I believe...

I believe...

That the Bible is true.

That macro evolution is impossible.

That love is gold.

That America was never quite what is claimed that it was.

That children are (ultimately) a blessing.

That insanity is mere inches from ingenuity.

That it is illogical to ask what made a Jihadist 'snap'.

That religion is harmful but God can redeem all things.

That the people who need the most help are those who are least likely to ask for it (or do not know that they need it).

That no politician who would vote for himself is worthy of office.

That empires rise on the wings of power and brilliance and fall by the lead of pride.

That to live merely in service to oneself is to become a cancer to everyone else.

That those who accept or deny anything unequivocally are probably ignoring evidence.

That philosophy can definitely be overdone.

That solitude tempered by good company builds character.

That any pursuit or theory that is at all based on assumptions is unscientific speculation (i.e. the age of the earth).

That when Christ returns to rapture His church, the world will have some false but believable explanation for how we all disappeared and will, in a sense, benefit from our absence.

That Thomas Edison was kind of a sloppy inventor.

The Vale Angles Toward Hope

Well the breeze of fall is kicking up and the vale is angled toward hope. Leaves are fluttering in the hot and turgid air, brown leaves, dead leaves, crucified by the sun and the strangulation of domesticity. Things here are boiling down, the pot is no longer overflowing. Life seems more manageable now than not. The Father of Lights has rained down his refreshing beams on us and a wind of life has been prophecied into our dry bones.
It looks like we'll be in a house by Christmas barring unforseen escrow complications. A house with a beautiful view of desert hilly wilderness, hiking trails, and MegansLaw convicts. The fire has died down a little, our pocket linings are moving back toward the pants instead of sticking out as they were. Babies are beautiful angels sent here to pacify us into love and impatience.
Dreams of serial killers, struggles at work, pink insides jutting out like a hamster's coughed-up intestines. The leaves are settling on the ground now, the air is drawing for the big Santa Ana blow and life is going from fire to simple static electricity.
May the Lord bless our broken, yet hopeful, home.

What does the Bible say about...?

Summer set

So this is it. Sunday at 2:15 pm. I've got an apartment that's way too expensive and that we can't afford, a quickly depleting savings account, two babies who refuse to sleep (one all day and the other all night), a wife who's got the post-operation and new baby blues, a couple homeless guys that have been coming over for dinner like three times a week (when we really don't have much to feed ourselves), a rat or something in the wall by the fireplace that freaks out Helen anytime it moves and scratches around, grandparents who seem to want to kidnap my daughter and raise her "the right way", very little uninterrupted sleep, a messy apartment, the feeling that I'm failing as a father and a husband, little ambition to do anything about it, and my first impulse is - let's move far far away from here to some place we can afford. So yesterday we went to look at some houses in Moreno Valley just east of Riverside. It was fun and we were able to enjoy ourselves even through semi-screaming babies but mostly they both just slept. It was like a mini-vacation. We are super interested in buying a house now, one because both of us have always wanted to, and two because it's starting to seem like the mortgage would be a bunch cheaper than the rent we're paying now. We found some neato looking houses with pretty big yards for under 100,000. I know that they oversimplify matters but the little mortgage calculator Heather did said that would come out to like 500 something a month. Even with utilities on top of that it would be less than the 1165 we're paying now. I have never wanted to move to someplace like Moreno Valley (although honestly I think it would fit me a whole lot better than where we're at now). My dreams are like coastal Oregon or Montana or Maine. Those places too we might be able to find cheaper housing than we can here, the problem is I don't have a job in any of those places, and moving to Moreno Valley wouldn't totally alienate us from everyone we know. I'm very much the type though that would just do it with the Swiss Family Robinson and Mosquito Coast in mind and then maybe regret it later, maybe not. Just get my family somewhere other than here where we can live and let live and escape drama and negativity and raise our kids how we want to without millions of forceful opinions seeping in from all sides. It could be escape. It really could be. I am known for being an escape artist. When things start to get iffy I like to hide in some fantasy world that no one can penetrate. God help us we don't know what we're supposed to do. I guess making big decisions is all part of growing up. I just feel like if we stick around here no one will let us make our own decisions. We're still treated like teenagers everywhere we go, like our kids are illegitimate and we'd better let a pro take care of them. Those kinds of feelings really affect our self-worth and bring a sense of hopelessness on this house that we can't seem to shake. We're being torn asunder. The lack of sleep could have a lot to do with this too. I would love to just do a short sale on a house somewhere in the middle of nowhere with no people and no cutting remarks anywhere for miles, buy the Little House on the Prairie or something where the only things we really have to worry about are how we're gonna make it through a freezing winter or make sure we don't get attacked by panthers while we're leaving for town on a horse-drawn carriage. People need to lighten up already. Maybe it's us. Maybe we need to lighten up. We're going to implode. This family is in the midst of melt-down. I accidentally scooped up one of my fish while changing out water in my fish tank today, dropping him down the drain through the garbage disposer. He was the only guppy left out of five that the betta didn't eat. I hope the next time I turn the disposer on it doesn't smell like purreed sushi. Poor guy. We watched Better Off Dead last night too. We need a little french foreign exchange student around whose very life is wrapped up in giving us hope and language lessons. Bitterness has been following us everywhere we go. We need a break, sleep, money (or a cheaper place to live), prayer, etc. etc. etc. Maybe all of this is from the heat. Maybe it's just because it's the middle of a hot summer and our brains are tainted by it. The stuffed Captain Kirk on top of the water dispenser says hello. Lord we need a miracle.

break on through to the other side

So I had a breakthrough last night. I realized that I am saved not just in my sin, but from my sin. I am free of it. And one of the requirements of being free of something is not doing it anymore. And more than just forgiving sins, the Lord wants to help us free our lives from sin and live completely for Him. What I realized is not that I'm a dirty sinner. I've known that for years and years. What I realized is that I'm a dirty sinner by my own choice. I've been praying for release from these powers that hold me in bondage for a long long time. I realized about a month and a half ago that one of my major issues that I've been praying for freedom from and striving to free myself from it was not going away because I honestly deep down still wanted it there. I realized last night that I honestly deep down still want all of the sin that I'm involved in to stay right where it is. It's not a question of striving. It's a question of releasing. The Bible says that through Christ Jesus' sacrifice on the cross we can be made free from sin and be acceptable to God. He loved us even in our sin. And that is where I still am. Not because I don't believe I am forgiven, but because I won't give it to Him to get rid of. I've tried. I can't do it. There's no earthly way to be free from sin. But I'm still holding on. So my prayer today is that God would help me to just let go. To let go of everything. My life (easy), my wife (fairly easy), my finances (not so easy), my daugther (really really difficult), my music (fairly difficult), my sin (working on it), my time (this is one of the tougher ones), my apartment (I'm pretty anal about things, and yet still so irresponsible - hypocrisy you say? I know...bummer). I am not free of sin until I let go. I'm not even sure if in God's eyes I am washed clean until I step up to the cross and allow the cleansing blood to flow over me and just surrender.

Epistles study

Rob and I are starting a Bible study. We're going to be going through all the epistles in six months - Romans - Revelation. Should be awesome. I can't wait to dig into that stuff.

Evolution?

Maybe I was off on my assessment of the polar bear population in terms of how many generations it took them to evolve. This is incredible: http://www.answersingenesis.org/articles/2009/06/06/news-to-note-06062009#one

declaration of dependence

These last few weeks have been exhausting. Every day is a battle. It seems like everything is kind of coming to a head now and I'm not sure what to do with it all. I'm being attacked with negativity and I'm letting it sneak back in to myself. I'm overwhelmed. I want to curl up in a ball and ride out the storm. To escape. To escape to a beach house on a small island far away with a hammock out front where it's perpetually dusk under the coconut palm trees. Sunset. Sea salt in the air, and the sweet smell of flowers blooming not far away. And my hair is sticking together because of the salt and sand. Sounds nice.

But that's my old nature. The Bible says I have been given a new nature, a new life, a new existence, and one day I'll be given a new body that can handle all those other things. But for now I'm stuck trying to live out this new nature in my present imperfect body with my imperfect mind incapable of thinking rationally and my imperfect heart incapable of loving completely and I just have to deal with it. I heard a saying a while back that has helped me and it has been getting me through this last week. It goes like this: "When the persecuted Christians in China pray, they don't pray that God will make their load lighter, they pray that He will make their backs stronger, and then they rejoice." I want some of that. I have prayed that prayer many times already. The rejoicing part hasn't quite hit me yet. But I'm surviving. I'm doing my best to encourage my wife who is under the weather and 8-1/2 months pregnant, counsel friends who need serious help, stay afloat with bills and insurance nightmares, grocery shopping, keeping the house liveable as far as hygeine goes (I'm not doing a very good job of this), keeping myself awake enough to go to work every day, and doing my best to prepare for bombardment at every turn. And this operation could never be successful without a strength that I in myself do not possess. A supernatural strength is what I'm holding on to and if I let go I will drown in this ocean of trials. But as the Lord lives, I will push on, because I know that's what He wants from me. This is character building time. It's not fun. It seems pointless. But it's not. Because when I come out of this, I will be that much wiser, that much stronger, and that much more dependent on the grace of the only Living God.

the hope in something like fear

So it's the middle of the afternoon on a warm yet comfortable day and the sky is caving in a very interesting way. It's not falling. It's not asphyxiating. It's almost like it's anxious for something terrible to happen, but not that worried because nothing short of God could do anything terrible to something as big and amazing as the sky. It's a strange feeling. I was thinking again the other night about the vision I used to have of a rope coming out of the ceiling when I would lie in bed and I would grip the rope and pull myself up and it wasn't so much a lazy man's vision of something helping him out of bed, it was more like a symbol of a beckoning hope that never failed. Anytime I was in bed this rope came out of the sky (not even the ceiling, whatever surface was above me). It was this entity that wanted to help me, to pull me out of whatever devastation I was in at the moment, my escape. Then one day after I had come to trust this hope, this vision, and I pulled myself out of bed with this rope and climbed it, up away from all the things that were tearing me apart and toward some blessed unknown, the end of the rope became a noose. It gave me the impression that the only hope I had, this rope, was suicide, death. Nothing would ever revive me from my coma, a sublime fear of the future.

Well the future has arrived, and I must say that it's not as bad as I apparently thought. I have come to know a greater hope than the rope that hung down from the sky, namely the Lord Jesus Christ, and I struggle greatly to follow Him daily. But all of the little things in life, in love, in marriage that keep me reeling with this feeling that there's more that I am missing, and more I could be giving, and so much less that I deserve. And I'm humbly here, sitting at an antique oak desk, deciding that my future will be better than my past. That I will from now onward choke back my feelings as well as my words. That the pride of my youth will be murdered and buried with the aborted fetuses of the present generation. That I will not react in such a manner as I have taught myself to react. Because of Jesus, and because it's a lovely, warm, time-spattered day, I shall replace my visor, wield my spar and live to fight another day.

So I started this journal with the intent to be raw. so far I have told you all about my take on evolution. Is that raw? not really. raw for me is kind of a scary thing because I know how raw I can be and I know that a lot of other people don't want to see that. So I guess I'm gonna try anyways.

Luxy is sleeping. Thank God. Heather has been in kind of a funk for the last couple weeks and that coupled with other things drove me into a nervous breakdown about Wednesday I guess it was. I'm also really nervous about if we can even afford this place we just moved into. It starting to seem like we can't without some major spending cut-backs (of which there is not a whole lot to cut). So this week I'm deciding to just trust in God and try to pay the bills on time as best I can. I don't make very much. This place costs a ton. Our rent is roughly 60 or 65 percent of my take home pay.

Yesterday I got mad while I was trying to install the little safety latches on the cabinets in the kitchen so that Luxy can't open them. I never cuss. But I did. Really loud. And from across the apartment. I asked Heather where the damn scissors were. She marathon ran them out to me. It was kind of sad that I never do that, but when I did it had the desired effect. That makes me sad. If I just said "where are the scissors" she might have just said "I don't know, find them yourself."

I love the story of Esther. I was reading it the last couple of days. Mordecai awesome. He doesn't mince words or anything. After Haman tells King Xerxes that he'll pay a bunch of money into the palace treasury if Xerxes will order that the Jews be killed, Moredecai (because of a patriotic act he had done earlier) gains the upper hand over Haman and when Haman had been hanged and Mordecai is given his place as the lord of the land he askes Xerxes if he could write a new law to repeal the one that Haman had written. When Xerxes said he could he didn't just write "No you may not attack and kill every Jew you see on the 13th day of Adar". Instead he writes, "Every Jew shall have the right to defend his life and his family and annihilate every man, woman or child who dares attack them or looks like they might". He basically turns the thing around. So while the Jews are in captivity under the Medo-Persian Empire, Mordecai gives them the right to kill all their Persian neighbors for (what turns out to be) two days of bloodshed. 76,300 Persians are killed in two days throughout the empire. And then they celebrate it and commemorate the day when the Lord brought them vengence against their enemies, of whom the King was their friend...Weird story. And after all that slaughter the king just says, "Look, tons of my people have been killed. So what are we gonna do today?" It's pretty amazing.

This morning I was reading "The Case for Christ" by Lee Strobel and he was talking about all the Messianic prophecies. Apparently there are something like 48 Messianic prophecies that Jesus fulfilled. I've only come across some of them. One I hadn't heard before though, that he pointed out, was in Daniel 9:26-29 about the time from when King Artaxerxes commanded that the Jews (under Neamiah) should be allowed to return to Jerusalem and rebuild the temple (445 B.C.) to the time when the Messiah would come and be killed and all would be fulfilled would be 69 7's (which if taken to mean years (sevens means time, but not any specific measure of it...could be days, weeks, months or years) comes out to 483 years, or 38 AD). So the general consensus has it that Jesus was killed in approximately 33 AD. Although that prophecy in such a sense is not exact exact (unless we've got it all wrong and Jesus was actually killed in 38 AD), it's pretty darn close, and what's five years give or take when it's prophecied almost 500 years before it happens? We give evolutionists the benefit of +-8 million years or whatever on their radio carbon dating but for 5 years we trip up. That's kind of funny. Strobel was saying that there have been plenty of Jewish rabbis that have been challenged to disprove that Jesus of Nazareth fulfilled all of the Messianic prophecies and he said that none of them could. Just amazing.

Anyway. It's been a rough week but I've rediscovered my Bible which has really been helping me through. Even at the basest of faith levels (I'm not quite that low right now), the stories of all these amazing things that God does through people and all of the incredible teachings of Christ and the mind boggling complexity and yet simplicity of it all is staggering and inspiring at the same time. It's food for thought for like your whole life. Hemingway only takes about two weeks to digest. Just an aside. Breakfast awaits. Farewell and ado to you fair spanish ladies.

my current wonderment continued - biological timescale

Biological Timescale

First of all, recorded human history goes back about 6,000 years. The earliest written documentation is believed to be from the Mesopotamian region of this era. I would submit that any prehistoric (before written documentation) timescale should be regarded with some trepidation as no one was there to witness it. In other words, anything that you are told happened more than 6000 years ago should not be swallowed whole, but chewed on for a while. This is not to say that the earth is only 6,000 years old. This is to say that there is no sure way of knowing beyond that.

Biological dating is an interesting science. It involves identifying natural biological processes with known rates, and then reversing mathematical interpolations of those rates to give estimates of dates back into history or prehistory. It sounds complicated, which is why I have been on the fence about it for so long. These systems absolutely make sense. Here is one example of these systems at work:

Tree ring dating:

This method a child could learn and understand. It is a method of dating involving tree stumps, or cores from unfelled trees.

The process:

Every year, no matter the climate, has a wet (cold) and dry (hot) season. In some places these seasons are much harder to distinguish from each other, but in others the difference is abundant. Every season leaves an impression on a tree. Trees grow well in wet seasons when their roots are getting plenty of water, and in the dry seasons they do not grow so well. The nutrients in the ground between a wet season and a dry season also differ, and, in a sense, both seasons leave a ring on a tree.

http://waynesword.palomar.edu/treedate.htm
As you can see in the photograph above (Douglas Fir), the small brown dot is the sapling tree. That represents its first year. The light, thickish ring surrounding it is a wet season where the tree grew well in a short amount of time. The small dark ring is a dry season where the trees growth was stifled. It is virtually a scar. A wet season and a dry season together make up 1 calendar year. You might also notice that some of the rings are further apart than others and some of the scars, or dry season rings, are larger or smaller than others. These represent particulars of those seasons. The large tan rings represent ideal growing conditions, which are lots of rain and lots of sunlight. Perfect, Central California type weather. The larger scars represent longer or more severe dry seasons, and can even represent forest fires. So if you count the rings on the tree sample above, you will find that this tree (at least what is shown in the picture) is about 32 years old.

Deductions:

Now considering that each tree ring is variable, depending on the season, we can reasonably assume that that same season in the same region would have similar effects on a similar tree, right? So, let's say that we cut down the above tree in June of 2003. If we found an old stump of another Douglas fir, and can see the rings on it, we can logically compare the rings of our tree to the rings of the stump. If we see a stretch of rings that match up almost precisely, we can logically assume that those represent the very same seasons as the one on our tree. So the years 1983 - 1988 on our tree match up perfectly with the outer 6 rings of the stump. What does this tell us? That the tree was cut down in 1988. This tree happens to have 85 rings, not just thirty. So now we can subtract 85 from 1988 and deduce that the tree began to grow in 1903. Now that that stump has a known date of origin, we can find another tree and try to match our stump up with that. We can match up, say the years 1910 - 1915 from our known stump to the other fir tree from the same region. The matching seasons on the other tree are not quite to the edge of the tree so we count back to the core from 1910 to see how old the tree is. This particular tree has 110 rings and 1910 falls at ring 95. So we subtract 95 from 1910 and deduce that this tree began to grow in the year 1815. We can also deduce, if it is a stump, that it was cut down in the year 1925. And on and on it goes. Now of course it can get more complicated than that, but in simple terms, this is the process of tree-ring dating. It's as logical as logical can get. Experts who use this method of dating have a tree ring historical record that goes back 8,000 years, meaning approximately 6,000 B.C., and 2,000 years further back than the written historical record.

Chemical dating involves identifying natural chemical processes with known rates, and then reversing mathematical interpolations of those rates to give estimates of dates back into history or prehistory. One example of that follows.

Radio Carbon Dating (Carbon-14 Dating):

This method is more complicated only in terms of the mathematical and chemical knowledge needed to understand it.

The Process:
(source: http://id-archserve.ucsb.edu/anth3/courseware/Chronology/08_Radiocarbon_Dating.html)
The earth's upper atmosphere is constantly bombarded by cosmic radiation (radiation from space). As this radiation enters the upper atmosphere, it causes nitrogen to break down into an unstable (decaying) form of carbon, known as carbon-14. This c-14 pollutes the atmosphere and as it is thrown to earth through storms and other phenomenon it attaches to living molecules in plants through photosynthesis. When animals eat those plants, they ingest the radioactive c-14 molecules as well. C-14 has been shown in laboratory to have a certain rate of decay. Since it is an unstable molecule it is constantly decaying into a stable one. This rate has been studied and the time it takes for a small amount of decay to take place has been multiplied out to the magic number of 5,730. Meaning that from what scientists discovered in the laboratory they decided that every 5,730 years, 1/2 of the c-14 molecule decays. This is what is called a half-life. Over the next 5,730 years, 1/2 of the 1/2 that remains will decay, leaving 1/4 of what was originally there, and over the next 5,730 years, 1/8 of the original molecule will remain, etc. This natural process also seems quite stable.

Deductions:

We can assume that herbivore animals eat plants their whole lives. Carnivores eat the herbivores in the same way the herbivores eat the plants, so c-14 can be found in any animal. When an animal dies, the replenishing of c-14 stops. This is the starting point of its logical decay. We can therefore determine the date of the animal's death by determining how much of the c-14 molecule is left to decay in the animal. Scientists know how long it takes for c-14 to break down, so if they find that a molecule is say 75% decayed, what does that tell us? Well, 75% is 1/2 of 1/2, meaning 2 half-lifes. We can then multiply the magic number 5,730 x 2 and find out how long ago the animal died, in this case 11,460 years ago. If it is 95% decayed, we can determine that as well, 100/2 is 50/2 is 25/2 is 12.5/2 is 6.25/2 is 3.125% so 5 half-lifes is a little too long. Actually 6.25/1.25 = 5%, the amount of c-14 leftover. So here we have 4.625 half-lifes for 95% decay, and 5% c-14 leftover. Multiply 4.625 by our magic number of 5,730 and we get 26,501.25. That is this particular animal with 95% c-14 decay died approximately 26,500 years ago, or the year 24,492 B.C. It should also be noted that most scientists agree that radio-carbon dating has about a 50,000 year limit on it's accuracy. After about the ninth half-life there is so little material left in the specimen (less than 0.2%) that it is very hard to accurately determine amounts.

Those are two of scores of dating methods that scientists use to date prehistoric material. And I haven't even gotten to geological methods yet. Wow. To be continued again.

my current wonderment continued - the problem

the problem

I have been taught since I was young that the earth is 6000 years old, that God created the heavens and the earth, all the plants, animals and sea creatures, and Adam and Eve in the garden of Eden, and that Noah's flood occurred about 4500 years ago, covering the whole earth in water for 40 days and 40 nights. My dilemna should be obvious by now. How does what I have been taught fit with what we are now told is scientific fact? This is something that I have struggled with for quite some time. As stated in the previous entry, I have never accepted macroevolution as true, partially due to my upbringing, and partially to the substantial evidence that the evolutionary model has yet been unable to explain. But what about tectonic plates? Volcanos? The formation of mountains and canyons and fresh water lakes? The erosion of cliffsides, the creation of sandstone? What about the Grand Canyon and Mount Everest? Why would God create the earth looking like it was really old? Doesn't make sense, does it? My dilemna has always been that I disregard macroevolution as fact, or even a working theory, but at the same time I have been overwhelmed by evidence of natural processes within the earth itself that work very, very slowly and seemingly explain much of the earth's surface and delicate balance of inner and outer workings.



Now, assuming that the earth is 4 billion years old, what is to stop macroevolution from being plausible? Nothing. There's no telling what could happen in 4 billion years, well 2 billion, after life is said to have begun. And why does it matter so much? So what if macroevolution is true? Here's the problem as I see it: the Bible states in Genesis 1:26 - 27, that God created man in his own image. If human beings are the product of millions of years of natural selection and accidental situations that caused living beings to change one into another, then God did not create them in his image. If human beings are the product of millions of years of natural selection and accidental situations that caused living beings to change one into another, then there was no plan for how life came into being and for what purpose. If all of this occured, then human beings are worthless animals, with no notable place in history, just another accident that will eventually be eradicated by some global climate change or the accidental formation of a new disease that kills and spreads faster than human beings are capable of adapting to immunity. If this is true, then our lives are pointless, and there is no God (at least not the God of the Bible). If there is no God, there is no Jesus Christ, and no reconcilliation from our sins. Indeed, there is no sin, and in that case no need for a savior at all, in fact, there is no higher morality than power politics. And if there is no God, no Savior, and no prospect of heaven, then my entire upbringing was for nought, any delusions I had of future rewards that would prompt me to view others as higher than myself and to serve them and love them and spread human kindness and compassion are worthless ventures that will make no notable difference in the span of the billions of years to come, that is if we don't destroy the earth by that time because of our petty wars over ideals that matter equally as little. This is the problem I have been facing.



I have dabbled in dating methods in the past, and learned how they worked, and it all makes sense. This was, as far I could tell, true science at work. Then I was recently jolted into an understanding of the foundation of this science, and now I have more confidence that I am not a worthless animal. Let's explore geological timescale.

my current wonderment - evolution

I have been taught half my life that the earth is millions of years old. They tried to sell me on the evolution thing too, but even to a philisophical wanderer on the road to offbeat ideas this sounded ridiculous. It still does. I see no evidence in all of this world that anything ever evolved from anything else. Microevolution I can see, it's apparent. I would maybe even attribute the taxanomical level of family to microevolution. I can see how the idea of macroevolution could form off of this premise and observation. BUT. Here it is: the idea that the earth and everything in it is millions and millions of years old is a neccessary assumption in this line of thinking. This idea is a bold one.

The main idea is that if we can observe microevolution, and also assuming that the earth is millions and millions of years old, we can assume that maybe microevolution can be expanded to macroevolution over that long timeframe. General evolution is a theory based off of the ideas of utility and simplicity.

The changes that occur between generations must be simple and useful for that species. This means that if a brown bear decided or was compelled for some unknown reason to move to the arctic regions, that over many generations the progeny of said brown bear with lighter colored fur would be more likely to survive, and therefore more likely to reproduce, making each successive generation more likely to have light colored fur. The bears who are born with darker fur are assumed to not survive as well as the ones with lighter fur. Now thinking about the climate of the arctic circle, mostly ice, mostly white, this would make sense. A white bear would be camouflaged by the white snow and therefore be more able to kill prey in order to survive. It's common prey, the arctic seal, would see a brown bear coming a mile away and be more able to escape. The situation has caused the brown bear's fur to turn increasingly lighter in color, and other internal changes to as well to cope with the severely cold temperatures. This is called adaptation, and is an example of microevolution. The changes are useful, and rather simple in nature.

The above example could fully take place (speculatively, of course) within probably 20 to 30 generations, or about a thousand years. Now, evolutionists would say, imagine this dramatic process spread out over 2 million years (1000 x 2000) and let's dream up what could happen, and then use that speculation to try to explain the fossil record.

Let's stop for a second and take a step back. Microevolution is fairly observable. Geneticists can tell you that. Macroevolution (the process of, say, a reptile turning into a bird) just at face value seems silly. It is purely speculative and evidence exists that strongly opposes its plausibility. But I'm not here to argue macroevolution. That is for people who are more interested in it than I. I fully reject it as a theory or fact or whatever you want to call it. It's an atheist's wet dream. I do want to look at the root issue of macroevolution, however, namely the concept of millions of years.

This to be continued...

into the deep

this is going to be dedicated to the deepest reaches of my heart, soul and mind. nothing is sacred. nothing is spared. details may be excruciating. prepare yourselves for raw. no building can stand without a firm foundation.