Book Review of Believing Is Seeing

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Book Review of Believing is Seeing

or

https://medium.com/@pkajjohnson/book-review-believing-is-seeing-a-physicist-explains-how-science-shattered-his-atheism-and-4b5f5a60d812

My thoughts: If Seeing isn’t believing and believing isn’t seeing then what you get is a sort of a form of voodoo like what the Catholic Church adhered to in the time of Copernicus. If that is Christian then I am a monkey’s uncle. Seems to me it is anti-Christian. It is toxic to Christian faith. But there are organizations that tell humanity that science and bible are at war with each other.

View at Medium.com

Bible and Science, Two Views.

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There are two main views Christians seem to have about science.

1. The Unified View. Science and the bible portray one unified truth.
2. The Conflict View. Science and bible are in conflict and are at war.

Young earth creationism (YEC) promotes the Conflict View as the only way to understand the bible.

Reasons To Believe (RTB) goes with the unified view. They make way more sense to me that the conflcit view.

YEC’s consistently tell me the conflict view is the only view because for science and bible to not be in conflict means the bible is not credible. I think they fabricated that and it is a lie.

Mark 13:32 states that no one, not even the angels in heaven or the Son, knows the day or hour of the end times, only the Father. This verse emphasizes that Jesus in his incarnation, while fully human and fully divine, did not have full access to the knowledge of the father and the holy spirit. So YEC’s overclaim about what jesus knew about Genesis. His knowledge came from the Septuagint.



Family Genetics, Genealogy, and YEC.

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Unbelievable that I have to explain this.

In America we pass property to blood relatives. What is a blood relative? They came from your parents. Or your grandparents. Or your great grandparents. Or your great great grandparents. Etc. Until you go back so far you A) have no legal paperwork trail or B) have no indentifiable DNA patterns in common. You have to have one of those to have blood relatives. That is what genetic FAMILY is.

Every child you have gets about 1/2 your DNA. Their children get 1/4. The next generation get 1/8th. And so on. Until autosomal DNA is so diluted it is at noise level. So when we compare individuals we cannot tell if they are genetic blood relatives. You cannot be a blood relative of everybody on earth.

But there is an exception. Y-DNA passes intact from father to son. And so on. All the way back to the first man. Adam.

We can measure the SNPs. We see mutations and they accumulate. Sometimes living people will have the same Y chromosome where the common grandfather is back 10 generations. Or 50 generations.

We can also dig up bones and match them. Even if they are 10,000 years old they will contain the same SNP sequence minus the recent mutations.

The point is, we can trace where our patrilineal blood relatives died. And their ancestors too!

I know where my ancestors were all the way back to pre-history. And I know where my brother in law’s ancestors were too. So no, we are not blood relatives, our ancestors never went anywhere near each other. But, pontificating Answers in Genesis YECs (Young Earth Creationists) at church want to tell the whole church that I am related to my brother in law. Its kind of like saying I am Chinese. This claim of theirs is completely baseless.

Science people will claim that celts came from the eastern Ukraine. Science deniers claim no no no, they came from Noah’s Ark. Which is true? If they came from Noah’s Ark then they would be buried down the road from the Ark, and the next few generations would be buried a bit further down the road, until they got to western Europe. That trail is completely missing. I mean, the skeletons aren’t there.

What I see is that YECs do not evaluate the evidence.

Why Look At This?

Why did I start talking about this? Because of the YEC claim that I am related to my brother in law. No, it didn’t mean “we are all children of Adam”. People tell me “oh, we all have DNA, we must all be family”. No, that is not what they are talking about. They are talking about Moral Obligation to Family. Meaning blood relationships. In the context they used it it meant I have a moral and Christian obligation to let my in-laws continue to abuse me. Because I am related. So I therefore am obligated. And I am a sinner if I by chance just want to get away from it. Move to another state, don’t look back. However, that is not acceptable. Because? Because, as they claim, I am related to my inlaws. WHAT THE HELL? They are talking about blood relatives, not strangers on the street. Not sons of Adam due t all sons of Adam possess DNA. No. It was a statement about close family.

Now, how do I know I am not related to my in-law family? The above explanation on DNA. That’s how. And I had told this to a 12 step group at church. I study the family’s genealogy and DNA. But there is another reason. It is because the leader is a self entitled fundamentalist YEC asshole. So he instantly overrode me and took a vote. He got the group to vote! WHY? Because he says so. Thats it! I thought I would die of a heart attack. I didnt go back to church for months after that. Here I had been deciding to be free of the abuser and they could not live with this. They think their job is to fix people! But we know really only God can fix people.

I put these folks in the category of RAPIST. Fundamentalist rapists. They live in a fantasy world and use the bible to justify themselves. I am not the only victim of the fundamentalists. I saw a lot of victims at that church. People who endure a lot of false religious shaming from fundamentalists.

They had made it very clear they are fundamentalists and follow young earth creationism and believe in a world-wide global flood. And are against Christians studying modern science. Or reading books. You see, books, even Christian books, might make you think, and thinking will lead you astray to the point where you wont take the word of fundamentalists just because “they say so.”

Back to the science. There is a conscept called admixture. It means what percent Scottish are you? Irish? French? African? Etc. Compared to current living populations. I myself don’t put much stock in it, but most people want to know if they are 45% Scottish, for example. That is based on autosomal DNA.

My inlaws come from a patrilinial viking line where we share a grandfather in 44000 BC. So we are cousins that are so far apart that we may as well be Japanese and Black. If you think Japanese and Black people are the same family you are nuts. Stark raving mad. They are not the same family lines. What cousins are we? 400th cousins 400 times removed? The point is IT WAS CAVE MAN DAYS. It doesn’t matter.

OK, OK, I can call my brother in law a cave man, I guess, have it your way. The real point they were making was science denial. That really is the whole point of YEC. Science is at war with God. Why? Because they say it is. And they use morality arguments as a weapon for brainwashing. Which is ministerial abuse.

This is part of why my presbyterian elder neighbor tells me Answers in Genesis is a satanic conspiracy.













Do the Laws of Physics Change Over Time?

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Hugh Ross writes: “The biblical principle of unchanging and pervasive physics launched the scientific revolution.”

Before that happened Galileo told the cardinals that because of the established laws of heaven and earth when you find the laws in contradiction to your understand of scripture then your understanding is flawed. The church eventually agreed with him. Why?

Fixed Naturals Laws and the Christ.

https://www.bible.com/bible/111/JER.33.NIV

19The word of the Lord came to Jeremiah: 20“This is what the Lord says: ‘If you can break my covenant with the day and my covenant with the night, so that day and night no longer come at their appointed time, 21then my covenant with David my servant—and my covenant with the Levites who are priests ministering before me—can be broken and David will no longer have a descendant to reign on his throne. 22I will make the descendants of David my servant and the Levites who minister before me as countless as the stars in the sky and as measureless as the sand on the seashore.’ ”

23The word of the Lord came to Jeremiah: 24“Have you not noticed that these people are saying, ‘The Lord has rejected the two kingdoms he chose’? So they despise my people and no longer regard them as a nation. 25This is what the Lord says: ‘If I have not made my covenant with day and night and established the laws of heaven and earth, 26then I will reject the descendants of Jacob and David my servant and will not choose one of his sons to rule over the descendants of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob. For I will restore their fortunes and have compassion on them.’ ”


What got me to thinking about this? Answers in Genesis claims that the laws of physics have been different in the past. Drastically different physical constants. Physical constants that vary. Such as the speed of light.

Hugh Ross writes about physical constants and physical laws remaining constant. he references the above scriptures.

New Evidence Further Affirms Biblical Prediction of Unchanging Physics
by Hugh Ross

August 9, 2021

(from reasons.org)

It may be surprising for some readers to learn that the Bible declared millennia ago that the fundamental physics of the universe has not and does not change. In Jeremiah 33, for example, God avows that he is not like humans, who habitually change their minds, their convictions, and their loyalties. God uses the physics of the universe as an analogy for his immutable nature. As God “established the fixed laws of heaven and earth” (Jeremiah 33:25), so, too, his character attributes, convictions, and commitments are unchanging.

Another biblical example is found in Romans 8:20–22. Here, Paul states that “the whole creation has been groaning” as a result of its “bondage to decay” (NIV 1984). This passage summarizes the long discourses in Ecclesiastes, especially chapters 1–3, 10–12, declaring that the law of decay, known today as the second law of thermodynamics, applies ubiquitously throughout the universe.

Foundation of Modern Science
The biblical principle of unchanging and pervasive physics launched the scientific revolution. During the Renaissance, students of the Bible began to recognize that if the laws of physics are the same for all times and places throughout the universe, then experiments and observations about natural phenomena will reveal reliable and trustworthy knowledge and understanding about the natural realm. Such understanding would not only satisfy our curiosity about nature but also yield economic and technological advances. During the Reformation, the recognition of unchanging and pervasive physics became widespread throughout Europe and gave birth to the scientific revolution.

It is no accident that the scientific revolution was birthed in Reformation Europe. Biblical literacy, for the first time, flourished in Reformation Europe and led to the widespread acceptance that the laws of physics could be trusted to reveal truth about nature.

Tests of Unchanging Physics
Even though the biblical principle of constant and pervasive laws of physics forms the foundation of the scientific method and scientific research, scientists continue to subject the principle to rigorous and exhaustive testing. They have two reasons for doing so. First, affirming the fundamental assumption undergirding the scientific method and scientific research to a greater degree of precision and to a greater extent of space and time builds confidence in the value and successes of the scientific enterprise. Second, searching for very tiny departures from the constancy of known laws of physics might reveal the existence of new, as yet undiscovered, laws of physics. For example, what appeared to astronomers at the end of the nineteenth century as a tiny departure from Newton’s laws of motion in their observations of Mercury’s orbit1 led to the discovery of another nonvarying law of physics, the theory of general relativity.2

Christians also have a vested interest in subjecting the biblical principle of constant and pervasive laws of physics to more rigorous and exhaustive testing. Millennia before scientists had any hint that the laws of physics are constant and that they apply ubiquitously to the entire universe, the Bible stood alone in making such claims. These tests present an opportunity to demonstrate the Bible’s unique power to accurately predict future scientific discoveries. Such a demonstration provides strong evidence for the existence of an all-knowing, all-truthful God and that the Bible is the inspired, inerrant revelation from that God.

Past Tests
I have written many Today’s New Reason to Believe articles documenting the most rigorous observations and experiments that establish that the laws of physics are constant and pervasive.3 The most stringent tests achieved to date, with years over which measurements have been made, are as follows:

Physical law test Measurements’ Span of YearsVariation
fine-structure constant variation  4 years4<2.0 x 10-16/year
fine-structure constant variation  12.9 billion years5<6.2 x 10-16/year
electron-to-proton mass ratio variation  4 years6<2.3 x 10-14/year 
electron-to-proton mass ratio variation  12.9 billion years7<1.6 x 10-17/year 
gravitational constant variation  24 years8<5.2 x 10-14/year  
gravitational constant variation   11.0 billion years9<7.9 x 10-12/year

The two tests performed over 4–year spans were achieved in laboratories. Helioseismic observations of the Sun were responsible for the test over a 24-year span. Observations of the spectral lines of galaxies and quasars over a broad range of light-travel times yielded the three tests over billions of years. To less precision, tests show no sign of variation in the values of the fundamental constants of physics with respect to regional location in the universe.10

Latest Test
The past tests establish to high precision that no change has occurred in the fundamental constants of physics from 11.0–12.9 billion years ago until the present. That’s 93.5% of cosmic history. Until the James Webb Space Telescope and the Extremely Large Telescope become operational, it will not be possible for observations of galaxy and quasar spectral lines to push the time range earlier than 12.9 billion years ago. However, two British astronomers, Luke Hart and Jens Chluba, analyzed data from the Planck 2018 map of the cosmic microwave background radiation to determine values for the fine-structure constant and the electron-to-proton mass ratio when the universe was only 370,000 years old, or 13.79 billion years before the present.11

Hart and Chluba determined that just 370,000 years after the cosmic creation event the value of the fine-structure constant compared to its value measured in present-day laboratories = 1.0005 +/- 0.0024. The value of the electron-to-proton mass ratio 370,000 years after the cosmic creation event compared to the present-day value = 1.0005 +/- 0.0099. Though Hart and Chluba’s measurements are not as accurate as the past tests, they extend the demonstration that the fundamental constants of physics remain unchanged over the past 93.5% to now 99.9973% of cosmic history.

Philosophical Implications
Observations now show that the laws of physics that govern the universe indeed are unchanged to high precision over (what for all practical purposes is) the entire history of the universe. The accurate forecasting of this scientific discovery thousands of years ago in the writings of the Bible establishes that the One who inspired the Bible authors to write what they did must be superintelligent, superknowledgeable, superpowerful, trustworthy, and truthful. These observations show, too, that the study of nature is a worthwhile endeavor that can be trusted to reveal truth not only about the natural realm but also about the attributes of the One who brought it all into existence.

Endnotes

  1. Simon Newcomb, “Discussion of the Observed Transits of Mercury, 1677–1881,” Astronomical Papers Prepared for the Use of the American Ephemeris and Nautical Almanac, vol. I (Washington: Bureau of Navigation, Navy Department, 1882), available at http://relativitycalculator.com/pdfs/mercury_perihelion_advance/S.Newcomb.pdf; G. M. Clemence, “The Relativity Effect in Planetary Motions,” Reviews of Modern Physics 19, no. 4 (October 1, 1947): 361–364, doi:10.1103/RevModPhys.19.361.
  2. Albert Einstein, “Die Grundlage der allgemeinen Relativitätstheorie,” Annalen Der Physik 354, no. 7 (July 1916): 769–822, doi:10.1002/andp.19163540702; Albert Einstein, translated by Satyendra Nath Bose, “The Foundation of the Generalised Theory of Relativity,” last edited December 30, 2020.
  3. Hugh Ross, “New Fine-Structure Constant Measurement Affirms Cosmic Creation,” Today’s New Reason to Believe (blog), March 1, 2021; Hugh Ross, “More Evidences for Biblical Claim of Unchanging Physics,” Today’s New Reason to Believe (blog), June 22, 2020; Hugh Ross, “Stronger and More Comprehensive Tests Affirm the Universe’s Unchanging Physics,” Today’s New Reason to Believe (blog), July 1, 2013; Hugh Ross, “TNRTB Classic: Testing the Biblical Notion of Unchanging Physics,” Today’s New Reason to Believe (blog), July 4, 2013.
  4. Nathan Leefer et al., “New Limits on Variation of the Fine-Structure Constant Using Atomic Dysprosium,” Physical Review Letters 111, no. 6 (August 6, 2013): id. 060801, doi:10.1103/PhysRevLett.111.060801.
  5. S. A. Levshakov et al., “An Upper Limit to the Variation in the Fundamental Constants at Redshift z = 5.2,” Astronomy & Astrophysics: Letters 540 (April 2012): id. L9, doi:10.1051/0004-6361/201219042; Franco D. Albareti et al., “Constraint on the Time Variation of the Fine-Structure Constant with the SDSS-III/BOSS DR12 Quasar Sample,” Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society 452, no. 4 (October 1, 2015): 4153–4168, doi:10.1093/mnras/stv1406.
  6. J. Kobayashi, A. Ogino, and S. Inouye, “Measurement of the Variation of Electron-to-Proton Mass Ratio Using Ultracold Molecules Produced from Laser-Cooled Atoms,” Nature Communications 10 (August 21, 2019): id. 3771, doi:10.1038/s41467-019-11761-1.
  7. Levshakov et al., “An Upper Limit.”
  8. Alfio Bonanno and Hans-Erich Fröhlich, “A New Helioseismic Constraint on a Cosmic-Time Variation of G,” The Astrophysical Journal Letters 893, no. 2 (April 21, 2020): id. L35, doi:10.3847/2041-8213/ab86b9.
  9. Earl Patrick Bellinger and Jørgen Christensen-Dalsgaard, “Astroseismic Constraints on the Cosmic-Time Variation of the Gravitational Constant from an Ancient Main-sequence Star,” The Astrophysical Journal Letters 887, no. 1 (December 3, 2019): id. L1, doi:10.3847/2041-8213/ab43e7.
  10. Jon O’Bryan et al., “Constraints on Spatial Variations in the Fine-Structure Constant from Planck,” The Astrophysical Journal 798, no. 1 (January 1, 2015): id. 18, doi:10.1088/0004-637X/798/1/18.
  11. Luke Hart and Jens Chluba, “Updated Fundamental Constant Constraints from Planck 2018 Data and Possible Relations to the Hubble Tension,” Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society 493, no. 3 (April 2020): 3255–3263, doi:10.1093/mnras/staa412.

SMS tip for admins

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Sending emails to SMS or MMS

Email to Text settings

For services such as Voicemail Email Notification, you can enter the text message email address in the field.


To send a text message via email, you must use a SMS or MMS to email gateway. Just substitute a 10-digit cell number for ‘number’ for each carrier below:

What use are DATASETS really?

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A bunch of people are trying to use datasets to implement permissions and ACLS via the GUI.
I use a zsh shell via ssh and give normal debian commands and scripts and automations. You cannot automate hardly anything via a gui. That is the #1 reason I abandoned TERRA-MASTER OS.

However, on TrueNAS there is the dataset dilemma.

Willnx says about datasets on truenas:

If it helps, here’s how my box at home is set up (with the datasets and such):
Vol1
+Berkeley (Unix dataset)
–>So many exports…
+Redmond (CIFS dataset)
–>Two different shares for my only two Windows boxes. Unique permissions for each.
+FTP (Unix dataset)
–>For the crap I always have to re-download when I make a new VM/ build a new PC.

I don’t have any quotas set up on these datasets either. I don’t care how big any of them get, provided it doesn’t fill my NAS 100% and turn it into a big brick.
Instead, I set up a reserve space on Vol1.

To me, the real power/ benefit of multiple datasets are:
More granular snapshots (Clones too)
Different compression preferences
More granular Deduplication control

Using datasets (in my option) for permission control is kind of like using a big wrench to hammer a nail; it works fine, but not it’s intended use.



My thoughts:

So, what I am hearing above is snapshots and clones are a reason to use datasets. Plus, if you have a windows and want SMB (because NFS is hard to do on windows) you do not want files being accessed by NFS and SMB at the same time because SMB does collaborate on file locking.

I use NAS for backup of desktops. But I also want virtual machines and server like Plex and Home Assistant, etc, and I want them in their own dataset space.

Further thoughts: First thing I plan to do when creating the first NAS test bed is to see if the superuser can cp directories in dataset A to directories in dataset B.

I am used to different users having their own private file space in their home directory and see no need for anything else to separate them. Datasets seems like something that comes from non-nix operating systems. Nix has been great for 40+ years and there is no need to overcomplicate it. Debian is debian is debian.

Why use RAID-10 in a 4 BAY NAS?

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ZFS: You should use mirror vdevs, not RAIDZ.

Has to do with lowest stress and quickest resilver.
Could use 3 bay RAIDZ1 with hot spare, but that is more stressful on all drives.

My plan A.

System 1: The back end. (Lower performance CPU). A 4 bay terramaster F4-424 pro should use 2 mirrors in raid 10 format.

System 2: The front end.

A 6 bay terramaster F6-424 MAX (higher performance a bandwidth:
Should use 2 mirrors or if 2 extra drives are added use 3 mirrors, all in RAID-10 format.
Have a cold spare available. Back up system 2 to system 1. Back up both to external USB drives and rotate offsite. 1 to back, 1 to cloud.

Have a third system in another location for fault tolerance.

On Alpha

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What is Alpha?

Alpha measures the performance of an investment relative to what was expected based on its beta. Simply, it shows how much an investment has earned beyond the expected return.

  • Positive Alpha: If an investment has a positive alpha, it has outperformed its expected return based on its beta.
  • Negative Alpha: If the investment underperforms its expected return based on its beta, it has a negative alpha.

Slouching Toward Heresy: Early Confessions

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The Christian church makes use of two types of confession of faith.

  1. The symbol set up once for all, and drawn up in the language of the new testament. This is ascribed to the apostles as an authentic summary of scripture. [Cullmann, p 10]

    Cullmann points out an example of this first type is the so called Apostle’s Creed. An example of the next one, below, is the Nicene Creed. The Niceno-Constantinopolitan symbol represents a mixed type, on the one hand containing the anti-Arian formula, but on the other often regarded as apostolic. [Cullmann, referring to Caspari]

  2. The symbol conditioned by circumstances, which transcribes the Biblical Gospel into the language and concepts of a certain period. On the basis of the New Testament, this symbol takes up position over against new problems and heresies unknown in the apostolic age. [Cullmann, p 10]

I would like to point out the New Testament in the 27 book form we see today was compiled by Athanasius, Bishop of Alexandria, in 367 AD, 32 years after the Council of Nicea. So for over 300 years the New Testament did not exist as a bible. It consisted of scattered manuscripts and letters copied and sent around the world from region to region as separate writing. Not all books were accepted. Jude, James, 2 Peter are examples of rejected books in many parts of the world.

So when someone says “I go only by the New Testament” what they are referring to is that which was compiled in 367 AD, translated into Latin, translated into English 1100 years after the fact. [Duvall and Hays, p 499].

And was accepted by the Bishops of the catholic church after 367. Protestantism was far off in the future.

What Cullman is really talking about, and Habermas is evaluating, is having rules of faith and formulas which trace back to the apostles. The purpose was (and is) to dethrone every future tradition in the name of apostolic tradition. Not to set ecclesiastical tradition above scripture. [Cullmann, p. 13], [Habermas, p 143-170]

Is fundamentalism now a new ecclesiastical tradition? Is it slouching towards heresy? Hard to say. But when one gets criticized for affirming the Apostles Creed and the Nicene Creed because “it is not Baptist belief, Baptists don’t have creeds” one begins to seriously wonder.

So, a reasonable course of action is to study the teachings of the apostles and how these were written down, and how these writings were spread across the world, ending with the compilation of the New Testament in 367 AD.

In decades of attending Baptist churches I have never heard of this. It seems to have been buried and is the best kept secret of the 21st century, as if it is some sort of rotten fruit.

REFERENCES:



Oscar Cullman, The Earliest Christian Confessions, 64 pp., published 1949 and 2018.

Gary R. Habermas, The Historical Jesus, 304 pp, published 1997.

Scott Duvall and J. Daniel Hays, Grasping God’s Word, 592 pp., published 2020.




Two discussions.

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Two discussions on how Christians figure things out.


I was discussing Christian Education with a friend, PERSON 1, and why so many become deceived by YEC (Young Earth Creationism).

At some point I mentioned to him the reliance on an expert to decide a belief without themselves thinking through it : “This is what was wrong with the catholic church in the middle ages. The only experts were the priests. The bible was only in Latin. Malpractice was everywhere. The solution was mass education. Why not Christian Education then? But Baptist churches want to focus only on holiness, not promoting sound minds in the pews via education. This is why they are so sesceptible to YEC propaganda.

PERSON 1 replies to me:

Personally, I think this problem extends beyond just the Baptist denominations. Again, there’s nothing wrong with teaching people to live holy lives. That is important. But it shouldn’t become a means to salvation. That’s where I would be concerned. My experience in Baptist/non-denominational churches has been that they tend to focus more on evangelism than holy living or Christian education. Most of the sermons are focused on trying to get new converts in the door rather than shepherding the existing flock. Sadly, most seminary pastors are only taught how to teach the gospel. Their education seems to be largely focused on making essential things very easy to grasp and preach but not much else. As the great theologian, Mr. Miagi once said: “No such thing as bad student, only bad teacher. Teacher say. Student do.” It’s not that our pastors are bad. It’s that their education is condensed and watered down. Most of them do not hold master’s or doctorate degrees. They do not know Greek and Hebrew. Some have a little bit of experience with Church history, but not much. It’s simply the limit of their 4-year seminary degree. They have the basics. But they usually don’t move beyond that before they begin preaching. Some don’t even have this much! When an undereducated pastor instructs his flock, the flock likewise becomes undereducated. The student only knows as much as their teacher, typically. So, we end up in our current predicament where most churchgoers are noticeably undereducated about their own faith. They have the basics down–the spiritual milk, as it were. But they are not ready for heavier spiritual food and oftentimes never are. But I think that is starting to change now with so many good sources available online. More and more laypeople are starting to educate themselves. Particularly the millennials and Gen Z. Which is refreshing. But there is still a lot of ground to cover before the American/Evangelical church is on par with their historic counterparts.


Another conversation with PERSON 2, where I said, “My concern is about the tools everyone uses to decide what is believable versus unbelievable.”

PERSON 2 replied, “Excerpt:

Origen of Alexandria, wrote in his commentary on Genesis in the third century:

“What reasonable person would read that the first three days of creation had a morning and evening, when the sun and moon were not created until the fourth day, and believe it to be literal? I do not suppose that anyone doubts that these things figuratively indicate certain mysteries… not literally.”

What reasonable person would take this literally?

Origen wrote this before we knew how old the earth was. He wrote it before Darwin. He wrote it before we knew anything about cosmology. Origen did not write this because scientists made fun of him and he made up an interpretation so he could stop crying.

Origen was highly educated and he could actually read the languages that the Bible was originally written in. Other influential church fathers like Augustine, Tertullian, etc. tend to agree with Origen on reading Genesis non-literally.

When people read Genesis in ways that are non-literal, we aren’t making up something new. We are returning to an old way that Christians used to read it before people like Ken Ham ruined everything.

– Zach Christensen”

PERSON 2 said, “Augustine’s attitude to science.

Often, a non-Christian knows something about the earth, the heavens, and the other parts of the world, about the motions and orbits of the stars and even their sizes and distances, … and this knowledge he holds with certainty from reason and experience. It is thus offensive and disgraceful for an unbeliever to hear a Christian talk nonsense about such things, claiming that what he is saying is based in Scripture. We should do all we can to avoid such an embarrassing situation, which people see as ignorance in the Christian and laugh to scorn.

The shame is not so much that an ignorant person is laughed at, but rather that people outside the faith believe that we hold such opinions, and thus our teachings are rejected as ignorant and unlearned. If they find a Christian mistaken in a subject that they know well and hear him maintaining his foolish opinions as based on our teachings, how are they going to believe these teachings in matters concerning the resurrection of the dead, the hope of eternal life, and the kingdom of heaven, when they think these teachings are filled with fallacies about facts which they have learnt from experience and reason.”



ME: ” Fascinating! I knew about Augustine but I didn’t know about Origen. I am undereducated about the Christian faith in general.

By contrast my point to Sarah lies in a different field. It is based not on the bible but on modern science. Its science that leads me to reject atheism.

Im not a mathematician. I cannot wax poetic about Hermitian spaces (can you? Can your critics?) But I ran into this guy named Ludvig Boltzmann. He figured out how energy, measured in terms of P,V,n,T tells us how many elements in an ensemble are in a certain state. If at a given moment of time you take any given state and count the number of elements in that state the number *is* the probability of that state having that number. The number and the probability are the same thing. This is a fundamental law of physics, like the pythagorean theorem.

BTW, to me this is an article of faith. Do we believe in it? Well, do we believe in Riemann sums? If we don’t, well guess what? We cannot do calculus. 😉

But I digress. We can use Boltzmann’s Law to tell us about what we should believe about the physical universe. That is what scientists *do*.

I have just defined for you what I mean when I say the word probability. And I realize Sarah means something different. There is a communications gap. I struggle to find ways to breach that gap. It does affect what humans are willing to believe, and whether their beliefs are warranted (to parrot WLC).

Physics people like to think their beliefs are warranted. To convince them their beliefs are not warranted you have to show them using math and physics.”

“Having said that, nobody has shown me why biologos is wrong. I think I have the rational option to believe in biologos. Your critics and those who call you names can show no such proof as far as I can tell. Their arguments are vacuous.”

PERSON 2 said to me: “I think you know more about the history of mathematics than I do. The BBC produced a series on it hosted by Jim Al-Khalili that I liked very much, but that’s about as far as I have gone. I have spent much more effort on the history of science and the philosophy of science.

I think the notion that knowledge consists of “warranted true belief” goes back to Theatetus, a dialog by Plato. The Gettier problem is a modern challenge to it, but I am not convinced that it really is a problem.”

ME, “I have listened to 8 lectures so far out of the audible book of Cary’s Great Course on Augustine, Philosopher and Saint. The photos are from the pdf notes from the course. I got this course for $10 just as a backgrounder on Augustine. I now seem to know more about Augustine than any of the baptists at church. I have toyed with the idea of asking a sunday school class if they realize they have bought off on greek philosophy because they are all neo-platonists. And they got that from Augustine. 😉

Its true! They just dont know it. So I expect looks of horror. 😉

It seems like God is raining Plato on me lately.”

PERSON 2:said, about Augustine: “I also own that Course as well, and have listened to it multiple times. The lecturer is excellent.

Augustine did a lot of good, but he also took some positions that I can’t endorse.”

ME, ” I understand. He and Luther probably didn’t see eye to eye either. The problem I have is I cannot understand church history without understanding the church fathers. But my baptist upbringing left me with zero knowledge. It does not matter one tiny bit how righteous and holy my life was if I die from being a dumbass and have a faith based on a fantasy world held up by quicksand. Why? Because our floundering about in the dark produces random effect on the world rather than purposeful effect. One may as well say that a highly moral atheist acting properly had good effect on the world. How could anyone tell the difference? The difference is the belief and the message. But if one doesnt care what the correct message might be what does one even have?

Our core beliefs are first order knowing but we also have second order knowledge comprised of *gasp* philosophy. 😉 So, I turn to philosophy.”

PERSON 2 then says to me, “//But my baptist upbringing left me with zero knowledge.//

Same here. I only learned about them when I attended Wheaton College.”

Mark 9

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49 Everyone will be salted with fire.

50 “Salt is good, but if it loses its saltiness, how can you make it salty again? Have salt among yourselves, and be at peace with each other.”


This tells me to worry about salting myself and focus only on my own journey. And to back off on harassing other believers who have their own journey. Advocating truth is different than hunting someone else’s sins. And it is different from human pressure to conform.

12 steps isn’t about fixing someone else. If we try to do that we will stumble them. And then earlier verses in Mark 9 apply to us.

12 steps also isn’t about holding to right church doctrine. Instead it is about how God is touching our own particular soul. Not about how someone else is supposed to experience God touching their soul. Only God knows the inner needs of another human. Only God can decide how to minister to them.

Telling another person “your experience must be my experience” is not being salty. So how do believers share saltiness? By confession, by sharing their own yieldedness with each other. That confession has nothing to do with condemning another believer for “doing it wrong”, or pressuring them to “shape up.”


Gene Trivia

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What are single nucleotide polymorphisms (SNPs)?

Single nucleotide polymorphisms, frequently called SNPs (pronounced “snips”), are the most common type of genetic variation among people. Each SNP represents a difference in a single DNA building block, called a nucleotide. For example, a SNP may replace the nucleotide cytosine (C) with the nucleotide thymine (T) in a certain stretch of DNA.

SNPs occur normally throughout a person’s DNA. They occur almost once in every 1,000 nucleotides on average, which means there are roughly 4 to 5 million SNPs in a person’s genome. These variations occur in many individuals; to be classified as a SNP, a variant is found in at least 1 percent of the population. Scientists have found more than 600 million SNPs in populations around the world.

Most commonly, SNPs are found in the DNA between genes. They can act as biological markers, helping scientists locate genes that are associated with disease. When SNPs occur within a gene or in a regulatory region near a gene, they may play a more direct role in disease by affecting the gene’s function.



From https://medlineplus.gov/genetics

Most SNPs have no effect on health or development. Some of these genetic differences, however, have proven to be very important in the study of human health. SNPs help predict an individual’s response to certain drugs, susceptibility to environmental factors such as toxins, and risk of developing diseases. SNPs can also be used to track the inheritance of disease-associated genetic variants within families. Research is ongoing to identify SNPs associated with complex diseases such as heart disease, diabetes, and cancer.


Number of SNPs per gene.

Genes vary substantially in size, which leads to different numbers of SNPs assigned to each gene (Figure 1). Of 20,919 protein-coding genes 17,006 have at least one SNP assigned; most of these genes (∼77% or 13,083 genes) have fewer than 10 SNPs; 6.5% (1,097 genes) have more than 50 SNPs.

How many SNPs are in a gene?

SNPs occur normally throughout a person’s DNA. They occur almost once in every 1,000 nucleotides on average, which means there are roughly 4 to 5 million SNPs in a person’s genome.

Fun Links:
https://learn.genetics.utah.edu/content/basics/