Secrets of Longevity

Miracles have been occurring for millennia. Evolution is one of the greatest miracles and mysteries of all. Since a second is as a thousand years to God might not an hour be as a million years. What if a million years hence by the grace of God humans with their God-given intelligence figure out how to progressively boost their longevity and one day turn off the aging of cells entirely?

If a tortoise can live to be 255 could not scientists find how to produce that longevity in humans? [*]

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* 255 year-old tortoises

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Ever Revealing Science of God

"There is no version of primeval history, preceding the discoveries of modern science, that is as rational and as inspiriting as that of the Book of Genesis," Asimov says. However, human knowledge does increase, and if the Biblical writers, "had written those early chapters of Genesis knowing what we know today, we can be certain that they would have written it completely differently." -- Isaac Asimov

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Humanity's Urgent Cry for Help Needs Resolution

Somebody to Love

Lord what you're doing to me
I have spent all my years in believing you
But I just can't get no relief, Lord!
Somebody, somebody
Can anybody find me somebody to love?
-- Freddie Mercury

[Truly a cry for help to anybody who is compassionate enough to come to the aid of people with serious needs.
Maybe you or I could be the only one who will ever come to a person's urgent need for help.]

Supernatural Selection and Theistic Evolution

There is nothing completely natural about natural selection. The natural state of a truly wild and undisciplined environment or system is to develop into ordered chaos, if you will. It is marvelous to speak about how natural selection selected this trait or that trait to bring about the fittest specimen who then would have the greatest chance of surviving. Sometimes a sentience and incorporeal intellgence is attributed to natural selection as it chooses this trait or this species to survive and procreate. Too much perfection and unbiased godlike power is attributed to natural selection. There is actually a supernatural selection going on that is guiding evolution along. God is the agent of supernatural selection.

[Transtion needed]

A child is naturally sinful. Ethical behavior has to be learned. Ultimately God is the source of all ethical behavior.

It is arrogant for man to think he or she can save himself or herself from the condition of death and sin.

The proverbial Fall of Man comes to each person upon realization of his or her capability for evil as well as good.

Christ is our example of what we can become through his transforming power and loving kindness.

God conferred super intelligence and a knowledge of his existence on the primitive homo sapient couple who lved in a veritable garden of Eden.

Where it not for super intelligence the Bible could never have been written as well as all the intellectual achievements of man throughout history.


God will one day allow man to join him in his sphere when he feels humanknd is ready.

How to Escape the Death of the Universe

Cosmologists speak of M-theory which speaks of three visible dimensions of space, length, height and width. Additionally, it crunches seven super-tiny and virtually invisible dimensions into the mix. M-theory also includes one dimension of time, as well. *

What if there were a second dimension of time, as well. We'll call it Static time to keep it separate from the Dynamic Time we experience every day. Dynamic Time includes past, present and future. Static time, however, only has one state. That state is best described as an Endless Now. This is not necessarily nonsense.

Consider, if you will, a very advanced civilization with knowledge and resources to visit or, should it ever become essential, to escape into, a timeless parallel reality that is outside of our known universe. This would come in handy in escaping the eventual death of our universe when individual stars have spent all their fuel and our universe becomes both a ghost universe and a virtual non-universe.

Having escaped our dying universe our far-future friends who wait in Static Time would be virtually immortal. There could, of course, be accidents. After all, they are not gods with invulnerability but rather, advanced humans, cyborgs or possibly androids who are "out-of-time," as it were, and so do not experience time as we know it. In Static Time organisms don't age as they do in our Dynamic Time reality. Hopefully though, it is possible to think and move while in Static Time. If not our futuristic travelers would be forever trapped in their Static Time reality. They become, in effect, prisoners of their own devising.

If they were intelligent enough they could find another universe where a Big Bang singularity had jump started a new universe or they might try enlarging a small black hole and create a baby universe and set up residence there once conditions had stabilized sufficiently to permit humans to live naturally on one of the new worlds of the baby universe.

Some of the scenarios I've just described are, in fact, based on various theories by different cosmologists. Others are wishful thinking and may not have all the science once would wish to back them up.

Finally, there is at least one historical figure who does experience this theoretical Endless Now and to whom Static Time is very much a given and not just a theory. I'm speaking of someone who lives outside of our Dynamic Time universe and can at times access our Dynamic Time universe. Needless to say I'm referring to God who inhabits a realm we can only refer to as Infinity.

No one can say for sure what Infinity is like. Even the Bible doesn't give us much clue as to its nature or location. It, no doubt, makes no sense to speak of Infinity as having a location. Infinity might be a reality possessing a location which we could never imagine or understand even given the proper mathematics to try to comprehend it conceptually.

One clue the Bible does give about the nature of Infinity might be the descriptions of God given in both the Old and the New Testament. In the Old Testament God is described as the ONE WHO WAS, the ONE WHO IS and the ONE WHO WILL BE. In the New Testament it is said of the Lord God that He is the Alpha and the Omega or the Beginning and the End.

Infinity, by association, can then be described as being a reality which was, which is and which will be and all three descriptions refer to the same Endless Now of Static Time. Infinity might be a perpetual steady state reality with past, present and future all indistinguishable one from another. Perhaps that is why the Bible also states that for God a thousand years is like a day and a day is like a thousand years. The same might be said of Infinity where length of time has no meaning since time is static and not dynamic as it is in our universe with its birth, development and death.

Yes, it is a bit shocking to speak of our universe as dying for all that lives is born to die. Even stars die and galaxies crash into other more gravitationally powerful ones so that new stars and new galaxies might be born. This should not be a cause for concern though since the God who created our universe out of nothing can also create other universes out of nothing as well.

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* Hawking, Stephen. The Grand Design.

How Well Do You Tolerate Evolution and Creationism?

Non-theistic evolution though intellectually stimulating has too many variables to consider here. It ignores a need for a prime mover by stating that the Big Bang took place and requires no further justification. This is similar to theists saying God needs no creator for he had no beginning. No more questions need be asked. End of story.

Special Creation solves many mysteries except the origin of God. Furthermore, Special Creation presents a demonic being as the origin of Evil though Special Creation and its associated theologies do not excuse Evil or the demon in question due to the mystery of Evil itself. Evil is simply because it is. Special Creationists can't or won't explain Evil since by explaining it they would then justify or understand why it exists at all. Special Creation does not solve all of the enigmas. It creates extra ones and leaves them as is.

Theistic evolution solves some problems but ultimately presents God as a cosmic mad scientist. How, pray tell, do you pray to and love an omnipotent being who needed eons of trial and error--just look at all of the fossil record--to finally produce one of the generally impressive results of evolution:  Man the Thinker? What is the other impressive end-product of theistic evolution? Gaia (Mother Earth) itself [see footnote]. Our self-actualizing world is almost sentient in its perfection and self-regulating complexity. Some see this perfection and near-sentience as an indication of an omniscient God who is responsible for the almost flawless miracle that we call Earth.

What then is the answer of answers :  how did we get here? If we were to find this perfect solution we'd cease to evolve as a species. It is better to leave some questions unanswered.

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Gaia philosophy (named after Gaia, Greek goddess of the Earth) is a broadly inclusive term for related concepts that living organisms on a planet will affect the nature of their environment in order to make the environment more suitable for life. ...
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gaia_(philosophy)

Where Is God?

Only the mystery we call God can change the hell that can sometimes exist both in our mind or in the world that surrounds us. No other mystical power or force of science can change that permanently with  lasting effects in mind. Thank God for God. How truly alone we'd feel if He didn't exist. Without God the wonder that we call the universe would be a charade or a cruel joke. All this dazzling immensity and beauty created for no reason and easily destroyed--eventually after billions of years--meaninglessly, as well.

God must exist, you see. He just has to. Otherwise the quality and beauty of life is cheapened.

If--and this we cannot prove--God does not exist then we have to become our own all-loving, all-forgiving and all-comforting "God." [1]  Let us not even consider the quagmire of dealing with lower-case gods or beneficent forces of nature. We need God or the ideal implied by the word God, not just for each other's sake, or for our own sake. We also need God or the ideal of God ("God") for the benefit of the culmination of eons of evolution--pre-primate and primate--as well. Ultimately we need God if only to insure that our own health and survival as a species is assured for whatever fate or providence or some nameless and undefined Factor or Ideal has in store for us down the road. Without something larger than ourselves millions of years of human evolution lose whatever meaning artists and poets have attributed to the wonder of being human and being alive to enjoy that splendor and glory. [2]

Humanity really, then, is created in the image of God. We are carbon copies of our perfect and wonderful God. We need God, however, to let that wonder and perfection shine and grow. Not from within ourselves only but from a mysterious reality or force beyond ourselves. That mystery can only be called God. It truly can be said of us, His children, that "we are the light of the world."

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References:

1. It may not be necessary for some, but in the event that there is some confusion as to what I'm referring to when I speak of God (the deity of the Old and New Testament Bible) and "God" (the ideal of God or a conceptual God, if he were not to exist) this note may prove helpful. Again, it is not my intention nor concern at this time to address any interaction or use of a lower-case god. There are already too many lower-case gods in our  postmodern world.
2. Though probably used in a different context and possessing different meaning than what I've presented here, I am partially indebted to Jack Provonsha's "God is With Us" which I read at the age of 19. It still lingers in my mind though only vaguely. It was there that I first came upon the sometimes confusing uses of God and "God."

Coming to terms with Science and Faith

Why did God permit man to appear 200,000 years ago in Sub-Saharan Africa? Creating humankind on day six of Creation week is simpler, perfect and requires less faith than crediting impersonal natural selection for the personable being that is man (generic term intended.)