Evolution's Achille's Heels Pt. 2

This is my second article about the previews for a movie called "Evolution's Achilles' Heels." I'm not going to pay to watch the movie for various reasons, but I don't mind examining what I can see for free, and so far it has proved to be less than impressive, but maybe the second preview will reveal at least something which is problematic to the theory of evolution.

 

"Evolution: Is it true?"

 

Yes. Evolution is fact. Not believing it has nothing to do with its relationship to reality. I hope that clears that up. If it doesn't, please use the internet to do some research about how genetic mutations cause variance which is then naturally selected.

 

"Most evolutionists have never critically examined their own position. It's such a sacred cow, even in their own minds, it's unthinkable to even start examining the weaknesses."

 

I can't speak for most evolutionists, but I can say that I came from faith in the biblical story. I know evolution is true because I critically examined my position and changed my mind when I gathered information which was relevant and new to me. The reason why evolution was discovered in the first place is because of critical analysis of information. There has been critical examination of the evidence for evolution since it was first proposed, so even I c an individual doesn't question it, the scientific community as a collective has very much critically examined it and this is how we got the scientific theory of evolution. We make progress in science by building on the progress of the past and doing away with incorrect assertions.

 

"Natural selection plus mutation actually works in the wrong direction for evolution. So the question is: How does evolution work?"

 

What exactly is "the wrong direction?" Is he saying creatures devolve? That mutations result in certain death? That natural selection will weed out successful mutations before the unsuccessful ones? The fact the changes are occurring is evolution! Of course at the end of the statement I think he's acknowledging that evolution happens and maybe in the movie he presents information as to how he thinks evolution works in a different way. Either way, if he is unable to understand evolution, it does not change the reality of it happening which he seemingly admits here.

 

"So genetic entropy is profound. It means that things are going down, not up. The human race should be devolving, not evolving."

 

Now this one is the most interesting comment made out of the two previews. It gets pretty complicated but I'll boil down the concept. There are many more slightly negative mutations that occur than beneficial ones and it is unlikely that that would be selected against because they are so minor, but over time these negative mutations would build up to the point where a population would go extinct. Considering nearly all species which existed ever are now extinct, he may be right, but there is significant evidence that this is false because we have observable and repeatable experiments which prove populations can improve fitness with evolutionary pressure. The biggest problem I have with this concept is that it is often related to irreducible complexity and intelligent design. Just because we can't explain how an organism evolved doesn't mean it didn't happen. It just means we don't know how. These two items are wholly assertions which there is no evidence for.

 

"Even if every atom in the universe was an experiment for every possible molecular vibration over supposed millions of years of time, we'd never get one protein, let alone hundreds, let alone the dna to actually code for them."

 

I'm not sure how he knows this. My guess is that it's based on probabilities. As far as I have found, no one has definitive proof of how life arose, whether by creation or by abiogenesis. The thing is we know life exists, evolution occurs and that we have a lot of time, but we have no evidence for the existence of any god apart from the musings of mankind.

 

"This period of inflation, as it's called, starts for no particular reason and it stops for no particular reason, and by the way, during it, gravity has to work in reverse."

 

Imagine there is a slingshot and it launches a rock into outer space. The effects of gravity from earth will slow it down but it will keep going. What I'm saying is that if the universe started with enough force it would counteract gravity. Apart from this simple explanation, the universe is accelerating, so there is some force which is counteracting gravity in space causing this. It could be that expansion slowed because of the energy needed to expand space and now the universe is building inertia in it's expansion, but this is just my thoughts. In truth, we don't know why these things happen yet. This statement is quite contrary to the theme of this movie. He's pointing out things we don't know about an event he's refuting entirely. It's like irreducible complexity, just because we can't explain a piece, doesn't negate all the other evidence supporting it.

 

"The basic features of the fossil record, sudden appearance, there's and absence of transitions leading to the first appearance of a particular kind of animal."

 

Fossilization is rare. Because it is so rare we should not be surprised that we don't have every stage of evolution set in stone, so to speak, for us to examine. This also ignores the fact that all specimens are in transition to either something else, or extinction. We do have cases of species which had very long runs with little change, like the coelacanth (if you think it hasn't changed at all though, feel free to take a look at the fossils and modern examples for yourself.) I also want to throw in here that the use of the word "kind" here is intentional because creationists believe animals were created in "kinds" but have no scientific definition of the meaning. It is taken straight from the Bible.

 

"From what was learned at Mt. St. Helen's we can now understand that there's all sorts of geological processes which can happen in the blink of an eye."

 

For this I actually went to the icr.org website to find out what they might mean. Most of it is stuff we already knew happened quickly. One interesting point is that trees nearby were floating and sinking in an upright position from a forest destroyed by the blast and might be confusing if we found the much later solidified through multiple layers of strata. What I doubt they'll cover in the movie though is that the event helped us to confirm radiometric dating works.

 

"Cobal-60, cesium-137, silicon-32, and radium-226 do indeed vary with time which, of course, would invalidate the calculated ages."

 

This statement should have been prefaced with "A list of radioactive isotopes not used for dating materials:" because I cant find any reference for using these for dating. It also fails to mention in the clip (as well as the movie I'm sure,) that the variance is smaller than the margin of error for current tests. My guess is the whole idea here is to cast doubt on all radiometric dating by proving there is some variance which was only recently discovered. I sincerely feel like scientists should continue to look into this because it might make for more accurate information on ages of material in the future. Another thing I doubt will make the movie is that this is actually more of a problem for young earth creationists than the theory of evolution primarily because there's a lot of decay which has happened in the past. To quote the Radioisotopes and the age of the Earth Group, a joint project between the Institute for Creation Research (ICR) and the Creation Research Society (CRS):

 

The RATE group concludes that there was about 4 Ga of accelerated decay at creation and about 500 Ma worth at the time of the Flood. However, the amount of heat released by this amount of decay during the Flood would raise the crust to 22,000 K, more than enough to melt the whole crust and boil away the oceans! This is called the heat problem.

 

I think it's notably outstanding that these scientists agree with the rest of the scientific community that there has been 4.5 billion years worth of decay. It's just another instance of Christian scientists forcing the round evidence into the rectangular pages of the Bible.

 

"Now, that doesn't mean that atheists are amoral, but it means their morality is not based on any fundamental truth. So, if evolution is true, many honest evolutionists acknowledge there's no rational basis for morality."

 

I wonder if the pope would be considered an honest evolutionist? And if so, would he say there is no rational basis for morality? (If you're not familiar with the true Scotsman, you should check it out.) This question has been addressed many times before and I've read some excellent answers. I would ask, if God's commands to man are the reason for morality, why would animals exhibit moral behavior? There is also a lot of supporting evidence that morality may have arisen from the need for cooperation. I personally think it's a bit of evolution, and a bit of cultural influence. In other words I think some morality is learned rather than instinctual. I have to stop and ask, are all other "evolutionists" dishonest?

 

"15 Ph.D. Scientists"

 

And they end with meaningless contradictory information from the first preview, true to biblical form.

Evolution's Achilles Heels Pt. 1

I haven't been engaging others for too long in regards evolution vs. creationism. Mainly because for most of my life, I was on the creationism side turning a blind eye to anything which did not confirm my belief and twisting what was impossible to ignore. It helped that there are just enough scientists out there to support the idea to keep the young earth creationism theories.
Recently a new book and movie came out called Evolution's Achilles Heels. To be fair, I didn't watch the whole thing. I watched to extremely abridged versions, also known as "previews" in commoner terms.
I'm going to take the snippets they showed for free to make a few observations and my first observation is: If these guys have the scientific knowledge to prove evolution is false and the Bible is true, they might have to be some of the most immoral people of all time to charge people money for the information when souls are at stake. Maybe their bank account is more important than the billions of souls which could be saved. Seems legit.
On to the preview.

 

"Natural selection can't actually generate anything new. It can only operate on what is existing."

 

They start off with a true statement, but the implication is a lie. Natural selection is a part of the evolutionary process which slims the choices down. Genetic mutation is the part of the process which makes the variants to be selected. I'm really not sure if the person saying this phrase simply doesn't understand the terminology, or if he's being intellectually dishonest. At best there must be a portion which denies genetic mutation all together, which is false, but maybe he's just refuting natural selection in addition to mutation, in which case he might be severely uninformed. Or maybe he's just saying natural selection does remove mutations which have to exist before their removal in the most deceptive way possible.

 

"14 Ph.D. Scientists"

 

14?! Somebody call the New York Times and let them know that there's a whole 14 Ph.D. scientists in this movie! I'm honestly not sure if this number is meant to impress the viewer or not. There could be 1,000 or a group of flamingos in lab coats holding up cue cards. It's not the minds presenting the information that I care about, it's the information itself.

 

"Many evolutionists claim that the origin of life is not part of evolution, but come on, they believe that all living things came from a single cell, which in turn came from a primordial soup."

 

"But notably absent from any rock anywhere is any trace of a primordial soup."

 

I want so badly to hop all over the term "evolutionists" here like a jackelope on the hot sands of West Texas, but I'll save it for later since there is so much wrong with this.
Technically these guys believe in abiogenesis if they think the creation account is true. Evolution and abiogenesis are two separate issues. A god could have created life a billion years ago and evolution would still be true. Evolution has happened and is happening now. Abiogenesis does not have to be proven to support it.
I would like to what someone's belief has to do with the case against evolution. What does the lack of evidence for something someone hypothesized happened have to do with evolution? Just in case they wanted some filler, they should have mentioned the sun is not a chariot ridden by Helios and Superman's fortress of solitude isn't real either. There are a million possibilities besides primordial soup so I don't think anyone should be surprised when they don't find it.

 

"Existence of a fossil by itself is actually proof that something happened very, very fast. We also know therefore that the rocks the fossils are formed in must have formed quickly as well."

 

Fossils are great examples of a specimen getting buried quickly. There are multiple things fossils can be buried in as well such as sedimentary rock or volcanic ash. There are different types of fossils though and not all can be explained as happening rapidly. A short timeline is years though and it only goes up from there when it comes to sedimentary rock.
They follow the statement with something about Noah's flood but they don't give evidence so I won't get into the weeds on that one because it is a pretty clear move from a case against evolution to religious propaganda.

 

"If the whole earth was pure carbon-14, it could only last about a billion years before it's all gone and we couldn't detect it. And yet, we repeatedly find carbon-14 in objects which are claimed to be millions, and even billions, of years old including diamonds."

 

Carbon dating is kind of complicated, but I'll try to explain this simply. Carbon-14 is radioactive and becomes nitrogen-14 with a half-life of 5,700 years or so and is generally not used to date anything over 20,000 years. By the way this phrase is said, we shouldn't find carbon-14 in anything at all if the earth is billions of years old, but they don't say that. The reason why they don't is because carbon-14 is produced on earth in different ways so many things become contaminated with it. After a certain point when objects have too little, or no carbon-14, but undergo the test for carbon dating, background radiation will seem as if it is the smallest margin of error for the test. This is how you get carbon-14 where there might actually be none and why something formed a billion years ago would test for younger. Of course the technician running the test might question your motives for the test in the first place if you knew the object was likely older than the test was accurate for. I would probably classify that with falsifying evidence.

 

"If the creator made us, then he owns us and has a right to make the rules for us. But if things made themselves, then there's no right or wrong. We're just really bags of rearranged pond scum. So what is murder? It's just one bag of chemicals impacting another bag of chemicals."

 

I won't argue the first part of this because I don't know what evidence he may have to support his claim of a creator. Things making themselves is as wrong as using a pickle spear to stir your hot chocolate. Something cannot make anything until it exists, especially not itself. I know causality is an important part of logic for humans, but isn't this a bit far fetched?
Right and wrong are concepts well beyond the scope of such a short post, but I would say if there were no humans around to ask what is right or wrong, would the concept exist at all? We see lots of "moral" behavior in mammals. Ours has become so complex it's confusing, but on the individual level, we decide what we think is best for us and our group. I honestly prefer meat machine to bag of chemicals, but I don't have a Ph.D. to back up such technical terms. I like to think my life has more intrinsic value to myself than other animals because I have the ability to comprehend it more than they. In that same thinking, I have respect for the lives of others because they too are valuable to themselves, to their family, and to their friends. I have a respect for the human condition which conflicts with biblical morality in that I believe people have value beyond their belief in God or Jesus.

 

"There's another reason why an evolutionist would hold onto their belief system even when all the fatal flaws are revealed and that is because if evolution isn't true, it strongly points them in a different direction."

 

I wonder if the saying this realizes the pope is an evolutionist and that is not his belief system? Evolutionists are just those who accept the evidence of evolution, no belief required. And besides all that, why would I care if the evidence lead in a different direction? I'm absolutely fine with being wrong. I guess they saved all the "fatal flaws" for the actual movie though. As a more appropriate rebuttal to this statement:
The reason why a creationist would hold to their belief system even when all the fatal flaws are revealed is because if evolution is true, it strongly points them in a different direction.

Blind faith

Many times I see Christians think that a believing evolution requires blind faith. I've read and heard over and over that evolution is just a theory or less and Pascal's wager weighed heavily on me throughout my transition beyond faith.
I need to constantly reevaluate what I know because I have been wrong in the past. I cant settle for the knowledge I have because I may be wrong, I have been before.
So, is my faith now in science? Or the scientists?
First, it's important to note that faith is a belief not based on proof or evidence. I can say with certainty I do not have faith in science. I analyze the evidence presented by it and make the best judgment from there.
One thing I know is that mankind is a prideful species and every scientist lives for a big discovery. If one scientist can prove another wrong they will gladly do so. Would it be easy to prove evolution false? No. There is mountains of evidence supporting it. The theory is so solid at this point it would take a lot to disprove it. One giant leap in the right direction to put some doubt in the theory and give the flood story a little more credence is if any fossil ever were found out of order in the geological layers.
I believed as a young earth creationist that the flood was fact and that it was the primary cause of the layers we see in the earth today. The flood story offers a lot of explanations to what we see around us when limiting earth to a 6,000 year time scale (aside from the god of the gaps idea.)
There's one huge glaring problem though. In a flood the water moves everything chaotically. If the flood was truth, we would still find tons of fossils, but they would be mixed up, as if there was no order to how life evolved. We would find mammals  prior to the Triassic period and some dinosaurs in the most recent of rock deposits. We don't find that in reality. If we could separate the geological layers like sheets of paper we could watch evolution occur like a flip book.
Even for animals as unique as the platypus we can view its evolutionary progress.
By the flood account, this is not possible unless God purposely made it that way, in which case it is a lie fabricated by God to lead people away from the Bible, which is contrary to everything I believed about God.
When I was studying through all this information,  I wanted to believe the creation story. I tried my best to reconcile what I believed with reality, but it just didn't match up.
Another big thing I learned during the process of learning about the origins of life as we know it is that evolution is a theory, but not as Christian leaders taught it. Evolution is a theory the same as gravity, planetary movement, or the expanding universe are theories. Gravity exists, you feel it's forces constantly, and not believing in it doesn't make it untrue.
I remember once in high school I was talking to another student about God and she said to me that her faith was that whatever you believed was true to you. I asked if she believed the chair she was sitting on was there, and she replied in the affirmative. I then asked, if I didn't believe in the chair would it cease to exist. She replied in the negative of course. I said it's the same with God and she said just because I believed, doesn't mean he exists.
Pascal's wager basically boils down to the idea that belief in God is better than non-belief because there is a lot more to gain in faith.
I love the idea that I could live forever. It is a wonderful thought that I could have eternity, but I cannot believe in God because I like the idea, and it doesn't make it true just because people believe.
I was in prayer constantly over everything in my life and it was easy to find a correlation with real world events. I didn't understand that I was creating an enormous probability that would be true. It all seemed real until I heard about an experiment with pigeons who developed their own "prayers" to get food.
I was doing the same thing as these pigeons. It just seems like God is there because I'm connecting the dots I created in the first place.
Over a long enough time scale you a correlation can be found between lots of entirely unrelated events, but it doesn't prove they're related.
So how can I be sure that evolution isn't just that, a correlation of unrelated events over time? The evidence. Evolution is reinforced constantly through DNA, dating methods, and fossil evidence.
My views on evolution are based on anything but faith. It's all based on evidence.
The fallacy here is in not knowing that all faith is blind. By definition it does not need proof. But believing, unfortunately, does not make it so.

What about my kids?

One thing I have contemplated a lot since my religious transition is how I will raise my children.
I had always imagined that my children would be raised as members of the Christian community and a big part of that would be my immediate family and their influence.
Before I had kids I would imagine us being late for church because it took my wife too long to get ready, and as soon as it was time for Sunday school you'd see how fast they could really run. I based these ideas off of my upbringing.
Church was such a necessity that even on vacation, it was part of the planning process to figure out where we would go to church.
Especially when I first realized the Biblical story was untrue I wondered how would I teach my kids morality. I considered continuing to bring them to church because I didn't understand morality without God. I didn't think there could be a standard of morality without God. And I was partially right.
Even within the Bible the standard fluctuates from person to person based on their knowledge and faith. For non-believers the standard ranges even more wildly, though.
How am I supposed to teach my children solid morality?
I still think the golden rule applies to everyone and is quite useful. Treat others as you would have them treat you, but this does not apply to every situation. To begin with, you must have a sense of responsibility in order to be treated fairly. If a thief comes to your home, do they deserve to be treated as you would treat yourself? The answer is simple, no. They have forfeit their sense of responsibility for their own sense of entitlement. They think they are entitled to what you have for whatever reason they have come up with to justify their actions.
I feel like most situations can be viewed this way outside of the Bible's version of morality.
I think it boils down to the simple concept of responsibility toward humanity vs. a sense of entitlement from it.
The biblical version of morality covers everything with a little bit of faith, but definitely defies what I see as right because it views God as entitled to all of humanity so whatever is written in his name goes. God even has guidelines for what you can think.
There are a lot of things the Bible says not to do that no one fights, so let me bring up an example that Christians fight hard on that falls outside my standard: homosexuality.
This has been the biggest fight for equal rights since Martin Luther King Jr. was around and there were a lot of Christians on the wrong side of that moral battle. Now most Christians would say everyone is God's creation whether they're black, yellow, red or white. (No offense, it comes from a Christian children's song.)
I wonder what Christians will say 50 years down the road now. I suspect that they will say homosexuality is fine. It's what happened with slavery and segregation.
These are all pretty good examples where entitlements outweighed responsibilities.
The Bible does not approve of homosexuality to clear that up for anyone who does not know, but does it present a truly moral obligation against it? I assume the obligation comes from the fact that same-sex relationships at the time didn't allow for children in a society where having a legacy to leave behind was pretty important.
The fight in the U.S. now is Christians want homosexuals to know they don't approve of their lifestyle by denying them a piece of paper and some tax benefits.  The truth is it doesn't change the way people will live, it only makes them feel like lesser people in the eyes of others. Sometimes people perceive others to think of them as less when it's not true, but in this case, it is exactly that which is happening.
I don't want my children to view others as less because of personal choices which have no effect on their lives.
Should anyone who's favorite color is green be ostracized? Perhaps if you're favorite flavor is strawberry you should be extradited immediately. Even more gravely, a farmer who uses crop rotation, anyone who wears clothes of more than one fabric, if you cut the sides of your hair, if you like your steak any way except well done, and if you don't stand in the presence of old people, you are in danger of the fires of hell. That's not all either. If you don't like immigration,  hell. Homeschooling mom with male children, hell. Seriously, this goes on and on and on, and Christians chalk up these rules to cultural relevance.
These personal preferences have no effect on another person's happiness unless they take they choices as an affront to themselves personally and who's fault is that? I have to admit, I don't like making other people feel bad and I do feel guilt over it at times, but its my problem for feeling guilty when I shouldn't.
Homosexuals aren't gay because you do or don't want them to be, its a part of who they are. Is it fair for anyone to force them to be disallowed their own responsibility for who they are?
The Bible does not allow for this view of morality.
I want my children to be leaders in a society that looks at humanity for the dignity and liberty it could have and moves toward more freedoms through responsibility.
My children are entitled to my love. It is my responsibility to give it to them and through that simple idea, I hope I can give them everything they need to succeed morally in life on their own terms.
But what if they believe in religion despite everything I know and pass on to them?
My children are their own people. Even though they are small now and I can make nearly every decision for them, it wont always be that way.
I can absolutely accept they may believe in religion down the road. I believed it once and had faith. I know that faith is a very small leap when you have truth, or at the very least good ideals, mixed with unverifiable statements, or even lies. Most importantly I would still love them, but I would also hope they didn't lose their sense of humanity, empathy and responsibility.

Are Christians logical?

I consistently read atheist forums and Facebook pages and I never have to look too far for comments saying that anyone who believes religion are illogical and willfully ignoring reality.
As someone who has recently transitioned beyond Christianity, I can assure you that isn't the case.
People become Christians for many reasons. Some are born in families which follow the Bible and some turn to it in time of need.
I wish that everyone who ever lived was able to live in a way that made them happy without trying to force others into their ideal. It's human nature to seek out people with similar traits to one's self though and that's a lot easier if you can convince people to change to your way of life.
I was raised in a Christian home where Biblical values were taught and there's a lot of good things that came from that for me.
I think it really helped me to develop a greater sense of responsibility for humanity. When everyone is God's creation they are each precious. I still think every person has value and deserves to be happy, as long as their happiness doesn't involve ending other people's ability to be happy. Everyone has a right to life and happiness until they forfeit it in favor of threatening that of others.
But were my Biblical views logical?
There was a lot of people who were instrumental in shaping my views while I was growing up. First and foremost were my parents. They were my example. I think my dad is a brilliant man and he has had faith all my life, why would I as a child question what he already knows?
That's where faith started for me.
Whenever I had questions, they always had answers for me that were based around the biblical story, so when I got to Sunday school at church, I was ready absorb every word as absolute truth. This type of attitude carried almost through college for me.
I was surrounded by Christian friends, Christian teachers and a Christian family.
When everyone around you believes you have discussions about different aspects of the faith, but you don't usually question the whole thing because it doesn't seem logical when everyone else believes.
I did have questions about many things, but there was always someone there who could give me the Christian answer and encourage my faith. I was surrounded by people who relied on faith.
All those answers I got about my questions only crumbled under the weight of the evidence of the real world because I fully expected to find they lined up perfectly. I never thought of God as someone who was stuck on the pages of the Bible. He was a real entity who lived in me and affected the real world. To me the Holy Spirit was my spiritual Jiminy Cricket guiding me in the tough decisions of life and I would chalk up my intuitions to him.
Faith is the only hump to making it all seem logical. There are verses in the Bible that apply to nearly every philosophical question or life situation. That is the beauty of it. With a little bit of faith you can justify so much.
Faith is the cornerstone of it all. Once you have faith, your questions lead back to the Bible first, and the word of others secondarily, the word of unbelievers lastly.
Christians are logical in a very creative sense. They use the Bible to explain every phenomena through creative interpretation. That is what makes the Bible timeless is our ability to reinterpret every sentence and infuse it with new meaning.
If the Bible were true I can think of a lot of ways it could have said things not understood at the time like maybe saying God created the universe in 14 billion years or at least saying it would look that way. It could have said the earth was a sphere, mentioned seven (or even six) continents. It could have mentioned the other 9 planets in our solar system. The Bible could have said the Earth revolves around the sun or that clouds in outer space make stars, or maybe even say that God made stars first which exploded to make all the other material he needed to create life. There are so many things which could not have been verified at the time but would have directly verified its authenticity as being from God or at least by someone who knew how the universe worked in ways we couldn't have measured at the time. There are more than 31,000 verses in the Bible and God couldn't add and extra verse per hundred years until Jesus comes back to just say "Hey, I already knew this before you guys realized shoes were a good idea"?
I only think that way now because of my transition. Before I would see how perfectly tuned the universe is for life. Now that seems like thinking that water was made for fish. Fish live in water because they evolved to live in those conditions. Water didn't evolve to allow fish to inhabit it.
We find ourselves in a universe which supports life, because it does, if it didn't we wouldn't be here, or we'd be suited to a different universal condition. Our sample of life is exactly one so I wont limit my views on the possibilities.
Christians aren't illogical, they just don't have all the information, or view contrary information through faith and not objectively. I don't view Christians as illogical, just misinformed very well.

Where is the hope?

I think that probably one big question I will hear is where is the hope in not believing the Bible and the salvation through Jesus.
I honestly did take a lot of comfort in the idea of eternal life before my transition beyond Christianity. Forever is quite a long time and I truly think I would enjoy living that long.
I would be able to compose all the music I could literally ever imagine. I could paint murals which stretched for miles. (As someone who enjoys writing, i wonder if you could write stories with antagonists in heaven?) I could get a really great tan basking in the glorious starlight of newly formed stars at the pillars of creation.
Unfortunately just because it is a wonderful idea does not make it true. I can imagine a world where there's no gravity and clouds are made of cotton candy so nutritious it's all anyone ever needed to eat and no one ever has to work, ever. There aren't any ancient texts claiming that will happen but it's no more probable it will come to pass than an afterlife.
There's not much hope for anything beyond this life for me. I am quite a lucky product of a long line of miraculous events, but so is everyone who has ever lived.
I am no more special than the next person except for to myself and my family. Another statement which is generally true for all humans.
I am a consciousness higher than any other animal, able to ponder the cosmos.
So I have a lot to look forward to in this life.
Watching my children grow, seeing the rise of a digital world where everyone can own or explore anything, buying my dream car, spending countless evenings with my wife.... the list goes on and on.
There's a lot of hope for things to come while I live.
I cannot trust in the idea that I will have eternity, so I will have to try my best to have a good time while maintaining my responsibilities.
Honestly though, the idea that we are simply a meat robots doomed to base desires has crossed my mind more than once. Usually followed by the question of do I really control myself?
The very fact I'm pondering that question means I must to some degree. At the very least, I'm analyzing past events which would affect reactions in the future.
In some instances I am kind of in control. I get hungry and I have to eat. I have gone more than a day without food when it was readily available, but eventually, I will eat in order to survive. I get thirsty, I have to breath, there's a lot of needs I must meet in order to continue to exist as a conscious being. I can choose to abstain from anyone for short periods of time though.
I think the craziest part in all this though is imagining what it will be like after I die.
I spent a lot of my life preparing spiritually for eternity. Most people also plan for the eventuality of their death through wills, life insurance, savings and I'm sure a lot of other things as well. But will it matter?
I'm sure when I die it will matter to those I leave behind, but me, I'll be gone. My consciousness will have "left the building" so to speak. I truly cant imagine death though.
My blackest black and quietest quiet conjured up in my imagination just don't cut it. I'm still perceiving the real world around me. It will just be over, like an unending dreamless sleep.
I think I will mostly be sad it is the end before it comes, but I will think about the good things in my life like the way my daughter's cheeks fill up like tiny balloons when she smiles, the way my son laughs deviously when we play, or the day I got married.
But then, when all is said and done. I will be gone, no longer troubled with anything here, but also unable to experience the good. 
In the mean time, I'll have to do my best to make the most good experiences for myself and others that I can and that is where the hope lies. That I still have time to enjoy this life a little more.

What I believe

I've talked quite a bit about different aspects of my religious transition, but I haven't talked to much about how it has changed how I think.
Over a year and a half I transitioned from a young earth creationist to.... something.
I don't really know about a lot of things. I wouldn't consider myself truly atheist, because I just don't know. I can prove the biblical story false on many fronts, but does that mean there is no God or spiritual aspect to life?
I wish I had direct answers to those questions, but I don't know.
It may be an artifact of my Christian beliefs, but I feel like existence itself may be evidence for God. I know it leads down a road of circular reasoning, but what is the cause? Even the big bang is a reaction. Hawking said time didn't exist before it, but I would disagree based on pure logic. Something happened, and if something is happening there is an element of time, and our universe came into being. So I wont discount there could be a God. (Every pure atheist is shaking their head asking what caused God right now.)
I believe my mind is my own, it's a private space that belongs only to me and I can share or keep secret whatever I like.
I have this one life to live, and even though I wish there was an eternity on the other side of it, I see no evidence for that, so I have to do the best I can with what I have.
As a Christian I took a lot of comfort in thinking I would have eternity to explore every crevice of the universe. I thought eternity with God would be awesome. I imagined millennia to spend learning everything I could possibly be interested.in. Now I have to learn and grow while I can and use my time wisely.
I have an obligation to treat others fairly and be respectful of their happiness.
The constitution of the U.S. was written for people who have a sense of responsibility, not a sense of entitlement. People with a feeling they are owed something mess up rules that work by taking advantage of the system. I cannot decide for other people what will make them happy, we are not all the same, but I can support others being happy as I would hope they would support my happiness. I cannot make decisions for people based on a set of rules governed by the authors of the book of the Bible.
I'm still on this journey and now that I'm not basing my opinions on the Bible, everything is fluid and changing on a consistent basis. Its wonderful to know I have the freedom to make up my own mind what works for me.
Having a Biblical standard works if you pick and choose, but following it in it's entirety?
I Timothy 2:9

I also want the women to dress modestly, with decency and propriety, adorning themselves, not with elaborate hairstyles or gold or pearls or expensive clothes,

Go to a church and see how many women have gold or pearls, but homosexuality is an abomination. The truth is all Christians pick and choose and apply a few catch-alls to what doesn't work. Like Galatians 5:18 or I Corinthians 8 or simply citing the blessing of grace. I've used these same verses in my life, but the Bible can be used to argue against itself all day long. It's not the single cohesive work that I once believed it to be.
According to this article, God gives everyone enough rope to hang themselves in the pages of the Bible. What, in all the universe, is fair about that? God wants us to willfully ignore the contradictions in order to be saved?
There are a lot of excuses to explain these contradictions, but even the excuses tend to lead to contradiction. If all scripture is God breathed, does that mean he's points people in the wrong direction if they study too hard? I know the "Christian answer" here is that it's only me causing the contradictions and not all contradictions can be taken at face value because context must be taken into consideration but it still doesn't account for all.
My standard is looking out for my fellow humans with regard for their ability to be happy.
Who am I to make the rules for how someone else lives? As a Christian I thought that standard was set by God and was cut and dry, but life is not so simple. Don't get me wrong, there are lots of excellent lessons in the words of the Bible, but there are in any good story. If the Bible was 100 percent perfect and never contradicted itself, I would still believe in that standard as the word of God, but it does not stand up to that kind of scrutiny.
Even as I write this, I know my words do not perfectly explain every aspect of what I mean, but I will continue to flesh it all out in further posts as I don't think anyone has the time or desire to read a book of a post on that in one sitting.
I can also be wrong. As a Christian there was only one way and my biggest concern was always: does a person accept Christ as their savior? It was that exact thinking that lead me down this road.
Now that I'm beyond that, I have the freedom to view things through my own eyes, evaluate and re-evaluate them. Being wrong is okay. There are more lessons to be learned from mistakes than successes and I'm free to learn, change and grow as a member of humanity and not be a "slave to the law" as the Bible puts it.

The right to life... and death

Whenever i get on a plane, one of the first things i check is how far i am from the exit doors. I dont do this in case of water landings though. Im mapping out in my mind a what-if scenario where the plane encounters a catastrophic problem where i know a crash is imminent. I know the whole scenario is far fetched, but if the situation were to occur, my plan is to go out one of those doors. I would rather go out with one last thrill of my own choosing than hit the ground in a burning tin can with everyone else. I can imagine the investigation later wondering why this one passenger ended up a mile away from the rest of the wreckage. I dont think it would take too long for them to figure out that I decided on my last flight pattern myself.

Brittany Maynard ended her life recently. It stirred up a whole slew of reactions, good and bad, the internet over.

Because of my recent religious transition, I became very interested in the views of religious people concerning this specific matter because it shows a lot about how they view and relate to the world.

Maynard became the voice of a movement to die with dignity in the face of terminal illness.

For anyone who doesn't know, Death with Dignity laws allow mentally competent, terminally-ill adults to voluntarily request and receive a prescription medication to hasten their death. I would encourage anyone to read up on the process so you can see it's not a hasty one in comparison with the timeline one may have to take advantage of it.

I saw a whole lot of posts about this describing Maynard's actions as cowardly and suicide, but I have to disagree.

Death is scary for anyone, even Christians aim to preserve their own life. If someone has a terminal illness, I cannot judge whether they are brave for seeing it through to the last day, a coward for not, or a coward for ending their life early or brave for taking control of a terrible situation. I would say I cannot possess the knowledge of what fears are running through their mind and I think, out of human respect, that individual should be given the benefit of the doubt for whatever attitude seems better.

Why did so many feel that what Maynard did was so wrong? Why is it that so many people thought their opinion on her actions were more valid than Maynard's and that she should have suffered to the bitter end?

Maynard's personal choice has very little direct effect on me right now. I didn't know her or her family personally. I doubt I would have met her in these last few months of her life. I can't think of a reason to mourn her passing in light of the fact that it happened how she wanted in light of the circumstances, and to top it off, she made an impact in a cause she believed in. Part of me wonders, if she was completely made up, would people feel silly for the way they've acted. For all I know, she could have been and her story would have no less effect on me.

A lot of Christians would say she took away the opportunity for a miracle in her life. Many called her actions suicide, and to be fair, that is what she did. She killed herself, but not in the way we normally think of suicide, an action of peril done alone as a result of depression or other circumstances. She was going to die and said she wanted to live, but that wasnt an option for her. To be clear, I do not condone suicide, I believe situations like hers are an exception. She had the support of her family in her final moments, that speaks volumes about the situation of her death.

A lot of faiths consider suicide a mortal sin which cannot be forgiven and maybe that has a lot to do with the hate she received, even after her death, from christians. I guess it's easier to condemn someone to suffer in life when you think most of humanity will suffer for all of eternity.

I see her choice a lot like my plan for a catastrophic plane incident. She went out of her own choosing, at her own time, in her own way, in the face of death. I'll believe that what she did was brave because it was her decision in the depths of overwhelming circumstances.

What will everyone think?

I have only told two people about my recent transition in faith. My wife and later a coworker who is atheist. My coworker was quite surprised when I told him what I had been through because he knew I went to church faithfully and even though he knew me during the entire process, he didn't know it was happening. It was easy to open up to him because we interact every day and I already knew he was on the same page.
I haven't told my other coworkers, let alone the members of my church where I went. I'm most apprehensive about telling my family though.
I know my family will love me no matter what, but they will still think of me differently once they know.
I already saw how they reacted to my uncle's coming out as atheist and I have a cousin who is gay and probably feels the same in many aspects. They wont ostracize me and I don't foresee being cut out of any wills, but they will be genuinely concerned for my soul.
They will look for opportunities to minister to me and they will probably see misfortunes that fall on me as God trying to get my attention. I fully understand these feelings because I have felt them for others. I don't even feel like its wrong for them. I don't like the idea of putting undue stress on them though. Especially my parents.
The Bible says:
Train up a child in the way he should go: and when he is old, he will not depart from it.
I wonder everyday if what i am doing will benefit my children far in the future, and i hope i am, but i also view their shortcomings as my own. My parents were excellent examples of the essence of Christ in my life. I know that when they read these words they will wonder where things went wrong. I hate the idea that they might take these things quite hard as parents. They may even blame my uncle as if he had an influence on my studies even though I learned all this in an attempt to reclaim him for Christ.
Even though I see no reason to believe in things beyond this life, I know my parents minds will not change, and I have no desire at all to try to change them. But they will have heartfelt concern for my spiritual well being as well as that of my family.
My parents have always been adamant that I should study scripture and learn it for my own edification so my faith was my own. How will they feel when they learn that the very book I based much of my life on has lead me to disbelief when I studied it with more discerning eyes? 
The rest of my family will feel a similar concern at this news. I'm honestly glad I have a family so concerned with my well being on every level. I consider myself exceptionally lucky in that respect. But my 'coming out' will result in reservations on their part as well.
I have cousins in a very wide age group. Will any future family event include a warning about me being 'out there' and to take what I say with a grain of salt. Or maybe they wouldn't want me to be around their children in a format which would have been fine before this transition.
I'm not out to convert anyone or lead them away from faith but still our differences could lead to unseen rifts, which is unfortunate to say the least.
Of course, in the end this is all conjecture because I haven't told them yet.
Along the way I even wondered at one point if they already knew all this and kept up appearances for the sake of their children, but I don't think they could keep up a lie for so long. And for that exact reason, I know I cant keep this a secret forever either. At some point, they will know.

First brave step out

Until about eight months ago the only person who knew I was going through a theological transition was me. During the time leading up to that I played in my church's praise team and participated in a lot of church events.
I remember specifically one of the more active members in my church asked me how my relationship with God was. I'm not much for lying, but I didn't want to come out and say "I'm trying to figure out whether God really exists or not," so I told him about the things I was doing in the church. He told me it was easy to get caught up in doing things but not really progressing spiritually. He went on to invite me to a small group which I declined, but I was impressed with his ability to perceive the way I skirted the issue. He was actually quite right. I wasn't growing spiritually, I was relearning reality.
I did struggle with some things along the way. The biggest one might have been my relationship with my wife.
My wife is the nicest person I have ever met. She is amazing in so many ways and is absolutely my balancing force in life. When I'm stuck in zig, she suggests zag. When I think black, she reminds me of white. No matter what, she is always there for me though.
During my transition I felt like I couldn't say anything to her. I'm the one who fed her knowledge about why the creation story was true. She was a huge encouragement in my return to faith. I had no desire whatsoever in sending her down this crazy path I was on.
The problem was I spent quite a bit of time studying and analyzing everything I was learning and I'm not big about talking about work which meant that the deep meaningful conversations about nothing and everything she was used to us having were conspicuously absent.
It was obvious to her that I was being unusually silent.
To complicate things more she was pregnant and I know she knew I was hiding something but she didn't know what. I'm sure a million things went through her head and she would ask me to just talk sometimes and my brain would strain under the enormous weight of my secret.
We were on a long drive one day. The ride was fairly silent because the radio was low to keep my son from waking up and I was sitting in the driver's seat trying to build up the courage to tell her what I was going through.
I remember looking over at her pregnant belly and she said "So.... do you want to talk about something?"
I felt like I might throw up. I had felt this way many times in trying to bring this topic up. I have the ability to think very strategically and remain calm in the most grave of situations, but telling the woman of my dreams what I was going through was scary.
I was scared she might have doubts about our whole relationship. Or that this might be something about me she couldn't accept. Or she just wouldn't understand. We were about to have a baby, how would she react to my change of heart? Would she even see me as the man she married?
I got the first few words out one at a time with an unsure pause between each one as if I was going to just stop talking. I finally got the first sentence out. Then a second.
She was attentive, calm, not upset at all.
I spent about 30 minutes talking about the entire process before we arrived at our destination.
It was a relief for both of us. I had prefaced everything I said by telling her I had no desire to change her beliefs and I still don't. I love that she is more free spirited than I am. She is my window to the fantastical and I would never want to suppress that.
I couldn't believe how well the conversation went and it definitely reopened a flood gate of communication between us and I was relieved at least one person knew my secret and having told her I was a little sad that I had held it in for so long.
I also explained how it changed my view of our marriage, changes that I am constantly evaluating through new eyes.
I don't think of our marriage as a three-way promise between my wife, God and myself anymore. It's just my promise to her and hers to me. I can be assured that every loving action comes from myself, and not out of some spiritual obligation.
For someone who is quite disconnected from faith, the difference may seem irrelevant, but I assure you it is massive. It comes with freedoms and fears, but I know in the end my love and commitment to my wife is my own. Can it be shaken? Maybe, but my commitment to her goes well beyond what I could hope to  understand in such a short lifetime. There are no stories of courage without fear and I truly look forward to the development of our story every day whether it's boring or intensely exciting. That's what courageous love is all about.
I am with her because I sincerely choose to be.
Since then she has continued to be amazingly supportive and understanding and I have continued to be open with her about what's going on with me.
It really opened my eyes to how homosexuals must feel and I very much related to a ted talk covering just that issue. It was my first step out of my closet and it felt great.
But how would everyone else react to my change?

I think I owe someone an apology

It was over a year and a half ago when my long journey in transition began and during that time there has been a gigantic shift in the way I think about things.
As a believer, a lot of how and what I thought was based completely on the Bible.
The whole reason I started down the road of study which lead me to here is because I was honestly concerned for my uncle and his family. Sometimes he would post things to facebook about how thanking God after a natural disaster was like thanking a serial killer, or that religion was a geographic birth lottery, or comments of stories about religion around the world killing people and having barbaric practices. I butted heads with him more than once needless to say.
It made me mad on some levels as well as being concerned. I'm not one to sit idly by while something happens that i don't like. I HAD to do something and staying silent just isn't me. I accused him of being without morale compass because that compass comes from God, or so I thought. I pressed him about how logical our faith was and that we didn't lack the reason to make an informed decision.
I think what really put it over the top for me though was when my uncle declared he was now an evangelist for atheism.
This was in stark contrast to who he was before. He had spent a lot of time trying to get into Christian ministry. He went to church and participated in the band. He had a degree from a Christian college.
His explanation was that he hadn't lost his fervor for spreading the truth, he just learned new truth.
I had received messages from other family members thanking me for standing up for our faith, because we were concerned as a collective for my uncle's whole family.
Being on the other side now, I understand how alienating that must have been and probably still is.  There must have been a long line of difficult choices that lead up to that point. Don't get me wrong, my whole family still loves them and would do anything for them, but they also are eager to have the opportunity to minister to them. What's really awkward about it, is that it's genuinely out of love. Its because they care. I'm nearly certain that this is why my uncle's family didn't go to our reunion. I'm sure they would have loved most of it, but maybe just didn't want to have to hear all the religious talk and ministering that went with it.
At the time I honestly didn't consider that though. What I really thought was that my uncle's life wasn't going the way he would like for it to, which made him angry with God, which lead him to atheism. I think most Christians probably think this way. I think people will think the same thing of me when I do "come out" so to speak. A perfect example of this is the movie "God's not Dead."
The problem is that for my uncle, or anyone else for that matter, to be mad at God, he had to believe in God.
To further complicate the matter, I'm sure there are a few "atheists" which fit into the category of being mad at God, and there are a lot of atheists who devote their time to attacking the church with anger which certainly gives off the same appearance to a Christian.
I guess before I transitioned I couldn't identify with someone who didn't believe God existed at all.
Now it could be that my uncle's life wasn't going as he planned, and maybe that's what lead him to the realization of the truth, but I don't know, we've never had that conversation. It may have been he was trying to figure out the meaning of some passage, got confused and went down a similar road of research.
I wonder if people will think I was mad at God? I'm financially more stable than I've ever been, I was about to have my second child and everything in my life is still on an upward swing I feel.
I was also upset because his two boys were definitely believers before. How would this affect them psychologically and spiritually? I felt like it was so unfair to his children for him to put such a big change on them.
Really I was the one being unfair though. Who am I to judge how he parents and what is best for his kids? I know for a fact not everyone will agree with how I raise my kids, but I do look out for what's best for them. I'm not a perfect parent, and neither is my uncle, but its definitely not my place to think hes in the wrong for telling his kids what he thinks is true.
I doubt it will have any lasting psychological effects either. I eventually found out (spoiler alert) that Santa Claus, the easter bunny, and the tooth fairy were all fictitious, and I still turned out (relatively) fine. No one knows his children better than he does and his love for them compels him to do his best, even when it is tough.
As a Christian I just couldn't empathize with how he was thinking at the time though. In hindsight the saddest part of all to me is that, at least on some level, he felt like the family couldn't accept him and I was the prime example of why he felt that way. Even with my good intentions I was actually working against the greater good.
I honestly don't even know whether to say I was wrong. Is it wrong to show concern for some one's soul? My gut reaction is to justify my concern because it was out of love, but does that make it okay?
Its a tricky question because I still think treating your neighbor as yourself applies. As a Christian I would have wanted someone to confront me, but from this side, I could see how it might be uncomfortable, especially if you're getting a mini-sermon every time you turn around. Obviously I'm still philosophically exploring these ideas because at the moment, when people discuss religious matters I have no issue discussing things and honestly, I'm happy for them. Seriously. I lost something in this transition: the belief in the impossible. Something every true believer still has. I enjoy seeing their delight at it and I truly don't find it offensive. But I also haven't had anyone try to bring me back to 'the truth' either and I know I don't want a constant barrage of it.
So I think I owe an apology, because what I thought and did in the end was at least in part out of anger and most definitely did not promote the unconditional love family should have for one another.

Back to the Bible

If you are a Christian and do not wish to have doubts in your faith, STOP READING NOW. I have no intent of dissuading others from their belief for reasons I will outline later, but in this post I'll be discussing what happened when I looked back to the Bible to see if I was denying absolute truth.
I believed with certainty, before I started down this road, that the Bible was perfect, absolute truth and the word of God. I had a lot of doubts in not believing it. I still had a nagging fear that I might be wrong about everything.... again.
If you've made this transition, I'm sure you know exactly what I'm talking about. A lifetime of thinking one way doesn't change overnight.
It was about a year ago that I went back to the Bible to study. Part of me hoped I would find it as a perfect whole.
But it's not.
The reason why it needs to be perfect is because where ever it is not perfect truth, it is not the word of God. If I can prove some parts are false, what does it say about all the other sections which I cannot verify, parts which could only be verified by being there at the time? Errancy shows that while the Bible may have some great things to say, it's not absolute truth. It proves the Bible is the words of men.
I started by looking into prophecy.
I learned in christian college that prophets who were wrong were stoned to death because it meant they were false prophets. So all prophecy in the Bible should be 100 percent accurate, not just because a prophet said it, but because it is the word of God. So what happens if they aren't all absolute truth?
When I was young, I asked my mom about psychics. Ms. Cleo might have been popular at the time and I wondered how she convinced everyone she knew the future. My mom's reply was that it's easy to convince people you know the future if you speak vaguely because people will look for anything that can be interpreted as the prediction. She also commented that prophets in the Bible were specific and always right which is how we knew they spoke for God.

Ezekial 26

7 “For thus says the Lord God: ‘Behold, I will bring against Tyre from the north Nebuchadnezzar king of Babylon, king of kings, with horses, with chariots, and with horsemen, and an army with many people. 8 He will slay with the sword your daughter villages in the fields; he will heap up a siege mound against you, build a wall against you, and raise a defense against you. 9 He will direct his battering rams against your walls, and with his axes he will break down your towers.10 Because of the abundance of his horses, their dust will cover you; your walls will shake at the noise of the horsemen, the wagons, and the chariots, when he enters your gates, as men enter a city that has been breached. 11 With the hooves of his horses he will trample all your streets; he will slay your people by the sword, and your strong pillars will fall to the ground. 12 They will plunder your riches and pillage your merchandise; they will break down your walls and destroy your pleasant houses; they will lay your stones, your timber, and your soil in the midst of the water. 13 I will put an end to the sound of your songs, and the sound of your harps shall be heard no more. 14 I will make you like the top of a rock; you shall be a place for spreading nets, and you shall never be rebuilt, for I the Lord have spoken,’ says the Lord God.
This prophecy is pretty darn specific. Nebuchadnezzar is going to destroy Tyre and it's never coming back.
But Tyre was never destroyed and still is an active city to this day.
Now there is A LOT of prophecy in the Bible, and many are accurate in the complete story, so how were they able to make such accurate predictions?
The authors of the New testament were quite familiar with the prophecies of the old testament and looked for opportunities to fulfill them. And if you think it was all on the up and up, check out this verse.

Matthew 2

13 When they had gone, an angel of the Lord appeared to Joseph in a dream. “Get up,” he said, “take the child and his mother and escape to Egypt. Stay there until I tell you, for Herod is going to search for the child to kill him.”

14 So he got up, took the child and his mother during the night and left for Egypt,15 where he stayed until the death of Herod. And so was fulfilled what the Lord had said through the prophet: “Out of Egypt I called my son.”

The 'prophecy' here is from Hosea 11:1 and actually reads:
"When Israel was a child, I loved him, and out of Egypt I called my son."
The passage is very clearly talking about the Israelites exodus from Egypt, not a prediction of future events.
Which brings me to my next point. The easiest way to fulfill a prophecy, is just to write down that it happened.
Belief in all aspects of the Bible require a supreme trust in "historical science" as the creationist community say. You cannot repeat the events and so you must rely on the accuracy of the person that wrote it down. Archaeologists on the other hand rely on hard observable data left behind, like pottery, clay tablets, graves and anything really that tells the story of the past.
It may surprise you to learn that there has been no evidence ever to even suggest that the Jews were enslaved by Egypt outside of the pages of the Bible. A whole generation of people died out in the desert without one grave being left. The Egyptians apparently ate or burned every slave after death so as to hide the truth from us. A whole population which the Egyptians never recorded. There is also no circumstantial evidence such as a large change in population,  an economic downturn or a shortage of workers to help this story along. To be fair, Pharaohs had a lot of power and would try to erase events from the record of their people. Amazingly enough, threes always someone devoted enough to leave something behind for us to find.
How much of the Bible is pure fiction? How much is historically factual?
I feel like this line is pretty blurry and I no longer care enough to try to sort it out. At every turn there is a sham. Don't believe me? What did God make the birds from, dirt or water? Check both stories in Genesis. Why do we need four gospels and is it even possible for all 4 to be completely accurate? If even the gospels, the most crucial evidence of the ministry of Jesus are not important enough for God to inspire accurately, how important was it?
I try to keep in mind that it is so easy to believe the Bible. There are a ton of resources out there from people who support the Bible's claims whole heatedly, and with the best of intentions. They are genuinely concerned for the eternal consequences of your soul and feel genuine sorrow for the perceived grief God feels. The real tragedy is that they simply do not know that the story they are being told is not real. Up until a several months ago I was in that same ark.
If the blind lead the blind...

Have I been wrong all along?

I believed the Bible was absolute truth. As the word of God it should be perfect. What was i supposed to think when the evidence showed something contrary to the words i trusted implicitly?
The real turn in this story came from whales ability to smell, or lack there of.
Evolutionary biology shows the direct genetic link between animals. The theory of evolution predicts that the genes of ancestors will be present in some form in the DNA of creatures today.
The evolution of whales comes from land mammals which came from some aquatic critters further down the line (these aren't exactly the most technical terms but you get the idea.)
While I dint have time to discuss the entire lineage, and as far as fossils are concerned, there are some large gaps, but you can fill those gaps with whale DNA.
Because land animals evolved from a distant ancestor they have the genes for olfactory receptors which function under water only, but the genes are switched off in most terrestrial creatures. But what about whales? If they evolved from sea to land to sea again what do you think their genes would say?
Toothy whales have both genes for aquatic and airborne olfactory receptors, but they're all turned off.
I believed that God made everything. Why would he add junk genes to a creature? Genes it didn't need or use and indicated quite specifically the lineage of a creature's evolutionary process.
When I didn't know too much about genes, I assumed they all did something whether we knew it or not, but that's not the case. Organisms do not need every gene. Pseudogenes are abundant in organisms. This idea brought up an image of God sitting at a computer hitting "copy" and "paste" like a maniac as he created.
So if God presents the truth in a way that indicates a lie, is He lying?
Is it a lie for God to create every organism as if it had evolved even though it didn't?
Let me warn you now, from here I only find more lies that creationists shift their theories and stance on quite often to keep the position that their faith is grounded in truth. The reason this is such a hot topic to Christians is because the entire Bible must be true in order for the whole belief to not fall apart.
How can we inherit sin from Adam, if there was no Adam? If the creation story is false, why would Jesus, being God in flesh, mention it? I know that the domino effect is quite over used, but it applies overwhelmingly here.
Deep time is a term to describe the massive expanses of time, which are so mind-boggling large that they are difficult to truly comprehend, that make up the history of the universe.
I had never believed the universe to be older than 6,000 years, so how can we see stars billions of light years away?
Some of the creationist answers were as archaic as the Bible itself, such as the light-in-transit model which postulated that everything beyond 6,000 light years from us was played out like a movie on a galactic screen.
I immediately doubted the veracity of the claims of the distance of stars... until I studied how we find those distances through magnitude, parralax, and redshift. These methods give us an approximation which creationist argue with shifts in light travel fluctuations, but the theories are completely unfounded in reality, and it still leads to the same problem of "appearance of age."
Did God just make it appear old? Why would he form the cosmos in a way that alludes to an old universe? Maybe it wasn't in his plan for us to be able to measure those distances, but then why are we still here if it's not in his plan?
Over a period of months, which I am recounting in a single post, my faith was falling apart like a Jenga tower. I was pulling blocks to fill holes, but I was only creating new holes in my faith and my worldview.
The moment I realized that what I had been taught was untrue was the most profoundly lonely moment I have ever experienced.
Up until then I had imagined that we were all spiritually connected in a way that transcends belief or faith. That the souls of humanity existed on a plane indiscriminate of time or place.
What made it so profound for me was that for the first time ever I was alone in my mind. It was the first time I had ever conceived that God was not watching everything that went on in my mind like a continuous facebook feed filled with pictures, statuses and videos.
I was alone.
There were people nearby, but I was truly alone. It was frightening and liberating at the same time.
Even after all this I still felt the need to be sure. What if I was wrong? We're talking about ETERNAL consequences here. This goes well beyond the idea of deep time and was truly a concern. Had I been deceived? Was I lured away from my faith by the devil? What if the reason I felt so alone was actually separation from God? Am i just to dumb to see the message God has for me? Had i fallen into the same trap as my uncle and was i failing in my mission to win him back for Christ? Is the Bible absolute truth?
To answer these questions I had to turn back to the scriptures.

The quest for answers and my uncle's soul

I should preface this post by saying when I began my search for the reasonable answers I was a young earth creationist. Part of why I believed this was because the Bible said so. By tracing the lineage of the age of the lives recorded in the Bible you could estimate the earths age at over 6,000 years. With that knowledge I filtered the information I learned about geology, biology and evolution through that lens.
Some might say I was naive, but I was quite knowledgeable about the theories Christian scientists presented to support the young earth claim. Such as reptiles growing for the entirety of their lives. If people lived to 600 years old, it makes sense that lizards could grow to dinosaur sizes with that kind of life span. I was aware that DNA breaks down over time and of these discoveries of soft tissue in dinosaur bones which, to me, proved they were younger than 10,000 years (the theory at the time for how long it takes dna to break down but i cant find a reference for at the moment.) I looked at examples of the rapid developement of layers in the earth's surface as examples of how they could be formed on the timeline I believed to be true. I considered the Bible to be absolutely historical fact, inspired by God, the Word of God, perfect, and that evolution was only brought about as an alternative to the creation story.
I remember watching a documentary where a scientist said he loved digging up fossils and seeing how the evidence supported his theories. I thought to myself that it's the same process for Christian scientists, just a different theory, and that it was logical that secular scientists would look for the evidence to refute God's creation and highlight it.
I started my search to give my uncle logical understanding for faith by listening to debates about creationism vs. evolution on youtube. I know men much more intelligent than myself who believe the creation story so i needed to take the time to study and gather the information they had to offer as proof for its validity. There are a lot of videos though and they range from absurd to thought provoking, the most recent of which that I listened to was Bill Nye vs. Ken Ham.
These type of talks brought me down rabbit holes so deep Cpt. Nemo would envy me, but they pointed out some very serious flaws with my theory. How did Noah fit all those animals on the ark? Ken Ham talked a lot about "kinds", a word I cant find a solid definition for anywhere as far as taxonomy is concerned and is pretty vague on creationist websites, but thats not what I believed. All he was saying was that evolution was true, just on a much shorter time scale. I refuted any evidence of "microevolution" because I knew it was just evolution on a shorter time scale. It's important to add that with a "God" variable, there are an infinite number of possibilities. (I have a book at home about geocentric theory published by a Christian group.) So maybe God didn't stop creating. Maybe coyotes "evolved" more teeth through breeding with wild dogs.
I also was quick to point out that examples of evolution like the peppered moth only showed animals switching to a trait which they already had. They were black sometimes at the start, why should we be surprised when we still have a black moth at the end? It's not like it developed a turbine engine on its tail or a telepathy sensor or even a third antenna.
I also listened to talks surrounding theology, philosophy, and atheism to be able to approach my uncle in a well rounded way with understanding of where he was coming from. In the end I knew it would be God who turned things around for him though.
Sometimes these talks were infuriating. Most atheists doing any sort of interaction with christians were borderline rude, and to be fair a lot of christians they spoke with believed on the word of the Bible alone or because of the words of others which were blatantly untrue, which even aggravated me. If the Bible is truth it should match up undeniably with reality no matter how far fetched it may seem.
A little more than a year ago, i watched a show called the Athiest Experience. The host mentioned a website of outdated or false creation arguments. They were specifically talking about moon dust on the show if I remember correctly.
I had personally used many of the arguments on this site as they had been taught to me. Seeing them now on a "not to use" list was.... dissapointing and confusing. It meant that I had unknowingly lied to others in support of my beliefs which didnt sit well with me at all. Did anything I knew about creationism apply at all any longer?
Even more troublesome to me was that the christian theories had changed many times even in the last decade. My mom once told me one of the things that made the Bible so special was it's relevance and timelessness,  but this was not timeless. The christian theories evolved as quickly as science was making discoveries because it had to. For every new evidence against creationism, there must be an answer. Even recently at the discovery of gravity waves predicted by the big bang theory, the next day I read an article saying scripture predicted it first.
The more I studied the more problems I encountered and that lead to an ever changing stance as to how existence came to be through creation, but I didnt like it.
I felt like a child trying to explain a crime scene formed of liquid paint to a police officer, but I was both the child and the officer. Everything I believed seemed fuzzy and formless and my faith was at war with my mind.
Its hard to explain how difficult it was for me. I hadnt told anyone, not even my wife, that I was studying all these facets of the creation story with the intent to reinvigorate the faith of my lost uncle and I felt like I couldnt share it because I would never want to shake anyone elses faith. That was the complete opposite of my intended goal. All I had at this point was that my most of what I thought I knew was false, and there were no good answers to my questions.
My faith held but was what I believed evident beyond the pages of the Bible?
Then came evolutionary biology...

In the beginning

To say I grew up in a Christian home is putting it quite mildly. My dad was a preacher for a large portion of my life. He would help churches grow and then we would move to another place that needed his spiritua]l guidance. I remember him being very well liked. His sermons always got laughs along wigh teaching a lesson.
My mom usually directed the music at the churches my dad pastored and worked other jobs during the week. She still loves music and leads at a church to this day.
I can probably count the number of times I missed sunday school before I was a teenager without taking off my shoes.
I had many "mountain top" experiences, or spiritual highpoints, in my teenage years going to Christian youth conferences and mission trips. I truly believed durring that and acted accordingly.
After high school I became more interested in girls than religion, but I never lost faith. I went to a Christian college and regularly played in worship bands all through those years. Eventually I stopped going to church all together, I got married, and I lived a life as someone who believed that Jesus was the savior of my soul, and everyone knew I believed it, but I rarely went out of my way to share that in a meaningful way with others.
Eventually I was divorced and I truly regained my faith. It didnt happen immediately,  but over time. I got remarried, had kids and attended church regularly. I even got back into playing with the worship band.
This was the time period of my life where I belived the most of my own volition.  No one forced me to be there, I wanted to be at church. I activly participated in the functions and was more forward about my faith to others.
Then I went to a family reunion about a year and a half ago.
With few exceptions my family are geniune Christians. They go on mjssion trips and share their faith readily with others. Beyond that, they go out of their way to help others less fortunate. So, as you can imagine, there is a lot of prayer and talks about faith durring these retreats.
One family in particular was conspicuously missing from the retreat. I learned one evening around a camp fire that the reason that family was missing was because my uncle had decided he was athiest.
My heart sank for him and his family. I wondered why he would do that? Why would he put his family through that? How would it affect the faith of his kids? He had searched for some time to be a minister. He even took jobs at churches in the hopes of making it onto their leadership team. This was quite a shock to me. We prayed for that family that night.
I thought at the time that he must be mad at God because life wasnt going how he thought it should, or that someone was misleading him. I felt genuine concern for the spiritual well being of his family and I felt I needed to do something. I was even a little mad at him for being so foolishly cavalier with the eternal consequences to his family.
When I returned home I saw a post on my newly outed athiest uncle's facebook talking about his new unfaith. I was upset by it, it just seemed so wrong to flip from belief to non-belief. I responded to his post, and a few more with open ended discussions about why he would make such a big change, but honestly, I wasnt really listening to his side. I was only arguing against it. I was applauded by others for standing up for my beliefs, and hoped, along with others in my family, that my uncle would realize his mistake and come back around. I feared for the souls of his family.
I decided I would track down the "proof" my uncle needed to bring him back to faith. I would search for the bread crumbs that must exist in this world that God created. I specifically prayed at the time,
"God, never let my logic overide my faith."
Then I started down a path that would change my outlook. On everything.