Month: August 2022

The Broad Array of Moral Concepts, revised Part 3

Freedom of the Will is a Reality that is Inconceivable in a Purely Materialistic Universe

            One of the givens, being a constant within the kingdom of the God of the Bible, is that free-will choice must be in existence for personal relationships to have any meaning.

            The perfectly actualized God-sovereignty of Jesus Christ within His life-script that leads to the cross and the resurrection, as described above, reveals a divine quality of unselfish love that is found at the top-most peak of the vertical spectrum-line of moral character.

            The cross and the resurrection of Jesus Christ provides for me the freedom to enter into a personal relationship with God, and to embark on the adventure of a research program into the discovery of the knowledge of good and evil that will last for an eternity, acquired for me by God at Calvary and on Resurrection morning.

            Jesus Christ went to the cross out of unselfish love to provide for believers the freedom from sin, to be able to search for and find our highest destiny within a God-composed journey of faith life-script.

            The plan of redemptive salvation by grace through faith in Christ is a rescue program having the highest ideal intentions imaginable.

            When I became a Christian, God did not instantly change me into a perfect moral person.

            When I became a Christian, God did not instantly change this world and everything in it into a perfect, trouble-free environment.

            What God miraculously did do was to change me as a person from the inside-out, from a previously lost and directionless person having no real basis for self-worth, into a new and different person now experiencing the value and worth bestowed upon me by the Creator God of the universe thinking enough of me to want to establish a relationship, and by initiating a calling for my life that gave it purpose and meaning.

            This created in me a desire to be the best person I could be in terms of character and virtue, a concept that previously had been laughably foreign and utterly unattainable.

            The point here is that the sacrifice of Jesus Christ not only cleansed me from my sins, but equally important it transformed the nature of my continued moral imperfection from willful bad choices into honestly unintentional lessons-learned mistakes.

            Walking through a genuine, biblical-quality journey of faith following Jesus Christ moderates and softens the ill-effects of my honest mistakes, and in practical terms improves the ratio of my good works going forward to actually exceed in number and in magnitude my occasional bad works.

            Jesus Christ on the cross paid in full the negative side of my balance-sheet portfolio, so that I could pick-up my own cross and follow Jesus into an adventure of faith, without the condemnation of character faults and short-comings that now instead become invaluable lessons-learned along this research program into the knowledge of good and evil.

            Again, in Matthew 5:6 in the Sermon on the Mount, Jesus does not say blessed are the perfectly moral, but blessed are they that hunger and thirst after righteousness through a spiritually born-again heart (John 3:1-21).

            My sins past, present, and future are covered by the blood Jesus shed on the cross, because my present and future sins are not the result of malice or ill-intent towards anyone, but are simply a part of inhabiting for the time being the research vehicle of a fallen yet redeemed moral nature.

            If modern science at this point in time is revealing an Intelligent Designing Agent this precise in crafting the natural world, then if His main response to the evil and suffering in this world is to merely compose life-scripts and orchestrate journeys of faith that do not altogether remove evil and suffering, then this seemingly partial solution needs explaining.

            If the response by the God of the Bible is to initiate research programs into the knowledge of good and evil as articulated in this book, now better understood through the lens of the modern scientific method, this produces the common complaint that if God is all-powerful, all-knowing, and everywhere, why doesn’t He remove evil and suffering?

            The argument that the presence of evil and suffering renders God weak and incapable of providing an entirely safe and optimized environment for humans, presupposes that there is not a more important reason for God allowing evil and suffering to exist on the earth.  

            I think the freedom for human beings to be able exercise intellectual and moral reasoning through cognitive thinking within the challenging environment of a broken and fallen world, is a sophisticated reality that is inexplicable in a purely matter and energy universe.

            For this intellectual and moral reasoning capacity to proceed unfettered by the undermining of our innate value and worth through the weight of the guilt and confusion over our imperfect moral natures (Romans 7:15-8:4), inexplainable through naturalistic materialism, requires the unselfish atoning sacrifice of Jesus Christ on the cross and His resurrection three days later.

            This top-most quality of God-sovereignty written into the life-script for Jesus Christ the Son of God, singles-out and highlights the love of God to successfully establish our freedom from debilitating sin in the right way through divinely conceived justice, within the plan of redemptive salvation by grace through faith in Christ.

This combines with the broad array of moral concepts in existence in this world, and our amazing capacity to adequately adjudicate these realities, in order to arrive at a meaningful yes/no decision to accept Jesus Christ as Savior, King, and Ruler in our lives.

This deserves the most respectful and considered evaluation, being one of the main contentions made in this book.  

From Pondering Our Creation: Christian Essays on Science and Faith.

Sales Models Landscaping

            Because the landscaping for the sales models must make an immediate positive impact on the visual appearance for the multi-unit tract housing or condominium project, the builder should take an active role in the sales model landscaping selection and planting.

            The sales models complex should look its best in time for the project grand opening to the buying public, which can be better accomplished by including two provisions within the landscaping contract.

            The first provision is for the builder to have the option of selection approval.  This can involve personally going to the nursery with the landscaping contractor to help select plants and trees, or reviewing and approving plants and trees shown in photographs taken by the landscaping contractor.

            This active role not only allows the builder to help select good plants and trees, but also enables the builder to ensure that the project is getting actual 5-gallon trees in 5-gallon can, for example.

            Typically, growing trees are transferred from 1-gallon cans to 5-gallon cans legitimately…but for the sales models, the builder wants mature 5-gallon trees planted as specified on the landscaping plans, for example, not younger trees recently transferred into larger cans or boxes.

            The second provision is for the builder to be able to approve the planting spacing in place.  If the size of the ground-cover plants and shrubs are too small as purchased by the landscaper, or installed farther apart than specified in the landscaping plans, the builder should be able to require that more plant material be added to achieve the desired effect.

            The point here is that the landscaping requirements for the sales model complex is different than the landscaping for the production units for a large condominium project.

            For the production units, the landscaping can take several months to mature with the landscaping contractor maintaining the planting and trees, allowing for an economy in the purchasing of the production landscaping. 

            An immediate “splash” of greenery and color is still important in common areas at the beginning of homebuyer occupancy.

            But for the sales models landscaping an immediate impact of mature trees, plants, and flowers is needed in a short amount of time, therefore requiring more attention to details, pre-planning, and quality-control supervision.

            Finally, some jobsite construction superintendents are very expert in the nuts-and-bolts of the building construction activities, but not as strong in terms of landscaping. 

            This is where the builder can fill any gaps in field expertise by including in the landscaping design contract and the landscaping subcontract, a provision for a field inspection of the landscaping by the landscape architect.  This informs all parties…especially for the all-important sales models grand opening, that an expert will be inspecting the work and noting any deficiencies.   

From Lessons-Learned for Builders, Architects, and Interior Designers in Housing Construction, Book 6.

The Broad Array of Moral Concepts, revised Part 2

            The connection between the human capacity for intellectual and moral reasoning with an external set of independent moral concepts is similar to what is called prior fitness in the study of how biodiverse living species fit-in to complex, pre-existing environmental ecosystems

            This reality that we so easily take for granted argues compellingly for a human mind capable of recognizing and parsing the subtleties of informational concepts, that transcends above a mere matter-and-energy brain.

            Dr. John Lennox, Oxford mathematician and author suggests in some of his interviews and discussions online on the Internet, that the sudden immergence of human intellectual and moral reasoning capacity might be considered another example of being a singularity, in the same manner as the Big-Bang creation of the universe and the sudden immergence of life on earth can be understood as singularities.

            The mental capacity to technologically problem-solve at the advanced level to take us to the moon in 1969, and the moral reasoning capacity to differentiate and comprehend complex moral concepts, are two realities that define the essence of human beings.

            The point here is that human beings possess a complete and exhaustive array of tools within the broad assortment of moral concepts from which to make an intelligent and reasoned judgment as to the divine quality of the life and ministry of Jesus Christ.

            Just as orderliness and intelligibility are indispensably coordinated with our human capacity to conduct successful scientific investigations of the natural world, it would be pointless to be presented with the decision-making imperative regarding the truth-claims of Jesus Christ regarding His qualifications as Savior, King, and eternal Ruler if humans did not possess the incredible capacity to make an informed decision.

            It is therefore plausible to recognize that the origin of the entire array of moral characteristics appearing suddenly and fully defined in scope, that this recognition represents a sharp, near-instant vertical upward spike on any conceivable graph-line for the time-duration of the human race.

             This is not anything like incrementally gradual, small-step, evolutionary development.

The Broad Array of Moral Concepts are In-Place and On-Time for Human Consideration

            In Galatians 5:22-23, Paul lists some of the positive fruits of the Spirit: “love, joy, peace, longsuffering, gentleness, goodness, faith, meekness, temperance: against such there is no law.”

            Earlier in Galatians 5:19-21, Paul lists some of the negative “works of the flesh”: “Adultery, fornication, uncleanness, lasciviousness, idolatry, witchcraft, hatred, variance, emulations, wrath, strife, seditions, heresies, envy, murders, drunkenness, revellings, and such like.”

            To these two lists of moral attributes and characteristics we could add the concepts of truth, honesty, dignity, loyalty, friendliness, honor, humility, dedication, forgiveness, mercy, compassion, humor, flexibility, empathy, forbearance, consideration, self-sacrifice, gratitude, persistence, commitment, discernment, rationality, logical thinking, being organized, being a peace-maker, fairness, generosity, passion…and a number of other distinct and precise words that describe finely differentiated moral characteristics.

            This list could be expanded further by adding their negative counterparts.

            Why is this important in a Christian book about science and faith?

            When anyone who is a born-again Christian, Bible college student, Christian theologian, atheist, skeptic, or curious truth-seeker begins an examination of the perfect and sinless life of Jesus Christ, they are acknowledging the existence of the very tools of the sophisticated and varied concepts available that precisely define moral characteristics, that make such an examination possible.

            Without this complete and exhaustive tool-kit of concepts by which to judge moral characteristics, a personal decision for or against accepting Christ as Savior would fall short of being meaningful, would not have all of the richly differentiated criteria to support a valid decision, one way or the other.

            The three complimentary categories: the existence of the broad array of moral concepts, our capacity for intellectual and moral reasoning, and the divinely composed life-script for Jesus Christ, must all be fully developed and fully functional in-time for the appearance of Jesus Christ into this world in the first-half of the first-century A.D.

            This discussion opens the door into a better and fuller understanding of the uniqueness of the cross and the resurrection of Jesus Christ, validating the life of Jesus to be at the top-most point of moral perfection.

God-Sovereignty Exemplified at the Cross

            One area therefore where we can clearly and unambiguously authenticate the divine nature of Jesus Christ is in His perfect compliance with the biblical concept of God-sovereignty, in His life-script and performance.

            On the cross, Jesus is demonstrating God-sovereignty actualized to absolute perfection in staying within His God-composed life-script calling to become the Savior of the world.

            On the cross, Jesus exemplifies purely consistent, non-rebellious, sinless unity-of-purpose within the Godhead of the Trinity of the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit.

            The divinely brilliant, creative originality of the cross is that Jesus is experiencing the most acute outward display of worldly failure, while at the same time achieving the greatest single accomplishment for mankind in all of history as the Passover Lamb of God atoning sacrifice for sin.

            God combines on the cross two contrasting elements: extreme worldly failure and brilliantly divine success, on the broadest possible range of human experience because the cross at Calvary involves the divine Son of God in a human body (Isa. 7:14, 9:6-7) that no human literary writer could ever imagine or invent.

            Jesus Christ on the cross as the Passover Lamb of God sacrifice for mankind’s sins in perfect demonstration of God-sovereignty, is such a brilliantly divisive yet subtle issuesurgically separating truth from error, that many modern Jews even today use this perceived failure of Jesus to be the expected Moses, Joshua, or King David type Messiah ushering-in world peace…as still serving as the main reason for why they reject Jesus Christ as Messiah, disqualifying Him on these grounds alone.

            Many Jews in the first-century and today would say that their Messiah would never suffer the indignity of being crucified by the Romans, of being a curse “hanged on a tree.” (Dt. 21:23; Gal. 3:13).

            Yet redemptive salvation by grace through faith in Christ creates the singular brilliance of a joint-venture with God into the exploration of the knowledge of good and evil, utilizing the research vehicle of our fallen yet redeemed imperfect nature.

God-composed journey of faith life-scripts starting with Abraham anticipate by roughly 3,500 years the scientific method of basic field research inaugurated at the start of the Scientific Revolution.

            As we ourselves stand at the cross looking up at Jesus, we either see the Passover Lamb of God performing His God-composed life-script in perfect God-sovereignty, or we see the worst failure of a person that can be imagined in life, the utter humiliation of first being scourged, then afterwards ending their lives through the shame and defeat of Roman crucifixion.

            This is the most modern, up-to-date, sophisticated use of the broad array of moral concepts at the outer edge of their utility.

            As we look up at Jesus hanging on the cross, we either see a life-script that was perfectly written to match the unique capacity of the God/man Jesus Christ to take upon Himself the sins of the world as foreshadowed centuries before at the start of the Exodus[1],[2] (Ex. 12:21-28).

            Or we see a life-script that falls so far short of the positive ideals and aspirations of the American Dream ancient or modern, that our best option then is to choose to go our own way in a journeyof self, according to the tenets of worldly conventional normalcy and thinking, and reject Jesus Christ altogether.

            The insightfully piercing dichotomy between the perfect God-sovereignty of Jesus Christ, and the self-sovereignty of going our own way of the religious elites and political rulers in Jerusalem, at the cross is exposed by God alone as no human literary genius could of being as wide apart as the Grand Canyon.      

God alone has the ability to highlight on that one day atop Calvary Hill, the huge contrast between self-sovereignty versus God-sovereignty…to perfection.

            This is a key element that separates-out for us amidst the sea of multiple competing narratives the singularly unique, divine quality of the biblical narrative in today’s modern world.

From Pondering Our Creation: Christian Essays on Science and Faith.

[1] 20161030 The Oldest Yahweh Inscription 2 Kings Joel Kramer, published on Oct. 30, 2016, by Lighthouse Church-Twin Falls on YouTube…at Joel Kramer Archaeologist.

[2] Historical Evidence for the Exodus from Egypt (with Titus Kennedy), published on Jul. 19, 2022 on the YouTube channel Dr. Sean McDowell.

The Broad Array of Moral Concepts, revised Part 1

“And the Word was made flesh, and dwelt among us, (and we beheld his glory, the glory as of the only begotten of the Father), full of grace and truth.”                                               (Jn. 1:14)

            If the Bible and Christians contend that Jesus Christ is the blemish-free, Passover Lamb of God sacrifice for mankind’s sins, that He was perfect and without sin during His life and ministry on earth, by what or by whose standard do we judge the existence of this alleged perfect moral character in any person?

            How would we determine that the life of Jesus was at the outer edge of moral perfection, at the peak and the pinnacle of absolute goodness and virtue?

            How would we know that no additional room or space remained at the highest top-most point of the vertical, graduated spectrum-line of virtue and morality for further improvement?

            What would explain the existence of the diverse categories of moral criteria defining virtue, of the numerous moral concepts broken down into individual words as abstract thoughts accessible to human contemplation, that would enable and support a valid determination of the moral credentials of Jesus Christ?

            And finally, where would our highly-advanced capacity to comprehend, to divide, separate-out, and parse these varied conceptual virtues and vices, consisting of finely differentiated realities that are true-to-life, come from? 

            Where would this uniquely human capacity originate from, seeing that it does not exist anywhere else in the animal world and therefore cannot plausibly be attributed to the common descent, materialistic explanation for its origin extending seamlessly from animal instinct to human intellect?

            In short, this current planet earth is the perfect environment to conduct individual research explorations into the knowledge of good and evil, using the lens of a fallen moral nature that is redeemed by Jesus Christ on the cross at Calvary.

            The broad array of moral concepts functionally operative within human relationships is the intellectually thought-filled counterpart to the biodiversity and ecological balance we find in the natural world that enables animal instinct to operate.

            The brilliant invention of redemptive salvation by grace through faith in Christ is the means by which believers can with impunity and without risk to our eternal salvation, enter into journeys of faith by picking-up our own cross to follow Jesus Christ into adventures of challenge beyond our imagination…designed to illuminate the subtleties of the knowledge of good and evil for our eternal benefit.

            The entirely counterintuitive insight coming from modern science that adds a new and unexpected understanding of the biblical interpretation of salvation by grace through faith in Christ, is that the sacrifice of Jesus on the cross was not just a way to provide forgiveness for sin and to restore our relationship with God, but also to open-up a living way into exploring the knowledge of good and evil through the research vehicle of an imperfect yet redeemed, fallen moral nature (Rom. 7:15-8:4; 2 Cor. 4:7).

            If we look at the detailed, biblical narrative stories of faith from Abraham through Paul, we see not only personal relationships created between people and God, and mission-plans often having enormous benefits to other people, but we also see life-scripts that are research programs into the knowledge of good and evil that are purpose-filled at the pinnacle of rational thought and reasoning.

            There is infinitely more to God’s plan of salvation than just reconciliation and addressing the guilt of our mistakes, as important as that is.

            Redemptive salvation by grace through faith points directly to Genesis 3:4-5.

4 And the serpent said unto the woman, Ye shall not surely die:

5 For God doth know that in the day ye eat thereof, then your eyes shall be opened, and ye shall be as gods, knowing good and evil.

            This is a classic example of a half-truth.

            The only way that I can acquire a genuine knowledge of good and evil is through a guided research program while inhabiting the four-wheel drive vehicle of my fallen yet redeemed earthen vessel (2 Cor. 4:7), my imperfect moral nature being the perfect lens through which to understand the subtleties of the broad array of moral concepts.

            It took a perfect person Jesus Christ to take my deserved place on the cross to satisfy perfect justice, yet one profound outcome of this event provided divine impunity for me to enter into a research program into the knowledge of good and evil in which it is a certainty that I will make mistakes that become lessons-learned rather than condemning sins (Mt. 5:6).

            This is one reason why God did not show-up in the Garden of Eden to dispute the character assassination put forward by the spiritual apparition of Satan in the holographic form of a beautiful talking serpent, because it is difficult to debate with a liar.

            The galactic irony here is that it is modern science that illuminates this component of a research program into the knowledge of good and evil contained within redemptive salvation by grace through faith in Christ.

            The other profound take-away here is that science will disappear as we now know it, the universe being temporal (Mk. 13:31; 2 Pet. 3:10).

            But a genuine knowledge of good and evil acquired through the first-hand experience of living within a God-composed journey of faith life-script lasts an eternity.

            I think it takes a grasp of what is involved in a modern science research program to see the comparative quality of God-composed journeys of faith life-scripts in which God displaces our ways and thoughts with His higher ways and thoughts (Isa. 55:8-9), like a PhD professor guiding a graduate student through their thesis research program (Jn. 16:13).

            The God of the Bible is writing research programs and offering research grants in the form of redemptive salvation by grace through faith in Christ, so that believers can obtain a genuine knowledge of good and evil through the first-hand field research of personal experience, our mistakes and shortcomings factored-in as part of the lessons-learned protocol.

            The brilliance of this is that it partly validates from an unexpected direction the claim by Jesus that He is the way, the truth, and the life to the exclusion of all other gods, religions, and philosophies. 

            Jesus said “no man cometh unto the Father, but by me.” (Jn. 14:6).

            Only one God can be God.

            Only our Creator God can compose journeys of faith that match our unique talents and abilities, replacing our ways with His higher ways, to craft four-wheel drive research vehicles having the lens of a fallen yet redeemed moral character through which to comprehend the subtle nuances of the knowledge of good and evil.

            Only the one real God is capable of crafting a program that identifies one of the fundamental purposes underlying the creation of the universe, inventing the concept of redemptive salvation by grace through faith in the death and resurrection of Jesus Christ, which allows me to venture-out into a risk-filled journey of faith, with the understanding that I am certain to make many honest and unintentional mistakes (Mt.5:6).

God-composed Journey of Faith Life-scripts are Too Deep for a Naturalistic Explanation for their Origin

            The recent modern recognition in philosophy is that the human mind when reduced down to only a materialistic “brain” alone, made up of circuits and neurons, devolves into nonsensical relativism.

            The radical reduction into materialism undermines confidence in the reliability of all human thought, and thereby destroys rationality, scientific investigation, and even worldview philosophies such as atheism itself.

            Yet by simply asking the question and examining the evidence, this in and of itself declares at the outset that Jesus Christ the person we are investigating is in fact within the zone of moral perfection and sinless virtue by reason of the question being seriously entertained at all. 

            We would not even open such an investigation into the life of any other exceptional person past or present, because we already correctly acknowledge that only one person in all of history has made a credible, serious claim to have lived a perfect life, and that one person is Jesus Christ.   

            No sane person in all of recorded history has made a viable and well-substantiated claim to embody and demonstrate the moral attributes of brilliant pure light, absolute goodness, and perfect virtue, of being, speaking, and acting like a Deity.

            Jesus Christ as Messiah is proactively anticipated for centuries in the biblical Old Testament messianic prophecies fulfilled in the life, teaching, and ministry of Jesus Christ recorded in the New Testament gospels.

            This raises the probing apologetics question into the divine origin of the composition of the Bible, Old Testament Judaism, and New Testament Christianity, of how in the first-place we would “come by” the capacity to accurately judge whether the life and ministry of Jesus Christ exhausts the extent of the possible outer-limits of moral perfection.

            How would we determine that our current tool-kit of known virtuous characteristics, of well-defined moral attributes, is absolutely exhaustive, adequate, and complete enough for the in-depth moral reasoning needed to evaluate the life of Jesus Christ? 

            How would we know whether there are not some additional, outstanding moral characteristics that we are unaware of, in this current earthly context, above and beyond those demonstrated and exemplified in the life and ministry of Jesus Christ that would raise the bar higher?

            How would we know there are not some missing moral attributes in our reality that might call into question the impeccable qualifications of Jesus to be the blemish-free and sinless atoning sacrifice for our sins?

            The point here is not whether God has some additional, divine characteristics applicable in heaven that would not concern us presently, that are not relevant here on earth, but whether or not Jesus the Son of God in a human body (Isa. 7:14, 9:6-7) exhausts the limits of moral perfection as the God/man in order to qualify as the Passover Lamb of God, one-time atoning sacrifice for sin.

            The question is how this full and varied palette of moral concepts had an origin and came into existence within the reality of human life, to be able to make this assessment.

            The important point in this discussion is the fantastic notion that we would have the moral reasoning tools in terms of human mental capacity, but also in the complementary existence of the broad array of abstract moral concepts defined through the language of discrete and distinctive words, to be able to make a valid decision for or against salvation faith in Jesus Christ at this highly advanced level.

From Pondering Our Creation: Christian Essays on Science and Faith.

Clearly Written Narratives for Framing Extras

            During construction of the sales models for multi-unit production housing the total dollar amount for carpentry framing extras, resulting from owner’s changes as well as corrections for architectural and structural engineering mistakes, can total in the thousands and tens of thousands of dollars depending upon the extent of these revisions.

            It simplifies the payment approval process in the field by the jobsite superintendent in terms of the recollection of past events, if each submittal for a framing extra to the contract contains a short narrative of exactly what the extra work entailed.

            This narrative should include the sales model unit or lot number, the reason for the extra work, who initiated the extra, the number of hours involved and the names of the framing carpenters doing the work, the hourly wage rate of these carpenters, and the cost of the materials.

            The jobsite superintendent or project manager can thus review and approve framing extras for the sales models, which can be numerous and extensive, without setting up two-hour meetings in the construction trailer with the framing contractor and their field foreman to verbally discuss the details and justification behind each individual extra each time a group of framing extras is submitted for payment.

            This narrative requirement should be included in the conditions for extras approval stated in the framing subcontract and verbally discussed upfront before the start of the work.

            It should be self-explanatory in its wording to enable the framing contractor to be able to meet this time-saving requirement for the builder. 

            If the field superintendent or project manager cannot understand the framing extra from the narrative, it should be returned to the framing contractor for more clarification.

            This general approach should be extended to all other subcontractors as well. 

            If extras are required to be submitted on standard change order forms supplied by the builder, this is an opportunity to state on the change order form the requirement for a detailed description of the extra work, in blank spaces labeling the information specifics required by the builder as briefly listed above, and any other required information that is project-specific and/or builder-specific. 

The Giant Asian Hornet, revised Part 4

Scientists Speaking Outside of Their Specialty are Laymen

            Some scientists have been telling us for decades that God is dead, and that the only reliable route to obtain truth is by the empirical evidences acquired through hard, bench-top science.

            Some scientists have been saying for decades that the clear evidence of design that we see in the natural world is not real, but is an illusion.

            The term-of-art popularly used by scientific materialists here is to say that the appearance of design in nature is an artifact…an artificially produced appearance created through human imagination.

            I can look through an electron microscope and see the nanotechnology of the molecular machinery at work inside a living cell, and conclude that the organized complexity I see occurring in action before my eyes is design-produced.

            I am not sure our modern culture has recognized clearly how potentially dangerous viewpoint bias is if carried to an extreme.

            The anti-god, materialistic worldview of Darwinism is on the brink of destroying the credibility of all human analytical ability because Darwinism exposes our susceptibility to the intimidating force of imposed group-think consensus that can even exist in science.         

            Confidence in the reliability of the reasoning capacity of the human mind/brain to arrive at genuine truth in science and in life connects directly to a non-material Mind/Being.

            From the Christian viewpoint, the God of the Bible created human beings with the capacity to enter into highly specified and detailed life-scripts as patterned for us in the biblical narrative stories of faith from Abraham through Paul, based upon a dependable and reliable confidence in our innate intellectual and moral reasoning ability.

            Atheism extended to its logical end-point reduces the human mind/brain to a mere material entity produced through random and undirected processes, having no firm basis to rely upon its reasoning capacity.  

            One contention of this book is that modern scientific investigation was always going to arrive at a point in time when it reached the inescapable recognition of the need for a Designing Intelligent Agent.

            The organized complexity of the information content now reveals scientifically an architectural and engineering Artisan/God of incomparable precision at the highest standards of craftsmanship.

            This Artisan has complete mastery of the database of information to create everything material and non-material in existence in the universe, because He Himself created all of this information.

            Because the natural world was always this complex,starting at the Big Bang creation of the universe 13.7-billion years ago and the formation of our planet earth 4.5-billion years ago, this paradigm-changing epiphany was waiting all this time for human scientific discovery to catch-up. 

            The functional coherence of specified complexity now points to intelligent design as the only remaining plausible option, in contradiction to the reasonableness of scientific materialism thrust forward by Darwinian evolution in 1859 based upon the database of knowledge understood at that time. 

            One point that is easily overlooked in the evolution versus creation debate, is that by making the natural world orderly and intelligible, and by having human beings with the capacity to do science, God is taking the risk that we might discover that He was sloppy, slip-shod, and incompetent as an architect and engineer.

            A God who was not completely confident about the quality of His workmanship credentials, would never upon-up the first sentence in the Bible by saying: “In the beginning God created the heavens and the earth,” knowing full-well that a beginning point in time for the creation of the universe would not be validated by science, until at the relatively late point in time in 1929 in the discovery of an expanding universe.   

            In my career in building construction, I learned early the hard-way in the customer service phase of new housing construction as a jobsite superintendent, that if a particular condominium unit or house was not ready to be shown to the homebuyer during the formal walkthrough prior to occupancy, that the best approach was to ask the sales staff to reschedule the walkthrough a few days later.

            This gave myself and the customer service prep-crew time to fine-tune the unit, so that the walkthrough would produce from zero to two or three minor repairs at most, creating satisfied new homebuyers and general good-will throughout the remaining warranty period.

            There was no point in prematurely conducting the walkthrough with a unit that was not ready, producing two or three pages of needed repairs identified by the disappointed and dissatisfied new homebuyer.

            There is no reason in a purely matter and energy universe that the natural world would be orderly and intelligible to human beings having the capacity to do science.

            The God of the Bible has in essence invited us to do a walkthrough through the human scientific enterprise.

            One of the key observations coming from modern science today is that everywhere we look, as science digs deeper and deeper into the causations behind the phenomena in the natural world, the specified complexity exhibited in nature wins the awe and admiration of atheist and theist alike.

Scientific Information is Easily Accessible Today

            In doing the research for this book, I sense that the general populace in countries like the United States are two or three decades behind where science today actually is.

            I sense that the general populace is still somewhere back in the 1990’s, accepting the assertion by Carl Sagan promoting the idea of the Principle of Mediocrity that the earth is an insignificant, pale blue dot lost in a vast universe, and the assertion by the Harvard paleontologist Stephen J. Gould that science and God cannot overlap, but belong in entirely different, competing categories of reality.

            A person needs to invest only about two hours to get caught-up with where science is today, in some of the key critical areas that influence our worldview philosophy for life.

            This can easily be achieved for those people who have access to the Internet (via smart phone, computer, or other electronic device), and are willing to watch in succession, with coffee or tea breaks in-between, the presentations by Edward Murphy discussing the standard theory of the origin of the elements of the Periodic Table[1], then Gunter Bechly describing the discontinuities in the fossil record[2], and Stephen C. Meyer explaining the quantum mechanics at the Big Bang[3], to see that the evidences for random and undirected processes still being put-forward by the philosophy of scientific materialism, are no longer reasonably plausible.

            But for a real jolt forward by several decades to reach the current science in the field of molecular biochemistry (what it takes to create life), watch Scientists Are Clueless on the Origin of Life, Lecture @ Andrews University (Sept. 11, 2020) featuring Dr. James Tour on YouTube.

Prior Fitness Coordinates Too Many Complex Systems of Information that are Independent from Each Other

               One of the themes of this book is that the materialistic explanations using random and undirected processes to achieve function and fit, through the method of gradual, incremental, small-step, progressive development, no longer makes sense.

            The information content underlying the natural world is too complex to support materialism.

            When we factor-in the concept of the prior fitness of the biodiversity and environmental ecosystems required to be in-place to support each new introduction of major innovations in the living and non-living world,[4] the worldview of naturalistic materialism can no longer be considered a viable candidate to explain the ultimate reality of existence.

            When I watch on the Internet the 2014 presentation by Aoife McLysaght[5] in defense of modern Darwinian evolution, I run into the same brick-wall I encountered reading Jerry A. Coyne’s book.

            About five minutes into this excellent presentation, I sense that Dr. McLysaght is unwittingly making a cumulative case argument for intelligent agency rather than historical Darwinian evolution, so brilliantly marvelous is the scope and breadth of the natural world she is describing.

            To a modern, discriminating audience using critical-thinking, merely exchanging the phrase “intelligent designing agency” with the substitute word “evolution” is a semantics slight-of-hand card-trick that is apparently undetectable to scientific materialists.

            If intelligent agency is disallowed according to the philosophical worldview of naturalistic materialism, then the only word capable of expressing the secular version of agency is evolution.

            But merely saying something, does not make it so.

            The classic statement made in 1988 by Francis Crick to scientists that they must “constantly keep in mind that what they see was not designed, but rather evolved,”[6] in just a few short years has now become obsolete.

            Information about the natural world has exponentially exploded that fast.

            Whenever phenomena in nature are described thoroughly using their full informational content discovered through science, the more and more obvious becomes the design element requiring agency, that transcends above and pushes out a purely materialistic explanation through evolution.

            How do you get multi-cellular green algae floating on top of the ancient oceans, having whatever small number of different cell-types biologists and paleontologists agree upon today, to make the leap from there to branch-off into becoming the next iteration of being a Precambrian jellyfish floating near the surface of the ancient oceans, considered by some scientists today to possess around 10 to 12 different cell-types[7] to support their architectural body-plans?  

            How do you get from there to the introduction of the new and different architectural body-plans and lifestyle habits of the creatures of the Cambrian Explosion, exhibiting the dynamic movement of predator/prey relationships within more complex biodiversity and ecosystems, that appear suddenly in the geological record around 535-million years ago?

            These new and novel creatures are estimated to have between 30-40 different cell-types in support of their new and active body-plans and lifestyle habits, without any lead-up, intermediate precursors found in the Precambrian rock/sediment strata, or in imaginative fictional contemplation.

            Imposing a skeletal explanatory framework over the fossil record, of gradually continuous biological development chopped-up into introducing one new cell-type at a time, is unsupported by the fact-based evidence we see all around us today in the natural world of well-defined living organisms having discontinuous gaps between them, that even children can recognize.

            In a learning game with young children, we point to various animals in a book as they answer that this picture is of an elephant and that picture is of a dog, cat, or horse.  They recognize the well-defined differences between each animal even before they stumble over correctly pronouncing the names hippopotamus or rhinoceros.

            As we look out at the natural living world today, we do not see a multitude of forms all blending together into continuous linkages, that would negate young children from being able at first-glance to separate them into their unique names.  

            This was the case in 1859 as it is today.

            An argument can be made that it was the atheism within naturalistic materialism that falsely interpreted the data at that time-period, and not the empirical, fact-based evidence itself.

            To suggest instead an alternative skeletal explanatory framework over the geological data and the fossil record of functional end-point outcomes in biology that are achieved by the input of blocks of information in clustered groups, this requires the existence of an Intelligent Designing Agent as the architect and builder of the natural living and non-living world.

            Again, this is unacceptable to the worldview of scientific materialism.

            In the final analysis, if possession of the facts does not lead to near-perfect conclusions clearly apparent to nearly everyone, this introduces a gray area of discretionary judgment into the equation of the search for truth in science and in human living, which is inexplicable in a purely material universe.

            If the final takeaway after five-hundred years of the Scientific Revolution is that after most of the evidence regarding the natural world is in…has been acquired…that as smart as we humans think humans are, if we still need a smarter God to lead and guide us into genuine truth in all of the realms of existence (Jn. 16:13), this would truly be a colossal discovery.   

From Pondering Our Creation: Christian Essays on Science and Faith.

[1] “The Origin of the Elements” by Jefferson Lab, Nov. 20, 2012 with Dr. Edward Murphy, University of Virginia, on You Tube.

[2] Fossil Discontinuities: Refutation of Darwinism & Confirmation of Intelligent Design—Gunter Bechly, published Oct. 11, 2018 on You Tube by FOCLOnline.

[3] Watch the Internet interview on You Tube: The Return of the God Hypothesis: Interview with Stephen Meyer.  Streamed live on May 13, 2020, Dr. Sean McDowell.

[4] See “The Fine Tuning of Nature for the Major Innovations in the History of Life” by Dr. Michael Denton, published Oct. 16, 2019 on YouTube by Zefrum fur BioKomplexitat & Natur Teleologie.

[5] Copy number variation and the secret of life—with Aoife McLysaght, produced by The Royal Institution, May 27, 2014, on You Tube.

[6] Francis Crick, What Mad Pursuit: A Personal View of Scientific Discovery (New York: Basic Books, 1998), 138.

[7] On the Origin of Phyla—Interviews with Dr. James Valentine, by Access Research Network, published on Oct. 22, 20`4, on You Tube.

Revise Contracts After the Sales Models

            Every housing construction project is slightly different, and it is difficult to anticipate and cover every activity in the subcontracts. Some items are missed on the plans, some changes are made to the houses by the company owners or the interior design/marketing department, and some things are determined to be unnecessary and thus dropped.

            All these changes generate paperwork for the jobsite superintendent because they are not covered in the contracts and people must be paid for their work.

            After the sales models are complete, and during the purchasing stage prior to the start of the first phase of the production units for large projects, the subcontracts should be revised to include changes and extra work added to the construction so that the additional paperwork does not carry through the entire project.

            If the amount of extra work-order paperwork, time-and-material monitoring, and accounting are kept to the absolute minimum, the jobsite superintendent can then be out in the field running the construction rather than stuck in the trailer filling-out paperwork. 

%d bloggers like this: