Tag Archives: Bible

The DNA of Eve

Science, ,

One spectacular achievement of modern science is the ability to sequence DNA. We can now “read” the exact DNA code of you, me, and every other living creature. Human beings have about 3.2 billion letters of DNA code in almost every cell. By “reading” the code, and comparing differences, we can trace genealogy and recreate the history of the human race. When we do that, we get fantastic confirmation of the Bible.

You may have heard of “mitochondrial Eve.” It is now commonly accepted, even by Atheist scientists, that all human beings are descended from a single female. This woman, this mother of all humanity, they call “mitochondrial Eve.” Of course, people who believe in molecules-to-man evolution aren’t suggesting the Bible is true, but they are agreeing with the Bible that we are all descended from a single female. Secular scientists will tell you that mitochondrial Eve lived about 200,000 years ago. The Bible tells us Eve lived around 6,000 years ago.

Mitochondria are energy factories in cells. They have their own DNA, and each person receives their mitochondria DNA, also called mtDNA, only from their mothers. By measuring differences in mtDNA from one person to another, we can measure the “genetic drift” from mutations over generations, and get an idea of how closely people are related. If we know the total number of mtDNA differences in human beings, and know how fast mutations/differences pile up over generations, we can estimate the time back to Eve, Biblical or otherwise.

The original studies assumed that mtDNA mutations occurred as at the same rate as mutations in normal DNA. The data now reveals a much faster rate of mutations in mtDNA than in normal DNA. If Eve lived 200,000 years ago, the total number of differences in mtDNA among humans living today should be around 470. If Eve lived 6,000 years ago, as the Bible tells us, the total number of differences in mtDNA should be around 80. Guess what — the measured number is 80!

Science again proves the Bible is correct. You might also be interested in an earlier post noting that, using differences in DNA from the Y chromosome, which men inherit only from their fathers, the data indicates that all men are descended from a single man who lived about 4,500 years ago. (Hint – there was a big flood.) You can find it here: https://countingtogod.com/memories-of-the-flood/

Going back to Eve, the mtDNA analysis confirms the Bible in a second important way. If you look at a chart (Answers magazine, Jan-Feb 2018, Vol. 13 No. 1, page 59) connecting related individuals according to their mtDNA, you will find three points, or “nodes,” from which all mtDNA is related. These nodes represent the wives of Noah’s three sons. They are close to each other on the chart, because they were each possibly 10th generation descendants of Eve. From these three nodes the chart spreads out, as the mtDNA of all humanity is descended from one of these three women.

Dr. Nathaniel Jeanson, who has a Ph.D. from Harvard in cell and developmental biology, recently published an excellent book titled “Replacing Darwin.” I hope to write more about this exciting book. Dr. Jeanson has studied mtDNA differences in a variety of species. In every case, from chickens to fruit flies roundworms to bakers yeast, the data contradicts the predictions of millions of years of evolution. The actual number of mtDNA differences is much less than those predictions.

It is sad that our “popular” media purposely ignores scientific results that confirm the Bible. Instead, our biased media hypes stories intended to make the Bible look unreliable. I noted a few months ago where it was reported, and read by hundreds of millions of people, that DNA testing of people living today in Lebanon contradicted the Bible. These stories got it absolutely backward, because the DNA findings were exactly what the Bible says, that, despite God’s instructions to kill all Canaanites, the Israelites disobeyed, and let some live. Here is my post on that: https://countingtogod.com/dna-and-the-bible/

How are we to overcome this enormous bias, this deliberate withholding of the truth? I am not aware of a single major newspaper, magazine, or TV channel that reported the new data on mtDNA mutations, this stunning discovery, this scientific revelation that Eve lived about 6,000 years ago. Perhaps the only way to fight this bias is through the combined efforts of ordinary people, people like me and you. Friends don’t let friends be Atheists, at least not without exposing them to science that reveals God.

We need to spread the good news of true science. Together we can change the world.

Thanks for reading.

Doug

Full Strength Christianity

Journey of Faith, , , ,

Christianity is on the decline. A recent poll found the percentage of Americans professing to be Christians declined by 7. 8% between 2007 and 2014. I’m back from Europe, where I was able to visit churches and cathedrals. Some took a century or more to build; they represent the greatest architecture and art of the Middle Ages; they are increasingly empty.

To what do we attribute this loss of faith? Our “popular” media twists true science and often mocks belief. Our tax dollars are used to indoctrinate children in the Darwinian delusion that technology so advanced we cannot understand it (like the human brain) arose by accident. Our scientists invent nonsense theories, theories without a shred of evidence, to remove God from the creation of the universe and the creation of life.

Sadly, many churches share the blame. Many offer watered-down Christianity. Some acquiesce to the contradictions of “theistic evolution,” they embrace the Darwinian delusion of technology by accident, yet try to convince people God is in control. Some treat Adam and Eve, and Noah and the flood, as fable. Some even question the divinity of Jesus.

This retreat can lead to spiritual death. I quote now from an Atheist. His starting premise is wrong, but his logic from that false premise is compelling:

The most devastating thing though that biology did to Christianity was the discovery of biological evolution. Now that we know that Adam and Eve never were real people the central myth of Christianity is destroyed. If there never was an Adam and Eve there never was original sin. If there never was an original sin there is no need of salvation. If there is no need of salvation there is no need of a savior. And I submit that puts Jesus, historical or otherwise, into the ranks of the unemployed. I think that evolution is absolutely the death knell of Christianity.

Do you see my point? Without the metanarrative, the overarching theme, of Creation – Fall – Redemption, what is the purpose of the cross? How can Jesus be the “last Adam” (1 Corinthians 15:45) if there was no first Adam? The Christian faith is diluted to something like “please love your neighbor and do good things. ” Why get out of bed on Sunday for that?

Another way of looking at it, as a friend pointed out to me, is if you don’t believe that Adam and Eve were real people, at what point do you start believing the Bible? Until recently, I didn’t grasp this logical problem. I would not consider the evidence for Adam and Eve, and Noah and the flood, just as many will not consider the overwhelming scientific evidence for the existence of God. I was afraid others might think me crazy. Now that my eyes are open, I am astonished by the evidence.

If you haven’t seen it, I recommend “Is Genesis History?” which is available on Netflix. It will answer many of your questions and concerns.

I have learned to embrace the Bible as the literal word of God. When my eyes were opened to the true evidence, I felt a great peace. When I learned I could trust the Bible, from Genesis to Revelation, from sin to salvation, I was overjoyed.

I invite you to take Christianity full strength. Full strength Christianity can satisfy your soul. Overall, Bible-based churches with full strength Christianity are growing. This is great news. Modern science increasingly, with new discoveries every year, backstops full strength Christianity. In recent posts I’ve touched on DNA evidence of Adam and Eve, and memories of Noah and the flood. There is so much more that supports the literal truth of the Bible.

Thanks for reading. I appreciate the work of many of you to share the good news of true science. Together we can change the world.

Rethinking the Big Bang

Science, ,

I used to think the Big Bang theory was supported by multiple lines of scientific evidence, and impossible to challenge. When you watch anything related to astronomy on TV, it will probably be based on the Big Bang theory. In Counting To God I argued that the creation of all time, space, and matter from nothing was evidence of God.

The evidence of God is still there, stronger than ever, but the support for gradual cosmic evolution disappears when you look behind the curtain. The latest evidence does not agree with the Big Bang theory, and the theory is now rejected by many scientists, including many Atheists. In this post I’ll describe the Big Bang theory, and then the science. To me, science now points to an even more miraculous creation, the creation described in Genesis. As usual, you decide.

According to the Big Bang theory, a one-time, supernatural event took place 13.8 billion years ago. That event was the instantaneous creation of space, time, and all of the matter and energy that ever has existed and ever will exist. The theory is that an ultra-hot and ultra-dense fireball gradually expanded and cooled, and gravity slowly pulled the matter together over billions of years to form stars, planets, and galaxies. As generations of stars burned and exploded, the extreme heat and pressure created heavy elements – elements heavier than helium in the periodic table (oxygen, carbon, nitrogen, and so on) – that are critical for life.

That’s the theory. Let’s look at facts (sorry the list is so long, but the subject fascinates me):

Mature Distant Galaxies. This shocked me. Galaxies far away are receding from us, and the speed with which they are receding is generally proportional to their distance from us. (Hubble’s Law). According to secular Big Bang models, this means that when we look at distant galaxies we are looking back in time. According to the Big Bang theory, the galaxies farthest away were formed shortly after the Big Bang. The models generally predict that it takes billions of years to form a mature galaxy with billions of stars, and that the heavy elements gradually increase as stars explode.

We have found distant galaxies that are fully mature. One team of astronomers found 15 distant galaxies that (according to their models) are 12 billion light years away on average. In other words, they believed they were looking back in time 12 billion years, to less than two billion years after the Big Bang. These galaxies are fully mature in shape; they are massive, with a hundred billion stars or more each; and they are filled with heavy elements. Another team discovered a galaxy supposedly 560 million years old with ratios of heavy elements similar to nearby galaxies.

Mature distant galaxies contradict the Big Bang model. They fit the biblical model, where God “stretches out the heavens like a curtain…” Isaiah 40:22. The Bible states in 10 places that God stretched out the heavens.

Blue Stars. Blue stars are the most massive stars. Stars with more mass are hotter and burn much quicker. Rigel (the star in Orion that is the “foot” on the right) is estimated by secular astronomers to be around 8 million years old and at the end of its life. A star like our sun, which itself is bigger than 95% of all stars, will burn for a thousand times longer than a typical blue star. If the universe is billions of years old, blue stars should be long gone, and any new ones formed should be fantastically rare. Yet blue stars are all over our galaxy. I love to look at magnificent bands of blue stars in other spiral galaxies. (It’s easy to do, just google “spiral galaxies” and click on “images”). The abundance of blue stars, both in our galaxy and in other galaxies, contradicts the Big Bang model.

Arms in Spiral Galaxies. While you’re admiring those spiral galaxies, notice the “arms” of tens of billions of stars stretching out from the center. Our Earth is in the Orion arm of the Milky Way. According to secular astronomers, our galaxy has made about 20 complete rotations in its roughly 12 billion year life.

Nice theory. But, if it were true, the stars wouldn’t still be in the spiral arms. Over time the stars would have wandered and filled in the disks of the galaxies. Those sharply defined arms disprove the Big Bang theory.

Double Stars. Stars like our Sun are typically found in groups of two or three. Double stars, also called binary stars, are very common. New research shows that most double star systems will spiral into collapse – the stars will run into each other – in less than one hundred thousand years. This contradicts the Big Bang model of double star systems existing for billions of years.

No Exotic Particles. The ultra-hot and ultra-dense fireball of the Big Bang should have produced exotic particles. We don’t find any. When energy “condenses” into matter, it creates equal amounts of matter and anti-matter. We don’t find anti-matter in the universe. Under the Big Bang theory, one of the most common particles in the universe should be a magnetic monopole, a particle with a single net magnetic charge. Magnetic monopoles have been created in the laboratory. They have never been observed in space.

The Horizon Problem. When we look deep into space, all areas are almost exactly the same temperature. The Big Bang theory predicts cold spots and hot spots. Since light could not have traveled between regions on opposite sides of the universe, they should not have the same temperature; they haven’t been able to exchange energy. To get around this, many secular astronomers believe the universe went through a brief period of massive “inflation.” Inflation is really a philosophical belief, and not science, since it can never be reproduced or observed. Some mathematical models of inflation did make predictions, and all of those predictions have been proven false.

Stars and Planets from Clumps? According to computer simulations, gravity won’t hold grains of dust together until the ball is at least a kilometer in diameter. In other words, you need planets to get planets, and stars to get stars. Secular scientists brush over this problem, but have yet to show how planets and stars can be formed by gravity.

Magnetic Fields. Planets that are billions or even millions of years old shouldn’t have magnetic fields. The total electric energy “stored” in the Earth’s magnetic field has decreased by 14% since its first careful measurement in 1829. This decay fits creation models, which attribute the decay to electrical resistance in the core of the Earth.

Dr. Russell Humphreys has done incredible work in this area. In 1984 he proposed an alternative magnetic model involving God aligning water molecules during the creation week. It accurately predicted the magnetic field strengths of Uranus, and Neptune, as well as the decay rate of Mercury’s magnetic field. Even more impressive, a number of his predictions were made in advance, and then confirmed by satellite measurements.

Comets. Comets have finite life spans; they gradually burn up or collide with the Sun or a planet. They can’t have existed for billions of years, and in most cases not for millions. Secular astronomers imagine an “Oort Cloud” containing a trillion or so potential comets, at the far outer reaches of our Solar System, to replenish the supply. However, as even Atheist Carl Sagan admitted, there is not one shred of scientific evidence for the existence of the Oort Cloud.

* * *

I am not an expert in all of these areas, and it is certainly possibly that I have gotten some things wrong, or that later research will change the statements above. Nevertheless, I think the verdict is in. I am now convinced the Big Bang theory, the prevailing model of gradual cosmological evolution, has fatal flaws. It’s not as ridiculous as Darwin’s theory of biological evolution (how could any sane person believe the human brain “evolved” by chance?) but it has huge problems that most people don’t know about. In Counting To God I noted the 1965 discovery of cosmic microwave background radiation, faint radiation coming from everywhere, and suggested it was overwhelming evidence of the validity of the Big Bang theory. I didn’t know about these problems (and many problems not listed here), and I didn’t know the background radiation can also be explained as the limiting temperature of space, as starlight being reflected off space dust.

The universe can’t have existed forever. (Second law of thermodynamics, look it up.) Like models of gradual biological evolution, models of gradual cosmological evolution don’t fit the facts. We are left with a magnificent creation, a universe of enormous complexity, beauty, and size. The facts suggest it was all created just thousands of years ago, exactly as described in the Bible:

“I made the earth and created man on it; it was my hands that stretched out the heavens, and I commanded all their host…” Isaiah 45:12.

The Bible is true, right from the first page. In a later post I’ll show how important that is for Christianity.

Thanks for reading. Please share the good news of true science. Together we can change the world.

Memories of the Flood

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I think, overall, it was mostly two things in high school that pushed me towards Atheism. First was the Miller-Urey experiment. When I read (falsely) that life could have arisen by chance, I began to think science and religion were in conflict. (For a detailed explanation of why life could not have arisen by chance, see Chapter 10 of Counting To God.) Second was the Genesis account of Noah and the flood.

The flood story seemed crazy. A global flood covers the highest mountains? Noah and three sons are warned and build a large boat, an ark? Land animals of every kind come two-by-two onto the boat, and stay on it for months? Noah sends a dove out to see if the land is dry? The animals repopulate the Earth, and all people are descended from the sons of Noah and their wives?

I had many questions, and no one to talk to. I thought that, if the flood story wasn’t true, why should I believe other parts of the Bible? Perhaps nothing in the Bible has been attacked as strongly as the flood story of God’s judgment. It is rejected by most secular scientists. It is often mocked.

I am now absolutely convinced, for many reasons, that it is true. I was astonished, blown away, to learn there more than 500 different memories of the flood. In at least 300 of them, it is clear the flood is global. This from the NW Creation Network:

Native global flood stories are documented as history or legend in almost every region on earth. Old world missionaries reported their amazement at finding remote tribes already possessing legends with tremendous similarities to the Bible’s accounts of the worldwide flood …. Ancient civilizations such as (China, Babylonia, Wales, Russia, India, America, Hawaii, Scandinavia, Sumatra, Peru, and Polynesia) all have their own versions of a giant flood.

These flood tales are frequently linked by common elements that parallel the Biblical account including the warning of the coming flood, the construction of a boat in advance, the storage of animals, the inclusion of family, and the release of birds to determine if the water level had subsided.

Ken Ham is the founder of Answers in Genesis and the Ark Encounter in Williamstown, Kentucky, which features a full scale replica of the Ark. He writes:

I met two missionaries who visited the Creation Museum while on furlough from their missions work. They are missionaries who are the first contact with certain tribes in the Amazon. At the time, they were the first in contact with two different tribes. I asked if those tribes had a flood or creation legend. They said the tribes did and they even had a legend where the languages split apart too!

(The splitting of languages is a memory of the Tower of Babel.)

Flood memories can be found on many websites. Parallels to the Bible are stunning. Hawaiians have a memory of a time when the world became a wicked place, and only one good man, Nu-u, was left. Nu-u built a great canoe with a house on it and filled it with animals, and only Nu-u and his family were saved. Chinese have a memory that Fuhi, his wife, three sons, and three daughters escaped a great flood and were the only people alive on Earth. Ancient Babylonians have a memory in the Epic of Gilgamesh, stone tablets discovered in 1853 that mirror many features of the flood story in the Bible, including sending out a dove to see if the waters had receded.

When you read these stories, you know they are based on real events. You just know. Unrelated tribes and cultures from around the world could not possibly have this memory if the flood did not occur. Differences in the details of the flood stories are exactly what you would expect when cultures pass down memories for thousands of years. Associates for Biblical Research date the flood at around 3000 BC.

Imagine a world that was much flatter. Imagine that world rocked by enormous volcanos as the “fountains of the great deep burst forth.” (Genesis 7:11). The fountains may have included water from underground oceans in addition to massive amounts of lava. Huge tsunamis washed over the entire Earth, and the volcanic activity and rapidly shifting tectonic plates created the mountains we see today, either during the flood or shortly after.

I recommend Ken Ham’s easy-to-read book: A Flood of Evidence. He provides solid answers to the most common questions and objections. He notes the many flaws and inconsistencies of radioactive dating. All fossils, coal, and diamonds contain Carbon 14, an isotope with a half-life of 5,000 years, which could not possibly be detected if those items were more than 100,000 years old. Fossils, coal, and diamonds cannot be millions of years old!

The flood of Noah explains a great deal. It explains why sedimentary rocks and fossils are found all over the world. It explains the Ice Age. You don’t get an ice age if the Earth just gets colder; there isn’t enough moisture to build sheets of ice miles high. You need warm oceans for evaporation and cool summers so the snow doesn’t melt. After the flood, perhaps for centuries, the oceans were warmed by volcanic activity but the summers were cool because of volcanic dust.

As I noted in an earlier post, human DNA provides strong evidence that all men are descended from Noah. Here’s two other items. First, if humanity is tens of thousands of years old, why don’t we find stories of people who lived more than 5,000 years ago? Second, if the layers of rock in the Grand Canyon were laid down over tens of millions of years, why are they so level with no sign of erosion?

Jesus spoke of the flood, and compared it to his second coming:

For as were the days of Noah, so will be the coming of the Son of Man. For as in those days before the flood they were eating and drinking, marrying and giving in marriage, until the day when Noah entered the ark, and they were unaware until the flood came and swept them all away, so will be the coming of the Son of Man.

Matthew 24: 38-39. The flood is noted in the letters of St. Paul and St. Peter. Peter predicted that “scoffers will come.” “For they deliberately overlook this fact … that the world that then existed was deluged with water and perished.” 2 Peter 3:4-6.

I never ask you to believe despite the evidence. I ask you to believe because of the evidence.

Thanks for reading. Please ask others to consider the truth. It could change their life.

DNA and the Bible

Science, ,

The Bible was under attack this week in newspapers around the world. Here’s one headline: “The Bible got it wrong: Ancient Canaanites survived and their DNA lives in modern-day Lebanese.” Here’s another: “Study disproves the Bible’s claim that the ancient Canaanites were wiped out.” The next four paragraphs are from the New York Times:

“There is a story in the Hebrew Bible that tells of God’s call for the annihilation of the Canaanites, people who lived in what are now Jordan, Lebanon, Syria, Israel and the Palestinian territories thousands of years ago.

‘You shall not leave alive anything that breathes,’ God said in the passage. ‘But you shall utterly destroy them.’

But a genetic analysis published on Thursday has found that the ancient population survived that divine call for their extinction, and their descendants live in modern Lebanon.

‘We can see the present-day Lebanese can trace most of their ancestry to the Canaanites or a genetically equivalent population,’ said Chris Tyler-Smith, a geneticist with the Wellcome Trust Sanger Institute who is an author of the paper. ‘They derive just over 90 percent of their ancestry from the Canaanites.’”

I hope you noted the words “or a genetically equivalent population,” which destroys the argument that these scientists had somehow disproved the Bible. But, even worse, these supposedly quality publications failed to actually read the Bible! Yes God told the Israelites to wipe out the Canaanites,” that they may not teach you do according to all their abominable practices that they have done for their gods.” Deuteronomy 20:17. But the Israelites DISOBEYED! The Bible explicitly records that a variety of Israelite commanders let the Canaanites live. Judges 1:27-35. God then said OK, but you’ll be sorry. “So now I say, I will not drive them out before you, but they shall become thorns in your sides, and their gods shall be a snare to you.” Judges 2:3. So we are left with dozens of articles, read by perhaps hundreds of millions of people, making false claims against God. How sad that, in our upside-down world, people try to sell newspapers by attacking God.

Equally sad is that, when science supports God and the Bible, you never read about it in the popular press. In September 2014 scientists claimed that, over the course of human history, women had migrated significantly more than men. Men inherit the DNA in their Y chromosome only from their father, whereas all people inherit the DNA in their mitochondria (little energy factories in our cells) only from their mothers. A study found greater variability in a population in the female-inherited DNA, the mitochondria DNA, and claimed it was because women traveled more for marriage.

Really? Over all known history men have overwhelmingly been more likely to travel, whether for trade, curiosity, or war. Women generally marry within the community in which they were born. So this scientific study seemed strange to me. Last weekend I learned that greater variability in female DNA is exactly what the Bible predicts. Deuteronomy 32:8 states that when God divided mankind after the Tower of Babel, “he fixed the borders of the peoples according to the number of the sons of God.” In other words, from one group, humanity was divided by paternal lines, and the women went with their husbands regardless of their family background. So the females in a given populations should have greater variability in their DNA, exactly as the 2014 study found.

Last weekend I also heard a talk on Y chromosome variability by Nathaniel Jeanson, a research biologist with a Ph. D. in cell and developmental biology from Harvard. Dr. Jeanson measured variability in the Y chromosome over time. To do that he needed a population that had been separated at a known time in the past. He used African Americans, and compared their Y chromosomes to the Y chromosomes of the population that stayed behind in West Africa. There are statistics on the number of people who came to the United States in this brutal way, and it is known that the mean point of the slave trade was around 1800. By comparing the variability in Y chromosome between African Americans and those who stayed behind, he got a measure of genetic drift in the Y chromosome.

Dr. Jeanson then presented a chart that showed differences in the Y chromosome among all males worldwide. The chart shows clear connecting points, nodes if you will, that strongly point to a common ancestor. According to the Bible, all men trace their Y chromosome back to Noah, who with his three sons, and their wives, were the only people on the ark. Dr. Jeanson used his estimate of how fast the Y chromosome drifts to estimate the time back to the central nodes. It’s not clear which one could be Noah; the data doesn’t establish that clearly. But the time back to all the nodes was around 5,000 years, which is when the Bible tells us Noah lived.

The bottom line here is that modern DNA analysis strongly supports the Bible. Unfortunately, that story rarely makes the secular press. I highly recommend the magazine Acts and Facts, which spreads the good news of true science every month. You can get a free subscription here:
http://www.icr.org/subscriptions/signup/

Thanks for reading. Please spread the good news of science.