God In America

Friday, August 21, 2015

Evidence 2 of a Young Earth

Note: This blog is titled The History of God in America. However, I’m going to deviate from that subject to post several articles supporting a young earth.

Without millions and billions of years, evolutionary history completely falls apart. Here is the second of many credible articles from various branches of science that tell of a world much younger than evolutionists claim.

Evidence 2 Astronomy: Recession of the Moon

The gravitational pull of the moon creates a “tidal bulge” on earth that causes the moon to spiral outwards very slowly. Because of this effect, the moon would have been closer to the earth in the past. Based on gravitational forces and the current rate of recession, we can calculate how much the moon has moved away over time.

If the earth is only 6,000 years old, there’s no problem, because in that time the moon would have only moved about 800 feet (250 m). But most astronomy books teach that the moon is over four billion years old, which poses a major dilemma—less than 1.5 billion years ago the moon would have been touching the earth!

• For more information
Lunar Recession
Age of Moon
The Age of the Universe, Part 2
Our Created Moon

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Friday, July 24, 2015

Evidence 1 of a Young Earth

Note: This blog is titled The History of God in America. However, I’m going to deviate from that subject to post several articles supporting a young earth.

Without millions and billions of years, evolutionary history completely falls apart. Here is the first of many credible articles from various branches of science that tell of a world much younger than evolutionists claim.

Evidence 1 Geology: Radiocarbon in Diamonds and Coal

Far from proving evolution, carbon-14 dating actually provides some of the strongest evidence for creation and a young earth. Radiocarbon (carbon-14) cannot remain naturally in substances for millions of years because it decays relatively rapidly. For this reason, it can only be used to obtain “ages” in the range of tens of thousands of years.

Scientists from the RATE (Radioisotopes and the Age of the Earth) project examined diamonds that evolutionists consider to be 1–2 billion years old and related to the earth’s early history. Diamonds are the hardest known substance and extremely resistant to contamination through chemical exchange.

Yet the RATE scientists discovered significant detectable levels of radiocarbon in these diamonds, dating them at around 55,000 years—a far cry from the evolutionary billions!

In addition, samples were then taken from ten different coal layers that, according to evolutionists, dated millions to hundreds of millions of years old based on standard evolution time estimates, all contained measurable amounts of 14C. Samples displayed significant amounts of 14C. This is a significant discovery. Since the half-life of 14C is relatively short (5,730 years), there should be no detectable 14C left after about 100,000 years. The average 14C estimated age for all the layers from these three time periods was approximately 50,000 years. However, using a more realistic Pre-Flood 14C /12C ratio reduces that age to about 5,000 years.

Conclusion

All radiometric dating methods are based on assumptions about events that happened in the past. If the assumptions are accepted as true (as is typically done in the evolutionary dating processes), results can be biased toward a desired age. In the reported ages given in textbooks and other journals, these evolutionary assumptions have not been questioned, while results inconsistent with long ages have been censored. When the assumptions were evaluated and shown faulty, the results supported the biblical account of a global Flood and young earth. Christians should not be afraid of radiometric dating methods. Carbon-14 dating is really the friend of Christians, and it supports a young earth.

Sources:
http://christiananswers.net/q-aig/aig-c007.html
https://answersingenesis.org/geology/carbon-14/doesnt-carbon-14-dating-disprove-the-bible/
https://answersingenesis.org/geology/carbon-14/radiocarbon-in-diamonds-confirmed/

Tuesday, May 5, 2015

James Madison and James Monroe

(This post is the fifth of a series about Presidents and their religious views.)

* * James Madison

Although educated by Presbyterian clergymen, young Madison was an avid reader of English deist tracts.

Madison as an adult paid little attention to religious matters.

However, some scholars say he leaned toward deism.

* * James Monroe

Little is known about Monroe’s religious beliefs. No letters survived in which he discussed his religious beliefs. Nor did his friends, family or associates comment on his beliefs.

Monroe was raised in a family that belonged to the Church of England when it was the state church in Virginia before the Revolution. As an adult, he frequently attended Episcopal churches.

Monroe believed in God for he said:

"If we persevere...we can not fail, under the favor of a gracious Providence...My fervent prayers to the Almighty that He will be graciously pleased to continue to us that protection which He has already so conspicuously displayed in our favor." (1)

(1) http://www.monroefoundation.org/education/43-education.html

Monday, March 23, 2015

Thomas Jefferson

(This post is the forth of a series about Presidents and their religious views.)

The religious views of Thomas Jefferson diverged widely from the orthodox Christianity of his era. Throughout his life Jefferson was intensely interested in theology, religious studies, and morality. Jefferson was most closely connected with Unitarianism and the religious philosophy of Christian deism; he was sympathetic to and in general agreement with the moral precepts of Christianity. He considered the religion of Christianity as having "the most sublime and benevolent code of morals which has ever been offered to man."

Jefferson used certain passages of the New Testament to compose The Life and Morals of Jesus of Nazareth (the "Jefferson Bible"), which excluded any miracles by Jesus and stressed his moral message. Though he often expressed his opposition to clergy and to Christian doctrines, Jefferson repeatedly expressed his belief in a deistic god and his admiration for Jesus as a moral teacher.

Jefferson began attending church services in the House of Representatives, a custom had not yet begun while he was Vice President, and which featured preachers of every Christian sect and denomination. In January 1806, a female evangelist, Dorothy Ripley, delivered a camp meeting-style exhortation in the House to Jefferson, Vice President Aaron Burr, and a "crowded audience". Throughout his administration Jefferson permitted church services in executive branch buildings, which were acceptable to Jefferson because they were nondiscriminatory and voluntary, and because he believed that religion was an important support for republican government.

For Jefferson, separation of church and state was a necessary reform of the religious tyranny whereby a religion received state endorsement, and those not of that religion were denied rights, and even punished. In 1786, the Virginia General Assembly passed Jefferson's Bill for Religious Freedom, which he had first submitted in 1779. It was one of only three accomplishments he put in his epitaph. The law read:

No man shall be compelled to frequent or support any religious worship, place, or ministry whatsoever, nor shall be enforced, restrained, molested, or burdened in his body or goods, nor shall otherwise suffer, on account of his religious opinions or belief; but that all men shall be free to profess, and by argument to maintain, their opinions in matters of religion, and that the same shall in no wise diminish, enlarge, or affect their civil capacities.

Jefferson sought what he called a "wall of separation between Church and State", which he believed was a principle expressed by the First Amendment. Jefferson's phrase has been cited several times by the Supreme Court in its interpretation of the Establishment Clause, including in cases such as Reynolds v. United States (1878), Everson v. Board of Education (1947), and McCollum v. Board of Education (1948).

In an 1802 letter to the Danbury Baptist Association, he wrote:

"Believing with you that religion is a matter which lies solely between man and his God, that he owes account to none other for his faith or his worship, that the legislative powers of government reach actions only, and not opinions, I contemplate with sovereign reverence that act of the whole American people which declared that their legislature should "make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof", thus building a wall of separation between Church and State."

Quote from Jefferson's 1785 Notes on the State of Virginia:

"Can the liberties of a nation be thought secure when we have removed their only firm basis, a conviction in the minds of the people that these liberties are of the gift of God? That they are not to be violated but with his wrath? Indeed, I tremble for my country when I reflect that God is just; that his justice cannot sleep forever; that considering numbers, nature and natural means only, a revolution of the wheel of fortune, an exchange of situation is among possible events; that it may become probable by supernatural interference! The Almighty has no attribute which can take side with us in such a contest."

During the last hours of Jefferson's life he called family and friends around his bedside and with a distinct tone he uttered:

"I have done for my country, and for all mankind, all that I could do, and I now resign my soul, without fear, to my God, – my daughter to my country".

Source: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thomas_Jefferson_and_religion)s

Tuesday, February 3, 2015

John Adams

(This post is the third of a series about Presidents and their religious views.)

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_Adams

Adams was raised a Congregationalist, since his ancestors were Puritans. According to his biographer David McCullough, "as his family and friends knew, Adams was both a devout Christian, and an independent thinker". In a letter to Benjamin Rush, Adams credited religion with the success of his ancestors since their migration to the New World in the 1630s. He believed that regular church service was beneficial to man's moral sense.

http://www.pbs.org/godinamerica/god-in-the-white-house/

In contrast to his predecessor, John Adams was a self-professed "church-going animal" who made no secret of his religiosity. Raised in the Congregational Church, the established church in his home state of Massachusetts, John Adams later became a Unitarian. Unitarianism, a liberal strand of Christianity popular in New England, began in the liberal wing of the Congregational Church. Like other men educated during the period of the Enlightenment, Adams professed belief in a simpler, less mysterious form of Christianity. In a letter to his early political rival and late-in-life friend Thomas Jefferson, Adams wrote “without religion, this world would be something not fit to be mentioned in polite company -- I mean hell."

In a second letter to Jefferson, written following the death of his beloved wife, Abigail, Adams ponders the question of the afterlife: "I do not know how to prove physically, that we shall meet and know each other in a future state; nor does Revelation, as I can find, give us any positive assurance of such a felicity. My reasons for believing it, as I do most undoubtedly, are that I cannot conceive such a being could make such a species as the human, merely to live and die on this earth. If I did not believe in a future state, I should believe in no God. This Universe, this all would appear, with all of its swelling pomp, a boyish firework. And if there be a future state, why should the Almighty dissolve forever all the tender ties which unite us so delightfully in this world, and forbid us to see each other in the next?"

http://johnadamsinfo.com/was-john-adams-a-christian/92/

There are many famous quotes of John Adams on religion, especially in response to the Atheism of Thomas Paine. For John Adams, Atheist beliefs were a threat to a decent and moral society. He rebuked Thomas Paine's criticism of Christianity by declaring that no other religion had more "wisdom, virtue, equity and humanity." But John Adams was independent of mind to recognize consequences of any established religion. In the view of John Adams, Christianity had been twisted over the centuries by authorities who used superstition and division to control the populace, abuse minorities, and lead large scale wars. In the writing of John Adams on religion, he often criticized the Roman Catholic Church for its corrupted structure of power and deceit. John Adams' religion certainly changed during his life, but he always believed in the virtue of Christianity and attended church regularly throughout his life.

Quotes by John Adams

“Our Constitution was made only for a moral and religious people. It is wholly inadequate to the government of any other.”

“There is no such thing as human wisdom; all is the providence of God”

“The Ten Commandments and the Sermon on the Mount contain my religion.”

“I cannot conceive such a Being could make such a Species as the human, merely to live and die on this earth”

http://christianity.about.com/od/independenceday/a/foundingfathers.htm.

"Suppose a nation in some distant Region should take the Bible for their only law Book, and every member should regulate his conduct by the precepts there exhibited! Every member would be obliged in conscience, to temperance, frugality, and industry; to justice, kindness, and charity towards his fellow men; and to piety, love, and reverence toward Almighty God ... What a Eutopia, what a Paradise would this region be."

--Diary and Autobiography of John Adams, Vol. III, p. 9.

"The general principles, on which the Fathers achieved independence, were the only Principles in which that beautiful Assembly of young Gentlemen could Unite, and these Principles only could be intended by them in their address, or by me in my answer. And what were these general Principles? I answer, the general Principles of Christianity, in which all these Sects were United: And the general Principles of English and American Liberty, in which all those young Men United, and which had United all Parties in America, in Majorities sufficient to assert and maintain her Independence.

"Now I will avow, that I then believe, and now believe, that those general Principles of Christianity, are as eternal and immutable, as the Existence and Attributes of God; and that those Principles of Liberty, are as unalterable as human Nature and our terrestrial, mundane System."

--Adams wrote this on June 28, 1813, excerpt from a letter to Thomas Jefferson.

"The second day of July, 1776, will be the most memorable epoch in the history of America. I am apt to believe that it will be celebrated by succeeding generations as the great anniversary Festival. It ought to be commemorated, as the Day of Deliverance, by solemn acts of devotion to God Almighty. It ought to be solemnized with pomp and parade, with shows, games, sports, guns, bells, bonfires and illuminations, from one end of this continent to the other, from this time forward forever."

--Adams wrote this in a letter to his wife, Abigail, on July 3, 1776.

Ray R Barmore
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Wednesday, January 7, 2015

George Washington

(This post is the second of a series about Presidents and their religious views.)

Oath of Office

Washington took the oath of office on April 30, 1789, with his hand on the Bible. Immediately following the oath, Washington added, "So help me God," and bent forward and kissed the Bible before him. He then delivered America's first inaugural address, in which he made note of America's indebtedness to our Creator, stating: No people can be bound to acknowledge and adore the invisible hand which conducts the affairs of men more than the people of the United States. Every step by which they have advanced to the character of an independent nation seems to have been distinguished by some token of Providential agency.

First Inaugural Address April 30, 1789

Such being the impressions under which I have, in obedience to the public summons, repaired to the present station, it would be peculiarly improper to omit in this first official act my fervent supplications to that Almighty Being who rules over the universe, who presides in the councils of nations, and whose providential aids can supply every human defect, that His benediction may consecrate to the liberties and happiness of the people of the United States a Government instituted by themselves for these essential purposes, and may enable every instrument employed in its administration to execute with success the functions allotted to his charge. In tendering this homage to the Great Author of every public and private good, I assure myself that it expresses your sentiments not less than my own, nor those of my fellow-citizens at large less than either. No people can be bound to acknowledge and adore the Invisible Hand which conducts the affairs of men more than those of the United States.

General Orders – July 2, 1776

The time is now near at hand which must probably determine, whether Americans are to be, Freemen, or Slaves; whether they are to have any property they can call their own; whether their Houses, and Farms, are to be pillaged and destroyed, and they consigned to a State of Wretchedness from which no human efforts will probably deliver them. The fate of unborn Millions will now depend, under God, on the Courage and Conduct of this army—Our cruel and unrelenting Enemy leaves us no choice but a brave resistance, or the most abject submission; this is all we can expect—We have therefore to resolve to conquer or die: Our own Country’s Honor, all call upon us for a vigorous and manly exertion, and if we now shamefully fail, we shall become infamous to the whole world. Let us therefore rely upon the goodness of the Cause, and the aid of the Supreme Being, in whose hands Victory is, to animate and encourage us to great and noble Actions—The Eyes of all our Countrymen are now upon us, and we shall have their blessings, and praises, if happily we are the instruments of saving them from the Tyranny meditated against them. Let us therefore animate and encourage each other, and shew the whole world, that a Freeman contending for Liberty on his own ground is superior to any slavish mercenary on earth.

George Washington’s Thanksgiving Proclamation 1789

Whereas it is the duty of all Nations to acknowledge the providence of Almighty God, to obey his will, to be grateful for his benefits, and humbly to implore his protection and favor.”

(Note that Washington was not only asserting that individuals have obligations before God, but that nations do as well. At this point, the United States government was not yet a year old.)

Other Information

During the first meeting of the Continental Congress in Philadelphia in September, George Washington prayed alongside the other delegates, including Patrick Henry, John Jay, and Edmund Randolph, as they received the news that war with England had erupted in Boston. Here Anabaptists, Quakers, Congregationalists, Episcopalians, Unitarians, and Presbyterians all recited Psalm 35 together as patriots.

Washington believed in a God who responded to prayer and human need. Of his experiences in the battlefield, Washington reported, "By the all powerful dispensations of Providence, I have been protected beyond all human probability or expectation."

Farewell Address

Of the link between religion and morality, Washington states in his Farewell Address, "Of all the dispositions and habits which lead to political prosperity, religion and morality are indispensable supports... And let us with caution indulge the supposition that morality can be maintained without religion. Whatever may be conceded to the influence of refined education on minds of peculiar structure, reason and experience both forbid us to expect that national morality can prevail in exclusion of religious principle."

Ray R Barmore
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Monday, November 24, 2014

Barack Hussein Obama II

This post starts a very long series about Presidents and their religious views. It seems only appropriate to start with Barack Hussein Obama II. There is a lot of discussion about Obama’s religion based on many things that he says and statements in his books. He seems overly sympathetic to Islam while professing to be a Christian. He often refers to the holy koran. Keeping with the one God belief, the koran can’t be holy unless he believes Allah is the one God, therefore he wouldn’t be a Christian. So, the debate continues.

Most of this article is taken from http://www.pbs.org/godinamerica/god-in-the-white-house/ unless otherwise noted.

BARACK HUSSEIN OBAMA II

Raised in a secular household, Obama embraced Christianity after a spiritual awakening during his 20s. The sermons of Pastor Jeremiah Wright combined scriptural lessons with a call to social activism, which appealed to Obama, who was at the time a community organizer. Obama joined Chicago's Trinity United Church of Christ.

Obama later described his decision: "I came to see faith as more than just a comfort to the weary or a hedge against death, but rather as an active, palpable agent in the world and in my own life. It was because of these newfound understandings that I was finally able to walk down the aisle of Trinity one day and affirm my Christian faith. It came about as a choice, and not an epiphany. I didn't fall out in church, as folks sometimes do. The questions I had didn't magically disappear. The skeptical bent of my mind didn't suddenly vanish. But kneeling beneath that cross on the South Side, I felt I heard God's spirit beckoning me. I submitted myself to His will, and dedicated myself to discovering His truth and carrying out His works."

In January 2008, Obama told Christianity Today: "I am a Christian, and I am a devout Christian. I believe in the redemptive death and resurrection of Jesus Christ. I believe that faith gives me a path to be cleansed of sin and have eternal life." On September 27, 2010, Obama released a statement commenting on his religious views saying "I'm a Christian by choice. My family didn't—frankly, they weren't folks who went to church every week. And my mother was one of the most spiritual people I knew, but she didn't raise me in the church. So I came to my Christian faith later in life, and it was because the precepts of Jesus Christ spoke to me in terms of the kind of life that I would want to lead—being my brothers' and sisters' keeper, treating others as they would treat me. (1)

Obama's personal religion became a topic of debate and speculation during the 2008 election campaign, when opponents suggested that Obama was either a Muslim because of his father's heritage or a racist Christian, based on some of the Rev. Wright's controversial sermons. During the campaign, Obama was ultimately forced to separate himself fully from the pastor, and he resigned his 20-year membership at Trinity.

As a candidate, Obama delivered the keynote speech at a conference organized by the liberal evangelical minister Jim Wallis. "Secularists are wrong when they ask believers to leave their religion at the door before entering into the public square," he said. "Frederick Douglass, Abraham Lincoln, Williams Jennings Bryan, Dorothy Day, Martin Luther King -- indeed, the majority of great reformers in American history -- were not only motivated by faith, but repeatedly used religious language to argue for their cause. So to say that men and women should not inject their 'personal morality' into public policy debates is a practical absurdity. Our law is by definition a codification of morality, much of it grounded in the Judeo-Christian tradition."

In the same speech, Obama criticized the religious right and their argument of political issues. "I may be opposed to abortion for religious reasons," he said, "but if I seek to pass a law banning the practice, I cannot simply point to the teachings of my church or evoke God's will. I have to explain why abortion violates some principle that is accessible to people of all faiths, including those with no faith at all."

(1) http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Barack_Obama#Cultural_and_political_image

Ray R Barmore
Health and Wellness Coach
The Herbal Guy
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619-876-5273
Skype: barmore4
Email Me

Other Blog:
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