Back to Christianity

I talked in a recent post about evangelism and how I always want it to be first in my life. Somehow I got back into the subject of evolution and what different viewpoints of evolution can mean to a person's faith.

I guess I keep talking about science because I was one of the students in college, a long time ago, who got sucked into eventually believing everything is made by chance from matter and energy, and that there is no God at all needed to make our universe and everything that is in it.

Though I think that is obviously a wrong argument today, my way back did not start through reason. It was because I was emotionally miserable. I had some difficult life situations as we all do, and I saw nothing to give me hope in this life, much less in any next one.

Fortunately I had been brought up with Christian training. Then, after a long time, certain events took place in my life that showed me how rich Christian love can be. Though it seems I myself decided to try to go back to the beliefs once more, I think Christ was rescuing me. I found myself healing and renewed. And the same goes for problems since then. I can be scared from life's tribulations, but I feel the Lord will pull me through.

My beliefs also meant I could accept God as Creator of life, which made more sense than chance. It also meant that love has meaning and morals have meaning. That especially has a profound influence on our lives and uplifts our spirits when we experience it. It builds up instead of tearing down.

The more I tried to believe, the more I really believed. I believe God exists, and I believe Jesus Christ is truly the Son of God, part of the Trinity of Father, Son and Holy Spirit. The Christian creeds proclaim that we believe God made all that is seen and unseen.

It seems that faith and reason interweave. As I've said before, if we think at all, we can't help but reason. But this reasoning may be right or it may be wrong. I believe true faith, which is a mystery, gives us the underpinning for right reason. We can stand strong in faith when others attack it because Jesus Christ provides the foundation for us.

Open to Comments

For a while I closed my blog to comments because I took some time off from it. I like to keep track of them if I have any comments in order to answer back. I have made some comments on other blogs, but these have not generated comments here. I know I have focused a great deal on a subject which has not been of general interest, namely biological Creationism. (I think its potential is much greater than realized and could be a great evangelization tool.)

I have opened the blog to comments now, but will probably not have many new posts. I think I may be entering a new phase of life where I will be working outside the house, so I will not have the time as I did the past few years to enter posts. If you are interested, please look at past posts and topics. This blog has been helpful to me, among other things, in learning and expressing the amazing Creation we have from the Lord, and for that it has been good.

Evangelism First

My husband and I had a nice vacation to visit relatives and now that I'm back I want to put together a positive-minded post.

I have been writing regularly in my blog for several years, and wrote a mystery book and several booklets. However, I had been feeling frustrated and at a stand-still with the resistance of persons against the idea of direct supernatural creation of life by God. I don't want my writing to be all about the negative interactions I have had. I truly admire Creation and enjoy learning about it. I've written about it in those terms, not just in antagonism to those who don't agree. I had given some talks and debated with persons on the Internet (on a small scale). Some of this activity has been positive and successful. But then I got into negative debate, enough to discourage me about future success. So I took some time off and do feel better about things in general.

I hope to always serve the Lord as the priority of my life. We all have various gifts and can serve in different ways. I'm not very outgoing, yet I'd like to evangelize. I think of what I can do to tell someone about Christ by something I do or write. This includes prayer for those who are out in the field, doing the living work of telling the Good News.

I think those of us who talk about Creation care about how God is perceived. Those who insist on theistic evolution (indirect creation and evolution of life) worry that atheists will reject what they think is ignorant (even if this perception is incorrect). Those who believe in direct supernatural creation believe the discussion of it in the classroom will bring students' imaginations closer to the possibilities of God's touch and then God Himself. Young-Earth Creationists are concerned about Scriptural Truth and that people will not be turned away from it.

The theistic evolutionists also are afraid that science will suffer if we say about unknown aspects of life that "God did it." Yet we can keep on discovering life as it is, and seek knowledge for medicine and the like under the auspices of systems biology. This is what many researchers are already doing with their computer analyses of genes, proteins and other cell processes. They don't have to know how or whether something evolved to see how it works now. In fact, wrong speculation about evolution can mislead theory, such as the case of thinking that all non-coding DNA was "junk DNA." This has proven false and slowed down research in this area for many years. We need the clear theory-neutral facts, and if researchers want to speculate on theory such as evolution, they should do so in clearly marked separate sections of their paper.

Christians should want to put our solidarity in Christ at the forefront, then work out our other concerns with each other. Though science is important, evangelism for Jesus Christ is much more so. The body lasts only so long in this world, no matter how well our medicine works. The everlasting life of the soul is our more important concern. Consider the thought of Paul in 2 Corinthians 5:2 (NABRE) when he says about our bodies (tents), "For in this tent we groan, longing to be furthered clothed with our heavenly habitation." Now, I very well know we want to treat children for cancer and have them live to their full earthly life-span, but Paul appreciated the greater power of God. Paul said in v. 4, "we do not wish to be unclothed but to be further clothed, so that what is mortal may be swallowed up by life."

I want to serve the Lord in the forefront in my life.

Creation Science for Biology

I'm very pleased to announce that my new booklet, Creation Biology, is now on my blog. It is similar in some ways to my previous booklet, Faith, Science and Intelligent Design. But I found my theology was too different from the Intelligent Design Advocates who repeated that the Designer of life "could be anybody." Though I know they have their reasons for putting their description of design in nature this way, some of them are Christian. I feel the Christian should not equivocate about design and creation, and state openly and clearly about the Creator. There is only One choice for us, and that is God. We state this in our creeds, such as you can see written out in the booklet.

I hope you will make use of this booklet and learn from it, as from another one called Heaven's Passport. This has factual information about Jesus Christ with references. This booklet also can be easily read online or printed out.

The links in the titles lead to the pages that contain more information and direct links to the files. You can also click their images in the right column.

Just the Facts

I remember watching Dragnet as a kid. I loved Jack Webb, and of course Harry Morgan is one of Muskegon's own. The famous line "Just the Facts, Ma'am" came from the the way witnesses and other involved persons would get off the track, wasting the time of investigators.

There are many researchers, scientists and teachers who are brilliant and have done a great deal for the world by their discoveries in medicine and the like. This is certainly not to be taken for granted.

But, however important scientific progress is in this life, there is another life to come that is even more important. This is because it lasts longer, has to do with the state that our souls will be in, and relates to the God who made us in the first place. We just can't forget about that in our fear of disease or hunger in this world.

Evolution is a very tricky subject. Though we look for patterns in biology to learn how to manipulate problems, these patterns are present whether they came from evolution or elsewhere. The idea of evolution as something that helps find the patterns is not necessarily true. In fact, it has delayed some progress in the past because things that are present were not expected. We need a proper analysis of what we find in DNA, protein and other parts of the cell at the present time instead of insisting on evolution as past, present and future answers to all our questions.

There is a great paper in the first issue of BIO-Complexity about the "Search Problem" also known as "Sparse Search." It is by Douglas Axe, "The Case Against a Darwinian Origin of Protein Folds," BIO-Complexity, (2010). This shows the vast number of amino acid combinations that do not have function as compared to those which do. Axe is a researcher who has devoted his time to studying proteins, the cell machinery that take on specific shapes for specific jobs. This is a great article to read about facts of biology. You can get the full PDF article from the link in the article title above. There is no answer for this problem of how the cell formed with so many non-functional proteins around to get in the way of working ones (or, in the case of DNA, nonfunctional sequences of codes). Some proteins are nearly the same, but many are very different. Axe answers the challenges I've heard to this problem.

Scientists are frustrated when some of us say there may never be an answer as to how life began. They say just because we don't know now doesn't mean we'll never know. That could be true, but it is time for them to admit that we don't know the whole story of evolution at present. That is the proper analysis for now. Evolution, along with origin of life, is in the same state. You can't insist that something is a fact, when the facts, even though they may answer a few things, do not answer all the questions.

While we are on facts, many philosophers are telling us that we can know God by facts. This is an accepted argument made by Aquinas, but we have only to look around us and see many thinking people who do not believe in God. The problem is that facts in this world are very complicated things. In the Bible, Paul said that we can know God through the things which are made (cf. Rom 1:20 NABRE). But, did Paul know the composition of rocks? Did he understand electromagnetic radiation? He was awed by the stars, but did not understand what made them glow. I don't think raw facts were his point.

There is something that is deeper going on here. I think God made us to understand creation and design, and we can acknowledge it to Him or not. Paul also said that men did not glorify God but their hearts were darkened (cf. Rom. 1:21). This is where today's philosophy is falling short in insisting on philosophical materialism alone. Philosophers cling to materialism because that is what seems most "logical" to them. They can't let go because it threatens their conception of facts. But God can do as He sees fit, and if He made life directly by Supernatural means, the facts will point in that direction. This is the logic they are missing and unfortunately it leads to keeping out those who see it from being able to join in the discussion (at least the classroom discussion). As to Christians who insist on theological evolution, where God makes everything indirectly, they may be misled by these materialists. At least they see the design of the universe and magnify the Lord.

Facts, as we see, can be very helpful, but our minds are affected by attitudes and misconceptions. It may be impossible for individuals to start with "just the facts," which is why fair discourse is so important.

Our Great Hope

In this blog I had given an emphasis to Intelligent Design Theory (ID). But mostly the point from those is that you can see design from nature. What I have repeated in the blog and a booklet about ID that I had written was that for Christians, not just anyone can be the designer, as the ID people often say. For a Christian, the logical conclusion is that God was the designer.

I don't know if the term "design" really helps the situation. Creation Science advocates have said all along that God supernaturally created the creatures, including humans. So, I feel I want to change my viewpoint to Creation Science, oriented to biology. Now, Creation Scientists often believe that the Earth is only thousands of years old, instead of the billions that most scientists advocate. They are known as Young Earth Creationists. I don't know how old the Earth is and, though I think there can be much research done there, I find enough to do with trying to keep up with biology.

There are many people who are already involved with Creation Science, so I don't know how much I'll take up the struggle for understanding this aspect of God's work from now on. This re-orientation will take a little time to get used to. I want to see what is out there in the way of books from the Creation Science rather than Intelligent Design point of view. Often writers start out on one project and end up on another. I don't know where I will go from here.

Last winter, I had wanted to write a book about proteins for the layperson in order to give them some idea of the amazing world inside our bodies. I know it is being studied in science classes, but a lot of adults have missed out on the explosion of new discoveries in the last few decades.

But, there are several things which have happened to change my mind about doing a book, at least in the way I had planned. One is that I had met great resistance to the idea that completely materialistic, naturalistic evolution of species may not be providing the answers we have expected ever since Charles Darwin's theory became so widely accepted. I not only wanted to write about proteins but teach students from the angle of direct supernatural design/creation. I contacted many schools and groups, but was mostly turned down, even though I have degrees in animal science and veterinary medicine. For many years religious people resisted Darwin's idea of slight changes and natural selection for the differences we see in animals. Now the extreme is at the other end, where any ideas of direct supernatural creation are resisted very strongly (though they say it is OK to believe God made creation if He designed it all to happen before the Big Bang). I have been disappointed in the lack of fairness I expected from people to be willing to hear the other points of view.

But I found another problem coming from a fault of my own. I admit not only disappointment but anger at them for making the culture so inhospitable for the Christian message for the next generation, which I believe is related to how we think of God's creativity. I think it is very important to at least have an open mind as to how God may have touched His creation after the formation of the Earth. Though I tried not to show my anger to others, I know how I have felt.

It is humbling to know our own faults. The effort we take to look at them helps us realize how unpleasing we ourselves sometimes are. I was actually feeling a hopelessness in my life from these events. Yet I went through reflection and prayer and know there are some things that always bring me back to hope. One of the greatest is the fact that Jesus Christ, God's own Son, came to Earth, lived a perfect life, and died for my sins. He rose on the third day and ascended to Heaven. He told us that if we believe in Him, we will have everlasting life and love with Him.

That gives me hope indeed.

Protein Wonders

The only problem with showing people the wonders of proteins is to know where to start. There is such a variety of amazing molecules, it boggles the mind. These pictures are seen in magazines and on the Internet, but some places are especially good, I think, for learning about them. I'll assume I'm speaking to a beginner, but this applies for anyone.

When I was in college, I learned about physiology, but a lot of it had to do with which hormone was floating to which organ. In vet school, we were concerned about disease and medicine. There was not the access to microbiological structures as there is now. But, one of the things they taught us there was how to teach ourselves. They knew science and medicine would keep changing and we had to be able to keep up. In my case, it was "catch up," since I had been away from practicing for a while.


But now I enjoy looking at the proteins and reading about their structures and functions. The proteins form parts of larger structures. Sometimes there are many duplicates of the same protein within the whole mechanism.

There are many links and one database can lead to another. I have spent a few years on this blog, learning about them and putting together different descriptions. I invite you to look around. I try to have certain basic links. Some are inside my own website and some connect to others.

The "cell" is the basic unit of our bodies. Humans have about 100 trillion cells. Proteins are one of the working components of our cells. The pictures here are of one amazing set of proteins, ATP Synthase and the machinery that copies the DNA code to make proteins, RNA Polymerase. You can go to the links and read my description. ATP Synthase is an energy-storing machine. Don't worry if you can't understand all the terms or what I've said. Enjoy the wonders of them. Eventually, if you are interested and keep working on it, you'll understand more. You can also click on the pictures here to get a better look.

One of my favorite sites to learn about proteins is the Research Collaboratory for Structural Bioinformatics Protein Data. That is a mouthful, but it is abbreviated RCSB PDB and the home page is HERE.  They have a sub-section called PDB-101 which features "Molecule of the Month" by David Goodsell. The descriptions and pictures in Molecule of the Month are meant for a general audience. You can go there to get a good idea of the amazing variety of proteins and how they work. There is a selection in the top ribbon for Molecule of the Month along with other features of the web page. There are other protein websites, but this is a good place for a beginner.