Biblical Creation vs. Evolution

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Page Two

Natural Selection

Macroevolution depends on the idea that the environment can cause the bodies of living things to change to any degree, given enough time. The changes take place over many generations. Natural selection is aprocess in which individual organisms (animals or plants, for instance) that have some advantage overtheir fellows will have more offspring and in time those with the advantage will be the most numerous in the population. The classic example of this for years has been the "peppered moths" in England in the yearsof the industrial revolution. These moths come in two varieties, one light and one dark in color. As thestory goes, when soot and pollution from the factories made the trees dark, the light colored moths were easily seen by birds, so the birds ate them and what was left was mostly dark moths. So, many text books have pointed this out as an example of how natural selection changes a population. Well, this was believed to be a valid example and was not questioned by creationists to my knowledge, but now evidence has come to light that shows the whole story of the peppered moths to be wrong. A now famous picture that shows a light moth and a dark moth on a tree has appeared in many biology and life science textbooks (including in creation-based Christian textbooks). Recent research from evolutionists has shown thatKettlewell, who published this study on the moths years ago, actually faked this picture. These moths actually do not rest on trees and the moths in the famous picture were dead moths glued to the tree! So,this makes the peppered moth story no longer a valid example though it sounds quite plausible. Even if itwere a valid example of natural selection, it would only represent microevolution (or minor changes), not macroevolution.

On the other hand, there are valid examples of natural selection. There is a degree of competition between animals for food, water, for mates, territory, etc. There are winners and losers in the animal world. Natural selection is really just a SELECTION mechanism. It does not create anything new, but only determines who wins in the sense of which animals survive best and have more offspring. Creationists acknowledge that natural selection occurs. This allows living things to adapt to some degree and survive when their environment changes. Natural selection is supposed to work with mutations to make the changes of macroevolution possible. According to evolutionary theory, new traits develop as the climate or food supply changes, or as predators change, or as organisms move into a new habitat. For instance, changes in climate or vegetation could force some animals to move to another area for foodor shelter. Over a period of time, having to live in a different area could cause a group of animals to change in their color, the shape of their teeth, or their fur for instance.

According to evolutionary theory, beneficial mutations are believed to somehow add up in the genetic code until they make some significant improvement possible in the body of an animal. This improvement will give them some new ability. This new ability would give that particular animal an advantage over its peers,but the new ability would never spread to most of the others (of all groups of that type of animal) without natural selection.  By natural selection the animal with this new ability might live longer and have more young. Then its offspring would also have the ability and they would also have more young than others that did not have this new ability. In time, the individuals with the "new ability" would become the norm, and the "new ability"would no longer be new. The individuals who did not have the ability would become fewer and fewer. Evolutionists believe that this process works best in small populations, because a new trait can become the dominant thing in the group easier. But, research has shown that small populations, rather than leading the way in evolution, are more likely to go extinct than larger groups. Charles Darwin's book "The Origin ofSpecies," published in 1859, contains much about natural selection. So, natural selection is a theory about what happens to groups of living things when they are in competition.

We can see natural selection among living things, but living things do not always compete. Living things also cooperate to a surprising degree. They may live and let live if they can. Often they compete only at the points where they have to. The idea that the strong survive but the weak die, based on natural selection, is an oversimplification. There are many examples in nature where instead of the weak dying they end up in some symbiotic relationship with another creature. It's like they "make a deal" with some other living thing that benefits both. A classic example is the cleaner fish. Sharks allow the small cleanerfish to clean their teeth without eating them. Rather than the weak dying, the weak may simply move somewhere else. Being stronger or faster etc. also is not always an advantage all the time. Sometimes real life is more "survival of the luckiest" than survival of the fittest.

Creationists acknowledge that natural selection is a real process in the living world, but natural selection cannot explain how macroevolution could happen. Why? First, because there are many mechanisms in the cells of every living thing that limit how much change is possible; they prevent genetic changes because they are harmful. Second, because the pressures on living things are not so predictable as the idea of "survival of the fittest" and so even if a particular beneficial mutation produced some dramatic new ability, there are enormous odds against it lasting in the population. Natural selection may determine what size or variety of dogs can survive in a particular area, but it cannot provide the information required for the complex changes it would take for a dog to evolve into some other kind of animal.

Note that in a Biblical view, the animal world was somehow affected by mankind's fall into sin in the beginning. This is important for answering many questions about living things. Exactly how life was affected by mankind's Fall into sin is not clear. But, the violence and cruelty of nature is not the way life and ecology operated in the beginning. Living things did not need to eat each other in the beginning. We know this from Genesis telling us that God provided plants for food at Creation.
Two major things have had adverse effects on living things and on ecological relationships between living things. The first was mankind's sin against God, causing a sinful nature to be inherited by all humans from then on. God judged this sin partly by adverse effects on nature and living things (see Genesis chapter 3). The second thing that negatively affected the living world was the worldwide Flood of Noah's time. It is not surprising that there are organs in living things that do not function perfectly today, for example. There have been thousands of years of harmful mutations and adverse effects of living in a fallen broken world. The Earth is not a perfect habitat for living things as it once was. Many processes have caused imperfections in our bodies that are carried on from one generation to the next. Yet, in spite of this, God's marvelous design is still very evident in living things.

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Part 3

Previous parts of this series explained microevolution and macroevolution and addressed what are considered to be the mechanisms for macroevolution, mutations and natural selection.  This article will address the evolutionary argument from similarity.  This general subject is known as homology.  It is the idea that all living things, from people to potatoes, have all descended from a common living ancestor that lived in the distant past.  The evolutionary argument has it that the similarities found in different living organisms are there because of a common ancestor that had those traits.

By this logic, a squid and a human, for example, both have very similar eyes because there was some ancient ancestor in the lineage of both squid and humans that evolved an eye like what we have today.  Squid and human eyes would actually be an example difficult for evolutionists to explain. This is because if you go back in time far enough to find a common ancester of man and squid, the ancestor would probably be a primative fish that could not have such eyes.  A more common example would be in the skeletons of vertibrates.  You can compare the number of bones and arrangement of arms or limbs for humans, land mammals, bats, and even fish and the similarities of the skeletons is striking.  Thus the structure of a fishes fin may be similar to the wing of a bat, though the size and proportions of the bones are very different.  There are obvious similarities of the skeletons even though these organisms are very different.

Evolutionists define homologous body parts, like the fish’s fin and the bat’s wing as structures that are similar and that can be shown to have a common ancestor.  This definition is a problem.  The similarity of the body structures is a fact anyone can see.  The common ancestry is unverifiable by experiment or even by fossil evidence.  Since evolutionists know that it is not possible for squid and humans to have a common ancestor with an eye like they have today, squid and human eyes are not considered to be homologous.  Instead, they would be called an example of “convergence.”  The idea of convergence is that the same thing evolved more than once independently.  In other words, by macroevolution, it would take millions of years for the squid to evolve their eyes, it took even longer for humans to evolve and human eyes just happened to turn out very similar to squid eyes.  There are many many examples of “convergence” like this among living things.  Evolutionists do not really have any explanation for this frequent convergence, they just have a name for it.

Convergent traits are considered rare exceptions that are not important to explain at all.  Since the squid and human eyes are defined out of consideration as not being homologous, evolutionists do not have to explain how they could evolve with similar eyes.   But other organisms that may be easier to say are related by evolution, are called “homologous.”  The flipper of a porpoise and the bat’s wing are used as evidence for evolution because of their similarities.  But wait, the evolutionist’s definition of homologous assumes evolution!  So, homologous structures are not really evidence for evolution, since the definition of what constitutes homologous assumes evolution.  This is an example of circular reasoning found in many science textbooks.

Common Ancestor vs Common Design

If the similarities in organisms do not give evidence of macroevolution, then what do they really mean?  I think they point to an intelligent Creator who is simply a great engineer.  When an engineer finds a design that works well, he may use it in many different kinds of devices.  This is very true in the field of electronics and computer technology.  Certain kinds of electronic components (such as capacitors or transistors) can be found in all sorts of devices from televisons, to loudspeakers, to computer motherboards.  This doesn’t mean  that motherboards evolved from televisions for instance.  It is just that transistors are very useful and so it is a design that is reused a lot.

There are many characteristics of living things where the Creator has used a similar design in different organisms.  This is not surprising when you think about it.  After all, living things on Earth are all made to live on the same planet.  Life on Earth shares the same air and water, and animals often eat similar foods and have similar lifestyles and behaviors.  In fact, if plants and animals were too different biochemically than us humans, we wouldn’t have anything we could eat!  So, it is not surprising that there would be some similarities.  But having designed-in similarities does not mean God carbon-copied parts and stuck them together.  The Creator is not limited to only doing things one way.  So even when a basic idea is used in different organisms, there may be unique variations of it in different creatures.

Flight in the living world is a good example of this.  Flight is something that by evolution would have to have evolved four separate times, in birds, insects, bats, and flying reptiles (which now seem to be extinct).  All these different groups of living things fly but they all fly differently!  The principles of flight are basically the same but bats are very different from birds and so are insects, yet they all fly.  Is it really plausible to say that flight just happened to evolve four times?  Modern scientific research from the evolutionary view has not been able to answer how similar traits could come about in different organisms.  It is not that similar traits come from similar genes in the DNA, because the same gene sequence often means something different in different organisms.  Flight is a complex thing.  Considering flight, the respiratory system, skeletal system, nervous system, and muscles must all be made for flight.  If any one of these body systems does not allow the organism to fly, then the creature might eventually go extinct or flight would not evolve.

A Creator is necessary to explain how flight could exist in four different types of creatures that are so different from each other.  The Creator applied the basic principles of flight in different ways in different living things.  And in each type, the various body systems were designed to be coordinated with the purpose of flight.  Thus, birds have hollow but strong bones to make them lighter, they have special flow-through “lungs” that helps them breathe while flying, and the nerves and muscles of a bird’s body are able to control flight and maintain flight for long periods.  Insects and bats are different than birds and they fly just as well for what they need as birds do, though it is done without feathers.  Insects are much smaller than birds (though there is fossil evidence that there used to be insects much larger than today).  This makes flying somewhat different for insects than for birds.  (So insects don’t really need feathers, for example).

The problems with the evolutionist concept of “convergence” is most evident in the many interesting cases of multiple convergence.  One example is the sea horse and chameleons.  Both have a coiled prehensile tail and independently moving eyes, though they could not have a common ancestor with both of these traits.  The duck-billed platypus has multiple examples of multiple convergence.  It has a duck-like bill and lays eggs similar to birds or reptiles.  It also has highly developed sonar and detects electrical currents in water similar to some fish.  It has a poisonous claw similar to a snake’s fang on it’s hind feet as well, similar to snakes, though the platypus is a mammal and it suckles it’s young.  The platypus has a unique combination of intelligently designed and fully functional traits, not a haphazard mix of characteristics that evolved by chance.

cont'd on page two

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Page Two

Embriology and Similarity

There is one special topic where evolutionary arguments, though incredibly out of date and absurd, still persist in some textbooks today.  This the idea that developing embryos of various organisms follow stages similar to their evolution.  Biologist Jonathan Wells describes it this way, “similarities in early embryos not only demonstrate that they are descended from a common ancestor, but also reveal what the ancestor looked like.”  The technical term for this is embryological recapitulation.  This argument originates from an evolutionary German biologist named Ernst Haeckel (1834-1919).  Haeckel had made drawings of developing embryos of different animals, arranging them in a series and then arguing that the similarities in them were because of descent with modification from a common ancestor (which is macroevolution).  These drawings were done even before Charles Darwin wrote his book The Origin of Species in 1859.  Darwin was very impressed and influenced by Haeckel’s drawings.

Though it is well known in the scientific community that Haeckel misrepresented the facts in his drawings, the argument has persisted in many textbooks to this day.  It is also used frequently by abortionist Doctors to persuade women to get abortions.  The woman will be told something like, “the life inside you is not really human, it is only in the fish stage.”  This embryological argument for evolution from Ernst Haeckel is one of the clearest most undisputed cases of misrepresentation in science.  Even before the publication of Charles Darwin’s Origin of Species Haeckel’s ideas were soundly refuted, especially by embryologist Karl Ernst von Baer (1792-1876).  Darwin even misquoted and distorted von Baer’s work to support the idea, something von Baer objected to.

Haeckel’s drawings of embryos have appeared in many books and publications.   It has been known for over a century that they distort the facts to make the embryos appear more similar than they are.  Haeckel’s drawings include embryos of fish, salamander, tortoise, chicken, hog, calf, rabbit, and human.  For one thing, Haeckel’s drawings started at a midpoint in development and skipped over significant differences in these embryos that is evident from earlier stages.  Secondly, two classes of fishes were omitted from Haeckel’s drawings, the jawless and cartilaginous fishes.  They would not have fit in well.  He used a salamander to represent amphibians, which happens to appear to fit his argument.  But if he would have included a frog, which is more representative of amphibians, it would not have fit his argument at all.  So, Haeckel had a very biased sample of carefully selected cases that implied more similarity than was realistic.

In 1995 a British embryologist Michael Richardson wrote that “These famous images are inaccurate and give a misleading view of embryonic development.”  Richardson is not a creationist.  Haeckel and Darwin thought that at the earlier stages the various embryos were more similar and they became less similar in their later stages of development.  This has been soundly disproven by recent research.  In 1997 Michael Richardson and an international team of scientists reexamined Haeckel’s drawings again and compared each drawing to modern high quality photos of the actual embryos.  This study thoroughly demonstrated again that Haeckel’s drawings misrepresent the truth.  Yet the embryological recapitulation argument is still found in various forms in many high school and college level textbooks.  Even many scientists and biology professors are not aware of the problem, because embryology is not their specialty.

Each type of living thing develops as an embryo in a unique way.  There are stages where there are superficial similarities of appearance between them, but the real function and nature of the embryo’s structures are different from each other.  For instance, there is a point in the development of a human embryo where the embryo has something that looks similar to the gill slits of a fish embryo.  These structures are known by embryologists as pharyngeal folds.  In fish these structures do develop into gills, but in reptiles, mammals, and birds, they develop into totally different organs that have nothing to do with respiration.  Even in fish, they are not gills until a later more mature stage.  In humans, they develop into the tonsils, the middle ear canals, and the parathyroid and thymus glands.  So, in humans, since they are not slits and they have nothing to do with gills, human embryos certainly do not have gill slits.  There are many special structures in embryos whose only purpose is for during the development process, then they no longer function in the adult.  This explains a lot about how embryos develop.  This is just how God planned and designed life to be.

Though the area of embryology is not my field of expertise, I would say that the development of a human embryo demonstrates a great intelligence and wisdom far beyond chance.  It clearly points to creation, not evolution.  The many examples of similarity between very different living things is not surprising from a Biblical point of view.  God as a divine engineer can reuse His designs however he wants.  Furthermore, God’s reused designs do not have to show up in the ways predicted by evolution.  Evolution  theory assumes there was no God involved and that everything just turned out as it is by  random mutations and natural selection.  So, from a creation point of view, both the “homologous” and the “convergent” traits of living things come from the same Creator.

Part 4

This series on Creation Biology has looked at important issues about biological change, biological similarities, and other issues.  No discussion of creationist biology would be complete without discussing what is called “chemical evolution.”  This is the issue of how the first living cells could have allegedly evolved from simple chemicals about 3.5 to 4 billion years ago.  I think this is the subject in which the concept of evolution has the most serious problems.  The evidence in this topic is overwhelmingly in favor of supernatural divine creation, rather than relying on natural processes alone and chance to create the first life.  Modern science has greatly increased our knowledge of complexity of life at the molecular level.  Even the “simplest” cell is so complex that only supernatural divine creation can explain how life could first arise on Earth.

cont'd on page three

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Page Three

Chemical Evolution

In the evolutionary view of Earth history, after the Earth formed there were many impacts from space for a period of time.  This heavy bombardment from space is believed to have ended a little under 4 billion years ago.  This bombardment had to end before life could evolve.  At that time the Earth, according to the evolutionary scenario, had a very different atmosphere than it does today.  Many laboratory experiments have been done by scientists attempting to simulate the conditions of this early Earth atmosphere.  It is not that there is solid evidence for Earth’s atmosphere being different than it is now, it’s just that it would have had to be or life could not have evolved by natural chemical processes.  The important thing evolutionists believe about the early Earth is that there was little or no oxygen in the atmosphere, unlike today, when there is nearly 20% oxygen.  If oxygen were present when the first biological molecules were forming it would have stopped the process and other unwanted unimportant chemicals would have formed instead.  So, evolutionists have suggested various types of atmospheres for the early earth.  The famous scientist Stanley Miller, who did electrical discharge experiments on the origin of life used chemicals like carbon dioxide, methane, hydrogen, ammonia, nitrogen, and water vapor.  Today, scientists are considering ammonia as less important, but the basic idea has not changed much.

The idea is that simple gases such as the above would combine into organic “building blocks” such as amino acids, proteins, and enzymes.  Most evolutionists believe this took place in water, which is often called an “organic  soup.”  Living cells are made up of many very large complex organic molecules.  For scientists to form such molecules in a laboratory takes significant effort and special procedures.  Many of these biomolecules do not form easily though scientists have formed some of them in origin of life experiments.  Molecules like proteins, which make up much of our body tissues, are long chain molecules often called biopolymers.  They are made up of many smaller units connected together in some sort of chain  or other three dimensional arrangement.  The smaller units that make up proteins are amino acids.  Amino acids are small molecules.  Proteins in living things are made up of 20 different amino acids.  Organic molecules can combine into different three dimensional shapes or arrangements often.  The three dimensional shape of the molecules makes all the difference in the world in a living cell.  If amino acids combined in the wrong sequence or you had the wrong type of amino acids, it could change the shape of the whole molecule and then the protein forming from that sequence may not function properly inside the cell.  Also, even if the sequence of molecules is correct, many other molecules must be present for it all to work in the cell.  Living cells have all types of complex “machinery” that has to be coordinated to work together properly.  Natural chemical and physical processes alone are totally inadequate for explaining how such complex processes could come about.

What are some of the problems with the first living cell forming by chance from simple chemicals?  Much has been written about this, but here I will only mention a few points.  First, in the so-called “origin of life” experiments, the important sought-after chemicals are generally removed from the reaction so that they won’t be destroyed.  In the early Earth there would be nothing to remove them or concentrate them adequately.  There would always be other chemicals present in a “natural” organic soup that cause unwanted reactions that would prevent the formation of the important large biomolecules such as proteins or RNA.  (These unwanted chemical reactions are known as “side reactions.”)  When experimenters remove amino acids from their origin of life experiment, they are actually interfering with the natural process and this means the experiment is not really simulating real conditions like evolutionists say existed in the early Earth.

Other problems with the formation of the first cells from chemicals include ultraviolet light breaking down the biomolecules, natural energy sources are often of the wrong kind (destroying the biomolecules), and natural processes do not explain how the information content of biomolecules could come about.  This last problem is perhaps the most important one.  Life is tremendously organized, even in the “simplest” one-celled organism.

Complex molecules like RNA and DNA in living cells are I think somewhat analogous to a computer program that has been stored on some storage device, like a hard drive or a computer floppy disk.  Even if you can make the device, like the floppy, it won’t do anything without information on it.  The information is coded onto the floppy device by a certain “language.”  The cell, which uses the RNA and DNA, reads the data or information on the DNA molecule.  The cell also has the necessary machinery to build the materials specified by the information code.  Our Creator designed both the information code and the cellular machinery to use it.  Recent research has just completed mapping the complete sequence of the human genome.  This does not mean that scientists know what everything in the sequence means, it just means we now have a more complete record of what the sequence is.  This research on the human genome will lead to many medical benefits for us.  But it also underscores that we are “fearfully and wonderfully made” by a Creator who put in the sophisticated information.  No natural processes operating by chance in an undirected way could explain the origin of the complexity inside living cells.
 

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Archbishop: stop teaching creationism

The Archbishop of Canterbury, Rowan Williams, has stepped into the controversy between religious fundamentalists and scientists by saying that he does not believe that creationism - the Bible-based account of the origins of the world - should be taught in schools.

Giving his first, wide-ranging, interview at Lambeth Palace, the archbishop was emphatic in his criticism of creationism being taught in the classroom, as is happening in two city academies founded by the evangelical Christian businessman Sir Peter Vardy and several other schools.

 "I think creationism is ... a kind of category mistake, as if the Bible were a theory like other theories ... if creationism is presented as a stark alternative theory alongside other theories I think there's just been a jarring of categories ... My worry is creationism can end up reducing the doctrine of creation rather than enhancing it," he said.

The debate over creationism or its slightly more sophisticated offshoot, so-called "intelligent design" (ID) which argues that creation is so complex that an intelligent - religious - force must have directed it, has provoked divisions in Britain but nothing like the vehemence or politicisation of the debate in the US. There, under pressure from the religious right, some states are considering giving ID equal prominence to Darwinism, the generally scientifically accepted account of the evolution of species. Most scientists believe that ID is little more than an attempt to smuggle fundamentalist Christianity into science teaching.

States from Ohio to California are considering placing ID it on the curriculum, with President George Bush telling reporters last August that "both sides ought to be properly taught ... so people can understand what the debate is about." The archbishop's remarks place him firmly on the side of science.

Dr Williams spoke of his determination to hold the third-largest Christian denomination together in its row over the place of gay clergy. He was also highly critical of parts of the church in Africa and said he did not wish to be seen as "comic vicar to the nation", speaking out on issues where he can make no difference.

Speaking of the church's situation in Africa, the archbishop issued snubs to two of the region's archbishops. He described the position in central Africa, where Archbishop Bernard Malango has just absolved without trial Bishop Norbert Kunonga of Harare, accused by his parishioners of incitement to murder, as "dismal and deeply problematic" .

Dr Williams also criticised Archbishop Peter Akinola, leader of the largest single national church in the Anglican communion, in Nigeria, who has been accused of encouraging violence against Muslims during recent rioting by warning that Christian youth could retaliate against them. Dr Williams claimed the African primate had not made himself sufficiently clear: "He did not mean to stir up the violence ... I think he meant to issue a warning which certainly has been taken as a threat, an act of provocation."

Speaking of the gay debate which threatens to split the church, Dr Williams insisted he would continue to try to hold the communion together. "I can only say that I think I have got to try ... For us to break apart in an atmosphere of deep mistrust, fierce recrimination and mutual misunderstanding is really not going to be in anybody's good in the long run." But he accepted there might come a moment where the Anglican Communion says "we can't continue, we can't continue with this".

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TWICKY TWINS BORN to 19 year old Kyle Hodgson - one a blue eyed blonde
and the other a dark skinned and firstly blue eyed -now brown eyed
identical(?) twin, reported the  Sunday Mail Australia March 12 p3. Parents
Kyle and Remi are UK residents of mixed ancestry from Nottingham England.
The unusual twins were born April 05 and are now doing very well. After
birth baby Kian's skin went fairer as baby Remee's skin and hair became
darker. Put by the experts at odds of 1,000,000 to one, the identical girls
will undoubtedly get asked lots of questions as they grow up.

ED. COM. We often get asked about the textbook case of the red and grey
squirrels on opposite sides of the Grand Canyon as being evidence for
evolution by speciation. Now you can see why it isn't. Black and white
"identical" twins are the same kind as mum and dad. If perchance the twins
matured and became separated with right coloured partners, you can now
easily see how they could produce two separate tribes of different coloured
humans, who did not go black because it was hot or white, because it was
cool. It would be no more evidence for evolution than an ancestral squirrel
having two differingly coloured offspring, who end up on opposite sides of a
big hole and cannot get back together to mix colour genes again. They and
the humans are excellent evidence that all life forms produce their own kind
as God created them to do as recorded in the first chapter of Genesis. (Ref
selection, variation, microevolution),

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ANGLICAN ARCHBISHOP SAYS stop teaching creationism reports the Guardian,
Tuesday March 21, 2006. "The Archbishop of Canterbury, Rowan Williams, has
stepped into the controversy between religious fundamentalists and
scientists by saying that he does not believe that creationism - the
Bible-based account of the origins of the world - should be taught in
schools. Giving his first, wide-ranging, interview at Lambeth Palace, the
archbishop was emphatic in his criticism of creationism being taught in the
classroom, as is happening in two city academies founded by the evangelical
Christian businessman Sir Peter Vardy, and in several other schools.

"I think creationism is ... a kind of category mistake, as if the Bible were
a theory like other theories ... if creationism is presented as a stark
alternative theory alongside other theories I think there's just been a
jarring of categories ... My worry is creationism can end up reducing the
doctrine of creation rather than enhancing it," he said..

Dr Williams spoke of his determination to hold the third-largest Christian
denomination together in its row over the place of gay clergy.

He was also highly critical of parts of the church in Africa and said he did
not wish to be seen as "comic vicar to the nation", speaking out on issues
where he can make no difference..

Speaking of the gay debate which threatens to split the church, Dr Williams
insisted he would continue to try to hold the communion together. "I can
only say that I think I have got to try ... For us to break apart in an
atmosphere of deep mistrust, fierce recrimination and mutual
misunderstanding is really not going to be in anybody's good in the long
run." But he accepted there might come a moment where the Anglican Communion
says "we can't continue, we can't continue with this".


ED. COM. When will church leaders recognize that the two subjects
confronting the archbishop above are linked. Christ's teaching on human
marriage and his teaching that homosexuality is an utter abomination to God
is based on the historic fact of His creating male and female specifically
for marriage of male and female only (see Matthew 19:1-7, and its cross ref
to Gen 1:27 and 2:24) You let the schools not teach creation and only teach
evolution and student sexual mores will evolve in any direction that their
sinful nature takes them, till they reach what the True Creator God has the
right to label as the perverted position of thinking homosexuality is OK,
even clergy can be gay because their evolved god accepts it.

[Soldier4Christ]

NEW RODENT IS LIVING FOSSIL, according to report on BBC Online News, 9
Mar 2006 ScienceNOW and Science vol. 311 p1456, 10 Mar 2006. Last year a
previously unknown (to the scientific community) rodent was found in a
hunter's market in Laos by Robert Timmins of the Wildlife Conservation
Society and specimens were sent to the Natural History Museum, London for
study and classification. The animal is similar in size to a red squirrel,
but has grey fur and is known by the local people as the kha-nyou.
Scientists found that its teeth and bones were a "striking match" to a
fossil rodent believed to have been extinct for 11 million years, making the
animal a "living fossil". The scientists who studied and classified it have
given the animal the scientific name "Laonastes aenigmamus" and refer to its
discovery as "a particularly striking example of the "Lazarus effect" in
recent mammals, whereby a taxon that was formerly thought to be extinct is
rediscovered in the extant biota, in this case after a temporal gap of
roughly 11 million years." Taking up the theme of Lazarus, the ScienceNOW
article is entitled "Rodent rises from the Dead".

ED. COM. Charles Darwin used the term "living fossil" to describe living
creatures that are the same as fossilised creatures. If you believe the
evolutionary timetable, the rodent  "Laonastes aenigmamus" has stayed the
same for more than 11 million years, and that is no help to a theory that
claims animals change from one kind to another. In fact, living fossils like
this creature are good evidence for the accuracy of  the Genesis account
which states that organisms were created as fully functional organisms,
designed to multiply after their kind. Both the fossil and living specimens
of this rodent  are only known as fully formed creatures, and if the living
specimens are the descendents of the fossil specimens they must have
reproduced after their kind. The use of the Biblical term "Lazarus effect"
is an example of both ignorance and hypocrisy in the scientific community.
If the authors of the Science paper and ScienceNOW article knew their
Bibles, they would know that Lazarus was resurrected after being observed to
be dead for a few days, not simply out of the sight of scientists for many
years. As the local people had a name for this animal, it can't even claim
to have been missing, let alone presumed dead, except by the ignorance of
western evolutionists who assume their observations are the only ones that
count. If creationists display this kind of ignorance about evolutionists'
writings they are loudly condemned. (Ref. mammals, Asia, biodiversity)

[Soldier4Christ]

JURASSIC BEAVER SWAM WITH DINOSAURS according to articles in BBC News
Online and news@nature and Science vol 311, p1123, 24 Feb 2006. A team of
palaeontologists led by Zhe-xi Luo of the Carnegie Museum of Natural
History, Pittsburgh, have found a fossil of a beaver-like animal in rocks
from China. The fossil is about half a metre long and is an almost complete
skeleton surrounded by impressions of fur and a broad scaly tail. The shape
of its feet indicate it was a good swimmer. It has been dated as 164 million
years old, which places it in the Middle Jurassic period - a time when the
only mammals were believed to be small, insect eating creatures who spent
their time avoiding being trampled by enormous dinosaurs, and which didn't
diversify into the variety of mammals we have now until the reptilian
monsters died out. According to news@nature this new fossil "shows a
hitherto unexpected diversity in the shape and size of the earliest mammal."

ED. COM. Diversity in shape and size of so called early mammals may be
unexpected by evolutionists but it is no surprise to Creation Research.
Genesis 1:26-31 tells that the different kinds of mammals were separately
created at the same time as the reptiles. Therefore, mammals of diverse
shapes and sizes lived with dinosaurs from the beginning. If you are willing
to think laterally, the fossils that are found in a rock layer indicate how
and where the creatures got buried, not when, or even where, they lived. The
fact that not many mammals have been found in rock layers containing
dinosaurs is not evidence that mammals evolved later. (Ref. palaeontology,
biodiversity)

[Soldier4Christ]

"FAMILY MAY PROVIDE EVOLUTION CLUE" is the headline of an article on BBC
Online News, 7 Mar 2006, about a family in a remote part of Turkey where
four sisters and one brother walk on all fours. One sister can walk on two
feet sometimes, and another brother walks on two feet with difficulty.
Medical tests indicate all were born with a brain disease called cerebellar
ataxia, which affects the part of the brain that controls balance and
co-ordination. The affected children use their hands to help them move
around, putting the weight on their wrists and lifting their fingers off the
ground. Prof Nicholas Humphrey of the London School of Economics (LSE)
claims: "I think it's possible that what we are seeing in this family is
something that does correspond to a time when we didn't walk like
chimpanzees but was an important step between coming down from the trees and
becoming fully bipedal."  However, Humphreys notes that this palm down
method of quadripedalism is not the way apes walk. Chimps and gorillas are
knuckle walkers, i.e. they support their weight on the backs of curled up
fingers. This means ape fingers are built for strength rather than
dexterity. By keeping their fingers off the ground the Turkish children are
still able to use them for skilled work like crochet and embroidery, as for
other humans. Humphreys suggests that this was how our direct ancestors
walked as it would have enabled the fingers to be used for manipulating
tools, and the brain disease suffered by the Turkish children caused them to
revert to an ancestral form of walking. He went on to say, "Because of the
peculiar circumstances they were in, they kept walking as infants." A team
of researchers at the Max Planck institute in Germany believes the family
are suffering from a defect of a gene on chromosome 17 that was important in
the evolution of two-legged walking.

ED. COM. This story is a bizarre mixture of medical facts and evolutionary
imagination. The closest Prof. Humphreys gets to the truth is the claim that
the affected children kept walking as infants. However, that has nothing to
do with evolution. Human children crawl on all fours before they stand and
walk because they must wait until their brains mature and they develop
strength in their legs and trunk. Because of a genetic defect the Turkish
children's brains did not develop properly, so they continue to use their
arms to compensate for their lack of balance and co-ordination in their
legs. The idea that progression from crawling to walking represents an
evolutionary transition is a belief in recapitulation, i.e. that human
development from conception to adult is a repetition of evolution from
amoeba to man. This is a totally discredited idea based on fraudulent claims
made by the  nineteenth century evolutionist Ernst Haeckel. Cerebellar
ataxia is a rare genetic defect, but it is likely that in the remote part of
Turkey where the family live there has been inbreeding, so genetic defects
are more likely to be expressed. This is a sad reminder that the human race
is degenerating downwards, not evolving upwards, and it is outrageous of
evolutionists to exploit the misfortune of this family to falsely promote
their beliefs. (Ref. bipedalism, gait)

[Soldier4Christ]

CREATIONISM IS "JUNK MEDICINE" proclaims a headline in The Times, (UK) 11
Feb 2006. In an article subtitled "How evolution can save lives", Mark
Henderson, science correspondent for The Times calls for people to resist
the current interest in creation and Intelligent Design in Britain and
consider the practical benefits of evolution. According to Henderson,
"Darwin's natural selection has transformed medical science. Its
contribution to health stands comparison with Jenner's vaccine, Pasteur's
germ theory of disease and Fleming's antibiotics." He then goes on to cite
"prime examples" - bird flu, HIV, multi-resistant bacteria, sickle cell
anaemia, cancer, obesity and Type 2 diabetes. Two weeks later, a similar
article was published as an editorial entitled "Medicine Needs Evolution" in
Science, vol. 311, p1071, 24 Feb 2006. The Science editors claim evolution
is "the vibrant foundation for all biology" and also use the example of
antibiotic resistance and sickle cell anaemia, but they also claim that
evolution explains the increase in breast cancer, infertility and
miscarriages. They then call for changes to the teaching of medicine to
include evolution. They are: "First, include questions about evolution in
medical licensing examinations; this will motivate curriculum committees to
incorporate relevant basic science education. Second, ensure evolutionary
expertise in agencies that fund biomedical research. Third, incorporate
evolution into every relevant high school, undergraduate, and graduate
course."

Geotimes, a website and magazine that normally reports about geology, has
also joined the call for evolution in medicine with an article in their
March 2006 edition named "Evolution Lessons from Infectious Disease" in
which they also name antibiotic resistance, HIV, bird flu and SARS as
examples of evolution.
Times article: http://www.timesonline.co.uk/article/0,,8123-2032900,00.html
Geotimes article: http://www.geotimes.org/mar06/comment.html

ED. COM. None of the examples cited are evolution. Pasteur's germ theory was
well used by Pasteur as proof that evolution from chemicals to cells did not
happen. Pasteur firmly opposed Darwin's theory. Bird flu and SARS occurred
because of the mixing of already existing genes between viruses. The fact
that some virus combinations flourish because they are more successful at
making people ill and spreading themselves is natural selection, but it is
not evolution. It does not explain how viruses got their genes in the first
place. Genetic changes, i.e. mutations, do occur in viruses but they don't
even  change viruses into different viruses. They just change their already
existing surface properties or growth rates. Mutations do cause sickle cell
anaemia, all cancers and some cases of infertility and miscarriage, but none
of these are evolution. Mutations damage genes and indicate that living
cells are degenerating from fully functional complex structures to partially
defunct structures. This is the opposite of evolution. Antibiotic resistance
in bacteria can be caused by mutations, but the bacteria that gain some
resistance because of mutations are invariably weaker and only do well in
places where there are lots of antibiotics keeping the normal bacteria from
competing with them for food and living space, eg. Hospitals. Most bacterial
resistance is due to bacteria that are already resistant flourishing when
the non-resistant bacteria are killed. Bacteria can also share genes for
antibiotic resistance. This is not evolution because no new genes are being
made - they are just being re-distributed, and the bacteria that gain them
remain the same kind of bacteria.

The call for evolution to be imposed on medical education in coercive ways
that put research funds and licenses to practice at risk, shows that
evolution is not "the vibrant foundation for all biology". If it was, it
would already be in the foundational science courses used in medical
schools, and there would be no need for such totalitarian tactics. We
suggest medical schools should teach the facts about mutations and
selection, i.e. they are the effects of degeneration of living things and
their environment, which is why we need medicine. We also suggest that
Geotimes stick to writing about rocks. (Ref. microbiology, illness, health)

[Soldier4Christ]

FOSSIL CROCODILE SURPRISES SCIENTISTS, according to articles in
news@nature, BBC Online News and Science Express 10 Nov 2005. South American
palaeontologists have found the skull and jaws of a fossil marine creature
named "Dakosaurus andiniensis" that was believed to be a sea-dwelling
crocodile. This creature was already known from a few fragments. It was
about 4 metres (13 ft) long and had paddle shaped forelimbs. The skull and
teeth are very different from all other known marine crocodiles. All other
marine crocodiles have long narrow snouts with many small pointed teeth.
Diego Pol of Ohio State University, who participated in the study of the new
fossils commented: "Other vertebrate palaeontologists have been asking us
whether this really is a crocodile." The newly found fossils show that the
creature had a short robust head, like a dinosaur and a small number of
serrated teeth. These findings have led researchers to wonder what the
creature ate. Living marine crocodiles catch whole fish by sweeping their
jaws sideways and grabbing them with their teeth. This is an effective way
of catching slippery fish and squid if a creature has a long narrow snout,
but "D andiniensis" would be better suited to biting pieces out of larger
prey, such as other marine reptiles, commented vertebrate palaeontologist
Eric Buffetaut, but he added: "the only way to be sure is to find a fossil
complete with stomach contents."


ED. COM. We are pleased to see an evolutionary palaeontologist admit
something that Creation Research has been saying for many years - you cannot
be sure what a creature ate from simply looking at its teeth. Teeth give you
clues about how it are but to know what a creature ate scientists need to
observe it eating, or in the case of extinct animals find preserved stomach
contents or dung.

[Soldier4Christ]

SNAILBOT CRAWLS INTO ACTION, as described in news@nature, 13 Dec 2005. A
team of engineers at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) have
built a "mechanical mollusc" that can climb wall and crawl along ceilings in
a similar fashion to a snail. Snails move by contracting the muscle in their
foot over a bed of slime that attaches them to the surface and prevents them
from going backwards. The muscle contraction starts at the rear of the foot
and moves forward until it lifts the front end off the surface. The snail
then stretches out to its full length, reattaches to the surface and pulls
the rest of its body forward. The MIT engineers designed a mathematic model
of this movement and built a robot with five moveable segments to test the
model. As the robot did not produce its own layer of slime the engineers ran
their robot over a platform covered with a clear sticky gel made from
Laponite (a type of clay). The researchers admit "that snail locomotion is
slow, slimy and inefficient" so there may not be a great demand for a
snailbot. However, snails can crawl over just about any surface, which means
they can move about in many different environments - a useful property for a
robot.


ED. COM. Whether the snailbot becomes a useful device or remains an academic
engineering oddity, it didn't come about by chance random processes. The MIT
engineers first had to study a living snail, invent a mathematical model and
built a device that could only carry out one function. By using their minds
clever scientists built a far inferior mechanism compared with a real snail.
Therefore, they have no excuse for not recognising that the real snail was
created by a far cleverer scientist. (Ref. design, biomimmetics, robotics)

[Soldier4Christ]

MATHEMATICAL CABBAGES reported in ScienceNOW 16 Nov 2005 and New
Scientist 19 Nov 2005. Skunk cabbages (not really cabbages, but members of
the Arum family) generate heat with an internal furnace consisting of
special starch burning cells in the central stalk of the plant. This keeps
their flowers from being damaged by cold weather, and the plants can
maintain a steady 24 degrees Celsius even when the outside temperature is
below zero. Two Japanese researchers at Iwate University, Japan, have
studied the way the plant controls its temperature by monitoring the
temperature in several plants and analysing the pattern of temperature
variations using a statistical method called non-linear forecasting. They
concluded that the plants were using a unique mathematical algorithm to
determine whether to turn the internal furnace up or down at any moment.

ED. COM. Anyone who has an automatically controlled central heating system
knows that maintaining an even temperature is the result of clever design in
the thermostat, not chance random processes. Mathematical algorithms are the
product of minds, not matter. Applying them to carry out some useful
function, such as temperature control, requires the application of
information to matter by a creator. Therefore, it is foolish to claim this
plant's central heating system is the result of mindless chance acting on
equally mindless matter. (Ref. mathematics, design, thermoregulation)

[Soldier4Christ]

FLEXI-CELLS EXPLAINED in a brief item ScienceNOW 31 Oct 2005 (whole item
is quoted). "Red blood cells are amazingly flexible: they can deform and
squeeze through even the tiniest capillaries. But how do they do it?
Scientists know the cell's protein skeleton consists of thousands of linked
hexagons with a central rod-shaped filament holding its shape. And now, a
new model suggests that those filaments aren't just scaffolding: as the cell
deforms, elastic fibers actually twist the filaments around, giving the
oxygen carriers plenty of limberness, researchers report online 21 October
in Annals of Biomedical Engineering."

ED. COM. If human scientists had invented a flexible support structure
system like the one described above, no doubt the editors of Annals of
Biomedical Engineering would have recognised creative engineering and given
them the credit. They have no excuse for not recognising it here. It took
clever biomedical researchers to work out the structure of this cellular
scaffolding. It took a smarter biological engineer to design and build it
(and the rest of the cell) in the first place. (Ref. erythrocytes,
cytoskeleton, bio-engineering)