Piltdown Superman

The subject of near-death experiences (NDEs) is highly controversial, but has been fascinating people for many years. One reason scientists have difficulty examining them is because they are extremely subjective. Also, there is a variety of experiences. Some people see light and a voice they attribute to God or an angel that tells them it is not yet time, go back. Others experienced terror. Many lives have been changed, but not always for the better and they need counseling. Those who went to a happy place resent coming back; their infirmities still exist. Spirit, light, and clouds, Pixabay / Gerd Altmann (geralt) Medically, some NDEs can be dismissed as hallucinations because the brain goes into special functions. There are times when people in the midst of an NDE returned and described people, conversations, and more that they could not have known about. The idea of giving counseling to NDE experiencers (especially to those who have challenges to their worldviews) involves materiali...

by Cowboy Bob Sorensen  Many people say that evidence for the Designer is clearly obvious in many ways, even showing his engineering and planning skills, love of beauty, and more. Even the single-celled  Stentor coeruleus  shows intricacy found in multicellular organisms. The wealthy and intelligent Elon Musk was asked about the Creator , and he said, "I believe this universe came from something. People have different labels." I do not think he simply meant that the word God  is not the same in all languages. Chromosomes, National Human Genome Research Institute (public domain) There are people who admit that the universe and life itself were designed, but they distance themselves from the Designer. Believers in microbes-to-microscopist evolution study things like chromosomes and then gleefully give the credit to evolution. While evolution is pantheistic in nature (is is an ancient religious and philosophical belief, after all), it is not a person and cannot make de...

One of the most amazing follies of atheism is its adherents spend time and energy hating God (and often hating Christians), then claim they "lack belief" that he exists. There is no evidence, they say. If they would take off their Darwin spectacles  and honestly look around, they would cease to be atheists. (The same applies to agnostics.) Known as general revelation , the Creator has made himself known quite clearly through his creation. However, people willingly and unrighteously suppress the truth. Esopus Lake from High Banks Preserve , Unsplash / Cowboy Bob Sorensen What would constitute "proof" for an unbeliever? Professing atheists and agnostics demand scientific  proof, but this is illogical. They presuppose and then rail against a "straw god" of their own imaginings instead of dealing with the God of the Bible: He is spirit, and not subject to man-made scientific evidence. God's existence is not restricted to scientists or others who may be con...

There are times when someone is confronted by an accuser, and after giving responses, is told, "You have an answer to everything!" That remark is often sarcastic because some people make things up and give ridiculous excuses. (Of course, the accuser may not want to accept legitimate replies.) Evolution has answers. It is interesting that the puny god of evolution is often treated as a powerful being with the ability to make decisions. A good part of the way evolution explains what is observed is from practiced storytelling, especially those in science fields. Spectacles modified from Freeimages /  Kenn Kiser Life and history (including imagined history) are interpreted through Darwin spectacles. Such a worldview only lets someone see evolution at every turn. There were some "science facts" videos I was watching about biology, but had to leave them in the dust. Some interesting material that was marred by evolutionary stories about the unobserved past, such as "...

Most Americans probably know of the July 4, 2025 flash flood tragedies in Texas. The one that is most prominent is Camp Mystic for Girls near Hunt, Texas. At this writing, twenty-seven campers and counselors are dead, and others are still missing. In this and other disasters, people wonder, "Where is God?" There is a word for attempts to reconcile the love of God (or even his existence) with evil in the world. It is theodicy , but academic discussions can seem glib or self-serving. Interestingly, the Camp Mystic tragedy is a challenge to atheists and other Darwinists. Camp Mystic, Flickr / crawford orthodontics ( CC BY-NC-SA 2.0 ) The camp is a nondenominational Christian. It was established in 1926 as Stewart's Camp for Girls. It was sold in 1937 to the Stacy family. Somewhere along the line, the name was changed to Camp Mystic because the morning mist on the Guadalupe River  gave the area a mystic feel, There had been several previous incidents of flooding over the ye...

It may come as a shock, but yes, there are some things that God cannot do. He created the universe and raised Jesus, God the Son, from the dead. But he still has certain limitations. One is that he cannot go against his nature. Professing atheists like "gotcha" questions like, "If God is all-powerful, can he make a rock so big he cannot lift it?" These tinhorns think they are being clever, but they are showing some serious intellectual flaws. God is perfect in logic, and such challenges are illogical. Mountains, rocks, flowers, and sun, Unsplash / Damian Markutt The challenge is based on contradictory premises, so it is nothing. God cannot make  nothing. He is all-powerful (omnipotent) and has no limitations outside himself.  Such disingenuous questioners are trying to use his omnipotence against him — without understanding what that word means. Roslyn B from Tasmania, Australia asked: My son (grade 8) asked me a question which he was asked by a peer (who says he’s...

There are many schools of psychology, some of which borrow concepts from each other. They are all wrong because they are not only atheistic but also have Darwinian foundations. Although secular psychologists deny the existence of the soul (mind, consciousness), they still try to understand it . In behaviorism, humans are essentially meat machines. They respond to stimuli — behaviors come from conditioning. This includes reward and punishment. Conditioning is gradual, a piece here and there over time. Interestingly, some aspects of behaviorism can be accurate. Brain and network, Pixabay /  Gerd Altmann  (Geralt) Psychologists lost their affection for behaviorism because they liked cognitive approaches and because it failed to explain language. The extreme specified complexity of language speaks (heh!) of the Creator , which flies in the faces of Darwinism and behaviorism. The Intelligent Design article linked below ends with a bit of a cop-out: "The science is clear. Mind, not ...

His father,  William, was a Christian and a slavery abolitionist , and Samuel (1805-1873) took his faith further. He became a bishop in the Church of England. Samuel was also a contemporary of Charles Darwin and unimpressed by his work. Interestingly, scientists tended to reject Darwin's version of evolution while the clergy was embracing deep time, then eventually rode for the Darwin brand. Wilberforce is known for a misrepresentation of his confrontation of T.H. Huxley . There something else of significance that is less known. Samuel Wilberforce by George Richmond , 1868 Sam was involved in a debate with Darwinists and also published an essay in 1860. He did one thing that I deplore in any Christian apologetics effort, and that was to leave God out of the discussions. However, he did take Darwin to task on scientific grounds. "But Cowboy Bob, he had no business taking on Darwin because he wasn't a scientist!" Actually, Darwin's only degree was in theology — he ...

Right from the get-go, I need to point out that a few things have changed since the article featured below was written in 2019. The so-called New Atheism is fading and several of its primary apologists are losing their impact. Even so, the material and principles are still useful. One of the most obstreperous and arrogant professing atheists is Bill Nye. He makes remarks against biblical creationists and the Genesis Flood as if he has superior knowledge, but is repeatedly shown to be wrong. C. Richard Dawkins and Neil deGrasse Tyson also make false claims about us. Shattering atheism image by Why?Outreach Bill Nye had a highly-publicized debate with Ken Ham a few years ago. He misrepresented creationists and used a passel of fallacious attacks , including equivocating evolution with science . He was claiming that creationists would not have reasoning skills and essentially saying that we brainwash our children. That's a lie, old son. Dawkins and Tyson also misrepresent creationi...

God the Son, the second person of the Trinity , humbled himself and became the man Jesus. Out of love for us, he was crucified, dead, buried, and bodily resurrected. These are well-attested facts in the four Gospels. However, they have differing accounts about the details of what went on that morning. Scoffers have claimed that the differences are contradictory, but such claims cannot be supported. Written accounts of eyewitnesses are available from history. Close examination of the records is needed to deal with alleged contradictions and piece together the full narrative. Four Gospel booklets, Unsplash / alabaster_co Care must be taken to avoid placing modern approaches to writing onto ancient texts. For instance, women were traveling early in the morning. Was the sun up yet? How much of it? (After all, dawn  can mean different things, such as when the first part of the sun is above the horizon, or the entire solar ball.) How many women were there? Were they there at the same tim...

As any well-schooled child knows, there are rankings in science. Someone makes observations and makes a few predictions for a hypothesis. This can graduate to a theory if it is well-substantiated with facts and testing. A law is something that summarizes observations and is unchanging under certain conditions. Charles Darwin had speculations or a hypothesis of evolution at best, but not a theory — and definitely not a law . Some owlhoots took a notion to fabricate a new law to explain how life as they see it has increasing complexity. Police cars at night (slightly modified), Unsplash / Acton Crawford This fundamentally-flawed thinking involves evolutionary presuppositions. Also, it has deep time assumptions. Add to this the thought that some laws take up where others fail, such as Newtonian rules getting replaced by quantum mechanics or relativity. No, those two things only apply in special circumstances, but there is no "replacement" going on. These scientists think evoluti...

When people feel burdened, they often seek out counselors. Good friends can be helpful but problems may be cause so much discomfort, a person wants an expert. As in so many things, worldviews matter. Everyone has a worldview . It is very unfortunate that most schools of psychology are humanistic. That is, they reject the God who made us and instead draw from atheism and evolutionism: Everything began with the Big Bang, the cosmos evolved, we are star stuff and (by accident) made ourselves evolve into humans, and when you die, you are worm food. Fabulous consel, Frederick! Creepy AI-generated Charles Darwin as a psychiatrist, made at  Simplified Scientism is compatible with the foolishness of evolutionary psychology  and secular humanism. It is the belief that all the answers in life are found through science. Of course, their definition of science rejects the Creator and, like atheism, cannot be consistently lived. Joy, peace, love, reason, science itself — all are immaterial ...

Long ago, I encountered a computer program called ELIZA on the TRS-80, which was a machine for beginners. The Tandy version of ELIZA mimicked a therapist but it could be tricked with clever wording. This was early stages of artificial intelligence. AI is ubiquitous, especially online. (Indeed, when I highlight a block of text I am composing, a particular browser offers to use AI to rewrite it. No. The mistakes and possible cleverness are mine.) It is being used in some amazing ways but some see it as a threat. Robot using computer, Pixabay /  Lukas Many people think that AI will put artists out of work. Some graphics it produces are impressive, but others (especially at the free level) are risible. Many videos on YouTube are entirely made by AI, but there are certain flaws in narration that give them away. (I expect lawsuits because the voices of famous people are often used.) Music is composed by AI that is acceptable but...unsatisfying. Some folks have such a high opinion of arti...

The internet can be considered a tool for information gathering, and like any tool, can be used for good or bad. It has helped promote atheism, which pretends to be about rational thinking. The internet also helped advance the Intelligent Design movement and biblical creation science. But the atheism that infested the internet was erroneously said to promote reason and science. It did not go well. Whether or not people actually became atheists and stayed with it, the damage was done and people became...soulless. Their thinking was mechanistic and reductionist . Waters are falling at the Falling Waters Preserve near Glasco, NY, Unsplash / Cowboy Bob Sorensen Although atheists usually deny it, they are very religious. In their jumble of beliefs,  Scientism usually comes out on top. That view reduces humans and everything else into its components, and that hard sciences are the only path to reality. Such a worldview is saturated with absurdities and arbitrary definitions, not the lea...

When dealing with professing atheists — I have to pull on the reins right away and stop this pony before it even gets going. My use of  professing  here indicates that I believe the Bible. Romans 1:18-23 says that everyone knows God exists, but they suppress the truth so they can continue claiming that there is no God. (More foolish is that they "lack belief.") There are been many professing atheists I have encountered who ridicule theists for denying "reality" or some such. However, atheism cannot be lived on a consistent basis. Darwin dollars image made with PhotoFunia Atheists (adding professing  in every instance gets tedious) are materialists. That is, they only believe in matter; atoms, molecules, and all that good stuff. To be consistent, they cannot believe in immaterial things such as love, beauty, consciousness, morality, and other things that cannot be measured. But they do believe in most of those things, so they are standing on the biblical worldview. F...

Getting ready to write this post about gratitude and Thanksgiving Day, I slopped coffee on the carpet while walking to the computer. In this frame of mind, I am grateful to have a place to live in where I am spilling coffee, and even the stuff itself. This is my second painful Thanksgiving after my wife died after about twenty-four years together, but there are people who care about me and want to share their holiday with me. Also, some folks have very little but still have a gratitude attitude and do what they can to celebrate . Give thanks, Unsplash /  Adam Winger It is indeed unfortunate that there are people who use our inner sense of gratitude for manipulation. That is, someone can do a favor and use it for leverage to demand one in return. (It's quite different when the give and take is known from the get-go, that's like business or politics.) Some people wonder where this inner sense of gratitude came from. Many biblical creationists know that we are created to have grat...

Scoffers sometimes refer to Christianity as a "death cult," which is an ad hominem  and a straw man; we believe that death is an enemy (I Cor. 15:26) that has been defeated by the bodily Resurrection of Jesus. It is indeed ironic that those scoffers uphold evolution which actually is a death cult. Strangely, people have a fascination with fear and death, but also a simultaneous aversion to them. In movies, violence and gore are extreme and people pay their hard-earned money to see them. Try to talk about their own mortality and people often change the subject. Cemetery, Pixabay / Patty Jansen Those of us who have experienced the death of someone close seem to have a stronger aversion to it than others. My wife died fourteen months ago today, and I have no interest in stories with numerous killings, and gore. I have long been put off by large body counts, but more so now. Indeed, others who experience grief often try to help others get through it. Darwin taught a version of na...

by Cowboy Bob Sorensen  Although I am not fond of trends, I like a new one on my radar. "Beware of Smartphone Zombies" can be seen on T-shirts, possibly  real road signs , and many places on the internet. People do not watch where they are walking, forcing others to go around them — if possible. It illustrates a deeper problem related to the stupidification of society, especially younger people. Our Creator gave people minds to use, but their attention is on electronic entertainment and getting dopamine from a sort of electronic culture . They miss out on true beauty. Rondout Creek joining the Hudson River, several things happening, Unsplash / Cowboy Bob Sorensen I'll allow that people want their entertainment and don't want to be interrupted. For instance, I was uninterested in going on "color tours" to see the autumn leaves changing because I had things I preferred to do. We all have some entertainment priorities or some things just have no appeal. However...

by Cowboy Bob Sorensen  There was a story told some time ago about a salesman who came across a man cutting trees in the forest, and he was using just an axe. The sales rep said the man could cut down many more trees if he used the chainsaw he was selling. Sold! A couple of days later, the salesman came back and asked how things were going. "Lousy!" replied the man. "All day yesterday with that blasted chainsaw, and I only cut down two trees . I want my money back!" "Easy, friend," replied the salesman. "Let's see what's wrong with it." He pulled the starter and there was a loud vroooom. "Whoa, what is that noise? " cried the man. Car in the woods, Unsplash / Cowboy Bob Sorensen Amazing that he got any  trees cut when he didn't even know how to start up the chainsaw. Every once in a while, someone makes news for having lived an amazing number of years. People ask, "What's your secret to a long life?" Answers va...

With " Inner Knowledge of the Creator ," we examined how people who claim to have no evidence of God are unrighteously suppressing that knowledge because it is all around them. Also, there is inner knowledge and our consciences. A term for all that is general revelation . Knowledge of the Creator comes from revelation. There is another kind, called special revelation , where God has made himself known in more direct ways, especially Scripture. We have word pictures to consider, but secularists present their geologic time scale picture to corrupt the divine revelations. View of Rondout Valley and mountains, Unsplash / Cowboy Bob Sorensen When people put on their Darwin or Deep Time spectacles, their view of both general and special revelations is corrupted. They "see" millions of years, evolution through death, and evidence for the divine judgment of the Genesis Flood is degraded to uniformitarianism (slow and gradual processes over many years). People need the guida...