A Total Eclipse of the Sun. Dramatic Solar Eclipse illustration.
“Now from the sixth hour there was darkness over all the land until the ninth hour”—Matthew 27:45 ESV
“And when the sixth hour had come, there was darkness over the whole land until the ninth hour”—Mark 15:33 ESV
“It was now about the sixth hour, and there was darkness over the whole land until the ninth hour”—Luke 23:44 ESV
Starting right in the middle of the day, when the sunlight is the very brightest, from about noontime until about 3 PM, on the day Jesus was executed, a mysterious darkness covered “the whole land” (Greek, “ge”), meaning Jerusalem and the surrounding area of Judea. Three extra-Biblical ancient historians, Thallus, Phlegon, and Africanus, also mentioned this three hour period of darkness in their writingsread more
“Even when walking in the street the fool, lacking understanding, calls everyone a fool”—Ecclesiastes 10:3 NAB
BIBLICAL CHRISTIANITY REQUIRES LESS FAITH TO BELIEVE IN THAN ATHEISM
While Christians are often derided for their seemingly “blind faith” in the Creator/God’s existence, the facts give powerful evidence the Biblical Creator/God is real.
The overwhelming scientific evidence confirms the essential truths of the “Big Bang”. In just the last 100 years, scientists, such as cosmologists and astronomers, have been forced by their very own discoveries to admit the universe had a beginning, which harmonizes with what the Bible stated as fact thousands of years ago. For example:read more
“In the beginning God created the heavens and the earth”—Genesis 1:1
In our article about the expansion of the universe, we showed how some basic scientific facts about the universe point to the existence of God. This article examines even more scientific concepts about the universe and we will see how they relate to the Creator.
Existence of Elements Essential for Life
When two helium nuclei collide, they fuse together and produce the fleeting, unstable beryllium. An additional collision with a single helium nucleus, and carbon is created. Without these very unlikely “lucky accidents” constantly occurring carbon would not exist, and neither would we.
“For the Lord is God, and he created the heavens and earth and put everything in place. He made the world to be lived in, not to be a place of empty chaos. ‘I am the LORD,’ he says, ‘and there is no other.'” (Isaiah 45:18 NLT)
The Fine-tuned Universe
A proton is 1,836 times heavier than an electron. If this difference was any greater or lesser, it would not be possible for life to exist in the universe.
“The laws of science, as we know them at present, contain many fundamental numbers, like the size of the electric charge of the electron and the ratio of the masses of the proton and the electron. … The remarkable fact is that the values of these numbers seem to have been very finely adjusted to make possible the development of life.” – Stephen Hawking
In 1961, physicist Robert H. Dicke said that certain forces in physics, such as gravity and electromagnetism, must be perfectly fine-tuned for life to exist anywhere in the Universe. Fred Hoyle also argued for a fine-tuned Universe in his 1984 book “Intelligent Universe.” He compares “the chance of obtaining even a single functioning protein by chance combination of amino acids to a star system full of blind men solving Rubik’s Cube simultaneously.”
“In you is the source of life, by your light we see the light.” (Psalm 36:9 NJB) The Bible refers to Almighty God as “the source of life.”
Fine-tuning of the Force Strengths to Permit Life
The constants governing the four fundamental forces of physics are finely-tuned to support life.
Strong nuclear force is important for the existence of stable atoms beyond hydrogen. If the strong force were 50% weaker, no elements used by life would exist because protons couldn’t be held together in the nucleus.
Electromagnetic force is responsible for chemistry and plays a critical role in stellar fusion which powers life. The electromagnetic force needs to be much weaker than the strong nuclear force for atoms to be stable – so that the radius of the electron orbit is much larger than the radius of the nucleus.
Weak nuclear force controls proton-proton fusion, a reaction 1,000,000,000,000,000,000 times slower than the nuclear reaction based on the strong nuclear force. Without this, essentially all the matter in the universe would have been burned to helium before the first galaxies were formed. Because the weak nuclear force is so much weaker than the strong nuclear force, a star can burn its hydrogen gently for billions of years instead of blowing up like a bomb.
Gravitational force: the strength of gravity is about 40 orders of magnitude weaker than the strong nuclear force. Based on this expectation that gravity can vary up to strong nuclear force strength, the level of fine-tuning required for life is pretty remarkable:
If gravity is weaker by 1 in 10 raised to the 36th power, stars are unstable to degeneracy pressure (for small stars) or unstable to radiative pressure just expelling huge chunks of the star (for larger stars).
If gravity is stronger by 1 in 10 raised to the 40th power, the universe is dominated by black holes not stars.
If gravity is weaker by 1 in 10 raised to the 30th power, the largest planet that would avoid crushing effects of gravity on any large-brained creatures would have a radius of about 50 meters – which is not a good candidate for an ecosystem and the development/sustenance of intelligent life.
“As it was in the days of Noah, so it will be at the coming of the Son of Man. In [those] days before the flood, the were eating and drinking, marrying and giving in marriage, up to the day that Noah entered the ark. They did not know until the flood came and carried them all away. So it will be [also] at the coming of the Son of Man”—Matthew 24:37-39 NAB
Archaeologists have discovered a 7,000-year-old burial site in the Gulf of Mexico after a tip from a recreational diver who found human remains at the site in 2016. More details can be read in this article.
The ancient burial site discovered off the southwest Florida coast lends credence to what we know from the Bible about the flood in Genesis 6-8. The article states that “sea levels were much lower during that time”, and then goes on to say that “sea levels rose”. How does this harmonize with the Biblical account of the global flood?
“All the springs of the great deep burst through, and the sluices of heaven opened. And heavy rain fell on earth for forty days and forty nights” (Genesis 7:11 NJB). A gigantic amount of water was somehow released upon the earth within a relatively short time. Psalm 104:6,7 possibly explains where the water came from: “You covered it (the earth) with the watery depths as with a garment; the waters stood above the mountains. But at your rebuke they fled, at the sound of your thunder they took to flight” (NIV). They were released at the start of the flood.
This global deluge resulted in
“the water covered even the highest mountains on the earth, rising twenty-two feet above the highest peaks” (Genesis 7:19,20 NLT)read more
Why do many people not believe in God or his word the Bible? Why are so many people lacking faith? A person with genuine Bible-based faith is referred to as “one who sees Him who is invisible.” (Heb 11:27 CSB) read more
Vouivria herd roaming a coastal lagoon (Imperial College London)
“How countless are your works, Yahweh, all of them made so wisely! The earth is full of your creatures”—-Psalm 104:24 NJB
“Fossil sheds light on ‘Jurassic Park’ dinosaurs” is the title of an article published on May 2, 2017 by BBC News. The article shows how flimsy and precarious the entire theory of macroevolution (Darwinism) is. From a re-examination of one fossil, scientists have come up with a new species of dinosaur!
Then they admit “these animals were evolving much earlier than the fossil record previously has indicated.” That should be worded “much earlier than our theory indicated.” Actually, they say it’s “five million years” older.
The Bible, for thousands of years, has indicated that “God made the wild animals according to their kinds… and all the creatures that move along the ground according to their kinds.” (Genesis 1:25 NIV) While evolutionists are forced by their own scientific discoveries to continually revise their theory, the Bible record has been accurate since it was written thousands of years ago, with no need of revision. This is not surprising, since it was authored by “God, alone wise.” (Romans 16:27 NKJV)
The article can be read below. Here it is:
Fossil sheds light on ‘Jurassic Park’ dinosaurs
The fossil of a dinosaur that has been languishing in a museum for decades has been re-examined – and it turns out to be that of a new species.
Brachiosaurus, depicted in Jurassic Park, now has an early relative, providing clues to the evolution of some of the biggest creatures on Earth.
Scientists say the plant-eating dinosaur was longer than a double-decker bus and weighed 15,000kg.
Its remains were found in the 1930s in the Jura region of France.
Since then it has been somewhat over-looked, spending most of that time in storage crates in the National Museum of Natural History in Paris.
Lead researcher Dr Philip Mannion of Imperial College London said the dinosaur would have eaten all kinds of vegetation, such as ferns and conifers, and lived at a time when Europe was a series of islands.
”We don’t know what this creature died from, but millions of years later it is providing important evidence to help us understand in more detail the evolution of brachiosaurid sauropods and a much bigger group of dinosaurs that they belonged to, called titanosauriforms,” he said.
Asteroid strike
Titanosauriforms were some of the largest creatures ever to have lived on land and were very diverse, surviving right up until the asteroid strike that wiped out most life on Earth.
The new species, given the scientific name, Vouivria damparisensis, lived in the Late Jurassic, some 160 million years ago.
“It’s the earliest member of a group that includes Brachiosaurus – one of the most famous dinosaurs we know – one of the prominent animals in Jurassic Park,” Dr Mannion told BBC News
“And it gives us a much clearer idea of what’s going on in the early evolution of this really important radiation of dinosaurs.”
Sauropods
The dinosaur is a sauropod – a sub-group of titanosauriforms, which include well-known groups such as Brachiosaurus, Diplodocus and Brontosaurus.
They had very long necks, long tails, and small heads with thick, pillar-like legs.
The fossil predates the previously oldest-known member of this group by about five million years.
“It starts to give us an idea that these animals were evolving much earlier than the fossil record previously has indicated,” Dr Mannion added.
“This pushes back a lot of origin times for a range of sauropod dinosaurs based on our understanding of how these different species related to one another.”
The re-classification of Vouivria as an early member of the titanosauriforms will help in mapping their spread across the Earth, from Jurassic times to the extinction of all dinosaurs.
It is thought that they were present across Europe, the US and Africa, but became extinct in Europe towards the end of their reign.
The fossil was discovered in the village of Damparis in the Jura region of eastern France in 1934.
It was documented scientifically in the 1940s, but has not been studied in detail since then.
Its scientific name, Vouivria damparisensis, relates to ‘La vouivre’, a local folklore legend about a winged serpent.
Dr Mannion examined the bones of the creature along with scientists at the National Museum of Natural History in Paris and the CNRS/Université Paris 1 Panthéon-Sorbonne.
A new BBC News article says that evidence from a variety of sources suggests that our early ancestors were more sophisticated than we could have imagined.
Here we go again. More discoveries proving evolutionary theories wrong. Early humans were much more complex than they imagined. That is just what the Bible said about the first humans all along. For example, the very early humans mentioned in Genesis:
