Comparative similarities: homology , Part Four

The alleged 98% similarity of human and chimp DNA, for example, is often touted as proof of the evolutionary closeness of the two. The 2% difference actually translates into about 60 million base pair differences. The small differences in the genes are actually turned into a large difference in the proteins produced.
The evidence supports the idea of a matrix of specially created organisms with traits occurring where and when they are needed. Discovering the details of this predictive pattern may someday strengthen the validity of the creationist perspective in the minds of skeptics.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7y6OWI8fN-M   

Anselm: Cosmological-Type Arguments

Before Anselm, Saint Augustine offered a proof for God. After him Anselm (1022-1119). He is best know for his ontological argument in the Proslogion, but an earlier work, the Monologion, offered three a posteriori proofs for God's existence (Anselm 1-3). A description of his arguments is given in the article on Anselm.
Anselm's first argument is from the existence of things:

1) Good things exist.
2) The cause of this goodness is either one or many.
3) If it were many, there would be no way to compare their goodness. But some things are better than others.
4) So there is one Supreme Good who causes all goodness in all good things.

The second argument is similar but works from perfection:

1) Some beings are more nearly perfect than others.
2) But things cannot be more or less perfect unless there is one wholly perfect standard for comparison.
3) The standard is a Most Perfect Being.

The third argument, from being, is most obviously cosmological:

1) Something exists and
2) owes its existence either to nothing or to something.
3) Nothing cannot cause something.
4) There is, then, a something, which is either one or many.
5) If many, the beings would be mutually dependent for their own existence or dependent on another.
6) They cannot be mutually dependent for their existence. Something cannot exist through a being on which it confers existence.
7) Therefore, there must be one being through which all other being exist.
8) The being must exist through itself.
9) Whatever exists through itself, exists in the highest degree of all.
10) Therefore, a supremely perfect Being exists in the highest degree.

These arguments, unlike Plato's but like the reasoning of Plotinus, identify the Creator with the supreme Good. Unlike Aristotle's, the arguments view God as the efficient, not the final, Cause of the world. Unlike Plato or Aristotle, Anselm holds that his efficient Cause does not merely operate on eternally existing matter. Rather this Cause causes everything, including mater.
These Christian theistic arguments combined at least three elements: (1) Efficient causality from Plato's Timaeus argument; (2) identification of this God with the Good of Plato's Republic, the supremely perfect Being; (3) identification of this God with the Hebrew-Christian God. This God causes the very being, not merely the forms of being, of everything that exists.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PvdLhQ3Mz04

Comfort and winning in life?

 We are often called to leave worldly connexions, interests, and comforts. If heirs of Abraham's faith, we shall obey and go forth, though not knowing what may befall us; and we shall be found in the way of duty, looking for the performance of God's promises. The trial of Abraham's faith was, that he simply and fully obeyed the call of God. Sarah received the promise as the promise of God; being convinced of that, she truly judged that he both could and would perform it. Many, who have a part in the promises, do not soon receive the things promised. Faith can lay hold of blessings at a great distance; can make them present; can love them and rejoice in them, though strangers; as saints, whose home is heaven; as pilgrims, travelling toward their home. By faith, they overcome the terrors of death, and bid a cheerful farewell to this world, and to all the comforts and crosses of it. And those once truly and savingly called out of a sinful state, have no mind to return into it. All true believers desire the heavenly inheritance; and the stronger faith is, the more fervent those desires will be. Notwithstanding their meanness by nature, their vileness by sin, and the poverty of their outward condition, God is not ashamed to be called the God of all true believers; such is his mercy, such is his love to them. Let them never be ashamed of being called his people, nor of any of those who are truly so, how much soever despised in the world. Above all, let them take care that they are not a shame and reproach to their God. The greatest trial and act of faith upon record is, Abraham's offering up Isaac, Genesis  22:2. There, every word shows a trial. It is our duty to reason down our doubts and fears, by looking, as Abraham did, to the Almighty power of God. The best way to enjoy our comforts is, to give them up to God; he will then again give them as shall be the best for us. Let us look how far our faith has caused the like obedience, when we have been called to lesser acts of self-denial, or to make smaller sacrifices to our duty. Have we given up what was called for, fully believing that the Lord would make up all our losses, and even bless us by the most afflicting dispensations?

Hebrews 11:8-19

8 By faith Abraham, when called to go to a place he would later receive as his inheritance, obeyed and went, even though he did not know where he was going. 9 By faith he made his home in the promised landlike a stranger in a foreign country; he lived in tents, as did Isaac and Jacob, who were heirs with him of the same promise. 10 For he was looking forward to the city with foundations, whose architect and builder is God. 11 And by faith even Sarah, who was past childbearing age, was enabled to bear children because she considered him faithful who had made the promise. 12 And so from this one man, and he as good as dead, came descendants as numerous as the stars in the sky and as countless as the sand on the seashore.

13 All these people were still living by faith when they died. They did not receive the things promised; they only saw them and welcomed them from a distance, admitting that they were foreigners and strangers on earth. 14 People who say such things show that they are looking for a country of their own. 15 If they had been thinking of the country they had left, they would have had opportunity to return. 16 Instead, they were longing for a better country—a heavenly one. Therefore God is not ashamed to be called their God, for he has prepared a city for them.

17 By faith Abraham, when God tested him, offered Isaac as a sacrifice.He who had embraced the promises was about to sacrifice his one and only son, 18 even though God had said to him, “It is through Isaac that your offspring will be reckoned.” 19 Abraham reasoned that God could even raise the dead, and so in a manner of speaking he did receive Isaac back from death.

Comparative similarities: homology , Part Three

The opposite occurs in "divergent" structures where organisms that appear to be evolutionary cousins have drastically different mechanisms that cannot be explained by a common ancestor. different light-focusing methods in shrimp provide an example. These systems accomplish the same goal with different and intricate design features-more evidence of their Creator.
Abandoning proof of evolution based on the similarities in large structures many now look to the similarity in molecular and genetic structure to support evolution. The sporadic presence of hemoglobin in the evolutionary branches of invertebrates is one example. If evolution had occurred, we would expect a predictable pattern-that pattern does not exist. The hemoglobin must have evolved, despite its intricacies, in each of these groups independently. The facts confirm the creationist model of created kinds with great genetic variety and deny evolution from a common ancestor.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-c3yTfaf4Kw