Full Discussion of “Satan is a Liar” tract.
The text of the paper tract changes a little over time as I try to fit more info into it, but the basic tract text is in black with comments in red and links in green. If you hear of any additional criticisms of the tract, please let us know so we can address it.
SATAN IS THE “FATHER OF LIES”!
BE CAREFUL WHAT YOU BELIEVE!
(Do you believe that?? J )
It’s easy to believe a lie when you want to.
Our beliefs are a powerful driving force; they determine who we are and what we do. And sadly they are often wrong and easily manipulated. We need to be careful and not just go with the flow of the masses.
· Did you know that for 30 years people thought that drinking radiation water was good for them? It was sold in bottles: Radithor.
· Think bacon and eggs has always been the “all American breakfast”? Nope, it’s an incredible propaganda victory. (google Edward Burnays)
See many more amazing examples here
The intent of this section is to show that you can’t always accept something as fact even when the majority of scientist believe it and say it is fact. The critics will point out that just because they are wrong sometimes it doesn’t mean they are wrong all the time (an argument by opposite exaggeration). And I agree. But again, my point was just that you need to look into it further without automatically accepting it as fact.
But what we believe about God’s truth is far more important because it will determine our eternal destiny. The “church” has been wrong many times too (killing Jews, racism, slavery). Any church can make this mistake, protestant, Catholic, etc. Only the Bible can be trusted. Be careful to get your truth straight from the Bible, not from other people’s interpretation of it. And don’t be afraid to follow God. He loves you.
The critics will point out that some people claim to be following God but are clearly crazy. In my 20 years of being a serious Christian I’ve run across several nuts that claim they are following God, so I know what they’re talking about. Many of them may have taken drugs or something in the past that messed up their ability to think straight. That certainly reduces people’s trust in God or trusting that we can know God’s truth. However, these are very rare and I’ve met countless people who sincerely sought the truth in the Bible and found it. They may have differences on small details of the Bible that aren’t clear (e.g., worshiping on Saturday or Sunday, or pre trib rapture or post trib, etc) but they agree on the bigger ones (e.g., the need to believe in Jesus and ask Him to cleanse you from your sins).
Even if you believe in God, you need to read your Bible to know what He requires. Many people will be terribly shocked on judgment day (Luke 13) Click for more info.
Satan’s biggest lie “there is no God”. The Bible actually says God does not usually want to prove himself to people but He is looking for sincere people willing to seek the truth by faith. (See Jeremiah 29:13, Acts 17:27, Heb 11:6). Creation and our conscience point to a creator, but a sinful man will not seek Him: Psalms 10:4 In his pride the wicked does not seek him. God has hidden Himself, so it’s easy for people to believe this lie.
The critics will naturally balk at why there is no undeniable evidence and why we have to rely on Faith. As I tried to briefly explain, God is very wise and so he has used faith as a test for sincerity. When people sincerely seek the truth, they will find that Christianity and the Bible are very easy to believe in, unlike any other religion. In fact, it’s much easier to believe in than evolution or atheism. This isn’t because there’s some undeniable irrefutable proof, but just a whole lot of clues that would be hard to fake.
It’s like I can’t prove that the car in your driveway or parking lot isn’t actually someone else’s. Someone could have replaced it with a car that looks just like yours. It has the same body dings, the same personal items inside, the same key etc. Everything just happens to look the exact same. You can’t absolutely prove that didn’t happen. But common-sense reasoning naturally leads you to firmly believe that it is actually your car. In the same way when we look at irreducible complexity (more on that later) and all the historical and prophetical “clues” in the Bible we can reasonably conclude that there is a God and the Bible describes His interaction with us. And again it’s much easier than all the alternatives. It takes amazing faith to believe that all this came from nothing and unintelligent random chances, as I’ll get into more detail with.
The problem is many people really don’t want to find it because they enjoy being self-ruled. Or they are enjoying some things they think God would disapprove of (showing they still have some conscience left). In truth these things are counterfeits to the Good things that God has to offer. When you follow God’s ways you’ll find things happen as the Bible says. They lead to peace and joy, family harmony, love for fellowman, etc.
But when a person doesn’t want to see this because of the things I mentioned or others, they will wince when they start to think it could be true and deliberately put it out of their mind. They certainly won’t think it thru as it requires. Some will be so opposed to it that they mock it, create fake science (more in a minute), and make up stories of how God threatens to torture us for eternity but doesn’t even reveal himself.
To address this last thought quickly, the Bible says that Hell was actually created for Satan and his angels (Matthew 25:41, Revelation 20) and that God doesn’t want any to perish (2 Peter 3:9). There are many verses that talk of God’s love for us (John 3:16 being the most famous). People will only go there after they have continually rejected their conscience, the obvious complexity of creation that shows a creator, and pleading from other Christians like myself.
But they have to come up with some crazy (&well-funded) ideas for how we got here, which take far more faith. They see similarities in creation and extrapolate to absurdities. It’s like thinking an IPad evolved naturally from an IPhone. The ultimate origin is a real mystery so it’s actually by faith. Some even propose aliens (and who knows where the aliens came from).
“No one knows how it got started” Richard Dawkins (2008 “Expelled” documentary)
“That’s a great mystery” Bill Nye, the science guy (debate with Ken Ham)
“[that] is an unanswerable question” Carl Sagan (Cosmos) SEE IT’S BLIND FAITH!!
This was a summary so more is discussed in detail below. I heard one atheist say that Bill Nye “mopped the floor” (or something similar) in the debate with Ken Ham but that’s all subjective. I even heard other atheists say he didn’t do that well. He certainly didn’t produce any convincing evidence for evolution. His statement that I use above clearly shows that ultimately it’s a faith issue for him too.
Some critics like to separate this beginning (abiogenesis) from the rest of the evolution theory since it is so unprovable. But it is technically part of the overall big theory of how life and matter begun.
Critics will also point out that just because they don’t know what happened it doesn’t prove that there is a God (“God of the gaps”). And I agree it’s not proof. But it should cause you to question the whole evolution theory when the very first step goes against all that we observe, common sense, and the first two laws of thermodynamics (matter and energy cannot be created or destroyed, and all things go from more organized to disorganized).
The critics aren’t too concerned that they don’t know because they believe someday they’ll discover what happened. Logically it will have to be some kind of a process that creates everything from nothing (I mean nothing, not energy or anything) or that something existed for eternity with no creator, ever. It has to be one or the other. Both of these are extremely hard to believe. It interesting that though they don’t know, they are almost always certain it can NOT be a god-like higher power.
Richard Dawkins in his interview in the Expelled documentary said clearly “no one knows how it got started”. He even talks about the possibility of aliens but says they had to have a natural origin because he was absolutely sure it’s not a god-like higher power. How can he be so sure if he doesn’t know? There being a God is out of the question and logically there’s no reason so I’m thinking it must be a moral/self-rule type issue as I’ve mentioned.
Here is a very detailed article from ICR which also includes some quotes from scientists, even atheists, showing this faith-based aspect of evolution.
It does take effort, but IF you sincerely seek the truth you’ll find the Bible is easy to believe in. Since Satan is such a deceiver it’s not surprising to find so much deception in various religions. But there is no other book like the Bible. Usually religions are created by a few people making claims and telling stories. There is no compelling evidence at all. They are spread by deception, cultural traditions or force.
The Bible is very unique in these ways:
History. Unlike any other book, the Bible has been accurately recording world events since 4000 B.C. It was written over 1500 years (5 time longer than we’ve been a country) on 3 continents by 40 people with one congruent story. Other religious books have bogus stories and no real history. See below for more information on history.
A good portion of ancient history relies on the Egyptian dating method. And in its current arrangement, there is a lot of skepticism on the Bible’s accuracy because it places the Exodus at a later date where there is no archological history for it happening. This Egyptian dating includes assumptions of how long certain undocumented periods in Egypt were, which push the Exodus date later. The history of other contemporary countries also need unknown gaps inserted to make things fit the inflated Egyptian dating. There’s lots of evidence for the Israelites and the Exodus there, it’s just in the wrong time period so they discount it. But it is in the right time period if you reduce the assumed undocumented Egyptian time period. But they are very firm in these assumptions even though there’s really no evidence for it.
Another thing adding confusion is that the Bible uses the city name Ramesses which is the city name later on in a later time period. But this is just an anachronism (replacing an old city name in an old document with the new city name that the current people understand as the document is copied). The real city name is probably Avaris. There are two documentaries with the “Patterns of Evidence” series with Tim Mahoney. You can rent them on YouTube for about $4 each. They discuss all this and also some of the theories of language origination and how the book of Exodus fits fine into what we’ve discovered in archeology. The Bible is constantly meshing with archeology and secular historical documents. https://answersingenesis.org/archaeology/does-archaeology-support-the-bible/
But some critics may accept the amazing, detailed historicity of the Bible but surprisingly still deny God was behind it. This would be an amazing journey of a tiny group of people to the center of the then-known world without the help of God. And many major miraculous events, like the red sea crossing, water coming from Mt. Sinai, and the worldwide flood, have clues that Tim Mahoney goes thru. Some of them are in areas that are heavily guarded by the current Muslim inhabitants so free access is harder, especially nowadays. Other miracles wouldn’t generate a material clue that would last for thousands of years (e.g. Moses talking to a burning bush). The historicity, going back to 4000 B.C. should at least make you take note that this old book may have something to it. It is certainly the most credible of all religions. The others don’t have anything at all like this.
Critics may claim that the Bible was written by Israelites to bolster themselves. But in the Bible you see that the Israelites were certainly not perfect men and their wicked deeds are very accurately recorded as such and condemned many times throughout the Old Testament. In fact, the Old Testament is really not that flattering of them. It’s not tempting to think they wrote it to flatter themselves. God loved and chose them because of the faith and righteousness of the forefathers like Abraham but they were an obstinate people.
But as for Israel He says, “All the day long I have stretched out My hands to a disobedient and obstinate people.” Romans 11:21
Prophesy. The Bible has many specific prophesies that were fulfilled 100’s of years later. The book of Daniel (written 600 B.C.) predicted the next 400 years of world kingdoms. It has information that was only known in 600 B.C. (more about that in a minute), but critics still try to say it was written later to avoid explaining these exact prophesies.
Here’s a good website on the topic: Fulfilled Prophecies at the Birth of Christ | Answers in Genesis
Daniel describes specific details of the next four empires from Babylon to Medo-Persia to Greece to Rome. He even prophesied about Alexander the Great, and the final division of his empire his four generals (Daniel 7:6, 8:5–8, 11:2–4).
Then the goat became exceedingly great, but when he was strong, the great horn was broken, and instead of it there came up four conspicuous horns toward the four winds of heaven. Daniel 8:8
3 Then a mighty king shall arise, who shall rule with great dominion and do as he wills. 4 And as soon as he has arisen, his kingdom shall be broken and divided toward the four winds of heaven, but not to his posterity, nor according to the authority with which he ruled, for his kingdom shall be plucked up and go to others besides these. Daniel 11:3-4
Ezekiel is another ancient prophesy. It gives specifics on the destruction of the Phoenician city Tyre in Ezekiel chapter 26. Verses 7-11 are referring to the first attack from Nebuchadnezzar. But, as verse 3 says, many nations will attack it, culminating with Alexander the Great who literally threw Tyre’s “stones, timber and rubble into the sea” in 332 B.C. when he built a one-half mile causeway out to the island fortress to conquer the city. Though portions of the mainland and island-now-peninsula, have been recently rebuilt, the ruins of the main city in both the mainland and peninsula can still be seen today.
12 They will plunder your wealth and loot your merchandise; they will break down your walls and demolish your fine houses and throw your stones, timber and rubble into the sea. 13 I will put an end to your noisy songs, and the music of your harps will be heard no more. 14 I will make you a bare rock, and you will become a place to spread fishnets. You will never be rebuilt, for I the Lord have spoken, declares the Sovereign Lord.
But even if you read Isaiah 53 (52 also) or Daniel 9 knowing they are proven by critics to be written before at least 153 B.C., you’ll see they talk about Jesus clearly before He was born.
Just read these two chapters and if you know anything about Jesus you’ll see they are full of verses that clearly refer to Him.
Here’s an additional one from Isaiah 52:
13 Behold, my servant shall act wisely;
he shall be high and lifted up,
and shall be exalted.
14 As many were astonished at you—
his appearance was so marred, beyond human semblance,
and his form beyond that of the children of mankind—
15 so shall he sprinkle many nations. [Reference to Old Testament practice of sprinkling of blood to purify] Isaiah 52:13-15a
Daniel 9:25 predicts the exact year of Jesus’ coming. It was 483 years (69 sevens) after a decree to rebuild Jerusalem (458 BC per Ezra 7:11-26). 26 A.D. (start of his ministry) is 483 years later (see website for more).
Prophesying the very year of his coming 600 years beforehand, which can be linked to secular historical dates, is pretty impressive. See my in depth article on this.
Some prophesies have even been fulfilled in our time: Israel was reborn in a day (Isaiah 66:8) and is a burden to the nations (Zach 12), the explosion of knowledge (Daniel 12:4), instant worldwide communication (Rev. 11:9). Some are in work to soon be fulfilled: one-world religion and government, mark on the hand needed to buy and sell (Rev. 13).
So you can see that many of these prophecies were very specific and written several centuries before coming to pass. But Critics will claim that the prophesies were general in nature. Some are and these are the ones critics list. But when you start adding even the general prophesies all up it becomes more and more exclusive. A Christian math class did an exercise to figure the odds of 1 person fulfilling 8 of the general prophecies and came up with 1 in 10^28. Much of the calculation was difficult guesswork but even a fraction of that number would be very impressive. You can see the detailed discussion in this chapter of the professor’s book: http://sciencespeaks.dstoner.net/Christ_of_Prophecy.html
Critics will point out the discrepancy they see that only God the Father knows the day of Jesus’ return and yet we Christians talk all about it. It’s true we don’t know exactly when. But we do know a few things about what will happen and can look for their coming beforehand.
Critics of the Bible will say that other religions also had prophecies. But you will only find a handful of vague or near term prophesies. This website examines the Quran’s prophecies in detail: https://answering-islam.org/Quran/Prophecy/index.html
Sincere Leaders. Jesus, and His disciples were killed for their message, showing sincere motives. No other major religious leader voluntarily died for his message. Usually only his followers die for him while he lives well.
Notice how I tried to make it real clear that it’s unusual for a LEADER to VOLUNTARILY die for something he teachers. It may be easy to convince followers to die for you. It at least shows they believed it. But there’s little motivation for a leader to invent a lie then die early for it. That’s why no other credible spiritual leader voluntarily died. E.g. Joseph Smith died prematurely at the hands of a mob but involuntarily. Mohammad died of sickness at the age of ~62. Now maybe a few crazy spiritual leaders like Jim Jones, or David Koresh might have died voluntarily, but they were so crazy that they aren’t credible in other ways. Quite unlike Jesus who taught profound wisdom and split BC and AD.
Teaching. It has unique teaching on sin, forgiveness, peace, and love that heals the soul and makes sense of a fallen world. It tells of a loving God that wants good for us but also of a deceitful Satan/Devil that hates us. We see the effects of both. Satan comes to kill, steal and destroy. His ways look fun but lead to problems, as you find out later. When we follow what the Bible says, things work out better. (E.g. Marriage vs immorality). The exception is persecution from people following Satan.
Summary of deceptions preventing belief in God:
(Given very briefly for you to consider a side you may not have seen, since
the Christian side is not often presented in mainstream sources.)
ð Enjoying sin & don’t want to think about it. It’s important! Please do. Satan offers many temptations, but they are all harmful counterfeits.
ð Church Hypocrisy, problems, wars, etc. See 2 Timothy 4:3, Rev 3:14. Sadly, many churches are lukewarm as the Bible predicted in end times. People pervert the truth all the time. Follow only the Bible.
ð Various “historical” documentaries and movies. Archeology overwhelmingly supports the Bible as many secular archeologists admit. But it deals with fragmented or sometimes inaccurate archeological information. It requires guesses and assumptions sometimes. Remember written language itself was developing during these times and there was no universal dating system. So some critics can quickly develop skewed opinions with the unclear areas. (Two documentaries “Patterns of Evidence-Exodus” and “… – Moses” do a good job of detailing this)
Many times they have thought the Bible was wrong, only to find later it wasn’t. e.g. For centuries they thought the Bible was wrong because it mentions Belshazzar as king of Babylon and everyone knew it was Nabonidus. Other details were off too. Then in 1882 they found a small detail on the “Nabonidus Cylinders” which clarified it all. Nabonidus left his reign to his son Belshazzar as co-regent while he was away most of his reign. That’s why Daniel became the “third ruler of the kingdom” (Daniel 5:29) and not the second. The cylinders were buried and forgotten and this detail was lost to ancient historians as Babylon was destroyed. Historians just 100 years later (Herodotus, Megasthenes, Berossus) mention only Nabonidus. This gives credibility to the Book of Daniel and its amazingly accurate prophesies because it must have been written close to the events before the detail was lost. The Bible was also criticized for lack of proof & then vindicated on various persons, people groups, and cities.
ð Evolution casts doubt that there is a God.
Evolution has so many flaws that are not revealed in popular media and education outlets. They fight hard to suppress this from being taught. When you look deeper you see it’s just well-guarded propaganda. The “Expelled-no intelligence allowed” documentary covers this.
1. Life has never come from non-life! The famous Miller-Euric “primordial soup” theory has fatal flaws (see any creation website for the other side). This is the perfect example of why you should always read the other side of the story. This article from Answers in Genesis is a very thorough scientific analysis of the problems with the Miller-Euric experiment and theories from it. The article says they have evaluated many science textbooks and found that they simply don’t discuss these obvious problems at all. (Vs. discussing them and explaining them away).
2. The long neck of the giraffe by generations of stretching their neck, called Lamarckism, is plagued with criticism even from evolutionists. (I had to change these two lines around Feb 2022 because I found out that textbooks still use these examples though they’re plagued with problems. The lines used to say these examples had been abandoned.)
There is a long Wikipedia page detailing all the problems and rebuttals of the Lamarckism experiments that attempted to prove this branch of evolution. This article from Answers in Genesis also addresses it and says that Lamarck traits are only seen in the micro evolution of bacteria. This is bacteria changing into other bacteria so it’s micro evolution, also called speciation, which Creationists agree with (discussed more below, it’s not really evolution). It is not “macro evolution” which is the form of evolution people usually think of. Additionally, the article notes (in the footnotes) that bacteria behave differently than mammals so it can’t be used to describe mammal evolution. I’ve also heard that bacteria often evolves by losing information, and so that’s how it adapts.
Even the famous evolutionist Steven Jay Gould admits ‘the giraffe’s neck cannot provide a proof for any adaptive scenario, Darwinian or otherwise” Stephen Jay Gould, Leonardo’s Mountain of Clams and the Diet of Worms: Essays on Natural History, Harmony Books, New York, p. 302, 1998 (cited in this lengthy article on Lamarckism)
3. Darwin’s theory, change by natural selection alone, has been proven inept so they’ve added mutation, called neo-Darwinism. But mutations only alter existing information, ie an extra foot, not create new features. There is no known process to add new information to DNA. This is crucial to evolution so belief in it is by faith. New research is clearly showing genetic entropy (degradation) is actually happening, not genetic improvement.
4. If evolution were true “Missing link” fossils should be as abundant as other fossils, but they are non-existent except for a few propped-up ones.
If animal A turned into animal B (whatever they are doesn’t matter as long as you pick two points in the so called evolution process so that the two look different, like a dog and a cat), and if it was done in small steps, then you can take that process and divide it into 10 steps. At step 1 it looks like animal A. At step 10 it looks like animal B. So steps 1 thru 3 look pretty close to animal A. And steps 8 thru 10 look pretty close to animal B. (The fictitious artwork for this is in many evolution textbooks). But we should still be able to find fossils for steps 4 thru 7 and easily fit them into the process. That’s 4 steps that are missing. So, 40% of the fossils should be these “missing link” fossils, but they’re no where. Early on in evolutionary belief the adherents thought that they’d eventually find these missing links but it’s been another century now and there still aren’t any, and that’s not for a lack of fervently looking.
More information from Answers In Genesis and Creation.com
5. DNA research has shown that creatures have built-into their DNA (by the creator) a wealth of information that allows them to speciate within a kind. (e.g. produce many types of dogs and wolves, but not cats). Evolutionists name this “micro-evolution”, and use it for their examples, touting that “evolution” is proven true. But it’s not evolution as we know it. It is actually a complex creation. True evolution (changing kinds) is never found.
Critics will try to blend micro and macro evolution. If they don’t distinguish the difference between minor speciation and completely changing kinds, it’s only to confuse the issue because there is a big difference between the two. To blur the difference is called equivocation: Proving the one thing that is provable and making people believe the other is also true
6. Cells, organisms, and even the whole world eco system are made of many integrated parts that can’t survive alone. They had to be created whole or they would have died. But the odds of even one cell, the smallest of these systems, all coming together is 1:1×10^137,000 (that’s a number that is a hundred and thirty thousand zeros long, a million to one shot is 1:1×10^6). The cell is much more complicated than Darwin could have ever imagined. It’s basically a mini-city. Google an image of “metabolic pathways” if you want to blow your mind. See Youtube “expelled cell animation” for an animation of what happens in a cell.
It’s always interesting to see how atheists dodge the irreducible complexity dilemma. It’s takes quite a bit of faith to believe that a tornado can assemble a car from loose parts in a junkyard, even from a continuous very long process of trying. One thing that helps a lot is assuming that when a part is where it should be it can lock into place and then start working on the next part. That certainly helps but it is still very illogical to believe in. If this tornado had the ability to perform all the required functions (e.g. can it even turn a bolt into a threaded hole) it would probably still take longer than 5 billion years. And remember you are already making a big assumption that all the parts are there. So there are 4 very hard steps to even get here: you have a long time, the parts don’t come apart as easily as they go together, random processes have the ability to assemble the parts, and the parts are there to begin with. So this is already extremely hard to believe.
But any logical person would have to agree it can’t happen in one short event. For you see, unlike a car, a living thing has to have all the parts come together quickly or it will die. And the simplest living thing, a cell, is amazingly complex (see video mentioned above) and the odds of it coming together by chance is staggering, just as much as a car coming together. This is where the deception came in. Darwin and the people of his day thought the cell was “simple”, as they called it. But research has revealed quite the opposite. And then you have to consider the eco system was there to sustain it after it came together. It can only be described with the term “miraculous” from a Creator.
Skeptical methods to dismiss this:
I’ve never seen any skeptic tackle this head on. They use one or all of these methods:
1) They assume you have all the time you want for it to happen from start to finish, but as I discussed, with living things that won’t work. They have to come together quickly or they’ll die.
2) They use a much simpler system (ie a string of 13 letters) or systems of trying multiple letters at a time to show examples with short solutions. But these are unrealistic shortcuts and each new letter causes a logarithmic increase in complexity.
3) You can lock in the letters when they appear in the right location and you don’t have to worry about them again. This is a huge shortcut, especially with something as simple as putting one of 26 letters in a spot. But again, in a living thing that won’t work – they fall back apart.
This is the method that was used by Richard Hardison with a computer program. By locking in letters that appeared in the right position, he was able to create the play Hamlett (130,000 characters) in 4.5 days. This makes it sound easy to dismiss the irreducible complexity argument. However, even with this huge shortcut, it took his computer 1.4 million iterations to get the whole thing correct.
(Here’s the math behind that number: Earlier in the article it mentions 336 iterations in 90 seconds. So it’s 3.7 iterations per second. So, 4.5 days would be 388,800 seconds and 1.4 million iterations.)
4) They start talking in infinite mathematical terms until it’s beyond human comprehension. This whole problem is also called the “Infinite monkey theorem” as found at this Wikipedia article (monkeys hitting keys on typewriters). The article asserts that these things are possible if “given enough time” but that little statement is amazing beyond comprehension, and I’ve heard evolutionists use it like a mantra. The article admits that creating a simple 6 letter word like “banana” with random processes has less than 1 chance in 15 billion. And it gives other amazing clues of just how improbable it is, all amazing beyond comprehension, but still tries to give the impression that it is indeed possible, so one is led to think maybe it can. But if you could understand fully what is behind this math you’d see believing in God is “infinitely” easier.
5) The last is to simply state emphatically that it happened and the great improbability doesn’t prove a thing so stop worrying about it (or something like that).
But whether we were there or not (a common argument) we have to logically consider how this could have happened. And it doesn’t prove which god did it, it just shows that something intelligent must have done it. That’s why a lot of atheists believe in aliens (e.g., Richard Dawkins describes this in his interview in the Expelled documentary). That helps them get over this red flag that pops up when they try to imagine it happening on accident. But then they go right back to their desire to be self-ruled (next paragraph below) so they just say that the aliens were created by some kind of natural process. That helps push it far enough away in to the obscurity to help them sleep at night.
Critics will point out that none of this is pertinent because biology is dealing with living things that reproduce and so these changes and evolution can happen during the reproduction. But you still have to consider how that first complicated and self-replicating cell came about. You see, that only makes it more difficult. The miracle of life is just that, a miracle. Intelligent scientists have been trying with enormous resources to recreate life for a long time with no success. And just look at the very amazing design in the observable process of reproduction. How two cells meet, create a new blueprint to life through the amazing DNA code, and then replicate to create that blueprint piece by piece (cell by cell). Louie Giglio has a good video describing this: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=atUGBua2AzE
Try to imagine creating something complicated (like an iPad) that can also reproduce itself! See, that’s two huge first steps. After that, then thinking it can change how it looks over time as it reproduces is actually much easier and this is their focus, though we don’t even see that. In fact, we see roadblocks to it (genetic entropy). But all that aside, just getting past these first steps is extremely difficult. So adding the reproduction argument only makes all this harder for them. We just take reproduction for granted because we see births all the time and so evolutionists focus on that point forward. See this article on this topic: http://www.libertyoftruth.com/attachments/Tall-Tale2.pdf
ð Killing in the Bible. God “resets” peoples when they become depraved – a miserable, hopeless condition where even innocent kids suffer (child abuse, child sacrifice, disease). It won’t change so God ends the misery (by fire, flood too). It was always limited to one time and place; it was not to be ongoing.
It may be hard for us 3000 years later to understand the depth of their depravity. It’s much different than the human reasons for genocide: greed, hate, and revenge. It’s important to see the difference. It was probably a living hell that affected everybody in the town and was impossible to turn around. The Bible records that they burned their own children to death as a gift to their gods and other terrible things (Leviticus 18:1-30). Their destruction was done to actually save the rest of mankind, like removing a cancer. Using the term “reset” is the shortest word I could find to describe it (you see I don’t have much extra space in the tract). God does judge sin but does so after much patience and when it’s well deserved. Genesis 15:16 says God could see their iniquity growing 400 years earlier. And He would have allowed any who repented to be spared, as Rahab was. She even made it into the human genealogy of Jesus. The Bible says in Joshua 2 that Rahab told the Israelite spies that the whole city knew of the miracles God had done and the spies offered to spare anyone’s life that she could convince to go with her.
“If at any time I declare concerning a nation or a kingdom, that I will pluck up and break down and destroy it, and if that nation, concerning which I have spoken, turns from its evil, I will relent of the disaster that I intended to do to it. And if at any time I declare concerning a nation or a kingdom that I will build and plant it, and if it does evil in my sight, not listening to my voice, then I will relent of the good that I had intended to do to it” (Jeremiah 18:7-10 ESV). An example would be the city of Nineveh. God had decided to judge Nineveh for their evil (Jonah 1:2). But they repented so God did not judge them.
Naturally people protest this genocide, especially when it affected the children. I know this is difficult and it certainly wasn’t meant to be the ongoing way of doing things (as other religions do). It was only toward the Canaanites. Deuteronomy 20 told them to offer terms of peace to all the other countries as they were defending themselves in all other wars. You don’t see this nature of God elsewhere. E.g., Jesus loved the children and rebuked the disciples for ignoring them. God sent a prophet on a special journey (by fish) to Nineveh because of the children (those who “didn’t know their right hand from their left” Jonah 4:11). Elsewhere we see the wrath of God only when it is justified against people who deserve it. So for the children to be killed in Cannan something was different. It may have been because of diseases (in some places they were told to kill the animals and not touch the food or take any other spoils). Sexual promiscuity does tend to generate diseases. Leviticus 18 even mentions bestiality where you can see that this can happen.
Also, if there were any children that were innocent they went straight to heaven. In fact, some who were already following the evil ways of their parents may have also went to heaven because they hadn’t reached the age of accountability yet. So in the bigger picture it may have been the best thing that happened to them. But I certainly see why people are skeptical. When you read the whole Bible you just see a much different picture so you know something was wrong there. In depth article here.
ð If there was a God, why is there pain & suffering? Satan, the “prince of this world” & “the father of lies” has some control of earth & has brought suffering, death, etc. Man is free to obey God, who wants good, or Satan and evil.
ð Why doesn’t God prove Himself? Discussed earlier, He wants faith.
ð Isn’t the Bible full of errors? In spite of being written over 1500 years, it actually isn’t. Critics misunderstand small details in this ancient book which was written in a totally different culture and writing style.
Some things are confusing because they are out of context. You have to understand the background of what is being said by reading it in context and considering who it was written to and when. If you read the Bible, or even just the New Testament, in its entirety it will all fit together and you’ll begin to understand it.
e.g. Prophesies can have multiple fulfilments or come from different sources.
Many time prophesies will have a near term fulfillment and a long term fulfillment and perhaps even an end time fulfilment. Sometimes natural events or people are a foreshadowing of a future event and so are considered a prophecy.
There are what we call major prophet books (larger and more well-known) and minor prophet books. If a prophecy is a combination of both, only the major prophet will be cited. Jesus being sold for 30 pieces of silver (Matt. 27:9) is cited as Jeremiah but is a combination of several passages in Jeremiah and Zechariah. A good discussion is found here. Mark (1:2-3) quotes Mal 3:1 and Isaiah 40:3 but attributes them to the major prophet Isaiah.
Terms can mean different things (“father” can mean predecessor or great-great grandfather). Different names are used. See also the previous historical discussion.
Our lawsuit happy culture and fault-finding critics (which are in any field: politics, religion, sports, entertainment, etc) have caused our modern society to be very careful with details. But this was not so in ancient times. The writing was much more casual and common sense was allowed more in ancient times. E.g. Writers in these times did not have to follow strict chronological order. Matthew did not write chronologically at all in his Gospel but seems to have arranged it by topic. And he sometimes condensed several stories into one (called “compressed narratives”), which causes the order of events to be mixed up compared to the other Gospels. Critics can call these errors but common sense analysis just shows a unique writing style.
Matthew 21:12-17 compared to Mark 11:15-19 is a good example of the clear difference caused by these different methods of writing. We don’t know for sure if the cleansing of the temple occurred on Sunday or Monday or if it occurred in the beginning of Jesus’ ministry or end, or both. These are the types of “errors” that critics like to point out but if you use common sense you can see that they are acceptable differences.
Comparing details in the gospels like this is a common way to find discrepancies. When you have documents from several witness it’s acceptable to have small differences in trivial details of the story, especially back then. However they may have background information that we’re not aware of. E.g. Mark 10:46 says Jesus was leaving the city when an event happened, while Luke says Jesus “approached the city” (Lk 18:35). Luke may have been referring to the new Jericho, while Matthew (20:29) and Mark may have meant the old city. John 21:25 tells us that only a very small fraction of Jesus’ life is recorded, so some minor differences could be that the different gospel writers were referring to different events though they look to us like the same event. But as you look into all these discrepancies you see they are all trivial details and nothing to cause doubt of their work.
It should also be pointed out that these differences were well known all along (from the first centuries) to the people who dedicated their life to studying and coping the scriptures. The dedication of Jews and Christians to the Bible was so obvious that Muhammad called them “the people of the book”. These differences could have easily been fixed when the scribes didn’t think anyone would notice or even care too much. But their dedication to the preservation of the sacred scriptures was seen even from early on in their faithfulness to copy them exactly. Of course with our modern forensics and the careful science of studying and comparing manuscripts, we would be able to tell the differences. And while copying 1000’s of manuscripts far and wide, small non-doctrinal typos did occur and then were faithfully copied. With the modern forensics and comparison techniques of manuscripts by date and location, they can usually trace these down to about when and where they occurred and what the original text should be. In the few cases where they can’t tell for sure, the differences do not change doctrine so it doesn’t matter. In fact the basic message of the Bible is fairly simple. Believe in God and His Son Jesus and ask Him to forgive you of your sins. Be baptized. Then seek Him and obey Him. If you make a mistake while sincerely trying to obey Him, He will forgive you (Philippians 3:15-16).
It’s good that they didn’t convene a council at some point to come up with an official copy of the scriptures and then burn the others. This would have destroyed this ability to use forensics and comparisons to see what the original was. This is what the Muslims did. Their 3rd caliphate, Caliph Uthman, did order the discrepant versions of the Quran burned. They were very careful to copy that Quran exactly from then on but they don’t know what all was around before this. And so they don’t know for sure what it actually taught. There are clear verses in the Quran affirming Christians and their “book” [the Bible] and that we should all read the Injil (Gospels). But other verses are clearly opposite of this. We don’t know for sure if these weren’t added by these first successors to Mohammad who saw Islam as a way to have power and wealth.
(Rabbit trail here) Whenever you unite religion and government into one (which has happened in all religions, including Christianity for a while under Constantine) you have to consider this possibility of people using it for power. It always gets corrupt unless it is actually set up by God Himself and He purges corruption Himself, as we see in the Old Testament with Israel. And even then it got corrupt as they walked away from Him and as He eventually allowed it. The pure Biblical form of Christianity (to Gentiles anyway) is a personal relationship with God. It contains instructions for church but not government. That’s why our founding fathers were so careful to separate church and state (but not God and State-they didn’t mean to ban God or the Bible from government). Revelation 17 talks about a powerful worldwide entity that kills Christians and it controls the kings of the earth. It is called a “whore”, which would be a filthy counterfeit to a true bride, which is symbolic for the church. So it seems like a powerful false church. I know there are good Catholic people but the organization as a whole makes me nervous. It’s interesting that at least 6 (maybe 7, Gorsuch could be Anglican or Catholic, the other two are Judaism) of the 9 Supreme Court justices, the US President, and Speaker of the House (Pelosi) are Catholic now. (I used this site for this info) There are no Protestants on the Supreme Court now, which are the less dangerous unorganized independent style of church body. The current Pope (Francis) has strong desires for world affairs and uniting all churches. Many mainstream Protestants agree with him. It will be interesting to see how this plays out. Psalms 2 points out how vain it all is. They’re just playing into God’s hands as he plans to wrap things up in the last days. After wreaking havoc on the true Christians, this whore later gets destroyed by the beast, a conglomerate of evil nations in a one-world government.
There are numerous specific critiques that I can’t take time to answer here. Several good websites have information on them. Search the terms on one of these website to get the other side of the story:
Modern church lies: (1) “Believing” in God is all that is required.
You believe that there is one God. Good! Even the demons believe that—and shudder. … You see that a person is justified by what he does and not by faith alone. Read all James chapter 2
We know that we have come to know him if we obey his commands. The man who says, “I know him,” but does not do what he commands is a liar, and the truth is not in him. But if anyone obeys his word, God’s love is truly made complete in him. This is how we know we are in him: Whoever claims to live in him must walk as Jesus did. (1 John 2:3-6)
There are many verses that say if you believe you will be saved, but later verses clarify that true belief will be followed by obedience. There are 60 other verses that support this and the church taught it for 1500 years. See our website below for the list of scriptures and an e-book on the subject. See specific article, click here
(2) Sin is forgiven & not a big deal. Jesus said cut your hand off if it causes you to sin! (Matt. 18:8). “No one who lives in Him keeps on sinning” (1 John 3:7)
So don’t be afraid to seek and obey God. When you sincerely follow His ways your conscience will be clear and you’ll have peace and joy. There can be times of persecution and we are not exempt from those who follow Satan’s evil ways. But it’s still a much better way to live!!