Biblical Creation vs. Evolution

[Soldier4Christ]

NATIONAL GEOGRAPHIC MAKES FOOLS of themselves as they release TV DOCUMENTARY
about Turkish quadruped human family. For background :in March 2006 several
science news services reported a story about a family of brothers and sisters
who walked around on all fours. In spite of the fact that medical tests
indicated they had a genetic defect that caused a malfunction in the part of the
brain that controls movement, many scientists and now National Geographic have
let their prejudice for evolution become proof of evolution as they join those
who claim that the family are evidence that humans evolved from a quadruped ape.
For those who may have seen the National Geographic documentary here is our
original report and comment on the family.

Evidence News 22nd March 2006
"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.

[Soldier4Christ]

TREES RETURNING says November Proceedings of National Academy of Sciences USA
(PNAS, vol 103  p17574, 14 Nov 2006), as it reports there are significant gains
in tree numbers in the USA and China, even though Brazil and India have lost
trees. 22 of the 50 significant forest regions of the globe have gained trees.

ED.COM. Our own research would agree with this report as we have talked to many
old timers over the past decade in the USA who vouch for this fact. But tree
gain is also true for many parts of the UK where historic paintings of the
geology sites we visit show forests today where there was cleared land in the
1700's. Even the Scottish moors are rapidly being covered, much to the disgust
of those who like their barren bleakness. Our perspective - God made  trees for
us to use and appointed us to have dominion over the planet (Genesis 1:1-31), so
by all means "if you want to use a tree, cut one for you and one for me, and
then plant three!

[Soldier4Christ]

SEA URCHIN SURPRISE reported in news@nature, biologynews.net 9 Nov 2006 and
Science, vol. 314, p398, 10 Nov 2006. Scientists have decoded the genome of the
California purple sea urchin and have identified 23,300 genes made from 814
million DNA code letters. The scientists were surprised to find 7,077 of the sea
urchin genes are also found in humans. Most surprising was that some of the "in
common genes" are associated with hearing, balance, and sight in humans, but the
sea urchin does not have eyes and ears. The vision genes were found to be
activated in the animal's tube feet. Gary Wessel of Brown University, who
participated in the project, commented: "Nobody would've predicted that sea
urchins have such a robust gene set for visual perception. I've been looking at
these organisms for 31 years - and now I know they were looking back at me."
Some of the eye and ear genes were thought to be unique to vertebrates. The gene
study also showed that sea urchins have a complex immune system.

ED. COM. Seven thousand out of 23,300 genes is approximately 30%, but no-one has
yet claimed sea urchins are thirty percent human. Next time someone claims that
humans are 98% chimpanzee remember this! Finding genetic information that is
used in eyes of vertebrates but in tube feet in sea urchins simply shows that
the information carried on genes can be used in different ways. It is not
evidence that one kind of creature changed into another. Neither is this type of
phenomenon a new discovery, but rather an ignored old one because it doesn't fit
evolutionary theory. In the 1970's, prominent embryologist Gavin de Beer wrote a
book entitled Homology: an Unsolved problem (1971 Oxford University Press). He
pointed out that "homologous" structures are not always controlled by the same
genes, and the same genes in different organisms can control different
structures.

The following two quotes from de Beer's book are from an article entitled
Homology and Heterochrony: The Evolutionary Embryologist Gavin Rylands de Beer
(1899-1972) by Ingo Brigandt, Department of History and Philosophy of Science,
University of Pittsburgh: "It is now clear that the pride with which it was
assumed that the inheritance of homologous structures from a common ancestor
explained homology was misplaced; for such inheritance cannot be ascribed to
identity of genes."

"But if it is true that through the genetic code, genes code for enzymes that
synthesize proteins which are responsible for the differentiation of the various
parts in their normal manner, what mechanism can it be that results in the
production of homologous organs, the same 'patterns', in spite of their not
being controlled by the same genes? I asked this question in 1938, and it has
not been answered." ('71, p 16)

[Soldier4Christ]

PLANT IRON STORE REVEALED, as described in an article in ScienceExpress 2 Nov
2006. A team of  researchers led by Mary Lou Guerinot of Dartmouth College, New
Hampshire has used a combination of gene studies and x-ray imaging techniques to
work out where iron is stored in plant seeds. They found that the iron is
stored in the developing vascular (fluid transport) tissue in the seed and
involves a protein named VIT1, which transports the iron into internal storage
depots inside plant cells called vacuoles. The researchers are hoping their
findings can be used to develop grain crops with higher iron content."
(ScienceExpress is the advanced online publication site for the Journal
"Science')

ED. COM. Iron is an essential mineral for plants and animals, and the decreasing
availability of it after Noah's flood, was probably why some animals took to
scavenging and predation. For example, mosquitoes live on nectar and plant
juices, but females cannot get enough iron to make eggs from these sources. This
is why female mosquitoes seek out a meal of blood when they are ready to lay
their eggs. If plants had a higher iron content mosquitoes wouldn't need to bite
people. Plants get their iron from the soil, and in the original good world
described in Genesis the mineral content of the soils would have been sufficient
for the needs of the plants, and for the animals and people that ate them. The
worldwide flood of Noah degraded the soil and we know from agricultural history
many places in the world have soils lacking in essential minerals. Plants have
degenerated since then, as well, and may not be able to accumulate and store
iron as well as they did in the original good world. Studies such as the one
described above may help us to find out how and why many plants are no longer a
good source of iron. Perhaps even to redevelop iron rich weed food sources for
mosquitoes and eliminate malaria for good.

[Soldier4Christ]

GYMPIE FLOOD TREE SITE EXCAVATION PICS ON
http://www.creationresearch.net/research/Fossil-Log-Jam.htm
The excavation project was a great success as a good group of helpers turned up
to excavate the fossil logjam we discovered quite a few years ago. All logs
excavated, regardless of size, had been smashed. Some logs were up to
1/2m thick and look as if they had been karate chopped into separate blocks. The
deposit is in strongly cross-bedded sandstone with pebble beds indicating the
direction of water flow. The trees are mainly pine and as such are no help
to evolution.

We already take school and public field trips to this site - now it can be even
better evidence that the rocks did not take millions of years to get there and a
flood explanation actually works.

[Soldier4Christ]

FLAMINGO FEEDING described in ScienceNOW 31 Oct 2006. Larry Witmar of Ohio
University has studied the blood vessels of flamingos and compared them with
other birds. He found that flamingos have two expandable blood filled sinuses
under each side of the tongue. When these are filled with blood they enlarge and
stiffen the tongue. This would enable the bird to feed more efficiently.
Flamingos are filter feeders, i.e. they suck water into their mouths and
strain out plankton. Unlike other filter feeders, flamingos hold their heads
upside down as they feed and use their tongue like a piston to pump the water
through their mouths. Flamingo jaw bones have a distinctive depression where it
underlies the sinuses. No other birds have this depression, so scientists
suspect that the sinuses are unique to flamingos. Ornithologist Richard Prum of
Yale University commented: "This is pioneering work. Flamingos evolved a
whole new way to feed, with a new orientation of the head, and nobody has come
up with a role for the vascular (blood vessel) system in foraging before."
Evolutionary biologist Marcel van Tuinen of University of North Carolina says
the jawbone depression could be used to trace the origin of filter feeding as
the flamingo's method of feeding resembles that of baleen whales.

ED. COM. No-one has observed flamingos evolving from another bird, let alone
from a baleen whale. Finding filter feeding structures in both flamingos and
baleen whales is a good example of how each kind of living creature is a unique
combination of non-unique parts - exactly what you would expect from the
description of creation in Genesis, which tells us that birds and whales were
made as fully functioning creatures, according to their kinds.

[Soldier4Christ]

SOMETHING "MAGIC" ABOUT THREE, CLAIMS PHYSICIST, according to reports in
Science Daily, and Nature, vol. 440, p289 & 315, 15 Mar 2006. A team of
scientists led by Cheng Chin of University of Chicago have converted three
ultra-cold caesium atoms into a new state of matter that was originally
theorised to exist by a Russian physicist named Vitaly Efirmov in 1970. The new
state of matter, named Efrimov state, needed three atoms to form. Two
caesium atoms weakly repelled one another, but when three were put together they
attracted one another and formed a stable state. As such, they behave like a
Borromean ring. Chin explained: "This ring means that three objects are
entangled. If you pick up any one of them, the other two will follow. However,
if you cut one of them off, the other two will fall apart. There is something
magic about this number of three."



ED. COM. Even in the obscure world of quantum physics, scientists cannot get
away from the "three-ness" of the universe. It is not a coincidence that very
fabric of reality consists of stable trinities imposed on a unity. This is
exactly what you would predict from the Scripture that tells us (Romans 1:20)
that the God of the Bible not only created, but has stamped his divine Triune
nature (three in one), on the creation. The same Scripture also tells us this is
so obvious, that we are without excuse for not recognising it in the Universe
where three primary colors are found in a three dimensional space in which you
can't have any one dimension unless you have all 3. Time is best described
as past, present and future and again you must have all 3 or you can't have any
one. Even humble matter normally has three states that become one at the triple
point. Now go look for many more trinities in this unity that reflects the
Nature of a Creator God who is One, yet Three. 

[Soldier4Christ]

JUST WHEN WE THOUGHT WE WERE EVOLVING MORE BRAINS, a 2000 yr old analog
computer made by the ancient Greeks is documented in a recent Sky and Telescope
article, http://skytonight.com/news/home/4776976.html
The Antikythera Mechanism, was made of brass enclosed in wood, but until
recently, no one has had a close look at it. It turns out this mechanical device
is really an analog computer that "enabled astronomers in the second century BC
to predict the movements of the Moon and Sun, along with lunar and solar
eclipses. It could recreate irregularities in the Moon's motion due to its
elliptical orbit. And it may have even enabled Greek astronomers to forecast the
positions of the known planets."  Mike Edmunds of Cardiff University in Wales
says: "This device is just extraordinary, the only thing of its kind. The design
is beautiful. The astronomy is exactly right. The way the mechanics are
designed just makes your jaw drop." All this with a mechanical device instead of
an electronic computer.

Bradley Schaefer of Louisiana State University comments on Antikythera, "This is
all rather exciting, as it shows a greatly more sophisticated technology for the
Greeks than any had really imagined. And this technology is far in advance of
anything else for almost a millennium."

ED.COM. If Schaefer had read the book "Longitude", the true story of English
clockmaker John Harrison, "a lone genius who solved the greatest scientific
problem of his time" in the 1700s, he would realize that "we" have always
had brilliant minds among us. Harrison provided mariners with an accurate method
of determining their longitude at sea, and he did it with the most accurate and
miniature clocks that had ever been constructed. Mariners could use the sun in
the day and the North Star at night (at least in the Northern Hemisphere) to
accurately determine their latitude, but they had no clue about their longitude.

Longitude was important because on frequent occasions ships and even flotillas
would run aground because they didn't know exactly how far they were to the east
and to the west. If Columbus had had one of Harrison's clocks with him 200 years
earlier, he would have known he was going the wrong way to China. Scientists of
Harrison's day were trying to use the appearance and disappearance of the
Galilian moons behind Jupiter, and they disdained intensely Harrison's "stupid"
little machines. Of course, Jupiter could only be seen at night, and only on
cloudless nights, and then only when it was above the horizon at night. Today
mariners avoid running onto rocks by using clocks that are not much more
accurate than those Harrison was crafting 400 years ago. One of Harrison's
wooden clocks, located on the tower of a horse barn in England, is still keeping
accurate time to this day - and because of the "oily" type of wood he used, it
never needs oiling.

The Bible tells us that even further back in the early chapters of Genesis 4,
there were highly skilled and obviously intelligent craftsmen. "We" haven't
gotten smarter - we just have to use different technology. Most of the old
knowledge and skills have been lost - I doubt if anyone could construct an
Antikythera computer today, or a wooden clock that can keep accurate time for
centuries - or a huge seagoing wooden ship the size of Noah's ark, that
worked with no sea trials and no life boats.

[Soldier4Christ]

ROBOT LEARNS TO LIMP

 Engineers at Cornell University have
made a four legged robot that can work out how to walk, and then adjust its
pattern of movement if one of its limbs is damaged. The robot is fitted with
sensors in its limbs that send information to a computer when it moves its body
parts. Using this information the robot builds an information model of its body
and works out what should happen when moves its limbs. If one of its limbs is
damaged, or a piece is lost, the robot's movements no longer match what the
model predicts. The robot can sense this and work out what changes in movements
it must make to keep going. Robot researchers hope that this new method of robot
learning can be used in robots sent to explore remote or dangerous places where
human engineers will not be available to repair broken robots on site. Ronald
Arkin of the Mobile robot Laboratory at Georgia Institute of Technology
commented to news@nature that the adaptable robot is a "new development in
evolutionary robotics" - described by news@nature as "a field that aims to build
robots that learn from their environment without human help, and then teach
other robots their skills."

ED. COM. When robots are developed that can learn from their environment it will
have nothing to do with evolution.  The robots, the sensory devices and the
mathematical model that interprets the sensory information and sends
instructions to the robot's limbs will all be created by intelligent pre
existent scientists and engineers. Human movement depends on a similar but much
more sophisticated system. Your brain is constantly monitoring sensory
information from the body and using it to make adjustments to body movements and
is able to see the obvious analogy to a created robot, as well as to choose to
not learn from it.

[Soldier4Christ]

NEANDERTHALS GREW LIKE US, according to reports in ScienceNOW 22 Nov 2006
and Nature Advanced Online Publication doi:10.1038/nature05314. In 2004
researchers who studied enamel layers on Neanderthal front teeth suggested that
Neanderthals grew up faster than living humans. This would have helped them
survive in harsh conditions, but provided less time for brain development.
However, the following year another group of researchers claimed that the
Neanderthal growth pattern was within the normal human range. A team of British
and French researchers have now studied the internal microscopic structure of
Neanderthal molars to get a more accurate record of growth patterns. As teeth
grow they build up a pattern of microscopic lines that indicate how far the
teeth had developed at birth, and how fast the crown and root development
occurred after birth until full maturity. The researchers summarized their
findings as: "These data are the first on internal molar microstructure; they
firmly place key Neanderthal life history variables within those known for
modern humans."

ED. COM. In spite of numerous claims that Neanderthals were a separate species,
whenever a detailed study is carried out on any aspect of Neanderthal structure
and/or function, the results fit within the present normal human range. The only
real differences in Neanderthal bone structure, are best  explained by
degenerative changes resulting from a poor diet and living in harsh conditions.
All of which are the opposite of evolution and fit the Biblical picture of
Man migrating from Babel (Genesis 11) with a loss of technology compounded by a
degenerating environment 

[Soldier4Christ]

 Radiocarbon in diamonds: enemy of billions of years

What do hard sparkling diamonds and dull soft pencil ‘lead’ have in common? They are both forms (allotropes) of carbon. Most carbon atoms are 12 times heavier than hydrogen (12C), about one in 100 is 13 times heavier (13C), and one in a trillion (1012) is 14 times heavier (14C). Of these different types (isotopes) of carbon, 14C is called radiocarbon, because it is radioactive—it breaks down over time.

 Some try to measure age by how much 14C has decayed. Many people think that radiocarbon dating proves billions of years.1  But evolutionists know it can’t, because 14C decays too fast. Its half-life (t½) is only 5,730 years—that is, every 5,730 years, half of it decays away. After two half lives, a quarter is left; after three half lives, only an eighth; after 10 half lives, less than a thousandth is left.2 In fact, a lump of 14C as massive as the earth would have all decayed in less than a million years.3

So if samples were really over a million years old, there would be no radiocarbon left. But is this not what we find, even with very sensitive 14C detectors.4
Diamonds

Diamond is the hardest substance known, so its interior should be very resistant to contamination. Diamond requires very high pressure to form—pressure found naturally on earth only deep below the surface. Thus they probably formed at a depth of 100–200 km. Geologists believe that the ones we find must have been transported supersonically5 to the surface, in extremely violent eruptions through volcanic pipes. Some are found in these pipes, such as kimberlites, while other diamonds were liberated by water erosion and deposited elsewhere (called alluvial diamonds). According to evolutionists, the diamonds formed about 1–3 billion years ago.5
Dating diamonds

Geophysicist Dr John Baumgardner, part of the RATE research group,6 investigated 14C in a number of diamonds.7 There should be no 14C at all if they really were over a billion years old, yet the radiocarbon lab reported that there was over 10 times the detection limit. Thus they had a radiocarbon ‘age’ far less than a million years! Dr Baumgardner repeated this with six more alluvial diamonds from Namibia, and these had even more radiocarbon.

The presence of radiocarbon in these diamonds where there should be none is thus sparkling evidence for a ‘young’ world, as the Bible records.

[Soldier4Christ]

Dragon virgin births startle zoo keepers

Zookeepers in Britain are marveling at the apparent virgin conception and birth of four Komodo dragons (with eight more on the way) at Chester Zoo. The hatchlings and yet-to-be-hatched are the product of parthenogenesis, a process observed in several animals (including various other lizards) whereby an adult female may give birth without fertilization from a male. News@nature.com explains:

    [T]he dragon sons are not direct clones of their mothers, but that the babies‚ DNA contains half as much variation as is present in the mother’s genes, indicating that it represents a doubling up of one set of mother’s chromosomes. The results show that no other Komodo dragon could have been involved in their conception.

Interestingly, the offspring are entirely male:

    In dragons, the female carries two different sex chromosomes (ZW), while males are homozygous ZZ. As WW is not a viable combination, all surviving offspring created by doubling up half of the female’s genes must be males.

Of course, allusions to the Virgin Conception of Christ abound especially as Christmas is upon us, though such allusions ignore the fact that the Bible is clear that Jesus does have a Father (Matthew 1:18; 16:17)!

[Soldier4Christ]

Human-chimp Difference May Be Bigger

Remember all the excitement over claims that human and chimp DNA were more than 98% identical? Well, evolutionist excitement is paling as scientists from Indiana University report that such claims ignore other factors:

    The new estimate ... takes into account something other measures of genetic difference do not—the genes that aren’t there.

Based on the latest analysis, “[a]pproximately 6 percent of human and chimp genes are unique to those species,” though evolutionists interpret this difference as being a result of the species losing and gaining different genes since diverging from a common ancestor.

Of course, Answers in Genesis has pointed out before that the differences make the difference and that there’s more than the genes that make the difference.

[Soldier4Christ]

One Key to Bird Flight Discovered

Articles like this one may leave evolutionists puzzled even while creationists chuckle. LiveScience reports on scientists’ investigations into how bird flight works:

    The key, they found, is the acrocoracohumeral ligament, a short band of tissue that connects the humerus to the shoulder joint. The ligament balances all of the converging forces, from the pull of the massive pectoralis muscle in the bird’s breast to the push of wind under its wings.

    Curious if the same was true of ancient animals, the researchers put some alligators on a treadmill and studied their gaits and used X-rays to make more computer models. The ancestors of modern alligators were closely related to birds.

Alright, so far, so good: the scientists are using their evolutionary assumptions—that “[t]he ancestors of modern alligators were closely related to birds”—to construct their models of flight. Since bird ancestors and alligator ancestors were closely related, the argue, there must be similarities in their muscular/skeletal structure.

    They found that alligators use muscles, not ligaments, to support their shoulders.

So, there aren’t similarities! Of course, the article mentions Archaeopteryx as also having a “flight mechanism” different from modern birds (specifically pigeons), but this is based largely on conjecture, considering all that exists of Archaeopteryx are fossils.

Try as they might, evolutionists consistently run into trouble trying to reconcile all the various life-forms that have supposedly diverged from a common ancestor.

[Soldier4Christ]

Dinosaurs—stones did not help with digestion

In case you’ve been staying up late wondering: stones did not help with dinosaur digestion, according to research conducted at the universities of Bonn and Tübingen in Germany. Scientists have speculated that stones may have been used as “gastric mills” in dinosaur stomachs, helping them digest food in the same manner employed by some modern birds (such as ostriches).

But the real interest this article has for a creationist is found in the first paragraph:

    The giant dinosaurs had a problem. Many of them had narrow, pointed teeth, which were more suited to tearing off plants rather than chewing them. But how did they then grind their food? [Emphasis added]

The Bible plainly teaches that all animals were created vegetarian, and that carnivory only entered the world after Adam’s sin. Yet some ill-informed old-earthers and evolutionists claim that the teeth found in some fossils (e.g., fossilized T. rexes) prove that these animals couldn’t have eaten plants. So it’s refreshing to read a science publication admit that, yes, many plant-eating dinosaurs had “narrow, pointed teeth” that were in fact quite ideal for ripping and tearing plant material. Of course, there is no doubt that they were created with an efficient method of digestion as well, even if that method is lost on modern scientists who cannot directly observe the past.