Not by Chance: How Parents Boost Their Teen's Success In and After Treatment

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Is this appearance of design merely illusory? Could natural selection have produced this appearance in a neo-Darwinian fashion one tiny incremental mutation at a time? Biochemist Michael Behe argues ‘no.’ He points out that the flagellar motor depends upon the coordinated function of 30 protein parts. Yet the absence of any one of these parts results in the complete loss of motor function. Remove one of the necessary proteins (as scientists can do experimentally) and the rotary motor simply doesn’t work. The motor is, in Behe’s terminology, “irreducibly complex.” I ask myself, “How does the Savior see my faith?” And tonight I ask you, “How does the Savior see your faith?” Why? According to neo-Darwinism, wholly undirected processes such as natural selection and random mutations are fully capable of producing the intricate designed-like structures in living systems. In their view, natural selection can mimic the powers of a designing intelligence without itself being directed by an intelligence. Both the Bible and the Book of Mormon give us the beautiful assurance that Jesus is the Christ, the Son of God. I hold in my hand a copy of the first edition of the Book of Mormon in French, published by John Taylor as he began the work in France in 1852. Some or all of the Book of Mormon is now in 110 languages across the world. It provides a spiritual and tangible witness of the truthfulness of the Restoration. When was the last time that you read the Book of Mormon from cover to cover? Read it again. It will increase your faith. 21 Even so, the theory of intelligent design may provide support for theistic belief. But that is not grounds for dismissing it. To say otherwise confuses the evidence for a theory and its possible implications. Many scientists initially rejected the Big Bang theory because it seemed to challenge the idea of an eternally self-existent universe and pointed to the need for a transcendent cause of matter, space and time. But scientists eventually accepted the theory despite such apparently unpleasant implications because the evidence strongly supported it. Today a similar metaphysical prejudice confronts the theory of intelligent design. Nevertheless, it too must be evaluated on the basis of the evidence not our philosophical preferences or concerns about its possible religious implications. Antony Flew, the long-time atheistic philosopher who has come to accept the case for design, insists correctly that we must “follow the evidence wherever it leads.”

Of course, many will still dismiss intelligent design as nothing but warmed over creationism or as a “religious masquerading as science.” But intelligent design, unlike creationism, is not based upon the Bible. Design is an inference from biological data, not a deduction from religious authority. Either life arose as the result of purely undirected material processes or a guiding intelligence played a role. Design theorists favor the latter option and argue that living organisms look designed because they really were designed. In the same month, a renowned British philosopher, Antony Flew, made worldwide news when he repudiated a lifelong commitment to atheism, citing among other factors, evidence of intelligent design in the DNA molecule.Thus, contrary to media reports, the theory of intelligent design is not based upon ignorance or religion but instead upon recent scientific discoveries and upon standard methods of scientific reasoning in which our uniform experience of cause and effect guides our inferences about what happened in the past. Nevertheless, only the most committed conspiracy theorist could see in these intellectual developments a concealed legal strategy or an attempt to smuggle religion into the classroom. Dawkins claims that the Neo-Darwinian Theory (NDT) is, like gravity, something which only the intellectually retarded or insane would deny. It explains, without God, why there is all the design information in nature. Things only appear to be beautifully designed to fit into their environments as a by-product of the following process: Oxford Professor Richard Dawkins’ best-selling book The Blind Watchmaker may be the most influential treatise of all time in winning converts to raw Darwinian meaninglessness. Many a university student has given up on the idea of creation, defeated, after being given one of Dawkins’ books.

As the information that codes for living things (on the DNA molecule) is copied during reproduction, there are tiny accidental changes (mutations), which are inherited. Uncle Boniface (Cash Daddy), unlike Kingsley, is not education-obsessed and cares less about the consequences of his illegal business, not when it’s paying him off and affords him a lavish lifestyle many envy.Kingsley’s father is a graduate of a UK-based university, so he works in the civil service. He doesn’t earn a huge salary that will enable him to live a luxurious life or afford everything his family desperately needs. However, he did train his son, Kingsley, at a university. Because he has exhausted himself working in the civil service and still eke out for a living, he wishes and advises his son not to end up like him. His deteriorating health forced him to retire from the civil service. One of the examples where information is lost is the one often trotted out by evolutionists nowadays in an attempt to convince the public of the truth of evolution. That is the evolution of bacterial resistance to antibiotics. Soon, his parents got to know and were not pleased with it, making Kingsley enraged and sore in defense of his lucrative business. He laments how he has sacrificed his moral principles to elevate the family from poverty and gets hatred in return. They refuse to talk to him any further. Kingsley goes deeper into the scamming business; he improves his scamming techniques to Cash Daddy’s surprise. This allows for a few alternatives, including ‘progressive creation’ and, of course, straightforward creation of Genesis ‘kinds’, with mechanisms built in to allow subsequent ‘micro-evolution’ (built-in variation potential) within each kind. Spetner mentions the Torah (of which Genesis is a part) and a rabbinical tradition of some 730 separate kinds of animals and birds originally created. Apart from this, he gives no hint of where he stands on the question of six days, and so on. But brethren, we have been given something more: the priesthood of God, the power of God restored to earth by holy angels. This makes you different. You no longer stand on neutral ground. Your faith will grow not by chance, but by choice.

On experimental grounds, there are no known random mutations that have added any genetic information to the organism. This may seem surprising at first, but a list of the best examples of mutations offered by evolutionists shows that each of them loses genetic information rather than gains it. Idioms on the chance, in the mild hope or against the possibility: I'll wait on the chance that she'll come. These genetic rearrangements may be part of a built-in mechanism that permits a line of organisms to adapt to a new environment. Part of the genetic program of the organism seems to be a set of genetic switches that can be triggered by the environment. These enable a heritable switch in the organism to one of a limited set of alternate forms. An interesting feature of this mechanism is that it can cause a population to adapt rapidly to a new

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There is, however, both direct and indirect evidence that some evolution has occurred. How did it occur? The novel centers on the life of a college graduate, Kingsley Ibe, whose father, Paulinus, is a civil servant and wishes his son to end up not like him. Paulinus is schooled in the UK and works in the Nigerian Civil Service to cater to his family’s needs. Kingsley, a Chemical Engineer graduate, wishes to find a job better than his father’s, at least to take care of his ailing father, whose health challenges have forced him to retire prematurely. However, Kingsley, fatigued from a serious job hunt, is unable to live up to his family’s expectations. But what is this theory of intelligent design? And why does it arouse such passion and inspire such apparently determined efforts to suppress it?

Cash Daddy is drunk with his fortunes, so he goes into politics. Unfortunately, he lived a short life as his political ambition was short-lived when he was eliminated from the poll. This left is business under no one’s care. Kingsley is unready to inherit his uncle’s business since he is even burdening him. Thus, Behe concludes — based on our knowledge of what it takes to build functionally-integrated complex systems — that intelligent design best explains the origin of molecular machines within cells. Molecular machines appear designed because they were designed. There are many Christian men and women with deep faith in the Lord Jesus Christ, and we honor and respect them. No Longer on Neutral GroundDNA functions like a software program. We know from experience that software comes from programmers. We know generally that information-whether inscribed in hieroglyphics, written in a book or encoded in a radio signal-always arises from an intelligent source. So the discovery of information in the DNA molecule, provides strong grounds for inferring that intelligence played a role in the origin of DNA, even if we weren’t there to observe the system coming into existence. For example, questions concerning the Prophet Joseph Smith are not new. They have been hurled by his critics since this work began. To those of faith who, looking through the colored glasses of the 21st century, honestly question events or statements of the Prophet Joseph from nearly 200 years ago, may I share some friendly advice: For now, give Brother Joseph a break! In a future day, you will have 100 times more information than from all of today’s search engines combined, and it will come from our all-knowing Father in Heaven. 19 Consider the totality of Joseph’s life—born in poverty and given little formal education, he translated the Book of Mormon in less than 90 days. 20 Tens of thousands of honest, devoted men and women embraced the cause of the Restoration. At age 38, Joseph sealed his witness with his blood. I testify that Joseph Smith was a prophet of God. Settle this in your mind, and move forward! Gifts That Enlarge Our Faith His family sees education as the shortest way to success, a reason his father broke the bank to send him to a university. After graduating, he encounters a strange and unwelcoming scenario, something he never expected, making him appear helpless and hopeless. There was no job anywhere in Nigeria due to the failing economy, leaving him unable to cater to his family’s needs. His girlfriend, Ola, broke off their relationship because he was financially handicapped. He couldn’t afford to pay her bride price. Experiments have also been performed to show that the process of selection does indeed work under the right conditions. Moreover, random mutations have been observed that do improve the adaptiveness of the organism under certain conditions. From these observations, evolutionists have (unjustifiably) extrapolated to say that random mutations and natural selection can account for the development of life. THE GLITCH IN EVOLUTIONARY THEORY