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    • Looking Through a Glass Darkly

    US public tv has been running a series of new shows about the universe. It chronicles the “advances” in our understanding of the universe. The “big bang”, the Hubble Telescope, “dark energy” and “dark matter” and stuff like that. First there was the “red shift” and the “expanding universe”, then there was the “big bang idea”, then the establishment for the “age” of the universe at “13.7 Billion Years” based on the supposed accelleration of objects out there and so forth.

    They make is sound as if everything has been figured out! The wonderful achievements of man with celebrations and award ceremonies! Now, there are the challenges of “dark energy and dark matter” to tackle. The space telescope has revealed a vast and complex universe most of which is a visual artifact from many millions of years in the past. We have no way of actually telling if any of it is still really there if it’s much further out past our own little galaxy, the “Milky Way”.

    In fact, we have only just recently managed to send a probe out beyond this tiny solar system. We think we know so much about the universe and yet as this lonely probe leaves our solar system into open space there is bated breath waiting to find out what open space is really like. So, what’s just outside of our solar system is still a mystery. That might only be a few “light hours” away. So, how much do we REALLY know about these phantoms that we see in the night sky. So many of which existed million and even billions of years ago if they are right about that. For all we know, they may have been removed long ago leaving a visual record a long stream of radiation that could run out at any moment.

    Science is a game of educated guessing and NOTHING MORE! The fundamental rule of modern science is, “seeing is believing”. A sort of “photon-based” reality show based on fringe ideas that grab our imaginations. Just like so many scifi shows that paint a loosly “science” based picture of space, the future, etc. But, never seem to touch on financial accountability. How even crude space flight programs like the space shuttle can bring NASA to it’s knees.

    Jesus worked long and hard to cultivate a place for mankind to be introduced. He knew full well the price He would have to pay for His efforts and hard work to give us a place that we could enjoy and hopefully appreciate. Maybe you find it hard to believe. But, that won’t make it any less true. Reality is reality.

    In the beginning was the Word. And the Word was with God, and the Word was God. All things were made for Him and by Him. Without Him was not anything made that was made. He came to His own and His own received Him not. But, to as many as received Him He gave them power to become the sons of God. Even to as many as believed on His Name. (The Book of John chapter one)

    Wayne Hollyoak

    Written on December 2nd, 2012 , All Topics, Devotional, Evidences of ID, Intelligent Design, Interesting Science, New Developments, People in Science, Perspecitve, Physics/Gravity, Puzzlers, Retrospect, Super Nature
    Carry Things Too Far

    What happens when humans come up with an basic understanding of how things seem to work? We often give that understanding a broader application than we should. For instance, we think that rooms should generally be square at the corners. So, we begin putting everything in boxes, even in nature and theology and so on.

    It’s well understood that the pressure of the soil, sand and rock accumulates as you go deeper into the earth just as the pressure continues to increase as you go deeper under water. This is why submarines all have a depth limit established based on the ability of its hull to withstand the pressure of that water.

    But, somehow we have failed to account for the fact that earth is a sphere. Mass produces gravity and attracks objects toward its center of mass. The problem is that the center of a massive sphere like a planet has mass all around more or less equally surrounding and the effect cancels all gravity out and objects at the center of planets are weightless.

    All this is pretty well understood. But, the implications are for some disturbing. Most of the “experts” I’ve heard on this are quite sure that all objects in the immediate vacinity of this point of weightlessness would be crushed by the “accumulative weight” of everything about it. This is what happens when you carry an idea too far and that “expert” status generate momentum for limited observation.

    What really happens in the case of a planet, is that the gravity rolls off once you reach a point which I would call, “the spherical horizon effect”. As the mass surrounding an object increases above an object passing into a spherical mass towards the center, the pressure of that mass above the object gradually will deminish as the weight of the material get’s lighter and lighter.

    So, the material above at some point begin to apply less pressure then even the atmosphere upon the surface of the sphere. There could be a gas “bubble” where the low pressure could allow the gaseous state to exist. And not just a little foot diameter one. But, an extensive one perhaps hundreds of miles across. In the low pressure conditions at the central region, most gases would work their way to the vast central cavity.

    But, this kind of thinking tends to be repulsive to the “experts” I suppose since there is a so-called “hollow earth” movement that claims that there lives a civilization of non-human people that live there. Now, I don’t know about all that! But, admitting that planets may very well have a gaseous cavity of some measure at their cores doesn’t add much credence to the “hollow earth” people stuff. So, why not just admit that stuff gradually gets lighter as you go deeper in the earth and somewhere that crushing force from material above begins to decrease till it’s completely weightless.

    Wayne Hollyoak

    Written on June 11th, 2012 , All Topics, Interesting Science, People in Science, Perspecitve, Physics/Gravity, Puzzlers
    Taking a Closer Look at Genesis

    This is a brief look at the first chapter of Genesis. I’ll try to focus on just what the scriptures say and cut through stuff that I or others might “want” it to say. I’ll be using the New American Standard Bible (NASB) since that translation is considered by many to be the least paraphrased english Bible version.

    Genesis Chapter 1:

     1 In the beginning God created the heavens and the earth.
    2 The earth was formless and void, and darkness was over the surface of the deep, and the Spirit of God was moving over the surface of the waters.
    3 Then God said, “Let there be light”; and there was light.
    4 God saw that the light was good; and God separated the light from the darkness.
    5 God called the light day, and the darkness He called night. And there was evening and there was morning, one day. 
    6 Then God said, “Let there be an expanse in the midst of the waters, and let it separate the waters from the waters.”
    7 God made the expanse, and separated the waters which were below the expanse from the waters which were above the expanse; and it was so.
    8 God called the expanse heaven. And there was evening and there was morning, a second day.
     9 Then God said, “Let the waters below the heavens be gathered into one place, and let the dry land appear”; and it was so.
    10 God called the dry land earth, and the gathering of the waters He called seas; and God saw that it was good.
    11 Then God said, “Let the earth sprout vegetation, plants yielding seed, and fruit trees on the earth bearing fruit after their kind with seed in them”; and it was so.
    12 The earth brought forth vegetation, plants yielding seed after their kind, and trees bearing fruit with seed in them, after their kind; and God saw that it was good.
    13 There was evening and there was morning, a third day.
     14 Then God said, “Let there be lights in the expanse of the heavens to separate the day from the night, and let them be for signs and for seasons and for days and years;
    15 and let them be for lights in the expanse of the heavens to give light on the earth”; and it was so.
    16 God made the two great lights, the greater light to govern the day, and the lesser light to govern the night; He made the stars also.
    17 God placed them in the expanse of the heavens to give light on the earth,
    18 and to govern the day and the night, and to separate the light from the darkness; and God saw that it was good.
    19 There was evening and there was morning, a fourth day.
     20 Then God said, “Let the waters teem with swarms of living creatures, and let birds fly above the earth in the open expanse of the heavens.”
    21 God created the great sea monsters and every living creature that moves, with which the waters swarmed after their kind, and every winged bird after its kind; and God saw that it was good.
    22 God blessed them, saying, “Be fruitful and multiply, and fill the waters in the seas, and let birds multiply on the earth.”
    23 There was evening and there was morning, a fifth day.
     24 Then God said, “Let the earth bring forth living creatures after their kind: cattle and creeping things and beasts of the earth after their kind”; and it was so.
    25 God made the beasts of the earth after their kind, and the cattle after their kind, and everything that creeps on the ground after its kind; and God saw that it was good.
     26 Then God said, “Let Us make man in Our image, according to Our likeness; and let them rule over the fish of the sea and over the birds of the sky and over the cattle and over all the earth, and over every creeping thing that creeps on the earth.”
    27 God created man in His own image, in the image of God He created him; male and female He created them.
    28 God blessed them; and God said to them, “Be fruitful and multiply, and fill the earth, and subdue it; and rule over the fish of the sea and over the birds of the sky and over every living thing that moves on the earth.”
    29 Then God said, “Behold, I have given you every plant yielding seed that is on the surface of all the earth, and every tree which has fruit yielding seed; it shall be food for you;
    30 and to every beast of the earth and to every bird of the sky and to every thing that moves on the earth which has life, I have given every green plant for food”; and it was so.
    31 God saw all that He had made, and behold, it was very good. And there was evening and there was morning, the sixth day.
    —————-
    A few notes to consider:
    1. The earth is shown here to be formed and the first living things introduced prior to the formation of space and the celestial objects. During the first 3 “days” there was no sun or moon or stars so the time was measured some other way. Was the earth being “incubated” in a sense allowing for the first life forms to establish an oxygen bearing atmosphere? Modern cosmology relys entirely on the theory of “uniformitarianism” which doesn’t allow for any manipulation of the natural laws at any point in history and time. In Genesis there is no such assumption. The Creator has full sway over the natural laws and He has in fact designed them to begin with.

    2. The Creator “moves over the waters”, perhaps for careful inspection and monitoring of the progress of His cultivation of the first living things to decide when this planet would be ready for it’s placement into context of what we call, “the universe”. Up until the introduction of “string theory”, such a senario might have seemed impossible to imagine, but we have since learned that reality is much more complex and mysterious then ever dreamed, even in the most outlandish of scifi stories.

    3.  Once in the context of the ‘visible universe’ the dry land mass was gathered in one place, what we refer to today as, “pangea”. The use of the the expression “evening and the morning” must be taken from the Creator’s viewpoint. That could easily mean “epoch”, or a rotation period of the “Milky Way” our galaxy which currently takes about 60,000 years or so. It could just as easily refer to such an event as it occurs in the Creator’s domain or kingdom and that could represent any number of earth rotations. We have no way to tell for sure. (William Jennings Bryan likely was more of a literalist than those fundamentalists that betrayed him!)

    4. As the Creator introduced the various life forms in the described succession they are commanded to reproduce “after their kind”. This term does eliminate the possibility for the spontaneous generation of completely novel forms of life by natural processes as proposed by Darwin and his disciples. But, allows for some variation and adaptation. How much is up to debate. I’m inclined to think that not much variation has taken place past the “genera” taxanomic level. So far there has never been a documented case (by man) of  the formation of anything remotely translating to a new “genus” of any living thing. So, that may be indication of the great stability of the “kind”. “Genus” and “Genesis” appear to have the same root and that may have been intentional.

    4. In any event, the first chapter is a description in “layman’s” terms of the most fantastic events imaginable and I have complete confidence that it tells us all we need to know about them.

     

    Wayne Hollyoak

    Written on December 6th, 2011 , All Topics, Devotional, Evidences of ID, Intelligent Design, Interesting Science, Perspecitve, Physics/Gravity, Puzzlers, Super Nature
    More to Space then Meets the Eye

    Driving home from work can be a real treat during this time of the year. As the days get shorter and now with Daylight Savings Time in effect, five o’clock in the afternoon means sunset. As we loose sight of the sun down low on the horizon the clouds can become a canvas for the most beautiful paintings you’ll ever get to see.

    West virginia Sunset

    Sunset in WV

    During the day we see the full spectrum light coming from the sun. But, as the sun sets only the reds and pink part of the spectrum come across to light the bottoms of clouds that are closer to the horizon. The hues and tones can be truely amazing! The skies are truly painted for our pleasure and enjoyment. When our Creator designed the atmosphere and the sun, He did so with great care so that it not only supports us, but brings us enjoyment and happiness.

    Wayne Hollyoak

    Written on November 10th, 2011 , Devotional, Evidences of ID, Intelligent Design, Perspecitve, Physics/Gravity, Super Nature
    How Great was the Flood?

    Could it be argued that there are quite a few fossils out there? Of course! There are even quite a few areas that have large dinosaurs heaped together as if were deposited there by very powerful forces. Tsunami perhaps, or washed away by extreme flooding and entombed in earth and mud.

    I can assure that the flood of Noah was of “Biblical proportions” and that there is no reason to assume that it was a completely “natural” event. There also was likely global deforestation and a following ice-age as a result. Animal remains rarely last longer than 20 years when exposed to the elements. Theiy must be buried not long after their death in order to be preserved in any way.

    The earth is an immense flood zone with layers upon layers of sediment and sedimentary rock. Was it all produced by a singe great flood (and associated multitude of tsunamis)? The Bible states that the “fountains of the great deep” were opened. Was this a reference to volcanic activity or rupture of many aquifers or both?

    The main thing I want to express is that the flood of Noah’s time was a massive and devestating ecological disaster with worldwide killoff of the existing creatures. It was not a natural event. The creator is in no way subject to natural laws, rather they are completely subject to Him. So, don’t expect the evidence of the flood to be of a natural event. Besides, we’ve all seen what a powerful tsunami can do. Just multiply that by a million and there you have the flood of Noah.

    Wayne Hollyoak

    Written on November 2nd, 2011 , Devotional, Perspecitve, Physics/Gravity, Puzzlers, Retrospect, Super Nature, The Role of Faith in Science
    Design and the Physical Laws

    Our Creator has revealed to us His incredible skills and genius (the words are truly inadequate) in the creation that surrounds and supports us. But, not only is He the Designer of living things, He is also the Engineer of matter, mass, space and time – the rest of the “universe”.

    So, He created “matter” and “energy” and established the laws that govern them. Some of the more basic laws of matter and energy and space can be described using Einstein’s theory of relativity (E=mc2). Nuclear energy harnesses the enormous amount of energy released by splitting atoms. But, there are all kinds of objects that exist within those basic “particles” electrons, protons and neutrons. Things like, neutrinos, quarks, photons, etc.

    We like to call them particles, but that turns out to be a gross oversimplification. Now, we are trying to understand the resonant qualities of these particles and other strange and wonderful characteristics of matter in “quantum physics”. Whoever wrote these awesome laws that govern matter had an IQ that was off the charts, way off the charts!

    Wayne Hollyoak

    Written on July 13th, 2011 , Evidences of ID, Intelligent Design, Interesting Science, Perspecitve, Physics/Gravity, Retrospect, Super Nature
    The Foundation of Creation Studies

    If you want to understand this universe that we live in, you must first set aside any notions about the so-called, “big bang” myth and all that. Any attempt to explain the creation of the universe and us without acknowledging the One behind it all is a total waist of time and energy.

    Remember, asserting that there isn’t a person behind all of this will never make Him go away! It will only come back to haunt you as the immensity and power of His being confronts you in the end. I hope any who fail to admit this reality and worse yet, tells others that there is no Creator, will return to their senses and begin to appreciate the great things that our Creator has done on our behalf.

    The “scientific establishment” has gone down for the count and I don’t see an easy road to recovery for those who have signed oaths against “creationism” and “intelligent design” and anything that questions Darwin’s creation stories.

    But, this presents those of us who accept and embrace the reality of a created universe, with a great opportunity to start fresh with a purely humble and respectful perspective on the study of “nature”. How did the Creator make everything so that it works together so wonderfully despite the huge diversity of living things should remind us constantly that He is the only true personification of “brilliance”! Though we may advance in our very crude basic knowledge of some small aspects of the physical, visible universe and living things, we must always remind ourselves that we’ve only scratched the surface of the hows and whys.

    Nature was designed for our benefit as not only a support system for mankind, but also as a great educational system to help us grow and mature as people. We don’t need any special credentials or training to be involved. Just an open mind and heart!

    Wayne Hollyoak

    Written on September 2nd, 2010 , All Topics, Devotional, Intelligent Design, New Developments, Perspecitve, Physics/Gravity, Super Nature, The Role of Faith in Science
    Just a Few of the Ways that Nature Points Us Towards Its Creator

    I’ll start with 10 things that are rather obvious, or should be anyway:

    1. Entropy is considered a universal law in physics. Yet, very well designed machines can minimize it’s impact. Cars can be made today to last a quarter million miles or longer by applying better design and manufacture methods. This is through the collective efforts of highly intelligent designers. Living creatures are so well designed that they seem to play with entropy at will. Birds make a mockery of human attempts at flying machines. Swifts fly so efficiently that they can remain airborne for the entire lives powered by tiny insects. Landing only for brief periods long enough to rear their young

    2. Artistry is everywhere in the natural world. The peacock is considered a symbol of beauty. How about the horse, the rose and the rainbow trout. How many favorites can you think of?

    3. Flight requires advanced knowledge of aerodynamics, weight economy and balance. Feathers alone are engineering marvels that work beautifully because they were designed intelligently. Remember. that the sole design consideration for so called, “Natural Selection” is function, that’s it. And ns can only operate on existing designs.

    4. Music requires a complex knowledge of tonality and harmonics. Think of how birds with such small brains are designed to produce some of the best music.

    5. Sight opens up a creature to an awareness of its surroundings. With all our amazing camera technologies, we still can’t hold a candle to our own eyes. So if you must conclude that the camera is an intelligent design, how much more so with the human eye!

    6. Diversity is the hallmark of the natural world. Diversity means LOTS of genetic code has been written by an awesome code writer! Nuff said!

    7. Fireflies still exist, even though they are designed to give away their locations to predators! They were also designed to delight us on those hot evenings of spring and summer!

    8. Metamorphosis allows insects to transform their entire body shape and function. They were designed to do so in the safety and security of a protective “cocoon”. This is a design “tour de force” by any reasonable measure!

    9. Biological Clocks are design considerations that synchronize creatures life cycles in some way with certain changes in their environment. In some cases it might be the length of daylight, the tides and the position of the moon in the sky or it’s phase, or the temperature, etc. that will trigger a bear to wake up from hibernation and a turtle to swim thousands of miles across oceans to the tiny island where it was born, or all the billions of coral polyps around the world to release all their eggs into the see at the same moment on a certain day of the year.

    10. Ecology is another design, “tour de force” where the Creator displays not only His ability as a Designer, but his wisdom in how all the dirversity of creatures can coexist in harmony. Predators and prey, big and small, pathogen and immune system, reproduction and death. Moms to bring us into the world and cleanup crews: yeast, insect, bacteria, birds, etc. to recycle our bodies after our spirits return to the presence of the author of it all to receive our fantastic new bodies so we can give an account for our lives on this Creator’s planet!

    These are only a few of vast array of design indicators… In the next few posts I’ll point out many others.

    Wayne Hollyoak

    Written on June 3rd, 2010 , Devotional, Evidences of ID, Intelligent Design, Interesting Science, Music, Perspecitve, Physics/Gravity, Super Nature
    On the Wing

    My front yard is roughly an acre square and takes about an hour and a half to cut on the yard tractor. A few summers back I had the wonderful experience of watching some special birds while cutting the grass. They were not very big just gently gliding along about 6 feet off the ground and didn’t seem the least bit bothered by my presence.

    Yesterday, that experience came back to me and I decided to Google, “Swift”. Can’t say for sure, but it seems pretty clear to me now that that’s what my visitors were on those warm summer afternoons. So, I spent a little time learning about these little guys.

    We in America have our own variety of these birds called the, “Chimney Swift”. Like most all swift species, they are born in little nests that their mom and dad build with their own spit (saliva) stuck to the sides of, well in this case, chimneys mostly. (ever heard of “bird’s nest soup”?) Chimneys that aren’t in use during the warmer months.

    When they are old enough to fly, they exit the nest and never touch the ground again until they are ready to build their own nest! That’s right, they LIVE totally in the air. They even fly while they are ASLEEP! How far do they fly before they ever land? Several hundred thousand miles lets say. Now that’s endurance! The only time they ever land is to raise their young each summer.

    Think of all the time and ingenuity that goes into designing and building our most advanced aircraft and multiply that complexity and efficiency by a few orders of magnitude and you have this little bird that existed pretty much the same as we see it today as ancient fossils in stone. Sure tells me a lot about it’s Designer!

    Wayne Hollyoak

    Written on February 26th, 2010 , Evolutionism, Intelligent Design, Interesting Science, Perspecitve, Physics/Gravity, Puzzlers, Super Nature
    Boggles the Mind!

    There are so many things about this universe that we live in that blow me away! The land we walk on, the house I live in, all the wonderful materials that man has been able to use to make things. Pine trees and oak trees, spruce, maple, rosewood and on and on provide building and cabinetmakers and even musical instrument makers with strong, durable and beautiful materials for use in make all sorts of useful things. Things that we depend on like telephone poles and books.

    Snow on a fence

    Wood comes from those wonderful living things we call trees which give us shade and block the wind and even produce tasty fruit and syrup. The wood itself is composed of material left over from living cells that gave the trees their strength and let them grow to great heights.

    Even rocks and soil all around us are engineered to serve us in many useful ways. A little tar and gravel and you can make roads. Sand can be melted to make glass that lets us see the snow on the ground outside as clear as day even though we are inside dry and warm as can be. Even water in a plastic bottle can be refreshing on a hot dry day or it can fill an ocean that dolphins and whales can swim and play in.

    Gases like oxygen and nitrogen have just the right qualities needed to keep our bodies functioning. Even at this molecular and atomic level the engineering is beautifully refined and tuned. The behaviors of all the subatomic particles and such give us a wide range of elements each with unique properties that make a seemingly infinite variety of materials.

    We are absorbed and surrounded by so many fantastic materials, objects and gases that I find myself overwhelmed at how easy it is the just call them, “things” and take them all for granted. How could I have ever thought that this was just a cosmic accident? How will I ever come to appreciate all the hard work, planning, time, wisdom and patience it must have taken to get it all going? The love that our Creator shows us is impossible to measure in it’s span and depth and detail! And, yet that is only the beginning!

    Wayne Hollyoak

    Written on February 17th, 2010 , All Topics, Devotional, Evolutionism, Intelligent Design, Music, Perspecitve, Physics/Gravity, Super Nature, The Role of Faith in Science
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