parts are quite probably irreducibly complex themselves, but for now we’ll leave that fact aside. Think about this: if you have a photoreceptor but no brain area ready to deal with the data, what do you have? You don’t have an eye that sees badly, you have an “eye” that does nothing. Absolutely nothing. And what’s worse, you have vital energy being used up in the production of useless organs. That’s exactly the sort of thing that the survival of the fittest principle would weed out quickly. The same is true for each of the parts of the simple eye mentioned above. Unless you have all three appearing randomly at the same time, not to mention connected in such a way that they can function together, you don’t have a simple eye, you’ve got junk.

When we start to try to calculate chances that not just one, but all three of the basic parts could appear by random chance/mutation at exactly the same time and in an arrangement where they could function together, it quickly becomes obvious that they couldn’t. No way. Not possible.

The eye is just one example. There are lots of systems that have specified complexity and are irreducibly complex. Other examples that scientists are writing about right now include: blood clotting, the flagellum on bacterium, cilia, the ATP Synthase molecule, etc. These are all described in detail in Michael Behe’s book, Darwin’s Black Box and William Dembski’s Signs of Intelligence. If you want more detail on any of these examples, I highly recommend these two books. Neither of them are exactly kids’ books, but they’re clear and definitely worth the effort. If you really want a challenge, try Dembski’s book No Free Lunch: Why Specified Complexity Cannot Be Purchased Without Intelligence.

What it all boils down to is this: systems that are complex, specified and cannot be accounted for by the gradual accumulation of complexity are best explained by a Designer, and we call this designer God.

That’s the essence of the teleological arguments. Again, these arguments don’t say a great deal about the kind of God we’re dealing with, other than that He is intelligent, powerful and apparently very creative. But they have the virtue of being used by some very smart people who are working hard right now to demonstrate their findings to the scientific world. And you know what? They’re having a surprising degree of success. Belief in God isn’t a scientific thing, of course, but isn’t it nice to know that scientific evidence supports our belief?

1 We have to say probably, because what if it turned out that this particular sequence was the exact code you had to enter to gain access to a government computer system? See, in that case, this sequence would also be specified because it would be this sequence and only this sequence which would produce a particular, specified result. Of course, this would beg the question, “what’s the chance of randomly producing the exact sequence needed to access the computer system?” In this case, the chance is .05%…not very likely at all!

The post Teleological Arguments appeared first on Shepherd Project Ministries.

Craig A. Smith (From the book, The Search)

The term cosmological comes from the Greek word for the universe: cosmos. By universe, we are really referring to everything that exists in the physical realm, from the deepest depths of the earth to the farthest galaxy and everything in between. Basically, the cosmological argument works by attempting to show that the existence of the universe can only be explained by appealing to the actions of an intelligent, personal being (who we call God).

There are actually several different versions of the cosmological argument, but they all have certain basic features in common. Here are the basic parts of any cosmological argument.

1. 1.       Everything which exists either had a beginning or did not have a beginning.

This seems pretty obvious, doesn’t it? There really aren’t any other options. If thing X exists, then thing X has either always existed or it began to exist at some point. Logically, there’s no middle ground between these two options. If a thing has always existed, then it can’t have ever begun to exist. If a thing began to exist at some point, then it can’t have always existed. These two options are mutually exclusive.

This is because of a principle known as the Law of Non-Contradiction which states that a proposition (truth-claim) cannot be both true and false at the same time and in the same way. If it is true that thing X had a beginning, then it is false that thing X has always existed. Conversely, if it is true that thing X has always existed, then it is false that thing X had a beginning.

This point is essentially irrefutable. No reasonable person can disagree with it.

2. The universe had a beginning.

This is the point at which some people will disagree. Everyone agrees that the universe either had a beginning or didn’t have a beginning, but they may not be so quick to accept that the universe had a beginning. Atheists in particular will often claim that the universe, or at least the multiverse1, had no beginning. Actually, they pretty much have to claim this because otherwise you have to accept the existence of God. See, you can’t get away with saying that the universe just spontaneously came from nothing, because “nothing” can’t produce “something.” So, if there’s something here now, there has to have always been something or else we’d still have…right, nothing. Of course, this something could just be the universe itself, but if the universe has a beginning, then it hasn’t always been around, which means that it can’t be the something. Whew!

So, what makes us think the universe had a beginning? Well, two big things:

First, we have the Second Law of Thermodynamics. The Second Law of Thermodynamics states that the total amount of energy in the universe that is available for work is decreasing.

This is the principle of entropy. You may have heard it expressed this way: in a closed system, disorder increases while order decreases. This is why lawnmowers don’t assemble themselves from piles of junk in the yard but why lawnmowers will become piles of junk if left alone long enough. This principle is true of the whole universe. The amount of energy that can be used to fuel stars and chemical reactions is gradually becoming diffused throughout the universe, rather than remaining concentrated in particular areas. If uninterrupted, this will eventually lead to what scientists call the heat-death of the universe.

So what? Well, if this is true – and every experiment and observation so far indicates that it is – then the universe cannot be infinitely old. If it was, then we wouldn’t have pockets of concentrated energy in the form of stars and all the stuff that orbit them. Think of it like this: say there’s 1000 units of “universe energy” and it’s being used up at a rate of 1 unit every 1 billion years. At that rate, the universe will run out of usable energy in 1000 billion years, otherwise known as 1 trillion years. But if the universe were infinitely old, then we would have passed that 1 trillion year mark literally an infinite number of times already, so the universe would already be burned out.

The energy in the universe is in the process of diffusing, but it isn’t completely diffused yet. This means that the Second Law of Thermodynamics hasn’t been operating for an infinitely long period of time. And, if it hasn’t been operating for an infinite period of time, then the only other possibility is that it has been operating for a finite period of time which, by definition, means that it has a beginning.

The second line of evidence that supports the idea that the universe has a beginning involves the fact that all our measurements tell us that the universe is expanding. Where it’s expanding from and when this expansion started isn’t important right now. What is important is that all the evidence is that it started expanding. It must have. If the universe had no beginning, then the expansion would have had to have been going on for an infinite time period already and the universe would have to be infinitively large, which it isn’t. It may be mind-bogglingly big, but it is not infinitely big. So, there was a start to its expansion and this means that the universe itself had a beginning.

There are other lines of evidence that support the idea that the universe had a beginning as well, but that’s enough for now. Just given these two observations, which have been verified in every experiment conducted so far, claiming that the universe had no beginning requires turning a real blind eye to the facts.

1. 2.       All things which have a beginning have a cause. So, since the universe had a beginning, the universe must have had a cause.

Okay, hold on to your gray matter for a quick second! It may be that something has always existed, but if it began to exist at some point, something had to cause it to exist. The only other possibility is that nothing produced something and this cannot happen.

Now, some people hear this and immediately want to ask, “So, what caused God?” but that’s not a necessary question. We said everything that has a beginning has a cause, but if God has no beginning, then He doesn’t need a cause. Remember, the same would be true for the universe if the universe had no beginning, but since all the evidence indicates that the universe did have a beginning, it must have had a cause.

 Some people want to argue that even if the universe did have a beginning, it might have just been caused by some other event unrelated to God. In other words, maybe there have always been universes and as each one grinds to a halt, this somehow causes a new one to pop into existence. Maybe our universe is just the current event in a long chain of events, and the chain itself does not depend on God.

Think about balls bouncing around on a pool table. Say the eight-ball goes into a pocket. What was the cause? The cause was the three-ball hitting it, but what was the cause of the three-ball moving? The cue-ball hit it. In this example, the movement of the three-ball is the cause of the eight-ball’s movement, but it is also an effect of another, earlier cause. All this is fine to a point, but we still have one question to ask: what is the ultimate cause of all the effects? In this analogy, the answer is obvious: someone deciding to hit the cue ball with a stick. Of course, you could imagine that the cue ball got hit because the person with the stick slipped on some ice…and the ice was on the floor because a waitress tripped and dropped it…and so on and so on. But, if the Second Law of Thermodynamics is true (see above), then there cannot be an infinite chain of this sort of cause and effect events. If energy is being used up, then either something happened to give the universe (or universes) their initial energy or something is putting new energy into the system on a regular basis to keep it running. Since we have no evidence that new energy is entering the universe, only the first option is a viable possibility.

Okay, here’s where it gets a little heavy. Ready?

The only way to account for an ultimate/initial/first cause in a system where the Second Law of Thermodynamics operates is by what we call an un-caused cause; that is, a cause that makes things happen but is not itself the result of any other event. So, even if our universe was only one in a long series of universes (which the scientific evidence does not support), the whole long chain of events would still have to have an ultimate, uncaused cause. 4. An un-caused cause must be the result of a willful decision, which requires a personal being.

Ultimately, first causes in closed systems are always the result of a willful decision, which just means that someone has to decide to do something. Now, there might be reasons for a particular decision, but reasons aren’t the same as causes. Jimmy might hit a baseball towards the Peterson house because he wanted to impress his friends, but that desire isn’t the same thing as a cause. No one will try to get the cost of a new window out of this “desire.” Everyone involved will recognize that Jimmy himself is the ultimate cause of the broken window.

The only way to have a truly uncaused first cause is for it to be a decision rather than a consequence. Now, decisions are only made by things that have a will, and things that have will are said to be “personal.” So, if the universe has a beginning, it must ultimately trace its existence back to a willful decision on the part of some personal being. We call that being God.

Limits of the Cosmological Arguments

Well, there you go, that’s the basics of the cosmological argument. As I said earlier, there are several versions of this very old argument, but all of them have the same basic structure.

In essence, the cosmological arguments all boil down to saying that the existence and essential nature of the universe requires an first cause that is the result of willful action by a personal being.

Now, this argument doesn’t say much about what kind of being this “God” is, only that He’s real, personal and extremely powerful. For more specific information, we have to look elsewhere. Still, cosmological arguments go a long way towards demonstrating that God exists. They’re not the easiest arguments to grasp, but they have the virtue of being very convincing once you get a handle on each of their steps.

The primary weaknesses of the cosmological arguments have to do with the difficulty of establishing the premises. That probably bears a little explaining. See, a logical argument like this has two parts: a series of premises and the conclusion drawn from these premises. If the argument is constructed properly, then the conclusion will be an unavoidable result of the premises, assuming that the premises themselves are true. For instance, take the following statement: all dogs are canines and all canines are mammals, so all dogs are mammals. Here, the statements “all dogs are canines” and “all canines are mammals” are the premises. “All dogs are mammals” is the conclusion, which absolutely has to be true, provided that the premises themselves are true. If one of the premises is false, then the conclusion no longer has any validity. For example, suppose the argument were something like this: all dogs are felines and all felines are mammals, so all dogs are mammals. In this case, the first premise isn’t true, so the whole thing falls apart.

In the case of the cosmological arguments, some of the premises are rather difficult to prove. Numbers 3 & 4, in particular, are complicated enough that some people just don’t accept them, although most scientists will tell you flat out that all the evidence supports them. But when you need lots of evidence to establish a premise which, when combined with other premises, leads to a conclusion, things can get complicated pretty quick.

1 The multiverse is a hypothetical realm of existence which contains our universe and maybe an infinite number of others. Because the evidence clearly says that our universe had a beginning, some people argue that there is an eternal multiverse that our universe exists inside of. Maybe our universe had a beginning, but the multiverse that spawned it did not…at least that’s how the argument goes.

The post Cosmological Arguments appeared first on Shepherd Project Ministries.

By Craig A. Smith

I have been continually surprised by the Christian response to the idea contained in this brief article. On the one hand, some Christians seem to find the idea threatening, though I confess I do not understand why: I am a strict¹ Creationist and find the theory of macro-evolution to be both theologically impermissible and scientifically incoherent.

On the other hand, many Christians are genuinely surprised by these ideas, having never heard anything quite like them. The very idea that this hypothesis is indeed novel is very perplexing to me. What I will outline in the following few paragraphs seems quite basic and non-controversial to me. I continue to be surprised when people with whom I have shared these thoughts tell me that they have never heard anything quite like it before. I find this disturbing for two reasons. First, the hypothesis presented here is generally both well-known and well-accepted by Christian apologists. Why it has not become more generally familiar to the Christian community at large is a mystery to me. Second, the hypothesis presented here provides an explanation for certain undeniable facts that Christians have tended to ignore because they are felt to be difficult to account for in a creationist model.

I do not have any desire here to address the more esoteric questions of cosmology which so often occupy center-stage in the creation/evolution debate; that is, I will not address here the issue of the age of the universe or the issue of how to interpret the ‘days’ of Genesis 1. These are significant questions, but they are not my concern at the moment. I am far more interested in a question related to the present state of the world in which we live: bio-diversity.

There can be no doubt that Earth is home to a stunning array of life-forms. Certainly on this point both creationists and evolutionists must agree. It is the question of how such diversity came to be, however, which engenders the debate. Evolutionists argue that the various species which inhabit our world developed over a long period of time from common, simpler organisms. Creationists generally insist that this diversity is directly attributable to special acts of creation by God; that is, that each and every “species” is the result of God’s direct creative involvement.

To be sure, there have been mediating positions. Theistic evolutionists in particular suggest that God created the basic organisms and the physical laws which have worked upon them to stimulate their evolution into the myriad of organisms we see today. This position has never been a popular one since both staunch evolutionists and staunch creationists tend to perceive it as a capitulation. However, it is a position which has been held by individuals who are quite faithful, both to their Lord and to science.

This fact has always given me pause. While I do not consider myself a theistic-evolutionist, at least in the normal sense, the struggle which has led such individuals to their mediating position has made me leery of dismissing their ideas out-of-hand. I believe it is quite arrogant to assume categorically that all theistic evolutionists are either following men instead of God (as creationists often assert) or holding to superstitious tradition in spite of scientific advancement (as scientists often assume).

It seems far more intellectually credible to examine the specific issues which give theistic evolutionists difficulty. In my experience, the two most significant such issues are as follows: the question of bio-origins and the question of bio-diversity. Theistic evolutionists simply cannot accept that life has purely naturalistic origins. The notion that life began accidentally is ludicrous to them in the face of the complexity of life and the consequent improbability/impossibility that such organized complexity is the result of random processes. On the other hand, their familiarity with the vast number of species living in the world today, and their observation of the undeniable similarity which exists between many of those species, has made it difficult for them to accept that each and every species is the result of a special act of creation.

I have some sympathy with this last concern, although such sentiment arises from what may well be a very different place. I am a staunch believer in the Bible as the inspired and inerrant Word of God. Among other things, this means that I hold to the literal historicity of events which it describes, and therefore to the literal historicity of the Noah’s ark account. But therein lies my difficulty.

I have great trouble accepting the idea that representatives of every species currently extant on earth could have been housed on that vessel. Current lists place the number of known living species in the world today somewhere between 1.5 and 1.8 million. Now, granted, many of these are oceanic and thus need not have been housed on Noah’s vessel. Let us suppose that a conservative half of the species represented by the above figure may be discounted for this reason. Moreover, many of the 750,00 remaining species are insects which do not take up much room. However, there are an estimated 4,500 species of mammals alone and these will have taken up much more space than insects, even if we assume that Noah obtained very young specimens.

Now, if we use an absurdly low estimate of the average space each animal would need (say, 1728 cubic inches, 1 cubic foot), then representative pairs of each known species currently living on earth would need 2.6 billion cubic inches of space. Using typical conversions of the cubit² measurements given to us in Genesis, we see that this would be twice what the ark could hold and we still haven’t left any room for food stores or for Noah and his family.

The point is this: it is difficult for me to accept that a representative pair of each and every species currently living on earth was on the ark.

“But wait!” some will say. “Noah didn’t take ‘species’ on the ark, he took ‘kinds.’” Perhaps the equation of these two terms is erroneous. I think this may well be the case, but the suggestion simply raises another question: if not ‘species’ then what does ‘kinds’ mean? The answer usually goes something like this: a ‘kind’ is a sort of proto-animal, a common ancestor possessing a great deal of genetic diversity that manifests itself in different ‘breeds.’ For instance, Noah would not have had to take pairs of Dachshunds, Golden Retrievers, Collies, etc. on the ark. He only had to take a sort of proto-dog, which later diversified into the breeds with which we are more familiar.

Now, it is always interesting to note that even on this relatively uncontroversial point, some creationists begin to grow uncomfortable. ‘Diversification’ and ‘common ancestor’ sound suspiciously like evolutionary terms, after all. But of course, the point that breeds are a diversification from a common ancestor is incontrovertible. And besides, creation apologists are quick to point out, a Golden Retriever and a Collie can still interbreed; thus they are not a new species, so we’re really not borrowing capital from the evolutionary framework to speak of ‘kinds’ in this way.

Of course, some evolutionists will disagree. True, they concede, a Golden Retriever and a Collie can still interbreed and so are not solid examples of speciation. Or at least not yet, because evolutionary theory argues that, given enough time, Golden Retrievers and Collies will grow further apart from one another even as they grow more distant from their common ancestors. Eventually, the argument goes, Golden Retrievers and Collies will not be able to interbreed anymore and so speciation will have occurred.

Creationists often disagree with this, of course, but the argument is not terribly convincing. Consider, for instance, the Chihuahua and the Great Dane. Genetically, these two breeds are still capable of producing fertile offspring (although one shudders to thing what such a mutt might look like). Practically, interbreeding will never occur outside of a geneticist’s test-tube; the size differential alone makes natural reproduction impossible. Thus, the Chihuahua and the Great Dane are living examples of animals which clearly originated from a common ancestor but which are now forever segregated.

Evolutionists point to such examples as proof of a process they claim has always been operating on living organisms: a common ancestor produces various ‘breeds’ which gradually become reproductively isolated, at which point they are designated as different ‘species.’

Is this really so different from what creationists claim? Well, yes, it is, but the surface similarity is sufficient to make us realize that creation apologetics are often carried out on the wrong front. It is common among creation apologists to flatly deny that new species can come into existence, but this is a counterproductive approach for two reasons.

First, there is no clearly accepted definition of ‘species’ in the scientific community. Some define it as genetic reproductive isolation (i.e. genetically incapable of producing fertile offspring with another group of organisms), others as practical reproductive isolation (i.e. will not mate with another group of organisms under natural conditions). More esoteric definitions exist as well, but they need not be considered here as they are not widely accepted. Application of the various definitions appears to be haphazard at best. There are a number of animals that are officially classified as being a distinct species but which are perfectly capable of interbreeding with other ‘species.’ For instance, gray wolves and red wolves are classified as distinct species, though they can, and sometimes do, interbreed even in nature. It is somewhat perplexing that gray and red wolves, which can interbreed and which are so physically similar should be classified as distinct species when Chihuahuas and Great Danes are classified only as different breeds within the same species. Clearly, the definition of a species is a matter of great confusion. When creation apologists insist on maintaining that no new species are coming into existence, they are drawing lines in the sand and wasting their time. In practice, the terms ‘breed’ and ‘species’ overlap considerably. We simply ought to point this out and move on.

Second, even if one accepted the somewhat stricter genetic definition of a species (i.e. genetically incapable of producing fertile offspring), then there is no particular reason why the appearance of a new species ought to be unexpected. In fact, given what we know about selective breeding, quite the opposite should be true: we ought to be surprised if no new species appear from among the various breeds. What I mean is this: as breeds diversify from their common ancestor, their initial, God-given genetic variety is significantly reduced. Getting a Chihuahua to look like it does requires removing from the Chihuahua gene pool a large number of dominant and recessive traits that might manifest themselves in undesired morphology (shape/appearance). Consequently, you get Chihuahuas, or Great Danes or any other breed, largely by paring away the undesired genetic material; that is, by removing the unwanted traits from a given population’s gene pool. The process is more akin to sculpting than to building. What makes one breed distinct from another is that one possesses genetic material that has been bred out of another. This material was present, though perhaps unexpressed, in the common ancestor and has now been teased out and made to express in one line of its descendents.

While this process can be useful in breeding certain animals that are useful in specialized situations, it has some unfortunate side effects. The reduction of genetic variety means that specific breeds are often less able to adapt to changing environmental conditions. Genetic traits that would have made it possible for some of their offspring, who manifested the particular variety, to survive the changing environment, have been eliminated from the gene pool. Thus, no offspring will be produced with the trait that will allow them to survive the new conditions. It is a truism in the biological sciences that the more specialized a population is (e.g. the more its genetic variety has been trimmed either naturally or artificially) the more unlikely it is to survive changing environmental condition. Moreover, specialized breeds often suffer from other debilitations. This is why so many purebred animals have difficult health issues: hip displysia, dermatological woes, generally weak constitutions, etc. The process which has produced their unique forms has reduced, and, in some cases, eliminated, other genetic material which governs less visible, but nonetheless crucial, phenotypic and morphological development.

Given these facts, it should not be surprising that sometimes one breed becomes unable to reproduce with another breed, even though descended from the same common ancestor: some crucial genetic material, which makes the production of fertile offspring between the branches possible, has been lost. This appears to be what has happened with the horse and the donkey. A horse and a donkey can produce offspring, a mule, but the mule is always sterile. Why? Given the material regarding breeds as discussed above, we would hypothesize that it was because some necessary common genetic material between the horse and the donkey has been lost over time. And this is precisely what genetic analysis has found. Specifically, donkeys are missing³ two entire chromosomes which the other breeds of horse still possesses. Consequently, there are sections of the DNA chains which cannot match correctly during fertilization and the blank areas are apparently related in significant ways to the mule’s inability to reproduce.

In such cases, are we giving away the farm if we concede that horses and donkeys may legitimately be classified as different species? I do not think so. On the contrary, I believe creation apologists may be able to use such a case quite profitably. This brings me to the heart of my hypothesis.

You may have noted that I spoke above about new species ‘appearing.’ I deliberately avoided use of the classic evolutionary term ‘arise.’ Typically, evolutionists speak of a new species ‘arising’ because the metaphor is in keeping with the central claim of the theory; namely, that life as we see it has evolved upwards from a simple organism to gradually more and more complex ones.

For a naturalistic evolutionist, speciation is more than the reproductive isolation of a breed from the other breeds which derive from a common ancestor. Rather, it is the gradual accumulation of new traits. Many of these traits must be due to the addition of new genetic material to the population. If this were not the case, then there would be no basis for claiming that the original common ancestor of all living things was, in any way, simpler than its descendents. However, no-one has ever shown how such new genetic material could be added. On the contrary, genetic experiments seem to show that the addition of material to a DNA sequence is virtually impossible under natural conditions.

Now, if the ‘new’ traits are simply phenotypic expressions of genetic traits already present, but unexpressed, in the parent organism, then nothing has really been gained. Likewise, if one breed-line becomes distinct from others because the genetic material necessary for successful cross-breed reproduction has been lost, we cannot properly say that a new species has ‘arisen’ or even ‘evolved’ (as the term is typically used). It would be far more proper to say that a new species has ‘de-evolved,’ for it is actually less complex and less suited to long-term survival than its predecessors.

So, my hypothesis is this: the current state of bio-diversity is a result of de-evolution. God created proto-animals in a variety of ‘kinds.’ These kinds each possessed all of the genetic variety that has come to manifest itself in the different ‘species’ that populate the earth today. Many animals which give surface appearance of having had a common ancestor probably did; that is, they are different breeds descended from the same proto-animal. In many, if not most cases, these breeds are still capable, at least on the genetic level, of reproducing fertile offspring, thus re-combining their genetic material to create offspring which are somewhat closer genotypically, to their original created ancestor. In other cases, the breeds have de-evolved into what may be called new species because they have lost the genetic material that would have made the production of fertile offspring between them possible.

This appears to me to be an acceptable middle ground between the current poles of the creation/evolution debate. This hypothesis of de-evolution seems to account for many of the observations most cherished by evolutionists while giving away nothing that is crucial (or even tangential) to the biblical belief in special creation. In fact, this hypothesis seems to square quite well with the biblical account of the Fall, in which Adam’s sin threw all of creation into a downward spiral. We should not be in the least surprised to find that the tremors of our rebellion can be felt even at the genetic level.

We do not live in a world of greater complexity, as the evolutionists claim, but in a world of greater complication. The two are not quite the same thing, though it is understandable why scientists working from a strictly materialistic foundation might confuse them.

What I’ve said here is not entirely new, of course. In important ways, what I have outlined above is merely a refinement of the hypothesis regarding the ‘proto-animals’ on Noah’s ark that I have heard appeal to on numerous occasions. However, I believe what I am suggesting is both a refinement and a significant expansion of that idea. I welcome readers’ feedback on this proposal. I can be reached at craig@shepherdproject.com.

God bless!

1 Strict in the sense that I believe Genesis to contain an historically accurate account of the Creation, rather than a mythical or symbolic account. However, on the basis of strictly biblical considerations, I am not convinced that the “days” of Genesis 1 represent 24 hour solar days. My interpretive agnosticism has nothing to do with capitulation to science or contemporary opinion. I simply do not find that the textual considerations make this the only, or even the most likely, option. It is certainly possible that 24 hour days are in view here, but I feel that excessive attention to this relatively minor detail has obscured some of the more important theological significance of Genesis 1.

2 A cubit, of course, was a unit of measurement equivalent to the distance from the tip of a man’s fingers to his elbow. Obviously, the size of the man would affect the size of this unit considerably.

3 Actually, the chromosomes are not really missing. It would be better to describe them as “broken” because the genetic material which once comprised them is still identifiable as genetic “rubble” in the expected locations. At some point in history, a breed of horse suffered some genetic damage which somehow became normative for the whole population of that breed; i.e. the donkey.

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