God has given us the potential of such a rich and incredibly deep awareness of both our inner and outer worlds, and yet many of us act as if we are automatons. We work through our routines, everyday the same as the previous day. Sometimes we may feel we are stuck in a rut. But, potentially, we can climb out of our comfort zones, we can pray to God and let Him know of our willingness to work for His purposes. Tangible-ists, though, cannot see beyond the material world and, consequently, they miss the depth of God's love for them and the depth of their own purpose in this world, when following God's will.

If we are not little robots, wandering randomly through this world, what, then, are we? Christians know, for in our Handbook, John 4:24, we see that God is spirit. Then in Genesis 1:26 we see that we are made in the image and likeness of God. We, therefore, are spiritual beings that temporarily inhabit physical bodies. We are in this mortal world a short time, before we become residents of eternity. If we become too wrapped up in the physical world (which includes our physical bodies), we will shut ourselves out of spiritual knowledge, which can only come with a spiritual focus. Often we close the door to the spiritual, concentrating only on the limited knowledge of the world (which mankind rewards with diplomas and various certificates of accomplishment). The real knowledge, though, comes from the spiritual realm—i.e. God, who is careful to impart the deeper truths to us, when we hunger and thirst for Him. He often does this when the Bible is being studied and prayed over, in a humble spirit. God can use dreams as well to share a deep message. But, since this world has a demonic voice to counterfeit or sway us from God's Holy Spirit voice, we may need to refer to the Bible to confirm to whom we are listening.

God is aware of all of us, individually as well as collectively and, yes, He can hear us all and is ready to welcome us as His children in a second's notice, should our hearts be opened to Him. We can hear Him both through the Word and through our hearts. And, yes, as Richard Dawkins has stated facetiously in The God Delusion, the bandwidth that God uses in order to communicate with all of us, is far beyond human comprehension. There are many witnesses to this fact. They are Christians who have opened their hearts to the Lord and found an instant personal response, not, "Please leave a message and I'll get back to you." It really irritates the tangible-ist when we theists say and believe such things. They have to understand everything, even though understanding everything is impossible. No wonder they are so angry and frustrated with believers. We know we'll never understand it all, and yet we're at peace with this. It is reassuring to some of us that we can't know all that God is, and all that He can do. It means He really is above and beyond our problems (and quite willing to conquer them with our trust and belief).

Worldly wisdom is needed, to a degree, but the heavenly knowledge surpasses it. One day, all the world will pass away and this worldly knowledge will be useless. When we personally meet our Maker, the worldly knowledge will no longer be necessary for us, individually. We need to keep a balance, of course, but our preference should be for eternal wisdom over the temporary. We shouldn't store up treasures on earth that rot and decay…

Mat 6:19 Do not lay up treasures on earth for yourselves, where moth and rust corrupt, and where thieves break through and steal.
Mat 6:20 But lay up treasures in Heaven for yourselves, where neither moth nor rust corrupt, and where thieves do not break through nor steal.
Mat 6:21 For where your treasure is, there will your heart be also. (MKJV)

This may make no sense to the atheists because they are unwilling to see through the lens of our Savior—and see beyond physical appearances. To them, there is no spiritual world at all. The miracles that Jesus performed, some of them say, probably did not happen and are merely the result of stories that were exaggerated as they were passed down from generation to generation, (even before the Bible was solidified into the book it is today). Jesus, however, did not just demonstrate miracles—He shared immense wisdom that surpasses the work miracles will do, in helping people believe the truth. In the Word, Jesus recognized that miracles will not sustain belief. He told Thomas, who needed proof after Jesus' resurrection that He was the risen Lord, "Blessed are the people who will believe without seeing." (For those who might be unfamiliar with God's Word, Thomas needed hard evidence that Jesus had risen from the dead and declared that unless he put his fingers in the scars on Jesus' body, he would not believe. He did indeed put his fingers on Jesus' scars and fell to his knees, weeping, saying "My Savior, and my Lord!") Miracles will not bring faith to the faithless any more than they did for the children of Israel, upon their amazing deliverance. God's great displays of power did not keep them from grumbling and doubting. Nor did Christ's miracles help the fickle to hold fast, in confidence that He was the Messiah.

I find the miracles wonderful and God has presented many to my wife and me. For the faithful, they are the cream that floats to the top of a life with Jesus. The salvation that Jesus gave to us, through the cross, provides me with my life's foundation. The teachings of Jesus, provide me with my orders of behavior, which I am commanded to follow. They are most difficult but, as I ask for my Father's help in carrying them out, I receive strength that is not my own. I desire to please my heavenly Father, even as children desire to please their parents.

How interesting that God set up the family structure, similarly to the way He set up our relationship to Him. Though many people come from or are in dysfunctional families now, and many people will be in dysfunctional families, even raising their children dysfunctionally, the IDEA has been presented by God, to us, in the format of how a family could be. There is a father and a mother with children. In the same manner, theoretically, God is our Father/Mother and we are His children. But, though we humans are imperfect, God is perfect. His care, His love, and His teachings, through His Son, transcend our dysfunctionality. God, being God, understands that many of us will refuse to know Him as He is, because we are unwilling to attempt to know Him in spirit, which includes our praying to Him and trusting that, on a personal level, God knows us better than we know ourselves.

Mr. Dawkins has built his foundation from an incorrect and spiritless premise. His premise is that religion is of no worth, and he wonders why religion was accepted in the natural selection process. He feels it should have been dumped ages ago, as irrelevant and wasteful. Having pondered this for quite sometime, he came up with an idea that backed his false premise. It is this:

He found that a moth will, on occasion, burn himself up in a candle flame. We ask the question, "Why is a moth committing suicide on a candle flame?" However, he says, we never considered that the question might be wrong. The question never considered an additional fact. It is that a moth, with its multiple tubular eyes, uses light as a guidance system toward a destination (home or abroad). This moth's eye system works properly ONLY when it is focused on light that has the property of optical infinity. Optical infinity can only be starlight or moonlight. These lights virtually stay the same wherever the moth goes. They, therefore, are reliable as a moth guidance tool. That the moth happens to refocus on a candle flame, does not make the navigational method any less purposeful to the moth's life. It is still a good system, but when the moth allows the candle flame to become its optically infinite light source, it is time to get out the fire extinguisher. The question should be, "Why does a moth switch to a localized light source and inadvertently do himself in—instead of staying focused on the optically infinite light source?" (And why do atheists focus only on their own, localized light, instead of God's infinite light?)

He feels that, when we tell our children to follow our commands, we are utilizing a necessary childhood survival authority--a "what we say is what goes" stance, and, when the children grow up, they carry that stance into adulthood, worshipping, no longer their parents, but a fanciful and illusory God. The parents were needed in order to help the children get through the trials of childhood. Once childhood ends, Dawkins states, their "made-up" god is no longer that useful. However, it was necessary that children follow their parent's admonitions for their survival into adulthood, after which they can utilize their sexual maturity and have children, who will carry on the species, ad infinitum. Dawkins, clarifies his point by saying that one reason for religion being so predominate, though it is so wasteful and irrelevant, is that children absolutely need unwavering guidance from a higher authority. However, that higher authority is no longer relevant later⁷.

I'm glad Mr. Dawkins shared his theory. To be fair to him, he also states that this theory may not be the actual cause of religion, but, he declares, something is deluding us, something other than our mere need to know God and to love our Creator. The wonder we have at receiving the deep, inner wisdom that God gives to us, who consistently pray to Him, as well as an almost tangible, personal love and care that the Spirit of God gives to us who reach for Him in faith, are not considered valuable (nor even real) to the atheist. As I stated earlier, giving biblical backing to the concept, whatever a person chooses to believe, he will gather his ideas that support that choice. This is not the way a true scientist gathers data. It is dishonest and even unscientific to determine the truth THEN make everything fit that determination. Atheists who profess to be scientists should be ashamed to gather data in this way, as it is an atrocity to the scientific method they claim to believe in. Dawkins made a decision that religion is worthless and maybe even destructive, on the thin foundation of an idea found in the story of a moth and a flame.

I have to remind myself that Mr. Dawkins and others like him, are sorely lacking (though I pray, not forever so) in understanding of the eternal truth of God's reality, as well as the heavenly wisdom that is based, not of appearances found only in the physical, but beyond appearances, in the spiritual (by faith). Had he wished to use his scientific method and "test out" what the proponents of religion say about faith being an integral part of discovering God's existence, he might have come to the correct conclusion—instead of his fabricated one that backs his false premise. (Lord, give me patience!)

The moth story has a deeper meaning to me. If we stay focused on God's eternal and unchanging heavenly light, like the moth, traveling to his destination, we will travel to our eternal home, with no trouble. But, if we get diverted by a local, appearances-only, worldly focus, our eternal destiny toward heaven will be lost, as we circle around and around worldly issues, acknowledging only the appearances of this world, which is Satan's domain. With this chaotic worldly view, we can eventually fall into its flames, which lead to our destruction and our loss. Everything that exists and happens can be a parable about deeper truths. These deeper truths are considered foolish to those who are wise in the world's and in their own eyes. However, those who truly believe in God, worshipping Him in spirit, trusting Him for strength beyond their own, are not disappointed. They find their intellect and heart being wonderfully filled with the wisdom that comes from God, through faith. To me, the moth example only magnifies my marvel at the all-encompassing genius of God, as in this tiny creature, He teaches us the danger of being distracted by earthly things!

7. My wife brought up an interesting thought regarding natural selection. What good is it that the more "evolved" beings require longer childhood? The longer the childhood, the more chance there is that predators or just plain lack of presence of mind will cause the child to leave the gene pool before they mature. How did the process of natural selection make childhood so long and "unproductive"? Why wasn't that selected out? Of course, even as I say that God created us, that same inefficiency still exists—but I wonder how the naturalist would explain the long dependency we humans have, in terms of the alleged efficiency of natural selection? The Christian explanation is, of course, that God has so designed it so that parents learn the long lessons of love, compassion, patience, mercy, unselfishness, and wisdom only gained by parenting, and get a glimpse of how God sees and loves us. Back.

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