@sarahsalviander Just managed to pre-order a copy in the UK too! My daughter and I are so looking forward to getting it and weโre overjoyed that your scan was clear.
God bless and continue to use you as you serve Him ๐๐
@sarahsalviander Hi. Sarah, can I ask how this type of black hole is found if thereโs no galaxy (or stars) around it?
Is gravitational lensing used or something else?
@astro_reid You and the rest of your crew were just as inspiring as the views you shared. Thanks for being such great role models - was wonderful to see the positive example you guys set with all the negativity thatโs going on in the world.
Enjoy the beauty of creation!
I used to think Christians were naive. I thought faith in God was just an emotional crutch for people who could not handle reality.
Now I think the opposite.
The more seriously I looked at life, history, suffering, conscience, beauty, evil, and the limits of human reason, the less convincing atheism became.
Because everyone has faith. Everyone. The only real question is where that faith is placed.
In God, or in man.
I was taught that intelligence means distance from God. But what is so intelligent about believing that matter somehow produced mind, that chaos somehow produced order, that chemistry somehow produced conscience, and that human beings can ground morality by themselves while constantly contradicting even their own standards?
If we are only matter, then human dignity is just a useful story. Love is chemistry. Evil is preference. Sacrifice is irrational. Meaning is self invented. But almost no one actually lives that way. We all live as if truth matters, as if cruelty is really wrong, as if beauty means something, as if love is more than a chemical reaction, and as if justice should exist even when it costs us.
That is not nothing. That points beyond survival.
The Bible understood this long before modern people started pretending they had outgrown it.
Genesis grounds human dignity in the image of God. That means people are not valuable because they are productive, attractive, healthy, or useful. They are valuable because they bear His image.
John 1 does not begin with chaos. It begins with the Logos. Reason, order, meaning. Reality is not random noise. It is intelligible because it comes from a mind greater than ours.
Ecclesiastes says that pleasure, work, success, and achievement collapse into vanity when cut off from God. Anyone who has chased status, money, sex, or recognition long enough knows how true that is.
Romans 1 says creation points beyond itself. And it does. The order of the world, the mathematical beauty of reality, the existence of consciousness, the hunger for meaning, the presence of moral knowledge, these are not small things.
And history teaches the same lesson. The bloodiest experiments of the last century did not come from too much faith in God. They came from man trying to replace God with ideology, state, race, class, or power. When God is removed, something else always takes His place. Usually something crueler.
Christianity also does not begin with a vague spiritual feeling. It makes a historical claim. That Christ entered history, was crucified, and rose again. You can reject that claim, but it is not the same as saying faith is just blind comfort. Christianity stands or falls on what it says actually happened.
So no, I no longer think faith in God is stupid.
I think one of the most shallow ideas modern people were ever sold is that disbelief is automatically intelligent.
Sometimes disbelief is not depth. Sometimes it is pride.
And sometimes faith is not an escape from reality. It is what remains when you look at reality honestly enough and realize that man is not enough, matter is not enough, and this world cannot explain itself.
I used to think Christians were foolish.
Now I think many of them simply saw earlier what I was too proud to see.
This Easter, I invite you to look at Jesus, consider what he said and did, and ask for yourself what I believe is the most important question you will ever answer: Did he really leave behind an empty tomb? And if he did, what does that mean for you?
This video was made possible and in collaboration with my friends at @ChildlikeMedia.