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  • 30Aug

    Neil’s Niche

    by Neil in Neil’s Niche, Seeking Things Above.

    Okay, so I have been getting some positive feedback from the “Questions to Ask an Atheist” series.  Keep them coming!  And if you have any parts of apologetics that you would like me to cover (such as Ontological, Cosmological, Teleological, or Moral arguments for God’s existence) then I would love to.

    Before I begin I want to define what a chicken is.  A chicken (Gallus Gallus) is in the order of Galliformes, which is in the Phasianidae family.  They are omnivores who usually congregate within a flock in their natural habitat (which is just about everywhere).  They lay eggs in order to breed, and they take care of their eggs while in incubation.  Recently, artificial incubation has been able to take the chicken out of the equation.  Egg farmers now know that if one were to replicate a certain environment that the eggs will hatch within 21 days.  The eggs are kept at 95.5° Fahrenheit and in 55% relative humidity.  The eggs must turn, though, because if the eggs are not turned the embryos will stick to the side of the egg wall and become deformed.  Actually, when thinking about it, the breeding process of any bird, much less the chicken, is almost a miracle.  How did the first chicken know how to do this?  Did the very first chicken (we will call her Mama Chicken) learn from her mother how to do such (we will call Mama Chicken’s mother “Almost-a-chicken”)?  What was the difference between Almost-a-chicken and Mama Chicken that brought the chicken species to what they are now?  Did she still have reptile scales or something?  What happened while Mama Chicken was incubating in her very own egg to turn her into a chicken?  So my question for this week is this….

    Which came first, the chicken or the egg?

    From an evolutionary standpoint it is impossible to say “the chicken” because species do not transform into their state during a lifetime (No one can ever be born a chimp and turn into a human before they die), but also something that is not a chicken cannot reproduce a chicken as their offspring.  So the question is, how did we get the modern chicken?  Was there a magical egg, or a magical animal that created the first chicken?  Or was there a Being who created the chicken?

  • 30Aug

    An August Month

    by Drew in Seeking Things Above.

    For most of us, August is the eighth month of the year.  The word can describe that which inspires awe or admiration.  So this year, to say that today is the last Sunday of an “august” month is a double entendre.  It has been a great month, one that deserves reflection.

    We are focusing on roles this summer, particularly the unique contributions men and women should be making in the kingdom of God.  On Wednesday nights, our men and women have been gathering in separate classes.  In addition to these classes, we hosted a Ladies Day with Cindy and Hannah Colley, and the men had breakfast together one Saturday, an occasion for prayer and fellowship.

    The young people have been busy, too.  Neil capped the summer with some great opportunities for spiritual development.  One weekend, our teenagers attended the Southern Evangelism Conference (SEC).  Six hundred people in all were present on Saturday of the conference.  It is wonderful to see so many young people studying to see what they can do to reach the lost.  On top of SEC, there was a youth devotional, an area-wide event at the Shades Mountain congregation, and a rafting trip.

    Our numbers have looked good this summer, despite family vacations, camp, and other events that usually take people away from home.  One Sunday in August our attendance peaked at 255.  Our building is getting full.  New families continue to place membership, more are continuing to visit, and our core members are growing in their faith and knowledge.

    The Young Adults got together for fellowship one evening, and today we are having our Fifth Sunday Fellowship, along with an early afternoon service at 1 p.m.  The early church enjoyed one another’s company.  That was part of the secret behind their endurance and growth.  In following their example, we too can persevere.

    To make things even better, this summer is ending with two weddings.  Adam Lyons and Mauri Swanson were married yesterday, and Sarah Camp and Grant Dopson will be married this Saturday at the Decatur Highway Church of Christ.  Our prayer is that God will bless these new families with many happy years.

    Of course, there’s always room for improvement.  Our contribution was low, probably due to school supplies and summer vacations.  We can do better.  Also, our hearts go out to two of our families who lost beloved parents and grandparents.  We take the good with the bad, making improvements where we can.  In everything, we must put our trust in God.

    “Rejoice always, pray without ceasing, give thanks in all circumstances; for this is the will of God in Christ Jesus for you” (1 Thes. 5:16-18).

  • 23Aug

    Neil’s Niche

    by Neil in Neil’s Niche, Seeking Things Above.

    Scientists on the Swiss-French border have made a machine called “The Collider,” of which the main function is to display the exact beginning of the Big Bang.  It is a very technical and complicated machine, but the basic gist of such an instrument is to replicate the conditions from which our existence, the whole universe, was created.  In it two particles run at high speeds through a vacuum to recreate the Big Bang (basically).  I have some problems with this because these scientists are working from materials that have already formed.  They are not starting from scratch (such as what the Big Bang apparently did).  The question for this week has to do with Hydrogen.  Hydrogen:  the building block of life.  Its simple structure is found in 90% of all matter.  It is the most prevalent element in the universe.  Hydrogen plays a big factor in our existence and also in the theory of how life began.  Without Hydrogen there can be nothing, and so naturally the scientists on the Swiss-French border are using Hydrogen to help explain how we got here.  Here is my problem:

    How was hydrogen created?

    It is impossible to prove a theory that the Hydrogen element can just pop up out of nothing (Hydrogen Genesis).  If in the beginning there was nothing, then still today there should be nothing.  You cannot simply create hydrogen when there is nothing else that exists.  All matter exists because something predicated its existence.  Creatio ex nihilo (creation out of nothing) is as impossible as the eye evolving into a working organ overnight (or millions of years for that matter).  The scientists working on “The Collider” are working with existing materials and intelligence…but the Big Bang wasn’t!  The answer then is that something must have predicated the existence of Hydrogen….that something points to God.

  • 23Aug

    Why Words Matter

    by Drew in Seeking Things Above.

    Words are important because language affects the concepts we come to believe. No one knows this better than the authors of classic literature. They are wordsmiths whose skill is in crafting language to promote the ideas that shape our world.

    Take Jonathan Swift’s classic Gulliver’s Travels, for example. The book has for ages been read as a children’s story, but it finds itself among the greatest novels ever written in the English language because it strikes at the heart of the human condition, exposing man’s vices and looking for a better way.

    In Gulliver’s Travels Swift takes Lemuel Gulliver on a series of voyages to strange lands where the poor sailor encounters unusual races that give him a fresh perspective on his own people back in England. His final journey takes him to the country of the Houyhnhmns, a race of horses endowed with reason. In this place Gulliver discovers that his counterparts are dirty, grotesque versions of himself. They are called Yahoos. Continue reading »

  • 16Aug

    Neil’s Niche

    by Neil in Neil’s Niche, Seeking Things Above.

    Maybe it’s because I really loved my Christian Evidences class at Freed-Hardeman, but I really have been enthralled with apologetics lately. I’ve been reading books (shocker!) and studying my notes, and I decided that now would be the best time to present an idea that I had. I am going to start a series for Neil’s Niche called “Questions Every Atheist (and Christian) Should Ask.” The next few weeks will have questions that I have ran across that seem to go unanswered if dealing with evolution, yet fit in perfectly with a theology in which God created the world. These are questions that I hope you look into and try to answer on your own, and hopefully if ever dealing with an atheist you may ask them that same question. So here goes the first one:

    How did the eye evolve?

    The human eye (or any eye for that matter) is one of the most complicated things in the biological world. It can process 36,000 bits of information every hour, it can instantaneously set in motion hundreds of muscles and organs in your body, and it is composed of more than two million working parts. So the question is: how did it develop if evolution is true? Did it just find the right parts one day and decide to start working? Or did it evolve over millions of years? If the latter is the case, how was it able to “happen” to form itself into the working eye that we have today? How could the eye have worked if the more than 2,000,000 parts had not developed at the same time? Can an eye see when the nerve endings don’t work? Can the eye see when the iris isn’t formed? What about when the pupil isn’t fully formed? How could a working eye evolve when all the parts were not formed yet?

    Here is my contention: there is an obvious design within human eye. Since there is a design there MUST be a designer… God.

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