A recent exchange on the Huffington Post article "The Bible: History or Myth?"

I am a long time supporter of Creation Ministries International and I recently had a discussion with an atheist on Huffington Post web site. I have included this on my blog because I hope it shows that you don't need to be a scientist or theologian in order to refute some of the theological and scientific arguments often presented in such discussion threads. I believe it is important to always be able articulate the reasons for my faith.

Lee Harvey
"Creationism is the belief that God could create the world in 6 days, but couldn't find 2 naked people hiding in a garden." - Anonymous

Wes Dart
I think Lee that you may have missed the point of the question.
"Adam, where are you?" has a much deeper almost existential meaning. God was calling Adam to examine the state of his own heart, and the predicament that he had found himself in, as a result of his rejection of the boundaries that God had established for the creation.

George Genung
08:01 PM on 7/18/2011
Wes, did this deity of yours select this creation out of an infinite possible creations knowing everything that would happen, before it made the creation?
Your answer will tell a lot about the basis for your theology.

Lee Harvey
My post was supposed to be funny. Maybe it failed.

Brooke123456
01:25 AM on 7/19/2011
And you know this how?
If you had a conversation with god, then did others hear it?
Did he sound like George Burns?
If you had thoughts in your head, that's just your brain doing what it does, if you heard audible voices then, please seek help.
If your post was meant as a joke, then please forgive my response.

Wes Dart
08:37 PM on 7/19/2011
Hi Brooke, I was doing my best to reflect on Lee's original post in the context of the Genesis narrative. We all start with a presupposition of some kind; mine is intelligent design, yours is likely some variant of materialism i.e. what we can observe is all there is. From my perspective the very fact that you can even have 'thoughts in your head' is testimony to an intelligent designer. We don't observe complex systems with amazing redundancy and inter-dependencies arising out of chaos anywhere in nature; detailed information is coded into every living cell.
http://creation.com/mind-by-design-peter­line-interview
I would imagine that you would interpret the same evidence in a very different way based on your own pre-supposition?

Brooke123456
12:58 PM on 7/21/2011
No presupposition here.
I have a brain, the brain can be observed and scanned.
The activity in the brain can be correlated to my activities­.
Same goes for your brain.
Where is the presupposition?
You state:
"We don't observe complex systems with amazing redundancy and inter-dependencies arising out of chaos anywhere in nature.."
Answer: Sure we do, its called life and its all over the place on earth!

Wes Dart
04:52 AM on 7/23/2011
We both see the same evidence "it's called life and it's all over the place on earth"; but you have revealed the source of your presupposition in your answer. You are relying on observation and correlation of the physical evidence to explain what you are seeing. This presents no problem for me. My question to you is where can you observe non-living matter becoming living? You are relying on a presupposition that all this happened somewhere in the unobserved distant past. Observation in the present will verify that life is required in order to 'create' new life. There is no evidence even that a mutation results in any new information being added to our DNA e.g. like getting feathers instead of hair -- it is always a 'loss' or a corruption of existing information e.g. an extra or perhaps missing finger. So this won't help you either.

Brooke123456
15 hours ago (10:23 AM)
Wes Dart....ok­ay...I have loose evidence that abiogenisis happened..­..there is decent suppport for it. But I will grant you, there is no way to KNOW for sure...of course that applies to everything­.
That does not however mean you get to just make stuff up! The appropriate response is "I Don't Know", not my magic sky daddy did it.
I could make up a story that fits the facts a whole lot better than your god!
Flying Spaghetti Monster is a much better answer!

Ryan Nice
11:03 PM on 7/19/2011
Actually his reading of the that verse isn't that abstract - I'm surprised your having trouble getting it. But then again purposely missing the point is a quick way feel like you're winning an argument. Well done.

Wes Dart
0 minute ago (2:15 AM)
Hi Brooke, I guess the point I was making is that we both are taking a 'faith' position when it comes to the past. I am much happier taking the eyewitness accounts of people who were ultimately happy to lose everything, many even losing their lives, for the sake of remaining faithful to what they had seen, touched and experienced. That's why I could never consider a 'flying spaghetti monster' as a rational alternative to an omnipotent God. Wes

An amazing coffee made by my nephew Josh

A fabulous finish to a magnificent meal enjoyed with my brother and sister-in-law Leigh & Amanda and their family on our way back from the Gold Coast.

Virgin Money Childhood Dream Competition

I just entered the Virgin Money Childhood Dream Competition, hoping to win myself a trip to space!

Part of the competition was that you had to submit your childhood dream in 25 words or less.

I was going to make something up, but then I remembered that this really was my dream when I was in my early teens:

"To build a new community in a remote part of Australia using innovative construction techniques, technology and alternative energy as a model for the world."

Funny how life turns out sometimes. I wonder whether Richard Branson feels like he has achieved his dream?

Mothers Day Lunch with a couple of extra Irvings

Are We Disappointed With Space Exploration?

http://www.theatlantic.com/technology/archive/2011/04/are-we-disappointed-with-space-exploration/237136/

A very interesting article and to be honest it is pretty hard to fault the logic.

My only observation would be that what is perceived as valuable often changes with the passage of time. There are potentially lots of opportunities for profit in outer space, unfortunately opportunities are not always apparent until you have spent some time in a place.

In my own country, the Dutch explorers arrived before the British and decided that Australia wasn't all that interesting to them from a commercial perspective. Curiously they made a similar decision about Manhattan Island! Then the British decided that Australia might make a nice prison camp.

Eventually someone worked out that money could be made on a massive scale growing wool for export; but it wasn't really until the 20th century that we began unlocking the vast mineral wealth lying beneath the surface.

At the end of the day I believe it will all come down to obtaining resources at the best price possible. I am betting that eventually we will need to look off-world to satisfy demand. If we can build a space tourism market in the mean time, then this will help to establish the necessary infrastructure to begin mining H3 on the moon or perhaps some other exotic minerals on passing asteroids.

The question to ask is: what resource that is scarce on Earth is otherwise readily available elsewhere in the solar system?

Also, I would add that the role of government is to provide an environment where private enterprise can flourish.

If we had insisted that the Australian government be solely responsible to mine the mineral wealth of Australia; we would have ended up producing sub-standard product at an uncompetitive price. Now that sounds a lot like communism to me, or the National Broadband Network or a host of other government programs in my own country. Perhaps there are even shades of NASA there too.

Instead I believe the role of government is to regulate in order to bring the best outcome for as many stakeholders as possible; then, I hasten to add, to happily collect royalties and taxes along the way. This is how you end up with world class mining companies like BHP-Billiton or RIO Tinto.

Don't leave outer space to NASA, ESA, Roscosmos, CNSA or JAXA. It is too important to be left with the politicians.

Let's encourage entrepreneurs like Elon Musk, Jeff Bezos, Richard Branson, John Carmack and Robert Bigelow. I only wish we could add some Australian names to the list -- Rupert Murdoch seems too focussed on his terrestrial concerns. Perhaps we should be looking at some of our mining magnates?

Running at Hawks Nest

We enjoyed an excellent time with other leaders from our church at Hawks Nest over this last weekend. Jonty, who one of our international guests currently doing a gap year with the church happened to take this amazing picture of the sunrise as we were running past.

I absolutely love running, but it is being outside enjoying creation that often thrills me more. Just before this photo was taken we had witnessed a pod of dolphins swimming in synchronized perfection among the morning breakers.

Lockheed Martin shows test spaceship

http://news.ninemsn.com.au/article.aspx?id=8227136

It has been fascinating watching the progress of this with Obama wanting to cancel the Constellation program and Congress determined to keep as many pieces of it alive as they could manage. For all the wrong reasons in my opinion!

Don't get me wrong, I love watching the space program, but I would love to see NASA focus on the cutting edge stuff like the Nautilus X that I sent you links about a few weeks ago. I find it pretty hard to get excited about what essentially appears to be Apollo Mk2.