Monday, April 19th, 2010


In Isaiah 55:8-9 we read the word of YHWH: “For my thoughts are not your thoughts, neither are your ways my ways, declares the LORD. 9 For as the heavens are higher than the earth, so are my ways higher than your ways and my thoughts than your thoughts.”

In my experience, this Scripture is usually quoted in two contexts: (1) when we are ignorant of some knowledge; (2) when our position is being decimated by our opponent’s evidence, and we lack a sufficient response.  Neither use is legitimate because both are taking the passage out of its context.  

Verse 7 reads, “Let the wicked forsake his way, and the unrighteous man his thoughts; let him return to the LORD, that he may have compassion on him, and to our God, for he will abundantly pardon.”  The Lord’s way/thoughts are contrasted to the ways/thoughts of the wicked, not the righteous.  The Lord’s point is that His ways/thoughts are superior to the ways/thought of the wicked, not that His ways/thoughts are incomprehensible to mankind in general.  That’s not to say we can fully understand God and His ways, but it is to say that this passage is not teaching divine incomprehensibility, but rather divine superiority.

(Note: Read Part 3a of the series before reading this post)

Viruses

The HIV virus mutates at the evolutionary speed limit: 10,000 times faster than most cells such as malaria.[1] And its genome is rather small (nine genes versus thousands in malaria).[2] Its small size combined with a short generation time (1-2 days) and super-rapid mutation rate means every single nucleotide in the HIV genome will mutate 10,000 to 100,000 times in every infected person every day, and thus double point mutations like the one that made malaria immune to Chloroquine occur in every person every day.  In fact, over the past several decades every possible combination of up to six point mutations has occurred in HIV somewhere in the world.  If RM drives macroevolutionary changes in organisms, then we should observe macroevolution in the HIV virus since it experiences more mutations than any other organism.  But we don’t.  HIV has run the gamut of all possible mutations to its genome, and yet with all of these mutations in a population of 100 billion billion viruses, no new cellular machinery has been created, and no new organism has developed! HIV is still HIV.  It still contains the same number of proteins, still performs the same function, and still binds to its host the same way it always has.  There have been no significant biochemical changes.  Even gene duplication has failed to produce any new biological information.

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