Test Your Eyewitnesses, Even Your Own Eyewitness Account

Test Your Eyewitnesses, Even When the Eyewitness Is You

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Also you may click the Red link below for more information.

As a detective, I’m a distrustful person. I learned to be skeptical the hard way; I was fooled several times in my early career by convincing liars (both suspects and alleged eyewitnesses). As a result, I’ve learned the importance of testing eyewitnesses, even when they offer testimony favorable to my case. I’d much rather discover a lie early, than discover it in front of a jury under cross-examination. I’ve learned to evaluate witnesses with the four part template I developed from the jury instructions offered in criminal trials. If a witness was truly present, can be corroborated by additional evidence, has been consistent and honest over time, and lacks prejudicial bias, he or she can be trusted.

I must confess my skepticism also colors the way I see claims of religious experience. Many believers offer the personal testimony of experience. When they do this, they present themselves as eyewitnesses, and I’ve learned to be skeptical of their testimony. I have six half-brothers and half-sisters who were raised in Mormonism. Like other Latter Day Saints, when asked why they believe Mormonism is true, they offer personal testimony of religious experiences that served as confirmation of the Book of Mormon and the claims of Joseph Smith. This religious experience (whether it is described as a “burning in the bosom” or in more contemporary language) is seen as sufficient evidence Mormonism is true. But when Joseph Smith and the Book of Mormon are evaluated under the simple template I use to assess eyewitness reliability, they fail to withstand the scrutiny. In fact, Mormonism is demonstrably false.

Given my experience with Mormon believers, I’ve become skeptical of Christians who cite religious experience as the only evidence they can offer when defending the claims of Christianity. I’m not saying I don’t trust religious experience at all; I simply saying all religious experience must be tested:...

Test Your Eyewitnesses, Even When the Eyewitness Is You

Scientific facts or fossil remains; Archaeopteryx the myth

(Archaeopteryx is regarded as a transitional form or bridge form between reptiles and birds because of its co-existing reptile and bird features. In evolution research, it used to be an important proof of the correctness of the theory of evolution . It seems the birds are the only living direct descendants of the dinosaurs??)

  British scientists have decided that the fossil Archaeopteryx is not, after all, the ‘missing link’ between reptiles and birds but was a fully developed bird. The conclusions (published in the scientific journal Nature and reported in theLondon Times on 5 August) stem from a new examination of the creature’s skull.

Using the latest computer tomography techniques, palaeontologists from the Natural History Museum in London ‘reconstructed’ the part of the skull that held the fossil’s brain, ears and eyes. They found that the size and shape of these organs were very similar to those in modern birds and concluded thatArchaeopteryx possessed all the faculties necessary for flight. It could not therefore be an evolutionary link between birds and their supposed precursors.

As recently as 1982, Harvard biologist Ernst Mayr declared that Archaeopteryxwas ‘the almost perfect [evolutionary] link between reptiles and birds’. Creationists pointed out repeatedly that the resemblance to dinosaurs is superficial and the fully developed flight feathers show the fossil to be that of a bird.

But their protests were ridiculed and for over a century Archaeopteryx has been a key icon of evolutionary theory, used to ‘prove’ evolution in text books and the media.

Although the new work sets back the popular idea that birds evolved from dinosaurs, it is unlikely to dampen enthusiasm for the theory among evolutionists. This theory has gained publicity recently from fossil ‘discoveries’ appearing to show that some dinosaurs had rudimentary feathers. In his book Icons of Evolution (Regnery Publishing Inc., 2000) Jonathan Wells gives several examples...

Click the link below to read the whole article.

archaeopteryx

Interesting response to comment of ignoring scientific facts or fossil remains by Dr. Andrews

...No, we do not ignore scientific facts or fossil remains. The debate is not (usually) about the observations themselves but about the interpretation of the observations. In the cases you mention, for example, you interpret phenotopic similarities as evidence of evolutionary descent but the phenomenon of ‘convergence’ is so ubiquitous that great caution is needed in placing this interpretation on the factual evidence. Facts are one thing, interpretations another, and it is in the latter that world-views play such a strong part.

Does Richard Dawkins believe in miracles?

Dear SS( sincere seeker):

You don’t believe in miracles? That’s a pity, because your idol Richard Dawkins does.  You didn’t know that Richard Dawkins believes in miracles? Yes, really, though he would prefer to call them ‘extremely improbable events’ rather than miracles. But don’t take my word for it, read what he says himself. 

Dawkins writes:

‘A miracle is something that happens, but which is exceedingly surprising. If a marble statue of the Virgin Mary suddenly waved its hand at us we should treat it as a miracle, because all our experience and knowledge tells us that marble doesn’t behave like that’.

He continues, ‘In the case of the marble statue, molecules in solid marble are continually jostling against one another in random directions. The jostlings of the different molecules cancel one another out, so that the whole hand of the statue stays still. But if, by sheer coincidence, all the molecules just happened to move in the same direction at the same moment, the hand would move. If they then all reversed direction at the same moment the hand would move back. In this way it is possible for a marble statue to wave at us. It could happen. The odds against such a coincidence are unimaginably great but they are not incalculably great. A physicist colleague has kindly calculated them for me. The number is so large that the entire age of the universe so far is too short a time to write out all the noughts! It is theoretically possible for a cow to jump over the moon with something like the same improbability. The conclusion to this part of the argument is that we can calculate our way into regions of miraculous improbability far greater than we can imagine as plausible’

Please excuse me to quote mostly from this link below, to read more, please click the link below.

whomadegod.org/2012/04/richard-dawkins-scientific-fallacies/

According to Richard Dawkins, miracles do happen but are simply highly improbable natural events. We examine his examples( in chp 11) — the hand-waving statue and the cow that jumps over the moon — and show that they are scientifically vacuous. We also see why the atheist needs to establish that literally anything can happen by natural causation given enough time (another false conclusion)...

Jesus has healed many blind people during His time on earth; since He is living today and forevermore, He certainly can heal our blindness whether physical or spiritual.

I can only pray that God heal your spiritual blindness, you only need to humble yourself and ask Him to have mercy !

To me "Nothing creates this universe" should be the biggest miracle, if it were really so. You should be called a man of great faith in Big Bang's metaphysical far stretched and extrapolated implications. You were not there when your "Nothing" created this universe, right? Yet you believe so wholeheartedly?

Actually, I think " Nothing creates this universe" is the most irrational belief of yours. Sorry to say so. You may think that is the only free lunch in the whole universe, Actually, it is the most costly lunch that will cost you eternal life. Seriously, you better rethink!

May God's truth shine on you like the Sun!

BH

Ref: Luke 18:35-43

A Blind Beggar Receives His Sight

35 As Jesus approached Jericho, a blind man was sitting by the roadside begging. 36 When he heard the crowd going by, he asked what was happening. 37 They told him, “Jesus of Nazareth is passing by.”

38 He called out, “Jesus, Son of David, have mercy on me!”

39 Those who led the way rebuked him and told him to be quiet, but he shouted all the more, “Son of David, have mercy on me!”

40 Jesus stopped and ordered the man to be brought to him. When he came near, Jesus asked him,41 “What do you want me to do for you?”

“Lord, I want to see,” he replied.

42 Jesus said to him, “Receive your sight; your faith has healed you.” 43 Immediately he received his sight and followed Jesus, praising God. When all the people saw it, they also praised God.

I just want to know what's true!

The cold case detective lists several good reasons to motivate people to seek God out, However, none in the list suits his case. Here below is the last listed good reasons in his list for your references.



...

I Didn’t Become a Christian Because I Needed to Change My LifeMy life prior to becoming a Christian was great. I had a meaningful and fulfilling career, a beautiful family, an incredible wife, and lots of friends. I wasn’t struggling and looking for a solution. I didn’t become a Christian to stop beating my wife or to sober up.

"I don’t think any of these reasons are bad, necessarily. I think it’s perfectly legitimate for (many) students to become Christians because they were raised in the Church, have many Christian friends, desire a relationship with God, want to go to Heaven or are looking for transformation. But although these reasons might motivate them to start their journey, I hope these aren’t the only reasons they’re still here. I’m not sure any of these motivations will suffice when push comes to shove, times get tough or they face the challenges of university life. In the end, truth matters more than anything else. I’m not looking for a useful delusion, a convenient social network, or an empty promise.

I just want to know what’s true."


For more reasons, please click the following link.

 - See more at: http://coldcasechristianity.com/2014/im-not-a-christian-for-any-of-these-good-reasons/?"utm_content=buffer67dca&utm_medium=social&utm_source=twitter.com&utm_campaign=buffer#sthash.Y1v4y2RQ.dpuf

I Believe Solely in Science but" God is not Dead!"

http://www.tennessean.com/story/entertainment/2014/04/02/ming-wang-inspired-gods-dead-film-character/7206647/

Dr. Ming  Wang in the left with actor Paul Kwo"

I grew up as an atheist in a family which believed solely in science," said Wang, who was born in China and raised by parents who taught at a medical school. "Everything was about scholarship, learning and science in our family. Education was the most important."

The movie tells the story of present-day college freshman Josh Wheaton, a devout Christian who finds his faith challenged on the first day of philosophy class when the professor informs students that they will need to disavow, in writing, the existence of God.

Yip, a Chinese foreign exchange student, is in the class along with Wheaton and is moved to consider Christianity as he observes Wheaton's defiance of the professor's assertion that "God is dead."

In real life, Wang said he began to question the omniscience of science when he was a student at Harvard.

"I began to study human anatomy, including the eye, and found that the structure ... is so complex that I began to doubt if it could all (have) evolved from random," said Wang, who became director of the Vanderbilt Laser Vision Center in 1997 and founded his own laser vision center, Wang Vision Institute, in 2002.

"I (learned) that the number of neuronal synapses in one person's brain is more than all the stars that we have ever discovered in the entire universe. I calculated that mathematically, it would have taken trillions of trillions of trillions of years, to randomly evolve into a structure as complex as the human eye, but the universe was presumably to have existed only for 13 billion years.

"So, science, or at least science alone, cannot provide the answer as to how such a complex structure as the human eye has formed."

Influenced by a professor who, Wang said, showed him evidence of the existence of God, Wang became a Christian.

"I have come to realize that faith and science serve two different purposes, they are the two sides of a coin: science is about what things are, and faith is about why things are."

...

If all religions were true...

1. If all religions are true, then Christianity is true and valid, yet an essential claim of 

Christianity is that all other religions are false, taken as a whole.

2. Either Christianity is true and others are false, or others are true and Christianity is false.

3. Either way, all religions can't be true.

Contradiction: All religions are true.  All religions are not true.

Click the following link to read the whole article.

Truthbomb Apologetics: A Quick Refutation of Pluralism
(Originally, Greg Koukl's Interactive Series Tactics in Defending the Faith.  
In the series Koukl demonstrates quickly and concisely why pluralism (the view that all religions are equally true 

and valid) defeats itself or, in his words, commits "suicide.")


It is popular to think  "Many paths up the same mountain" yet the only person that knows all paths lead 

to the top is the person on the top, so anyone claiming to have this knowledge is claiming to be on top 

of that mountain, a.k.a God. ( Bo commented below the original post in above link; 

it is slightly paraphrased here.)

A real testimony from a person who thought every path goes to the same ultimate spiritual end. ( Click the link below

http://www.cbn.com/tv/3527070794001

Missing Links of Common Ancestor 人，猿共同祖先？

???

Origin of Man Theories - How do scientists explain it?

The mainstream origin of man theory states that mankind and apes came from a common ancestor a few million years ago. At that point, an ancient primate went two different genetic directions—today's apes and today's man. Although the theory appears logical, it really has no support in the fossil record. Much of the alleged evidence that filled text books over the last 50 years has now been reclassified or rejected altogether. The missing links are still missing.

Origin of Man Theories – The Missing Links

"Ramapithecus" was widely recognized as a direct ancestor of humans and is now categorized as an extinct type of orangutan. "Piltdown man" was hyped as the missing link in publications for over 40 years until he was found to be a fraud based on a human skull cap and an orangutan's jaw. "Nebraska man" was determined to be a fraud based on a single tooth of a rare type of pig. "Java man" was based on sketchy evidence of a femur, skull cap and three teeth found within a wide area over a one year period. It turns out the bones were found in an area of human remains, and now the femur is considered human and the skull cap from a large ape. "Neandertal man" was traditionally depicted as a stooped ape-man, but it's now accepted that the alleged posture was due to disease and that Neandertal is just a variation of the human kind.

"Australopithecus afarensis," or "Lucy," has been considered a missing link for years. However, studies of the inner ear, skulls and bones have shown that she was merely a pygmy chimpanzee that walked a bit more upright than some other apes. She was not on her way to becoming human. "Homo erectus" has been found throughout the world. He is smaller than the average human of today, with a proportionately smaller head and brain cavity. However, the brain size is within the range of people today and studies of the middle ear have shown that he was just like current Homo sapiens. "Australopithecus africanus" and "Peking man" were presented as ape-men missing links for years, but are now both considered Homo erectus. "Homo habilis" is now generally considered to be comprised of pieces of various other types of creatures, such as Australopithecus and Homo erectus, and is not generally viewed as a valid classification.

Based on the fossil evidence alone, human evolution must be considered a theory in crisis. In addition, the evolutionary hypothesis must deal with many other issues, including the realities of genetics, biochemistry, design mechanics, irreducible complexity, DNA structure, and information systems.

- See more at: http://www.allabouthow.com/origin-of-man-theories.htm#sthash.52nZziGx.dpuf

人類的起源-科學家如何解釋呢？

主要的人類起源理論指出，數百萬年前，人類和猿猴來自一個共同的祖先。在某一個時間點上，一個古老的靈長類動物採取了兩個不同的基因遺傳方向，造成了今日的猿猴和今日的人類祖先。雖然理論上似乎還合乎邏輯，在化石記錄中卻真的找不到任何的支持。在過去的50年，充滿之教科書裡，大部分所謂的證據，現已重新被分類或乾脆丟掉。缺少的環節至今仍然找不到。

人類的起源-缺少的環節

“ 臘瑪古猿”"Ramapithecus"曾經被廣泛地認為是人類的直接祖先，現在歸類為一種已滅絕的猩猩類。“闢爾唐人”"Piltdown man"被出版界大肆宣傳為找到的缺失環節，遠超過40年，直到被發現它乃是基於人類頭蓋骨和一隻猩猩的下顎骨的一個騙局。“內布拉斯加人“

"Nebraska man" 被確定是一場騙局，乃是基於一種罕見的豬的單齒。“爪哇猿人”"Java man"是基於在廣泛的區域內且超過一年時間，發現的大腿骨，頭蓋骨和三顆牙齒合起來粗略的拼圖，且是在人類遺骸的一個區域中發現的，而現在，它的大腿骨被認為是屬於人類的，顱骨蓋則來自大猿猴。“尼安德特人”"Neandertal man"傳統上，一直被描繪為一個駝背彎腰的猿人，但現在被認定它的姿勢是由於疾病造成的，而他也只不過是人類的一種。

“阿法南猿”或“露西，” "Australopithecus afarensis," or "Lucy,"多年來，一直被認為是人與猿之間缺少的環節之一環。然而，內耳，頭骨和骨頭的研究，已經顯示，她只是一個侏儒黑猩猩，比其他猿猴行走更挺拔一些吧了。她並不是正在成為人類的人猿。“直立人”"Homo erectus"已經遍布世界各地。他是比今日一般的人類較小，具有較小的頭部和腦腔。然而，大腦的大小是在人類的正常範圍內，中耳的研究也顯示，他與目前的人類沒有兩樣。“南方古猿非洲種”"Australopithecus africanus" 和“北京人”多年來被列為人與猿之間缺失環節的一環，但現在都被認為是直立人。“能人”"Homo habilis"現在被普遍認為是由多種其他類型的動物拼湊成，如南方古猿和直立人，而通常不能被視為一種確實的分類。

如此，單憑化石的證據，人類的進化，顯然已是一個面臨危機的理論。更何遑進化論的假設仍須面對許多其他的問題的挑戰，包括基因的實況，生物化學，無法簡化的複雜機械設計，DNA結構和資訊系統等種種的問題。