Who Are We?

Modern secularists love to see present day humans as the pinnacle of evolution. In reality, human nature has change not one iota since Adam and Eve.

“We tend to have this idea of Neanderthals as these stereotypical cavemen that must have been different from us because they're not around today,” Riel-Salvatore said. “And what we’re seeing, in fact, is that the more we look at the record of Neanderthals ... the more their lifestyle appears to have been similar to those of modern humans at more or less the same time.”

“The big difference between them and us is shrinking by the day — literally, at this point,” Riel-Salvatore said. “And so instead of seeing them as this extinct offshoot on the human family tree, we should think of them more as extinct cousins, fairly close relatives.

http://www.cbc.ca/news/technology/neanderthal-caves-organized-as-pleasant-places-to-live-1.2483451

Regardless of either option, monkey or man, Darwinists plead with us to believe that we are nothing more than a mass of chemical exchanges and firing neurons even as they, the atheists, display a whole range of personal thoughts, emotions and pseudo arguments when their beliefs in this area are challenged.

These people look at the human abilities of self-reflection, art, medicine, the enjoyment of music and say it comes from an illusory direction of will. In fact, they say that self-will or freewill choice are also an illusion. Even though the development of our vocabulary is enormous, our grammar complex and our conversations deep and meaningful, it all comes, say materialists, without purpose or meaning. These atheists look at the human ability to codify language, our unbounded creativity, selflessness, love, the exercising of our rational faculties, our ability to develop an argument, follow a line of logic, draw conclusions and frame hypotheses and call it the simple, random and unguided firing of neurons. 

Our strong spirit of enquiry, our research in the fields of astronomy, mathematics, medicine and physics while noteworthy for some, is nothing of lasting consequence to an atheist, for all will, according to atheists comes to an absurd and meaningless end. Yearn for meaning in life? It too is of no lasting import. It’s the same illusion that causes us to devote so much of our time to philosophy, theology and ethics. Or so the materialist world-view claims. Atheists say that our religious sentiments and practices and our intense and endless quest for meaning can be traced to some random mutation eons ago. 

The concept of atheism forces us to say that it’s only the illusion of the “I” that questions not only our origin but also our destiny. It’s only the illusion of the “I” that has a refined aesthetic sense that admires beauty and longs to be surrounded with it. When we cultivate a garden, put flowers in a vase, or hang up a painting, it’s the illusion of the “I” that is expressing a love of beauty and a strong creative impulse. Our poetry, painting, dance, drama and music, our weekly craft groups where baskets are woven, wool is spun, shawls are knit, and photo albums are covered, all this, says the ardent materialist, is carried out for no particular reason save to follow the command of chemical exchanges.

Reason, language, enquiry, wonder, longing, religion, morality, aesthetics, creativity, imagination, aspiration and humour, to such intangible but fundamental qualities, atheists like Bertrand Russel can only respond, and in the total absence of proofs or evidence, yet driven by a desperate desire to be free from all accountability to one’s Creator, they hope that you will agree: 

“That man is the product of causes which had no prevision of the end they were achieving; that his origin, his growth, his hopes and fears, his loves and beliefs are but the outcome of accidental collocations of atoms; that no fire, no heroism, no intensity of thought and feeling, can preserve an individual life beyond the grave; that all the labours of the ages, all the devotion, all the inspiration, all the noonday brightness of human genius are destined to extinction . . . that the whole temple of man’s achievement must inevitably be buried - all these things, if not quite beyond dispute, are yet so nearly certain, that no philosophy which rejects them can hope to stand. Only within the scaffolding of these truths, only on the firm foundation of unyielding despair, can the soul’s habitation henceforth be safely built.” 

The atheist’s philosophical and powerful emotional reaction to the fact of a universe with a beginning and to the impossibility of life arising unaided from non life shows that we are far, far more than a mass of chemical exchanges, more than mere thinking machines. Bottom line, we're a lot less simian than atheists would like us to believe.

From "Trolling for Atheists" Rod Holmgren

Still Another Addition

I’ve posted on this before but I have another addition.

1) In the Bible, we have a Book that diagnoses the atheist problem clearly and concisely -
“No one is without excuse. The universe declares the existence of God.”
To date, nothing has been able to refute or falsify that claim.

2) The Bible tells us -
“What is visible is made from what is not visible”
- This 1,500 years before the microscope was invented.

3) The Bible tells us -
“God sits enthroned above the CIRCLE of the earth . . .”
- This thousands of years before people accepted that the earth wasn’t flat.

4) The Bible tells us -
“The earth will wear out like and old garment, There will be famines in many lands and war without ceasing,”
- this 2,000 years before anyone dreamed that the earth could run short of anything.

5) The Bible tells us -“The Lord suspends the earth over nothing.”
- This, 5,000 years before modern man confirmed its truth.

6) The Bible tells us -
“The number of the stars are like the sand which is on the seashore.”
- This, thousands and thousands of years before the telescope. Without the telescope only ~ 5,000 stars are visible to the naked eye. To say they were uncountable would have seemed preposterous. Yet it’s the truth.

7) This is a Book that -
Predicted the Israelites would be scattered throughout the world, that Israel as a nation would disappear only to return as a nation with Jews coming back from around the world.
- this 3,000 years before the return of Israel as a nation took place.

8) The Bible is a Book that -
2,000 years before science confirmed the fact that sexual involvement with another person triggers “bonding” chemicals in our brains that affect us more powerfully than any other type of behaviour. Sexual sin therefore has an affect on us like no other sin has the power to inflict. We are to be one with our married spouse. Yet adultery or fornication bonds us with someone who will probably not be with us for life. Either way, the profound emotional bond is broken when sexual sin takes place and a deep emotional wound is formed, a wound which must be covered over with yet another layer of emotional hardness. No wonder the “love of many is growing cold” as what were once vices are now accepted and even promoted habits.

1st Corinthians 6:16,18 - Do you not know that he who unites himself with a prostitute is one with her in body? For it is said, “The two will become one flesh. Flee from sexual immorality. All other sins a person commits are outside the body, but whoever sins sexually, sins against their own body.”
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Of course, those on the side of our Creator have been in opposition to materialists for ever. Materialists of course being those who falsely claim that they won’t believe anything that hasn’t been logically proven to them. They have to “see it to believe it.” It’s a lie, but still they say it ad nauseam.

“The Pharisees objected, “All we have is your word on this. We need more than this to believe.”

Jesus replied, “You’re right that you only have my word. You decide according to what you can see and touch. I don’t make judgements out of the NARROWNESS OF MY EXPERIENCE but in the largeness of the One who sent Me, the Creator, Father God. You are tied down to the mundane; I’m in touch with what is beyond your horizons. You live in terms of what you see and touch. I’m living on other terms. I told you that you were missing God in all this. If you won’t believe I am who I say I am, you’re at a dead end in terms of learning.” John 8:14-18, 23,24.

The Bible has many, many verses whereby the authors record their dealing with those in their community who were materialists. These authors are trying to explain, both from evidence and from experience that there is much more to life than what meets the eye, or any of the other senses for that matter. For example:

Romans 1:1 . . . since the creation of the world God’s invisible qualities - His eternal power and divine nature - have been clearly seen, being understood from what has been made, so that people are without excuse.”
Hebrews 11:3 - “By faith we understand that the universe was formed at God’s command, so that what is seen was not made out of what was visible.”

I find this verse fascinating. Here we have a 1st century author declaring a truth that wasn't confirmed until the first living cells were observed under a microscope in the middle of the 15th century.

2nd Corinthians 5:12 - “We are not trying to commend ourselves to you again . . . so that you can answer those who take pride in what is seen rather than in what is in the heart.”

2nd Corinthians 4:18 - “So we fix our eyes not on what is seen, but on what is unseen. For what is seen is temporary, but what is unseen is eternal.”

Rather than constricting life, as so many suppose, a life with Jesus at the centre and with God as the cause opens one’s mind to a storehouse of wisdom and knowledge that is simply unavailable to those who try to live life on their own terms. Humbly accepting that we are not the centre of the universe and opening ourselves to the wisdom of God is the most liberating move that a person can make. It is the most intellectually fulfilling move that a person can make.