| Author: Roger A. Richards, Jr. Subject: Apologetics Date: 9/4/2004 |
Published Sept. 4, 2004 in The Adirondack Journal, p. 3, Warrensburg, NY.
Most of us dislike any authority suppressing the truth for any reason and of such scandals are born. Yet, Lenin said that a lie told often enough becomes the truth. Skeptics and atheists have excelled in both. Romans 1:18 (NKJV) says they “suppress the truth in unrighteousness.” Dr. Rodney Stark, Professor of sociology and comparative religions at the Univ. of Washington uncovers all this in his book “For The Glory of God” through tedious research into original, historical documents.
For those of us who studied unrevised history (or so we thought), the latest texts as compared to what actually happened, are shocking. The average kid in class, however, just learns it. So let’s take a little True or False quiz:
1. In 1492 Christopher Columbus proved the world was round, yet faced years of opposition from ministers and churches who believed the world flat.
2. Magellan gained a victory for science by sailing round the earth, disproving all those ministers.
3. The Dark ages were caused by religion and were a time of superstition and technological regress.
4. The Greeks and Romans invented science and advanced scientific thinking greatly.
5. Copernicus, Kepler, Galileo and Newton fought against the church to air their new ideas.
6. The age of humanism brought us the enlightenment through science wrought by daring skeptics of the Bible.
7. The human body has many organs such as the coccyx (tailbone), appendix and tonsils that are vestigial or
left over from our “primitive” state.
The answer to all seven is ‘false’. Andrew White, founder of Cornell, in a two volume treatise ‘A History of the Warfare of Science and Theology in Christendom’ put forth many of these lies in order to attack the faith.
Almost all ministers at the time of Columbus knew the earth was round.
Copernicus did not discover that the earth revolves on its axis, he was taught it in his Christian university. He discovered the math to show that it was so.
There is no such thing as the Dark Ages as we were taught it. Technological progress continued to greatly advance from 400-1600 AD with great advances in outfitting horses, weapons, & manufacturing.
Christianity provided the foundation for science to develop where the Greek, Roman and Asian cultures could not. Stark says “It is the consensus among contemporary historians, philosophers and sociologists of science that real science arose only once: in Europe. The leading scientific figures in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries were overwhelmingly devout Christians who believed it their duty to comprehend God’s handiwork.”
Why there? Stark’s answer is simple; “The Christian God was rational, responsive, dependable and omnipotent and the universe was His personal creation in which His divine nature was put on display for man’s benefit and instruction.” Prov. 25:2 “It is the glory of God to conceal a matter, but the glory of kings is to search out a matter”. Isaiah 40:12 “Who has measured the waters in the hollow of His hand, measured heaven with a span
and calculated the dust of earth in a measure? Weighed the mountains in scales and the hills in a balance?”
Stark researched leading scientists from 1543 to 1680 and found that of the top 52, one was a skeptic, one a pantheist and 50 were Christians, 30 of whom could be characterized as devout because of their zeal. Why so many lies from the skeptics? To rid society of what they considered a menace; religion and the Christian faith in particular and to cause doubt in the Bible to erode away the faith so that even if one doesn’t forsake it, they’ll be weaker and maybe their kids or grandkids will leave it. Darwin’s own letters to fellow skeptic bear this out. No wonder the New Testament admonishes believers in 1 Corinthians 15:58 to “be steadfast, immovable, always abounding in the work of the Lord.”.
Dr. Stark says that the obvious flaw in Darwinism is that “it falls notably short of explaining the origin of species’. Further, he says “When Julian Huxley claimed that “Darwin’s theory is no longer a theory but a fact,” he surely knew better. But just like his grandfather, Thomas Henry Huxley, he knew that his lie served the greater good of “enlightenment” (p. 185). One of many lies told in skeptic’s frantic scramble to prove Darwin right was that the body has many organs left over from when we were monkeys. At the turn of the century evolutionists had conjured up over a hundred which have since dwindled to zero. Without the coccyx you would dump in your pants.
Without the tonsils or appendix you will be far more prone to disease and less able to fight things like the negative effects of radiation. During development the appendix has also been shown to have a vital function as well. Yes, we can live without them, but as with our eyes, arms and gallbladder, we live better with all intact as designed. Speaking of which:
“Creation (intelligent) design” was described by a molecular biologist in an interview with columnist George Caylor in an article titled “The Biologist” (2/17/2000, The Ledger, Lynchburg, VA) as “.an elephant in the living room. It moves around, takes up an enormous amount of space, loudly trumpets, bumps into us, knocks things over, eats a ton of hay, and smells like an elephant. And yet we have to swear it isn’t there.” When asked if the information found in the cell’s gene code evolved, he said “George, nobody I know in my profession believes it evolved. It was engineered by genius beyond genius, and such information could not have been written in any other way. The paper and ink did not write the book. Knowing what we know, it is ridiculous to think otherwise.” Small wonder for they’ve discovered in bacteria a mind-boggling array of sophisticated machines and computer systems light years ahead of our own. So scientists publicly deny intelligent design exists, yet affirm evolution, which they know to be false because to admit design and deny evolution is to commit academic and career suicide.
Polls show 60% of scientists are atheists, but 40% acknowledge a supernatural power. The founders of every major branch of science were overwhelmingly biblical creationists, as are thousands of practicing scientists today and from every scientific field. Their stories are quite similar. Each knew their own field proved evolution a lie, yet assumed other fields verified it. When they questioned scientists from other fields they were shocked to find the same was true in all of them! And now the elephants are beginning to break down the gates.
Roger Richards