THERE is a principle which is a bar against all information, which is proof against all argument and which cannot fail to keep man in everlasting ignorance - that principle is contempt prior to investigation." (Herbert Spencer)

The famous King Solomon, considered the wisest man of his day, also said, "He who answers a matter before he hears it, it is folly and shame to him". (Proverbs 18:13)

Fortunately and unfortunately I have a recognisable name and face. People know and remember me because of my success on the football field. People also know and remember me because of some of my off-field moments, which were not so successful. The facts are that in life we will each experience our ups and downs, good days and difficult ones, seasons of good, healthy decision-making, and seasons in which our personal choices do not result in our finest hours.

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I say this simply to illustrate my understanding of the fact that none of us is perfect - not one. We all fail and make mistakes. But surely it is from this place, the recognition of imperfection and the realisation of our need for change, that we should each begin to grow and learn; aspiring to live better, more meaningful, more productive and more effective lives. Surely we should each be focused on discovering how we as individuals and communities can learn to live and work together in order to produce a far more peaceful, stable, secure and loving environment?

Sadly, in this once great nation of Australia, this does not seem to be the case, which is why I feel burdened and compelled to speak out. I am motivated to say something publicly, and sense a desperate need to raise these issues, even at the risk of public ridicule, because I am hoping that my words just might provoke and encourage us to stop and think and take a serious look at the direction in which we are heading as a society. It is time we began to question some of our beliefs, and decision-making, to examine our desires and to ask ourselves quite seriously: "What kind of world do we want to live in?"

Today, our newspapers, televisions and computer screens are full of shocking and horrible crimes, detailing a very serious decline in morals and values in our community. We read stories that describe a rapid deterioration in standards of behaviour wherever we look. Our culture struggles under the massive weight of increasing problems associated with hatred, anger, violence, alcohol and drug abuse, depression and suicide, family breakdown, the devaluing of human life and dignity, and a growing disrespect for law and order, to name just a few - all of which work together to create and subsequently feed an enormous and expanding hole in the moral fabric that once upon a time held our society firmly together. We have lost our way. We have lost our direction and many have lost hope, and we need to rediscover who we are and where we are going. We need to realise that this current behaviour is only a symptom of far deeper issues within our society and the real problems must be identified and resolved. The need for truth and clarity has never been greater or indeed more obvious than it is right now.

We need to bring in a defined halt to the degradation of our society by restoring the foundations of a strong and effective culture. What are these foundations and how do we begin to restore the brokenness we see all around us? I believe without a doubt that our nation is in crisis and is in its current predicament because we have deliberately disconnected ourselves from our Christian heritage and history. We are a nation that was originally founded upon the word of God and established on the authority of biblical truth. Our political system, our judicial system and most of our schools and hospitals were begun by godly men and women who based their lives and work on godly principles.

However, over recent years we have shifted further and further away from the inclusion of anything godly in our planning, decision-making and policy-setting; so while we watch our standards crumble and our moral foundations erode away, we somehow simultaneously manage to sit back and wonder why society has no sure and stable footing left on which to build a strong and solid culture? We have been deceived and completely desensitised, like the proverbial frog in the kettle, the temperature is rising and in our blissful ignorance we do not realise we are being cooked alive.

Are we completely blind to the truth?

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FOR example, humanism, the central philosophy of our schools and society, teaches that man is above all else, that he alone is the centre of meaning. Teaching that man has meaning totally apart from God, (humanism) leave morality, justice and behaviour to the discretion of "enlightened" man and encourages people to worship man and nature rather than God. Living without God's divine truth causes humanity to sink lower and lower into spiritual darkness and depravity, blindly following a philosophy that intends to heighten the dignity of man, but which instead lowers him to the level of animals rather than a spiritual, emotional and moral being. Man has been classified as merely natural phenomena of time plus chances, no greater than rocks, animals or clouds.

One of the things that triggered my response was that I became aware that there was an atheist convention in Melbourne last week. Richard Dawkins, a renowned atheist, gave a message entitled, "From goo to you through the zoo".

Now it is bad enough misleading us by telling us we descended from convicts but to tell us we descended from "apes" - come on!

Man might look like an ape, act like a goat, eat like a pig, think like a jackass, be as stubborn as a mule and as cunning as a fox, but a man is still a man and has been that way right down through recorded history. I openly confess to being no scientist, nor will I try to pretend to be one. However, it is not hard for the average person to understand some of the basic laws and principles within the scientific world. There is so much misinformation out there called "science", masquerading as "truth", and because we've been taught to believe these falsehoods it takes an abundance of information to get these misconceptions unseated. So please bear with me as I may need to get quite technical to get my message across.

"As there is none in such deep bondage as those who falsely believe they are free."

For example, molecular biologist Michael Dentin pointed out in his book, Evolution, A Theory in Crisis, that even Charles Darwin had to admit he had absolutely no hardcore empirical date, no concrete evidence, no substantial scientific facts, nothing to prove any of the major evolutionary transformation he asserted. The fact is that fossil records do not support Darwin's theory. Experts have come to realise that the gaps in the fossil records and the absence of precursor and intermediate forms are such that they can no longer be ignored or his theory be taken seriously. It was Darwin, the author of the theory of evolution himself, that confessed in a letter to Ossy Gray on September 5, 1857 that "one's imagination must fill up the very blanks".

With testimonies like this from the author of evolution himself, I submit to you that the theory of evolution is not only lacking in facts, but has absolutely no foundation whatsoever. If it was only ever a theory, how did it find its way into our classrooms and society as fact?

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Let's take another example. Evolution teaches that matter plus energy (light or heat) plus time equals biogenesis, the cause of new life.

Yet our entire food industry relies on the fact that the evolutionary formula doesn't work. For example, if you take a jar of peanut butter (matter), expose it to light and heat (energy) and add time you will never get new life (biogenesis) in that jar. And are we grateful about that! Why is new life impossible in a sealed jar? Because we are missing the most important aspect: information.

The very reason food is sealed is to keep information out, it's only if and when the seal is broken that a contamination can occur because information has got inside the jar! We need to take this fact very seriously because in the food industry this experiment is conducted over a billion times a year collectively, and has been doing so for more than a hundred years, which proves that the absence of information renders life impossible.

This begs the question that since information is not inherent within matter itself, nor can it be derived from natural law, "where did it come from?"

Take today's newspaper, for example, with the codes and printing on it. To try and derive the information in the newspaper from the natural laws that govern the paper alone is impossible because the information needs to be printed on to the laws that govern the paper.

To attempt to derive the morning's news from the chemistry of the paper alone without the input of information is absurd. Even in a simple newspaper we can appreciate "Intelligent Design". It is the same as a genetic code imprinted according to the laws of information and language on to matter.

In other words, to get biogenesis (new life) you need a source of intrinsic information to be added to the system to get out of it in order which isn't intrinsic within inorganic matter itself. It then becomes very obvious that information can only come from an "intelligent" source. How can we be sure the origin of all things is a person? Because of the abundance of information that surrounds us.

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THE whole universe is imprinted with information, information so profound and complex as to demand reverence, worship and awe at the brilliance, capacity and power it indicates in the personality responsible.

Some of the renowned and respected scientists and mathematicians through the world have concluded that something as complex as the "DNA" molecule of every living thing occurring by chance is 10 to the power 130. In other words, one chance in 10 with a hundred and thirty zeros after it ... that is a huge number. In fact, most of us have no real capacity to fully appreciate just how big a number that is. But mathematicians say there is more chance of a hurricane going through a junk yard and assembling a fully operational 747 passenger jet. Now you and I may laugh at that because we can appreciate the "intelligent design", the information, the knowledge, the creativity and skill it takes to put something so complex together. Yet people like Richard Dawkins will try and tell us that we humans as well as the entire universe, which are immeasurably more complex than any passenger jet could ever be, all happened by chance. It's like having an explosion of ink in a printing room and coming up with the English Dictionary. It's a fallacy. Every cell in the universe came from another cell, you never see a new cell come into existence on its own. Organisms do not spontaneously arise in nature from non-life.

The Apostle Paul expresses this in Romans 1:23:25:

"The wrath of God is being revealed from heaven against all the godlessness and wickedness of men who suppress the truth by their wickedness, since what may be known about God is plain to them because God has made it plain to them For since the creation of the world God's invisible qualities His eternal power and Godhead have been clearly seen, being understood from what has been made, so that men are without excuse. For although they knew God, they neither glorified him as God nor gave thanks to him, but their thinking became futile and their foolish hearts were darkened. Although they claimed to be wise, they became fools and exchanged the glory of the immortal God for images made to look like mortal man and birds and animals and reptiles ... They exchanged the truth of God for a life, and worshipped and served created things rather than the creator who is forever praised. Amen."

Thus the Apostle Paul warns that creation itself is enough to hold us accountable, and that men are without excuse in holding down and rejecting the truth. The whole of creation is packed full of the most profound information imaginable in the DNA molecule of every living thing, information which is not inherent in matter itself.

This information is so complex as to demand an intelligence of awesome dimensions and must have been imposed on matter from the outside by the deliberate actions of personality, since information cannot arise from random processes nor is it inherent in impersonal matter itself. This need for the prior existence of personality for information to exist is expressed in the Gospel of John in its opening verses where it is recorded:

"In the beginning was the Word and the Word was with God and the Word was God. He was with God in the beginning. All things were made by Him and without Him nothing was made that has been made ... The Word became flesh and dwelt among us." (in the person of Jesus Christ)

Advances in microbiology, DNA et al have dealt the final death blow to Darwinism.

DNA is a digital code.

Darwinism cannot explain the origin of life because it cannot explain the origin of information.

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MOST of us probably never stop to think about what we really believe about our origins, nor why we believe it, at least not seriously. However, little do we realise how significant this issue plays in terms of how we live out our daily lives. Our behaviour is often a reflection of our beliefs about who we are. It is usually consistent with what we think to be true about ourselves. Quoting King Solomon again: "What a man thinks in his heart, that he is." In other words, our perception of reality (belief systems) will profoundly impact our every motive, attitude thought, word and deed, whether our perceptions are true of false.

Unfortunately, Western civilisation has embraced the "lie" of evolution as fact, and we have been completely blinded to the profound effect and impact it is having upon our society and nation. We tell ourselves and our children that it was all just an accident and we are nothing more than "cosmic orphans", with no real purpose, value or destiny, completely without hope for a great future and then wonder why our country is "self-destructing" and our society's attitude has become "Let's eat, drink and be merry for tomorrow we die". And, if life gets too hard or painful let's just end it. And that's just the beginning. No wonder our society if out of control, the consequences are horrendous. Man can live without many things but he cannot live without hope. The Bible reveals a very different reality. God's word tells us we are a very special and unique and precious creation, made in God's image for an eternal relationship with God and a purpose and a destiny that is mind-blowing. And God loves and values us so much that He was willing to leave His glory, take on human nature and enter into His own creation to undo the damage done by a dark intruder, and provide a mechanism by which you and I can qualify and be eligible for that relationship, purpose and destiny which is there for the asking. But that is all I will say, as I am aware this is a sensitive area for some. I do not wish to come across as a Bible basher or a religious fanatic, for this is not a church. But may I leave you with a poem that was written by Darrel Scott, the father of Rachel Scott, who was killed in the Columbine High School shooting in Littleton, Colorado, US, which we all need to hear, but especially those in positions of leadership and authority, and in particularly our Government.

"Your laws ignore our deepest needs

Your words are empty air

You've stripped away our heritage

You've outlawed simple prayer

Now gunshots fill our classrooms

And previous children die

You seek for answers everywhere

And ask the question 'Why?'

You regulate restrictive laws

Through legislative creed

And yet you fail to understand

That God is what we need".

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Originally published as What kind of world do we want to live in?