Chinese Christians using "superstition" to undermine national law enforcement?

Chinese authorities were careful to confiscate musical instruments and choir robes when they shut down meetings of the Suqian house church and arrested Pastor Shi Enhao on May 31, 2011. He was detained under suspicion of "using superstition to undermine national law enforcement." He was later sentenced without the benefit of a trial in late July to two years in labor camp on a charge of "holding illegal religious meetings."

Members of the Suqioan church meet in small groups around their city. Pastor Shi's detention is evidence that meeting in smaller groups does not guarantee freedom from government interference. After Shi's arrest, police also confiscated donations equivalent to $22,000, according to China Aid Association.

Other church leaders arrested at the same time were released within 24 hours.

We can be thankful to God that now Pastor Shi has been released, in January of this year. It is not known why he was released early, but international pressure is one probable reason.

Shi is now at home with his family, but he remains under government surveillance.

(from Voice of the Martyrs newsletter, May 2012)

Humanzee? No, scientific bias!

The story is that there is "nearly identical” similarity between the DNA of humans and chimpanzees. Does good science support this?

It turns out that a wide assortment of key secular human-chimp DNA research publications have something to hide. All analyzed cases of reported high human-chimp DNA sequence similarity are based on biased data selection and exclusion techniques. DNA sequence data that are too dissimilar to be conveniently aligned are omitted, masked, or completely excluded. Furthermore, gap data within DNA sequence alignments are typically omitted, further biasing similarity estimates. These are the findings of a report by Jeffrey Tomkins and Jerry Bergman in the April 2012 issue of Journal of Creation.

Humanzee? No... Photoshop!

These highly selective data-discarding techniques, fueled by Darwinian dogma, lead to the commonly claimed 98 percent similarity in DNA between human and chimp. Based on the reanalysis of DNA similarity estimates using discarded data in leading secular research publications, it is safe to conclude that genome-wide DNA similarity between human and chimpanzee is not more than 81 to 87 percent identical. These numbers are in good agreement with the range of estimates obtained by independent research at the Institute for Creation Research.¹

One must keep in mind that the chimpanzee genome is larger than the human genome by at least 8 percent (based on current data). Therefore, overall genome similarity between human and chimpanzee is most likely lower than 81 percent.

You may remember the "New Math". This is the "New Science" - if you have data that doesn't fit your theory, just hide it somewhere!

Good science should admit that an honest comparison of humans and chimpanzees points not to so-called "natural selection", but to an Intelligent Designer. Who could that be? We have someone out there who has already laid claim to that role - the God of the Bible!

(based on Jeffrey Tomkins, 2012. Journal Reports Bias in Human-Chimp Studies. Acts & Facts. 41 (6): 6.)

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References (selected)

1. Tomkins, J. 2011. Genome-Wide DNA Alignment Similarity (Identity) for 40,000 Chimpanzee DNA Sequences Queried against the Human Genome is 86-89%. Answers Research Journal. 4: 233-241.

No, our business practices are based on Jesus' teachings

ASIA - Just read the headlines - ethics in American business seem to be optional. In certain Asian business contexts, they're non-existent.

Andrew*, a Crossworld worker running a business in Asia, sat in his office with Ridwan*, a young sales agent from a different company. Ridwan leaned forward and in a conspiratorial tone said, "If you want, I'll send our new clients to your company. You'll make a lot of money."

"And you'll make a commission on each one, right?" Andrew asked. Ridwan nodded, expecting Andrew to eagerly accept this standard practice and start negotiating details. Instead, Andrew said no - firmly. "Ridwan, my company is founded on principles of honesty and integrity. We're committed to dealing ethically in every detail." Ridwan's disappointment showed as he stood to leave, but then he noticed a Bible on Andrew's shelf. "Are you a Christian?"

"Yes. Our business practices are based on the teachings of Jesus. That's why I can't accept your offer."

Certain he'd never see Ridwan again, Andrew was surprised to hear from Ridwan three days later announcing he had quit his job and was opening his own company! Ridwan explained why: "During three years working as a sales manager under three different bosses, I've been lied to countless times and not one boss has ever fulfilled promises made on commissions or other business agreements." Andrew congratulated Ridwan on his new venture, and for the next few weeks, they exchanged emails about business, life and faith.

Soon Ridwan asked, "How does someone become a Christian?" Andrew explained the gospel to Ridwan in person, who immediately prayed to receive Christ as Savior.

End of story? Hardly. Now Ridwan must grow spiritually amid an antagonistic culture. His faith will be challenged. His business may suffer. His security may be threatened.

Pray for Andrew as he disciples Ridwan, and that together they will stand strong for Christ. Looking back, Andrew shares "I never imagined turning the guy down would make an impact - I'm glad God knew!"

(from the Crossworld newsletter, May 2012)

Yes, but How did Earth get nudged into a new zip code? Planet pinball!

Big Scientific Problem: "Common theories of stellar evolution predict that the sun was only 70 percent of its current brightness when it first lit its fusion engine 4.5 billion years ago. The sun has been steadily growing brighter since then and will continue so into the future, eventually evaporating away Earth's oceans.

"Once Earth amassed an ocean 4.3 billion years ago it should have quickly frozen over and reflected so much sunlight back into space that it squelched Earth's ability to thaw out for billions of years.

"The dilemma, called the "faint young sun paradox," has been know about since the 1950s and was popularized by Carl Sagan. Geochemists and solar physicists have wrestled for answers all these years.

"Lowering Earth's reflectivity by reducing cloud cover doesn't work. Models also show that a greenhouse effect from dense carbon dioxide and methane can't warm the Earth enough either. In some simulations, methane and carbon dioxide combine to make a photochemical smog that would have chilled Earth even further.

"Now, David Minton of Purdue University has come up with a novel solution that, by his own admission, straddles science fact and fiction. Minton proposes that Earth was closer to the sun when it formed and then migrated outward to its current orbit. To keep Earth tepid under a cooler sun, our planet would have needed to have been roughly 6 million miles (9.7 million kilometers) closer to the sun than it is today.

OK, now the really hard part...

Smashup.

"But how do you nudge Earth into a new zip code? The most plausible model, out of several other unlikely mechanisms that were only present in the very young solar system, is a gravitational billiard ball game called planet-planet scattering.

"The challenge is that this effect would have had to have dragged out over one or two billion years. Even more problematic is that for this musical chairs game to work at all, one more terrestrial planet is need in the inner solar system. And, it's a big one at that, ranging between the mass of Mars and Venus.

"The unlucky "odd planet out" would have wound up falling into the sun, being ejected from the solar system, or crashing into another terrestrial planet.

Dr. David Minton.

"This isn't too far-fetched in that the solar system is fundamentally chaotic, says Minton. "Solar systems don't know if they are going to be stable for billions of years." Minton says that the best dynamical computer simulation for relocating Earth has a rogue plant that is 75 percent Earth's mass smashing into Venus -- in the ultimate planetary pinball game of "three's a crowd." This would have happened in as little as 2 or 3 billion years ago. Earth got kicked out into its present orbit as a consequence."

Marko comments:

Wow, isn't it amazing what scientists come up with these days! The only problem is, there is no experiment they can conduct to test this idea ... so this is not "Science".

When will scientists admit that there is no purely "natural" answer to the universe? All things point to a Creator, just as the Bible tells us to look for.

(excerpts from Ray Villard, Was Earth a Migratory Planet? Discovery News, April 18, 2012)

Life Chemistry just happened? Then who was the Chemist?

The world's most brilliant scientists have never been able to produce a single RNA molecule starting with their choice of raw materials, their choice of environmental conditions. A Being more intelligent and more powerful than man is required!

(selections from Timothy R. Stout, The Testimony of the Origin of RNA, published in Creation Matters, a publication of Creation Research Society, Volume 17, Number 2, March/April 2012, to appear at http://www.creationresearch.org/creation_matters/pdf/2012/CM17%2002%20for%20web.pdf)

The Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory recently posted online a collection of articles about the origin of life(Deamer and Szostak, 2012). The laboratory is one of the world's foremost private research laboratories, with 8 Nobel Prize winners associated with it over the years.

There is one article in the collection which was particularly intriguing, "Planetary Organic Chemistry and the Origins of Biomolecules" by Steven Benner et al (Benner, et al., 2010). This quote is from the abstract.

According to various models for the origin of life on Earth, biological molecules that jump-started Darwinian evolution arose via this planetary chemistry. The grandest of these models assumes that ribonucleic acid (RNA) arose prebiotically, together with components for compartments that held it and a primitive metabolism that nourished it. Unfortunately, it has been challenging to identify possible prebiotic chemistry that might have created RNA. Organic molecules, given energy, have a well-known propensity to form multiple products, sometimes referred to collectively as “tar” or “tholin.” These mixtures appear to be unsuited to support Darwinian processes, and certainly have never been observed to spontaneously yield a homochiral genetic polymer. To date, proposed solutions to this challenge either involve too much direct human intervention to satisfy many in the community, or generate molecules that are unreactive “dead ends” under standard conditions of temperature and pressure.

One might think that Dr. Benner and his colleagues had obtained their list of problems from the creation literature... To his credit, he is simply being honest about the issues and their significance. Notice, he refers to a number of problems:

• It has been challenging to identify prebiotic chemistry that might have created RNA. They still haven't identified it.
• Organic molecules have a "well known" tendency to form tar instead of biologically usefol molecules.
• A homochiral genetic polymer has certainly never been observed. This is a significant admission and observation. The world's most brilliant scientists have never been able to produce a single RNA molecule starting with their choice of raw materials, their choice of environmental conditions.
• The proposed solutions require trained scientists, using expensive laboratory equipment, implementing intricate sequences of steps, using purchased chemicals of laboratory grade purity.

"Blue compounds are dead-end compounds that accumulate in the reaction. A chemist must intervene to prevent this mixture from evolving further to give still more complexity."

It would require intervention by an intelligent being to overcome the overcome the myriad observed and documented problems which are counter to a natural origin of life. Man's inability to produce even a single, useful, genetic polymer starting from any assortment of assumed raw chemicals shows that a Being more intelligent and more powerful than man is required!
 
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