By Sam Storms, PhD

Physicists and cosmologists are ever in search of what they call “a theory

of everything,” an all-encompassing theory that can account for everything

from the subatomic world of particle physics to the galactic expanse of supernovas

and black holes.

Brian Greene, professor of physics and mathematics at Columbia University,

argues that for the first time in the history of physics we have a framework

with that capacity.   Scientists call it string theory.  The idea is that everything in

the universe at its most microscopic level consists of combinations of vibrating

strings. According to Greene, “string theory provides a single explanatory

framework capable of encompassing all forces and all matter.”

The problem isn’t that Greene and others have gone too far in making this

claim.  The problem is they haven’t gone nearly far enough!  Greene is clearly

drawn to this theory because strings make sense of every fundamental feature

of physical reality. But what makes sense of strings?  Why do they exist?

If they explain “all forces and all matter,” what explains them?  What accounts

for the shape they take and the functions they serve?

The answer is that everything exists for the glory of God. Everything

— from quarks to quasars, from butterflies to brain cells — was created

and is sustained so that you and I might delight in the display of divine

glory.   Only humans are fashioned in the image of God.  We are the only species

that establishes schools and conducts research and preserves archives

of information.  We alone have been granted remarkable capacities to reason

and reflect, deduce and conclude.  We alone can glorify God by rejoicing in

the beauty of his creative handiwork and relishing the splendor of his selfrevelation

in the person and redemptive work of Jesus Christ.

We’re touching here on the most profound question anyone could ever ask:

Why is there something rather than nothing?  The simple answer is that God

chose to create. This was certainly not from the anguish born of need, as if

creation might supply God what he lacked. God didn’t take inventory and

suddenly realize there was a shortage that only you and I could fill.  So what

prompted God to act?

The source of God’s creative energy was the joy of infinite and eternal

abundance! God chose to create from the endless and self-replenishing overflow

of delight in himself.

We must begin with the recognition that God delights infinitely in his own

eternal beauty. When God the Father gazes at the Son and sees a perfect reflection

of his own holiness, he is immeasurably happy. The Father rejoices in

the beauty of the Son and Spirit, and the Son revels in the beauty of the Spirit

and Father, and the Spirit delights in that of the Father and Son. God is his

own fan club! God created us out of this eternal community, this overflow of

mutual love, delight, and admiration, so that we might joyfully share in it, to

God’s eternal glory.

God doesn’t simply think about himself or talk to himself. He enjoys himself!

He celebrates with infinite and eternal intensity the beauty of who he is

as Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. And we’ve been created to join the party!

To relish and rejoice in the beauty of God alone accounts for why we exist.

Enjoying God is the soul’s sole satisfaction, with which no rival pleasure can

hope to compete. Glorifying God by enjoying him forever. It’s the Christian

Theory of Everything.

Reprinted from “A Faith and Culture Devotional”, copyright 2008, Kelly Monroe Kullberg and Lael Arrington.  Mr. Storms article is adapted from his book One Thing: Developing a Passion for the Beauty of God.   Mr. Storms left Wheatonto found Enjoying God Ministries in Kansas City, Missouri; www.enjoyinggodministries.com

(Reprinted with permission from Credenda/Agenda. See bottom of article).

Christmas is impossible. It can’t be done. That woman won’t be silent. It can’t be expressed. Encapsulate all the colors, meanings, music, and history of World War II into one sentence, commas permitted. Now do it with a far more earth-shattering, far more complicated, more unspeakable event. That’s the tension of Christmas.

At the first creation, words were not enough. Too thin. Not even close. The expression had to go deeper, beyond mere words. Angels had to scream at the art—scream at the eagles, scream at the sand, at the elephants, at fire, oysters. “When the morning stars sang together, and all the sons of God shouted for joy.” Father, Son, and Holy Spirit couldn’t be captured in words alone, so He used evergreens and walruses. The whole creation is the shout of His personality. But even tidal waves prove insufficient. He overflows. Thus, “the Word became flesh and dwelt among us, and we beheld His glory.” The Christmas sentence. Two sentences, one with a compound predicate. God “has spoken to us by His Son . . . the brightness of His glory and the express image of His person.” More insufficient sentences.

This second creation, this Incarnation was far brighter than the first creation. It built upon the first and turned it upside down. “These who have turned the world upside down have come here too.” Christmas turned creation inside out; it broke the stranglehold of death; it thickened water. How could we even begin to express it? Wineskins could not hold it. Normandy was cheesecake. Even John who gave us the Christmas sentence gave up. He gave us word upon word, sentence upon sentence and then breathed his last, “even the world itself could not contain the books that would be written.” A fine trick. And yet we’re expected to express it: “And teach them to your children and your grandchildren.” And “tell it to the generation following.” Very funny. Very cruel.

It’s impossible, but neither can we hold it in. It pushes our skin out to its breaking point. Painful adoration. Stretch marks. We’re pressed from within. She couldn’t hold it in.

“And Mary said: ‘My soul magnifies the Lord, and my spirit has rejoiced in God my Savior. For He has regarded the lowly state of His maidservant; For behold, henceforth all generations will call me blessed.” Mary, Mary, don’t you know that Christmas is a pagan holiday? Hold your words in. Be silent. “For He who is mighty has done great things for me, and holy is His name.” Vixen.

If she can’t hold in Christmas, why should we even try? It’s a lost cause. Imagine the tension of living in the covenant in the centuries before Messiah. The conflict is stark; the psychology twisted, longing for relief. “The prophets proclaim justice: Israel will certainly be judged for disobedience.

But they also proclaim grace: God is coming to redeem his people. . . . Israel’s sins are worse than those of the pagan nations of Canaan, even of Sodom and Gomorrah, which God destroyed. How can a just God do anything less than wipe them out entirely? Yet the promise of grace comes again. God will surely redeem his people. But how can He wipe them out and redeem them at the same time? It seems as though God’s justice violates His mercy and vice versa. God is, it seems, in a bind. If He redeems, He must wink at sin; if He judges, He must renege on His promise. . . . God seems to be wanting precisely to build the tension, and build, and build. . . . And then comes Jesus. The wait is over.”—John Frame. Oh the agony of life without Christmas. No wonder Mary sings. She carries life from the dead, light from darkness, home from exile. “Sing, O barren, you who have not borne! Break forth into singing, and cry aloud, you who have not labored with child! For more are the children of the desolate than the children of the married woman.” Imagine sitting in the deserts of Babylon and Assyria, counting the stars, juggling mercy and justice. “O come, O come, Emmanuel, and ransom captive Israel, That mourns in lonely exile here, until the Son of God appear. Rejoice! Rejoice! Emmanuel shall come to thee, O Israel.” Christmas is the revolution of revolutions. To hide it behind paganism, to hide it behind indifference and busyness, to express it behind sentences alone, would be a robbery. I would be lying to my children. I can’t hold it in—“We will not hide them from their children, telling to the generation to come the praises of the LORD, and His strength and His wonderful works that He has done.”

And Mary sings: “And His mercy is on those who fear Him from generation to generation. He has shown strength with His arm; He has scattered the proud in the imagination of their hearts.” More Christmas words, Mary. But these words have not been commanded. Your Christmas celebration isn’t sanctioned from on high. Whatever is not commanded is forbidden. How dare you speak out like this? Will worship. You have fallen headlong into the sin of Esther—“establish among them that they should celebrate . . . . as the month which was turned from sorrow to joy for them, and from mourning to a holiday; that they should make them days of feasting and joy, of sending presents to one another and gifts to the poor.” Hold it in, Mary. Buck up. Christmas thoughts are offensive.

And with the coming of Emmanuel, “old things have passed away; behold all things have become new” (2 Cor. 5:18). In the Incarnation we see that “In Him was life, and the life was the light of men. And the light shines in the darkness, and the darkness did not comprehend it.” Light overflows, overpowers, and blinds, like its creator. The Triune is the God of excess, the God who gives all, the light that chases  away darkness. The Son gives all for the Father and Spirit; the Father gives Himself over to the Spirit and Son; the Spirit returns more sacrifice and love back to the Father and Son. The coming of the Son is the express image of God bursting the old world. He tabernacled among us, and “How lovely is Your tabernacle, O LORD of hosts! My soul longs, yes, even faints for the courts of the LORD; My heart and my flesh cry out for the living God.” David faints and cries at the excess he saw. He would have burst to see his Son.

The Incarnation’s excess brittles my sentences as I stand before the kids, wondering how to  explain it. The words come out rickety, gap toothed. I can read and read to them but that’s never enough. Maybe I could set the whole house on fire in a searing white light with the darkest winter background, just a bit of star in the dining room, melt the neighborhood. That might come close. Instead I climb the ladder up the side of my house with my stupid little clinking lights; I loop and hang and wrap and pile them around as best I can. The electricity wheezes in the house, and the lights can be seen from two miles away; I tested. But I can’t stop; they’re never enough. It’s not fair. He gets to use glowing jellyfish and Texas lightning and Alpha Centauri, and I can only hang these pathetic glowing strings.

But Christmas insists. And so here in the north, during the darkest days of winter and death, this small town’s Christmas lights conspire together against the black night and start to reclaim reality. “And the light shines in the darkness, and the darkness did not comprehend it. . . . That was the true Light which gives light to every man coming into the world.” Slowly, slowly, Christ’s coming has been transforming the whole world, turning darkness to light, tribes to communities, wilds to gardens,  cannibalism to cuisine, philosophers to poets. “Since the Savior’s advent in our midst, not only does idolatry no longer increase, but it is getting less and gradually ceasing to be. Similarly, not only does the wisdom of the Greeks no longer make any progress, but that which used to be is disappearing. . . . On the other hand, while idolatry and everything else that opposes the faith of Christ is daily dwindling and weakening and falling, the Savior’s teaching is increasing everywhere”— Athanasius. No Pelagian Santa lies to kids there.

This new world suggests the oldest. It moves toward a mature Eden, the City of Eden, full of fruit trees. And so we plant trees full of “fruit,” mirrored balls staring back at our living rooms. We do this, too, in the middle of winter. These Christmas trees bring Eden back in the middle of the darkness. Fruit amidst death. My eyes roll to hear of pagan origins. Why do they stop arbitrarily at that point? Trees of life and knowledge were central to Eden. Sure pagans slunk off with edenic symbols and worshiped the creature rather than the Creator, but that is their sin, not ours. They may not claim the trees. They belong to Jehovah. These pagans also prayed, yet we do not abandon prayer. The Bible begins and ends with trees. Christmas makes us look backward and forward.

And, yet, the newness of the Incarnation doesn’t stop with lights and trees. The whole creation has been made new. Christmas is the beginning of the New Heavens and Earth, and this bursts out in gifts—new clothes, new tools, new games, new books—a new world. Boxes are wrapped to separate them from objects of monetary exchange, objects of equal trade. Instead, gifts are excesses, surprises of grace. And if the Lord blesses and your tree is gloriously surrounded with boxes on top of boxes of this new order of stuff, you can stoop down from across the room, level with all those boxes and see that they resemble a city skyline, a new city, “the great city, the holy Jerusalem” — “the foundations of the wall of the city were adorned with all kinds of precious stones” where the nations “bring the glory and the honor of the nations into it.” And in the middle of this city is “the tree of life, which bore twelve fruits, each tree yielding its fruit every month. The leaves of the tree were for the healing of the nations.” Your Christmas tree.

And Mary sings: “He has put down the mighty from their thrones, and exalted the lowly. He has filled the hungry with good things, and the rich He has sent away empty.” She bursts forth still? Celebrating Christmas will lead to consumerism, Babylonianism, apostasy, and stockings. The gospel is about law and stinginess. Let the women be kept silent; for they are not permitted to speak. Who allowed this Mary to preach Christmas?

Still something was wrong. It all went by so quickly. Christmas Eve, Christmas Day, done. The traditional church calendar helps express the largess of Christmas by the Advent season. This is a start. But I wanted to express a tinge of exile, a hint of that Old Covenant tension. Time needed to be stretched out. I could yak-yak-yak about the apparent tension between God’s justice and mercy, and for several years that’s what I did. But I wanted to show the tension—even through a glass darkly. I needed hints of Babylonian exile, “O Come, O come, Emmanuel.” Ezekiel saw and heard the bones in the desert—“Son of man, can these bones live? . . . Prophesy to these bones, and say to them, ‘O dry bones, hear the word of the LORD! . . . Surely I will cause breath to enter into you, and you shall live. . . . [T]here was a noise, and suddenly a rattling; and the bones came together, bone to bone. . . . They indeed say, ‘Our bones are dry, our hope is lost, and we ourselves are cut off!’ “Therefore prophesy and say to them, ‘I will put My Spirit in you, and you shall live.’”

Rattling bones, desert sand, sour wine. And so for more than a week before Christmas, we sing and read through the covenantal promises—Adam, Noah, Abraham, Moses, David, psalms, the prophets, Mary—always highlighting the wrestling of justice and mercy, yearning for release. We keep the rhythms of the songs with the rattle of bones (thick wooden dowels), and we partake of hints of vinegar and sand, a taste of ugly exile. Empty wine glasses sit before us, teasing, and at the close of that night’s liturgy, we sneak the tiniest bit of chocolate, a hint of Christmas to come. By Christmas Eve we are sick of sand and vinegar; we need freedom from the bones; the city grows around the tree; something more surely must burst forth; “O Come, O come, Emmanuel.” Please. We worship with the saints on Christmas Eve, and the presents burst open Christmas morning. The new world runs forth. At the final set of readings, we shift from “O Come” to “Joy to the World.” The sand and the vinegar vanish; the bones are replaced with bells; champagne and gourmet chocolates flow. “Cry out and shout, O inhabitant of Zion, for great is the Holy One of Israel in your midst!” Cry out and shout. Who can hold in Christmas? It’s impossible. I’m sure others can do better, but I’m forced to show something, my best shot.

And Mary sings, “He has helped His servant Israel, in remembrance of His mercy, as He spoke to our fathers, to Abraham and to his seed forever.” Turn away from such druidic folly, Mary. Pass the day like any other. God wants you to hold it in and ignore the Incarnation. Cross your knees. God treasures silence more than shouting.

We enjoy the lights and sand and vinegar and chocolate and bones and presents and tree and more, using bits of His creation to try and show His wonder. Of course, “better is a little with the fear of the LORD, than great treasure with trouble. Better is a dinner of herbs where love is, than a fatted calf with hatred.” The greatest of these is love. But He’s the one who makes this love want to burst forth from within. It’s His fault, the God He gave us. He couldn’t even hold it in either. Sure, He speaks words through Mary, but when the time comes, He doesn’t hold back. He decorates the sky with brightness and cheats where no lighted house can hope to compete: “Suddenly there was with the angel a multitude of the heavenly host praising God and saying: ‘Glory to God in the highest, and on earth peace, goodwill toward men!’” Unbelievable one-upmanship. A sky that would make the greatest fireworks grand finale look like an electric short.

Christmas can’t be done, but it bursts out. And when Christmas days have just passed, more reality strikes. The Incarnation was just the beginning. Christmas would be nothing without Easter. And Easter would be nothing without Pentecost. So little time, so much impossibility.

Copyright 2009, all rights reserved, Credenda/Agenda magazine. This article first appeared in Volume 14, Number 5 of Credenda/Agenda magazine, and is reprinted with permission.

For the original article click here.

For Credenda/Agenda click here.

There is a natural order in all of creation – ideas have consequences.  What people believe affect their actions.  The actions we take influence other people and their beliefs.  When Reverend Samuel Rutherford believed that “all men are equal” he wrote the world shaking doctrine of ‘Lex Rex‘ (The law is king).  This philosophy influenced the creation of our country, dissolved slavery, and still is challenging those in power today (for more information on this specific philosophy ready Francis Shaffer’s ‘The Christian Manifesto). In contrast to most actions, the written word has power to last beyond the spoken word, spreading its influence into the future.  Wiker states at the very start of his book:

“Common sense and a little logic tell us that if ideas have consequences, then it follows that bad ideas have bad consequences.  And even more obvious, if bad ideas are written down in books, they are far more durable, infecting generation after generation and increasing the world’s wretchedness. [...] What then? Shall we have a book burning? Indeed not! Such a course of action is indefensible.  As I learned long ago, the best cure – the only cure, once the really harmful books have multiplied like viruses through endless editions – is to read them.  Know them forward and backward.  Seize each one by its malignant heart and expose it to the light of day”

In the Lord of the Rings, when Frodo, Sam, Merry, and Pippen return after destroying the one ring, they must purge the last remnants of evil from the Shire. Likewise, when we return from fighting the battles out in the world, we have to purge the last remnants of sinful philosophy from our “Shire:” our hearts.  We must follow the mandate of 2 Corinthians 2:5 “We demolish arguments and every pretension that sets itself up against the knowledge of God, and we take captive every thought to make it obedient to Christ.”

Benjamin Wiker sets up the battle field of the mind by addressing ten works that have influenced our thought lives without our knowing. He also addresses five other books that set the groundwork for philosophy without theology: Machiavelli’s The Prince, Descartes’ Discourse on Method, Thomas Hobbes’ Leviathan, Rousseau’s Discourse on the Origin and Foundations of Inequality among Men, and Betty Friedan’s The Feminine Mystique. Each of these works are studied and have entered our culture’s thought patterns without our knowing.  Has someone challenged Descartes entrapping claim that “I think therefore I am”? Or attacked the skepticism that has arose from that concept? Has someone charged into battle against Rousseau’s belief that “the law is merely a tool for the rich to keep their riches, making the rebellion of the have-nots justified”?  All the errors and misconceptions of the 10 books spring from the removal of God from Man’s thought life. They all build off of each other – each book branching in a different direction but from that same trunk.

Carl Marx and Friedrich Engel’s The Manifesto of the Communist Party

John Stuart Mill’s Utilitarianism

Charles Darwin’s The Descent of Man

Friedrich Nietzsche’s Beyond Good and Evil

Vladimir Ulyanov (Lenin)’s The State and Revolution

Margaret Sanger’s The Pivot of Civilization

Adolf Hitler’s Mein Kampf

Sigmund Freud’s The Future of an Illusion

Margaret Mead’s Coming of Age in Samoa

Alfred Kinsey’s Sexual Behavior in the Human Male

All of these works offer differing perspectives on what to do with man ignoring God.  Wiker offers a critical mind-set in which the work is evaluated by its own merit.  Every book has citations taken and evaluated (except of Kinsey’s as the Kinsey Institute denied Wiker the right to cite).  Even for those not versed in philosophy, Wilken’s does an admirable job of shining light and making the errors of these 10 books seem obvious.  Wiker ends his book by stating:

“We are so fond of thinking of our progress from the simple savage that we forget to take account of whether we are really progressing in some sort of virtue or rather becoming more complexly and deviously savage.  [...] By following the trajectory of these books that screwed up the world, we can wonder whether the advance of ‘science’ over theology is an unmitigated good, and weather it is really progress.  Perhaps it is bringing us to a new age of technological barbarism, what we can certainly say is that the intensity of humanity’s self-destruction is a measure of the myth by which it lives, and this destruction is by no means limited to war and state-sponsored extermination.”

It all comes down to the concept of progress – is it something that has a foundation (a light that illuminates the world), or is it the destruction of what came before?  G. K. Chesterton gave this illustration in 1905:

“Suppose that a great commotion arises in the street about something, let us say a lamp-post, which many influential persons desire to pull down. A grey-clad monk, who is the spirit of the Middle Ages, is approached upon the matter, and begins to say, in the arid manner of the Schoolmen, “Let us first of all consider, my brethren, the value of Light. If Light be in itself good–” At this point he is somewhat excusably knocked down. All the people make a rush for the lamp-post, the lamp-post is down in ten minutes, and they go about congratulating each other on their unmediaeval practicality. But as things go on they do not work out so easily. Some people have pulled the lamp-post down because they wanted the electric light; some because they wanted old iron; some because they wanted darkness, because their deeds were evil. Some thought it not enough of a lamp-post, some too much; some acted because they wanted to smash municipal machinery; some because they wanted to smash something. And there is war in the night, no man knowing whom he strikes. So, gradually and inevitably, to-day, to-morrow, or the next day, there comes back the conviction that the monk was right after all, and that all depends on what is the philosophy of Light. Only what we might have discussed under the gas-lamp, we now must discuss in the dark.”

Read, Know, Confront, Battle, Stand.

—–

Ben Bishop is a recent graduate of Boise State University and is an assistant coach for speech and debate at the College of Western Idaho. In his spare time he reads as many books as he can get his hands on and blogs (http://windmillfighter.wordpress.com/).

by Casey Luskin

(Reprinted with permission from Salvo magazine. See bottom of article).

This past May 20, there was a good possibility that your day started something like this: You crawled out of bed, logged on to the internet, and soon discovered that Google had changed its banner graphic to display the image of a small, long-tailed fossil primate.

Being the internet-savvy user that you are, you immediately recalled that it’s not uncommon for Google.com to change its design to observe holidays or honor famous historical figures. Nonetheless, you wondered what this cute brown mammal was doing on Google’s home page, so you clicked on the link.

Little did you know that this innocent fossil graphic was not just any link. It was a lure that had successfully led you into a carefully orchestrated PR campaign involving leading paleontologists, top TV networks, the internet’s most popular website (Google), and numerous other media outlets in a coordinated effort to promote evolution to the public.

The fossil, dubbed “Ida” by her discoverers, was introduced to the media as the “eighth wonder of the world” whose “impact on the world of palaeontology” would be like “an asteroid falling down to Earth.”

Famed BBC broadcaster Sir David Attenborough got involved, making a documentary titled Uncovering Our Earliest Ancestor: The Link, to explain why Ida is “the link that connects us directly with the rest of the animal kingdom.” Co-sponsored by both the BBC and the History Channel, the program attracted a massive audience.

For those who don’t get their information from cable TV, Ida’s promoters also held a press conference generating a flood of news stories:

• Good Morning America and Nightline covered the fossil.
• National Geographic called her the “critical ‘missing link’ species.”
• ScienceDaily and a Discover magazine commentator praised Ida as our “47-million-year-old human ancestor.”
• Skynews told the public that “proof of this transitional species finally confirms Charles Darwin’s theory of evolution.”

With Google’s eager assistance, Ida went viral: One of the leading search terms that day was “missing link found.” Even the Drudge Report was reeled in by the media frenzy, briefly featuring Ida as the headline story.

In a statement to the New York Times, a lead scientist in Ida’s team justified the hype: “Any pop band is doing the same. We have to start thinking the same way in science.”

Perhaps, but at what cost?

Hype Balloon Busted

One of the scientists who studied Ida admitted to the Wall Street Journal that “there was a TV company involved and time pressure. We’ve been pushed to finish the study. It’s not how I like to do science.” Another scientist told Live-Science.com, “The PR campaign on this fossil is I think more of a story than the fossil itself. . . . It’s a very beautiful fossil, but I didn’t see anything in this paper that told me anything decisive that was new.”

Other critics weren’t so kind. One primate paleontology expert bluntly stated, “It’s not a missing link, it’s not even a terribly close relative to monkeys, apes and humans, which is the point they’re trying to make.” The expert further charged that the scientists promoting Ida “ignored 15 years of literature.”

If someone bothered to delve into Ida’s original scientific paper, he would learn what the literature actually says. Scientists in the journal PLoS One wrote that Ida “could represent a stem group from which later anthropoid primates evolved,” but added that “we are not advocating this here” (emphases added).

Indeed, twelve of the sixteen primate traits that the scientists were able to identify classified Ida with monkeys. Ida’s website boasts of her monkey-like opposable toes, thumbs, foot-bones, face, and binocular vision.

By now you should be getting the picture: Ida was a young, small-brained, monkey-like primate, whose evolutionary importance is anything but clear.

Wetherington’s Whoppers

Ida’s story is a tragic one. Long ago, she was fossilized after falling victim to some unfortunate accident, only to suffer a far worse fate millions of years later-becoming the victim of an absurd case of media hype, making her the centerpiece of a crusade for Darwin. Sad to say, she does not represent an isolated case of evolutionists overstating the case for human evolution.

For example, during a hearing before the Texas State Board of Education in January 2009, anthropologist Ronald Wetherington (of Southern Methodist University) testified that human evolution has “arguably the most complete sequence of fossil succession of any mammal in the world. No gaps. No lack of transitional fossils. . . . So when people talk about the lack of transitional fossils or gaps in the fossil record, it absolutely is not true.” Wetherington then insistently told the board that there were no “weaknesses” in neo-Darwinism worth disclosing to students.

The data, I suggest, says otherwise.

Our genus Homo is supposedly descended from the australopithecines, an ape-like genus whose name literally means “southern ape.” Hominid fossils thus generally fall into one of two distinct categories: human-like fossils or ape-like fossils. What Wetherington failed to acknowledge was the current absence of transitional fossils to bridge the gap between ape-like and human forms.

In 2004, the late authoritative evolutionary biologist Ernst Mayr conceded that the earliest fossils of our own genus Homo “are separated from Australopithecus by a large, unbridged gap,” and that we do “not hav[e] any fossils that can serve as missing links.” The following year, two paleoanthropologists noted in Nature that the earliest fossil members of Homo have “been described as . . . ‘without an ancestor, without a clear past.’”

Likewise, an article in the Journal of Human Evolution concluded that the origin of Homo required “a genetic revolution” since “no australopithecine species is obviously transitional.” One commentator said this shows a “big bang theory” of human origins because “the first members of early Homo sapiens are really quite distinct from their australopithecine predecessors and contemporaries.”

Negative Reinforcement

Wetherington’s misstatements of the facts went further, as he told the Texas State Board that in the human evolutionary tree, “every fossil we find reinforces the sequence that we had previously supposed to exist rather than suggesting something different.” Yet the very first fossil he touted as “transitional”-the “Toumai skull”-refutes his claim.

When the Toumai skull was first reported in 2002, paleoanthropologists were presented with a dilemma. The skull was far too old for its modern appearance. But if evolutionists accepted it as a direct ancestor of humans, then many subsequent human ancestors would have to be thrown out of our family tree. Authority Bernard Wood lamented in Nature that if we place Toumai “at the base, or stem, of the modern human clade,” then the fossil “plays havoc with the tidy model of human origins.” Wood even observed that Toumai shows how “a single fossil can fundamentally change the way we reconstruct the tree of life.”

This doesn’t sound much like a fossil that “reinforces the sequence that we had previously supposed to exist.” And if that weren’t enough, some experts have suggested that Toumai is no evolutionary link, but merely the skull of a female gorilla.

Objectivity Overshadowed

Like evolutionist David Hillis, whom I critiqued in Salvo 9, Wetherington obviously overplayed his hand. But, considering Ida and other examples, why is this so common within the field of human origins?

The answer may be found in a 1981 article in the journal Science:

The field of paleoan-thropology naturally excites interest because of our own interest in origins. And, because conclusions of emotional significance to many must be drawn from extremely paltry evidence, it is often difficult to separate the personal from the scientific disputes raging in the field.

The study of human origins thus exemplifies a field in which scientific objectivity can be overshadowed by the modern-day equivalent of ancestor worship.

The lesson is simple: Maintain a healthy skepticism regarding media hype over “missing links.” Anyone who believes the hype that we’ve found the “missing link” has either forgotten history or isn’t looking very carefully at the evidence. •

Overblown Missing Links

The public likes to think of the scientific community and their publicity division, the mainstream media, as a trustworthy source of information. Unfortunately, history is replete with examples of missing links being touted to the public as proof of Darwinism, only later to be shown to be fake, suspect, or dramatically overstated. Here are a few of our favorite examples:

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Piltdown Man Discovered in 1912 in a gravel pit near Piltdown, England, this half-ape, half-man skull was immediately touted as proof of evolution. The New York Times published the headline “Paleolithic Skull Is a Missing Link,” and the fossil was featured as court-approved evidence for human evolution during the nationally followed Scopes Trial. One small problem: The skull was a forgery, pieced together from the jaw of an orangutan and the skull of a human.

Unfortunately, the hoax wasn’t exposed until 1953, duping countless people in the interim to accept human evolution.

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Archaeoraptor The Chinese equivalent of Piltdown, this fossil was touted as proof that birds evolved from feathered dinosaurs in a full color cover story in National Geographic in 1999. What’s disconcerting is that NG published its “Feathers for T. rex” article even though experts had expressed doubts about the fossil’s legitimacy. Computer tomography scans later confirmed that it was a fake, produced in a Chinese “fossil factory.” Months later, NG buried a retraction letter from a Chinese paleontologist admitting, “Though I do not want to believe it, Archaeoraptor appears to be composed of a dromaeosaur tail and a bird body.”

Though we don’t want to believe it, Archaeoraptor appears to show that the media is willing to publish stories promoting missing links even when unsure the evidence is authentic.

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Tiktaalik This alleged transitional fossil between fish and amphibians isn’t a fake (yet), but has enjoyed celebrity status among the Darwin-lobby since first being reported in 2006. Tiktaalik‘s lead discoverer, paleontologist Neil Shubin, published a popular book titled Your Inner Fish, promoting it as “a fish with a wrist.” Such rhetoric has led to the fossil being featured as the centerpiece missing link in a 2007 PBS documentary and a 2008 U.S. National Academy of Sciences booklet, as well as the customary New York Times articles.

Somehow, none of this fanfare has changed the fact that Tiktaalik has entirely fishlike fins and no wrist.

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Australopithecus anamensis In 2006, paleontologists reported finding a couple of teeth of “intermediate” size from the hominid species Australopithecus anamensis. Playing off the transitional-fossil feeding frenzy generated by Tiktaalik, MSNBC.com saw an opportunity, and declared these teeth evidence for a “missing link” and “the most complete chain of human evolution so far.”

And they wonder why we’re Darwin skeptics?

Copyright 2009, all rights reserved, Salvo magazine. This article first appeared in Autumn 2009, issue 10, of Salvo magazine, and is reprinted with permission.

Find the original article here.

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One of our goals as a ministry is to offer resources to help people think through various issues. Because of this, we stock about 1,000 titles on a wide range of topics, and we often have books that represent different viewpoints within each topic. Some issues are clearer than others – some have solid answers while others are more elusive – in either case, we encourage people to look for truth and see how Jesus Christ is relevant to the issue.

In order to make these resources available, on topics like systematic theology, health care reform, intelligent design, the slave trade, and journalism, we offer all books (of a value greater than $4) at a 20% discount. If you are looking for a book that we do not have in stock, in most cases, we are able to apply the discount to special orders. Large orders of a single title may be eligible for a greater discount.

We are a ministry first and a bookstore second; the small profit that is made from sales we use to pay for books that we give away! It is our desire to be able to offer good resources and make them affordable for people.

Make sure you take advantage of this opportunity to work through issues and questions that you have. College is a great time to reflect upon the beliefs that you have and the reasoning that underlies them. It is also a great time to explore topics that interest you and that you can become more involved in. Not to mention, reading or giving away books can be a great way to enter into conversations with other people in an informed way.

What does it mean to follow ethics?  Is it duty, pleasure seeking, something greater?  Since the greatest questions do not have apparent answers – we can enjoy the self-discovery.  Just like Job, when like any person, reached his breaking point he cried out ‘Why?’ and God answered.  Clearly God did not answer with an explanation but with other question proving His sovereign power to which Job was satisfied.  God’s mysteries are greater than man’s solutions.  One of the mysteries of God is why allows evil to exist, but that may be another book [The Problem of Pain by C. S. Lewis].  This great mystery has had many attempts to give a solution for some have failed and yet are still followed, and others give a glimpse of the great mystery.

Steve Wilkens compiles 9 common ethical theories: ‘When in Rome, Do as the Romans Do’ – Cultural Relativism, ‘Look Out for Number One’ – Ethical Egoism, ‘I Couldn’t Help Myself’ – Behaviorism, ‘The Greatest Happiness’ – Utilitarianism, ‘It’s your Duty’ – Kantian Ethics, ‘Be Good’ – Virtue Ethics, ‘All you Need is Love’ – Situation Ethics, ‘Doing What Comes Naturally’ – Natural Law Ethics, ‘God Said It, I believe It, That Settles It’ – Divine Command Theory.  In each a fair summary is given, what is right about the theory, and then what is wrong.

However despite the Christian appeals Wilkens keeps the mystery.  As each chapter contains a bumper sticker title, it is that type of thinking that is argued against.  As soon as we give a solution of Man, God’s mystery is ignored.

“Instead of accepting ‘bumper stickers’ at face value, this system fills in the blanks and provides arguments about why its views are better than other options.  Only when we dig deeper into bumper sticker-sized bits of moral directive ca we know if an ethical perspective will bear the weight of a lifetime of moral decisions.”

Ethics ought to be used to argue for and support our own ethics.  How ironic would it be to support a deontological point of view with an ‘end justifies the means’ method.  If we do then we could become the Operative in this scene in Serenity.

Capt. Malcolm Reynolds: I don’t murder children.
The Operative: I do. If I have to.
Capt. Malcolm Reynolds: Why? Do you even know why they sent you?
The Operative: It’s not my place to ask. I believe in something greater than myself. A better world. A world without sin.
Capt. Malcolm Reynolds: So me and mine gotta lay down and die… so you can live in your better world?
The Operative: I’m not going to live there. There’s no place for me there… Malcolm… I’m a monster. What I do is evil. I have no illusions about it, but it must be done.

Evil can never justify itself, but what it can do is cloud mistake the actions and center only on the outcomes.  This is why Socrates is still looked up to as the searcher looking for Truth (and yes, I’ll forget about The Apology).  Wilkens concludes his book by writing:

“Socrates can remind Christians of something valuable here. Many of us feel pressures to come up with the right answer right away.  However, this can lead us to be dishonest in the process.  Truthfulness, goodness, and rightness need the characterize not only our conclusions buyt also the mans by which we get to our conclusions.  And if there is any place where Christians should be honest, it is the ethical process.”

An uniquely honest and ethical perspective from an unique book.

Now that the semester is steadily underway, and your schedule is more consistent, it is time to find a campus ministry to be a part of. There are a diversity of Christian clubs at Boise State that meet at different times. Although they have different names, are organized differently, or have different emphases, they all belong to the body of Christ and love serving together. The unity of the Christian clubs makes interaction with and between them very enjoyable; it also makes it easier for someone who is trying to find a club that suits them. On our community link, we have listed several of the Christian clubs on campus with a short description (click here).

Being a Christian without any peer fellowship can feel like being lost in the middle of the cosmos: which direction do you go, is anyone there for you, how can you help others? It is refreshing and encouraging to meet with people who hold similar beliefs – to mutually support each others struggles and joys. Many college students find themselves “loosing touch with God” when they go off to college (away from their close friends and family). This is not because there are doubts and questions that cannot be worked through, but often because people become weary and discouraged when they try to work through them on their own.

Besides the support of others, being a part of a club has the potential for much growth, learning, and fun. Experiences like taking a weekend to go on a prayer backpack rarely happen on one’s own, and never have the same results when done in a group (who doesn’t want to throw a campus minister into a pond, or discuss God’s love while gazing at the night sky). Not to say that individual experiences are not valuable, but that group activities are also important. God is doing different things in different people: they can bring perspectives different from your own to discussions. Interacting in groups also gives you a chance to practice using the gifts that God has given you to encourage others.

If you are not already part of group, begin by looking at our community page and see if there are any groups that interest you. Go check a couple of them out, and find some people that you can grow in God with. The benefits of fellowshipping with others are far reaching, but they include helping and being helped by others, practicing gifts, sharing insights with each other, working through struggles together, and being able to pray for one another. Don’t become discouraged by being isolated!

The first week of the semester has already passed and there is still much to do. Over the summer we have planned, worked, and organized, but, nevertheless, in order to get everything done we need a small army. This is where you come in. Since there are so many opportunities, no matter what your gifts or interests are, there is something for you to do. Not only will you be helping us check off our lists, but you will be blessing other people. This is also a great opportunity for you to practice your gifts and skills. Here is a partial list of things that we need help with. If anything interests you, please contact us.

• Graphic design: creating posters, flyers, pamphlets, etc.

• Taking artistic photos of Cornerstone, people, and campus.

• Finding professional articles to be posted on our website (or writing good articles).

• Writing reviews of books on our list.

• Leading or attending special topic discussion groups.

• Leading or attending a Bible study.

• Being an officer or member in our student club.

• Evangelizing on campus, helping with book tables, helping distribute resources to students, etc.

• Help with any technical computer problems.

• Help organize and categorize the loan library.

• Help clean and organize Cornerstone.

On Tuesday, September 15^th, David Horowitz will be speaking at 7:30 pm in the Jordan Ballroom at BSU on academic freedom.

The event is free of charge, but donations are accepted.

This event is presented by The College of Idaho Students for Economic Freedom, The Boise State Conservative Student Coalition, and The Idaho Freedom Foundation.