Thursday 19 June 2014

Show Me the Data!

According to a guest on "Science Talk" podcast, a culture unfortunately exists within the scientific community of "currency" being everything.

That is, what matters most to a researcher is to get published; to get his name on a paper; to get that recognition from his peers - rather than to make available the underlying data on which his article is based.

And in the case of data about the flu, it could be life-threatening not to make that database available, according to the guest on the podcast.

Some companies have two sets of data - one set of data which they make available to the public, and another set of data which is kept within the company.

This culture is driven by commercial interests on the part of the companies; and by professional interests on the part of the writing researchers/scientists.

I thought: if the danger of this culture in the scientific community (the culture of not making available the underlying data on which a published paper is based) is a danger to human life (in the case of not making data about the flu available), then the danger of this culture in other matters - such as in geological history, cosmological history, biology, or life-history (or the origin of species) could be misinformation or at least misinterpretation of the data. 

The average scientist, academic or member of the public doesn't get to see much of the data on which many of the theories and assertions are based in these fields. So how can we assess the interpretation of the data? We can't really.

Aside from commercial and personal professional interests being behind the creation of that culture, a researcher's own philosophy could also be affecting his interpretation of the data, and affecting the assertions he makes in a published article - yet we wouldn't even know!

It's like when I was sitting maths, physics or chemistry exams at school - we were required not only to give an answer, but also to show our working, to show how we arrived at that answer.

Ewald Rische Painting



Ewald (Woody) Rische

Wednesday 18 June 2014

Singing in Church

Singing familiar songs as congregational participation, looking at the words

Singing familiar songs to the Lord that are easily memorised and sung to the Lord from the heart with eyes closed without needing to look at the words

Introducing new songs

Singing spontaneous songs as the congregation responds as one to the move of the Spirit

Being sung to by music-ministers

Praise & Worship

The importance of including familiar songs in a church's worship program: 

http://www.patheos.com/blogs/churchformen/2013/05/why-men-have-stopped-singing-in-church/

Tuesday 17 June 2014

Exoplanets

Announcing the discovery of an exoplanet didn't likely come about because the planet has been seen directly. Not even through a telescope.

The existence of an exoplanet is usually only deduced - based on observing a feint light source, through a telescope, many times, over a long period of time, then measuring fluctuations in the intensity of the light and then measuring the timing of those fluctuations. If the fluctuations seem consistent, then it's deduced that the fluctuation may be caused by a planet's rotation in front of the light source. And there are other similarly indirect methods.

Sometimes it's happened after announcing the discovery of an exoplanet that the claim was retracted.

So it's not easy to be certain about an exoplanet's existence. It's even more difficult to conclude what the atmosphere around such an exoplanet might be, let alone conditions on the surface, if it indeed has a solid surface at all.

To say whether or not life exists on any such planet is therefore likely still a long, long way off.




The Messenger and Purified Israel

The Messenger of the covenant came; the Lord whom they sought suddenly came to His Temple.

Many repented. These were able to offer their Old Covenant offerings to the Lord with a newly experienced purity, thus fulfilling Malachi's prophecy.

And at that time the New Covenant was also inaugurated. Then the necessity for the Jews to offer offerings ceased forever.

The prophecy has thus found its historical fulfilment.


Suddenly Come to His Temple

If the Jews build a temple, could it truly be called the Temple of the Lord? especially if Jesus Christ is not worshiped in it!

(Jesus said Jerusalem is no longer the place of worship.

In the New Covenant God dwells in believers - Jews and Gentiles - requiring no temple made with hands.)

I met an Orthodox Jew the other night. I told him that God promised Abraham that in his seed (singular, not plural) all the world could be blessed, saved.

I said that the prophecy, "And the Lord whom ye seek shall suddenly come to his temple" had to have been fulfilled at a time while the Temple still stood - or else the prophecy forever lost its opportunity to be fulfilled.

I also told him that the Prophet Daniel prophesied that Messiah the Prince would come after 70-sevens, starting from the date of the decree to build the second Temple, and that a Gentile prince would then desecrate that Temple and succeed to scatter the Jews. Messiah had to come in that timeframe, and while the Temple still stood - or else the prophecy forever lost its opportunity to be fulfilled, I told him.

"Good point," he answered.

And he was happy for us to lay hands on him and pray for him in Jesus' Name.

I told him that I absolutely love Jews because almost all the good that's in the world today can be traced back to the work of people who were Jews. He seemed surprised to hear it said.

Seeing the prophecy as unfulfilled rather than fulfilled wrongly validates a continuation of Old Covenant practices without saving-faith in Jesus.

Seeing some double-fulfilment for the prophecy causes the prophecy to lose clarity either way.

But seeing the Prophecy as fulfilled rather than unfulfilled makes a case for Jesus being the Messiah. It helps put everyone and every modern issue in its right place on the map of what God has done, is doing, and shall do.


Saturday 14 June 2014

An Exemplary Step of Faith


Dreamcentre Church's 25th anniversary.

The Church was certainly an exemplary step of faith on Rod & Cheryl Gilchrist's part.

Hold That Thought!

Science can still do a 180 degree about turn on something.

They don't know a whole lot about some things.

And keep in mind that doesn't stop them making assertions!

Whatever they are asserting - if it's something unobservable, unmeasurable, undemonstratable through any practical application, I'd keep in mind that they could do a complete about-turn on it, and hold it lightly if at all:

Friday 13 June 2014

About Time-Light

The following explains why I have questions about the methods used to determine distance in space.

Imagine a room that is completely dark.

You are in the room.

You have no idea what shape the room is.

You have no idea how big or small it is. It could be eight metres long or it could be 22 kilometres long. And you have no idea how high the ceiling is.

You don't even know you're in an enclosed room. For all you know you could be in an open space. It's just so dark.

Everything is completely black - except for a number of small lights which you can see.

The lights are of varying sizes, brightness, colours, and causes.

You don't know this, but some are fluorescent. Others are incandessant. Still others are LED. All different colours and sizes. And still others are candle-lights. And some are actually reflections rather than sources of light.

And their sources are at varying distances from you - some of them are even moving, perhaps undetectably, either away from you, or towards you, or in varying other patterns.

In fact you yourself are standing on a moving platform inside the room - but your movement is undetectable to you: so you don't know which direction you're moving relative to which lights, and how fast. 

Different parts of the room even have varying atmospheres and temperatures caused by a smoke machine here, dry ice there, and dust over there - and still other particles elsewhere. All of this affects the lights between their sources and when it reaches your eyes. It affects their appearance of brightness, colour, size and motion and obscures the nature of their original source.

Other lights arrive at your eye unobstructed. Some lights arrive at your eye sometimes obstructed and other moments unobstructed.

But you are not told any of this. All you see is lights. You are not even told whether all the lights were turned on at the same time or at varying times.

Without all that other information, it isn't possible for you to determine how long ago each of the lights which you are seeing began their journeys to your eye. 

You come up with some experiments to try to answer the question. Some of the experiments seem to tell you how far away some of the light-sources are - especially those lights which happen to be connected to or close to your own moving platform. But for most of the tiny lights, the results yielded by the experiments may or may not be reliable because of the unknowable assumptions the experiments relied on.

On those lights which the experiments don't work for, you try different experiments, which yield answers that vary greatly - and they all relied on certain assumptions which you admit you don't have enough information to be able to prove.

Others in the dark-room are each trying to answer the same questions. Due to the lack of information, each person conducts experiments designed to test ideas which exist in his mind - ideas which are based more on preconceptions he had about the dark-room before being brought into the dark-room rather than based on anything proveable, observable, measurable, and falsifiable in the dark-room itself - without relying on major assumptions. Hypotheses therefore polarise - yet nothing much can be concluded yet about how far away each of the tiny lights are and how long they've each been transmitting light.

And so it seems to me to be with measuring time and distance of light not sourced from near space. 

Circle of the Earth

https://au.answers.yahoo.com/question/index?qid=20101113213748AACoBcE

Diamonds and the Bible


The above-linked article is interesting to me because it's the second time in a week that diamonds have cast doubt on doubts about the Bible.

(Last week the discovery of a type of Carbon in a diamond cast doubts on the timeline of life proposed by the Theory of Evolution.)

This week the discovery of water in a diamond casts doubt on the assertion that there isn't enough water in earth for a global flood.

One of my Facebook Friends ridiculed me when, a few weeks ago, I suggested the very same geological process described in the above-linked article (the process where water can be trapped or chemically bonded in rock and then later released from the rock).

But that very process is a process which some Evolutionists actually cite as a hypothesis for the origin of all the water on earth: the world's oceans were all formed out of the rocks in the earth, they propose.

Other Evolutionists propose that the water was instead delivered here by asteroids (without saying how the asteroids came to have water).

If so I wonder why the asteroids only brought water to earth and nowhere else in our solar system such as to Mars.

If one proposes that the asteroids did also bombard Mars and delivered water there but the water was not able to be retained by Mars because Mars didn't have an atmosphere like Earth had, then it should be remembered that Earth's atmosphere couldn't have been what it is before Earth had water. 

Besides, the lack of an atmosphere around Mars should have made it more likely for water-bearing meteorites to make it to Mars' surface, not less likely.

And Mars' gravity ought to have retained any such water in its atmosphere, even if the water vaporised.

Mars is said to have formed and cooled at approximately the same time as Earth, according to Evolutionary cosmology. So at the time when asteroids were allegedly delivering oceans of water to Earth, conditions on Mars would not have been so different as to end-up with so much less water than Earth.

And why did the asteroids stop delivering water to Earth?

So if the existence of water on Earth is better explained by the geological process described in the linked-article rather than by the asteroid idea, then by the same process there may indeed be enough water in Earth for a global flood to have been possible.

And another thought: seeing the geological process is happening on Earth (according to the linked article), why isn't the same process evident on Mars?

Could it be that the reason oceans of water are possible on Earth is because God designed for it to be possible on Earth.

For Further Thought

Regional flood idea, for further critique:

http://ncse.com/rncse/29/5/yes-noahs-flood-may-have-happened-not-over-whole-earth

Settled Science?

Are the alleged evidences for evolution and for the age of the earth as indisputable as the evidence of the usefulness of electricity in producing light for domestic uses?

Thursday 12 June 2014

Water on Earth

There is enough water on earth to have covered the whole earth in Noah's flood, given that the mountains might not have been anywhere near as high then:

http://m.livescience.com/46292-hidden-ocean-locked-in-earth-mantle.html?cmpid=514627_20140612_25880666

Binna Burra

Nice view today:


Did a walk to a cave:


The moon was rising by the time I left:

Tuesday 10 June 2014

Outback Stockmen Escort Gold Coach - by Ewald (Woody) Rische


"Gold Escort, Stockmen on Horseback Escorting a Gold Coach in Dusty Outback Landscape"  - Oil on Canvas, 29x39cm, by Ewald (Woody) Rische, circa 1970s

The Present Truth

Peter wrote to them about their heavenly focus, and attitudes that come with that focus. 

That's the present truth!

That's the correct application of Bible-prophecy.

It's about Jesus and living for Him while we wait for Him.

Ministry Attitude

One we're in heaven, the only ministries on the earth we'll be cheering on will be the ministries of others. 

So we may as well start cheering others' ministries on now, esteeming one another better than ourselves.

How can I serve you?

Noah's Flood

Numerous whale-bone fossils have been found inland in deserts above sea level in regions far removed from Ararat.

Surface of Mars

The surface of Mars looks more like showing signs of molten flow than water flow, to me. 

Sunday 8 June 2014

Where Did Earth's Water Come From?

If mars wasn't bombarded with water-baring comets like earth allegedly was, why not?

If it was, were conditions on mars so different to conditions on earth, that mars was able to retain none of the water brought to it by the comets, while the earth was able to retain so much water?

Whatever the proposed conditions on earth were that enabled it to retain the water, they cannot include conditions which required water in order to exist, seeing water was allegedly introduced by the comets.

The truth is, God created the universe and the earth, and water covered the earth.


Dream

The Holy Spirit invites us to dream His dreams

Earth's Appearance

They say comets brought water to earth.

Why not to Mars too? Why only to earth? 

They say the earth's geology is explained by millions of years physical processes.

Why then is much of the same geology non-existent on say Mars?

And why is some of the same geology existent on Mars?

Because God made it that way.

It's how God rolled! He made Mars to look like that. He made earth to look like it did. He caused things to happen on earth which have resulted in the way the earth looks now. 

Must We Speak Hebrew

It's okay to refer to sacred things in non-Hebrew terms. 

The Apostles did. So did the Jews themselves.

The Apostles used the Greek form of Jesus' Name rather than the Hebrew form, even in writing.

And the Jews used the Greek term Pentecost rather than the Hebrew form when referring to the Feast of Weeks.

Pentecost is not known in the Torah by that name. But it's in the Bible.

Pentecost was a Greek term - yet it was used by Jews, and by the Apostles, to refer to the Feast of Weeks.

So it was considered okay by both Christians and Jews to use Greek terms rather than Hebrew, even when referring to things of utmost sacred importance in both the Gospel and in the Torah. 

Using the Hebrew language doesn't in itself give you any special access to any spiritual blessings that another language can't. 

Hebrew doesn't send any special unseen waves through the universe that can in itself benefit you spiritually.

Neither can any language, because it's the spirit that gives life - the flesh profits nothing.

Jesus' Words are spirit and they are life. 

Friday 6 June 2014

Ask and You Shall Receive

Do you see someone blessed in many ways?

It may be that he or she asked for it.

"Ask and ye shall receive..."

"...that your joy may be full..."

"...herein is my Father glorified, that ye bear much fruit..."

What do you desire?

Ask for it, believe you receive it, say it - and you shall have it.

This goes for ministry and material things alike.

The Bible and Falsifiable Science

Someone said it's interesting that the only science Christians question is those sciences which contradict their Bible.

But another way to say it could be that the only sciences which the Bible inspires Christians to question are those scientific hypotheses which happen not to have been demonstrated observably.

Thursday 5 June 2014

Settled Science?

When it comes to the age of life on earth, that scientists can question not only current conclusions but also the very process itself that has been used to determine the age of life on earth, tells me that the process is still really only a theory. Just a hypothesis. 

It's not something like aeronautic theory; or electrical theory. No-one can question anymore whether planes can fly or electricity can be used to produce light for domestic purposes. To question it would be like rethinking the distance from  Surfers Paradise to Burleigh Heads, Qld. 

But to question the age of life on earth in the amount of a whopping 700 million years - and to question the very process that's used in the first place - well that's still quite reasonable, apparently.

And yet popular conclusions - and the methods used to come to those conclusions - have not only been taught as a settled science, but also anyone who publicly questioned it has often been ostracised.

http://cosmosmagazine.com/news/worlds-oldest-diamonds-push-back-age-life/

Sunday 1 June 2014

Stay in the True Grace

If you want to keep your congregation in the true experience of the grace of Jesus Christ rather than relying on works - rather than relying on substitutes - always preach things which they can never do apart from Christ. Preach experiences inimitable apart from receiving such experiences through a real relationship with the Lord.Preach such things in a way that they wouldn't even try!