The Big Bang is Christian

Dubbed the "Pillars of Creation", this photo was taken in 2022 by the James Webb telescope, showing massive columns of gas -- 66 trillion kilometers tall! -- in the Eagle Nebula, about 6,500 light years from earth. The nebula is called a stellar nursery, as new stars are actively forming within it. View the full res (70MB) photo.

Today I came across this post by well-known Christian conservative commentator Allie Beth Stuckey:

I’m reading a book written by an evolutionary psychologist, so I’ve been thinking about the claims of evolutionists a lot recently.

Obviously there’s the absurdly illogical belief that the universe was initiated by a big bang. But I also find it strange that many progressives… https://t.co/C0aSukIdTp

— Allie Beth Stuckey (@conservmillen) May 7, 2025

The part that got me was, "absurdly illogical belief that the universe was initiated by a big bang."

This is a common sentiment in the conservative Christian world. I suspect many in the Messianic and Hebrew Roots world feel the same. 

But a dirty little secret about the Big Bang theory is, it's Christian.

The Big Bang theory was developed by a devout Christian and the theory itself supports the Biblical idea that the universe had a beginning. It was initially combatted by atheist scientists because it too closely aligned with the Bible.

A devout Catholic priest and physicist by the name of Georges Lemaitre proposed the theory in 1927. 

Prior to this time, the scientific consensus was that the universe was eternal; it had always existed. But working off the theories of his contemporaries Edwin Hubble and Albert Einstein, Lemaitre theorized that the universe is expanding, with a definite point in time and space where it came into existence. In other words, the universe had a beginning.

Lemaitre's theory, which he called the primeval atom theory, was initially rejected by many atheist cosmologists. British astronomer Fred Doyle mocked the idea and coined the term "big bang" as a pejorative, claiming the theory too closely resembled the Book of Genesis.

But today, nearly 100 years later, scientists almost unanimously agree the Big Bang theory accurately describes the beginning of the universe. 

What changed their minds? 

A number of discoveries with powerful evidence:

• Cosmic Microwave Background (CMB) radiation. In the 1960s, scientists discovered faint radiation left over from the beginning of the universe. This radiation has been since observed to be stretched out due to the expansion of the universe, shifting visible light to different frequencies, aligning with predictions of an expanding, finite universe.
• Hubble's discovery of the expanding universe. Edwin Hubble discovered that galaxies are moving farther apart, suggesting the universe originated at a single point in space. This couldn't be true of an eternal universe.
• Abundance of light elements. The Big Bang predicted formation of precise amounts of hydrogen, helium, and lithium. Observations of old stars confirm these predictions.
• The reality of a dark sky. If the universe were eternal, the night sky should be very bright. Instead, it's mostly dark, suggesting a finite past.
• Distant galaxies' difference from our own. Observations of galaxies far away -- and thus, very old -- are made up of extremely bright stars, suggesting that the universe was much different than it is today, and suggesting that it had a precise beginning, not an eternal past.

The Big Bang is probably true, and it is Christian in its origins and Biblical in its implications. 

It's painful to me, then, that many uninformed Christians today reject the Big Bang categorically, as if it implies atheism. It does no such thing. It theorizes that the universe suddenly exploded into existence. 

In Biblical terms, "Let there be light!"

The universe isn't eternal, it had had a beginning: an instant of creation. And doesn't an instant of creation imply the existence of a Creator?

Against Being The Vaccine Guy

Crazed and obsessed? This has been me for the last few months. 

God has a higher calling for the Anti-Vaxx Guy, the Alternative Medicine Guy, the Conspiracy Guy, the Flat Earth Guy, the Angry At The World Guy, the Election Was Stolen Guy, the Biden is Literally Hitler Guy.

And God has a higher calling for me, The Vaccine Guy.

I want to be the guy known for loving and serving God and His people. Vaccines are great and all, but I’ve been unbalanced in this over the last few months.

I’m in danger of becoming The Vaccine Guy.

In this post, I’m going to show you how I got here, how it’s become an imbalanced issue in my life, and what I aim to do to fix that.

What I’ve been wasting my time on during the pandemic

A year ago as we entered this global pandemic, I knew there would major disputes among believers about COVID and vaccines, especially in the Hebrew Roots submovement.

Last July, in the midst of the COVID pandemic, I saw my Facebook friends starting to say Really Dumb Things™. One friend said, “The COVID vaccine is POISON!! DO NOT GET THIS SHOT!”

It was dumb because at the time, there was no COVID vaccine; they didn’t show up until 6 months later in December.

I asked my friend, “What COVID vaccine? There is no vaccine available for COVID right now. And there are multiple in development. Which one are you referring to?”

“All of them!” she replied.

I posted an ingredients list and asked which ingredient was poison.

“All of it! All of it is poison!”

I had posted the ingredients of an apple.

I knew, right then, that we were in for a rough ride.

People had opinions – strong opinions! – on things that didn’t even exist yet. They had already made up their minds in irrational exuberance. Their confidence made up for their lack of expertise.

Sidebar: In the age of the internet, it’s easy to be confident and wrong. Watch a YouTube video from Ovadiah Ben Clem about how the COVID vaxx will transmorgrify your DNA, and suddenly you have strong opinions about something that you have no expertise in. Your thinking isn’t shaped by expertise or data. It’s shaped by opinions from non-experts.

I knew there would be a tsunami of misinformation soon thrashing the shores of our social media pages and our oneg tables, especially among the Messianic movement and Hebrew Roots submovement, which tend to be anti-vaxx and steeped in scientific skepticism.

And I figured this time around would be worse than past anti-vaxx fears, because we were in the midst of a global, once-in-a-century worldwide plague. It would really divide people.

Historic anti-vaxx propaganda: An anti-vaxx flyer from 1955 demonizes the Polio vaccine as an experimental, murderous drug, a work of the Devil, a tool of the anti-Christ, with horrific side-effects. The vaccine was so effective, it ended the pandemic within two years. And by 1979, the vaccine had completely eradicated Polio from the US.

By December, against all odds and thanks to President Trump’s government fast-track program, the first COVID vaccines became publicly available in record time.

But how would we know if they worked?

This is where a lot of people turn to Ovadiah Ben Clem on YouTube, Outraged Political Guy on Big News Network, All-Natural-Bro dot com, and other non-expert sources.

Forget opinions, what does the data say?

But I focused on the data.

Specifically, if the COVID vaccine works, we should see a decrease in new cases, hospitalizations, and deaths. And we should see this in multiple nations, wherever the vaccine is rolled out.

If the vaccine doesn’t achieve those results, well, we need to acknowledge that and find a different treatment.

So I did an experiment: I said, “If the vaccines work, we should see X and Y results 30 days from now.” Here’s what I predicted back in January, right as the vaccines were rolling out:

In the comments, I added my prediction:

I figured, if the COVID vaccine works, we should see a significant drop in COVID infections and deaths within 30 days. I predicted a 15% to 20% drop.

A month later, my prediction was not only accurate, it wasn’t optimistic enough. COVID infections and deaths declined even more than I predicted:

The results were better than I predicted: Israel saw a 33% decrease in COVID infections, and a 40% decrease in COVID deaths.

I did this same experiment each month for the next 4 months: predicting what Israel’s COVID infection rate would be a month later given their current vaccination rate. All predictions came true, and all of them were not optimistic enough; the vaccine was more effective at stopping COVID than we had even hoped.

By April, Israel reported zero COVID deaths for the first time since the pandemic began. Shortly after, Israel lifted its mask restrictions, rolled back its vaccine passport, and removed most of its COVID restrictions.

For all intents and purposes in Israel, things are returning to normal; the pandemic is ending.

Correlation isn’t causation, though, so maybe all this data is a fluke, explained in other ways. Maybe Israel was fudging the numbers? Or maybe COVID naturally declined? Maybe COVID ran through the population and natural immunity kicked in?

But wherever a COVID vaccine was widely deployed, new infections, hospitalizations, and deaths dropped sharply and significantly. While Israel was a great test case, as they were the first and fastest nation to rollout a COVID vaccine to a majority of its citizens, it was not the only example.

This same pattern – vaccine introduced, infections disappear – was repeated in other nations with high vaccination rates, including the UK and US. As more people received the vaccine, cases and deaths declined.

Meanwhile, nations like India and Brazil suffered new waves of terrible COVID outbreaks, killing thousands per day.

Why?

Their vaccination rates were among the lowest in the world:

If this weren’t enough, more data rolled in from large studies showing the COVID vaccine to be highly effective at preventing COVID infections and deaths. Israel did numerous studies, but my favorite is this one by Maccabi Healthcare. They studied 523,000 vaccinated Israelis and and 628,000 unvaccinated Israelis. Same demographics, same ages, same ethnic backgrounds. Apples-to-apples comparison.

The result?

In the vaccinated group, 544 got sick with COVID.

In the unvaccinated group, 18,425 got sick with COVID.

These results were so stunning it prompted the head of Maccabi’s health division to say,

“The data unequivocally prove that the vaccine is very effective and we have no doubt that it has saved the lives of many Israelis.”

Dr. Miri Mizrahi Reuveni

In light of all this evidence, I’ve adopted the same view: the data shows beyond a doubt Pfizer’s COVID vaccine is highly effective at stopping COVID infections and deaths.

Social Media Warrior

I raised these data points on social media, showing that the vaccine appears to be very effective and will likely end the pandemic.

Anti-vaxx folks would flock in and try to explain away that data.

And soon, my Facebook page became a battleground.

I’d go back and forth with these folks; I have written over 1000 replies in the last 6 months to their comments, posts, and DMs.

In these replies, I’ve refuted vaccine conspiracy theories about Bill Gates, 5G chips, overpopulation and horrific vaccine side-effects. I’ve rebutted accusations that the vaccine makes you sterile, turns you gay, changes your DNA, or is gene therapy. I’ve responded to people who told me I will die because I chose to vaccinate myself. I’ve responded to people who told me, “You are no longer following Hashem. You have turned to Molech.” I’ve responded to people saying that I’m no longer trusting God by getting immunized. I’ve responded to people who told me I should find a burial plot so I don’t burden my wife and kids with my inevitable demise from the vaccine. I’ve responded to people saying I will get deathly sick in the next 6 months. I’ve responded to people who told me that I will be controlled by 5G radio waves. I’ve responded to people who told me that I will make others sick by shedding my vaccine-induced spike proteins.

I've engaged with people who point to fringe doctors who are against the COVID vaccine. Almost invariably, such people are ousted from medical profession or hold wild views of their own. For example, anti-vaxx hero Dr. Tenpenny: an osteopath who has never treated COVID patients...also rejects germ theory. Or consider anti-vaxx crusader Dr. Avni: he is no longer a medical doctor -- his license was revoked -- not only for his opposition to vaccination but also because he has advised cancer patients to avoid seeking modern medical treatment for cancer. To be clear, the overwhelming majority -- I would estimate over 99% -- of medical doctors support the COVID vaccine. Among those doctors who actually treat COVID patients, the number is even higher. Yes, there are a tiny minority who do not: they are often defrocked quacks who hold wild, fringe views in addition to their opposition to vaccines.

I've engaged folks who point to vaccine injuries in the VAERS database, calling attention to the number of reported serious side-effects. I've responded: VAERS shows about 48,000 adverse, serious events. That sounds horrible, until you consider that 160 million Americans have been immunized. That means, according to VAERS, you have a better chance of getting struck by lightning than you do getting a serious side-effect from the vaccine. And the numbers get better from there: an estimated 75% of VAERS reports turn out unrelated to the vaccine (e.g. an immunized man gets into an car accident 2 weeks later - this report goes into VAERS.) All in all, the COVID vaccine has, thus far, proven to be a safe medicine.

In short, I've engaged with nearly every argument against the COVID vaccine.

Some folks from my old congregation, too, would engage me and push their anti-vaxx views – some via snail mail, others by Facebook, others in person – usually coupled with conspiracy theories about Bill Gates, microchips, and other technology they didn’t understand.

My family also got sucked into anti-vaxx stuff. I had a few disputes with family members, sometimes public, over vaccines and related news about vaccine side-effects. I didn’t like doing that. At the same time, I felt compelled to speak up for my convictions.

People I admired and respected, Messianic musicians and congregational leaders and leaders in the Messianic Jewish movement, posted anti-vaxx conspiracy theories that often tied in our faith:

• “The vaccine is the Mark of the Beast!”
• “The vaccine is a new Holocaust!”
• “Bill Gates is trying to depopulate the world through vaccines!”

I’ve engaged those folks, too, trying to offer a different perspective with grace, sometimes calling attention to their sensationalism and how it hurts our witness about God and Messiah.

One Messianic Jewish ministry, a husband and wife that tour the United States, had come on my Facebook page and told me, “The COVID vaccine is much like Nazi Dr. Mengele’s experiments on Holocaust prisoners.”

I responded by saying, “This is what I mean when I say that Hebrew Roots has a misinformation problem. Sensationalism like this hurts our credibility as Yeshua’s disciples.”

This woman then responded by posting on her social media a big “OH MY GOD I’M BEING PERSECUTED BY JUDAH GABRIEL HIMANGO” thread:

This woman claimed I was shaming her. That I slammed her. That I said she was a bad believer. That she was ungodly.

None of those things were true. I shame bad ideas, not people. It’s why I didn’t even use her name in my post. I even blurred out her name on the original post when highlighting the sensational claim.

Even so, after seeing this woman take offense to my calling out her idea as sensational, I offered to delete my post for peace in Yeshua’s name.

She and her husband never responded to that offer.

I deleted my post anyways.

But there it was, and still stands today, a post that demonized me as bully figure, attacking people directly with shaming tactics. 214 likes, 124 comments, 17 shares.

And not just fringe people here - mainstream Messianic ministries and individuals, including Messianic Jewish ones accepted in the mainstream Messianic movement, were there in the comments, agreeing that I’m just a horrible person who shames people. 

Her post certainly brought a lot of sympathy for suffering this supposed persecution. Many commenters misread her post and assumed she was being attacked because she was Jewish. To this day, I still don’t understand why she opened her post with her Jewish heritage; my post didn’t mention her, her name, or her background. I have Jewish heritage too – my post called out ideas, not heritage.

Seeing a few hundred people piling on you, saying how terrible you are for attacking and shaming a person is a delightful experience. 😅 Internet mobs are vicious, especially when motivated with political or religious zeal. And witnessing hundreds of people agree with the sensational idea, “The vaxx is really a new Holocaust!” was a jarring moment.

I began to think, “Is everybody crazy? Am I crazy? Do I even belong in this movement?”

I responded to her post in grace. I told her and the hundreds of commenters,

“If you really believe the COVID vaccine is a new Holocaust and an experiment like the kind Dr. Mengele ran, let’s revisit this thread in one year. If millions of Israelis have died, I will acknowledge I was in grave error and apologize. But if millions of Israelis have not died from the vaccine, I ask you do the same.”

(How many of those hundreds of commenters will repent when it turns out the millions of Israelis haven’t died from the COVID vaccine, but rather, millions of lives have been saved? How many will have the humility to acknowledge their error?)

Becoming known for a minor issue

But all this came at a cost, in my estimation.

Last month I attended a wedding for a young man from my old congregation. At the wedding, I was seated at a table with some folks from my old congregation – all of them anti-vaxx. After polite niceties and small talk, much of the discussion that night was about vaccines. I didn’t want it to be. Weddings aren’t the place for that.

One of the folks at the table asked why I am so obsessed with vaccines. In my mind, I’m not obsessed; just trying to stand up for my convictions. But then again, that’s what all crazy people say. 😉

The week of the wedding I also visited with my parents and the discussion turned to vaccines. “I heard someone say the vaccine makes you magnetic; a magnet will stick to your arm where you got the shot.” (Spoiler: I tried it. I'm not magnetic.)

And then, last month at Proclaim Hebraic Music Fest, I met some amazing people…who were stunned to discover that I was pro-vaccine.

In all these cases, I didn’t even want to discuss vaccines. But the discussion came anyways, probably because I’ve made it too high a priority in my life, given it too much free rental space in my head.

About a month before all this, I had felt the pressing of the Lord to back off from my course of action. Fighting with believers over that in public resulted in a unhealthy imbalance in my own life, regardless of whether I was right.

I had long advised friends and congregants to back off from unhealthy obsessions – conspiracy theories, pet doctrines, flat earth – and instead be known for doing good works for the Lord.

Now I felt the Lord telling me the same.

And soon, friends started cautioning me against my current course of action. A pro-vaccine family member asked me privately, “Why are you doing this? What’s the point? Is anyone really going to change their mind?”

My parents had called me to tell me that I was being too harsh and rigid, unwilling to just have a discussion about anti-vaxx concerns.

Another friend told me, “I admire what you’re doing trying to change hearts and minds. But you’re putting yourself into the fire. Maybe taking a break would be good for your mental health?”

It’s OK to go against the grain and stand up for your beliefs. More than OK. It takes courage to do that when everyone else is going in the opposite direction.

“You have enemies? Good. That means you stood up for something, sometime in your life.”

Winston Churchill

But I recognize that God doesn’t want me to be The Vaccine Guy. It’s good to be pro-vaccine, because lives are saved. But I have prioritized it too highly. There are more important things, and a higher divine calling, than advocating for vaccines.

This is true for anti-vaxx folks, too. God has a higher calling for the Anti-Vaxx Guy, the Alternative Medicine guy, the Conspiracy Guy, The Flat Earth Guy, the Angry At The World Guy, The Election Was Stolen Guy.

Does this mean we can’t talk about our convictions? That I must hold my tongue while the anti-vaxxers plaster their hot garbage all over the walls of the internet?

No.

But it does mean that if I become known for those things, something’s out of balance. God’s people should be known for caring for the sick, for the poor, visiting the imprisoned, feeding the hungry. To serve God’s people in tangible ways. Caring for my family. Serving my local community.

I want to be that Guy because that’s how God wants us to live, as described in the Bible.

Changes

I haven’t quite figured out the right balance here. The data has convinced me more than ever that vaccines are a great blessing from God and are saving millions of lives right now. Since lives are at stake, it’s an important issue.

But I can’t let vaccines become the Big Issue in my life. That’s too small a thing for a disciple of Yeshua. It’s an imbalance. It can’t be the primary cause in my life, even in the midst of this pandemic.

How can I bring some balance to my pro-vaccine views as a disciple of Yeshua?

For starters, I’ve spent the last month not posting about vaccines on my Facebook page. Really, an exercise in self-control. Am I able to do that? Or has it gotten so bad I’m unable to keep my mouth shut for a moment?

(Anti-vaxx folks have still been posting on my wall and sending me DMs, and I have sometimes responded to those, for better or worse. 🤷‍♀️)

I’m also avoiding jumping in on vaccine threads started by other folks. There have been numerous times where I started typing a reply, only to delete it all and let it be.

There will be times when I post about vaccines. Silencing dissent isn’t the answer. But deprioritizing the vaccine issue in my life is a good start. I can have those convictions without being known as The Vaccine Guy. I can avoid majoring on a minor issue.

I aim in the future to keep these posts balanced with regards to my life’s calling as a disciple of Yeshua, that I don’t become known for such a small thing as my stance on vaccines. If I want to be used by God for bigger things, I can't make my life about a single issue.

Maybe that's true for you, too, fine Kineti reader.

Receiving Medical Treatment is Not Distrusting God

“Pray for guidance, but steer clear of the rocks.”

Today, I received my final immunization against COVID-19.

When I posted about it on social media, some believers in Yeshua had harsh words for me:

Because I chose vaccination, this same person felt the need to pray for my soul:

Others told me,

“You got the vaccine? You’re as good as dead.”

Another told me,

“You chose slavery. You’ll soon find out that you belong to THEM!”

Another told me,

“Hashem is no longer your G-d.”

Still some people from my old congregation told me,

“You are taking the mark of the beast!”

Yikes. A lot of fear and doubt being spread by disciples of Yeshua. Are they right?

The problem with this thinking is it’s terribly short-sighted and quickly leads to absurd arguments:

• Do you wear glasses or contacts? Why not just go with the vision God gave you? Why trust glass instead of God?
• Do you take Advil or any other medication? Why not just trust God and your own God-given immune system?
• Do you wear a seatbelt? Why are you trusting a piece of fabric instead of God?!
• Have you visited a hospital? Why trust doctors and not God?
• Have you ever had surgery? Why not trust the body God gave you?
• Do you use a refrigerator to preserve food? You’re not trusting God to provide for you each day.
• Do you have a home? Why not rely on God to give you provision?
• Do you have a car? Why not use the feet God gave you?
• Do you have a job? Why not rely on God to provide for your needs?
• Do you wear clothes? Why trust Big Cotton over the Lord?

Do you see the problem here?

Any technological or medical innovation to make life better can be thrown out because we “should just trust God.”

We might as well become Amish or Haredi, where all technological innovation beyond the 17th century is evil. Why not go back further, all the way back to caveman days! Then we’ll really be trusting in God! 🙄

This is rigid, fundamentalist thinking endemic to the modern Messianic movement.

Why is it wrong?

God gave us dominion over the earth, commanding us to subdue nature. Subduing viruses and bacteria to prevent suffering and death is a divine command from God.

Yeshua the Messiah commanded us to care for the sick. Reducing suffering by preventing and treating disease is a divine command from God.

God didn’t tell us to do nothing and just sit back and let nature take its course.

God commands us to take action, to work, to provide for ourselves and our families, to clothe ourselves, to subdue nature, to care for the sick, advance God’s reign, to preach the good news, to be an active participant in this world for good.

Sitting around and doing nothing is not trusting God. It is forfeiting our divine responsibility to be caretakers of this world until the Master returns. We are to be the servant who invested the Master's coins, not the lazy servant who buried the coins in the ground. 

Yes, we trust God, but yes, we take action. Prayer and action. Faith and works. Pray for guidance, but steer clear of the rocks.

Blessing God for the COVID-19 vaccine

This week, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu received the COVID-19 vaccine and recited the Shehekianu prayer, which blesses God for preserving our lives: 

בָּרוּךְ אַתָּה ה' אֱלֹהֵינוּ מֶלֶךְ הָעוֹלָם,
שֶׁהֶחֱיָנוּ וְקִיְּמָנוּ וְהִגִיעָנוּ לַזְּמַן הַזֶּה. pic.twitter.com/OsA4qq5946

— Benjamin Netanyahu (@netanyahu) December 19, 2020

It translates as,

Blessed are You

LORD, our God

Master of the universe

Who has kept us in life

And preserved us to this season

I love that Netanyahu recited this while receiving the COVID vaccine because it recognizes God working through modern medicine. 

This is a topic special to me because I've been harping on it decades now: God's people need to drop faux-medical woo and anti-science conspiracy theories and embrace the great blessing of medicine. 

Or, to put it more accurately, re-embrace medicine. It was pious, devout Christians who pioneered the very idea of hospitals, a concept largely foreign to the ancient pagan world. Nuns -- prototype nurses -- caring for the sick at Church buildings for the sick -- prototype hospitals -- funded by the Church and its faithful. Even to this day, hospitals often bear Godly and religious names. My two daughters were born at St. Francis hospital, for example, named for a pious Christian who spent his life caring for the sick.

Aren't vaccines harmful?

Many of my Messianic and Hebrew Roots friends scoff at vaccines and promote conspiracy theories about them. To those folks I say, vaccines have wiped out several diseases that plagued mankind for thousands of years. Isn't that a good thing?

Smallpox was responsible for great suffering for millennia, claiming nearly 20% of all deaths in 1700s London: 

 

The disease did not relent until a vaccine against it -- the first vaccine -- was introduced in 1796. 

This was no disease of modernity. The mummified remains of Pharaoh Ramses V, who lived 1000 years before Messiah, was found to be infected with smallpox, likely leading to the royal's untimely death.

This disease that once afflicted and killed millions, mostly children, is now unheard of in the modern world. Vaccines are the reason.

Polio is another fantastic example. This disease crippled people, often paralyzing one's ability to breathe. In the early 1900s, children with polio would be forced to live in giant medical machines called iron lungs in order to keep breathing. Imagine that, friends, living your entire life in a big metal box:

Many people who lived during this time are still alive. Talk to your Grandparents or Great Grandparents about it! 

I came across one such person recently in an article about the COVID vaccine:

The reason we no longer suffer with polio, the reason you have never seen an iron lung before, is because of vaccines. The polio vaccine was created in 1953 by Jonas Salk, and it effectively and quickly eradicated the disease:

 Polio has been eradicated in the US for decades now, and has nearly disappeared from the entire world. The last bastions of the disease are in remote African villages where vaccinators are at risk of wars and warlords. And even there, we are the cusp of riding this disease from the world forever.

If smallpox and polio don't convince you, I ask you today to watch what happens in 2021. Just as smallpox and polio were wiped out, we'll likewise see COVID disappear. First, it'll decline. Then it'll disappear from the news. Then, it'll all be but a distant memory.

When that happens, friends -- and you can be certain it will -- won't you reconsider your thoughts on vaccines? Will you acknowledge you were mistaken? I hope you will, friends. Let truth prevail.

Can't we cure these naturally?

Many of my religious friends will ask this. They feel medicine and pharmaceuticals are unnatural, and messing with nature is just bound to go wrong. God made our bodies to fight disease on its own; let it do the job.

This thinking is well-intentioned but terribly wrong.

First, nature is out to kill you. 😊 Natural things include snake venom, harmful bacteria, viruses, and a host of predators microscopic and lion-sized. Nature is not our friend, but a mortal foe that will eventually kill you. There is no going back to the Garden of Eden.

Second, God commanded us to subdue nature. Humanity has a divine mission to rule over nature:

God blessed them and God said to them, “Be fruitful and multiply, fill the land, and conquer it. Rule over the fish of the sea, the flying creatures of the sky, and over every animal that crawls on the land.”  

-Genesis 1:28

This absolutely applies to microbiology. It is our responsibility, our divine mission, to eradicate disease, reduce suffering, and subdue nature.

Some believe all-natural elixirs, essential oils, diets, and vitamins are the answer. This is wishful thinking. 

Two years ago, a dear Hebrew Roots friends passed away from cancer...despite going for all natural treatments. And just this year, Hebrew Roots teacher Brad Scott had a brain tumor. He blogged about how he was going for all-natural treatments, how he didn't take any pharmaceuticals, how he had refused modern cancer therapies, how he had taken advice from Hebrew Roots folks peddling their oils, diets, fasts, and vitamins.

They all failed. Brad Scott died of a brain tumor earlier this year. His posts about the all-natural treatments has since been removed from his website by his widow.

Lastly, essential oils, vitamins, diets and all-natural cure-alls are no more "natural" than pharmaceuticals. Neither occurs in nature. And just because a substance can be derived from a plant does not make it healthy; cocaine should teach us that. And it ultimately doesn't matter; our divine mission is to subdue nature; why cripple our mission with arbitrary boundaries God did not impose?

COVID isn't killing people, why all the fuss?

Some folks think COVID is a hoax. This is a conspiracy theory that says COVID isn't actually killing people. 

This is grievous to me, as I know 3 people personally who have died from COVID, most notably my dear friend, Marty Blume, a Messianic Jewish man who helped me created Chavah Messianic Radio. He is dead because of COVID.

At the time of this writing, December 21st, 2020, COVID has killed over 300,000 people in the United States alone, and nearly 1.7 millions people worldwide.

To put that into perspective, the September 11th attacks on the United States killed 3,000 people. COVID is now taking ~3000 lives every day; essentially a 9/11 tragedy every day.

Some people object to say those numbers are inflated artificially, pointing out that if a person dies with COVID, it's counted as a COVID death even though something else killed them. 

This is poor medical understanding. 

Often times, as in the case of my dear friend Marty Blume, COVID arrests one's breathing, and that causes additional diseases, like pneumonia, which ends up killing you for lack of oxygen. Hospitals count that as a COVID death, and rightly so. And while there is variance in how a COVID death is counted, that variance swings both ways. For example, many nations only count COVID deaths that occur at hospitals; meaning the actual number of COVID deaths may be higher than the above figures.

Still others say COVID only affects the elderly, so who cares? It's mild for most people, and the death rater is 1.7% of all infections, so why all the fuss?

But the truth is, the elderly are still important. In fact, the Torah requires God's people to honor the elderly above other people. To dismiss this is to rebel against God's commandments. 

And it's not just the elderly; it's also people who are overweight (~30% of the US), people who have chronic illness (e.g. diabetes). These people are also at high risk of serious COVID complications.

So, yeah, a strong healthy young man in his prime may have a mild case of COVID. But give it to your parents, to your congregation, to your relatives, and now it becomes serious.

Why thank God, and not Science?

My secular humanistic friends will ask this. "It was science that cured Covid, not your God!"

I saw on one atheist forum a quote from a doctor:

"When the child recovers, they thank God. When the child dies, they sue me."

Science and medicine was pioneered by men and women of faith, like Newton and Pascal and the aforementioned pious Christians who cared for the sick when no one else would. These people of faith studied these fields and blazed trails in pursuit of understanding the natural world, the work of God's hands. In pursuit of subduing nature, using our God-given intellect, it was the faithful who contributed the foundations of science and medicine. And still today, many scientists and medical experts are believers in that same God who commanded us to care for the sick.

A COVID vaccine, whether produced by the faithful or the faithless (or a combination of these!), ultimately fulfills the divine mandate and does the work of the Lord. God doesn't desire to see anyone suffer or die. Treating disease with all every method at our disposal must be seen as doing the work of the Lord.

So, yes, thank the researchers, thank the doctors, thank the scientists for this medical miracle. And then bless God for the COVID vaccine.

Blessed are You

LORD, our God

Master of the universe

Who has kept us in life

And preserved us to this season

What Technology, Science, And Medicine Can’t Solve

The Reverend Billy Graham passed away this morning at the age of 99. I think the world has lost its greatest servant of God.

Even for the non-religious, Graham is a remarkable figure. He spoke to more people than any other human being who has ever lived, reaching over 42 million people in person, preaching the message of the Jewish Messiah in 105 nations. He reached many kinds of people in different walks of life.

Graham reached me in the strangest of places.

Several years ago he gave a fantastic TED talk to a group of Silicon Valley technologists:

As a technologist myself, I was first surprised to see a preacher giving a TED talk! TED talks are for the technological, the futurists, the skeptics, the thinkers – what could an old fashioned preacher possibly say to this audience?

I was cringing before the video began, figuring it would be cliché old-hat religious pitches.

But Graham’s short 15 minutes on stage was something else entirely.

He first put me at ease with his gentleness and honesty. He acknowledged and praised the wonders of technology and modern medicine – noting how he personally benefited from science and medicine. Of the even-greater potential for technology and medicine, Graham says, “I would like to live in that [great future] age, but I won’t, because I’m 80 years old, and my time here is brief.”

Graham spoke a truth that was hard for me to swallow. In his gentle way, Graham broke a delusion that, I think, holds sway over many lovers of technology, science, and medicine. A delusion that has often held sway over my own thinking.

That truth? He showed that technology won’t – indeed, can’t –  address the worst problem humanity has. Science, technology, and medicine – for all it’s wonders and good – cannot address the human heart and its propensity for evil.

We technologists don’t like to hear this. We self-delude ourselves into thinking technology will solve virtually every problem humanity has.

For example, Google co-founder Larry Page (#9 on the world’s wealthiest people) has funded a company intended to solve death and make humans live indefinitely.

Microsoft’s Bill Gates is eradicating the last holdouts of polio around the world, and is tackling malaria next.

Amazon’s Jeff Bezos has made virtually every product available to any person with a tap of a finger.

SpaceX’s Elon Musk is bringing humanity to Mars and beyond.

Tech startups aim to disrupt nearly every industry, making life better and easier and more convenient.

Modern medicine has solved numerous diseases through antibiotics, vaccines, and new novel treatments for everything from cancer to heart disease to AIDS.

Science has helped us understand germ theory, the need for sanitation, decreasing illness and containing plagues that would otherwise kill thousands.

Science has shown us how to produce bigger crops yields, reduce draughts and prevent famines through crop irrigation, pest control, automated farming, genetic editing, and more.

The most optimistic thinkers among us believe that science-based medicine will eventually cure nearly every human disease.

And they might be right.

But you know what cannot be cured? The human heart and its bent towards evil.

Graham argues,

“Have you ever thought about what a contradiction we are?

On one hand we can probe the deepest secrets of the universe, we dramatically push back the frontiers of technology…we’ve seen under the sea, three miles down, we’ve seen hundreds of billions of years out into the future [through cosmology].

But on the other hand, something is wrong… [at this moment] we are ready to go to war with Iraq. What’s wrong with this? Why is it there are wars in every generation, in every part of the world?… We can’t get along with other people, even in our own families? We find ourselves in the paralyzing grip of self-destructive habits we can’t break. Racism, injustice, violence sweep our world, leaving a tragic harvest of heartbreak and death. And even the most sophisticated among us seem powerless to break this cycle.”

Why is it that no matter how advanced we are – and what wonders of science and technology and medicine we’ve achieved! – why is it that we’re so evil? Even increasingly so.

Why is it that in the 20th century – in which we saw the invention of the car, human flight, the computer, the internet, the eradication of polio and smallpox and a host of other diseases – why is it that we also experienced the greatest evils the world has ever seen in Nazi Germany and the brutal Communist dictatorships responsible for the death of over 100 million people in a single century?

Where is the disruptive tech startup that fixes human evil?

Where is the vaccine that prevents human wickedness?

(Or, on a smaller scale but more recent headline, why is it that 70% of the worst domestic shootings in US history occurred in the last 20 years, most recently last week’s Florida school shooting which killed 17 kids?)

Why isn’t technology addressing that?

Where is the disruptive technology startup that fixes human evil?

Where is the vaccine that prevents human wickedness?

All silly questions of course: science, technology, and medicine do not and cannot address the worst problem humanity has: the propensity for evil. It doesn’t even attempt to.

“I would like to see Oracle [the technology company] or some other technological geniuses work on this problem: how do we change man so that he doesn’t lie and cheat. So that our newspapers aren’t filled with stories of fraud in business, labor, athletics, and wherever else.”

Graham notes the real origin of the problem, and says that it cannot be addressed by science, technology, medicine, or any other future innovation.

“The Bible says it’s within our heart, without our souls. Our problem is, we’re separated from our Creator, who we call God. And we need to have our souls restored: something only God can do. ‘Out of the heart comes evil thoughts.’ Murder. Sexual immorality. Theft. False testimony. Slander.”

But he doesn’t just quote the Bible to this secular rationalist audience. He cites the rationalist’ own chief prophet, the atheist Bertrand Russell,

“The British philosopher Bertrand Russell, who was not a religious man, said, ‘It’s in our hearts that the evil lies, and it’s from our hearts that it must be plucked out.’”

I wonder how many of today’s rationalists could even agree with Russell’s statement about evil. I suspect very few could without apologizing and redefining terms. In my experience, many rationalists to try to muddy the waters by claiming there is no real evil, no real good. (One prominent atheist author stated that without a Commander, the commandment is useless; without a Lawgiver there is no real law, and morality is subjective.)

Graham mentioned his meeting Albert Einstein, and how Einstein too saw the problem of real evil:

“Einstein made this statement: ‘It’s easier to denature plutonium than to denature the evil spirit of man.’”

He shows that beneficial technology can be used for remarkable evil. Technology can be twisted to into something corrupting. Graham noted the early internet and viruses as examples – 20 years later, I’d say it’s worse than that: I am thinking of internet porn, the objectification of women enabled by it (and the corresponding bad fruit of rampant sexual misconduct we are experiencing today), blackmailing ransomware attacks, digital theft, online harassment that has caused people to commit suicide, and the nasty verbal abuse enabled by the anonymity of the web.

Technology is great, but can be used for great evil, Graham says.

“The problem is not technology. The problem is the person using it. King David said he knew the depths of his own soul. He couldn’t free himself from his personal problems and evils that included even murder and adultery.

Graham says our heart and our soul is something not measured by science, not addressed by medicine, left untouched by technology.

“And it yearns for God, and something more than technology. And it’s that part of you that yearns for meaning in life, and it seeks for something beyond this life. It’s part of you that yearns for God.”

It was Graham’s yearning for God that led him, in the early 1950s, to desegregate the churches and assemblies where he was speaking. At one notable event, Graham himself walked down and cut the ropes segregating the white and black sections of the audience, and told the people that Christianity is neither white nor black, and that the Messiah is Lord over all.

Billy Graham dead at 99. Took this in OK City, 2003. MLK said, “Had it not been for the ministry of my good friend Dr. Billy Graham, my work in the Civil Rights Movement would not have been as successful as it has been.” Graham said there was no scriptural basis for segregation. pic.twitter.com/O8SCmNdGB5

— kennerly (@kennerly) February 21, 2018

Graham’s own death today, remarkably, revealed the hearts of people, some for good, some for evil.

While past US Presidents praised Graham, others showed utter contempt:

The big news today is that Billy Graham was still alive this whole time. Anyway, have fun in hell, bitch.

— Lauren Duca (@laurenduca) February 21, 2018

The great thing about Billy Graham is that he'd forgive you for saying that. https://t.co/1ArlgIQIKc

— Judah Gabriel (@JudahGabriel) February 21, 2018

Why the hate? Evil hearts.

Some folks, particularly secular leftists, felt condemned by Billy Graham’s Bible-based preaching. While Graham boldly preached in the 1950s that “there is no Biblical basis for segregation”, it’s with that same boldness he consistently spoke against sexual immorality as defined by the same Bible: adultery, promiscuity, and homosexuality. For this, some on the left demonize him and celebrate his death today.

Celebrating the death of a righteous man is, well, wicked.

This is the same wickedness of the human heart that is left unaddressed by science, technology, and medicine.

What addresses human evil?

God gives a tangible way to solve evil. It’s not easy. It’s not glamorous.

Evil – the problem unaddressed by science, technology, and medicine – is addressed by God in this way: each person must acknowledge the evil he’s done.

That takes humility. Acknowledging your own faults before God and people. It’s good for the soul.

Then, that person asks for forgiveness – both of God and the persons wronged.

Then, that person makes restitution – both with God and the persons wronged.

Then, that person – now with a softened and humble attitude – changes his behavior. The person is transformed from a wicked person into someone who reflects God’s own character. An angry and abusive alcoholic becomes a gentle, soft-spoken and clear-minded light for humanity. A drug addict turns his life around. A man turns a corner in his life.

We’ve seen this happen a thousand times; it actually works. It’s King David’s repentance. It’s Paul life-turn-around. It’s the message of Jesus and the Hebrew Prophets. It’s a cure for the worst problem humanity has.

And Billy Graham preached that message his whole life. To paupers and Presidents. And to everyone that would listen.

"Someday you will read or hear that Billy Graham is dead. Don’t you believe a word of it. I shall be more alive than I am now. I will just have changed my address. I will have gone into the presence of God."

-Billy Graham

The world has lost – for now! – one of its greatest servants of God. His hope in the resurrection – a hope that Jews and Christians share – will one day be realized in full for the great Reverend Billy Graham. May his memory be a blessing for you as it is for me, fine Kineti reader.

Omer 26: Where “god of the gaps” fails

It’s the 26th day of counting the omer. Each day I post a little something to help me count. Previously I wrote about how God loves Jerusalem. Today, a short word about the god-of-the-gaps fallacy.

The Pillars of Creation: a build up of interstellar gas in the Eagle Nebula some 7000 light years from earth.

Naturalists oppose belief in God, saying that God isn’t need to explain the universe. They rightfully point out that while theists have used God to explain the gaps in human knowledge, those gaps are closing, thanks to Science™.

For instance, people once thought that god/gods were responsible for lightning. Thunder, the sound of Thor’s hammer. The storm an act of angry gods. This is god of the gaps reasoning: we didn’t understand lightning, so we ascribed it to gods.

But humans figured out that lightning is created by millions of tiny bits of frozen raindrops in clouds colliding, producing charged particles. And when enough charged particles build up in the cloud, an interaction between the negative and positive charges emits a giant spark – lightning.

Thor was unable to be reached for comments.

In short, what people once ascribed to the divine was actually the result of natural processes. God of the gaps. Naturalists now assume that everything in the universe can be explained apart from God.

This is a powerful argument, but I think it fails in two ways.

First, there is an implicit logical fallacy embedded in god of the gaps: a category error that conflates the workings of the universe with the cause of the universe. The outcome of this error is the mistaken believe that God is unnecessary or redundant. Glenn Peoples writes,

Take a Ford motor car. It is conceivable that someone from a remote part of the world, who was seeing one for the first time and who knew nothing about modern engineering, might imagine that there is a god (Mr Ford) inside the engine, making it go. He might further imagine that when the engine ran sweetly it was because Mr Ford inside the engine liked him, and when it refused to go it was because Mr Ford did not like him. Of course, if he were subsequently to study engineering and take the engine to pieces, he would discover that there is no Mr Ford inside it. Neither would it take much intelligence for him to see that he did not need to introduce Mister Ford as an explanation for its working. His grasp of the impersonal principles of internal combustion would be altogether enough to explain how the engine works. So far, so good. But if he then decided that his understanding of the principles of how the engine works made it impossible to believe in the existence of Mr Ford who designed the engine in the first place, this would be patently false – in philosophical terminology he would be committing a category mistake. Had there never been a Mr Ford to design the mechanisms, none would exist for him to understand.

It is likewise a category mistake to suppose that our understanding of the impersonal principles according to which the universe works makes it either unnecessary or impossible to believe in the existence of a personal creator who designed, made, and upholds the universe. In other words, we should not confuse the mechanisms by which the universe works either with its cause or its upholder.

Spot the error? We understand the combustion engine works via natural processes, but mistakenly conclude the whole car itself doesn’t require a creator. This is the error naturalists make with god of the gaps.

God of the gaps conflates the workings of the universe with the cause of the universe. We can understand the workings of the universe apart from God – natural processes govern the universe – but the cause of the universe is something different entirely.

So what about the cause of the universe? The scientific consensus, as of about 50 years ago, is that the universe had a definite beginning, what’s called the Big Bang. (Earlier in the 20th century, scientists believed the universe always existed, but scientists have ruled this out for observational reasons I won’t get into in this post.) If the universe came into existence in a massive explosion, what’s the first cause; what caused the universe to come into existence, what caused that Big Bang? We identify the creator as God.

The second problem is that god of the gaps assumes that if a natural process explains a phenomenon, then God is ruled out. It’s related to the first problem, but it ignores the reality that if indeed there is a first cause to the universe – God – then that first cause would likely have rule over the natural processes He was responsible for setting up.

This would mean that yes, God can use any natural process how He sees fit. Just as we can affect the world with our thinking put to action, the intelligence behind the universe can do the same with nature.

One apologist puts it this way:

“God is a real agent who exists in time subsequent to Creation just like you and I. He can cause effects in nature like you and I, the same way that you and I can – by using our immaterial minds to affect the natural world freely… even if everything has a mechanistic explanation, that still would not rule out an intelligence acting to bring the entire universe into being fine-tuned for complex life, with certain potentialities that would unfold over time.”

A simulated universe suggests a divine engineer

Summary: Neil deGrasse Tyson and leading scientists debate whether the universe is a complex simulation. But what, or who, made the simulation? We identify the chief engineer as God.

Popular science educator and physicist Neil deGrasse Tyson.

Imagine an ultra-sophisticated computer simulation in which intelligent characters are walking about a virtual world.

Given enough time and curiosity and intelligence, the characters begin to investigate their surroundings. They look at their world, study their universe. They figure out how things work, how to make useful tools, and machines, and they begin crafting their own technology.

And, as they begin to uncover and describe the laws governing their little universe, they find all the laws to be mathematical, rigid, cohesive.

One observant virtual researcher discovered in his polygonal world the Law of Collision: “If an object collides with a 3d polygonal object at angle X, the point describing his new position can calculated by the cross product of his velocity vector along the impacted surface of the polygon.”

The more the virtual characters studied the laws of their world, they found all of them to be mathematically sound.

Unbeknownst to the virtual characters, the programmer of the simulation knew the laws were mathematical and rigid. He coded them to be that way; his intelligence shines through the algorithms. His cohesive design is encoded throughout the virtual world.

But the characters in this little world are all discovering this for the first time.

And they’re amazed, and puzzled.

They begin to wonder, “Why is our universe like this? Why is there math and rigidity and fine-tuning behind our world? It’s almost like this universe was engineered to support life.

The most daring and freethinking asked, “Is there some greater intelligence – perhaps an advanced civilization or intelligent species above our own – that put these laws into place? And are we merely living in its simulation?”

Scientists at Harvard and MIT ask, “Are we living in a simulation?”

As a lover of science and technology, my interest was piqued by Scientific American’s recent article, “Are We Living in a Computer Simulation?”

It admittedly sounds more sci-fi than science. 

But as Scientific American notes, it’s a legitimate scientific hypothesis pondered by researchers, astronomers, and cosmologists as an answer to some of the cosmos’ most puzzling questions.

The more we learn about the universe, the more it appears to be based on mathematical laws. Perhaps that is…a function of the nature of the universe we are living in. “If I were a character in a computer game, I would also discover eventually that the rules seemed completely rigid and mathematical,” said Max Tegmark, a cosmologist at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT). “That just reflects the computer code in which it was written.”

Several observations of the natural world drive this theory.

First, scientists note that the laws governing our universe are mathematical. The universe appeared to be based on mathematical laws and their cohesive algorithms, often elegantly so.  

Why is this?

Moreover, the laws of the universe appear finely tuned to support life. A little variation in any direction and life couldn’t exist. 

Scientists note:

1. Matter: If the initial explosion of the big bang had differed in strength by as little as 1 part in 10⁶⁰, the universe would have either quickly collapsed back on itself, or expanded too rapidly for stars to form. In either case, life would be impossible. One scientist notes an accuracy of one part in 10⁶⁰ can be compared to firing a bullet at a one-inch target on the other side of the observable universe, twenty billion light years away, and hitting the target.
    
2. Nuclear force: Calculations indicate that if the strong nuclear force, the force that binds protons and neutrons together in an atom, had been stronger or weaker by as little as 5%, life would be impossible.
    
3. Gravity: Calculations show that if gravity had been stronger or weaker by 1 part in 10⁴⁰, life-sustaining stars like the sun could not exist. This would most likely make life impossible.
    
4. Subatomic particles: If the neutron were not about 1.001 times the mass of the proton, all protons would have decayed into neutrons or all neutrons would have decayed into protons, and thus life would not be possible.
    
5. Electromagnetic force: If the electromagnetic force were slightly stronger or weaker, life would be impossible, for a variety of reasons.

Here we are studying the natural world and we’re discovering something amazing: patterns and mathematical designs and fine-tuning behind the laws of the universe.

We are like the characters in our computer simulation, awestruck at the intelligence and beauty of the algorithms describing our universe. And we’re questioning why they’re like this.

“In my research I found this very strange thing. I was driven to error-correcting codes—they’re what make browsers work. So why were they in the equations I was studying about quarks and electrons and supersymmetry? This brought me to the stark realization that I could no longer say the people [who hold to this theory of universe-as-simulation] are crazy.”

-James Gates, theoretical physicist, University of Maryland

Last week, a summit was held at the American Museum of Natural History, where noted physicists discussed the universe-as-simulation hypothesis.

Neil deGrasse Tyson, the much-beloved pop science speaker and atheist, moderated the discussion.

Tyson put the odds at better than 50% (!) that our entire existence is a simulation, saying “I think the likelihood may be very high.”

Tyson goes on to say,

[I]t is easy for me to imagine that everything in our lives is just a creation of some other entity for their entertainment.”

-Neil deGrasse Tyson

Critics

Some scientists argued against this possibility, citing the insignificance of humans in the grand vastness of the universe.

“We mostly are interested in ourselves. I don’t know why this higher species would want to simulate us.”

Lisa Randall, Theoretical Physicist at Harvard University

Her argument is essentially that humans are self-centered and this universe-as-simulation theory is merely a reflection of our vanity.

Why would anyone want to create a simulation with us as the focus? In the broad expanse of the universe, why us?

She’s not the first to ask this question.

King David asks it in Psalm 8,

When I consider the universe, the work of Your fingers,
The moon, the stars, all which You established—
What is man, that You are mindful of him?
What is the son of man, that You care for him?

Why would the chief engineer of the entire universe concern itself with humans? Surely in the billions and billions of other planets, there must be life elsewhere, life that’s older and more advanced and more intelligent than us humans, right?

Fermi Paradox

Back to our imaginary computer simulation.

After a thousands of years gazing at the grand scale and magnificence of the sky above them, the characters in our computer game create technology that enables them go to the moon.

Decades later, they travel to other planets!

Centuries later, to other galaxies!

But what they find is both sobering and puzzling.

Instead of vast civilizations of alien life waiting for them, as their sci-fi movies led them to believe, they find among the uncountable billions of planets not a single soul.

No colonized worlds. No primitive life. Not even simple single-celled life! All the galaxies were void and barren wastelands.

Imagine that!

Billions of planets, some scorched, some frozen, some habitable. But not a single one with life.

The characters develop theories to explain this.

“Maybe our earth is a one-in-a-quintillion; a truly unique thing in the universe.”

“Perhaps there was life elsewhere”, theorized another, “but it always died out at a certain level of civilization.”

Still others speculated, “Maybe…we’re in a simulation of some kind.”

The programmer, of course, knew there was life only on that one planet; the rest of the universe was made for beauty and discovery and enjoyment, but he made life only in that place.

This statistical impossibility, this 1-in-a-billion-billions planet puzzled the characters.

So it is in our universe, in the real world.

Why is it that there seems to be life only here on Earth? This question is known in cosmology as Fermi’s Paradox.

It goes like this:

1. In the universe, given there are ~500 quintillion (billion-billion, 5x10²⁰) stars like our sun,
2. And given there are ~100 quintillion (billion-billion, 1x10²⁰) planets like the earth,
3. And if only .000000001% of those earth-like planets have life on them,
4. There should be ~1 billion earth-like planets with life on them, and thousands of advanced civilizations in our galaxy alone.
5. …and yet, it appears there’s no life anywhere but earth.

It’s a science-y way of saying, “Where the heck is everybody?”

Think of it this way: There are more earth-like planets in the universe than there are grains of sand on all the beaches of the world.

Surely some of those planets must contain life, scientists reason.

Mathematical probability leads us to believe that life almost certainly exists on other planets. (Especially if one holds to the evolutionary materialist view of the universe, where life naturally emerges from non-life.)

And yet, as far as we know, life only exists here. Why is that?

SETI, a scientific organization dedicated to searching for life in the vast universe, has for 32 years now been sifting deep space for radio signals, lasers, and other forms of communication that would hint at intelligent life on other planets.

And yet, despite 3 decades of searching, SETI has found nothing. Zilch. Zero.

Every other galactic grain of sand is a lifeless void. It appears the little blue dot we call Earth is the only place where life exists in the entire universe.

Wow!

This historic photo, dubbed the Pale Blue Dot, was the final photo snapped by Voyager 1 as it left our solar system in 1990. It’s the most distant from earth photo ever taken, some 3.7 billion miles from earth, revealing the earth to be a tiny pale blue dot in the vast expanse of space.

That’s Fermi’s Paradox in a nutshell: the universe is so utterly vast, with an uncountable number of earth-like planets, and yet, life appears to exist only here.

How can that be?

Scientists have proposed a few possibilities:

1. No, we aren’t alone: we’re just the first intelligent species in the entire universe, and we will eventually find simple life elsewhere.
2. No, we aren’t alone: civilization always dies out at a certain point (war technology?), thus preventing long-distance space travel and possibly destroying said civilizations.
3. No, we aren’t alone: we’re just rare. Life is extremely rare, and intelligent life even more so.
4. No, we aren’t alone: but life elsewhere is so advanced, it’s beyond our study, beyond our comprehension.
5. Yes, we’re alone: we’re totally unique in the universe, and there’s something we’re missing that explains that virtual impossibility.
6. Yes, we’re alone: we’re living in a simulation of an advanced intelligence above us.

As a person who believes God really does exist and is responsible for the universe’s existence and the existence of life itself, I welcome any of these answers.

However, there’s reason for people of faith to believe that the truth lies in a combination of #6 and #4.

#6: Yes, we’re living in a simulation. This explains why we haven’t found anyone else; there’s nobody else in this universe. It also explains why the universe is mathematically-describable with rigid and cohesive laws finely tuned for life.

#4: Yes, there is life elsewhere, but human intelligence is insufficient to comprehend it.

Let’s examine #4. One thinker sums it this way,

Let’s say we have an anthill in the middle of the forest. And right next to the anthill, they’re building a ten-lane super-highway. And the question is “Would the ants be able to understand what a ten-lane super-highway is? Would the ants be able to understand the technology and the intentions of the beings building the highway next to them?”

-Michio Kaku

Explaining the highway to the ant is a futile cause.

Why? 

The ant’s intelligence is insufficient to understand your form of communication.

But even if you could somehow communicate, it’s still futile: The ant has insufficient neurons in its tiny brain to comprehend who built the highway or why it exists or even what a highway is. In fact, the ant’s brain lacks the capacity to think and reason about ideas and higher order concepts altogether.

You could talk to that ant until you’re blue in the face, but it will never be able to understand highways.

So it is with us and the superintelligence above us.

The things the superintelligence does are incomprehensible to lesser intelligences.

Our tiny little brains don’t have enough neurons to even comprehend the superintelligence. Our brains lack the capacity to grasp its ways, our intelligence insufficient to understand its thoughts.

“My thoughts are not your thoughts,
Nor are your ways my ways.
This is my declaration of truth”, said the Superintelligence to humanity.

“For as the galaxies above are far beyond earth,
so are my ways higher than your ways,
and my thoughts higher than your thoughts.

-Words of the Superintelligence to humanity, circa 750BC
(With apologies to Isaiah)

The superintelligence that made the simulation is not biological. It is a thing beyond biology.

Nor is it an artificial intelligence; the superintelligence above us is beyond any AI that has existed or ever will exist.

The thing that made our universe is so far beyond our own intelligence, it cannot be comprehended or even studied by humans.

We are the ant.

The superintelligence that made the simulation is what humanity has worshipped for all of human history.

The master engineer, the advanced intelligence above us that made this simulation has a name: God.

And the puzzling reality of earth’s uniqueness, its housing the only life in the vast universe, and the finely tuned laws governing our universe are explained through God and his design which shines through the algorithmic laws of the universe.

It explains why science can’t study God: science is the study of the natural world; God is outside of biology, outside of nature.

But it’s even further than that: God exists outside of our universe; there isn’t a location we can go to find him.

Beyond that still: our tiny human brains and limited neurons can’t comprehend God anymore than the ant can comprehend a superhighway; we lack the physical capacity to understand God.

Intelligent species, advanced AIs, or God?

Modern scientists are reticent to say “God” or “creation”; it’s fallen out of favor. But many have no issue suggesting that a superintelligence outside our means of investigation may be responsible for our existence and even the existence of the universe itself.

In truth, it’s hardly a leap from God and a created universe.

If we’re willing to imagine, and even place a probability on, that we exist in a simulation built for “some other entity’s” entertainment, as Tyson said, is it not possible that “some other entity” is what we’ve been calling “God” all this time?

Tyson suggested the universe may be a simulation created for the entertainment or research of a superintelligent civilization.

What if, instead, the universe was created not for entertainment, but for the sake of creative act itself; not unlike how humans create art, and music, and programs and simulations of our own?

Scientific American notes that Neil deGrasse Tyson and the scientists at the conference did indeed contemplate something spiritual behind all this.

Some [of the physicists present] were more contemplative, saying the possibility [of a simulated universe] raises some weighty spiritual questions. “If the simulation hypothesis is valid then we open the door to eternal life and resurrection and things that formally have been discussed in the realm of religion,” Gates suggested. “The reason is quite simple: If we’re programs in the computer, then as long as I have a computer that’s not damaged, I can always re-run the program.”

I smiled at that statement. Humanity’s best scientists, many of them agnostics and apart from God, contemplating the possibility of resurrection and eternal life outside the realm of nature and science. Ha!

It’s as if they’re finding natural implementations of supernatural prerogatives.

The Scientific American author calls out the elephant in the room:

And if someone somewhere created our simulation, would that make this entity God?

Neil deGrasse Tyson answers with a contradictory statement:

We don’t think of ourselves as deities when we program Mario, even though we have power over how high Mario jumps,” Tyson said. “There’s no reason to think they are all-powerful just because they control everything we do.”

Here Mr. Tyson errs: if the superintelligence above us controls everything in our universe, then by definition it’s all-powerful in our universe; omnipotent.

While humanity doesn’t see itself as “god of the Mario universe” or any other simulation we’ve made, we do rightly see ourselves as creators of that universe. 

Unlike Mario and his universe, human beings have consciousness. We’re self-aware, we have been given intelligence far beyond Mario or any creation of humanity, such that we can reason and introspect about our universe and its creator.

We have freewill: unlike all other life, humans have been given the choice to follow the creator’s life-multiplying designs or rebel and go our own way.

- And for a creator so intelligent that he can make conscious beings with  freewill and intelligence of their own,

- And for a creator so compassionate and mindful of the things he made that he intervenes and communicates into his universe, guiding his creations in life,

- And for a creator above and beyond all intelligence that is and ever was and ever will be,

…such a creator is rightly called God.

All natural, bro! Why Yeshua’s disciples must put away medical quackery

A lot of my religious friends are suspicious of modern medicine. They turn to natural supplements, alternative medicines and treatments, cure-alls and elixirs.

Some of the zealous ones might even try to sell you some, or better yet, get you involved in a multi-level marketing scheme where you can sell it to your friends and family.

It gets worse.

Some of these folks will go beyond just pushing their elixirs and natural treatments and go into Warrior Zealot mode: personalizing the fight against “Big Pharma”, vaccines and medications, making it a religious issue to stand against the great evil that is modern medicine.

These religious people look at modern medicine as the Amish look at technology: a big evil that hurts mankind more than it helps. They embark on elaborate conspiracy theories about “Big Pharma”, and, despite having little or no medical training, they make wild, unfounded medical claims and perpetuate false facts about medicine.

Fine disciple of Yeshua, is this you?

[E]verything that comes out of a large Pharmaceutical company seems to be ok in the eyes of everyone. To me everything that is natural does help,  plants are very intelligent and all we need is in front us even growing at our doorstep,  but the big “guy “ want the money so they change it around.. Remember the case in south’s Africa where farmers where able to grow their own medicine for aids then the big guys come along and want to sell the expensive version made by them, they also arranged to forbid framers to keep growing the natural version. Would you support such behaviour?

Just look at GMo food.

microwaves its harmful to us and the environment but still on the market,  so how can I trust the so called testing institutes?

In addition I have three doctors that have tested the ASEA well for me… that’s why I am taking it.  With a method you would not approve but the only one I do accept. Called applied Kinesiology and a computer that works on your meridians. I am using my body to tell me what is good for me or my cat, as they can be trusted.

In Russian hospitals they heal people from cancer with Grabovoi and Petrov methods,  but would your institute approve.?

Look at the vaccine,  your institutes allow stuff in vaccines that are  very harmful to children e.g. vaccine grows on cancer cells and GMO cells.  How will the children’s children  who got the GMO vaccines look after their birth ? As you know there is also Mercury in the vaccine does your institute take it out? No ? Why? Cause they are too scared going against the big guys.  As they have the money..

Look at the vaccine study about mercury … the first study said its harmful,  the pharmaceutical company said to the guy:  no not good do it again. He changed it w, but as still not good enough and the third one which said Mercury is actually good for children was published.   That doc was promoted to a high job in Brussels. In similar cases where the docs don’t do what they are told, they have lost jobs….   So you want to tell me I can trust your testing methods   ?

And bloodletting can be good,  its depending on the problem you have and what type of person you are again,  again you need to ask your body computer for what’s best to you. .

Blessings

The above is an excerpt from a letter sent to ScienceBasedMedicine.org, a popular blog that highlights abuses in the alternative medicines community. In the letter, the female author makes the case for quackery and argues against science-based medicine.

What’s wrong with the letter?

• Paranoia and conspiracy theories abound.
• Wrong facts. Vaccines don’t contain mercury and are not grown on GMO cells, the statements about AIDS in Africa are blatant lies, microwaves are safe, Russian hospitals don’t have magical cures for cancer, etc.
• The natural fallacy (“plants are intelligent”?!)
• She fails to understand the need for scientific studies. 
• Cites debunked medical quackery like applied kinesiology  and a computer that works on your meridians!

I think many of my religious friends, Christian and Messianic followers of Jesus, would likely sympathize with this letter. So many of us have been fooled into buying the “secret knowledge” of alternative medicines. It’s tempting to think you have a great secret most of the world is blind to. How glamorous, then, to be a Zealot Warrior for said secret knowledge?

Sadly, those who benefit most from alternative medicines and cure-alls are the shady elixir peddlers and multi-level marketers. And their bank accounts.

Religious people are taken advantage of. Too many of us are gullible, because we want to believe.

If we fall for medical quackery, it hurts our credibility and more importantly, our message about Yeshua. How can people take us seriously when we are acting like an insane person, going on and on about “Big Pharma” conspiracy theories, and shouting that lemon grass will cure cancer?

Doctors, nurses, clinicians, researchers -- these people devote their lives to understanding disease and helping people live longer. But to the Medical Quack Zealot Warrior, they’re seen as nameless, faceless "Big Pharma", an evil organization that staged a coup d'etat and ousted all the natural healers.

Fine Kineti readers, consider that in the age of "natural healers" (shamans, medicine men, magic elixir vendors), the human lifespan rarely surpassed 40 or 50. In the age of modern medicine, humans today regularly live past 80 or 90, and that number is only rising.

Friends, the truth is, I'd be dead without modern medicine. Literally. I had appendicitis when I was an adolescent, and without surgery and modern medicine, my appendix would have ruptured and gone septic, sending me into peritonitis and shock, and death. Modern medicine saved my life.

My father has high blood pressure through genetic inheritance. There was a point he was coughing up blood; modern medicine lowered his blood pressure and he lives a normal life today.

I bet many of you have similar stories.

Modern medicine has problems. We haven’t solved all diseases, many medicines have adverse side effects, human suffering goes on. But the encouraging this is, medicine is evolving. Fast. We’re getting better at this, and at a very rapid rate.

• Lost your leg? No problem, we’ll fit you with a bionic, mind-controlled artificial limb.
• Need a new heart? OK, we’ll fit you with an electronic device that will never skip a beat.
• Need a kidney transplant? We can do that. What, no kidney donors? No problem. We’ll 3d-print a brand new kidney for you in the lab.

Friends, this isn’t evil. This isn’t “Big Pharma.” This is human civilization advancing, taking dominion over the world God placed us in. And it’s probably going to save your life one day. Our credibility and our message about Yeshua is diminished when we discard modern medicine in favor of fables.

Science-based medicine. It’s a wonderful thing for us religious people.