Thoughts from Mark "Hat" Rackley

I’m Detective Staff Sergeant Deviled Yeggs.  I work homicide in the big city of Tracy.  My partner is Jim Wednesday.  My nephew, Detective Poached Yeggs, is supposed to be assigned to homicide, but he is really a floater.  For those that read these reports, you already know that, but I think Captain Hart has it set up so that I get blamed for any Poached mistake, whoever he is working for at the time and whether I supervised.  But I will admit, the captain has mellowed a little as of late.

I had a very hard day, and I had just sat down in my recliner in the den when Blaise entered the room.  Blaise is our youngest, nine-years-old, in the eighth grade.  Yes, he skipped a few grades by taking online tests when we were not watching.  The other two are normal:  Easter Yeggs, 17, a high school senior, and Sophia Yeggs, 12, a seventh-grader, a year behind her little brother in school and loving it.  I had not even taken off my shoes and removed my socks.  Being home was not “being home” until that happened.

Blaise announced in his usual know-it-all voice, “Father, I have come to inform you that you are a liar.”

I groaned as I kicked the first shoe off, “That’s nice.”

Blaise countered, “No, it is not nice.  You are a Christian, and you live by the Ten Commandments.  It is not nice of you to lie.  And worst of all, you have lied to me.  Jesus said that if you lead a young one astray, then it would be better for you if a millstone was hung around your neck, and you were thrown into the sea.  That is not nice, indeed.”

During his soliloquy I got my other shoe off and my socks.  Now, I was home.  Now that I was home, I had fatherly duties to attend.  Something I did not feel like doing until I was home.  “Okay, Blaise, in what way did I lie?”

Blaise replied, “Many times, but to start with, you said that God created the heavens and the earth in six days, and He said it was very good.  You are a police officer.  You work homicide.  You are very busy.  How can the earth be good?  If the earth were good, you would be out of a job.”

Glyce and I expected this might come up, especially with Blaise who took everything to such an extreme.  We were at least semi-prepared.  I said, “C. S. Lewis wrote in The Problem of Pain, “Evil comes from the abuse of free will.”  Blaise, God created the heavens and the earth so that we humans would freely choose Him, to worship Him.  Just think, would you create something and then give the creatures you created the choice of loving you or running away and they chose to run away?  How would that make you feel?”

Blaise furrowed his brow. “I doubt if I would be pleased.  I might just squash them and start over.”

I chuckled, “In a way, that is what God did when He brought the flood.  But He loves us, even though we turn from Him.  He made us and called the creation very good, even though He knew we would choose our own interests over His.  It was good and mankind, that is Adam and Eve, messed that up.  And before we go any further, Blaise, please sit down.  Your standing there at attention seems uncomfortable.”

“I am perfectly comfortable, father.  I prefer to stand.”

“And although I am being accused of lying, a very serious offense, especially when I am often in court giving evidence at murder trials, I am still your father, and you will sit.  Understood?!”  I worked hard to not raise my voice, but I might have slipped a little bit.

Blaise sat on the sofa, very erect, still at attention, still seemingly uncomfortable.  “But if Adam and Eve sinned, why does everyone else have a sin nature after that?”

I smiled, “Have you heard of the experiments made on mice using a particular scent?”  Blaise shook his head.  “They would introduce this scent.  I can’t remember what it was, but let’s say lemons, but it might have been lavender or something else.  The scientists would follow the scent with an electric shock.  A mild one, but even then, it was unpleasant.  It took no time at all for the mice to be afraid of the scent.  Well, the mice had children.  As the children grew up, they reintroduced the scent, but not the electric shock, and the mice scurried away.  The young mice had not been taught to fear the scent.  It was now part of their make-up that they inherited from their parents.  The scientists proposed a change in RNA had occurred.  DNA did not change, but RNA did change.  So, did God imprint the sin nature upon our RNA or, as the Creator of all things, alter our DNA?  But was it really the effect of the fruit that did it?  Since we have no access to that tree, we may never know.”

“I suppose that is possible, and it does adequately explain it.”  Blaise was thinking of his next argument.  “But you cannot get past the earth being created in only six days and those days roughly being 6,000 to 7,000 years ago.  It takes millions of years to create fossils that are buried under hundreds of layers of rock.”

I sighed, “But Blaise, could not God simply create a rock?  Why limit God to only creating dirt that has to settle to form rock?  But that aside, there was a felt hat left in a mine in New Zealand when a volcano erupted.  Everyone left and when they returned, the felt hat had become a stone hat.  The felt was not simply covered in mineral deposits, the hat had fossilized in a matter of years, within the miner’s lifetime.  Millions of years are not required.  When we went on our grand vacation last year, did we not go to Mount St. Helens?  There were canyons with rock walls on either side.  The rock walls were made from ash deposits.  It is a small version of the Grand Canyon, but it was created in a few days, much of it in a few hours.  Still, the strata showing the same as when people look at the Grand Canyon and say all those layers took a year or more each to form.  No, they could have all been made by the flood, Noah’s flood.”

“But uniformitarianism disproves the flood.  Catastrophism is the ancient and disproven science.”  Blaise asserted.

“But uniformitarianism was proposed by Charles Lyell.  He saw himself as ‘the spiritual saviour of geology, freeing the science from the old dispensation of Moses.’  In other words, he had an atheistic agenda, but Lyell was a lawyer by education.  He only picked up geology as a hobby, and the ‘science’ that he quoted was his own theories, nothing ever proven.  Most geology texts since then have quoted Lyell’s book on geology as their “proof” when Lyell only proposed the ideas, and at that time, there was no way to prove any of it.  But one of those who read his book at the first printing, and was greatly enthused, was Charles Darwin.  Millions of Years, if it existed, would allow him to offer another theory, the theory of evolution, which has totally been debunked by true science since then.”

Blaise suggested, “Did not Madame Curie prove that rocks are millions of years old by examining the decay of uranium to lead?  And what of carbon dating?”

I leaned back and shook my head.  “Blaise, I am not smart enough to understand the RATE Team’s findings, but I think you are.  The RATE Team, Radioisotopes and the Age of The Earth, RATE, studied Madame Curie’s results and repeated the experiments with similar stones.  They discovered that carbon dating becomes highly inaccurate when looking at samples that date older than 5,000 years.  And while Madame Curie studied the lead in the stones, the RATE team studied the helium.  Why would there be helium in the stones?”

Blaise beamed, “Helium would appear from the radioactive decay from uranium to lead.  An alpha particle decay results in a helium nucleus being emitted, but, father, there would be no helium left after even a few thousand years.  Helium defuses through a steel wall.  Helium would definitely defuse through a little stone.”

I am so glad he used his most arrogant assertion to impress me with his knowledge.  This was going to be a bit easier, for only a moment.  “Blaise, the RATE team took stones just like the ones Madame Curie had studied and they found helium.  The stones were estimated to be several thousand years old, not millions of years.  Especially not deep time.”

“But what of Madame Curie’s results?”

“That’s why you need to read the study report.  Madame Curie assumed that the radioactive decay rate never changed, but the RATE team postulated that there was a change during the week of creation and during the flood.  And in all our canyon hiking last summer, did we not see trees that were petrified, growing through several layers of sediment?  That had to happen all at once.  After the first layer, the tree would have rotted before the second layer formed.”

“I see your point.  But what about the fossil record and the dinosaurs?”

I paused for a second.  “Have you heard of the Cambrian Explosion?”

“Of course, I have.  There were no fossils, or very few, prior to the Cambrian Explosion, and then there were millions of fossils all at one time.”

I nodded, “You saw that in the Grand Canyon.  Millions of fossils all at once does not support uniformitarianism, but it looks like a catastrophe.  Does that not point to Noah’s flood?  Forget the millions of years of rock above that.  We saw the hours of sediment at Mount St. Helens.  The year that the flood lasted could have created all those layers, but the Cambrian explosion was at the onset of the flood.  Now, at that time, the dinosaurs died.  If the dinosaurs were already dead millions of years before, then death occurred before Adam and Eve sinned.  That would mean that the Bible is wrong, but if dinosaurs have only been gone for about 5,000 years, would it not be possible to find soft tissue in a well-preserved dinosaur bone?”

Again, Blaise wanted to impress, “But that is impossible.  Those bones are millions of years old.  Soft tissue would have decayed or fossilized.”

“But, Blaise, they have found soft tissue in dinosaur bones, all over the world.  The ‘scientific’ community has covered up much of the results, but the results are there, and more is being discovered.”

Blaise said, “I will have to look into this.  In my thinking, you are still a liar and as a result, I do not trust you.  I wish to find out for myself.”

“I will give you a list of books to read and some videos to watch.  But I am curious.  Your mother is the scientific mastermind of the family.  Why did you accuse me and attack my faith and attack my knowledge on the subject?  Why not your mother?”

“Oh, I asked her, and she said that I should talk to you.”  I heard a snicker from the other side of the half-opened door.

I gave Blaise some books.  Among them were:  The Problem of Pain by C. S. Lewis, Mere Christianity by C. S. Lewis, Is Atheism Dead? by Eric Metaxas, The Case for a Creator by Lee Strobel and the RATE team’s book on their findings.  I also suggested that he search for videos from Cornerstone TV Network, specifically the television show Origins, and then look up things like deep time, evolution, DNA studies, race, and the Grand Canyon.  I especially requested he look at the show on the butterfly.  Why would a caterpillar die to form a butterfly if everything were by chance?  The answer is that it would not, unless the caterpillar knew what it was doing: intelligent design, rather than mere chance.

He returned about a week later.  He was willing to reinstate me with no restrictions as his father who did not lie, at least not a lot of big lies.  But then he asked, “Father, should I tell my teacher that she is a liar?”

“Blaise, that is a bad idea.  And let’s examine this entire concept of lying.  I believe that the Bible is true.  Thus, with or without proof, and you saw tons of proof in the Eric Metaxas book, I tell the truth, because I believe the Bible to be true.  The Bible is Truth, as Jesus is The Truth.  Now, some teachers have not discovered the flaws in evolutionary theories or in millions of years.  They trust their textbooks.  When you are examined, they will expect answers based on those textbooks.  So, some people can be wrong and tell wrong things because they believe what they were taught.  Is that lying?  Let’s say not.  They are passing on wrong information that they think is true.  We are not talking about relative truth, just deception on the part of some and then some are deceived.  So, when you take your test, you will have to reply with the textbook answer, but I know you.  You will add something to the answer.  You will want to set the record straight.  So, I think you may need to do even more studying.  Your teacher may have more questions than you asked me.”

“But why are there textbooks supporting a theory that is not proven?  And in many cases proven to be wrong?”

I sighed, “The government wanted a theory that had nothing to do with God.  They came up with evolution as that theory.  Whatever is then discovered is either improperly analyzed to fit evolutionary theory or it is dismissed as some type of error in data collection.  Funny how their proof is not proof at all, but what they consider error in data collection is mountains of evidence.  I truly believe that the field scientists are not that sloppy.  But many scientists know that they can make more money by perpetuating the lie and the politicians rarely understand what they are saying.  They lie all the time.  Now you can call them liars.  You have my permission.”

Credits

The line “Liar, Liar, Pants on Fire” has been said to come from the poem “The Liar” by William Blake, but his poem says, “pants are alight” so that it rhymes with night.  “Liar” and “Fire” rhyme.  Poems from the 1800s speak of “brimstone and fire”, but in the 1920s and 1930s, the phrase about pants being on fire is quoted as if a common phrase.  We may never know who said it first.  Amazing – a lot of lies about how a poetic line about lying got its origin.

I was in charge of helium storage long ago, and helium can indeed diffuse through solid steel, especially if the cylinders are in direct sunlight.  The helium particles are small enough at the atomic level to pass through the crystalline structure of the steel, given enough time to do so.  For a little party balloon, it takes hardly any time at all.  So, don’t bother looking for a “leak”.

I thought of this “confrontational” story months ago.  I prayed about it all this time.  I purchased Eric Metaxas’ book and in starting to read the book, I felt the courage to put this together, not really using the book at all.  Some of what Metaxas says involves things that I disagree with.  He let’s the concept of millions of years hang.  He may be a gap theorist, a gap between God creating the heavens and the earth and then the six days.  He might have not thought the science is totally proven that the earth is really young.  But the mountain of evidence that proves such early Biblical stories as to the location of Ur of the Chaldees, the kingdom of King David, and other such evidence are well documented, after discussing the fine-tuning of the earth and the universe at the beginning of the book.  The book is well written, typical of Eric Metaxas.  Metaxas suggests that if we really discovered an amino acid seventy years ago in a carefully arranged soup with controlled atmosphere, why have we not gone further in those experiments?

Indeed!  I ask.  Why is this one experiment not successfully repeated?  Why is there no real science to back up Darwin’s theories?  When Herschel Walker made some political statements regarding evolution recently, the media shouted him down by stating “fact check” and then stating the opposite, but they never produced the facts to support a fact check.  Their facts are the often-repeated theories that some think are mere notions with nothing to support evolution as even a legitimate theory.

As for the other books, The Problem of Pain is C. S. Lewis’ take on why there is pain in the world, but if you go to cslewis.drzeus.net, Into the Wardrobe, you will find an article from an atheist that not only thought the CSL book was inadequate, it proved to him that C. S. Lewis could have never been an atheist, ever, to have drawn those conclusions.  Odd, how the atheist could not see the contradiction in what he wrote, but without the Holy Spirit, we are blind.  Mere Christianity is a compilation of radio talks that C. S. Lewis was asked to make on the onset of World War II to give the people of England hope.  That would definitely not happen in today’s world.  It is not for the young reader as Lewis gives thorough arguments and the sentences get rather long.  The Case for a Creator is a well-done argument for the fine-tuned universe and fine-tuned earth, and it even discusses the complexity of the single cell organism, what Darwin thought was a bit of goo.

As for the videos, when you have time, you can start with these:

Origins – Creation not Confusion (26:30)

Origins – Evolution’s Flawed Thinking (26:30)

Origins – The Butterfly Enigma (26:32)

Origins – Marvels of the Creator Part 4 (28:00)