What I'm working on

"As I was thinking about this, suddenly a goat with a prominent horn between his eyes came from the west, crossing the whole earth without touching the ground. He came toward the two-horned ram I had seen standing beside the canal and charged at him in great rage. I saw him attack the ram furiously, striking the ram and shattering his two horns. The ram was powerless to stand against him; the goat knocked him to the ground and trampled on him, and none could rescue the ram from his power. The goat became very great, but at the height of his power his large horn was broken off, and in its place four prominent horns grew up toward the four winds of heaven." Daniel 8:5-8

The Ram here is the Persian-Median Empire. The Goat is Alexander the Great. Daniel writes this in the 6th century BC and these battles don't take place until late in the 4th century BC.

Right now I am back in school, taking Western Civilization I, American Literature I and Art History I. I put that quote there because my Western Civilization class has extra credit based on movies from the time period we are covering. I will be doing one of these on Alexander. I have been fascinated by him for a long time, but more so since studying the bible, and specifically the book of Daniel. Alexander is of tremendous biblical importance because he spread Greek culture and most importantly the Greek language throughout much of the known world. The New Testament was written almost primarily in Greek, and Greek is an excellent language to communicate a message. There are many different words in Greek for many different emotions that in English might be combined into one word. The classic example of this is the word: Love.

We love our spouse, our children, our friends, our country, our sports teams, cars and even TVs. In Greek there is Agape, Eros, Philia, Storge and Thelema. It is very clear if one says to another "s'agapo", that this is not referring to sexual love. But in English, context is necessary to derive the true meaning. The point though, is that Greek was an amazing language to write down the greatest story ever told, that of the Gospel.

So this is kind of what's been on my mind. In addition to watching the 3 and 1/2 hour long Oliver Stone movie on Alexander, (which I think focuses too much on a kind of love that it is uncertain if Alexander partook in) I've been watching History channel videos (via YouTube) on the battle of Gaugamela as well as videos on Philip and Alexander. Pretty cool stuff.

My Art History class has led me to think of a really cool approach to talking to atheists about God. I don't know if it will work, but let me throw it out here.

This sculpture, called the Venus of Willendorf, is very primitive. It is dated at about 30,000 BC. Even though it is primitive, anyone who looks at this sculpture would say that it was created. An intelligent being "designed" this sculpture. A rock was taken, and some sort of tools were applied to make this rock look like a woman.

Now if this poor quality (though not for its time) sculpture is evidence of its creation and design by a creator, then how is the universe and everything in it, including the zenith of all designs, the human body the result of millions of "beneficial accidents"? It is quite simply preposterous to think that humans could have developed by accident or luck. I'll conclude with this quote:

"“To suppose that the eye with all its inimitable contrivances for adjusting the focus to different distances, for admitting different amounts of light, and for the correction of spherical and chromatic aberration, could have been formed by natural selection, seems, I freely confess, absurd in the highest degree.”
- Charles Darwin