Tom Holland: How the Christian Revolution Remade the World

Filmed against the historically vibrant backdrop of Oxford, England, host Eric Metaxas sits down with historian Tom Holland to discuss - from music to marriage to service and science and education - how the West has been transformed by and remains to be utterly affected by Christianity. The two discuss Holland’s bestselling book at length, Dominion: How the Christian Revolution Remade the World.
This Socrates in the City conversation took place in July of 2024 in Oxford, England.

[@jamesrichards3086]

LOL', the elephant in the room is the fact that Mars has 1/3 the gravity of Earth. We have evolved over millions of years for Earth''s gravity. God gave us this amazing planet lets just be grateful and amazed by that.

[@lostat400]

Wrong. We did not evolve, we were created, just like all things, and every living thing.
We know now that everything operates by information. The old idea that more complex organisms came from simple organisms, has proven to be impossible. Information does not self originate or self assemble. There has to be source of information,. All information has to be spoken into existence by an intelligent mind.
What exists but doesn't fit with the "Theory of evolution"
Fossil record:
Headline: David Gelernter, a Yale a professor of computer science, Takes On Darwinism:
[In the famous “Cambrian explosion” of around half a billion years ago, a striking variety of new organisms-including the first-ever animals-pop up suddenly in the fossil record over a mere 70-odd million years. Darwin’s theory predicts that new life forms evolve gradually from old ones in a constantly branching, spreading tree of life. Those brave new Cambrian creatures must therefore have had Precambrian predecessors, similar but not quite as fancy and sophisticated.
But those predecessors of the Cambrian creatures are missing. Darwin himself was disturbed by their absence from the fossil record. He believed they would turn up eventually. Some of his contemporaries (such as the eminent Harvard biologist Louis Agassiz) held that the fossil record was clear enough already, and showed that Darwin’s theory was wrong. Perhaps only a few sites had been searched for fossils, but they had been searched straight down.]
Natural selection does not lead to speciation.
When we talk about evolutionary inheritance, what we are actually referring to: is the transfer of genetic sequences from one generation to the next.
Article "The secret on how life on Earth began" BBC, dated 31 Oct 2016.
[ .. The key point is that the double helix can be "unzipped". This exposes the genetic code - made up of sequences of the genetic bases A, T, C and G - that is normally locked away inside the DNA ladder’s "rungs".
It turned out that DNA only has one job. Your DNA tells your cells how to make proteins: molecules that perform a host of essential tasks. Each protein is essentially a long chain of ( left handed) amino acids, strung together in a specific order. The sequence of the amino acids determines the three-dimensional shape of the protein, and thus what it does. That information is encoded in the sequence of the DNA's bases. ...]
The Homochirality Paradox
Headline: Must the Molecules of Life Always be Left-Handed or Right-Handed? Smithsonian, 28 July 2016
[On Earth, the amino acids characteristic of life are all “left-handed” in shape, ( by chance?) and cannot be exchanged for their right-handed doppelgänger. Meanwhile, all sugars ( DNA) characteristic of life on Earth are “right-handed.” The opposite hands for both amino acids and sugars exist in the universe, but they just aren’t utilized by any known biological life form. In other words, both sugars and amino acids on Earth are homochiral: one-handed. ..]
Book: The Cell
The Shape and Structure of Proteins
{Since each of the 20 amino acids is chemically distinct and each can, in principle, occur at any position in a protein chain, there are 20 × 20 × 20 × 20 = 160,000 different possible polypeptide chains four amino acids long, or 20n different possible polypeptide chains n amino acids long... ]
A body Plan, is required.
Homeotic genes, Khan Academy
[Genetic patterns laid out in the egg-before the embryo is even an embryo-lay the groundwork for the body plan. During development, the body is first roughed out very generally, then, the structure is gradually refined, first into broad sections, then smaller sections, then finally into actual body segments. This process involves different classes of genes with increasingly narrow and specific patterns of expression. ]
Book: The Structure of Consciousness, Michael Polanyi
[Whatever may be the origin of a DNA configuration, it can function as a code only if its order is not due to the forces of potential energy. It must be as physically indeterminate as the sequence of words is on a printed page
The higher level cannot be derived automatically from the lower level-higher principles are always additional, not intrinsic, to lower principles. There may be several lower principles harnessed by a higher principle-and there may be more than one higher principle as we go from level to level in the hierarchy of life (e.g., reason and free choice in the boundary condition of mind).
Smash up a machine, utter words at random, or make chess moves without a purpose and the corresponding higher principle--that which constitutes the machine, that which makes words into sentences, and that which makes moves of chess into a game--will all vanish and the comprehensive entity which they controlled will cease to exist. ]
How to cause people to break with Christianity.
In his Book: Twilight of the Idols- Nietzche explains.
[... When one gives up the Christian faith, one pulls the right to Christian morality out from under one's feet. This morality is by no means self-evident: Christianity is a system, a whole view of things thought out together. By breaking one main concept out of it, the faith in God, one breaks the whole: nothing necessary remains in one's hands. Christianity presupposes that man does not know, cannot know, what is good for him, what's evil: he believes in God, who alone knows it. Christian morality is a command; its origin is transcendent; it is beyond all criticism, all right to criticism; it has truth only if God is the truth--it stands and falls with faith in God.]