Author Archives: Director

CLIMATE CHANGE — Conference 2010

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What Does A War In Iraq Have to Do With Global Change?

What Does More Science Data Do For Us?

The November 30 San Diego Tribune states that progress at the recent Cancun IPCC conference on climate change is characterized by:  “Deep-seated disputes within the conference continue to block agreement on a new binding global accord requiring rich nations – and perhaps some emerging economies – to reduce emissions. At best, the delegates are expected to concur in a handful of decisions on secondary issues.”

If you view our WindowView introductory video on Change, you’ll see that it’s not climate or even global change that is the real issue!  So, what is?  We suggest it’s how humanity as a whole responds to change that IS the ISSUE!  But the question remains: Can we, all humanity, really respond?  Something IS happening …  the Tribune, quoting Rajendra Pachauri, the chairman of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), reveals:

“The trend is very clear,” said the Indian engineer and researcher. “We have and will continue to have increasingly more floods, more droughts, more heat waves, more extreme precipitation events.”

One key response to change is EITHER collect more data on change OR just respond in some way that makes sense.  Can deciding not to go to war, but to make a move to head off climate change, be part of the real solution?  And was an opportunity missed when the war in Iraq started? Let’s consider the difference!

Watching Changes And Wondering

We should expect scientists to say more study is needed–that’s what scientists do.  This was the first cry from the scientific community in the late 80s and early 90s.  But back then, it was clear decisions needed to be made during the 1990s to have a real counter effect to the first of changes to come.  Now, scientists ask again for more data.  But what decision can be made now, such that we humans can counter changes before they grow further?

Go back to the quote at the top of this blog post … it says nations and organizations are in dispute.  Dispute is another word for friction, stalling, and failure to collaborate on a global scale.  And in the Window, we see that one day, according to the scriptural texts, there will be a one-world government.  Perhaps in the name of having global coordination? But this change will not be about coordinating a response to climate change!  Well, maybe in the name of making global responses, but the foundation of the one-world government will be about some other kind of power struggle–on a spiritual level.

The San Diego Tribune goes on to further describe the need for information.  It’s about thawing ground up north or the change in acid levels in all the world’s oceans.  This is all occurring to one degree or other … right now.  This comes in advance of a one-world government.  The environmental shift has started; again from the Tribune:

“It’s basically the fact that people have not carried out enough measurement so that we can get a handle on how this is going to change in the future, what sort of increase of temperature will occur with the melting of the permafrost,” Pachauri said.

Similarly, he said, “the oceans require a lot more concentrated attention.”

Researchers are growing deeply worried about the growing acidification of the oceans, from their absorption of excess atmospheric carbon dioxide. More acidic waters make it more difficult for coral, oysters and other undersea life to produce their calcium carbonate shells, threatening to blow holes in the oceanic food chain.

“We need to understand how this will affect marine life,” Pachauri said.

And beyond that, he said, scientists must try to gauge the oceans’ ultimate capacity to continue operating as a “sink,” absorbing carbon dioxide. If that stops – and researchers believe they have detected a slowing of absorption in the seas north of Antarctica – the planet will be in even deeper trouble.”

Climate change is wrapping up the whole Earth in its grip–all the oceans make this a big deal.  AGAIN, from the Window’s View we ask … how can humanity respond?  Isn’t our response so telling about our future–in the material and spiritual sense!

WAR or PEACE-full solution

Within the Window we have given thought to recent historical events.  Extremist terrorism has had an interesting counter effect to global climate change–consider this point and take a look at the Window’s TimeLine.  Think of it this way, had the US President had the courage to leave Iraq alone and to take all the Billions of dollars spent on war … and then offered these dollars to homeowners and businesses for solar power, wind power, or geo-thermal utilities, the entire world would have seen a very different result–more than dealing with extremism.  Sort of outside the box thinking! Progressive and forward thinking. But …

The Real Difference

On the one hand, investing in solutions, would take an energy-intensive country further off line–to be less vulnerable to extremists.  The underlying need for future Iraqi oil would diminished.  Electric cars would have, by now, been in the development and release stages of more than one American auto maker … and global climate change would have had a real response–especially by one consumer base that uses a lot of energy resources.  The expenditure of billions of dollars on solutions would have also created millions of jobs!

Instead, a President went to war … against a country and extremists, but not war against the larger overriding set of changes that continues to quietly grip the planet.  A huge opportunity was missed!  And let’s NOT depend on the world’s league of nations to come around to solutions … because like decades ago, today they are in dispute!

Yet as the world cries out because solutions are not coming quickly, we are not surprised.  The Window’s TimeLine looks to a horizon of events that are on the way–coming soon to visit all of humanity. It is not just one president who missed it … the entire human race is missing the point.  Did everyone chip in to create THE solution … or are we still waiting, watching, and wondering? Change is about how we do or don’t respond.  The WindowView is about seeing the big picture and understanding what lies ahead … come take a look through the Window!

Director, WindowView.org

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Unsettling Thoughts — Humanity’s Narrow Existence

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The Window is a thinking place in cyberspace.  Some material here relates to biblical prophecy (a prediction).  Some information here relates to changes in our environment.  We do not prophesy (that is make predictions), nor do we care for sensational claims.  There is enough stern faced Bible thumping and irate environmentalism to have us want to move on … but if there is pertinent information regarding things biblical, even in environmental terms, then it might be worth a look at dimensions of information put before us long ago.  Let’s just look at what evidence is there already.

A BIG BURN:  ALL GREEN GRASS and ONE THIRD of TREES

Some number of years ago I, Director of WindowView, attended professional scientific meetings and heard what might be the early descriptions of global climate change.  Scientists from around the US and the world, attended the annual meeting for the American Association of the Advancement of Science (AAAS).  The latter part of the same year, now two decades ago, came with another scientific symposium on global change and the prospects for humanity in the face of coming change.  Scientists were beginning to grasp the fullness of changes that were just beginning to reveal themselves.  Yet, change itself had not just begun, it was humanity’s consciousness of change that was beginning.  There is a difference here.  Some consequences were obvious, others to come.

Because of a biblical and scientific awareness, it seems important if not simply interesting to wonder if there are links between what we see currently in nature and what the Bible tells us about the future.  The sensational approach might be a screaming claim and you need to get down on your knees to pray for salvation or otherwise escape to the hills to save yourself.  Actually, at this point, it’s all a bit more subtle than that. This brief article simply points to something rather interesting.  You can form a personal conclusion if you like.

SCIENCE

The AAAS meeting presented an opportunity to hear scientists who follow the weather, those who explore ice core evidence for past climate, modelers who try to predict consequences to desert or rain forest–should patterns persist and change have greater effect.  But a while back, the models used to predict complex systems, like what might happen to the Amazon rain forest, were too simple.  More computer strength, more computation power, more variables, more of a lot of sophisticated approaches needed to be brought online.  Modeling was a growing field.  But could I ask a question about models, change and a Bible prediction?

BIBLE

Let’s just start with a few briefly stated points.  Many people are aware that the Bible contains prophecies.  Some have been declared and fulfilled, others declared and await fulfillment.

One ‘waiting prophecy’ concerns a time when all green grass and one third of all trees burn.  Let’s just consider something interesting about consequences in relation to this prediction.  We equate this prediction to an environmental change and thus label this an ‘environmental type.’ We say ‘type‘ because it relates to circumstances in the present, yet this looks to the future.

First, if you are alive on the only known habitable planet in the solar system, or perhaps in the galaxy, or even perhaps the only habitable place in the universe, if you saw a huge fire consuming the Earth’s vegetation, would you not be concerned?!

Second, if that burn appears in order of a lager sequence of events, other pre-recorded prophetic predictions, might that garner further attention?  You have to admit, if someone pointed out the parallel occurrence, you’d give it some thought–wouldn’t you?

Third, green grass only grows in one of the Earth’s hemispheres at a time.  That is, it is only summer in the northern or southern hemisphere, but not both at the same time.   The Bible is predicting a rather large prophetic event for all green grass in one hemisphere.  If the northern hemisphere, it’s a lot of green that burns.

FOURTH, major point, 80 PERCENT of the foodstuffs we eat as humans (from plant sources) come from species of crops in the grass family!  Wheat, barley, corn, and other related crops are grasses.  And many domestic animals depend on the grasses for the food and thus all green grasses going away in rapid fashion also impacts farming.  Totally, a big impact.

Do we have your attention at this point?

From an economic point of view, the result on obtaining foodstuffs means what food remains after this event is a matter of possession–the cost to buy food will be out of sight.  And if you have some food, you’re not likely to give any out, at any price.

Survival?  Material existence and the meaning of life, will be keenly accentuated by an incredible predicament.

SCIENCE AGAIN

So I called up a scientist at NASA and asked: “What would be the consequences to the Earth’s environment if all green grass (in one hemisphere) and all trees burned at one time?”  He asked why I asked!  I was forthcoming about the concept based on the Bible’s prediction.  He told me I was crazy and had no interest in answering my question.

I then wrote a letter to Dr. James Lovelock, the author of the GAIA Hypothesis.  You can explore this hypothesis on your own (just use an Internet search engine).  This time I was careful to explain that I was not seeking to be sensational, but was scientifically curious.  I explained the scenario and its source. [also see a write up on this correspondence in relation to environmental types at WindowView (book outline here, plus you can click on the title to download Chapter 22 to read further about environmental types)]

Interesting and surprisingly, I got a reply.  Now, to be clear, the answer was to a hypothetical and by someone who is not concerning himself with the Bible or its predictions.  But the answer is remarkable.

SURVIVAL and THINKING

The answer I got described consequences to the biomass burn (grass and trees) in terms of loss of sunlight reaching the earth surface, boost in carbon dioxide level, and negligible change in oxygen level.  Temperature would also change over time.  BUT remarkably, humans alive throughout this event would survive.  At least they would live to see the end of the fires.

Humans would have to think about what happened.  What you you think about in such a time as that?

CONCLUSION (one of many)

Today we are in possession of data of a much greater degree concerning global changes.  We know that some rather dramatic shifts can or are taking place.  Science gives us better models and better data sets to understand that we, humans, on the only habitable planet we know of, are living on a thread of life support.

If Bible be true and science information helpful, then the concept of all green grasses burring along with one third of all the trees (at one particular time), then this event will stare humanity in the face not only as prophetic, but with a question!  So many will yell: “Oh my God!”  So, do they believe?  Is there a God?  How do people in that moment respond?  Knowing ahead of time, how do you respond?

The idea behind WindowView is to tease out thoughts and to get you to think.

The Bible’s prophecy is for a time yet to come, but it begs a question.  When faced with the evidence in the material realm, how do we respond to something that goes to the spiritual realm?  And what if that provides an opportunity to walk through an open door from here to hereafter?

It’s that, or starve, because food will be in very short supply on that day.

Think about that!  Each day we live is a gift dangling from a thread of life support.

Director, WindowView.org

[See Revelation 8:7: The first angel sounded: And hail and fire followed, mingled with blood, and they were thrown to the earth. And a third of the trees were burned up, and all green grass was burned up.]

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Material Naturalism, Old Earth, and Timelines

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An Interesting Focus to September and October Traffic To WindowView

A webmaster will look at the pages that are visited most at their web site and think about how this relates to the purpose of the web pages. In recent weeks there have been more hits on three areas than we’ve seen in the typical mix of traffic coming to the Window.

First, Material Naturalism is drawing attention.  At the heart of understanding a relationship between scientific evidence for our existence and any aspect of our being spiritual, this topic is central to an ongoing debate.  If you want to simplify this, at the Window we know that Scripture tells us a major component of humanity will continually clutch a hold of a material explanation for existence and hold to that view until the end of the current age.   You can count on academics and other thinkers who will just keep saying, the evidence for cause and effect, on a material basis, explains why you are here.  You can count on those voices always being present.

From a scientific view, however, the data are not so conclusive.  But you really have to be willing to be objective, open minded, and dig for the other side of the larger picture.  The evidence from an information science perspective tells us that the code in DNA and how this is processed is of such a high order of efficiency, that a material origin alone lacks explanatory power.  And this is perhaps the best place to begin to look at the topic of intelligent design.  And we have pages with related information in the Window.

Science And Earth’s Age

Well, we know that it’s a turn off to materially minded folks to think the Earth is young, say 6,000 years of age, or even 50,000 or 100,000 years old.

Our web page related to an Old Earth point of view has been getting some traffic.  What we’d like to point out from both the scientific and biblical perspectives is one key point: We need to keep an open mind here too.  How so?  Frankly it boils down to something of a mystery that science itself can solve; if you will allow it!

The concept of a young Earth may be something of a biblical interpretation.  If so, perhaps the text does not intend this.  But for a moment, let’s assume the Earth is young.  If so, Darwinian evolution would not have time to cause all of the biological diversity we see.  That’s it.  That’s really all the more a point we need to make here.  But, let’s go on a bit.

What if the Earth is 4.5 billion years old?  For some support we will call your attention to another apologetics web site at Reasons.Org.  If you explore the writings of the astronomer there, Dr. Hugh Ross, you’ll eventually come across information that reveals the newly forming earth was sterilized by bombardments of objects from space.  Soon after the earth cooled enough to even allow for life to exist, it appears to have shown up.  The earliest evidence from an old earth perspective gives no real time for either chemical or biological evolution to take place.

We’ll leave you to chew on the differences in these perspectives and that science on an old earth basis really presses material naturalism to the point of forcing a spiritual examination to life’s existence …. as well as all the remarkable material support systems that reveal some aspect of design.  And that evidence is scientific.  From there you can explore our Harmony pages and the other side of the equation.  But the simple message is that either a young or old earth leaves us with a similar conclusion.

Time and The End of the Age

We have added a time line to this web site to pull together two different perspectives.  One is more or less the science, material, technological, and the change side to human activity.  The other side focuses on biblical themes and even works its way forward to describe in outline form what the Bible projects for time ahead.  What is remarkable is that events in the Middle East convey us right into the latter part of the time line.  This is happening today.

The backdrop to the time line includes the present hope that humans can save themselves and the material world that supports our livelihood.  And yet, life is not designed to last forever in this material context.  In fact, the entire solar system and universe have limits and life cannot go on forever.  That leaves us to make a decision as to whether life has a purpose we can discover within a life time.  The Window is here simply to make that point available to you.

An Open Invitation

Could it be possible you are missing the opportunity to think about life having purpose?

In fact, is the synthesis between science and Scripture an explanation to what you might decide?

The debate over how science can tell us something that even leads to a scriptural vantage point is an option you have to consider!  Because it takes a bit of information on Science, Change, and what we call the Harmony, to pull together the WindowView, we recently added  video-based introductions to to help our visitors in each area of this web site.

Our open invitation to you is to be objective and to explore the basic concepts to each area within the Window … watch the introductory videos … and then see how this creates a bigger picture and that really does use scientific evidence to open the Window to exploring why we are alive!

Come take a look and see the larger WindowView!

Director, WindowView

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New Intro for the Window

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We are trying out a new introduction (an intro video) on the home page at WindowView.

This short video gives a general overview and with the help of a harpist and some melodic background notes, the introduction touches on all the elements that make the window a complete presentation.

In the past 20 years WindowView has grown from a wee web presence of a few pages to four full feature areas and a number of separate articles and various resources for downloading.

In this span of time we have seen staggering and significant developments in each of the main topic areas.  Scientific exploration of the universe and the minute details in living cells continually declare something special about this place we live in … and something incredibly detailed by complex structures and highly specified information (in our DNA).  It’s increasing more difficult to say all the complexity and specificity comes about by some material tendency to make or support life.  And while a debate rages on, no matter where scientists stand on the issues, we are all awed by the data and marvel at life’s existence.

The Change Area and Harmony Area also get us thinking in other ways.  Our most recent shift on change is not whether global changes are occurring, the real issue in a scientific and even biblical dimension is whether humans really know how to respond to change.  Maybe the real clue is how we treat each other more than just stopping global warming, if that is even possible.

The Harmony area looks into a combination of themes that describe a woven network of Scripture related topics.  The network makes for a harmonious overview and we believe all this reflects back on the issues in the Science and Change Areas.

Well, can we consider different perspectives describing one larger concern.  Does this help us see what comes in the future?  If the window gets us thinking along these lines, then perhaps the purpose to taking in the larger view has been set in motion.

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Equipping Message from Hugh Ross

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To our WindowView.org readers we’d like you to think about science and Scripture both.  If you are strong on science and kind of ‘iffy’ on Scripture, then the following e-mail/listserve message will be of interest.

First, let me introduce you to the source, this following message comes from Dr. Hugh Ross, a Ph.D. astronomer and someone who has proven very interested in examining the Scriptures from a scientific perspective.  We also make an effort at WindowView to identify the Messiah by the name Yeshua, but the manner in which Dr. Ross makes his reference to Messiah is essentially of little consequence to Jews and Gentiles who examine the whole of Scripture.

If you are interested in what Dr. Ross has to offer here, then we encourage you to visit the Reasons to Believe web site.  This site is filled with resources that we trust many will find intriguing and well documented.

Here is what we received from Dr. Ross:

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August 3, 2010

An apologetics professor at a major Christian university commented to me recently. “I always get myself into trouble when my students bring up Genesis 1. Can I ask you how you deal with the disputes over creation days 1 and 4?”

First I acknowledged that few subjects generate as much controversy and hostility as the interpretation of Genesis 1. But, I added, this hullabaloo can provide a wonderful opportunity! It allows us to demonstrate the power of integration to transform dispute and rancor to harmonious, even exhilarating resolution.

The professor listened intently as I pointed out how other biblical creation accounts, including Job 38-39, Psalm 104, and Proverbs 8, amplify the Genesis story of God’s activities on the six creation days. Since God inspired all of these accounts, the best interpretation of Genesis 1 will be one that yields an appropriately literal and consistent reading of all these relevant Scripture passages.

This integrative approach reveals that God created light when He created the physical universe before rather than on day 1. He also formed the Sun, Moon, and stars before rather than on day 4 (even before day 1). His work on day 1 involved transforming Earth’s atmosphere from opaque to translucent, allowing light to penetrate Earth’s initially thick, dark cloud cover. His work on day 4 brought about transformation of this translucent (permanently overcast) atmosphere to a frequently transparent one, allowing the Sun, Moon, and stars to become clearly visible objects for the first time.

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The Bible stands apart
from all other “holy books”
in both the quantity and
quality of its information
about creation.

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Not only does this approach to the Bible’s creation accounts resolve textual incongruities but it also removes the apparent contradiction between what Genesis 1 teaches about cosmic history and what the “book of nature” and God’s other “book” of Revelation tells us about the universe, Earth, and Earth’s life.

The Bible stands apart from all other “holy books” in both the quantity and quality of its information about creation. You will find more than two dozen lengthy creation passages in Scripture. In fact, our website provides a list of every creation-related verse I’ve found in the Bible. If you haven’t already done so, you may want to take time this summer to read all these creation verses in one sitting. This exercise will equip you to be a peacemaker among Christian friends who struggle with creation issues. It may even equip you to help a nonbeliever make peace with God.

Take some time today, if you can, to look over the list of the creation passages in the Bible. I think you’ll find this list a great help in preparing to discuss the Genesis creation account with others.

A friend once asked my wife for a one-word theme to describe what’s unique about Reasons To Believe. Her answer: “Integration.” I agree. Over the past 24 years our unique strength and focus has been showing the world how a thorough integration of truth found in all 66 books of the Bible and across all the disciplines of science reveals the unified whole of God’s revelation. And this revelation continually yields new reasons to believe in Jesus Christ as Creator and Savior.

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As always, at WindowView, we encourage our visitors to build the larger view by using multiple perspectives.  Assumptions that get in the way hold us back from appreciating truth. Â And if this life gives us anything, it’s an opportunity to discern truth and the purpose to being alive.

Director, WindowView

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Free Book Download — Signature of Controversy

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New Book, Signature of Controversy, Responds to Steve Meyer’s Critics
Critics of intelligent design often try to dismiss the theory as not worth addressing, as a question already settled, even as being too boring to countenance. Then they spend an amazing amount of energy trying to refute it.

The very evidence of the ongoing debate sparked by Stephen Meyer’s Signature in the Cell should silence that tired trope that there is no controversy over evolution and intelligent design. That controversy has reached a fever-pitch in less than a year since the book’s first release, marking Meyer’s volume as a book serious Darwinists must deal with. And dealt with it, they haven’t – in their responses, some critics have misread it, while others have simply failed to read it at all.

Thus the defenders of Meyer’s book have analyzed these various hostile and futile attacks, and their responses to critics of Signature in the Cell have been gathered and are now published in a new digital book, Signature of Controversy: Responses to Critics of Signature in the Cell, now available for free DOWNLOAD ->HERE<-.

The book features essays by David Berlinski, David Klinghoffer, Casey Luskin, Stephen C. Meyer, Paul Nelson, Jay Richards and Richard Sternberg.
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Director, WindowView
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This post is a mirror posting from Nota Bene dated May 20, 2010.
If you wish to sign up for the Nota Bene newsletter go to www.intelligentdesign.org

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WindowView Press Blog Hacked and What Happened

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Hi to all our visitors,

If during April 2010 you visited this Blog only to see a warning that this site is infected with ‘Malware,’ please note this was NOT [not in this case] a real warning. Our blog was hacked into and the warning was fake.

If you want to really see the status of browsing this blog or any web site, according to Google’s “Safe Browsing” web tool, you can use your browser to visit their page plus by adding the URL to any web site you’ll get a status report … for example for WindowView, go to this link and view the report:
http://www.google.com/safebrowsing/diagnostic?site=windowview.org

We aplogize for any inconvenience and any misperception of the content at this web site!

Director, WindowView

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Never the Twain Shall Meet?

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Revealing the Jewish Messiah
In preparing a message on science and theology to give to a Messianic congregation, I started to reach back to memories of things that fit a Messianic theme. Jewish evangelism is the topic of finding evidence for the Jewish Messiah in the Tanach (the Hebrew Scriptures, aka old covenant). Finding clues, as scientists and detectives do is important so maybe the better term in place of evangelism is “making connections.”
What needs to be made absolutely certain is one thing, a Jewish person who can ascertain the identity of Messiah, has found the Jewish Messiah. Bible readers know … “to the Jew first and then the Greek” reveals an order of awareness but not a difference in relationship to Messiah, to all this is personal.
Have I ever seen a casual witness to this identity?
Then it struck me, that there is a strong witness in one particular passage. In fact, many Jewish persons I know cite Isaiah 53 as one of the most significant pieces of the text … because this passage (actually starting back in Isaiah 52 around verse 12) presents the Messiah. Rabbis say this is about Israel, but the pronouns are masculine and the profile of this figure in the passage fits one person uniquely.
The Billiards Room Witness
What might the famous writer Samuel Clements have to do with all this? Anything?
We know the name Mark Twain and some of us visit historical sites that present the humanity of this man. Many of us may never visit his home site in Hartford, Connecticut, but it’s there to explore.
On an upper floor is a study with desk and shelves and books. There is also a billiards table. Perhaps the writing mind needs a diversion to free up one’s thinking. In that room in a Hartford home, Mr. Twain had a rather large Bible. And for the open nature of this historical site, one of the curators appears to have decided to open this large tomb to a particular page.
Mark Twain’s Bible was open to Isaiah 53.
I recognized the potential impact of this for the passive Jewish visitor and to the Gentile who knows of whom the passage speaks. How many Jewish minds ponder that text? How many visit the Shrine of the Book in Jerusalem to see a full representation of the original Hebrew scroll with all of Isaiah’s writings fully exposed?
How many in Hartford and and how many in Jerusalem meet their Messiah by reading this text?
Have you?
Have you shared this with someone who needs to ponder the fact that we can see Him in that text?
Perhaps Samuel Clements himself left his Bible open to that page … which is still true to this day.
Director, WindowView

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Excuse Me – But Why Am I Here?

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Recently I was communicating with an old friend from way back in the high school era.  The joy of finding a long lost person gave way to telling each other our stories … where we’ve been, who we ended up with, and lots about what we’d done along the way.

But Who Are WE?

Invariably the stories run to some kind of end point.  Ah, this is where I am in life.  And when I described how I’d found disappointment in the way some or many persons had treated me in my life’s trek … I relayed the news that I’d started to ask the big questions in life.  I found myself in a way that began to differentiate who I was compared to the large majority of people.  Does that separation somehow make me the “odd man out?”  Or did I find something right and everyone else is on the outside?

A Night’s Realization

Well here is a test for you.  Have you thought about who you are and about others, only to find yourself putting your head down on a pillow at night, in the silence of the darkness, to realize something kind of freaky.  Like we know we are conscious and that means we are alive. Alive. What is that? And then the big question: “Why is there a me?”

Of all possible things … there is a universe, there is a planet called Earth, and I am here.  But why?  Out of all the thoughts I have each day … why does it strike me as strange that I am alive!

But then, why are we here?  It really didn’t need to be so.

The Big Story I Told

In telling my personal story, I noted that at one point in my career I started to ask both scientific and theistic questions.  The answers to the merging issues put an answer to the “Why Am I Here?”  The answers came over time and as new information from biblical archaeology, from a hard core examination of evolution and how Darwinism has its major issues unaddressed by the majority, how the Bible agrees with a universe that has an origin before which there was no space or time,  new discussions on life revealing evidence for design and thus opening the door to a designer, and studies of Israel and historical events that lead to a forward looking of chronological events that have been and will come according to the biblical text.  Science data revealed another side of the coin of truth.  Remarkable!  The Bible describes what was to come, what came, and what will come in the future ahead.  And we live on that time line, right now!

So maybe you don’t believe it.  But did you look at any of this?  Did you have that freaky moment late at night that pierces one’s being to ask why you are here?  And what if the scientific data and biblical information really do answer the question?

WindowView is a product of merging thoughts that go to answer why you are here.  It’s not a mistake, you are meant to be a stranger in a place where you are traveling here, in this space and time, to discover that there is a future … an eternal future.  Yeah, that seems strange doesn’t it?  But if it’s true, then why not embrace it and learn more and then be joyed by the fact that there is more to life than the mess we face here!  In this way, the future gets better, not worse.  A look around Earth today we see a lot of confusion.  Why not get beyond the confusion and clear up the view!  If science and theism bring you to a whole truth … you may not be in the majority, but at least you’ll know where YOU are headed!  And that answers the question: “Why Am I Here!”

Science can really tell us how special life is.  The Bible can tell us more about why we are here.  Together, these two perspectives give us a really wonderful big picture!

Director, WindowView.org

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Keeping an Open Memory on Inheritance

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Lets Really OPEN the Window!

The  WindowView metaphor is among other things a place holder for seeing unique thoughts and ideas.  This is not mere whimsical thinking.  Consider this: No one yet knows where the mind is or memory is stored.  And, no one yet knows where the blueprints are that direct the assembly of all those proteins and lipids and other molecules that make up your body.  No one yet knows where the body plan is stored.  Think about it!

An Interesting Thought on Memory:

The more we see of modern research on the brain the more we encounter  the presumption that the mind is wholly located within the brain.  We see an organ that interacts with thoughts, but with little to no real evidence that the brain does nothing more than serve as a processor.  Here’s a twist.  A two-way radio receives and sends signals.  When researchers use nuclear magnetic resonance (NMR) to explore the brain, they see areas ‘light up’ with brain activity.  During an operation the surgeon can place a probe on or in the brain and stimulate activity.  Might the brain be like the radio ‘transceiver.’  With no real tangible evidence that the mind and memories  are actually stored in the brain as a whole, we are then faced with the radio analogy pointing to mind beyond the physical location of the brain.

We’d like to see comments regarding the material brain and the more non-material aspects of mind.  Current research may be pointing to a mind and memory that is being tapped by the two-way radio-like function of a brain.  It’s possible.  And if so, the brain and mind become more a marvel than ever.  If the mind is outside, then where is that!

Inheritance Beyond DNA:

Equally interesting is the notion that DNA is not the sole source of inherited biological information.  In recent time science has discovered that the DNA does account for genes that direct protein production.  Some stretches of DNA with no known function were originally called junk DNA.  This is often referred to as leftovers from prior steps in evolution.  But the marvel here is that more and more of the junk is being ascribed to information processing tasks.  This is more like instruction code in a computer program.

The real challenge is the finding the location of the instructions, the blueprints, that put all the proteins and other biological molecules into their proper place in three dimensions.  And it turns out that certain physical locations in the egg cell and in membranes may be part of the blueprint.

What comes to mind is the criticism that apes and humans had to have evolved from one another because the DNA and genes are so similar.  But the sum total of biological information is just not the genes that make proteins!  The blueprints, where ever they end up being located, may prove to truly distinguish man from ape … and distinguish in a way that is orders of magnitude more complex than the apparent similarity in genes.

The Marvel of it ALL

We assume things way too often without knowing the real story.  Might the mind reside in extra-cranial space?  Might the instructions that direct the construction of an ape body be in fact dwarfed by the complexity of the blueprints for a human.  Or, at the very least, let us add the differences in blue print complexity to the known differences in the DNA of ape and human.  The sum of these differences is far greater than just in the genes in DNA alone.

In amidst all the talk of origins we forget the brain is a marvel of complexity that really defies an evolutionary explanation. Something happens in an organ beyond its physical structure that requires as much exploration and explanation than cell or tissue structure alone.  Inherited information that makes the brain (that supports the mind) is also a marvel and we have yet to learn more about this aspect of the complexity of our being.

Time at this window reminds us to consider our being here as the potential product of an act of intelligence.  This comes with some interesting prospects.  Some of which science cannot yet explain–if ever!  We think being here, living today, is a marvel and an opportunity to think of what purpose life offers.  And if we are purposed into being, then the location of the mind and blueprints of our body plan may be a wondrous bit of evidence in support of our being here by design.

Director,  WindowView


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