Question of the week: How did Adam and Eve keep warm before the fall when they were still naked if God had created them during the last ice age?
My answer: Good question. Genesis 2 implies that God created Adam and Eve sometime during an ice age, most likely the last ice age. The reason why is that Genesis 2 describes four known rivers, the Euphrates, Tigris, Pishon, and Gihon, coming together in the Garden of Eden. Today, only two of those four rivers are flowing, but during an ice age all four would be steadily flowing rivers. The only location where the four rivers come together presently is more than 200 feet below sea level in the southeastern part of the Persian Gulf. During an ice age, however, the sea level was 200–390 feet lower. The location where the four rivers come together would have been above sea level.
The location of the Garden of Eden in the southeast part of what is now the Persian Gulf at an elevation more than 200 feet below the present sea level implies that it must have had a year-round warm climate in spite of the colder conditions farther north and at higher elevations. Adam and Eve would not need clothing to stay warm.
For a much more comprehensive and detailed answer, see my book Navigating Genesis, pages 95–108.1
Reasons to Believe emerged from my passion to research, develop, and proclaim the most powerful new reasons to believe in Christ as Creator, Lord, and Savior and to use those new reasons to reach p… Read more about Hugh Ross.
Question of the week: The Bible doesn’t mention anything about early believers celebrating any event other than baptism and communion. Therefore, shouldn’t Christians refrain from celebrating Christmas especially since it originated from pagan traditions?
Question of the week: In what ways and to what degrees are the relationships that Christians have today with God the same or different from the pre-sin relationship Adam and Eve had with God?
RTB’s mission is to spread the Christian Gospel by demonstrating that sound reason and scientific research—including the very latest discoveries—consistently support, rather than erode, confidence in the truth of the Bible and faith in the personal, transcendent God revealed in both Scripture and nature. Learn More »
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Suicide remains a serious problem in our world today. And some researchers say suicide rates have increased during the pandemic.1 In fact, during the month of October 2020 there were more deaths in Japan from suicide than from COVID-19.2
Suicide is but one aspect of the broader problem of evil, pain, and suffering. Thus, Christians are not immune from this tragic reality. In fact, over the last couple of years you’ve probably seen news reports of evangelical pastors who died by suicide. Because my family has been touched by the tragedy of suicide, I wrote an article about the subject, specifically addressing whether suicide is a sin that can be forgiven by God.
Here is the concluding paragraph of my earlier article:
I argue, on the basis of Scripture, that God can and does forgive his children who take their lives. This affirmation of forgiveness in no way condones suicide, which is a great sin. Nevertheless, Jesus Christ’s sacrificial death atones for all the sins of his people—past, present, and future (Romans 3:25). And God will not remove his forgiving love because a mentally ill person in a state of desperation commits a terrible self-destructive deed (Romans 8:38–39). Believers in the Lord Jesus Christ enjoy God’s enduring and complete forgiveness for all their sins (2 Corinthians 5:18–19).
I received many comments on this piece. Some of them came from Christians who had lost loved ones to suicide. One such person, a father, even thanked me for helping him to think through the loss of his dear son and how God’s forgiveness related to the tragedy.
But I also had more than one person object to my theological conclusion that God forgives believers in Christ who take their own lives. Here are the (paraphrased) comments of three people who objected to my conclusion followed by my responses. My objective is not to win an argument per se but to hopefully bring insight and empathy to a very painful topic that touches many families.
Objection #1
Does a person with genuine confident trust in and reliance on Christ take their own life? Wouldn’t real faith in Christ translate into a hope that sustains the will to live, the will to honor and serve our Savior, the will to persevere through the valley of the shadow of death? Isn’t growth in sanctification one that climbs higher overall, closer to God, not down and away into suicide?
My Response
While I am not a mental health professional, after much study and reflection on this difficult topic from a theological and psychological perspective, my answer to your first question is yes. I have known Christians who have died by suicide. Christians are not immune to serious mental health challenges or even to despair itself. Sometimes despair overwhelms their faith to the point of not being able to take the pain any longer.
Sometimes that despair may be the result of mental illness or great trauma, abuse, addiction, or a combination thereof. The person feels a great sense of mental and soul sorrow.
Human fallenness and brokenness are profound. Original sin shouldn’t be underestimated. Salvation and sanctification are not guarantees that Christians will not struggle deeply. I’ve known Christians who were combat soldiers with PTSD and for me to tell them to just strive harder at their sanctification wouldn’t be sufficient or compassionate.
I’ve talked with people who were in their darkest hour. I had compassion on them and I’m confident that God, in his infinite love, does as well. The wonderful thing about God is that he loves even those who engage in self-destructive acts. God’s grace (unmerited favor) is rich, deep, and evident in the person of Jesus Christ. That grace causes me to empathize with a person’s deep mental suffering.
Objection #2
What about 1 Corinthians 3:16–17which specifically states that our bodies are the temples of the Holy Spirit and anyone who destroys the body will be destroyed by God? How do you see that verse?
My Response
As a Christian theologian and apologist, I attempt to understand Scripture within its proper context.
The biblical commentaries I’ve consulted concerning 1 Corinthians 3:16–17 indicate that the temples of God the apostle Paul is speaking about are to be understood corporately as the church and not as individual human bodies. Thus, God will punish those who damage or fracture the church. So, this passage seems to have no application to the issue of suicide.
Objection #3
You can’t know with certainty that every suicide victim who is a Christian goes to heaven or is rescued from hell after they sin. “You shall not kill” is in the Bible. I know the atoning death of Jesus is all-powerful so I guess the issue is: is repentance required for the blood of Jesus to cleanse away sin? And would that be possible even after the soul/spirit leaves the body and the person has not repented?
My Response
The Hebrew is translated: “You shall not murder.” Suicide is self-murder but it is likely done by people who are psychologically ill and thus not in full control of their mental faculties. I read Scripture as indicating that God forgives all the sins of his people including the tragic cases of suicide in which one cannot repent. Does anyone ever perfectly repent of all their sin? Sinners are sometimes oblivious of their sins (pride, envy, selfishness).
Leaning on Hope
Suicide is an especially painful tragedy for surviving family and friends. And when a Christian takes their life it raises genuine theological issues. In such difficult circumstances it is reassuring to hear the apostle Paul’s extraordinarily comforting words:
For I am convinced that neither death nor life, neither angels nor demons, neither the present nor the future, nor any powers,neither height nor depth, nor anything else in all creation, will be able to separate us from the love of God that is in Christ Jesus our Lord (Romans 8:38–39).
As Christians we long for the time when “‘He [our God] will wipe every tear from their eyes. There will be no more death’ or mourning or crying or pain, for the old order of things has passed away” (Revelation 21:4).
Reflections: Your Turn
If you are contemplating suicide or know of someone who is, someone at the Suicide Prevention Lifeline (1-800-273-8255) is available to chat right now (24/7).
Have you known Christians who have struggled with suicidal thoughts? Visit Reflections on WordPress to comment with your response.
I believe deeply that “all truth is God’s truth.” That historic affirmation means that when we discover and grasp truth in the world and in life we move closer to its divine Author. This approach r… Read more about Kenneth R. Samples.
Climate change has been and will remain a key topic of discussion and concern for many people. For scientists, sustained study of Arctic sea ice provides one reliable measure of what the future may hold. Are we headed for warming or an ice age?
What is real? What is right? What is lovely? Human beings ask these kinds of questions because we long for at least three things: truth, goodness, and beauty.
Can science test the veracity of biblical creation events such as whether Earth’s early atmosphere was opaque? I have always maintained that the answer is yes. In fact, the Bible invites such testing. In this way, science can affirm or negate the Bible’s statements about creation.
RTB’s mission is to spread the Christian Gospel by demonstrating that sound reason and scientific research—including the very latest discoveries—consistently support, rather than erode, confidence in the truth of the Bible and faith in the personal, transcendent God revealed in both Scripture and nature. Learn More »
Support Reasons to Believe
Your support helps more people find Christ through sharing how the latest scientific discoveries affirm our faith in the God of the Bible.DONATE NOW
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Reasons to Believe is a nonprofit organization designated as tax-exempt under Section 501(c)3 by the Internal Revenue Service. Donations are tax-deductible to the full extent of the law. Our tax ID is #33-0168048. All Transactions on our Web site are safe and secure.
Copyright 2020. Reasons to Believe. All rights reserved. Use of this website constitutes acceptance of our Privac
As a chemistry major at West Virginia State College during the early 1980s, I was required to take a library course on the chemical literature before I could graduate. During the class, we learned how to use the many library reference materials devoted to cataloging and retrieving the vast amount of chemistry research published in the scientific literature. Included in this list was the multivolume Beilstein’s Handbook of Organic Chemistry.
Beilstein’s Handbook of Organic Chemistry
Beilstein’s Handbook consists of hundreds of volumes with entries for well over 10 million compounds. The books that originally made up Beilstein’s Handbook took up rows of shelves in the library with new volumes added to the collection every few years. Today, the Beilstein’s volumes are no longer published as printed editions. Instead the entries are now housed online in the Beilstein’s Handbook database, with the old print volumes serving as little more than artifacts of a bygone era in the annals of chemistry.
Learning to master Beilstein’s Handbook is no easy task. In fact, there are textbooks devoted to teaching chemists how to use this massive database effectively. It is well worth the effort. If you know what you are doing, Beilstein’s Handbook holds the key to finding quickly anything you need to know about any organic compound, provided it has been published somewhere.
Beilstein Synthesis and the Origin-of-Life Problem
The utility of Beilstein’s Handbook is endless and its applications far-reaching. In fact, Beilstein’s has even served as the inspiration for origin-of-life chemists seeking to make sense of prebiotic chemistry and chemical evolution. These investigators think that if they can master an approach to prebiotic chemistry called a Beilstein synthesis, then they may well gain key insight into how chemical evolution generated the first life on Earth. In short, a Beilstein synthesis involves a chemical reaction taking place in a single flask with a large number of chemical compounds serving as the reactants. This process is so named as a nod to the 10 million entries in the Beilstein’s database.
Origin-of-life scientists are interested in Beilstein synthesis because they think that these types of reactions more closely reflect the chemical and physical complexity of early Earth’s environment. Yet, very few origin-of-life researchers have even attempted this type of reaction. Understanding what transpired during a Beilstein synthesis has long been an intractable problem. Until very recently, the analytical capabilities didn’t exist to efficiently and effectively characterize the myriad products that would form during a Beilstein reaction, let alone identify and characterize the different chemical routes in play. For this reason, origin-of-life researchers have focused on singular prebiotic processes involving a limited number of compounds, reacting under highly controlled laboratory conditions. In these types of reactions, it is far easier to make sense of experimental outcomes—but the ease of interpretation comes with a cost.
Over the last 70 years, the focus on singular sets of reactions and highly controlled conditions has produced some successes for origin-of-life researchers—albeit qualified ones. Focusing on isolated reactions and specific sets of conditions has made it possible for researchers to identify a number of physicochemical processes that could have contributed to the early stages of chemical evolution—at least, in principle. Unfortunately, serious concerns remain about the geochemical relevance of these types of experiments. These reactions perform well in the laboratory, under the auspices of chemists, but significant questions abound about the productivity of the same laboratory processes in the milieu of early Earth. (For a detailed discussion of this problem, I recommend my blog article “Prebiotic Chemistry and the Hand of God.”)
Additionally, these highly controlled reactions—carried out under pristine conditions—fail to take into account the chemical and physical complexity of early Earth. Undoubtedly, this complexity will impact the physicochemical processes on early Earth, shaping the outcome of plausible prebiotic reaction routes. No one really knows if this complexity will facilitate chemical evolution or frustrate it, but now we have some idea, thanks to the work of a research team from the Polish Academy of Sciences. These investigators moved the origin-of-life research community closer to achieving a prebiotic Beilstein synthesis by developing and deploying a computer algorithm (called Allchemy) to perform computer-assisted organic chemistry designed to mimic the earliest stages of chemical evolution. In effect, they performed an in silico Beilstein reaction with some rather intriguing results.1
Allchemy and the Prebiotic Chemistry
The researchers used Allchemy to identify the reaction pathways and products that could have formed under plausible early Earth conditions. They initiated the computer-assisted reactions by starting with hydrogen sulfide, water, ammonia, nitrogen, methane, and hydrogen cyanide as the original set of reactants, under the assumption that these small molecules would have been present on early Earth. After the reactions reached completion, the researchers removed any products that possessed an “invalid” chemical structure, then incorporated the remaining reaction products into the original set of starting compounds, and ran the computer-assisted reactions again. They repeated this process 7 times.
For each generation of reactions, they “computed” reaction pathways and products using a set of 614 rules. These rules were developed by encoding into the algorithm all of the known prebiotic reactions published in the scientific literature. They also encoded plausible conditions of early Earth. As they developed the list of rules, the researchers also paid close attention to chemical functional groups that would be incompatible with one another. As it turns out, it was possible to group these 614 rules into 72 chemical reaction classes. The algorithm began each generation of reactions by identifying suitable reactants for each class of reactions and then “reacting” them to discover the types of products that would form.
Allchemy Results
Through the course of 7 generations of reactions, Allchemy produced almost 37,000 chemical compounds from the initial set of 6 gaseous molecules. Of these compounds, only 82 were biotic. And, of this collection, 41 were peptides (formed when amino acids react together to form an adduct).
As it turns out the biotic compounds had some unusual properties that distinguished them from the vast collection of abiotic molecules. These compounds:
Are more thermodynamically stable
Display less hydrophobicity (water-insolubility)
Harbor fewer distinct functional groups
Possess fewer reactive functional groups
Have a balanced number of functional groups that were hydrogen-bond donors and acceptors
The researchers also discovered that there were a number of distinct pathways that could produce biotic compounds. That is to say, they observed synthetic redundancy for the biotic compounds. They discovered that they could eliminate nearly half of the 72 reaction classes from the algorithm and still generate all 82 biotic compounds. In contrast, the abiotic compounds failed to display synthetic redundancy. Only 8 of the reaction classes could be eliminated and still generate the same suite of abiotic molecules.
Additionally, the team discovered that some of the compounds generated by the in silico reactions—such as formic acid, cyanoacetylene, and isocyanic acid—served as synthetic hubs, giving rise to a large number of additional products. It is quite possible that the existence of these reaction hubs contributes to the synthetic redundancy of the biotic compounds.
Through the course of 7 generations of chemical synthesis, the researchers found that the Allchemy algorithm produced all of the prebiotic reactions reported in the scientific literature, to date. This finding isn’t surprising because the research team used these reactions to help design the rules used to guide Allchemy.
The algorithm also yielded prebiotic reactions that, heretofore had not been discovered by origin-of-life researchers. The research team demonstrated the validity of these pathways, discovered in silico, by successfully executing these same reactions in the laboratory.
Emergent Properties of Prebiotic Reactions
One of the most exciting discoveries made by the team from the Polish National Academy of Sciences was the emergent properties that arose after 7 generations of in silico prebiotic reactions:
Unexpectedly, some of the reaction products catalyzed additional chemical reactions, which expanded the range of available prebiotic reactions.
Reaction cycles and reaction cascades emerged, with the reaction cycles displaying the property of self-regeneration. In fact, after 7 generations, the chemical space of the prebiotic reactions became densely populated with reaction cycles.
Surfactants, such as fatty acids, emerged. They also discovered peptides with surfactant properties. These types of compounds can, in principle, form vesicles that can encapsulate materials yielding proto-cellular structures.
In many respects, this work reflects science at its best. It ushers in a new era in prebiotic chemistry, demonstrating the power of computer-assisted organic chemistry to shed light on chemical evolution. Coupled with the increased capacity to analyze complex chemical mixtures (thanks to advances in analytical chemistry), Allchemy and other similar software may make it possible to provide meaningful interpretations of real-life Beilstein reactions.
This work also shows that, in principle, complex chemical mixtures can give rise to some interesting emergent features that have bearing on chemical evolution and the rise of the chemical complexity and organization required for the origin of life. Nevertheless, we are still a far distance from arriving at any real understanding as to how life could have emerged through evolutionary processes.
Are the Allchemy Results Geochemically Relevant?
It is critical to keep in mind that this work involves computer modeling of chemical processes that could have taken place under the putative conditions of early Earth. And, though the algorithm developed by the investigators from the Polish National Academy of Sciences is quite sophisticated, it still represents a simplified set of scenarios that, at times, fails to fully and realistically account for our planet’s early conditions.
For example, some of the starting materials selected for the in silico reactions, such as ammonia and methane, likely weren’t present on the early Earth at appreciable levels. In fact, most planetary scientists believe that Earth’s early atmosphere was composed of water, nitrogen, and carbon dioxide. When this type of gas mixture is used in spark-discharge experiments—such as the ones carried out by legendary origin-of-life researcher Stanley Miller—no organic compounds form. In other words, this gas mixture is unreactive.
The researchers also ignored the concentration of the reactants. Laboratory studies indicate that many prebiotic reactions require relatively high concentrations of the reactants. Given the expansiveness of early Earth’s environment (particularly, its oceans), it is hard to imagine that the concentrations needed for many prebiotic reactions could ever have been achieved. In other words, it is quite likely that the concentration of prebiotic reactants on Earth was too dilute to be meaningful for chemical evolution.
The research group also ignored kinetic effects. Not all chemical reactions proceed at the same rate. So, while a chemical reaction may be possible, in principle, in reality it may transpire too slowly to be meaningful. By not taking into account rates of chemical reactions, the researchers undermined the geochemical relevance of their computer-assisted reactions.
The availability and types of energy sources on early Earth were ignored as well. Many prebiotic reactions require energy sources to trigger them. In many instances these energy sources have to be highly specific to initiate chemical reactions. Energy sources need to be powerful enough to kick-start the reactions, but not so powerful as to cause the breakdown of the reactants and ensuing products.
The researchers also failed to take into account the stereochemistry of the reactants and products. For this reason, they have failed to shed any insight into the homochirality problem, which beleaguers origin-of-life research.
So, the results of Allchemy have questionable geochemical relevance, and thus, questionable bearing on the origin-of-life issue. Still, the work demonstrates the value of Beilstein reactions—even, if performed in silico—and does indicate that emergent properties can originate out of chemical complexity, in principle.
It is also worth noting that this work sheds potential light on the earliest stages of chemical evolution. Even if building block materials are in place, there still needs to be an explanation for the emergence of information-rich biopolymers and stable membrane-bound vesicles that would form protocells. The work of the Polish National Academy of Sciences investigators provides clues as to how this might happen, but significant hurdles remain.
The Homopolymer Problem
One of the interesting findings of the in silico experiments was the recognition that prebiotic reactions generated around 40 peptides. The peptides became larger and more numerous for each generation. These compounds are formed from amino acids, which combine into “chain-like” molecules and could be viewed as the stepping stones to proteins. Some of the peptides produced in the prebiotic pathways display “nonbiological” bonding. This type of bond formation arises from reactions between the hydroxyl and carboxylic acid side groups of serine and aspartic acid (produced in the prebiotic reactions), respectively, and the carboxylic acid moiety and amino groups bound to the alpha carbon. These nonstandard linkages would render these peptides irrelevant for the production of larger proteins because of the homopolymer problem.
The late Robert Shapiro first identified this problem a number of years ago. For biopolymers to be able to adopt higher-order three-dimensional structures or to carry out critical functions, such as self-replication, the backbone must consist of identical repeating units. For intermolecular interactions to stabilize the higher-order structure of biopolymers or for these biopolymers to serve as templates for self-replication, the backbone’s structure must repeat without any interruption. This means that the subunit molecules that form the self-replicator must consist of the same chemical class.
Chemists call chain-like molecules with structurally repetitive backbones homopolymers. (Homo = “same”; poly = “many”; mer = “units”). DNA, RNA, proteins, and the proposed pre-RNA world self-replicators, such as peptide-nucleic acids, are all homopolymers and satisfy the chemical requirements necessary to function as self-replicators.
Undirected chemical processes can produce homopolymers under carefully controlled, pristine laboratory conditions. However, as Shapiro pointed out, these processes cannot generate these types of molecules under early Earth’s conditions. The chemical compounds found in the complex chemical mixture that origin-of-life researchers think existed on early Earth would interfere with homopolymer formation. Instead, polymers with highly heterogeneous backbone structures would be produced. The likely chemical components of any prebiotic soup would not only interrupt the structural regularity of the biopolymer’s backbone, but they would also prematurely terminate its formation or introduce branch sites.
The homopolymer problem is an intractable problem for chemical evolution—at least for replicator-first scenarios. Even though the in silico experiments demonstrated that amino acids can form and even combine into useful peptides, they also demonstrated that undesirable switching, branching, and termination reactions take place. Ironically, the in silico experiments have also provided added validation for the homopolymer problem.
The Membrane Problem
Another interesting feature of this work is the generation of surfactant molecules, such as fatty acids and amphiphilic peptides. Presumably, these materials could form vesicles with the capacity to encapsulate materials, leading to the first protocells. Yet, this process seems unlikely under the conditions of early Earth. Laboratory studies demonstrate that vesicles assembled from fatty acids are metastable and highly sensitive to fluctuation of environmental conditions. In fact, fatty acid vesicles assemble only under exacting solution conditions and require precise lipid compositions.2
Again, these insights raise questions about the geochemical relevance of this result. So, even though surfactants can form under prebiotic conditions, their assembly into bilayer-forming vesicles is not a given, by any means.
Prebiotic Chemistry and the Anthropic Principle
Even though the sophisticated work from the Polish National Academy of Sciences was designed to validate the notion of chemical evolution, the study’s results produced some interesting theistic implications. There are good reasons to think that origin-of-life researchers will never determine how evolutionary pathways generated the first life-forms because of seemingly intractable problems facing chemical evolution. In the face of these dismal prospects, it becomes hard to argue that mechanism alone can explain the origin of life and the design of core biochemical systems. The conviction that a Creator isn’t necessary stands on shaky ground.
Still, even if one grants the possibility that life had an evolutionary origin, it is impossible to escape the necessary role a Mind must have played in the appearance of first life on Earth—at least based on some intriguing results that emerge from the computer-assisted Beilstein reaction. As a case in point, it is provocative that the 82 biotic compounds which formed—a small fraction of the nearly 37,000 compounds generated by the in silico reactions—all share a suite of physicochemical properties that make these compounds unusually stable and relatively unreactive. These qualities cause these materials to persist in the prebiotic setting. It is also intriguing that these 82 compounds display synthetic redundancy, with the capability of being generated by several distinct chemical routes. It is also fortuitous that these compounds possess the just-right set of properties—many of which overlap with the set of properties that distinguish them from the vast number of abiotic compounds—that make them ideally suited to survive on early Earth and useful as building block materials for life.
In other words, there appear to be constraints on prebiotic chemistry that inevitably lead to the production of key biotic molecules with the just-right properties that make them unusually stable and ideally suited for life. This remarkable coincidence is a bit “suspicious” and highly fortuitous, suggesting a fitness for purpose to the nature of prebiotic chemistry. To put it another way: There is an apparent teleology to prebiotic chemistry. It appears that the laws of physics and chemistry may well have been rigged at the outset to ensure that life’s building blocks naturally emerged under the conditions of early Earth. Could it be that this coincidence reflects the fact that a Mind is behind it all?
It is remarkable to me as a biochemist and a Christian that the more insight we gain into the origin of life, the more the evidence points to the necessary role of a Creator, whether the Creator chose to directly intervene to create the first life-forms or whether he rigged the universe in such a way that life would inevitable emerge because of the design and constraints imposed by the laws of nature.
It really is a new era in origin-of-life research.
Endnotes
Agnieszka Wołos et al., “Synthetic Connectivity, Emergence, and Self-Regeneration in the Network of Prebiotic Chemistry,” Science 369 (September 25, 2020): eaaw1955, doi: 10.1126/science.aaw1955.
Jacquelyn A. Thomas and F. R. Rana, “Influence of Environmental Conditions, Lipid Composition, and Phase Behavior on the Origin of Cell Membranes,” Origins of Life and Evolution of Biospheres 37 (2007): 267-85, doi:10.1007/s11084-007-9065-6.
I watched helplessly as my father died a Muslim. Though he and I would argue about my conversion, I was unable to convince him of the truth of the Christian faith.
Who in America is not familiar with Legos? Lego is perhaps one of the most recognizable brands in the world. It was recently estimated that 400 million children and adults worldwide play with Lego pieces each year.1 Is the human fascination with such building blocks analogous to what science reveals about the universe’s creation?
Does evolution or creation better explain the rapid emergence of complex animals? If there’s one event in Earth’s fossil record history that garners more spirited discussion than any other, it would be the Cambrian explosion.
Suicide remains a serious problem in our world today. And some researchers say suicide rates have increased during the pandemic.1 In fact, during the month of October 2020 there were more deaths in Japan from suicide than from COVID-19.2
RTB’s mission is to spread the Christian Gospel by demonstrating that sound reason and scientific research—including the very latest discoveries—consistently support, rather than erode, confidence in the truth of the Bible and faith in the personal, transcendent God revealed in both Scripture and nature. Learn More »
Support Reasons to Believe
Your support helps more people find Christ through sharing how the latest scientific discoveries affirm our faith in the God of the Bible.DONATE NOW
U.S. Mailing Address 818 S. Oak Park Rd. Covina, CA 91724
Reasons to Believe is a nonprofit organization designated as tax-exempt under Section 501(c)3 by the Internal Revenue Service. Donations are tax-deductible to the full extent of the law. Our tax ID is #33-0168048. All Transactions on our Web site are safe and secure.
Copyright 2020. Reasons to Believe. All rights reserved. Use of this website constitutes acceptance of our Privacy Policy.
“The Curious Case of Benjamin Button,” written by F. Scott Fitzgerald—one of the great American writers of the twentieth century—is a short story about a boy born with the physical appearance of a 70-year-old. As he lives his young life, Benjamin’s parents soon discover that he ages in reverse, becoming younger as he gets older.
This fictional tale about the extraordinary life of Benjamin Button is odd to us for one simple reason: aging is a natural part of life. It’s inevitable. We struggle to conceive what life would be like if we didn’t age. Yet, if we are honest, many of us find ourselves a bit envious of Benjamin. We wish we would become younger as we grow older.
As fanciful as it might sound, we just might get our wish, thanks to work carried out by a team of biomedical researchers from Israel.1 These researchers treated 35 human test subjects with hyperbaric oxygen over the span of two months and discovered that two markers used to assess biological age showed a reversal, indicating that the test subjects became biologically younger as they chronologically aged.
This work is exciting—and concerning.
Scientists may be close to clinically arresting and even reversing the aging process. This potential breakthrough would carry staggering biomedical implications, perhaps allowing us to stave off diseases such as cancer, type II diabetes, and a host of cardiovascular disorders. But this work also has broad-ranging ethical and societal implications, paving the way for dramatic extensions in human life expectancy, while at the same time fueling the transhumanism movement.
Some Biological Consequences of Aging It goes without saying that as humans age, we experience a loss of physiological integrity (to use scientific jargon), which, in turn, makes us susceptible to diseases and leads to death. In fact, aging is the major risk factor in cancer, cardiovascular diseases, diabetes, and Alzheimer’s.
Biogerontologists have identified a number of physiological changes associated with aging, such as: (1) telomere shortening, (2) an accrual of gene mutations, (3) reduced cell-cell communication in tissues and organs, and (4) impaired cell function, which includes arrested growth and division (called senescence) and (5) impaired function of mitochondria.
One of the challenges facing investigators who study the biology of aging is determining which changes are a consequence of aging and which cause aging. Most scientists working in the biology of aging think that both telomere shortening and cellular senescence have a direct impact on the aging process. For this reason, many life scientists view telomere length and cellular senescence as reliable markers for biological age, with telomeres becoming predictably shorter and cellular senescence predictably increasing as each of us ages chronologically.
Reversing the Aging Process A growing number of biomedical researchers believe if we interrupt telomere shortening and cellular senescence, we can delay the onset of aging—maybe even reverse it. For example, in Humans 2.0, Ken Samples and I discuss the antiaging strategy advanced by Dr. Michael Fossel, which targets telomeres. Specifically, Fossel believes that through the use of the enzyme telomerase, it might be possible to lengthen telomeres, bringing an end to aging as we know it.
Even though Fossel’s idea seems reasonable, many life scientists and biomedical researchers have looked askance at the idea of antiaging therapies. Yet recent work published in 2019 by investigators from the US and Canada indicates that we are on the cusp of having genuine antiaging therapies.2
These investigators developed a drug cocktail that caused the thymus (an organ located between the heart and sternum) to increase in size. They carried out a small-scale clinical trial, administering their drug mixture to a small group of men between 50 and 60 years of age three or four times a week over the course of a year.
The thymus serves as the site for the maturation of white blood cells, a critical component of our immune system. As we age, our thymus becomes smaller, leading to loss of immune function. These researchers believe that by increasing thymus size, the loss of immune function can be arrested—perhaps even reversed.
As an afterthought, the researchers decided to take samples of blood from the test subjects, using an epigenetic clock as a way to measure the biological age of the study participants. To their surprise, the drug cocktail not only increased thymus size but also it turned back the epigenetic clock by two years, with the effect lasting six months after the drug trial ended. In other words, though the test subjects aged by a year chronologically over the course of a year, they became two years younger—at least based on an epigenetic marker for biological age.
New Study Holds Added Promise In contrast to the earlier study by US and Canadian investigators, the team from Israel deliberately tried to reverse the aging process by administering hyperbaric oxygen. Earlier studies indicated that hyperbaric oxygen treatments can improve cognition in test subjects by increasing cerebral blood flow. Administering hyperbaric oxygen also triggers stem cell proliferation and increases the biogenesis of mitochondria. These researchers reasoned that hyperbaric oxygen may well delay aging. To test their idea, the investigators enlisted the help of 35 volunteers who were over the age of 65. Over the course of 3 months, the investigators delivered 100% molecular oxygen to the test subjects, with sessions lasting 90 minutes. During the study, they measured telomere length and cell senescence of several different types of white blood cells, observing nearly a 40% decrease in cell senescence and a 20% increase in telomere length. In other words, hyperbaric oxygen treatments appear to have turned back the hands of time.
Is Aging a Disease? These types of studies are a harbinger of change in the way the biomedical community—and the public at large—is beginning to view aging. A growing number of biogerontologists argue that aging should be viewed not as an inevitable part of life, but as a disease.3 And, if viewed as a disease, it means that aging can be treated—maybe even cured. These scientists argue that if we successfully treat aging, diseases such as cancer, type II diabetes, cardiovascular disorders, dementia, Alzheimer’s, and others will wane because they are a byproduct of aging.
Though this view of aging is controversial and not widely accepted, it will likely increase in prominence in the years to come both within the biomedical research community and in a culture already obsessed with antiaging products and regimens. The difference is that studies such as the one conducted by the scientists from Israel are not based on questionable “junk” science. Rather, they herald the arrival of bona fide antiaging technologies undergirded by real scientific evidence.
Antiaging Therapies and Transhumanism The idea that aging is a disease instead of an inevitability has broad-ranging implications, as you might imagine. Now that biomedical researchers have demonstrated that it is possible to reverse biological markers for aging, the prospects that we might be able to extend human life expectancy well beyond our natural biological limits become a real possibility. This hope gives credibility to an intellectual movement called transhumanism.
Advocates of the transhumanist vision maintain that humanity has an obligation to use advances in biotechnology and bioengineering to correct our biological flaws—augmenting our physical, intellectual, and psychological capabilities beyond our natural limits. Perhaps there are no greater biological limitations that human beings experience than those caused by aging bodies and associated diseases.
Transhumanists see science and technology as the means to alleviate pain and suffering and to promote human flourishing. They note that, in the case of aging, pain, suffering, and loss characterize senescence in human beings.
Antiaging as a Source of Hope and of Salvation? Using science and technology to mitigate pain and suffering and to drive human progress is nothing new. But transhumanists desire more. They advocate the use of advances in biotechnology and bioengineering to take control of our own evolution with the grand vision of creating new and improved versions of human beings. They hope to usher in a posthuman future. Transhumanists desire to create a utopia of our own design. In fact, many transhumanists go one step further, arguing that advances in gene editing, computer-brain interfaces, and antiaging technologies could extend our life expectancy perhaps indefinitely, allowing us to attain a practical immortality.
In essence, transhumanism has a religious element to it, with science and technology serving as the means for salvation. But can the transhumanist agenda deliver on its promises?
I think the answer is no for the simple reason that ethical concerns abound when it comes to the prospects of wide-scale application of antiaging and life extension technologies.
Ethical Concerns What could possibly be wrong with wanting to live a longer, healthier, and more productive life? For the most part, don’t people do everything they can to delay the onset and effects of aging? Don’t we do what we can to avoid an early death? We try to eat right, take health supplements, exercise, submit ourselves to all sorts of medical screening procedures to ensure that we live as long as we possibly can—even sacrificing quality of life in some cases. It is hard to imagine anything inherently wrong with wanting to live longer. In fact, disrupting—even reversing—the aging process would offer benefits to society by potentially reducing medical costs associated with age-related diseases such as dementia, cancer, heart disease, and stroke.
Yet, these biomedical advances in antiaging therapies hold the potential to change who we are as human beings. After all, aging is part of our nature and it shapes our life experiences. Antiaging technology most likely will fundamentally alter the nature of society, too, by ushering in wide-scale social and economic changes. Unfettered access to antiaging technologies will lead to overpopulation as people live longer and death rates fall, putting demands on limited planetary resources. In the end, antiaging technologies may well be unsustainable, undesirable, and unwise.
One way to make long life spans in humans sustainable would be to curtail the birthrate. This may mean that married couples would be restricted on how many children they have, or perhaps some couples may be denied the right to reproduce at all. One could easily envision a future world in which only couples who meet certain criteria would be allowed to have children.
Further, in an effort to avoid overpopulation perhaps only certain individuals will be granted access to antiaging technology because of their demonstrated or potential contributions to society. Or maybe only the wealthy will have access to the technology, because they can pay for it and they possess the monetary resources to live for hundreds of years.
There seems to be an inherent unfairness to denying some people the opportunity to have children or restricting access to antiaging technology to only a select few—particularly if that technology can ameliorate the suffering that accompanies aging.
Having access to life-extending technologies likely will change intergenerational attitudes and relationships. For example, people living in the current generation may well become more concerned with selfishly devoting resources to extend their life and hold onto their place in society, than with investing in the success of the next generation. This selfishness poses the real risk of changing the way people view members of future generations. It is conceivable that people living in a current generation will begin to view members of the next one as a threat, as the next generation consumes already limited resources and seeks to replace the current generation in the workforce and society.
It is reasonable to think that this animosity will extend in both directions. People in the next generation may view members of the current generation as standing in their way, preventing them from assuming their place in society. It is conceivable that the next generation will believe that people of the current generation have unjustly imposed their will on all future generations. (This discussion merely scratches the surface. For a more detailed analysis of the ethical issues surrounding antiaging technology, check out the book listed below that I cowrote with Kenneth Samples, Humans 2.0.)
Transhumanism: A False Gospel? Can transhumanism truly deliver on its promises of a utopian future and a practical immortality? Cataloging the many ethical concerns surrounding antiaging technologies highlights the real risks of pursuing a transhumanist future. If we don’t carefully consider these concerns, we might create a dystopian, not a utopian, world.
The mere risk of this type of unintended future should give us pause for thought about turning to science and technology for our salvation. Transhumanism exposes the real need in all of us for hope, purpose, and destiny. I submit that the only way that need can ever be fulfilled is through the gospel of Jesus Christ.
Yafit Hachmo et al., “Hyperbaric Oxygen Therapy Increases Telomere Length and Decreases Immunosenescence in Isolated Blood Cells: A Prospective Trial,” Aging 12, no. 22 (November 18, 2020): 22445–56, doi:10.18632/aging.202188.
Gregory M. Fahy et al., “Reversal of Epigenetic Aging and Immunosenescent Trends in Humans,” Aging Cell (September 8, 2019): e13028, doi:10.1111/acel.13028.
I watched helplessly as my father died a Muslim. Though he and I would argue about my conversion, I was unable to convince him of the truth of the Christian faith.
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What is Earth’s greatest natural resource and why does it matter in the context of taking care of our planet?
When God created Earth, he filled it with “natural resources” such as water and land and vegetation and animal life. Then God created humans and provided us with a powerful brain. Was that brain the ultimate natural resource?
That’s the thesis of a 2018 article from American Institute for Economic Research (AIER) entitled “There Are No Natural Resources.” The article focuses on the philosophy of the late Julian Simon, a University of Maryland economist whose “most notable contribution is his demonstration that the human mind is, as he described it, ‘the ultimate resource.’ The human mind is the ultimate resource because it, and only it, creates all of the other economically valuable inputs that we call ‘resources.’”
Consider how human ingenuity exploited some of these “natural resources” for our benefit and advancement:
Minerals (including petroleum): Humans developed extraction technology and found productive uses – including manufacture of tools to develop other resources.
Soil and precipitation: Humans developed horticulture to increase productivity of wild fruits and vegetables, thus moving humanity from subsistence to bounty.
Clay and sand: People produced bricks, glass, and even semiconductor chips.
Trees: After burning wood to cook and combat cold, humans developed the lumber industry to build shelter and means of transportation.
Water, including rivers and lakes: Humans use water for agriculture and use waterways for commerce and the production of electric power.
The list is endless.
In Genesis 1:28, God charges humanity to “subdue” and “rule over” creation. We concluded in a previous article that this charge means God commands and equips people—as his image-bearers—to be problem-solvers who use ingenuity to make life better. In the context of Simon’s philosophy, perhaps our creative mind––the ultimate natural resource––is the tool God provided humans to fulfill this command.
Unfortunately, Simon may represent a minority position among secular scholars. A more frequently heard viewpoint says that humanity is harming the planet and overutilizing “scarce” natural resources.
The scarcity concept goes back to Thomas Malthus’s 1798 monograph, Essay on the Principle of Population,1 which predicted widespread famine due to population growth. Although Malthus has been proven wrong continually, his idea has endured for over 200 years. Simon relates that in 1865, social scientist W. Stanley Jevos estimated that England’s industry “must soon grind to a halt” due to exhaustion of coal and that “there was no chance that oil would eventually solve England’s problem.” Simon also observes that the US government estimated a 10 years’ supply of oil in 1914, a 13 years’ supply in 1939, and a 13 years’ supply in 1951. Human ingenuity has proven all such predictions wrong; and in modern times, “fracking” has greatly increased available reserves of oil and natural gas.
This same pattern applies to other natural resources. Canadian economist David S. Jacks has tracked real commodity prices 1850–present, and his data shows a pronounced downward trend. Credit Suisse has charted average real base metal prices over the same time period, and a 25–35% reduction is apparent. According to basic economic supply-demand principles, this means commodities are more plentiful today than they were 170 years ago despite massive utilization. Human ingenuity has consistently overcome fears of scarcity.
Our earlier article also discussed a corollary to Genesis 1:28. As God’s image-bearers, humanity is God’s steward to preserve his creation. But humans are not gods; we make mistakes that have negative consequences. For example, since industrialization brought prosperity, people did not object to a few industrial smokestacks or a small amount of waste in a river; but widespread industrialization caused problems. In 1969, the Cuyahoga River caught fire near Cleveland, Ohio. The event triggered an emphasis on cleaning up air and water pollution. Today a blogger refers to the Cuyahoga as “an incredible fishery.” People who complain about air and water pollution in the US today do not realize how much it has improved over the past 50 years—a fact that illustrates not only human effort and ingenuity to correct our mistakes, but also the self-healing that God programmed into creation.
Zoologist and author Matt Ridley recalls how human ingenuity solved environmental problems over the past half century:
In the 1970s, the future of the world was bleak. The population explosion was unstoppable. Global famine was inevitable. A cancer epidemic caused by chemicals in the environment was going to shorten our lives. The acid rain was falling on the forests. The desert was advancing by a mile or two a year. The oil was running out, and a nuclear winter would finish us off. None of those things happened. . . . [Instead] the average per-capita income of the average person on the planet, in real terms, adjusted for inflation, has tripled. Lifespan is up by 30 percent in my lifetime. Child mortality is down by two-thirds. Per-capita food production is up by a third. And all this at a time when the population has doubled. . . . [humanity is] the only species that becomes more prosperous as it becomes more populous.2
Most people over 60 remember these problems. God-given human ingenuity fixed them, even if they were self-inflicted. Back in the nineteenth century, it is widely believed that development of kerosene as a cheap, plentiful replacement for whale oil saved the whale from extinction. These and similar human efforts seem to illustrate the stewardship aspect of Genesis 1:28.
Ridley’s recollections also highlight an oft-heard secular viewpoint that humans are an evolutionary accident that is destroying the planet. The apocalyptic predictions he cites represent a pattern of doomsday forecasts evident since the Ban the Bomb movement, which warned about nuclear war and fallout in the 1950s.
Apocalyptic predictions continue today. The United Nations Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) warns of disastrous consequences unless carbon dioxide (CO2) emissions are drastically reduced. Unlike industrial air pollution, CO2 is neither toxic nor poisonous.3 It is naturally occurring—exhaled by humans and animals and absorbed by green plants via photosynthesis, which God created for ecological balance. Yet CO2 is also a byproduct of the industrialization that has so improved the human condition—and that is perceived as the problem.
This is not an article about the science of global warming or “climate change”; it is about human ingenuity. Let’s consider some basic principles. Christians believe God is in charge of history, and that God has a plan. We believe in God’s benevolent providence, and in the promise of the Noahic covenant that God will not destroy humanity (Genesis 9:8–17). The IPCC’s computer models should be taken seriously, but they are not hard scientific data. The models can be wrong, but even if they are right, is it possible that human ingenuity can address these problems without draconian measures? Many secular authorities believe we can. Prominent environmentalist Michael Shellenberger echoes Genesis 1:28 when he says, “Richer countries are more resilient, so let’s focus on making people richer and more resilient.”4
The real issue comes down to worldview: do people believe the Bible or not? Is human progress God-inspired, or is it not? If it is God-inspired, we need not panic and be stampeded into drastic action which will roll back those advances. We can trust God and continue to move forward as his image-bearers and as commanded by Genesis 1:28. That mandate includes using Earth’s greatest natural resource, the human mind, to make life better by responsibly managing God’s creation.
Endnotes
Thomas R. Malthus, An Essay on the Principle of Population, Oxford World’s Classics, (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1993).
Reasons to Believe is committed to bringing you sound reason and scientific research—including the very latest discoveries to support confidence in the truth of the Bible and faith in the personal… Read more about Guest Writer.
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One Christian author in history owns the distinction of having been read by popes, rock stars, and leading atheists. He lived almost 1,600 years ago and was from North Africa. He is the single most prolific author of the ancient world and has influenced countless Protestants and Catholics. Named after two Roman emperors, he is known to us as St. Augustine of Hippo (354–430).
After a youth filled with restlessness and rebellion and an early career characterized by the pursuit of pleasure and ambition, Augustine experienced a dramatic conversion to Christianity when he turned from his pagan and skeptical-based beliefs. His classic book Confessions details his dramatic conversion story and, to this day, remains a perennial bestseller that is read in great books programs as well as by famous individuals from diverse worldview perspectives.
Over his prestigious career Augustine wrote more than five million words. He was a robust theologian, an insightful philosopher, and a tenacious defender of the truth of historic Christianity. Widely considered the greatest of the church fathers, Augustine’s writings shaped aspects of Christian orthodoxy like creation, the Trinity, original sin, and salvation by grace. He is a universal Christian voice within Western Christendom and remains influential among scholars and laypeople alike.
Let me identify some of the diverse and well–known people who have read and been influenced by Augustine.
Favored Church Father of Catholic and Protestant Thinkers In his medieval theological masterpiece known as Summa Theologiae, the great Catholic philosopher Thomas Aquinas (1225–1274) calls Augustine “The Theologian” and quotes his writings extensively. Thus, arguably the greatest Catholic thinker in history, Aquinas, was an appreciative student of Augustine.
In his blockbuster theological work Institutes of the Christian Religion, Protestant reformer John Calvin (1509–1564) also quotes Augustine extensively and makes a case for Protestants being in the Augustinian theological stream. So arguably Protestantism’s leading systematic theologian, Calvin, was an ardent pupil of Augustine.
The Augustinian Pope Writing in personal, subjective terms about his life and thought attracts people to Augustine and causes them to reflect upon their own lives. The appeal of Augustine’s biography Confessions has extended all the way up to the head of the Catholic church. Pope Benedict XVI (now pope emeritus, born Joseph Ratzinger), is one of the most scholarly popes in recent centuries. Benedict is himself an Augustine scholar and has said that he is more attracted to the theological system of Augustinianism than Thomism.1 The pope even noted earlier in his career that he developed his basic theology in a dialogue of sorts with Augustine.2 Ratzinger’s doctoral dissertation was on “The People and the House of God in Augustine’s Doctrine of the Church.”
Patron Saint of Wayward Rock Stars It has been said that Augustine was a great sinner that became a great saint. His early reputation for worldliness appears to attract the attention of some of rock-n-roll’s leading stars and bad boys. He enjoys the pop culture distinction of being the only Christian thinker to be mentioned in songs by Bob Dylan (“I Dreamed I Saw St. Augustine”), the Rolling Stones (“Saint of Me”), and Sting (“Saint Augustine in Hell”). Augustine’s candid honesty about sin and his declaration of the absolute need for grace touches people from all walks of life.
Augustinian Atheists Augustine’s insights have not been lost on Western Civilization’s prominent thinkers, regardless of religious affiliation. Christian philosopher James K. A. Smith, author of the new book On the Road with Saint Augustine: A Real-WorldSpirituality for Restless Hearts (2019)has suggested that Augustine may have been the world’s first existentialist philosopher.3 Not only were existential forerunners and Christian thinkers Blaise Pascal (Catholic) and Søren Kierkegaard (Protestant) serious students of Augustine, but leading atheist thinkers such as Albert Camus, Jean-Paul Sartre, Martin Heidegger, and Jacques Derrida paid careful attention to Augustine’s writings as well.4 Augustinian themes of each person having inner longings and experiencing angst and estrangement in life while nonetheless seeking personal meaning, no doubt attracted these secular existentialist philosophers.
What is it that so many different kinds of people find in St. Augustine? I think the answer is that we see ourselves in him and in his descriptions of his life. Some scholars suggest that the Confessions is really about the human pursuit of God. Smith states: “When you really spend time with Augustine he is remarkably vulnerable, humble, and very much imagines himself as a co-pilgrim with people, rather than sitting up on this dais, sort of announcing and denouncing.”5
Augustine’s broad appeal therefore includes theologians, artists, philosophers, and everyday people attempting to make sense of life and the world. If you haven’t, I invite you to take up and read Augustine. Start with the Confessions. You’ll be reading a classic of both Christianity and Western Civilization.
Reflections: Your Turn Have you read any of Augustine’s works? Visit Reflections on WordPress to comment with your response.
Although there are many translations of Confessions available, I recommend these: Confessions, trans. R. S. Pine-Coffin (New York: Penguin, 1961); The Confessions: Saint Augustine ofHippo, ed. David Vincent Meconi, trans. Maria Boulding(San Francisco: Ignatius, 2012); Confessions, 2nd ed., trans. F. J. Sheed(Indianapolis: Hackett, 2006).
I believe deeply that “all truth is God’s truth.” That historic affirmation means that when we discover and grasp truth in the world and in life we move closer to its divine Author. This approach r… Read more about Kenneth R. Samples.
What is real? What is right? What is lovely? Human beings ask these kinds of questions because we long for at least three things: truth, goodness, and beauty.
Can science test the veracity of biblical creation events such as whether Earth’s early atmosphere was opaque? I have always maintained that the answer is yes. In fact, the Bible invites such testing. In this way, science can affirm or negate the Bible’s statements about creation.
He needs little by way of introduction. By some accounts, he is the second richest man in the world. And through his companies Tesla and SpaceX, this entrepreneur’s vision is to change humanity’s future.
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At the XVIIIth International Society for the Study of the Origin of life (ISSOL) conference held at the University of California in San Diego on July 16–21, 2017, Fazale (Fuz) Rana and I had the pleasure of many thoughtful conversations during extended mealtimes with origin-of-life research scientists. When they found out that we were Christians working at Reasons to Believe, they immediately assumed that we were not scientists, or at least not serious scientists. When we asked why, their responses were revealing. They equated the pursuit of serious science with atheism. One biochemist declared, “I am a scientist. Therefore, I am an atheist.”
These origin-of-life scientists also had a distorted understanding of Christianity. When they found out that Fuz and I both believe that the Bible’s content is trustworthy and reliable, they concluded that we must be young-earth creationists and that we dismiss nearly all scientific findings.
How did we break through their misperceptions? First, we assured them that we were not young-earth creationists. We explained how a careful and thorough integration of all the Bible’s creation texts—where we take all those texts literally and consistently—establishes an old-earth interpretation, while ruling out a young-earth interpretation. Next, we asked them questions about their research, their most recent papers, and the next papers they intended to write. These questions persuaded them that we were familiar with and understood the scientific details in the origin-of-life research literature.
In turn, they then asked where Fuz and I earned our PhDs, where we had done postdoctoral research, what research papers we had published, and why we were at the conference. They were surprised to learn that this was the third ISSOL conference we had attended and that we regularly write articles on the origin of life. Moreover, our interdisciplinary book, Origins of Life,1 had been reviewed by David Deamer, a highly respected researcher in the field, in Origin of Life and Evolution of the Biosphere.2
Having established our credibility, a door was now open for Fuz and I to ask our companions questions about their atheism. For instance, did they have other reasons for identifying themselves as atheists other than their occupation? They replied that it seemed to them that science has all the answers, or at least the potential to provide all the answers, to all the questions humans might ask.
Their response opened another door for Fuz and I to probe their thoughts on death, human consciousness, and our ultimate destiny. For example, we asked them how they were preparing for death what they thought happens to their consciousness when their physical bodies die, what they think might exist beyond the universe, and whether they believed there were any ultimate purposes to the universe and human beings. It turned out these scientists hadn’t given any thought to such issues. The focus of their lives had been their scientific research.
Fuz and I suggested that perhaps our companions were not committed atheists, but rather default atheists in the sense that they had not taken the time to seriously research the philosophical implications of atheism and whether or not purely naturalistic science indeed can answer all the questions that humans might pose. Scientific research can distract us from the most important issues of life. They readily agreed.
Science Research Addiction What we observed and experienced at the XVIIIth ISSOL conference we have seen repeated in other interactions with leading scientific researchers. It is something we have observed in ourselves. Scientific research can be powerfully addicting.
There is a certain thrill and euphoria that overflows me when I discover and understand some secret of the universe or the realm of nature that no one else has uncovered. My scientist colleagues at Reasons to Believe have those experiences, too. All scientists whose research has pushed back the frontiers of scientific knowledge and understanding have such moments.
The thrill and euphoria of making scientific discoveries can take scientists captive. Following one of my university debates with an atheistic scientist he told me just how captivated he was by his research findings. “It is all I ever I think about,” he said. He, too, admitted that he was a default atheist and that in our debate he had defended something he had not really thought through in terms of its implications.
The pursuit of scientific discovery, I contend, can be as addicting as alcohol or heroin. It can overtake one to a point where it pushes out personal relationships and the most important issues of life. During my time as a research fellow at the California Institute of Technology I was grieved to see the destruction of many marriages. Within the space of just a few years the majority of my colleagues who were married had gone through divorce.
Addiction Recovery As far as I know, there is no 12-step recovery program for scientists who are addicted to their research. However, I can suggest five steps to overcome this problem. (These are written with a Bible believer in mind, but the steps can be tailored to apply to a default atheist.)
Step 1: Obey the Sabbath. On a regular basis, step away from your scientific research and spend dedicated time meditating on the most important issues of life.
Step 2: Refrain from worshipping nature. God made the natural world and universe incredibly beautiful, elegant, grand, and complex. He also made us spiritual beings; hence, we are compelled to worship. However, we can be easily tempted into misplacing our worship. As Romans 1:25 states, we must guard against worshipping and serving created things rather than the Creator.
Step 3: Diversify your relationships. I know many research scientists for whom their only close personal relationships are with fellow research scientists. This situation is akin to an alcoholic having only alcoholic friends. We all need friends who have had different education and life experiences than ourselves. We need their objectivity.
Step 4: Deepen your relationships. For many research scientists, their personal relationships are superficial. They will have deep conversations about their scientific research, but say little to one another about their emotional and spiritual states and the steps they are taking toward building more love and reconciliation into their relationships. We all crave deep, fulfilling intimacy. It takes hard work, time, and especially prayer to achieve the intimacy God wants us experience in this life.
Step 5: Take time to experience wild nature. Scientists are committed to research and study of nature but most of them do their research and study in technologically modified environments: laboratories and observatories. I was an amateur astronomer before I turned pro. It never ceased to amaze me to encounter research astronomers who didn’t know the constellations hovering above their telescope dome. Psalm 19:1 says, “The heavens declare the glory or God.” Psalm 97:6 states, “The heavens proclaim his righteousness.” Job 12:7-10 exhorts us to learn from birds and terrestrial mammals. The problem today is that the majority of humans live in dense metropolitan cities where they cannot see more than a few stars and have little or no close contact with wild birds and mammals. I noticed how much easier it was to have deep spiritual conversations and share my Christian faith with research scientists in the high Sierra Nevadas than it was in hallways of Caltech’s laboratory buildings.
These five steps are not just for research scientists. We can all benefit from them, whether we are Christians needing to draw closer to God or default atheists needing to examine why we believe what we believe.
David Deamer, “‘Origins of Life. Biblical and Evolutionary Models Face Off’ by Fazale Rana and Hugh Ross,” Origins of Life and Evolution of Biospheres 37 (April 2007): 201–3, doi:10.1007/s11084-006-9019-4.
Reasons to Believe emerged from my passion to research, develop, and proclaim the most powerful new reasons to believe in Christ as Creator, Lord, and Savior and to use those new reasons to reach p… Read more about Hugh Ross.
Who in America is not familiar with Legos? Lego is perhaps one of the most recognizable brands in the world. It was recently estimated that 400 million children and adults worldwide play with Lego pieces each year.1 Is the human fascination with such building blocks analogous to what science reveals about the universe’s creation?
Does evolution or creation better explain the rapid emergence of complex animals? If there’s one event in Earth’s fossil record history that garners more spirited discussion than any other, it would be the Cambrian explosion.
Suicide remains a serious problem in our world today. And some researchers say suicide rates have increased during the pandemic.1 In fact, during the month of October 2020 there were more deaths in Japan from suicide than from COVID-19.2
RTB’s mission is to spread the Christian Gospel by demonstrating that sound reason and scientific research—including the very latest discoveries—consistently support, rather than erode, confidence in the truth of the Bible and faith in the personal, transcendent God revealed in both Scripture and nature. Learn More »
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Your support helps more people find Christ through sharing how the latest scientific discoveries affirm our faith in the God of the Bible.DONATE NOW
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Reasons to Believe is a nonprofit organization designated as tax-exempt under Section 501(c)3 by the Internal Revenue Service. Donations are tax-deductible to the full extent of the law. Our tax ID is #33-0168048. All Transactions on our Web site are safe and secure.
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In his 2000 book Bobos in Paradise: The New Upper Class and How They Got There, New York Times columnist David Brooks coined the term bobos to describe the current cultural norm that embraces a duality of bohemian and bourgeois values.1 Not only is it an apt term for describing much of modern secular America, it’s also a helpful one for Christians facing the challenges of living in today’s America. Many of those challenges are obvious (e.g., the new spiritual pluralism and moral relativism), but others can be sneaky and subtle, sounding innocent while raising important spiritual issues.
Christian Stewardship v. Secular Environmentalism
An example is the Christian obligation to care for the environment. Scripture leaves little doubt that humans are to respect God’s created universe and care for nature. Stewardship is the very essence of God’s command that humans exercise “dominion over nature” (Genesis 1:28). Pope Francis’s second encyclical, Laudato Si’, stressed this obligation when he explained that he took his name from St. Francis of Assisi, known for his express humility toward nature.2
Yet, concerned Christians wonder if an unqualified reverence toward nature risks compromising the Christian commitment to humans. This issue reaches back to an essay published in 1967 by late UCLA history professor Lynn White Jr, where White blamed our ecological crisis on the command in Genesis 1:26 that humans are to “rule over” nature.3 White argued that Western civilizations, influenced by Christianity, felt they had a free pass to exploit nature for selfish human purposes. Clearly that is not what God intended, though it is arguable that some professed Christians read the Scripture that way. Of particular importance, White’s interpretation overlooked the Old Testament teaching that humans are to manage Earth’s resources not just for the benefit of humans but equally for the benefit of all life on Earth (Genesis 1:26-28; Numbers 35:33-34; Proverbs 12:10).
White believed environmentalism was spiritual. He urged humans to see themselves as part of nature and equal in value, not superior to it. Discerning Christians saw this as an implicit challenge to the notion that humans are special creations of God. In his Sermon on the Mount, Jesus illustrates vividly the biblical view of humanity: even as God values the birds of the air and the lilies of the field, Jesus concludes, “Are you not much more valuable than they?” (Matthew 6:26–31). Unlike any other species in creation, humans were created in the image of God (Genesis 1: 26).
White may not have gotten Scripture right, but he won the day. The rhetoric of equality with nature would find itself expressed in the manifestos of mainstream environmental groups, even being identified as a fundamental tenet of a “New Environmental Paradigm” where Christian “anthropocentrism” is regarded as hostile to nature.4 By the 1990s, surveys showed that 69% of Americans had accepted the idea that humans are equal to nature.5
While there is a romantic appeal to elevating nature in this way, the subtle risk is that it can divert attention away from human tragedies while exaggerating environmental problems to draw attention to them. The popular metaphor of “spaceship earth” captures the modern human condition best, where one-third of the inhabitants live in first class while two-thirds live in the hold of the ship. There, people suffer from inadequate health care, sanitation, clean water, nutrition, and shelter. If nature is elevated with a blind eye to these human needs it becomes a religion of its own, with a natural tendency to exaggerate environmental problems while robbing headlines and resources and imposing barriers to the economic growth and advances in industrialism required to serve those in the hold of spaceship earth.
Seeking Balance
In his newly released book, Apocalypse Never: Why Environmental Alarmism Hurts Us All (2020), Michael Shellenberger, who was named a “Hero of the Environment” in 2005 by TIME, identifies case after case in which claims of pending environmental catastrophe, including climate change, have been exaggerated, often to the detriment of serving human needs.6 His is not a plea to ignore the environment, but to seek balance. One does not find here a hard-headed assault on environmentalism. You can’t read Shellenberger (not just his words but his life story), or spend time with him as I have, without feeling at a deep level his heart for nature and people. He seeks an answer that a romanticized environmentalism has somehow missed. He finds it in humanism.
Shellenberger calls for an alternate ethic. Specifically, he proposes a “new faith” in “environmental humanism”—which he defines as a commitment to the “transcendent moral purpose of universal human flourishing and environmental progress.”7 While placing a value on human welfare is virtually a universal ethic today, his framing poses the question of moral sources; namely, one cannot claim a “transcendental moral purpose” in a humanist worldview that denies transcendence.
Shellenberger seems to be relying on a common humanist claim that the value of human flourishing is an acquired taste.8 As evolutionary biologist Edward O. Wilson has argued, modern ethical principles are rooted in instincts which have been “subject to judgment according to their consequences” based on their survival value.9 Thus, patterns of conduct emerge which have become engrained in our human DNA through naturalistic evolution. As Charles Taylor has pointed out, when one runs this notion to ground, it basically says human flourishing is important not because humans have inherent worth, but only because it enhances survival. Societies that value human flourishing live longer.10
Finding a Transcendent Moral Source
But is it only a matter of survival? We know there is more. The notion of human flourishing appeals to us because in our hearts we know other human lives matter and there is something that is inherently right about caring for other people. What, then, is the source of that inner sense of value?
Shellenberger seeks a transcendent moral purpose of human flourishing because intuitively he understands it is part of our universal human nature to seek such a higher purpose. In doing so he is implicitly acknowledging a universal quality of being human that was implanted at creation by an eternal creator God who made humans in his image. It is who we are, whether we are willing to acknowledge him as the source or not.
Environmentalism is like many issues we face in this “age of bobos,” a shared concern framed in the values of our modern secular age. While such a framing can often pose subtle challenges for Christians, it can also provide opportunities to reaffirm the relevance of Christian answers. In this case, the Christian answer highlights a proper balance between nature and the unique value of humans, while pointing to the need for God as a transcendent moral source.
Endnotes
David Brooks, Bobos in Paradise: The New Upper Class and How They Got There (New York: Simon and Shuster, 2000).
Lynn White Jr, “The Historical Roots of Our Ecological Crisis,” Science 155, no. 3767 (March 10, 1967), 1203–7, doi: 1126/science.155.3767.1203.
Riley E. Dunlap and Kent D. Van Liere(1978), “The ‘New Environmental Paradigm,’” Journal of Environmental Education, 9, no. 4 (1978): 10–19, doi:1080/00958964.1978.10801875.
Mark David Richards, “Public Opinion on Ecology and Nuclear Energy,” Perspectives on Public Opinion, Nuclear Energy Institute, July 1995.
Michael Shellenberger, Apocalypse Never: Why Environmental Alarmism Hurts Us All (New York: HarperCollins, 2020).
Shellenberger, 274.
See Michael Shermer, The Moral Arc: How Science Makes Us Better People (New York: St. Martin’s Griffin, 2015).
BIO Paul Lorenzini graduated from the US Merchant Marine Academy in 1964, later earning a PhD in nuclear engineering from Oregon State University and a law degree from Loyola Law School. During his career… Read more about Paul Lorenzini.
Have you ever had a sudden realization that ended up changing your life? You may have had an epiphany, which can be defined as an intuitive flash of insight or discovery as to the deep meaning of something significant that comes through experience and leads to a sense of wonder.
Those of us who are over 60 will never forget the chilling words spoken by the Apollo 13 command module pilot, Jack Swigert, and repeated by the mission commander, Jim Lovell, late evening on April 13 of 1970, “Houston, we’ve had a problem.”
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Question of the week: Why did God kill every man, woman, and child living in Sodom and Gomorrah?
My answer: This question is not only frequently asked but also commonly used as a basis for atheists and agnostics to reject the existence of the God of the Bible. Such individuals presume that an all-loving God would never do such a thing.
Societal Reprobation The full description given in Genesis of the behavior and morality of the people living in Sodom and Gomorrah makes it indisputably clear that Sodom and Gomorrah are examples of societal reprobation. Reprobation is a term used in the Bible to describe an individual who is irretrievably evil. It describes an individual whose every thought and action is evil all the time. Such individuals believe that what normal human beings consider as evil acts are good and what normal human beings consider as good acts are evil. Such human beings are continually intent on evil and they work tirelessly to morally corrupt others to persuade, and if possible force, others to join them in their evil thinking and behavior.
Societal reprobation describes a town, city, set of cities, or a nation where every man, woman, and child is reprobate. Societal reprobation has always been rare. In fact, from the Days of Pentecost (described in Acts 2, 8, and 10) onward it has been nonexistent.
Why Not Now? On the Days of Pentecost, the Holy Spirit permanently indwelt first the Jewish followers of Jesus Christ, then the Samaritan followers of Christ, and finally the gentile followers of Christ. That permanent indwelling made the followers of Jesus Christ “the salt of the earth.” Such spiritual salt acts as a preservative that prevents the outbreak of societal reprobation.
The possibility of societal reprobation during Old Testament times and its impossibility since the Days of Pentecost explains why many skeptics conclude that the God of the Old Testament contradicts the God of the New Testament. Such skeptics err. God has not changed. It is people who have changed.
Evidence of Societal Reprobation in Sodom and Gomorrah Three different Bible texts affirm that Sodom and Gomorrah indeed are examples of societal reprobation. One text, Genesis 19:1–9, describes a test performed by two of God’s righteous angels. These angels visited Sodom to determine if its inhabitants were as evil as described in reports they had heard. They decided to spend the night in the city square so as to observe the behavior of the Sodomites for themselves. Lot, the only man in the city who had not yet succumbed to reprobation, insisted that the angels not spend the night in the city square. Evidently, he knew how dangerous that would be for them. He implored them to stay under the protection of his house. Shortly thereafter, Lot’s house became surrounded by every man, young and old, from every part of the city of Sodom. The phrase, young and old, implies that the men surrounding Lot’s house included young boys and elderly men. The men demanded that Lot send his two guests outside so that they could all subject his two guests to sexual violation.
There was no stopping the assembled mob. Desperate to protect his two guests, Lot even offered to send his two virgin daughters out to the mob to do with them as they wished if only they would leave his guests alone. The mob turned down the offer, moved forward to break down the door to Lot’s house, and threatened to do to Lot much worse than what they were intent on doing to his two guests.
Lot’s offer testifies to the degree of reprobation in Sodom. The reprobation was so persuasive that even Lot, a righteous man, was in grave danger of succumbing to the spiritual cancer that surrounded him. 2 Peter 2:7–8 describes how the Sodomites distressed and tormented Lot.
The second Bible text, Genesis 18:16–33 describes a conversation between God and Abraham where Abraham on behalf of his nephew Lot begs God to save Sodom and Gomorrah from destruction. Abraham first asks God that if fifty people in Sodom are found to be righteous would God not save all the inhabitants of Sodom on behalf of those fifty. God said he would. Abraham bargains God all the way down to just ten righteous in the city. Every time God says, “yes.” At that point, Abraham realizes that the only righteous people left in Sodom are Lot and his family. Knowing that God has promised to rescue Lot and his family before destroying Sodom and Gomorrah, Abraham stops his begging. He now recognizes that all the inhabitants of the Sodomite plain are reprobate except for Lot and his family.
The third Bible text affirming societal reprobation in Sodom and Gomorrah is Genesis 15:12–16. In this text God says to Abraham that while the Amorites living in the hills with him are evil, their evil “has not yet reached its full measure.” God explained to Abraham that it would take another four hundred years for the Amorites to degrade into societal reprobation. Only at that time would God act to remove the Amorites from the land of Canaan.
Why Not Isolation? A remaining question is why God does not simply isolate reprobate societies and let them die natural deaths. The answer is to protect the future generations of those societies and to protect the inhabitants of their neighboring societies.
Once all the inhabitants of a city become completely reprobate there is no hope for the children born in that city. As Paul points out in Romans 1:32, reprobation is malignant. Children born in a city where all the inhabitants are reprobates will be surrounded by the malignant spiritual cancer of reprobation. For them, there is no escape. As with metastasized stage 4 cancer, they will be infected and completely overcome. To prevent that from happening, God surgically removes a reprobate society as soon as its reprobation becomes pervasive.
Another reason God surgically intervenes is to prevent the spiritual cancer from spreading to communities adjoining the reprobate society. Societies do not and cannot operate in isolation. Cities must be maintained by trade with adjoining communities. If God had not acted in the manner that he did, the spiritual malignancy in Sodom and Gomorrah inevitably would have spread.
God’s destruction of Sodom and Gomorrah was a profound act of mercy and love. As I explain in my book, Beyond the Cosmos, from the perspective of eternity it was even a profound act of mercy and love to the reprobates themselves since these reprobates would be judged according to all the evil they had committed on Earth (Revelation 20:12). God prevented them from piling up more evil.
Reasons to Believe emerged from my passion to research, develop, and proclaim the most powerful new reasons to believe in Christ as Creator, Lord, and Savior and to use those new reasons to reach p… Read more about Hugh Ross.
Question of the week: I have heard you say that Hitler intended to kill the German people but was thwarted by his illness and the space-time dimensions. And you mention this on pages 174–175 of Why the Universe Is the Way It Is. I was wondering how you came up with that. Did you put it together in your own thinking or did you talk to someone or read something that put light on that part of history?
Question of the week: How does the cosmos affirm that there is a God who loves us? Isn’t the universe absolutely vast? Wouldn’t the vastness of the universe imply an enormous amount of wasted matter and space?
RTB’s mission is to spread the Christian Gospel by demonstrating that sound reason and scientific research—including the very latest discoveries—consistently support, rather than erode, confidence in the truth of the Bible and faith in the personal, transcendent God revealed in both Scripture and nature. Learn More »
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Our faith is in tandem with our U.S. Constitutions. Our faith encourages respect for the individual and our Constitution reinforces this belief by explicitly stating that no person(s) or government shall interfere with a citizen’s right to seeking a fulfilling life. Of course, many citizens don’t believe this and they actively impede another person from acquiring a fulfilling life. We have special interest groups (SIG) who collection sensitive info about a targeted citizen and distribute info that causes grave adversities in the life of the targeted private citizen. This makes it a criminal act. It is very difficult for the targeted citizen to have standing in the courts even if the targeted citizen can show devastation, as liken unto lost of livelihood. As SIG grows in power we are actually losing our free democracy and free society alone with the right to be let alone. Many political pundits are screaming socialism. I say no; it’s hyper-communism whereas the government owns our virtual-minds stored on computers, and governs with absolute power.
The oligarch class has always existed. They are the mega-rich on the planet who control the distribution of goods and items. They are the industrialist who trade with foreign countries. There is a natural coalition among the businesses with the goal of making profits. The oligarchies do not believe in a free democracy; they tolerate it. A free democracy with civil liberties is a threat to their assets. They understandably fear that a movement would successfully take their assets. Consequently, the oligarch class supports the SIG snake organization that uses sensitive information about each private citizen (dossiers) to pit each party against others. What happens is that SIG channels as many persons as they can to devastate a targeted private citizen.
The SIG snake organization is the operative who is developing hyper-communism. The oligarch class finances SIG who is moving us away from a free democracy and a free society by taking advantage of people who is not knowledgeable about how to keep our free society; they, without awareness, works to destroy our free society because they can not resist having an advantage over another and can feel impowered by belonging to a groups who is essential picking on a targeted person in the name of doing what is best for the poor targeted person; SIG feeds the life of a targeted person to others in order for them to serve the snake; thereby, empowering the SIG snake organization.
It is easy for the oligarchs around the planet to jell and form a One World Government as soon as SIG conditions the populace to receive the One World Government. After all, SIG is the operative who controls the minds of the populace on the planet. We are approaching this state.
Many socio-political pundits proclaim that we are suffering through authoritarianism verse freedoms. But, I say that we are wrestling with SIG the snake to maintain originality and self-determination. The SIG snakes have the ability at present to mentally enslave any targeted person. It has been growing rapidly during the past 20 years after Bush authorized surveillance of domestic America.
Our Christian religion preserves respect for the individual as does most religions. This is why SIG wants to push religion out of America. The SIG snakes have successfully pushed Christianity out of public schools and workplaces owned mostly by the oligarch class who desires such actions. Once the barrier which demands that an individual must be respected has been thwarted then SIG has rapidly grew. This growth caused many school shootings and workplace killings plus massive killing in the public.
This communistic government has been tried and failed many times in the history of mankind because it does disrespects the individual. May the existential aspect of the major theistic religions save humans from the dropping-hammer of secular humanism.
I am an "Intelligent Design" writer who has the Christian faith. Part of my background is that I have a degree in physics, and have been inducted into the National Physics Honor Society. Sigma Pi Sigma, for life. My interest has lead me into metaphysics, farther into Christianity. Optimum metaphysics becomes religion.
Will Myers
Intelligent Design and Biblical Scripture 