Evolution and the Beginning --Ray Comfort  <?xml:namespace prefix = o ns = "urn:schemas-microsoft-com:office:office" />

Zoologists have recorded an amazing 20,000 species of fish. Each of theses species have a two-chambered heart that pumps cold blood throughout its cold body. There are 6,000 species of reptiles. They also have cold blood, but theirs is a three-chambered heart (except for the crocodile, which has four). The 1,000 or so different amphibians (frogs, toads and newts) have cold blood and a three-chambered heart. There are over 9,000 different species of birds. From the massive Andean Condor with its wingspan of 12 feet to the tiny hummingbird (whose heart beats 1,400 times a minute), each of those 9,000 different species have a heart and blood. There are four chambers in their heart: the left atrium, the right atrium, the left ventricle, and the right ventricle--just like in a human. Of course the 15,000 species of mammals have a pumping four-chambered heart, that faithfully pumps blood throughout a series of intricate blood vessels to the rest of the body. There are also a million named species of insects, and scientists estimate that there could be another million waiting to be discovered and named. All these different insects have an "open circulatory" system. Their blood flows from the blood vessels out the end into the body cavity. It swishes around the body cavity until it gets sucked back by the heart into the other open end of the blood system somewhere else. This is in contrast to mammals where the blood never leaves the blood vessels at any stage.Here's an interesting question or two for the thinking evolutionist. Can you explain which came first (the blood or the heart) and why? Did the heart in all these different species of fish, retiles, birds, amphibians and insects evolve before there were blood vessels throughout their bodies? When did the blood evolve? Was it before the vessels evolved or after they evolved? If it was before, what was it that carried the blood to the heart, if there were no vessels? Did the heart beat before the blood evolved? Why was it beating if there was no blood to pump? If it wasn't beating, why did it start when it didn't know anything about blood? If the blood vessels evolved before there was blood, why did they evolve if there was no such thing as blood? And if the blood evolved before the heart evolved, what was it that kept it circulating around the body? 

Abraham Lincoln  

I recently read the biography of Abraham Lincoln. It was written in <?xml:namespace prefix = st1 ns = "urn:schemas-microsoft-com:office:smarttags" />Lincoln's own words, based on historical records. As I turned each page, I wondered how they would handle his assassination because he didn't say anything after he was shot in the head. In the book, he spoke of the grief of the civil war, about how good it was to have peace back in the country, and how he went to a play with his wife. It was a comedy, so he spoke about how it was good to hear people laugh again. He said, "…to be with Mary…to think of the years ahead. Please God, never let people forget the joy of love, the pleasure of laughter, and the beauty of peace." Then there was simply a bold headline that read: "WASHINGTON, D.C. --President Abraham Lincoln was shot at Ford's Theater shortly after ten o'clock last evening. At 7:22 this morning, April 15, 1865, he died."As I read those words, tears ran down my cheeks. I couldn't believe my reaction. I knew it was coming, so why was I crying like a child? This is why. Throughout the book, I got to know Abraham Lincoln not as a cold historical figure, but as a man with fears and pains. I grieved when his beloved sister suddenly died in her youth. I grieved with him at the loss of two of his children through sickness. The book personalized him to a point where I personally felt the pain of his untimely death.Did you know that every 24 hours 150,000 people die? That's a lot of people. It makes us rise an eyebrow. But because it is just a cold statistic, it can wash over us like water on a dead duck's back. If we are going to have a passion for the unsaved, we have to personalize ourselves with them to a point where it brings more than a tear to our eye. We have to see that 150,000 people as moms and dads, sons and daughters, brothers and sisters…people with the same fears and pains we possess. That is what is known as "empathy"--a virtue of compassion that causes us to feel the pain of another--"And on some have compassion, making a distinction; but others save with fear, pulling them out of the fire, hating even the garment defiled by the flesh" (Jude 1:22-23).

Another Anthony Flew?

The following is from an article called, "Is Richard Dawkins still evolving?" (Thursday, 23rd October 2008):"On Tuesday evening I attended the debate between Richard Dawkins and John Lennox at Oxford's Natural History Museum. This was the second public encounter between the two men, but it turned out to be very different from the first . . . This week's debate, however, was different because from the off, Dawkins moved it onto safer territory–-and at the very beginning made a most startling admission. He said:'A serious case could be made for a deistic God.' This was surely remarkable. Here was the arch-apostle of atheism, whose whole case is based on the assertion that believing in a creator of the universe is no different from believing in fairies at the bottom of the garden, saying that a serious case can be made for the idea that the universe was brought into being by some kind of purposeful force. A creator. True, he was not saying he was now a deist; on the contrary, he still didn't believe in such a purposeful founding intelligence, and he was certainly still saying that belief in the personal God of the Bible was just like believing in fairies. Nevertheless, to acknowledge that 'a serious case could be made for a deistic god' is to undermine his previous categorical assertion that '...all life, all intelligence, all creativity and all 'design' anywhere in the universe is the direct or indirect product of Darwinian natural selection...Design cannot precede evolution and therefore cannot underlie the universe.'