Kingdom Come

The history of “In God We Trust” becoming the official motto of the United States…

as the country became ravaged by the Civil War, religious sentiment grew… Reverend M. R. Watkinson appealed to Secretary of the Treasury, Salmon P. Chase, to add the phrase to all U.S. coins…He wrote, “This would place us openly under the Divine protection…

Really? The belief that proclaiming a condition brings it into existence is magical thinking. Common in young children but considered psychotic or New Age religion in grownups.

Trust is not created by fiat. Trust is formed by neurological connections in the brain through interactions with others.

Erik Erikson, a developmental psychologist, researched the importance of trust in infancy. He noted that when caregivers are a consistent source of comfort, food, and affection, an infant learns trust. The baby develops a belief that others are dependable and reliable. If caregivers are neglectful the infant learns mistrust. The baby then develops a belief that the world is an unpredictable, undependable, and possibly a dangerous place.

Further research has shown that trust may be established even prenatally, despite the still-developing brain lacking the neurological ability for cognitive or emotional processing of experiences.

Continue reading “SECTION I: In What Do You Trust?”

Hundreds of thousands of people died in the December 26, 2004 Indian Ocean tsunami. But as described in these news reports, others saw warning signs, and escaped with their lives…

a 10-year-old British girl saved more than 100 people because she had just studied the killer waves in school. When the sea suddenly began to boil, then pulled away from the resort she was visiting, leaving fish and boats stranded high and dry, Tilly Smith recognized that a tsunami was approaching. Fortunately, her frantic warnings were heeded, and the beach was evacuated just moments before the huge waves crashed ashore…

Many other people in the region were less attuned to nature, and paid with their lives. 

The most important knowledge, guiding our values and behaviors during our lifetime, is what happens after this lifetime.

Science cannot answer the question “Does God exist?”…science studies the natural world, not the supernatural. No amount of scientific testing or theorizing could prove or disprove the existence of a supernatural creator.

So we are forced to rely on revelation by a supernatural being.

But there are over 4,000 religions in the world offering hope for a quality of spiritual existence after death of the body. Which one is trustworthy?

Continue reading “1) Revelation Or Experience?”

Stephen Hawking is a genius physicist and “one of the most important scientists and public intellectuals of our time, if not all time.” 

But despite being a top ranked scientist among scientists, Stephen Hawking does not base his choice of belief system on evidence.

Note carefully that Stephen Hawking’s choice of belief is made to resolve his emotional response to the concept of an afterlife. As he states, he is grateful, i.e. relieved to conclude that there is no afterlife.

This is understandable, since he spent his entire adult life struggling with a severely debilitating physical disease, experiencing, in essence, the misery of a disembodied soul as postulated to be the condition of the afterlife.

But is someone’s emotionally disturbed coping mechanism a viable basis on which to base belief directing your own life’s choices and plans for your soul’s fate after death? 

Continue reading “4) Endless Or Pointless Existence?”

Traditional Christian views held that the world started with its Creation and would end with the second coming of Jesus. This concept did not give evolution enough time to producing anything. 6000 years was not enough time to create the incredible diversity of life in the world.

Charles Lyell (1797–1875) was a close friend of Charles Darwin. Lyell’s elite social and political connections within Britain’s Military Industrial Complex – like his friend Darwin – authorized him to underwrite a new “explanation of time” that due to its “eloquence…convinced a wide range of readers of the significance of “”Deep time.“

Continue reading “5) Proven Or Pretend Time?”

There were three major revolutions in scientific thought that prepared the way for a successful theory of evolution.

The first major change in scientific thought was in the field of biology. Linnaeus, the Swedish biologist, had…abandoned the theory of the chain of being that claimed that all living creatures formed an unbroken scale of complexity and nobility, terminating with the most complex and noble of all, humanity. Instead, Linnaeus showed that life could be divided into five separate kingdoms, each divergent from the other.

What a gross distortion of the facts.

In fact, Linnaeus was a devout Christian who believed that “The study of nature would reveal the Divine Order of God’s creation, and it was the naturalist’s task to construct a ‘natural classification’ that would reveal this Order in the universe.”

In fact, the separation of mortal living creatures into five categories follows the biblical account of creation which defines 1) water animals, 2) winged animals, 3) beasts of the earth, 4) cattle, 5) creeping things, and finally 6) man as a unique creation representing Spirit God himself in material form.

The second major change in scientific thought was in the field of geology.

Continue reading “6) Catastrophism or Uniformitarianism?”