The Physics and Philosophy of the Bible: How Science and the Thought of Great Thinkers of History Join with Theology to Show That God Exists and That We Can Live Forever

By James Frederick Ivey M.D.

Albert Einstein taught that imagination is more important than knowledge, probably having come to this conclusion through a realization that almost all science represents belieffaithas opposed to knowledge. It should come as no surprise, then, that scienceespecially modern physics with its theories of relativity and quantum mechanicshas revolutionized thinking about the likelihood of the existence of God.

In The Physics and Philosophy of the Bible, author and physician James Frederick Ivey explains how science, particularly quantum mechanics and relativity, aided by Platos philosophy and the history of Jewish people, can be utilized in order to virtually prove that God exists, that he is unique, and that he is the biblical deity. Ultimately an exploration of Christian philosophy and apologeticsincluding discussions of Christian history, secular retorts, the intersection of science and faith, and the relationship between physics and ultimate truthThe Physics and Philosophy of the Bible demonstrates that apologists are very close to the non-necessity of having to deal with whether God exists or not.

From Platos earliest philosophical insights to the most groundbreaking discoveries in contemporary physics, we can find the fingerprints of God that prove He is with us. And. God seeks us just as we seek him, for he desires cognitive individuals with whom he can enjoy mutual love and intimacy.

• Language: English
• Publisher: WestBow Press
• Release date: Dec 5, 2017
• ISBN: 9781973607151

James Frederick Ivey M.D.

Dr. Ivey is also the author of two books on Christian apologetics, The Physics and Philosophy of the Bible and Science, Philosophy, and Jesus Christ. These books form the series, The Inevitable Truth, and utilize quantum physics, relativity, Plato, the history of the Jews, and logic to show that God exists, that we are immortal, that there exists an absolute standard of ethics, that the true God is He of the Bible, and that this God came to us in Jesus of Nazareth.

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THE PHYSICS AND

PHILOSOPHY OF THE

BIBLE

James Frederick Ivey, M.D.

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Copyright © 2017 James Frederick Ivey, M.D..

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be used or reproduced by any means, graphic, electronic, or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, taping or by any information storage retrieval system without the written permission of the author except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical articles and reviews.

Scripture taken from the NEW AMERICAN STANDARD BIBLE®, Copyright © 1960, 1962, 1963, 1968, 1971, 1972, 1973, 1975, 1977, 1995 by The Lockman Foundation. Used by permission.

THE HOLY BIBLE, NEW INTERNATIONAL VERSION®, NIV® Copyright © 1973, 1978, 1984, 2011 by Biblica, Inc.® Used by permission. All rights reserved worldwide.

Scripture taken from the King James Version of the Bible.

This book is a work of non-fiction. Unless otherwise noted, the author and the publisher make no explicit guarantees as to the accuracy of the information contained in this book and in some cases, names of people and places have been altered to protect their privacy.

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ISBN: 978-1-9736-0714-4 (sc)

ISBN: 978-1-9736-0713-7 (hc)

ISBN: 978-1-9736-0715-1 (e)

Library of Congress Control Number: 2017917341

WestBow Press rev. date: 11/28/2017

THE INEVITABLE TRUTH

VOLUME 1

To my deceased wife, Nancy Joan Martin Ivey, as pure as Joan of Arc. In 2004, she went to be with Jesus, to be the face of His bride. She is ever loved by me and our children and many grandchildren.

To my wife, Pamela Jean Birdsall Ivey, giver of unconditional love and genius of the give-give marriage. She is ever loved by me and her children and grandchildren.

I thank them, as I thank God for them.

Things are not as they seem.

CONTENTS

The Inevitable Truth

Volume 1

Foreword

Preface

My Christian Experience, Method, And Intent

Personal Promises To You

My Own Belief And Commitment

Development By Experience

Development By Learning

Acknowledgments

Introduction

Overture: Plan And Purpose—Things Are Not As They Seem

Orientation: Structure

Part 1

Science, Religion, And Religions

Chapter 1:     The Shortcomings, The Dilemmas, And The Charge Of Christians

Imperfect Christians

A Dilemma

Count The Cost

A No-Nonsense God Of Character

Real Christians And True Christianity

The Christian’s Greatest Dilemma

Chapter 2:     Other Faiths

The Main Religions I Shall Compare

The Importance Of Comparison

Judaism

Comparison With Christianity

History Of The Jews

God’s Chosen

Islam And Mormonism

Hinduism And Buddhism

Pseudosimilarities Between Buddhism And Christianity

Neoplatonism

Less Frequently Discussed Subjects Of Comparative Religion

Chapter 3:     Secular Considerations

Comparisons: Science And Religion

Chapter 4:     Science And The World Beyond: A Dynamic Relationship

Ultimate Reality Lies Beyond The Scope Of Science.

The Special Theory Of Relativity

Relativity And Space-Time

Relativity And Matter

Relativity And Force

More About Matter As Mathematics

Mathematics And Greater Truth Yet

Quantum Physics

Mind Over Matter

The Ultimate Error Of Materialism

The General Theory Of Relativity

Reiteration And Other Thoughts

Chapter 5:     Science Stymied By The Prime Mover

No Causation Without A Prime Mover

Cosmological Considerations

Good Fruit Born Of The Objective Scientist

Where Else Science Belongs

A Procession Of Great Ideas From Science

More On The Job Description Of Science

Conclusion

Chapter 6:     Knowledge And Belief

Science As Beliefs About Nature

Usefulness Of The Nonproven

The Credibility Of Theology As A Source Of Information

Perspective

Faith: Valid, Powerful, And Multifaceted

Faith As A Sense

Faith As Remembrance Of One’s First Love

Faith As Remembrance Of One’s Origin

Ways To Faith

Why God Emphasizes Faith

Knowledge Versus Belief

Chapter 7:     More Lack Of Basic Knowledge

No Fundamental Understanding Through Science

Fundamental Understanding Through Faith

Mathematics As Evidence Of The Existence Of Deity

Our Lack Of Understanding Demonstrated In Specific Fields

Physics

Chemistry

Biology

A Challenge

Review

Part 2

The Origin Of God, Eternal Life,

And The New Christian Apologetics:

Relativity, Quantum Physics, And

Philosophy Bolster Christian Faith

Chapter 8:     The Truth Is Inevitable: How God Can Exist And Why He Must

The Abundant Life

Famous Proofs Of The Existence Of God

The Bottom Turtle

The Function Of The Truth

Absolute Versus Relative Truth

Relative Truth

Natural Law

The Truth Is Irrepressible

The Nihilism Of Relative Truth

Conclusions Concerning The Truth

Chapter 9:     The Physics And Philosophy Of Eternal Life: Einstein Showed That We Live Forever

Science, Theology, And Apologetics

Modern Physics And Immortality

Doxa And Logos

Historical Consensus And Citing

Ancient Times

The Middle Ages

The Early Modern Era

The Later Modern Era

Einstein And Planck Et Al. To The Rescue

Extrapolations Of Modern Physics

More Bright Men And Discoveries

Mind-Stuff

Relativity And Quantum Physics

Quantum Mechanics

The Genius Of Einstein

The Special Theory

Death Is Not As It Seems

More Reasons To Believe That We Live Forever

The Universe As Logos

More Thoughts Related To The True Nature Of Death

Chapter 10:   Quantum Physics And Ultimate Truth: Quantum Observation

Crisis In Academia

A Crisis Of Faith

The Common Remedy

The New Christian Apologetics: Preparing To Begin To Draw Conclusions

Recall And Reiteration

The Preeminence Of Mind And The Thought Of God

Quantum Observation

Scientists As Theists And Philosophers

The Biblical God As The True God

Chapter 11:   Quantum Observation And Genesis

The Biblical God’s Dual Method Of Creation

Part 3

Final Observations

Chapter 12:   Conclusions

Glossary

Words

Proper Names

FOREWORD

As my dad’s son, I am perhaps best able to contribute to your experience with the reading of this book by lending to you some of my perspective. I know the author very well, and perhaps I can help set the tone and context by telling you a little about him, the relationship we’ve enjoyed, and some of what we talked about when I was growing up.

My earliest memory of my dad is of his holding out his hands to me. I’m sitting on a sloping tree trunk, and he is standing on the ground, a few feet away, waiting. Next, he is building me a treehouse with football-shaped windows, and this memory is followed by instructions he is giving me: how to reel in a weedless black worm bait for optimal presentation to largemouth bass. I dutifully perform this prescribed activity while he unloads a small green johnboat from a pickup truck. By this time, I can’t be more than three years old.

Then the memories take on a different character. They are framed in the picturesque majesty of Alaskan mountains and glaciers. I stumble over river boulders the size of grapefruit, hewn out and rounded by their formative association with rushing water and crushing ice. I follow my dad through tangles of alder and thick stands of thorny devil’s club. I follow along the thin blades of mountain ridges, dividing treacherously steep and rugged cliffs of granite outcroppings and loose shale.

On another occasion, we transplant delicate broccoli and cauliflower bedding plants into the cool, silt-rich topsoil of the Matanuska Valley. I can see their pale leaves flat against the dark earth, two-dimensional in appearance, softly reflecting the rays of the subarctic sun. It is perhaps ten or eleven at night.

At some point, we begin to talk about God and science. I talk, and Dad listens. He carefully evaluates my every observation and patiently supplements my understanding of concepts from his own reading and science background. Over time, a compendium of conversation develops and becomes recurrent on many levels, spanning quite a range of topics, from the origin of life to properties of light, from biblical truths to the wisdom of philosophers and apologists of bygone eras.

The essence of the conversation is that science, far from being a thing to be feared or resented as threatening faith, is rather something to pursue with the eager expectation that faith will be rewarded in learning all we can about our world and indeed our universe.

As we progress in our thinking, we begin to derive great enjoyment from discussing what appears to be the ultimate nature of the physical reality of our surroundings. Is it the overwhelming beauty of Alaska that makes so plain to us the notion that only a Creator could have formed our world? Is it my dad’s knowledge and experience as a doctor of medicine that has taught him that human life is precious and surely directed and affected by wisdom beyond itself? These questions I cannot answer, but I do know that truth, more than any other quality or substance, has become my dad’s life’s pursuit. And I know somehow that his faith is that, in finding truth, he is finding God.

I have no doubt that Dad has indeed encountered God, and I cannot help but think that his compassion as a physician moves him to share his discoveries with others. I have seen him turn and pause on the trail many times, pointing out the next blaze or warning of a rough or steep stretch. I like to think that he is still the man standing at the base of the tree, holding out his hands, waiting. His answers may not be beyond healthy debate, but I continue to savor all that he has to say. And I have been listening for many years.

James Thomas Ivey

PREFACE

MY CHRISTIAN EXPERIENCE, METHOD, AND INTENT

Personal Promises to You

This book is about Christian philosophy and apologetics. It turns on a few concepts that I find fascinating (e.g., that of quantum observation in conjunction with God’s method of creation and the derivation of God from all-Goodness). It demonstrates that apologists are very close to the non-necessity of having to deal with whether God exists or not.

I begin with imagination, which Einstein said is more important than knowledge, and work from there to imbue the reader with advanced perspective, such as the ability to see the world with a timeless mind-set. My son, James, almost like a twin brother to me, having read a piece that I sent to him, expressed part of what I am about better than I ever could: I think these ideas are coming together in a profound way. When an object begins to be recognizable from many angles and distances, though appearing differently due to perspective in each case, that object begins to take form as an entity in our minds. Soon we can begin to imagine what it would look like even from a perspective as yet outside of our experience. (An example here is that I’ve never seen a polar bear quartering away from me to my right from one hundred yards, but I can imagine what it would probably look like.) You’ve come at the question of ultimate truth from many angles and distances. It seems like the conclusions are becoming increasingly recognizable—something we can think about and imagine, beyond our experience and perhaps beyond even our normal earthbound modes of perception.

I am a physician, and the primary maxim in the practice of medicine is, First, do no harm. This is a quote from the Greek physician Hippocrates, who lived in the fifth century BC.¹ I take it as a rule by which to live my entire life, professional and otherwise. It is reminiscent of Jesus’s admonition that we should not be judgmental.

I do not preach in terms of condescension; in no way do I perceive myself as superior to you, and I certainly may not judge you. There is no question in my mind that only a person who is both morally perfect and omniscient can be the ultimate judge of anyone, and I am, of course, not such a person, such that it would be hypocritical of me to try to perform this function; actually, a stronger term, ridiculous, is quite appropriate here.

Jesus said, Judge not, that ye be not judged (Matthew 7:1 KJV), and He meant that if we try to usurp His exclusive right to evaluate the innermost thinking of any person, we ourselves will be held all the more accountable for our own shortcomings. We are accountable enough already because our shortcomings are many and major.

On the other hand, I do not think that all preaching is bad because, if I preach with respect and convince you that Jesus is The Truth and should be worshipped as the true God, I believe I have done a good thing. Nevertheless, there is preaching in the form of lecturing, with the implication that the speaker knows everything about his subject and the listener knows little or nothing, and that kind of verbal display is rude and unrealistic. I promise not to do that and will keep my promise. One often hears people complaining about someone trying to impose his or her views upon society or another person. I, of course, do not have the power to do that, but if I did, I would be wrong to use it. Certainly, everyone should be free to reject Christian evangelism without fear of derision.

I also may well judge in terms of giving my opinion on this or that thought or behavior. One should hate bad behavior but love the person who is behaving badly, and we should, in fact, be careful about what we call bad behavior. Furthermore, Christians who seek to change the beliefs of others need to proceed with utmost caution and humility; otherwise, we can do much harm. The bottom line is that Christians need to simply present Jesus in love and depend upon the Holy Spirit of God to do the rest. The complexity, profundity, and sheer importance of the network of cause and effect that can result from an act or two carried out in the supposed interest of others can be major and often quite detrimental. We often lack the perspective to visualize more than a tiny part of the damage we can cause by insisting upon a quick and positive response to that which we advocate. The following story will succinctly illustrate what I am talking about.

I once viewed the movie Hawaii, based on the book by James Michener. The main character was a fire-and- brimstone, legalistic kind of minister who essentially worshipped a God of punishment and revenge. He turned many away from the gospel with his intolerance of the traditions of the people he was trying to convert, trying to make their private business his, and constantly threatening. His words, demonstrating well the power of the tongue for destruction, caused a chain of events that led to such rash action on the part of the husband of the queen of the islands that he left his island home and struck out for the land of his ancestors, with the implication that he would probably die trying. The missionary’s long- suffering wife, on the other hand, just let her faith show and spoke words of kindness in Jesus’s name, and she consequently provided the example of the Christ to the natives in a way that caused them to love both Jesus and her. Due to her influence, the queen herself became a Christian, explaining her conversion with the simple comment that Jesus was such a wonderful young man.

Though I cannot criticize those who seek, find, and reject, I cannot understand those who do not seek at all. I cannot imagine a lack of curiosity with regard to the most profound questions humans can ask. To try to learn such answers is very enjoyable, for one thing, but particularly to rationalize, sublimate, or ignore the prospect of the approach of death makes no sense to me, though many of us, especially the young, seem to be good at doing that.

The seeker, for purposes of this discourse, is one who wishes to discern essence and discover axioms, to open his or her mind to all of truth, to all of the reality that lies within space-time and beyond. This truth that is sought is not some abstract summation of human thought; it is something that is out there, something that we can find, that we can discover, as the human race has already found natural physical laws that detail the mathematical order of our world. It is part of the thought of God. I know that some of us do not recognize the existence of axioms or believe that there is any such thing as undeniable truth. I can only respectfully, though (most) vigorously, disagree with those who are of the opinion that what is true depends upon opinion and circumstance. It takes considerable concentration for me to be respectful in this instance because I believe that believing such is a recipe for death.

I do not recommend anything to anyone that I do not think will improve him or her as a person; in fact, if I advocate anything that I do not intend to apply to myself, shame on me, much shame. That is, of course, the way one should act, and it is, in fact, the way one should be.

I do not evangelize because I am afraid God will punish me if I do not, and I certainly believe that I am far short of knowing it all. As Jesus claimed no goodness, I most certainly do not. I claim only the Christ and the benefits He offers. I boast only in Him and believe, with Paul, that my life is preserved solely by God’s grace (His undeserved favor) and that it will be so forever, provided I accept His graciousness through my faith. I try to pass on His gift largely because that is the most rational thing to do with it; it is most especially reasonable to do this because I can give it away without suffering loss, and passing it on results in my personal gain as well as that of anyone who receives it as a result of my testimony. Giving good things is its own reward, building us up as persons. It provides us enjoyment, and there can be no greater gratification than giving the best there is.

The Lord I Tout

The gospel of the Christ presents to us a concerned God who affords us the opportunity to have meaningful life after death, joyous beyond measure, most likely in a state outside of time and space, where there is only a present and no past or future, and where we probably can no longer change, at least in any fundamental way. There is no reason to believe we will ever have an additional life in which to prepare for such a scenario; therefore, I unreservedly recommend that we all exercise the free will God has given us and choose full commitment to Jesus of Nazareth as soon as we feel it at all reasonable to do so. His words make sense and jibe with all disciplines of humankind, at the same time connecting positively with intuition and fitting in with all that we observe in our universe (provided we perceive it using the mind’s eye). Since I gave myself up to Him, and particularly when I have prayed the most and given the most, the happiness that has come my way has been exponential.

MY OWN BELIEF AND COMMITMENT

Development by Experience

When I was a child, I was trying to go to sleep one night and saw two young men at the foot of my bed. They said nothing and looked neither happy nor sad. One was tall, and the other was short. This scenario was not at all like a dream, and I was not afraid, though I fully believed they were live persons. I lay there a minute or two, after which they disappeared. I then got up and told my parents what had happened. They said it was a dream. It was no dream; I believe they were angels, partly because it seems as though I have been protected all my life. I will not enumerate the many times I have escaped death when I easily could have died, due to my having done some dumb thing, particularly as a pilot. On one occasion, I could have taken a son with me to eternity; at another time, a friend.

The most frightening of these happened when one of my childhood friends and I decided to tunnel through a very large ridge of dirt that had been deposited after a large machine had dug up a road.

I said, You go in that side, and we’ll meet in the middle. Of course, the tunnel collapsed, and I could not move a finger. Fortunately, my friend had not gone in as far as I had and rescued me.

Someone once gave me a mug inscribed with the message, James—meaning protected, and this gift later proved to be a quite ironical thing when I discovered that this someone had embezzled some $20,000 from me. A coincidence? Most likely, but I sometimes wonder. Perhaps this was a little message from God; certainly, it connects quite nicely with my conviction that God has indeed protected me from danger throughout my life. In any case, I am by no means a Glory, hallelujah person who interprets everything as some kind of sign. I simply and calmly, with a fully intellectual approach to the matter, feel that angels have always watched out for me. Perhaps they did so because of my grandmothers, who were constantly praying.

There have been no tragedies in my family of origin or among my offspring, who are many. I have had everything on a silver platter, though my parents were not wealthy. I had a wonderful first wife for forty-three years, and after she died, I married yet another exceptionally fine lady. My first wife did die young by today’s standards, and this, along with her suffering for years, was a tragedy with which I can deal only through an element of denial, exercised as I deal with part of it at a time. Nevertheless, she got everything out of her body that she could have gotten, and I have reason to believe that God wanted her to come to Him at sixty-five. In any case, her particularly severe suffering for about two years was so distressing to me that her death was less so.

All of my children love each other, and all of their twelve children love their aunts, uncles, and cousins and are Christians). My offspring accept my second wife quite well. When I think of what I have compared to the majority of people I know, I am overwhelmed, and I can only believe that God oversees my life.

Part of my silver platter was that Santa Claus used to bring me about ten presents each Christmas. I would make a list beforehand and would generally get what I wanted, but the gift I liked the best was usually something I had not thought of. God is like my parents were in this respect. If we could handle it without believing we deserve it and more, He would probably be doing this constantly.

I prayed every night during much of my childhood that I might have a long, full, happy, and useful life, and God continues to answer this prayer in spades.

Development by Learning

Here is some information I’ve encountered through the years that convinced me that the true God is He of the Christian Bible and that Jesus is His embodiment.

The setting of Jesus’s ministry was ideal in terms of providing the best possible point from which Christianity could spread following His resurrection. His story connects with the secular history of His day in a way and to a degree that greatly enhances its believability. It takes place in just the right place, a locale that was in His time and still is now the crossroads of the world. It is where Europe, Asia, and Africa meet, and it is a part of the Middle East, the crucible of conflict and the graveyard of empires.² It lay right on the path in ancient times of Rome with its breadbasket, Egypt. Jesus also lived at a time that was ideal for the spread of the faith that He engendered.

Octavian, grandnephew, adopted son, and heir of Gaius Julius Caesar, had established the Pax Romana (Roman Peace), a prolonged period of relative peace in the Roman Empire, which, at least for its citizens, provided much more personal freedom than one would think could exist in a dictatorship. In addition, having conquered nearly all the known Western world, Rome had established communication and relatively safe travel by way of its roads, previously imaginable only by the most visionary of souls. This situation certainly facilitated the spread of the gospel once Jesus had laid Himself as the Cornerstone thereof, especially after He had selected a Roman citizen to head up missionary efforts.

The availability of Saul of Tarsus, later called Paul, at just the right time and as the ideal person to lead the thrust of the Christian faith into the Roman world, is yet another ingredient of the no-coincidence soup that characterized the events that led to Jesus’s advent and His becoming the foremost figure of all times on planet earth. Paul spoke both Greek and Latin, and he was an ardent Pharisee, a member of the group that Jesus had most severely criticized. In him, we see the paradox so often visible in God’s work. As a hateful persecutor of Christians, he was a man who probably would have never been the choice of anyone besides Jesus for the purpose of convincing Western peoples to accept Christianity as containing the Answer and providing all The Truth, comfort, and good life that any person could ever need. Yet he had the most useful status and qualities possible, with regard to his ability to move around in the empire.

Paul’s accomplishment in spreading the Word was so great that it is common for nonbelieving scholars of Christianity to question whether his role in the faith could have been more important than that of Jesus. Paul also had excellent assistants, most prominently Silas, Barnabas, Luke, and Timothy. His enthusiasm concerning his Lord is particularly intriguing because of his previous negativity concerning Christianity and his severe persecution of the members thereof. It causes one to believe that his experience on the road to Damascus must have been every bit as dramatic and impressive as he described it (Acts 9:1–9).

The existence of not one but two widely understood languages, Latin and Greek, enhanced communication and travel in the empire. Alexander, about 350 years earlier, had spread Greek culture and the Greek language to the Middle East and beyond, and Latin was spoken by many individuals throughout the holdings of the Romans. Thus, though we do not know how much Latin or Greek Jesus spoke, if any, we do know that the existence of these linguae francae hastened His becoming well- known throughout the Mediterranean world and most of the rest of Europe.

Furthermore, the Roman authorities did not at this time worry a lot about what people worshipped, or even whether they believed in the Roman gods. Whether one put his deity above his allegiance to the Roman state was admittedly another matter, yet the Romans, by virtue of the antiquity of the Jewish religion, allowed the Jews to do even this; they revered almost anything that was old. In any case, it was not Roman law that resulted in Jesus’s execution, but religious jealousy combined with the ability of Jewish leaders to make the local Roman governor fear that he might be seen as out of line with the wishes of the emperor of that time if he did not have Jesus killed.

These situations and conditions can hardly be coincidental.

I have additionally observed that the writings of the early followers of the Christ connect well with one another. They also describe events that are quite believable, particularly as the authors relate them with complete honesty. According to the well-known Bible translator J. B. Phillips, the New Testament has the ring of truth—it sounds intuitively right to him.³ It certainly does to me, and I believe that intuition is a valid entity based on information accumulated in our brains on the subconscious level. When recognized and used discreetly, it is a helpful store of information.

A particularly important reason that I am a Christian is that Jesus is the only person in the history of humankind who claimed to be God and made that claim stick. Furthermore, He did so to the tune of His having more followers today, two thousand years later, than any other religious figure.

I am likewise impressed with the utter simplicity of Jesus’s message, which is also unique in its manifesting and commanding love and in its packing maximum amounts of wisdom into every sentence. We can summarize His message with just a few words: Follow me; observe me, and do as I do. The example that He sets is also easy to understand: it is that of an eminently wise man who maximally loves God and other humans but who manages to be humble as well.⁴

In the book of Micah in the Old Testament, we find, He has told you, O man, what is good; and what does the Lord require of you but to do justice, to show kindness, and to walk humbly with your God (5:2). Thus, the basic admonition of God in the Old Testament is essentially the same as that in the New.

Jesus, the embodiment of the true God, was simple to understand and yet enormously rich in personality and wisdom, and such a God is exactly the kind that one feels most comfortable worshipping. It is terribly sad that the Jews, who for centuries had expected their God to come as a man to the home they had built for Him, rejected Him when He came because they expected a military figure who would free them from Roman bondage.⁵

NOTES

1   There were about two hundred Hippocrateses, with the original as their leader or prototype. Sherwin B. Nuland. Doctors: The History of Scientific Medicine Revealed through Biography. Chantilly, VA: Teaching Company, 2005. The Teaching Company might be my most important single source; it uses the best university professors in the United States to produce its courses.

2   Professor J. Rufus Fears. The Wisdom of History. Chantilly, VA: Teaching Company, 2007.

3   J. B. Phillips. Ring of Truth. Wheaton, IL: Harold Shaw Publishers, 1967.

4   Some people object to the degree of humility demanded by Jesus, but the only reason they can find for doing so is that it does not seem fair or democratic. However, if Jesus is God, and God made us, it is not up to us to decide and declare that He is under any obligation even to be fair to us. Additionally, democracy makes no sense when a better form of government is available (e.g., that of a dictator who is an omniscient being with nothing but goodness, love, and caring on His mind).

5   Antony Flew. There Is No a God. New York: HarperCollins, 2007.

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

To my wife, for great encouragement and for designing the book jacket of the original version of this book. A few years ago, I began to list everything she does for me, and these presently number forty-five. Everyone who wishes to be her friend is heartily welcomed as such, and to her everlasting credit, she seems quite unaware that racial, societal, or economic differences exist among people.

To my father, James Frederick Ivey, Sr.: pharmacist, scientist, and mentor; greatly beloved and sorely missed. To his mother—Mary King Ivey (MaMa)—who prayed for me every