jesus gospel Why is there not a Gospel of Jesus existent that predates Paul?
Did you know that during the time of Paul and the apostles, there were many oral traditions and Gospel principles that were different from those of Paul? Why is there not a Gospel of Jesus existent that predates Paul?
Paul invented Christianity.
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The U.S. population in 2009 had increased more than 9% to 307,006,550 since the 2000 census. In 2009's Census Bureau's annual population estimates, the population grew .86% in one year. Regarding individual states, Texas added the most people - 478,000. California was second with 381,000 and North Carolina was third with 134,000. Wyoming had the highest growth rate at 2.12%, followed by Utah with 2.1% and Texas with 1.97%. Michigan, Maine and Rhode Island shrank in population - by .33%, .11% and .03% respectively. However, one state undoubtedly caused many of the changes - the state of the economy.
The U.S. Department of Transportation finally imposed new regulations regarding tarmac delays after 613 planes were delayed more than 3 hours from January to June 2009. As of April 20, 2010 domestic flights will have to provide tarmac-stranded passengers with food and water within 2 hours, as well as working lavatories and medical attention when necessary. After 3 hours passengers must be allowed to disembark except when there are safety or security issues or air traffic control says returning to the terminal would disrupt airport operations. Hopefully, those exceptions won't become loopholes big enough for planes to get through.
D-Box Technologies has designed a new movie seat - a seat that does more than provide a cup holder and recline. The new seat, which debuted in some theaters during the 2009 Christmas season, provides 3 types of movement during the feature presentation. The seats move forward and backward, side to side and up and down. Although the movements are supposedly gentle, these seats are not recommended for pregnant women; people with heart, back or neck problems; people drinking hot beverages; and children under 10 without parental supervision. Nevertheless, it seems that even bad movies can now be a moving experience.
Even religion is experiencing technological changes. For example, there are over 2 dozen Bible application programs for smart phones. There is also an iRosary app that provides rosary beads and a prayer book. The Web site Lifechurch.tv brings worship services to about 60,000 computer screens a week. The Web site AskMoses allows people to talk with a Jewish scholar every day except the Sabbath and holidays. Even Pope Benedict XVI has a Web site. Pope2You's content is translated from Italian into English, French, German and Spanish. Of course, people who use smart phones and/or computers 24/7 are already using technology "religiously".
About the Author
Knight Pierce Hirst has written for television, newspapers and greeting cards. Now she writes a 400-word blog three times a week. KNIGHT WATCH, a second look at what makes life interesting, takes only seconds to read at http://knightwatch.typepad.com
Great Reformation Study, Part 2, BibleOrTraditions Pope Benedict XVI Vatican
Apostle Paul writes: “We are confident. . .to be absent from the body (is) to be present with the Lord.” 2 Corinthians 5:8
NazNet moderator Hans Deventer states that when one dies the soul goes into an “intermediate state,” whatever that means. The saved soul, per Deventer, does not go “to be present with the Lord.”
Deventer does not mind discounting the Bible. When in his whim, he does so frequently on NazNet.
Yet NazNet is represented as “friend” to the Church of the Nazarene, per web site founder Dave McClung. That church does not teach an “intermediate state” upon death.
The Church of the Nazarene has always held to the biblical data of the saved going immediately to heaven and the unsaved going immediately to hell.
Deventer makes up his anti-Bible “theology” as he goes along his moderator trail. He posts that he does not believe the Bible, for instance. What he does believe in that Book deals only with Jesus' mercy for obviously Hans wants to go where Jesus is when Deventer dies.
However, because Deventer contradicts himself throughout NazNet, upon death he cannot go where Jesus is until Deventer first passes through his “intermediate state.”
By the way, Deventer posts on NazNet that the unsaved souls are annihilated. However, once again confusion reigns. Does the unsaved soul first go to an “intermediate state” before being annihilated?
Deventer discounts such biblical warnings concerning hell: Matthew 5:22, 29, 30; 7:13; 10:28; 13:38-42, 49-50; 23:15, 33; 25:28-41, 46; Mark 9:43-47; Luke 12:5; 16:23-26; II Thessalonians 1:9; James 3:6; II Peter 2:4; Jude 1:6; Revelation 1:18; 6:8; 9:1-2, 14:10-11; 19:20; 20:10, 13-15; 21:8.
Does McClung do anything about Deventer's heresies? No. McClung permits them to remain on NazNet.
Yet McClung is esteemed by the Church of the Nazarene as an outstanding wealthy layman, even appointing him to prestigious denominational boards as well as one-time President of Eastern Nazarene College, Quincy, MA.
The sad picture then comes into focus: McClung has ingratiated himself politically into the ecclesiastical machine so as to be permitted trashing the Bible as well as destroying the denominational foundations.
In short, politics counts more than biblical truth. Just another travesty of these confusing religious times.
FOOTNOTE: HEAVEN
To be absent from the body is to be present with the Lord. II Corinthians 5:8
Come, you blessed of My Father, inherit the kingdom prepared for you from the foundation of the world. Matthew 25:34
Eye has not seen, nor ear heard, nor have entered into the heart of man the things which God has prepared for those who love Him. I Corinthians 2:9
Lay up for yourselves treasure in heaven, where neither moth nor rust destroys and where thieves do not break in and steal. Matthew 6:20
For God so loved the world that He gave His only begotten Son that whosoever believes in Him should not perish but have everlasting life. John 3:l6
jesus said: I am the resurrection and the life. He who believes in Me, though he may die, he shall live. John 11:25
For we know that if our earthly house, this tent, is destroyed, we have a building from God, a house not made with hands, eternal in the heavens. II Corinthians 5:1
If the Spirit of Him who raised Jesus from the dead dwells in you, He who raised Christ from the dead will also give life to your mortal bodies through His spirit who dwells in you. Romans 8:11
This is the promise that He has promised us — eternal life. I John 2:25
He who sows to the Spirit will of the Spirit reap everlasting life. Galatians 6:8
Jesus said: My sheep hear My voice, and I know them, and they follow Me. And I give them eternal life, and they shall never perish. . . John 10:27-28
How Proper Leadership Coaching Will Help You Understand Your Inner Self
The most difficult thing is to look within oneself and understand they are. It is often observed that once a person faces adversity, he falls down and he keeps on falling to ultimately get lost into a type of wilderness. Lack of proper guidance makes it difficult for them to take corrective measures in this matter. This is true for anyone, from a common man to a high profile celebrity. History has plenty of testaments to uphold this fact; many leaders when struck with adversity, usually falter.
In this backdrop, it is important to reinstate that proper leadership coaching can ward off such situations. Proper leadership coaching helps an individual to understand their inner strengths. It prepares them for adverse situations as well. Every individual is has some strength and some amount of weaknesses as well. In due course of time, one should try to maximize their strengths and minimize their weaknesses. Easy to say but difficult to perform.
A leadership coach will guide as to you what should be your priority in life. Giving too much attention to personal problems is an utter wastage of time and energy. It might divert a leader away from his real goal and by the time he realizes this, it might be too late to turn back. Leadership coaching helps an individual to set their priorities in order, it helps them to understand their true potential, and it teaches one to effectively manage their time.
Friedman who gave Bowen Theory laid emphasis on self –differentiation. He believed that when a leader functions it has an influence on the entire system. Therefore, it is important for a leader to be cautious in the decision they take and the way they carry themselves. Emotional balance is a must for any individual. Almost every leadership coaching lays emphasis on emotional quotient of a leader. Friedman argued that whether in a family or in an organization a leader will exhibit the same emotional behavior. The real test of leader lies in his ability to shift focus between his family and organization. Leaders should not distance him from the organization, as this would create a wide gap between him and his subordinate.
Leaders are those who dare to go to such places where nobody has gone. He is visionary and has tremendous risk taking capability. He should have positive attitude and should have a burning desire to achieve something distinct. Such qualities many posses but at the end of the day many leaders find that they have reached nowhere. They do not have any definite goal. Here leadership coaching becomes handy. It not only helps an individual to develop leadership qualities but also helps them to understand their goal. Consistency of purpose is a must for any leader. A fickle minded leader will do no good to himself and to his organization.
A leader need not run behind followers. A leader should develop magnetic persona, which will attract people to them. Great leaders like Mahatma Gandhi, Swami Prabhupad, jesus christ and others would never chase their followers but the followers where attracted to them as the followers always wanted to be in their company.
About the Author
Muna wa Wanjiru Has Been Researching and Reporting on Leadership for Years. For More Information on Leadership Coaching, Visit His Site at Leadership Coaching
Since Frank Marshal Davis - obama mentor # 1 was exactly like rev wright?
obamas 1st mentor Frank Marshal Davis whom he met william Ayers from was the man that actualy created obama and the way he is could this be why he was attracted to rev wright?
here are some of the things Frank davis talked about
The “Red Army” poem goes beyond hoping for the communists to beat the Nazis in World War II and hails the Soviet revolution. It says:
“Show the marveling multitudes
Americans, British, all your allied brothers
How strong you are
How great you are
How your young tree of new unity
Planted twenty-five years ago
Bears today the golden fruit of victory!”
One Davis poem, “Christ is a Dixie Nigger,” dismisses Christ as “another New White Hope” and declares:
“Remember this, you wise guys
Your tales about jesus of Nazareth are no-go with me
I’ve got a dozen Christs in Dixie all bloody and black…”
http://canadafreepress.com/index.php/article/2554
how can obama say he never heard this stuff?
Communist Frank Marshal Davis was Obama's mentor before Rev. Wright
Wow...he sure can pick 'em !!
In his books, Obama admits attending "socialist conferences" and coming into contact with Marxist literature. But he ridicules the charge of being a "hard-core academic Marxist," which was made by his colorful and outspoken 2004 U.S. Senate opponent, Republican Alan Keyes.
However, through Frank Marshall Davis, Obama had an admitted relationship with someone who was publicly identified as a member of the Communist Party USA (CPUSA). The record shows that Obama was in Hawaii from 1971-1979, where, at some point in time, he developed a close relationship, almost like a son, with Davis, listening to his "poetry" and getting advice on his career
There have been some amazing, life-affirming occurrences over the last ten years. But you don’t want to hear about those, do you?
Thought not. Here’s the most crushing letdowns of the decade…
10. The Y2K Bug: Crappest techno-crisis ever (1st January 2000) The disappointments started early this decade. For years there had been rumblings about an impending IT meltdown due to the widespread (and rather short-sighted) abbreviation of years into two digits.
As media scaremongers counted down to the apocalyptic ’00 switchover, the Millenium Bug hype ramped up considerably and, as I remember it, people began stockpiling tins of analogue food and steam-powered hair straighteners in a desperate bid to stave off the annihilation of civilisation.
Now, I’m no apocalypse-yearning Luddite, but I was looking forward to a little post-millennial excitement – maybe some light looting, or the eradication of global credit card data. Plus I had a massive stack of unread books to catch up on.
Alas, the year 2000 arrived and what did we get? Problems issuing bus tickets in Australia. Rubbish.
9. Firefly gets cancelled: What a gorram disappointment (December 2002) Joss Whedon’s quietly awesome sci-fi series was doomed from the start when Fox TV’s executive idiots decided to air the initial episodes in the wrong order before unceremoniously cancelling it.
It wasn’t necessarily up there with the best shows of the decade, but many lesser products have inexplicably clogged up our TVs season after season, year after year (*cough* Lost, *cough* Prison Break).
But not poor old Firefly, which ran for less than one of its intended seven years. That’s nearly three quarters of a decade of Cap’n Reynolds and crew’s wisecracks, bar brawls and bank robberies we missed out on. Instead we got the useless Dollhouse.
8. Indiana Jones 4: Further proof that George Lucas hates humanity (22nd May 2008) George Lucas, the bearded Dark Lord of Disappointment, spent his early career lovingly crafting wonderful escapist fantasies that defined our childhood years and captured the budding imagination of an entire generation.
During the 1990s, however, he completed his journey to the Dark Side by single-handedly engineering 20th century cinema’s most gut-wrenching disappointment: The Phantom Menace.
This decade, after further defecating over our childhood dreams with two more intergalactic kicks to the scrotum, he turned his Mephistophelian hand to overseeing the destruction of his other much-loved creation: Indiana Jones.
Nuclear blast-proof fridges, long-lost son clichés and alien conspiracies: this was not the joyous, whip-cracking Indy of old, but a cynical, hackneyed, CGI-spattered sham. Why do you hate us so much George?
7. Windows Vista: Bill Gates validates Mac owners’ smug faces (30th January 2007) The monolithic Microsoft Corporation has taken a lot of criticism over the years. All of which seemed fully justified after the release of their latest operating system which managed to be even crapper than the previous one. Security flaws, hardware compatibility problems, draconian digital rights management – the list goes on and on (and it does, at length, on the Wikipedia page entitled “Criticisms of Windows Vista”.)
However, the most disappointing thing about Windows Vista was that it justified the annoying self-satisfaction of Apple Mac owners, making them infinitely more irritating and punchable.
6. Duke Nukem Forever: Duke Nukem Never (2000 onwards) 13 years. That’s how long we’ve been waiting for the triumphant return of the wise-cracking, decidedly non-PC video game action hero. After announcing the game way back in 1997, the developer, 3DRealms, subjected long-suffering fans to a hilariously protracted trickle of screenshots, rumours and bold proclamations of revolutionary content, with the odd teaser trailer thrown in to keep their increasingly tenuous hopes alive.
You may wonder what on earth they were using to develop this game. The Antikythera mechanism? Windows Vista? However, such ponderings – amusing though they are – were rendered irrelevant in May of this year when 3DRealms announced they were shutting down and that development on the eight-time winner of Wired.com’s annual vapourware awards had finally ceased.
Or maybe not? Rumour has it that DNF is still on the cards. Time to let it go people…
5. Large Hadron Collider gets switched on: Nothing happens (10th September 2008) You can’t blame them for the hype, I suppose, for the LHC is nothing if not utterly esoteric. Therefore, in order to justify the staggering costs, and to let us simple folk in on the whole thing, they cranked up the media buzz generator.
The popular press excitably proclaimed that humanity was on the cusp of discovering the unifying theory of everything ever in the history of everything (ever), while doomsaying nutjobs predicted that we were about to be sucked into a black hole of our own making.
And dammit, it worked. It was an exciting time: absolutely baffling, yet pregnant with the wondrous possibilities of human endeavour. The LHC looked like a Bond villain’s lair for Christ’s sake. They had made particle physics sexy.
But then they switched it on. And there was no black hole, and no instantaneous scientific epiphanies, and our MTV-addled, instant-gratification-seeking brains just switched off.
And then it blew a fuse.
4. The Matrix sequels: The Wachoswkis disappear up their own rabbit holes (May/November 2003) Thanks to the deluge of dire movie sequels, cinema historians will look back on the Noughties as “The Decade That Imagination Forgot”. But while most were pointless, cynical continuations of past-their-prime or previously-concluded franchises (see number 8), the Matrix sequels were of a much more disappointing nature.
The original movie ended the 90s in a hugely satisfying synthesis of existential angst, visual flare, innovative action and intellectual depth that seemed to herald the exciting cinematic future of the approaching millennium.
But instead of delivering on this promise, the Wachowski’s blew it. Twice. The first movie’s inventive action was replaced with tired and overblown CGI exercises; the playful deconstruction of notions of reality gave way to annoyingly oblique cod-philosophy and heavy-handed religious mysticism; and what did we get in place of the original’s effortless cool? That ridiculous rave scene.
3. Bush’s re-election: Rest of the world slaps forehead (November 2004) OK, vote-tampering aside, in some ways it almost made sense. I mean the Democratic candidate… umm… hold on… John Kerry (I just Wikipedia’d it), was hardly a memorable candidate. But from every other logical (and illogical) standpoint it was utterly confounding. Bush? Again? WTF America?
There’s a saying where I come from: vote for a fool once, shame on… shame on you. Vote for a fool twice, umm… everyone… everyone will be really, really disappointed.
2. The financial crisis aftermath: Time for a change? Erm… no (2007 onwards) When the financial crisis struck in the latter part of the decade, bombarded by grandstanding political bluster about economic reform, I found myself gripped by a fleeting moment of delusional optimism, during which I almost believed that our perfidious, vote-pandering leaders were actually capable of instigating tangible, positive change.
“Finally,” I thought, “the world has accepted that our global economy is a ridiculous sham, our benevolent leaders will surely rip it down and in its place we shall build a progressive, sustainable and just system ushering in an era of peace and harmony that will last for aeons”. Embarrassment and disappointment soon followed.
To use Homer Simpson’s neologism, the economic crash was a quintessential “crisitunity”. It provided a real opportunity for genuine change. We could have slapped the smug look from the bankers’ jowls and told them stick their damned derivatives and reckless greed.
But with our hands greased by impotent political rhetoric, public apathy and the hegemonic influence of the banking sector, the chance slipped through our fingers. Instead, we allowed the bankers to go about their greedy business, risking global economic security in the ceaseless pursuit of growth and profits. This time, however, with us footing the bill.
As Homer would say: D’oh!
1. No contact with alien life forms: Seriously, this is getting boring (2000 onwards) We know you’re out there you little green bastards. A simple “hello” would have sufficed. We’d spent the previous decade with Mulder and Scully pretty much proving your existence, stamping the notion of your imminent arrival onto our collective consciousness on a weekly basis. And you don’t even have the decency to turn up.
Here’s an idea for you: give up the covert cavity probing, grow some balls – or the extra-terrestrial anatomical equivalents – and stop disappointing everyone.
You better show up next year with a good excuse and some sweet gadgets or you’ll make Arthur C. Clarke look like a right dick. And that’s not cool.
There are significant turning points in the history of mankind. We are now living in one of them. Some call it globalization and some say that this is the genesis of the “information age.” These are true, but there is yet a more important concept than these. Although some are unaware of it, great advances have been made in science and philosophy in the last 20-25 years. Atheism, which has held sway over the world of science and philosophy since the 19th century is now collapsing in an inevitable way.
Of course, atheism, the idea of rejecting God’s existence, has always existed from ancient times. But the rise of this idea actually began in the 18th century in Europe with the spread and political effect of the philosophy of some anti-religious thinkers. Materialists such as Diderot and Baron d'Holbach proposed that the universe was a conglomeration of matter that had existed forever and that nothing else existed besides matter. In the 19th century, atheism spread even farther. Thinkers such as Marx, Engels, Nietsche, Durkheim or Freud applied atheist thinking to different fields of science and philosophy.
The greatest support for atheism came from Charles Darwin who rejected the idea of creation and proposed the theory of evolution to counter it. Darwinism gave a supposedly scientific answer to the question that had baffled atheists for centuries: "How did human beings and living things come to be?" This theory convinced a great many people of its claim that there was a mechanism in nature that animated lifeless matter and produced millions of different living species from it.
Towards the end of the 19th century, atheists formulated a world view that they thought explained everything; they denied that the universe was created saying that it had no beginning but had existed forever. They claimed that the universe had no purpose but that its order and balance were the result of chance; they believed that the question of how human beings and other living things came into being was answered by Darwinism. They believed that Marx or Durkheim had explained history and sociology, and that Freud had explained psychology on the basis of atheist assumptions.
However, these views were later invalidated in the 20th century by scientific, political and social developments. Many and various discoveries in the fields of astronomy, biology, psychology and social sciences have nullified the bases of all atheist suppositions.
In his book, God: The Evidence, The Reconciliation of Faith and Reason in a Postsecular World, the American scholar Patrick Glynn from the George Washington University writes:
The past two decades of research have overturned nearly all the important assumptions and predictions of an earlier generation of modern secular and atheist thinkers relating to the issue of God. Modern thinkers assumed that science would reveal the universe to be ever more random and mechanical; instead it has discovered unexpected new layers of intricate order that bespeak an almost unimaginably vast master design. Modern psychologists predicted that religion would be exposed as a neurosis and outgrown; instead, religious commitment has been shown empirically to be a vital component of basic mental health…
Few people seem to realize this, but by now it should be clear: Over the course of a century in the great debate between science and faith, the tables have completely turned. In the wake of Darwin, atheists and agnostics like Huxley and Russell could point to what appeared to be a solid body of testable theory purportedly showing life to be accidental and the universe radically contingent. Many scientists and intellectuals continue to cleave to this worldview. But they are increasingly pressed to almost absurd lengths to defend it. Today the concrete data point strongly in the direction of the God hypothesis.1
Science, which has been presented as the pillar of atheist/materialist philosophy, turns out to be the opposite. As another writer puts it, "The strict materialism that excludes all purpose, choice and spirituality from the world simply cannot account for the data pour in from labs and observatories."2
In this article, we will briefly analyze the conclusions arrived at by different branches of science on this issue and examine what the forthcoming “post-atheist” period will bring to humanity.
Cosmology: The Collapse of the Concept of An Eternal Universe And the Discovery of Creation
The first blow to atheism from science in the 20th century was in the field of cosmology. The idea that the universe had existed forever was discounted and it was discovered that it had a beginning; in other words, it was scientifically proved that it was created from nothing.
This idea of an eternal universe came to the Western world along with materialist philosophy. This philosophy, developed in ancient Greece, stated that nothing else exists besides matter and that the universe comes from eternity and goes to eternity. In the Middle Ages when the Church dominated Western thought, materialism was forgotten. However in the modern period, Western scientists and philosophers became consumed by a curiosity about these ancient Greek origins and revived an interest in materialism.
Immanuel Kant: Proposed the idea of a universe without a beginning or an end. He was terribly wrong.
The first person in the modern age to propose a materialist understanding of the universe was the renowned German philosopher Immanuel Kant—even though he has not a materialist in the philosophical sense of the word. Kant proposed that the universe was eternal and that every possibility could be realized only within this eternity. With the coming of the 19th century, it became widely accepted that the universe had no beginning, and that there was no moment of creation. Then, this idea, adopted passionately by dialectical materialists such as Karl Marx, Friedrich Engels, came into the 20th century.
This idea has always been compatible with atheism. This is because to accept that the universe had a beginning would mean that God created it and the only way to counter this idea was to claim that the universe was eternal, even though this claim had no basis on science. A dogged proponent of this claim was Georges Politzer who became widely known as a supporter of materialism and Marxism in the first half of the 20th century through his book Principes Fondamentaux de Philosophie (The Fundamental Principles of Philosophy). Assuming the validity of the model of an eternal universe, Politzer opposed the idea of a creation:
The universe was not a created object, if it were, then it would have to be created instantaneously by God and brought into existence from nothing. To admit creation, one has to admit, in the first place, the existence of a moment when the universe did not exist, and that something came out of nothingness. This is something to which science can not accede.3
By supporting the idea of an eternal universe against that of creation, Politzer thought that science was on his side. However, very soon, the fact that Politzer alluded to by his words, “if it is so, we must accept the existence of a creator”, that is, that the universe had a beginning, was proven.
This proof came as a result of the “Big Bang” theory, perhaps the most important concept of 20th century astronomy.
The Big Bang theory was formulated after a series of discoveries. In 1929, the American astronomer, Edwin Hubble, noticed that the galaxies of the universe were continually moving away from one another and that the universe was expanding. If the flow of time in an expanding universe were reversed, then it emerged that the whole universe must have come from a single point. Astronomers assessing the validity of Hubble’s discovery were faced with the fact that this single point was a “metaphysical” state of reality in which there was an infinite gravitational attraction with no mass. Matter and time came into being by the explosion of this mass-less point. In other words, the universe was created from nothing.
John Maddox: His prophecy about the Big Bang utterly failed.
On the one hand, those astronomers who are determined to cling to materialist philosophy with its basic idea of an eternal universe, have attempted to hold out against the Big Bang theory and maintain the idea of an eternal universe. The reason for this effort can be seen in the words of Arthur Eddington, a renowned materialist physicist, who said, "Philosophically, the notion of an abrupt beginning to the present order of Nature is repugnant to me".4 But despite the fact that the Big Bang theory is repugnant to materialists, this theory has continued to be corroborated by concrete scientific discoveries. In their observations made in the 1960’s, two scientists, Arno Penzias and Robert Wilson, detected the radioactive remains of the explosion (cosmic background radiation). These observations were verified in the 1990’s by the COBE (Cosmic Background Explorer) satellite.
In the face of all these facts, atheists have been squeezed into a corner. Anthony Flew, an atheist professor of philosophy at the University of Reading and the author of Atheistic Humanism, makes this interesting confession:
Notoriously, confession is good for the soul. I will therefore begin by confessing that the Stratonician atheist has to be embarrassed by the contemporary cosmological consensus. For it seems that the cosmologists are providing a scientific proof of what St. Thomas contended could not be proved philosophically; namely, that the universe had a beginning. So long as the universe can be comfortably thought of as being not only without end but also without beginning, it remains easy to urge that its brute existence, and whatever are found to be its most fundamental features, should be accepted as the explanatory ultimates. Although I believe that it remains still correct, it certainly is neither easy nor comfortable to maintain this position in the face of the Big Bang story 5
An example of the atheist reaction to the Big Bang theory can be seen in an article written in 1989 by John Maddox, editor of Nature, one of the best-known materialist-scientific journals.
In that article, called “Down With the Big Bang,” Maddox wrote that the Big Bang is “philosophically unacceptable,” because “creationists and those of similar persuasions… have ample justification in the doctrine of the Big Bang.” He also predicted that the Big Bang “is unlikely to survive the decade ahead.” 6 However, despite Maddox’ hopes, Big Bang has gained credence and many discoveries have been made that prove the creation of the universe.
Some materialists have a relatively logical view of this matter. For example, the English materialist physicist, H.P. Lipson, unwillingly accepts the scientific fact of creation. He writes:
I think …that we must…admit that the only acceptable explanation is creation. I know that this is anathema to physicists, as indeed it is to me, but we must not reject that we do not like if the experimental evidence supports it. 7
Thus, the fact arrived at finally by modern astronomy is this: time and matter were brought into being by an eternally powerful Creator independent of both of them. The eternal power that created the universe in which we live is God who is the possessor of infinite might, knowledge and wisdom.
Physics and Astronomy: The Collapse of the Idea of a Random Universe and
The Discovery of the Anthropic Principle
A second atheist dogma rendered invalid in the 20th century by discoveries in astronomy is the idea of a random universe. The view that the matter in the universe, the heavenly bodies and the laws that determine the relationships among them has no purpose but is the result of chance, has been dramatically discounted.
For the first time since the 1970’s, scientists have begun to recognize the fact that the whole physical balance of the universe is adjusted delicately in favor of human life. With the advance of research, it has been discovered that the physical, chemical and biological laws of the universe, basic forces such as gravity and electro-magnetism, the structure of atoms and elements are all ordered exactly as they have to be for human life. Western scientists have called this extraordinary design the “anthropic principle”. That is, every aspect of the universe is designed with a view to human life.
We may summarize the basics of the anthropic principle as follows:
The speed of the first expansion of the universe (the force of the Big Bang explosion) was exactly the velocity that it had to be. According to scientists’ calculations, if the expansion rate had differed from its actual value by more than one part in a billion billion, then the universe would either have recollapsed before it ever reached its present size or else have splattered in every direction in a way never to unite again. To put it another way, even at the first moment of the universe’s existence there was a fine calculation of the accuracy of a billion billionth.
The four physical forces in the universe (gravitational force, weak nuclear force, strong nuclear force, and electromagnetic force) are all at the necessary levels for an ordered universe to emerge and for life to exist. Even the tiniest variations in these forces (for example, one in 1039, or one in 1028; that is—crudely calculated—one in a billion billion billion billion), the universe would either be composed only of radiation or of no other element besides hydrogen.
There are many other delicate adjustments that make the earth ideal for human life: the size of the sun, its distance from the earth, the unique physical and chemical properties of water, the wavelength of the sun’s rays, the way that the earth’s atmosphere contains the gases necessary to allow respiration, or the Earth’s magnetic field being ideally suited to human life. (For more information on this topic, see Harun Yahya, The Creation of the Universe, Al-Attique Publishers, 2001)
This delicate balance is one of the most striking discoveries of modern astrophysics. The wellknown astronomer, Paul Davies, writes in the last paragraph of his book The Cosmic Blueprint, "The impression of Design is overwhelming."8
In an article in the journal Nature, the astrophysicist W. Press writes, "there is a grand design in the Universe that favors the development of intelligent life."9
The interesting thing about this is that the majority of the scientists that have made these discoveries were of the materialist point of view and came to this conclusion unwillingly. They did not undertake their scientific investigations hoping to find a proof for God’s existence. But most of them, if not all of them, despite their unwillingness, arrived at this conclusion as the only explanation for the extraordinary design of the universe.
In his book, The Symbiotic Universe the American astronomer, George Greenstein, acknowledges this fact:
How could this possibly have come to pass [that the laws of physics conform themselves to life]? …As we survey all the evidence, the thought insistently arises that some supernatural agency—or, rather Agency—must be involved. Is it possible that suddenly, without intending to, we have stumbled upon scientific proof of the existence of a Supreme Being? Was it God who stepped in and so providentially crafted the cosmos for our benefit?10
By beginning his question with “Is it possible”, Greenstein, an atheist, tries to ignore that plain fact that has confronted him. But many scientists who have approached the question without prejudice acknowledge that the universe has been created especially for human life. Materialism is now being viewed as an erroneous belief outside the realm of science. The American geneticist, Robert Griffiths, acknowledges this fact when he says, “If we need an atheist for a debate, I go to the philosophy department. The physics department isn't much use.”11
In his book Nature’s Destiny: How the Laws of Biology Reveal Purpose in the Universe, which examines how physical, chemical and biological laws are amazingly calculated in an “ideal” way with a view to the requirements of human life, the well-known molecular biologist, Michael Denton writes:
The new picture that has emerged in twentieth-century astronomy presents a dramatic challenge to the presumption which has been prevalent within scientific circles during most of the past four centuries: that life is a peripheral and purely contingent phenomenon in the cosmic scheme.12
In short, the idea of a random universe, perhaps atheism’s most basic pillar, has been proved invalid. Scientists now openly speak of the collapse of materialism.13 The supposition whose falsity God reveals in the Qur’an, “We did not create heaven and earth and everything between them to no purpose. That is the opinion of those who disbelieve…” (Qur’an, 38: 27) was shown to be invalid by science in the 1970’s.
Quantum Physics and the Discovery of the Divine Wisdom
When scientists have gone deeper into the atom, they found it shockingly "empty".
One of the areas of science that shatters the materialist myth and gives positive evidence for theism is quantum physics.
Quantum physics deals with the tiniest particles of matter, what is called the sub-atomic realm. In school everyone learns that matter is composed of atoms. Atoms are made up of a nucleus and several electrons spinning around it. One strange fact is that all these particles take up only some 0.0001 percent of the atoms. In other words, an atom is something that is 99.9999 percent "empty."
An even more interesting fact is that when the nuclei and electrons are further examined, it has been realized that these are made up of much smaller particles called "quarks," and that these quarks are not particles in the physical sense, but simply energy. This discovery has broken the classical distinction between matter and energy. It now appears that in the material universe, only energy exists. What we call matter is just "frozen energy."
There is a still more intriguing fact: The quarks, those energy packets, act in such a way that they maybe described as "conscious." Physicist Freeman Dyson, on his acceptance of the Templeton Prize, stated that:
Atoms are weird stuff, behaving like active agents rather than inert substances. They make unpredictable choices between alternative possibilities according to the laws of quantum mechanics. It appears that mind, as manifested by the capacity to make choices, is to some extent inherent in every atom.14
What this means is that there is information behind matter. Information that precedes the material realm. Gerald Schroeder, an MIT-trained scientist who has worked in both physics and biology and author of the famous book The Science of God, makes a number of important comments on this subject. In his more recent book, The Hidden Face of God: Science Reveals the Ultimate Truth (2001), Schroeder explains that quantum physics—along with other branches of science—is the tool for discovering a universal wisdom that lies behind the material world. As he puts it:
It took humanity millennia before an Einstein discovered that, as bizarre as it may seem, the basis of matter is energy, that matter is actually condensed energy. It may take a while longer for us to discover that there is some non-thing even more fundamental than energy that forms the basis of energy, which in turn forms the basis of matter.15
John Archibald, professor of physics at Princeton University and recipient of the Einstein Award, explained the same fact when he said that the "bit" (the binary digit) of information gives rise to the "it," the substance of matter.16 According to Schroeder this has a "profound meaning":
The matter/energy relationships, the quantum wave functions, have profound meaning. Science may be approaching the realization that the entire universe is an expression of information, wisdom, an idea, just as atoms are tangible expressions of something as ethereal as energy.17
This wisdom is such an omniscient thing that covers the whole universe:
A single consciousness, a universal wisdom, pervades the universe. The discoveries of science, those that search the quantum nature of subatomic matter, have moved us to the brink of a startling realization: all existence is the expression of this wisdom. In the laboratories we experience it as information that first physically articulated as energy and then condensed into the form of matter. Every particle, every being, from atom to human, appears to represent a level of information, of wisdom.18
This means that the material universe is not a purposeless and chaotic heap of atoms, as the atheist/materialist dogma assumes, but is instead a manifestation of a wisdom which existed before the universe and which has absolute sovereignty over everything that exists. In Schroeder's words, it is "as if a metaphysical substrate was impressed upon the physical". 19
This discovery shatters the whole materialist myth and reveals that the material universe we see is just a shadow of a transcendent Absolute Being. Thus, as Schroeder explains, quantum physics has become the point where science and theology meet:
The age-old theological view of the universe is that all existence is the manifestation of a transcendent wisdom, with a universal consciousness being its manifestation. If I substitute the word information for wisdom, theology begins to sound like quantum physics. We may be witnessing the scientific confluence of the physical with the spiritual. 20
Quantum is really the point where science and theology meet. The fact that the whole universe is pervaded by a wisdom is a secret that was revealed in the Qur'an 14 centuries ago. One verse reads:
Your god is God alone, there is no god but Him. He encompasses all things in His knowledge. (Qur'an, 20:98)
The Natural Sciences: The Collapse of Darwinism and
The Triumph of Intelligent Design
Darwin: His theory is now refuted by a great deal of scientific evidence.
As we stated at the beginning, one of the main supports for the rise of atheism to its zenith in the 19th century was Darwin’s theory of evolution. With its assertion that the origin of human beings and all other living things lay in unconscious natural mechanisms, Darwinism gave atheists the opportunity they had been seeking for centuries. Therefore, Darwin’s theory had been adopted by the most passionate atheists of the time, and atheist thinkers such as Marx and Engels elucidated this theory as the basis of their philosophy. Since that time, the relationship between Darwinism and atheism has continued.
But, at the same time, this greatest support for atheism is the dogma that has received the greatest blow from scientific discoveries in the 20th century. The discoveries by various branches of science such as paleontology, biochemistry, anatomy and genetics have shattered the theory of evolution from various aspects. (See Harun Yahya, Evolution Deceit, 2000). We have dealt with this fact in much more detail in various other books and publications, but we may summarize it here as follows:
Paleontology: Darwin’s theory rests on the assumption that all species come from one single common ancestor and that they diverged from one another over a long period of time by small gradual changes. It is supposed that the proofs for this will be discovered in the fossil record, the petrified remains of living things. But fossil research conducted in the course of the 20th century has presented a totally different picture. The fossil of even a single undoubted intermediate species that would substantiate the belief in the gradual evolution of species has not been found. Moreover, every taxon appears suddenly in the fossil record and no trace has been found of any previous ancestors. The phenomenon known as the Cambrian Explosion is especially interesting. In this early geological period, nearly all of the phyla (major groups with significantly different body plans) of the animal kingdom suddenly appeared. This sudden emergence of many different categories of living things with totally different body structures and extremely complex organs and systems, including mollusks, arthropods, echinoderms and (as recently discovered) even vertebrates, is a major blow to Darwinism. For, as evolutionists also agree, the sudden appearance of a taxon implies supernatural design and this means creation.
Biological Observations: In elaborating his theory, Darwin relied on examples of how animal breeders produced a different variety of dogs or horses. He extrapolated the limited changes he observed in these cases to the whole of the natural world and proposed that every living thing could have come to be in this way from a common ancestor. But Darwin made this claim in the 19th century when the level of scientific sophistication was low. In the 20th century things have changed greatly. Decades of observation and experimentation on various species of animals have shown that variation in living things has never gone beyond certain genetic boundary. Darwin’s assertions, like “I can see no difficulty in a race of bears being rendered, by natural selection, more and more aquatic in their habits, with larger and larger mouths, till a creature was produced as monstrous as a whale.”21 actually demonstrates his great ignorance. On the other hand, observations and experiments have shown that mutations defined by Neo- Darwinism as an evolutionary mechanism add no new genetic information to living creatures.
The Origin of Life: Darwin spoke about a common ancestor but he never mentioned how this first common ancestor came to be. His only conjecture was that the first cell could have formed as a result of random chemical reactions “in some small warm little pond”.22 But evolutionary biochemists who undertook to close this hole in Darwinism met with frustration. All observations and experiments showed that it was, in a word, impossible for a living cell to arise within inanimate matter by random chemical reactions. Even the English atheist Nobel Prize-winner Fred Hoyle expressed that such a scenario "is comparable with the chance that a tornado sweeping through a junk-yard might assemble a Boeing 747 from the materials therein.”23
Intelligent Design: Scientists studying cells, the molecules that compose the cells, their remarkable organization within the body and the delicate order and plan in the organs are faced with proof of the fact that evolutionists strongly wish to reject: The world of living things is permeated by designs too complex to be found in any technological equipment. Intricate examples of design, including our eyes that are too superior to be compared to any camera, the wings of birds that have inspired flight technology, the complexly integrated system of the cells of living things and the remarkable information stored in DNA, have vitiated the theory of evolution which regards living things as the product of blind chance.
All these facts have squeezed Darwinism into a corner by the end of the 20th century. Today, in the United States and other Western countries, the theory of intelligent design is gaining everincreasing acceptance among scientists. Those who defend the idea of intelligent design say that Darwinism has been a great error in the history of science and that it came to be as the result of materialist philosophy’s being imposed on the scientific paradigm. Scientific discoveries show that there is a design in living things which proves creation. In short, science proves once more that God created all living things.
Psychology: The Collapse of Freudianism and the Acceptance of Faith
The representative of the 19th century atheist dogma in the field of psychology was the Austrian psychiatrist Sigmund Freud. Freud proposed a psychological theory which rejected the existence of the soul and tried to explain the whole spiritual world of human beings in terms of sexual and similar hedonistic motivations. But Freud’s greatest assault was against religion.
Later studies showed that Freud's ideas, especially the ones about religion were totally flawed.
In his book The Future of an Illusion published in 1927, he proposed that religious faith was a kind of mental illness (neurosis) and that, as human beings progressed, religious faith would completely disappear. Due to the primitive scientific conditions of the time, the theory was proposed without the requisite research and investigation, and with no scholarly literature or possibility of comparison, and therefore, its claims were extremely deficient. Indeed, if Freud had the possibility of evaluating his propositions today, he would himself be surprised by the logical deficiency of his claims and he would be the first to criticize such senseless presuppositions.
After Freud, psychology developed on an atheist foundation. Not only Freud, but the founders of other schools of psychology in the 20th century were passionate atheists. Two of these were B.F. Skinner, the founder of the behaviorist school and Albert Ellis, founder of rational emotive therapy. The world of psychology ended up by becoming the forum for atheism. A 1972 poll among the members of the American Psychology Association revealed that only 1.1 percent of psychologists in the country had any religious beliefs.24
But most psychologists who fell into this great deception were undone by their own psychological investigations. It became known that the basic suppositions of Freudianism had almost no scientific support and, moreover, that religion was not a mental illness as Freud and some other psychological theorists declared, but a basic element of mental health. Patrick Glynn summarizes these important developments:
Yet the last quarter of the twentieth century has not been kind to the psychoanalytic vision. Most significant has been the exposure of Freud’s views of religion as entirely fallacious. Ironically enough, scientific research in psychology over the past twenty-five years has demonstrated that, far from being a neurosis or source of neuroses as Freud and his disciples claimed, religious belief is one of the most consistent correlates of overall mental health and happiness. Study after study has shown a powerful relationship between religious belief and practice, on the one hand, and healthy behaviors with regard to such problems as suicide, alcohol and drug abuse, divorce, depression, even, perhaps surprisingly, levels of sexual satisfaction in marriage, on the other. In short, the empirical data run exactly contrary to the supposedly “scientific” consensus of the psychotherapeutic profession.25
Finally, as Glynn says, “modern psychology at the close of the twentieth century seems to be reacquainting itself with religion”26 and “a purely secular view of human mental life has been shown to fail not just at the theoretical, but also at the practical, level.27
In other words, atheism has been routed also on the field of psychology.
Medicine: The Discovery of "How Hearts Find Peace"
Another branch of science that was affected by the collapse of atheist suppositions was medicine.
According to results compiled by David B. Larson and his team at the National Institute for Healthcare Research, a comparison among Americans in relation to church attendance yielded very interesting results. Risk of arteriosclerotic heart disease for men who attended church frequently was just 60 percent of that for men who were infrequent church attenders. Among women, suicide was twice as high among infrequent as among frequent church attenders; smokers who ranked religion as very important in their lives were over seven times less likely to have normal diastolic pressure readings than were those who did not.28
Secular psychologists generally explain such phenomena as having a psychological cause. In this sense, faith raises a person’s morale and contributes to his well-being. There may be some truth in this explanation, but if we look more closely we see something much more dramatic. Belief in God is much stronger than any other influence on the morale. In comprehensive research on the relationship between religious belief and physical health, Dr. Herbert Benson of the Harvard Medical School came up with some interesting results. Although he did not have any religious faith, Benson arrived at the result that faith in God and worship had a much more positive effect on human health than could be observed in anything else. Benson concludes that he has “found that faith quiets the mind like no other form of belief.”29
Why is there such a special relation between faith and human spirit and body? The result arrived at by Benson, who is a secular researcher, was, as he put it, that the human mind and body are “wired for God.”30
This fact, that the medical world is slowly beginning to notice, is a secret revealed in the Qur’an with the verse, “Only in the remembrance of God can the heart find peace.” (Qur’an, 13:28) The reason why those who believe in God, pray to Him and trust in Him are physically and mentally more healthy than others is that they behave in harmony with their nature. Philosophical systems opposed to human nature always bring pain, sorrow, anxiety and depression upon people.
The basic source of the peace experienced by a religious person is that he acts in order to gain God’s approval. In other words, this peace is the natural result of a person’s listening to the voice of his conscience. A person does not live the morality of religion simply “to be more at peace” or “to be healthier”; a person who acts with this intention cannot find peace in its true sense. God well knows that what a person stores in his heart or what he reveals. A person experiences peace of mind only by being sincere and attempting to gain God’s approval. God commands:
So set your face firmly towards the [true] religion, as a pure natural believer, God’s natural pattern on which He made mankind. There is no changing God’s creation. That is the true religion—but most people do not know it. (Qur’an, 30:30)
In the light of the discoveries that we have briefly indicated above, modern medicine is starting to become cognizant of this truth. As Patrick Glynn says, “contemporary medicine is clearly moving in the direction of acknowledging dimensions of healing beyond the purely material”.31
Society: The Fall of Communism, Fascism and the Hippie Dream
The collapse of atheism in the 20th century did not occur only in the fields of astrophysics, biology, psychology and medicine; it happened also in politics and social morality.
Communism may be considered the most important political result of 19th century atheism. The founders of this ideology, Marx, Engels, Lenin, Trotsky or Mao, all adopted atheism as a basic principle. A primary goal of all communist regimes was to get society to adopt atheism and to destroy religious belief. Stalin’s Russia, Red China, Cambodia, Albania and some Eastern block countries applied immense pressure on religious people to the point of committing mass murder.
Yet, amazingly, at the end of the 1980s this bloody atheist system collapsed. When we examine the reasons for this dramatic fall, we see that what collapsed was actually atheism. Patrick Glynn writes:
To be sure, secular historians would say that the greatest mistake of Communism was to attempt to defy the laws of economics. But other laws, too, came into play… Moreover, as historians penetrate the circumstances of the Communist collapse, it is becoming clearer that the Soviet elite was itself in the throes of an atheistic “crisis of faith”. Having lived under an atheistic ideology—one that consisted of lies and that was based on a “Big Lie”— the Soviet system suffered a radical demoralization, in every sense of that term. People, including the ruling elite, lost all sense of morality and all sense of hope.32
An interesting indication of the Soviet system’s great “crisis of faith” was President Mihail Gorbachev’s attempts of reform. Since the time that he assumed the presidency, Gorbachev was interested in moral problems as well as economic reforms. For example, one of the first things he did was to initiate a campaign against alcoholism. In order to raise the morale of society, for a long time he used Marxist-Leninist terminology but he saw that this was of no use.
Gorbachev: His futile attempts could not heal the "crisis of faith" in the Soviet society.
Then, in the later years of the regime, he even began to mention God in some of his speeches, even though he himself was an atheist. Naturally, these insincere words of faith were of no use and the crisis of faith in Soviet society continued to worsen. The result was the collapse of the gigantic Soviet empire. The 20th century documented not only the fall of communism, but also that of another fruit of 19th century antireligious philosophy—fascism. Fascism is the outcome of a philosophy which may be called a mixture of atheism and paganism and which is intensely hostile to theistic religions. Friedrich Nietzsche, who may be called the father of fascism, extolled the morality of barbarous idolatrous societies, attacked Christianity and other monotheistic religions and even called himself the “Antichrist.” Nietzsche’s disciple, Martin Heidegger, was an avid Nazi supporter and the ideas of these two atheist thinkers gave impetus to the terrifying savagery of Nazi Germany. (The Holocaust, one of the greatest act of evil in human history, was the result of Nazi anti-Semitism, an ideology that hated Jews and the monotheistic faith that has been the cornerstone of Judaism—and also Islam.) The Second World War, that caused the death of 55 million people, is another example of the calamity that atheist ideologies like fascism and communism have brought upon humanity.
At this point, we must recall another atheist ideology—Social Darwinism—which was among the causes for the outbreak of both the First and the Second World Wars. In his book entitled Europe Since 1870, Harvard history professor James Joll states that behind each of the two world wars lay the philosophical views of Social Darwinist European leaders who believed in the myth that war was a biological necessity and that nations developed through conflict.33
In contrast with the theist and peaceful American Revolution, the French Revolution was atheist, neo-pagan and extremely violent.
Another social consequence of atheism in the 20th century appeared in Western democracies. In the present day there is a tendency to regard the West as the “Christian world.” However, since the 19th, century, a quickly growing atheist culture has held sway with Christian culture, and today there is a conflict between these two cultures in what we call Western civilization. And this atheist element has been the true cause of western imperialism, moral degeneration, despotism and other negative manifestations.
In his book God: The Evidence, the American writer Patrick Glynn draws attention to this matter and, in order to compare the God-fearing and atheist elements in the West, he takes the examples of the American and French Revolutions. The American Revolution was carried out by believers; American Declaration of Independence states that all men “are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable rights”. Since the French Revolution was the work of atheists, the French Declaration of Human Rights was very different, with no reference to God and full of atheist and neo-pagan notions.
The actual results of the two revolutions were quite different: in the American model, a peaceful, tolerant environment was created that respected religion and religious belief; in France the fierce hostility to religion drowned the country in blood and unleashed a savagery such as had never been seen before. As Glynn says, “there is an interesting historical correlation between atheism, on the one hand, and moral and political catastrophe, on the other hand.”34
Glynn notes that attempts to turn America into an atheist country have also caused harm to society. The fact that the sexual revolution (for example) that spread in the 60’s and 70’s caused immense social damage is accepted even by secular historians.35
John Lennon: The world he imagined —one without religion— did not bring a happy end, neither to him nor to his followers.
The hippie movement was a demonstration of this social damage. The hippies believed that they could find spiritual emancipation through secular humanist philosophy and by such things as unlimited drugs and sex. These young people who poured onto the streets with romantic songs—like John Lennon’s Imagine in which he spoke of a world “with no countries, and no religion too”—were actually undergoing a mass deception.
In fact, a world without religion actually brought them to an unhappy end. The hippy leaders of the 1960s either killed themselves or died from drug-induced comas in the early 1970s. Many other young hippies shared a similar fate.
Those young people of the same generation who turned to violence found themselves on the receiving end of violence. The 1968 generation, who turned their backs on God and religion and imagined they could find salvation in such concepts as revolution or selfish Epicureanism, ruined both themselves and their own societies.
The Dawn of the Post-Atheist World
The facts that we have briefly summarized to this point shows clearly that atheism is undergoing an inevitable collapse. In other words, humanity is — and will be — turning towards God. The truth of this assertion is not limited only to the scientific and political areas that we have written about here. From prominent statesmen to movie stars and pop artists, those who influence opinion in the West are much more religious than they used to be. There are many people who have seen the truth and come to believe in God after having lived for years as atheists. (Patrick Glynn from whose book we have quoted is one of these ex-atheists).
The fact that the developments which have contributed to this result began in the same period, that is from the second half of the 1970s, is quite interesting. The anthropic principle first appeared in the 1970s. Scientific criticism of Darwinism started to be loudly voiced at that same time. The turning point against the atheist dogma of Freud was a book entitled The Road Less Traveled published in 1978 by Scott Peck. For this reason, Glynn, in the 1997 edition of his book writes that “over the past twenty years, a significant body of evidence has emerged, shattering the foundations of the long-dominant modern secular worldview.”36
Surely, the fact that the atheist world-view has been shaken means that another world-view prevails, which is belief in God. Since the end of the 1970’s, (or, from the beginning of the 14th century according to the Muslim calendar) the world has seen a rise in religious values. Like other social processes, this does not happen in a day and the majority of people may not notice it because it has been developing over a long period of time. However, those who evaluate the development a little more carefully see that the world is at a major turning point in the realm of ideas.
Secular historians try to explain this process according to their own principles but just as they are in deep error with regard to the existence of God, so they are greatly mistaken about the course of history. In fact, as the following verse reveals, history moves as God as determined: “...You will not find any changing in the pattern of God. You will not find any alteration in the pattern of God.” (Qur’an, 35: 43) It follows, then, that history has a purpose and unfolds as God has commanded. And God’s command is the perfection of His light:
They desire to extinguish God’s Light with their mouths. But God refuses to do other than perfect His Light, even though the disbelievers detest it. (Qur’an, 9: 32)
This verse means that God has sent down His light upon humanity through the religion that He has revealed. Those who do not believe want to extinguish this light by their "mouths"— intimations, propaganda and philosophies, but God will finally perfect His light and give dominion to religious values on earth.
This may be the “turning point in history” mentioned at the beginning of this article as also indicated by the evidence we have provided here, as well as the implications of various hadiths and statements by scholars. Surely, God knows best.
Conclusion
We are living at an important time. Atheism, which people have tried for hundreds of years to portray as “the way of reason and science,” is proving to be mere irrationality and ignorance. Materialist philosophy that sought to use science for its own ends has been in turn defeated by science. A world rescuing itself from atheism will turn to God and religion. And this process has begun long ago.
It is clear that believers have important duties in this period. They must be aware of this major change in the world’s way of thinking, interpret it, make good use of the opportunities that globalization offers and effectively represent the truth along this road. They must know that the basic conflict of ideas in the world is between atheism and faith. It is not a struggle between East and West; in both East and West there are those who believe in God and those who do not. For this reason, faithful Christians, as well as faithful Jews are allies of Muslims. The main divergence is not between Muslims and the "People of the Book" (Jews and Christians), but between Muslims and the People of the Book on the one hand, and atheists and pagans on the other. Of course, we must not show hostility to such people but view them as people who need to be rescued from their error.
The time is fast approaching when many people who are living in ignorance with no knowledge of their Creator will be graced by faith in the impending post-atheist world.
Under the pen name of Harun Yahya, Adnan Oktar has written some 250 works. His books contain a total of 46,000 pages and 31,500 illustrations. Of these books, 7,000 pages and 6,000 illustrations deal with the collapse of the Theory of Evolution. You can read, free of charge, all the books Adnan Oktar has written under the pen name Harun Yahya on these websites www.harunyahya.com
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(1) Patrick Glynn, God: The Evidence, The Reconciliation of Faith and Reason in a Postsecular World , Prima Publishing, California, 1997, pp.19-20, 53
(2) Bryce Christensen, in a review of Gerald Shroeder's book The Hidden Face of God, Booklist March 15, 2001
(3) George Politzer, Principes Fondamentaux de Philosophie, Editions Sociales, Paris, 1954, p. 84
(4) S. Jaki, Cosmos and Creator, Regnery Gateway, Chicago, 1980, p.54
(5) Henry Margenau, Roy Abraham Vargesse, Cosmos, Bios, Theos, La Salle IL: Open Court Publishing, 1992, p.241
(6) John Maddox, "Down with the Big Bang", Nature, vol. 340, 1989, p. 378
(7) H. P. Lipson, "A Physicist Looks at Evolution", Physics Bulletin, vol. 138, 1980, p. 138
(8) Paul Davies, The Cosmic Blueprint, London: Penguin Books, 1987, p. 203
(9) W. Press, "A Place for Teleology?", Nature, vol. 320, 1986, s. 315
(10) George Greenstein, The Symbiotic Universe, p. 27
(11) Hugh Ross, The Creator and the Cosmos, p. 123
(12) Denton, Michael Denton, Nature's Destiny: How the Laws of Biology Reveal Purpose in the Universe, The New York: The Free Press,1998, p. 14
(13) Paul Davies and John Gribbin, The Matter Myth, Simon & Schuster, New York, 1992, p. 10
(14) As quoted in Gerald Schroeder, The Hidden Face of God, Touchstone, New York, 2001, p. 7
(15) Gerald Schroeder, The Hidden Face of God, Touchstone, New York, 2001, p. 8
(16) Ibid. p. 8
(17) Ibid. p. 28
(18) Ibid. p. xi
(19) Ibid. p. 48
(20) Ibid. xii
(21) Charles Darwin, The Origin of Species: A Facsimile of the First Edition, Harvard University Press, 1964, p. 184
(22) Charles Darwin, Life and Letter of Charles Darwin, vol. II, From Charles Darwin to J. Do Hooker, March 29, 1863
(23) "Hoyle on Evolution", Nature, vol. 294, November 12, 1981, p. 105
(24) Edwin R. Wallace IV, “Psychiatry and Religion: A Dialogue”, in Joseph H. Smith and Susan A. Handelman, eds., Psychoanalysis andReligion, John Hopkins University Press, Baltimore, 1990, p. 1005
(25) Patrick Glynn, God: The Evidence, The Reconciliation of Faith and Reason in a Postsecular World , Prima Publishing, California, 1997, pp.60-61
(26) Patrick Glynn, God: The Evidence, The Reconciliation of Faith and Reason in a Postsecular World , Prima Publishing, California, 1997, p.69
(27) Patrick Glynn, God: The Evidence, The Reconciliation of Faith and Reason in a Postsecular World , Prima Publishing, California, 1997, p.78
(28) Patrick Glynn, God: The Evidence, The Reconciliation of Faith and Reason in a Postsecular World , Prima Publishing, California, 1997, pp.80-81
(29) Herbert Benson, Mark Stark, Timeless Healing, Simon & Schuste, New York, 1996, p. 203
(30) Herbert Benson, Mark Stark, Timeless Healing, Simon & Schuste, New York, 1996, p. 193
(31) Patrick Glynn, God: The Evidence, The Reconciliation of Faith and Reason in a Postsecular World , Prima Publishing, California, 1997, p.94
(32) Patrick Glynn, God: The Evidence, The Reconciliation of Faith and Reason in a Postsecular World , Prima Publishing, California, 1997,pp.161-162
(33) James Joll, Europe Since 1870: An International History, Penguin Books, Middlesex, 1990, pp. 102-103
(34) Patrick Glynn, God: The Evidence, The Reconciliation of Faith and Reason in a Postsecular World , Prima Publishing, California, 1997, p.161
(35) Patrick Glynn, God: The Evidence, The Reconciliation of Faith and Reason in a Postsecular World , Prima Publishing, California, 1997, p.163
(36) Patrick Glynn, God: The Evidence, The Reconciliation of Faith and Reason in a Postsecular World, Prima Publishing, California, 1997, p. 2
About the Author
ABOUT THE AUTHOR, HARUN YAHYA
Born in Ankara in 1956, Adnan Oktar writes his books under the pen name of Harun Yahya. Ever since his university years, he has dedicated his life to telling of the existence and oneness of Almighty Allah, and to disseminating the moral values of the Qur'an. He has never wavered in the face of difficulties and despite oppression, still continues this intellectual struggle today exhibiting great patience and determination. For mor information pls visit: http://www.harunyahya.com/theauthor.php
Theology of the Body and Marriage Prep. Pt. 1 by Fr. Loya
By faith Abel offered to God a more excellent sacrifice than Cain, through which he obtained witness that he was righteous, God testifying of his gifts; through it he being dead still speaks (Hebrews 11:4, emphasis added).
The purpose for which God created all things was that it would bring Him joy and fulfillment. God also intended for creation to find joy and fulfillment in Him. God delights in His creation and testifies of the joy and fulfillment that it brings to His heart. The Holy Spirit witnesses with the spirits of faith heroes that they are pleasing to God. The Father, Son and Holy Spirit’s life is a joyous fulfilling fellowship with one another and with creation. In loving and serving one another and caring for creation the Holy Trinity finds joy and fulfillment in their oneness as God as they flow in the absolute harmony, joy and peace of their perfect relationship. It is only an oneness-relationship with God that can minister fulfillment. Independence from God cannot please Him and it can never minister true joy and fulfillment to creation. All things hold together in christ because He upholds all things by the word of His power. Only in an oneness-relationship with God, both God and creation find joy and fulfillment. It is only in being one with Christ that creation can relate in holiness to one another.
God overflows with goodness, is awesome in holiness and exceedingly righteous in His glory and for His enjoyment made all creation a copy of His own glory that it may declare His wondrous works in all the earth. When the heavens saw His marvelous works the morning stars sang together and the sons of God shouted for joy. Day unto day the heavens declare the glory of God and the earth sings His praise as God brings them joy and fulfillment.
It was the Father’s good pleasure that the Root and the Offspring of David, the Bright and Morning Star occupies the throne as Creator and God also appointed Him Head over all the things that He has created. He that created all things is also He who upholds all things by the word of His power, which is His reasonable service to His Father. Who is He? He as eternal High Priest is clothed with a garment down to the feet and girded about the chest with a golden band that went into God’s presence to obtain forgiveness of sin for those who have believed in Him. The Creator redeemed His own creation that Adam ruined through sin. His head and hair is white like wool, as white as snow radiating His wisdom and divine righteousness. His throne is a fiery flame, its wheels a burning fire for the foundation of His throne is established on righteousness and is maintained by His mercy. His body is like beryl radiating the richness and wealth of His glory. The face of the Omniscient One is like the appearance of lightning reflecting His infinite awareness, understanding and insight. The eyes of the Righteous Judge are flames of burning fire and His feet are like refined fine brass in a fire ready to kindle a fire against all ungodly men and those who turned the grace of our God into lewdness and deny the only Lord God and our lord jesus christ. His voice the sound of many waters and His word is the two-edged sword that fashioned all things beautifully according to the wisdom of His own creative council. His countenance is like the sun shining in its strength. The First and the Last is glorious in appearance, almighty in His strength and fearfully awesome to behold. It is He who is alive, was dead and lives forevermore. It is He who has the keys of Hades and of Death (Revelation 1:12-18). It is this awesome God who created all things for His delight, according to the pleasure of His will.
In the beginning, Jesus, the Word of God, made all things and without Him nothing was made that was made (John 1:3). He created all visible and invisible things both in heaven and on earth. Through faith the Word of God framed the worlds so that visible things were made of invisible substance (Hebrews 11:3). His word is always creating and is moving, living and powerful, like the Spirit of God.
All things were created through Him and for Him and for His pleasure they were created. He is before all things, and in Him all things consist. It pleased the Father that in Him all the fullness should dwell and by Him all things live and move and have their being in Him.
All things were created very good, radiantly overflowing with His marvelous glory, created holy unto the Lord. The Son who is the brightness of the Father’s glory and the express image of His person created all things a mirror image of Himself that all His invisible attributes are clearly seen, being understood by the things that are made. Virtue went out of Him into creation so that it becomes a copy of His radiance, shining forth in a kaleidoscope of countless virtues His perfect goodness and awesome holiness. Everything was filled with the joyful light of His presence bearing the seal of his glory, manifesting His goodness and holiness in and through all things. He created and upholds all things by the word of His power that all things may find joy and fulfillment in Him and He in them.
The Lord who is compassionate, just and the Righteous Judge delights in His own character and power made manifested in man. God created Adam for His own delight that His glory may be made known in man. He beautifully fashioned Adam and Eve as creatures of light. He made them a copy of Himself that they may manifest His virtues of lovingkindness, righteousness and justice in the earth. In them were life and their life was the light of the earth. A city set on a hill cannot be hidden. They were created very good, holy unto the Lord shining forth His glory. Man is created as a creature of God’s delight.
Adam did not have to do anything to please God; he was created perfectly into the delightful and pleasing image of the living God. The Lord God formed man of the dust of the ground, and breathed into his nostrils the breath of life and man became a living soul. Adam’s spirit, soul and body were created alive unto God. Because Adam was created a living soul he was created with the ability to spontaneously and effortlessly love the only true God with all his heart, with all his soul and with all his strength. He was created to love God perfectly in his soul. His mere existence pleased God and God’s perfect person pleased Adam. Adam was filled with love in an environment absent from knowledge and faith. Everything Adam experienced was perfection and fulfillment. Everything he touched was joy and fulfillment. So faith and hope was unknown in Eden. Faith reaches into the future for fulfillment but Adam’s experiences of fulfillment were for the moment. He only knew the love of God in an atmosphere filled with His absolute holiness and the beauty of His glory. Ever since God breathed the breath of life in Adam, Adam and God shared one life, the life of God. Because God and His son were one, Adam did not know or could not understand or could not relate to the concept of independence from his God and Father. Whatever Adam did, he manifested God’s nature because he was one with God. He was fashioned to be fully involved in his Father’s business, to do His will and to accomplish His work. When God walked with Adam, He taught him about creation and the purpose for cultivating and maintaining it. He also taught him about naming the animals and his relationship with them. God gave Adam freedom to be creative as he was tending the garden because he was made in the image of his Creator. In this they found great joy and fulfillment as they flow in absolute divine fellowship. As Adam abided in Christ His Creator and do His will, he flowed with the life force of God; he was totally alive to God always moving, vibrant and an overflowing fountain of the Spirit of God that was all the time working in his whole being. When Adam walked with God he was in harmony with creation and filled with energy and strength of the Spirit of God. He was so full of life that he lived 930 years after sin entered him and the discord of sin entered his soul. All life loses its power when it does not abide in Jesus Christ. Adam pleased God and brought fulfillment to His heart with the life of the Spirit of Christ that was in him.
Hope and faith are foreign substances in an atmosphere of absolute fulfillment (1 Corinthians 13:8-10). There is nothing to hope or believe for if the substance of all things is total fulfillment. Adam needed not to look for or obtain a witness that he was pleasing to God. Created perfectly in the image and likeness of God he spontaneously and effortlessly pleased God just by being Adam. The purpose of life was that God created His son Adam for His own pleasure and fulfillment; that Adam through fellowship as a son and service to God may please Him and find fulfillment in Him and that God being Father to Adam find joy and fulfillment in him.
When the Lord planted a garden eastward in Eden, he put man in the garden to tend and keep it. Out of the ground the Lord made every tree that was pleasant to the eye and good for food. Every tree yields fruit whose seed is in itself according to its kind. The seed of every tree brings forth offspring after its own kind.
The tree of the knowledge of good and evil was also in the garden. God commanded man that of every tree of the garden he may freely eat but of the tree of knowledge he shall not eat. God warned man that in the day he will eat of it he would surely die. God never told Adam that He would kill him if he disobeyed but told him that he would die because the tree was poisonous. The seed of the tree of knowledge of good (law) and evil (lawlessness) changed man’s nature to seek wisdom and knowledge in isolation from God, which is death. Its poisonous seed is from the heart of the evil one and it brings forth fruit that is pleasant to the eyes, and desirable to make one wise but its end is destruction. Although God created Adam perfectly into His image and likeness He never intended for him to be a robot but created him to have freedom of choice. Adam was created without sin yet with a free will. Through disobedience Adam partook of the tree of knowledge and his heart of flesh was instantly transformed into an evil unbelieving heart of stone. Adam and Eve fell from the grace and glory of God. They have dishonored the law of Christ’s consuming love that ruled their members. Their transgression meant separation from the light of His presence and a plunging in to death, darkness and the lie. They have gathered for themselves treasures of sin and death and were separated from the love of God because they were found outside of Christ their Creator.
The effects of the fall resulted in Adam rejected God as Father by partaking of the tree of knowledge. He lost the ability to be a son to God and to relate to Him as Father. Thus they became incapable to please Him. They ceased to be God’s people. He ceased to be one Spirit with God because he was a branch cut of from the Vine. The transgression closed the road for man to grow up from a living soul into a Life Giving Spirit, which was Christ His creator. Adam lost the ability to please God on his own merits. Man has become an abomination to God because of his fallen state. It was impossible for the first Adam and his offspring in their blemished condition to please God. The most beautiful and holy relationship in oneness of Spirit was ruined. It was wrecked and all of creation lamented the fall of the morning star. Because of one man’s disobedience access to God who dwells in the Spirit was closed down to all.
Because Adam sinned all of creation sinned and fall short of the glory of God and was taken captive as a fallen creation into a broken universe that lacks eternal life. Eternal life is to know God and Jesus whom He sent. Sin is missing the mark, failing being an anointed substance to fulfill the will of God that you may bring Him joy and fulfillment. To do the will of the Father is to know Him. All of creation is still lamenting their inadequacy to please God by groans to deep to utter in hope for their redemption so that they may be set free from futility and be clothed with the glory they had before the transgression. To please God is both the cry of the Spirit and of creation.
So God sent His Son, creator of heaven and earth, to redeem His own creation, which Adam ruined. God gave all of creation hope that in His Son, they will please Him once again as it was in the beginning and find their joy and fulfillment in Him.
Since the fall, it is impossible to please God without faith and to find fulfillment in Him. Faith is the substance of your hopes, the evidence of unseen realities. The converting of hope into substance is faith. The righteous walks by faith and not by sight. Faith is the substance that takes you back into the garden where Adam once lived in the light of God’s presence and lived to please Him by being an anointed substance of joy and fulfillment to his God and Father. Because you cannot see the substance of your hope, which is faith, with the naked eye does not mean it is not there. Hope that is seen is not hope. We have access to God through faith into His grace and rejoice in hope of the glory of God because we know that hope does not disappoint. Faith brings fulfillment that grow so big that it disappear, not in the disobedience of fear and unbelief but in the obedience of love. When you trust God without the mind warring in doubt, only love remains. When you doing the will of the Father it is the manifestation of christ in you.
The seed of the word of God in us cannot sin, which is Christ in us, the hope of glory. Now if anyone does not have the Spirit of Christ, he is not His (Romans 8:9b). Christ’s word in us is our food for faith; it is the vision of our hope. If that seed germinates in you and you carefully nurture it into maturity, you will grow up to be an overcomer. What do you overcome through faith in God? Adam’s fall from divine glory as a result of the transgression. When you overcome the Holy Spirit witnesses with your spirit that you are pleasing to God because of your constant faith in Him. God will then give you to eat from the tree of life (Revelation 2:7) and you will live forever (Genesis 3:22). You will be restored in your spirit, soul and body. But if the Spirit of Him [Father] who raised Jesus from the dead dwells in you, He who raised Christ from the dead will also give life to your mortal bodies through His Spirit who dwells in you (Romans 8:11). The life of God, which is in the tree of life, will restore you to perfection as it was before the fall.
Enoch taught us that you obtain first the witness that you have overcome then you will be translated into glory (Hebrews 11:5). The witness comes through the Spirit of Christ (Christ in you) and the translation through the Spirit of the Father that raised Jesus from the dead (Romans 8:9-11). So the seed, which is in the fruit of the tree of life, is eternal life, which works in your mortal body.
You overcome by the blood of the Lamb and by the word of your testimony, and you do not love you life to death (Revelation 12:11). Firstly, you need to be in Christ, washed in His blood, to overcome because without Him you can do nothing. Secondly, you need to overcome by the word of your testimony. Your witness in pleasing God by abiding in the anointing in you is the testimony of your life. The inner witness of the Holy Spirit in how you pleasing God, which is also the testimony of your life, is a mighty weapon. Paul testified to King Agrippa concerning his witness of pleasing God, saying, “I was not disobedient to the heavenly vision” (Acts 26:19). God testified about His Son on the mount of transfiguration, saying, “This is My beloved Son, in whom I am well pleased. Hear Him!” (Matthew 17:5). When the evil one finds nothing in you, you also overcome through the word of your testimony. Hypocrisy is when you testify one thing with your mouth and you live a different life.
Lastly, you also overcome by not loving your soul life to death. If you lay down you life for Christ sake you will overcome the fall from His glory and receive the witness from the Holy Spirit that you have persevere in overcoming the transgression, which is the witness of all the faith heroes through all ages (Hebrews 11).
When Adam transgressed against God his spirit, soul and body died to God. He fell from the glory that God gave him, which was God’s character and power. He fell from His oneness with God, which was his sonship. God mourned the death of His son because Adam could no longer hear or sense the Almighty God walking in the cool of the day. He deprived God of his fellowship, service and fulfillment. Adam could no longer spontaneously find fulfillment in God because his whole being was translated into a chunk of sinful flesh. Adam’s whole existence and natural course of life had changed into an abominable sinful substance toward God that provokes his righteousness to judgment. Because of sin, man fell from the glory and favor of God. Since the transgression, Adam needed to do nothing to be abominable to God; he spontaneously and effortlessly displeased God just by living through his sinful nature that was separated from God and His grace. It is impossible for sinful flesh on its own imperfect merits to be pleasing to the all-perfect God.
In what manner should man walk before God? God is looking for His character in man, which is grace, righteousness and mercy, and holiness. Pursue grace because God is filled with compassion. Through righteousness the thrones of kings are established and maintained in mercy. Man shall walk in holiness because the holy oil of the anointing that consecrates him holy unto the Lord that was upon the Old Testament kings, prophets and priests is now in every one that is washed in the blood of the Lamb.
When Christ is in you, your spirit is alive because of righteousness. When you are joined to Christ you become one spirit with Him (1 Corinthians 6:17). It does not say His Spirit becomes a mixture of your spirit with His but it says you become one spirit with Him, which is the Spirit of Christ. You become one spirit with Him for your Maker is your husband, the Lord of hosts is His name (Isaiah 54:5); indicating a wedded relationship. Because your spirit is alive to God you receive revelation through the faculties of your spirit so that through faith you can change into the glory that you behold, even the glory of Christ. However, your body is dead to God because of sin. You cannot see God with your natural eyes, hear Him with your natural ears or touch Him with your hands of flesh because your body is dead to God because of sin (Romans 8:10). Your soul is enmity against God for it is impossible to subject it to the law of God. So it is impossible to please God in this body of flesh (Romans 8:7-8). But the life that you live in the flesh now, you live by faith in the Son of God, who loved you and gave Himself for you (Galatians 2:20). What does that mean?
Through faith by the Eternal Spirit of God you present your body of death and your soul, which is an enemy of God, alive to God. Through faith you present that which is dead to God because of sin, which is the enemy of God, as if it is alive to God and pleasing to Him. Therefore you take every thought in captivity to the obedience of Christ and you present the members of your body a slave unto righteousness (Romans 12:1-2). Your faith brings to life your entire being spirit (which is already alive to God), soul and body as if you have attained to the resurrection from the dead and as if you have been made perfect. Though, you do not see your perfection yet or you do not see all things being subjected to Christ your faith is an expression of your hope to attain to the resurrection from the dead and be made perfect in His sight. You cannot serve God in a Biblical manner without involving your entire being, spirit, soul and body. Unceasingly your heart cries out, saying, “To please You is the cry of my spirit; to please You is what I am living for.”
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