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Good
morning and thank you for inviting me to speak here today.
First
a little about myself.
Born
in Christchurch, educated at Middleton Grange and ChCh Boy’s High School.
Two
years at Polytech – Wellington and ChCh.
Farming
and orcharding in Central Otago for a few years.
I
work mainly with graphic design and writing and illustrating of books.
I
am self-employed.
I
understand that the reason I’m here is to entertain and inform so I will try
to do both.
Some
of you probably read my letters to the newspaper. This is a little hobby of mine
which I hope you enjoy as much as I do.
Truth.
Most
of us go through our lives holding a large number of beliefs, which we consider
to be true. We believe things about the world we live in, the people we meet,
the cars we drive. We have faith in these things, and will usually defend our
beliefs if they are challenged.
Truth
is an interesting subject.
But
before we get too serious about it, here are some amusing ‘truths’ which
have turned up on the sports media:
Sports
commentator David Coleman said “And here’s Moses Kiptanui, the 19 year old
who turned 20 a few weeks ago.”
Mr.
Coleman also told us : “It’s a great advantage to be able to hurdle with
both legs”.
Murray
Walker, during one event, told us “We now have exactly the same situation as
we had at the start of the race, only exactly the opposite”.
Greg
Norman told us: “I owe a lot to my parents, especially my mother and
father”.
Alan
Minter told us : “There have been injuries and deaths in boxing, but none of
them serious”.
Tony
Crozier once announced: “The Queen’s Park Oval, exactly as the name
suggests, is absolutely round.”
But
who trusts sports commentators? We can see for ourselves what’s going on
without their help.
So
truth is sometimes difficult to find.
What
about the movies? Is there truth in there?
I
have watched thousands of movies and enjoyed most of them, but over the years I
have noticed a certain pattern to them. There are many predictable things in the
land of Hollywood – things which we could hardly call truth.
For
example:
It
is always possible to park directly outside any building you are visiting,
A
detective can only solve a case if he is suspended from duty,
If
you decide to start dancing in the street, everyone you bump into will know all
the steps,
Most
laptop computers are powerful enough to override the communication systems of
any invading alien,
It
doesn’t matter how many opponents you have, if you are a martial arts experts
your enemies will attack you one at a time,
Any
lock can be picked by a credit card or a paper clip, unless it’s the door to a
burning building with a child trapped inside,
Television
news bulletins usually contain a story that affects you personally at the
precise moment you turn the TV on.
But
truth doesn’t always persuade.
Take
Noah - he preached the truth for
120 years and no-one believed him.
And
truth is harder to find when we are young. Children live in a world coloured by
fantasy and magic. We even talk about the ‘magic’ of childhood.
When
we are very young we believe many things which we thought were true, but
unfortunately they turned out to be quite the opposite:
Money
grows on trees
The
tooth-fairy leaves money for teeth
All
grown-ups are invincible
Children
never become old people
Everybody
goes to heaven when they die
The
world is our oyster
In
a survey held many years ago, people voted for who they thought was the most
reliable and trustworthy.
Politicians . . . . came near the bottom of the list, along with lawyers
and car salesmen. Ministers weren’t near
the top either. Doctors and teachers were considered the most reliable. Just out
of interest, where would you rate bankers and corporate managers? Where
would you rate newsreaders?
It
is an interesting thing truth.
The
following are a few of the untruths which I think need to be addressed:
1.
St Patrick’s Day.
Most of St.Patrick’s Day is taken up with Irish music, leprechauns,
green bread and legends about snakes leaving Ireland. We are also told that
Patrick was Irish.
The
truth is, he was a British citizen, born in Roman Britain about 390 AD. He was
taken captive by Irish raiders and sold to an Irish king who put him to work as
a slave-shepherd. During those six long, bitter, lonely years, he drew on his
Christian upbringing and found God, who promptly told him to walk to the coast
where, God told him was, a ship would be waiting.
He did and it was.
Patrick walked the 200 miles and found a ship there, which took him back
to Britain. He studied the Bible and was ordained a bishop. 30 years after
leaving Ireland he returned there preach the gospel – to a nation which
practiced paganism, barbarism and human sacrifice. The real St.Patrick was a
courageous Christian who put his life on the line for his Saviour.
2.
Charles Darwin.
Known as the man who has become the figurehead for the ‘Theory of
Evolution’, has also been held up
as a proponent of materialism. His theory demands the total exclusion of God, or
any Intelligence. If his theory is true, then all life came about by accident.
Darwin is much admired by modern materialists, and atheists.
Yet Darwin himself never believed that life came about by chance.
On the last page of Darwin’s book, the ‘Origin of Species’ he
writes that life itself was “first breathed by the Creator”.
On another page of his book he wrote: “For I am well aware that
scarcely a single point is discussed in this volume on which facts cannot be
adduced, often apparently leading to conclusions directly opposite to
those at which I have arrived. A fair result can be obtained only by fully
stating and balancing the facts and arguments on both sides of each question.”
In other words, Darwin wanted people to have free access to all the
facts, not just one set of beliefs to the exclusion of all others.
So why is Creationism so vigorously opposed by most NZ State schools?
Could it be that our government and the bulk of our teachers are unwilling to
give students a balanced presentation? Are teachers afraid to give their
students all the facts, lest students decide, on the basis of evidence, that
there is more credence for Creation than Evolution?
3.
Church traditions.
I
was brought up a Presbyterian as a child, and later tried the Salvation Army and
finally the Brethren. I have attended Catholic, Methodist, Anglican and even
Quaker services. In all the different churches I have attended I have heard
things which did not match with what the Bible says. I call these inconsistent
teachings traditions, because they are Manmade.
There
are in fact hundreds of them..
I
would like to pick out just a few.
Jonah
and the whale – the Bible says a “great fish” not a whale swallowed Jonah.
Elijah
went to heaven in a chariot of fire? – no, he went in a whirlwind. The chariot
divided Elijah from Elisha.
The
three wise
men came to worship Jesus at the manger? –no, they arrived at Nazareth over
one year later, the Bible does not even say there were three of them. They did
not follow a star to Bethlehem, and none of them were kings.
Moses
was placed as a baby in a boat made of reeds? – yes, but his boat was covered
in black tarry pitch. The Egyptian woman who found him was attracted by his
crying, not by his beautiful face.
Jesus
wore white and had a mystical glow? Never! He was so ordinary-looking he had to
be pointed out.
Which
brings me to Noah’s Ark.
In a large number of story books, Noah’s Ark is depicted as a cute
little boat, with a wide deck and a bunch of animals gathered about on the deck.
There are usually a couple of
giraffes poking their heads out of windows and Noah always looks very happy.
The
truth is quite different.
Noah’s
Ark was immense. It was also black.
Its
displacement tonnage was about 20,000 tons.
It
was longer than a football field, and taller than a three-story building.
It
had three decks and had enough cubic capacity to hold 125,300 sheep.
Traditions
say that Noah had to catch the animals, but the Bible says God brought them to
him.
Traditions
say the flood was local, but the Bible says it covered the whole planet.
Traditions
say that full-grown animals were taken on board, but the most likely size would
be the younger and smaller.
And
yes Noah had dinosaurs on the ark – baby ones.
To
support the Bible account of the great flood, we have hundreds of similar
stories from almost every language group in the world. We also have about three
quarts of the world’s land area comprising sedimentary rock, in which are
embedded billions of fossils. Fossils, as you know, are the remains of plants
and animals buried by sediment.
Now
I would like to look at some of the myths we have been taught through the media,
by such leading lights as David Attenborough, David Bellamy and Sam Neil.
How
is coal formed?
David bellamy told us the usual story - that forests grow on the same
area for thousands of years, gradually dropping leaves and sticks and building
up a thick layer of peat, which eventually hardens and becomes coal.
But is this true?
If we look at a coal bed, such as the vast, enormous one which stretches
down under the sea from south Australia, we find that the coal is made of solid
wood which has been carbonized. In the coal we find fossils of animals and many
types of tree, which normally do not grow together. We also find tree trunks,
buried vertically through the layers. All this evidence totally contradicts the
theory of slow buildup from peat.
The truth is, coal is formed by a cataclysmic flood of water, which rips
forests from the earth and buries them in heaps.
Where
do languages come from?
Another TV presenter told us that language evolved out of the grunts and
clicks made by a certain branch of apes.
The truth is, language is so complex, it needs a special extension to the
brain to handle it. Language can only be learned from another language-speaker..
It
is therefore impossible for language to arise by accident. There had to be an
original human who already spoke a language fluently before any other humans
could learn it. If a child is not taught a language, its speech-centre
atrophies. Language can come only from language – this confirms the Bible,
which says that Adam and Eve were created with built in language ability.
DNA
and inheritance.
David Attenborough tells us that one of the main planks on which the
theory of evolution rests is that of DNA and its ability to pass on
modifications to offspring. We are told that, given enough time, all life will
change and adapt to a changing environment because DNA keeps coming up with new
sequences.
The truth is, DNA is like a finished book. No new chapters can ever be
written into it. All DNA can do is pass on what it already contains.
Within a gene pool there is always some room for variation – big dogs,
little dogs, white dogs, black dogs – but nothing new can ever appear. No new
genes are possible.
Many forms of life have been seen to lose things, but no new thing has
ever been found.
Birds
may lose the ability to fly, fish may lose pigment from their skin, deformities
and mutations may occur, but no new organs have ever arisen. Life is like a huge
clock, which is gradually winding down. The DNA we have today will gradually
become depleted, but never increased.
Freedom
of enquiry.
When it comes to the truth, I think one of the most important principles
we need to defend is that of ‘Freedom of Enquiry’.
For example, whenever we hear something from a so-called expert, we
should be free to question what we hear, and not have to fight a wall of
dogmatic bigotry.
Most evolutionists will tell us that the fossil record illustrates
evolution, but the fact is there are no transitional fossils anywhere in the
fossil record.
Most cosmologists will tell us that the universe is billions of years
old, but the fact is there are many evidences which indicate that the universe
is only a few thousand years old.
Most of the earth-sciences will say that the Earth is millions of years
old, yet there is a huge amount of evidence which contradicts this.
The scientific world is peppered with liars, charlatans and deceivers.
Many scientists are fanatical and one-eyed, quite prepared to present false
information to bolster their personal beliefs. The media quite often follows
their lead, and the public is deceived into thinking lies are truth.
I would like to close with this humorous quote from Osama Bin Laden. It
comes from a notice which (someone said) he posted on the wall of his cave:
“We have heard that there may be American soldiers in disguise trying
to infiltrate our ranks. I want to set up patrols to look for them. First patrol
will be Omar, Muhammed, Abdul, Akbar and Brad.”
Like Osama, perhaps we ought to check out what we believe, just in case
we too have been infiltrated?
Thank
you.