Today’s New Reason To Believe

Previously Posted on January 22nd, 2008 by Kenneth Richard Samples

Recently someone asked me a question concerning animal sacrifices in the Bible. Her specific question was: “Why did God allow man to use animals for sacrifice? Doesn’t he care about the innocent animals?” In our current social climate, where many people consider extensive animal rights to be moral necessities, the sacrifices described in the Bible can be misinterpreted as barbarous acts of cruelty. But this perception is far from the actual truth. Here is my response.

Biblically speaking, creatures derive their existence and their purpose for being directly from their Creator. Creatures have no independent existence or rights apart from their Creator. Creatures, by definition, therefore lack total autonomy (complete independence and freedom). According to Scripture, animals were created by God ultimately to serve his purposes. Often those divine purposes directly involve helping human beings.

Theologically speaking, God used animal sacrifices as a precursor of Jesus Christ’s ultimate sacrifice (Hebrews 7:27). Animal sacrifices illustrated the idea of a substitute that suffers wrath or punishment on the account of another’s offense. Jesus Christ is the perfect substitute who suffers the wrath of God in the place of sinners (Isaiah 53:4-5; 2 Corinthians 5:21; 1 Peter 3:18). Animal sacrifices served God’s purpose in teaching God’s people about redemption. And that is a very important purpose indeed.

Through his acts of providence, God expresses great and special care for all of his creatures, both animals and humans (Job 5:10; Psalm 65:9-10; 104:14; 147:8-9; Jeremiah 10:13; Acts 14:17). Consider the words of Jesus: “Look at the birds of the air; they do not sow or reap or stow away in barns, and yet your heavenly Father feeds them. Are you not much more valuable than they?” (Matthew 6:26 NIV)

While it is true that animals have not committed sinful or evil actions, it needs to be understood that animals, by their very nature, are not capable of making moral decisions or performing moral actions. Animals are neither moral nor immoral, but rather amoral (not relating to the moral sphere). Animals shouldn’t be viewed as “innocent” or “guilty” specifically because they lack the spiritual/moral sensibilities that are required for such ethical classifications. Of all the species on Earth, only humankind was created in the image and likeness of God (Genesis 1:26-27). Human volition and moral decision-making is only possible because of the imago Dei (Latin: image of God). The moral sphere is clearly one of the things that set human beings apart from the animal kingdom.

I personally think that many people in our time have a sentimental rather than a realistic view of animals. Certainly as creatures of God, animals are to be cared for, appreciated, and even protected, but on a moral and spiritual level they are not equivalent to human beings who are made in the image and likeness of God. Animals should never be treated carelessly or cruelly, but nor should they be placed on the same level as human beings, as some animal rights organizations tend to do.

For more on how human beings differ from animals, see chapter 10 of my book, A World of Difference: Putting Christian Truth-Claims to the Worldview Test.

Previously Posted January 28th, 2008 by Hugh Ross

Many independent sets of observations confirm that only about six percent of all the ordinary matter (neutrons and protons) in the universe is made up of stars and stellar remnants.¹ The other 94 percent is dark. While astronomers have verified that enormous quantities of ordinary dark matter exist as dispersed intergalactic gas, they have yet to positively identify a totally dark structure of galactic proportions.

The existence of ordinary dark matter structures on galactic, or at least dwarf galactic scales, is a crucial component of the biblically predicted big bang creation model,² which appears to best fit the observations, namely the cold dark matter big bang model. Therefore, the discovery of a dark matter structure of galactic proportions would be a big boost for a biblically consistent cosmic creation model.

A team of thirteen astronomers from Chile, France, Germany, Italy, the United Kingdom, and the United States found such a dark galaxy in the Virgo cluster of galaxies.³ In a low-resolution map of the Virgo cluster at radio wavelengths they found a neutral hydrogen line (21-centimeter wavelength) emitter with a broad line width that was unaccompanied by any light-radiating source. The team re-imaged that part of their map using the high-resolution Westerbork Synthesis Radio Telescope in the Netherlands. What they discovered was a dark, edge on, spinning disk manifesting the diameter and mass of a typical spiral galaxy. Furthermore, they noted that the luminous spiral galaxy, NGC 4254, is located very close to the dark rotating disk and possesses an “odd one-armed morphology” that can only be explained by a nearby massive perturber. The one possible candidate in the vicinity of NGC 4254 is the dark disk discovered by the team. Finally, the team confirmed that their discovered disk is indeed truly dark when they used the Hubble Space Telescope to search for possible faint stars associated with the disk’s 21-centimeter emission. They found none.

The team not only produced a convincing case for the existence of a “dark galaxy,” they also demonstrated that astronomers very likely have been overlooking the possible existence of dark galaxies elsewhere. They propose a targeted research program to search for and identify such galaxies. Such a program would enable astronomers to develop a much more detailed model for the creation and history of the universe and, consequently, more rigorous tests of the biblical cosmic creation model. We at Reasons To Believe are thrilled that doubts expressed by atheists and young-earth creationists about the dark matter component of the big bang creation model are being convincingly answered. We also predict that any forthcoming more-detailed models of the creation and history of the universe arising from future dark galaxy discoveries will prove to be a beautiful match with the Bible’s story of the universe’s beginning and development.

1. Masataka Fukugita and P. J. E. Peebles, “The Cosmic Energy Inventory,” Astrophysical Journal, 616 (December 1, 2004): 643-68.
2. Hugh Ross, The Creator and the Cosmos, 3rd ed. (Colorado Springs: NavPress, 2001): 23-29.
3. Robert Minchin et al., “21 cm Synthesis Observations of VIRGOHI 21-A Possible Dark Galaxy in the Virgo Cluster,” Astrophysical Journal 670 (December 1, 2007): 1056-64.

Previously Posted on October 26th, 2007 by David H. Rogstad, Ph.D.

When the Bible tell us that we have been made from the “dust of the earth,” and will eventually “return to the dust,” it is more true than perhaps the authors realized.

Prevailing theory for the formation of planets maintains that they form when dust particles in the disk of material rotating around a central star begin to stick together in clumps (just like the dust under my bed!). Gradually they grow in size, from particles the size of sand, to pebbles, rocks, and eventually boulders as big as a meter across. Next, these boulder-sized objects aggregate into objects called planetesimals that can be many kilometers across. Finally, gravity takes over and draws these planetesimals together to form planets.

Scientists have accounted for most of the physical processes necessary to bring about the accumulation of material to finally form planets, except for that one step of going from boulders to planetesimals. On occasion it has been called one of the major unsolved problems in planet formation, and has often been the focus of dispute by some in the young-earth creationist community as grounds for rejecting this explanation for how solar systems like our own were formed.

New research could help resolve the issue. In a paper published in the August 30, 2007 issue of Nature, Anders Johansen and several of his colleagues describe a set of simulations that, to their knowledge, for the first time permits accurate and complete modeling of how these objects go from meter-sized boulders to kilometer-scale planetesimals.

The team needed to solve two major problems: (1) boulders are not expected to stick together very easily because of the weakness of their gravitational interaction, and (2) the time to interact is short because the objects tend to spiral into the central star in only a few tens of orbits, due to the “headwind” from slower rotating gas.

The results of their simulations demonstrate, however, that boulders can, indeed, collapse together under the force of gravity. What they show is that some regions in the disk randomly undergo local increases in the density of boulders. Then gravity can act over a long-enough period of time and with sufficient strength to build up larger bodies.

While the authors are cautious about claiming to have resolved all the difficulties, they do offer a possible path for filling this gap in planet formation. Once again, more detailed studies have yielded an explanation for a particular phenomenon that at first had been criticized.

Certainly there are areas of science where the lack of an explanation is grounds for abandoning a theory, but this is not one of them. Instead, to (the planetary) dust we shall return.