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Does God Exist? Suffers A Loss
 Early the
morning of May 9, 2008, Phyllis Clayton lost her battle with
diabetes after living with it for about sixty
years, since the age of ten. She lived
through many complications of diabetes: insulin reactions and
blood sugar problems; eye problems; diabetic neuropathy; kidney
function; heart problems; osteoporosis, circulation problems, and
diabetic ulcers. She often quoted Dr. John Warvel, Methodist
Hospital, Indianapolis, often, “Control your diabetes to live, not live
simply to control your diabetes.”
Because of this guiding principle she was able to live a full
life. She was married to John Clayton for almost fifty
years. She and John raised three children: a son, Timothy
of South Bend, Indiana, who has multiple handicaps; a daughter,
Cathy Haught of Abilene, Texas; a daughter, Wendy Howe of
Irving, Texas. Cathy and Wendy have blessed Phyllis and John with
five adored grandchildren.
Phyllis graduated from Indiana University in Bloomington. Early
in her career she worked as a dietician and cafeteria manager with the
South Bend Community School Corporation. In the late 1960s John
began the Does God Exist?
program of which Phyllis was an integral
part. She worked in many facets of the program and was very
supportive of John’s traveling and lecture program. She helped
with the publication of the Does God
Exist? bulletin as well as many
other publications of the program. Recently she authored a book
about living with diabetes--Living
Successfully with Diabetes.
She was an active member in many churches, recently with the
Dowagiac Church of Christ in Dowagiac, Michigan. She was a great
inspiration to everyone who knew her.
There was a memorial service at Hickey Funeral Home in South Bend,
Indiana, on Thursday, May 22, 2008. In her memory donations can be made to the American
Diabetes
Association or to Does God Exist?,
PO Box 2704, South Bend, IN
46680-2704.
* * * * *
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We wish to thank those who have expressed
their condolences by sending cards, donations, or flowers. We
have tried to express our gratitude, but were unable to do so on some
because
we were not able to put names with correct addresses. Thank you
for your care and concern.
John Clayton and family and the Does God Exist? staff
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Publications
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A Practical
Man's
Proof of God
The purpose of this brief study is to offer a
logical,
practical, pragmatic proof of the existence of God from a purely
scientific perspective. To do this, we are assuming that we
exist, that
there is reality, and that the matter of which we are made is
real. If
you do not believe that you exist, you have bigger problems than this
study will entail and you will have to look elsewhere. [more]
A Help in
Understanding What God Is
To help the reader comprehend the nature of God, I
would like to borrow an analogy from the book Flatland by Edwin
Abbott.* Abbott was a mathematician and the model is geometric in
nature. It was originally written in the 19th century for the
purposes
we are
using it for here. Flatland is the story of a man who lives in a
two dimensional world--like a sheet of paper. In the surface of
the
paper there is only length and width-there is no such thing as
thickness.
You and I are three-dimensional beings-we have length and width and
frequently considerable thickness. You cannot get me, a
three-dimensional being, into a two-dimensional sheet of paper.
You can
draw a front view of me (a portrait), but that is not the whole
me. You
can draw a top view of me which because I am bald, ends up being three
concentric circles, but that is not the whole me. If you and I
were to
look at the man in Flatland,
we would see him as a.... [more]
Who
Created God?
One question which inevitably comes up in a
discussion of this nature is what is the origin of God? If God
created
matter/energy, and designed the systems that have propelled matter into
its present arrangement, who or what accomplished that for God?
Why is
it any more reasonable to believe that God has always “been” than it is
to say that matter has always “been”? As Carl Sagan has said, “If
we
say that God has always been, why not save a step and conclude that the
universe has always been?” (Cosmos, p. 257). [more]
What Was
the
Cause
of the Beginning?
It is assumed that the
reader has read the first two booklets in this
series, one titled A Practical Man's
Proof of God and the other A
Help in Understanding What God Is. In these two
booklets,
we have established that all scientific evidence supports the fact that
there was a beginning, and that the beginning was caused. We
have also shown that the creator of time, space, and energy has to be
something that is outside of time, space, and energy. The nature
of the cause cannot be in the three-dimensional physical world in which
we live and must be outside of time to have created time. [ more]
Why I Left
Atheism
Of all the lessons that I present concerning the
existence of God and of all the material that I try to make available
to people to learn about God's existence, the present lesson, "Why I
Left Atheism," is the lesson in the series that I frankly do not like
to present. I guess none of us like to look back in our lives to
a time
when we made poor judgments and foolish mistakes--when we took rather
really idiotic positions--and admit this, especially to people we are
not well acquainted with. I present this lesson, however, because
it is
my
fervent hope and prayer that perhaps by exposing my mistakes and by
pointing out the things that were a part of my early life, some who
might
be following the same paths (to a greater or lesser extent) might
not make those same mistakes. [more]
God's
Revelation in His Rocks and in His Word
This paper is a part of the Does God Exist? program
which was begun in 1968 by John Clayton as an attempt to show that
intelligent, scientifically literate, thinking people can and should
believe in God and in the Bible as His Word. Your author, John
Clayton,
is a science teacher who began his teaching career in the public
schools of South Bend, Indiana, in 1959 and has taught physics,
chemistry, geology, astronomy, and physical science since that
time.
Since I was an atheist for many years and came to believe in God
through my studies in science, it frustrated me to see students and
parents who viewed faith and science as enemies. [more]
The
Problem of Human Suffering
Almost every time that I am involved in a lectureship
on a college campus or a similar place I have people--young people
usually--who will come to me and say, "Well all right, you've shown us
that there is some evidence for God's existence, but if there is a God
and if he is a loving and merciful God, how do you explain the problems
of suffering and death and all the tragedies that happen to
people?"
Why is it that these things occur? I believe any question that
man can
ask has a reasonable answer-at least an answer that is as consistent
with God's existence as
it is in opposition to God's existence. And so, in the problem of
human
suffering and the problem of death and tragedies--things that happen to
all of us--there are answers. [more]
The
Whiner's Guide to Chemotherapy
This is the epilogue for those of you who flip to the
end of the book. I did make it! I'm 62!!! The
exclamation points are
because I didn't think I would see 50. God is so awesome!
God would be
awesome even if I had not seen 50, but it is amazing how He has made my
cancers turn out for good--both mine and His. It feels great to
feel
great! Thank You, God! [more]
The
Real Jesus of History
Was the real Jesus of history one and the same
as the Christ of faith whom we read about in the New Testament and
worship in the church? Was Jesus really raised from the
dead? Is he
really the divine Lord of lords? Or is it possible that the
portrait of
the divine Son of God is an exaggeration, at best, or a complete
fabrication, at worst, of the original Jesus? Could the one whom
Christians worship be merely a mythological creation or is he
real?
These questions have exercised many great minds and have been the
dominant issue in New Testament studies during this century.
Between
1910 and 1950 approximately 350 lives of Jesus were published in the
English language alone. Since then the numbers have increased
significantly.Not only are Christians writing about Jesus, but also
Communists, Jews, atheists and agnostics are taking up their pens to
paint a portrait of Jesus. [more]
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Charts
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Childrens materials
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Correspondence Course |
The objective of this course is to (1) provide a
foundation that will meet naturalistic and atheistic teachings; (2)
provide up-to-date, logical, and factual data so that students can
answer questions that tend to disturb them in trying to deal with their
friends and the world in which they live; and (3) provide teachers with
a wide-range, accurate, open-ended method of teaching this area of
great concern.
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| Bimonthly Journal |
May/June 2008
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Articles
in this issue:
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