Great Creation Quotes:

Some quotes I have found both insightful and compelling. Enjoy.

“The reason we accepted Darwinism even without proof, is because we didn’t want God to interfere with our sexual mores.”
Julian Huxley

Darwinism is based on an a priori[prior] commitment to materialism, not on a philosophical neutral assessment of the evidence. Separate the philosophy from the science, and the proud tower collapses.”
Phillip E. Johnson

“The creation – evolution debate is not about religion versus science or the Bible versus science – it’s about good science versus bad science. Likewise, it’s not about faith versus reason – it’s about reasonable faith versus unreasonable faith.”
Norman Geisler

“My high school science teacher once told me that much of Genesis is false. But since my high school teacher did not prove he was God by rising from the dead, I’m going to believe Jesus instead.”
Andy Stanley

“The complexity of the simplest known type of cell is so great that it is impossible to accept that such an object could have been thrown together suddenly by some kind of freakish, vastly improbable event. Such an occurrence would be indistinguishable from a miracle.’
Michael Denton, atheist Microbiologist

“In grammar school they taught me that a frog turning into a prince was a fairy tale. In the university they taught me that a frog turning into a prince was a fact!”
Ron Carlson

“Only a rookie who knows nothing about science would say science takes away from faith. If you really study science, it will bring you closer to God.”
James Tour, Nanoscientist

“Science without religion is lame; religion without science is blind.”
Albert Einstein

People almost invariably arrive at their own beliefs not on the basis of proof but on the basis of what they find attractive”
Blaise Pascal

“We did not follow cleverly invented stories when we told you about the power and coming of our Lord Jesus Christ, but we were eyewitnesses of His majesty”
Simon Peter

“Why would the apostles lie?…If they lied, what was their motive, what did they get out of it? What they got out of it was misunderstanding, rejection, persecution, torture, and martyrdom. Hardly a list of perks!”
Peter Kreeft

Skeptics must provide more than alternative theories to the resurrection; they must provide first-century evidence for those theories.”
Gary Habermas

God Bless
Brian Mason

Terminology Tuesday: Myth

I have encountered many people, predominantly atheists that throw around the names such as Isis, Horus and Osiris as examples of mythological characters that incorrectly are addressed as proponents of how the Christian faith came to be. In response to those very ridiculous and empty arguments I believe we should actually read the definition of “Myth”.

*The term myth is most often associated with fable or with the historically inauthentic (fiction) rather than with truth and objective reality. Hence some people apply myth to any part of the Christian message that includes the supernatural or miraculous (see Bultmann; demythologizing). Myth can also be used to describe the true but transcendent or ineffable quality of God’s revelation. This is beyond rational, linguistic description (see Brunner). Myth also connotes the language or imagery borrowed from the cosmological/cosmogonical (creation) myths to speak of God.

*Stanley J. Grenz, David Guretzki & Cherith Fee Nordling, Pocket Dictionary of Theological Terms (Downers Grove, IL: InterVarsity Press, 1999), p. 81-82

God Bless
Brian Mason

Terminology Tuesday: Nihilism

*The rejection of objective moral values and structures, literally “nothingism.” The nihilist is a skeptic about moral traditions and obligations and does not regard them as binding. A distinction should be made between the attitude of the reluctant or sorrowing nihilist, who finds nihilism terrifying but true, and the celebrative nihilist, who view nihilism as liberation from oppressive rules. Friedrich Nietzsche sometimes described nihilism as a fate that haunts Western culture. At other times, he seems more celebrative in his calls for the construction of a new morality. For those who believe morality requires a transcendent basis, Nietzsche is seen as a guide pointing beyond nihilism.

God Bless

Brian Mason

*C.Stephen Evans, Pocket Dictionary of Apologetics & Philosophy of Religion (Downers Grove, IL: InterVarsity Press, 2002), p. 82.

Terminology Tuesday: Supralapsarianism

*Supralapsarianism is an issue within Reformed Theology (Calvinism) dealing with what may have happened in God’s mind regarding the logical order of his considering whom to elect into salvation before the foundation of the world. The word means “before the fall.” This position holds that God first decided that he would save some people and then second that he would allow sin into the world. By contrast, the infralapsarian (“after the fall”) position is the reverse in that it holds that God first decided he would allow sin into the world and second that he would then save people from it.

God Bless

Brian Mason

*www.carm.org

Pantheism: What is it?

Hinduism’s main belief system is pantheism; here is the definition:

*Greek for “everything is God”, the belief that God and the universe are essentially identical. More specifically, pantheism is the designation for the understanding of the close connection between the world and the divine reality found in certain religions, including Hinduism. One variety of pantheism speaks of God as the “soul” of the universe, which is thought to be God’s “body.” Pantheistic religions often suggest that our experience of being disconnected from each other and from the divine is merely an illusion.

* Stanley J. Grenz, David Guretzki & Cherith Fee Nordling, Pocket Dictionary of Theological Terms (Downers Grove, IL: InterVarsity Press, 1999), p. 88

God Bless

Brian Mason

Mr. Ruiz…“Are We All Divine”?

Accept your own divinity. Everything is a manifestation of God. When you know that, the power that is LIFE is inside you, you accept your own divinity, and yet you are humble, because you see that see the same divinity in everyone else.
Don Miguel Ruiz
The Mastery of Love by Miguel Ruiz

HERESY ALERT! HERESY ALERT!
If you ever need a perfect example of shamanistic pantheism, you can quote Mr. Ruiz.
“Accept your own divinity” Who can truly boast they are “divine in nature”? From the Christian belief we are all sinners. When you look into your own being do you see God? How arrogant of a statement is to “accept your own divinity”? Human beings are constantly struggling with sin. It is all around us and inside us. We have a HUMAN NATURE not a DIVINE NATURE! This is a true “NEW AGEISM” that is designed for the self centered form of heresy that does not WANT a God. They want to become, or acknowledge being divine themselves!

Now back to pantheism. The definition of pantheism has been addressed earlier on this blog. In a nutshell it is defined in Greek as “Everything is God and that God and the universe are essentially identical”. This is one of the most self centered, self serving works of the devil one could ever come up with! In other words we share God’s divinity! We must accept “We are God” WOW!

Mr. Ruiz is clearly practicing shamanism which believes that everything has a spirit and is alive. This would include rocks, air, animals etc. Shamans use altered states of consciousness to attempt healing of people with spirit guides. They are promoters of astral projection and what is called the “throwing of bones” to attempt to predict the future.

*”The Throwing of The Bones is one of the most ancient forms of divination, or talking with the Spirits, known. It is a tradition that is passed down among the women in the culture of the central eastern Andes.

The long training of more than thirteen years in this delicate art was given to Kay Cordell Whitaker by the Amazon elder and shaman Chea Hetaka. In a “reading” the person comes with a specific question – any kind of question or issue can be presented – and the answers and information that are gained from the Bones reach into all levels of one’s being and contain in depth spiritual and psychological insight.
The combination of the presence of the many Spirit Beings and the diversity and depth of information given insures not only the most powerful and detailed insights but the added aspect of a healing process on all levels of one’s being from the Spirit Beings which usually continues for a number of days after the reading has ended.”

I ask you as Christians to always question the motives of the “new-agers”. I believe it is much deeper than monetary gain; it is the attempt to lull people into the grips of satan. Who doesn’t want to hear there is an easy way to self-betterment or inner peace? This is clearly satanic ear-tickling.

Not only is it satanic ear-tickling it is directly forbidden in the Holy Bible:

Leviticus 19: 26
‘You shall not eat anything with the blood, nor practice divination or soothsaying.”

All the answers people need are found in the Holy Scriptures.
The true “Power of Life” comes from the one that GAVE YOU LIFE! We are not God! We are servants of God. I ask that if you know someone who is practicing this type of sorcery please pray for the Holy Spirit to show them their errors. It is a Salvation issue! The only way to God is through Jesus Christ our Savior!

Galatians 5: 18-24
18 But if you are led by the Spirit, you are not under the Law. 19 Now the deeds of the flesh are evident, which are: immorality, impurity, sensuality, 20 idolatry, sorcery, enmities, strife, jealousy, outbursts of anger, disputes, dissensions, factions, 21 envying, drunkenness, carousing, and things like these, of which I forewarn you, just as I have forewarned you, that those who practice such things will not inherit the kingdom of God. 22 But the fruit of the Spirit is love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, 23 gentleness, self-control; against such things there is no law. 24 Now those who belong to Christ Jesus have crucified the flesh with its passions and desires.

God Bless
Brian Mason

*http://www.worldbalance.com/BoneThrowing.htm

Terminology Tuesday: Panentheism

*The belief that God’s being includes and permeates the entire universe so that everything exists in God. In contrast to pantheism, panentheists declare that God’s being is greater than and not exhausted by the universe. God is affected by each event in the universe, and thus God’s knowledge must change and grow. However, God simultaneously retains personal integrity and complete reality.

* Stanley J. Grenz, David Guretzki & Cherith Fee Nordling, Pocket Dictionary of Theological Terms (Downers Grove, IL: InterVarsity Press, 1999), p. 88

God Bless
Brian Mason

Terminology Tuesday: God-of-the-Gaps Argument

*A type of argument that invokes God as an explanation for what cannot be explained naturally or scientifically. Critics of this style of argument claim that such a strategy will inevitably make God’s role in the universe appear to diminish as scientific explanation advances. Critics of the intelligent design movement allege that the attempt to argue for an intelligent cause of biological order is a God-of-the-gaps argument, but proponents of intelligent design argue that there is positive empirical evidence for intelligence as the cause of complex systems in nature.

*C.Stephen Evans, Pocket Dictionary of Apologetics & Philosophy of Religion (Downers Grove, IL: InterVarsity Press, 2002), p. 50.

God Bless

Brian Mason