faith

by

God’s Not Dead – part 2


I was doing some research and quickly found the following statements. As I read the article I became even more aware of the efforts to explain what happened that proves what or who we are – while not really explaining much of anything. The efforts to cloud an issue while working hard to clarify and substantiate current theories is somewhat mind-boggling. If you read what is written closely you will see that the efforts put forth in the end completely support the requirement, the staging and the changes that had to take place that allowed man of old to live such a long life (up to and over 900 years). These changes in sea level and how the atmosphere changed hold such a key to who we are. Changes like these disrupt the current scientific dating methods more specifically carbon dating. As you read the report keep in mind that if the Cambrian explosion happened and it was responsible for starting life forms to evolve, and that it took place 530 million years ago, then we should not find things of human origin or things of later era’s located in this formation of the earth. However, we do find these things. Is it even possible that life of anything could have existed and then survived this explosion. Is it possible for this type explosion to happen and still keep our earth in its place in the atmosphere allowing life that existed to continue and expand into what we see today? If it took an explosion to really kick-start life as we know it, then how could it possibly take 20 million years. It would not be an explosion! It would have been a process and this is what science wants us to believe happened. So was it a process or an explosion?

LiveScience
By By Tia Ghose, Staff Writer
September 19, 2013 2:47 PM

Evolutionary ‘Big Bang’ Was Triggered by Multiple Events

The Cambrian explosion, the evolutionary “big bang” that led to the emergence of a trove of complex life forms, was caused by multiple events, researchers argue.

Genetic changes allowing for complex body plans combined with rising sea levels and an influx of chemicals into the ocean probably created the unique conditions needed to set off the Cambrian explosion, researchers argue in a perspectives paper published today (Sept. 19) in the journal Science.

“There was this cascade of events,” said study co-author Paul Smith, a paleobiologist at the University of Oxford’s Museum of Natural History. “You can see how one process might feed into one another and possibly amplify it as it feeds back.”

Evolutionary big bang

About 530 million years ago during the Cambrian Period, the diversity of life on Earth exploded. The first sea-faring predators and prey emerged, animals developed strange and diverse body plans and evolved hard exoskeletons. A recent study revealed that life evolved during the Cambrian Period at a rate about five times faster than today. [Cambrian Creatures: Images of Primitive Sea Life]

Scientists have proposed everything from genetic changes to a starburst in the Milky Way to explain the explosion in diversity.

“There are well over 30 hypotheses out there for the Cambrian explosion,” Smith told LiveScience.

Smith and his colleagues looked through all the existing research to see what could explain the evolution of complexity from relatively simple life forms that existed prior to the Cambrian explosion.

“Prior to this, a typical ecosystem would have been a microbial mat with a few things sitting on top,” Smith said. (Microbial are single cell living organisms. Where did they come from?)

At that time, animals couldn’t eat large particles of food, and there were no food webs with predators chasing prey. (if life forms started based on the theory that the big bang mixed just the right amount of chemicals and etc. together to start life, then life didn’t exist prior to the big bang. If it did exist then the big bang did not start life. At the time of the big bang no animals existed big or small. So how did it start?)

Multiple factors

The researchers found genetic changes were needed to get the ball rolling toward an explosion of life. By estimating mutation rates, biologists have concluded the genes that code for complex, easily adaptable, bilateral body plans — a necessary precursor for diverse life forms — likely evolved 150 million years prior to the Cambrian Period. (Some evidence suggests this evolution may have occurred closer in time to the Cambrian explosion.)

But genetic changes alone couldn’t explain the explosion in diversity.

The rise of sea levels and the flooding of flat, shallow areas of the continents may have served as triggering events. The flooded areas would have provided vastly more habitat for organisms, and the contact between the eroded rock surface and the seawater would have infused minerals, such as calcium and strontium, into the oceans.

Those minerals are toxic to cells, so animals would’ve needed a way to excrete them.

The animals then would have evolved the ability to incorporate those minerals into their exoskeletons, enabling much more complicated body plans, predation and more modern food webs.

The idea that many factors led to the Cambrian explosion is pretty widespread, said Robert Gaines, a geologist at Pomona College in California, who was not involved in the study.

“I think there are very few people who wouldn’t wholeheartedly agree with that,” Gaines told LiveScience.

Though the Cambrian explosion is described as a big bang, it was a rather drawn-out affair occurring over 20 million years, Michael Lee, a researcher at the South Australian Museum at the University of Adelaide, who was not involved in the study, wrote in an email.

“One would expect that a range of complex ecological and abiotic drivers might have acted at different times throughout the period,” Lee said.

______________________________________________________________

by

God’s not Dead


The movie “Gods Not Dead” has hit the screens and if you choose to go and see it (I highly recommend it), you may see the world from a little different angle even if it is for just a moment. For those of you that have followed any of my writings or even read a copy of my book “Deceptive Influences” you would know this is a passion of mine. I believe that this world was created and that it has not just evolved. I believe that if everyone would take the time or maybe better yet be given the total story via our education system, the world would be such a good place to live. People would love people, people would respect people, all people would have a real truthful purpose in life. It’s not that each of us don’t have goals, and it is not that goals are not important because they are, it’s that so many times we get the important ones mixed up and they end up on the back burner and many times we loose them due to our pushing them so far back we don’t even remember them. In todays world, actually this started back in history in the early 1800’s and we could even track this back hundreds of years before our time, the world decided that God was not so important and that maybe He just does not exist and set out to prove that they were correct. Going way back in time people added new god’s to the equation in search for something that they must have felt made sense to them at the time. Then came the evolutionary theory. No God at all. While this was a very small minority in the beginning, the momentum started to grow in the mid-1800’s. Many people credit Darwin with this evolutionary thinking. He stepped out and published what he felt was important and he did this for a reason. He did this after the death of his young daughter and also his younger son. I can only guess at what his attitude on life would have been. I have never experienced this personally outside of loosing my parents and grandparents, but loosing a child let alone two would be a bit devastating. It was after this that I believe Darwin lost his faith in God. Darwin had went to college and trained to be a minister. His faith was challenged and his desire to find a different path was set.

I believe that this is true for any of us when faced with things in our lives that make us feel uncomfortable, uneasy with what we see, upset with events in our lives, and just plain upset with God. So many people blame any bad thing’s that happen on God. How often do you hear or maybe you have even stated it, “If God was a good God He would not let these thing happen”. People struggle with these issues. I truly believe that if we could allow our minds to just contemplate the total story, we would be able to understanding that it is not God doing these things. I had an example of this explain to me and it goes like this.

“If a father and a son were walking along a path together, and the son fell down and hurt himself, was it the fathers fault? Did the father cause him to fall? Or was it the father that reach down and picked up his son and help him back on his feet or carried him back home?”

Digging into this topic I have discovered that it really does come down to a single question. It should have nothing to do with what makes us comfortable, how we want to live our lives or what makes us happy. It has to do with the truth behind who we are. Were we created or did we just evolve? You may not want to tackle this question or even explore it due to our human inclination to keep our lives comfortable with where we are. However, if we were created then it is a very real possibility that God is real and that what He created is each of us. If we evolved from something, then He is not real. It takes faith to believe in either. It is now a matter of where you place your faith. When placing it one way or the other you need to do this with an understanding of all the information out there and not just what someone wants you to believe. We live in a world that either tells us what to do or provides advertising in an attempt to control our desires. What we need to do is make that decision ourselves based on our discovery journey. Believing in God is not restrictive outside of what we should not be doing anyway and allows each of us to live a great life. If you decide to believe in evolution you should still desire to live by the same rules of life. In either case our life on earth would be so much better if we all followed these simple rules. They are called the 10 commandments.

I welcome any comments and thoughts from either side of this discussion. It is an exciting journey we are on and to share and explore is what makes this life so interesting. Thanks in advance for your support and too each and every explorer that decides to jump aboard this discovery journey with me.

by

What happened to all the people?


A Think Tank question:

Have you ever had a time when you were looking at something to purchase and when comparing the difference in cost of new vs. used and having checked out the available statics, you determine that new is the best way to go? However, down the road what you purchased new no longer worked while your friend with the used one was still using it and it was working just like yours did when it was new? The world of statistics can be fascinating and generally can add credibility to most any thing if they exist, if true information is utilized with no hidden motivation in their compilation. Summing this up we really need just the true facts to draw a solid conclusion.

Looking into our world population and the current numbers that everyone agrees exists today and moving backward based on the proven and statically agreed to population growth formula, we find that when we reach all the way back to the first two people – a man and a woman living on earth – it would be around 4500 years ago. I find this quite incredible since we are continually educated that this earth is many millions and billions of years old. That we are told that it takes millions of years for something to evolve into something else. That a man and a woman would have evolved just in time – at the same time – just to start the population of our earth is quite mind-boggling.

What is wrong? Who is wrong? Is anything wrong? Think about it!

 

 

by

Life’s Questions


Go back

Your message has been sent

After several conversations with several different people on the topic of what are people really looking for in life I found several comments that focused on who am I and why am I here. Why should I care? What should I believe in? Is there really a God? If God is good and controls everything why does He let all the bad things happen? Who is the real god? Are we created or did we just happen? Science has proven we have evolved over time. I can’t believe the bible is true. What religious belief is the real deal?

I have asked several of these questions myself and find many people who don’t believe the same as I do, take positions on these topics based on feelings or personal comfort with how they want to live their life just like I did. How do you look at life? What makes you believe the way you believe?

If you would share any thoughts you may have it would be great. I believe it is the unasked questions and the unanswered questions that control who we ultimately are, what we place our faith in, how we act and react to life’s issues.

Thanks in advance for your support in this exploration. What questions do you have or do you hear from your friends?

by

Influence’s – Why do I think and act the way I do?


If our personality is at the core of who we are, then what shaped it the way it is. What influences in our lives have had the biggest impact? What is at the core of who we have become? Many would say our parents and our family. Some would say our education. Some might say our religious background. Even our environment can play a role. It could be the country we live in or the city or even the area of the city we lived in as a child or even where we live today as we have grown older. Maybe it is our jobs. Many of us have had our fair share of up’s and down’s in life (some more than others) which can have a direct impact on how we think and react to just about everything. Many of us don’t like our lives disrupted, we have a comfort level in our daily lives and generally like it left alone. But what has guided your opinion on life down the road you travel? Giving this some thought I bet you could come up with many reasons why you are who you are and what shaped this personality of yours.

If you have an opinion you would like to share it would be great. I believe that many of us could learn from each others experiences. In the next few days I will give you a feel for where I came from and the key influences that has driven me in many different directions. I always wanted to see if the Grass on the other side of the fence was really greener. Is it?

To be continued!

by

What are the odds?


Go back

Your message has been sent

Just what are the odds of some event happening somewhere back in time setting in motion everything we see from the plants to the animals, the fish, the birds and even the insects and of course us humans? The scientifically accepted law of probability which is called Borel’s law of probability states that the odds of anything happening would have to be less than 1 out of 10 to the 50th power. That is a lot of zeros, but one might think anything is possible if it is just one point below this. However, it is stated by some of the very influential evolutionist that for things to evolve from some random something happening would be most difficult. Dr. Carl Sagan of Cornell stated the odds would be 1 in 10 to the 2,000,000 power. One now believing creationist – Dr. Harold Morowitz a biophysics from Yale – states the chances of evolution happening as we are taught in our schools is 1 chance out of 10 to the 340,000,000. Putting this in simple words, it is just impossible based on the odds of it happening by itself! So how did this all start. Someone must have put things in motion.

by

Influencing personalities that Influence


Have you ever wondered just who you are? Just why you are here? Why you do what you do? Why you have become the person you see looking back at you in the mirror? The person behind the face you see?

It all begins at birth. After one is born we start taking on the influences of our parents. We learn by doing, seeing, touching, tasting and smelling. We learn by doing even if it is a bad experience. We react to things we see and restate things we hear. Our personalities are in full development mode. We move onto school and enter into our formal education years and our mind continues to soak things up that we are taught, hearing what people want us to hear. We start becoming our own person which has been influenced by everything around us. At some point in this process our personalities take over and it drives us deeper in the direction it has been programmed to do. We many time don’t even realize the things we are missing just because we have programmed our mind to see things the way we want to see them. Life moves on and we become set in our ways and generally can have issues seeing someone else’s point of view if it does not somewhat line up with ours. We dig in our heals when things oppose our point of view. We don’t want anyone rocking our boat. Then something happens. It could be the death of a loved one, an accident, a close call, a war, or just about anything that rattles our daily norm and for a brief moment we become vulnerable and have a window of opportunity to see things differently. If we react things can change and if we don’t, in short we are back to where we were before this event occurred.

If we would just allow ourselves to peel the onion back and get to the core of who we are, we could start to see these influences that molded us. Makes little difference if it is religious driven or the other side of the equation that believes we are just here via some big bang. The point to this is that getting to the core of how this all began is important and if we did not evolve from some little cell that just happened, then someone must have started it all. It really is one or the other. This someone would have been the beginning of everything including ourselves. So if you choose to place your faith in chance than don’t worry too much because you just happened, but if you place your faith in someone who started everything then it might be good to find the beginning of this so you have your faith in the right someone.

Possible a little deep I know. But worth pondering. What I found while digging into these thoughts was surprising. It was not overwhelming and most definitely was worth the time spent traveling down this discovery road. I feel I now know how this all started. It takes faith to believe in either side of this story. It is really just a question now of where you place your faith and making sure that it is your decision and not a decision influenced by what someone else would have you believe.

by

Life’s Influences


Go back

Your message has been sent

When one looks back on their life we find that our personalities start their formal formation at birth. How we are raised, the environment we live in, our schooling, our religious upbringing all play a role in who we are today. Check this YouTube video out and see what this author has tried to analyze, drawing conclusions based on solid non – influenced data.

http://www.youth.be.com/znG9cEWUdg4