By Will Myers

The six questions that Christians should answer to help the nonbeliever to accept Christ. May the Lord Christ Jesus mediate the nonbeliever’s heart.

 Why does bad things happen to good people who believe in Christ Jesus?

Romans 5:12; “Wherefore, as by one man sin entered into the world, and death by sin; and so death passed upon all men, for that all have sinned:”

All people are under the original sin of Adam and Eve. No one is immune to bad things happening to them.

Genesis 3:5; “For God doth know that in the day ye eat thereof, then your eyes shall be opened, and ye shall be as gods, knowing good and evil.” This is the original lie told by Satan who told the first lie to humans.

The phrase “ye shall be as gods, knowing good and evil” reveals the desires of humans and their desire to rule the world. Evil is pervasive liken unto water which washes over everything; no one is immune from evil; bad things can happen to everyone. The humans desire to have dominion over the world, causing sin because  God is sovereign over the world but humans oppose God.

One can be close enough to the Lord in order to hear the Spirit Of God (the small soft voice within) speak giving warnings of danger and guidance to gratuities. The obedience of civil norms and social mannerisms falls short of God’s Spiritual Laws. So, who is called very sanctified socially is actually in the same boat with sinners as seen by God.

Humans can think for themselves. Everything can be comprehended by humans. Why should we worship God?

The above question is the jewel of atheist or just plain secularist. The answer is simple. God has given humans freewill with the ability to learn and reason. God must be in the equation of life or else the outcome is different with a lesser magnitude being treated. It’s liken unto isolating one block in a major city and observe the dynamics. But, if the block is exposed to the whole city area then variances from without causes a very different dynamics. The capacity of Christianity covers before the founding of the world and the area from the beginning of time until the present through the world unto the end plus life after the end. We worship God to experience positive encounters in this world with the consoling thought of life after death.

The two main categories of philosophy are liberation from suppression and acquisition to a future social-political state. When we compare them to the Word of God they are very limited. Many philosophers has attempted to destroy the believe in God Father, God Son, and God’s Holy Spirit without much success. Some have repented and accepted Christ Jesus on their death bed. Philosophy is liken unto a sign hanging over the gate to a cemetery which read “from this point on you are on your own.”

GOD IS ALIVE; NICHE IS DEAD.

 Why does Christians behave the same as nonbelievers?

This question is quite genuine. Not trying to escape a compelling truth, I submit that most all Christians are inspiring Christians. They support the church. They acknowledge that the Word of God is true. They support and love Jesus.Their spirit, although not perfect, tempers evil in the world. There are a massive number of born again believers who has lived within the past 2000 years who has behaved differently from the nonbelievers.

 If God knows everything, than why would God create a soul that is to be destroyed?

My attitude about this question is that we learn precept after precept until all mysteries are revealed. I believe that the answer is in the future. Faith comes into play when it comes to this question. One possibility is reincarnation in the sense that God places a soul in a different discipline (Creation) until the soul passes God’s test. Although, the soul would experience possibly many deaths. This belief challenges the concept of hell making this world part hell; we are avoiding hell as much as possible while on the other hand seeking the good.

 Why does Christians refer only to the bible in order to justify their truths?

The bible is unique in the sense that it begins before the creation of the world, teaching unto the present things of the Spirit; thereafter, prophecy tells of the end of the world and the after life. The Holy Spirit of God is unique in the bible; no other religion or philosophy espouses to the Holy Spirit. The bible is the most comprehensive book of life and it is truly the complete book inspired by God, our Creator.Of course, the Son Of God, Jesus, is unique to the Word Of God.

Christians worship one God and one Savior. Why are there so many denominations?

The problems are created when us Christians place emphasize on one scripture over other scriptures; having a personal relationship with Christ Jesus would resolve the problem of many denominations. Jesus writes His laws on the hearts of His Believers leading to a proper weighting and interpretation of each scripture leading unto His unity.

The above questions are the main objections for not becoming a believer in Christ.

By Will Myers

Genesis 1 ( God created all that IS and nothing created was not created by God)

MATTHEW 7:12;  “So in everything, do to others what you would have them do to you, for this sums up the Law and the Prophets.” This states the fulfillment of the spiritual laws as related to the duty of human beings. In Romans 1:20; “ For the invisible things of him from the creation of the world are clearly seen, being understood by the things that are made, even his eternal power and Godhead; so that they are without excuse:” This scripture connects the physical world to the spiritual world.

All of the laws hang on the law of Love. The scripture, Matthew 7:12, reveals love in action for “God is Love” Who created His Son, Jesus, to be love.

The works of God is to make people believe in whom He has sent. God is molding each person to be like His Son, Jesus. Referring to the physical laws beginning at creation, the Son is the defacto mind of all creation with all of its dynamics which develops and conditions the mind unto One Mind, One Truth, that possesses God Holy Spirit. The spirit of selfness  causes sin which delays this process.

In Isiah 28:16; “Therefore thus saith the Lord God, Behold, I lay in Zion for a foundation a stone, a tried stone, a precious corner stone, a sure foundation: he that believeth shall not make haste.” This scripture reveals the Perfect Righteousness of God giving perfect order to all things.

Since we are beginning with Genesis, the Creation, where all of the laws of physics were created we can connect them to the spiritual laws by metaphysical equations:

UspaceVspace=Q, the laws, anything observable, principles (The God Equation) whereas Uspace represents God’s Perfect Righteousness giving perfect order to all things. The Vspace (Nexuses) represents the dynamics of all Creation which are in constant flux; everything is coming into being and going out of being. Therefore, Vspace is the nexus of all things. Things of Q (laws or principles) reflects One Truth, One higher Law. A particle reflects a higher law; anything observable reflects a higher law; such is the God Equation.

Since metaphysics is about the mind we must consider our role in Creation, our nature. So, this brings us to the Observer Equation: UspaceVspace[summed choices:A(x) + summed choices:B(y)]= Q(z) which represents our thought process as we are exposed to our environment and its fullest extent  God’s perfect righteousness giving perfect order is constantly imposing on us and vice versa The A(x) is first observed with its attributes and  wonderment x with faith playing a role and is a given when next, in order to overcome a shortcoming, observes B(y) and its attributes and wonderment y with faith playing a role.. All actions in the mind are to overcome a shortcoming, and things that are secure are overcoming fears of shortcomings.

Transforming by expanding the scripture, Isaiah 28:16, with knowledge of classical  physics and our Lord Jesus Who is the fulfillment and completion of the law, we get:  “Therefore thus saith the Lord God, Behold, I lay in Zion (in the essence of things) for a foundation (UspaceVspace) a stone, a tried stone, a precious corner stone, Q (The Laws), a sure foundation (UspaceVspace=Q, the God Equation): he that believeth shall not make haste.” Now recall Romans 1:20 which says that we see the spiritual from the way things are made because God’s Perfect Righteousness (Uspace) giving perfect order (Vspace) to all things have existed from the beginning of Creation unto the heavens. Jesus, the defacto, universal mind, was sent to mankind as the key to God’s Kingdom. He is our Savior Who redeemed us from a world of sin by the shedding of His blood.

I get a lot of questions about how effectively science reveals God. One of the most common is, does science reveal more about God today than it did a century ago? Another question I receive is, if science reveals much more about God than it did in the past, why are there so many more atheists today than in the past?

My quick answer to these questions is that in one context, science indeed reveals much more about God, his attributes, and his plans than it did a century ago. In another context, however, science reveals much less about God, his attributes, and his plans than it did a century ago. In this blog article I will explain and describe how science reveals much more. In my next blog article I will explain and describe how science reveals much less, and why, consequently, in some parts of the world atheists and agnostics today make up a larger percentage of the population.

God’s Two Books
The Bible declares that God has revealed himself through two books. One is the book of Scripture; the other is the book of nature. Theologians often refer to these books, respectively, as special revelation and general revelation. Psalm 119 and 2 Timothy 3:15–16 are two of several biblical texts declaring the value, trustworthiness, and power of Scripture in revealing and establishing God’s existence, his attributes, and his plan for humanity. Psalm 19:1–4, Psalm 97:6, and Romans 1:18–20, likewise, are three of several Bible passages proclaiming the value, trustworthiness, and power of the realm of nature in revealing and establishing God’s existence, attributes, and plan and purpose for creating everything, and us human beings in particular.

In one context, the database of the book of Scripture has remained static for more than 19 centuries. The last of the 66 books of the Bible was penned sometime during the last decade of the first century AD.¹ In another context, it is far from static. Scholars from each successive generation of church history, in researching biblical texts, gleaned additional insight and understanding. This progression of biblical insight and understanding is in keeping with 1 Peter 1:12:

It was revealed to them [Old Testament prophets] that they were not serving themselves but you, when they spoke of the things that have now been told you by those who have preached the gospel to you by the Holy Spirit sent from heaven. Even angels long to look into these things. (NIV)

The book of nature’s database has changed and continues to change in all contexts. Every day, scientists and others make new discoveries that add to humanity’s knowledge and understanding of the realm of nature. Daniel 12:4 prophetically declares that at the time of the end,

many will go here and there to increase knowledge. (NIV)

Most Bible scholars interpret this text as implying that in the epoch before the return of Jesus Christ, humanity will experience both a travel explosion and a knowledge explosion and that much of the travel will be motivated by the quest to expand knowledge.

Nature Revealing More
It is hard to deny that we are presently in the epoch Daniel spoke of. In my lifetime the published scientific research literature has expanded exponentially. For example, I started my subscription to the Astrophysical Journal when I was in my late teens. At that time, the page count for that journal was about 2,400 pages per year. Today, the pages for the journal are twice the size, and the page count runs about 36,000 pages per year.

That 30-fold expansion (15 times as many pages, times pages twice as large) is very conservative.When I was a teenager there were 15 major journals publishing research papers in astronomy and astrophysics. Today, there are more than 60.

Astronomy and astrophysics are not exceptional among the scientific disciplines. Every discipline of science has seen similar exponential increases in research findings. Furthermore, the number of scientific disciplines has greatly expanded.

What does this scientific information explosion say about nature’s revelation of God, his attributes, and his plans? It means that where several decades ago scientific discoveries that added to the weight of evidence for the Christian faith occurred on average about once a month, today they occur at a rate averaging several per day.

Just by myself, I post an average of four tweets per day alerting our constituents and others to recently published research papers that add to the body of evidence for the Christian faith and the Reasons to Believe biblical creation model. If you are not already a follower, I encourage you to check out my Twitter page. In each tweet I attempt to describe the discovery in 140 characters or less and always include a link to the actual research paper. That link gives you free access to the paper abstract, and most research paper abstracts give you the bottom line result of the research study in language that laypeople can understand. In some cases the entire paper is made available for free.

I am not alone. All of the scientist-evangelists on staff at Reasons to Believe regularly tweet about scientific discoveries adding to the weight of evidence for the Christian faith, and, like me, they write blog articles on the more significant of these discoveries.

Another dramatic demonstration of exponential growth in revelation about God from nature’s book is the increase in evidence for fine-tuning in the universe, solar system, and Earth that is needed to make possible the existence of life and of human beings (or their functional equivalent). In the first, second, and third editions of my book The Creator and the Cosmos—dated 1993, 1995, and 2001, respectively—I presented tables where I estimated the probability for attaining the necessary physical characteristics to make the existence of life possible somewhere in the universe without invoking divinely activated miracles. In 2006, I also updated a table on our website. A comparison of the four tables shows that the evidence for supernatural intervention to explain the fine-tuning needed to make life possible rises by more than a factor of 1,000 times per month. In other words, the measurable degree of fine-tuning design necessary to make long-lasting life possible increases by an average of more than a thousand times per month. For skeptics who struggle to believe in the Christian faith, we can challenge them to wait one month and observe how the fine-tuning evidence for God multiplies.

So, yes, today the book of nature is revealing much, much more about God, his nature, and his plan than in previous decades and centuries. That dramatically increased revelation from nature is what fuels the ministry of evangelism here at Reasons to Believe, in our chapters across the nation, and with all our volunteers and constituents. That exponential increase is what personally gives me hope that we may be able to complete the commission that Christ gave us to make disciples of all people groups within a few decades rather than several centuries.

Endnotes

1. Craig S. Keener, The IVP Bible Background Commentary: New Testament (Downers Grove, IL: InterVarsity Press, 1993), 758.

Subjects: God’s Existence

Why do I think God exists?

In short, the elegance, sophistication, and ingenuity of biochemical systems—and their astonishing similarity to man-made systems—convince me that God is responsible for life’s origin and design.

While many skeptics readily acknowledge the remarkable designs of biochemical systems, they would disagree with my conclusion about God’s existence. Why? It is because for every biochemical system I point to that displays beauty and elegance, they can point to one that seems to be poorly designed. In their view, these substandard designs reflect life’s evolutionary origin. They argue that evolutionary mechanisms kludged together the cell’s chemical systems through a historically contingent process that co-opted preexisting systems, cobbling them together to form new biochemical systems.

According to skeptics, one doesn’t have to look hard to find biochemical systems that seem to have been put together in a haphazard manner, and DNA replication appears to be an example of this. In many respects, DNA replication lies at the heart of the cell’s chemical operations. If designed by a Creator, this biochemical system, above all others, should epitomize intelligent design. Yet the DNA replication process appears to be unwieldy, inefficient, and unduly complex—the type of system evolution would generate by force, not the type of system worthy to be designated as the product of the Creator’s handiwork.

Yet new work by Japanese researchers helps explain why DNA replication is the way it is.¹ Instead of reflecting the cumbersome product of an unguided evolutionary history, the DNA replication process displays an exquisite molecular logic.

To appreciate the significance of the Japanese study and its implication for the creation-evolution controversy, a short biochemistry primer is in order. For readers who are familiar with DNA’s structure and the DNA replication process, you can skip the next two sections.

DNA

DNA consists of chainlike molecules known as polynucleotides. Two polynucleotide chains align in an antiparallel fashion to form a DNA molecule. (The two strands are arranged parallel to one another with the starting point of one strand in the polynucleotide duplex located next to the ending point of the other strand, and vice versa.) The paired polynucleotide chains twist around each other to form the well-known DNA double helix. The cell’s machinery forms polynucleotide chains by linking together four different subunit molecules called nucleotides. The nucleotides used to build DNA chains are adenosine, guanosine, cytidine, and thymidine, famously abbreviated A, G, C, and T, respectively.

The nucleotide molecules that make up the strands of DNA are, in turn, complex molecules consisting of both a phosphate moiety and a nucleobase (either adenine, guanine, cytosine, or thymine) joined to a five-carbon sugar (deoxyribose).

Image 1: Adenosine Monophosphate, a Nucleotide 

Repeatedly linking the phosphate group of one nucleotide to the deoxyribose unit of another nucleotide forms the backbone of the DNA strand. The nucleobases extend as side chains from the backbone of the DNA molecule and serve as interaction points when the two DNA strands align and twist to form the double helix.

Image 2: The DNA Backbone 

When the two DNA strands align, the adenosine (A) side chains of one strand always pair with thymidine (T) side chains from the other strand. Likewise, the guanosine (G) side chains from one DNA strand always pair with cytidine (C) side chains from the other strand.

DNA Replication

Biochemists refer to DNA replication as a template-directed, semiconservative process. By template-directed, biochemists mean that the nucleotide sequences of the “parent” DNA molecule function as a template, directing the assembly of the DNA strands of the two “daughter” molecules. By semiconservative, biochemists mean that after replication, each daughter DNA molecule contains one newly formed DNA strand and one strand from the parent molecule.

Image 3: Semiconservative DNA Replication 

Conceptually, template-directed, semiconservative DNA replication entails the separation of the parent DNA double helix into two single strands. By using the base-pairing rules, each strand serves as a template for the cell’s machinery to use when it forms a new DNA strand with a nucleotide sequence complementary to the parent strand. Because each strand of the parent DNA molecule directs the production of a new DNA strand, two daughter molecules result. Each one possesses an original strand from the parent molecule and a newly formed DNA strand produced by a template-directed synthetic process.

DNA replication begins at specific sites along the DNA double helix, called replication origins. The DNA double helix unwinds locally at the origin of replication to produce what biochemists call a replication bubble. The bubble expands in both directions from the origin during the course of DNA replication. Once the individual strands of the DNA double helix unwind and are exposed within the replication bubble, they are available to direct the production of the daughter strand. The site where the DNA double helix continuously unwinds is called the replication fork. Because DNA replication proceeds in both directions away from the origin, there are two replication forks within each bubble.

Image 4: DNA Replication 

DNA replication can only proceed in a single direction, from the top of the DNA strand to the bottom. Because the strands that form the DNA double helix align in an antiparallel fashion with the top of one strand juxtaposed to the bottom of the other strand, only one strand at each replication fork has the proper orientation (bottom-to-top) to direct the assembly of a new strand, in the top-to-bottom direction. For this strand—referred to as the “leading strand”—DNA replication proceeds rapidly and continuously in the direction of the advancing replication fork.

DNA replication can’t proceed along the strand with the top-to-bottom orientation until the replication bubble has expanded enough to expose a sizable stretch of DNA. When this happens, DNA replication moves away from the advancing replication fork. DNA replication can only proceed a short distance for the top-to-bottom-oriented strand before the replication process has to stop and wait for more of the parent DNA strand to be exposed. When a sufficient length of the parent DNA template is exposed for a second time, DNA replication can proceed again, but only briefly before it has to stop again and wait for more DNA to be exposed. The process of discontinuous DNA replication takes place repeatedly until the entire strand is replicated. Each time DNA replication starts and stops, a small fragment of DNA is produced. Biochemists refer to these pieces of DNA (that will eventually compose the daughter strand) as “Okazaki fragments,” named after the biochemist who discovered them. Biochemists call the strand produced discontinuously the “lagging strand” because DNA replication for this strand lags behind the more rapidly produced leading strand.

One additional point: the leading strand at one replication fork is the lagging strand at the other replication fork, since the replication forks at the two ends of the replication bubble advance in opposite directions.

Before the newly formed daughter strands can be produced, a small RNA primer must be produced. The protein that synthesizes new DNA by reading the parent DNA template strand—DNA polymerase—can’t start production from scratch. It has to be primed. A massive protein complex, called the primosome, which consists of more than 15 different proteins, produces the RNA primer needed by DNA polymerase.

Once primed, DNA polymerase will continuously produce DNA along the leading strand. However, for the lagging strand, DNA polymerase can only generate DNA in spurts to produce Okazaki fragments. Each time DNA polymerase generates an Okazaki fragment, the primosome complex must produce a new RNA primer.

Once DNA replication is completed, the RNA primers are removed from the continuous DNA of the leading strand and the Okazaki fragments that make up the lagging strand. A protein called a 3’–5’ exonuclease removes the RNA primers. A different DNA polymerase fills in the gaps created by the removal of the RNA primers. Finally, a protein called a ligase connects all the Okazaki fragments together to form a continuous piece of DNA out of the lagging strand.

DNA Replication and the Case for Evolution

This cursory description of DNA replication clearly illustrates the complexity of this biochemical operation. (Many details of the process were left out of the discussion.) This description also reveals why biochemists view this process as cumbersome and unwieldy. There is no obvious reason for why DNA replication proceeds as a semiconservative, RNA primer–dependent, unidirectional process involving leading and lagging strands to produce DNA daughter molecules. Because of this uncertainty, skeptics view DNA replication as a chance outcome of a historically contingent process, cobbled together from the biochemical leftovers of the RNA world.

If there is one feature of DNA replication that is responsible for the complexity of the process, it is the directionality of DNA replication—from top to bottom. At first glance, it would seem as if the process would be simpler and more elegant if replication could proceed in both directions. Skeptics argue that the fact that it doesn’t reflects the evolutionary origin of the replication process.

Yet work by the team from Sapporo, Japan, indicates that there is an exquisite molecular rationale for the directionality of DNA replication.

Why DNA Replication Proceeds in a Single Direction

These researchers recognized an important opportunity to ask why DNA replication proceeds only in a single direction with the discovery of a class of enzymes that add nucleotides to the ends of transfer RNA (tRNA) molecules. (Transfer RNA molecules ferry amino acids to the ribosome during protein synthesis.) If damaged, tRNA molecules cannot properly carry out their role in protein production. Fortunately, there are repair enzymes that can fix damaged tRNA molecules. One of them is called Thg1-like protein (TLP).

TLP adds nucleotides to damaged ends of tRNA molecules. But instead of adding the nucleotides top to bottom, the enzyme adds these subunit molecules to the tRNA bottom to top, the opposite direction of DNA replication.

By determining the mechanism employed by TLP during bottom-to-top nucleotide addition, the researchers gained important insight into the constraints of DNA replication. As it turns out, bottom-to-top addition is a much more complex process than the normal top-to-bottom nucleotide addition. Bottom-to-top addition is a cumbersome two-step process that requires an enzyme with two active sites that have to be linked together in a precise way. In contrast, top-to-bottom addition is a simple one-step reaction that proceeds with a single active site. In other words, DNA replication proceeds in a single direction (top-to-bottom) because it is mechanistically simpler and more efficient.

One could argue that the complexity that arises from the top-to-bottom DNA replication process is a trade-off for a mechanistically simpler nucleotide addition reaction. Still, if DNA replication proceeded in both directions, the process would be complex and unwieldy. For example, if replication proceeded in two directions, the cell would require two distinct types of primosomes and DNA polymerases, one set for each direction of DNA replication. Employing two sets of primosomes and DNA polymerases is clearly less efficient than employing a single set of enzymes.

Ironically, if DNA replication could proceed in two directions, there would still be a leading and a lagging strand. Why? It is because bottom-to-top replication is a two-step process and would proceed more slowly than the single step of top-to-bottom replication. In other words, the assembly of the DNA strand in a bottom-to-top direction would lag behind the assembly of the DNA strand that traveled in a top-to-bottom direction.

Bidirectional DNA replication would also cause another complication due to a crowding effect. Once the replication bubble opens, both sets of replication enzymes would have to fit into the replication bubble’s constrained space. This molecular overcrowding would further compromise the efficiency of the replication process. Overcrowding is not an issue for unidirectional DNA replication that proceeds in a top-to-bottom direction.

The bottom line: In light of this new insight, it is hard to argue that DNA replication has been cobbled together via a historically contingent pathway. Instead, it is looking more and more like a process ingeniously designed by a divine Mind.