Comments On Hawking's " Grand Design" You Tube

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1tVO0-zYAvE

Frank Turek, Answering the Atheists, Stephen Hawking Part 1 - YouTube

Are We Free to Reject God?

Dear friends, I've just watched a brief debate between Dr. Frank Turek and a college student.
Here below is some dictation written down for you.

...If God exists, in eternity you are going to be with Him or you are not going to be with Him.
That is logically, there are only two options.

If you want to be with Him, you will seek Him out and to be with Him. If you don't want to be with Him, God wouldn't force you against your will.

An atheist once asked Frank Turek if his mom who survived Holocaust, since she rejected the Gospel presented to her, is she in Hell now?

And Frank answered :" I don't know where your mom is and if she made a profession of faith at her last moment. If she didn't then God would not force her into His presence against her will, God is too loving for that.

 I asked you audiences, ladies, if any man who has ever pursued you and you didn't want to date him, ...suppose this man keeps pursuing and keeps pursuing you, and you said, Look, I only like you as a friend.... Suppose this man still keep pursuing you, and to the point he said, Look, I like you so much, I'd like to force you. Can he do that? He can't do that, "love" by definition, must be freely given. So if he truly did love you, what did he do? He would leave you alone. That is exactly what God did. He sent flowers, letters, cards while we are here. And if we keep rejecting Him, keep rejecting Him, He gives us up to our own desires, and that is where the Hell is, Hell is separation from God. So you are free in Hell, you can continue to reject God in Hell, but you are confined to Hell, Hell is a quarantine for evil. That is what it is and Heaven is being in the presence of God. God loves you too much to force you into His presence against your will.

For the interesting debating, please click the link below or click the embedded You tube.

www.youtube.comFrank Turek Answers Atheist's 3 Objections to Christianity - YouTube www.youtube.com

Frank Turek Answers Atheist's 3 Objections to Christianity - YouTube

Also another interesting video debate in You Tube

Truthbomb Apologetics: Video: What Do You Mean by Evolution? by Fran

Faith as "The Emperor's New Clothes" ?

Dear friends:

Here below is my email debate with a former college friend WJ who has become an accomplished philosopher.  ( My comments to WJ's email is in purple fonts.)

WJ: I just went through the Old Testament story quickly.

Me:That is very good indeed it is quite an accomplishment. 

CHRISTIAN Faith is a priceless spiritual asset even without embracing it as ultimate concern for a believer.Agree! However, Christian faith shouldn't be just a spiritual asset ( that is only a fringe benefit ), it is the relationship with our Creator God, Jesus our Savior who died for our sins and the indwelt Holy Spirit that is most valuable and desirable. Our earthly lives will pass away sooner or later yet Trinity God guarantees an eternal life for us in Jesus our Savior. We surely should stretch our perspectives beyond the horizon of our temporal earthly life. Don't you think?

It should be "above and not below" natural science. Agree totally!There is no need to rely upon science to build up the credentials of such faith. Christian faith is the only faith that can have scientific credentials to support and sustain it. And many scientists and engineers do demand scientific credentials for faith that claims it owns the ultimate truth of universe and creation. The bottom line is if Christian faith is true then it shouldn't be contradictory to science discoveries. Of course, science may not advance enough and may revise again since it is not the final version yet.

When we read the story of Joseph being sold and brought to Egypt and with the divine help and his ability being raised to power almost next to the Pharaoh. So was Moses. 

And the story of the Exodus across the Red Sea and later on the Dead Sea near Jordan to the Promised Land, Canaan, these are all historical events in narrations! 

The journey took 40 years ?, Yes, because of Israelites' rebellions against God, God let them detour around the deserts for 40 yrs. and Moses spent 40 days on Mount Sinai with God with so many "miracles" happening on the way often brought about by raising his rod. Could our almighty God do miracles? You bet! But you'd rather have a man made god who couldn't do miracles? If those miracles were not real miracles but fictional virtual stories out of human imagination, then God's almighty powers should be greatly discounted and even be dwindled to nothing, right? Remember the whole nation of Israelites eye witnessed God's awesome revelation of Himself at the foothill of Mt. Sinai. when 10 commandments were announced to them. It is forever etched and remembered again and again in their national memories.

The language used there is apparently not meant to be literal Why not? Those events are historical narrations, right? or scientific. Naturally, it is not scientific language of our modern days, because the ancient audience couldn't understand the terms of our modern science and it was addressed to the ancient audience. Nonetheless, it is the language of science of say, Moses' days. And its factual narrations still hold water even today.  The story does not need the support of science and historical criticism. You may think so, but if the ARK of Noah's dimensions couldn't even let it float on the water, then Noah's ARK only can be regarded as an item in a mythology. Of course mythology never needs scientific proofs or reality checks. And all miracles in Bible are not mythologies at all. If those miracles recorded in Bible were not real miracles but mythologies, then this God would become a paper god, powerless and worthless. I can't argue with you about language per se, but WJ, you do have a tendency only to buy the sayings of those Bible smearers or liberal Bible scholars, you've always neglected authentic traditional interpretations of Jesus' disciples, Gospel writers and earliest church fathers. You may have poured out the baby with bath water, do you realize that? Some scholars like NT Wright would for sure support the historicity of OT Bible narrations. Without honest reality checking, there is the danger of "faith" becoming "The Emperor's New Clothes".(國王的新衣) or the satirical and arbitrary so called Flying Spaghetti Monster of recent years. Anything or any name could go because they are only out of human imagination. For that matter, why don't we just believe in Santa or tooth fairy??( If reality checks are not important at all.)

Without reality checking, we are opening up a kind of Pandora's box of human imagination. 天馬行空，各說各話。 Though the characters of " Gone with the Wind" and other fictional characters may reveal true human psychology and acted just like real human beings, that is because human natures are all alike, therefore it is easy for the novelists to describe vividly and for us to project or resonance with those virtual characters, like Scarlet...etc. And the main purpose of that novel or film is to describe to us an American pre-Civil War South culture that has gone with the wind. So those fictional figures do serve the purpose to portray a past American Southern culture and history.

On the contrary, we humans were not God, we don't know God's mind, we have no way to identify with God at all, let alone pretend we know who God is or what God's attributes really are. Therefore if some people made God in human images then those man made arbitrary gods or goddesses out of human imagination are for sure acting like humans, they can't be true God at all. Remember those Olympian gods and goddesses, they acted just like humans, jealous and fooling around with their lusts...etc. So if our Creator God exists, He has to reveal Himself to us! And if the God who claims He creates heavens and earth and all the creatures, then science should back Him up and we should be able to detect His fingerprints everywhere in our universe. Agree? So this answers your following question.

Why do so many preachers feel the need of using modern science to support this remarkable and priceless spiritual legacy and their faith?  Though Christian faith by itself is remarkable and priceless spiritual legacy yet if the content of this faith is contradictory or conflict with reality check then we can just categorize it as mythology and we shouldn't have faith in it at all. ( though admittedly, there are some unfortunate misinterpretations of Bible which kept the concept of flat earth as true...etc.)

Could Truth be assessed only by science and even by gifted scientists such as Einstein? It is not an "only" approach. there certainly are many ways to access Truth, including philosophical pursuits. However, if modern science starts to catch up with Bible truth, for example, heavens are stretching, then it should strongly convince us those Bible writers were inspired by our Creator God who knows advanced science of today because He is the One who put all natural laws in our universe to start with. Why Bible writers could have written things that were so ahead of their time and generations, i.e.prophecies about future, knowledge of modern advanced science...etc., all tell us about an all knowing Almighty God--our Creator God, right?

Do Chinese Christians still need to celebrate the Passover like the Jews who are no longer believers? Your sister R has explained well about this. Christians now celebrate Passover in the new deeper meaning because Passover foreshadowed Jesus as the Passover Lamb killed for our sins. So we now celebrate Passover in connection with Jesus' crucifixion and resurrection every Easter. Christians should appreciate greatly how the Jews through ages meticulously recorded and reserved their national memory of historical Passover which foreshadowed and pointed to the coming salvation in Jesus Christ. And if Passover were not a historical event, then all the celebrations of Jews and Christians about it were meaningless, don't you think? WJ, I admire your great academic achievements in Philosophy and  Confucianism...etc, yet I hope you may still have reality checks with faith issues. That actually is what we are debating back and forth, right? 

Can Astronomy Explain The Biblical Star of Bethlehem?

Dear friends:
Here are two wonderful articles I found to explain the puzzles of the Star of Bethlehem.
You may click the links to the original posts. Enjoy reading!

December 29, 2014 | by David A Weintraub

Can Astronomy Explain The Biblical Star of Bethlehem

Bright stars top Christmas trees in Christian homes around much of the world. The faithful sing about the Star of Wonder that guided the wise men to a manger in the little town of Bethlehem, where Jesus was born. They’re commemorating the Star of Bethlehem described by the Evangelist Matthew in the New Testament. Is the star’s biblical description a pious fiction or does it contain some astronomical truth?

Puzzles For Astronomy

To understand the Star of Bethlehem, we need to think like these wise men. Motivated by this “star in the east,” they first traveled to Jerusalem and asked King Herod where a new ruler of the people of Israel would be born. We also need to think like King Herod, who asked the wise men when the star had appeared, because he and his court, apparently, were unaware of any such star in the sky.

These events present us with our first astronomy puzzle of the first Christmas: How could King Herod’s own advisers have been unaware of a star so bright and obvious that it could have led the wise men to Jerusalem?

Next, in order to reach Bethlehem, the wise men had to travel directly south from Jerusalem; somehow that “star in the east” “went before them, ‘til it came and stood over where the young child was.” Now we have our second first-Christmas astronomy puzzle: How can a star “in the east” guide our wise men to the south? The north star guides lost hikers to the north, so shouldn’t a star in the east have led the wise men to the east?

And we have yet a third first-Christmas astronomy puzzle: How does Matthew’s star move “before them,” like the tail lights on the snowplow you might follow during a blizzard, and then stop and stand over the manger in Bethlehem, inside of which supposedly lies the infant Jesus?

What Could The ‘Star In The East’ Be?

The astronomer in me knows that no star can do these things, nor can a comet, or Jupiter, or a supernova, or a conjunction of planets or any other actual bright object in the nighttime sky. One can claim that Matthew’s words describe a miracle, something beyond the laws of physics. But Matthew chose his words carefully and wrote “star in the east” twice, which suggests that these words hold a specific importance for his readers.

Can we find any other explanation, consistent with Matthew’s words, that doesn’t require that the laws of physics be violated and that has something to do with astronomy? The answer, amazingly, is yes.

Astrological Answers To Astronomical Puzzles

Astronomer Michael Molnar points out that “in the east” is a literal translation of the Greek phrase en te anatole, which was a technical term used in Greek mathematical astrology 2,000 years ago. It described, very specifically, a planet that would rise above the eastern horizon just before the Sun would appear. Then, just moments after the planet rises, it disappears in the bright glare of the Sun in the morning sky. Except for a brief moment, no one can see this “star in the east.”

We need a little bit of astronomy background here. In a human lifetime, virtually all the stars remain fixed in their places; the stars rise and set every night, but they do not move relative to each other. The stars in the Big Dipper appear year after year always in the same place. But the planets, the Sun, and the Moon wander through the fixed stars; in fact, the word planet comes from the Greek word for wandering star. Though the planets, Sun and Moon move along approximately the same path through the background stars, they travel at different speeds, so they often lap each other. When the Sun catches up with a planet, we can’t see the planet, but when the Sun passes far enough beyond it, the planet reappears.

And now we need a little bit of astrology background. When the planet reappears again for the first time, and rises in the morning sky just moments before the Sun, for the first time in many months after having been hidden in the Sun’s glare for those many months, that moment is known to astrologers as a heliacal rising. A heliacal rising, that special first reappearance of a planet, is what en te anatole referred to in ancient Greek astrology. In particular, the reappearance of a planet like Jupiter was thought by Greek astrologers to be symbolically significant for anyone born on that day.

Thus, the “star in the east” refers to an astronomical event with supposed astrological significance in the context of ancient Greek astrology.

Was the star visible just briefly before dawn? James Callan, CC BY-NC-SA

What about the star parked directly above the first crèche? The word usually translated as “stood over” comes from the Greek word epano, which also had an important meaning in ancient astrology. It refers to a particular moment when a planet stops moving and changes apparent direction from westward to eastward motion. This occurs when the Earth, which orbits the Sun more quickly than Mars or Jupiter or Saturn, catches up with, or laps, the other planet.

Together, a rare combination of astrological events (the right planet rising before the Sun; the Sun being in the right constellation of the zodiac; plus a number of other combinations of planetary positions considered important by astrologers) would have suggested to ancient Greek astrologers a regal horoscope and a royal birth.

Wise Men Looking To The Skies

Molnar believes that the wise men were, in fact, very wise and mathematically-adept astrologers... When they identified a powerful set of astrological portents, they decided the time was right to set out to find the new born king.

If Matthew’s wise men actually undertook a journey to search for a newborn king, the bright star didn’t guide them; it only told them when to set out. And they wouldn’t have found an infant swaddled in a manger. After all, the baby was already 8 months old by the time they decoded the astrological message they believed predicted the birth of a future king. The portent began on April 17 of 6 B.C. (with the heliacal rising of Jupiter that morning, followed, at noon, by its lunar occultation in the constellation Aries) and lasted until December 19 of 6 B.C. (when Jupiter stopped moving to the west, stood still briefly, and began moving to the east, as compared with the fixed background stars). By the earliest time the men could have arrived in Bethlehem, the baby Jesus would likely have been at least a toddler.

Matthew wrote to convince his readers that Jesus was the prophesied Messiah. Given the astrological clues embedded in his gospel, he must have believed the story of the Star of Bethlehem would be convincing evidence for many in his audience.

http://www.eclipse.net/~molnar/

Could the purchase of an ancient coin have led to an important clue about the Star of Bethlehem? The above illustration is a Roman coin from Antioch, Syria which shows the zodiacal sign, Aries the Ram. In trying to understand the meaning behind this coin, I found that Aries was the sign of the Jews. Realizing that this is where ancient stargazers would have watched for the Star of Bethlehem, I embarked on searching for the celestial event that signified the birth of the Messiah in Judea.

Superposed on the photograph of the coin is what I found: Jupiter underwent two occultations ("eclipses") by the Moon in Aries in 6 BC. Jupiter was the regal "star" that conferred kingships - a power that was amplified when Jupiter was in close conjunctions with the Moon. The second occultation on April 17 coincided precisely when Jupiter was "in the east," a condition mentioned twice in the biblical account about the Star of Bethlehem. In August of that year Jupiter became stationary and then "went before" through Aries where it became stationary again on December 19, 6 BC. This is when the regal planet "stood over." - a secondary royal portent also described in the Bible. In particular, there is confirmation from a Roman astrologer that the conditions of April 17, 6 BC were believed to herald the birth of a divine, immortal, and omnipotent person born under the sign of the Jews, which we now know was Aries the Ram. Furthermore, the coins of Antioch and ancient astrological documents show that there was indeed a Star of Bethlehem as reported in the biblical account of Matthew.