Why I am discontented with Robert Kuhn's 'Closer to Truth'

The Mission of getting Closer to Truth

https://www.closertotruth.com

I can't say that I have listened to all Robert Kuhn's series in his format called Closer To Truth. There is a vast library now of 3500 videos of the world's greatest thinkers. Over the years I dipped into quite a few. Overall Robert Kuhn has done a magnificent job in covering such a range of views and expertise that is rarely found with such sympathetic yet probing integrity. His interviews cover physicists, biologists, scientists, philosophers, theologians, historians and many scientific disciplines of all hues.

I found them all interesting in that they were interviews with specialists and experts but I came away dissatisfied with almost all of them.

Why? 

True and whole Science

I found that they lacked a coherent scientific structure. Academic disciplines are becoming more and more separated into silos and few experts can have the vision of an overview from the heavens to the deep analysis of the infinitesimal detail. Silo-hopping results in lack of overall cohesion. Then there were failings of internal logic, which is natural. As humans we are all reluctant to yield our own prejudice for pure fact and logic. This is especially the case when it comes to theological foundations of knowledge. Materialistic liberalism infuses much modern thought, even (or especially!) among theologians. Iron needs to sharpen iron, but the right sort of iron is needed to make a sharp blade to bring overall satisfaction. Some borrow extradisciplinary iron that is already rusty.

Theology creates the big divide in academia, where the predominant philosophy disdains it. Knowledge of God requires logically obedience to God as our Creator. Or at least reverence and awe. Skeptics disparage moral laws. Or to put it another way, those who refuse the Ten Commandments call themselves atheists or excuse themselves with a religious label. What is their conscientious objection? 

True science requires a pure conscience. A persistent, pure conscience can also break empires. The conscience of Judeo-Christian believers in DDR, Hungary, Poland and Russia brought the downfall of the atheistic USSR. It showed Marxism was unscientific. The Politburo was biased. It banned free discussion of the spiritual, or non-materialism. Education in Museums of Atheism did not work.

Today, however, the West is still suffering from USSR's ideological attacks and materialism that emptied churches and more. Soviet propaganda undermining society structures was long-lasting. Now the more subtle Chinese atheism and autocracy produces thousands of choking weeds. But even media and internet censorship in USA will not stop the quest for truth. There may be more professing Christians in China than in Europe.             

Origin of modern Science

The scientific method derives from classical reform theology. In our modern era, the Hon Robert Boyle in the 17th century and later the Royal Society laid down personal rules that a searcher for truth must make sure that his conscience is absolutely clear of prejudice, and preconceptions. Experiments must be totally impartial. Facts and logic should provide the answers. The early scientists learned logic from the Bible -- for example debunking apparent contradictions by testing multiple hypotheses. They also compared the standard Roman Catholic belief and myths with historic documents now published and translated into the common languages for the first time. The vast collection of papal claims made over a millennium were exposed as frauds. 

Today our knowledge is increased in many areas. (In some other areas it has declined, such as the motor motive of science that there is one truth and fraud should be exposed and rejected.) The ideology of the popes is replaced by a Darwinistic / neo-Marxist premise (both failed theories). That results in false conclusions that everything evolved or economics dictates all human history and knowledge.

It is not progress to turn all phenomena into mindless, purposeless materialism. Such nonsense permeates the whole framework of present day thought. It represents the greatest danger to civilization -- materialism, only matter is important, not the spiritual world. Did electrons evolve to create Dark Energy, did amoebas grow to become elephants? Was it a triumph of workers over capitalists? Class warfare failed, so atheistic Marxists turn to race wars as the new Dialectical materialism.

Use your brain!

All civilizations knew that human mind is different from rocks and chemicals and far superior in its potential to the animal brain. The whale does not do better at mathematics or astronomy because its brain is seven or eight times bigger than man's 1300 gms. Or an elephant brain with 256 billion neurons, three times more than a human.

On the other hand some birds can circumnavigate the whole planet and find their way home. The aptly named godwit, shaped like a high tech fighter aircraft, travels from Alaska to New Zealand in one go, and later flies back across oceans. No stops for food.

Some humans get lost in their own city. Could you manage two non-stop trips totalling 29,000 kms?

The godwit reduces the size of its internal organs to make space for fuel. Its brain size? The whole bird weighs about 300 gms -- and its brain must be just a couple of grams. Butterflies also travel across oceans and back.   

 

Big Picture

The search for truth must take all new facts and conclusions into account.

What new knowledge needs to be integrated?

The great scientists of its modern foundation period knew man was a spiritual being. They applied this knowledge. Newton and William Whiston, his successor as Lucasian professor of mathematics at Cambridge, John Wilkins, cryptologist, philosopher, Anglican bishop and first Secretary of the Royal Society, John Ray the pioneering biologist, and many others were fervent Christians. Science boomed because they were scientists in mind and spirit. Ray like Paley described how each creature was finely constructed for its own good purpose. The Bible animated all their researches. The same can be said for the next generations, such as Faraday and Maxwell who electrified our present society. Their electromagnetic wave theory is based on 'spiritual fields'. The designs of God indicate his purpose and plan but also act as a spearhead to new discoveries.

Your God is too small

No-God atheists and small-minded ministers need to stretch their minds to the reality of Creation and obviously the Creator. 

We know now that the Universe is far more magnificent and vast than any could have imagined. It stretches 14 or 15 billion light years to the visible rim. Who knows what lies beyond it?  The maximum speed of 74 km/second for a rocket was achieved by the Juno probe to Jupiter using the slingshot of gravitational assist. It would take such a probe 15 billion x 300,000 x 31.56 million seconds divided by 74 -- 6 trillion years -- to reach the rim of the universe and peak into what is beyond our visible sighting of stars. I can't wait that long.

The voyage is likely to be lonely. Even though the universe is dotted with stars and many may have planets, the Earth is the only known planet in our solar system and beyond where we know there is life such as bacteria. But we see good and negative spiritual forces in battle all day long. 

As we look deeper we find that the Earth has not only an extraordinary abundance of life but it is in forms that earlier man had could not imagine. Life exists in the deepest oceans and in the upper atmosphere. The simplest of cells, seen through microscopes, is as well organized as a massive city. But a cell has powers that go far beyond it. It can search for chemical foodstock. It can reproduce. It can make other cities. 

Each of the creatures on earth can tell us a lesson about how to live, care for young or not, or avoid our predatory enemies. They are education. We have a book of wisdom written in Nature. Modern technologies look to Nature's original design to find new designs and inspirations. 

Diseases caused by man's foolishness find their therapeutic solutions in Nature. The Nobel-prize-winning therapeutic Ivermectin, a powerful world-changing corrective and preventative to viruses (including in practice corona viruses), was found in the soil of a golf course in Japan by Satoshi Omura. It is one of the most tested, effective and cheapest of drugs. Then 'science' changed. Today the 'science' of its use may be distorted by profits of Big Pharma or a globalist agenda of those like WHO. 

A detailed View

Let's go smaller. Small, small fingers are required.

Last century's scientists started off by believing that the fundamental building blocks of our world, whether atoms or then atomic particles, would be simple systems. (atom= Greek indivisible) We could then work out the Lego construction of the universe.

The truth turned out to be far more complex, as is all nature. A whole zoo of particles and anti-particles, quarks, neutrinos, photons and strange and beautiful beasts act both as waves and particles. But they all work well and the average citizen does not have to look 'under the hood' to see how the material world works. Complexity and functionality is everywhere in harmony.

The universe is founded in wisdom down to the smallest detail we can figure out.

A pair of the smallest particles retain an intimate interconnection. When a human observes and measures one, the other, perhaps now at the far reaches of a galaxy, 'knows' and reacts faster than light travels. Man's decision-making affects the physical characteristics of the universe in ways we are only beginning to understand. Man operates on a spiritual plane. The human mind acts beyond the material physics.

From the least particle to the entire spread of the universe each brings a lesson to Mankind. The Great Creator God will not fit into man's box of experiences. From the stuff a billionth of a centimeter to that billions of light years, all give a lesson: if we wish we can grow in knowledge, wisdom and maturity. But silo academics must abandon 'Greek' thinking about atoms, universal measures of time and space to come to truth.

Truth, then what?

The crux of my remarks here would be to pose the question: where does one start?

Information, it has now been shown to the satisfaction of astrophysicists, can survive a Black Hole collision. Information existed before the beginning of the Universe 14 or so billion years ago. An impartial look at the existence of humankind and human observation of nature shows that it involves not only information but knowledge (from whence we deduce our sciences) and wisdom -- which is necessary for human maturity, the building of virtuous character.

Therefore all scientific analysis must start with the Wisdom Giver. Even the skeptics think they are wise. Usually groups of humans become unwise.

The early scientists were Jews or Christians but they shunned organised religion. Newton's researches led him to reject the pagan trinity. Whiston was expelled from Cambridge because of 'heresy'! Others adhered to obscure congregations of believers or were known as non-conformists and unitarians like many of America's founding fathers. They did not conform to crowd psychology. They rejected the church that absorbed paganism. They searched for truth and paid the price for non-conformity to errors. That showed that their pure conscience was fundamental to science and faith in God. Which scientist today is persecuted? Which scientist is not influenced by peer pressure or by grants from industry or government? Which real scientists are able to teach or debate in group-think universities?

After analyzing the proofs of God and how the atheistic skeptic refused them, Whiston concluded that biblical prophecy was paramount. He foretold in the 1700s, based on the Bible, that Jews would rebuild their homeland in Israel. A Temple would be built. The first happened in 1948, despite centuries of skeptics saying it was impossible. The second is yet to come. 

Diamond quality

Why did I feel unsatisfied with Closer to Truth? Getting close to truth is a start. Truth merely excludes the false. Wisdom is better than knowledge; knowledge is better than information, information is better than data. A diamond is more valuable than raw carbon. 

I was taught that Wisdom is the principle thing. Above all seek wisdom. Awe of the Eternal is the beginning of wisdom. 

 

 

Conjunctions, the Bethlehem Star Prophecy and Precision Astrophysics

Humankind needs to learn humility when gazing at the stars and planets. It is clear that mankind was not their maker. What man can make is insignificant, even in relation to our own home.

But I disagree with those that say the Stars and Planets do not have significance. They speak for the Great Creator and Information Giver who first designed and then made them all.

The Earth is full of intricate living organisms from bacteria to massive creatures like whales and elephants. Finely balanced physical planetary characteristics are necessary to maintain them. Earth was made for humankind. The environment is finely shaped to sustain him and also provide teachings of the Creator who made all things.

But when it comes to wider universe, many of the humans who benefit from the wisdom and construction of the planet fail to see the same hand in the stars and galaxies. That is a big mistake. The Creator who finely tuned all the constants of the laws of physics and life, did not throw the stars out at random. 

Here are some reasons to believe otherwise.

Stars as Witness

There are many references to stars and the heavens in the Bible. From its first words of Genesis, the Bible confronted to nonsense of the pagans in their errors, errors that were maintained into the twentieth century. 

In the Beginning God created the heavens and the earth implies that at a certain moment the entire universe was created. The pagans like Aristotle believed that the universe had always existed. Scientists up to the middle of the 1900s also thought this. Why? Because the dominant materialist philosophy wanted to deny a creation because logically a creation must involve a Creator. That was well known even in ancient Greek logics and philosophy.

Scientific advance showed that this fallacy of an eternal universe could not be maintained. The stars were moving away from us. And logically, at one time they must have all come together at the beginning. The sceptical materialists tried to downplay this fact that bust their materialism apart by calling it the Big Bang.

The Bible shows these materialist/ atheists have much more to learn. 

Take the movement of the stars mentioned in the book of Job as some examples. Learn some lessons from the Creation.   

Pleiades

Let us go to one of the signs of the Hebrew zodiac: the Pleiades, Hebrew Kimah. 

The Eternal God asked Job out of a whirlwind, Job 38:31:

Can you fasten the harness of Pleiades? (New Jerusalem)

Can you bind fast the cluster Pleiades? (Bullinger) 

Can you bind the sweet influences of Pleiades? (KJV)

The Pleiades are known as the Seven Sisters. What does it mean fastening or binding them? Only recently the most powerful telescopes make it clear. Imperceptibly to the naked eye they are moving closer together. This data was collected from massive earth telescopes in Australia and elsewhere and combined with recent data from the Gaia space satellite launched in 2013.

Careful measurements with the Gaia space telescope and others show the stars of the Pleiades are slowly moving in the sky. One star, Pleione, is now so close to the star Atlas they look like a single star to the naked eye.

But if we take what we know about the movement of the stars and rewind 100,000 years, Pleione was further from Atlas and would have been easily visible to the naked eye.

The writer of the book of Job had magnificent eyes or maybe, as the book says, someone listened to the Great Information Giver who made the stars.

Orion

What about the other part of the verse about Orion, Hebrew Kesil:

Can you loosen great Orion's bands?

The three stars of Orion's belt are a line-of-sight constellation. Two stars may now be shown to look like they are approaching each other while the third is drifting out of the arrangement and may eventually break up the three-star line-up completely.

Arcturus

Next verse:

Can you guide Arcturus and his sons?

Highly unusually Arcturus, Hebrew Aysh, has a stream of 52 stars connected to it. That was discovered in 1971. Equally unusually Arcturus, one of the greatest stars in the universe, is a runaway. It has a speed of 257 miles a second. That compares with the normal under 25 miles per second and our own sun's 12 1/2 miles a second.

Arcturus and his sons are all on their own course at rip-neck speed.

Can the movement of Planets, Stars and Constellations predict the future? Can they show events of the past?

Humans have no ability to move stars. Their course can be worked out by the eternal laws of mathematics and physics. We have a sure means to see how their position predicted events before, when and after such notable events happened. Humans have no excuse for not paying attention.

 Eternal God, creator of the Universe

Humans are subject to error and tempted by deliberate deceit. Humans cannot muck with movement of the planets, comets and stars. That was the reason that Kepler, Newton, Whiston and other believing scientists tried to determine what, when and where was the Star of Bethlehem.
The heavens have an extraordinary, clear and unambiguous message. But what is it? We should not seek it in pagan, Chaldean astrology.
What does the Bible say? What is the configuration of the heavens in the autumn of 3/2 BCE?
Astronomers in the past could work this out. Many people in the early centuries were far more skilled and literate in astronomy and its real significance than people today -- in spite of so-called popular astrologers.
They looked at the sky at night and knew the stars and the movements.
But how do you see what was happening way back in the past?
You can also this ancient stellar display in the heavens at a planetarium when they set the mechanism back 2000 years.
Now with the help of the computer and software it is possible for anyone at home to see exactly the movement of the planets back into the distant past.
What did the night sky look like in 3/2 BCE?
It is an extraordinary fact, as Dr Ernest L Martin points out, that

• on only one day in 3 BCE was the moon under the feet of the constellation of Virgo, the virgin and the sun 'clothed' her. 
• It was when it was the first crescent of the New Moon. 
• It occurred on 11 September. 
• It remained there for only a few hours. 

Click the link here to have a description of the Ancient Astronomy of this time by Dr Michael Heiser.

One reason people observed the stars was that it was religiously significant because observation of the New Moon was essential to define months and proclaim the New Year. What is even more extraordinary is that 11 September was the beginning of the Feast of Trumpets in the Hebrew calendar. Revelation 12:
'And there appeared a great wonder in the heaven; a woman clothed with the sun and the moon under her feet, and upon her head a crown of twelve stars.'
This year is also confirmed by Luke's statement that Jesus was 'about thirty years old' when he began his work as chief priest and teacher in the Temple. This has to be understood in relation to the Hebrew inclusive arithmetic system and the Jewish secular new year (common through the eastern Roman Empire). It is also defined by the known dates for the reconstruction of the Temple by Simon Boethus under Herod the Great.

The date of the birth of Jesus is 1st Tishrei in year 3 BCE in the autumn.
This fits all the criteria of

• historical events in the NT and Josephus
• Hebrew chronology
• Hebrew festivals
• Hebrew interpretation of the movement of the planets in 3 BCE,
• The near unanimous report of nearly all early writers of the first centuries.

The heavens don't lie.