The great moral veracity with which our founders began their Declaration of Independence from the English crown reads, “We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness.”

Our life belongs to God who gave it and to each one of us who is morally and personally responsible for properly maintaining it. Our liberty to move and live and be comes from the One who gave us our being (Acts 17:28). No government that is morally based should have the right to deprive us of that freedom. Our pursuit of happiness, which includes the assurance of good health, which is in turn dependant upon the proper care of our individual physical and emotional needs, and those of our children, is part and parcel of our own personal responsibility, tenacity and preference, not that of any government: federal, state or local.

The Bible does not specifically address the issue of a government requiring that we have health care, or one that is totally in control of that care, but it does specifically deal with the need for assuming personal responsibility and taking good care of the body. It is replete with admonitions directed at maintaining good health, both physical and emotional. This is neither a purely partisan political nor a secular debate, it is one with profound biblical implications and it is high time that some people in the business of “religious broadcasting” and preaching the Gospel are awakened to that fact.

What the healthcare law seeks to do is at its best unconstitutional and in the least immoral. Our US Constitution is morally based and any legislation that opposes the tenets of that founding document is thus corrupt and, akin to the new Health Care Reform law, has little regard for the sanctity of life. When healthcare is rationed, as it is in other countries that have legislated central government control over healthcare expenditures, people are deprived of the right to life. Age limits are set on the liberty to obtain life saving procedures such as coronary artery by-pass, cancer chemotherapeutic drugs and kidney dialysis. Access to care is controlled by limiting the number of facilities where that care can be received; I.e. MRI units and cardiac catheterization labs. These are the acts of people who have little regard for the needs and lives of others or their continued pursuit of happiness,

     Once again Scripture proves to be verified as we read in Psalm 139:13-14 “For you created my inmost being; you knit me together in my mother's womb. I praise you because I am fearfully and wonderfully made; your works are wonderful,  I know that full well.” The longer I have studied and treated human bodies, the more convinced I have become of the fact that all of God’s works are wonderful. He is an infinite, personal and sovereign God and any true scientist knows that full well unless he or she is patently blind to truth or chooses to suppress it. “Since what may be known about God is plain to them, because God has made it plain to them. For since the creation of the world God's invisible qualities—his eternal power and divine nature—have been clearly seen, being understood from what has been made, so that men are without excuse.” Romans 1:19-20

In all observable nature does intricate design flow from time + matter + chance?

(Part One)

 The observable world is replete with examples of order and design both inside and outside of the science laboratory. Take for example one species of plant, the eminently unique, carnivorous Venus’ flytrap. This particular variety of vegetation is indigenous to the marshy areas of the Carolinas where the native soil is nitrogen poor. The flytrap produces a flower, which attracts certain insects. At the base of the flower’s stem is found a series of spring-loaded leaves and at the base of each leaf a complex gland that secretes digestive juices. When a fly lands on the flower, the spring loaded leaves slam shut and capture the fly. At that moment the digestive glands secrete their flesh eating proteolytic enzymes, which in turn consume the fly, thus providing the vital nitrogen to the plant’s metabolic system. Considering the origin of such a plant the question arises which of these highly complex and mutually dependant parts evolved first, or were they more likely simultaneously generated? Furthermore, which came first the nitrogen poor soil or the intricate mechanisms for providing the plant its much needed nitrogen? If the soil were at first devoid of nitrogen, how would the plant have survived while it was evolving all of those complex, nitrogen trapping systems over hundreds of thousands of years? If the soil had not been devoid of nitrogen, what was the impetus for the evolution? Consider another example in the animal kingdom; the elaborate design of a silk spinning mechanism unique to spiders. There are more than 30,000 varieties of spiders in the world, but they all have this one feature in common, they each spin silk. Some spiders use the silk to make webs, others to line leaves or tiny earthen caves and water spiders use it to make under water diving bells in which they reside. All spiders spin a lifeline, which they propel out to descend toward a prey, to escape a predator or to swing in the wind across an expanse. Some spiders have a ball of glue attached to the end of their lifeline, which they sway back and forth in order to attract and capture some unsuspecting prey. In every case their specific silk is designed and spun for a specific purpose.

     There are numerous evidence-based questions and scenarios that don’t seem to fit very well into the alleged extent of time posited in the evolutionary model.  For example, there is the entire question of probabilities. As stated earlier (question 4 blogged on 4-12-10) the odds of two hundred letters (or strands of DNA) aligning themselves in a restricted, unique and obligatory fashion is 1 chance out of 1 x10 364 attempts to get it right. If the earth is 4.5 billion years old (as the evolutionary model proposes) there are only 1 x 1018 seconds in all of earth’s hypothetical, chronological history. The 1x10 364 probability figure applies only to the proper DNA alignment in a miniscule portion of the first master cell. Who could possibly quantify the probabilities and the time required for further portions of the alleged evolutionary off spring cells to randomly align in perfect order and move progressively into existing life forms?

     Time also creates another puzzle in the evolutionary model when considering currently observable and predictable environmental conditions such as the erosion of mountains and so called sea rain building up on the ocean’s floor. Mountains have been calculated to erode at an observable rate of I foot every 5,000 years, or I mile in 25 million years. Eroding soil flowing into the streams, rivers and oceans causes a rise in the sea’s water level. The combined effects of those two processes would have served to flatten Mount Whitney (America’s highest peak) in a mere 55 million years. Geologists however, have estimated that the Rocky Mountains were formed 65 million years ago. Applying the figures proposed by the geological experts with known erosion rates, Mount Whitney should have become flat 10 million years ago.

     "Sea rain” is a metaphor applied to the settling out of suspended particles of silt plus the calcium based shells of dead plankton. As these particles descend to the ocean floor they accumulate at a measurable rate of one inch every 5000 years. If the oceans are as old as an evolutionist says they are (I.e. 3 billion years) those accumulations of sea rain should be at least 10 miles thick. However, core samples taken from the ocean floor in the Pacific region reveal the actual thickness to be no more than1000 feet and the core depth in the Atlantic was found to be only 2000 feet.

     The seas and the mountains tell us that they are not as old and some evolutionists think. In Job 12:7-9 we read God’s admonition concerning that which He has revealed to us in nature:  "But ask the animals, and they will teach you, or the birds of the air, and they will tell you; or speak to the earth, and it will teach you, or let the fish of the sea inform you. Which of all these does not know that the hand of the LORD has done this?”

     Survival of the fittest is one of the most critical components of the Darwinian theory of biological macro-evolution. Snakes, for example, allegedly evolved into birds through mutation and natural selection. The snakes or birds less fit to survive were subsequently “selected” out of the gene pool, became extinct and are thus not expressed in the higher, allegedly evolved species, and interestingly enough the transitional forms between reptiles and birds are absent from the fossil record.  But is such a scenario likely or even logical in real-time, real-life experience?

Consider this scenario: a garter snake with a smooth, slender body that is quite able to hastily escape the grip of some natural predator by darting down a hole in the ground into which it neatly fits is quite fit to survive in a hostile environment.  Now imagine that same snake having been “zapped” by a cosmic ray such that its ovarian DNA has been altered to the extent that one of its offspring begins to grow wings and legs. That steady transformation in the growth of appendages would be absolutely essential to its evolution into a bird. The development would of course be gradual, unfolding in genetic sequences from one generation to the next over thousands and thousands of years. At some point in the timeline, the evolutionary snake has protruding, transitional appendages that are neither legs, nor wings; thus it can neither run nor fly. Along comes a predator but the transitional snake/bird is no longer sleek, quick, or functionally able to dart into a tiny hole for protection. Could such an intermediate but dysfunctional life form be fit enough to survive? Think about this for a moment: If such a transitional process worked against survival then would not the original snake (prior to being zapped into mutation) have been more likely to survive?  If the original were better able to survive in a cruel world, then wouldn’t the evolutionary model be turned upside-down? It would be self-defeating by creating things less fit to survive.

Current, observable, laboratory experiments affirm a similar conclusion. Fruit flies are often used in genetic research because of their rapid rates of reproduction. Millions of generations of fruit fly experiments reveal that 99.9% of all genetic mutations are utterly destructive to the survival of the species, causing either death or non-functional disfigurement of the offspring. In every case, however, the mutated, mutilated fruit flies remain as they were; fruit flies.