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Category Archives: archaeology
Can Christianity & Science Be Compatible
We have published the following article over at Hub.com We hope you will visit our new page there as we will be doing a lot of original writing at that site over the next few weeks.
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This is the age-old question
There are a lot of people, including many who identify as Christian, who like to do science. They are intrigued by the exploration, the investigation and they enjoy the time they discover new and wonderful items.
Yet science does not always agree with the Bible or Christianity. This contradiction forces many people to alter their thinking. Most of the time, these people decide to side with science because they ignore the all-knowing God behind the Bible.
They think that the Christian scriptures were penned by sheep and goat herders and not the God who created everything. This decision often turns discussions about Christianity and science into heated debates where emotions and insults rule.
These heated discussions often make enemies between the two groups and leave many observers wondering who is right. There is a way to make science and Christianity compatible but first we need to discuss the nature of the two opposing camps.
What is science
Science is supposed to be the investigative tool of life that helps people find answers to certain difficult questions. Yet its nature is often its biggest hindrance as science is designed to look for natural answers only. Anything outside of those boundaries did not take place, according to many science supporters.
Also, science focuses on finding the best explanation for different events and the existence of unexplainable objects. It is not focused on or willing to search for the truth and provide concrete answers. In fact, scientists continue to ask questions even when the answers have been discovered.
Plus, it looks for physical evidence to provide the proof the scientist needs to finally accept the existence of certain events or discoveries. In a nutshell, this is what drives science.
What is Christianity
Christianity is a faith whose foundation is built on the truth and finding the truth. The Bible talks about how Christians will know the truth and that they have help in reaching that objective. It is a lifestyle that requires following divine principles, guidelines, instructions and commands.
Physical evidence is not needed for adherent to believe the Bible. Love is defined in part as believing all things, thus if the Christian loves God, they believe his words. What science has to say does not matter because the Christian knows that God does not lie and would not lead his creation astray.
In the Christians’ eyes, science is not an evil that must be destroyed. It is a tool that has been mishandled by unbelievers who have been deceived and misled.
If Christians compromise
If the Christian compromises and accepts science in its present form, then they are not representing the Christian faith correctly. They are making some very troubling and disheartening statements about the faith and God.
First, if they accept certain scientific theories, the Christian is saying that fallible men and women know more than God does. Second, they are saying that God cannot communicate his actions to his people. Third, they are saying that the Bible is incorrect and in need of correction by people who do not have the truth.
All these messages, and many more, basically tell the unbelieving world that Christianity is not worth their time, lives or faith. It has no answers to help them in their lives and Go di snot the all-powerful God he says he is.
If scientists compromise
The ramifications of an unbelieving scientist compromising with Christianity is not as severe. They do not give up doing science. They do not give up exploring or answering questions and so on. What happens is that science gets better. It has proven morality rules added to the field to guide the work and keep it honest.
The scientists stop investigating once they have discovered the truth. There are no endless experiments trying to answer the same questions over and over. They save time, money and energy. False theories are discarded, and everyone gets to the truth a lot quicker.
Science does not lose credibility or impact if it adopts Christian ways. The field becomes better and stops misleading the public. It can uncover hoaxes a lot faster as well and lead people away from misinformation.
To answer the question
In answering the main question, there is only one answer that is rational, logical and correct. For science and Christianity to be compatible it is science that has to make the sacrifice and give up its arrogant, selfish, sinful ways and let God come into the field to direct it.
If Christians did it, that would mean that they have left the faith to adopt non-biblical ways which is a sin in God’s eyes. Science is basically secular and anything that does not believe in God does not have God or the truth guiding it. They have evil deceiving them and evil does not lead its adherents to the truth.
It only gives them partial truth to make sure they remain outside of God and away from the truth. Because science is designed to be outside of God, it is in need of a savior and that means that the unbelieving scientists must see the error of their ways and repent of their sins.
That is the only way for science, in its current form, and Christianity can be compatible. At present the two entities are striving for different goals and different answers. Neither can be made compatible with the other. One of them must change and it cannot be Christianity.
If Christianity changes, then the message of hope and the good news would be lost, and it would not be Christianity any more. No one would want to follow a faith that denies its own God and calls him weak, incapable and a liar.
Some final words
It is best for Christian scientists to stop trying to make science compatible with Christianity. It just won’t be possible to do while science operates under its current format.
This does not mean that Christians cannot do science. It just means they need to follow God and his ways while they do their scientific work. This conclusion also does not mean that the Christian cannot use technology etc. The believer just has to put that use in the proper perspective and not have it seen as greater than God.
Finally, the Christian has to realize is that the unbelieving scientist is not the light unto the church or Christianity. It is the Christian scientist who has to bring the light of God to the dark scientific world, if science is going to be conducted correctly
All science is not good science. The research field needs proper ethics, morals and guidelines if it wants to be good and compatible with Christianity.
Dead Sea Scroll Hint
As you are aware we are skeptical of the announcements archaeologists make these days. This is another one we are having doubts about
Two new caves that could possibly contain Dead Sea Scrolls, the oldest biblical texts in existence, have been discovered in the West Bank in Israel.
Archaeologists working near Qumran have called the caves 53b and 53c, Live Science reported, and are investigating them for what could turn out to be new important finds connected to the earliest days of the Bible.
Of course they have to say it that way because they need to continue to fuel interest. We prefer they say ‘We do not know and we are still looking’.
The researchers were able to find a bronze cooking pot and “large amounts of pottery representing store jars, flasks, cups and cooking pots, and [the researchers also found] fragments of woven textiles, braided ropes and string.” An oil lamp near the cave was also discovered.
“We have not analyzed all of the pottery from this cave (53b), so we do not know if a scroll jar was present,” said Price.
We will leave it up to your judgment to decide if they are hot on the trail of more scrolls after a 71 year silence. As for us, we will withhold judgment until we hear more. New Dead Sea Scrolls, depending on their contents, may hold some more information but how important tha information is remains to be seen.
What is Wrong with This Discovery?
Scientists have found that a “superheated blast from the skies” destroyed cities near the Dead Sea 3,700 years ago, which biblical analysts are saying echoes the destruction of Sodom.
You may say we should be happy that science has validated a biblical account. We aren’t for there is one glaring error that undermines and embarrasses the archaeologists who say this confirms Sodom and Gomorrah’s destruction
he scientists discovered radiocarbon dating and unearthed minerals that instantly crystallized at high temperatures at what used to be cities and farming settlements north of the Dead Sea, suggesting that a massive air-burst, possibly by a meteor, destroyed communities in a 15-mile-wide circular plain.
No, the bold words are not the glaring error. It is a minor assumption that works against the credibility of the archaeologists. There is no evidence to suggest a meteor was what God used to destroy the cities. Looking for natural answers for supernatural events is always misleading and prone to error.
Silva said that following the cataclysmic event, people did not return to the region for 600 to 700 years.
Again this is not the glaring error. This is a bigger mistake than the previous one as the destruction of Sodom, Gomorrah, and the other cities was not a temporary event. It was a forever event. People did not return to live in the area at all. Jude and Peter give us the clues to this conclusion.
The destruction not only of Tall el-Hammam (Sodom), but also its neighbors (Gomorrah and the other cities of the plain) was most likely caused by a meteoritic airburst event,” the authors added.
This is the glaring error. We know that the location was mentioned previously to this in the article but this was the better paragraph to quote. Tall el-Hammam is not Sodom. It is too far north and does not contain one piece of evidence to verify that it is Sodom. What makes this identification and declaration worse is that the archaeologists making the claims are supposed to be Christian.
There is no real debate. Sodom is down in the Numeria & Bab edh-Dhra region of the south-eastern part of the Dead Sea. It is the only location that meets all biblical criteria. When science and archaeology are used for personal agendas, nothing good can really come of the misuse. At least for Christians. These things make it harder for true Christians to reach the lost.
Archaeology Gone Bad
You may have heard of this discovery
Archeologists have discovered a 1,500-year-old painting of Jesus they say is the oldest known depiction in Israel of Christ being baptized.
The painting was found inside a church in the Negev Desert of southern Israel and dates to the Byzantine empire. The church was located in the village of Shivta.
“The discovery of this painting is extremely important,” a paper in the journal Antiquity said. “Thus far, it is the only in situ baptism-of-Christ scene to date confidently to the pre-iconoclastic Holy Land.”
Yet we have one pressing question– How do they know it is of Jesus? if the painting was done 500 years after Christ’s baptism how would the painter know he captured Jesus ‘look? How do archaeologists know it is of Jesus? We didn’t find answers to those questions in the above article so we went searching. One answer we did find came from the following link:
https://www.foxnews.com/science/jesus-face-uncovered-at-ancient-church-in-the-israeli-desert
The archaeologists’ answer is:
The painting was briefly noted in the 1920s, but has now undergone more analysis. In their study, the University of Haifa archaeologists explain that Christ is depicted next to a much larger figure, which is probably John the Baptist. “The location of the scene – above the [church’s] crucifix-shaped Baptist font – suggests its identification as the baptism of Christ,” said the study’s authors.
It doesn’t make sense as John the Baptist and Jesus were very close to each other in age and Jesus was not baptized as a youth. He was roughly 30 years of age. Also, why would the location of the painting indicate or suggest it was of Jesus? There is no rhyme nor reason to draw that conclusion.
Archaeology does go bad when archaeologists take such blatant liberties with different discoveries
Experts describe the painting’s discovery as extremely important, noting that it predates the religious iconography used in the Orthodox Christian Church. “Thus far, it is the only in situ baptism-of-Christ scene to date confidently to the pre-iconoclastic Holy Land,” they said in the study. “Therefore, it can illuminate Byzantine Shivta’s Christian community and Early Christian art across the region.”
First, they have to prove that the subject being baptized is Jesus. This they cannot do at this time and with such scant information. There are plenty of other purposes behind that painting but to automatically assume that it is Jesus is ridiculous and embarrasses archaeology and archaeologists.
The second link mentions a few other recent discoveries archaeologists have made. We reserve judgment n their conclusions.
What is in a Date
We are not talking about the fruit. We are talking about a scientific dating system that enjoys producing unrealistic dates for human history
A patchy, weathered painting of a beast daubed on the wall of a limestone cave in Borneo may be the oldest known example of figurative rock art, say researchers who dated the work.
Faded and fractured, the reddish-orange image depicts a plump but slender-legged animal, probably a species of wild cattle that still lives on the island, or simply dinner in the eyes of the artist, if one streak of ochre that resembles a spear protruding from its flank is any guide.
The animal is one of a trio of large creatures that adorn a wall in the Lubang Jeriji Saléh cave in the East Kalimantan province of Indonesian Borneo. The region’s rock art, which amounts to thousands of paintings in limestone caves, has been studied since 1994 when the images were first spotted by the French explorer Luc-Henri Fage.
The researchers come up with a 40,000 year date for the paintings using what is called uranium series analysis. If you want to know what that is just click the following link
https://nvlpubs.nist.gov/nistpubs/jres/122/jres.122.044.pdf
This dating system is just another way for secular scientists to justify their rejection of the truth. It is their way to say that creation did not take place 6 to 10,000 years ago. Scientists and other unbelievers claim that their dating systems are independent. But when you take a hard and close look at their dating systems you will see that they are all created by unbelievers using fallible deceived thinking which cannot verify one claim about the dating systems.
Since these dating systems all come from the same source, they are hardly independent and hardly free from error. Even calibration won’t help because the dating systems used to calibrate other dating systems also come from unbelieving sources. There is no independence found in any of the dating systems.
But there is room for doubt. Writing in the journal Nature, the researchers concede that the crusts they analysed had formed on top of a heavily weathered part of the animal painting and that pigment analyses could not distinguish the underlying paint from that of a nearby mulberry-coloured hand stencil.
At least they are honest but that won’t help they case or their cause. Nothing in this solar system existed 40,000 years ago. If we give an honest look at the development of human civilization, let’s use America as an example, why would it take humans 40,000 years to develop, when America went from the stone age to the nuclear age in just over 300 years.
The reasoning is not logical and researchers have to totally dumb down humans to brute beasts to even get close to making any logical arguments about human development. If humans took so long to develop why then did the Minoan society have flush toilets, 2 and 3 floor apartments and homes, hot and cold running water and a lot more modern-day technological advances roughly 3,500 years ago? Why did the ancient societies discovered in India, Europe and other places have grid patterns for their cities, modern day type sewers and more, thousands of years before the current modern era?
Or why did the ancient Babylonians use time capsules, a social security system long before America was a hint in Britain’s eyes? No, evolutionary arguments do not make sense nor can they explain anything about human development. Archaeology alone interferes with their theories. As a side note, it is funny that an anthropologist will find a bone or two near the surface of the earth and declare it too be millions of years old based on the dirt surrounding the discovery.
But an archaeologist digging a mile or to away and goes down over 100 feet only gets dirt dating to a few thousand years ago. Sorry but tectonic plates or other similar theories, pushing up dirt is not a realistic explanation, especially when skeletons are found in pristine condition in that supposed million+ year old dirt. Evolutionary theories do not make sense and neither does the dating of that cave painting.
The work suggests that figurative art may have emerged in south-east Asia and Europe at about the same time,
No the work does not suggest that. The researchers are suggesting that. They have no way to verify that thinking nor do they have any means to determine where cave painting or figurative art originated or who taught who the concept. What they have is paintings done by someone who lived after the creation of the world that used cave walls to tell a story, describe a hunt, graffiti or numerous other explanations for the painting’s existence
Keep in mind that evolutionists also cannot verify one evolutionary claim they make. They cannot produce one piece of verifiable credible and legitimate evidence showing that humans and life developed the way they say it developed. Yet the Bible is dismissed even though not one scientific, archaeological or other research field discovery has yet to prove the Bible false.
We reject that date for the cave paintings and that dating system. They only have one piece of supposed evidence, the date they claim, to justify their conclusions. We have more evidence for Noah’s flood than that. All this does is make the cave painting dating a fairy tale. There is no corroborating evidence supporting the date or the claims made by the researchers. Especially from non-evolutionary sources.
If the supposed supporting evidence comes from evolutionists, then that does not make the new evidence independent. It is like-minded people trying desperately to support their unbelief in the Bible and shore up their nagging doubts that come with the evolutionary theory.
But he is cautious about the dating in the latest study. “Sadly, this work says more about academic competition and the scramble for early dates than it does the emergence of art,” he said. “I welcome the impressive discovery and documentation of a major early art region, but I have considerable reservations about the pertinence of the dated samples to the art beneath. It is not made clear that the oldest minimum ages are clearly and unambiguously related to the figurative art.”
We are not alone in our dissent but our view comes from the truth found in the bible and won’t change when evolutionists wave amagic wand and claim they have supporting evidence. Evolutionists are not promoting the truth, only demonstrating their foolishness by not believing the words of God.
Stick to the Truth
In Walsh’s video published by The Daily Wire on YouTube last week, he argued that although he doesn’t “question the sincerity or the faithfulness of six-day Creationist folks,” he positioned that when the belief is preached, it can “inadvertently do some harm” and “put obstacles in the way, especially for non-believers.”
When talking about the Bible it is best to stick to the truth. Paul told us that the unbeliever cannot do anything against the truth. The truth does not do any harm to evangelism. Misrepresenting what the Bible says does the harm. If you tell the truth, the only person putting obstacles in the way of unbelievers converting is evil.
Faith and love means that you believe God. If God said he created in 6 24 hour days then our faith and our love have us siding with God over sinful man and his words.
If you state something about the Bible that the Bible does not say, then you are not stating what God said but what you want to believe. You are not evangelizing someone to God’s faith but your own version of it. You are communicating that God cannot even get his own act of creation correct. Who would want to believe in a God like that and who would want to adopt a faith where the adherents do not even believe their own God?
The truth is, God created in 6 24 hour days just like he said. There was no failure by God to communicate his creative act to his biblical writers and their was no altering the creative act because the biblical writers did not understand any alternatives. They wrote what God told them he did and since God cannot lie, there are no alternatives to the creation accounts found in Genesis.
The people who are doing harm and creating obstacles are those who adopt and promote alternatives to the truth.
