Scientific Proofs God Exists

Scientific reasoning on every level is more and more pointing to God. Proper science is proving to argue more against evolution, and for the Biblical account of creation.

DAY 1                                                                                       

If not Creation, then what?

Scientists call it the first law of thermodynamics. Isaac Asimov [professor of Smithsonian Institute] says that “this law is considered the most powerful and most fundamental generalization about the universe that scientists have ever been able to make.” What is this law that lies at the base of all modern science?

It is the fact that while you can convert matter to energy (like heat that results from a burning log), you cannot create energy or matter out of nothing. So, since we know that our universe is made up of matter and energy, we have to face the reality that it had to come from somewhere. Despite the incredible advances of modern science, the fact remains that not one of our scientific theories can even begin to explain where the energy and matter came from in the first place. Creation is the only plausible theory that anyone has been able to offer.

Day 2

There had to be a beginning…

For centuries scientists argued that the universe was infinite and eternal. If so, many claimed there was no beginning, and hence nothing for a Creator to do. But, we now know that the amount of usable energy in the universe is decreasing. And, scientists agree, if the universe is running down, it cannot be eternal or infinite. It will have an end just as it had to

Amazingly the Bible stated that the earth is wearing out thousands of years before science discovered this truth!

"Of old the Lord has laid the foundation of the earth: and the heavens are the work of His hands. They shall perish, but thou Lord shalt endure: yea, all of them shall wax old like a garment..." Psalm 102:25-26, see also Isaiah 51:6.

It is fascinating to know that science’s two most foundational discoveries, the first and second laws of thermodynamics, argue for creation, not against it!

“…if your theory is found to be against the second law of thermodynamics, I can give you no hope; there is nothing for it but to collapse in deepest humiliation.” …Sir Arthur Eddington
 

DAY 3

A Beginning requires a Beginner

It wasn’t until the early part of the twentieth century that Newton’s model of an infinite and eternal universe was finally scrapped. The final clincher was Albert Einstin’s discovery of the general theory of relativity, which proved that everything in the universe is moving away from everything

else, thus suggesting that someone or something must have set it in motion in the first place. Twelve years after his theory was published [1929], astronomer Edwin Hubble (after whom today’s Hubble Telescope is named) was able to prove that Einstein's theory was correct. What the telescope showed was that all the other galaxies were indeed moving away from us, and from each other. It was from these observations that the Big Bang theory was

eventually born. Scientist’s knew that according to the law of inertia, these galaxies had to have been set in motion by some external force. All the galaxies are moving away from each other in a manner similar to that of a bomb explosion…. Thus the theory of a Big Bang. One thing was for sure, the universe had a beginning. Although many atheist scientists did not like their own discoveries [they still don’t], these discoveries forced them to admit that the universe had a beginning. And, if there is a beginning, must there not be a beginner?

DAY 4                                       

What Came Before The Big Bang?

The idea of a big bang does make sense. Many different observational techniques confirm that every galaxy that we can see, is moving away from every other. If all the galaxies are now moving away from each other, there must have been a time in which they were all closer together. In fact, according to Einstein’s mathematical calculations [and new scientific discoveries], everything that makes up the universe was at one time so

 compacted that it did not take up any space whatsoever! While this may be difficult to even begin to imagine, the theory suggests that it eventually exploded, shooting the universe out just as a bomb would. According to this widely accepted theory, the expansion of the universe that we are witnessing today is simply the result of an explosion.

However, Stephen Hawking, one of the world’s leading authorities on the cosmos, admits that the theory does not even try to answer the question of where all matter, we, or the rest of the universe came from in the first place. The Bible teaches in Genesis that, "in the beginning God created the heaven and the earth...And God said, Let there be light, [BIG BANG!] and there was light."
 

DAY 5

Evidence of Design

One of the flaws with the big bang theory is that explosions do not produce systematic order, but only destruction and chaos. Such as a building contractor putting all of his building materials in a big pile with a few sticks of dynamite, ignite the dynamite and the results are a perfect 30 story office building. Or that a bunch of small pieces of metal were dropped into a bucket, the bucket was shaken, and the metal pieces over

time with much shaking turned into a Rolex watch. This is what the big bang theory is suggesting…., and there is no overstatement. It actually takes more faith to believe that an explosion produced the complex order of life and the millions of perfect balances than it does to believe in God.

DAY 6

Latest Scientific Discoveries are Converting Atheist Scientists into Believers in God

A half-century ago, in 1955, Professor Antony Flew set the agenda for modern atheism with his “Theology and Falsification”, a paper presented in a debate with C.S. Lewis. This work became the most widely reprinted philosophical publication of the last 50 years. Over the decades, he published more than 30 books attacking belief in God and debated a wide range of religious believers. Then, in a 2004 Summit at New York University, Professor Flew announced that the discoveries of modern science have led him to the conclusion that the universe is indeed the

 creation of infinite Intelligence. The Associated Press reported: "NEW YORK Dec 9, 2004 — A British philosophy professor who has been a leading champion of atheism for more than a half-century has changed his mind. He now believes in God more or less based on scientific evidence, and says so on a video released Thursday. At age 81, after decades of insisting belief is a mistake, Antony Flew has concluded that some sort of intelligence or first cause must have created the universe. A super-intelligence is the only good explanation for the origin of life and the complexity of nature, Flew said in a telephone interview from England."

DAY 7

Biased Two faced Scientists

Today the tireless search continues for signs of extraterrestrial life. Millions and millions of dollars have been spent setting up huge satellite dishes, pointed into the sky, listening for messages from outer space. Ironically, when you ask those people who are actually doing the listening how they will know that a sound that they hear is indeed an intelligent signal, they will tell you that it will have a pattern or design to it. Many of these same scientists however, can somehow look at the universe and the cycle of life on earth with all of its intelligent patterns and evidences of design, and tell us that it simply came about by accident and random chance! Point to an ordinary office building and ask these same scientists the question, "what is the greatest evidence the office building had a designer?" They will concede that the building itself is the best evidence.

The same can be said about Mount Rushmore. No true science evaluation would claim that Mount Rushmore could form over millions of years through rain and erosion by accident. The best evidence of design is the detail of design itself.

DAY 8

The Bible supports and does not conflict with modern Scientific Facts

There are literally hundreds of stories that have come from various world religions. For example, a Chinese creation myth claims that a star canopy covers a square Earth with China at its center. The Egyptians claimed that a goddess with a starry body was resting her hands and feet on the four corners of a rectangular Earth. A German legend claims a land of cold was separated by a wide valley of mist from a land of fire. A god was produced from the mist, and when the god died, all life grew from it’s corpse. The Mesopotamians believed the Earth floats on water. A dome covers the Earth and rain seeps through holes in the dome, while the stars shine inside the dome! The Koran states that when the sun sets, it sets in a muddy pond. The problem with each of these myths is that they obviously do not line up with the established facts of science in nature. The Book of Mormon for example declares that Native Americans descended from Jews – which has been easily disproven by DNA research. The Eastern writings also contradict true science. The Bible is the only account of creation and history that does not conflict with modern scientific evidence. It in fact supports it.

DAY 9

The Bible and the Science of Oceanography

There are many passages in the Bible that prove the Bible was years ahead of modern science. The father of oceanography, Matthew Maury (1806-1873), noticed the expression "paths of the sea" in Psalm 8:8 (written 2,800 years ago) and said, "If God said there are paths in the

 sea, I am going to find them." Maury then took God at His word and went looking for these paths. The result was the discovery of the warm and cold continental currents. His book on oceanography remains a basic text on the subject and is still used in universities.

DAY 10

Scientific Accuracy of the Bible

The study of Atoms. Here is another simple passage that puts the Bible 2000 years ahead of modern science. One of the most astonishing scientific references in the Bible talks about atoms which cannot be seen.

The Bible says, "the worlds were framed by the word of God, so that things which are seen were made of things which do not appear.”

(Hebrews 11:3)

Not until the 19th century was it discovered that all visible matter consists of invisible elements, yet the Bible states it clearly; "things which are seen are made of things which do not appear."

DAY 11

The Bible Years Ahead of Modern Science

The Chinese creation myth claims that the Earth is square. The Egyptians claimed that the Earth is rectangular. Four hundred years ago the modern American & European scientific communities believed the Earth was flat!  The fear at the time was that if a ship would sail out too far out it would fall off the edge! However, the book of Isaiah was written long before man discovered the Earth was not flat. We read in chapter 40, verse 22 that God “is He that sitteth upon the circle of the Earth.”

DAY 12

The Circuit of the Sun

The sun goes in a circuit (Psalm 19:6). Some scientists scoffed at this verse in the Bible thinking that it taught geocentricity – the theory that the sun revolves around the earth. They insisted the sun was stationary. However, we now know from the use of the Hubble space telescope that the sun is traveling through space at approximately 600,000 miles per hour around the Milkyway galaxy. It is literally moving through space in a huge circuit – just as the Bible stated 3,000 years ago!

Also interesting to note is that the only other book claiming to to be divinely inspired that mentions the movement of the sun is the Muslim Quran. It claims that the sun when it goes down, sets in a muddy spring.

DAY 13

The Suspension of Earth

The earth free-floats in space (Job 26:7), affected only by gravity. The Bible was written during a time when many religious myths were suggesting explanations which we know now to be complete nonsense in

the light of modern scientific discovery. One of the topics was how the earth is suspended in space. Before Isaac Newton discovered gravity

 there were many idea's taught as fact. Hindus believed that the Earth rested on the back of an elephant who stood on the back of a turtle that was swimming in the great endless sea. The Greeks at the time believed that the mythical god Atlas carried the Earth on his shoulders. Obviously these could not square up to science as we know it. However the Bible makes many references to the workings of the natural world.

DAY 14

Description of Evaporation and the Hydrologic Cycle

Psalm 135:7
He causes the vapors to ascend from the ends of the earth;
He makes lightning for the rain;
He brings the wind out of His treasuries.

 

Job 36:27-29

For He draws up drops of water,

Which distill as rain from the mist,
Which the clouds drop down
And pour abundantly on man.

Indeed, can anyone understand

the spreading of clouds,
The thunder from His canopy?

This is amazing. These simple verses have remarkable scientific insight; written in a time when the ancients observed mighty rivers flowing into the ocean, but they could not conceive why the sea level never rose. Though they observed rainfall, they had only quaint theories as to its origin. Meteorologists now understand that the hydrological cycle consists of evaporation, atmospheric transportation, distillation, and precipitation. We can see these phases of the hydrologic cycle in these old scriptures. The worldwide processes of evaporation.

DAY 15

The Universe is Expanding

 (Job 9:8; Isaiah 42:5; Jeremiah 51:15; Zechariah 12:1). Repeatedly God declares that He stretches out the heavens. During the early 20th

century, most scientists (including Einstein) believed the universe was static. Others believed it should have collapsed due to gravity. Then in 1929, astronomer Edwin Hubble showed that distant galaxies were receding from the earth, and the further away they were, the faster they were moving. This discovery revolutionized the field of astronomy. Einstein admitted his mistake, and today most astronomers agree with what the Creator told us millennia ago – the universe is expanding! Over and over, the Bible is years ahead of modern science.

DAY 16

The Moon

 Genesis 1:17 says "God set them [the moon and the sun] in the firmament of the heaven to give light upon the earth". 

What is interesting is the size of the moon in relationship to the earth. It is much larger in comparison to the earth than any other moon is compared to the planet it circles. Due to its size and composition, the Moon is sometimes classified as a terrestrial "planet" along with Mercury, Venus, Earth and Mars. Scientists still have not decided exactly how the moon came to be in orbit around the earth or even how it was formed.  What is interesting to us, is that the moon is so large that it could easily destroy the earth. A shorter distance away and the moon would not circle the earth. If it were any closer, it would impact the earth creating massive destruction. Our moon is unique in the universe and is precisely placed to accomplish it's purposes.

DAY 17

The Bottom of the Sea's

Only until recently, it was thought that oceans were fed merely by rivers and rain. Yet in the 1970s, with the help of deep diving research submarines that were constructed to withstand 6,000 pounds-per-square-inch pressure, oceanographers discovered springs on the ocean floors! Over and over again we see the proof that God authored the Bible.

The Bible says that the oceans contain springs (Job 38:16). The ocean is very deep. Almost all the ocean floor is in total darkness and the pressure is enormous. It is impossible for Job or any human to have explored the "springs of the sea" mentioned in the Bible. There are also mountains on the bottom of the ocean floor (Jonah 2:5-6), and the Bible mentions these mountains! Only in the last century have we discovered that there are towering mountains, deep trenches and springs in the depths of the sea.

DAY 18

Light can be divided

In the year 1701, Sir Isaac Newton studied light and discovered that white light is made of seven colors, which can be “parted” and then recombined.

The theory of color based on the observation that a prism decomposes white light into a visible spectrum. Science only confirmed this four centuries ago – God declared this four millenniums ago! "By which way is the light parted."(Job 38:24)

DAY 19

Electromagnetic Radio Waves

The Bible says that light can be sent, and then manifest itself in speech. "Can you send lightnings, that they may go, and say to you, here we are?" (Job 38:35). We now know that radio waves and light waves are two forms of the same thing – electromagnetic waves. Therefore, radio waves are a form of light. Today, using radio transmitters, we can send “lightnings” which indeed speak when they arrive. The Bible speaks of these things thousands of years before they are discovered by science. No other book in the world claiming to be divinely inspired describes so many scientific topics accurately as the Holy Bible.

DAY 20

Countless Stars

Each star is unique (1 Corinthians 15:41). Centuries before the advent of the telescope, the Bible declared what only God and the angels knew – each star varies in size and intensity!

DAY 21

VIDEO CLICK HERE

THE SCIENTIFIC CASE FOR INTELLIGENT DESIGN

DAY 22

Instructions for Dealing with Disease

When dealing with disease, the Bible accurately taught that clothes and

 body should be washed under running water (Leviticus 15:13). For centuries people and doctors naively washed in standing water spreading terrible diseases and causing thousands of deaths. Today we recognize the need to wash away germs with fresh water. As simple as this may seem to figure out, the entire world was unaware of the presence of germs until the late 1800's. 
 

DAY 23

Bible Recognizes Role of Germs and Disease

In the late 1800s, Louis Pasteur developed his theory that germs cause disease, not poisons which develop in the organs as other scientists

believed. Also predominant in that day were many myths in a number of cultures, suggesting that evil spirits were the cause of disease. The books of Leviticus and Deuteronomy, however, written hundreds of years before, are filled with various hygienic references on how to keep disease at bay. If someone was sick, the Israelites were instructed to cover any open vessels that contained food or beverages. If someone was suffering from a plague, the Jews were instructed to remove them outside the camp, with someone being designated to go with them and take care of them. They were instructed to constantly cleanse their hands and clothing while treating patients. Some Viennese bishops who followed these rules during a plague in the 1600s managed to stop the plague cold. So the Bible obviously recognized that disease was caused by the spreading of germs—thousands of years before scientific discovery could catch up!
 

DAY 24

Christian Doctor Applies Biblical Teaching and Saves Lives

A Christian Quaker by the name of Joseph Lister picked up on Pasteur’s work and became the founder of antiseptic surgery. He worked on several

experiments that would lead to the practice of disinfecting surgical tools. Even so, it still took a very long time for hospitals to adopt the practice of complete hygienics. In many hospitals across Europe in the early 1900s, for example, doctors would leave an autopsy room and then go and deliver a baby without washing their hands in between. Needless to say there was a great mortality rate for both birth mothers and newborns while this practice was going on. Later, one Christian doctor decided to implement some of the things he learned from the Bible and had the staff in his hospital department start washing their hands in between each medical procedure. The result: A dramatic reduction in the mortality rate within his department! Indeed, it took many years for scientists to “discover” that germs even existed and that they could be passed through the air or from unsanitary medical procedures.

DAY 25

Hygienic Laws of God Proven by Modern Medicine

Many of the hygienic laws that God gave to the Israelites have also been proven by modern medicine to be accurate. When the black plague struck

Europe and when leprosy spread, the Jews in many instances were blamed because these plagues weren’t running in there Jewish ghettos. Why didn't they? The reason is because they didn’t have sewage running in their streets as was the case in many other cities, like Paris for example. In Paris, sewage was running into the Seine River and people were not only bathing in their own filth, but drinking from it too! We can still see this kind of thing taking place today in countries like India and Egypt which are not Christian nations and therefore do not follow the principles of the Bible. By following the hygienic laws of the bible, the Jews throughout the ages have managed to avoid many of the plagues and diseases that have stricken other cultures.

DAY 26

Dietary Tips Directly from God

In addition to the hygienic laws that God gave to the Israelites, He also gave them many commands regarding their diet. They were instructed, for example, not to eat meat like pork, which we know today needs to be cooked with extreme care since it carries parasites. They were instructed not to eat fish without scales like lobster or crab, which are suspected today of containing cancer causing agents. They were also instructed not to eat meat and dairy products together which we now know to be very hard on the digestive system. There are other examples…, but the picture is clear. These dietary laws were not merely for religious reasons, as many believe, but they were also given for health reasons….. and sound advice it was, directly from God!

DAY 27

The Case for Circumcision

Consider the Jewish custom of circumcision in which the flesh of the male foreskin is cut off. God instructed the Israelites to perform this covenant

 duty on the eighth day after birth. Only in recent years has it been discovered that the blood clotting factor in a baby doesn’t reach its maximum peak until the eighth day after birth and then it drops down again!

So according to modern science, the eighth day is the ideal time to perform this. So important was this instruction in fact, that the rite was not postponed even if the eighth day was the Sabbath.
 

DAY 28

Case for Circumcision…. Part 2
 

Interestingly, many doctors and hospitals today will perform circumcisions upon request because it is known medically that men who have not been circumcised are more likely to cause cervical cancer in their wives. There is a very low rate of cervical cancer in Jewish women.
 

DAY 29

The Birth of the Sanitation Industry

The book of Deuteronomy (23:13) says that the Jewish soldiers were to have a “paddle”, or a shovel, attached to their weapons so that when they had to “ease” themselves they could dig a latrine and bury it. Up until World war 1, about ten times as many soldiers died of disease as they did from war wounds because they did not know enough to dig a latrine and bury the human waste. The book of Deuteronomy was written by Moses who had been educated by the Egyptians. They believed, for example, that wounds could be healed by rubbing them with dung from a camel. How did Moses discover that burying waste was more hygienic than using it for medicinal purposes? Another wonderful proof of God’s divine hand guiding the writings of the Bible.

DAY 30

 A Delicate Balance

There are many known factors that must be precisely met in order for life to exist here on Earth. Any slight variation, in any of these factors, would spell disaster. The rate of the Earth’s rotation, for example, is ideal. If it were to slow down to 10% of its present rate, then life as we know it

could not exist. Plants would burn during the day and then freeze during the night. If on the other hand the rotation were to speed up too much, winds would increase to unbelievable levels. In fact, Jupiter rotates on its axis once every 10 hours and the winds there are in excess of 1000 MPH! So again, we see great precision in the design of the Earth, and that is what allows it to support life. And when you see all of these evidences of design you must logically expect there to be a designer.
 

DAY 31

The Glue That Binds Us All

There is a powerful force within the universe, holding together all the

atoms and making the various elements (Hydrogen, Helium, Oxygen, Iron, etc.) possible. If, however, this force was even 5% weaker, then the only element that could exist on Earth would be Hydrogen and that would make life impossible. At the same time, if that same force were just 5% stronger, everything would clump together into giant molecules. Life would also be impossible under these conditions.
 

DAY 32

Thank God! The Sun is Right Where it Should Be

The distance between the Earth and the sun is about 93 million miles. Did you realize that if this distance were changed by only 2% in either

direction, life on Earth would be impossible? At the same time, our Moon is right where it needs to be to both stabilize the tilt of the Earth and to cleanse and nourish the sea through tides. In fact, if the Moon were too close, then the tides would completely submerge the continents twice a day.
 

DAY 33

Gasp!

The air that you are breathing right now contains approximately 21% oxygen. If that ratio were to rise even slightly, say to 25%, then our atmosphere would suddenly become highly flammable. If it were to fall to 15% or less, then you simply wouldn’t be able to breathe and you’d suffocate immediately.

DAY 34

I’m Stuck on this Planet

Gravity is what keeps us all pinned to the ground, and like so many other natural phenomena it has been set up perfectly. If the Earth’s gravitational

pull were to be increased just a few percent, then some of the most dangerous gases in our atmosphere would accumulate and make life impossible (i.e. Methane and Ammonia). Reducing the gravitational pull would result in the loss of too much water.
 

DAY 35

Are We Alone in the Universe?

One of the biggest questions on the minds of people today is whether or not life is unique to Earth. Research conducted by Iosef Shklovski and Carl Sagan in the mid-1960s found that it took a very special kind of star, at just the right distance from a planet, for life to exist. They calculated that only 0.001% of the stars can have a planet that is capable of sustaining advanced life. Later research showed there are even fewer. According to Christian astrophysicist Hugh Ross, Ph.D., “It is possible, even at this stage in the research efforts, to gather many of the planetary system parameters for life support and determine a crude estimate for the possibility that by natural life…with considerable security, we can draw the conclusion that much fewer than a trillionth of a trillionth of a percent of all stars could possibly possess, without divine intervention, a planet capable of sustaining advanced life. Considering that the observable universe contains less than a trillion galaxies, each averaging a hundred billion stars, we can see that not even one planet would be expected, by natural processes alone, to possess the necessary conditions to sustain life.”

DAY 36

The Miracle of Life

Clearly we can’t really consider the design of life without looking very closely at the incredible complexity and design of living organisms. Take, for example, the very cells that make up our bodies. There are over one trillion such cells in the human body, with each one being made up of components which interact with each other in a very precise and extremely complex way. Protein molecules, for example, conduct, individually or in groups, all of the necessary tasks to ensure the life of a cell. Proteins contain long chain-like molecules made up of amino acids. Also, most proteins are made up of several thousand atoms which form different three-dimensional infrastructures for different tasks. It is difficult to fathom how each of these individual components randomly evolved in the first place, and then somehow miraculously came together to form a living cell.

DAY 37

Life’s Really Little Instruction Book

Looking at individual protein molecules, we see incredible variety, with each individual molecule having a very specific task in life. So how do these molecules know what that task is? That information can be found in other molecules, known as DNA and RNA. These incredible molecules actually carry the instructions for creating life. DNA contains the actual blueprint for building life molecules, and RNA carries that information to other parts of the cell. You can think of DNA as being like a compact disk

 full of information, and the RNA as the CD player. Without the RNA, the cells would have no way of understanding the information contained in the DNA—information that will tell the protein molecules to form or repair living cells! Even more staggering, however, is the fact that the instructions for building RNA are contained in the DNA. It would be like having a CD that contained all of the instructions detailing how to build a CD player. But with no CD player to play it on, how could you ever get those instructions out? Again we can’t help but see clear signs of intelligent design and the impossibility of life coming about purely by chance.

DAY 38

How Can Trial and Error Work When Error is Fatal?

The study of the human body is one of the clearest evidences for the existence of an intelligent designer. Take the kidney, for example. Here is an organ so complex that even minor fluctuations in its functioning can be fatal. And yet evolutionists would have us believe that this incredible organ simply evolved and developed through trial and error. We all know that trial and error is not a reliable method for problem solving, but how much less so when you consider that errors will kill the organism and end the entire trial and error process.

DAY 39

The Ultimate Computer

Think about the most complex organ of them all—the human brain. Here we have a lump of grey matter, made up of somewhere close to ten thousand million nerve cells. Now consider the fact that each of these cells is

comprised of anywhere from ten thousand to one hundred thousand connecting fibers. Each of these fibers, in turn, makes contact with other nerve cells in the brain, giving each of us about one thousand million possible connections. Such a number is beyond the reach of our wildest imagination and becomes even more staggering when we consider the fact that these connections are not just random occurrences. They are arranged in an intricate and extremely precise network. It’s difficult to conceive of such complexity and perfection coming about by accident.

DAY 40

The Human Brain

How many times have you heard people talking about how small a percentage of our brain power we actually use? Well, next time someone mentions that, there’s an important question that you should raise. How is it possible, using the theory of evolution, to explain this? Natural selection sure can’t explain it since those very capabilities were never used (by definition) and so could not possibly have provided any survival advantage.

DAY 41

Prayer & Healing, Science is starting to Believe



According to a NEWSWEEK Poll, 72 percent of Americans say they would welcome a conversation with their physician about faith; the same number say they believe that praying to God can cure someone—even if science says the person doesn’t stand a chance. On Beliefnet, a popular interfaith Web site, fully three quarters of more than 35,000 online prayer circles are health related: patients’ loved ones—as well as total strangers—can log on and send prayers into the electronic ether, hoping to heal cancers, disabilities, chronic illness and addiction. Popular practices like these, as well as the growing belief in the medical community that what happens in a person’s mind (and, possibly, soul) can be as important to health as what happens on the cellular level, are leading many doctors to embrace the God they banished from the clinic long ago in favor of technological and pharmaceutical progress.

All over the medical establishment, legitimate scientists are seeking the most ethical, effective ways to combine patients’ spiritual and religious beliefs with high-tech treatment. Former mutual-fund tycoon Sir John Templeton spends as much as $30 million a year funding scientific projects that explore the nature of God. “The Anatomy of Hope,” a meditation on the effects of optimism and faith on health, by New Yorker medical writer Jerome Groopman, M.D., is coming out early next year. The National Institutes of Health plans to spend $3.5 million over the next several years on “mind/body” medicine. And this weekend Harvard Medical School will hold a conference on spirituality and health, focusing on the healing effects of forgiveness. “There’s been a tremendous shift in the medical profession’s openness to this topic,” says Dr. Andrew Newberg, a neurologist at the University of Pennsylvania who is studying the biological effects of meditation and prayer on the brain. “People like me are very intrigued by what we’re seeing.”

Modern medicine, of course, still demands scientific proof on top of anecdotal evidence. So over the past decade, researchers have been conducting hundreds of studies, trying to scientifically measure the effects of faith and spirituality on health. Can religion slow cancer? Reduce depression? Speed recovery from surgery? Lower blood pressure? Can belief in God delay death? While the research results have been mixed, the studies inevitably run up against the difficulty of using scientific methods to answer what are, essentially, existential questions. How do you measure the power of prayer? Can one person’s prayer be stronger—and more effective—than another’s? How do you separate the health benefits of going to church or synagogue from the fact that people who attend religious services tend to smoke less and be less depressed than those who don’t?

For critics of this trend, that’s precisely the problem. In 1999, crusading Columbia University professor Richard Sloan wrote a paper in the medical journal The Lancet attacking the faith and healing studies for weak methodologies and soft thinking. Along with a second paper published a year later in The New England Journal of Medicine, the broadside ignited furious letter-writing campaigns in the academic press and divided the medical profession into two camps. Some scientists, like Sloan, believe that religion has no place in medicine and that steering patients toward spiritual practice can do more harm than good. Others, like Duke University’s pioneering faith-and-medicine researcher Dr. Harold Koenig, believe that a growing body of evidence points to religion’s positive effects on health and that keeping spirituality out of the clinic is irresponsible.

To make sense of the morass of data, the NIH commissioned a series of papers, published earlier this year, in which scientists attempted to definitively assess the state of the faith-and-health research. Lynda H. Powell, an epidemiologist at Rush University Medical Center in Chicago, reviewed about 150 papers, throwing out dozens that had flaws—those that failed to account for age and ethnicity, for example, which usually affect religiosity. In one respect, her findings were not surprising: while faith provides comfort in times of illness, it does not significantly slow cancer growth or improve recovery from acute illness.

One nugget, however, “blew my socks off,” Powell says. People who regularly attend church have a 25 percent reduction in mortality—that is, they live longer—than people who are not churchgoers. This is true even after controlling for variables intrinsically linked to Sundays in the pew, like social support and healthy lifestyle. While the data were culled mainly from Christian churchgoers, Powell says the findings should apply to any organized religion. “This is really powerful,” she says.

DAY 42

VIDEO CLICK HERE

MATHEMATICAL FINGERPRINT OF GOD

SCIENTIFIC PROOF OF DESIGN

DAY 43

The Eyes Have It

Perhaps the most conclusive quote on the matter of creation vs evolution comes from the father of the evolution theory, Charles Darwin. When considering the design of the eye for example, Darwin noted, “To suppose

that the eye with all it’s inimitable contrivances for adjusting the focus to different distances, for admitting different amounts of light, and for the correction of spherical and chromatic aberration, could have formed by natural selection, seems, I freely confess, absurd in the highest degree.” And he was right. There are over ten million light sensitive cells packed tightly together in the retina of the human eye. Equally astounding is the fact that these cells have a very high rate of metabolism and are completely destroyed and replaced about once a week! More staggering is the fact that each of these cells is vastly more complex than even the most sophisticated computer. In fact, it is believed that the retina conducts close to 10 billion [that’s 10,000,000,000 calculations every second, and that’s before the image even gets to the brain!

Here is what is written about the eye in the computer magazine BYTE. “To simulate 10 milliseconds of the complete processing of even a single nerve cell from the retina would require the solution of about 500 simultaneous non-linear differential equations 100 times and would take at least several minutes of processing time on a Cray supercomputer. Keeping in mind that there are 10 million or more such cells interacting with each other in complex ways it would take a minimum of a 100 years of Cray time to simulate what takes place in your eye many times every second.” It’s hard to imagine such a system coming about by accident or random chance. It’s easier to understand God’s Word when it tells us “ The hearing ear and the seeing eye, the Lord hath made even both of them.” Proverbs 20:12
 

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