Biblical Creation vs. Evolution

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Man of Science, Man of God: Johann Kepler

Who: Johann (or Johannes) Kepler
What: Father of Physical Astronomy
When: December 27, 1571 - November 15, 1630
Where: Born in Weil der Stadt, Württemburg, Holy Roman Empire, of German nationality

Johann Kepler developed a love for astronomy at an early age. He observed the Great Comet of 1577 when he was six and the 1580 Lunar Eclipse, events that no doubt fueled his curiosity and enthusiasm for science. Although he originally wanted to be a minister and studied theology at the University of Tübingen, Kepler accepted a position in 1594 as a mathematics and astronomy teacher at a Protestant school in Graz, Austria. He later became an assistant to Tycho Brahe, the court mathematician to Emperor Rudolf II. Upon Tycho's death, Kepler inherited his position, as well as his extensive archive of planetary observations.

Kepler is best known for discovering the three mathematical laws of planetary motion ("Kepler's Laws") that established the discipline of celestial mechanics. He also discovered the elliptical patterns in which the planets travel around the sun. At a time when the sun and other celestial bodies were still widely believed to circle the earth (geocentrism), Kepler defended Nicolaus Copernicus' theory that planets orbit the sun (heliocentrism) and sought to reconcile it with Scripture.1 He revolutionized scientific thought by applying physics (then considered a branch of natural philosophy) to astronomy (seen as a branch of mathematics).

An "unorthodox" Lutheran, Kepler had a deep love for Christ and the inspiration and authority of Scripture. He is frequently quoted as saying, "O God, I am thinking Thy thoughts after Thee." Strong theological convictions prompted him to find a connection between the physical and the spiritual, and his scientific discoveries led him to believe he had uncovered God's geometrical plan for the universe. In Kepler's view, the universe itself was an image of God, with the sun corresponding to the Father, the stellar sphere to the Son, and the intervening space to the Holy Spirit.

Life, however, held many trials for Kepler. His Protestant beliefs won him little favor with the Catholic church, and the Lutheran church shunned him for his sympathies with Calvinist beliefs. He was forced to relocate more than once to avoid persecution, as well as to escape political dangers from ongoing wars. He suffered the deaths of his first wife and several young children. In addition, fellow scientists did not immediately accept his scientific discoveries. Galileo Galilei and the French mathematician and scientist René Descartes ignored his 1609 work Astronomia nova (A New Astronomy). Even his mentor Michael Maestlin objected to his introduction of physics into astronomy.

Yet Kepler stayed true to his faith, as evident in his written works, and his scientific discoveries would eventually win him acclaim, legitimize the discoveries of his contemporary Galileo, and serve as a major influence on the scientists who came after him. His famous work Harmonies of the World (in Latin, Harmonices Mundi) begins:

    I commence a sacred discourse, a most true hymn to God the Founder, and I judge it to be piety, not to sacrifice many hecatombs of bulls to Him and to burn incense of innumerable perfumes and cassia, but first to learn myself, and afterwards to teach others too, how great He is in wisdom, how great in power, and of what sort in goodness.2

At the end, Kepler concludes:

    Purposely I break off the dream and the very vast speculation, merely crying out with the royal Psalmist: Great is our Lord and great His virtue and of His wisdom there is no number: praise Him, ye heavens, praise Him, ye sun, moon, and planets, use every sense for perceiving, every tongue for declaring your Creator…to Him be praise, honour, and glory, world without end. Amen.3

References

   1. An extensive chapter in Kepler's Mysterium Cosmographicum (The Cosmographic Mystery, the first published defense of the Copernican system) is devoted to reconciling heliocentrism with biblical passages that seem to support geocentrism.
   2. Kepler, J. 1619. "Proem." Harmonies of the World.
   3. "Epilogue Concerning the Sun, By Way of Conjecture," ibid.

[Soldier4Christ]

The Secrets of Evolution

Life's amazing complexity cannot be denied. We see all around us a seeming universality of perfection. The inner complexity of living creatures is matched by symbiotic relationships between life forms, a mutual dependency that defies a sequential appearance of the entities involved. Nature has balance, from the intricate food chain to a recycling of resources. The plant and animal kingdoms give every appearance of having been created, on purpose, by a very wise Creator.

Evolutionists see the same universality of perfection, yet they deny any creative agent. The irreducible complexity of life that seems obvious to anyone who believes in the existence of a supernatural Creator, is ascribed by evolutionary scientists to unthinking natural causes.

How can they do this? Is it logical? Is it credible? What is the thought system that permits such a conclusion? It behooves us from time to time to remind ourselves of the parameters of evolutionary thinking.

Naturalistic Explanations

First and foremost is a faith commitment to naturalism, an interpretive system in which natural causes are the only ones allowed. Some adherents have even gone so far as to redefine "science" as "naturalism." Instead of science being the search for truth, it becomes the search for a believable naturalistic explanation for every scientific observation.

Other naturalists would insist that even if creation and intelligent design are true, they cannot form the basis for a valid scientific approach. Not all evolutionists are atheists, but evolution is atheistic at its core. So the first secret of evolution is that all explanations must be naturalistic. If there is a God, He must be arbitrarily kept out of science and scientific interpretations. Even if naturalistic explanations strain credulity, they are accepted and supernatural causes are categorically shunned.

Time

Next is a reliance on deep time--time enough for virtually anything to happen. Evolution depends on beneficial mutations as a mechanism for change, genetic modifications that confer some selective advantage to the mutated being. These are unspeakably rare--indeed, none have ever been documented that have actually added information to the genome. Some mutations may have produced a temporary advantage that could be selected by natural selection, but such changes actually involved the loss of a trait, a reduction in the genome's complexity.

Evolution would require trillions of beneficial steps to turn a single-celled organism into a man. We have never observed such positive genetic steps, but in millions and millions of years it is supposed that they would happen sometimes. So time seemingly solves the problem.

Death

Then there is the evolutionary necessity of struggle and death. Survival of the fittest actually means extinction of the unfit. The vast majority of individuals, as well as types of individuals, must be sacrificed for the select favored few to survive. For instance, the dinosaurs' extinction allowed mammals to flourish, supposedly leading to the emergence of man. If there is no death, there is no evolutionary progress.

Naturalism, time, and death--how strong a scientific foundation are they? Obviously, we have no way of knowing absolutely that no supernatural agent has ever acted. We live in a world in which we observe only natural processes, but how could we know what happened in the long ago past? Likewise, we have no assurance of immense spans of time in which these natural processes operated. We are locked into the present, and the inaccessible past lies beyond our reach. And death--is it a creative power? Does death by natural selection produce higher forms of life? Quite the reverse: death is an ending, not a beginning.

Evolutionary thinking relies on these questionable concepts to present itself as scientifically plausible. But as we have seen, these secrets are neither necessary nor logical. Rather, they are a choice, a position willingly taken in spite of overwhelming evidence to the contrary. Evolutionary theory has become an entire worldview, a way of interpreting the evidence--but it is a worldview with a very shaky foundation.

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Red Butte: Remnant of the Flood

Sixteen miles from Grand Canyon's south rim, a cone-shaped butte rises like a lone sentinel 1,000 feet above the Coconino Plateau floor. Thousands of tourists rush past on Arizona Highway 64 without giving it another thought, yet this humble little hill testifies to a remarkable past.

Red Butte is composed of flat-lying shales of the Moenkopi Formation, overlain by Shinarump Conglomerate of the Chinle Formation. Continuous exposures of these two formations are not found for tens of miles around, yet they occur here. These strata sit on a foundation of flat-lying and resistant Kaibab Limestone, the rim rock for most of Grand Canyon and surface of the Coconino Plateau. A basalt (lava) flow tops the butte, protecting the softer layers below from erosion. Lava ordinarily flows downhill, so how did it get on top? Answer: it flowed onto a surface that was once 1,000 feet higher than the present Coconino Plateau! Strata of the Moenkopi, Chinle, and perhaps other formations were stripped away by erosion. Red Butte stands as the most prominent vestige of this once continuous layer.

The butte's shale slopes tell another story. These shales belong to the Moenkopi Formation, a stratum that can be traced across parts of Wyoming, Utah, Colorado, and New Mexico. Lateral equivalents of the Moenkopi may extend to Connecticut, England, Germany, Spain, and Bulgaria.1 Fossil plants, crinoids, brachiopods, gastropods, bivalves, ammonoids, nautiloids, arthropods, fish, reptiles, and labyrinthodont amphibians have been recovered from Moenkopi strata in the Grand Canyon region.2 To explain this odd assortment of terrestrial and marine taxa, and the persistence of the strata, geologists envision for western North America "a broad, continental plain that was periodically flooded by an ocean."3

A global Flood may provide the framework for a more credible depositional model. During the Flood, sediment-choked waters deposited 1,200 meters of flat-lying "Grand Canyon strata" and around 4,000 meters of Mesozoic strata (seen today atop Utah's Grand Staircase to the north, and Arizona's Black Mesa to the east). The unique vertical movements in the earth's crust during the Flood's retreat4 uplifted the region, and an enormous quantity of soft sediment was removed from its top--a volume far greater than that excavated from Grand Canyon proper.5 Red Butte is a tiny remnant from this vast erosion. When the strata gained sufficient internal strength to stand as near-vertical walls, Grand Canyon itself was incised into the plateau.

Deposition and erosion on such scales boggle the mind, yet they unquestionably took place. This humble little butte challenges geologists to think big. Perhaps this is why the Grand Canyon region fits so well with a global Flood model of earth history.6

References

   1. Ager, D. 1993. The Nature of the Stratigraphical Record, Third Edition. New York: John Wiley & Sons.
   2. Doelling, H. et al. 2000. Geology of Grand Staircase-Escalante National Monument, Utah. In Sprinkel, D.A. et al (eds.), Geology of Utah's Parks and Monuments, Utah Geological Association Publication 28. Salt Lake City: Utah Geological Association, 189-231.
   3. Anderson, P.B. et al. 2000. Geology of Glen Canyon National Recreation Area, Utah-Arizona. Ibid, 301-335.
   4. "At thy rebuke [the waters] fled….They go up by the mountains; they go down by the valleys unto the place which thou hast founded for them" (Psalm 104:7-8). The Hebrew text suggests vertical movements in the earth's crust whereby the mountains went up and the valleys went down, allowing the Flood waters to retreat.
   5. Mesozoic strata are conspicuously or nearly absent for an estimated 9,000 square kilometers around Grand Canyon, though they are present to thicknesses in excess of 4 kilometers in the adjacent Grand Staircase and Black Mesa regions. Erosion is estimated to have removed 36,000 cubic kilometers, dwarfing the approximately 4,000 cubic kilometers excavated from Grand Canyon (see Steven A. Austin's book Grand Canyon: Monument to Catastrophe, available at www.icr.org/store).
   6. A tour of the Grand Canyon region will be conducted by ICR scientists April 11 to 20, 2008.

[Soldier4Christ]

The Face on Mars: A Teachable Moment

In 1976, Viking snapped a photo from Martian orbit that looked like a human face staring up from the plains of Cydonia. It launched a worldwide enterprise of imagination. For countless hours on late-night radio, enthusiasts offered speculations about long-lost civilizations that left monuments to their presence, along with conspiracy theories that NASA was covering up evidence. More recent orbiters with better camera resolution began to show the feature's true "face"--a windswept mesa. Photos from Mars Express in 2006 and Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter in 2007 have quieted all but the most incorrigible believers.

Our brains tend to find faces on mountains and messages in noise. Sometimes, though, genuine designs are hard to discern. How can we reliably detect intentional design versus the results of chance or natural law? It is tempting to ridicule the gullibility of believers in the Face on Mars, but we can make it a teachable moment. Turn the question around. Say that one day aliens land on Mars and find one of our rovers. Even if it were rusted and inactive by then, would they know it was a relic of civilization, rather than a product of the natural forces--wind, erosion, chemistry, electromagnetism-- acting in the planet's environment?

As explained in the excellent film Unlocking the Mystery of Life,1 design can be inferred when a structure 1) is improbable and 2) matches an independently specifiable pattern. Design as an explanation is a last resort after chance and natural law have been ruled out.2 Using these principles, the Face on Mars is explainable by chance and geological processes. The faces on Mt. Rushmore, by contrast, are both improbable and specified by the well-documented faces of four American presidents. It is ironic that the SETI (Search for Extra-Terrestrial Intelligence) program, staffed as it is by staunch evolutionists, depends on this ability to separate intelligent design from chance and natural law.

The Face on Mars can be a useful introduction for teachers and parents who want to present a lesson on design detection. Compare objects that look similar and ask whether they are products of intelligent design, chance/natural law, or both. Some examples would be cannonballs and concretions; burrow tracks and hieroglyphics; an archery target and a radiohalo; cave paintings and cave formations; a river and an aqueduct; columnar basalt and steel girders; sand ripples and sand castles; lenticular clouds and skywriting; a trail cairn and a random rock pile. Show these on a screen and have volunteers decide if they are "designed" or "not designed." Ask them how they know. Throw in some difficult ones, like a solar eclipse, or abstract art, or a bush trimmed like a rabbit next to a real rabbit. These discussions will lead to deeper questions about information, communication, and primary versus secondary design.

As Christians, we need to understand that not everything in nature is a product of God's direct intervention. In His rule over nature, God sometimes speaks in the thunder (primary causation, special revelation).3 More often, He lets the thunder obey the natural laws He has ordained (secondary causation, natural revelation).4 Since much of our creation apologetic depends on an argument from design, it is important that we understand and apply it properly. Some well-meaning Christians infer design when it is not warranted. When highly-improbable patterns fit an independent specification, though, the design inference can be compelling. The Face-on-Mars people deserve to blush for their credulity. The right kind of design reasoning can save face.

References

   1. Available at www.icr.org/store.
   2. Natural law is also designed by God, of course, but is usually considered secondary causation--i.e., not requiring direct intervention.
   3. John 12:28-30; Revelation 10:3-4.
   4. Psalm 29; Psalm 19:1-4.

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FOSSIL GLOBAL WARMING EVIDENCE shows in preserved leaf damage, says PhD student Ellen Currano, (Pennsylvania State University,
Smithsonian Institution 7/March 2008) who is studying leaf fossils in the Bighorn Basin Wyoming, which she dates at 52 to 60 million
years old. During this time, she says, several significant temperature fluctuations occurred. One event particularly relevant to
modern global warming is the Paleocene-Eocene Thermal Maximum (PETM), a rapid warming of 5-10 degrees Celsius caused by the release
of at least 4,000 gigatons of carbon into the earth’s atmosphere over less than 10,000 years.



ED.COM. If we take this report seriously - how many cars, cows and human industries are evolutionists prepared to say were
responsible for this 4000 gigatons of CO2 around 50 million years ago? Since the answer is none - then vast amounts of CO2 can arise
naturally both then and now? So why blame cars and cows and people when even secular Geology Prof Ian Plimer argues that less than
0.1 per cent of the atmospheric carbon dioxide is due to human activity and much of the rest due to little-understood geological
phenomena.”

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CHURCH MAGAZINE JOINS WITH HUMANISTS FOR DARWIN EXHIBITION

The Royal Ontario Museum (ROM) is currently presenting a biographical exhibition on the life and work of Charles Darwin developed by a group of USA and Canadian Museums for the upcoming Darwin Bicentennial. However, the ROM was unable to attract corporate sponsorship, so the exhibition is jointly sponsored by the magazine “United Church Observer” and the Humanist Association of Canada. The museum approached over 40 of its usual corporate sponsors but they refused on the basis that Darwin was too controversial. In the end the humanists provided 50,000 dollars and the church magazine 40,000 dollars. David Wilson, the editor and publisher of the United Church Observer claimed “We've never seen a need that was so clear.” His magazine has published many articles on creation and evolution and claims that Christians have nothing to fear from evolution. He told the Toronto Star, “There is an inherent beauty in the theory of natural selection that illuminates the inherent beauty and wonder of creation.” Pat O’Brien, President of the Humanist Association said he was pleased to share sponsorship with the church magazine, and said, “They've really shown some leadership in the religious community. There are a lot of religious people who are happy with evolution.” Chris Darling, senior curator of natural history at the ROM said that Darwin’s ideas are relevant to today because “We see things like disease, things like SARS, epidemics. These are really good documentations of evolution in action. There's a big concern now about the overuse of antibiotics. Well, why is that a problem? Why shouldn't we be hitting every little infection with ... the strongest antibiotics we have? Well, what will happen is we'll select for the ones that are resistant to that drug and then those will be the ones that propagate and those will be the ones we'll be dealing with next time.”



ED. COM. We wonder how much the United Church Observer editor actually knows about Darwin, evolution or the Bible. There is nothing inherently beautiful about natural selection and the struggle to survive. Darwin summed it up at the end of his book as the “war of nature” and he eventually turned away from the Christian faith because he could not reconcile a good God with such a bad process.
The museum curator’s comments about needing evolution to explain antibiotic resistance in bacteria are a perpetuation of a lie that started with Darwin. Darwin convinced people that natural selection is the same as the origin of new species, and because natural (and unnatural) selection can be observed, the origin of species by purely naturalistic processes must be true. As Chris Darling correctly describes, antibiotics “select for the ones that are resistant to the drug.” However, this does not make them into new species, it merely eliminates those members of the same species that are sensitive to the antibiotics, leaving the resistant ones to survive. There is no evolution from or into different species, and Darwin’s theory is not needed to understand it or deal with the problem.

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FOSSIL MINI-TANK FOUND, according to ABC News in Science, 13 Dec 2007. Fossil hunters in the Andes mountains have discovered the remains of a 76 cm long “tank-like mammal” covered in a shell of immovable armour plates, similar to the armour of an Ankylosaurus dinosaur, but unlike the hinged rows of plates sported by living armadillos. John Flynn of the American Museum of Natural History
commented: “It looks different than anything out on the landscape today. There really isn’t anything that’s comparable in terms of body form. Scientists estimate the creature weighed about 90kg. The fossil was found along with fossils of other extinct mammals including hoofed mammal, rodents and opossums. Researchers suggest that the environment was very different from the present day
“thin air, scarce water and bitter cold” at the fossil site now. Instead it was a savannah with trees and grass for grazing animals. The fossil is believed to be 18 million years old, which makes it one of the oldest members of the mammal family named glyptodonts and according the ABC article “the discovery prompted scientists to craft a new evolutionary tree for the glyptodonts and their closest kin.”


ED. COM. The fact that scientists had to “craft a new evolutionary tree” reminds us the such family trees only exist in the minds of human scientists who are trying to classify living things according to an already believed theory. They are not the result of anyone having seen any creatures evolve. This fossil and the other extinct animals it was found with provide more support for the Genesis Record where harsh environments with “thin air, scarce water and bitter cold” came about, only after Noah’s flood, after God warned Noah that in future Earth would experience times of heat and cold until the world ended. This glyptodont has obviously and sadly died out, but extinction is no help to the theory of evolution, because it does not explain where new animals came from.

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FOSSIL POLLEN LINKS FLOWERS AND INSECTS, according to an article in ScienceDaily and PNAS 22 Jan 2008. Scientists at University of Florida have found nine species of fossil pollen believed to be 96 million years old. The pollen is in clumps indicating that the plants that produced it were pollinated by insects rather than by wind. Flowers that are specialised for insect pollination form their pollen grains into clumps, whereas wind pollinated plants produce pollen as small individual grains. According to ScienceDaily the study “provides strong evidence for the widely accepted hypothesis that insects drove the massive adaptive radiation of early flowering plants when they rapidly diversified and expanded to exploit new terrestrial niches.” David Dilcher of Florida Museum of
Natural History commented: “Our study of clumping pollen shows that insect pollinators most likely have always played a large role in the evolution of flowering plants. “It was true 96 million years ago and we are seeing it today with the potential threat to our agricultural crops because of the collapse of the honeybee colonies. The insect pollinators provide for more efficient and effective pollination of flowering plants.”


ED. COM. The availability of pollen carrying insects will help plants to survive, provided they already produce clumped pollen, but it does not explain how plants came to produce clumped pollen in the first place. The belief that “insects drove the massive adaptive radiation of early flowering plants” may be “widely accepted” but it is a belief by faith alone. Evolutionary scientists have yet to explain how the behaviour of insects can make changes to the genes in plants that control the formation of pollen. The
interdependence of different living organisms, such and plants and insects, is much better explained by a creator making both to work together in a fully functioning ecosystem.

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BIGGEST FOSSIL RAT FOUND, according to a report in ABC News in Science, and Proceedings of the Royal Society B, 17 Jan 2008.
South American fossil researchers have found the largest fossil rodent in the San Jose Formation on the coast of Uruguay, dated as 2-4 million years old. The fossil is a giant rat whose skull is 53cm long and may have weighed in at over a tonne. The largest living rodent is the capybara, which can weigh up to 60 kg. The new fossil has been named “Josephoartigasia monesi”. It had enormous incisor teeth, but its grinding teeth and the bones that form the attachment sites for chewing muscles are small. The researchers suggest it lived in a “estuarine or deltaic system with forest communities” and ate soft vegetation, fruit and aquatic pants.

ED. COM. A large animal that lived in places of rivers and forests and where it ate vast amounts of soft vegetation and fruit would have thrived in a well watered world where all animals ate plants, such as the one described as created by God in Genesis, but this lush, fruitful environment no longer exists. Particularly after the ecological disasters that commenced following Noah's Flood, when food became scarcer and tougher, so that eventually some creatures became first scavengers and then carnivores. As a result most animals could not grow as large as they had before, and many died out. This decrease in size and loss of variety is the opposite of evolution, but is fully consistent with the Biblical history of creation Fall Flood etc.

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OLDEST HORSESHOE CRAB FOUND, as reported in LiveScience and Palaeontology, 51(1), 1-9, Jan 2008. Canadian Palaeontologists have found two small horseshoe crab fossils in Ordovician rocks in Manitoba, Canada, dated as 445 million years old. This makes the new fossils nearly 100 million years older than previous oldest known specimens. The new fossils have been named “Lunataspis aurora” and are about 4cm (1.5 in) long. This is much smaller than modern day horseshoe crabs, but the fossils may be young animals that had not reached adult size. Otherwise, they have the same body structure as living horseshoe crabs. David Rudkin of the Royal Ontario Museum, Manitoba, commented to LiveScience: “We wouldn't necessarily have expected horseshoe crabs to look very much like the modern ones, but that's exactly what they look like. This body plan that they've invented, they've stayed with it for almost a half a billion years. It's a good plan. They've survived almost unchanged up until the present day, whereas lots of other animals haven't.”


ED. COM. If this animal has really “survived almost unchanged” for 445 million years, after appearing suddenly and fully formed in the fossil record, then it is living (and dead) proof that no matter how much time you have, horseshoe crabs don’t evolve. Horseshoe crabs are classic examples of living fossils – a description used by Charles Darwin for animals and plants whose fossils are the
same as living specimens. However, living fossils are no help to the theory of evolution. Instead, they are exactly what you would expect to find on the basis of Genesis 1 Creation, which tells us that plants and animals were created as separate kinds to multiply after their kind.

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PLACODERM EYES ARE EVOLUTIONARY INTERMEDIATES claims an ANU press release, 12 Dec 2008, and an article in ScienceDaily, 2 Jan 2008. Gavin Young of the Australian National University has studied the eye structure of a fossil placdoerm, an extinct fish that had bony plates embedded in its skin. The fossil was found in limestone around Lake Burrinjuck in New South Wales dated as being 400
million years old. The soft tissue of the fish’s eye is not preserved but placoderm eye sockets are lined with a layer of thin bone which shows where the nerve canals and muscle attachments were. Young described his findings as follows: “Part of the trouble in tracing the evolution of the eye is that soft tissues don’t tend to fossilise. But the eye cavities in the braincase of these 400 million-year-old fossil fish were lined with a delicate layer of very thin bone. All the details of the nerve canals and muscle
insertions inside the eye socket are preserved – the first definite fossil evidence demonstrating an intermediate stage in the evolution of our most complex sensory organ. These extinct placoderms had the eyeball still connected to the braincase by cartilage, as in modern sharks, and a primitive eye muscle arrangement as in living jawless fish.” He went on to say: “What this research shows
is that 400 million years ago there was already a complex eye, and one that was an intermediate form between jawless and jawed vertebrates.” This means that we’re able to add one more piece to the puzzle of how the human eye came to be.”



ED. COM. If “400 million years ago there was already a complex eye”, then this fossil does not explain how complex eyes came into existence. The evidence actually shows that extinct placoderms had a combination of two functional features that are not seen together in living fish. This does not make it evidence of one changing into the other. That could only be proven by observing such a change, which is impossible because placoderms are extinct.

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Congressional candidate equates Darwinism with racism

Creationist congressional candidate Paul Abramson believes a recent DNA study that claims to support the African origin of mankind has racist roots.

According to Associated Press, the study allegedly bolsters scientists' beliefs that modern humans evolved in Africa and then spread from there to populate the rest of the world. Scientists assessed the genetic makeup of 938 individuals from 51 populations for the study. However, Abramson -- who hopes to represent his Indiana district come next year -- disagrees with their findings. He says evolutionists have a history of looking down on African cultures as lesser-evolved races.

"Darwinism has been used in racist ways ... historically speaking, to try to confer that black people are less evolved than white people. That's been a strain within it since 1859," Abramson contends.

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Dino Age Is Only Skin Deep

The Associated Press reports this week on what they consider “something amazing”: a nearly complete mummified1 dinosaur, currently undergoing extraction from its rock “tomb” in North Dakota.

The fossilized Edmontosaurus dinosaur, which has been dubbed Dakota, was originally discovered in 1999 by a Yale University paleontology student in his uncle’s Badlands ranch. The actual unearthing of the fossil didn’t begin until 2004, and a team in the basement of North Dakota Heritage Center is now chiseling away at the rock that still surrounds Dakota.

What makes this story of a dinosaur fossil different than most, though, is the incredible preservation of Dakota. The AP reports that the duckbilled dinosaur fossil includes fossilized skin that is “as hard as iron.” It thus joins only four other such mummified dinosaurs “of any significance” in the world, according to project consultant Stephen Begin.

Begin added, “It may turn out to be one of the best mummies, because of the quality of the skin that we’re finding and the extent of the skin that’s on the specimen.” He explained that most dinosaur mummies lack sufficient skin to be useful for research or education.

The team used a CT scanner to examine the dinosaur, which is still partially hidden in nearly five tons of sandstone. Though the creature’s skeleton is somewhat curled up, its original length would be around 30 ft (9m).

Toeing the line of evolutionary timetables, Dakota was assumed to have fossilized some 65 million years ago. The researchers, according to the Associated Press, “say Dakota must have been buried rapidly and in just the right environment for the texture of the skin to be preserved,” since animal tissue otherwise decomposes shortly after death (the tissue that isn’t consumed by scavengers, that is). Manchester University paleontologist Phillip Manning, a team member, explained what happened concisely: “The process of decay was overtaken by that of fossilization, preserving many of the soft-tissue structures.” He continued:

    “This is the closest many people will ever get to seeing what large parts of a dinosaur actually looked like, in the flesh. . . . This is not the usual disjointed sentence or fragment of a word that the fossil records offer up as evidence of past life. This is a full chapter.”

It will take a year or more, according to North Dakota Geological Survey paleontologist John Hoganson, to fully extract the carcass, after which it will be displayed in the Heritage Center and may eventually go on tour. Nevertheless, the fossil has already inspired two books (one for children) and National Geographic television programs.
What about the date?

So why the date of 65 (or 67) million years?2 Hoganson explained, “[The Badlands are] one of the few places in the world where you can actually see the boundary line where the dinosaurs became extinct, the time boundary. In the Badlands, this layer is exposed in certain places.” Hoganson is referring to the K–T extinction boundary, which allegedly divides the Cretaceous Period from the Tertiary Period in the fossil record and marks the extinction of the dinosaurs. Thus, the team must date the find as at least 65 million years old—despite any evidence otherwise—just so it lines up with evolutionary theory and the uniformitarian understanding of the fossil record.

That said, we find a few flaws in assigning this date to Dakota—and it’s important to remember that that’s what scientists do: assign dates based on circumstantial evidence. Fossils don’t come stamped with exact dates!3

The scientists explain how Dakota must have been “buried rapidly.” That is exactly the explanation creation scientists give, but we have a clear, global explanation for the millions of fossils we have, which are time and time again shown to have been buried rapidly and catastrophically: the Flood of Noah’s day, which unleashed catastrophes worldwide and covered the world in water for a year. Starting from this viewpoint, we can make sense of these many fossils buried rapidly and recently—just a few thousand years ago.

Ultimately, this news shows us once again that science is beholden to one’s worldview. In this case, as in many, the old ages required by the fossil record—which are in turn required by the time line evolutionary theory needs—dictate the dating of the fossil. Starting from Scripture, we have the answers that explain why we find millions of fossils laid down catastrophically in rock layers all over the earth: the global Flood that the Bible describes.
Footnotes

   1. While it is referred to as a mummy, the dinosaur has been fossilized into stone. Back
   2. The AP release mentions both ages. Back
   3. Of course, many evolutionists, even laymen who are not familiar with the science behind it, claim radioisotope dating of rocks and bones is akin to a “date stamped” in every fossil; however, radioisotope dating frequently results in wildly incorrect, incoherent, or contradictory dates, and the technique itself involves many assumptions about continuity of radioisotope decay rates, the amount present in rocks and fossils originally, and so forth. Back

[nChrist]

The Bible and Modern Astronomy, Part 1
by Dr. Jason Lisle

March 27, 2008

Aside from the issue of the age of the universe, there are several other matters where the majority of astronomers today disagree with a straightforward reading of the Bible. In this chapter, we will investigate these differences, and we will see that the evidence very much supports the Genesis record of creation. We will explore the concept of naturalism and examine the philosophic and scientific problems with it. We will examine the question of the uniqueness of the earth and the concept of extraterrestrial “alien” life.

Naturalism Versus Supernaturalism

Perhaps the most obvious difference between the biblical view and the secular view lies in the first verse of the Bible, “In the beginning God created. . . .” This stands in stark contrast to the secular teaching of a universe which spontaneously formed in a big bang. The big bang, and secular ideas about the formation of galaxies, the solar system, etc., are naturalistic explanations of origins. They are atheistic in nature. This is not to say that everyone who holds these views is necessarily an atheist, but these naturalistic formation scenarios attempt to explain the creation of the universe and things within it (galaxies, stars, planets, etc.) without God. None of the astronomy textbooks I have used in my undergraduate education or doctoral program give credit to God for the creation of the universe or anything within it. All events are described in terms of what can be explained within the laws of nature — nothing beyond nature is allowed. This is naturalism.

The Bible is super-naturalistic. The Bible makes it clear that God (either directly or indirectly) made everything that was made (John 1:3). God is “outside” of the physical universe; He is not bound by it. The Christian worldview is therefore supernatural in nature. The Christian claims that the processes which created the universe are not the processes that exist within it.

The Philosophy of Naturalism

Naturalism is extremely popular in scientific circles today. In fact, many scientists even equate science with naturalism. After all, science depends on the fact that there are laws of nature which the universe consistently obeys. Take gravity, for example. If I drop a pen, I know it will fall down at a given acceleration because of the well-known law of gravity. A naturalist might argue that if there is a God who constantly intervenes (by, for example, making my pen float, or fall up, etc.), then how would we ever learn about gravity? Experimentation would be pointless since we might get a different result every time. We would never know if we were learning something about the universe, or witnessing a miracle. Therefore, the naturalist concludes, science requires naturalism.

This kind of argument might be a reasonable objection to a haphazard god who is inconsistent and whimsical. However, this is not the biblical God. The God of Scripture does not arbitrarily suspend the laws of nature which He created. Certainly God can bend, change, suspend, or reverse the laws of nature — and has done so on special occasions for special purposes (for example, Christ’s walking on the water and the Resurrection itself ). The laws of nature were created by God and depend on God’s sustaining power for their continued existence (Hebrews 1:3). Clearly God is not “bound” by them, as we are. Many of the miracles recorded in the Bible seem to be special cases where God has worked outside the “normal” operation of the universe. However, these miracles are (by definition) exceptions and therefore rare. Primarily, the Lord accomplishes His will by upholding the laws of nature which He created, not by suspending them. Another way of putting it might be that the operation of “natural law” is God’s normative way of working.

Both the Christian and the naturalist agree that there are laws of nature which the universe “obeys” (i.e., which describe the consistent, predictable behavior of things) and that scientific experimentation can be used to probe these laws. Therefore, it is indeed possible to study and understand the universe in the Christian worldview. In fact, Christianity provides the basis for such scientific research.

The Christian expects the universe to obey laws because God created those laws — the “ordinances of heaven and earth” (Jeremiah 33:25). The creationist expects that the laws of nature that applied yesterday will apply in the future as well; this is because God is consistent (Malachi 3:6) and does not arbitrarily change His mind (Numbers 23:19). We expect the universe to be understandable, because God created it and He created us with the ability to reason (Isaiah 1:18 ) and understand. However, the naturalist cannot account for these properties of the universe. What reason does he have for expecting the universe to be consistent and predictable? Why should a naturalist be able to assume that the same laws that apply here on earth also apply on, for example, the surface of the star Alpha Centauri? Applying such assumptions has been overwhelmingly successful, but they are not assumptions that arise out of naturalism, but from the Bible.
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[nChrist]

The Bible and Modern Astronomy, Part 1
by Dr. Jason Lisle

So, the objection that science and knowledge are impossible without a belief in naturalism actually backfires on the naturalist. If the universe had not been designed by God, then why should it obey any laws of nature? Where did the laws of nature come from, and why do they obey logical mathematical relationships? If our brains are merely the result of a random sequence of accidental mutations, then why should we think that they can determine truth? A brain is merely a collection of electrochemical interactions which conveyed some sort of survival value in our past — in the secular scenario. There is no reason to think we can reason if naturalism were true, so, we see that the naturalist is unable to account for science and knowledge within his own worldview. He must borrow creationist ideas (that laws of nature exist and are understandable, etc.) in order to do science.

It is also crucial to point out that the origin of the universe is a different issue from the current operation of the universe. The naturalist blindly assumes that the universe was caused by the kinds of processes we see operating within the universe today.1 Of course, there is no logically compelling reason to believe this, and it would be absurd to assume that this necessarily applies to anything else. For example, a telescope operates by reflecting and refracting light to a focal point, but the telescope was not created by this process.

The Bible makes it abundantly clear that the universe was supernaturally created by God. Genesis 1 specifically lists a number of astronomical objects which were made by the Lord; He made the heavens,2 the earth (Genesis 1:1), the sun, the moon, and the stars also (Genesis 1:14–16). This means that galaxies were created supernaturally (since they are comprised of stars), and the other planets are as well (since planets are “stars” in the biblical nomenclature).3 These things were supernaturally created, and therefore, seeking a naturalistic explanation for them (as many secular astronomers do) is an exercise in futility. We would therefore expect some scientific problems in the naturalistic explanations for the origins of stars, the planets, and the universe, and this is exactly what we find.

A Few Scientific Difficulties for Naturalists

Since secular ideas of the origin of the universe are based on a faulty premise (naturalism), they abound with scientific problems and inconsistencies. An exhaustive discussion of the scientific problems with naturalistic ideas on the origin and evolution of the universe, stars, and planets would take volumes. Let us examine just a few of these.

Regarding the (big bang) naturalistic attempt to explain the origin of the universe, there is a serious issue called the baryon number problem — the problem of the missing antimatter (see in-depth box). Stated concisely, if the big bang were true, it should have produced antimatter (a substance like ordinary matter but with the charges of the particles reversed). In fact there should be as much antimatter in the universe as ordinary matter — yet there is virtually none. This is a fatal problem for the big bang. The almost complete absence of antimatter in the universe testifies to its supernatural origin.

Solar System Formation

Secular models of solar system formation have also come up short. The earth, moon, sun, and all the planets have supposedly formed from a collapsing nebula — a cloud of hydrogen and helium gas. The model is upheld by secular astronomers because it can account for some of the properties of the solar system. One such property is the fact that the small rocky worlds (Mercury, Venus, Earth, and Mars) orbit close to the sun, whereas the giant gas planets (Jupiter, Saturn, Uranus, and Neptune) orbit farther away (see creation in-depth box). This was therefore expected to be a general trend of solar systems. Thus, planets orbiting other stars can serve as test cases for the standard model of solar system formation.

We have now discovered over 150 planets orbiting other stars. Contrary to the expectations of the secular model of solar system formation, most of these extra-solar planets are large giant gas worlds that orbit very close to their star — in many cases closer than Mercury orbits the sun. This is a devastating blow to secular solar system formation scenarios. However, the diversity of these solar systems is consistent with the creative variety God has demonstrated throughout the cosmos.

Although virtually all secular astronomers believe that stars form spontaneously, the physics behind this alleged process is riddled with difficulties. According to the standard model of star formation, stars form from a collapsing nebula. However, when gas is compressed, it heats up.4 This higher temperature creates extra pressure which resists further compression. The collapse would have a tendency to stop before the star ever formed. Furthermore, a collapsing cloud would spin faster as it collapsed.5 This is much the same way a skater spins up as she pulls her arms in. As the cloud spins faster, it becomes increasingly difficult to pull material in further: much as weights held at arm’s length are difficult to pull closer when one is spinning. Even if the star were able to form by pulling in the material, it would be spinning extremely rapidly. A small percentage of stars do spin rapidly,6 but most do not. The sun takes about 25 days to rotate once at its equator.7
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