Friday, March 31, 2006

Archaeology: David's Palace

This will be the first installment of my Archaeology series. The point of this series is to show that the Bible is a reliable source of information regarding actual people, places and events. These sorts of finds are, frankly, too numerous to blog on all of them, but I want to highlight the big ones.

Historical revisionists have long questioned and even dismissed out of hand substantial claims documented only in Holy Scripture. One such item is the recent (1997) discovery of King David's Palace. This article documents how a 49 year old archaeologist, Eilat Mazar, used the Bible to locate King David's Palace, lost since the 9th century B.C.E.! There are now many authenticating features that make it highly unlikely that this find is anything other than David's Palace, even if the Bible had not been used to find it.

The article, as well as other sources, point out how the Palestinians and some secular archaeologists have scoffed at the existence of the Biblical David, or at least of his significance in Hebrew history. After all, the existence of a man like David that whipped his contemporary neighbors into submission isn't too comfortable for Canaanite descendents.

Once again, the Bible proves its worth as a guide for actual people, places and events. Does it prove there is a God? No, but it is evidence that the Bible isn't the fictional collage of stories as purported by the atheistic, pseudo-scientific community of our day.

In future installments, I hope to blog about the re-discovery of the Hittite Empire, the destruction of Tyre by Nebuchadnezzar and Alexander the Great, and many other significant archaeological evidences that bear out the historical accuracy of the Bible.

The Lazarus Effect: Coelacanth

One of the most notable in my Lazarus series is the Coelacanth. The Coelacanth was a large fish with an average weight of 176 pounds (80 kg) and up to 6.5 feet (2 meters) in length with unique characteristics that lived (according to learned scientists) somewhere in the Late Paleozoic and Mesozoic periods (390 million years ago). What interested scientists the most was this fish's fleshy appendages at the base of certain of his fins. These appendages must surely have represented a "transitional form", they asserted. These stubby appendages were certainly the progenitors of arms and legs (which is why they had 6 of them, bottom and top)!

A "transitional form", by their definitions, is one that exhibits characteristics of two types of modern animals, and must, therefore, have been a middle species between one and the other. The keen observer will note that lately, every dinosaur "discovered" seems to have feathers! This is because scientists have altered their model (this word makes fantasy theory sound more like operable facts) to assert that the dinosaurs didn't die out at the beginning of the ice age, they merely turned into birds (Ah, I see)! On a side note, check out this article that refutes thier claims about feather evolution. So in the millions of years that it took to transition from dinosaur to bird, they merely wore arctic clothing by Canada Goose.

Anyway, the learned scientists boasted about how the discovery of the Coelacanth proved their belief that cross-species evolution did happen! Evolutionary artists even painted pictures of the Coelacanth using their fleshy fins to crawl out of the water to feed, possibly lay eggs, or just see who won the super bowl that year! Now we know that they never came anywhere close to the surface (300 - 700 feet deep).

Well, imagine their surprise (code for embarrassment) when in 1930, someone discovered a Coelacanth swimming around the Indian Ocean. Since that time, at least 6 sites have been found to host living Coelacanths spanning a thousand miles. The "startling" thing about this (and all) Lazarus species is the way that when found, they appear to be identical to their 390 million year old counter parts!

So how did this fella’ survive all this time? How come there aren't any Coelacanth fossils from those early layers of strata till the present? Shouldn't there be a consistent record of Coelacanths from then till now? Shouldn't all layers of strata from 390 million years ago till the present contain examples of the Coelacanth? And why didn't he change over the eons? Could it be that the earth is only 6-8,000 years old and he hasn't had time to change? Isn't is possible that the Bible's account of history is true, and that God's declaration in Genesis that each should produce after it's kind (which would eliminate the possibility that the Coelacanth is the progenitor of the Clydesdales [though I must admit, they do both start with a "C"])?

For scientists theories about the fossil records to be true, it is impossible for the species to have "gone silent" in the fossil records during all the years from then till now. As they do daily, they disprove evolution each time they find a Lazarus species.

Thursday, March 30, 2006

The Lazarus Effect: Squirrel-like Rodent


Click here to see another Lazarus species, this time a rodent thought extinct for 11 million years. But it's understandable this time that scientists didn't find it earlier. It must have been a very tiny squirrel-like rodent. They said they found it inside Laos. Do you know how tiny you'd have to be to get inside a laos?

Here's an alternate link if Yahoo decides to archive their story.

The Lazarus Effect: Pine Trees

This is the first blog in "The Lazarus Effect" series.

According to "scientists", the Lazarus Effect happens when a species only known from the fossil record from eons gone by suddenly re-appears walking, breathing, floating, or just standing there, as is the case in this first blog. The name, of course, comes from the Biblical story of Lazarus (John 11) who was raised by Jesus after he was dead four days, buried and "stinketh" (11:39) until Christ resurrected him.

The phenomena is so astounding because, according to the learned scientists, the fossil record (read: atheists' bible) "goes silent" on some species some millions of years ago (usually round numbers of 5 or 10), and no such species is found in "newer" layers of strata. To see a 120 million year extinct fish or a 65 million year extinct dinosaur walking around does present some problem for these learned men (and women,...er...persons). For these species to have flourished many years ago and for many of such species to have been fossilized in the past, say the Jurassic period, yet for none to have been fossilized from then till now (65m years) is, well, against the odds, shall we say.

When presented with (oh, no!) another Lazarus species, instead of revisiting their shabby theories to something more palpable (I can think of one or so), they instead pretend to celebrate the discovery. If it's a problem anomaly, let it be THEIR problem anomaly!

Now just to be clear, the term "Lazarus Effect" isn't quite the right term. See, they named it that to pretend like they believe it really came back to life after tens of millions of years. But they don't really believe that and wouldn't say they did. What they really believe, and what really astounds them, is that this species ("kind" is a better word), has been around all along, but we didn't know it. With all the people walking around (billions at last count...or was that cheeseburgers?), the chances of no one seeing one of these in, say the last 45,000 years (when they say we started tooling ewes, or was it using tools? Can't remember!) are again, against the odds.

So I think it only appropriate to propose a new term; let Lazarus rest in peace. Maybe the "We were wrong effect!" Doesn't ring. Hm. Maybe the "Egged Face" effect. Better. Well, feel free to write in with your proposals. But try to keep it catchy.

If you've hung on this long, you're pretty determined, so here's the link to the first article that shows one of these Lazarus species ... to scientists' astoundment...something or other. It depicts a rare, but obviously not extinct, species of pine tree, the Wollemi Pine, that some tree guy came across in Australia. It was supposedly extinct for 200 million years.

Tuesday, March 28, 2006

Clear Evidence

Some people require proof before they will believe. This bars them from ever understanding and thus believing the greatest truths. The greatest truths are those concerning God and eternity. This blog isn't for them.

My purpose isn't to convince an unbeliever of the existence of God. Nothing I'll post here, or could post here could possibly accomplish that. My purpose is simply to present evidence that God is real. The cynic still won't be convinced.

A coworker of mine and I were having a discussion that landed (inevitably) on the topic of evolution. When I told him that I didn't believe in evolution, he came back with his experience in horse breeding, suggesting that he'd observed evolution in action. After several more volleys, he finally stated his standard of proof: "If they'd show me human tracks superimposed upon dinosaur tracks in the same layers of strata, then I'd believe them." Right away, I told him that they (the ambiguous "they") had uncovered just such evidence in many places on earth. Within a few days I'd found the book and page that documented an example of this in southern Utah, about 43 miles southwest of Delta. Here, sandal-clad human footprints overlaid trilobite fossils from before the dinosaurs (in evolutionary thinking). These fossils were supposedly from the Paleozoic or even Cambrian period (around 250 million years ago), yet they were superimposed by indisputably human footprints, which, in evolutionists thinking, couldn't have been been made until just 45,000 years ago! Scientists immediately labeled them a hoax until they returned with the man to uncover many more that he'd not discovered. When I showed my coworker this evidence, he said, "Hmph, that's interesting." and stomped off angry, rather than convinced. Such is the mind of the unbelieving man.

But perhaps a Christian, teetering on the edge, caught between the teachings of his pastor and the Bible, and the ridicule so overwhelmingly flowing from the world's demagogues (i.e. the media, university professors, apostate religious organizations, etc...) will think again before abandoning the faith to follow a different faith, today known as "science".

It is my intention to post on a handful of recurring themes:

1) Scientific and historical evidence that the Bible is true.
2) Evidence that the Darwinists are greatly changing their theories daily.
3) An attempt at explaining how true science is consistent with the Bible (and not the other way around.)

So I hope some of these things are encouraging to you as they have been to me. Once you learn to be suspicious of the scientific community, it's startling how many other things start making sense.

I would hope that anyone who reads this would accept the axiom of Colossians 1:18b "...that in all things he [Christ] might have the preeminence."