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Calvin the “Christian” Murdering Blasphemer

 

Calvin plays a key role in the history of the Churches and Christianity. Mostly he is lauded as a great sage, a virtual Protestant Saint, and, of course, the mastermind behind the Reformation. As so often with these matters, the truth is somewhat different.

Calvin was born in 1509. This was over 80 years after the reformer John Wycliffe was burned at the stake; and Wycliffe’s burning did not take place until over 40 years after he himself died. The Catholics had to dig his body up to burn it. So the total time between Wycliffe’s Bible translating and other reforming activities, and the start of Calvins’, is the better part of two centuries. Calvin was very, very far from being in the forefront of the Reformation.

Calvin was born in France to a strongly Catholic family, and was expected to become a Priest. He was very bright, and already working as a clerk to a Bishop at the age of twelve. He subsequently attended the prestigious College de Montaigu in Paris. This is the same college where Ignatious Loyola saw fit to remain for seven years. Ignatious Loyola, of course, was the founder of the infamous, counter-reformation Jesuits. Ignatious and Calvin were not contemporaries at the college, but there is a strong indication here of the sort teaching that Calvin was immersed in.

There is no clear narrative of Calvin’s conversion, something which is debated to this day. Yet by 1536, at the age of just 27, Calvin had published his key work, “Institutes of the Christian Religion”. Notice here that by this age he had not merely begun his research, not merely written the book, was not still searching for a publisher, but had already done all of these things, and the book was published. Even Jesus did not begin his Ministry until the age of thirty. How did Calvin have such a meteoric rise to respected Reformation Author, given his background, and given not only the lack of any clear account of his conversion, but the likelihood that he accredited his personal Christianity to his Catholic Baptism as a baby? Infant Baptism is very significant in Calvin’s story as we shall see in the next paragraph.

Michael Servetus was a Spanish Doctor and polymath, and was the first European to accurately describe the flow of blood through the heart. He was also a radical Christian reformer. He did not accept the standard doctrine of the Trinity, was opposed to Calvin’s view of predestination, and like many radical reformers did not accept Infant Baptism. The term Anabaptist was used for those reformers who only accepted baptism given to adults following a conscious decision for Christ. Servetus was condemned to death by the Catholics. He escaped but fell into the hands of Calvin in Geneva, where he was duly burned at the stake. His was not the only execution carried out in the Geneva Theocracy that Calvin led. Beheading, drowning and burning were all methods of execution used. The execution of Servetus stands out because of his fame at the time, his scientific accomplishments, and particularly for the justifications used for his execution such as the rejection of Infant Baptism. Jesus never used force or manipulation on anybody. He spoke the truth and those who would not accept it were left to go their own way. Even the valid-in-its-time execution of a woman for adultery was quashed by Jesus. The idea that Calvin was a true disciple of Jesus Christ is untenable in view of his actions.

The other reason to reject Calvin as a Christian is his preaching of predestination. Calvin’s version of predestination makes God into an unjust ogre, who punishes men for eternity on account of living a sinful life; a sinful life about which they had no choice, because God made them sinful. See more on this both here, Predestination 101, and here,  Free Will and Predestination: No Contradiction.

It is not possible to come to a compromise conclusion about Calvin. Perhaps he was one of the Greatest Christians who ever lived, as many believe. Alternatively he was a fraud, with the mission of destroying and sowing discord among the radical reformers. Just one part of his legacy today is that many reject God because they have accepted Calvin’s monstrous depiction of Him. We all have to decide whether Calvin was Great or Fake. Our decision on that point matters deeply.

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Scientists Dissenting from Darwinisn

Evolutionists often claim that all scientists accept evolution. The enormous list here shows something of the falsity of that claim. The list however, should be read with an understanding of the massive pressure on academics to conform to the majority view. The documentary film Expelled: No Intelligence Allowed (view here) shows how even a neutral reference by a scientist to Intelligent Design can be a career breaker. A reference to Biblical Creationism is even more damaging.

It is also important to realise just how compartmentalised science is. Even in High School, science teachers have a strong preference to stay within their own specialism, be it physics, chemistry or biology. Beyond school this is much more than just preference. A researcher in aeronautics, meteorology, oncology, combustion theory, or whatever, is most unlikely to have given any more thought to evolution than anyone else.  Including such people on a list of scientists who accept evolution has little meaning. The list linked above shows scientists who have both seriously thought about evolution and are also prepared to put their career and reputation on the line by going public.

Whatever the numbers here, it is vital to remember that science is not a matter of politics or money, though these things have enormous influence on it. Science is about evidence. One man with evidence outweighs a million without.

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Why Creation Science Matters

The existence of an Almighty Creator God is fundamental to Christianity. Darwinian Evolution denies the existence of such a Being, and is the foundation of Atheism. Since that denial is couched in scientific terminology, it must be disproved by science. Failure to do so produces a false dichotomy between Science and Faith. The results are that atheists who accept this dichotomy are confirmed in their Atheism; and “Christians” who believe it must reject the very first words of the Bible. When you reject the first chapter of a book as rubbish or mere allegory, you are well primed to disregard the rest.

The Churches have long argued that Creation Science is unnecessary. They thought they could live with Atheism’s bottom line. That is largely why they are dying. They are prey to the dynamic already mentioned, in which they first reject the beginning of the Bible, and then go on to consider which other parts they might consent to, and which they will reject.

Nobody who accepts Darwin’s delusion can have a clue as to who or what God really is, nor, by extension, can they truly understand His Son, Jesus.

Anybody browsing this site should take time to look into the science, unless they are already sure that a straight reading of Genesis gives the truth. “Faith” does not mean closing your eyes and willing God to exist. It means having trust and confidence in a God who you know exists. Creation Science provides that knowledge. That’s why it matters.

(Paul says in Romans that God and His qualities are obvious from what has been made. It should be obvious; it should be obvious that if a smartphone needs a designer a human being does too. For some it is obvious. But for very many of a generation drenched in Darwin’s folly,  knowledge of the science is essential.)

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No Man Hath Greater Love – the Bible Used as War Propaganda

“No man hath greater love than this, that he lays down his life for his friend.” This Scripture is frequently misused to justify war. The quote comes from a passage in John’s Gospel which is very much about love. God is love, and we are commanded to love even our enemies.

This has nothing to do with soldiering. No soldier gives his life. His mission is to kill others while staying alive himself. There’s a maxim that in war it takes a thousand bullets to kill a man. If you calculate numbers of rounds and number of deaths, that’s probably an under-estimate. If a man wants to die, it only takes one bullet. When it takes thousands, it’s clear that everybody is trying very, very hard to stay alive. Very rarely does a soldier give his life; mostly he has it wrenched away from him with pain and horror.

The repeated use of this Scripture on military graves, and elsewhere, for the purpose of glorifying war, is an iniquitous abuse of Scripture. A soldier’s life is taken by the enemy, but also by the soldier’s own decision to take up the sword, and also again by those who encouraged, or enabled, or pressured him to do so. It is blasphemy to use the words of Jesus to justify any of this.

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Why Creation Science Fails

This must seem a strange title for an article on a creationist website. However, the issue here is not with the science, which is ever more strongly behind the existence of an intelligent Creator and a recent Creation, but with other factors that have far more impact on popular thinking. (If you are not convinced that evolution is fake science, please spend some time studying the science links in the Menu. Also two introductory articles on this site – see end of article.) There are at least five powerful reasons why Creation Science fails and will continue to do so.

1 The media consistently portrays evolution as an established scientific fact supported by ever-increasing amounts of “evidence”. If you were to watch TV solidly for ten years you would be exposed to thousands of positive references to evolution, but would probably not see even one fair reference to Creation.

2 The education system also teaches evolution as fact, which impacts children especially in the High School years. Only a tiny handful of pupils escape this through homeschooling or whatever, but even in those cases any creationist understanding they receive rarely survives the buffeting from mainstream evolutionism much beyond their teens.

3 The churches support evolution. Their support is perhaps the greatest asset the evolution promoters have. Intuitively, people feel that if there were even just a scrap of evidence somewhere that evolution were not true, the churches would be shouting it from the rooftops. The fact that one almost never hears churches objecting to evolution provides people with what is entirely lacking in the science: that is, evidence for evolution! The role of the churches in maintaining belief in evolution can never be overstated; the nearest churches ever get to Creation Science is normally Creation Silence.

4 People do not understand science. Even worse than simply not understanding it, they imagine that they do. This is partly because we live in a highly technological society, and people use technology every day. They think using technology makes them “scientific”; but the relationship between science and technology is essentially the same as that between a cow and its milk. You don’t have to understand biology or agriculture to drink milk; and you don’t have to understand science to use the technology it creates. All that most people have is an unfounded, and therefore self-deceiving, belief in their own scientific understanding. Further, when it comes to things like the Periodic Table or the Second Law of Thermodynamics, both of which are absolutely fundamental to any rounded understanding of how the Universe works, most people’s minds are a virtual blank. Further still, when it comes to understanding what does or does not constitute valid scientific evidence, the necessary knowledge, for the vast majority, is completely missing. This is not necessarily their fault; the fault lies primarily with the education system and those who run it. But whatever the reason, the result is that trying to change people’s minds with science is mostly a non-starter. They don’t understand the arguments and cannot retain them.

5 Most people have a deep internal bias in favour of evolution, because the obvious alternative is a Creator God to whom they would naturally owe some responsibility. “The fool says in his heart ‘There is no God’”. And there is no lack of foolishness out there. Whatever powers of reasoning people do actually possess, they don’t want to use them if that may lead to a conclusion they don’t like.

So, in summary, Creation Science faces all the barriers posed by people’s educational conditioning, the illusions spun by the media, the false witness of the churches, people’s lack of comprehension of science, and their unwillingness to accept the truth.

If this analysis does not make the impossibility of success clear, then it is well to consider some of the history. Firstly, Darwin’s famous book, “The Origin of Species”, is mainly a set of excuses for, and acknowledgements of, the lack of evidence for his theory. The fact that it was so rapidly adopted is proof that it has a perverse following wind, more accurately perhaps a following gale; something that Creation Science spectacularly lacks. That lack of any following wind for Creation is demonstrated by the fact that the Evolution Protest Movement, set up in the 1930’s, and presided over by none other than Sir Ambrose Fleming, the Father of modern electronics, made no progress. Also, it is now almost sixty years since the publication of Whitcomb and Morris’s tome “The Genesis Flood”. This book was and is scientifically streets ahead of Darwin’s convoluted reasoning; and every single church leader, every bible college lecturer, every allegedly Christian author active today, has lived his or her entire life of church leadership while that book has been available. Yet most people, be they atheists, churchgoers or anything else, have never even heard of it, or its evidence, or its conclusions. To call this a “lack of progress” would be charitable. It is actually decades of failure, with the same dynamics that caused such a failure still firmly in place today.

This is not a happy conclusion, but it’s the reality, and we are always better off facing the truth than pretending things are otherwise. The only possibility for progress is for Christians who understand Creation to do what they can personally. This means knowing some science themselves, and having some internet references to hand, which may convince a few. And it means using that information to draw people to the Gospel of Christ and a relationship with Him; not using it to draw people into any particular Church, or Calvinism, or Christian Zionism, or anything else. However, even with the best efforts and intentions, given the problems outlined above, any progress will be slow at best.

(Evolution articles on this site are Darwin Exposes Himself, Darwinian Evolution is Bunk and Geology: The Rocks Cry Out. Also see links to many other science sites here.)

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Darwinian Evolution is Bunk

Darwinian Evolution is fatally flawed. It contravenes the Second Law of Thermodynamics. It claims that information on DNA comes about by chance. It assumes that simple atoms spontaneously combine to make the hyper-complex chemicals of life. It ignores the “innumerable intermediate forms” missing from the Fossil Record. (Something Darwin himself stated, before “solving” the problem by a leap of blind faith*.) It ignores the fact that intermediate forms would, by definition, not be the fittest to survive, and would perish if they ever managed to exist. It denies Irreducible Complexity. It claims Natural Selection as an original, creative process even though the name tells us it’s merely a Selection Mechanism. It continues to pretend that Darwin’s “Simple Cell”, which he could only see under a simple light microscope, really is simple, in spite of modern science showing that even just the Proton Engine within the Mitochondria is a masterpiece of nano-engineering. Unlike proper science, it is not underpinned with precise mathematical formulae. It is nothing more than a hotchpotch of assumptions and imaginations backed by imaginary reams of evidence. Evidence which nobody can ever quote, always making the excuse that “I’m not a scientist”. Or in the case of a scientist “I’m not an evolution scientist”. Evolution Theory contributes nothing to real science. Its role is to provide a comfort blanket for atheists, and a platform to attack the Bible and Christianity.

Why is nobody prepared to spend even a few hours out of their entire life to check the truth of the statements above? Laziness? Pride in what they think they already know? Fear of what they will discover? There is no easy way to say this: Darwinian Evolution is the most stupid, convoluted piece of circular argument in the history of philosophy. It is bogus science. Anyone who bases their life on it is committing the worst act of folly imaginable.

Promoting Creation Science is not the main purpose of this site; it exists to expose the Churches as the sick surrogate for Christianity they really are. But we provide here plenty of resources for people to research this vital issue. We advise, beg and implore people to thoroughly rethink what they believe.

*See Origin of Species Chapter 6 “ I believe the answer mainly lies in the record being incomparably less perfect than is generally supposed.”

See also Darwin Exposes Himself and Science Page.

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Forget What the Bible Says. It’s Still Amazing.

A few basic questions about books throw an interesting light on the Bible:

How many books are there that run to over half a million words?

There are a few super-long novels that most people have never heard of. Among the famous ones, War and Peace, Les Miserables, and Gone With the Wind all come in at around a half-million. Dickens’ David Copperfield, his longest work, clocks over a third of a million. The Book of Mormon is a little shorter. The Koran and the Bhagavad Gita both have less than a tenth of a million. Marx’s Das Kapital reaches about two-thirds of a million. Mission Earth by L Ron Hubbard, founder of Scientology, reaches over a million. The Bible has over three-quarters of a million. Not unique, but very special.

How many books were written in two different languages?

Silly question! Who would produce a book in two languages? However, the Bible was written in both Hebrew and Greek. It is probably the only book to be written in two completely different languages.

On the invention of the printing press, which book was most printed?

The Bible.

What is the most printed book today?

The Bible.

Which book has been translated into the greatest number of different languages?

The Bible.

Which books have their own special paper?

The Bible. It’s a very highly specified paper, typically about 30gsm, always known in the print industry in the past simply as “Bible Paper.”

Which books have people been willing to kill or die for?

The Koran. The Bible. Das Kapital. Mein Kampf. A number of others.

Which books have people been willing to die for, but not to kill for?

The Bible.

Which books were written partly in Palaces, partly in Prison?

The Bible. Possibly some others.

Which books have taken thousands of years to write?

Silly again! How can somebody plan to write a book over thousands of years? However, there’s the Bible.

Which book holds the record for being burned the most?

Any guesses? The Bible?

Which book has gathered the most dust ever?

Has to be the Bible!

This article is not seriously suggesting that anyone forgets what the Bible says. But it has to be significant that, quite apart from what it says, the Bible stands out quite unlike any other. Suppose there was a God who wanted to leave Mankind with a detailed witness of Himself and His desires that would pass down through time. That witness would need to be in writing. And it would need to stand out in some way or ways from everything else ever written. It would need to be preserved, and be at least potentially accessible to all people, in both non-digital and digital ages. The Bible fits those requirements perfectly. So it’s either a most improbable product of chance, or there is such a God, and the Bible is His Word. Either way it’s remarkable. Yet very few people have read it cover-to-cover even once.

 

 

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Can You Get to Heaven if You Never Knew About Jesus?

An argument often used against Christianity is that, since Jesus is the only “Name by which men are Saved”, people who never hear about Jesus must go to Hell, and on that basis Christianity is unfair. However, Paul makes clear in Romans the role conscience plays in guiding our behaviour. This is not as great a means of Salvation as that which comes through Jesus, since there is no benefit in this life, only in the next. But it is, never the less, a clear route to Salvation.

The anti-Christian argument put forward on this “Jesus Only” basis misses its mark, apart from the reason given above, because by definition it is put forward by those who have heard about Jesus. What they are doing is citing an alleged injustice against people they do not even know, in order to justify their own rejection of Christ. It is a classic piece of anti-Christian rhetoric based on ignorance of the Bible.

Just to be clear, there is no justification in this for following conscience rather than Jesus. The conscience route exists for people with no knowledge of Jesus. Those who know about Jesus but reject Him in favour of their own conscience are making a fatal error.

See also Why We Don’t Normally Give Chapter and Verse Bible References.

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Free Will and Predestination: No Contradiction!

The Free Will/Predestination problem has taxed the minds of many, and still does. Frequently a fruitless debate between Calvinism and Arminianism takes place. I believe the answer can be found with a little exercise in thinking through, with the usual caveat that our understanding of God is never perfect because His intelligence and knowledge are so far above our own.

Some key points that must be incorporated into any rational understanding of the supposed dichotomy here are as follows:

1  Men must be accepted as having Free Will, because God is just and cannot possibly punish men for something they have no choice about.

2  The Bible talks about Predestination, so in some sense Predestination must occur.

3  God has foreknowledge.

4  Men have a body and a spirit. The body is locked into time, but the spirit is eternal, unless destroyed in Hell . For the period that we live our spirit is effectively locked into Time because it is locked into our mortal body. When our body dies, the spirit is released.

5  What a man really is, is his spirit. It is the spirit that has Free Will. The body is only so much clothing around the spirit, with no Will, although its natural needs and desires may well prove a temptation for the spirit.

Most of the points above are not controversial, and those that are have at least been debated at times. The next points I wish to raise, however, are rarely considered. Where does a man’s spirit come from? How is it given? When is it made? There is something a little strange here. Considering the general acceptance of a person’s spirit being released back to God when we die, how is it that we never seem to ask how it gets into the body at birth?

From our simple human perspective there are only a limited number of possibilities here. The spirit, which we accept is God-given, may come into the body at conception, or at birth, or perhaps sometime in between, or even shortly after birth. And the spirit might be made at that time, or may have been made earlier. Finally, a particular spirit may come into a particular body by chance, through some sort of celestial lottery, or it may be placed specifically by God into a particular body.

For our purposes here, we need not consider the first point. We can just accept that the spirit enters around the time of conception or birth. Regarding the time when the spirit itself comes into existence, Scripture gives no clear indication. I take the view that it is pre-existing in eternity. This is at the very least a possibility, and fits with the thesis I am presenting here. Regarding the issue of lottery or choice, I opt firmly for the latter, and given all that we know about God I’m sure many will readily accept this is likely the correct choice.

Some other issues need to be discussed before making a synthesis of these points. One is that God gave Dominion over the Earth to Adam and his descendants; this dominion is given in the very first chapter of Genesis. If we acceppt Free Will, which as pointed out at (1) above is scripturally  necessary, God cannot know every detail of what will happen in advance. The idea that God knows everything and nothing happens outside of his Will is false. It should be obvious that a very great many things happen which are outside of his Will, so He is clearly not taking control. If He did, all those bad things we see would  not happen, and God would not be fulfilling his decision or promise in Genesis to give Dominion over the Earth to Man. You can’t give a child the responsibility to walk to school on his own, and also put him on a lead and walk behind him with a big stick, hitting him whenever he departs from your constant and precise instructions. You give responsibility, and the power that goes with it, or you don’t. God gave us both.

In view of the above, it might be asked how anything called Predestination can happen. But consider people born in different places, at different times in history, into different classes or castes. We can see even as mere humans that much of what happens to people is effectively predestined. If we know people half-way through their lives, such that we also know their level of intelligence, their motivations, their particular skills and shortcomings, all in addition to the human and physical environment they live in, we can know with a fair level of accuracy what they will do next year. That does not mean knowing if they will have beans or egg on their toast next Wednesday; it means knowing the general direction of their life. We cannot predict everything, for as the Bible itself says, time and chance happen to all men. But the general progression is normally pretty clear.

Now try to see the same thing, but from God’s viewpoint. He understands far better than us any particular human environment. When He places a spirit in a baby, He already knows the inclinations of that spirit. He can see them far more clearly than we ever can, not only because He is God, but also because He looks upon the spirit He has created before it is clothed in a human body.  There are no outward appearances to deceive him, even if that were possible.  This is His foreknowledge. When he chooses where to place that spirit He knows not only the Human environment it will grow up in; He also knows the parents intimately; He also knows the precise DNA makeup of the new person, which includes whether it will be male or female. There’s a lot of predestination in all of that; yet the spirit, from the moment of its creation, has Free Will, and retains that Free Will throughout its life in a human body. It reacts to the situation it finds itself in according to its inclinations, be they loving or aggressive, rebellious or obedient.

Has your life been predestined? To a large extent it has. God chose where you would live, at what time in history, with which parents, and with what DNA. But within those limits you show your Free Will by the way you respond to the situation God has chosen for you. Free Will and a very significant degree of Predestination are not contradictory.

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Why Does Evolution Stick, When it Stinks?

The title here makes evolution sound like something unwanted that got stuck on your shoe, which is not so far from the truth. But the serious question is this:  why is evolution a core belief – possibly the core belief – of people in the UK, including most church-goers? It’s a little hard to understand when the scientific evidence behind it is so deficient. However, there are reasons for evolution’s capture of the popular imagination, which are discussed in the articles at the end of this post.

For those not clear that evolution is false, we offer three articles on this site and a large number of links to Creation Science resources:

Darwinian Evolution is Bunk

Darwin Exposes Himself!

Geology: The Rocks Really do Cry Out!

Science Page

And reasons why evolution sticks:

Why Creation Science Fails

Evolution Page