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.

Radiometric dating: Science or Guesswork?

Posted on by
F14 in catapult with full afterburners

F14 in catapult with full afterburners


Is radiometric dating accurate? It’s science and many believe “science” to be synonymous with “always true” and therefore don’t question the data given, even when it contradicts the Bible – which also claims to be always true in  information that it affirms. So when the two contradict – as they do with the age of the universe and the earth – many abandon the faith and reject the Genesis account because current science tells them that the universe and the earth is billions of years old, and disregard the biblical account – which indicates an age of about 6,000 years. The evidence many find persuasive:  radiometric dating. But is radiometric dating really the objective hard science many believe it to be? By “objective, hard science” I mean science that is  measurable, repeatable, predictable, consistent and accurate.  For instance I would could consider the physics of flight a “hard science.”  Here’s how those terms apply to the performance of an aircraft: Continue Reading

More Big Bang Magic Tricks – Shadows and Waves

Posted on by

What casts no shadows besides vampires? Apparently, the big bang.

In theory, scientists are objective seekers of the truth, handling the data that is discovered with honesty and integrity.  Unfortunately particularly in sciences that have worldview implications, that is not the case. One of those sciences is cosmology – the science that attempts to determine the origin and development of the universe. With the possible exception of Darwinian evolution,  there are no sciences  that have larger worldview implications that cosmology.   Even without knowing how the origin of the universe came about, the psalmist is correct in his declaration “the heavens declare the glory of God.” (Ps 19.1)  Atheist cosmologists know that and have tried to mute that testimony by attempting to come up with a story of the creation of the universe that doesn’t involve God.  Because even if you haven’t formally studied apologetics or cosmology, everyone implicitly understands the Kalam Cosmological argument for the existence of God: Everything that begins to exist has a creator. The universe began to exist, therefore the universe has a creator. The only one powerful enough to create the universe is of course God, therefore God created the universe.

Such a simple, intuitive, easy to understand proof of the existence of God is anathema to atheist cosmologists because their own preferred theory of origins – the Big Bang theory – though incorrect nevertheless points to the fact that the universe had a beginning. Continue Reading

The complex science that explains consciousness: Faith

Posted on by

Consciousness poses a serious, and in fact insurmountable problem for  materialist scientists – which includes of course materialist evolutionists.[1]  Brain researcher Robert Lawrence Kuhn captures the problem succinctly: “Try as I have for decades, I cannot remotely imagine how physical matter can become mentally aware.”[2] By “mentally aware” he is referring to consciousness, which he defines as:

“Consciousness is what mental activity feels like inside. The private inner experience of sensation, emotion and thought.”[3]
Robert Lawrence Kuhn

Which is probably the easiest way to view consciousness.[4] But this easy to understand concept of consciousness masks a fundamental conundrum: matter is not conscious. If matter is all that exists, and thus people are no more than intricately structured matter, why are we conscious?

The problem is akin to the origin of life for such materialists. The origin of life problem, briefly stated, is  how did non-living matter – an arrangement of molecules – become a living creature? The problem of consciousness is very similar:  How does an arrangement of non-consciousness matter become conscious? For  the record, materialists have no answer to either question.

Before looking further into the problem, we need to be clear on how  insurmountable a problem consciousness is for those who believe there is nothing beyond the material world. Famed former atheist turned theist Anthony Flew highlighted the problem through the means of  a thought experiment: Continue Reading

Intelligent Design’s Blind Side

Posted on by

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

Posted on by

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?

Posted on by

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

Posted on by

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

Posted on by

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?

Posted on by

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

Posted on by

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