No Matter What They Say

There have to be people out there who are beginning to realize that biological life is too complex to have come about by random physics and chemistry, no matter what evolutionists say. Many critics of the Intelligent Design Movement (ID) insist the ID advocates are Creationists who are trying to hide their real identity.  The IDists say they are simply scientists who are evaluating the telltale signs of design in biology.  The critics ask who the designer is and the IDists say the Designer has intelligence but “could be anyone” or “could be anything.” They give a characteristic of their theoretical designer, but not an identity.

But I’m happy to answer Who the Designer is.

I believe that God made Creation and He has revealed Himself through the Bible.  He has also made Himself known through nature itself.  There are Scripture verses often quoted by those who link science with religion.  One of them goes: "Ever since the creation of the world, his invisible attributes of eternal power and divinity have been able to be understood and perceived in what he has made..." (Romans 1:20 NABRE).

Design does not have to be proven in the scientific way in order for people to see and appreciate it. The far more puzzling question is why people aren’t seeing it. How can they even pretend these biological systems are not designed?

Perhaps it is because they are told they are not designed. But more and more information is coming out that contradicts what evolutionists and most scientists are saying.  At some point we have to judge for ourselves, just as a jury has to evaluate whether someone is being truthful or lying about a certain event. Juries evaluate motives, and we are called upon in the case of evolution theory to analyze agendas.  Though many deny it, biological evolution is tied to questions of value of life. 

Besides being Creator, God interacts with people personally. But you may have no idea how to connect with Him.  I’d like you to be aware of these 5 ways to develop spirituality.  Start with any and try to work up to all of them.

1. Worship, preferably within a Christian Church.
2. Read the Bible, starting with the New Testament (Book of Matthew, and be sure to read the Book of John).
3. Pray, even if you don’t know what you are doing.  God does and will hear you. 
4. Make quiet time for yourself at regular intervals. 
5. Speak to members of the Christian community, including the pastor, about your thoughts and questions.  If you are not comfortable in the first conversation, please try again.

Maintain this effort even if you don’t detect any change at first. Persistence pays. If you have resisted belief in God, it may be difficult.  But I hope as you read the Bible and do the other spiritual exercises you will sense a difference in your thoughts and your life.

I believe God exists and that biological life and the world around us are evidence of such.  It can be most fulfilling to learn more, in different ways, of both the Creation and the Creator.

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My husband had surgeries in August and the beginning of Sept. to help in his fight against the symptoms of Parkinson’s disease.  By God's grace, he is recovering well from the surgery. 

I want to thank our church family at St. Mary’s Catholic Church in Muskegon for their emotional and spiritual support and the wonderful staff at Mercy Health St. Mary’s and Hauenstein Neurosciences in Grand Rapids.  You are all very, very special.  Often people are asked why Catholics stay in the Church with all the bad going on in it.  Of course we believe in Jesus Christ and His real presence in the Eucharist. Beyond that there are good works Catholics say they would not want to abandon.  You are all proof of the good.

Division and Change

Austrian Fr. Helmut Schüller is a representative of many priests in the Catholic Church.  He is currently on a US speaking tour.  He is organizing priests and laypersons to make a grass-roots change.  His group thinks all Catholics should have greater participation in the running of the Church and that married men and women should be able to become ordained.

Several bishops have disallowed Fr. Schüller to speak under their jurisdictions.  This web page article by Matthew Archbold, "Philadelphia Archdiocese Opposes Dissident at Chestnut Hill College," Free Republic, July 8, 2013, reports that Archbishop Chaput of Philadelphia thinks his appearance at a local college on July 19 would be dangerous to Church unity.  Does Archbishop Chaput actually think that the current Church is united?  Perhaps he doesn’t count all the people who have left it in recent years or those crying for change.

When the Pew Research Center released an extensive survey in 2008, US Religious Landscape Survey: Religious Affiliation, it found that Catholic Church has the most percentage loss of any denomination.  In the past few decades here, around 25,000,000 people have left. As the survey says, if it were not for the Latino influx into our country, the losses would be much higher.  The bishops may hope for Latinos to change the order of things in the US, but these people are also leaving the Church. There may have been an enthusiastic World Youth Day in Brazil, but in another Pew Forum study, Brazil's Changing Religious Landscape, the statistics show people are declining in Catholic affiliation there too, especially the young.

Ever since Pope Francis has been elected, he has talked about change.  He wants Catholics to “get outside themselves,” to dialogue with others and to care for the poor. If you follow the Vatican News website which gives daily updates on his homilies and other activities, you will see the themes often.

The people who leave the Catholic Church go to various ends.  Some join Pentecostal churches, some mainline Protestant, some lose their faith altogether. Even within the Church a wide range of opinion is seen, from liberal to conservative. So is there any hope for unity at all?

The Catholic Church has been through all kinds of tough times.  Past popes were involved in wars (Free Library description HERE) and belonged to corrupt political families (Wikipedia entry HERE).  During Inquisitions, heretics were burned at the stake. Women are totally excluded from leadership. The child sexual abuse travesty has apparently been around for a long time but not as widely known as it lately has been. (And we hope that this coming to the surface will lead to permanent cleansing.) A well-researched article by Thomas Doyle, "A very short history of clergy sexual abuse in the Catholic Church," is on the Crusade Against Clergy Abuse website.   People ask why members stay. 

I do not want to minimize our responsibility to try to solve our problems. Fortunately, things do change and we hopefully try to evangelize heretics instead of burning them at the stake. In my blog I have had many articles concerning the inequality I feel is imposed upon Catholic women. Though some Catholic women are not insulted by the traditional way of men-only clergy, in this day and age many women are indignant about the differences. Though some people hold there are reasons for distinctions between genders, this theology has obviously been put forward by an all-male Magisterium. Would a group which included women in the decision come to the same conclusion?

However, getting back to the point, I along with other Church members have priorities.  I saw a comment on the Internet where they were discussing grievous wrongs of the Church. The person said he can answer why he stays with two words: the Eucharist. 

In a word it is the Word for Whom we stay.  “In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God.  He was in the beginning with God” (John 1:1-2 NABRE). When we receive the true body and blood of Christ at each mass, the encounter is awesome. Most Protestants and a large number of Catholics think that the bread and wine are simply symbols, so I suppose I should speak for myself.  One way I will try to put it is that even though I accept, as Christ promised, that He is with us always, there seems like an added or maybe clearer dimension in this sacrament. It reminds me of a Scripture verse from the King James Bible: "Of the increase of His government and peace there shall be no end" (Isaiah 9:7 KJV). It's like when you think you've had a peak experience with the Lord, it can get even better. Those of us who experience this mystery want to invite others to come to Him too.

People are sinful and sometimes very badly sinful.  But you don’t get away from evil by leaving the Church.  Evil is all over the place.  We come to the Lord because He is our protector.  He is our Savior, and we surely need one.  Through the ages, no matter how bad it got, people realized this.  Though they may have disagreed with their leaders and each other, this is the focal point from which they carried on. This is the power that is greater than evil.

Many Catholics agree with Fr. Helmut Schüller in his first priority: to ensure that there are enough priests to provide the precious gift of the Eucharist for all who desire it (along with time for those priests to adequately serve their parishes).  Christ told Peter, “Feed my sheep” (John 21:17 NABRE). It is good that Pope Francis cares about the poor--I'm glad he does. But he must also care for the Catholic flock. And he especially must care about the souls of all human beings.

Another commenter I read in a different discussion about disagreements among Catholics declared, tongue in cheek, he will change the name of his blog to “I alone am the True Church.”  I think we all feel this way at one time or another.  But we pray for the grace to move forward, and that we may all do our best so that Christ’s body and blood can be given each week to all who believe it is real.

Cambrian Explosion Explodes

The latest in the regular literary output from the Intelligent Design (ID) people has made its debut. It is by Steven Meyer, Darwin’s Doubt, (HarperCollins Publishers, 2013), and he acknowledges help from fellow Discovery Institute members. These guys are pretty sharp when it comes to biology.

Even if you are a regular follower of ID theory and read the Discovery Institute website, Evolution News, the new book gives worthwhile perspective on the breadth and depth of scientific research about evolution or the lack thereof. It focuses on the so-called “Cambrian Explosion.” This describes a geological layer of rock where many animal forms have been discovered without any build-up toward their full formation in the rock layers beneath. These findings defy the tree-like description of gradual change that Charles Darwin said would be found if he were correct about evolution. He believed the Earth started with a “simple” cell-like organism which through generations of time slowly developed into various species and forms which we know now. Meyer shows how the fossil records are not what Charles Darwin predicted.

An earlier book by Stephen Meyer, Signature in the Cell, (HarperCollins Publishers, 2010) is about the origin of life. So with these two volumes you have extensive descriptions of biology and the consolidation of many facts related to the evolution debate. I think Meyer is very readable and should be understandable even to beginners. These two volumes are worth the money for anyone interested in these subjects. That is because the coverage of the issues is so extensive that the two books sufficiently teach about the history up to the very latest of science concerning life origins and evolution, both for the ID and neo-Darwinian perspectives. The books are worthy enough to be read down to the last word, and they should be valuable reference books too. However, whether or not we accept that biological life was designed, Meyer thinks we may never know all the details of how it came about.

As I’ve said before, I’ve moved from this particular point of view (ID) to Direct Biological Creationism. I’m open-minded about the age of the Earth, but ID holds that it is billions of years old. The proponents also do not want to combine the science with religion, which I think is a mistake. When faith is first, true science falls into place, even when we don’t have all the answers. Research can go on to new heights, but we will also respect life in a new light. This should not be a problem in our country because America was formed in order to give people religious freedom. The problem is with the people who interpret the Constitution in the wrong way. I’m not saying you should read Scripture in public school, because I don’t want literature from all religions read in school. But there must certainly be ways to work out the freedom to say, within the confines of a public school building, that you believe God made biological cells.

The Apostle Paul advises "be renewed in the spirit of your minds, and put on the new self, created in God's way in righteousness and holiness of Truth (Ephesians 4:23-24 NABRE). When a person becomes Christian he or she sheds the old self and becomes new. When this happens, faith, not science, is first. You do not have to be a believer to be an Intelligent Design advocate. But when you become a believer, faith is the first priority even in reason, and all logic follows in line.

We Want Change

I will be putting in a new post on First Friday as I've done for a few months now.  That's the day many Catholics follow the devotion to the Sacred Heart of Jesus, as I've noted elsewhere.  Today I just want to say a few words about two images I put together and display here. They represent a wooden nickel, with one side saying "Peter was Married!" and the other side saying "We Want Change!" Bible verses concerning Peter's marriage are: Matthew 8:14-15 NABRE; 1 Corinthians 9:5 NABRE.

I am interested in evangelization and it doesn't behoove a church to have infighting when they want to attract others to join them.  However, it is no secret that the Catholic Church has had a lot of problems lately between scandals and incompetency.  Most of us, I hope, realize that we have got to clean up our own act if we are going to help others toward Christ.  Of course, we admit we are sinners, but one of the points of becoming Christians is to put off the old self and become renewed in spirit (Ephesians 4 NABRE).

I like Pope Francis quite a bit and have so far read almost everything that he has said that's been posted on the Vatican News website HERE.  He talks about reforming the Church and I sincerely hope he does.  But things move so slowly we think we will never get where we have to be.  We must try to release our frustration in ways that are not permanently harmful.  I had seen that some Catholics were giving wooden nickels to the Church instead of cash or checks to show their frustration with the leadership and using the real money they withheld to donate directly to worthy charities.  I forget what was written on the nickels, but I made up my own in pictures to show my wish for the collection plates until at the very least married men are allowed to be priests. Though this isn't directly related to the problems mentioned above, it would turn things in general to the direction of change for the better.
 
To be up front, I admit I haven't gone so far as to drop wooden nickels yet. But I did look up a few stores to see if they have wooden discs.  Many can't understand why Catholics still give with all the bad things happening, but the Catholic leadership does many good things like care for the poor and sick and teach children.  There is government help for some of the work, but much comes from donations.  I'd sure like to figure out a way to get money to the right place without it being diverted to the people who have gone so badly wrong.

Feast of the Sacred Heart of Jesus

Today is the first Friday of June, the Feast of the Sacred Heart of Jesus.  I had posted the devotion for the Sacred Heart HERE. If you would like a detailed description of the meaning and history of the Sacred Heart Devotion, you can go HERE to the New Advent website.  It holds a 1917 version of the Catholic Encyclopedia which is still beneficial for historical information and accessible free online.

The devotion to the Sacred Heart of Jesus started about 1000 years ago.  It was associated with the piercing of Christ’s side on the cross, and the wounding of His heart was considered as representing God’s love.

by Rjcastillo

Then in the 1600’s, a nun named Margaret Mary Alacoque reported visions in which she saw and heard Jesus Christ. He talked of His love for mankind and encouraged the renewal of the devotion to His Sacred Heart. She took the request to the superior of a Jesuit house, Father de la Colombière.  Through his efforts the devotion grew in popularity and eventually popes got involved in approving and promoting it.

Margaret Mary was a Visitandine, from an order established by Saint Francis de Sales.  It was originally intended that the members of this order would visit the poor.  But due to local circumstances, they became an enclosed cloister.  Eventually, they moved in the direction of education and exist as such today. 

The founder, St. Francis de Sales, is a doctor of the church and considered the patron saint of writers.  I include this information because a prayer said along with the devotion supplicates for those who disdain the Christian faith, seeking that they may be converted to the Truth.  The New Evangelization depends greatly on education and communication as well as prayer.

Shifting Paradigms

An interesting article has come out by Philip Ball, "Celebrate the Unknowns," Nature 496 (April 24, 2013): 419-420.  The author marks the 60th anniversary of the discovery of the structure of DNA (our cellular source of genes) by Watson and Crick. He basically says scientists don’t understand molecular evolution, which means they don’t understand evolution period.  Ball in turn quotes another biologist, Patrick Phillips, who said, "[P]rojects such as ENCODE are showing scientists that they don't really understand how genotypes map into phenotypes, or how exactly evolutionary forces shape any given genome." The genotype is the makeup of the gene and the phenotype is the physical structure of the individual organism. 

It’s intriguing that Nature would produce such an article, since they are the ones who published the Consortium Project collection, "ENCODE,". Nature (Sept. 5, 2012). A summary of the findings can be seen in another article by Brendan Maher, "ENCODE: The human encyclopaedia," Nature 489 (Sept. 5, 2012).  Basically ENCODE found that at least 80% of DNA is functional, which totally eliminates chance as the fundamental cause of life and speciation.  This research has falsified Darwinian evolution, but many scientists still won’t admit it.  To deny that only chance was involved, they’ve claimed natural selection has moved life and evolution along.  However, that was based on nature being able to select individuals with genes which formed by chance into something useful.  And that depended on a DNA molecule that was mostly "junk," supposedly giving room for the chance formation of useful genes to be selected. ENCODE has eliminated the "junk" hypothesis.

The high functionality of DNA defies the “billions of years” modifier used in the past to explain materialistic evolution.  Billions of years is a drop in the bucket for the millions of regulatory switches found by the ENCODE research.  There is just no way these could have randomly gathered and been able to function in the fine-tuned world of the biological organism.  Anyone familiar with probabilities will know the truth of that.  It is time for a change in our paradigm.

In my blog, I’ve been trying to show that human beings can’t be here from simple chance of nature.  I know there is still a long way for some of you to go in your understanding, but I hope you are starting to see how true it is that we are made by a Genius Whom we know as God.  The next step for those who are just starting to accept that neo-Darwinian theory is defunct is to determine Who this God is.

My approach is in contrast to what the advocates of Intelligent Design Theory (ID) say about biological design being separate from religion.  They seem to think that is a valid approach and are not the only ones who make distinct categories.  The biologist Stephen Jay Gould felt they were different spheres.  But Creationists have long combined the two, and their concept of biological Creation is independent of the age of the Earth, though many believe in a Young Earth.  In other words, a Creationist does not have to believe in 6 literal 24-hour days of creation to believe that God made people and/or species directly. And when Christians believe that biological life was made by a Designer, there should be no question to them of Who that is.  That is the Triune God of the Bible: Father, Son and Holy Spirit.

ID advocates insist that they are not secretly promoting religion, describing the designer only as intelligent.  They define a quality of the designer but not the identity.  But once we see the complexity of biology it is natural to ask the “Who” as well as the “How.”  This is where the ID people ignore a portion of the population as much as materialistic scientists do. Creationists see all questions as valid, even if some of the answers will always be beyond our understanding.

So I ask those of you who are starting to see the validity of what Creationists have said all along to keep on your journey.  When I was searching for answers to spiritual questions, I prayed for the Truth.  Even if you don’t know Who God may be, He will hear you.  I prayed in this way and found Christianity.  I now believe this religion to be True and am joyful to have discovered fulfillment such that I never could have previously imagined. 

It’s not that unusual to fear new territory and yet when we allow ourselves to experience it we often find the opposite from what we expect.  Seekers may think Christianity is limiting, but it is expanding.  They may think it will confine them if they embrace it, but it frees them.  But like a foreign country, you can’t really know what Christianity is like until you go there.

First Friday

As I said before, I have found myself too busy at this time to plan for a weekly post, but will try to enter one at least once a month. I attend church on First Fridays of the month when the Litany of the Sacred Heart of Jesus is repeated. I thought that putting the actual devotion in my post would be a good way to start this attempted schedule.

Here is the Litany to the Sacred Heart of Jesus. The reader’s part is in regular text, and the response of the group is in italics. Due to not wanting to take a lot of time figuring out formatting, I have them on separate lines without indentation. Several prayers, said by all, follow.

LITANY OF THE SACRED HEART

Lord, have mercy on us.
Christ, have mercy on us.
Christ, hear us.
Christ, graciously hear us.
God, the Father of Heaven,
have mercy on us.
God the Son, Redeemer of the world,
have mercy on us.
God the Holy Spirit,
have mercy on us.
Holy Trinity, one God,
have mercy on us.
Heart of Jesus, Son of the Eternal Father,
have mercy on us.
Heart of Jesus, formed by the Holy Spirit in the womb of the Virgin Mother,
have mercy on us.
Heart of Jesus, substantially united to the Word of God,
have mercy on us.
Heart of Jesus, of Infinite Majesty,
have mercy on us.
Heart of Jesus, Sacred Temple of God,
have mercy on us.
Heart of Jesus, Tabernacle of the Most High,
have mercy on us.
Heart of Jesus, House of God and Gate of Heaven,
have mercy on us.
Heart of Jesus, burning furnace of charity,
have mercy on us.
Heart of Jesus, In whom are all the treasures of wisdom and knowledge,
have mercy on us.
Heart of Jesus, in whom dwells the fulness of Divinity,
have mercy on us.
Heart of Jesus, In whom the Father was well pleased,
have mercy on us.
Heart of Jesus, of whose fulness we have all received,
have mercy on us.
Heart of Jesus, desire of the everlasting hills,
have mercy on us.
Heart of Jesus, patient and most merciful,
have mercy on us.
Heart of Jesus, enriching all who invoke Thee,
have mercy on us.
Heart of Jesus, fountain of life and holiness,
have mercy on us.
Heart of Jesus, propitiation for our sins,
have mercy on us.
Heart of Jesus, loaded down with opprobrium,
have mercy on us.
Heart of Jesus, bruised for our offences,
have mercy on us.
Heart of Jesus, obedient unto death,
have mercy on us.
Heart of Jesus, pierced with a lance,
have mercy on us.
Heart of Jesus, source of all consolation,
have mercy on us.
Heart of Jesus, our life and resurrection,
have mercy on us.
Heart of Jesus, our peace and reconciliation,
have mercy on us.
Heart of Jesus, victim of sin,
have mercy on us.
Heart of Jesus, salvation of those who trust in Thee,
have mercy on us.
Heart of Jesus, delight of all the saints,
have mercy on us.
Jesus meek and humble of heart,
Make our hearts like unto thine.

LET US PRAY

Almighty and Eternal God, look upon the Heart of Thy dearly beloved Son, and upon the praise and satisfaction He offers Thee in behalf of sinners, and being appeased, grant pardon to those who seek Thy mercy, in the name of the same Jesus Christ, Thy Son, who lives and reigns with Thee, in the unity of the Holy Spirit, world without end, Amen.

CONSECRATION OF THE HUMAN RACE TO THE SACRED HEART OF JESUS

Most sweet Jesus, Redeemer of the human race, look down upon us, humbly prostrate before your altar. We are Yours and Yours we wish to be; but, to be more surely united with You, behold each one of us freely consecrates himself today to Your most Sacred Heart. Many indeed have never known You; many too, despising Your precepts, have rejected You. Have mercy on them all merciful Jesus, and draw them to Your Sacred Heart. Be King O Lord, not only of the faithful who have never forsaken You, but also of the prodigal children who have abandoned You; grant that they may quickly return to their Father’s house, lest they die of wretchedness and hunger. Be King of those who are deceived by erroneous opinions or whom discord keeps aloof, and call them back to the harbor of truth and unity of faith, so that soon there may be but one flock and one Shepherd. Grant, O Lord, to Your church assurance of freedom and immunity from harm; give peace and order to all nations, and make the Earth resound from pole to pole with one cry: “Praise to the Divine Heart that wrought our salvation! To it be glory and honor forever!” Amen.

PRAYER TO ST. MICHAEL

St Michael the Archangel, defend us in battle. Be our safeguard against the wickedness and snares of the devil. May God rebuke him, we humbly pray, and do thou, O Prince of the Heavenly Host, by the power of God, cast into hell, Satan and all the evil spirits who prowl about the world seeking the ruin of souls. Amen.