Saturday, April 19, 2008 "Created equal vs. Evolved equal"

Saturday, April 19, 2008

"Created equal vs. Evolved equal"

This week again it is Creation vs. Evolution, and Julie's thoughts on the meaning of life.

From Julie's Keyboard:

A Life With Meaning.....

It's been said that "The greatest tragedy is not death, but life without purpose."

What motivates us today? Are there things in our lives, thoughts and emotions, that lead us in the paths we are taking. Does some form of inner fear compel us to run wide open toward life and never really stop to assess the purpose of our being?

Do we let hostilities and resentments build within? Is there a load of guilt or shame from previous failures or disappointments that hound us? Are we caught in the strongholds of materialism and never seeing an end to our list of wants? Or, how about this one? Who are we trying to please? Are we caught up in that constant need for approval? Ouch! But all valid questions that one might need to use as a check list if our focus goes awry with aimless distraction.

Some might say "Who really thinks about their reason for being?" Everyone. Whether one cares to admit it or not. We started out made in the image of our Creator and made for a reason. It pleased Him. His plan is why I am here. Sometimes that novel idea is there that we wish to be remembered by others when we are gone. But is that what we're here to do? Establish long lasting memories?

I submit that we were put here to build something of a legacy that lasts through all eternity. In doing this, we must get beyond what we think, see and feel each day to focus with a single vision on what we're supposed to do as God's people in this earth. We're only in this place. He said we were not of it. It's a short visit folks. We must share His Love.

We have just enough time in this walk of life to do the plan God has called us to. If our intent is upon fulfilling God's will, the hindering issues listed above will not be regarded with any impact as touching our lives. If we remember that our lives must have meaning (and we must know it), then we can walk through this world of living undaunted by its many ills.

But without His purpose revealed within us and our clinging to Him, we can only expect challenge after challenge from this life on earth to wear us down and keep us going through motions of a meager existence.

This life spoken of is no utopia of bliss, but quite the contrary. Jesus told us that "in this world ye will have tribulation." Yet, He also said, "Be of good cheer. I have overcome the world." Wow! When we live in this vein of the "overcomer," we win. This is where it's all found. In Him.

What are we doing today with what He's given us? May we live a life to impact His Kingdom.
Isaiah 26:3 "Thou wilt keep him in perfect peace, whose mind is stayed on thee: because he trusteth in thee."

Romans 8:14 "For as many as are led by the Spirit of God, they are the sons of God."

Matthew 6:33 "But seek ye first the kingdom of God, and His righteousness; and all these things shall be added unto you."

Have A Blessed Week,
Julie

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"Created equal vs. Evolved equal"

"it shall be unlawful for any teacher in any of the Universities, normals and all other public schools of the State which are supported in whole or in part by the public school funds of the State, to teach any theory that denies the story of the divine creation of man as taught in the Bible and to teach instead that man has descended from a lower order of animals." - - - - Scopes v. State 289 S. W. 363 (Tenn. 1927).

This state law of Tennessee was the spark of the Scopes v. State trial ( The Scopes Monkey Trail). It’s hard for us today to imagine a time when the state would uphold legislation that would prohibit teaching against divine creation.

It is here again that we find our selves polarized in the opposite direction of our foundation, we prohibit instead the teaching of divine creation but sanction that which we once prohibited.
As a matter of fact, as I alluded to last we, we even deny the very authority to which we ascribed our founding documents of freedom to. One being that we were all “created equal,” instead of “evolved equal.”

Some would tell us that our Founders did not have the wonderful information that has come to by the works of Charles Darwin to enlighten them, but as I also mentioned last week they were well informed in the theory of evolution. So much so that even the most anti-religious founders rejected this theory of thought.

Thomas Paine was influential during our founding era, but his anti-religious views caused him to spend the last years of his life in New York as an outcast, when he died he was buried in a farm field because no America cemetery would accept his remains. But I quote him below to emphasize the general view and well equipped knowledge of evolution during the founding of this Great Nation.

“It has been the error of schools to teach astronomy, and all the other sciences and subjects of natural philosophy, as accomplishments only; whereas they should be taught theologically, or with reference to the Being who is the Author of them: for all the principles of science are of divine origin.

Man cannot make, or invent, or contrive principles; he can only discover them, and he ought to look through the discovery to the Author.

When we examine an extraordinary piece of machinery, an astonishing pile of architecture, a well-executed statue, or a highly-finished painting where life and action are imitated, and habit only prevents our mistaking a surface of light and shade for cubical solidity, our ideas are naturally led to think of the extensive genius and talent of the artist.

When we study the elements of geometry, we think of Euclid. When we speak of gravitation, we think of Newton. How, then, is it that when we study the works of God in creation, we stop short and do not think of God? It is from the error of the schools in having taught those subjects as accomplishments only and thereby separated the study of them from the Being who is the Author of them. . . .

The evil that has resulted from the error of the schools in teaching natural philosophy as an accomplishment only has been that of generating in the pupils a species of atheism. Instead of looking through the works of creation to the Creator Himself, they stop short and employ the knowledge they acquire to create doubts of His existence. They labor with studied ingenuity to ascribe everything they behold to innate properties of matter and jump over all the rest by saying that matter is eternal.

And when we speak of looking through nature up to nature’s God, we speak philosophically the same rational language as when we speak of looking through human laws up to the power that ordained them.

God is the power of first cause, nature is the law, and matter is the subject acted upon. But infidelity, by ascribing every phenomenon to properties of matter, conceives a system for which it cannot account and yet it pretends to demonstration. - - - - Thomas Paine, A Discourse at the Society of Theophilanthropists, Paris, in Age of Reason: Miscellaneous Essays for Third and Fourth Parts, in Life and Writings of Thomas Paine 2-8 (Daniel Edwin Wheeler, ed., 1908).

May God bless each of you,
David