Have you ever wondered what the night sky would look like around Vulcan, Tatooine, Alderan or Arakis?  Would it look like the Earth’s night sky?  Would you look up and see a dark sky with only a handful of very bright stars that stand out in a background of dim stars?  Would you be able to recognise patterns of constellations in the sky that the small number of bright stars appear to trace out? Would you look up and see discernible patterns such as a snake like Draco, or a line like Orion’s belt?  Also would the bright stars of the constellations themselves be concentrated in a belt like ring?  Is the Earth’s night sky just like the night sky of all of these imaginary planets or their real analogues?

 The answer to all of the above questions is a resounding NO.  Almost all the night skies of planets orbiting distant stars fall into one of three basic patterns.  Planets located in Galactic Nuclei (which constitute about 90% of stars) would see a very bright sky filled with millions of stars that all have just about the same brightness.  Planets located in high gas areas such as spiral arms would see only a small number of randomly distributed dull stars.  These constitute about about 8% of the remainder.  The last approximately 2% would see a sky similar to the Solar System’s but it would look more like a wall paper made up of a uniform field of mixed bright and dull stars with few if any creating a discernible pattern.

As it turns out the Solar System, we are fortunate enough to inhabit, has a very rare sky and occupies a very unusual almost spooky position in space.  Astronomers have discovered the Solar System sits in the middle of  a very low density star bubble.  This bubble is about 3000 light years across.  It contains about a million low mass stars but only a few thousand high mass stars.  Even stranger,  these high mass stars are primarily located in a band called Gould’s Belt.  Gould’s Belt is a ribbon of stars that make up the constellations of the night sky. This narrow band is tilted about 20 degrees to the plane of the Milky Way, our Galactic disk.  It is the combination of low star density with a band of ultra bright stars concentrated in a belt which runs through it that provides the beautiful night skies peppered with constellations that the Earth’s inhabitants are allowed to enjoy. 

These constellations have figured prominently in the history of the Earth.  They have been useful tool to navigate on sea and land.  They also have proven valuable to agriculturalists to mark out the farming labor cycles.  The constellations have also figured prominently in the imagination of people all over the planet who used  them as visual symbols of their mythology.

There is a second great mystery associated with the stars of Gould’s Belt.  These stars seem to have been formed separately from the rest of the stars in our Galaxy. Stars are normally formed in the gas rich spiral arms.  The stars in Gould’s Belt however seem to have been formed outside the spiral arms in “some local violent event.” This is truly a weird situation.  The Earth sits in the middle of a peculiar bubble that seems to have been swept clear of most of the stars that were originally formed in it.  The bubble was then surrounded by a unique ring of a few thousand bright stars that were formed in an unusual, possibly unique,  event separately from all the other 200 million stars in this galaxy. 

The title of this Blog was taken from the headline to the article which contained most of the information used in this Blog.  The article however attempts to explain this amazing situation through the invocation of Dark Matter.  At this time no one even knows if Dark Matter actually exists. Even if it is proven that Dark Matter exists and was the immediate cause of the wonderfully beautiful, glorious skies the Earth enjoys,  would it not seem likely that the ultimate cause behind this incredible series of coincidences was the Hand of God? 

Source: “Orion’s Dark Secret,” NewScientist, Nov. 21, 2009, pp 42-45.

The Bible mentions five colors in Hebrew: red (adom), Yellow (tzahov), green (yerakon), blue (tchelet) and magenta (argaman).  One curious observation is immediately apparent, in that this list not only includes the primary colors - red, yellow and blue but it also includes the only two other colors green and magenta that are necessary to produce the complete color palate for four color printing. As interesting as this observation is it pales in comparison to a discovery made by Haim Shore a professor of Statistics and Engineering at Ben-Gurion University. What Professor Shore discovered is that the numerical values of the Hebrew words for these colors is correlated with the spectral wave frequency for these colors. 

Hebrew is an alpha numeric language - in that every letter is also equal to a number.  So if you add the values of each letter you get a number for the total value of the word. This is commonly used in “gematria”, the Rabbinic Cabalistic system of Biblical interpretation and prophesy, but what Shore did is not gematria. After calculating a total value for each word, he then plotted them on a graph.  He plotted the numerical value of each word on the horizontal graph and the color’s wave frequency on the vertical axis .  To Shore’s amazement he discovered that the graph yielded a straight line.

“It’s a universal principle of engineering that if you have two sets of data, you put them in ascending order, plot one set on the horizontal axis and the other on a vertical axis and if they fall on a straight line, that means that both data sets are measuring the same thing, only on a different scale. “I was astonished.  The five points on the graph formed a straight line, which means that the names of the colors related directly to their wave frequencies.” It was purely a statistical analysis Shore said,”I didn’t manipulate a single number in doing the analysis.” “When I saw this result I was stunned.” “I was completely astonished. Then I went on to other words in the Hebrew Bible, plotting the value of the letters against known scientific data. The whole thing blew me away.” Shore went on to investigate similar cases in the Bible and so far has preformed over 20 different analyses with statistically verifiable findings, for example he has found a similar correlation between numerical word value a planetary diameters.

Shore began as a Bible skeptic and did not expect to make any of these findings.  He says that he does not want to tell anyone what his findings mean but their theological implications are unavoidable.

Sources:

“Mere Coincidence or divine truth?”, by Yocheved Russo, Jerusalem Post, December 3, 2009.

“Coincidence in the Bible and in Biblical Hebrew”, by Haim Shore, 2008, iUniverse, New York.

The Bible mentions five colors: red (adom), blue (tchelet), yellow (tzhov), green (yerakon) and purple/magenta (arganam).  Black and white are special cases from the stand point of the physics of light because black is the absence of all light and white light is all colors combined.  This list of colors by itself has some surprising properties in that it is limited to the primary colors plus the two additional colors that are needed for tinting to cover the full range of what the human eye can see. However Professor Haim Shore of Ben-Gurion University made a much more startling discovery about these colors and their Hebrew names.  Dr. Shore a Professor of Statistics and Engineering discovered that, “The Hebrew word for the color actually matched the colors wave frequency.” This is a breath taking discovery: in Dr Shores own words, “How could that be?” Shore had started out as a total skeptic regarding such phenomena, believing that claims of empirical knowledge being encoded in the Bible were a myth.  “In the scheme of things that’s an outrageous suggestion - why would anyone think that the Hebrew name of colors mentioned in the Bible - red, green, yellow - would bear any relationship to the wave frequency of the color itself.” “When I saw the result I was stunned.”

What Dr. Shore did was to take the five words and calculate the total numerical value of the letters added together.  He then plotted them on a graph with the vertical axis being the colors electromagnetic spectral wave frequency and the Colors Name Value on the horizontal axis. When complete Shore was “astonished” because what he had was a straight line. ” The five points on the Graph formed a straight line - which means that the names of the colors related directly to the their established wave frequencies” “I didn’t manipulate a single number”, it was a straight statistical analysis.  After making this discovery Shore was disconcerted. “When I saw it, I was like a lion in a cage, pacing around. I couldn’t believe it.”  “The whole thing blew me away.” 

Professor Shore then decided to try plotting the value of of other words against known scientific data for them.  What he found continued to surprise him, he found that the Bible contains many examples of similar coincidences of numerical word value being associated with scientifically established phenomena which the same word is related to.  For example he found another straight line fit for the words Sun (shemesh), Earth (eretz) and Moon (yareach) when plotted on a log scale against  their diameters.

Shore went on to write a book about his discoveries called, “Coincidences in The Bible and In Biblical Hebrew.” He feels that this work is very important because, “It’s a universal principle of Engineering that if you have two sets of data, you put them in ascending order, plot one set on a horizontal axis and the other on a vertical axis and they fall on a straight line, that means both sets of data are measuring the same thing, only on a different scale.” 

 While Shore is reluctant to make specific theological claims about his research, it has ended his own skepticism about the authorship of the Bible.

Source: “Mere Coincidence or Divine Truth”, by Yocheved Russo, The Jerusalem Post, December 3, 2009.

As militant atheism is growing some of its own stalwarts are beginning to have questions about the desirability of a world without religion and especially one without Christianity.  A number of atheists and agnostics going back to at least the time of the American Revolution have asked themselves what would a world without the constraints of Christian morality be like.  The most recent examples of religion free governments that come to mind are the Soviet Union, Nazi Germany, Cambodia under Pol Pot and Mao’s China .  The most obvious characteristics held in common by all of these atheist governments are mass murder, political repression, and economic poverty.  Atheists are generally not stupid or ignorant of history, many see that their own fate under an atheist regime could be quite unpleasant, for while they may share, with such governments, a disdain or even hatred for religion or God, these governments are usually quite hostile to other things that atheist often see as desirable.  Homosexuals, for example, were dealt with very harshly, including executions, in the above “atheist paradises.” 

 Some of this disagreement surfaced this September following the “Blasphemy Day” celebration held in Washington D.C., where atheism enthusiast engaged in a number of activities designed to ridicule, denigrate, and insult religion and religious believers especially Christians.  These activities included de-baptisms, desecration of communion hosts, offers to swap Bibles for pornography and an extensive display of blasphemous art.  Interestingly this “bold and  imaginative intellectual effort” somehow failed to include and depictions of Islamic materials,  a mere coincidence no doubt on the part of a group who views themselves as courageous advocates for true non-judgemental, relativist morality.

 The rift seen at this meeting was one primarily of style.  Some atheists found the tone of the activities objectionable and likely to be counter-productive.  However deeper streams of discontent are being voiced by some atheists.  For example,  sophomoric refutations for the existence of God currently abound in the atheist literature.  Many atheists seem to think they have hit upon an original thought when asking, “Why do bad things happen to good people?”, seemingly unaware of the libraries full of books that provide answers to this 2000 year old question or the embarrassingly naive discovery by Oprah Winfrey that the Bible states the “I am a jealous God.” 

Atheists claim that the world is moving into a Post-Christian Era, however if they would bother to look at the broader literature in philosophy and history they would notice that the actual stronger trend in movement into a Post-Secular Era.

Source: “A Bitter Rift Divides Atheists”, by Barbara Hagerty, National Public Radio, October 19, 2009.

Intelligence is a very difficult concept to define let alone reproduce.  We know it when we see it, even in animals but what it is exactly has eluded philosophers and scientists for millennia?  Human intelligence is the biggest mystery of all?  How is it that humans are capable of advanced mathematics, Quantum Physics or memorizing Pi to 22,500 places? Even the infinitely malleable Darwinian explanation, which can bludgeon anything into the Natural Selection straight jacket, which simultaneously explains everything and nothing, is no longer taken seriously as the explanation for the rise of human intelligence by a growing cohort within the field of Cognitive Sciences.

Artificial intelligence is an attempt to reproduce this undefinable quality of “intelligence” in machines.  In 1958 Walter Cronkite narrated a “Twentieth Century” television documentary about computers and artificial intelligence.  Computer technology was in its early stages and capabilities were limited but the program assured the audience that “intelligent computers” capable of thought were just around the corner and within a few years would be part of everyday life and that thinking machines would soon be relieving humans of all sorts of mundane tasks.  In 1968 Stanley Kubrick’s “2001 A Space Odyssey” included the character “HAL 9000,” a sentient computer which was not only capable of thought; HAL even became afflicted with mental illness caused by moral qualms.  In 1969 an IBM hardware engineering executive assured me that IBM could “build HAL today” if the government would just put up the money.  Such claims have continued to be made regularly for the past fifty years and the field of Artificial Intelligence (AI) has developed from the efforts to actually build these thinking machines.  Unfortunately despite high hopes and almost daily predictions of breakthroughs AI seems even more distant now than it did in 1958.  In the 1960’s it was concluded that progress in AI was not being made because the “right questions” were not being asked.  In the 1980’s it was concluded that “the right questions were not being asked because the questions were not being framed properly.”  In the 1990’s until now it is acknowledged that we do not even know how to frame the questions, let alone ask the right questions.

As a former enthusiast of AI, the vision I had of the future filled with intelligent machines in no way matches today’s reality.  Instead of the highly intelligent Star Ship Enterprise type computers that relieved the ships crew of loads of tiresome chores,  I find that computers have instead loaded us with more tiresome chores.  For example clerical work:  for many years I had secretaries that did my typing, filing, phone answering and much more work that I must now do for myself because computers make it possible.  The work once done by bank tellers, the banks are now trying hard to force the customer to do for themselves.  Even the grocery stores are trying to force patrons to be their own checkers and box boys.  This doesn’t even include the deluge of email we all deal with daily.

However this rather lack luster reality has not dulled continued predictions of a rosy future filled with smart machines doing all sorts of wonderful things. The reason for this continued optimism about the creation of thinking machines comes from the belief by theorists in the field that intelligence is a “computational” activity.  This line of reasoning is simple - computers can compute therefore computers should be able to think.  The Materialist philosophy behind this AI assumption is that intelligence is just a by product of the brain’s chemistry and physics: therefore intelligence should be reproducible in machines.  Unfortunately years of failure and dead ends in AI are now leading some in the field to question these Reductionist, Materialist beliefs about intelligence. Intelligence seems to be more then just brain chemistry and physics. But what is it?

If intelligence is not a matter of brain physics and chemistry, it then must originate in a non-material realm.  This of course is arguably Plato’s greatest conjecture, that consciousness and intellect originates in the mind of God and we in effect “think God’s thoughts after Him” to quote Albert Einstein.  This of course is not difficult for Christians and Jews to accept because it is totally consistent with our beliefs. 

 Contributing Source: “The Revolution Will Not Be Roboticised” by Nic Fleming, NewScientist, August 29, 2009, pp 28-29.

Junk science is growing very rapidly in many fields.  This is a big and growing problem for Christians because this ideologically driven junk science is frequently used to undermine Faith especially of the young. This is evident from the effects of Darwinism in Biology and Origin of Life Research, Freudianism in Psychology and Cognitive Studies, Marxism in Economics and Political Science and on and on.  While not directly related to Christian Faith, right now junk science is nowhere more blatantly evident then in Climatology with the growth of anthropogenic global warming ideology.

However this has been a terrible month for those who still assert that human produced CO2 emissions are causing global warming.  First one of the world’s leading climate modelers and an author of the United Nations IPCC report on global warming told an audience of 1500 climate scientists at the World Climate Conference in Geneva, Switzerland that new research indicates that the recent global cooling trend is likely to continue for the next 10 to 20 years.   Not only that, Mojib Latif went further and admitted that this change in the global climate had nothing to do with human activity but was instead the result of “natural cyclical processes.”

From the stand point of the credibility of the global warming argument an even more damaging revelation came this week.  When researchers recently asked to review the original climate data that the IPCC report was based on, they were refused access to the data.  However they persisted with their request and it has now been claimed that the original data upon used to produce the IPCC report, which is the foundation stone of the global warming argument, can not be reviewed because it has been destroyed.  It was further revealed that the original data had been altered by merging it with other data in order to ”homogenized” it.  In other words the original data was taken, manipulated and then the original data was destroyed so that the original data can no longer be examined by researchers.  Consequently it is claimed that skeptics can no longer examine the raw data to see if its analysis really supports the conclusions of global warming claimed by the IPCC.

This is not the way science is done.  It is the way scientific frauds are done.  This puts policy makers such as President Obama, who are pushing for sweeping legislation to massively change the world’s economy through “Cap and Trade” and other measures, to be advocating their position based on scientific claims that cannot be verified.   If the data really supported the global warming alarmists’ claims,  is it believable that they would have deliberately destroyed their proof? The much more likely explanation is that the evidence was destroyed to prevent the exposure of one of the greatest scientific frauds in history.

Sources:

1. “World Will Cool For The Next Decade,” by Fred Pearce, New Scientist, September 12, 2009, p.10.

2. “The Dog Ate Global Warming,” by Patrick Michaels, National Review Online, September 23, 2009.

The current claimed view of the human fetus in the “Pro-Choice” community is that a fetus is simply a ball of tissue and aborting it is no different from removing a wart. This view of course is rejected by the Pro-Life community. However, this dehumanized view of the fetus held by the Pro-Choice community is facing a growing problem from fetal research studies. About 10 years ago it was discovered that the human fetus feels pain. Until recently surgeries preformed in utero did not anesthetize the fetus because it was believed that they did not experience pain, however fetal brain wave studies have clearly shown that the human fetus does experience pain during surgical procedures. While this should give us all pause when considering what the fetus must experience during an abortion: the Pro-Choice community succeeded in defeating efforts to require fetal anaesthesia during abortions. The barbaric cruelty of this to my mind is almost unimaginable.

Now a study done at the University of Maastricht in Holland has shown that the 30 week old fetus appears to have at least short to medium term memory and the ability to learn. These studies show that the fetus can recall memories even 4 weeks later. For years many hypnotherapists have claimed evidence for long term memories in utero going back long before 30 weeks.

Pain, learning, brain wave activity and now memory in the human fetus all strongly point to the fact that the fetus is not just a simple ball of cells but is a sentient being.

Source: Child Development, “Aspects of Fetal Learning and Memory”, by Chantal Dirix et. al., Issue 4, vol 80, pp 1251 -1258.

The Book of Nehemiah recounts the story of the return of the Jews to Jerusalem in 445-444 BC from their exile in Babylon.  Nehemiah recounts in detail how Ataxerxes, the Babylonian Emperor, issued orders that allowed them to reoccupy and rebuild the city and its walls.  Skeptics have long dismissed the story as later day propaganda made up by the Jewish exiles in Babylon.

In November of 2007 a team of Israeli archaeologists led by Eilat Mazar announced that they had discovered Nehemiah’s Wall. Predictably the initial reaction of critics was that, “the evidence did not support the claim.”  However, as this research continues the critics have been silenced because the level of correspondence between the descriptions in the Bible and the materials uncovered by the archaeologists has been astounding.

There is a continuing flood of evidence coming out of this research that will produce numerous books on the subject in the near future. The highlights of this research include the discovery of the destroyed pre-exilic wall that surrounded Jerusalem, which was ruined by the Babylonians.  One of the key questions that had to be answered about the wall was its reconstruction date.  The evidence from several different lines of research clearly puts the date when the reconstruction was preformed exactly were the Bible reports it, at about 445 BC (Nehemiah 2:11-15).

Nehemiah 3:1-32 goes on to describe how the wall was rapidly rebuilt in just 52 days by having different sections assigned to different families, guilds or settlement groups.  Several lines of evidence support this Biblical description.  These include pottery studies, architectural studies and other archaeological findings.  Scripture also indicates that the work was done in extreme hast to the ridicule of the Jews enemies (Nehemiah 4:1-2).  The archaeology also supports this claim of a rushed, high-pressure reconstruction and as would be expected, it is reflected in “shoddy workmanship.”

Christians and Jews alike believe that the Bible reports God working in human history.  Many critics claim that this is not true and that the Bible is not an historically accurate document.  Their primary evidence for this claim is their opinions.  These opinions drive their insistence on scientific evidence that provides corroboration of Biblical events independent of reports in Scripture.  This was not an unreasonable position 100 years ago or even 30 years ago. However as archaeological research progresses, it is becoming increasingly difficult, to the point of “willful blindness”, to maintain that the Bible is not a historically reliable document.

Source: “The Wall That Nehemiah Built”, by Eilat Mazar, Biblical Archaeology Review, March/April 2009, pp 24-33.

According to the “objective” media “religion in Europe is dead.” This “fact” has been gleefully touted, widely and frequently and occasionally is backed up by carefully selected statistics. This is also claimed to be a relatively new phenomena and is supposed to be heralding the eventual triumph of the “new atheism.” The general line of argument is that - Enlightenment Rationality, driven by secular education is finally displacing Christianity as the dominant philosophical view in Europe. European history is generally painted in the popular imagination as one where, the church dominated Medieval life, during the “Age of Faith” when church attendance was almost universal, even if it was involuntary.

Many Christians believe that Europe is now a spiritual desert and find its future prospect quite sad and depressing. Many also fear, and the media asserts that European secularism and atheism is a harbinger of things to come in the United States. For those who feel this way, I highly recommend “Discovering God” by Rodney Stark. Stark’s research holds many surprises. He shows that most prominent scholars of European religious history are in agreement that church attendance in Europe, especially in Northern Europe has always been very low and in many areas much lower than it is today. Many will find this surprising given the large number of churches and monasteries built all over Europe. As it turns out these beautiful cathedrals and churches went largely unused. The eminent English historian Keith Thomas, for example, states that during the Medieval period of British history, “It is problematical as to whether certain segments of the population at this time had any religion at all.” Alexander Murray reported the same situation existed in Italy stating that, “Substantial sections of Thirteenth-Century society hardly attended church at all.” Among those few who did attend it was often because “they were ordered to do so by their lord.”

This pattern changed little even after the Protestant Reformation. The Oxford Diocesan Visitations for 1738 reports that in its 30 parishes “fewer then 5% of the total population had taken communion” in that year. This situation around Oxford, the home of several great churches, was not unusual.

So what is the situation today? Has it gotten worse? Are there any Christians left in Europe? Those who are discouraged should view the University of Michigan research, funded in part by the National Science Foundation’s “Study of World Wide Rates of Religiosity, Church Attendance” - “Table of Adult Weekly Church Attendance” by country. It is true that in Northwestern Europe weekly church attendance is low, especially in Scandinavia but the picture in the rest of Europe is not nearly so bleak. For example:

Sweden 4%

Czech Republic 14%

Germany 14%

France 21%

Britain 27%

Austria 30%

Holland 35%

Belgium 44%

Italy 44%

Poland 55%

Ireland 84%

So the media’s version of religion in Europe is much the same as its reports of Mark Twain’s death - “greatly exaggerated.” Christians should take heart from these reports. The world is not being secularized. Europe is in fact not being deChristianized. Christian Faith in Europe is actually growing and is probably healthier then it has been in the past.

Sources:

“Discovering God: The origins of the Great Religions and the Evolution of Belief,’” by Rodney Stark, Harper-Collins, New York, 2007.

“Study of World Wide Rates of Religiosity, Church Attendance”, University of Michigan New Service: Current Archives, Dec 10, 1997 (17).

Biblical critics often claim that the New Testament has been changed over its 2000 year history. Some argue that these changes have been dramatic. Numerous popular books allege that these modifications have been done to perpetrate a variety hoaxes on a gullible humanity, ranging from the claim that Jesus never existed to claims that he was married and had children. No one has yet claimed that this material also conceals the fact that Jesus couldn’t get a date and surfed badly; however, my study of these claims is not exhaustive.

Over the years the assertion that the Bible has been altered over time has become increasingly difficult to maintain as researchers have located and authenticated older and older manuscripts and Biblical fragments. The oldest Biblical manuscript fragments now date to at least 125 AD and possibly as early as 65 AD. So the window of opportunity for Scriptural alteration has shrunken steadily. In reality even this truncated period of time when Scripture could have been altered is no longer tenable because copies of the Bible are not the only source of Scripture. As it turns out there are approximately 100,000 surviving letters and manuscripts from the first and second centuries which quote Scriptural passages and many of these surviving documents contain lengthy quotations.

A survey of these extra Biblical sources reveals that a staggering 98% of the passages in the New Testament can be found repeated in these documents by the second century AD. A good part of these sections of Scripture come to us from the first century. For example, Ignatius, the Bishop of Antioch and Clement, the Bishop of Rome (whom Paul probably mentioned in Philippians 4:3), quoted passages in their writings. Some of these letters can be dated as early as the 70’s AD.

Given this mountain of evidence, the claim that the Scripture we have today is different from the original is not credible. Persons making such claims simply are not aware of the mountain of evidence supporting the continuity of the Bible.

Sources:

“The Signature of God”, by Grant Jeffery, Frontier Research, Ontario, Canada, 2002.

“Introduction to New Testament Textual Criticism”, by J. Harold Greenlee, Ehrdmans, Grand Rapids, Michigan, 1964.