MIL Report
Yesterday the other woman in her room passed away. It wasn't a surprise. She was a Christian. She also moaned a lot and mumbled all night and her oxygen machine sounded a bit like a jackhammer. For the moment, at least, MIL has a private room.

Dracula Report
We open this Friday. We have only one more rehearsal. We suck. I really hope we get our collect crap in one sock before week's end. We haven't even run curtains yet. UGH! It has the potential to be a great show. I'm nervous. ((deep breaths)) It will be okay. It will be okay ((shakes head)).

Crucifixion Report
I was reading a tidbit yesterday from Case for Christ and discovered there's independent corroboration in the written accounts of a Roman historian that there was in fact a period of about 3 hours of utter darkness beginning at noon and covering the Mediterranean world so that stars were visible, accompanied by great earthquakes the same day, in the spring of what our calendar would be 33 AD. The historian (I think it was either Pliny the Younger or Tacitin) goes on to comment that while some thought it to be from a solar eclipse, this was not possible since the moon was in the wrong phase at the time. I will try to share the specific reference when I get a chance, but I found this to be an incredible source of support for what I already believed to be true about the NT documentation of the events of that day. [The source was a Roman historian named Thallus writing in 52 AD. His work does not survive directly, but the key item here was preserved as a quote preserved in other ancient writings which do still exist today.]

And now, a few more questions from Case for a Creator... (my answers next time)

Deist or Theist?

Suppose you were a devoted atheist until you sat down and pondered all this, working through it, researching the particulars on your own with an open mind, and you came to the same conclusion I’ve presented here. There must be God. The next logical query would be whether this God is personal or impersonal. A deist is a person who believes God is an impersonal distant intelligence who does not interact with His creation. A theist is a person who believes God is personally involved with and cares deeply about His creation, even having personal relationships with individuals. If you are wondering which kind of God to believe in, then perhaps you should continue to examine the evidence to determine which is more likely and therefore believable.

The Kalam principle suggests a personal Creator. If a man were to walk into the kitchen and find a pot of water boiling, he might ask his wife why. His wife could explain it in terms of kinetic energy or she could say she was making him tea. One explanation is impersonal (scientific only) while the other is personal. Since there is no scientific (impersonal) explanation for creation, the reason must be personal. God created everything for His own reason. If God is indeed personally involved with His creation, it seems logical to seek Him if we are to seek our origin and thus our destiny.

What are the odds of a livable planet?

The odds of life being possible anywhere in the universe is astronomically low. To have the correct combination of gravity, atmosphere, temperature, water, minerals, radiation and radiation shielding, sun characteristics, lunar characteristics, and so forth requires a lengthy list of measured constants to be in perfect alignment. Suppose there were only ten such diverse variables. Suppose each variable had only ten possible values. Life requires each of the ten dials to be set correctly. If any one dial is off, even by a value of 1, life cannot exist. That means the odds of a particular solar system having a habitable planet is one in 10 billion. Most stars are not of the energy range, light range, size, or stability as our sun. Most planets we’ve been able to observe orbiting distant stars are not the perfect distance from their star and not of appropriate mass or composition. Most stars are not of the right composition. Near the center of the Milky Way there is tremendous violent radiation making life anywhere near the nucleus highly unlikely. Of the few planets discovered around other stars, they have been found to have radically oblong orbits compared with the orbits of most of our planets. Earth is in the right part of the galaxy, orbiting the right size and composition star at the right distance, at the right speed, with the right solar and lunar gravitational forces, the right magnetic force, the right ozone, the right outer radiation belt, the right amount of hydrogen and helium in the atmosphere, the right amount of oxygen, the right amount of water, the right temperature range, and in general all the right chemistry to support life. The odds are considerably lower than one in ten billion of life, yet here we are.

Does nuclear chemistry support Big Bang or Creation cosmology?

According to the Big Bang theory, big clouds of swirling dust in space spun out into solar systems. Initially all the dust which a solar system is made from is essentially uniformly randomly scattered bits of the same stuff. Why then is the sun almost entirely hydrogen while the planets are all made of almost entirely heavier elements? Centrifugal force throwing heavy elements out does not account for this. In fact, the existence anywhere of any element heavier than iron is against all reason.

Fusion of light elements gives off energy. This is why the fusion reactions in our sun emit so much energy. Fusion of any elements even slightly heavier, of helium or lithium for example, produces a small fraction of the energy compared to hydrogen fusion. It takes more energy to fuse two elements into an element as heavy or heavier than iron than the fusion reaction gives off. Elements significantly heavier than iron give off more energy than they absorb when they undergo a fission reaction. Fission is the nuclear process of breaking a heavy element down into two or more smaller elements with a net release of energy.

All matter is made up of atoms (or parts of atoms). If the sun is made of light elements and the planets are made of heavy elements, there must have been some sort of sorting process. Centrifugal force can’t account for it for at least two reasons. For one, the lighter elements should have been thrown to the outside most easily whereas gravitational force should have drawn the heaviest elements to the center. The opposite is observed. For another, when a spinning mass ejects parts, those parts spin out in the same direction. Two planets spin backward, several moons spin backward, and one planet spins almost completely sideways. The planets all spin at different rates and different angles, in both directions, yet all orbit the sun at the perfect speed given their mass and distance.

Finally, consider the quantum process of fusion itself occurring continuously in our sun. According to Einstein’s special theory of relativity, mass and energy can be equated using a constant value. In the fusion process, energy is given off because the net mass is reduced by the fusion reaction. In other words, a helium atom with two protons is lighter than the sum of two hydrogen atoms. It is logical that in a given sample, the new mass would be less than the original mass and the density would be higher. The combined effect would be to reduce the total volume required to hold the sample. In a sample the size of the sun, the same logic implies the sun should be shrinking. Of course the laws of physics are a little more complicated, but the basic logic does apply to hydrogen and helium. Although there’s been a great amount of debate in the astrophysics community, numerous studies since the 1960s, including a recent study measuring gravity waves in the sun, indicates the sun is shrinking at a rate of up to 4.5 km per year. The average data suggests a likely real shrink rate closer to about 2 km per year. At that rate, over a million years the sun’s surface should be 1 million km closer to earth. Even if the burn rate of the sun isn’t constant, or if you assume the size reduction is related to the helium/hydrogen ratio, further assuming the sun began as 100% hydrogen, if the earth were a billion years old it must have either started out inside the sun or it has been drawing closer to the sun with time. Assuming a purely natural cosmology, it just doesn’t add up.