Author Archives: Duane Caldwell

About Duane Caldwell

Duane has served in many different capacities including pastor, elder, project coordinator and flight instructor. He is an ordained minister of the gospel of Jesus Christ by the Evangelical Church Alliance and holds a Master of Divinity from Trinity Evangelical Divinity School, a Trinity International University school and a BS in Aeronautics from Parks College, St. Louis University.

Intelligent Design’s Blind Side

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Intelligent Design’s Blind Side

William Dembski is a leader in the Intelligent Design (ID) community, so I read with initial interest a recent interview he did with Sean McDowell titled How is the Intelligent Design Movement Doing? Interview with William Dembski.  which is posted on McDowell’s blog. That initial interest turned to dismay as the adversarial attitude Dembski has toward revealed truth in general and Young Earth Creationism (YEC) in particular was made apparent. When asked how he assesses the reception of ID within the church, Dembski states:

“I would say that the church broadly and even the evangelical community has — on balance — been somewhere between useless and downright counterproductive to the success of ID.”

A most unfortunate assessment given the potential ID has to impact a culture that has largely fallen under the sway of the junk science put forth to support the materialist religion known as Darwinian Evolution. Even more unfortunate is Dembski’s  apparent blindness to how he (and other ID advocates with similar positions) has caused such a reaction from the God fearing, Bible believing faithful they’d like to gain support from. To unravel this mystery for them, let’s start with what both ID advocates and YEC advocates are trying to achieve. Continue Reading

Should Christians believe in a multiverse? 7 Reasons Against

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The god of this age has blinded the minds of unbelievers, so that they cannot see the light of the gospel of the glory of Christ, who is the image of God.
2 Cor 4.2

Non-believers will likely consider the above scripture irrelevant and unpersuasive and will ponder the wisdom of starting an article on the multiverse with a verse of scripture. In so doing they will have confirmed the scripture (blind to spiritual truths) while setting up my two points: First – this is not merely a discussion of physics – but of metaphysics. (Metaphysics being those things that lie beyond the realm of observable physical reality and so strictly speaking, are beyond the realm of the questions that physics can answer.) Second, not only is the multiverse “pure metaphysics”[1] as Christian apologist William Lane Craig puts it, but many scientists seem blind to the fact that they are engaging in metaphysics – not physics – when proposing the multiverse as a “scientific” answer to a number of the problems their theories have. They have fallen into the same error that  philosopher of science and apologist John Lennox chides theoretical physicist Stephen Hawking for: engaging in metaphysics while failing to recognize he is doing so.[2]

Truth in advertising

Having identified multiverse theories as claims that deal with the metaphysical, we can make the following observations: Continue Reading

Can Evolution Explain the Origin of Language?

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With regards to origins, evolutionists and creationists don’t agree on much. The item of contention for today’s closer look: language. Creationists will tell you that God is the originator of language and gave man the ability to communicate via language as part of being made in the image of God. (Gen 1.27) For evolutionists, the origin of language is yet another unknown conundrum; one of the many things that evolutionists have no plausible theory to explain such as:

  • the origin of life
  • the origin of DNA and the coded information in it
  • the origin of multi-cellular life from single celled creatures
  • the non-directed specialization of cells that allow for the creation of specialized organs likes heart, lungs, etc.
  • and the specialized, completely different but complementary organs for accomplishing reproduction through two different creatures; the organs making the individual either male and female – and when paired male and female, reproduction is accomplished.

All the above happened – according to evolutionists – without plan, direction or design. Add to the list “origin of language”. In spite of  the lack of a coherent theory to explain any of this, evolutionists still cling to the merit-less theory of evolution. Continue Reading

Review: The Atheist Delusion

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In his latest evangelistic movie “The Atheist Delusion – Why Millions Deny the Obvious” Ray Comfort is once again out among atheists in what I’d like to say is his inimitable style – but that would be a very inaccurate description. Because it is clear that Comfort has developed an easy to use approach that he’d like every Christian to use when confronted with atheist claims of “there’s no evidence of God”. Continue Reading

MicroEvolution: Dispelling the Myths and Misconceptions

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As the above image implies, there’s a mist that surrounds the concept of microevolution that conceals clarity on the matter. If you’re not a close follower of the theories that comprise Darwin’s theory of evolution[1], you are probably laboring under a misconception of what microevolution is.  That misconception is furthered (it appears to me) by Darwinists seeking to bolster the evidence-lacking theory.  To dispel the mists surrounding this often abused term, and shine the light on the truth, following are five myths or misconceptions, and the reality or the truth behind each one.

As I point out in an article titled “Games Evolutionists Play: The Name Game” part of the problem with demonstrating the falsity of  Darwinism is that evolutionists keep changing the definition in an attempt to keep evolution from being falsified. So let’s start with a firm definition. Jonathan Wells, author of “Icons of  Evolution” provides a firm definition of both micro-evolution and macro-evolution in the glossary of his book “The Myth of Junk DNA“: Continue Reading

Why have so many humans seen dinosaurs?

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The full title of this article is too long to use for a blog article (which is why the shortened version appears), so let me put the full title here:

If dinosaurs died out 63 million years before humans existed
Why have so many humans seen dinosaurs?

Evolutionary theory claims that the age of dinosaurs began about 250 million years ago and ended 65 million years ago when they were wiped out by what many secularist believe was a huge asteroid strike. Humans, the theory claims, only came on the scene 2 million years go. (For a pictorial, see this timeline.) So according to evolutionary theory, the last dinosaurs died out some 63 million years before humans existed, and no human should ever have seen a living dinosaur. If that is the case why have so many  humans in all countries in all ages persistently claimed to have seen dinosaurs? This article suggests that the reason is two fold: 1. The earth is not that old, it is about 6,000 years old so the evolutionary time frame is entirely off, and 2: Humans and dinosaurs were both created on day 6 (Gen 1.24-26; 31) when God made all the other land creatures. We will examine the evidence for item 2: that humans and dinosaurs were created on the same day, and thus have lived together concurrently on the earth for as long as the earth has existed.

But before we get started, let’s clear the path of  red herrings. Continue Reading

Is Creation Relevant? Part 2: Undisputed Evidence

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In part 1 of this article, we began to explore the dynamics around the question, “Is creation relevant?” What we found is that to God, it is quite relevant – it is the first thing he wants us to know about himself, as indicated in the first verse of the Bible – “In the beginning, God created the heavens and the earth.” But today, due to a desire to make and live one’s own reality, people are throwing away what God has clearly created and instituted in order to fashion a world made to their own likings and tastes – whether such a world is true or not. And since they have rejected God’s truth – the world they fashion is increasingly distant from the truth of what God created. And thus like the shadow of Mordor over Tolkien’s middle earth, the shadow of self deception grows increasingly long over the lives of people today.

In our previous exploration, we left off pondering the  question “how do we begin to address this problem of a rejection of absolutes and the creator?” – the Creator being of course the ultimate absolute. Which is where we pick it up today.  In order to address the problem, we must understand what is at the root of the problem of people rejecting the Creator and His teaching on creation. Otherwise we will merely  be treating symptoms, while the disease continues to ravage the body (Some of those symptoms – 80-90% who make a profession of faith fall away; 2/3 of professing young adults leave the faith by the time they leave college; the falling numbers of people adhering to Biblical truth, etc.). Thus we must understand why people reject the creator. Continue Reading

Is Creation Relevant? Part 1: The Problem

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Is teaching and proclaiming God’s creation of the universe and all life relevant for today? Is the biblical proclamation –  “In the beginning, God created … ” a message that 21st century people need to hear; or should we have the same focus as the apostle Paul who said – “I resolved to know nothing while I was with you except Jesus Christ and him crucified“? (1 Cor 2.2)

 Some Christians see an insistence on adhering to the traditional creation account – that God created in six – 24 hour days about 6,000 years ago – as unnecessarily divisive.  But adherence to any Biblical account can be divisive. Some Christians don’t believe, for example,  that the New Testament witness of the day to worship is on Sunday (Acts 20.7) and insist on keeping the Old Testament practice of meeting on the Sabbath (Saturday).  That has been an issue divisive enough to form separate denominations over. So the question of divisiveness is beside the point.  It does not address the question of relevance. Also, since the divisiveness issue is an in house question (the house of God I mean) that has already been well addressed[1] I won’t spend time on it here.

Others say that for those who are lost, the account of creation is not a concern. They may have many concerns, but how the universe began is typically not one of them. I had that conversation with a pastor, who said of the many people he speaks to, creation is not an issue. And though not stated, the implication was that creationists spend too much time discussing things that are not of interest. Things such as evolution, the big bang, dinosaurs, the flood, the age of the earth, etc.,  etc.  Perhaps he has a point. Perhaps at the point he speaks with people there is no interest in creation. But does that mean the issue is not there, lurking beneath the surface? Continue Reading

Dark Matter: The Big Bang’s Missing Link

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Black holes – once again a candidate for dark matter. (Above: simulation of merging black holes. Click for animation)

 

“How often have I said to you that when you have eliminated the impossible, whatever remains, however improbable, must be the truth?”[1]
Sherlock Holmes

Holmes, the famed fictional detective created by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle popularized that statement of logic, and highlighted the power of deductive reasoning for solving problems.  As fans of Sherlock Holmes know this adage is a key tool in the forensic tool kit for catching criminals.  Applied to science, it is also very helpful, but it cannot always be as conclusive with scientific theory as it is when narrowing the field of suspects in a crime. That is because of two ambiguous terms that science has a hard time precisely defining. Those are:

  1. Eliminate the Impossible
     This is a doubly difficult task for science, because it assumes you first have the knowledge to identify all possibilities, then secondly, have the ability to identify (via testing if it’s to be scientific) that which is  not possible. Only then can you know that you’ve eliminated the impossible. But when it comes to cosmology as physicist and creationist John Hartnett quips:

    “To make such a claim, you would have to know that you have ruled out all other possibilities. In such a case—remember this is not a laboratory experiment—you would have to be an all-knowing god.” [2]
    John Hartnett
     

  2. Whatever remains
     We tend to think that “whatever remains” is a single identifiable cause, but in fact, there could be multiple causes that make up “whatever remains”

So before coming out with any definitive statements,  scientists must be sure that they have carefully accounted for each of these two often difficult to identify variables. Unfortunately, that has  not been the case when it comes to  scientific speculation on Dark Matter. In that regard there are a lot of scientists jumping to the conclusion that dark matter exists, and is out there, waiting to be verified (in a lab) by scientists. Why is that? Let’s take a look at why scientists are so intent on proving that Dark Matter exists, and why it’s prudent to be skeptical about their whole approach to the existence of dark matter.

The Problem: The Universe is not behaving as (we think) it should

Scientists have identified peculiar behavior in the outer reaches of the universe. Not all galaxies are moving as they should. To visualize the problem, consider: Continue Reading

Evolution: Not Science, Pseudoscience

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A duck dressed as a scientist is still a duck. And a pseudoscientific theory dressed up like real science is still pseudoscience.  That just leaves the question: is evolution pseudoscience?  Fortunately, that’s an easy question to answer: yes. And even better, you don’t need to be a scientist to recognize a pseudoscience, just as you don’t need to be a doctor to recognize the difference between a human and a non-human like a duck. Anyone who knows what a “human” and a “duck” is can easily discern the difference. And anyone who knows what “science” and “pseudoscience” is will likewise easily discern the difference.

As  you are probably already aware, a favored tactic of  proponents of evolution is to label both Creation and Intelligent Design disciplines as “pseudosciences.”  The irony of course being that it is a trivial matter to demonstrate that Darwinian goo-to-you evolution is the epitome of a pseudoscience.  Yet regardless of  how clear the evidence is, you will never, ever get an evolutionist to acknowledge that Darwinian molecules-to-man evolution is a pseudoscience. So in this article we’ll first take a look at how Darwinian evolution fits the definition of a pseudoscience perfectly; then press on to demonstrate how evolution breaks a number of the known laws of science further proving it to be pseudoscience in spite of their protestations that “it’s science.”

According to the bastion of popular secular knowledge known as Wikipedia, a pseudoscience is:

“…a claim, belief, or practice presented as scientific, but which does not adhere to the scientific method. A field, practice, or body of knowledge can reasonably be called pseudoscientific when it is presented as consistent with the norms of scientific research,  but it demonstrably fails to meet these norms.”[1]

So one cannot know whether something is a pseudoscience until one first understands the scientific method. Again, according to Wikipedia, the scientific method is:

“a body of techniques for investigating phenomena, acquiring new knowledge, or correcting and integrating previous knowledge. To be termed scientific, a method of inquiry is commonly based on empirical or measurable evidence subject to specific principles of reasoning. The Oxford English Dictionary defines the scientific method as “a method or
procedure that has characterized natural science since the 17th century, consisting in systematic observation, measurement, and experiment, and the formulation, testing, and modification of hypotheses.”[2]

Evolution fits the definition of a pseudoscience

Evolution fits every criteria necessary to be identified as a pseudoscience: Continue Reading