Radaractive

Who am I supporting for President? Rick Santorum, naturally!!!

2012-02-11T21:40:00.000-08:00

"A president who, after thousands of years of human history, a Harvard law degree, and four years in the White House, cannot tell us with certainty what he thinks marriage or life is, is not worthy of the trust of the American people or a second term in office. It is time for leadership in America. It is time again to stand for self-evident foundational truths." - Rick Santorum

Yesterday a wonderful thing happened.   It was the birth of a new baby into the world, a girl.   It was an event that will forever change the new mother and the new father as they become more than husband and wife, they also become Dad and Mom (Well, Da and Ma and then Dada and Mama and then Daddy and Mommy usually come first).   The young lady who arrived was a couple of days "late" so lots of us were praying for them and for a great and healthy delivery.   Mission accomplished!!!

These young people were both students in a church classes I taught.   For years now I have seen kids who I taught grow up and get married and have their own kids.   Theoretically there is a third generation from the bus route I had back from over 30 years ago, since some of those kids were teens?   Anyway for awhile I was working at a Christian bookstore while recovering from a horrific injury and often saw some of my former students coming in with a stroller and or a toddler or even a couple of grade schoolers in tow.   Sometimes it had been such a long time I would not even recognize them at first, most times no matter how old there are faces you never forget.

Whether the young people I've worked with love me or are not particularly interested in me is not the issue. I go where God has called me. Some of the young people have become like family and we are connected forever, some not so much. It isn't about me.   I want to share the love and wisdom of God with others. That is what matters.

Still, one of the great blessings of working with kids and teens especially is to make a connection with lives and to see the young people pair off and start families and stay in the Christian family.   We have friends in several churches all over the place, even some on missions overseas and I mean the kind of missionaries who move to a place and stay.   We love our church and we love having friends at our church but not everyone is supposed to go to the same church. God is big enough to work in more than one place.

This couple came from two dedicated Christian families, who taught their children to love God and believe in the traditional values. They married, they have decided to begin a family and now they will continue on into the future, having started their own family. Will they find themselves facing a life where being a Christian will force them to choose between jail and compromise? For the last three years that is the way things have been trending in the USA. Political correctness and "tolerance" walk hand-in-hand with big government as the First Amendment is under direct attack.

Tomorrow's post, God willing, will cover a subject that is critical to the person who wants to take a step back and take a look at our nation and where we are and where we came from and why we have arrived at this moment in history. But for now, by allowing Rick Santorum to speak for himself today...tomorrow I will go back to the subject of the Theist versus Atheist and especially Christian versus Darwinist in the 21st Century in taking a look back and then, a look forward. I believe in a future for the young people coming after me that will be a far better one with a President who actually loves America, the Constitution and the foundational beliefs that birthed our nation.

Rick Santorum speaks:

We Hold These Truths

The White House recently told the press there couldn’t be more difference between my position on gay marriage and President Obama’s.

On reflection, I agree.

President Obama’s position on marriage is constantly “evolving,” as he so often says. He’s not sure what marriage is, or what it should become, and no doubt right now he’s consulting highly-paid polling experts to determine how his position – and marriage itself – should morph next. This should come as no surprise given the President’s musings about the other great moral issue of our time, the protection of human life.

In a 2008 campaign forum, Pastor Rick Warren asked, “at what point does a baby get human rights, in your view?" Obama answered, “Well, you know, I think that whether you’re looking at it from a theological perspective or a science perspective, answering that question with specificity, you know, is above my pay grade.” But as an Illinois State Senator, Barack Obama articulated a very clear view of when a baby was granted rights. He was the only senator to vote against the Born Alive Infants Protection Act in committee; legislation that protected babies who survived an abortion and were born alive. He was the only senator to speak against it on the senate floor.

At the time, the constitutional law professor boldly asserted, that “whenever we define a pre-viable fetus as a person that is protected by the equal protection clause or other elements of the Constitution, what we’re really saying is, in fact, that they are persons that are entitled to the kinds of protections that would be provided to a–a child, a 9 month old–child that was delivered to term.” He says children only have rights who are 9-months old and delivered at term. So, does that mean any child born before 9 months is not entitled to rights?

By contrast, millions of Americans, including myself, know what we think about human life and marriage. We know not only what we think but why we believe what we believe. We know that some truths are bigger than the next election and should not shift with political consultants’ advice. And among those great, enduring, and foundational truths, I believe, are life and marriage.

An unborn child is not just a clump of cells. He or she is a human life, as worthy of basic dignity and respect as any one of us. Each precious, irreplaceable human life is too infinitely valuable to permit courts to redefine its meaning away. I fought against Partial Birth Abortion, a horrific procedure supported by President Obama, all the way to the U.S. Supreme Court. When the highest court found the law banning the practice unconstitutional, I sent it back to the justices a second time so they could get it right.

Marriage is, and has always been through human history, a union of a man and woman – and for a reason. These unions are special because they are the ones we all depend on to make new life and to connect those new lives to their mom and dad.

A husband is a man who commits to a woman, to her and any children she may give him. He commits to his wife without any reservations, to share with her all his worldly goods and to exclude all others from this intimate communion of life. From this vow of marriage comes a wonderful and unique good: any children their union creates will have a mom and a dad united in love, in one family.

That’s the special work of marriage in law – to connect things that otherwise fray and fragment: love, life, money, moms, and dads.

A man who does not seek to do this – who doesn’t choose to give himself to a woman and any children they may have together in this unique and special way – may well be a very good man and have wonderful other kinds of relationships, but he isn’t seeking to be a husband. We can’t redefine reality to accommodate politically fashionable wishes. Words matter because they capture enduring and timeless truths about human nature and about the common good.

Lawyers cannot create life and did not create marriage. And lawyers (whether on the bench or in politics) have no business redefining either to suit the shifting winds of fashion, or worse, for political expediency.

I know so many single moms who work so hard and do such a great job raising children. We need to applaud every heroic parent working hard to raise good kids regardless of whether or not they are married; just as we need to protect all our children, born and unborn, those lucky enough to have the gift of a married mom and dad and those who do not.

We can do this without cravenly surrendering timeless truths about marriage and human life. We don’t want liberal media-approved lawyers and politicians massaging the meaning of words, or judges implementing vast social changes without the consent of the governed, or, frankly, politicians like President Obama who cannot even tell you what marriage will be next week.

In positions of power, we need men and women of character, willing to stand up and defend what they think is right and to level with the American people. America is hungry for leadership. I have found everywhere I go across this great land that people appreciate it if they know you’re the kind of man they can trust to tell the truth on important issues even if they do not agree with you on every issue.

Marriage is a society’s life blood. Not everybody can or will marry, but all of us (married or not) depend on marriage in a unique way. Marriage is foundational: it creates and sustains not only children but civilization itself. This is an institution which protects our liberty.

A president who, after thousands of years of human history, a Harvard law degree, and four years in the White House, cannot tell us with certainty what he thinks marriage or life is, is not worthy of the trust of the American people or a second term in office. It is time for leadership in America. It is time again to stand for self-evident foundational truths.
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This Op-Ed was first featured on January 13, 2012 on Ricochet.com.

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So you think Evolution is science? Uh, no!

2012-02-08T21:31:00.000-08:00

"This most beautiful system of the sun, planets, and comets, could only proceed from the counsel and dominion of an intelligent and powerful Being."

^{- Sir Isaac Newton, brilliant scientist and devout Christian}

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There are several journals and magazines and publications I receive and plenty of online resources are at my fingertips. The glory of the still-free internet is the plethora of information that the ruling paradigm has not yet managed to control and censor to any extent. Therefore truth is still to be found here in the USA and most other nations where the government does not censor the internet. We know that Communist China filters the internet and Google helps with the process, which is one reason I do not post Google ads despite the fact that I would be paid to do it. I believe it would be wrong to do. Wrong. Do you know that word? Of course, what I think is wrong and what atheistic naturalists think is wrong are two different things. I believe that God decides right and wrong.

In any event, Jerry Bergmann wrote a fantastic article that appears in the AIG Answers Research Journal and was available for distribution today, so here is the beginning of the article. The entire article is available to read or download as a PDF now.

Answers Research Journal 5 (2012): 1–12.
www.answersingenesis.org/articles/arj/v5/n1/evolution-myth-biology

An Evaluation of the Myth That “Nothing in Biology Makes Sense Except in the Light of Evolution”

by Jerry Bergman

February 8, 2012

Abstract

Darwinists commonly claim that evolution is the foundation of all of the sciences, especially the ife sciences and that “nothing in biology makes sense except in the light of evolution.” To evaluate this claim I reviewed both the textbooks used for life science classes at the college where I teach and those that I used in my past university course work. I concluded from my survey that Darwinism was rarely mentioned. I also reviewed my course work and that of another researcher and came to the same conclusions. From this survey I concluded that the claim “nothing in biology makes sense except in the light of evolution” is false.

Keywords: Teaching of evolution, the application of evolution, creationism, college text books

Introduction

In 1929, an article in Popular Science was written to encourage the teaching of the theory of evolution in spite of the laws that were passed by several states to curb the teaching of Darwinism. The article claimed that “The theory of evolution is altogether essential to the teaching of biology and its kindred sciences” (Armstrong 1929, p. 135). The most popular biology book in the 1920s by Dr. Truman Moon, entitled Biology for Beginners, stated that the theory of evolution is “the cornerstone of all recent science and the foundation of all modern thought” (quoted in Armstrong 1929, p. 133). Almost a half-century later, the eminent American evolutionist, Theodosius Dobzhansky (1900–1975), claimed that “evolution” is the cornerstone of biology and is central to understanding both living and extinct organisms (Dobzhansky 1973, p. 125).

His statement that “nothing in biology makes sense except in the light of evolution” has been repeated in thousands of articles to argue that Darwinism must have a central place in all areas of life-science education, including biology, anatomy, medicine, agriculture, and biotechnology (for example, see Antolin and Herbers 2001, p. 2379). Orthodox Darwinism is defined as the evolution of all complex life forms on earth from a single common ancestor as a result of natural selection acting on random mutations in the genome over vast periods of time through strictly naturalistic processes. A recent internet search revealed over 50,000 hits for Dobzhansky’s quote. As a result of this oft-repeated assertion, many argue that evolution must be a central part of all public school and college life science classes. In the words of the National Academy of Science, evolution is “the most important concept in modern biology, a concept essential to understanding key aspects of living things” (emphasis mine) (National Academy of Science 1998, p. viii). This claim is made because Darwin’s

Origin of Species has had more influence on Western culture than any other book of modern times. It was not only a great biological treatise, closely reasoned and revolutionary, but it carried significant implications for philosophy, religion, sociology, and history. Evolution is the greatest single unifying principle in all biology (Prosser 1959, p. 539).

Dawkins opines that, without Darwinism, “biology is a collection of miscellaneous facts.” He adds before children “learn to think in an evolutionary way” the material that students learn

will just be facts, with no binding thread to hold them together, nothing to make them memorable or coherent. With evolution, a great light breaks through into the deepest recesses, into every corner, of the science of life. You understand not only what is, but why. How can you possibly teach biology unless you begin with evolution? How, indeed, can you call yourself an educated person, if you know nothing of the Darwinian reason for your own existence? (Dawkins 2002, p. 58).

The claim that evolution is central to biology has been around for decades. For example, the Scopes Trial transcript included the following words penned by Vanderbilt University biology professor Dr. E. N. Reinke:

To deny the teacher of biology the use of this most fundamental generalization of his science would make his teaching as chaotic as an attempt to teach . . . physics without assuming the existence of the ether (Reinke 1927, p. 8).

The ether idea has now been fully refuted, a fact that illustrates the fallibility of the biology claim if the analogy were true. The evolution-is-central-to-biology belief has even made the Doonesbury cartoon; the lead character stating that “Evolution is the foundation of all life sciences. Without it, whole fields from genetics to ecology can’t exist!” (Trudeau 2011).

Although Darwinists often talk about the central importance of “evolution” in gaining a basic understanding of the natural world, in the daily work of both scientific education and scientific research, evolution is rarely mentioned or even a concern. This has been my experience as a research associate involved in cancer research in the department of experimental pathology at the Medical University of Ohio and as a college professor in the life and behavioral sciences for over 30 years. As Conrad E. Johanson, Ph.D., Professor of Clinical Neurosciences and Physiology and Director of Neurosurgery Research at Brown Medical School in Rhode Island noted, research scientists

rarely deal directly with macroevolutionary theory, be it biological or physical. For example, in my 25 years of neuroscience teaching and research I have only VERY rarely had to deal with natural selection, origins, macroevolution, etc. My professional work in science stems from rigorous training in biology, chemistry, physics, and math, not from world views about evolution. I suspect that such is the case for most scientists in academia, industry, and elsewhere (Johanson, pers. comm.).

Renowned chemist and National Academy of Science Member, Dr. Philip Skell, Professor Emeritus of Pennsylvania State University (see Lewis, 1992), surveyed his colleagues “engaged in non-historical biology research, related to their ongoing research projects.” He found, in answer to the question, “Would you have done the work any differently if you believed Darwin’s theory were wrong?” that “for the large number” of the Darwinist researchers he interviewed, “differing only in the amount of hemming and hawing” was “in my work it would have made no difference.” Some added they thought it may make a difference for other researchers (Skell, pers. comm.).

Another scientist, Professor Henry F. Schaefer III, the Graham-Purdue Professor of Chemistry and Director of the Center for Computational Chemistry at the University of Georgia, added that

Darwinian assumptions are not needed for the day-to-day work of science. If you look at the biochemical literature for scientific papers that try to explain how biochemical systems developed step-by-step in Darwinian fashion, there aren’t any. It’s startling. Most biologists completely ignore evolution in their work, and the ones that think about it simply look for relationships and don’t bother with Darwinism. My University of Georgia colleague in biochemistry, Professor Russell Carlson, has expressed the same sentiment to me privately (Schaefer 2004, p. 102).

From 1981 to 1997, Professor Schaefer was the sixth most highly cited chemist in the world out of a total of 628,000 chemists whose research was cited at least once. The Science Citation Index reported that, as of December 31, 2010, his research had been cited over 47,000 times.

Of interest is that the fact that molecular, cell, and developmental biology majors at Yale University Graduate School are no longer required to complete courses on evolution (Hartman 1997). I have noted from my own research, both to my frustration and over my objections, that many of the subscriptions to journals focusing on evolution at both the University of Toledo Medical College and Bowling Green State University have been dropped. I was told by the reference librarian that there was little demand for them.

I also interviewed several biology professors. Typical is Tony Jelsma, who obtained his Ph.D. in Biochemistry in 1989 and did postdoctoral research for almost eight years before landing a position teaching at the Department of Biology, Dordt College (Sioux Center, Iowa). His B.Sc. (1983) and Ph.D. (1989) were both completed at McMaster University. He stated that he did not encounter Darwinism in his work or studies except in one undergraduate biochemistry class where he studied the abiotic synthesis of adenine (Jelsma, pers. comm.).

A Survey of Textbooks

Having taught biology, genetics, zoology, psychology, and related courses at the college level for the past 40 years, I evaluated this claim by examining the content of the major textbooks that I have used to teach science courses. I found most of the biochemistry/molecular biology, genetics, and cell biology texts we have used never, or hardly ever, mentioned Darwinism (see Table 1). The only courses that covered it in any detail were Biology 101, zoology, and anthropology. In my experience, even in these classes, many instructors skipped the section on evolution.

Even those textbook chapters labeled “evolution” often spend much time on non-evolution topics, such as basic genetics, human development, population genetics, and similar areas. None of the anatomy and physiology textbooks we have used ever mentioned evolution. The only reference to Darwinism in the microbiology texts we used was on the development of bacterial resistance (which is not a concern for intelligent design or even creationists because many of the mechanisms producing resistance are well known and do not support orthodox evolution, see Bergman 2003).

Read the rest at the original site:

The fact is that in the real world of science, evolution is never observed nor is it in any way helpful to the study of the cell or DNA or the structure and systems of living organisms. New scientific disciplines have arisen to study the design of nature and to copy or mimic such designs to make man-made objects better or to attempt to copy the designs intact. While Darwinists proclaim with all the enthusiasm of snake-oil salesmen the need to understand evolution, science is studying the DESIGNS of nature and applying them to improve the world of man. For example:

Living Surprises, Living Hopes

Posted on January 21, 2012 in Amazing Facts, Biology, Biomimetics, Botany, Cell Biology, Darwin and Evolution, Genetics, Health, Humanity, Intelligent Design, Mammals, Marine Biology, Microbiology, Origins, Terrestrial Zoology, Uncategorized

Here are ten recent discoveries about plants and animals that are surprising and inspiring. Some of them may lead to technologies that can improve our own lives.

Fish-o-pus: Slinking through Indonesian waters is a master of impersonation: an octopus that can elude predators by imitating a fish. But that’s just part of the story. Scientists have now found a fish that imitates the octopus that imitates the fish! Story on Science News. The jawfish apparently hangs around with the mimic octopus to share in its protective strategy.

Mind meld with apes: German scientists studied the four anthropoid apes, chimps, bonobos, gorillas and orang-utans, Science Daily said, and found that some (but not all) appeared to be able to calculate risks before acting. Their experiment involved choices between small banana pieces in reliable spots, and larger banana pieces hidden behind variable locations. The gorillas didn’t do so well. It’s not clear whether readers will be as impressed with this as the researchers were, considering that birds seem to do even better at these kinds of brain teasers. Last month, Live Science reported that pigeon brains are on par with primates.

Brazilian worm-eating plant: A new kind of carnivorous plant has been found in the Cerrado of Brazil, a unique tropical biodiversity hotspot. Reported in PNAS (January 9, 2012, doi: 10.1073/pnas.1114199109), the plant Philcoxia apparently uses sticky underground leaves to trap and eat roundworms. PhysOrg has a picture and summary of the predatory plant.

Flower power: PhysOrg featured a researcher at Kansas State that is trying to untangle sunflower genetics. Different species living in different climates have apparently become successful through gene duplications, hybridization and mobile genetic elements – pieces of genetic code that can relocate and insert themselves in different parts of the genome. Although Mark Ungerer is couching his explanations in evolutionary terms, the article seems to indicate a kind of controlled adaptability that has occurred recently. It seems premature to credit unguided processes with success at adapting to climates as different as Texas and Canada, considering Ungerer’s humble admission, “Although virtually all plants and animals have these types of sequences in their genomes, we still know very little about what phenomena cause them to amplify and make extra copies of themselves.”

Rhinoceros foot puzzle: The Royal Veterinary College is playing footsie with rhinos to see how their “stumpy little feet” can support so much weight. Their weight-bearing strategy is apparently different from that of elephants. According to the BBC News article, Dr. John Hutchinson has another reason for investigating this unknown marvel: “From understanding the feet of rhinos, as an example of a big land mammal, we could draw inspiration and understand how to build devices that can handle heavy loads and carry them around while moving.”

Pause for paws: Speaking of feet, why don’t dogs get frostbite from walking in the snow? Think of those brave Alaskan huskies on the Iditerod. Actually, dogs can get frostbitten paws, depending on the breed, but they rarely do. PhysOrg told how scientists from Tokyo checked out the paws of four dog breeds and discovered an ingenious heat-exchanging system in the blood vessels that not only transfers warmth to the bare surfaces of paws but ensures blood returning to the heart is warm enough. Cool pet tip: spray the paws with cooking spray before taking your best friend into the snow.

Gecko fish: Ever heard of the northern clingfish? These are small fish on the north Pacific coast that have mastered the art of clinging to shoreline rocks as they search for food. Remarkably, their modified fins use a similar adhesion technique as geckos, reported Science Magazine (20 January 2012: Vol. 335 no. 6066 p. 277, doi: 10.1126/science.335.6066.277). Their modified belly fins have tiny hairs that make use of atomic forces, adhering to rough surfaces better than suction cups. An undergraduate student found that the clingfish can support 180 times their own weight.

Do the fish walk: The headline at Life’s Little Mysteries promises to show how “Discovery Reveals How Fish Learned to Walk,” but the article is actually about real living fish called Pacific leaping blennies that do the twist as they flip around the intertidal zones of Guam. These are not Darwin fish; they have no feet, and their muscles are really not different from those of other fish. Their flip-flop “walk” is more an adaptive behavior than evolution. Researcher Tonia Hsieh was astonished to find half her lab blennies walked out of the tank overnight. Then she found some of them on the wall.

Leaping lizards: Speaking of Tonia Hsieh, a biologist at Temple University who developed a childhood fascination with lizards and other animals, she has a cool lab to study lizard leaps in slow motion. She especially likes the basilisk, a lizard that stands up and runs fast, reported the Philadelphia Inquirer – so fast it can run over water, giving the nickname the “Jesus lizard.” You can watch these amazing lizards in action on Hsieh’s track at the Temple University website. “It’s important to realize that animals do not have a specific program to tell them how to react to each and every possible perturbation scenario in the real world,” she said, yet they manage to keep going even when encountering a slippery spot. Understanding their locomotion strategies, she believes, can help robot designers walk out of the wheel rut. Her research might also help the elderly prevent falls.

Miracle tree: Readers may remember Moringa oleifera, the “miracle tree” that not only provides food and fuel, but can actually disinfect water for poor countries (3/09/2010). Previously we learned that crushed Moringa seeds, sprinkled in turbid water, took out the turbidity and killed bacteria. One problem was making the process sustainable and affordable. Without proper techniques, the dissolved organic compounds could return to cloud the water again. Now, according to PhysOrg, clean drinking water for the poor is a step closer to reality. The American Chemical Society published a paper by scientists who identified the protein in the seeds that has the antibacterial effect. By attaching it to sand, they can attract both the bacteria and the dissolved organic compounds to the sand particles, which carry the impurities to the bottom, leaving clean water suitable for drinking. The paper is published in the ACS journal Langmuir. The new process is inexpensive and sustainable, said Science Daily, and a billion people stand ready to benefit from this one remarkable plant, “one of the world’s most useful trees.”

We love good science here. Most of this is good old, Darwin-free scientific discovery. What has evolution done for any of it? Sure, the sunflower wizard believes in evolution, but he was watching built-in adaptation tricks of the genome in action, not some external “natural selector” corralling chance mutations. Sure, Tonia believes in evolution, but her lizard track meets are designed to improve senior health and robotics. In every case, evolution had nothing of substance to add to the science. What wonderful benefits await poor people from research on how to employ a tree’s built-in codes to purify water! Evolution is like a ball and chain on this kind of science. Take it off, and let science take off.

Exactly! Evolution is the embarrassing relative who gets drunk at wedding receptions. We are stuck with him for a short time yet. Within a generation of today the absolute proof of Biogenesis will have to be accepted by science, the certainty of design within organisms will be too obvious to be ignored and the overwhelming evidence against long ages that will be built up by the coming generation of scientists will allow the younger generation to usher the old eccentric uncles like Dawkins and Myers out the door of relevance and then with a deep breath, toss away all the nonsense of Darwinism and get on with real science again. The worst part of the scientific aspect of the 20th Century was the unnecessary anchor of Darwinism that held back scientific discovery and dumbed down education. With the last book authored by Hawking the ruling paradigm played their last card and that card was the King of Incoherence. The Universe had to make itself? (see below) A toddler could think things out equally as well as the poor deluded Hawking. Ironic that he included the word "design" in his last book, is it not? Design in the Universe and in organisms is inescapable.

Hawking Says Universe Created Itself

by Brian Thomas, M.S. *

Stephen Hawking, leading cosmologist and recently retired Lucasian Professor of Mathematics at Cambridge University, has co-authored a new book, The Grand Design. In it, he claims that the universe did not need God to create it. This conclusion goes against the writings of another famed Lucasian Professor who is credited with discovering the very law Hawking uses as his "proof"--Sir Isaac Newton.

The Telegraph quoted from The Grand Design:

Because there is a law such as gravity, the Universe can and will create itself from nothing. Spontaneous creation is the reason there is something rather than nothing, why the Universe exists, why we exist.¹

What would compel a person to ascribe the power of creation to just gravity? Perhaps it stems from the idea that gravity has an equal amount of "negative" energy to perfectly balance all other "positive" energies.²
Recent investigations into gravity--one of which questioned its very existence--left plenty of room for doubt about claims that depend on an accurate conception of this particular natural force.³

But even if "gravity" did provide such balance, it could hardly suffice as an adequate cause for the whole universe. Pointing out qualities of already-existing energies is no more an explanation for their origin than pointing out how the energy-of-motion in a rolling ball will be exactly matched by the energy-of-resistance from friction. Neither quantity answers where the ball came from and who or what pushed it.

On the other hand, for his hypothesis Hawking may have relied on the common cosmological concept that gravity supposedly can pull matter together from fine dust into nuggets, clumps, large conglomerates, nebulae, planetesimals, planets, stars, galaxies, galactic clusters, and superclusters. The physics, however, shows that gravity alone cannot do this.⁴ This is why the shockwaves of "nearby supernovae" or giant collisions are routinely invoked to jump-start star formation from dust clouds, where the gravity is too weak to overcome repulsive forces of hot gas particles.⁵

Extraordinary information also characterizes this vast universe. The three-dimensional placement of heavenly bodies in space and the particular--and peculiarly life-enabling--universal parameters, such as the speed of light and electromagnetic strength, are some examples of fine-tuned information.⁶ Also, there is the mountain of information in living systems to explain.

Since concerns over gravity and energy do not address the more obvious question of information--a massless yet ubiquitous fundamental entity--then statements about gravity or energy alone form insufficient grounds to reject a supernatural origin for the universe.

In addition, any assertion that a thing can make itself is self-contradictory. This is because in every case where something has actually been made, that which caused it existed prior to it. For example, an oak tree may have found its immediate cause in the planting action of a pre-existing squirrel and by the acorn production of a pre-existing oak tree. So, for the universe to have made itself, it would have had to exist prior to its existence--a contradiction of the undeniable first principle of causality.⁷

A classic argument for the existence of God holds that since something exists (say, the universe), and since something cannot make itself (without violating the first principle of causality), then a cause outside that thing must exist (God).⁸ In essence, Hawking has attempted to refute this reasoning by simply denying the second premise!

Did the oak tree come from an acorn? No, Hawking would say--it was just the result of "spontaneous creation" and there it is. Such reasoning makes no sense. Hawking's illustrious predecessor, Sir Isaac Newton, formed a more reasonable and accurate assessment of the universe's origins:

"This most beautiful system of the sun, planets, and comets, could only proceed from the counsel and dominion of an intelligent and powerful Being."⁹

References

Roberts, L. Stephen Hawking: God was not needed to create the Universe. Telegraph. Posted on telegraph.co.uk September 2, 2010, accessed September 2, 2010.
Gribbin, J. Are we living in a designer universe? Telegraph. Posted on telegraph.co.uk August 31, 2010, accessed September 2, 2010.
Thomas, B. Physicist Questions Gravity's Existence. ICR News. Posted on icr.org August 6, 2010, accessed September 2, 2010.
Coppedge, D. 2009. Bottom-up Science. Acts & Facts. 38 (11): 18.
DeYoung, D. B. 1996. New Stars, New Planets? Acts & Facts. 25 (4).
Coppedge, D. 2006. There's Only One Universe. Acts & Facts. 35 (12).
The first principle of causality can be stated several ways, including "every effect has a cause," and "nonbeing cannot cause being." Geisler, N. L. 1999. Baker Encyclopedia of Christian Apologetics. Grand Rapids, MI: Baker Book House, 120.
Importantly, this argument requires that the "something" that exists is the kind of something that is contingent and finite, like an oak tree, person, or the universe. This is unlike the Creator Himself, who is self-existent, uncaused, eternal, and infinite. Infinite beings require no cause.
Quoted in Dao, C. 2008. Man of Science, Man of God: Isaac Newton. Acts & Facts. 37 (5): 8.

* Mr. Thomas is Science Writer at the Institute for Creation Research.

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Flu plus Super Bowl = guest youtubes Falsifying Evolution and of course the great Ian Juby for the win!

2012-02-06T18:04:00.000-08:00

The contest and winner!!!

A favorite finalist

Second favorite finalist

Ian Juby pwns on!

While recuperating from illness, a couple of days of youtubes...probably tomorrow as well. But plenty to digest.

Darwinists, the argument from incredulity is not your escape pod from Starship Science!

2012-02-04T18:22:00.000-08:00

Logical Fallacies: Argument From Incredulity (comment by Quaxotic)

Argument from ignorance - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Quote:

Argument from incredulity / Lack of imagination

Arguments from incredulity take the form:

P is too incredible (or I can't imagine how P could possibly be true) therefore P must be false.
It's obvious that P (or I can't imagine how P could possibly be false) therefore P must be true.

These arguments are similar to arguments from ignorance in that they too ignore and do not properly eliminate the possibility that something can be both incredible and still be true, or obvious and yet still be false.

The Atheistic Argument:

The existence of some invisible sky-daddy is so ludicrous, let's face it none exists.

The Theistic Argument:

Humans evolved from monkeys? That's ridiculous. Evolution is false.

__________________

"Reality is that which, when you stop believing in it, doesn't go away." Phillip K. Dick

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I do not know the guy who posted this comment, but the comment by the excellent Phillip K. Dick, who was a terrific writer, is spot on!   Truth is truth, no matter what those in error may think.   Over the years I have heard of stories that boggle the mind.   Can you imagine a paleontologist hiding evidence of flesh remains on a fossil find because it would tend to destroy his worldview?   Can you imagine a couple of men from a Darwinist propaganda site walking out to a remote location on a riverbed and smashing some fossil footprints to smithereens because it would have, if verified, proved man and dinosaur lived at the same time?   Such thinking is at the toddler level.   If you hide your eyes, I can still see you! Destroying evidence does not change the truth of that evidence.    It just makes you a foolish individual.

The more intelligent the Darwinist, the more likely he is to be a massive logic fail zone.   Of all the so-called standard rules of logic that Darwinist commenters use as a resort, probably the one most ill-used of them all is the "argument from incredulity."

As a father who raised several children, was at one time the owner of the "hang-out house" where the teens and pre-teens came to eat my food, hang out with my kids and listen to my music and watch television and play video games and a father who played basketball and football and tennis and volleyball and went to concerts and camping and all that stuff with all sorts of kids and teens, I have lots of experience with the misuse of that argument.

I would hear a crash, run into a room and find a kid in the room and a broken something on the floor.   When they were very young, they would try to resort to the argument from incredulity.   Just because they were the only person in the room and there had been a glass of milk dropped or a hanging plant and it's shattered pot littering the floor, that didn't mean they had to have been responsible.   Without understanding the argument itself, they would use it.   Just because I could not conceive of how a glass of milk could pour itself and then break itself on the floor did not mean that child was responsible!    Well, in my house there were varied degrees of punitive/corrective actions depending upon the transgression.   A kid drops a glass on the floor? He cleans it all up.   He lies about it? Now he is in trouble! You see, the two things that my kids learned got them sent to their room waiting for me to come in were lying and directly disobeying.   Mistakes? I did not punish mistakes.   Bad judgments? Minor consequences.   Lying or directly disobeying?   Then I brought the hammer down.   Yes, I spanked my small children and then they apologized for what they had done and then I hugged them and forgave them and it was over.   When they got bigger I felt a time came when they were too old for spanking and I used grounding and loss of privileges was then applicable.

All of my kids are grown now and I have three grandchildren.   All of them love me and I love them.   Do you think they resent that I spanked them when young? Are you kidding?   They hated the time in the room waiting for me to come in and that was the biggest punishment...the waiting.   They all agree with the way they were raised and those who are now raising their own children are doing it the way I did it because I did it the way the Bible teaches parents to raise children.    Have rules and enforce them.   Enforce them with love and never, ever spank or punish in anger.   I could yell in my dark voice and scare them silly to get their attention but I never let anger actually move me.   If I was really angry at a kid, off to their room and I would not come in until I was completely calm no matter what they did.   I did far more teaching and very little punishing.   My belief is that you do not put your kids in a box of rules, you put the box of rules into your kids and expect them to live those rules out in their lives.   This is what used to be normal in the United State of America until idiots with degrees and bereft of common sense and a basic Judeo-Christian morality began to urge parents not to spank their kids and not teach them a worldview to live by but rather let them find their own way. Dumb. Educated but not wise, these people who have convinced children and parents alike that the Bible way to raise children is wrong are part of the reason more people are miserably unhappy than ever.

But enough about children. On to the logical fallacy. From Conservapedia:

A logical fallacy is an error in logical reasoning. While the common usage of the word fallacy would include any error in reasoning, in logic a fallacy is defined as a particularly deceptive argument which seems correct, but upon further examination is found to be incorrect.^[1] The maker of such an argument, however, need not be aware of its fallacious nature.

Logical fallacies fall into two general categories: formal fallacies and informal fallacies. Formal fallacies apply to deductive arguments, and are those which relate to an improper application of a rule, whereas informal fallacies apply to inductive arguments, and are those which involve the improper use of the content of an argument. That is, an informally fallacious argument gives a conclusion which may be true or false, but which the fallacious argument does not prove; a formally fallacious argument gives a conclusion which is always false.

There are four categories of informal fallacies: fallacies of relevance, fallacies of defective or weak induction, fallacies of presumption, and fallacies of ambiguity.

A logical fallacy is not the same as lying, although it is still an error if you commit one (and dishonest if you know you are committing one). A lie in logic is a premise that one offers while knowing that it is false.
Logical fallacies are the beloved debating tactic of liberals; for this reason, it is not advised to debate them unless you have to, as you will only up frustrated when one of them inevitably claims global warming is true because Al Gore said so.

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You can go to that site and see all kinds of arguments but let us focus on one. Conservapedia touches on this but does not do a direct hit:

Fallacies of Defective or Weak Induction

Fallacies of defective or weak induction are fallacies which are due to a lack of understanding for how well premises lead to a conclusion.

Argument from silence

Argument from silence (in Latin, argumentum ab silencio) or argument from ignorance (Lat: ad ignorantium) is an assertion which states that, because there is no evidence to support a given argument, the opposite must be true. The fallacy follows the form:

If P then Q
P cannot be shown true
Therefore Q is false

For example: "Nobody has ever seen God, so clearly he doesn't exist".

This fallacy is often associated with and best remembered by the phrase: "the absence of evidence does not constitute evidence of absence."

A particular form of the argument from silence is the argument from personal incredulity, which takes the form "I cannot believe/understand/explain P; therefore, not-P." For example, someone who does not understand why God would condemn homosexuality or condemn sinners to eternal hell may commit this fallacy and conclude that the relevant Bible passages should be rejected.
The argument from silence often results from a misplaced burden of proof.^[8]

^{~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~}

Arguments from Incredulity

January 10, 2008

Posted by Dave S. under Intelligent Design

We often hear that ID is an argument from incredulity. At this point I would tend to agree. That said, arguments from incredulity aren’t necessarily wrong but in fact are rather reliable and employed constantly and consistently by everyone every day.

Let’s take the example that Granville Sewell offered in his most recent post here. He described Schrodinger’s equation and showed us that it’s theoretically possible for a pitched baseball to stop and hover in mid-air. A commenter who appeared to have a reasonable understanding of Schrodinger’s equation at first protested then ended up agreeing that it’s possible but the odds against it are long and for all practical purposes incalculable. They went on to agree that the quantum uncertainty is tractible in the analysis of a single electron orbiting a single proton (a hydrogen atom) but that the math is intractible for a pitched baseball because such a large number of particles are involved.

So how do we “know” that a pitched baseball won’t stop and hover in mid-air? Incredulity is how. We can’t precisely calculate the odds against it due to the system being so complex but we know it is (literally) incredibly improbable. It’s the same thing with ID. Although we can’t calculate the odds precisely we do know enough to see that self-organization of atoms into structures as complex as the machinery found in living cells is incredibly improbable. We couple this with the sure knowledge that intelligent agency routinely produces organizations of matter that, absent the intelligent agent’s intervention, are incredibly unlikely.

Here’s a good example. In principle it is possible for two cows to mate and give birth to a chimpanzee. The reason we don’t ever expect to see such a thing is we know (now) that the genetic differences between a cow and a chimp are so complex and specified that the odds against it actually happening in a single generation are nearly impossible. We can’t calculate the odds precisely but we know it is incredibly improbable. The argument that two cows won’t mate and produce a chimpanzee is an argument from incredulity.

Likewise, is it possible that a bacteria can, through RM+NS, change into a baboon over a billion years and trillions of generations? Sure it’s possible but when you actually get down to assessing the sequence of changes that must have occurred, analyzing the probability in a finite number of years and a finite number of generations, using everything we know about the mutation and selection mechanism, it quickly becomes an incredible proposition. It grows more incredible every day as new knowledge of the underlying physical mechanics is discovered.

So the next time someone tells you that ID is an argument from incredulity you can simply respond by saying

“Yeah, so what? Arguments from incredulity are common and quite reliable in all aspects of life from the physics of baseball to the physics of biology.”

We use this reasoning every day. Is it possible for a human being to be born with the ability to fly through the air like Superman? If you allow for every single thing that a human being can imagine to be possible, then yes, that is possible. But it is so statistically improbable to be declared statistically impossible. So is the natural materialistic hope that a way can be found that life could arise from non-life. Once science declared this to be impossible for even the most simple of microorganisms and named a law, the Law of Biogenesis, that says just that. For many hundreds of years there have been scientists laboring to disprove Biogenesis and every attempt fails miserably. How long will they believe in fairy tales? Oh, and Darwinists spin this topic like a top!

The Skeptics Guide online explains it like this:

"Argument from Personal Incredulity

I cannot explain or understand this, therefore it cannot be true. Creationists are fond of arguing that they cannot imagine the complexity of life resulting from blind evolution, but that does not mean life did not evolve."

Wow, the sheer weight of the evidence presented here!!   Just because we have never found the right cabbage patch does not mean that babies do not come from them. Just because no one has seen the Tooth Fairy does not mean she is not real.   All of the evidence we have about organisms that we can observe in real time and test tells us that all organisms produce more of the same kind when they mate and that they all have the information-packed DNA that in combination with the cell helps not only reproduce life but also regulate it and is, by the way, also equipped with a system to try to keep mutations from happening and at the same time allow for quick speciation using preloaded genetic information so that the kind can survive in a wide variety of ecosystems.   We have bears in the Arctic Circle and bears at the equator.   There are varieties of fish and eels and rays that live in freshwater and in saltwater.   Salmon breed in fresh water but then live in salt water.   Some sharks can adjust from salt water to fresh water, as some people in Australia have been surprised to discover. Bull Sharks can live in both fresh and saltwater.   There are shrimp that live in both salt and fresh water.

So the argument from incredulity is a valid argument if you are discussing a situation that is not credible. The odds against one simple organism happening by random chance if every electron in the Universe, which is estimated at 10 ^80 power electrons could make an attempt to become part of an organism every second for 15 billion years the odds against this are a statistical impossibility.   Now that is true without considering the hard barriers at the molecular level, basics of chemistry, which prove that the "building blocks of life" are not able to be produced and survive in the wild at all, let alone assemble themselves into an organism, let alone have some kind of information source for the coding mechanism we call DNA.   You see, the more we study DNA and the cell, the more sophisticated and complex we find them to be, the more obvious design features are disclosed, the more ludicrous the idea that a material world could produce even one microorganism.   There are trillions of varieties of life living all over the planet and extending up so high above sea level and so deep below the surface of the ocean, some of them not even part of the carbon-sunlight life cycle but instead depending upon minerals from within the Earth like sulphur and methane.   We have found both hot and cold seeps with living creatures that depend upon substances coming from within the Earth rather than taking energy from the Sun either directly or indirectly.   This is not good news for evolution,

School children are still being taught about a "tree of life" where one simple organism kept being changed by mutations and splitting off into other creatures that evolved up to the level of life we see on Earth today. But in fact we find that all basic forms of life suddenly appear in the Cambrian layers of sedimentary rock and science has also found that all sorts of systems that seem to be similar are in fact unrelated. There are at least ten different basic eye designs, for instance, and that is being very conservative.

So we see that resorting to this so-called logical fallacy is just a fancy way of retreating without putting up a fight. Every time you see a commenter resort to this, you know that he has no argument that includes actual evidence. But, good news, creationists DO have actual evidence!   I will share with you today and later on as well the wonder that is the Ian Juby YouTube channel.   Ian has a science brain with a quick wit and probably would be a fantastic dinner companion. Here is a tasty selection, which includes just some of the evidence that dinosaurs and man had to have existed at the same time. Oh, yes, there may not be a Tooth Fairy but there is a Delk Track:

As Science discovers that the Solar System is actually young...

2012-02-03T09:51:00.000-08:00

credit

Lunar Upsets Challenge Paradigms

Posted on January 27, 2012 in Astronomy, Dating Methods, Geology, Issues, Philosophy of Science, Physical Science, Physics, Solar System, Space

Forty years after the last moonwalkers came home, new discoveries about the moon are calling into question what scientists know about our celestial partner. But is it legitimate for scientists to invoke mystery forces when a favored theory faces falsifying evidence?

Shocking physics: Looking into the crystal balls Apollo astronauts brought back from the moon, namely zircon minerals, geologists at Curtin University decided their data “challenges” the “current paradigm” known as the Late Heavy Bombardment (see 1/09/2012). PhysOrg reported about “impact-related shock features in lunar zircon, giving scientists a new conceptual framework to explain the history and timing of meteorite impact events in our solar system.” When a “new conceptual framework” challenges a “current paradigm,” the ripple effects can undermine textbooks and other related theories. Since theories about the “timing of meteorite impact events” are built on lunar data, this puts theories of the entire history of the solar system at risk.

Alternative energy source: The moon had a long-lasting dynamo. That statement should floor you if you are a typical planetary scientist. To see why, read on Space.com why physicists are scrambling to find alternative power, like homeowners frantically searching for a backup generator when the lights just went out. The data come from crystals in basalt sample #10020 from the moon that, according to the evolutionary view of radiometric dating, is 3.7 billion years old – yet has remnant magnetism. In their dating scheme, that’s almost a billion years after the formation of the moon. Any primeval dynamo that could have magnetized the rock should have been long gone by then. PhysOrg put the surprise in the first sentence: “The moon has this protracted history that’s surprising. This provides evidence of a fundamentally new way of making a magnetic field in a planet a new power source [sic].”

That quote was from Benjamin Weiss, an associate professor of planetary science at MIT, one of the authors of a paper in Science (27 January 2012: Vol. 335 no. 6067 pp. 453–456, doi: 10.1126/science.1215359). “Such a long-lived lunar dynamo probably required a power source other than thermochemical convection from secular cooling of the lunar interior,” they wrote, referring to the consensus dynamo theory. “The inferred strong intensity of the lunar paleofield presents a challenge to current dynamo theory.” What powered it? “an alternative energy source,” they suggested. Have they found one? No. They tossed out a couple of possibilities at the end of the paper: maybe stirring from precession did it. Maybe a big meteor walloped the interior into a temporary molten stir. It hardly seems they considered those options seriously when they ended, “the late, intense paleomagnetic record from 10020 presents a challenge to current dynamo theory.”

Ray tracing algorithm: This story’s not from our moon, but from the asteroid Vesta, where the DAWN spacecraft is undertaking an orbital reconnaissance. A new photograph displayed on PhysOrg shows a crater with both dark and light rays. “There is dark and bright material located across Vesta,” the article said, “but it is unusual to have a crater with both bright and dark ejecta rays.” Although the press release didn’t say so, the darkness of crater rays is usually taken as an indicator of age. Looking at our moon, planetary scientists assume that crater rays begin bright and darken over time due to “space weathering,” the effect of solar wind particles on lunar dust. (See, for instance, in the “Geology of the Moon” article on Ask.com, which states: “The impact process excavates high albedo materials that initially gives the crater, ejecta, and ray system a bright appearance. The process of space weathering gradually decreases the albedo of this material such that the rays fade with time.”) The new Vesta combo crater shows that dark and light rays can originate from the same impact, potentially undermining the ray-dating algorithm.

Which moon? We may not be able to talk about “the moon” in our nighttime sky. New Scientist just announced that “Hundreds of tiny moons may be orbiting Earth.” The idea is that wandering asteroids may get captured in Earth orbit from time to time. The Earth sits in a gravity well, after all, so it’s not surprising that it would pull objects into its tractor beam. “They orbit at distances between five and 10 times as far from Earth as the moon,” the article said. “Most stay in orbit less than a year, although some stay much longer. One object in the team’s simulations stayed in orbit for almost 900 years.” This could provide some water cooler conversation. When someone talks about “the moon,” you might respond, “To which moon are you referring?” They’ll think you are Looney Tunes till you explain. You can even quote Shakespeare; “There are more things in heaven and earth, Horatio, than are dreamt of in your philosophy.”

Blue marble: We end with a breathtaking finale. The historic Apollo 8 mission in 1968 provided the first human-photographed image of the Earth from a distance. Subsequent spacecraft have improved on “Earth from space” views over the years. Now, an Earth-observing spacecraft launched in October, dubbed Suomi NPP, has just released a stunner – a realistic photograph of our “Blue Marble” from 512 miles that is so clear, so beautiful, it deserves to be set to music. At Space.com you can download it for a screen save in several sizes. At the Suomi NPP website, you can download the complete highest-resolution image (16.4 mb, 8000 x 8000 pixels) and soar over North and Central America with incredible detail (for starters, check out Lake Mead, Grand Canyon and Lake Powell). Because the spacecraft flies in a sun-synchronous orbit (see Suomi NPP feature), we can expect more fully-lit images of other faces of our planet as Earth rotates underneath.

Look at the Blue Marble photograph and ponder it awhile. Think about the proud little creatures running around down there who pretend they can understand the cosmos.

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Related:

Creation by God is the only plausible answer for the Solar System. Evolution fails again!

Rewind! From May of 2011:

Why George Couldn't Lasso The Moon. Exploding another Darwinist Myth!

Unlike unqualified sources who make comments about unqualified sources, we have some top scientists who have spoken to the moon recession and the implications:

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Let's set the stage with an overview, quickly, from CreationWiki. Normally I hate to even mention talk origins for so many reasons. They are the antithesis of what I do and what ICR and AIG and CMI and similar organizations stand for, a propaganda arm for disseminating misinformation. Such as the Moon brouhaha!

Moon is receding at a rate too fast for an old universe (Talk.Origins)

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Response ArticleThis article (Moon is receding at a rate too fast for an old universe (Talk.Origins)) is a response to a rebuttal of a creationist claim published by Talk.Origins Archive under the title Index to Creationist Claims.

Index

Claim CE110:

Because of tidal friction, the moon is receding, and the earth's rotation is slowing down, at rates too fast for the earth to be billions of years old.

Source: Barnes, Thomas G., 1982. Young age for the moon and earth. Impact 110 (Aug.).

CreationWiki response:
(Talk.Origins quotes in blue)

1. The moon is receding at about 3.8 cm per year. Since the moon is 3.85 × 1010 cm from the earth, this is already consistent, within an order of magnitude, with an earth-moon system billions of years old.

This is an over simplification of the problem., Two factors cause the moon's recession rate to be faster in the past.

A faster rotation rate for the Earth causes the tidal bulges' lead on the Moon to be larger, and this increases the net tidal force, which causes the moon to recede faster.
The inverse square law. Simply put, the force of gravity changes with the square of the distance, such that if the distance is reduced by 1/2 the force of gravity increased by a factor of four.

We start with a measured lunar recession rate of 3.82 cm/yr, and the measured slowing of the Earth's rotation rate of 8.812 milliseconds/year. If you plug these values into the laws of physics you get the following charts of the number of days in a year and Earth/Moon distance.

Note that it climbs sharply as it nears the 1.2 billion year mark. This is because if the moon is closer the tidal forces are greater and the slow down rate is greater.

When this projection is carried out for the moon's distance from the Earth it turns out that the moon's recession rate would have been much faster than its current 3.82 cm/yr, such that it would have been at the Earth's surface just over 1.2 billion years ago. That's about 3.3 billion years too recent for uniformitarian geology.

2. The magnitude of tidal friction depends on the arrangement of the continents. In the past, the continents were arranged such that tidal friction, and thus the rates of earth's slowing and the moon's recession, would have been less. The earth's rotation has slowed at a rate of two seconds every 100,000 years (Eicher 1976).

Talk Origins is accurate in pointing out that factors such as continental location affect tidal drag, but since the closer the Moon, the stronger its pull on the Earth, the rate of change tends to get vary large. The result is that to save the old Earth model it becomes necessary to virtually eliminate the effect of the continents.

The alleged rate of change in the Earth’s rotation rate of only 0.02 milliseconds / years (2 seconds / 100,000 years) adds up to about one additional day per year over 4.6 billion years and paleontological evidence (see below) does not support such a low rate of change in the Earth rotation rate.
One problem with this continental movement idea is that the methods used by geologists to trace theoretical past continental movement do not yield results for the precambrian, so any attempt to use it to prove that the Earth – Moon system can be 4.5 billion years old is speculative at best.
Eugene Poliakow's paper “Numerical modelling of the paleotidal evolution of the Earth-Moon System” is an example of efforts to calculate the effect of continental movement based on actual estimates of past continental movement. Because of limitations of the methods used to estimate past continental movement, it only projects back 600 million years, but this is enough to evaluate the results.

The following chart shows the results.

Time before now in millions of years	Lunar recession in cm/year	Earth's rotation slowing in seconds/century
0	2.91	1.59
10	2.68	1.46
50	1.83	0.98
100	0.81	0.43
200	0.34	0.18
300	0.46	0.24
350	0.80	0.42
400	0.57	0.30
450	1.54	0.80
500	2.53	1.31
570	2.19	1.11

The way to judge the validity of a mathematical model is to see how well it reproduces known data. Poliakow’s calculations give (as seen in the above chart) a figure of 2.91 cm/yr as the Moon’s current recession rate and 1.59 seconds / century as the rate of slowing of Earth’s rotation. The problem with these figures is that they both differ significantly from the values actually observed. The Moon’s current recession rate has actually been measured at 3.82 cm/yr, which is nearly a 3rd larger than Poliakow’s model indicates. Furthermore the slowing of Earth’s rotation has been measured at 0.8812 seconds / century which is just 55% of what Poliakow’s model indicates.

At first glance the fact that Poliakow’s model overestimates the deceleration rate of Earth’s rotation would seem to be a plus for uniformitarianism. However, the limiting factor of the age of the Earth - Moon system is the position of the Moon, not the Earth rotation rate. Since the Moon’s recession rate is actually higher than in Poliakow’s model, the error would be a clear negative. The real problem is that discrepancies between the model and real world data show there to be fundamental flaw in the model. It means that Poliakow overlooked one or more major factors that could easily nullify his results.

The other flaw in this model is that it does not produce results consistent with paleontological evidence. Any old Earth model for evolution of the Earth – Moon system would have to agree with both present system data and paleontological evidence, but Poliakow’s model disagrees with both

3. The rate of earth's rotation in the distant past can be measured. Corals produce skeletons with both daily layers and yearly patterns, so we can count the number of days per year when the coral grew. Measurements of fossil corals from 180 to 400 million years ago show year lengths from 381 to 410 days, with older corals showing more days per year (Eicher 1976; Scrutton 1970; Wells 1963; 1970). Similarly, days per year can also be computed from growth patterns in mollusks (Pannella 1976; Scrutton 1978) and stromatolites (Mohr 1975; Pannella et al. 1968) and from sediment deposition patterns (Williams 1997). All such measurements are consistent with a gradual rate of earth's slowing for the last 650 million years.

There is no problem with the raw data, (number of growth rings) but the interpretation is flawed. Here is chart showing uniformitarian age verses number of days in a year based on growth rings.

Made from data at Impact origin of the moon

This chart has stromatolites (green), fossil tidal rhythmites (blue), and fossil bivalves and coral (red) At first glance they seem to show a steady increase in the number of days in a year. However when one looks more closely at the data, this interpretation is shown to be invalid.

The first clue is the degree of scattering in the data. It is not what would be expected if it were really the result of lunar recession. There should be a clear curve but there is not. Now scattering often occurs in data, but in this case there is no reason for the scattering, if it were a result of the slowing of the Earth rotation rate. This is because the rate of change would be too slow to cause scattering, if the data was actually a result of a change in the number of days per year. Furthermore when other studies are considered, they show the degree of scattering is actually higher than is shown here.

Stromatolites

Stromatolites are produced by the activity of cyanobacteria and living colonies produce 365 layers in year. Fossil "colonies" have been found with 450-800 layers in apparent agreement with the slowing of the Earth rotation through the geologic ages.

The main problem is that fossil Stromatolites may not have formed from cyanobacteria. Some contain no evidence of the cyanobacteria and carbonate precipitation can result in some very stromatolite-like structures, rendering the number of layers meaningless, and making it consistent with a global flood.
The data shows four pairs of data points. The older three seem to be pre-Flood and may have been formed during the creation week. The fourth seems to be an early Flood deposit. The relationship in each pair shows no trend but there is a trend among the pairs, particularly among the three older pairs. This could simply represent a change in precipitation patterns.

Tidal rhythmites

Tidal rhythmites are produced by tidal action, and so called fossil tidal rhythmites are assumed to indicate the moon's position in the past. However, the same patterns occur in varves. So are they rhythmites or varves? Even experts have a hard time telling them apart in the geologic record. If they are varves then the patterns are meaningless for determining past lunar positions or the number of days in a year. Rhythmites and varves look similar and varves can form at the same time by hydrological sorting, just what one would expect during a global flood.

Bivalves and coral

Coral and bivalves normally produce one growth ring per day, therefore normally 365 per year. Due to the slowing of Earth's rotation, coral would have had more rings in the past on an old Earth . Fossil coral and bivalves have been found with 357-450 growth rings. The extra growth rings are assumed to indicated more days per year.

As with most such claims the effects of a global flood are not considered. Furthermore before the Flood there were probably smaller, if any, seasonal variations and his could have resulted in longer-lived specimens.Since longer lived specimens would be heavier, they would tend to be hydrologically sorted out early in the Flood. If this occurred one would expect to find a general trend with significant scattering as the data shows.

The above comparison between growth rings and alleged age shows significant variation outside the trend. One example even has only about 357 rings, so are we to assume that it is from the future?

When a statistical curve fit is graphed to this data; (the purple line) you see that some 6 bivalve/coral data points show more rings than those predicted by the curve, and 6 have fewer. Since a third of the bivalves/coral examples have more growth rings than alleged age indicates, they must have had more than one growth ring per day. Seeing that it is possible for coral and bivalves to have more one growth ring per day, all of the examples could have had more than one growth ring per day.

The purple line is just a statistical curve fitted to paleontological data and as such it is not based on actual tidal force data.

When this chart is compared to what a simple curve calculated says the number of days should be at a given time in the past (yellow curve) based on real tidal drag data, it shows that the paleontological data does not even come close to a fit. Most of the examples are above the curve.

The current rate of change in Earth rotation rate is often mistakenly projected back in a straight line, but the law of physics show that the rate would be higher when the moon was closer. Even if the current rate of change is projected back in time (light blue line), the statistical curve line (purple line) is still way off. The measured rate of slowing is about 8.836 milliseconds per year. (Based on data from the CRC Hand Book of Chemistry and Physics.)

The rate indicated by the statistical curve is 13.14 milliseconds / year. The result is that there is no correlation between paleontological data and projections based on direct observation of the changes in the Earth's rotation. This is further evidence against the accuracy of using paleontological data in estimating tidal effects on Earth's rotation rate. It indicates that the apparent trend in paleontological data has some other cause.

This data does not support the alleged rate of change in the Earth rotation rate of only 0.02 milliseconds per year (2 seconds in 100,000 years) from #2. This rate of change only adds up to about one additional day per year over 4.6 billion years.

When it is added to the chart it is essentially a flat line (orange line) and there is no indication of of such a flat line in the data. But according to the model needed to save uniformitarian time scales, it must be there. Yet it is not there.

4. The clocks based on the slowing of earth's rotation described above provide an independent method of dating geological layers over most of the fossil record. The data is inconsistent with a young earth.

Actually these "clocks" do not match actual data on the slowing of Earth's rotation rate. So in reality they are inconsistent with an old Earth model. This indicates that the apparent trend in paleontological data has some other cause. One such cause would be longer lived bivalves and coral; that would be consistent with a Young Earth and a Global Flood.

References

Creationist

Young age for the moon and earth. by Thomas G. Barnes ICR Impact #110. 1982.
Problems with a Global Flood?
How Long Would It Take the Moon to Recede from Earth to Its Present Position?
The Moon is Still Young response to Tim Thompson’s “The Recession of the Moon” at Talk.Origins. rebutting Tim Thompson’s “The Recession of the Moon” at Talk.Origins). by Malcolm Bowden.
Abiotic origin of stromatolites

Secular

Impact origin of the moon
Abiological origin of described stromatolites older than 3.2 Ga
Rhythmites or Varves?
Numerical modelling of the paleotidal evolution of the Earth-Moon System
Grotzinger JP. Rothman DH. 1996. An abiotic model for stromatolite morphogenesis. Nature 383:423-425.

Browse

Naturalistic theories put lunar origin close to Earth

Photo by NASA

The first moon landing—astronauts placed mirrors on the moon, making possible lunar laser ranging experiments leading to precise determination of the lunar recession rate.

According to Genesis 1:14–18, God spoke the moon into existence as a unique celestial body on Day 4 of the Creation Week. Opposing the Genesis account are naturalistic theories of lunar origin: (1) the capture theory (‘daughter’ theory); (2) the accretion theory (‘sister’ theory); (3) the fission theory (the ‘spouse’ theory), popularized first by George Darwin, son of Charles Darwin;¹ and (4) the impact theory. The impact theory is currently in favour as the other theories have been found to ‘have serious flaws’.²

The capture theory has been discredited because of the improbability of Earth capturing an approaching moon-size object. Rather than explaining the origin of the moon itself, this theory merely displaces the problem of lunar origin to an indeterminate point far from Earth.

The accretion theory claims that the moon coalesced from debris remaining from the solar nebula in close orbit about the earth. The accretion theory, sometimes called the ‘double planet theory’, says that the earth and the moon formed in tandem from the solar nebula. If this theory were true, the earth and the moon should have similar structure and composition. As might be expected from the creation of the moon as a unique heavenly object, its composition (especially the difference in iron content) does not match the earth’s.^3,4 Indeed, the accretion theory has been discredited because of difficulty in explaining how debris can coalesce, and also because of the problem of ‘explaining why the abundance of iron in the Earth and the Moon is so different’.^5,6

The fission theory claims that the moon coalesced from debris spinning off the presumably molten earth eons ago; while the impact theory claims that a Mars-size asteroid once impacted the earth,⁷ with the debris eventually coalescing into the moon. The fission and impact theories both require that the debris forming the moon begin coalescing at or near earth’s Roche limit.

The Roche limit: site for naturalistic lunar formation

The Roche limit is the distance from a central body, such as a planet, inside of which orbiting debris cannot coalesce.^8,9 The gravitational force of the central body on an orbiting particle is stronger on the particle’s near side than on its far side. Within the Roche limit, this differential gravitational force is greater than the particle’s own self-gravitation, and particles break apart rather than joining.

A satellite can exist within the Roche limit if non-gravitational cohesive forces hold the object together, but once torn apart into smaller pieces, the pieces cannot rejoin. Saturn’s rings are evidently fragments of moons once orbiting Saturn inside the Roche limit. Forces due to collisions, or disruptive forces within the moons, tore the moons apart. Before they fragmented, cohesive forces held the moons together, but once they disintegrated, they could not re-form. Similarly, the earth’s moon could never form inside the Roche limit out of debris due to fission.

The impact theory does not resolve lunar origins difficulties

Even the impact theory leaves moon’s origin ‘still unresolved’, and it was adopted ‘not so much because of the merits of theory as because of the … shortcomings of other theories’.^10,11 Lunar origin theories have a history of being accepted with fanfare, then being quietly dropped as unworkable. Indeed, Hartmann quipped,

‘The moon seems a highly unlikely object. Theoreticians have been led by frustration on more than one occasion to suggest facetiously that it does not exist.’^12,13

The impact theory was first proposed in 1975 and found widespread acceptance in 1984. Until details of the theory were examined, it was viewed as explaining virtually all observations.¹⁴ Before the impact, the earth’s rotation rate was small or non-existent, and ‘the projectile must have struck the earth off-center [to] have sped up the earth’s rotation to its current value’.¹⁵ However, as mentioned, the moon’s iron content is significantly lower than Earth’s, and to explain this, ‘you need to avoid a grazing collision … lest too much of the impactor’s iron spill into orbit’ and become part of the moon.¹⁶ Further, the impactor would need to have been quite large, two or three Mars masses, to propel sufficient debris into orbit to form the moon.¹⁷ But such a large impactor would pose other challenges:

The combined mass of the earth-moon would be too large unless the earth was only partly formed at the time of impact; the earth may have been as little as ‘half formed’.¹⁸ A current estimate is that the earth was 89 % accreted.¹⁹ However, a collision so intense as to add on the order of 10% to the earth’s mass would profoundly disturb the earth in other ways. It is believed that solar He and Ne from the primordial nebula have been detected within the earth, ‘but how did this solar gas survive the Giant Impact?’²⁰ In addition, the elements which would later make up the present ‘secondary atmosphere’ would have been lost. Replacement of the atmosphere by later cometary impacts seems unlikely because the D/H ratio of Earth is different from that of comets. Thus ‘all the D/H data for comets acquired so far preclude this possibility.’^20-22 Another result of a large impactor would have been the formation of a ‘terrestrial magma ocean,’ but ‘there is no direct evidence that a magma ocean ever existed on earth’.²³ On the other hand, an impactor of too small a size requires a ‘near grazing [impact orientation] and so too much of the impactor core remains in orbit’, leading to a moon too rich in iron.²⁴
A large impactor would import so much energy into the earth-moon system that the impact debris would vaporize before the moon could form. To counter this problem, a ‘hybrid’ model was developed in which debris within the Roche limit is allowed to vaporize, but debris outside the Roche limit is allowed to cool by radiation and eventually form the moon.²⁵ There is no physical basis for such a dichotomy, however; the assumption of such a hybrid scheme is an artificial modelling device.
A large impactor ‘would produce an Earth-moon system with twice as much angular momentum as they actually have’.²⁶ Responding to these concerns, Canup and Asphaug claimed to have developed a computer model with a Mars-size impactor ‘that [yields] an iron-poor Moon, as well as the current masses and angular momentum of the Earth-Moon system’.¹⁸ This optimism was premature, as we will now see. The degree of vaporization of debris was unknown because of uncertainty in their equation of state (EOS),²⁴ making the initial mass of the moon’s accretion disk also unknown. Generally the mass ratio of earth to moon impactor is an adjustable parameter employed to generate acceptable model results.²⁷ EOS uncertainties are endemic to all impact models.²⁰

Another critical parameter in all impact models is the timing of the impact. In recent years, the hafnium-182/tungsten-182 (¹⁸²Hf/¹⁸²W) system has been used in attempts to date the moon, but this and other classical chronometers produce equivocal results. As Podosek notes,

‘It is not even clear whether the chronometers are consistent or in conflict with each other. … all methods rely on models of varying complexity involving assumptions difficult to verify and parameters difficult to measure.’²⁸

The uncertainties in ¹⁸²W lunar dating are ultimately constrained by acceptable dates for the age of the earth.⁴ Further, W lunar abundance data are extremely sparse; Kleine and colleagues based their conclusion that the moon was formed 30 Ma after the earth ‘on W isotope data from only one [lunar] sample’.²⁹

Another unresolved problem is the moon’s orbital inclination. Currently the moon’s orbit is inclined at about 5 degrees to the earth’s orbit.³⁰ Extrapolation back in time revealed that 4.5 Ga ago, the inclination would have been about 10 degrees.

‘The cause of this inclination has been a mystery for 30 years, as most dynamical processes (such as those that act to flatten Saturn’s rings) will tend to decrease orbital inclinations.’⁹

In other words, if the moon had originated naturalistically, the inclination should be zero and a lunar eclipse should occur at each full phase.

Biblically, God created the moon with very nearly its present inclination, and the orbital inclination problem is really a ‘pseudo-problem’. However, Ward and Canup claimed to have solved the problem by invoking inter-gravitational attractions or ‘resonances’, and possibly only one resonance, among the particles of debris forming the moon.⁹ Such resonances have been invoked to explain the structuring of the Saturnian and Uranian rings, for example. For this resonance model to work for lunar origins, the time of lunar formation and the mass of the accretion disk are ‘input parameters’ and the ‘resulting [present] inclination depends mainly on [these] two parameters’.³¹ As mentioned above, these two parameters are unknown. A model depending on them cannot be said to have yielded dependable results, and the orbital inclination problem remains unresolved for the investigator ruling out special creation.

The moon’s maximum age is less than 4.6 Ga

The moon was never at the Roche limit, but was positioned or ‘set’ in the firmament (Genesis 1:17) at approximately its present distance from the earth. Highly accurate lunar laser ranging measurements have shown that the moon is very slowly receding from the earth. Based on these measurements we can compute the time, which would hypothetically be required, for the moon to recede from the Roche limit to its present position.

The recession rate dr/dt of the moon is

where r is the semimajor axis of the moon’s orbit about the earth, t is time, and k is a proportionality constant.^32-34 When t = 0, r = r₀.

To compute the moon’s recession time to its present orbit, we first integrate equation (1). Over the time interval 0 to t, the moon’s distance from the earth increases from the Roche limit r₀ to its present orbit at distance r:

in which t is the maximum age of the earth-moon system. The present value of r is 3.844 x 10⁸ m. For an object orbiting a planet, the Roche limit r₀ is

where R is the radius of the central body (the earth in this case); ρ_p is the density of the central body; and ρ_m is the density of the orbiting body, in this case the moon.³⁵ With R = 6.3781 x 10⁶ m for the earth; ρ_p = 5515 kg/m³; and ρ_m = 3340 kg/m³, we find that r₀ = 1.84 x 10⁷ m. This is less than 5% of the moon’s current orbital radius.

From equation (1), the proportionality constant k is the product of the sixth power of the distance r, and the current recession rate. The present value of the recession rate is 4.4 ± 0.6 cm/yr, or (4.4 ± 0.6) x 10^–2 m/yr.^36–38 Therefore, k = 1.42 x 10⁵⁰ m⁷/yr. With this value for k, the right hand side of equation 1 equals the present recession rate dr/dt, when r = the moon’s current orbital radius.

From equation (2), the time for the moon to recede from r₀ to r is 1.3 Ga. Without introducing tidal parameters, to be discussed below, this is the moon’s highest allowable evolutionary age, similar to DeYoung’s estimate.³⁹ This is a serious challenge to the belief that the moon is 4.6 Ga old.⁴⁰ As Baldwin noted:

‘Jeffreys’ early studies of the effects of tidal friction [the cause of lunar recession] yielded a rough age of the Moon of 4 billion years. … Recently, however, Munk and MacDonald have interpreted the observations to indicate that tidal friction is a more important force than had been realized and that it would have taken not more than 1.78 billion years for tidal friction to drive the Moon outward to its present distance from any possible minimum distance. This period of time is so short, compared with the age of the earth, that serious doubts have been cast upon most proposed origins and histories of the moon.’⁴¹

Efforts to save conventional lunar chronology have failed

Recession rates for the earth-moon system challenge conventional lunar chronology

One response to the chronological challenge of recession has been the impact theory, in which lunar material originates within the Roche limit but is quickly ejected beyond it. The impact theory in turn is grounded in an older concept, the ‘orbital resonance theory’, which claims that the moon was never actually at the Roche limit. According to this theory, the moon is currently receding, but was once approaching the earth as part of a series of alternating recession/approach events as old as the moon’s conventional age.^42,43 The resonance theory, however, presumes conventional age rather than proving it, so is no support for evolutionary chronology.

Another response has been to minimize the lunar recession rate. NASA put the current recession rate at 3.8 cm/yr,^44,45 which is at the lower end of the range of lunar recession rates discussed above. Fix goes further and cites a value of only 3 cm/yr.⁴⁶

However, if the moon’s distance r had ever been much smaller than its current value, equation (1) shows that the recession rate dr/dt ‘must have been much larger in earlier times’.⁴⁷ George Darwin stated, ‘Thus, although the action [rate of lunar recession] may be insensibly slow now, it must have gone on with much greater rapidity when the moon was nearer to us’,³² a view echoed much more recently by Verhoogen.⁴⁷

Using equations 2 and 3 above, together with the conventional age of 4.6 Ga for the earth-moon system, we can compute how far the moon should have receded from the Roche limit over that time. Using r₀ = 1.84 x 10⁷ m, k = 1.42 x 10⁵⁰ m⁷/yr, and t = 4.6 x 10⁹ yr, we find that r = 4.7 x 10⁸ m. This is 20% higher than the actual distance of the moon from the earth.

Using Fix’s estimate of recession rate gives a value 14% greater than the current distance, or a time frame of 1.8 Ga, still far short of the 4.6 Ga date.

A third response is to employ adjustable tidal parameters to stretch recession chronology into harmony with the conventional solar system lifetime.^47,48

Tidal parameter adjustments fail to save a long lunar chronology

Photo by NASA

The full moon.

The primary cause of lunar recession is the tides of the earth’s oceans.^49,50 Friction between ocean water and the earth causes the earth to lose rotation energy and therefore angular momentum. Momentum conservation requires that the moon gain angular momentum in an equal degree, so the moon accelerates in its orbit, with a resulting recession from the earth.⁵¹ Analysis of astronomical and historical evidence dating back 2,700 years to Babylonian civilization shows that the day has lengthened by an average of 1.7 milliseconds per century, consistent with the earth’s slowing rotation rate.^50,52

As Mignard has observed, unless the moon had a slower recession rate in the past than it does now, the moon’s age is only 1.3 Ga, the maximum age computed above. He continues,

‘Such a time scale has now been proved to be unrealistic. … what is wrong in the computation of the time scale and how can it be corrected? The solution to this problem is thought to be a reduced rate of dissipation of [tidal] energy in the past … .’⁵³

In this view, it is therefore ‘necessary to make an empirical adjustment for the tidal acceleration’.⁵⁴ This is tantamount to saying that the proportionality constant k in equations (1) and (2) is actually variable,⁵⁵ and must be adjusted to bring lunar chronology in line with that of the earth.⁵⁶ The extremely speculative nature of such an adjustment was emphasized by Mignard who said, ‘even if we have sound reasons to accept a substantial reduction of the dissipation in the past, we are still lacking evidence of what the Moon’s orbit looked like 3 or 4 billion years ago’.⁵⁷

Slichter, one of the earliest investigators to suggest a slower rate of terrestrial energy dissipation in the distant past, remarked that if ‘for unknown reasons’ this occurred, the dilemma of lunar chronology would be resolved,⁵⁸ and Goldreich searched for possible causes.⁵⁹ Lambeck concluded,

‘… unless the present estimates for the accelerations are vastly in error, only a variable energy sink can solve the time-scale problem and the only energy sink that can vary significantly with time is the ocean.’⁶⁰

A globally open ocean would experience the least friction with land and would therefore dissipate energy at the lowest rate. Accordingly, investigators searched for continental configurations which would provide minimum resistance to the tides. Hansen proposed two models, one with a single polar continent and another with a single equatorial land mass.⁴² Piper⁶¹ and Webb⁶² proposed that the present continental arrangement on earth is abnormal and that one continent is normal. Bowden pointed out that ‘particularly the Americas which are strung from north to south across the path’ of the tides are responsible for a high energy dissipation rate.⁶³

Reconstructing ancient continental configurations is ‘exceedingly difficult’,^64,65 yet attempts have continued to link plate tectonics with past oceanic energy dissipation.^66,67 From a creationist perspective, doubts exist about whether plate tectonics has occurred in the conventional sense.⁶⁸
The layering in stromatolites and other banded geological deposits is supposed to confirm the enlarged chronologies obtained by manipulating continental configurations.⁶⁹ The tidal layering of such deposits, called rhythmites, required billions of years according to conventional assumptions. Tidally laminated sediments are taken to imply a lunar recession rate of 1.27 cm/yr between 2.5 Ga and 650 Ma ago,⁷⁰ and 2.16 cm/yr on average since then.⁷¹

Though claimed to be reliable, rhythmite data sets are often short, and periodicities must be interpreted from selected data sets.⁷² Varves themselves are dated with respect to the presumed age of the earth.^73,74 Thus lunar recession rates derived from such varve chronologies constitute circular reasoning as ‘evidence’ that the moon is old. Indeed, the varves now taken to reflect lunar behavior were not too long ago claimed as evidence of solar behaviour patterns and constituting ‘potential solar observatories’ shedding light on the sun’s processes and history.^75,76 However, there is no known mechanism linking varve characteristics and solar behavior.⁷⁷ After reinterpretation, varves were viewed as luni-solar⁷⁸ or as a lunar phenomenon.^79,80 Confidence is now placed in the reinterpretation of varves as a window on lunar history. Nevertheless, a recent assessment concluded that analysis of tideal rhythmites has not eliminated ‘paleorotational parameters in the distant geologic past [that] are highly speculative’.⁸¹

Conclusions

Lunar scientist Irwin Shapiro used to joke that ‘the best explanation [of lunar formation conundrums] was observational error—the Moon does not exist.’

Over the approximately 6,000 years since the creation of the universe, the lunar recession rate has been essentially constant at the present value. However, assuming a multi-billion year age, lunar recession rates would have been much higher in the distant past than now. The currently accepted parameters indicate that the moon would have required 1.3 Ga to move from its origin at the Roche limit to its present position. This is the moon’s upper-limit age and shows that the conventional chronology is incorrect. If the solar system were actually 4.6 Ga old, the moon would have receded to a distance from earth approximately 20% beyond its present position. There is a widespread belief that the impact theory of lunar origin has neutralized these dilemmas for conventional chronology. However, this is not true. Lunar scientist Irwin Shapiro used to joke that ‘the best explanation [of lunar formation conundrums] was observational error—the moon does not exist’. The situation has not fundamentally changed, for lunar scientist Jack Lissauer recalled this anecdote as continuing to apply in a post-impact theory paper.¹¹

Recommended Resources

The Astronomy Book

by Dr Jonathan Henry

For thousands of years, people have gazed at the night sky and the bright morning and wondered, ‘What’s out there?’. Our universe is so vast and awe-inspiring that to learn about it is to learn about ourselves. The Astronomy Book will show you: What long-ago astronomers thought about other worlds Solar system facts How constellations relate to astrology The history of space exploration Whether black holes exist The origin and age of the moon Why Mars doesn’t support life The composition of stars Supernova remnants The myth of star birth Asteroid legends and the extinction of the dinosaurs Whether planets outside our solar system could be home to intelligent life What UFOs are the age of comets and meteor showers Hardcover. (Junior High–Adult) 80 pages.

Taking Back Astronomy: The Heavens Declare Creation

by Dr Jason Lisle

The heavens should declare the glory of God, but for decades, public school students (and even seminary students) have been taught that the universe is far older than the Bible chronology suggests, even billions of years older. The subject of astronomy has been hijacked by evolutionists to sway people in the debate about origins. In this beautifully illustrated book, the author debunks the most accepted teachings about evolution and other long-age assumptions, giving tremendous answers for those struggling to reconcile the Bible and science. Readers are given solid answers to questions about the speed of light, geology, the big bang and much more, restoring God to His rightful place as the Creator.

What does the Bible say about Astronomy?

by Dr Jason Lisle

What’s the real age of the universe? Does the Bible teach the earth is round? What does the Bible say about the big bang? (Teen–Adult) 24 pages.

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Darwinists can't, alas.

Evolution Proponents - making preposterous claims 24 by 7 is their business!

2012-02-01T23:14:00.000-08:00

When all you have is a hammer, everything looks like a nail. But what if you have a buggy whip? No, that is not a good analogy as there are actually a few buggies in use even now. Okay, a whalebone corset. Darwinism is the whalebone corset of science, completely preposterous and of no good use.

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Darwinism is used to explain every possibility, with completely unproven hypotheses stated as facts, millions of years claimed with no conclusive evidence to back it up and great design credited to accidents that either make great changes in things or...not change them at all? They will tell you there was a Great Dying but call the Flood a fairy tale? Really...how much credibility can Darwinists have when every aspect of their hypothesis has been logically falsified or disproven by years of testing. Let's look at how they spin evidence:

Turning an Unevolved Horseshoe Crab Into a Darwin Showpiece

Posted on January 26, 2012 in Awards, Biology, Darwin and Evolution, Dumb Ideas, Mammals, Marine Biology, Origins, Terrestrial Zoology

Horseshoe crabs are survivors by anyone’s measure; they have carried on their lives virtually unchanged, according to the standard evolutionary timeline, for 450 million years. This not only points to incredible stasis against alleged forces of evolution; it also means they have survived at least three global extinctions that evolutionary biologists and geologists say wiped out most other species. Not only that, the world has changed drastically since they allegedly evolved from who-knows-what arthropod ancestors – perhaps trilobites, that appeared in the Cambrian Explosion without ancestors. But the numerous, successful trilobites did not survive the global extinctions. Given these contradictory facts, how can the horseshoe crab possibly be an exhibit for evolution? A recent article shows how.

Horseshoe crabs are not crabs; they are arthropods, similar in some ways to scorpions. The UK Natural History Museum gave facts and fancies about these amazing, complex animals on the verge of a BBC News special TV program about them:

The Great Dying wiped out most of the Earth’s species. Some scientists have estimated 96% of marine species, 70% of terrestrial vertebrates and 57% of insect families became extinct. But the strange-looking horseshoe crab, with its armoured shell and long rigid pointed tail, lived on… These animals have survived 3 of Earth’s extinctions that wiped out most other species.

If humans learned their secrets, maybe they could do better on the Survivor reality shows. What are their secrets? Fossil expert Richard Fortey lists some possibilities in the article: (1) being able to eat almost anything, (2) getting by with less oxygen, (3) salt tolerance, and (4) having a kind of blood that shields against bacteria. If those traits are so evolutionarily successful in one of the earliest animals, it’s a wonder every other animal didn’t mimic them. Presumably the trilobites had these traits, but they went extinct anyway.
At the end of the article comes the evolutionary exhibit. Richard Fortey does his best to explain why an unevolved creature is really evidence for evolution:

Evolution not only brings about ‘improvements’ in body shapes and design that help a species adapt better to its surroundings. It also allows some species to remain basically the same.

“These creatures tell us that evolution does not move inevitably forwards towards new morphology and new designs,” comments Fortey.

“Evidence for evolution is also found in past designs that endure to the present day. As long as the right habitat endures, then so will some of the creatures that inhabited the distant past.”

The article dubs this “strange evolution.” Indeed. In the same article, Fortey said that the duckbill platypus has survived for 200 million years. With flexible explanations like this, Darwin can’t lose.

Articles like this are more evidence that once the level of public credulity is sufficiently reduced by accurate information about the logical tricks of evolutionists, people will laugh Darwin off the stage of history and wonder how on earth so many smart people fell for his view of the world.

Let’s review what we were just told.

• Complex designs just popped into existence without ancestors.

• These designs were not only complex, they were better at surviving than more than 90% of other animals that followed.

• They endured virtually unchanged for 450 million years.

• Evolution improves body designs, but it also allows them to remain basically the same.

• A past design that endures to the present day constitutes evidence for evolution.

If you are sufficiently dumbfounded at these shenanigans committed in the name of science, stop taking it. Fight back. Demand logic. Demand integrity. Call a spade a spade. This spadeful of nonsense calls for a ultrasaurus-size pooper scooper.

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Yes, Darwinism is basically a bunch of baloney that a great number of people promote because it is necessary for their worldview. If the world paid attention and thought critically about the Darwin story, they would cast it aside entirely. Most people are just going about their day and great numbers of them are working hard just to survive another day. Not many think critically about the continual stream of Darwinist propaganda being promoted all around us. But among scientists there is a trend of slowly backing away from the Darwinist table, because of evidence like this:

More Upsets for Darwin

Posted on January 17, 2012 in Biology, Darwin and Evolution, Dumb Ideas, Early Man, Genetics, Intelligent Design, Mammals, Media, Origins, Philosophy of Science, Terrestrial Zoology

For every hyped-up demonstration of evolution in action the media announces with gusto, there are setbacks that often do not get the splashy headlines. Here are three recent examples.

Treehopper evolution wasn’t:   Recently a “spectacular” announcement that some bugs called treehoppers had evolved a new functional appendage has been found false. “Evidence for a spectacular evolutionary novelty was recently reported,” wrote nine scientists in PLoS ONE,¹claiming that the treehopper bugs evolved their odd-looking “helmet” as new thoracic appendages. Those evolutionists, publishing in Nature,² were not at all modest in their pronouncement: “Here we show that the treehopper (Membracidae) ‘helmet’ is actually an appendage, a wing serial homologue on the first thoracic segment. This innovation in the insect body plan is an unprecedented situation in 250 Myr of insect evolution.”

Wrong, the new team reports. It’s not a novelty, but a common and widely-distributed feature among hemiptera (true bugs) – just an invagination of tissue, not a distinct limb. The new paper not only corrects the error but criticizes the evolutionists who proposed the wrong idea, telling them basically they should have consulted the insect experts (entomologists) before hopping to a Darwin-tree conclusion. “The treehopper pronotal wing hypothesis yields examples of misinterpretation that could have been avoided through updated best practices in phenotype knowledge representation and the broader development of anatomical references,” they said.

Wish Ida known: Remember Ida, the extinct lemur that briefly made a splash in the science headlines as being a possible human ancestor? (5/19/2009, 3/03/2010). The discoverer even paid homage to Darwin by naming it Darwinius masillae, and it became the star of a TV documentary.   Live Science reported this month that new evidence is casting doubt on it having anything to do with the human line. Another similar lemur fossil from Wyoming shows a grooming claw characteristic of mammals on other branches of the assumed evolutionary line of primates. “After examining the data, both with and without information about the grooming claw,” therefore, “it appeared both these ancient primates were more closely related to lemurs than to monkeys, apes and humans.”

(Radar note:   Ida was yet another Phil Gingerich special. Guess he is the modern-day Haeckel? Not that there are not many candidates!)

Darwin wouldn’t like this: Biologists can’t conjure up gradualism out of the data. Charles Darwin’s theory depended on the slow accumulation of gradual changes over long periods of time. In Current Biology last month,³ Douglas Erwin tried hard to put a happy face on the ugly problem of “punctuated equilibria” that causes mismatches between molecular methods of tracing the unfolding tree of evolution, and the fossil record that shows stasis and explosive diversification. Factoring in the ad hoc method of “rate heterogeneity” (something like artist Salvador Dali’s stretchy clocks in The Persistence of Memory) still doesn’t get the data in sync.

Erwin recalled the long-standing “tension between microevolutionists and macroevolutionists” – the former looking for processes they can tweak in the lab, the latter looking at the fossils. It’s a tension that has lasted for over a century. Even though Erwin grinned like a hungry flashlight salesman that “Several recent papers now shed new light on macroevolutionary processes,” his light was lacking batteries in the body of his Dispatch.

First, the darkness: “The discrepancy between plots of the diversity of taxa through time as inferred from molecular phylogenies and those based on counts documented by the fossil record has long been troubling,” he said, “largely because molecular phylogenies appear to underestimate the frequency of extinction.” In hopes of mitigating the damage, he presented three recent papers. One team of evolutionists found additional ways to tweak their models to get a better fit, particularly with dolphins and whales. But the next subtitle states, “Punctuations Are Not Passé.” The second study, this one more extensive, covering 40 species from fish to mammals, was not so gradual: “Their analysis supports a model of rare bursts of extensive evolutionary change in a sea of shorter-term fluctuations.” At the end of the section, Erwin lists three possible explanations for this:

The bursts of evolutionary change over longer timescales remain to be explained but could reflect episodic changes in the optimal adaptive phenotype as the environment changes, as the authors suggest, the construction of new ecological environments, or the longer waiting time for significant developmental innovations.

A third paper Erwin cited showed another episodic, not gradual, record of life, this time modeling developmental changes in light of the fossil record. Try as he might to save Darwin’s face, Erwin waved his hands, smiling, while writing what sounds like evolutionary gobbledygook to save macroevolution from the evidence of sudden, explosive change:

In each of these papers [2,3,4] the results document a greater range of evolutionary processes, including great differences in origin and extinction rates in different clades through time, bursts of phenotypic change interrupting intervals of greater phenotypic quiescence, and a structuring of the developmental sources of evolutionary change.

If anyone can understand that last clause without invoking intelligent design, it would make a good project in the psychology of evolution.

1. Mikó I , Friedrich F , Yoder MJ , Hines HM , Deitz LL , et al. 2012 On Dorsal Prothoracic Appendages in Treehoppers (Hemiptera: Membracidae) and the Nature of Morphological Evidence. PLoS ONE 7(1): e30137. doi:10.1371/journal.pone.0030137.

2. Prud’homme et al., “Body plan innovation in treehoppers through the evolution of an extra wing-like appendage,” Nature 473 (05 May 2011), pp. 83–86, doi:10.1038/nature09977.

3. Douglas H. Erwin, “Macroevolution: Dynamics of Diversity,” Current Biology, Volume 21, Issue 24, R1000-R1001, 20 December 2011, 10.1016/j.cub.2011.11.007.

What do we have here? (1) Treehoppers are out as evidence for evolution. (2) Ida is out as evidence for human evolution. And (3) punctuated equilibria, completely contrary to what Darwin envisioned, is a gremlin in the Darwin camp that cannot be escaped with prodigious exercise in hand-waving, ad hoc models and gobbledygook.

Erwin’s statement above is classic Darwinian obfuscational confability. Let’s parse it with our Baloney Detectors on:

The bursts of evolutionary change…. [He acknowledges the evidence is bursty, but then embeds his own evolutionary assumptions into the phrase “evolutionary change” here. What if it is not evolutionary (i.e., gradual) change? What if it is creationary change?]

over longer timescales… [Longer timescales embeds more of his evolutionary assumptions of slow, gradual change over millions of years.]

remain to be explained… [Notice the subtle use of passive voice infinitive here; some nebulous entity will have to explain it someday over the rainbow. He should fess up and write in active voice, declarative sentences: “We can’t explain it. They can’t explain it. I can’t explain it. We are all clueless. I can only wish upon a star that someday, somebody will explain it.”]

but could reflect episodic changes in the optimal adaptive phenotype as the environment changes,… [Stop right there! We put you under citizen’s arrest for impersonating a scientist (9/30/2007 commentary). That’s miracle talk. Erwin is assuming that if a landslide occurs, or the sea level changes, or a volcano blows its top, the Goddess of Evolution will produce an “optimal adaptive phenotype” on demand. How? By snapping her fingers? By waving her Tinker Bell Mutation Wand? This is crazy! Don’t let them get away with obfuscation like this.]

as the authors suggest,… [You know, we’re really not interested in your suggestions. We want our scientists to do real science – observable, testable, repeatable science.]

the construction of new ecological environments,… [More hand-waving and gobbledygook. This is an offhand reference to “niche construction” theory, that organisms not only adapt to environments but construct them. Such notions personify evolution and beg the question of how adaptation occurs.]

or the longer waiting time for significant developmental innovations…. [Aaagh! Stop it. This is more miracle-talk assuming the Stuff Happens Law. Wait long enough and “significant developmental innovations” will just occur. How? Will they just arise? Will they just emerge? Will they somehow develop? When the “waiting time” is up, will they pop into existence, like the Pop-Eye theory of evolution? Stop the funnies. We thought we were watching The Science Channel, not the Cartoon Network.]

Learn how to slice, dice and analyze these baloney tales from the evolutionists. Learn how to blow away the fogma* and get to the evidence. We naturally tend to defer to “scientists” because they are supposedly so smart. Their jargon sounds intimidating. The list of references to other baloney-generating scientists in science journals presents an aura of credibility. But it’s all aura and no substance, aurora with no charged particles of data, a roar a minute with no teeth.

Understand that the structure in which Erwin and the evolutionists act with rhetorical flourish is just a façade like a movie set, with the script already written. Darwin’s script is being directed by ideologues that care less about the facts of nature than preserving their epic tale. Charlie’s Angles is one script so implausible, so out of touch with reality, it deserves to be left on the cutting room floor.

*Fogma (n.), dogma so thick you can’t see through it unless you are outside of it (5/14/2007 commentary).

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More Evidence Cambrian Explosion was Un-Darwinian

Posted on January 18, 2012 in Biology, Darwin and Evolution, Dating Methods, Fossils, Marine Biology, Origins, Physical Science

The Cambrian Explosion (the abrupt appearance of animal phyla in the earliest fossil layers bearing multicellular body plans) remains unmuffled. Known by Darwin as a problem for his theory, it has become more problematic to his followers over time. There are now many more Cambrian fossils than Darwin knew of, and they continue the pattern: sudden appearance of complex animals, complete with legs, digestive systems, eyes, and nervous systems. Discoveries of Precambrian fossils have not helped: the ones that are more than microbial appear to be mere colonies of cells with no relationship to animals. Here are more discoveries that fit this pattern.

Burgess shale tulip animals: A new species of filter-feeding marine animal that resembles a tulip has been found on Mt. Stephen in British Columbia, Canada, site of the internationally famous Burgess Shale fossil bed. Pictures of the fossils and an artist reconstruction can be found on PhysOrg. Named Siphusauctum gregarium, the animal is about 8” high and lived in colonies. The Burgess Shale is dated Middle Cambrian, but the existence of this fully-formed animal, complete with gut, foot anchor and pump to drive water through its “unusual filter-feeding system” implies a very short fuse between the Precambrian and its abrupt appearance.

Crustaceans with modern aspect: Like lobster? Think of the complexity of this animal with eyes, antennae, claws, legs, mouth parts equipped with mandibles, and internal organ systems, including a digestive tract and sexual organs. Crustaceans are a highly diverse group of arthropods that include lobsters, crayfish, and crabs. Among the crustacean subphylum are the branchiopods (which includes the fairy shrimp and water flea), ostracods (small shelled crustaceans; see diagram of complex internal organs on the Lake Biwa Museum site), and copepods (“oar-foot” swimmers; see Smithsonian for description).

At another site in western Canada called the Deadwood Formation, a trio of scientists from Cambridge, Hawaii and Canada found exquisitely-preserved crustaceans “of surprisingly modern aspect” in mudstone, a type of rock that was thought to form very slowly (12/14/2007). The abstract of their paper in PNAS says it best:¹

The early history of crustaceans is obscured by strong biases in fossil preservation, but a previously overlooked taphonomic mode yields important complementary insights. Here we describe diverse crustacean appendages of Middle and Late Cambrian age from shallow marine mudstones of the Deadwood Formation in western Canada. The fossils occur as flattened and fragmentary carbonaceous cuticles but provide a suite of phylogenetic and ecological data by virtue of their detailed preservation. In addition to an unprecedented range of complex, largely articulated filtering limbs, we identify at least four distinct types of mandible. Together, these fossils provide the earliest evidence for crown-group branchiopods and total-group copepods and ostracods, extending the respective ranges of these clades back from the Devonian, Pennsylvanian, and Ordovician. Detailed similarities with living forms demonstrate the early origins and subsequent conservation of various complex food-handling adaptations, including a directional mandibular asymmetry that has persisted through half a billion years of evolution. At the same time, the Deadwood fossils indicate profound secular changes in crustacean ecology in terms of body size and environmental distribution. The earliest radiation of crustaceans is largely cryptic in the fossil record, but “small carbonaceous fossils” reveal organisms of surprisingly modern aspect operating in an unfamiliar biosphere.

Other crustaceans had been found in the Cambrian, the authors say (see 7/20/2001, 10/4/2007, ), but “until recently, have been represented almost exclusively by “Orsten-type” taxa of minute body size (< 2 mm) and limited appendage differentiation,” the authors said. Even the Burgess Shale arthropods lacked the “key diagnostic characters among the inner leg branches and mouthparts,” they said. The only previous fossil with convincing a crustacean mandible was dated Late Cambrian.

Previous “cryptic” fossils hinted at the presence of crustaceans in the Early Cambrian, but now, the new discovery shows them alive and well in the Middle Cambrian: “the Deadwood fossils provide crucial phylogenetic and ecologic datapoints for charting a major Cambrian radiation of crustaceans.” The Deadwood Formation extends from western Canada to the Black Hills of South Dakota, they noted.
After showing an array of beautifully detailed fossils and discussing them, the authors concluded that their discovery pushes back the date of branchiopods 80–100 million years (Lower Devonian to Middle Cambrian), ostracods 70 million, and copepods 190–210 million years. They did their best to maintain their evolutionary belief, pointing to differences between the fossil forms and modern or later fossil forms, for example, “In any case, they offer clear potential for reconciling the Orsten forms with adults and larger bodied relatives for a new, high-definition narrative of early mandibulate evolution.” Nevertheless, these fossils show “direct evidence for sophisticated particle-handling” and represent “the acme of Cambrian differentiation within appendages,” they said.

It’s hard to see evolution in the picture of “early origination and subsequent conservation in crustacean form and function” these fossils illustrate, especially when the fossil copepods are larger than modern ones. To reconcile that with evolution, they postulated that the presence of fish with predatory eyes would drive crustacean size down. Maybe they forgot that the Chinese found fish fossils in the early Cambrian (8/21/2002, 1/30/2003), but that seems the least of their worries. The complex body parts represented in these fossils begs for explanation how a gradual, unguided Darwinian process would lead to such high levels of functional complexity in short order, abruptly, with no fossil pathway evident, much earlier than expected.

Up periscope! Sea spider eyes: Did you know there are spiders at the bottom of the sea? A paper in PLoS ONE talked about them.² They are called pycnogonids, and they have unusual eyes on stalks that look like periscopes. The authors of the paper did not find Cambrian fossils of sea spiders. Instead, they tried to infer their evolutionary origins, and placed them in the Cambrian as the oldest arthropods. “Recently it was suggested that arthropod eyes originated from simple ocelli similar to larval eyes,” they said. “Hence, pycnogonid eyes would be one of the early offshoots among the wealth of more sophisticated arthropod eyes.”

Putting puzzle pieces together in some kind of evolutionary arrangement, though, seems the least of their worries. They found that these eyes had nerves from the stalks down to the brains of these eight-legged creatures. How eyes popped into existence suddenly in the earliest layers bearing animal fossils is the “elephant in the room” that most evolutionists dodge. They ended with an “if-then” statement of doubtful premise: “If arthropod eyes originated from simple ocelli similar to larval eyes, pycnogonid eyes could be one of their early offshoots, which date back at least 500 Myr to the Cambrian, and be older than the appearance of distinct lateral and median eyes.” Notice that they are not saying sea spiders have “simple” ocelli (light-sensitive organs, as in dragonflies; see 8/13/2004), just that they were a later offshoot of a presumed ancestor, “if” arthropod eyes “originated” by evolution.

1. Harvey, Vélez and Butterfield, “Exceptionally preserved crustaceans from western Canada reveal a cryptic Cambrian radiation,” PNAS, Published online January 17, 2012, doi: 10.1073/pnas.1115244109.

2. Lehmann T , Heß M , Melzer RR , 2012 Wiring a Periscope – Ocelli, Retinula Axons, Visual Neuropils and the Ancestrality of Sea Spiders. PLoS ONE 7(1): e30474. doi:10.1371/journal.pone.0030474.

The Cambrian Explosion is not a problem for special creation; it is a problem for evolution. Why do evolutionists get over 150 years of leadership in science for clinging to a belief that has been falsified by the evidence? This is like giving astrologers hegemony in a day of modern astronomy. Charlie’s little Victorian myth needs to go to the dumpster with phrenology, mesmerism and table-turning. We need to look at the fossil record anew, without the black-tinted glasses of evolutionary assumptions. That will “shed light on evolution,” all right; it will take the dark glasses off so that the pre-existing light that was ignored can reveal it for what it is, a chosen world view that demands all evidence be interpreted within its dark world of imaginary light.

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In fact, some of the most advanced eyes known amongst organisms were found on trilobites, Cambrian fossils which were buried by the Flood and apparently unable to survive. Cambrian translates as "bottom layer of the Flood sediments."

If the War of Worldviews is raging, pick a side and go on the attack!!! God or Satan?

2012-01-31T22:52:00.000-08:00

Jesus said in Matthew 6:24 and Luke 16:13 that "NO MAN CAN SERVE TWO MASTERS..."

I am a soldier in a war. The war of worldviews is really just a battle in the overall fight between good and evil. God is good and atheism is evil. Simplification? Nope. There is a Satan who seeks to cause people to worship ANYTHING OR ANYONE other than God. Atheism is his default position because evolution is being taught as fact (what a hoot!) which allows him to receive worship by people without even being named.

Those who worship Allah or are Buddhists or Hindus or Zoroaster or themselves are actually worshiping the enemy of God. Agnostics are choosing Satan by default. This is not my opinion, it is just what the Bible teaches. Most of you who prefer to ignore God or find another spiritual focus are not intentionally choosing to worship the Angel who rebelled and was cast out of Heaven. Yet you are still doing it.

Galatians 1:6-10 =

I marvel that ye are so soon removed from him that called you into the grace of Christ unto another gospel:
Which is not another; but there be some that trouble you, and would pervert the gospel of Christ.

But though we, or an angel from heaven, preach any other gospel unto you than that which we have preached unto you, let him be accursed.

As we said before, so say I now again, if any man preach any other gospel unto you than that ye have received, let him be accursed.

For do I now persuade men, or God? or do I seek to please men? for if I yet pleased men, I should not be the servant of Christ.

Frankly I didn't know what I was getting into when I first began this blog in 2004. I was a writer and had been a professional journalist and I was doing sportswriting at the time, but somehow it was not enough of an outlet. So I began writing a personal opinion blog which very quickly became focused on the battle of worldviews between Christians and Darwinists. I decided to hold a "Darwin is Dead" blog carnival and did that twice before the entire concept turned out to be lame. I found myself posting not only things I disagreed with, but also content supposedly supporting my side which was somewhat weak. At that point I decided that I would try to "vet" my sources and make sure to attribute the articles I used.

Over the years I have become acquainted with some of the ID and creation science people, wonderful people, who almost without exception are not only personable but have a sense of humor. Some of them have suggested that I moderate all comments and filter out the trolls. However, it makes more sense to me to let them say what they will within the rules of common decency and let readers compare what they say to what I say and what my sources say. If you have not spent much time in the comments thread, the Darwinists generally hide behind "logical fallacies", fairy tales, spun evidence and false claims of victory if I do not respond to everything they say. Guess what? My life is too busy to respond to every single comment so I may or may not comment. But the First Amendment still reigns here on my blog.

Which brings us to this post. I believe parents and communities owe their children a balanced education rather than indoctrination in the religion of Secular Humanism starring Neo-Darwinism and its host of fairy tales and just-so stories. I thought Apologetics Press wrote a terrific article on the subject:

Combatting Evolution Education

by	Jeff Miller, Ph.D.

There is no doubt that for several years, there has been a battle being waged for the minds of the young people of this nation with regard to the matter of origins. Will they accept the atheistic General Theory of Evolution or believe in the Creation account as detailed in Genesis chapter one? Or will they compromise between the two? Or just try to ignore the debate and stick their head in the sand?

The side that each person chooses to take in the debate could have long-lasting ramifications for them and the next generation. The atheistic choice will send them to hell, and affect the lives of all whom they influence along the way. The approach of compromise leads to an interpretation of the Bible which pits it against itself and has the potential of watering down a person’s view of a host of biblical doctrines—all ultimately boiling down to a lack of faith in “God said.” The apathetic, ostrich-like approach boils down to a person sitting on the sideline while the forces of Satan flood society uncontested. And yet Jesus said, “You shall know the truth, and the truth will make you free” (John 8:32).

In light of ongoing debate over teaching the General Theory of Evolution in various public school systems, which we have been documenting for several years (e.g., Warren, 2011; Brooks, 2011; Deweese and Brooks, 2009), some have rightly asked what Christians can do to combat the forces of pseudoscience in this critical area. This question has compelled us to give a few suggestions to that end.

Encourage individuals in your churce/community to run for office where they can make a difference. Sheila Butt, mother of our very own Kyle Butt, was elected to office in Tennessee where she serves as a state representative. She is, therefore, in a position of potentially significant influence in this debate.
Flood decision makers with letters from people all over your area expressing your opinions on the matter. Contact other churches to assist in a concerted effort to that end. Perhaps write several versions of letters that can be used in bulk so that people will be more likely to send them in. The more letters that lawmakers receive every day, the more likely they will feel pressure to hear our voices. Try sending DVDs of our Truth Be Told and Silencing of God seminars and related books (see http://www.apologeticspress.org/store/Product.aspx?pid=101; http://www.apologeticspress.org/store/Product.aspx?pid=97; http://www.apologeticspress.org/store/Product.aspx?pid=421; http://www.apologeticspress.org/store/Product.aspx?pid=49; http://www.apologeticspress.org/store/Product.aspx?pid=51). Books, especially, are hard for any of us to throw away.
Get the local media involved. We all know how much the politicians are affected by the media.
Host Creation/Evolution, as well as Silencing of God seminars all over the state and publicize them heavily (see http://apologeticspress.org/pdfs/Seminar_flyers/APSeminarList4Speakers.pdf). I recently spoke in South Carolina, where the hosting congregation used highway billboards to advertise the seminar. In fact, they spent several thousand dollars in advertising the event, including saturating their area with postcards and radio spots about the seminar. If local churches come together to host a seminar, more money could be pooled for advertising.
Engage in consistent, fervent prayer. Host weekly Tuesday night or Thursday night prayer gatherings with Christians for the sole purpose of fighting the evolutionists’ agenda in the school system. Be sure to remember the coming elections in your prayers as well. God can easily raise up individuals who can make a significant difference in this fight if we have the zeal to plead with Him for assistance.
Donate Creation/Evolution materials to local community and school libraries. If the next generation is taught the truth, the future will look much more promising. Hitler certainly championed effectiveness of indoctrinating youth with his agenda and such is the position of the homosexual community today, as well.
Make sure that Christian public school teachers are equipped with materials to hand out to students who ask for information on the controversy (see http://www.apologeticspress.org/APContent.aspx?category=9&article=1314).
More prayer.
Encourage everyone at your church (and others) not only to have a subscription to Christian evidences journals, such as our very own Reason and Revelation (for adults) and Discovery (for children), but to order subscriptions for friends, neighbors, grandchildren, nieces, nephews, etc. who could also benefit from the information. Some elderships have even chosen to purchase subscriptions to Discovery magazine for every young family in their congregation.
Devote at least one quarter of Bible classes each year specifically on preparation to defend the truth (i.e., about the existence of God, the inspiration of the Bible, the importance of God in government and society, Creation/Evolution, etc.). The focus would be, not simply learning the material for themselves, but to prepare them to teach it to others. Perhaps even pair members of the congregation during the Bible class and have one person play the atheist and the other play the Christian to see if members are prepared to teach the truth at a moment’s notice—especially when caught without notes (cf., 1 Peter 3:15). Our Christian Evidences and Creation/Science bookmark reference cards would be beneficial for this option (see http://www.apologeticspress.org/store/Product.aspx?pid=281; http://www.apologeticspress.org/store/Product.aspx?pid=282).
Encourage parents to consider homeschooling their children or sending them them to private Christian schools. Thousands of parents throughout the country have pulled their kids out of the public school system in order to ensure that their children are being trained in the way they should go—in the nurture and admonition of the Lord, rather than of monkeys. Some families simply cannot take advantage of this possibility (especially many single parent families). And some areas of the nation are handling the subject in an appropriate way, thus eliminating the necessity of this option. However, many areas have been so infiltrated by Satan’s forces that children are being adversely affected in ways that parents do not know and have not anticipated. Yet it is still their responsibility to train and nurture their children. All parents will be held accountable for rearing their children. It is not the duty of their teachers.
Even more prayer. Encourage your church to set their phones to remind themselves to pray every two hours of every day.
Encourage individuals and churches as possible to support A.P. financially on a monthly/yearly basis. Combating atheism, evolution, humanism, etc. is what we do, but as a non-profit organization that relies heavily on donations, we simply cannot do it without financial support. In spite of the state of the economy, our Web page had over 8.1 million hits last year from people in more than 180 countries. It is undeniable that your financial support will directly affect the lives of millions!

Please do not hesitate to let us know if you have other ideas that would be effective in combatting atheism and macroevolution (contact our offices at 334-272-8558 or e-mail us at mail@apologeticspress.org). As always, thank you for your interest in and support of Apologetics Press.

REFERENCES

Brooks, Will (2011), “Does Evolution Belong in Biomedical Curricula?” Reason & Revelation, 31[3]:18-20, March, Apologetics Press, http://www.apologeticspress.org/apcontent.aspx?category=9&article=3796.

Deweese, Joe and Will Brooks (2009), “A Response to the 21^st Century Science Coalition Standards of Science Education,” Reason & Revelation, 29[6]:41-47, February, Apologetics Press, http://www.apologeticspress.org/apPubPage.aspx?pub=1&issue=610.

Warren, Jim (2011), “Hart Schools Chief: Evolution is Viewed as Fact in State Test,” Kentucky.Com: State, http://www.kentucky.com/2011/12/12/1992514/kentuckys-plan-for-biology-tests.html.

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I am a soldier in the war far beyond writing this blog. Last year I brought Jonathan Sarfati into the area to make presentations at two church meetings to big crowds. The year before that I taught a class for adults at church on Creation Science. Every fourth year I teach a series on the subject in the senior high youth group and bring the subject up at least once a year in other years. This year I am starting a small group of adults to study the basic Old Testament books that speak to YEC like Genesis and Job and Psalms and then discuss and bring in evidence from history, paleontology, geology and etc. There really are only two sides. Perhaps you are not on the battle? But this battle is not for just the entire world. It is a battle for YOU! Will YOU be a Christian or deny Him? You must admit that there are only two possible answers to that question.

You can't legislate morality? Really???

2012-01-30T21:55:00.000-08:00

LAST (probably) in the mini-series on abortion, which is just a word liberals use to mean baby murdering. The practice causes intense pain to the child, and it is wrong.

credit

At 20 weeks they are babies! See above and below!

Unborn babies can feel pain

Scientific evidence reveals that unborn babies do, indeed, feel pain

The evidence of fetal pain

With the advent of sonograms and live-action ultrasound images, neonatologists and nurses are able to see unborn babies at 20 weeks gestation react physically to outside stimuli such as sound, light and touch. The sense of touch is so acute that even a single human hair drawn across an unborn baby's palm causes the baby to make a fist.

Did you know that this 20-week-old unborn child can feel pain?

Surgeons entering the womb to perform corrective procedures on tiny unborn babies have seen those babies flinch, jerk and recoil from sharp objects and incisions.

“The neural pathways are present for pain to be experienced quite early by unborn babies,” explains Steven Calvin, M.D., perinatologist, chair of the Program in Human Rights Medicine, University of Minnesota, where he teaches obstetrics.

Medical facts of fetal pain

Anatomical studies have documented that the body’s pain network—the spino-thalamic pathway—is established by 20 weeks gestation.

• “At 20 weeks, the fetal brain has the full complement of brain cells present in adulthood, ready and waiting to receive pain signals from the body, and their electrical activity can be recorded by standard electroencephalography (EEG).”
— Dr. Paul Ranalli, neurologist, University of Toronto

• An unborn baby at 20 weeks gestation “is fully capable of experiencing pain. … Without question, [abortion] is a dreadfully painful experience for any infant subjected to such a surgical procedure.”
— Robert J. White, M.D., PhD., professor of neurosurgery, Case Western University
Unborn babies have heightened sensitivities

Unborn babies at 20 weeks development actually feel pain more intensely than adults. This is a “uniquely vulnerable time, since the pain system is fully established, yet the higher level pain-modifying system has barely begun to develop,” according to Dr. Ranalli.

“Having administered anesthesia for fetal surgery, I know that on occasion we need to administer anesthesia directly to the fetus, because even at these early gestational ages the fetus moves away from the pain of the stimulation,” stated David Birnbach, M.D., president of the Society for Obstetric Anesthesia and Perinatology and self-described as “pro-choice,” in testimony before the U.S. Congress.

Given the medical evidence that unborn babies experience pain, compassionate people are viewing abortion more and more as an inhumane and intolerable brutality against defenseless human beings.

The unborn baby at 20 weeks

Fetal development is already quite advanced at 20 weeks gestation:
• The skeleton is complete and reflexes are present at 42 days.
• Electrical brain wave patterns can be recorded at 43 days. This is usually ample evidence that “thinking” is taking place in the brain.
• The fetus has the appearance of a miniature baby, with complete fingers, toes and ears at 49 days.
• All organs are functioning—stomach, liver, kidney, brain—and all systems are intact at 56 days.
• By 20 weeks, the unborn child has hair and working vocal cords, sucks her thumb, grasps with her hands and kicks. She measures 12 inches.

Abortion at 20 weeks

Despite the unborn child’s advanced development at 20 weeks, the following painful abortion procedures are used:

• Partial-birth abortion (D&X): The unborn baby is delivered feet first, except for the head, which is punctured at the base of the skull with a sharp object. The brain is then suctioned out, killing the child. (This method was outlawed in the United States in 2007.)

• Dilation and Evacuation (D&E): Sharp-edged instruments are used to grasp, twist and tear the baby’s body into pieces, which are then removed from the womb.

• Saline abortion: Salt water is injected into the womb through the mother’s abdomen. The unborn baby swallows this fluid, is poisoned and dies in a process that sometimes takes 24 hours. The toxic saline solution causes severe burns over the unborn child’s entire body.

Minnesota law recognizes fetal pain

MCCL helped to pass Minnesota’s Woman’s Right to Know law in 2003, which, among other things, informs women that their unborn child can feel pain at 20 weeks gestation. MCCL also strongly supported the Unborn Child Pain Prevention Act, which became state law in 2005. The law requires that abortionists and referring physicians inform women that pain-reducing medication is available for their unborn baby. Pregnant women must sign a form to either request or refuse the administration of pain-reducing drugs to their unborn child prior to an abortion.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

An aborted 9 week old baby. How is this not murder?

The silliest pro-abortion argument ever (is one you hear all the time)

by Kristen Walker

January 17, 2012 (LiveAction.org) - Tell me if this has ever happened to you.
It’s lunchtime. You are eating at your desk at work and decide to look at Facebook. It’s as exciting as ever. Your aunt had a burrito for lunch. A girl you haven’t seen since college got a new tattoo. Someone is super happy it’s almost Friday.

Then you see that a virtual stranger (there’s a double meaning in that) has commented on one of your posts. And she has said something so asinine that you put down your fried pickle (’cause you’re in Texas and you eat stuff like that) and respond.

It’s daunting, the task before you. Do you even want to undertake this? Can you really change someone’s mind about abortion in one Facebook comment?*

Well, you’re gonna try. So you launch into refuting whatever dumb thing the person just said. “There’s no scientific concensus that life begins at conception!” “If we make it illegal, they’re gonna do it anyway!” “If you’re against abortion, you should be against war, too!” It could be any of these things, or something else.

Click “like” if you want to end abortion!

So you drop a couple knowledge bombs, go back to your life, and hours later you find the following response:

“Well, maybe you’re right, but we can’t legislate morality.”

You look around for a candid camera. Is this an elaborate joke? No. Someone actually said that. Again. You sigh. And you type this:

Really? We can’t legislate morality? What do you call it when we tell people they can’t murder? Rape? Steal?

The Ten Commandments: All up in your business since circa 1440 B.C.

Let’s do some Criminal Justice 101, shall we? There are two types of laws: malum in se and malum prohibitum. Malum in se is a Latin phrase meaning “wrong in itself.” Most of us feel that murder is wrong, therefore there is a law against it. Malum prohibitum means something is wrong because it is prohibited. For example: in the United States we have to drive on the right side of the road, not because driving on the left is inherently evil (I’m lookin’ at you, England!) but because good order meant we had to pick one side. Because we’ve picked right, if you drive on the left, you’re gonna get stopped. Try it, you’ll see.**

Malum in se laws are based on morality. Our laws here in the U.S. grew out of English Common Law, which in turn was based on Judeo-Christian morality. Now, old-timey English lawmakers did not sit around and go, “Hmmm, what should we base our laws on?” And then come up with the Bible because it had an attractive leather cover. Judeo-Christian morality was a part of the culture since the 7th century, and has in fact formed Western culture, culminating most recently in our humble little former colony, the United States.

Detractors will say English Common Law formed in the 5th century, before Christianity took hold in Britain. But the law as we know it didn’t stop forming then. Christian men such as Henry de Bracton in the 13th century in England and Sir William Blackstone in the 18th century in the United States have had a tremendous impact on creating the laws we know today.

(Radar note. Blackstone and the Bible were the two most referenced sources by the Founding Fathers when they were writing the Constitution and the Bible more than Blackstone.)

Whether you like it or not, the culture that created you is a Judeo-Christian culture. All the things you think are right and wrong were formed by Judeo-Christian principles. Why do you think it’s wrong to have slaves? Western culture is just like most other civilizations in that it engaged in slavery, but unique in that it is solely responsible for ridding the world of it. What about having a harem of concubines? That was common in pre-Christian cultures, not so much in the West today. Sacrificing virgins? No big deal to the pagans, but frowned upon in our time.

The idea of loving people more than ourselves, sacrificing for the poor, turning the other cheek… these ideas were so revolutionary to the Roman world in which Christianity was born that they were scandalous. The tenets of Christianity made Christians so different they were almost universally hated. They were persecuted and killed all over the Roman Empire, until the Emperor Constantine had a vision. But I digress.

So those who cry that morals have no place in public policy are a little too late. Judeo-Christian morals created our public policy, created our culture, were the basis for our founding documents, guided the formation of our nation through the beliefs of our founders, and make up the fabric of our society.

Recently, a postmodern deconstructionist tendency to wipe American law clean of “traditional” morality has created not a sparkling tabula rasa, but a libertine morass. You don’t have to be a Jew or Christian to recognize there is such a thing as right and wrong. Lately, it seems like the only evil people will recognize is believing in evil.

Ironically, the abortion advocate who tells us to keep our morals off her body is herself expressing a moral belief, a belief in liberty. I also believe in liberty, but I believe that in the phrase “life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness,” life comes first for a very good reason: you can’t have liberty without life. I believe a baby’s right to be alive trumps his mother’s right to kill him for any reason she sees fit. Because, as we all know, there are limits to liberty. My liberty ends where, for example, it infringes upon another person’s right to live. Hence, I am free, but not free to murder. I am free to drive, but not into someone’s restaurant. I am free to watch TV, but not “Jersey Shore” at Kristen’s house. And so on.

The next time someone tells you, “We can’t legislate morality,” tell them, “Sure we can! It’s fun and easy! Like Mad Libs!”

But seriously: this is another argument you can easily shoot down with just a little bit of knowledge. Now you know. And knowing is half the battle.***

*No. But one day I’m gonna set a world record and do it in three.

**Please do not try this.

***G.I. Joe

Reprinted with permission from LiveAction.org

Abortion follow-up. How to make the end of abortion the end of unwanted children.

2012-01-29T16:27:00.000-08:00

"I have always thought there was something indescribably beautiful about the act of taking a stranger into your home and making him part of your family. It is proof of the generosity and love inherent in the human soul." - Kristen Walker

I know several families who have adopted children. It is NOT true that babies are unwanted!

In our little church alone there are a few families who have adopted children. My wife and I have six so we did not really need to adopt. We have had enough kids and friends of kids to have had a parade of younger folks stomping through the house, particularly during the teen years. For awhile my house was the "cool" house to hang out for teenagers. Now as our kids have entered adulthood the traffic has slowed considerably, but there are a couple of handfuls of young adults who know they are welcome in our house like our very own!

Back to these families. One family has three children born to them and two children they adopted. They are a white couple who adopted a couple of mixed-race boys, brothers, and those two guys assimilated into the family and the youth group and the church and school no problem. Since this family still has three teens, it is like my house used to be, a place zillions of teens can come in, hang around, eat through the food supply and be at home. Great family! I love all of their kids and they come in more than one size and shade of melanin, but who cares? They are people and they are family. What if those two brothers had been aborted? Their friends would have missed out on knowing them, their schools would have missed out on their talents and everyone would have missed out on their personalities, humor, fun, determination, sincerity, intelligence and all of that.

Another family is a mixed race marriage with their own wonderful children who adopted the husband's niece, born in Africa and with a mother who died and a father who because of the political climate could be killed at any time. So with the church praying for them, they somehow managed to cut through all the red tape and adopt that little baby and she just had her first birthday in the USA this past week. Awesome!

Yet another family adopted one of our youth group girls, another one adopted a pair of Asian-heritage babies and yet another is doing foster care, taking in the kids others cannot handle and seeking to help them find peace and consistency for once in their lives.

There there is a couple who have been on missions trips, they are young, they want their own children but so far no go. So they are thinking that they will adopt in order to have children. Of course we hope they can have their own biological offspring but they just want children to love and raise and will be willing to jump through all the hoops to get them and adopt them.

In this country there are millions of babies being aborted every year and, at the same time, so many couples trying to adopt children and finding that paperwork and costs are daunting. Why don't we make it easy for mothers to have babies and give them to couples who want them? As a society we are stuck on stupid!!! There are black families and white families and brown families and mixed families all looking to adopt. There are couples who want to become a family by adding children they cannot have. There is an unmet need that these babies could meet if only they were allowed to live.

Thank God that in our church we have people of many shades of skin color, many shapes, many sizes, many ages, many different talents and personalities. Some of the young people have been adopted or taken in as foster kids. I have the honor of being a youth group staff member. That means I write a recommendation letter for a young man seeking a scholarship, or take a few guys out for a sandwich, or pray with one to somehow work in his parent's marriage, or we pray for a grandparent or parent fighting a disease. We laugh, we play, we get serious - I get to invest in their lives. I never care about what color hair or skin or eyes they have or how big or small they are!

But I am warning you, America! You are killing the innocents and God does not like that. If this country fails, it will fail in part because socialist morons like Barack Obama are allowed to spit on the Constitution but even more so because the Supreme Court spat on the Ten Commandments when they rendered the wrong decision in Roe versus Wade. We had better work hard to fix that. We have murdered more innocents than Hitler did, and probably as many as Stalin and Mao did. Given ten more years and the nation we call America will have taken more innocent lives than the maddest Roman Caesar, Communist tyrant or Nazi dictator! Are you proud of this? Will you do something about it?

How to make the end of abortion the end of unwanted children

by Kristen Walker Wed Jan 25

We need to educate couples about adoption.

January 25, 2012 (LiveAction.org) - Recently I’ve been discussing the correlation between the problem of emancipating slaves in the American South, and the problem of ending abortion in our country. While most pro-lifers agree abortion must be ended as soon as possible, it doesn’t change the fact that an extra one million babies per year, many born to mothers with limited resources or parenting skills, will put a great strain on federal assistance and social welfare programs.

The first part of the solution to this problem is far-reaching and, admittedly, far-fetched. It involves changing the way young people view personal responsibility, morality, and sex, which involves changing the hearts and minds of adults so that they raise their children with better instruction and more traditional values.

While it’s essential that we continue to lead by example and advocate for higher sexual standards, it’s also important that we realize unwanted pregnancies are still going to happen, and lots of them.

According to the U.S. Census, single parenthood increased from 3 million families in 1970 to nearly 14 million in 2010. That’s almost a 100% increase per decade. An unsurprising 84% of single parents are mothers. The advent of the sexual revolution in the 1960s led to a decline in the number of “nuclear” families and a growing dependence on the state to act as father and provider for children without one. Today, a staggering 70% of black children are born out of wedlock.

When women mistook sexual libertinism for independence, they shrugged off the horrible yoke of having a husband who provided for them in favor of a different burden: that of parenting alone. I was raised by a single mother. She did the best she could, and I love her for it and applaud her courage and fortitude. However, my brother and I would have been better off with a present father.
Don’t take my word for it. Ask Mark Mather, PhD.

The effects of growing up in single-parent households have been shown to go beyond economics, increasing the risk of children dropping out of school, disconnecting from the labor force, and becoming teen parents. Although many children growing up in single-parent families succeed, others will face significant challenges in making the transition to adulthood.

The Telegraph also reported on a study of 14,000 children born in Britain between 2000 and 2002:

Some 12 per cent of children brought up by one parent displayed serious behavioural problems by the age of seven, it was disclosed, compared with just six per cent of youngsters raised by both natural parents.

Several years ago, controversial writer Ann Coulter made headlines when she quoted these statistics, although they had already been published in a left-leaning magazine:

A study cited in the Village Voice produced similar numbers. It found that children brought up in single-mother homes ‘are five times more likely to commit suicide, nine times more likely to drop out of high school, 10 times more likely to abuse chemical substances, 14 times more likely to commit rape (for the boys), 20 times more likely to end up in prison, and 32 times more likely to run away from home.

’
She also added the following shocking information:

By 1996, 70 percent of inmates in state juvenile detention centers serving long-term sentences were raised by single mothers. Seventy-two percent of juvenile murderers and 60 percent of rapists come from single-mother homes. Seventy percent of teenage births, dropouts, suicides, runaways, juvenile delinquents, and child murderers involve children raised by single mothers.

As a pro-lifer, I firmly believe that we must respect the sanctity of life for unborn humans. I also know that any chance at life is better than none. I am glad my mother, who found herself pregnant with twins as an already-single mother of two, decided to keep my brothers and raise them. Fortunately, despite making a few less-than-stellar decisions, she was an excellent mom with a head on her shoulders who took good care of us. She also had a support system of family and friends to rely on.

Not every pregnant woman has these advantages, and that is why, by the time that beautiful day arrives when abortion is ended, we must have already begun to educate the people of our country — especially the young people — about the priceless gift of adoption.

My mother was adopted, my grandfather was adopted, and my best friend was adopted. I have always thought there was something indescribably beautiful about the act of taking a stranger into your home and making him part of your family. It is proof of the generosity and love inherent in the human soul.
Adoption is a little understood process. Unfortunately, most potential adoptive parents dismiss it as too expensive or time-consuming, while most women experiencing unplanned pregnancies view it as a difficult, mysterious, agonizing prospect.

We need to educate couples about adoption. We need them to know it is easier and less expensive to adopt than most people think.

Most of all, we need to begin to elevate adoption as a joyous and rewarding process for the pregnant mother. She is giving her child not only the gift of life, but the gift of a better life than the one she can probably provide.

Soon I’ll tell you a little bit more about adoption, and why it’s our best hope for ensuring that as many children as possible are raised by loving, capable parents who can give them the opportunities they deserve.

Click “like” if you want to end abortion!
Reprinted with permission from the LiveAction blog.

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I am going to mention an issue that goes side-by-side with abortion. One reason we are allowing innocent babies to be murdered is because we have become an immoral society and one reason we have allowed this is because honesty is becoming unfortunately rare. Virtues like honesty and purity and common decency are falling by the wayside. When you systematically remove God from society, the virtues associated with Godliness soon dissipate.

The Death of Honesty

by William Damon (Senior Fellow and member of the Virtues of a Free Society Task Force)

The failure to cultivate virtue in citizens can be a lethal threat to any democracy.

Editor's note: The essay below is from the online volume Endangered Virtues, a publication of the Hoover Institution’s Task Force on the Virtues of a Free Society.

For a number of reasons, people do not always stick to the truth when they speak. Some of the reasons are justifiable—for example, humane considerations such as tact and the avoidance of greater harm. Reassuring an ungainly teenager that he or she looks great may be a kind embroidery of the truth. In a more consequential instance, misinforming storm troopers about the whereabouts of a hidden family during the Nazi occupation of Europe was an honorable and courageous deception.

Illustration by Barbara Kelley

Honesty is not a wholly detached moral virtue demanding strict allegiance at all times. Compassion, diplomacy, and life-threatening circumstances sometimes require a departure from the entire unadulterated truth. Some vocations seem to demand occasional deception for success or survival.

Politicians, for example, are especially hard-pressed to tell the truth consistently. Perhaps this is because, as George Orwell once observed, the very function of political speech is to hide, soften, or misrepresent difficult truths. Orwell was clearly skeptical about any expectation to the contrary. In “Politics and the English Language,” he put it this way: “Political language—and with variations this is true of all political parties, from Conservatives to Anarchists—is designed to make lies sound truthful and murder respectable, and to give an appearance of solidity to pure wind.”

Although in this case Orwell himself may have been guilty of overstatement for purposes of rhetorical effect, his claim cannot be totally dismissed. It would be naïve (or cynical) for anyone in today’s world to act shocked whenever a politician tries to hide the real truth from the public. For ordinary citizens, keeping up with the daily news means a constant process of speculating about what the politicians really meant by what they said and what they actually believe. It certainly does not mean taking what any of them say at face value.

Yet to recognize that honesty is not an absolute standard demanded for every life circumstance—and that we can expect a certain amount of deceit from even our respected public figures—is not to say that the virtue of honesty can be disregarded with impunity. A basic intent to be truthful, along with an assumption that people can be generally taken at their word, is required for all sustained civilized dealings.

Teaching honesty is no longer a priority in our schools.

No civilization can tolerate a fixed expectation of dishonest communications without falling apart from a breakdown in mutual trust. All human relations rely upon confidence that those in the relations will, as a rule, tell the truth. Honesty builds and solidifies a relationship with trust; and too many breaches in honesty can corrode relations beyond repair. Friendships, family, work, and civic relations all suffer whenever dishonesty comes to light. The main reason that no one wants to be known as a liar is that people shun liars because they can’t be trusted.

Honesty’s vital role in human society has been observed and celebrated for all of recorded history. The Romans considered the goddess Veritas to be the “mother of virtue”; Confucius considered honesty to be the essential source of love, communication, and fairness between people; and of course, the Bible’s Old Testament prohibited bearing false witness. It is also noteworthy that the two most universally heralded U. S. presidents (George Washington, who “could not tell a lie,” and Abraham Lincoln, who was known as “Honest Abe”) were widely acclaimed for their trustworthiness.

In a similar vein, religious leader Gordon Hinckley has written that, “where there is honesty, other virtues will follow”—indicating, as did the Romans, the pivotal role of truthfulness in all moral behavior and development. Hinckley’s comment was made in the context of his alarm-sounding book on “neglected virtues,” and it points to the problematic status of honesty in our society today. Although truthfulness is essential for good human relationships and personal integrity, it is often abandoned in pursuit of other life priorities.

Indeed, there may be a perception in many key areas of contemporary life—law, business, politics, among others—that expecting honesty on a regular basis is a naïve and foolish attitude, a “loser’s” way of operating. Such a perception is practically a mandate for personal dishonesty and a concession to interpersonal distrust. When we no longer assume that those who communicate with us are at least trying to tell the truth, we give up on them as trustworthy persons and deal with them only in a strictly instrumental manner. The bounds of mutual moral obligation dissolve, and the laws of the jungle reemerge.

Our serious problem today is not simply that many people routinely tell lies. As I have noted, people have departed from the truth for one reason or another all throughout human history. The problem now is that we seem to be reaching a dysfunctional tipping point in which an essential commitment to truthfulness no longer seems to be assumed in our society. If this is indeed the case, the danger is that the bonds of trust important in any society, and essential for a free and democratic one, will dissolve so that the kinds of discourse required to self-govern will become impossible.

A basic intent to be truthful is required for all sustained civilized dealings.

What are the signs of this in contemporary society? In professional and business circles, a now-familiar complaint is, “It used to be your word was good, but those days are gone.” In print, broadcast, and online news coverage, journalism has lost credibility with much of the public for its perceived biases in representing the facts. In civic affairs, political discourse is no longer considered to be a source of genuine information. Rather, it is assumed that leaders make statements merely to posture for effect, and not to engage in discussion or debate. In such an environment, facts may be manipulated or made up in service of a predetermined interest, not presented accurately and then examined in good faith. This is troubling, because civic leaders set the tone for communications throughout the public sphere.

Most troubling of all is that honesty is no longer a priority in many of the settings where young people are educated. The future of every society depends upon the character development of its young. It is in the early years of life—the first two decades especially—when basic virtues that shape character are acquired. Although people can learn, grow, and reform themselves at any age, this kind of learning becomes increasingly difficult as habits solidify over time. Honesty is a prime example of a virtue that becomes habitual over the years if practiced consistently—and the same can be said about dishonesty.
Honesty is the character virtue most closely linked to every school’s academic mission. In matters of “academic integrity,” which generally revolve around cheating, schools have a primary responsibility to convey to students the importance of honesty as a practical and ethical virtue. Unfortunately, many of our schools today are failing this responsibility.

Of all the breeches that can tear deeply into the moral fabric of a school, cheating is among the most damaging, because it throws in doubt the school’s allegiance to truth and fairness. Cheating in school is unethical for at least four reasons:
1) it gives students who cheat an unfair advantage over those who do not cheat;
2) it is an act of dishonesty in a setting dedicated to a quest for truthful knowledge,
3) it is a violation of trust between student and teacher; and
4) it disrespects the code of conduct and the social order of the school.
As such, one would expect that cheating would provide educators with an ideal platform for imparting the key moral standards of honesty, integrity, trust, and fairness.

Incredibly, some teachers have actually encouraged students to cheat.

For educators looking for opportunities to help students learn from their mistakes, there is plenty of material to work with: research has shown that almost three-quarters of American college students (that is, students who have made it through high school) admit to having cheated at least once in their pre-college academic work. Donald McCabe, the most prominent contemporary researcher on school cheating, has concluded that “Cheating is prevalent, and…some forms of cheating have increased dramatically in the last 30 years.”

Yet many teachers, in order to avoid legal action and other contention, look the other way if their students copy test answers or hand in plagiarized papers. Some teachers excuse students because they believe that “sharing” schoolwork is motivated by loyalty to friends. Some teachers sympathize with student cheaters because they consider the tests that students take to be flawed, unfair, or too difficult. Such sympathy can be taken to extremes, as in the case of one teacher, observed by an educational writer, who held that “it was the teacher who was immoral for having given the students such a burdensome assignment...” when a group of students was caught cheating.

Incredibly, some teachers actually have encouraged students to cheat; and some have even cheated themselves when reporting student test scores. In July 2011, a widely-reported cheating scandal erupted in school systems in and around Atlanta, Georgia. State investigators found a pattern of “organized and systemic misconduct” dating back for over ten years. One-hundred-and-seventy-eight teachers, and the principals of half of the system’s schools, aided and abetted students who were cheating on their tests. Top administrators ignored news reports of this cheating: a New York Times story described “a culture of fear and intimidation that prevented many teachers from speaking out.”

Nor was this an isolated incident. In a feature on school testing, CBS News reported the following: “New York education officials found 21 proven cases of teacher cheating. Teachers have read off answers during a test, sent students back to correct wrong answers, photocopied secure tests for use in class, inflated scores, and peeked at questions then drilled those topics in class before the test.”

With such prominent and recent instances of cheating among students and teachers today, one would expect a concerted effort to articulate and promote the value of honesty in our schools. Yet school programs regarding academic integrity consist of little more than a patchwork of vaguely-stated prohibitions and half-hearted responses. Our schools vacillate between routine neglect and a circle-the wagons reaction if the problem boils over into a public media scandal. There is little consistency, coherence, or transparency in many school policies.

It is practically impossible to find a school that treats academic integrity as a moral issue by employing revealed incidents of cheating to communicate to its student body values such as honesty, respect for rules, and trust. In my own observations, I have noticed a palpable lack of interest among teachers and staff in discussing the moral significance of cheating with students. The problem here is the low priority of honesty in our agenda for schooling specifically and child-rearing in general.

In former days, there was not much hesitancy in our society about using a moral language to teach children essential virtues such as honesty. For us today, it can be a culture shock to leaf through old editions of the McGuffey Readers, used in most American schools until the mid-twentieth century, to see how readily educators once dispensed unambiguous moral lessons to students. Nowadays, when cheating is considered by some teachers to be an excusable response to a difficult assignment, or even a form of pro-social activity, our society risks a future of moral numbness brought on by a decline of honesty and all the virtues that rely on it. As the Founders of our republic warned, the failure to cultivate virtue in citizens can be a lethal threat to any democracy.

William Damon is a professor of education at Stanford University, director of the Stanford Center on Adolescence, and a senior fellow at the Hoover Institution. For the past twenty-five years, Damon has written on character development at all stages of life. Damon's recent books include Failing Liberty 101 (Hoover Press, 2011); The Path to Purpose: How Young People Find their Calling in Life (2008); and The Moral Advantage: How to Succeed in Business by Doing the Right Thing (2004). Damon was founding editor of New Direction for Child and Adolescent Development and is editor in chief of The Handbook of Child Psychology (1998 and 2006 editions). He is an elected member of the National Academy of Education and a fellow of the American Educational Research Association.

Letters to the editor may be sent to definingideas@stanford.edu. Editors reserve the right to reject or publish (and edit) letters.

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Honestly? Abortion is murder.

Honestly? Evolution is built upon a series of lies.

Honestly? God did create the Universe and all within it. He has the right to declare what is right and what is wrong in the world that He made. Darwinists rebel against authority and wish to make their own rules and are willing to tell any lies they can get away with to prop up their preposterous fairy-tale unattributed set of magical events unscientific clap-trap hypothesis which has been falsified by the discovery of information and design in organisms and in the Universe. Will they admit it? No, they will shovel mounds of excrement at you at top speed in an attempt to fool you.

Abortion, the mores of society, evolution, atheism...they are all partners in crime. Convince people that they are not a unique and wonderful work of God and then convince them that there is no certain morality and then convince them that there really is no great purpose to life or existence and then you can tear apart the moral fabric of society and then you can promote your own set of ungodly pursuits - homosexuality, pedophilia, necrophilia, bestiality, murder, deceit, theft...the list goes on and on.

You Darwinists who proclaim lies to be truth will meet your Maker. Again I warn you that the road you are on comes to a place where the bridge is out and you will go over the edge and into destruction! I do not want you to go there and I do not want you taking others with you. The battle for truth is part and parcel to the war against terrorism and abortion and racism and every other evil thing.

Origin of life: the polymerization problem
Royal Truman

by Jonathan Sarfati

A well-publicised paper by Claudia Huber and Günter Wächterhäuser in Science proposed a scenario for a materialistic origin of life from non-living matter.¹ They correctly state:

The activation of amino acids and the formation of peptides under primordial conditions is one of the great riddles of the origin of life.

Indeed it is. The reaction to form a peptide bond between two amino acids to form a dipeptide is:

Amino acid 1 + amino acid 2 → dipeptide + water

H₂NCHRCOOH +H₂NCHR’COOH → H₂NCHRCONHCHR’COOH + H₂O (1)

The free energy change(ΔG₁) is about 20–33 kJ/mol, depending on the amino acids. The equilibrium constant for any reaction (K) is the equilibrium ratio of the concentration of products to reactants. The relationship between these quantities at any Kelvin temperature (T) is given by the standard equation:

K = exp (^–ΔG/_RT)

where R is the universal gas constant (= Avogadro’s number x Boltzmann’s constant k) = 8.314 J/K.mol

For reaction (1),

K₁ = ^[H2^{NCHRCONHCHR’COOH][H}2^O]/_{[H2NCHRCOOH][H2NCHR’COOH]}

= 0.007 at 298 K

where a compound in square brackets symbolises the concentration of that compound.

This means that if we start with a concentrated solution of 1 M (mol/l) of each amino acid, the equilibrium dipeptide concentration would be only 0.007 M. Since tripeptides have two peptide bonds, the equilibrium tripeptide concentration would be 0.007² M or 5x10^–5 M. For a non-specific polypeptide with 100 peptide bonds (101 amino acids), the equilibrium concentration would be 3.2 x 10^–216 M. NB: the problem for evolutionists is even worse, because life requires not just any polymers, but highly specified ones.

Since the equilibrium concentration of polymers is so low, their thermodynamic tendency is to break down in water, not to be built up. The long ages postulated by evolutionists simply make the problem worse, because there is more time for water’s destructive effects to occur. High temperatures, as many researchers advocate, would accelerate the breakdown. The famous pioneer of evolutionary origin-of-life experiments, Stanley Miller, points out that polymers are ‘too unstable to exist in a hot prebiotic environment’.²^,³ A recent article in New Scientist also described the instability of polymers in water as a ‘headache’ for researchers working on evolutionary ideas on the origin of life.⁴ It also showed its materialistic bias by saying this was not ‘good news’. But the real bad news is the faith in evolution which overrides objective science.

Some evolutionary scenarios

The analysis above doesn’t mean it’s impossible to make polypeptides. Consider the expression for the equilibrium constant K: if [H₂O] is lowered, then [polypeptide] must increase. One approach is to drive off the water with heat, as proposed by Sydney Fox.⁵ However, his experiments required a large excess of the trifunctional amino acids (i.e. they can combine with three other molecules), but these are produced very sparingly in typical simulation experiments.⁶ The heat also destroys some vital amino acids and results in highly randomized polymers. Another problem is that all the chiral amino acids are racemized, that is, a 50/50 mixture of left and right handed molecules is produced, which is unsuitable for life.⁷The large excess of trifunctional amino acids results in extensive branching, unlike biological polymers. The required heating and cooling conditions are geologically unrealistic—there is no known place on earth where amino acids could be dumped and polypeptides would result. Finally, Fox’s experiments required very concentrated and pure amino acids, while any hypothetical primordial soup would be impure and grossly contaminated with other organic chemicals that would destroy them.⁸

Another way to remove water is with certain high-energy chemicals that absorb water, called condensing agents. If the reaction between condensing agent C and water is:

C + H₂O → D (2)

and if ΔG₂ of reaction (2) is negative and large enough, it can couple with reaction (1):

H₂NCHRCOOH + H₂NCHR’COOH + C → H₂NCHRCONHCHR’COOH + D (3)

ΔG₃ = ΔG₁ + ΔG₂. If ΔG₃ is large and negative, the equilibrium constant for reaction 3, K₃, will be large, and this could conceivably produce reasonable quantities of polymers.

Some researchers used the condensing agent dicyanamide (N=CNHC=N) to produce some peptides from glycine, even claiming, ‘dicyanamide mediated polypeptide synthesis may have been a key process by which polypeptides were produced in the primitive hydrosphere.’⁹

However, the biggest problem is that condensing agents would readily react with any water available.

Therefore it is a chemical impossibility for the primordial soup to accumulate large quantities of condensing agents, especially if there were millions of years for water to react with them. Yet the above experiment used a 30-fold excess of dicyanamide. And even with these unrealistic conditions, 95% of the glycine remained unreacted, and the highest polymer formed was a tetrapeptide.¹⁰

Organic chemists can certainly make polypeptides, using intelligent planning of a complex multi-stage synthesis, designed to prevent wrong reactions occurring.¹¹ Living cells also use an elegant process to make polypeptides. This involves the use of enzymes to activate amino acids (and nucleotides) by combining them with the high-energy compound ATP (adenosine triphosphate), to overcome the energy barrier. Such high-energy compounds are not formed in prebiotic simulation experiments, and are very unstable.

Chain termination

To form a chain, it is necessary to react bifunctional monomers, that is, molecules with two functional groups so they combine with two others. If a unifunctional monomer (with only one functional group) reacts with the end of the chain, the chain can grow no further at this end.¹² If only a small fraction of unifunctional molecules were present, long polymers could not form. But all ‘prebiotic simulation’ experiments produce at least three times more unifunctional molecules than bifunctional molecules.¹³ Formic acid (HCOOH) is by far the commonest organic product of Miller-type simulations. Indeed, if it weren’t for evolutionary bias, the abstracts of the experimental reports would probably state nothing more than: ‘An inefficient method for production of formic acid is here described …’ Formic acid has little biological significance except that it is a major component of ant (Latin formica) stings.

A realistic prebiotic polymerisation simulation experiment should begin with the organic compounds produced by Miller-type experiments, but the reported ones always exclude unifunctional contaminants.

Wächterhäuser’s theory

Günter Wächterhäuser is a German patent attorney with a doctorate in organic chemistry. He is highly critical of the usual primordial soup ideas of the origin of life. As the quote at the beginning of this article shows, he recognises that polymerization is a big problem. However, not willing to abandon his evolutionary faith, he proposes that life began as a cyclic chemical reaction on the surface of pyrite (FeS₂). The energy to drive this cycle is said to come from the continued production of pyrite from iron and sulfur. However, he admits that this proposal is for the most part, ‘pure speculation’.¹⁴ Fellow origin-of-life researcher Gerald Joyce claims that the acceptance of Wächterhäuser’s theory owes more to his legal skills than to its merit.14 Stanley Miller calls it ‘paper chemistry’.¹⁵

In their latest well-publicised experiment, Huber and Wächterhäuser activated amino acids with carbon monoxide (CO) and reacted them in an aqueous slurry of co-precipitated (Ni,Fe)S using either hydrogen sulfide (H₂S) or methanethiol (CH₃SH) at 100° C at a pH of 7–10.

We should also note that Huber and Wächterhäuser started off with very favourable conditions for chemical evolution. Although ‘the researchers have not yet shown that this recipe can produce amino acids’,¹⁶ they used a strong solution (0.05 M) of left-handed amino acids (or the achiral glycine), with no other organic material. Of course, any ‘primordial soup’ would have been dilute, impure and racemic. It would have contained many unifunctional molecules and other organic compounds that would have destroyed amino acids. Stanley Miller also points out that Huber and Wächterhäuser used concentrations of CO far higher than are realistic in nature.¹⁶

Even under their favourable conditions (due to intelligent design!), all they produced was a small percentage of dipeptides (0.4–12.4%) and an even tinier amount of tripeptides (0.003%)—calculated from reported quantities. Huber and Wächterhäuser also reported that ‘under these same conditions dipeptides hydrolysed rapidly’!

The exclusive ‘left-handedness’ required for life7 was destroyed in the process. They excuse this by pointing out that some cell wall peptides have right-handed amino acids. But this misses the point—enzymes that break down cell walls are designed for exclusively left-handed amino acids, so an occasional right-handed amino acid is the perfect defence in a left-handed world.

A final irony is that one of their previous experiments converted CO into acetic acid (CH₃COOH) under similar conditions with CH₃SH and a (Ni,Fe)S slurry.¹⁷ Since acetic acid is unifunctional, this would prevent long polymers from forming under the conditions Huber and Wächterhäuser propose!

Did scientists create life, or did the media create hype?

Newspapers around the world reported this experiment. Some went as far as claiming: ‘German chemists have produced living cells from a combination of amino acids …’¹⁸

If true, then this would be remarkable. Even the simplest decoded free-living organism, Mycoplasma genitalium, has 482 genes coding for all the necessary proteins, including enzymes. These proteins are composed of about 400 amino acids each on average, in precise sequences, and all in the ‘left-handed’ form.¹⁹ Of course, these genes are only functional with pre-existing translational and replicating machinery, a cell membrane, etc. But Mycoplasma can only survive by parasitizing more complex organisms, which provide many of the nutrients it cannot manufacture for itself. So evolutionists must postulate an even more complex first living organism with even more genes.

However, as shown above, all Huber and Wächterhäuser produced were a few dipeptides and even fewer tripeptides. While they didn’t make the deceitful claim quoted above, their evolutionary faith means that they see far more significance in their experiment than it deserves.

The next day, the same newspaper wrote ‘WA Museum evolutionary biologist Ken McNamara said if life could be created artificially, it could emerge naturally given the right conditions.’²⁰ How absurd—does this mean that because we can create cars artificially (with loads of intelligent input), it proves they could emerge naturally (without intelligence!)?

People should not be surprised by such biased reporting. We should compare the hype about ‘Martian life’ with the near silence about the fact that this claim has been thoroughly discredited, even according to most secular scientists.²¹^,²²^,²³^,²⁴

The cynical media disdain for truth was well illustrated at a symposium sponsored by the Smithsonian Institution. Ben Bradlee, editor of The Washington Post, said:

‘To hell with the news! I’m no longer interested in news. I’m interested in causes. We don’t print the truth. We don’t pretend to print the truth. We print what people tell us. It’s up to the public to decide what’s true.’²⁵

A detailed survey of the political and social beliefs of producers, editors, writers, and staff in the television industry ²⁶ shows that they are biased against Christian morality. Two-thirds of them believe the structure of American society is faulty and must be changed. 97% say women should have the right to decide whether they want to have an abortion, 80% believe there’s nothing wrong with homosexual relations, and 51% see nothing wrong with adultery. And they openly admit that they push their ideas into the programs they create for their audiences. The media’s willingness to push evolutionary hype is consistent with their anti-Christian stance.

Conclusion

Despite over-optimistic science reports and very biased and hyped-up media reports, scientists have not even come close to ‘creating life in the test-tube’. Even if they do manage this feat, it will be the result of intelligent design. Ordinary undirected chemistry moves in the wrong direction—for example, as shown in this article, biological polymers tend to break apart, not form.

References

Huber, C. and Wächterhäuser, G., 1998. Peptides by activation of amino acids with CO on (Ni,Fe)S surfaces: implications for the origin of life. Science 281(5377):670–672. Return to text.
Miller, S.L. and Lazcano, A., 1995. The origin of life—did it occur at high temperatures? J. Mol. Evol. 41:689–692. Return to text.
Miller has also pointed out that the RNA bases are destroyed very quickly in water at 100°C—adenine and guanine have half lives of about a year, uracil about 12 years, and cytosine only 19 days. Levy, M and Miller, S.L., 1998. The stability of the RNA bases: Implications for the origin of life. Proc. Natl. Acad. Sci. USA 95(14):7933–38. Return to text.
Matthews, R., 1997. Wacky Water. New Scientist 154(2087):40–43. Return to text.
Fox, S.W. and Dose, K., 1977. Molecular Evolution and the Origin of Life, Marcel Dekker, New York. Return to text.
Glycine, the simplest amino acid, is by far the commonest amino acid formed. See Ref. 13 for some typical yields. Return to text.
For more information on chirality and life, see Sarfati, J.D., 1998. Origin of Life: The chirality problem. CEN Tech. J. 12(3):263–266. See online version. Return to text.
Such criticisms and more are found in Thaxton, C. B., Bradley, W. L. & Olsen, R. L., 1984. The Mystery of Life’s Origin, Philosophical Library Inc., New York. See online version (off site). Return to text.
Steinman, G., Kenyon, D.H. and Calvin, M., 1966. Biochim. Biophys. Acta 124:339. D.H. Kenyon, also co-author of the evolutionary book Biochemical Predestination, has since become a creationist. Return to text.
Gish, D.T., 1972. Speculations and Experiments Related to Theories of the Origin of Life: A Critique, ICR Technical Monograph No. 1, Institute for Creation Research, San Diego, CA. Return to text.
Streitwieser, A. and Heathcock, C.H., 1981. Introduction to Organic Chemistry, 2^nd Ed., Macmillan, NY, ch. 29. Return to text.
Volmert, B., 1985. Das Molekül und das Leben, Rowohlt, pp. 40–45. Cited in: Wilder-Smith, A.E., 1987. The Scientific Alternative to Neo-Darwinian Theory: Information Sources and Structures, TWFT Publishers, Costa Mesa, CA, p. 61. Return to text.
Dickerson, R.E., 1978. Chemical Evolution and the Origin of Life. Scientific American 239(3):62–102. A chart on p. 67 shows a typical yield from one of Miller’s experiments. 59,000 mmol carbon in the form of methane yielded as the main unifunctional products: 2,330 mmol formic acid, 310 mmol lactic acid 150, mmol acetic acid and 130 mmol propionic acid. Four amino acids found in modern proteins were produced: 630 mmol glycine, 340 mmol alanine, 6 mmol glutamic acid, and 4 mmol aspartic acid. Return to text.
Horgan, J., 1991. In the beginning. Scientific American 264(2):100–109. Quote on p. 106. Return to text.
Horgan, ref. 14, p. 102. Return to text.
Vogel, G., 1998. ‘A sulfurous start for protein synthesis?’ Science 281(5377): 627–629 (Perspective on Ref. 1). Return to text.
Huber, C. and Wächterhäuser, G., 1998. Activated acetic acid by carbon fixation on (Fe,Ni)S under primordial conditions. Science 276(5310):245–247. Return to text.
The West Australian, 11 August 1998. Return to text.
Fraser, C.M., et al. 1995. The minimal gene complement of Mycoplasma genitalium. Science 270(5235):397–403; Perspective by A. Goffeau. Life with 482 Genes, same issue, pp. 445–6. Return to text.
The West Australian, 12 August 1998. Return to text.
Scott, E.R.D., Yamaguchi, A. and Krot, A.N., 1997. Petrological evidence for shock melting of carbonates in the martian meteorite ALH84001. Nature 387:377–379. Return to text.
Bradley, J.P., Harvey, R.P. and McSween, H.Y., 1997. No ‘nanofossils’ in martian meteorite. Nature 390(6659):454–456. Return to text.
Holmes, R., 1996. Death knell for Martian life. New Scientist 152 (2061/2):4. Return to text.
Kerr, R.A., 1998. Requiem for life on Mars? Support for microbe fades. Science, 282(5393):1398–1400. Return to text.
Bradlee, B., 1989. Reported by Brooks, D., 1989. The Wall Street Journal, 10 October. Return to text.
S. Robert Lichter, S.R., Lichter, L.S. and Rothman, S., 1992. Watching America: What Television Tells Us About Our Lives. Referenced in Ray, D.L. and Guzzo, L., 1993. Environmental Overkill, Regnery Gateway, Washington DC. Return to text.

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The idea that life formed itself naturally is one of the most ludicrous scams so-called scientists have pulled on the unsuspecting public!

Just as so-called evolution is inane the idea of life forming naturally is also ludicrous and unscientific. There is absolutely NO scientific evidence for natural formation of life. It is simply the hope of atheistic anti-theist who desperately need a way out of the idea of God. Although we have a scientific law that is known as Biogenesis, Darwinists pretend it doesn't apply to "simple life." As if there is some magic to pretend that there is such a thing. The simplest of organisms have been proved to only come from other organisms - life comes only from life. We have tested this since the 1600's and it is the SAME RESULT EVERY TIME!!! Atheopaths may not like it, but it is true!

So I must ask the Darwinists this question. Are you crazy, stupid or simply blind religious zealots? Because science says life comes from life. Period. Game, set and match!

Quotes from Scientists about Evidence for the Creation by God Theory

2012-01-25T20:37:00.000-08:00

Occam's Razor. Do you ever just sit back and think about everything?

How can it be that there are naturalists in the world today?

We had an unusual evening in which my oldest son and one of my teens,Kyle, from youth group just went out to eat and talk over some spicy foods and the background of the Bulls-Pacers game playing on various television sets in the Pizza joint. The really unusual part was that the Bulls actually lost!

My oldest son loves history and is working towards becoming a high school History teacher. He is also a music lover and a big fan of comics and especially Marvel comics. I am also big into history and music but far more into science than my son Rob. Kyle is not much for sports but loves computers and mechanical things and is now thinking about being either an auto mechanic or a computer technician. He obtained his initial Cisco certifications while a Sophomore in high school, so he really understands computer-related things. We all considered how ridiculous the idea of evolution really is by thinking on what a man would think if he discovered a computer sitting out in a field. Would he think it EVOLVED?

We talked about all the components necessary to make a computer actually operational and then I said, wait, but it also has to find another computer and be able to mate with it and reproduce more computers!!! I mean, a computer requires all sorts of different hardware and sophisticated components, a basic operating system for the underlayer to the programs that will run on it, power to make it all work and cooling fans to keep some parts from overheating. But also someone had to write the programs to run on it and devised the code that could "talk" to the hardware and software and cause pieces of metal and silicon and plastic and other things to be able to convert the input of people via mouse and keyboard into a language that the software and machinery can respond or send that information on to be stored or perhaps interact with other computers over the internet. If you break down all the logical and physical layers involved in networking and then consider how complex even one computer actually is, you know it cannot possibly have been a result of a bunch of random accidents and collisions and mistakes!

A human being is remarkably and infinitely more complex than the world's most powerful computer. One of our cells is more remarkable than a big honking Dell rack server with the latest and greatest muliple-core Westmere processors and loads of Ram.

Some of the great scientists have stepped back, looked at the world and admitted that it could not be an infinite collection of miraculous accidents. In some cases, despite themselves!!!

credit

Quotes from Scientists Regarding Design of the Universe

by Rich Deem

Introduction

Does science lead us down a road that ends in the naturalistic explanation of everything we see? In the nineteenth century, it certainly looked as though science was going in that direction. The "God of the gaps" was finding himself in a narrower and narrower niche. However, 20^th century and now 21^st century science is leading us back down the road of design - not from a lack of scientific explanation, but from scientific explanation that requires an appeal to the extremely unlikely - something that science does not deal well with. As a result of the recent evidence in support of design, many scientists now believe in God. According to a recent article:

"I was reminded of this a few months ago when I saw a survey in the journal Nature. It revealed that 40% of American physicists, biologists and mathematicians believe in God--and not just some metaphysical abstraction, but a deity who takes an active interest in our affairs and hears our prayers: the God of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob."(1)

The degree to which the constants of physics must match a precise criteria is such that a number of agnostic scientists have concluded that there is some sort of "supernatural plan" or "Agency" behind it. Here is what they say:

The quotes

Fred Hoyle (British astrophysicist): "A common sense interpretation of the facts suggests that a superintellect has monkeyed with physics, as well as with chemistry and biology, and that there are no blind forces worth speaking about in nature. The numbers one calculates from the facts seem to me so overwhelming as to put this conclusion almost beyond question." (2)

George Ellis (British astrophysicist): "Amazing fine tuning occurs in the laws that make this [complexity] possible. Realization of the complexity of what is accomplished makes it very difficult not to use the word 'miraculous' without taking a stand as to the ontological status of the word." (3)

Paul Davies (British astrophysicist): "There is for me powerful evidence that there is something going on behind it all....It seems as though somebody has fine-tuned nature’s numbers to make the Universe....The impression of design is overwhelming". (4)

Paul Davies: "The laws [of physics] ... seem to be the product of exceedingly ingenious design... The universe must have a purpose". (5)

Alan Sandage (winner of the Crawford prize in astronomy): "I find it quite improbable that such order came out of chaos. There has to be some organizing principle. God to me is a mystery but is the explanation for the miracle of existence, why there is something instead of nothing." (6)

John O'Keefe (astronomer at NASA): "We are, by astronomical standards, a pampered, cosseted, cherished group of creatures.. .. If the Universe had not been made with the most exacting precision we could never have come into existence. It is my view that these circumstances indicate the universe was created for man to live in." (7)

George Greenstein (astronomer): "As we survey all the evidence, the thought insistently arises that some supernatural agency - or, rather, Agency - must be involved. Is it possible that suddenly, without intending to, we have stumbled upon scientific proof of the existence of a Supreme Being? Was it God who stepped in and so providentially crafted the cosmos for our benefit?" (8)

Arthur Eddington (astrophysicist): "The idea of a universal mind or Logos would be, I think, a fairly plausible inference from the present state of scientific theory." (9)

Arno Penzias (Nobel prize in physics): "Astronomy leads us to a unique event, a universe which was created out of nothing, one with the very delicate balance needed to provide exactly the conditions required to permit life, and one which has an underlying (one might say 'supernatural') plan." (10)

Roger Penrose (mathematician and author): "I would say the universe has a purpose. It's not there just somehow by chance." (11)

Tony Rothman (physicist): "When confronted with the order and beauty of the universe and the strange coincidences of nature, it's very tempting to take the leap of faith from science into religion. I am sure many physicists want to. I only wish they would admit it." (12)

Vera Kistiakowsky (MIT physicist): "The exquisite order displayed by our scientific understanding of the physical world calls for the divine." (13)

Robert Jastrow (self-proclaimed agnostic): "For the scientist who has lived by his faith in the power of reason, the story ends like a bad dream. He has scaled the mountains of ignorance; he is about to conquer the highest peak; as he pulls himself over the final rock, he is greeted by a band of theologians who have been sitting there for centuries." (14)

Stephen Hawking (British astrophysicist): "Then we shall… be able to take part in the discussion of the question of why it is that we and the universe exist. If we find the answer to that, it would be the ultimate triumph of human reason - for then we would know the mind of God." (15)

Frank Tipler (Professor of Mathematical Physics): "When I began my career as a cosmologist some twenty years ago, I was a convinced atheist. I never in my wildest dreams imagined that one day I would be writing a book purporting to show that the central claims of Judeo-Christian theology are in fact true, that these claims are straightforward deductions of the laws of physics as we now understand them. I have been forced into these conclusions by the inexorable logic of my own special branch of physics." (16) Note: Tipler since has actually converted to Christianity, hence his latest book, The Physics Of Christianity.

Alexander Polyakov (Soviet mathematician): "We know that nature is described by the best of all possible mathematics because God created it."(17)

Ed Harrison (cosmologist): "Here is the cosmological proof of the existence of God – the design argument of Paley – updated and refurbished. The fine tuning of the universe provides prima facie evidence of deistic design. Take your choice: blind chance that requires multitudes of universes or design that requires only one.... Many scientists, when they admit their views, incline toward the teleological or design argument." (18)

Edward Milne (British cosmologist): "As to the cause of the Universe, in context of expansion, that is left for the reader to insert, but our picture is incomplete without Him [God]." (19)

Barry Parker (cosmologist): "Who created these laws? There is no question but that a God will always be needed." (20)

Drs. Zehavi, and Dekel (cosmologists): "This type of universe, however, seems to require a degree of fine tuning of the initial conditions that is in apparent conflict with 'common wisdom'." (21)

Arthur L. Schawlow (Professor of Physics at Stanford University, 1981 Nobel Prize in physics): "It seems to me that when confronted with the marvels of life and the universe, one must ask why and not just how. The only possible answers are religious. . . . I find a need for God in the universe and in my own life." (22)

Henry "Fritz" Schaefer (Graham Perdue Professor of Chemistry and director of the Center for Computational Quantum Chemistry at the University of Georgia): "The significance and joy in my science comes in those occasional moments of discovering something new and saying to myself, 'So that's how God did it.' My goal is to understand a little corner of God's plan." (23)

Wernher von Braun (Pioneer rocket engineer) "I find it as difficult to understand a scientist who does not acknowledge the presence of a superior rationality behind the existence of the universe as it is to comprehend a theologian who would deny the advances of science." (24)

Carl Woese (microbiologist from the University of Illinois) "Life in Universe - rare or unique? I walk both sides of that street. One day I can say that given the 100 billion stars in our galaxy and the 100 billion or more galaxies, there have to be some planets that formed and evolved in ways very, very like the Earth has, and so would contain microbial life at least. There are other days when I say that the anthropic principal, which makes this universe a special one out of an uncountably large number of universes, may not apply only to that aspect of nature we define in the realm of physics, but may extend to chemistry and biology. In that case life on Earth could be entirely unique." (25)

Antony Flew (Professor of Philosophy, former atheist, author, and debater) "It now seems to me that the findings of more than fifty years of DNA research have provided materials for a new and enormously powerful argument to design." (26)

Frank Tipler (Professor of Mathematical Physics): "From the perspective of the latest physical theories, Christianity is not a mere religion, but an experimentally testable science." (27)

References

Jim Holt. 1997. Science Resurrects God. The Wall Street Journal (December 24, 1997), Dow Jones & Co., Inc.
Hoyle, F. 1982. The Universe: Past and Present Reflections. Annual Review of Astronomy and Astrophysics: 20:16.
Ellis, G.F.R. 1993. The Anthropic Principle: Laws and Environments. The Anthropic Principle, F. Bertola and U.Curi, ed. New York, Cambridge University Press, p. 30.
Davies, P. 1988. The Cosmic Blueprint: New Discoveries in Nature's Creative Ability To Order the Universe. New York: Simon and Schuster, p.203.
Davies, P. 1984. Superforce: The Search for a Grand Unified Theory of Nature. (New York: Simon & Schuster, 1984), p. 243.
Willford, J.N. March 12, 1991. Sizing up the Cosmos: An Astronomers Quest. New York Times, p. B9.
Heeren, F. 1995. Show Me God. Wheeling, IL, Searchlight Publications, p. 200.
Greenstein, G. 1988. The Symbiotic Universe. New York: William Morrow, p.27.
Heeren, F. 1995. Show Me God. Wheeling, IL, Searchlight Publications, p. 233.
Margenau, H and R.A. Varghese, ed. 1992. Cosmos, Bios, and Theos. La Salle, IL, Open Court, p. 83.
Penrose, R. 1992. A Brief History of Time (movie). Burbank, CA, Paramount Pictures, Inc.
Casti, J.L. 1989. Paradigms Lost. New York, Avon Books, p.482-483.
Margenau, H and R.A. Varghese, ed. 1992. Cosmos, Bios, and Theos. La Salle, IL, Open Court, p. 52.
Jastrow, R. 1978. God and the Astronomers. New York, W.W. Norton, p. 116.
Hawking, S. 1988. A Brief History of Time. p. 175.
Tipler, F.J. 1994. The Physics Of Immortality. New York, Doubleday, Preface.
Gannes, S. October 13, 1986. Fortune. p. 57
Harrison, E. 1985. Masks of the Universe. New York, Collier Books, Macmillan, pp. 252, 263.
Heeren, F. 1995. Show Me God. Wheeling, IL, Searchlight Publications, p. 166-167.
Heeren, F. 1995. Show Me God. Wheeling, IL, Searchlight Publications, p. 223.
Zehavi, I, and A. Dekel. 1999. Evidence for a positive cosmological constant from flows of galaxies and distant supernovae Nature 401: 252-254.
Margenau, H. and R. A. Varghese, eds. Cosmos, Bios, Theos: Scientists Reflect on Science, God, and the Origins of the Universe, Life, and Homo Sapiens (Open Court Pub. Co., La Salle, IL, 1992).
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McIver, T. 1986. Ancient Tales and Space-Age Myths of Creationist Evangelism. The Skeptical Inquirer 10:258-276.
Mullen, L. 2001. The Three Domains of Life from SpaceDaily.com
Atheist Becomes Theist: Exclusive Interview with Former Atheist Antony Flew at Biola University (PDF version).
Tipler, F.J. 2007. The Physics Of Christianity. New York, Doubleday.

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credit

Tony Rothman (physicist): "When confronted with the order and beauty of the universe and the strange coincidences of nature, it's very tempting to take the leap of faith from science into religion. I am sure many physicists want to. I only wish they would admit it."

He almost "gets it." All science is intimately connected with religion. Belief in naturalism is a religion in every way like a belief in creationism. Both depend upon a beginning presupposition and both view the evidence from the point of view based on that presupposition. Naturalists like to say their religion is "science" but they have no more right to the word than do I, in fact, since the inventors of modern science were creationists, they are in fact thieves of the word!

Science used to be the investigation into how the world that God made worked, not how the world managed to make itself! Such a pursuit is a dog chasing it's tail, never amounting to anything other than a lot of wasted resources. At least the dog has the good sense to quit and lie down now and then.

Darwinists sound like a massive flock of crows in a small forest of trees, their continual cawing drowning out the rest of the noise of the forest and making no sense to anyone other than each other. Thus encouraged, they go off to spread their nonsensical cries around the rest of the area...and we have to wash the cars again.

Darwinists claim nothing made life, nothing made information, in fact they claim that nothing made absolutely everything by no means or method and in opposition to all natural laws (the last part is especially amusing)! Darwinism is built on nothing and then proceeds to pretend to add while subtracting. Mistakes are given credit for marvelous designs, accidents for inventing intricate systems and producing astounding beauty, form and function! Well, if you want to BELIEVE that you are free to do it, but it is in actuality a religion and a poor one at that.

Mean distance from earth	384,404 km or 239,000 miles
Diameter	3,476 km or 2172.5 miles (0.273 Earth, 1/400 Sun)
Mass	7.35 x 10²² kg (0.0123 Earth)
Density	3.34 g/cm³ (0.6 Earth)
Surface Temperature	204°C (400°F) day, -205° C (-338°F)
True (sidereal) orbital period	27.322 Earth days (29.531 day phase cycle)^[13]
Orbital angular momentum	2.68 x 10³⁴ kg m²/s (82.9% of earth-moon system)
Inclination of equator to orbital plane	6° 41¢ (cf. Earth 23° 27¢)
Earth-moon gravitational attraction	1.98 x 10²⁰ N (2.23 x 10¹⁶ tons)

Radaractive

Who am I supporting for President? Rick Santorum, naturally!!!

So you think Evolution is science? Uh, no!

by Jerry Bergman

February 8, 2012

Abstract

Introduction

A Survey of Textbooks

by Brian Thomas, M.S. *

Flu plus Super Bowl = guest youtubes Falsifying Evolution and of course the great Ian Juby for the win!

Darwinists, the argument from incredulity is not your escape pod from Starship Science!

Fallacies of Defective or Weak Induction

Argument from silence

As Science discovers that the Solar System is actually young...

From CreationWiki, the encyclopedia of creation science

References

See Also

The Moon’s Origin

The Moon’s Purpose

TIDES

Nice to Visit—But to Live?

How Long Has the Moon Been Receding?

Could the Moon Form by Itself?

When Day Becomes Night...

Moon Facts

Conclusion

References

Naturalistic theories put lunar origin close to Earth

The Roche limit: site for naturalistic lunar formation

The impact theory does not resolve lunar origins difficulties

The moon’s maximum age is less than 4.6 Ga

Efforts to save conventional lunar chronology have failed

Tidal parameter adjustments fail to save a long lunar chronology

Conclusions

Related articles

Further reading

Recommended Resources

References

Evolution Proponents - making preposterous claims 24 by 7 is their business!

If the War of Worldviews is raging, pick a side and go on the attack!!! God or Satan?

REFERENCES

You can't legislate morality? Really???

LAST (probably) in the mini-series on abortion, which is just a word liberals use to mean baby murdering. The practice causes intense pain to the child, and it is wrong.

At 20 weeks they are babies! See above and below!

Scientific evidence reveals that unborn babies do, indeed, feel pain

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

An aborted 9 week old baby. How is this not murder?

Abortion follow-up. How to make the end of abortion the end of unwanted children.

"I have always thought there was something indescribably beautiful about the act of taking a stranger into your home and making him part of your family. It is proof of the generosity and love inherent in the human soul." - Kristen Walker

I know several families who have adopted children. It is NOT true that babies are unwanted!

Yet another family adopted one of our youth group girls, another one adopted a pair of Asian-heritage babies and yet another is doing foster care, taking in the kids others cannot handle and seeking to help them find peace and consistency for once in their lives.

More problems for a natural origin of life considered

Some evolutionary scenarios

Chain termination

Wächterhäuser’s theory

Did scientists create life, or did the media create hype?

Conclusion

References

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

The idea that life formed itself naturally is one of the most ludicrous scams so-called scientists have pulled on the unsuspecting public!

So I must ask the Darwinists this question. Are you crazy, stupid or simply blind religious zealots? Because science says life comes from life. Period. Game, set and match!

Quotes from Scientists about Evidence for the Creation by God Theory

Occam's Razor. Do you ever just sit back and think about everything?

How can it be that there are naturalists in the world today?

A human being is remarkably and infinitely more complex than the world's most powerful computer. One of our cells is more remarkable than a big honking Dell rack server with the latest and greatest muliple-core Westmere processors and loads of Ram.

Some of the great scientists have stepped back, looked at the world and admitted that it could not be an infinite collection of miraculous accidents. In some cases, despite themselves!!!

by Rich Deem

Introduction

The quotes

Related Pages

References