Monday, January 31, 2011

Purpose-Driven Science Ignores Darwin

"While some Darwinists feel that the Intelligent Design (ID) movement is a major threat to science, many scientists unconnected to ID are acting as if it provides for them a more fruitful approach to research. Several recent examples illustrated what might be called a silent “de facto” intelligent design movement.

"Purposeful proteinsPhysOrg reported work at the RIKEN Advanced Science Institute in Japan with the eye-catching title, “Searching for purpose in proteins.” 
 
"Imitating insects:  Meanwhile, inventors at Penn State, Harvard and the Naval Research Laboratory have developed “an engineered thin film that mimics the natural abilities of water striding insects to walk on the surface of water, and for butterflies to shed water from their wings.”  Inherent in biomimicry is the belief that the thing being imitated is well designed.
 
"Biophysics on birds: Researchers in Australia were curious why ostriches are such good runners compared to humans, so they compared their leg physics with a computer analysis. PhysOrg summarized the resulting paper by saying it’s spring in their step. Only this third team even mentioned evolution.

"Join the silent ID revolution! You don’t have to use the maligned phrase, or declare your allegiance to the Discovery Institute. Just stay focused on the design in your subject, and gradually say less and less about Charlie D. After enough good design science, fewer people will even miss him."

(for more, see Purpose-Driven Science Ignores Darwin, Creation-Evolution Headlines, October 2010)

(also published in Creation Matters, a publication of Creation Research Society, Volume 15, Number 6, November/December 2010, to appear at http://www.creationresearch.org/creation_matters/pdf/2010/CM15%2006%20low%20res.pdf)

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Sunday, January 23, 2011

Perfume


If you're under pressure today,

Remember, God is making perfume out of you.

(Robert A. Cook, "Walk with the King today, and be a blessing")

Saturday, January 22, 2011

Adam's descendents were too numerous for a local flood

"If Adam's listed descendents each produced only 10 offspring during his lifetime, Adam would have had more than 10 million descendents when he died at age 930." (Downing 2011)

Adam died 492 years before the flood, according to Bishop Usher's Biblical chronology, and even earlier in other interpretations of the biblical dating. Extremely long lifetimes are definitely reported in the pre-Flood account of Genesis, tailing off to present-day expected lifetimes only long after the time of Abraham.

This is another strong evidence that the Genesis account upholds a global flood! A local flood could not have wiped out 10 million people. Only a global flood could have done this. The book of Genesis teaches us that God saved only Noah and his family from destruction, by His grace. All others perished, because of their sin and rebellion.

References

Downing, Jim. 2011. 75 Years as a Disciple-Maker, an Interview with Jim Downing, Mission Frontiers 33(1):30.

Christians Never Lose

  • Christians never lose. We live eternally (John 3:16).
  • The greatest favor we can do for our enemies is to introduce him to Jesus (whether they accept him or not).
  • By placing us in a nation of religious freedom, God has given us the opportunity to exchange strength with those courageous ones who live under oppression.
  • The brief burst of time that we live on earth is simply preparation for further fellowship with all nations in heaven. (Each day is a gift!)

(Tom White, Executive Director, Voice of the Martyrs, January 2011)

Choose Life, that You and Your Children may Live (Deuteronomy 30:19)

Through 2008, the estimated number of abortions in the United States since the 1973 Roe vs Wade ruling is estimated to be over 50 million.

Let us grieve for them, and not forget. Let us uphold those mothers and fathers who are truly sorry for their action.

"Even so, it is not the will of your Father in Heaven that one of these little ones should perish."
(the words of Jesus, Matthew 18:14)

Sunday, January 16, 2011

The Rise and Fall of Goal-Directed Evolution

Evolution cannot find the mechanism that drives evolution forward. They have also shot down theistic evolution's idea that God planted an "Omega Point" within each life form that is its ultimately state of perfection in evolutionary time. What does that leave us? God the Creator formed each kind of life at the same time, during Creation Week! We know this is true from His Word, the Bible, as told to the first humans, Adam and Eve...

"The collapse of each new attempt to explain the origin of new biological information in species is additional support for the creation origins views. The neo-Darwinian concept of mutations and natural selection may well also be discarded when its limitations are more fully understood."

Selections from The Rise and Fall of the Orthogenesis Non-Darwinian Theory of Evolution, by Jerry Bergman.

(These selections by Marko Malyj are of the article published in Creation Research Society Quarterly Journal, Volume 47, Number 2, Fall, 2010, to appear at http://www.creationresearch.org/crsq/abstracts/Abstracts47-2.htm).

Evolutionists have always struggled to come up with a final theory to explain the origin of new biological information in species. Darwin himself recognized that his initial theory was merely "a provisional hypothesis or speculation", the best so far that "until a better one [can] be advanced, it will serve to bring together a multitude of facts which are at present left disconnected by any efficient cause" (Darwin, 1896, p. 350). However, ever since Darwin's published Origin of the Species in 1859, no such final theory is in sight. It can continue to be said that "evolutionary theory is a tumultuous field where many different views are now competing for dominance" (Esenstein, 2003, p. 2).

What is Orthogenesis or Goal-Directed Evolution?

Orthogenesis was one of the leading evolutionary theories between 1875 and 1950. It tries to answer several issues.

First, "Darwin assumed that the variation of individuals occurred more or less at random" (Bowler, 1979, p.40). But early on, numerous objections were raised against Darwin's theory of evolution by natural selection. Random variations, acted on by natural selection, are not a sufficient mechanism by which evolution might produce the life-forms existing today.

Second, evolution seems to have stopped for many forms of life. Called "living fossils," they have not changed much since their initial appearance in the geologic record. Evolutionary change ceases and stasis [stability] prevails.

Orthogenesis, also called straight-line or "goal-directed" evolution, raises the idea that "if variations were not random - if they tended to occur more readily in some directions than others - then the direction of variation might itself control the course of evolution" (Bowler, 1979, p. 40). In orthogenesis, there is therefore an "internal drive", a biological force that drives species to evolve to perfection. This force is built in to the organic world. Henry Fairfield Osborn, the "giant of paleontology", explained that once a "perfect mechanism evolved, evolution stopped" (Ruse, 1996, p. 265). Evolution continues until a maximized structure evolves, at which point evolutionary change ceases and stasis prevails. The evolution of organisms would be driven in one direction to a "state of perfection."

Of course, the most well known supposed example of goal-directed evolution is the famous human evolution progression series, which we will discuss further below.

The Spread of the Orthogenesis Idea

One of the earliest supposed examples of goal-directed evolution is the horse. Professor Othniel Marsh, a 19th century  paleontologist, collected a magnificent set of fossil horses and then attempted to trace its evolution

from a small three-toed animal "the size of a fox" through larger animals with progressively larger hooves, developed from the middle toe. Darwin thought Marsh's sequence from little Eohippus ("Dawn horse") to modern Equus was the best evolutionary demonstration anyone has produced in the 15 years since the Origin of Species (1859) was published (Milner, 1990, p.220).
Marsh's classic orthogenetic, unilinear horse evolution soon became "enshrined in every biology textbook and in a famous exhibit at the American Museum of Natural History" (Milner, 1990, p.220).

Osborn argued that evolutionary parallelism - today called convergent evolution - was persuasive evidence for orthogenesis. Convergent evolution is when animal structures evolve along discrete, but similar, lines to yield very similar structures (Colbert, 1994, p.64). Thus, wings are believed to have evolved separately at least three times (in birds, bats, and pterodactyls). To Osborn these examples proved the existence of the orthogenetic inward drive.

Orthogenesis was further popularized by Jesuit paleontologist Teilhard de Chardin. He argued for an orthogenetic evolution that would eventually reach a state of perfection, which he called the "Omega Point". De Chardin wrote that without orthogenesis life would only have merely spread out, but with it, the ascent of life became "inevitable" (1959, p. 109).

In recent years, orthogenesis was used by Calvin College physics professor Howard Van Till [who has moved away from Calvinism - MM] His theory concluded that a "complete initial creation" and an inbuilt "robust foundational formational economy" are responsible for the creation of all things, living and nonliving (1990, pp. 112-115). This form of vitalism credits God with constructing the seeds of life very early in the universe, and for this reason life contains the drive to perfect itself. (This view is simply another form of theistic evolution and orthogenesis).

Opposition to Orthogenesis by Evolutionists

Close to a century after Marsh's horse exhibit first appeared, the paleontologist George Gaylord Simpson reexamined horse evolution and "concluded that generations of students had been misled" (Milner, 1990, p.220). Simpson (1951, pp. 163-171) argued that horse evolution was not gradual. Teeth, toes, and even body size "varied in different lineages, independently of each other" (Milner, 1990, p.220). He concluded that orthogenesis did not provide an adequate explanation of horse evolution (Simpson, 1953).

Of course, the most well known supposed example of goal-directed evolution is the famous human evolution progression series pictured above. However, the prominent evolutionist Stephen Jay Gould (1989, p.30) concluded this series is a gross distortion of the fossil evidence.

Problems with the Human Evolution Progression Series, courtesy
http://thinkinginchrist.com/2010/02/human-evolution-drawings/
Ultimately, most evolutionists rejected orthogenesis because it fails to explain the source of the "unknown inner forces inherent in organisms" that moved them "toward some ideal goal". Simpson was opposed because he concluded it required "some mysterious inner force" that cannot be explained by science (Simpson, 1953, p. 125).

The orthogenesis theory has largely been abandoned, because no plausible physical mechanism for the postulated internal drive that caused life to evolve in a specific direction was ever found (Ruse, 1996; Simpson, 1967). Examples used to support it have all been shown to have many exceptions and irregularities or are just plan wrong. Darwinists vehemently rejected the conclusion that "direction" exists in evolution (Simpson, 1967, p.132).

Creation Science's Answer to Orthogenesis

Howe (1965, 1972, 1999, and 2000) has summarized and evaluated a great deal of evidence. It is erroneous to see "convergent evolution" as supporting orthogenesis. Instead, our Creator displays his extraordinary versatility by producing wings in different kinds of animals that are taxonomically widely separated. Such parallelism supports creation, not evolution.

The collapse of each new attempt to explain the origin of new biological information in species is additional support for the creation origins views. The neo-Darwinian concept of mutations and natural selection may well also be discarded when its limitations are more fully understood.

References (selected)

Bowler, P.J. Theodor Eimer and orthogenesis: evolution by "definitely directed variations." Journal of the History of Medicine 34(1):40-73.

Colbert, Edwin H. 1994. Four giants of paleontology, Natural History 5:62-67.

Darwin, Charles. 1896. Animals and Plants Under Domestication. Vol II. D. Appleton, New York, NY.

De Chardin, P.T. 1959. The Phenomenon of Man. With an Introduction by Julian Huxley. Harper, New York, NY.

Esenstein, J.H. 2003. Death to intelligent design. The Harvard Crimson Online Edition, March 3, 2003.

Gould, S.J. 1989. Wonderful Life: The Burgess Shale and the Nature of life. Norton: New York, NY.

Howe, G.F. 1965. Homology, analogy, and creative components in plants. Creation Research Society Quarterly 2:11-21.

Howe, G.F. 1972. Homology, analogy, and innovative teaching. Unpublished manuscript. georgefhowe@sbcglobal.net.

Howe, G.F. 1999. Homology and origins. Creation Matters 4:1-5.

Howe, G.F. 2000. The origins of flowering plants. Creation Research Society Quarterly 37:66-67.

Milner, Richard. 1990. The Encyclopedia of Evolution: Humanity's Search for Its Origins. Facts on File, New York, NY.

Ruse, M. 1996. Monad to Man: The Concept of Progress in Evolutionary Biology. Harvard University Press, Cambridge, MA.

Simpson, George Gaylord. 1951. Horses: The Story of the Horse Family in the Modern World and Through Sixty Million Years of History. Oxford University Press, New York, NY.

Simpson, George Gaylord. 1953. Life of the Past. Yale University Press, New Haven, CT.

Simpson, George Gaylord. 1967. The Meaning of Evolution. Yale University Press, New Haven, CT.

Van Till, Howard J. 1990. The scientific investigation of cosmic history. In Van Till, Howard, J., Robert E. Snow, John H. Stek, and Davis A. Young (editors), Portraits of Creation: Biblical and Scientific Perspectives on the World's Formation, pp. 82-125. Eerdmans, Grand Rapids, MI.

Saturday, January 15, 2011

Did God Design Eons of Death into the Creation?

If there were eons of pain, suffering, and death before the awful rebellion of Adam brought "death" into the world, then the suffering of our Lord Jesus becomes unnecessary.

Some have suggested that all living things were originally designed by God to die, that over the millions of years in which animal and pre-human life was developing, death played a perfectly natural role in the creation. Some have even taught that the death which God threatened Adam with was a "special" kind of death that applied only to humans.

Necessary death and long ages are exactly what atheistic science would advocate. How can the God who is life create death as part of His own signature? How ludicrous to think God would design death into His creation, and then agonize over the necessity of His own death in order to bring us salvation. Death by the design of God is absolutely foreign to the revealed nature of God (Romans 1:20).

In Genesis 3--the turning point in Scripture--all of the "good" was instantly withdrawn by God, who by His word activated the "groaning and travailing" of the earth and its inhabitants. The ground was cursed, yielding thorns and thistles, surrounding Adam with sorrowful labor for the rest of his life until he himself would return to the earth from which he was fashioned.

But was God lying? Was He now blaming Adam for what He Himself had done? If the death pronounced by God is nothing more than a "symbol" of a greater message, then death can be relegated to a mystical musing that has no tangible meaning.

A most dangerous extension of the "death" equation is that physical death becomes essentially irrelevant in the punishment of sin. Gethsemane's agonizing was for nothing, and the hundreds of warnings, curses, and consequences detailed in Scripture are now twisted into allegorical advice or suggestions.

If there were eons of pain, suffering, and death before the awful rebellion of Adam brought "death" into the world, then the suffering of our Lord Jesus becomes unnecessary. If the "wages of sin" is nothing more than some sort of spiritualized distance from the Creator, then the entire burden of sin becomes nothing more than a mental attitude. Heaven and hell are "what you make of it."

(extracted from Henry Morris III, "The Issues of Death", Acts & Facts, November 2009, Institute of Creation Research)

Parable of a Man and the Immovable Rock

A man was sleeping in his cabin one night when suddenly his room filled with light, and God appeared. The Lord told the man he had work for him to do, and showed him a large rock at the shore near the man's cabin. The Lord explained that the man was to push against the rock with all his might…

So, obedient to the Lord's request, the man pushed day after day, week after week. For many years he toiled from sunup to sundown, his shoulders set squarely against the cold, massive surface of the unmoving rock, pushing with all his might!

Each night the man returned to his cabin sore and worn out, feeling that his whole day had been spent in vain. Satan decided to enter the picture by placing thoughts into the weary mind: “You have been pushing against that rock for a long time and absoulutely nothing has happened. Don't you know that it is an impossible task? Why not just put in your time, and do the minimum amount of effort. That will be good enough.”

Feeling like a failure, the man decided maybe that's what he should do. However, he thought that since God had asked him to do this task, he would take his failure to God and see what God wanted him to do. “Lord,” he prayed, “You know everything. You know I have been faithful to Your request. But in all all this time, I have not even budged that rock even one inch. Why am I such a failure?”

Compassionately the Lord responded, “My friend, you accepted my request and were faithful to the mission that I gave you, to push against the rock with all of your strength. You have done this. But never once did I mention to you that I expected you to move it.”

“Your task was to push. Look at yourself. Your back, your muscles, your hands are stronger than when you started. You were patient and obedient to my command. Along the way you have grown in faith and wisdom. That's why even in your discouragement, you didn't give in to despair, but you turned to Me for direction. Well done, good and faithful servant.”

(from a Christian newsletter, January 2011)

Wednesday, January 12, 2011

Please write Encouraging Letters to these Christian Prisoners

Li Ying, China: A Chinese court sentenced Christian Journalist Li Ying to 15 years in prison for her role in the publication of an underground church magazine in China. Only the state-controlled TSPM church can legally produce a magazine. All other Christian publications are illegal. Li Ying was arrested in April 2001 along with 16 others and was originally sentenced to death in December 2001. After a retrial, ordered by the Hubei Provincial Supreme Court in October 2002, her sentence was reduced to the current 15-year term. Arrest and imprisonment are not new to Li Ying, who is only in here early thirties. She has been arrested many times and spent a year in prison in 1996. Li Ying cannot have a Bible and is forced to work 15 hours a day. Prison officials, stunned by the thousands of letters she receives at the prison, ask her, "How many overseas relatives do you have?" Please pray that this young woman will persevere in faith during her imprisonment.

Please send an encouraging letter to:
Li Ying
No. 2 Division, Section 3
Wuhan Female Prison
Wuhan City
Hubei Province, 430032
Peoples Republic of China

Asia Bibi, Pakistan: Asia Bibi, a 37-year old Pakistani woman from the village of Ittanwali, was arrested in June 2009 after telling a group of Muslim women, "Our Christ is the true prophet of God, and yours is not true." The woman had been pressuring Asia to convert to Islam, but she held to her Christian faith. Christians there urged the police not to file blasphemy charged, but police claimed that they must go forward due to pressure from local Muslim leaders. On Nov. 8, 2010, a judge sentenced Asia to death. At press time, her attorney was preparing an appeal.

Please send an encouraging letter to:
Asia Bibi
District Jail
Sheikhupura
Punjab
Pakistan

Dmitry Shestakov, Uzbekistan: On Jan 21, 2007, Pastor Dmitry Shestakov was arrested during a raid on his Full Gospel Church in Andijan, Uzbekistan. Uzbekistan's Religious Affairs Committee claims that Shestakov, an evangelical pastor affiliated with the registered Full Gospel Church, is not an authorized leader of an officially recognized religious organization in Uzbekistan. They describe him as an "imposter" who leads an underground group of "charismatic Pentecostals" engaged in proselytizing. Pastor Shestakov is appealing his four-year labor camp sentence.

Please send an encouraging letter to:
Dmitry Shestakov
Ispravitelnoye Uchrezhdeniye 64/29
Novoyiskaya Oblast
Uzbekistan

(from Voice of the Martyrs newsletter, January 2011)

Tuesday, January 11, 2011

Iran rounds up Christians in crackdown

In the midst of tyranny, thousands of Iranian Muslims are finding hope in Christ! They are being invited to Iran's house churches by other Muslims who have turned to Jesus. And Iran's fundamentalist Islamic government is embarassed. They can only offer stepped up arrests and repression.

AP reports that "Iran has arrested about 70 Christians since Christmas in a crackdown that demonstrates the limits of religious tolerance by Islamic leaders who often boast they provide room for other faiths. Caught in the middle is the small community of Iranian Christians who get together for prayer and Bible readings in private residences and out of sight of authorities. They are part of a wider "house church" movement that has taken root in other places with tight controls on Christian activities such as China and Indonesia.

"Authorities increasingly view them with suspicions that range from trying to convert Muslims to being possible footholds for foreign influence."

Christian activists claim their Iranian brethren are being persecuted simply for worshipping outside officially sanctioned mainstream churches.

"Iran has claimed as a point of pride that it makes space for other religions. But in past years, authorities have staged arrests on Christians and other religious minorities, but the latest sweeps appears to be among the biggest and most coordinated.

"In the West, the followers are drawn to house churches because of the intimate sense of religious fellowship and as an alternative to established denominations. In places such as Iran, however, there also is the effort to avoid monitoring of sanctioned churches from Islamic authorities — who have kept closer watch on religious minorities since the chaos after hard-line President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad's disputed election in 2009.

"Tehran Governor Morteza Tamadon described the Christians as "hard-line" missionaries who have "inserted themselves into Islam like a parasite," according to the official Islamic Republic News Agency.

"It's the nature of the house churches that worries Iran. It's all about possible converts," said Fleur Brading, a researcher for Middle East and North Africa at Christian Solidarity Worldwide, a British-based group the follows Christian rights issues around the world. "It's a very specific and pinpoint strike by Iran."

"The wave of arrests began Christmas morning and since then, opposition websites have reported 70 Christians arrested, including those regarded as pastors in the house church movement. Many were later released, but the reports say more than a dozen remain in detention and officials have hinted more raids are possible.

"The use of the word missionaries instead of evangelicals is an intentional move by the government," she said. "As evangelicals, they are a group entitled to their faith. As missionaries, they are enemies of the state seeking to corrupt its people."

"What's most troubling about this wave of detentions is the fact that Iran is continuing its recent trend of targeting evangelical Christians, which they've been doing for years, and also leaders from the recognized and protected Armenian Christian community," said Leonard Leo, chairman of the U.S. Commission on International Religious Freedom, an independent government advisory panel.
"The manager of the Iranian Christian News Agency, Saman Kamvar, said authorities likely perceive some kind of challenge to the religious status quo and are "feeling insecure." "This, in my opinion, was a green light to the other authorities to crack down on them," Kamvar said from Canada, where he now lives.

(for more, see Iran rounds up Christians in crackdown, Brian Murphy, Associated Press)

Sunday, January 09, 2011

Body, Soul & Life Everlasting


The best book on resurrection that I've read is John W. Cooper, Body, Soul & Life Everlasting, Biblical Anthropology and the Monism-Dualism Debate, 1989, Eerdmans, Grand Rapids. 


Sorry, it does not try to deduce principles of the resurrection from fantastic models of physics.... Instead, Cooper goes to both the Old Testament and New and gives a very satisfying explanation of what awaits believers after death, in both the intermediate state before they receive their glorified bodies, and who they will be after judgment day.

Here is Cooper's own summary:

Body, Soul and Life Everlasting makes the case that as Holy Scripture progressively discloses what happens to humans when they die, it teaches not only that each of us will undergo bodily resurrection, but that believers continue to exist 'with the Lord' until the resurrection. The Old Testament notion of ghostly survival in Sheol, eventually augmented with an affirmation of bodily resurrection, is developed by the Holy Spirit into the New Testament's revelation of fellowship with Christ between each believer's death and the general resurrection at Christ's return. Thus the Bible indicates that humans do not cease to exist between death and resurrection, a condition sometimes euphemistically termed 'soul sleep,' or that final resurrection occurs immediately upon death.

Body, Soul goes on to argue that, given this teaching of Scripture, human nature must be so constituted that we - the very individuals who live on earth - can exist at least temporarily while our physical bodies or organisms do not. In other words, there must be enough of a duality in human nature so that God can sustain Moses, Paul, and my mother in fellowship with him even though they are currently without their earthly bodies. At the same time, I follow Scripture, most traditional theology, and almost all current thought in emphasizing the unity of human nature, its essential bodiliness, and resurrection as the final Christian hope. All things considered, therefore, the biblical view of the human constitution is some kind of 'holistic dualism.'
(from John W. Cooper, Body, Soul & Life Everlasting, Eerdmans, Grand Rapids, 1989, pp. xv-xvi)

So, if you have entrusted your life to Jesus Christ, what happens to you when you die? The body is dead, but the soul is not. Your soul goes into the intermediate state, where you wait for the day of judgment and resurrection, when you will receive your new glorified body. While you are in the intermediate state, you are alive. Your soul is conscious of the presence of the Lord and that of other believers, and you are in a state of slowed-down existence.

You are also filled with the joy and hope of the coming resurrection, which comes without the anxious waiting of time as you presently know it. Finally, when you receive your glorified body, you are ushered into the new reality of a new Heaven and Earth. All along the way, you retain your full identity as the person that God made you, in Christ!

Saturday, January 08, 2011

Beauty is a Reality that is a Touch from God...

At the university campus, the teachers were brilliant. But they flatly denied any possibility that God had created all the wonders of the world of living things around us. My parents had warned me not to believe evolution, but now I saw that my parents weren't educated in science, so how could they know? My professors seemed so honest, as if they were willing to go wherever the facts led...

Then spring came. One morning I walked on campus and looked up and saw the dogwood in bloom. It was so beautiful that it stopped me in my tracks. It came clearly into my mind that beauty was a reality that science had no room for. It was such a clear touch from God in my soul.


(from a letter to the editor, Institute for Creation Research, Act & Facts, January 2011)

Noah's Ark - A Scale Model Being Built to Demonstrate Feasibility

ICR Act & Facts reports that Ernie Carrasco is building an ark.

"Carrasco is a student in ICR’s School of Biblical Apologetics (SOBA). He is constructing a scale model of Noah’s Ark.

"He used the Bible as his primary research tool before starting the construction of the 1/60th scale model. “Dr. Henry M. Morris included some excellent notes in The New Defender’s Study Bible that offer great insight,” he said. Other valuable resources included The Genesis Flood by Drs. John Whitcomb and Morris, as well as Noah’s Ark: A Feasibility Study by John Woodmorappe.

"The interior of the model Carrasco started constructing in March 2010 measures approximately 7.5 feet long, 15 inches wide, and over nine inches tall. He said he plans to leave one wall open so viewers can see interior details such as stairwells and animal pens.

“Well, Noah took 120 years to build his. And it is a 1/60th scale model, so that means two years,” he laughed. “I think I have some time.”

(extracted from Christine Dao, "ICR's Modern-Day Noah", Acts & Facts, January 2011, Institute of Creation Research)

(also see How did Noah fit all the animals on the ark?)

New Young Earth Creationist Science Curriculum for Schools

"The Institute for Creation Research unveiled its new Science Education Essentials curriculum at Christian school and homeschool conventions across the United States this past fall.

"Science Education Essentials is a series of science teaching supplements that exemplifies what ICR does best—providing solid answers for the tough questions teachers face about science and origins.

"This series promotes a biblical worldview by presenting conceptual knowledge and comprehension of the science that supports creation. The supplements help teachers approach the content and Bible with ease and with the authority needed to help their students build a defense for Genesis 1-11.

 
"Modules include: 

"Each supplement includes a teacher's manual and a CD-ROM packed with K-12 reproducible classroom activities designed to work within your school’s existing science curriculum, with an uncompromising foundation of creation-based science instruction.
 
"If you work in a Christian school or homeschool your children, visit www.icr.org/essentials for more information about obtaining these Bible-based science curriculum supplements for your school."
 
(For more, read, 2011. ICR Science Curriculum Debuts at Education Conferences. Acts & Facts. 40 (1): 18.)

 

The Stones Cry Out: What Rocks and Fossils Say about the Age of the Earth

Brian Thomas asks, is it accurate to think that rocks and fossils show abundant evidence of a very old earth, millions of year old?

The answer is no! First, each sedimentary rock layer containing fossils had to have formed rapidly because that’s the only way the fossils would have been preserved. Second, upper layers formed soon after the lower ones were deposited, since there is no sign of erosion in the razor-sharp contacts between them. Therefore, whole sections of the rock column were deposited in rapid succession, as would be expected in a widespread watery cataclysm. Genesis describes the year-long process of Flood waters increasing, prevailing, and then assuaging, eventually snuffing out all land vertebrates not protected on the Ark.



The fossil record is replete with evidence of soft parts, such as worm or clam bodies and burrows, as well as original soft tissues! Creatures with soft bodies or tissues would need to be fossilized within a shorter timeframe than it would take for them to decay. These fossils and other rock features have convinced mainstream geologists to reduce the amount of time involved when interpreting a single rock layer.

Many now recognize that each layer was borne of a high-energy watery event. The contacts between strata often look “razor sharp,”5 are very flat, and extend for many square miles.

If each fossil-filled layer formed rapidly, and if there is very little time between each layer, then rocks and fossils developed within a relatively short timeframe. Christians should be encouraged to look at the rocks and fossils themselves and compare them with the biblical record, instead of relying on “a majority of authorities” who write their own world history apart from that given by the highest ranking authority.

(extracted from Brian Thomas, "The Stones Cry Out: What Rocks and Fossils Say about the Age of the Earth", Acts & Facts, January 2011, Institute of Creation Research)

No Evolutionary Evidences for the Descent of Man

Frank Sherwin writes that the list of evidences that were supposed to validate man’s evolutionary ascent from “lower” life forms has been expunged by decades of good scientific research.

For instance, recently discovered footprints look surprisingly human. Creation scientists are vilified for suggesting the unthinkable—perhaps they were actually made by humans!

Dentists with a Darwinian philosophy may suggest removing wisdom teeth because of the “evolution” of the human jaw. Although some molars may indeed need extraction, it demonstrably has nothing to do with evolution.

Many evolutionists point to chronic back problems as evidence that humans recently stood upright from tetrapod ancestors. But back troubles most directly correlate to bad habits, injury, or other abuses. Evolution has exactly nothing to do with back pain.

Many secular schools still teach the unscientific concept that structures such as tonsils, adenoids, and the appendix are useless vestiges of an evolutionary past.

There is no fossil evidence that man evolved from some subhuman creature. One science writer put it, “The last common ancestor of chimpanzees and humans remains a holy grail in science.”

(extracted from Frank Sherwin, "Design of Man: No Evolutionary Evidences", Acts & Facts, January 2011, Institute of Creation Research)

References (selected)

Thomas, B. Human Evolution Story Stumbles over Footprints. ICR News. Posted April 6, 2010, accessed November 10, 2010.

Viegas, J. The Human Family Tree. Discovery News. Posted on discovery.com, accessed November 11, 2010.

Children's Textbooks Still Teach False Evolutionists Claims

"All the scientific evidences supposedly supporting evolution that were slated for use in the famous Scope Monkey trial of 1925, have been thoroughly discredited today. Even evolutionists no longer use them.

"But these discredited evidences are still repeated in school textbooks today! When confronted, evolutionists admit the faulty claims, but insist they still be used in textbooks since there are no better claims that are so effective in teaching evolution(!) And so millions of American schoolchildren each year are indoctrinated in a false worldview.

"Consider, among others:
  • Neanderthal Man—a fully human people group, with art, music, agriculture, weapons, etc.
  • Piltdown Man—an embarrassing scientific forgery; an ape’s jaw coupled with a human skull-cap
  • Nebraska Man—touted as an ape-man, but represented by nothing more than a fossilized pig’s tooth
  • Embryonic recapitulation—forged drawings of embryos that supposedly show humans related to the animals
  • Peppered moth—mere color shifts in a population that have now shifted back
  • Vestigial organs—thought to be evolutionary leftovers, but now known to be functional
"Nevertheless, truth will win out. Christians are attempting to regain lost ground in the political, educational, and religious arenas. Interest in creation still flourishes today, spawning thousands of creation scientists, hundreds of creationist organizations, and millions of creation believers. Polls taken in America consistently show a majority of people hold to some form of creation, especially young-earth creation.

"Things are not what they should be, but neither are they as bad as before. What a wonderful time to be a Bible-believing Christian/creationist recruit in the Lord’s army.
  
(extracted from John D. Morris, "The Creation Worldview and the Scopes Trial", Acts & Facts, January 2011, Institute of Creation Research)

Nigerian Christians victims of the Dogo Nahawa attack

"When you are going home from work in northern Nigeria and you are a Christian, it is very possible that you may not come home at night. But it is possible to come home at night even if you are caught, if you are willing to say 'Allah is god and Mohammed is his prophet.'

"Think about your family at home, and imagine that you are on your way home and you are stopped by a mob of vicious people saying, 'Repeat after me or die.' Suddenly I realize our faith in the West may be fairly broad theologically, but it is not all that deep sometimes. These people in Nigeria, they don't know a lot of answers to Bible stories, and they probably can't give a good discussion on why Arminianism and Calvinism are right or wrong. But I can tell you that when people step up to them with a gun or a knife, and they are asked, 'Will you repeat after me?' and they say, 'No, Jesus is Lord,' their theology is very deep and we need that. I need that."

Dr. Paul met with doctors who treated victims who survived the March 2010 Dogo Nahawa attack in Nigeria. He comments further: "I have been an orthopedic surgeon now in practice for 25 years, and I have done a lot of emergency room work. I think 500 or 501 is the total number of people in this grave, approximately 450 from Dogo Nahawa and another 50 from the sister village that also tried to escape the Muslim attackers are buried here as well.... I have not seen this level of human tragedy in all my time I don't think, at least in such a concentrated form. It affected me because of the ... volume of it and seeing beyond, and knowing what the injury means to the person, and knowing how little resources are available in this country. As I prayed, I said 'God, what are you doing here? What is this?' I just had a terrible time with it.


A boy sitting with his mother cries
during a funeral for people killed in
religious attacks in the
Dogo Nahawa village
"The thing that struck me about these Christians, besides the depth of their commitment, was - and probably related to their commitment - was their ability to forgive. I am just amazed at their ability, supernaturally I am sure, to forgive their tormentors.

"They haven't given up. They believe that they are going to carry on."

(from Voice of the Martyrs, January 2011 newsletter)

(for more, see news stories from allAfrica.com, ChinaDaily.com)

Launching Balloons into North Korea

"My country is madness," says a North Korean who escaped to China. "The food we get is worse than that of pigs. We are without clothing, medicine and treatment for the sick. Living in North Korea is like living in hell. Thank God and thank you all who serve the Lord. His people are supplying our material and other needs with God's love, and I am thankful for that. We will learn the Word of God and grow in faith, and promise we will do the work of the Lord until the last day of our lives."

VOM distributes thousands of Scripture leaflets in North Korea, bringing the Word of God to people who are forbidden to study it.




North Korean Christians do study it, and they share the gospel with one another despite the ever present risk of a death penalty. Many large balloons are launched into North Korea, each with Scripture leaflets in large bags, which open over North Korea and drop the leaflets to earth. The gospel is reaching North Koreans and continues to bring them hope!

(from Voice of the Martyrs, January 2011 newsletter)

Friday, January 07, 2011

Destiny

Your Thoughts determine your Actions,

your Actions determine your Character,

and your Character determines your Destiny.

(Robert A. Cook, "Walk with the King today, and be a blessing")

Nations Clamping Down on Internet Freedom

Scott Bradner comments that Internet Freedom is under attack by nations around the world, in his article Goodbye Internet, we hardly knew ye?

"Throughout its history, the Internet, in most places, has been essentially free from government regulation. There are significant exceptions -- a few countries do quite an effective job of controlling Internet content and a number of countries control specific Internet technologies such as encryption and VoIP. But, on the whole, the Internet has been left alone.

"Governments, in general, do not much like the Internet, or at least the Internet-based activities that they do not control. Some governments, such as China, have established strong controls over the Internet in their own countries. Venezuela has just proposed to do the same.

"Restructuring the Internet so that each country has a control point could easily wipe out the ability of Internet users to find out what is going on in the world.

"But we do not have to wait until the UN acts to see the future. The U.S. government recently seized a bunch of domain names without letting the owners contest the seizure.

"News reports show that the U.S. government pressured PayPal and Amazon to stop supporting WikiLeaks, again without any due process. You do not have to be a fan of WikiLeaks to understand that letting the U.S. government decide, on its own, without the legal process defined in our Constitution, what should and what should not be accessible on the Internet is not a recipe for freedom. Maybe they can take pointers from China."

(for more, see Goodbye Internet, we hardly knew ye?, by Scott Bradner)

(Also see 10 Ways the Chinese Internet is Different From Yours)

Facebook is Big Brother, not Google

"Here is what Ryan Singel says in a deep-dive post that gets to the meat of why Facebook scares Google so much.

Singel argued "it's because Facebook with its Like Button and other social plug-ins, has found "a way of placing ads anywhere on the Net with a granularity Google can only dream of -- in no small part because Google promised its users never to go down that path." Singel added:


"One, there's so much interaction and information being shared inside Facebook that it has become a decent-sized replica of the Web inside the Web. And Google can't crawl and analyze much of what happens in there. That's a problem when your goal is to organize the world's information. Google is blind to this because much of what happens on Facebook remains in Facebook. ... The problem is that Google built a wall between user search data and advertising -- and the mammoth financial success of AdWords proved that the separation was fine at the time.

"Two, Facebook knows who you are and has the right to use that information because you explicitly gave it to them. Google has different kinds of data that reveal a lot about who you are and what you are interested in -- some of it very private. But very little of that data is information you explicitly told the company to share, and they've assiduously promised not to use your search history and e-mail data to profile of you."

(For more, see Why Facebook Has Google over a Barrel: Social Ads, by Clint Boulton, 11/15/2010)

Wednesday, January 05, 2011

A New Creationist Cosmology: In No Time at All

Dr. Russell Humphreys gives a possible solution to the question of how stars can be seen many millions of light years away if only a few thousand years have passed since they were created. There is a Fifth Dimension that can explain the problem of Starlight and Time!

According to Humphreys, the universe that we see through our telescopes can be explained by God working in a Fifth Dimension, outside of space and time, to change the tension in the fabric of space. This tension affects the speed of light, and can actually freeze time itself. During Day Four of creation, time froze on Earth, while the stars and galaxies that were spun off into the heavens went through millions of years. The timeless region in the heavens rapidly imploded toward our Earth, and when it broke through sometime during that Fourth Day, the stars and galaxies were finally visible, in all their ancient glory! And yet, only 24 hours passed on Earth that day...

(Marko Malyj's abridged version of A New Creationist Cosmology: In No Time at All Part, Parts 1 and 2, by Larry Vardiman and D. Russell Humphreys, 2010-11):

One of the issues that concern many people who wish to adopt young-earth creationism as a valid view of earth history is the question of how stars can be seen many millions of light years away if only a few thousand years have passed since they were created. Dr. Russell Humphreys, a previous researcher at Institute for Creation Research (ICR), spent years working on this problem and has developed a creationist cosmology that seems to resolve this question.

On the fourth day of creation, how long did it take God to make the stars and bring their light to earth? No time at all, according to clocks here on earth. That is what Humphreys concludes from his new creationist cosmology research. The cosmology presented in his 1994 book, Starlight and Time (Humphreys 1994) had the light getting to earth in a finite amount of time, not instantaneously. The general features of that cosmology—a universe centered upon our galaxy, expansion of space, and gravitational time dilation—still appear to be correct. But Humphreys was never fully satisfied with its details.

After several months of mathematical work, Humphreys found the solution and the Journal of Creation published his results (Humphreys 2008).

Time Stands Still

Humphrey's new metric (an allowable solution of Einstein’s gravity equations) is not complicated, compared to many modern ones. Because it is simple and yet rigorous, it shows a feature of gravitational time dilation that nobody had noticed before. Humphreys calls this feature of time dilation achronicity, or “timelessness.” It causes clocks and all physical processes—hence, time itself—to be completely stopped in a region that could be very large. This is in contrast to the time dilation around a black hole, in which time is completely stopped only at a certain exact distance from its center, at the “event horizon.” (Hawking 1988).

Space Is Like a Scroll

Space is not empty. Both science and Scripture strongly imply that space is a solid material that we cannot see or feel, though quantum field theory suggests it is extremely dense (Humphreys 1994). We move freely through it and it moves freely through us (Feynman 1965). See Scriptures like Isaiah 40:22: “[God] stretches out the heavens like a [tent] curtain” (NASB), and 16 other similar verses (2 Samuel 22:10; Job 9:8, 26:7, 37:18; Psalm 18:9, 104:2, 144:5; Isaiah 42:5, 44:24, 45:12, 48:13, 51:13; Jeremiah 10:12, 51:15; Ezekiel 1:22; Zechariah 12:1).

Lay a piece of typing paper flat on a table. Now roll up the paper like a scroll. You used the third dimension, height, in the air above the table to roll it up. But here is an amazing thing—Scripture says the same thing about the heavens:


And the heavens shall be rolled up like a scroll. (Isaiah 34:4, NKJV)

The context here is the “host of heaven,” which includes the stars, and “the heavens.” Yet God says He will roll them up like a scroll. That implies that the heavens are thin in a fourth direction that we cannot see. the extra dimension makes sense of the equations of Einstein’s general theory of relativity by giving room in which the “spacetime continuum” can be bent. Time is yet another dimension according to relativity theory, but it is different from the space dimensions.

The Analogy of the Trampoline

If the heavens are thin in one dimension, and like a stretchable fabric under tension, we can compare them to the fabric in a trampoline. Put a heavy ring inside the circular frame on the trampoline. Notice that the weight of the ring makes a dent in the fabric of the trampoline, as in Figure 3. In just the same way (but with more dimensions), Einstein’s gravity equations say the presence of a mass bends the fabric of space. For dents that are not very deep, this picture also fits Newton’s gravity equations.

The First Day of Creation

Now that we have the trampoline analogy in place, we are ready to understand some of the gravitational implications of creation. Recall that Genesis 1:2 mentions water:

And the earth was without form, and void; and darkness was upon the face of the deep. And the Spirit of God moved upon the face of the waters. (KJV)

Notice “the deep.” This was probably ordinary liquid H2O and would have been in the shape of a ball a few light years in diameter. If Newton’s gravitational constant G had the same value then as now (not necessarily true), all of the water would be well within the event horizon of a black hole.

Now, replace the ring on our trampoline with a heavy metal ball to represent “the deep.” Gravity would be strong around “the deep.” Almost certainly time dilation was taking place. One ordinary-length day of time passed during which time the ball would have contracted due to gravity.

The Beginning of the Second Day of Creation

At the center of “the deep,” God marked off a relatively small spherical region of water. He marked it off with a thin region of space that He called “the firmament,” or in other translations “the expanse” (Genesis 1:7). The Hebrew word raqia suggests something solid that was spread out, such as the bronze hammered thin and spread over the altar of sacrifice (Numbers 16:38). The raqia is understood to consist of the same dense, intangible, and invisible material that was mentioned above, the fabric of space. Above the raqia were the rest of the waters of the deep. Above the waters was more empty space (empty to our perception, but again a material) extending out many billions of light years.

Then, God began spreading out, or expanding, the raqia, hence giving the word its connection with “spreading out.” Somehow, God carried the waters above the firmament outward above the raqia. As the spreading out continued, the waters above the expanse would have become thinner, eventually breaking up into large and small drops of water. Then the drops would begin freezing from the outside inward. So, eventually the waters above the firmament would become a relatively thin region, shaped like a spherical shell, of ice particles.

The Second Day of Creation

The gravitational effect of the shell of waters above the raqia expanding on the second day of creation can be simulated on the trampoline. Remove the heavy metal ball we introduced and replace it with a pebble (representing the small ball of water that is the future earth) within a ring of metal having the same weight as the metal ball. Now there is a nearly-flat area within the ring except for a small dent made by the pebble at the center.

As God expanded the waters above the raqia, the dent in the fabric of space became shallower. This had important relativistic effects on time and space.

God called the raqia “heaven” (Genesis 1:8). At this point, the only created matter within the shell of waters above the heavens was an earth-sized ball of water. According to clues from physics, the expansion of the shell and the raqia is still happening today.

The Remaining Days of Creation

On the third day, God formed the waters below the firmament into the seas and dry land of planet earth, and then He made plants on the dry land. The only light source was apparently God Himself, as Psalm 104:2 suggests: “Who coverest thyself with light as with a garment.” Throughout the third day, the firmament was devoid of sun, moon, planets, and stars.

The new metric (solution of Einstein’s gravity equations) Humphreys developed to describe the relationship among mass, space, and time says (Humphreys 2008) that:
  • the distribution of mass controls the fabric of space,
  • the fabric of space controls the speed of light, and  
  • the speed of light controls time.
Time is speeded up or slowed down throughout space according to the distribution of mass. Figure 2 shows the relative speed of clocks as a function of gravitational potential energy and distance from the center of the cosmos where the initial mass was created. Notice that time slows down at lower potential energy until a critical value is reached. This value called the critical depth is the level below which time itself stops. This condition without time is called the achronous (no time) region.


Imagine that events prior to Day Four have expanded space and moved the shell of “waters above the heavens” out to a radius of, say, one billion light years. This would have left the earth and the nearly-flat fabric of space within the ring just above the critical potential.

Now imagine that during the fourth day, God created star masses in a way that would form a linearly-dented perturbation in the otherwise flat potential of the fabric of space, as shown in Figure 3.

The horizontal dashed line in Figure 3 represents the critical potential. As soon as God created the galaxy masses, the fabric of space began sinking slowly and the central part—containing the earth—dropped below the critical potential. An observer in ordinary space a bit farther from the center would have seen a black sphere appear at the center of the cosmos and begin growing in size. The entire interior of the sphere was an achronous region. For slow-moving objects in that region, time would have stopped. The critical potential depends on the speed of light, which in turn depends on the tension in the fabric of space. If, as God stretched or contracted the fabric of space (Isaiah 40:22), He changed the tension simultaneously everywhere, the speed of light changed and the position of the critical potential with respect to the fabric also changed. The critical potential line in Figure 3 could have moved up or down quite rapidly

A Light Transit-time Scenario on Day Four


Let’s suppose that God now increased the tension in the fabric of space, and the critical potential line moved downward. As each galaxy emerged from the receding timeless region, it resumed emitting light. Some of the emitted light would have gone inward toward the center (see Figure 4). When the sphere of timelessness reached zero radius and disappeared, the earth emerged, and immediately the light that had been following the sphere reached earth, even light that started billions of light years away. The stretching of the fabric of space had been occurring continuously all along the light trajectory, thus red-shifting the light wavelength.

On earth, it was still only the fourth day. An observer on the night side of the earth would have seen a black sky one instant, and a sky filled with stars the next. With a telescope he would also be able to see distant galaxies with suitably red-shifted spectra. From Day Four until now, about 6,000 years later, an observer on earth would have been able to see stars billions of light years away.

Implications and Elaborations

Although we have presented the basics of Humphreys’ new cosmology in these two articles (Vardiman and Humphreys, 2010, 2011), it has been in an abbreviated form without equations and elaborate illustrations. In a third article, we will conclude this discussion by describing the implications of Humphreys’ cosmology in more detail using a composite figure to illustrate the effects of stretching the heavens on earth time, cosmic time, and location in space. We will also discuss a possible second time-dilation episode associated with the Genesis Flood and some cosmic evidence for the Humphreys model.

References (selected)

Feynman, R. P., R. B. Leighton and M. Sands. 1965. The Feynman Lectures on Physics, vol III. Reading, MA: Addison-Wesley Publishing Company.

Hawking, S. W. 1988. A Brief History of Time. Toronto: Bantam Books, 87.

Humphreys, D. R. 1994. Starlight and Time. Green Forest, AR: Master Books, 67.

Humphreys, D. R. 2007. Creationist cosmologies explain the anomalous acceleration of Pioneer spacecraft. Journal of Creation. 21 (2): 61-70.

Humphreys, D. R. 2008. New time dilation helps creation cosmology. Journal of Creation. 22 (3): 84-92. Available on creation.com.

Vardiman, L. and D. R. Humphreys. 2010. A New Creationist Cosmology: In No Time at All Part 1. Acts & Facts. 39 (11): 12-15.

Vardiman, L. and D. R. Humphreys. 2011. A New Creationist Cosmology: In No Time at All Part 2. Acts & Facts. 40 (1): 12-15.