Biblical Creation vs. Evolution

[Soldier4Christ]

Dr. Spock realized that many of the movements with which he had once agreed had caused an enormous amount of harm in our society. As a result of his insight, he admitted that he had "come full circle, in the end, to a feeling that it is crucial, in all issues, to consider the moral dimension" when trying to solve social and societal problems (1970, p. xiii). The major source of morality in the West, he realized, was the Judeo-Christian heritage, which has been seriously undermined by Darwinism, Freudianism, and the secular humanistic philosophies taught in our schools and by society as a whole. In his words, he "grew up with the century" (Spock and Morgan, 1989).
Too Late to Do Much about These Issues

Unfortunately, Spock's insight about these issues came late in his life when there was little he could do about them. While he recognized that Darwinism was harmful, he had assumed the theory was supported by verifiable scientific facts. His own references to the alleged evidence for Darwinism have been refuted long ago. For example, we now know that almost every concept noted in the quote above from Spock's Baby and Child Care book was wrong. The theory that an embryo repeats its evolutionary history has been shown to be based on forgeries (Wells, 2000; Bergman, 1999; Frair, 1999). Furthermore, neither embryos nor fetuses have "gills like fish." Spock recognized that evolution had done much harm in society, but his belief that the evidence which supported evolutionism blocked him from doing much about the problem. This illustrates the importance of stressing current research, which shows that most of the icons used to support evolution are either outright frauds or based on extremely tenuous and debatable evidence (Wells, 2000).

Acknowledgments: I wish to thank Bert Thompson, Ph.D.; John Woodmorappe, M.A.; Clifford Lillo, M.A.; and Wayne Frair, Ph.D., for their comments on earlier drafts of this article.
References

Bell, D. 1966. "Profile: Dr. Benjamin Spock." Midwife and Health Visitor, 2(:323, August.

Bergman, Jerry. 1999. "The Rise and Fall of Haeckel's Biogenetic Law." Creation Research Society Quarterly, 37(2):110-122.

Bloom, Lynn Z. 1972. Doctor Spock: Biography of a Conservative Radical. Indianapolis/New York: The Bobbs-Merrill Company, Inc., p. 213.

Collum, Danny Duncan. 1998. "The Spock Revolution." Sojourners, 27(4):52, July/August.

Frair, Wayne. 1999. "Embryology and Evolution." Creation Research Society Quarterly, 36(2):62-68.

Lewkonia, Ray. 1998. "Benjamin Spock: The Public Pediatrician." The Lancet, 35(9130):825-826.

Maier, Thomas. 1998. Dr. Spock: An American Life. New York: Harcourt Brace & Company.

Philpot, T. 1979. "Profile: Dr. Benjamin Spock. A Middle-of-the-Road Man." Nursing Mirror, 149(19):20-21, November 8.

Spock, Benjamin, (M.D.). 1970. Decent and Indecent. Our Personal and Political Behavior. New York: The McCall Publishing Company and Michael Rothenberg; 1992. Baby and Child Care. 6th edition. New York. Dutton and Mary Morgan; 1989. Spock on Spock. A Memoir of Growing Up with the Century. New York: Pantheon Books.

Wells, Jonathan. 2000. Icons of Evolution. Washington, D.C.: Regnery.

*Dr. Bergman is on the Biology faculty at Northwest State College in Ohio.

[Soldier4Christ]

 Glimpses Of Christ the Creator
by David Demick, M.D.

Abstract
Three centuries before Christ, the philosopher Epicurus offered an evolutionary worldview of random, purposeless naturalism that is strikingly similar to the modern evolutionary view. It is worth noting that this philosophy, like modern evolutionism, takes a low view of the wonderfully designed features of the world.

The nature of Jesus Christ as the Son of God, one and equal with the Father and the Holy Spirit, is a primary doctrine of the Christian church. Thus, Jesus Christ was also the co-Creator of the universe, a prime participant in the entire process of creation. His apostle John phrased this idea in parallel with the opening verses of Genesis 1:

    In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God. The same was in the beginning with God. All things were made by Him; and without Him was not any thing made that was made (John 1:1-3).

The apostle Paul also stated:

    For by Him were all things created, that are in heaven, and that are in earth, visible and invisible, whether they be thrones, or dominions, or principalities, or powers: all things were created by Him, and for Him (Colossians 1:16).

This truth, however, is not generally highlighted in the narrative portions of the Gospels. There, Christ's recorded teachings focus on His mission of human salvation, and on calling His hearers to repentance from sin. While He claimed to be one with God the Father (John 10:30), to have existed with the Father before the world began (John 17:5), and did miracles to prove His power over the created order (John 20:30-31), He did not in the Gospel records refer directly to His own role in the creation of the cosmos. Nevertheless, at a few points in the Gospels, the insights of Christ the Creator shine through His words.

For example, tucked away in the middle of the Sermon on the Mount is an admonition not to be anxious about food or clothes. Jesus used examples from nature to illustrate His point, and He said:

    Consider the lilies of the field, how they grow; they toil not, neither do they spin: And yet I say unto you, That even Solomon in all his glory was not arrayed like one of these (Matthew 6:28-29).

This is a remarkable statement, standing in stark contrast with the evolutionary philosophies known among the ancient Greeks and Romans. Like their modern counterparts, these held that the "simpler" forms of life sprang from the earth in a haphazard and spontaneous fashion. For example, three centuries before Christ, the philosopher Epicurus offered an evolutionary worldview of random, purposeless naturalism that is strikingly similar to the modern evolutionary view:

    The atoms in their eternal whirl, after many combinations and dissolutions, finally became united into what we call "the world." At first the earth was a lifeless lump of clay, but gradually it began to put forth grass and shrubs and flowers, just as animals and birds put forth hair and feathers. Life came next. Birds began to fly . . . and beasts prowled . . . Some of these species were adapted to their environment and were thus enabled . . . to survive. Others were . . . the freaks of nature, the victims of a blind experiment in a planless world, and they were doomed to extinction. Man, the protagonist in this interesting play without a plot, was the last to arrive on the scene.1

It is worth noting that this philosophy, like modern evolutionism, takes a low view of the wonderfully designed features of the world. It is part of sinful human nature to unduly exalt human work, and to abase or ignore the work of the Creator. For instance, in the provision of clothing, it is easy to focus on the human work involved, such as harvesting of plant fibers, weaving and sewing of cloth, processing and applying dyes, etc. To the narrow humanistic understanding, such human work seems more complex and important than the simple, familiar opening of a flower, or the growth of a tiny seed. On the other hand, Martin Luther, with his deep reverence for God, was much closer to the truth when he said: "If thou couldst understand a single grain of wheat, thou wouldst die for wonder."2 Even more so, Jesus Christ, with the all-seeing eyes of the Creator, knew centuries in advance of modern science the incredible microtechnology that is involved in the mere opening of a flower, and the formation and coloring of its petals. Thus, he was able to say with truth and confidence concerning the flowers that "even Solomon in all his glory was not arrayed like one of these." In another portion of the Sermon on the Mount, Jesus makes another remarkable statement with profound scientific implication. This one concerns the human body:

    The light (Greek, luchnos, lamp) of the body is the eye: if therefore thine eye be single (Greek, haplous, free from defect, unspotted), thy whole body shall be full of light (Greek, photeinos, full of light, shining, bright). But if thine eye be evil, thy whole body shall be full of darkness. If therefore the light (Greek, phos, radiance) that is in thee is darkness, how great is that darkness! (Matthew 6:22-23).3

As with the rest of the Bible, the primary purpose of these verses is moral instruction, not scientific instruction. In the context of the surrounding verses, and the culture of Jesus's day, they are a warning against selfishness and greed.4 They are another example drawn from nature, with a natural phenomenon being used to illustrate an unseen spiritual truth. Yet, the higher truth has no meaning unless the natural truth is also sound. Jesus's words specifically mention light in the eyes "filling" the whole body, implying a systemic physiologic effect for light perceived through the eyes. Is this a fanciful idea? It would have seemed so until recently. However, developments in neurophysiology have shown that light sensation in the eyes is indeed important for the healthy functioning of the entire body. These medical advances shed further light upon these verses, and wonderfully reveal the genius of Christ as Creator.

cont'd

[Soldier4Christ]

The long story of the unravelling of this scientific truth begins with the anatomical discovery in ancient times of the pituitary body, located just above the nasal passages, close to the base of the brain. It was thought for centuries that the pituitary was an unimportant small gland involved in nasal secretions. Its real purpose remained obscure until the late 1800s, when physiologists were amazed to find that it is actually the "master gland" of the endocrine system, exerting control over other important glands such as the thyroid, adrenals, and gonads. In the mid-1900s, it was further discovered that a small complex of neurons just above the pituitary, called the hypothalamus, regulates most of the pituitary. The importance of the hypothalamus is underscored by this summary from a current physiology textbook:

Thus, the hypothalamus, which represents less than 1% of the brain mass, nevertheless is one of the most important of the motor output pathways of the limbic system. It controls most of the vegetative and endocrine functions of the body as well as many aspects of emotional behavior.5

This series of discoveries concerning the pituitary and hypothalamus was followed by the discovery in 1972 that some optic nerve fibers provide a direct sensory link from the occular retinae to the hypothalamus in mammals, independent of the visual cortex of the brain. This accessory pathway for light stimulation to the brain was called the "retinohypothalamic tract."6 The stage was now set for establishing a physiologic link between sensation of light in the eyes and the overall function of the rest of the body.

Another small part of the brain, the pineal gland, needs mention at this point as an important component of what physiologists were beginning to call the "photo-neuroendocrine system." Like the pituitary, the pineal's existence had been noted from ancient times, but its function was unknown. Understanding the function of the pineal organ took a step backward for a century after 1859, when Darwinian wisdom decided that it was no more than a largely useless "vestigial organ."7

However, modern insight into the importance of the pineal began with the discovery in 1958 that it secreted a hormone called melatonin, which has several important positive physiologic effects. With regard to the light-brain-body interaction, melatonin has a circadian (daily) rhythm of secretion which affects the daily sleep-wake cycle. Studies have shown a functional link between the pineal gland and the suprachiasmatic nucleus, or "clock" center of the hypothalamus, and it has been demonstrated that their daily rhythms of activity are closely tied together. Thus, through the hypothalamus, pituitary, and pineal glands, light impulses conducted through the occular retinae have far-reaching effects on the entire body, quite independent of the sense of sight.

This scientific work has demonstrated an increase in medical usefulness over the past generation. It gives a physiologic basis for the increased occurrence of mental depression in winter, especially in higher geographic latitudes, caused by the progressive loss of daily light. It also gives a physiologic basis for the medical problems experienced by many shift workers, who have to maintain a sleep-wake rhythm out of synchrony with the daily light-dark cycle.8 It has also shown how blind people whose daily physiologic rhythms run out of synchrony with actual day and night can be successfully treated.9 These phenomena show our need for strong light in a regular daily cycle, perceived through the eyes, for the well-being of the entire body.

As research continues to be done in this area, it may be expected that more beneficial aspects of the photoneuroendocrine system will emerge. And, for the Christian, this new science of light's good effects on the human body has additional meaning. Not only does it give us greater confidence in the complete reliability of the words of our Lord Jesus Christ, but it also "illuminates" in a wonderful way the promises of God for the future. The Christian is the glad possessor of Christ's promise of eternal life in the glorious and unending light of His presence, in the city of sparkling jewels and crystal which He is preparing for those who believe in Him (Revelation 21:10-27).

To conclude, a close examination of these verses from the Sermon on the Mount in the light of modern science reveals the great knowledge and insight into the nature of Christ the Creator, even when His words are aimed at moral teaching. Thus, we find the words of Christ, like other portions of Scripture, to be "as silver . . . purified seven times" (Psalms 12:6), with layer upon layer of meaning and truth.

Acknowledgements are due to Dr. Chaney Bergdall of Huntington College, and to Dr. Jerry Bergman of Northwest State College of Ohio, for their advice and assistance.
References:

   1. Thomas, H. and Thomas, D. L., Living Biographies of Great Philosophers, Blue Ribbon Books, 1941, p. 44.
   2. Bainton, Roland, Here I Stand: A Life of Martin Luther, Mentor Books, 1955, p. 168.
   3. Scripture quotations from the King James Version with amplified word meanings from Young's Analytical Concordance to the Bible, Eerdmans, 1970.
   4. France, R., The Gospel According To Matthew, Inter-Varsity Press, 1985,
      pp. 138-139.
   5. Guyton, A., A Textbook of Medical Physiology, W.B. Saunders, 8th ed., 1991, p. 652.
   6. Klein, Moore, and Reppert. Suprachiasmatic Nucleus: The Mind's Clock, Oxford University Press, 1991, introduction and chapter 1.
   7. Bergman and Howe. Vestigial Organs Are Fully Functional, Creation Research Society Monograph #4, 1990, pp. 49-55.
   8. Moore-Ede, Sulzman, and Fuller, The Clocks That Time Us: Physiology of the Circadian Timing System, Harvard University Press, 1982, pp. 330-341.
   9. Sack, Brandes, et al., "Entrainment of Free-Running Circadian Rhythms by Melatonin in Blind People," New England Journal of Medicine, vol. 343, no. 15, Oct. 2000, p. 1070.

* Dr. Demick is a practicing physician in Hastings, Nebraska.

[Soldier4Christ]

 Shapes, Numbers, Patterns, And The Divine Proportion In God's Creation
by Fred Willson, M.S.

Abstract
Why did Phideas, the Greek sculptor, and many others in ancient Greece and Egypt use this ratio in designing their works of art? Because this ratio has been found to be remarkably pleasing to the human eye, it produces what is called a Golden Rectangle.

In God's creation, there exists a "Divine Proportion" that is exhibited in a multitude of shapes, numbers, and patterns whose relationship can only be the result of the omnipotent, good, and all-wise God of Scripture. This Divine Proportion—existing in the smallest to the largest parts, in living and also in non-living things—reveals the awesome handiwork of God and His interest in beauty, function, and order.

I will first begin with shapes, then discuss how a numbering pattern and a ratio (the Divine Proportion) are an inherent part of these shapes and patterns and are ubiquitous throughout creation.

Let's begin with a shape with which we are all familiar. It is the spiral commonly seen in shells. By taking a careful look at that spiral (the chambered nautilus is probably the clearest example) you will observe that as it gets larger, it retains its identical form. Since the body of the organism grows in the path of a spiral that is equiangular and logarithmic, its form never changes. The beauty of this form is commonly called the "golden spiral."

This spiral is visible in things as diverse as: hurricanes, spiral seeds, the cochlea of the human ear, ram's horn, sea-horse tail, growing fern leaves, DNA molecule, waves breaking on the beach, tornados, galaxies, the tail of a comet as it winds around the sun, whirlpools, seed patterns of sunflowers, daisies, dandelions, and in the construction of the ears of most mammals.

This spiral follows a precise mathematical pattern. We will first look at this spiral in sunflowers. By looking carefully at a sunflower you will observe two sets of spirals (rows of seeds or florets) spiraling in opposite directions. When these spiral rows are counted in each direction, you will discover that in the overwhelming majority of the cases that their numbers, depending upon the size of the flower, will be of the following ratio:

if small, 34 and 55; if medium 55 and 89; if large 89 and 144

These numbers are part of the Fibonacci numbering sequence, a pattern discovered around A.D. 1200 by Leonardo Pisa (historically known as Fibonacci). Each succeeding number is the sum of the two preceding numbers. The sequence of these numbers is 1,2,3,5,8,13,21,34,55,89,144,233, ad infinitum. This numbering pattern reveals itself in various ways throughout all of nature, as we shall see.

When the smaller number of this pattern is divided into the larger number adjacent to it, the ratio will be approximately 1.618; if the larger one adjacent to it divides the smaller number, the ratio is very close to 0.618. This ratio is the most efficient of similar series of numbers.

Beauty

Why did Phideas, the Greek sculptor, and others in ancient Greece and Egypt often use this ratio in designing many of their works of art? Because this ratio has been found to be remarkably pleasing to the human eye, it produces what is called a Golden Rectangle. If the short side of the rectangle is 1, the long side will be 1.618. This rectangular shape was close to the pattern used in the designing of the Parthenon of Greece and for many of their numerous pictures, vases, doorways, windowns, statues, etc., and even for certain features of the Great Pyramid of Egypt. The United Nations building is a golden rectangle. Many of the things you use are (approximately) patterned after the golden rectangle—credit cards, playing cards, postcards, light switch plates, writing pads, 3-by-5 and 5-by-8 cards, etc.1

Artists such as Leonardo da Vinci, Van Gogh, Vermeer, Sargent, Monet, Whistler, Renoir, and others employed the golden proportion in many of their works. They would "take a blank easel and divide it into areas based on the golden proportions to determine the placement of horizons, trees, and so on."2 Why the golden proportion? Art forms can be either of static or dynamic symmetry. In static symmetry the lines have definite measurements whereas in dynamic symmetry it is the proportioning of the areas that is given emphasis. It implies "growth, power, movement. It gives animation and life to an artist's work . . . rather than the effect of stillness and quiet" 3 of static symmetry. This is the appeal of the golden proportion.

Another area of great interest is the occurrence of Fibonacci numbers in the spiral arrangement of leaves around a plant's stem (called phyllotaxis). This spiral pattern is observed by viewing the stem from directly above, and noting the arc of the stem form one leaf base to the next, and the fraction of the stem circumference which is inscribed. In each case the numbers are Fibonacci numbers. Examples: In an elm the arc is 1/2 the circumference; in beech and hazel, 1/3; apricot, oak, 2/5; in pear and poplar, 3/8; in almond and pussy willow, 5/13; and in some pines either 5/21 or 13/34. Why did God arrange them this way? This pattern assures that each leaf will receive its maximum exposure to sunlight and air without shading or crowding other leaves.

Not only do we discover this pattern in leaf arrangements, but it is also commonly found in the arrangement of many flower petals. Examples: a lily has
3 petals, yellow violet 5, delphinium 8, mayweed 13, aster 21, pyrethrum 34, helenium 55, and michaelmas daisy 89. With such a great variety of spiral ratios in leaf and petal arrangement, no one has any reason to get bored with God's creation.

When we realize that the information to produce these spirals and numbers in living things is stored in the DNA, should we then be surprised to find that the DNA molecule is 21 angstroms in width and the length of one full turn in its spiral is 34 angstroms, both Fibonacci numbers? The DNA molecule is literally one long stack of golden rectangles.4

Let's look into the area of very small and very large things. In the world of atoms there are four fundamental asymmetries (structure of atomic nuclei, distribution of fission fragments, distribution of numbers of isotopes, and the distribution of emitted particles), and it is significant that "the numerical values of all of these asymmetries are equal approximately to the `golden ratio,' and that the number forming these values are sometimes Fibonacci or `near' Fibonacci numbers."5 In changing states of a quantity of hydrogen atoms, as the atoms gain and lose radiant energy at succeeding energy levels, the changing proportion of the histories of the atomic electrons form Fibonacci numbers.6

In the area of very large phenomena when the time period of each planet's revolution around the sun is compared in round numbers to the one adjacent to it, their fractions are Fibonacci numbers! Beginning with Neptune7 and moving inward toward the sun, the ratios are 1/2, 1/3, 2/5, 3/8, 5/13, 8/21, 13/34. These are the same as the spiral arrangement of leaves on plants!

cont'd

[Soldier4Christ]

There are creationists who have theorized that some cosmic force, probably in relation to the day of Noah's flood, altered the solar system, especially from Venus to the asteroid belt. This may account for the only significant theoretical adjustments in the chart: Mars (687 to 596), and Venus (225 to 277); the rest are very close to reality. Even with these two adjustments, the correlation of the Fibonacci pattern to the periodic times of the planets is far more than just a chance arrangement. It is one more example of God's marvelous mathematical arrangement of His creation. The fact that it is not perfect reveals that although Adam's sin affected the whole creation (Romans 8:22), yet God in His goodness has not allowed sin to overcome all the marks of His great handiwork (Psalm 19:1).

A most interesting divergence in the chart is that of the Earth. As the next planet in the series after Mars, its number should be 8:21, but it isn't. This number "skips" over Earth and connects to Venus. Even with this divergence we find that the Earth's period compared to Mars and Venus are Fibonacci numbers (8/13, 13/21). It is my opinion that this anomaly is evidence of God's showing the uniqueness of planet Earth in relationship to the whole cosmos. It also accomplishes another fact, for this "anomaly" shatters the big bang and nebular hypothesis, for if all the planets formed from a whirling cloud of dust and atoms, this feature would not be present. To think that the times of revolution of the planets around the sun correlates with the arrangement of leaves around stems on plants is also an amazing phenomena.

These shapes, numbers, spirals, and the divine proportion are ubiquitous in their presence throughout all of creation. They are found in living and nonliving phenomena. Their symmetry, beauty, and mathematical preciseness are evident in every aspect of nature. Although absolute perfection is not found in all of these (due to the effects of Adam' sin), their very presence virtually everywhere and in everything argues against their having occurred by blind chance or evolutionary processes. The only rational conclusion is that the Creator of the universe is a personal, intelligent Being, who created these things as a visible fingerprint of His invisible, yet personal existence. This great, wise, powerful, creative, and sovereign God of creation is the One revealed in the Bible, of whom it can be said, "Great things doeth He, which we cannot comprehend" (Job 37:5). He is worthy of worship. And what is His name? The Lord Jesus Christ. "Thou art worthy, O Lord, to receive glory and honour and power: for thou hast created all things, and for thy pleasure they are and were created" (Revelation 4:11).

References

   1. Trudi Hammel Garland, Fascinating Fibonaccis, Dale Seymour Publications, 1987, p. 19. Available: www.bbhomeschoolcatalog.com or 800/260-5461.
   2. Ibid., pp. 34, 36.
   3. Garth E. Runion, The Golden Section, Dale Seymour Publications, Palo Alto, CA. 1990, pp. 84_85.
   4. Marl Wahl, A Mathematical Mystery Tour, Zephry Press, Tucson, AZ. 1988, p. 128.
   5. J. Wlodarski, "The Golden Ratio and the Fibonacci Numbers in the World of Atoms," Fibonacci Quarterly, December 1963, p. 61.
   6. H. E. Huntley, "Fibonacci and the Atom," Fibonacci Quarterly, December 1969, pp. 523_524.
   7. There is still controversy as to whether Pluto is a real planet. Whether or not it is, its distance from Neptune is still a Fibonacci ratio, even if in the opposite direction.
   8. Marcius Willson, The Fourth Reader of the School and Family, Harper & Brothers, Publishers, New York, 1860, p. 216.

* Fred Willson is ICR's Extension Specialist in Science Education.

[Soldier4Christ]

 Radiohalos - Significant And Exciting Research Results
by Andrew A. Snelling, Ph.D.

Abstract
What then is the significance of these radiohalos, discovered in this first ever systematic search in these granitic rocks?

Two years ago it was reported that polonium (Po) radiohalos were still "a very tiny mystery."1 Since then, extensive research into the geological occurrence and distribution of Po, uranium (U) and thorium (Th) radiohalos has been undertaken as part of the RATE project,2 so now there are some preliminary results to report that are both significant and exciting.
What are Radiohalos?

Radiohalos are minute spherical zones of discoloration surrounding tiny mineral crystals included in larger host mineral grains in certain rocks, particularly granites. Alpha-particles produced by radioactive decay of U, Th, and their decay products (including Po) in the tiny mineral inclusions (often zircons) penetrate the surrounding host minerals (often the dark mica, biotite) damaging their crystal lattices. Because the a-particles emitted by the different radionuclides in the U and Th decay chains have different energies, they travel different distances. Where the a-particles stop they do the most damage, resulting in spherical shells of intense discoloration, which are concentric ring structures when the rocks are studied in thin (cross) sections. Therefore, it is possible to identify which radionuclides were responsible for producing the observed radiohalos.

Figure 1. Composite schematic drawing of (a) a 218Po halo, (b) a 238U halo, (c) a 214Po halo, and (d) a 210Po halo with radii proportional to the ranges of alpha-particles in air. The nuclides responsible for the alpha-particles and their energies are listed for the different halo rings (after Gentry4).There are three Po radionuclides in the 238U decay chain—218Po, 214Po and 210Po. All decay very rapidly and so have very short half-lives—3.1 minutes, 164 micro-seconds and 138 days respectively. Thus the occurrence in granitic rocks of 218Po, 214Po, and 210Po radiohalos, exhibiting only the rings produced by these Po radionuclides because only these respective radionuclides were present in the radiocenters when the radiohalos formed (figure 1), has been interpreted as indicating instantaneous formation of both the Po radiohalos and the granitic rocks.3

U and Th radiohalos are not without significance either. Dark, fully-formed U and Th radiohalos are estimated to have required around 100 million years worth of radioactive decay at today's rates to have formed,4 so their presence in granitic rocks throughout the geologic record globally would seemingly imply that at least 100 million years worth of radioactive decay at today's rates has occurred during Earth history.5
Figure 2. A dark, fully-formed 238U radiohalo in a biotite grain in the Cooma granodiorite of southeastern Australia. The diameter of the radio-halo is approximately 40 microns.The RATE Research

The initial focus of the research has been granitic rocks that had to have formed during the Flood year. In each case there is unequivocal evidence that the granitic rocks formed by the melting during metamorphism (changes in rocks induced by heat and pressure) of fossiliferous Flood-deposited sedimentary layers, and that the resultant granitic magmas (melted rocks) then intruded into other Flood-deposited layers. Such Flood-related granitic rocks investigated thus far include the Stone Mountain granite near Atlanta (Georgia), the La Posta zoned granodiorite and related granites in the Peninsular Ranges of southern California east of San Diego, and the Cooma granodiorite and four other granitic bodies in southeastern Australia.

The biotite grains in all these granitic rocks have large numbers of 210Po radio-halos within them, often 4-10 times the numbers of 214Po radiohalos. Dark, fully- formed 238U radiohalos (figure 2) usually occur as equally often as the 214Po radio-halos. 218Po radiohalos are very rare. However, in the Cooma granodiorite and the four other granites of southeastern Australia there are more 238U radiohalos than any of the Po radiohalos, while in two of these granites there are as many 214Po radio-halos as 210Po radiohalos. Dark, fully-formed Th radiohalos are also common in the Cooma granodiorite.
U Radiohalos and Accelerated Decay

What then is the significance of these radiohalos, discovered in this first ever systematic search in these granitic rocks? The presence in them of so many dark, fully-formed U and Th radiohalos clearly implies that at least 100 million years worth of radioactive decay at today's rates must have occurred in these granitic rocks since they formed. However, these granitic rocks evidently formed only recently during the Flood year, so this implies that at least 100 million years worth of radioactive decay at today's rates must have occurred during the Flood year, when geologic processes were operating at catastrophic rates. Thus the rates of radioactive decay had to have been accelerated during the Flood year and therefore conventional radioisotopic dating of rocks, which assumes constant decay rates, is unreliable and conventional "ages" are grossly in error.

Furthermore, such accelerated radioactive decay would have generated a large pulse of heat during the Flood. This in turn would have helped to initiate and drive the global tectonic processes that operated during the Flood year, and to accomplish catastrophically much geologic work, including the regional metamorphism of sedimentary strata and the melting of crustal and mantle rocks to produce granitic and other magmas.
Po Radiohalo Formation and Rapid Geologic Processes

However, the Po radiohalos are also still highly significant, due to their exceedingly short half-lives. Because these granitic rocks containing them are neither created nor primordial, the Po that parented these Po radiohalos cannot have been primordial.6 Whatever secondary processes were thus responsible for separating the necessary Po from its parent U and concentrating it into the radiocenters, the timescale involved had to be very short.

Limited space here precludes a full technical explanation and detailed justification of a proposed mechanism for Po radiohalo formation, but a comprehensive paper is being prepared for presentation at next summer's International Conference on Creationism.7 In summary, many related lines of evidence suggest a viable hydrothermal (hot water) fluid transport model in which the immediate precursors to the Po isotopes, probably accompanied by the Po isotopes themselves, were carried exceedingly short distances within the biotite flakes from U decay in adjacent enclosed zircon grains. The Po isotopes were then continuously concentrated in appropriate radiocenters by attractive ions in lattice defects within the biotite flakes, and the Po radiohalos then formed.

cont'd

[Soldier4Christ]

The implications are far-reaching. Because the half-lives of these Po isotopes are very short, the hydrothermal fluid transport had to be extremely rapid. The hydrothermal fluids are generated as the granitic magmas cool, so the timeframe for the cooling of these granitic magmas has to have been extremely short (only days!) as the expelled hydrothermal fluids also carried away the heat.8 Because hydrothermal fluids also transport other metals in solution (such as gold, tin, copper, lead, zinc), these rapid flows of hydrothermal fluids had the potential to also rapidly deposit metallic ores, again within days! And finally, preliminary reports of U, Th, and Po radiohalos in regionally metamorphosed rocks9 could confirm that large-scale rapid flows of hydrothermal fluids catastrophically formed regional metamorphic complexes.10

Perhaps the Po radiohalos are no longer "a very tiny mystery." If so, the U, Th, and Po radiohalos are potentially powerful evidence of the catastrophic geologic processes within the Flood year on a young Earth. Investigations are continuing on Flood-related granites; other investigations are now going to include pre-Flood granitic rocks that might extend this evidence even back into the Creation Week.
Endnotes and References

   1. Snelling, A.A., "Polonium Radiohalos: Still `A Very Tiny Mystery',"  (Institute for Creation Research, El Cajon, CA., Impact #326, 2000), pp. i-iv.
   2. RATE stands for "Radioisotopes and the Age of The Earth," a research initiative of the Institute for Creation Research and the Creation Research Society. Details about the RATE project can be found at www.icr.org and in the book in reference 5.
   3. Gentry, R.A., Creation's Tiny Mystery (Knoxville, TN: Earth Science Associates, 1988).
   4. Gentry, R.A., "Radioactive Halos," Annual Review of Nuclear Science 23 (1973), pp. 347-362. Gentry, R.V., "Radiohalos in a Radiochronological and Cosmological Perspective," Science 184 (1974), pp. 62-66.
   5. For a comprehensive review of the details of all known radiohalo types and the controversy over them, see: Snelling, A.A., "Radiohalos," in Radioisotopes and the Age of The Earth: A Young-Earth Creationist Research Initiative, edited by L. Vardiman, A.A. Snelling, and E.F. Chaffin (Institute for Creation Research, El Cajon, CA., and Creation Research Society, St. Joseph, MO., 2000), pp. 381-468.
   6. Created rocks would be the rocks created by fiat in the sequence of God-directed steps recorded in Genesis 1. Such fiat creation could have involved processes akin to those we observe today, but accomplished at incredible speeds. Primordial rocks and elements are those that would have existed from the beginning of the earth at its formation, early in the sequence of God-directed steps.
   7. Snelling, A.A. and M.H. Armitage, "Radiohalos—A Tale of Three Granitic Plutons," in Proceedings of the Fifth International Conference on Creationism, in preparation.
   8. Snelling, A.A., and J. Woodmorappe, "The Cooling of Thick Igneous Bodies on a Young Earth," in Proceedings of the Fourth International Conference on Creationism, edited by R.E. Walsh (Pittsburgh, PA: Creation Science Fellowship, 1998), pp. 527-545.
   9. Rimsaite, J.H.Y., "Studies of the Rock-Forming Micas," Geological Survey of Canada Bulletin 149 (1967). Nasdala, L., M. Wenzel, M. Andrut, R. Wirth, and P. Blaum, "The Nature of Radiohalos in Biotite: Experimental Studies and Modeling," American Mineralogist 86 (2001), pp. 498-512. Wise, K.P., "Radioactive Halos: Geological Concerns," Creation Research Society Quarterly 25 (1989), pp. 171-176.
  10. Snelling, A.A., "Towards a Creationist Explanation of Regional Metamorphism," Creation Ex Nihilo Technical Journal 8 (1994), pp. 51-77.

*Dr. Snelling is Professor of Geology for the ICR Graduate School.

[Soldier4Christ]

 Nuclear Decay: Evidence For A Young World
by D. Russell Humphreys, Ph.D.

Abstract
Our experiments measured how rapidly nuclear-decay-generated helium escapes from tiny radioactive crystals in granite-like rock. The data show that most of the helium generated by nuclear decay would have escaped during the alleged 1.5 billion year uniformitarian2 age of the rock, and there would be very little helium in the crystals today.

Fenton Hill site. Photo: Courtesy of Los Alamos National LaboratoryRecent experiments commissioned by the RATE project1 indicate that "1.5 billion years" worth of nuclear decay took place in one or more short episodes between 4,000 and 14,000 years ago. The results strongly support our accelerated decay hypothesis, that episodes with billion-fold speed-ups of nuclear decay occurred in the recent past, such as during the Genesis flood, the Fall of Adam, or early Creation week. Such accelerations would shrink the alleged 4.5 billion year radioisotope age of the earth down to the 6,000 years that a straightforward reading of the Bible gives.

Our experiments measured how rapidly nuclear-decay-generated helium escapes from tiny radioactive crystals in granite-like rock. The data show that most of the helium generated by nuclear decay would have escaped during the alleged 1.5 billion year uniformitarian2 age of the rock, and there would be very little helium in the crystals today. But the crystals still retain large amounts of helium, amounts our experiments show are entirely consistent with an age of only thousands of years. Thus these data are evidence against the long ages of evolutionism and for the recent creation in Scripture. Here are some details:
Much Helium Begins in Radioactive Crystals

The research story starts in the late 1970s at Fenton Hill in the Jemez Mountains of New Mexico, about twenty miles west of Los Alamos, just west of a large volcanic caldera. Geoscientists from Los Alamos National Laboratory were drilling (figure 1) several miles deep into the hot, dry granitic rock beneath the site to determine how suitable it would be as a geothermal energy source. They sent drill core samples to Oak Ridge National Laboratory for analysis.

At Oak Ridge, Robert Gentry, a creationist physicist, and his colleagues ground up the rock, extracting hard, dense, microscopic crystals called zircons (figure 2, page iii). The zircons, were, as usual, radioactive. Much of the uranium and thorium in the earth's continental crust is in zircons, often imbedded in flakes of biotite, a black mica. The zircon-containing mica is scattered widely throughout the granitic rocks of the crust.

The radioactivity makes helium. As a uranium atom decays in many steps down to a lead atom, it emits eight alpha particles, each of which is a helium nucleus composed of two protons and two neutrons. For the crystal size we are concerned with, most of the emitted alpha particles stop within the zircon originating them. Then each alpha particle quickly gathers two electrons from the crystal and becomes a complete helium atom.
Much Helium Is Still in the Zircons

Helium is a lightweight, fast-moving, and "slippery" atom, not sticking chemically to other atoms. It can diffuse through solids relatively fast, meaning that helium atoms wiggle through the spaces between atoms in a crystal lattice. For the same reason it can leak rapidly through tiny holes and cracks, making it ideal for leak detection in laboratory vacuum systems. The rates are so great that those who believe in billions of years had expected most of the helium produced during the alleged long ages to have worked its way out of the crust and into the earth's atmosphere.

But the helium is not in the earth's atmosphere! When non-specialists hear that, they usually assume that helium has risen to the top of the atmosphere as it would in a balloon, and then that it has leaked from the top of the atmosphere into space. But unconfined helium spreads throughout the atmosphere from top to bottom, and the loss into space is actually quite small. Dr. Larry Vardiman, an ICR atmospheric scientist, has shown that even after accounting for the slow leakage into space, the earth's atmosphere has only about 0.04% of the helium it should have if the earth were billions of years old.3

In 1957 Melvin Cook, a creationist chemist, pointed out this problem in the prestigious scientific journal, Nature, asking in his title, "Where is the earth's radiogenic helium?"4 Radiogenic means, "generated by nuclear decay." In nearly half a century, uniformitarian scientists apparently have not found a good enough answer to publish in Nature. But creationists have a simple answer: most of the helium has not entered the earth's atmosphere. It is still in the earth's crust and mantle. In fact, the Oak Ridge team found that much of it is still in the zircons! It has not even had enough time to leak out of the crystals where it originated.

Zircons. Photo: Courtesy of R. V. Gentry Los Alamos measurements5 of uranium, thorium, and lead in the zircons imply "1.5 billion" years worth of nuclear decay—at today's rates. Gentry et al. used the amounts of lead to calculate how much helium the decay had deposited in the zircons. Then they measured how much helium was still in the zircons. Comparing the two gave the percentage of helium still retained in the zircons, which they published in 1982.6

Their results were remarkable. Up to 58 percent of the radiogenic helium had not diffused out of the zircons. The percentages decreased with increasing depth and temperature in the borehole. That confirms diffusion had been happening, because the rate of diffusion in any material increases strongly with temperature. Also, the smaller the crystal, the less helium should be retained. These zircons were both tiny and hot, yet they had retained huge amounts of helium!
Experiments and Theory Needed

Many creationists, knowing how fast helium diffuses in many materials, believed it would be impossible for that much helium to remain in the zircons after 1.5 billion years. But we had no specific data to support our belief. As of 2000 the only reported helium diffusion data for zircons7 were ambiguous, and none existed at all for biotite. So the RATE project commissioned experiments to measure helium diffusion in zircon and biotite samples specifically from the Fenton Hill borehole.

We also needed theoretical models to interpret the data. Thinking biotite was the main restriction, we published8 two models showing the biotite diffusion rates required to make the zircons retain the observed amounts of helium at the observed borehole temperatures for a specified time. The "Evolution" model assumed the time was 1.5 billion years, with continuous production of helium during the whole period. The "Creation" model assumed the time was 6,000 years, with most of the helium produced in one or more bursts of accelerated nuclear decay near the beginning of that time.
RATE Experiments Show How Fast Helium Escapes

Our experiments showed that we need to account for both diffusion from zircon and biotite, but zircon is more important. The resulting new "Creation" model differs by less than 0.05% from the previous one. The "Evolution" model did not change. So the numbers in our first models are still valid, but they now apply to zircon instead of biotite.

cont'd

[Soldier4Christ]

Our zircon data agree with recently published data from another site,9 and both agree with our "Creation" model. The data allow us to calculate how long diffusion has been taking place—between 4,000 and 14,000 years! The diffusion rates are nearly 100,000 times higher than the maximum rates the "Evolution" model could allow. That leaves no hope for the 1.5 billion years. For most of that alleged time, the zircons would have to have been as cold as liquid nitrogen (196ºC below zero) to retain the observed amount of helium. Such a "cryogenic Earth" model would not help uniformitarians, because it would violate uniformitarianism!

Three of my colleagues and I10 on the RATE project are preparing a paper with full technical details which we hope to present at the International Conference on Creationism in Pittsburgh next summer. In the meantime, friends and supporters of the RATE project have good reason to rejoice with us over these preliminary results, which strongly uphold the 6,000-year timescale of Scripture.
Endnotes and References

   1. RATE stands for "Radioisotopes and the Age of The Earth," a research initiative launched in 1997 jointly by the Institute for Creation Research, the Creation Research Society, and Answers in Genesis. See book in Reference 8, and numerous pages about the RATE project at (www.icr.org).
   2. Uniformitarians assume that "all things continue as they were from the beginning of the creation" (II Peter 3:4), without interventions by God which might drastically affect the rates of some physical processes.
   3. Larry Vardiman, The Age of the Earth's Atmosphere: A Study of the Helium Flux through the Atmosphere (San Diego, CA: Institute for Creation Research, 1990), p. 28.
   4. Melvin A. Cook, "Where is the earth's radiogenic helium?" Nature, 179:213, 1957.
   5. R. E. Zartman, "Uranium, thorium, and lead isotopic composition of biotite granodiorite (Sample 9527-2b) from LASL Drill Hole GT-2," Los Alamos Scientific Laboratory Report LA-7923-MS, 1979.
   6. R. V. Gentry, G. J. Glish, and E. H. McBay, "Differential helium retention in zircons: implications for nuclear waste management," Geophysical Research Letters 9(10):1129-1130, October 1982.
   7. Sh. A. Magomedov, "Migration of radiogenic products in zircon," Geokhimiya, 1970, No. 2, pp. 263-267 (in Russian). English abstract in Geochemistry International 7(1):203, 1970. English translation available from D. R. Humphreys.
   8. D. R. Humphreys, "Accelerated nuclear decay: A viable hypothesis?" in Radioisotopes and the Age of the Earth: A Young-Earth Creationist Research Initiative, L. Vardiman, A. Snelling, and E. Chaffin, editors (San Diego, CA: Institute for Creation Research and the Creation Research Society, 2000),
      p. 348.
   9. P. W. Reiners, K. A. Farley, and H. J. Hickes, "He diffusion and (U-Th)/He thermochronometry of zircon: Initial results from Fish Canyon Tuff and Gold Butte, Nevada," Tectonophysics 349(1-4):297-308, 2002.
  10. Drs. Steven A. Austin, John R. Baumgardner, and Andrew A. Snelling. Fifth International Conference on Creationism, Pittsburgh, PA., in process.

* Dr. Humphreys is Associate Professor of Physics for ICR.

[Soldier4Christ]

 Evolution: The Secret Behind The Propaganda
by Margaret Helder, Ph.D.

Abstract
It was David Hull, a well-known philosopher of science, who wrote as early as 1965 that ". . . science is not as empirical as many scientists seem to think it is. Unobserved and even unobservable entities play an important part in it.

"Everybody" knows, one might suppose, that evolution is about facts and the creation model is about belief. Certainly this was the message of the PBS TV series entitled "Evolution." An internal memo sent to PBS stations stated concerning evolution, "All known scientific evidence supports evolution. . . . New discoveries over the past 150 years have all supported the validity of the theory of evolution." (PBS Internal Memo. 2001. The Evolution Controversy: Use it or Lose it. Evolution Project/WGBH Boston. June 15, p. 5). The memo further defined a scientific theory as a "higher level of understanding that ties `facts' together" (p. 5). As to the creation model, the memo dismissed it as "not science. It is part of a religious belief system . . ." (p. 6). Such statements and other similar ones over the years have convinced many that science in general and evolution in particular are based on observations from the natural world and thus they are empirically or factually based. The interesting thing is that this is not the modern understanding of science among scientists themselves. They have long since abandoned much concern for actual data.

The modern outlook on science is readily apparent from remarks by scientists about their discipline. It was David Hull, a well-known philosopher of science, who wrote as early as 1965 that ". . . science is not as empirical as many scientists seem to think it is. Unobserved and even unobservable entities play an important part in it. Science is not just the making of observations: it is the making of inferences on the basis of observations within the framework of a theory."1 Within this statement we see what appears to be a balance between facts and interpretation or theory. Dr. Hull, however, had a dubious grasp of what constituted data. The previous year, he had written concerning the concept of descent with modification from a common ancestor (phylogeny or evolution): "The first factor in the phylogenetic program and the only one that is of an empirical nature is phylogeny, but even phylogeny is not a brute fact to be discovered merely by looking and seeing. Phylogeny, the subject matter of phylogenetic taxonomy, is an abstraction. It is an abstraction in two respects. First, it is inferred almost exclusively from morphological, genetical, paleontological, and other types of evidence and is not observed directly."2 His thoughts concerning evolutionary descent, we discover, were merely conclusions, not directly indicated by the evidence.

Views on the nature of science were actually in a state of flux at the time that Dr. Hull wrote these papers. Karl Popper in 1934 had pointed out that no theory in science could ever be proven true. The only alternative, he suggested, was to try to prove that theories were false. Those well-tested theories which had not been falsified or disproven on the basis of experimental data, would then qualify for the designation of scientific theory. The only catch was that many areas of scientific research did not meet these criteria. Theories which could not be falsified, were said to be metaphysical (belief-based) rather than scientific. Accordingly an editorial in the scientific journal Nature in 1981 pointed out that both Darwinism and the idea that God created the world, were metaphysical theories since "the course of supposed past evolution cannot be rerun."3 However, such embarrassing characterizations of Darwinism as nonscientific were on their way out. Thomas Kuhn had published his book, The Structure of Scientific Revolutions, in 1962 thereby ushering in a post-empirical age in scientific understanding.

According to Thomas Kuhn, all science must be conducted in terms of a unifying set of ideas. Without such a theoretical system, said Kuhn, facts were meaningless and science nonexistent. According to philosopher of science, Del Ratzsch, in his recent book, Science and its Limits, this primacy of theory over data has had enormous implications for the practice of science. The result is that empirical data are not that important to science anymore. According to Dr. Ratzsch: "in arguing that we have no paradigm-independent access to some ultimate reality and that paradigm choices are in part value choices made by scientists, Kuhn is moving the ultimate court of appeal concerning correct pictures of reality away from the world itself [data] and toward the informed consensus of scientists."4 Dr. Ratzsch further pointed out, "Since there is no complete and stable and independent external reality to which we have access, there is no particular point in talking about truth in science. . . ."

So what do modern scientists do with data? What they do is to interpret their data in terms of the current scientific paradigm. They do not seek to falsify any paradigm such as evolution because paradigms are not supposed to be easily toppled. Individual falsifying facts won't cause a paradigm to be rejected. Even a lot of contrary data will have little effect on a paradigm. Evolution of course is the most obvious paradigm which is largely immune to the influence of empirical data. Cosmology is another.

The most obvious casualties of this new definition of science are the concepts of reality and truth. Biologists Mark Siddall and Arnold Kluge, in 1997, for example, suggested that "`the search for truth' was a misguided venture in science from the start and one that has no basis in reality."5 They further opined that "Truth, though not irrelevant to science, is nonetheless irrelevant to the choice among scientific theories, because it is unknowable." Nevertheless these authors conclude that the good news is that we will keep on doing science. They depict the situation thus: "Our assertions regarding the terminal elusiveness of this truth may be seen by some as troubling or even nihilistic. We counter that it is the impossibility of achieving truth that ensures the continuation of scientific endeavor, and that guarantees our perpetual realization of that which is more valuable than truth itself—understanding."

Science has definitely come a long way. Initially in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, actual observations (empirical data) were highly valued. In some cases they were esteemed too highly. Some people like eighteenth century Scottish philosopher David Hume declared that there was no reality other than what our senses could discover. The material world was all there was. Gradually theory came to be more important until at the present time empirical data are often ignored. Not all scientists, however, support the Kuhnian appeal to consensus among scientists. Tom Settle, another philosopher of science, deplored the situation. "Many thinkers, seeing that the search for truth is an unending quest, abandon it (in despair perhaps), and settle for agreement with their fellows. If they are right that it is consensus rather than truth that ought to be aimed for in science, then the picture that emerges . . . is gloomy."6 The worst aspect of the situation is that scientists so dogmatically defend interpretations which are based only on consensus. "But what is vacuous is to abandon truth as regulative and then to agree to something's being so. And it undermines science rather than affirms it, since it rules out appeal to reality, it rules out striving to be objective."

It is evident that modern scientists do not attempt to prove paradigms or impor-tant theories like evolution wrong. They merely interpret their data in terms of the paradigm. Evolution is a philosophical starting point, not an observation. As Siddall and Kluge remark: "Biologists are no more immune to the requirements of a sound philosophical foundation than are these other sciences if our occupation ever is to be more than a simple cataloguing of the experiences of our senses. Evolutionary biology, and phylogenetics in particular, demands this even more because, like the quantum physicist, we are not able to observe that which we seek to explain."

Another biologist, Andrew Brower characterized "descent with modification" as a circular argument or a metaphysical assumption. "There is clearly an ontological leap between tests of individual observations and tests of `descent with modification,' if the latter is even testable without tautology."7 "If `the background knowledge of descent with modification' underlying cladistics is not testable by independent means, it would seem to be more a metaphysical First Principle like vitalism or orthogenesis than a component of a Popperian hypothetico-deductive approach." In other words, evolution is not falsifiable, but is an a priori assumption.

Christians, on the other hand, typically take a much more traditional or empirical approach to science. They expect that when contrary data are pointed out, that the hearer's response will be to reject the paradigm. All too often however, the hearer minimizes the significance of the data, calling them merely "anomalous" or poorly understood. Most supporters of evolution theory expect that the obvious problems will eventually be solved and in the meantime they concentrate on less controversial aspects of the paradigm.

cont'd

[Soldier4Christ]

For the present, consensus by scientists is indeed used as a major point in favor of a paradigm. Individuals arguing from a minority position already have a major strike against them. Some scientists also claim that science is an all or nothing proposition with no room for a critical evaluation of individual aspects of the discipline. It was Hull who articulated the all or none principle. He was referring specifically to evolutionary versus numerical [empirical] categorizing of organisms, and this same argument is used today against the creation model. "Are the inductive inferences made by evolutionists in reconstructing phylogeny sufficiently warranted? . . . . Any decision . . . must rest on the advances of the various sciences using the techniques of discovery and justification which they do use. Hence, induction is justified by an induction! The arguments presented by the empiricists against evolutionary reconstructions if sound would annihilate not just evolutionary taxonomy but all empirical science."8 According to him, it is pointless to contest scientific speculations on the basis of data, because the whole scientific enterprise holds together. If some theorizing is acceptable, then all of it is beyond challenge.

Since the importance of empirical data in science has long since been downgraded to a subsidiary importance relative to theory, the PBS statements concerning evolution and creation are all the more interesting. The PBS memo implied that evolution could easily have been falsified by negative empirical evidence. On the contrary, scientists have devoted their best efforts to protecting evolution theory from negative data. In actual fact, it is the creation model supporters today who so frequently appeal to empirical evidence (such as the coded nature and information content of DNA) and the evolutionists who so blissfully fail to recognize the significance of these very same data. Indeed, when all is said and done, the essence of much modern science is that it is not empirical at all but rather post-empirical or theory based. That's quite a difference. Maybe PBS should run a new creation-based series to alert the public to the real situation.
References

   1. David Hull. 1965. The effect of essentialism on taxonomy—two thousand years of stasis (II). British Journal for the Philosophy of Science 16 (61): 1-18.
   2. David Hull. 1964. Consistency and monophyly. Systematic Zoology 13 (1): 1-11.
   3. Editorial. 1981. How true is the theory of evolution? Nature 290 March 12: 75-76.
   4. Del Ratzsch. 2000. Science and Its Limits: The Natural Sciences in Christian Perspective. InterVarsity Press. pp. 191.
   5. Mark Siddall and Arnold Kluge. 1997. Probabilism and phylogenetic inference. Cladistics 13: 313-336.
   6. Tom Settle. 1979. Popper on "When is a Science not a Science?" Systematic Zoology 28: 521-529.
   7. Andrew Brower. 2000. Evolution is not a necessary assumption of cladistics. Cladistics 16: 143-154.
   8. David Hull. 1967. Certainty and circularity in evolutionary taxonomy. Evolution 21 (1): 174-189.

* Dr. Helder is a botanist and President of Creation Science Association of America.

[Soldier4Christ]

 The Battle for the Cosmic Center
by D. Russell Humphreys, Ph.D.

Abstract
The Hubble Law (which says that redshifts tend to be proportional to distance) offers a simple explanation: galaxies are, perhaps expanding in evenly spaced spherical shells around our point of observation, the Milky Way Galaxy.

Biblical teaching places man at the center of God's attention. Recent astronomical evidence restores man to a central place in God's universe. Over the last few decades, astronomers have become convinced that the red shifts of light from distant galaxies (figure 1) occur in distinct, evenly spaced groups. I discuss these "quantized" redshifts and their implications in a forthcoming technical journal article.1 See endnote 2 for more details.

NGC 4414 GalaxyFigure 1. NGC 4414, a typical spiral galaxy is 60 million light-years away, about 100,000 light-years in diameter, and contains hundreds of billions of stars. (Photo: Hubble Space Telescope Science Institute/NASA.)

The Hubble Law (which says that redshifts tend to be proportional to distance) offers a simple explanation: galaxies are, perhaps expanding in evenly spaced spherical shells around our point of observation, the Milky Way Galaxy, as figure 2 illustrates. This concentric pattern implies our galaxy is very near the center of the cosmos.

"Of course," says the average non-astronomer, "that sounds very reasonable. Who could have a problem with that?" The average astronomer, that's who! To the informed devotee of the big bang theory, the very idea of the universe having a center is anathema. The big bang cosmology has assumed from the outset that there were no special locations, such as a center. To visualize it the way the experts do, the computer-animated creationist video, "Starlight and Time," is very helpful.3 The bottom line is that the big bang theory can't tolerate a center. So quantized redshifts are evidence both against the big bang cosmology and for "galactocentric"4 creationist cosmologies.

sperical galaxiesFigure 2. (Idealized) spherical shells of galaxies concentric around our own home galaxy, the Milky Way. Probably the shells are expanding, not orbiting.

But to the secularist seeking to avoid any hint of God, there is a further heresy: we are much too close to the center. The quantized redshift data imply that we are within about 100,000 light-years of the center, a very small distance compared to the diameter of all the matter in the cosmos, at least 40 billion light-years. The probability of us being so close to the center by accident is less than one out of a quadrillion, implying we are where we are as a result of purposeful design. Not liking these high odds for God, the secularists have sought other explanations for the redshift quantization, without much success so far.
The Long War against a Center

Our being near the center of the cosmos is an idea of such great importance that scholars have fought over it for centuries. In the third century before Christ, Aristarchus of Samos suggested that the sun is the center of our solar system.5 But the earth-centered solar system propounded by other Greek philosophers won out, culminating in the detailed cycles within cycles of Claudius Ptolemy (~100 to 170 A.D.).6 Then in 1543, Nicolas Copernicus revived the idea of a sun-centered solar system. He believed that the universe has a center. He simply proposed that the sun, not the earth, was closer to the center, and that the sun was motionless with respect to the center. As did most other scholars of that period, Copernicus thought the universe is finite in size. But it was not long before philosophers such as Thomas Digges (1576) and Giordano Bruno (1583) began modifying Copernicanism by claiming the universe is infinitely large. A science historian summarizes Bruno's view:

    The sun was, he thought, merely one of an infinite number of stars scattered through the infinite expanse of space; some of the other bodies in the infinite heavens must be populated planets like the earth. Not only the earth but the sun and the entire solar system were transformed to insignificant specks lost in the infinitude of God's creation. . . .7

Matter in an infinitely large cosmos would not have any boundary, and so could not have a center. Isaac Newton went along with the idea of an infinite cosmos to prevent it from collapsing, since, as one modern cosmologist put it, ". . . if matter were evenly dispersed through an infinite space, there would be no center to which it could fall."8

Modern secular cosmologies have continued in the same tradition. In 1917 Albert Einstein set the pace by postulating his "cosmological principle" that matter is uniformly distributed throughout all space.9 This resulted in a non-expanding cosmos with space curving back on itself. Others modified Einstein's equations to allow expansion, but kept his starting assumption. The version that eventually won popularity is what we now call the big bang theory. Again, its starting point is Einstein's cosmological principle. Stephen Hawking and George Ellis renamed it the "Copernican principle" and sought to make it more plausible with these words:

    In the earliest cosmologies, man placed himself [not "God placed man"] in a commanding position at the centre of the universe. Since the time of Coper-nicus we have been steadily demoted to a medium sized planet going round a medium sized star on the outer edge of a fairly average galaxy, which is itself simply one of a local group of galaxies. Indeed we are now so democratic that we would not claim that our position in space is specially distinguished in any way.10

Actually Hawking and Ellis are making a very strong claim: that we are not in a special position in the cosmos. Another astrophysicist reveals the motive:

    The idea that we are not located in a special spatial location has been crucial in astronomy, leading directly to the [big bang theory]. . . . In astronomy the Copernican principle works because, of all the places for intelligent observers to be, there are by definition only a few special places and many nonspecial places, so you are likely to be in a nonspecial place.11

The word "likely" I have emphasized above shows that the secularists want to have us be where we are by accident, not by the deliberate intention of a God who might have put us in a special place. The big bang theory satisfies their desire by doing away with special places altogether. So we see that over the past four centuries, secularists have sought to move us further and further away from the center of God's universe, finally denying that there is a center at all.
Why a Center Is Crucial to You

cont'd

[Soldier4Christ]

The intense struggle for centuries over this issue is a clue that it is very important, emotionally, intellectually, and spiritually. One reason is that the Bible is quite clear about the centrality of our planet in God's plans. Genesis mentions the earth on the first day (1:1,2) and third day (vv. 10-12), well before God made the sun, moon, and stars on the fourth day (vv. 14-18). It was a sin on this planet (3:6) that subjected the whole universe to groaning and travailing (Romans 8:22). It was to this planet that the Creator came (John 1:9,10) to die on the cross and deliver not only us, but also the entire physical cosmos (Romans 8:21,23) from the consequences of that first sin. God's eternal throne will be on earth (Revelation 21:2,3). To escape consciousness of the scrutiny of such a God, secularists have worked hard to belittle our location and us, as the following words from Carl Sagan show:

    The Earth is a very small stage in a vast cosmic arena . . . Our posturings, our imagined self-importance, the delusion that we have some privileged position in the Universe, are challenged by this point of pale light [an image of earth taken by Voyager I]. Our planet is a lonely speck in the great enveloping cosmic dark. In our obscurity, in all this vastness, there is no hint that help will come from elsewhere to save us from ourselves.12

To the Christian, however, close attention from our Creator and Savior is not terrifying, but encouraging. To know, from this new redshift evidence, that God has given us prime real estate in His vast universe astounds and awes us, as Psalm 8:3,4 says:

    When I consider thy heavens, the work of thy fingers, the moon and the stars, which thou hast ordained; What is man, that thou art mindful of him? and the son of man, that thou visitest him?

Footnotes

   1. D. Russell Humphreys, "Our Galaxy is the Center of the Universe, `Quantized' Red Shifts Show," TJ (vol. 16, no. 2, 2002).
   2. The wavelengths of light from atoms in distant galaxies are usually shifted (from their normal values) toward the red side of the spectrum. In 1929, Edwin Hubble showed that the percentage of red shift for each galaxy tends to be proportional to its distance from us. The new evidence is that redshifts are "quantized", tending to be in distinct, evenly spaced numerical groups, such as: 0.024, 0.048, 0.072, 0.096, . . . (percent). Hubble's law implies that these percentages correspond to evenly spaced distances: 3.1, 6.2, 9.3, 12.4, . . . (million light-years). Since galaxies are evenly distributed in all directions, these distances imply that galaxies tend to form evenly spaced spherical shells around our home galaxy, the Milky Way, as figure 2 idealizes.
   3. Mark DeSpain, "Starlight and Time" (Albuquerque, Forever Productions, 2001), 27 minute video. Based on the book by D. Russell Humphreys, Starlight and Time (Green Forest, Arkansas: Master Books, 1994) 137 pp. Both available through ICR customer service 1/800-628-7640.
   4. "Galactocentric" (not "geocentric") here means a cosmology having a center and our home galaxy near it. Examples are my own (see above), and one by Robert V. Gentry, in Creation's Tiny Mystery (Knoxville, Earth Science Associates, 3rd edition, 1992), p. 180.
   5. Arthur Koestler, The Sleepwalkers (London: Penguin Books, 1959), pp. 50-52.
   6. Michael J. Crowe, Theories of the World from Antiquity to the Copernican Revolution (New York: Dover Publications, 1990), pp. 45-68.
   7. Thomas S. Kuhn, The Copernican Revolution (Cambridge, Massachusetts: Harvard University Press, 1957), p. 235.
   8. Steven Weinberg, The First Three Minutes (New York: BasicBooks, 2nd paper edition, 1993), p. 32.
   9. Albert Einstein, "Cosmological Considerations on the General Theory of Relativity," in The Principle of Relativity (New York: Dover Publications, 1952), pp. 177-198.
  10. Stephen W. Hawking and George F. R. Ellis, The Large Scale Structure of Space-Time (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1973), p. 134.
  11. J. Richard Gott, III, "Implications of the Copernican Principle for our Future Prospects," Nature 363:315-319, 1993.
  12. Carl Sagan, Pale Blue Dot (New York: Random House, 1994), p. 9.

* Dr. Humphreys is Associate Professor of Physics for ICR.

[Soldier4Christ]

 In Search Of the Congo Dinosaur
by William J. Gibbons

Abstract
The one area today that would favor living dinosaurs is the vast and unexplored swamps of equatorial Africa.

There is always something new coming out of Africa.
Herodotus, fifth century B.C.

Perhaps the most exciting prospect for the world of creation science is the possibility that dinosaurs may still be living in the remote jungles of the world. Evolution and its accompanying necessity of long ages of evolutionary development would be hard pressed to accommodate a living dinosaur. Such is the story of Mokele-mbembe, a creature that some scientists believe could be a surviving sauropod dinosaur. The one area today that would favor living dinosaurs is the vast and unexplored swamps of equatorial Africa. Many of the early accounts of the flora and fauna of West and Central Africa came from missionaries and explorers. In 1776, the Abbé Lievain Bonaventure Proyart, wrote in the History of Loango, Kakonga, and other Kingdoms in Africa, about a group of French missionaries who had found the tracks of an enormous unknown animal in the jungle. Pinkerton's translation, published in 1914, reads:

    It must be monstrous, the prints of its claws are seen upon the earth, and formed an impression on it of about three feet in circumference. In observing the posture and disposition of the footprints, they concluded that it did not run this part of the way, and that it carried its claws at a distance of seven or eight feet one from the other.

Prints this large could only have been made by an animal the size of an elephant, but elephants do not possess clawed toes. What kind of monster was it? In 1913, the German government decided to survey its then colony of Cameroon, and chose Captain Freiherr von Stein zu Lausnitz to lead the expedition. Von Stein included the following fascinating report on a creature "very much feared by the Negroes of certain parts of the territory of the Congo, the lower Ubangi, the Sangha, and the Ikelemba rivers." They called the animal, Mokele-mbembe.

    The animal is said to be of a brownish gray color . . . its size approximating that of an elephant. It is said to have a long and very flexible neck. Some spoke of a long muscular tail like that of an alligator. Canoes coming near it are said to be doomed; the animals are said to attack the vessels at once and to kill the crews but without eating the bodies. The creature is said to live in the caves that have been washed out by the river in the clay of its shores at sharp bends. It is said to climb the shore even in daytime in search of its food; its diet is said to be entirely vegetable.

Very little was heard of Mokele-mbembe until 1976 when herpetologist,
James Powell from Texas, traveled to Gabon to study rainforest crocodiles. Powell picked up stories from the Fang people about an enormous river monster called N'yamala, and a local witchdoctor called Michael Obang picked out a picture of the diplodocus from a book on dinosaurs as being a dead ringer for the N'yamala which he saw exit a jungle pool in 1946. Powell later conveyed this information to Dr. Roy P. Mackal, a biologist from the University of Chicago and vice president of the International Society of Cryptozoology. In 1979, Mackal and Powell traveled to the People's Republic of the Congo to investigate Mokele-mbembe activity which Mackal believed would be centered in the Likouala region, a huge area of seasonally inundated swamps that was left blank on most maps. In the northern town of Impfondo, situated on the Ubangi river, Mackal and Powell met with the Reverend Eugene Thomas from Ohio, a missionary who had served in the Congo since 1955. Thomas had heard many stories about Mokele-mbembe and sent out for firsthand eyewitnesses who had seen the monster. At first Mackal was reluctant to believe that he was on the trail of a living dinosaur. Yet each witness was absolutely emphatic that the illustrations of the apatasaurus and diplodocus in Mackal's book on dinosaurs were dead ringers for the Mokele-mbembe. According to Mackal:

    The witnesses described animals that were 15 to 30 feet long, mostly head, neck and tail. The head was distinctly snake-like, a long thin tail, and a body approximating the size of an elephant, or at least that of a hippopotamus. The legs are short, with the hind legs possessing three claws. The animals are a reddish brown in color, and have a rooster-like frill running from the top of the head down the back of the neck.

All the eyewitnesses agreed that mokele-mbembes live in the rivers, streams, and swampy lakes, and that they are rare and dangerous. Time ran out for Mackal and Powell, and they headed back to the U.S., tantalized by the reports. Mackal returned to the Congo in 1981 with a larger team, and this time headed south on the Likouala aux Herbes River. He attempted to reach the remote Lake Tele, a small, shallow body of water situated in the heart of the swamps where at least one Mokele-mbembe was reportedly speared to death by the Bagombe pygmies in 1960. Unfortunately, the narrow water channels that led to the lake from the unexplored Bai River were jammed with fallen trees, making passage impossible with heavy dugout canoes. One flutter of excitement occurred when the expedition was rounding a river bend just south of the town of Epena. A large creature had abruptly submerged near the far bank, producing an 18 inch high wave that buffeted Mackal's canoe. Crocodiles do not leave such a wake, and hippos that do, are not present in the area, for they have all been chased away by Mokele-mbembes, according to the pygmies.

Also in 1981, Herman Regusters, an engineer from Pasadena, California, led his own expedition to the Congo and actually managed to reach Lake Tele. During their exploration of the lake, Regusters and his wife, Kia, observed a long graceful neck ending in a snake like head, emerge from the water about 30 feet away from their inflatable raft. The creature regarded the astonished explorers for a few seconds with its cold reptilian stare before slipping silently under the water. Towards the end of their expedition, the Regusters team heard the ear-splitting roar of a huge animal as it crashed through the swamp near their camp one night. In 1983, Congolese biologist, Marcellin Agnagna, led his own expedition to Lake Tele. After five days of exploring the swamps surrounding the lake, Agnagna and his colleagues spotted a large animal moving out into the water. It had a small head like a lizard, a long neck, and a large broad back. Agnagna attempted to film the creature with his Super 8 cine camera, but during the excitement he forgot to switch the lens setting from macro to a long distance setting. Once again, vital film evidence eluded the world.

cont'd

[Soldier4Christ]

My own (first) expedition to the Congo took place from November 1985 to May 1986. Although we were delayed in Brazzaville for several weeks by the slow-motion bureaucratic system, Pastor Thomas graciously used his contacts in the various government departments to help us get underway. We eventually reached Lake Tele after a challenging five-day slog through the dense forest where we observed gorillas, chimpanzees, large pythons, crocodiles, and turtles, but no large monster. We also found that the fear of Mokele-mbembe was considerable among the rural Congolese which made information gathering very difficult at times. Our guides hunted daily, and on one occasion shot a monkey that we were unable to identify. The remains (the skin and head) were preserved in formaldehyde and later presented to the British Museum of Natural History in London, England. The monkey was later classified as a new subspecies of Cerocebus galeritus, or crestless mangabey monkey.

My second expedition was launched in November 1992 and doubled as an emergency delivery of medical supplies to the mission station in Impfondo where the missionaries maintained a free clinic. On this occasion we headed north on the unexplored Bai River and pushed our way northwest through dense swamps where we found two small lakes that were not even on the maps. Once again our guides were fearful of remaining in the area and we had to cut short our exploration of the swamps. Although many of the inhabitants of the Likouala Region know exactly where we can observe and film a specimen of Mokele-mbembe, they believe that to speak openly of the animals to white outsiders means death. It was nothing more than fear and superstition that was stopping us from making a major discovery.

In 1994, a civil war broke out in the Congo, scotching any possibility of a third expedition there. At this point I began to look for an alternative location in Central Africa in order to continue my search and decided to take another look at Cameroon. The south of the country (which borders the Congo) has scarcely been explored and is still rich in lush forests, swamps, and deep broad rivers, just as Freiherr von Stein had described it in 1913. In November 2000, I traveled to Cameroon with Dave Woetzel from Concord, New Hampshire. We teamed up with Pierre Sima, a Cameroonian national who hunted regularly in the jungle with the Baka pygmies. After purchasing additional supplies, we headed south on some of the worst roads imaginable.

The remainder of our time was spent slogging through waist-high swamp, going from one pygmy village to another. Our efforts were rewarded with firsthand, eyewitness accounts of Mokele-mbembe activity dating from 1986 to April 2000. Although the Baka people referred to the animals as La`Kila-bembe, they described the animals exactly as the Kelle pygmies in the Congo and confirmed that the monsters still inhabited the rivers, swamps, and streams of southern Cameroon. The pygmies also described the monster as having a series of dermal spikes running the length of its neck, back, and tail. This is a physical feature of sauropod dinosaurs that was unknown to paleontologists until 1991. Additional information was also gathered about other strange animals that reputedly inhabit the forest and swamps, including a large quadruped armed with a heavy neck frill and up to four horns on its head. Our witnesses immediately picked out a picture of the triceratops as being a dead ringer for this animal which is reputed to kill and disembowel elephants.

To our surprise, unlike the pygmies of the Congo, the Baka pygmies of Cameroon do not attach any supernatural or mythical beliefs to the mystery animals of southern Cameroon and were happy to answer our questions and provided a great deal of information about them. As a test, we showed the pygmies pictures of other animals such as the North American bear, which they did not recognize, thus establishing a measure of accuracy and truthfulness in their reporting. Enthralled by our progress, we returned home greatly motivated by the knowledge that we had made important progress in the search for Mokele-mbembe.

In February 2002, I returned to Cameroon with a four man Christian expedition. Much valuable time was lost due to problems in finding suitable transportation. However, we did make it back into the target area. Again with the help of our friend, Pierre Sima, we interviewed new eyewitnesses and gathered even more valuable information on Mokele-mbembe and other mystery animals of the region. It was, however, the dry season with the river level very low and very little time left for actual field research. We would have to return during the wet season (which is the best time to observe Mokele-mbembes, according to almost all eyewitnesses).

I must ask the reader to forgive me for the lack of detail regarding the precise location of my field work as I strongly believe that we are a hairsbreadth away from locating and filming a specimen of Mokele-mbembe. If the Lord is willing, I will return to Cameroon in October this year and once again team up with Pierre Sima. Perhaps on this, my fifth expedition, I will now at last film a specimen of Mokele-mbembe, the ultimate living fossil!

* Mr. Gibbons has led four expeditions to Africa in search of Mokele-mbembe.