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Websites: Got Questions https://www.gotquestions.org/ Answers in Genesis https://answersingenesis.org For my brothers and sisters in Christ https://creation.com Apps: Oneplace https://www.oneplace.com/ministries/ Bible https://www.bible.com/ GotQuestions.org https://www.gotquestions.org/ Books: Conversational Evangelism - Connecting with People to Share Jesus by David & Norman Geisler. On Guard - Defending Your Faith with Reason and Precision by William Lane Craig CROSS - by John Piper and David Mathis Multiply - disciples making disciples by Francis Chan with Mark Beuving How to study the Bible by John MacArthur Knowing Scripture by R.C. Sproul Desiring God by John Piper The Holiness of God by R.C. Sproul Mere Christianity by C.S. Lewis How Should We then Live? by Francis Schaeffer The Reformation by Steven Nichols Why Does God Allow Evil by Clay Jones Beginning at Moses: A Guide to Finding Christ in the Old Testament by Dr Michael Barrett Special thanks to the following contributor(s) to this list: @sciencechimp2004 / Tim @opiejames @MGleason ---Last Updated 04/16/2020---

A group of texts/posts I had written that were all along the same theme.  I asked AI to string them together and remove duplicate thoughts, after I edited the results this is what I got. What we think about creation does not shape creation itself, but it does reveal how we reason about it.  We understand creation because we create.  We know what it takes to build something that works: sequencing operations so downstream requirements are met, implementing functional mechanisms, monitoring performance, and designing systems that fail when tolerances are exceeded.  This kind of work can be highly complex, and it teaches us how to recognize design by its functional order.  Just as we can identify the type of bird that built a nest or recognize the structure of an ant hill, we know that building is not unique to humans—and that design leaves recognizable fingerprints. The same principle applies to information.  Language is symbolic, and its meaning is not tied to any particular medium.  Smoke signals, Morse code, spoken words, written symbols, or electrical signals all carry information not because of what they are made of, but because of how they are arranged.  Yet arrangement alone is not enough.  Information requires minds to generate, translate, and understand it.  Given how familiar we are with these everyday realities, denying design when we encounter complex, meaningful information requires actively suppressing reasoning we otherwise trust and use without hesitation. When we seek truth in any domain, we naturally look for multiple independent lines of evidence that converge.  When separate facts intersect consistently, our confidence in an explanation increases.  True claims tend to cohere; they integrate without contradiction, because truth does not conflict with other truths.  False claims, by contrast, must be protected by special pleading, exceptions, or auxiliary assumptions to keep them intact. For this reason, any sound explanatory framework must be capable of failure—clearly, loudly, and publicly.  If a system cannot fail, it cannot correct us.  Instead, it rewards bias by always producing answers that align with what we already want to believe.  This is far more dangerous than an honest mistake, because it teaches us to trust a method that hides its own errors.  It is like building a calculation that guarantees the result we prefer, flaws are concealed, red flags are ignored, and confidence grows precisely where it should not. Experiments and tests should therefore be designed to break under counterexamples.  Claims that cannot, even in principle, be falsified may appear to deliver answers every time, but what they really do is mask the limits of the method itself.  In this way, we can be deceived—not because reality changed, but because our approach never allowed us to see where we were wrong. The most important question we must ask, then, is not whether we can defend what we believe, but whether we are honestly seeking what is true.  Are we trying to prove the desired conclusion, or are we willing to discover that our assumptions are mistaken?  Truth claims will not contradict other truth claims if they are all true.  When a contradiction appears, at least one assumption must be false.  We must therefore become our own strongest critics.  Certainty itself is not an error when it arises from aligning truth with truth rather than from unexamined conformity or herd mentality. Well-designed systems reveal themselves through constraint.  In such systems, variables are aligned so that anything outside acceptable tolerances fails unmistakably.  When a system is functioning properly, everything flows as expected, and anomalies stand out clearly.  Biology provides a powerful example.  Doctors expect specific ranges in blood work, pulse, and heart function because the human body operates as a finely tuned system.  Deviations matter precisely because norms exist.  If we were not designed systems, there would be no rational reason to expect reliable baselines or to diagnose departures from them.  Order, predictability, and tight tolerances point to intentional structure rather than undirected chaos. Reality itself is constrained.  Truth has fewer degrees of freedom than error, because reality does not change to fit our preferences.  Our definitions, theories, and opinions are mutable; reality is not.  As understanding increases, the range of plausible explanations narrows.  False paths collapse, unnecessary assumptions fall away, and contradictions become more visible at the margins.  Truth simplifies not because it is shallow, but because it removes what never belonged. When we miss the truth, we often respond by inventing false flags, exceptions, heuristics, and excuses to protect mistaken assumptions rather than eliminating them.  By defining “truth” according to our biases, we can always adjust the definition to justify ourselves.  In doing so, we lose any stable scale by which to test our beliefs.  Over time, this creates an internal universe that shifts to accommodate preference rather than conforming to reality. An honest search for truth requires standards that do not bend to our desires.  It requires humility: a willingness to name our assumptions, to let evidence correct us, and to admit when certain inputs we trusted never belonged in the calculation at all.  Without this posture, the goal quietly shifts from discovering what is true to proving that we are right.  We may remain endlessly “reasonable” on the surface while never truly being open to correction. These principles hold regardless of worldview.  The outcome of a test does not change based on the beliefs of the person conducting it.  The same variables under the same conditions produce the same results whether the observer is a theist or an atheist.  Reality does not respond differently based on our motivations.  What differs is not the data, but the interpretation imposed after the fact. Ultimately, the pursuit of truth is not about defending a theory, a label, or a preference.  It is about submitting our reasoning to the constraints of reality and allowing error to be exposed rather than protected.  A fair test is not whether an idea can be made to fit what we already believe, but whether it best explains the world as it actually is.  Truth narrows our options, collapses false alternatives, and removes what does not belong.  The cost is surrendering bias; the reward is coherence, clarity, and alignment with reality itself.  

In another thread made me think about one the things this universe does is reveals what type of people we are, honest, loyal, hateful, unforgiving, greedy, loving and so on. How we interact, it and the Word shows it all.

We couch our discussions about creation and evolution in terms of deep or very short time. Both groups say what they believe can account for all that we see today in how they define how things work and why. Suppose you are an old-universe Theist or Atheist evolutionist. In that case, deep time can answer all the complex issues surrounding life, while a young universe Creationist says God did it, so it means all the complex issues are done due to his design. For questions unanswered, it is either God of the gaps or evolution of the gaps, which can be a blanket comment on the unknown. Neither statement helps move the needle; it only irritates the side directed at. I looked it up and saw that the human body has about 30 trillion cells, about 200 different types. This is a huge number of cells, and if you are a common ancestor evolutionist, you need to account for each one due to mutations. For a thought exercise, I'd like to know how many mutations it would take to reach the 30 trillion cells in the human body today. I have done the math already, but I think it would be better if you did it yourself. It would be more meaningful. Every mutation is considered good, and all move towards life; a best-case scenario for getting the job done is what it looks like practically per year. This exercise assumes abiogenesis occurred, evolution from a common ancestor is true, and every mutation correctly leads to human life, so there is no justification for age, abiogenesis, or evolutionary mutations. They are all accepted as true, and we only want to know how many per year from the starting point of life per year and how many mutations it takes to reach 30 trillion. I've asked these other places, and people have either ignored it or come up with issues like cancer, longevity, and so on, but today they never actually touched the question. This is simply a find X, the number of mutations per year to reach 30 trillion. If we know 30 trillion is the goal, we need to know the start date to determine how many years are needed to find X.

Information: The lack of uncertainty, the more possibilities against something, the lower the probability it will happen; therefore, the greater the specific information.  A coin flip is 50/50, so the uncertainty is 1/2, and a six-sided die is 1/6. What is proposed in an undirected evolutionary process is that random chance will, in the end, produce a very specified information-driven process.  An impossibility as soon as predictable outcomes are present, we have left the world of random.  As long as random outcomes are the driving force, they will remain random, unspecified, and unpredictable. Only something with a nature that can produce predictability can create anything with specified outcomes; an agent is required for designed outcomes.  We need not even concern ourselves with only the biological odds, since information-directing processes drive them; only something capable of directing those things could produce life. It takes an author to write a book.

sry

Do complex instructions come from minds, or could mindless processes write them? The difficulty of the instructions is a huge part of the question, but the medium in which they were written adds to the question. If they were carved in stone, painted on a cave wall, written with a pin or pencil, found in digital code, or set up in biological systems, what would that add to mindlessness being able to pull it off, or do all of them suggest a mind was at work?

One of my great pet peeves is that many times and almost without exception when a talk, lecture, or debates occur, what happens here and elsewhere, instead of the things that they have said come under scrutiny, the speakers are examined instead. I invite everyone to both examine the topics and how they are covered looking at the things that are said without attempting to deep dive in the person speaking. The other thing I would love to see in our talks is for everyone to post links that support their points of view that they are willing to defend with questions concerning what is said, NOT the people saying them. So debates, lectures, even sermons I don't care, if the talk supports one view over the other let the subject, not the person be where we go, is that possible, or does who someone is mean more to you than what they say?

Compare the power usage of a home and a EV power station?

Although it does matter how much time was involved, it becomes a meaningless question with God, because the length of time would not put any burden on God who is transcendent to time, space, and so on in our universe. Where the real questions come into place is without an agent with an agenda could any of this occur through any other means? We are transcendent beings in this universe, we can produce meaning by arranging the material in the universe so that it is recognizable to others.That leaves but two possible causes for the arrangement in the universe itself and life was an agent involved? I am telling you how much time doesn't matter, when you write a paragraph and I can read it does it matter that it took you 4 minutes to write it or 4 years? The fact meaningful words were arraigned in any medium in the material world speaks to an agent with a mind.

Nervous, Respiratory, circulatory, digestive, and Endocrine systems, plus all of the start-stop, level-checking, and error-checking going on in life, on top of all of the other things requiring information to be translated and processed, how is a mind not responsible for these things? The level of functional systematic complexity is so high we don't grasp it all, yet under a rock some where life started and evolved into what we see today through an indifferent, pitiless, mindless process?

I have been bringing this up in a couple of places, mainly because I hear people say things like evolution is a natural explanation for life. So before we can actually accept that shouldn’t the meaning of the phrase “natural” be clearly defined to avoid circular reasoning? If we get to say natural is whatever we want it to be, then only those things that agree with us will be acceptable. Afterwards no matter what is seen, identified, validated or invalidated, contrary to logic, the natural will keep everything off the table for that reason alone.

There have been numerous dates offered for the crucifixion. Over time these have been whittled down to a few possibilities 27 AD, 30 AD, & 33 AD. In the 1990s, two Oxford scientists made a strong case that was published in the most prestigious scientific journal in the world, no less (Nature) that showed the most likely date for Jesus's crucifixion was Passover, Friday 3, 33 AD. They showed how the Bible, prophecy, and additional historical sources, and science all coincide with each other. A key witness for this was Peter's speech on the Day of Pentecost when he said these things were in fulfillment of Joel: People wonder when the sun turned to darkness and the moon to blood, and it seems Peter was referring to the day of the crucifixion. The sun was darkened for three hours (many think this was a khamsin desert dust storm) But what about the moon turning to blood? This is was a common way to describe a lunar eclipse in ancient times. In addition, later second to third century Christian accounts also reference a lunar eclipse occurring during the crucifixion. So, the scientists reconstructed the astronomical history and discovered that there was indeed a lunar eclipse visible from Jerusalem around 6 pm (*the only lunar eclipse on a Passover that ever occurred during that time period). Around the time of Christ's death and start of Passover sacrifices in the temple. Lunar eclipses were also seen as a omen, and sign of (God's) wrath. "Before the great and glorious day of the Lord" (resurrection). A beautiful testimony to the most important events in history. The redemptive work of Christ's death, the resurrection, and the Day of Pentecost (the birth of the early church and outpouring of the Holy Spirit), all connected!

An interesting article about how historical evidence, archaeological evidence, and scientific evidence (specifically geomagnetism reported in a recent science publication) accord with biblical accounts of conquests. When military conquests included burning 🔥 cities the temperatures would sometimes get hot enough to burn the bricks and reset the magnetic minerals in the bricks which would then realign and reorient with the earth's magnetic field at that point in time, allowing scientists to confirm the accuracy of biblical dates. The burned bricks are like snapshot photos of the time on a clock ⏰️ when a battle happened so scientists can precisely determine the date of these battles recorded in the Bible. Pretty cool support and agreement with the Bible