Biblical Creation vs. Evolution

[Soldier4Christ]

Did Darwin Renounce Evolution on His Deathbed?

 Abstract
"In the beginning God created the heaven and the earth" (Genesis 1:1).

The story has circulated for decades. Charles Darwin, after a career of promoting evolution and naturalism, returned to the Christianity of his youth, renouncing on his deathbed the theory of evolution. The story appears to have been authored by a "Lady Hope," and relates how she visited him near the end and received his testimony.

Evolutionists in general and his surviving family in particular have disputed the account. Those with him at the time insist there was no evident changing of mind. Indeed, in his autobiography written late in his life, Darwin fully supported evolution. He admitted the concept was distasteful to him and had brought him much dismay, but he still held it.

Lady Hope was real, the wife of Lord Hope. She was a fervent Christian and friend of Darwin's wife, also a strong Christian who prayed for and witnessed to him all their married life, to no avail according to him. Nevertheless, many have researched the story, and all have concluded it is probably an "urban myth."

In his later years Darwin did soften in his attitude toward Christianity. He even allowed a local church to hold their meetings on his property, and asked that his bedroom windows be opened so he could hear the hymns being sung. A Christian can only hope that the seeds planted earlier took root at the end, and that he did place his faith in Christ before he died.

A similar scenario took place more recently with the death of the great spokesman for evolution and atheism, Carl Sagan. He received strong witness of Christianity from many people; most notably ICR's physics chairman Dr. Larry Vardiman. They corresponded for years, during which God's plan of salvation and the evidence for creation were clearly discussed. Dr. Sagan fully understood the salvation message but specifically refused it. He said he wished he could believe, but was convinced evolution was true and there was no God. He contracted cancer and passed into eternity in 1996.

His wife, Dr. Lynn Margulis, herself an avowed anti-Christian, took a different tack than Darwin's wife, however. She took great pains to insure that no one could ever write an "urban myth" about her husband. She organized a vigil at his bedside to make sure no Christian came near. No last-minute prayer, no final testimony was allowed.

Again, a Christian can only trust in the grace of our loving Lord and wonder if the seeds planted took root before it was too late. There is no joy for a Christian if anyone, even a lifelong opponent of the cross, slips into a Christless eternity.

[Soldier4Christ]

Arctic Heat Wave

 Abstract
Only a few decades ago it might have been considered preposterous to suggest oceans of 30-plus degrees centigrade that drove an "abbreviated" post-Flood Ice Age (of relatively short duration), but not today.

Drill cores from beneath the floor of the Arctic Ocean have revealed a startling find. Fossils from around the 430 meter mark indicate the seabed was once a balmy 23 degrees centigrade (74 degrees Fahrenheit)! Today's temperatures beneath the Arctic vary within a few degrees of zero. The find is thought to reflect a global condition of warming, suggesting that all the oceans were once at least this warm pointing to a period called "the Paleocene/Eocene Thermal Maximum" (PETM). Although it has long been suspected, from oxygen isotope data derived by analyzing both the deep sea Cenozoic record and from ice cores, such remarkably warm temperatures have taken most scientists by surprise. However, this fits in very well with the young-Earth creationist view of history which includes a global Flood.

Several implications follow from a warm ocean. Warm waters would result in high rates of evaporation, high rates of precipitation, and a very wet world. How wet? ICR research has predicted that a globally uniform sea surface temperature of 30 degrees centigrade would result in sustained precipitation in localities at over eight inches per hour. Heaviest precipitation would have been over the polar regions where the precipitation would fall as snow, the snow would compact to ice, and the ice would move out as glaciers. If the PETM corresponds to the immediate post-Flood period, an Ice Age following the Flood makes great sense. Second, a warm ocean would mean enormously energetic storms. A computational run using a globally uniform surface temperature of 37 degrees centigrade eventuated in cyclones of hundreds of miles in diameter breaking out across wide portions of the earth and not just the lower latitudes. Called "hypercanes," these storms would have generated horizontal winds of over 300 mph, vertical winds of 100 mph, and precipitation of over ten inches per hour. It is not difficult to imagine moisture-laden fronts ripping across polar regions producing temperature drops of scores of degrees centigrade. Flash-frozen mammoths recovered in the Arctic have up until recently been a cryogenic mystery. Although the mystery is by no means solved, a more credible answer is now possible. Such conditions so far from human experience apparently took place in the relatively recent past.

Many scientists suspect some kind of catastrophic release of carbon dioxide is to blame for the warm spell; others argue that a rise of temperature would be the expected cause rather than the effect of a carbon dioxide rise. But there is a more obvious possibility. If a global Flood occurred in recent world history, then one would expect warm oceans and a relatively temperate (or cool) air mass would have followed. Reasons for warm oceans following the Flood include: relatively warm pre-Flood oceans, extraordinary levels of submarine volcanism during the Flood, and possibly elevated rates of radioisotope decay during the Flood. Only a few decades ago it might have been considered preposterous to suggest oceans of 30-plus degrees centigrade that drove an "abbreviated" post-Flood Ice Age (of relatively short duration), but not today. Questions such as the duration of the Ice Age, the lag time between the end of the Flood and maximum ice advance, and many others, will await future research. In the meantime, the overall Flood model of Biblical Earth history looks very good.

[Soldier4Christ]

Titan vs. Billions of Years

 Abstract
Titan turned out to be very different from predictions made using long-age assumptions. The near absence of ethane remains a profound mystery.
The landing of the Huygens probe on Saturn's moon, Titan ranks as one of the most dramatic achievements in space exploration. When Voyager flew by in 1981, Titan looked like a hazy ball at visible wavelengths. Its surface lay shrouded in mystery for 24 years, as scientists tried to model what would happen under a nitrogen-rich atmosphere spiked with methane. The difference between what they expected and what Huygens discovered should be of great interest to creationists.

Titan is the only moon with a substantial atmosphere, composed primarily of nitrogen and just under 5% methane. It became apparent from post-Voyager models that the atmosphere is unstable. Unlike on Earth, where the nitrogen, carbon, and oxygen are recycled, the methane on Titan has only two places to go: down or out. In the upper atmosphere, methane is continually stripped of electrons from bombardment by the solar wind and cosmic rays. Free hydrogen escapes to space. Depleted of some of the hydrogen, the carbon atoms recombine into more complex molecules, some with nitrogen (nitriles) and some with carbon and hydrogen (hydrocarbons). Ethane, propane, acetylene, and benzene have been detected as products of this strange atmospheric chemistry.

Of particular interest is ethane, a stable molecule with two carbons and six hydrogens. Ethane falls to the surface as a liquid and cannot return to the atmosphere. Scientists were confident that the conversion is irreversible, and should lead to a buildup of ethane, forming lakes and possibly oceans on the surface. By the late 1990s, oceans of ethane several kilometers deep were anticipated. Artists' conceptions up until the landing imagined large expanses of liquid ethane or methane dotting a frozen landscape of water ice.

In 1997, a Titan-IV rocket blasted Cassini and its Huygens probe toward Saturn and Titan. During the seven-year cruise, Earth telescopes with improved spectral resolution detected light and dark areas the size of continents, but no global ocean. Finally, on January 14, 2005, Huygens successfully parachuted to the surface, taking priceless photos and measurements all the way down. It was designed to operate on a solid or liquid surface. Mission scientists actually hoped for a splash.

The results were as surprising as they were sensational. Instead of finding lakes or oceans, Huygens landed on a dry lakebed, where liquid methane appeared to saturate the surface but not form pools. River channels suggested erosion of icy mountains by occasional cloudbursts of methane rain. Contrary to predictions, Huygens measured ethane in only trace amounts. If ethane production had been going on for billions of years, where was it? Subsequent radar scans by Cassini showed vast areas covered by wind-driven dunes of icy grains. It appears that Titan is, for the most part, a freezing desert.

In short, Titan turned out to be very different from predictions made using long-age assumptions. The near absence of ethane remains a profound mystery. Now that the data have been published (Nature, 12/08/2005), creationists could do good work modeling Titan's atmospheric dynamics unfettered by long-age assumptions.

[Soldier4Christ]

COOKED ROACH SOLVES FOSSIL CHEMICAL PROBLEM suggests an article in
news@nature, 26 July 2006. A team led by organic chemist Neal Gupta of the
University of Bristol have solved a chemical puzzle on the difference between
living and fossil arthropod exoskeletons. Living arthropods, a large group of
invertebrates, such as insects, crabs and millipedes, have exoskeletons made of
fibres similar to cellulose embedded in a matrix protein, with a waxy layer on
the surface. The exoskeletons of fossilised arthropods are mainly made up of
long chain carbon compounds called aliphatic molecules that are similar to
molecules found in fossil fuels. To see if the aliphatic molecules could be
derived from chitin by fossilisation processes Gupta's team took exoskeletons
from cockroaches, scorpions and shrimps and baked them at 350 degrees Celsius
and 700 atmospheres pressure for one day. The researchers claim this treatment
"mimics the way fossils form over millions of years, compressed into a single
day by upping the temperature." The roast "fossils" did contain aliphatic
molecules similar to those of more conventionally formed fossils. The
researchers concluded that aliphatic molecules were derived from the waxy layer
and possibly from the internal tissues of the animals. The team hope their
technique will help to understand how fossil fuels form.

ED. COM. This experiment reminds us that it doesn't take time to make fossils -
it takes the right physical and chemical processes. The 700 atmospheres pressure
is quite a realistic model for many deeply buried fossil fuels. As such, this
experiment adds to the evidence that fossils and fossil fuels were actually
formed by rapid deep burial in a brief time span, not slowly and gradually over
millions of years. The very weight of the sediments becoming one source of the
heat to cook them. This editors research on the rapid formation of fossil fuels
has shown that the similar chemical changes to those that occurred in this
experiment can be produced equally rapidly, but at lower temperatures, if the
organic matter is baked with clays which seem to act as a catalyst. (Ref. time,
chemistry, hydrocarbons)

[Soldier4Christ]

NINETY PERCENT OF HUMANITY NEEDS TO DIE, claimed leading conservation
biologist, according to a report by Forrest Mims in The Citizen Scientist, 31
Mar 2006. Eric Pianka, an expert in lizards and desert environments, claims that
the world is drastically over populated by human beings, and would be better off
if 90 percent of the current human population died from an epidemic of a killer
virus, such as Ebola. Pianka made these claims in a speech to the Texas Academy
of Science where he condemned anthropocentrism - the idea that human beings have
a special place in the Universe and are intrinsically different from other
living organisms. He told a story about how a neighbour asked him what good are
the lizards that he studies. Pianka answered, "What good are you?" He then
rammed home his point with the claim, "We are no better than bacteria." The
speech was given during 109th meeting of the Texas Academy of Science at Lamar
University in Beaumont on 3-5 March 2006. At that same meeting the Texas Academy
of Science named Pianka as the 2006 Distinguished Texas Scientist.

ED. COM. Pianka is one of a rare breed - a consistent evolutionist. If human
beings only came into being by chance random or naturalistic processes, then
they are not intrinsically different to bacteria, lizards and have no more value
than any other life form that got here by the same processes. If "survival of
the fittest" is the basis of living on this planet then no-one can complain when
they are selected against by a deadly virus, or a Hitler or Pol Pot, leaving
only those who are tough enough to survive. Those who want human beings to be
protected by health care, social welfare and laws against murder and violence,
must understand that the only basis for protecting human lives is that human
beings are special creations made in the image of God. See Genesis 9: 1-6. (Ref.
genocide, humanity, pandemic)

[Soldier4Christ]

FINCH BEAK VARIATION described in Nature, vol. 442, p563, 3 Aug 2006. Changes
in beak shape of Galapagos Island finches is presented in textbooks and popular
media as a classic example of evolution of new species. A group of researchers
led by Arhat Abzhanov of the Harvard Medical School, Massachusetts, have studied
the development of finch beaks as the birds develop inside the eggs. They found
that variations in the amount of a molecule named  calmodulin (CaM) regulates
the length of the beak. Increased levels of CaM result in increased length of
the beak, resulting in a beak like that of the cactus finch. Several years ago
variations in another molecule named Bmp4 was found to regulate the depth and
thickness of the beak. The Harvard researchers suggest that combinations of
levels of these two molecules can explain all variations in beak shape and size
between the different finch species, e.g. high CaM and low Bmp4 results in the
long thin beak like a cactus finch, low CaM and high Bmp4 gives a short stout
beak of the large ground finch.

ED. COM. This is exactly what you would predict if the birds were variations
within one created Finch Kind. Apart  from their beaks and their feeding
behaviour, the Galapagos finches are remarkably similar, and hybrids between
them can produce fertile offspring. The study described above confirms that the
variation in beak shape is just built in variability in the same gene that
ensures that some Finches within the population can survive if the environment
changes. The more research that is done on the finches the more the evidence
fits with the Genesis account of living creatures being made as separate Kinds.
(Ref. adaptation, development, kinds)

[Soldier4Christ]

"EVOLUTION CAUGHT IN THE ACT" is the headline of an article in news@nature,
13 July 2006.  A study of two species of Darwin's finches on one of the smaller
Galapagos Islands has "provided the best description of a characteristic trait
evolving in the wild." The study was reported in Science vol. 313, p224, 14 July
2006 by Princeton University biologists Peter and Rosemary Grant. They have
studied the medium ground finch and the large ground finch on the island of
Daphne Major. Both these finches eat seeds but the large ground finches find it
easier to eat the large seeds of a low shrub named "Tribulus cistoides" (Tc) and
they have thrived on the island since they first arrived in 1982. The medium
ground finch can eat these large seeds but finds it easier to eat small seeds.
In 2003 and 2004 there was a drought, and the supply of large Tc seeds was
drastically reduced. The smaller birds could more easily eat small seeds, so
they survived. In 2004 and 2005 the researchers noted the average size of medium
ground finch beaks was smaller than before, and the birds were only eating the
large seeds half as often as before.

ED. COM. NOTE WELL! No birds have actually evolved. They already had beaks of
varying sizes and all that has happened is that some birds were already better
equipped to cope with drought induced change in seed availability. The ones that
weren't, i.e. those with big beaks, died out, while the small beaked birds
survived. This is "survival of the fittest" or natural selection, but it is NOT
evolution. The change in average beak size is the result of the larger beaked
birds being removed from the statistics in the next generation. This is an
ecological change, not an evolutionary one, BUT -it shows how researchers call
any change evolution-even when it isn't! (Ref. variation, ecology, elimination)

[Soldier4Christ]

EVOLUTION FAILS AGAIN according a report from Angus-Reid Global Scan
following a Gallup Poll that asked 1001 Americans how they believed human beings
came into existence. The poll asked the following questions: Which of the
following statements comes closest to your views on the origin and development
of human beings? 1) Human beings have developed over millions of years from less
advanced forms of life, but God guided this process; 2) Human beings have
developed over millions of years from less advanced forms of life, but God had
no part in this process; 3) God created human beings pretty much in their
present form at one time within the last 10,000 years or so." The results were:
36 percent said that man developed with God's guidance, 13 percent believed that
man developed but God had no part in the process, and 46 percent said that God
created man in his present form. The remaining 5 percent had no opinion.
Recently New York City mayor Michael Bloomberg commented: "It boggles the mind
that nearly two centuries after Darwin, and 80 years after John Scopes was put
on trial, this country is still debating the validity of evolution."

ED. COM. A similar result was produced by a survey in the UK (See Evolution
fails in British Opinion Poll, Evidence News, 8 Feb 2006) and during our recent
visit to the UK some prominent evolutionists were claiming the battle for
evolution had been won over 100 years ago. The response to this American survey
and the unprecedented interest in our work by the secular media in the UK
confirms that it has not. The fact that a century of promoting evolution in
popular and professional literature has failed to convince nearly half of the
survey sample reminds us that deep down people know that chance random processes
do not explain where they came from. (Ref. surveys, beliefs, faith)

[Soldier4Christ]

OLDEST ORB WEAVER FOUND, according to reports in BBC News Online 14 June 2006
and Biology Letters FirstCite Early Online Publishing, DOI:
10.1098/rsbl.2006.0506. David Penney of the Unviersity of Manchester, UK  and
Vincente Ortuno of the University of Alcala, Spain have found two specimens of a
spider from the family Araneidae, the orb weaving spiders, preserved in amber
from Alva in northern Spain. The amber is dated as Lower Cretaceous - between
115 to 120 million years old. This makes them the oldest orb weaving spiders
found. Today there are over 2,000 species of orb weaving spiders in three
families. Penny and Ortuno write: "Given the complex and stereotyped movements
that all orb weavers use to construct their webs, there is little question
regarding their common origin, which must have occurred in the Jurassic or
earlier." They then suggest that orb weavers diversified during the Cretaceous
period when flowering plants and insect pollinators evolved.

ED. COM. These are evidence that orb weaving spiders have always been orb
weaving spiders, which is exactly what you would expect if living creatures were
separately created to reproduce after their kinds. The claims that orb weavers
evolved unseen in the millions of years before these specimens were preserved in
amber, and they then gave rise to 2,000 other species is a blind belief - not an
observed fact. The reason for the comments about flowering plants and insect
pollinators is the common evolutionary idea that if a type of food becomes
available, flying insects or animals will evolve to eat it, e.g. spiders. This
is also blind faith. The fact that a spider eat insects no more explains how
spiders came into existence, than eating a BIG MAC proves where man come from.
(Ref. arachnids, amber, webs)

[Soldier4Christ]

SPIDER AGES BY 80 MILLION YEARS, according to a report in Cretaceous
Research, Volume 27, June 2006, Pages 442-446. David Penney and Paul Selden have
found the first fossils of a spider that now lives in New Zealand. The fossils
were found in Cretaceous ambers found in Manitoba and Alberta in Canada. The
fossils are juveniles but have all the distinctive features of a type of spider
classified as belonging "to the single, extant, monotypic genus Huttonia O.
Pickard-Cambridge". The researchers go on to say: "The fossils extend the known
geological age of Huttoniidae back approximately 80 myr (million years)".

ED. COM. If the oldest specimen of this spider is the same as the recent living
specimens then this spider has not evolved, no matter how old you believe the
fossil to be. This finding is exactly what you would predict on the basis of
Genesis, which tells us that God made living things as separate kinds to
multiply only after their own kinds. (Ref. arachnids, amber, fossil)

[Soldier4Christ]

SELF POLLINATING ORCHID FOUND according to a report in Nature, vol. 441,
p945, 22 June 2006. Flowers are fertilised when pollen is placed on the stigma,
the female part of the flower. Although most flowers produce pollen they rely on
outside agents, such as insects, to bring pollen to their stigma and take their
pollen to another flower. A group of Chinese biologists have studied the flowers
of an orchid named "Holcoglossum amesiamum" and found that the flower actively
pollinates itself, without any outside help. The pollen is packaged into two
pollinia on the end of a flexible stem called a stipe. The stigma sits in a
cavity with a roof above it. When the flower first opens the pollen is covered
by an anther cap and the stipe is folded back over the roof of the stigma
cavity. When the flower is fully open the stipe rises up, curves forward and
downward and inserts the pollen onto the receptive surface of the stigma. The
orchid normally grows high in trees growing in still dry conditions at altitudes
of 1,200 - 2,000m in China and south-east Asia. The researchers concluded: "The
present self-pollination mechanism is likely to be an adaptation to the orchid's
dry and insect-scarce habitat and may be widespread among species growing in
similar environments."

ED. COM. This orchid is a most attractive flower that has pretty pale pink and
mauve petals and a striped pattern below the stigma, and is listed on gardening
websites as a fragrant orchid. All of these features are considered to be
adaptations for attracting pollinators. However, as the study described above
clearly demonstrates, the plant does not need to attract pollinators. So, why is
it beautiful? The question of beauty came up at the recent debate at Northampton
University where the evolutionists insisted that beauty in living things such as
flowers and butterflies can be explained by sexual selection. However, that is
not the case for this orchid, and it is not the only self-fertilising beautiful
flower. Sweet peas have fragrant colourful petals but they fertilise themselves.
The distinctive patterns on butterfly wings cannot all be explained as sexual
selection either. Approximately half the species of Heliconius butterflies
reproduce by pupal mating. The male butterflies emerge from the pupae before the
females. The fully developed, but unopened female pupae emit pheromones that
attract the males. The males open the pupal cases and mate with the females
before they emerge. Many years ago Eric Laithwaite, a keen amateur butterfly
collector, commented on this behaviour in an interview with Robyn Williams of
the ABC (Australia) "Science Show". After describing the process of pupal
mating, he said he had "a question for God and Darwin, i.e. why were these
butterflies visually attractive when they didn't see one another when it
mattered." We believe God gives us a clue in Genesis 2:9, which states the trees
in the Garden of Eden were pleasing to the eye as well as good for food. Beauty
does matter to God, Who also gave mankind made in His image, an appreciation for
beauty. While most beautiful things in the created world also have a practical
function, there are some that cannot be explained in purely function terms. The
fact that this beautiful and fragrant Chinese orchid can reproduce in a "dry and
insect-scarce habitat" does explain that it can survive because it already has a
well designed method of self pollination. It does not explain how such a method
of pollination evolved at all.  (Ref. pollination, beauty, flowers)

[Soldier4Christ]

FISH WITH FRONT LEGS found according to articles 5 April 2006, in Nature and
news@nature. A team of researchers led by Neil Shubin of the University of
Chicago, and Edward Daeschler of the Academy of natural Sciences, Philadelphia,
have found fossils believed to be "an intermediate between a fish with fins and
a tetrapod with limbs". The fossils were found on Ellesmere island in Northern
Canada and include a "a near complete front half of a fossilised skeleton of a
crocodile-like creature, whose skull is about 20 cm (8 ins) long). The front
fins of the creature contain arm bones, with elbow and wrist joints but with
fins instead of hands. The animal also had a crocodile-like head with eyes on
the top and lacked a bony gill cover. It had bony scales and robust ribs,
although its spine is poorly preserved. The researchers believe it used its
front limbs to walk in shallow water. A "News and Views" article in Nature
claims that the new fossil, named Tiktaalik roseae, "might in time become as
much of an evolutionary icon as the proto-bird Archaeopteryx."

ED. COM. What has amazed us about this report is that it has failed to catch the
public imagination. In the time since this discovery was announced and promoted
heavily in TIME etc, only one uni student has asked about it in a debate.
Perhaps the fact that we already have living fishes Down Under that climb trees,
sunbake and jump off branches into the water just for fun, makes the hype appear
HYPER. These cute Aussie Mud Skippers have shown no sign of evolving. Perhaps
the fact that the fossil is very incomplete and so it has been difficult to
convince the public exactly what kind of animal it was. The fact that the fossil
creature no longer exists does not prove it evolved into a land animal. It
simply proves that like many other creatures we only know as fossils, it has
died out, and extinction is no help to evolution, but fits the Biblical history
of the world. (Ref. transition, fossilisation, evolution)

[Soldier4Christ]

FISH CATCHES FOOD ON LAND, according to reports in news@nature and BBC News
Online 12 April 2006. The eel catfish is a long agile fish that lives in swamps
in tropical Africa and is able to propel itself out of water and catch land
dwelling beetles to eat. As it leaps onto the muddy shore it lifts the front of
its body upwards and bends its head downwards so that it can grab the beetle
from above. It then slithers back into the water. It is not the first fish known
to hunt for land dwelling prey, but its method of catching insects has never
been observed before, and  scientists believe this behaviour helps explain how
the "first vertebrates graduating to land caught their dinner."

ED. COM. The way this fish bends its body to catch insects may be unique, but
fish that that can move about and catch bugs on land are not. The great Aussie
Catfish even climbs trees to catch food. Such fish are able to take advantage of
a land based food source because they already have the functional features
needed to do it. This does not explain how a fish might turn into a land animal.
(Ref. ecology, predation, transition)

[Soldier4Christ]

Again, another "evolutionary fossil" shot down out of the evolutionary column. More proof of evolution that has been disproved.


_____________________________



‘Hobbit’ was a disabled caveman


THE remains of a fossilised stone age pygmy, hailed as a new species of human when it was found two years ago, probably belonged to a disabled but otherwise normal caveman, researchers have claimed.

The discovery of the 18,000-year-old “homo floresiensis” on the Indonesian island of Flores was thought to be a major development in tracing human evolution when it was announced in 2004.

However, a new analysis of the 3ft skeleton, nicknamed the “hobbit”, along with other remains found at the site, has indicated they probably belonged to an early human suffering from microcephaly, a condition that causes an abnormally small head and other deformities.

“The skeletal remains do not represent a new species, but some of the ancestors of modern human pygmies who live on the island today,” concludes a report in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, one of America’s most respected scientific institutions. “The individual exhibits a combination of characteristics that are not primitive but instead regional and not unique but found in other modern human populations.”

The controversy began in October 2004 when Nature, a leading British science journal, published what appeared to be a groundbreaking paper about a new species of human.

The original team, co-directed by Michael Morwood from the University of New England in Australia and Professor Radien Soejono of the Indonesian Research Centre for Archeology, made the discovery in the Liang Bua cave.

The creature was found with fossils of animals including a snake, frog, monkey, deer and pig. “Here we have a creature that is substantially different from modern humans, a totally new species of our genus, that lived almost into historical times. This has a number of startling implications,” said Henry Gee, Nature’s senior editor for biological science, at the time.

Nature has confirmed that it subjected the manuscript to the normal scientific review process in which it was scrutinised by outside experts who approved its contents.

The new study suggests, however, that the initial evaluation of the remains was flawed.

Robert Eckhardt, professor of developmental genetics and evolutionary morphology at Pennsylvania State University, who was part of the new team, criticises the original study for comparing the skeleton with those of homo sapiens primarily from Europe.

A more accurate understanding of the “hobbit”, he says, emerges when comparing the bones against humans from the same region.

Some researchers had already expressed doubts over the original findings. Earlier this year Robert Martin, a primatologist at the Field museum in Chicago, said: “If you plot a graph of all of the data we have on brain sizes of hominids against time, [floresiensis] is the only one that falls right off the curve. It’s an anomaly.”

[Soldier4Christ]

A weekly feature examining the news from the biblical viewpoint

1. BBC: Research finds 'unique human DNA'

According to a study published in Nature, scientists believe they have found a gene sequence (HAR1, for those of you taking notes) whose evolution resulted in a tripling of the brain capacity of humans, thus distinguishing our mental abilities from chimpanzees.

For evolutionists, this is exciting news. For instance, the AP report on the find quotes Andrew Clark, a molecular biologist from Cornell University, as commenting that the news is “terrifically exciting”—although, interestingly enough, Clark “has a hard time believing it” because the gene has evolved (supposedly) so quickly relative to what evolutionists expect, based on commonly accepted rates of mutations. How quickly? Seventy times faster than all of our other genes, according to evolutionists.

A few important notes on this bit of news. First, the entire method by which scientists determine that these genes have “evolved” is based on circular reasoning. Basically, scientists compare the genetic code of humans with other mammals. Differences are then chalked up to evolution, period; the only “evidence” to show that these genes actually evolved is just the presupposition that our genetic code came from chimps. Second, the differences line up with what creationists could expect—God formed our torsos and limbs to be fairly similar to those of chimpanzees (design economy), whereas our minds were created to be less similar (to have communion with Him).

Finally, this is yet another find that upsets the traditional view of evolution—that slow, gradual changes produced all of life’s diversity. Evolutionists must increasingly accommodate their theories to the contrary evidence, which is what originally led to Darwinism replacements, such as punctuated equilibria and neo-Darwinism.