Intelligent Design? Prove It!

In the past few years, new discoveries in science and genetics are creating revolutionary understandings of how we got here, what our “meaning” is, and how life seems to operate.

One great summary of this new knowledge is a book called Survival Of The Sickest, by Dr Sharon Moalem. In it, Dr Moalem points out that diseases we have today may have been necessary adaptive responses to the past. In a new field called Epigenetics, Dr. Moalem writes that Lamarckian transmission, a notion that was discredited in the past, has now become an accepted idea within the field of Epigenetics.

What is Lamarckian Transmission? It is the idea that we evolved through “acquired traits” developed by different species. A giraffe, according to old Lamarckian ideas, got its long neck by constantly reaching fore the higher leaves that became increasingly hard to reach on trees.

What Epigenetics now shows us that it is possible for gene expression to occur as a result of influences from our environment. A recent cover story in Time magazine points this out.

Without getting involved in details, the human body is composed of “germ cells”, those cells which are contributed by our parents as the basic building blocks that make “you” and “me’ unique. But there is now evidence that the body carries a large majority of genes that used to be called “junk DNA”, which Dr. Moalem points out is actually related to viruses.

This is called “non-coding DNA”, not used in the normal process of cell building in our bodies, but seems to be a kind of database or library to which our bodies refer whenever we need to adapt to some new disease or infection. These very genes are also known as “jumping genes”, which were discovered by Dr Barbara McClintock several years ago. These jumping genes actually follow certain patterns that cause them to “jump” to certain areas that activate gene expression in our own bodies.

In fact, writes Dr, Moalem, “Jumping genes are very active in the early stages of brain development, inserting genetic material all over the developing brain, almost helter-skelter, as a normal part of brain development. Every time one of those jumpers inserts or changes genetic material in brain cells, it’s technically a mutation. And all of this genetic jumping around may have a very important purpose–it may help to create the variety and individuality that make every brain unique. This developmental frenzy of genetic copy and paste only happens in the brain, because that’s where we benefit from individuality”.

Imagine that. Our parents provide the core, the germ cells that create the basic blueprint of us, and then our bodies access a “library” of former viral DNA from our collective history that begins to jump around and shape us as individuals. What appears here is a combination of heredity and environment shaping our individual destinies. Dr. Moaelm points out that a chimpanzee, simply by stroking the head of its offspring, can affect the genetic expression of that offspring!

How far does this process of genetic engineering go? Howard Bloom, in a book called Global Brain, writes:

In a crisis, bacteria did not rely on deliverance via a random process like mutation, but instead unleashed their genius as genetic engineers”.

Bacteria? “Bacteria were the first to use the tools which now empower biotechnology’s genetic tinkerers: plasmids, vectors, phages, and transposons–nature’s gene snippers, duplicators, long distance movers, wlders, and re-shufflers….the millions–and often trillions–of bacteria in a colony used their individual genomes…as individual computers, meshing them together, combining their data, and forming a group intelligence capable of literally re-programming their species’ shared genetic legacy in ways previously untried and unknown”.

For bacteria, from ancient times, there was “memory” stored in the reactions of genetic shuffle, absorbing viruses, which Bloom describes as “the bacteria’s collaborator and its foe. Viral assaults devastated bacterial colonies–yet they tested bacterial intelligence, tweaking bacterial ingenuity, and amplified bacterial skills. Viruses also pried loose genetic pages from the creatures they attacked and inserted them in the DNA library of those they visited next while on their predatory rounds. Thus they became couriers through which bacteria swapped molecular pamphlets of new tricks and old collective memories”.

The virus as a “courier” of collective genetic history, has been stored in the creative “library” of the human body, and inserted as “jumping genes” in the developing brain, allowing us to respond to the necessary cues and genetic repsonse of individual stress.

This would mean that the way we think about life actually affects gene expression!

In a very real sense, “As a man thinketh, so is he”.

The germ cells that brought us into existence is not affected in the process of building our bodies, but the expression of genes stored in the “history” of our bodies, genes that once were the couriers, the viral invaders seeking to replicate themselves by hijacking our own replicative system, now compose the library of defenses our body uses when attacked by yet other viral or bacterial invaders.

But this does suggest a “design of intelligence”, if not “intelligent design”. It suggests that early life forms developed strategies that were quickly(by evolutionary standards) used to build ever larger systems, but always keyed to the core building blocks, the germ cells of each and every species.

But in each species, there is always the exchange of genes via viruses, from one species to another, as in Avian flu, swine flu, various flus and plagues that have infested civilization for centuries.

What does this mean in regards to the development of religion? perhaps a later essay.
Ralph

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What Do We Do Now?

What are the responsibilities or duties of those who are now outside the WCG or any of its offshoots?

Are we really a part of anything? Are we even important in the scheme of things?

To that I answer Yes! We are now more important, as individuals, than we ever were as members of the WCG or any group that we can name!

It all boils down to the same questions we heard so many years ago: Who am I? Why was I born? What is my purpose?

Is there a God? What is my relationship, if any, to that God?

When you walk away from the various WCG offshoots, you are now forced to ask that question of yourself. Not as part of a group, but as an individual! We might ask “Who am I NOW?”
“What do I do NOW?”, “Am I important as an individual NOW?”

You are more important now than ever before! You, of all the masses and millions who exist on this earth, are able, perhaps for the first time in your life, to ask the above questions, As an individual, and that alone makes you more important than the masses of people who dare not step out and live as individuals!

You and I have now discovered that there is no church of God we can join. We have now discovered that all the religious organizations of men are a farce, a scam, and we have been suckered for the final time.

But really, isn’t that exactly what the bible told us all along? Can we organize in the name of God? Can men rule over us in the name of God? Does any person on this earth have the right or the authority to represent God on our behalf?

No, and they never did! What did Paul tell us in Romans 8:7?

“Because the carnal(fleshy, natural) mind is enmity against God: for it is not subject to the law of God, and neither indeed can be”.

If your natural mind is not and cannot be subject to the law of God, who, then, can make you subject to that law? Well, God would, IF we could prove there is a God, right? Can we prove it? No! We simply can’t! We can hope there is a God, believe there is a God, and do everything possible to make others agree that there is a God, but we simply don’t know!

So, let’s assume someone comes up to you and say “I represent the truth! I know why you were born! I can tell you what you need to know!”

If you’re like me and most others who have left the “true church”, you’re going to say, “Yeah, right, head on down the road, Jack, and don;t let the door kick you in the rear as you leave”.

If there is one thing that we can agree on, those of us who have taken that step to freedom, we know better!

If somebody comes around saying “here is Christ!” We can look them squarely in the eye and say “Prove it!”.

But they can’t, and we know they can’t!

But isn’t that exactly what Jesus told his followers in Matthew 24, the big chapter that HWA used to show us the ‘Key to Revelation”?

Jesus told his followers “Take heed that no man deceive you, for many shall come in my name, saying, I am Christ, and shall deceive many”.

Does that mean we should listen to no one who comes claiming that THEY are Christ? Who’s going to be deceived by that nonsense? Of course no man living today is Jesus. We know that from simple logic. If there was Jesus, he lived two thousand years ago, and he was put to death. No man coming today can be him.

Old Herb actually had a point. If any man comes in the name of Christ, or saying “lo, he is here, or there”, Jesus told us plainly to “believe it not!(Matthew 24:23)”.

Of course! If the natural mind is enmity against God, and cannot be subject to God’s laws, and a whole bunch of people come claiming to either be the Christ or represent the Christ(messiah in that time), how in the world are we going to prove it? You can’t prove it. It’s impossible!

If it were possible, why are there an estimated 38,000 versions of Christianity? Why does the number keep growing? When I was a boy, it was estimated at over six hundred. Now, it’s over 38,000!

God did not create us to stand around and follow orders like some kind of robot! If he had, we would be able to prove what those orders are, know how to obey them, and understand them completely.

But here’s the problem: if we can do that, we can program those same orders into a computer, and make that computer a perfect representative of God! If we can understand it, we can translate it to language. If we can do that, we can translate it to algorithms, and if we can do that, we can fully program God’s law into a computer! But we can’t do that!

How do we know? Romans 8:7! The natural mind cannot be subject to God’s law! Godel;’s theorem! In any consistent axiomatic formulation of number theory, there exist undecidable propositions. In other words, we know from both the Bible and ,mathematics that there is no way any man or group of humans can represent God by any process of law!

Did Jesus tell us that? Yes, in Matthew 24:23! Did Paul tell us that? Yes, in Romans 8:7!

You cannot join into the collective, finite, rational, logical laws of men and expect to be the son of God! It cannot be done! Paul told us this emphatically. God foreknows his children, he predestines his children. he calls his children.

Who is “called”? I have no idea. Who are “elect”? Not a clue. But neither does anyone else on this planet!

Jesus said that you shall know the truth, and the truth will set you free. What is the truth? The truth is that I am the truth. YOU are the truth, YOU are the individual who has a right to live freely according to your conscience, and no other person has the right to tell you otherwise!

Those of you who have come this far, YOU are the “salt of the earth” to which Jesus referred. YOU are the individuals now prepared to “come out and be ye a separate people”. YOU are now empowered, AS INDIVIDUALS, to question the rules and powers of men, to live by the rules and freedoms that God grants you, here and now, on this earth, at this time.

“Our father, which art in heaven, hallowed be thy name, thy kingdom come, thy will be done, on earth as it is in heaven…”

It’s is not and CANNOT be about collective rules and laws and governments. It’s about YOU as a child of God, a free individual, now empowered to think, to question, to learn, and to grow!

YOU, the individual who reads this, are free! You are free from the collective will of men, free of collective religions, free to live by your conscience, free to live peaceably with all people, free to demand that you have the right of your conscience.

This “alienation” that you are now feeling is actually the greatest gift you can be given! You are more than rules, more than laws, and more than the collective will of men. You are free before God!

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