God vs. Science

Professor of Philosophy: In hopes that all our college students are able to discern this well, let me explain the problem science has with religion.

The atheist professor of Philosophy pauses before his class and then asks one of His new students to stand.

'You're a Christian, aren't you, son?'

'Yes sir,' the student says.

'So you believe in God?'

'Absolutely. '

'Is God good?'
'Sure! God's good.'
'Is God all-powerful? Can God do anything?'
'Yes'

'Are you good or evil?'
'The Bible says I'm evil.'

The professor grins knowingly. 'Aha! The Bible! He considers for a Moment. 'Here's one for you. Let's say there's a sick person over here and you can cure him. You can do it. Would you help him? Would you try?'

'Yes sir, I would.'
'So you're good...!'
'I wouldn't say that.'

'But why not say that? You'd help a sick and maimed person if you could. Most of us would if we could. But God doesn't.'

The student does not answer, so the professor continues. 'He doesn't, does He? My brother was a Christian who died of cancer, even though he prayed to Jesus to heal him. How is this Jesus good? Can you answer that one?'

The student remains silent. 'No, you can't, can you?� the professor says. He takes a sip of water from a glass on his desk to give the student time to relax. 'Let's start again, young fella. Is God good?'

'Er..yes,' the student says.
Is Satan good?'

The student doesn't hesitate on this one. 'No.'
'Then where does Satan come from?'
The student falters. 'From God'

'That's right. God made Satan, didn't he? Tell me, son. Is there Evil in this world?'
'Yes, sir.'

'Evil's everywhere, isn't it? And God did make everything, correct?'
'Yes'

'So who created evil?' The professor continued, 'If God created Everything, then God created evil, since evil exists, and according to the principle that our works define who we are, then God is evil.'

Again, the student has no answer. 'Is there sickness? Immorality? Hatred? Ugliness? All these terrible things, do they exist in this world?'

The student squirms on his feet. 'Yes.'

'So who created them?'

The student does not answer again, so the professor repeats his question. 'Who created them?' There is still no answer. Suddenly the lecturer breaks away to pace in front of the classroom. The class is mesmerized. 'Tell me,' he continues onto another student. 'Do you believe in Jesus Christ, son?'

The student's voice betrays him and cracks. 'Yes, professor, I do.'

The old man stops pacing. 'Science says you have five senses you use to Identify and observe the world around you. Have you ever seen Jesus?'

'No sir. I've never seen Him.'

'Then tell us if you've ever heard your Jesus?'

'No, sir, I have not.'

'Have you ever felt your Jesus, tasted your Jesus or smelled your Jesus? Have you ever had any sensory perception of Jesus Christ, Or, God for that matter?'

'No, sir, I'm afraid I haven't.'

'Yet you still believe in him?'
'Yes'

'According to the rules of empirical, testable, demonstrable protocol, science says your God doesn't exist. What do you say to that, Son?'

'Nothing,' the student replies. 'I only have my faith.'

'Yes, faith,' the professor repeats. 'And that is the problem science has with God. There is no evidence, only faith.'

The student stands quietly for a moment, before asking a question of His own. 'Professor, is there such thing as heat?'

'Yes.'
'And is there such a thing as cold?'
'Yes, son, there's cold too.'
'No sir, there isn't.'

The professor turns to face the student, obviously interested. The room suddenly becomes very quiet.

The student begins to explain. 'You can have lots of heat, even more heat, super-heat, mega-heat, unlimited heat, white heat, a little heat or no heat, but we don't have anything called 'cold'. We can hit down to 458 degrees below zero, which is no heat, but we can't go any further after that. There is no such thing as cold; otherwise we would be able to go colder than the lowest -458 degrees. Everybody or object is susceptible to study when it has or transmits energy, and heat is what makes a body or matter have or transmit energy. Absolute zero (-458 F) is the total absence of heat. You see, sir, cold is only a word we use to describe the absence of heat. We cannot measure cold. Heat we can measure in thermal units because heat is energy. Cold is not the opposite of heat, sir, just the absence of it.'

Silence across the room. A pen drops somewhere in the classroom, sounding like a hammer.

'What about darkness, professor. Is there such a thing as darkness?'
'Yes,' the professor replies without hesitation. 'What is night if it isn't darkness?'

'You're wrong again, sir. Darkness is not something; it is the absence of something. You can have low light, normal light, bright light, flashing light, but if you have no light constantly you have nothing and it's called darkness, isn't it? That's the meaning we use to define the word. In reality, darkness isn't. If it were, you would be able to make darkness darker, wouldn't you?'

The professor begins to smile at the student in front of him. This will be a good semester. 'So what point are you making, young man?'

'Yes, professor. My point is, your philosophical premise is flawed to start with, and so your conclusion must also be flawed.'

The professor's face cannot hide his surprise this time. 'Flawed? Can you explain how?'

'You are working on the premise of duality,' the student explains. 'You argue that there is life and then there's death; a good God and a bad God.

You are viewing the concept of God as something finite, something we can measure. Sir, science can't even explain a thought.' 'It uses electricity and magnetism, but has never seen, much less fully understood either one.

To view death as the opposite of life is to be ignorant of the fact that death cannot exist as a substantive thing. Death is not the opposite of life, just the absence of it.' 'Now tell me, professor. Do you teach your students that they evolved from a monkey?'

'If you are referring to the natural evolutionary process, young man, yes, of course I do.' 'Have you ever observed evolution with your own eyes, sir?'

The professor begins to shake his head, still smiling, as he realizes where the argument is going. A very good semester, indeed.

'Since no one has ever observed the process of evolution at work and cannot even prove that this process is an on-going endeavor, are you not teaching your opinion, sir? Are you now not a scientist, but a preacher?'

The class is in uproar. The student remains silent until the commotion has subsided. 'To continue the point you were making earlier to the other student, let me give you an example of what I mean.'

The student looks around the room. 'Is there anyone in the class who has ever seen the professor's brain?' The class breaks out into laughter. 'Is there anyone here who has ever heard the professor's brain, felt the professor's brain, touched or smelled the professor's brain? No one appears to have done so. So, according to the established rules of empirical, stable, demonstrable protocol, science says that you have no brain, with all due respect, sir.' 'So if science says you have no brain, how can we trust your lectures, sir?'

Now the room is silent. The professor just stares at the student, his face unreadable. Finally, after what seems an eternity, the old man answers. 'I guess you'll have to take them on faith.'

'Now, you accept that there is faith, and, in fact, faith exists with life,' the student continues. 'Now, sir, is there such a thing as evil?'

Now uncertain, the professor responds, 'Of course, there is. We see it everyday. It is in the daily example of man's inhumanity to man. It is in the multitude of crime and violence everywhere in the world. These manifestations are nothing else but evil.'

To this the student replied, 'Evil does not exist sir, or at least it does not exist unto itself. Evil is simply the absence of God. It is just like darkness and cold, a word that man has created to describe the absence of God. God did not create evil. Evil is the result of what happens when man does not have God's love present in his heart. It's like the cold that comes when there is no heat or the darkness that comes when there is no light.'

The professor sat down.

The student was Albert Einstein

Albert Einstein wrote a book titled "God vs Science" in 1921. (Although a good response, there appears to be no evidence that Einstein authored this)

Archer

An Attempt

Attempting to post to our blog from the phone. If this works I'll try pictures next.

Charity's Bison

The alarm rang at 5:30 am. Up and eat, dress the kids, get them to the friends house, leaving later than we wanted to... that seems to be the way it goes. It was above zero when we left home, in Delta it was about -15 with 20 mph winds and horizontal snow. It was chilly! We spotted Bison about a mile from the truck. We had to skirt a long way around them to get down wind (about 2 miles). When we got down wind from them half of the bison moved to the back side of a hedge row and we couldn't sneak down the back side. We had to wait for the bison to all move to one side of the hedge row before we could sneak in. It was a cold wait! We were able to sneak within 100 yards of about 60 Bison (we could only see a couple however). Charity's Bison walked out into the field all by its self, after she shot it 60 other Bison came flying out of the hedge row. We had to yell at them to get them to leave before we could go near the Bison. She shot it around 2:30 we were able to clean it and paritally skin it before we had to go back to the truck to warm up (charity had on uninsulated cross country ski shoes). We were sure it was a cow before she shot but were super nervous until we were able to get up and confirm it for sure. Charity had a cow tag and if we accidentally shot a young bull we would have still had to cut it all up, but then we would have had to give it over to the wildlife trooper and we would have had a $200-500 fine for shooting the wrong animal. We were releived when we were able to confirm it was a cow. Charity was shooting at it and I was supposed to start shooting right after her first shot (they can go miles even with fatal shots) but my gun wouldn't fire so I just watched her shoot away. I checked my gun after I saw the Bison go down and found my firing pin was frozen. Good thing she didn't stop shooting till it dropped! It was 6:30 by the time we had it all skinned and quarterd. We were so worn out from walking about 8 miles in total that we could hardly pull the sled with meat in it. I was able to get ahold of a co worker who lived about 30 miles away to borrow a snow mobile. It took longer to go get the snow machine, load and unload it than it did to pull the meat to the truck. It was about 11:30 by the time we had the snow machine back to Jason's house and could head toward home. We crawled into bed around 2:30 am after stopping to pick up the baby. We are definately sore and tired today but happy to be done chasing Bison through knee deep half crusted snow drifts for miles and miles!

Charity had a cow tag. This was a really old cow, we are guessing atleast 6 or 7 years old.

The bison is massive. In all the photos we are leaning right against it, not sitting behind it a bit to make it look bigger. The rifle is about 39" that shows how thick it was.

This photo turned out blurry as did all the photos I tried to take with the timer. Charity wanted some pictures with her good looking guide! It was still snowing a little bit and pushing -30F by now so we were limited in how many pictures we could take before the camera would shut off and our hands would get cold. You can see all the frost on my face.

The horn on this side is perfectly round like a cresent moon, the other side was broken or worn down a ways and was more L shaped. One of the hardest parts was getting the rib cage and head & hide up into the back of the truck. I am pretty sore from pushing the bison up into picture pose postion and moving it over from side to side to get it quartered.

It was amazing how much fat was on this bison. It was a couple of inches thick especiall up on the hump area. You can see how frosty Charity's face mask is in the photo. The rib cage was still steaming about 4.5 hours after we had it quartered. The stomache meat is almost an inch thick. The meat in the diaphram was almost 1.5 thick. It is amazing how much meat is on it.

The two hind quarters and two front quarters were several hundred pounds. The rib cage (suprisingly) seemed to be almost as heavy as the 4 quarters together. The head was massive and with the entire hide attached probably was pushing 125 lbs.

Christmas!

Few more garage photos

Progress.
Progress.

Almost there...

Down to the last row of my last log pile!

Finished walls! Not too bad for less than a weeks worth of work spread out over a month. Lumber for the truss's under the blue tarp in the foreground.

First pattern truss cut and layed out. The truss's will have an 8' x 16' x 36' room in them. This room will hopefully be used for some storage and a store/office for my log work, furniture, lamps, clocks, etc.

Silly Boys

Wrangell and Archer are morning boys.

Stryder eating beets.

Wrangell trying to keep up with Stryder.

Wrangell likes to chase stryder with an old caribou head.

Stryder finally got brave enough to touch the dead caribou head.

Archer is rearing to go. I think he really wishes he can get up and run around with the boys.

Archer is starting to get some baby fat. Everyone says he's so small, but he is about double his birth weight a few months ago.

Some begining garage photos

Setting up the bandsaw mill we borrowed from a fellow Pensylvanian turned Alaskan.

Just finished moving a log with Roger peeling them in the background.

Matt moving more logs. We milled over 300 8-16' logs for the garage.

Showing Roger how to set the mill while between logs.

Three days of preparation for a garage slab. Leveling the pad with sand. Laying out 2" of foam. Laying out vapor barier, Setting slab and footer forms, laying out remesh, rebar, and pex tubing.

Footer and half the slab completed. It was much easier this time than when we did the house. We bought the cement and had trucks bring it. The hard part was getting 5 yards of cement within 30 mins and rushing to work it out.

Finished Slab.

PIcs of the Kiddos

Archer is starting to smile more and more!

Archer enjoys listening to his brothers make lots of noise. He is also a morning boy.

Two eating carrots and one reading a bible...

Archer while still in the hospital. He was awake and observant pretty quick.

The joys of a large cardboard box.

Boys with new hats and ballon creatures... Waiting for Matt, Kari, Harlie, Grandma, and Rog to arrive tonight (Archer too, but what a surprise!) What a day that was.

Took the boys out to fill up the Black Bear bait station. I guess it was exhausting work.

Stryder holding Archer in the hospital.

Pictures from the Sheep Hunt

Fun on the way out. It was pretty good this year... not too terribly wet, just normal tundra muck. Only had to use the winches a couple of times.

Our base camp at about 3600 ft elevation. We climbed up the hill in the background on the right several times for glassing sheep and hiking for them. This camp was almost 20 miles from the truck and over 100 from Tok. We were out in the sticks a little bit.

Beautiful weather on the way in... it was also beautiful on the way out. Tanada Peak sticking up in the background.

A shot of Roger on the way in. Mount Sanford in the background... over 16,000 feet tall.


We didn't bring any sheep back. I was hunting with my bow mostly and we didn't see too many nice rams. In total we saw about 4 rams and 60+ ewes and lams, and one 55+" moose.

Homestead work

Here are some pictures of several of the projects we've been working on this summer. It has gone by in a blur.

New Arctic Entry. It will be a nice big room to hang coats, snowpants, boots, shoes, etc.

Root Cellar in the crawl space of the Arctic Entry.

We had a pretty good garden this year for the lack of sun light. There was no lack of rain. I think we only had to water a dozen times or so... We got about 8 bushels of Cabbage.

About 25 gallons of Carrots...

Maybe 250 pounds of potatoes from our garden, and about 300 pounds from a farm we dug potatoes at in Delta Junction. About 6 Bushels of Celery...

1.5 Bushels of Onions, and a large white pumpkin. We actually grew several ears of sweet corn, lots of beets, radishes, tomatoes, lettuce, jalopeno, cayane, and sweet peppers, squash, zuchini, etc. too!

We tore apart our log greenhouse this summer. I used the clear roof panels to put a roof over our front porch and basement door. It was so wet a few times this summer that water was splashing off the deck and leaking through by one window and puddling up in the basement stairs and leaking inside. We plan to make a lean to green house that is about 36x20 on the south side of the garage next spring.

In the background is our current greenhouse. It was a garage in a box we used last winter for the car. We put clear plastic over it and used it for a greenhouse this summer. It did quite well. This is how far I was on the garage last week. I finished the 10' walls last weekend and it was too dark to get pictures.

Here is another view of the garage.




This is a picture of the garden and front circle areas. I pushed all the stumps out with the dozer and removed most of the roots. This will make our garden area about 4 times larger than it is now...