Feb 13, 2020 | Explanatory Power
When I pray in the morning it seems that I always start praising God for revealing himself to us in creation, Scripture, and Christ. Each means of God revealing himself to us astounds and flabbergasts me in its own way. I have a hard time conveying just how grateful I am to him for making himself so real to me, to us, to his people. It is impossible for me to believe in the alternatives to our biblical Creator God. Whenever I doubt, and every psychologically healthy person does, I just look at creation, and marvel: Our God is real! I will briefly deal with Scripture and Christ in following posts, and show why my reaction to those modes of God’s revelation is the same. (more…)
Dec 5, 2019 | Explanatory Power
This appears to be a strange question. You might answer, I see a leaf of Romaine lettuce, and of course you would be right, but you would also be wrong. Am I contradicting myself? No. The leaf, as with all created things, points beyond itself. So yes, the leaf is a leaf, but it is also an amazing creation of Almighty God! If we don’t see all of reality this way, we are not seeing reality biblically, and have been sucked into the vortex of the stultifying secular culture we swim in every day. I’m not sure there is anything more important as we raise our kids, or develop our own faith, than learning to see reality biblically. That means we daily, hourly, minutely, constantly affirm God as Creator, of everything! That means we stop taking those things for granted, and have moments of wonder at the sheer bizarreness of existence. As I did with my Romaine leaf. (more…)
Nov 17, 2019 | Explanatory Power
Since the great enemy of Darwinism Phillip Johnson went to be with the Lord recently, I’ve been listening to talks and interviews he gave over the years, and seeing again why he was such a formidable opponent to those espousing the bankrupt theory of evolution. He uncovered how the “scientific consensus” in favor of Darwinian evolution is one big project of begging the question, or assuming what you are ostensibly trying to prove. In one interview he compared Darwinism to alchemy, “a medieval chemical science and speculative philosophy aiming to achieve the transmutation of the base metals into gold, the discovery of a universal cure for disease, and the discovery of a means of indefinitely prolonging life.” Alchemy proved to be a fool’s errand, as is Darwinism.
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Nov 9, 2019 | Explanatory Power
Phillip E. Johnson, a Berkeley law professor whose book Darwin On Trial launched the Intelligent Design movement, died last weekend at 79. I remember reading it back in the early 90s when it came out, and being thrilled that someone was so effectively exposing that the emperor Darwin had no clothes. Not only was there no evidence for a Darwinian notion of evolution by random mutation and natural selection, those pushing it assumed what they ostensibly were trying to prove. In logic that is called begging the question (which doesn’t mean raising the question), assuming true what you’re trying to prove as true. What they assumed was and is naturalism, that matter is all that is, and all that matters. There were numerous articles celebrating Johnson’s life at Evolution News, and one by Stephen Meyer explains this point well: (more…)
Sep 21, 2019 | Explanatory Power
In my last post I wrote about the concept of Explanatory Power, specifically in the context of life’s meaning, or not. The concept of what most powerfully, compellingly, explains the reality we experience extends to the heavens and the skies. You may be familiar with the words in the title that come from the first verse of Psalm 119. I put an exclamation point at the end because I came across an article of pictures taken of the heavens that are simply mind blowing in their beauty. The title of the piece shows that it took two creators to reveal this specific beauty: “35 ‘Astronomy Photographer Of The Year 2019’ Finalists That Took Massive Amounts Of Planning And Precision.” Here’s one:
Most people exposed to such stunning beauty are left dumbfounded, and deep down inside know there has to be an artist responsible for such artistry. Other people think it’s all just a cosmic accident. We learn why in the first chapter of the Apostle Paul’s letter to the Romans: (more…)
Sep 19, 2019 | Explanatory Power
The great English playwright William Shakespeare expressed his inner Richard Dawkins, born almost 400 years later, when he wrote these almost immortal words coming from the mouth of murderous King MacBeth:
Tomorrow, and tomorrow, and tomorrow,
Creeps in this petty pace from day to day
To the last syllable of recorded time,
And all our yesterdays have lighted fools
The way to dusty death. Out, out, brief candle!
Life’s but a walking shadow, a poor player
That struts and frets his hour upon the stage
And then is heard no more. It is a tale
Told by an idiot, full of sound and fury,
Signifying nothing.
(more…)
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