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Luminaries in the world of biology have contributed evidence that indicates an intellect created life on earth and directed its development. Interestingly, many of them consider themselves atheists, but their findings provide strong justification for belief in God. One such atheist, the late Sir Francis Crick, Nobel prize-winning co-discoverer of DNA, wrote: "An honest man, armed with all the knowledge available to us now, could only state that in some sense, the origin of life appears at the moment to be almost a miracle, so many are the conditions which would have had to have been satisfied to get it going." Life Itself (New York: Touchstone, 1982), page 88)

Liar!!!!

Here's the whole thing, in context

"An honest man, armed with all the knowledge available to us now, could only state that in some sense, the origin of life appears at the moment to be almost a miracle, so many are the conditions which would have had to have been satisfied to get it going. But this should not be taken to imply that there are good reasons to believe that it could not have started on the earth by a perfectly reasonable sequence of fairly ordinary chemical reactions. The plain fact is that the time available was too long, the many microenvironments on the earth's surface too diverse, the various chemical possibilities too numerous and our own knowledge and imagination too feeble to allow us to be able to unravel exactly how it might or might not have happened such a long time ago, especially as we have no experimental evidence from that era to check our ideas against."

Sorry but, If you have to lie and take people's quotes out of context in a desperate appeal to authority in order to prop up your ideas, your case is pretty weak.

The author's anthropic principle argument fails to move me for several reasons:

1. Sure, if the physical constants & ratios were different than they are, then things would be different, and life as we know it could not have gotten started. But we have no idea what all the implications would be, on a macroscopic scale, if the constants were different. We can say, "if this ratio was different, then stars as we know them could never form." Or, "if this constant was different, stars could never produce elements heavier than helium." But who knows if carbon-based life is the only possible type of life? And if, say, electromagnetism was the dominant force in a universe, who knows what the menagerie of elemental particles & resulting chemistry would look like? We have a sample size of one, and only the vaguest notion of what the other hypothetical samples might look like.

2. The extent to which we're impressed by how different things would have turned out if the ratios were different depends soley on how big our imaginations are. So the ratio of constant A to constant B is exactly 1.28485:1, and if it were greater than 1.28486:1 or less than 1.28484:1 then something on the macro-level would be very different than it is today. Is that remarkable or not? Well, to someone who can hardly imagine the ratio being less than 1.2:1 or greater than 1.3:1, the fact that it does fall inside the narrow range that it does is much less remarkable than to someone who can imagine the ratios being 100:1 or 1:100.

The problem is, anytime we learn about what causes some phenomenon of nature, we learn why the phenomenon is what it is, instead of being else. We learn why it never could have been any other way in the first place!

So any astonishment we might feel at the narrow range of physical constants & ratios is really an artifact of our lack of knowledge, coupled with our imaginations.

3. If the multiverse theory is true, then much of the rationale for being astonished by our universe's seeming to be designed for life as we know it goes away. So the author thinks it's just wishful thinking for atheists. But as I understand it, the multiverse theory actually pops out from the equations of standard cosmological theories.

This is a case where the author should have spent a little time on oppo. research to see if maybe these atheists had any decent reasons to think the way they do. If he had, maybe he could have come up with a counterargument that we might be impressed by.

Wrongheaded dreamer. The Catholic church will likely be the source of the Antichrist. I'm willing to wait and see, either in this life or the next. Jesus is coming soon.

The following Epilogue is from the Hal Lindsey book Vanished Into Thin Air. Following the Epilogue are Hal's comments from chapter one where he talks about our Blessed Hope. These two sections together are the gist of the entire book. What is happening in the world today to make things look like they are spinning out of control BUT, we know that Jesus is in total control of it all and that prophesy is being played out at break neck speeds. I love Hal's comment to the talk show host presented here at the very bottom, the last two sentences. It is very comforting as we watch the world going to hell in a hand basket.

"EPILOGUE

On A Personal Note

I have never been more thankful to God for the personal hope of the Lord’s return for the believer before the coming world holocaust. I had unwittingly begun to take this wonderful truth for granted. It breaks my heart as I pour over world events, day by day, and see how rapidly the world as we know it is moving toward a catastrophic end.

• Experts say that we are headed for a global economic collapse. Third world countries keep piling up massive debts. They can’t even pay interest, much less principal on their loans.

• Many jobs lost in the latest recession will never be restored- experts speak of a whole generation being unemployable because of the painful change from the industrial age to a new technical age of uncertain destiny.

• The Arab- Israeli conflict continues to smolder with the constant threat of igniting the fuse of Armageddon.

• Russia, already the mightiest military power in history, continues to be a menace to the world will its political/economic instability couple with a vast arsenal of weapons of mass destruction just waiting for dictator to use them.

• Nuclear weapons capable of destroying all life on earth continue to be produced at the rate of approximately six warheads per week.

• “Star Wars” type technology rapidly moves toward lasers and death rays of unimaginable lethality.

• China, with more than one fourth of the world’s population, continues to prepare for war.

• Super strains of diseases thought vanquished by antibiotics are rapidly appearing

• Deadly new viruses are emerging from various places

• Aids continues to spread across the planet

• Global weather patterns continue to change storms of unprecedented force are striking in new places around the globe.

• Lawlessness is rampant;

• Bizarre killing rampages are multiplying among our teenagers;

• Schools have become among the most dangerous of places for our children;

• Rapes are epidemic

• Gang rapes occur while average citizens look on and do nothing;

• Jails are filled to over capacity with hardened criminals of all kinds;

• Drugs are virtually a staple of the modern society;

• Traditional families are almost nonexistent;

• Murders with no real motive are commonplace;

• Serial killers are appearing everywhere;

• Famines continue to expand over large sections of the world’s population.

• Volcanoes, long dormant, are exploding into life;

• Earthquakes continue to increase in frequency and severity.

To the untrained ear, this may sound like unrelated bad news. But to the student of prophecy, it all fits into a precise pattern that was predicted long ago. This pattern clearly shows us that the Lord’s coming for His Church is very near.

In times like these, the hope of the Rapture should be a very practical force in our lives. It should motivate us to gain a combat knowledge of the Bible in order to be able to face the perilous times that precede the Tribulation. It motivates me to win as many to Christ as possible before it’s too late. I want to take as many with me as I can. Although I grieve over the lost world that is headed toward catastrophe, the hope of the Rapture keeps me from despair in the midst of ever-worsening world conditions.

The one who knows that Jesus Christ is in his heart and has the sure hope of the Lord’s coming for him before the Tribulation is the only one who can face today’s news and honestly be optimistic.

My prayer is that this book will help you to have a certain and sure hope of the Lord’s any moment return. Maranatha!"

----------------------------------------------------------- "Impending Doom, or Blessed Hope?

The good news is, nothing is spinning out of control. Instead, all the signs are; pointing in exactly the opposite direction. The Bible predicted moral collapse in the last days. It predicted the rise of Muslim fundamentalism, the collapse of Russia, signs in the sun, moon and stars, and even the sense of impending doom we are discussing. The Bible predicted the collapse of the Israeli peace process, the controversy over Jerusalem, and even the development of the European community. The Bible said all these things would begin at approximately the same point in history, and would develop along parallel lines.

Because that is exactly what is happening, it proves things aren’t out of control, but carefully under control. Jesus told us this would happen, because He is in charge of it all. And He promised us that, when we see all these things begin to come to pass, to look up, and lift up our heads, for our redemption draws near. The feeling of impending doom is for everyone else. We have the assurance of knowing that the only way to predict an event is to be in control of it. Bible prophecy proves everything is under control, and on schedule. We have nothing to fear. And we have a great hope in our immediate future.

Summary

Flooding and drought, both consequences of shifting weather patterns, are responsible for the famines that give rise to new epidemic diseases, which in turn exacerbate regional ethnic conflicts and civil war as nations fight over shrinking supplies of food, medicines, arable land and fresh water. You see, they are all related and accelerating each other.

Like birth pangs, each of the signs of the times are increasing in frequency. They are growing more intense. As I write these words, I am again staggered by the events I have been privileged to eyewitness over my lifetime. And I am reminded of my own words from a talk show I did some months ago. The host, Warren Duffy, asked me how long until the Rapture. I told him then, "It could come even sooner than I think."

Another case where the author should have spent a little effort to understand why his opponents believe what they believe: Punctuated equilibrium describes the kind of dominant pattern that an orthodox Darwinian paleontologist should expect to find.

Or as Richard Dawkins, supposedly the mortal enemy of Punk Eek, explains it:

The theory of speciation resulting from initial geographical separation has long been a cornerstone of mainstream, orthodox neo-Darwinism, and it is still accepted on all sides as the main process by which new species come into existence (some people think there are others as well). Its incorporation into modern Darwinism was largely due to the influence of the distinguished zoologist Ernst Mayr. [The punctuationists asked themselves:] Given that, like most neo-Darwinians, we accept the orthodox theory that speciation starts with geographical isolation, what should we expect to see in the fossil record?
... The 'gaps', far from being annoying imperfections or awkward embarrassments, turn out to be exactly what we should positively expect, if we take seriously our orthodox neo-Darwinian theory of speciation. ... [W]hen we look at a series of fossils from any one place, we are probably not looking at an evolutionary event at all: we are looking at a migrational event....
The point that Eldredge and Gould were making, then, could have been modestly presented as a helpful rescuing of Darwin and his successors from what had seemed to them an awkward difficulty. Indeed that is, at least in part, how it was presented - initially. ...
Eldredge and Gould could have said:

Darwin, when you said that the fossil record was imperfect, you were understating it. Not only is it imperfect, there are good reasons for expecting it to be particularly imperfect just when it gets interesting, just when evolutionary change is taking place; this is partly because evolution usually occurred in a different place from where we find most of our fossils; and it is partly because, even if we are fortunate enough to dig in one of the small outlying areas where most evolutionary change went on, that evolutionary change (though still gradual) occupies such a short time that we should need an extra rich fossil record in order to track it!

But no, instead they chose, especially in their later writings in which they were eagerly followed by journalists, to sell their ideas as being radically opposed to Darwin's and opposed to the neo-Darwinian view of evolution ....
... The proper way to characterize the beliefs of punctuationists is: 'gradualistic, but with long periods of "stasis" (evolutionary stagnation) punctuating brief episodes of rapid gradual change'. The emphasis is then thrown onto the long periods of stasis as being the previously overlooked phenomenon that really needs explaining. It is the emphasis on stasis that is the punctuationists' real contribution, not their claimed opposition to gradualism, for they are truly as gradualist as anybody else..]
Richard Dawkins, The Blind Watchmaker, 1996 ed., pp238-252