Monday, February 28, 2011

Recent Sea Floor Formation is Scientific & Biblical Truth

Sea floor studies from the last few decades “show that today’s igneous ocean floor—all of it—has formed via seafloor spreading since roughly mid-way through the Flood.” And as Whitcomb and Morris suggested, “ocean basins were deepened after the Flood.” But what colossal energetic process could have done this?

It looks like the sea floors were made recently and rapidly. Experiments have demonstrated that silicate-rich sea floor “material can weaken dramatically, by factors of a billion or more, at mantle temperatures.”10 This means that once the earth’s crust was broken at the start of the Flood, hot mantle material, forming new lower ocean basins, propelled continent-size tectonic plates horizontally on the order of one meter per second. This catastrophic breakup and heating was implied in Genesis 7:11, which references the “fountains of the great deep” bursting forth.

The evidence for recent sea floor formation is one of the scientific observations made in the seminal book The Genesis Flood, written 50 years ago this month by John Whitcomb and Henry Morris. It is even more scientifically valid today than when first written. Most of the perspectives that were laid out by John Whitcomb and Henry Morris in their 1961 publication have been verified beyond reasonable doubt by ongoing observations..

(extracted from Frank Sherwin & Brian Thomas, Genesis Flood Insights More Relevant Today than Ever, Acts & Facts, February 2011, Institute of Creation Research)

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Sunday, February 27, 2011

Jewish outreach on the Indian beach

You might think it strange that a Chosen People Ministries would go to India, but there is an excellent reason. The region of Goa is one of the most important destinations for Israeli tourists. Many young Israelis celebrate the completion of their compulsory military service with a few months of world travel, and the resort area of Goa in Southwest India is a popular destination. Known for its scenic beauty, it is a magnet for young Israelis who want to kick back on its splendid beaches or explore its lush landscape.

RB, who is with CPM, led a small team of young evangelists there to strike up conversations and to share the Gospel with Jewish people and others who were open to hearing about Messiah. RB says, "In Goa, we began meeting people. We had many long, spiritual conversations, with lots of questions being asked...especially at one late-night hang out, where two of our team members met a group of Israelis. One guy in particular asked them many questions about the Lord and said he never heard almost anything about Yeshua (Jesus) and was curious to understand. He asked questions for almost an hour."

Bringing Jewish people to faith in the Lord is often a step-by-step process - just as it says in John 4. One sows and another reaps, but we know that the Lord gains the glory.

(from Chosen People Ministries newsletter, February 2011)

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Saturday, February 26, 2011

The Evolution of the Trojan Horse

During the 1800s, England hosted three major “Trojan horse” attacks on the Genesis account of the worldwide Flood. The first one was especially influential, opening the door for the others. Each attack was hospitably “invited” into Christian circles and produced ruinous corruptions to the worldviews of those who unsuspectingly played “host” to such visitors.

Originally, Christian scientists and leaders treated the Biblical account in the book of Genesis as a literal record of a global deluge. "Throughout the entire eighteenth century [i.e., 1700s], and well into the nineteenth [i.e., 1800s], an imposing list of scientists and theologians produced works in support of the Flood…. That the Flood was universal and that it was responsible for the major geologic formation of the earth was accepted almost without question in the western world during that period."1
 
The first such Trojan horse was introduced, ironically, by a French Protestant creationist, Baron Georges Cuvier. Cuvier proposed a theory of “multiple catastrophes” that treated the Genesis record as mostly irrelevant (if not misleading) for understanding the natural world and its catastrophic past.2 Cuvier’s theory was employed in 1814 by Thomas Chalmers for his ruin-and-reconstruction “gap theory,” an unequal and humanistic yoking of unbiblical “science” notions with the early chapters of Genesis.

The next breed of Trojan horse involved in the assault on the Genesis account of the Flood was grounded upon the anti-catastrophist uniformitarianism of Charles Lyell, Darwin’s ideological mentor. As Lyell’s old-earth uniformitarian theory gained popularity, catastrophist views of geologic history (including Cuvier’s) lost popularity. Consequently, efforts to preserve academic “respectability” led some Christians to mix Lyell’s anti-catastrophist dogma with a non-catastrophist view of the Genesis Flood, the so-called “tranquil flood” theory promoted by the likes of Carolus Linnaeus and John Fleming.3

Another Trojan horse was welcomed during the 1800s, the “local flood” theory of John Pye Smith.4 Thus, long before Charles Darwin published his atheistic concept of “natural selection” (a bait and switch metaphor that arbitrarily replaced the all-wise and all-powerful Creator with a magic force called “nature”), many of the leaders in Christian circles, both scientists and church leaders, had already closed the book of Genesis—at least as to what it teaches about the global Flood.

Today Christendom faces new breeds of Trojan horses (e.g., BioLogos, Intelligent Design deism, day-age “progressive creation,” framework hypothesis, etc.), which lie in wait to attack our understanding of Genesis and what it teaches about the Flood. Beware—and keep your Bible open!

(excerpted from Johnson, J. J. S. 2011. Just Say No to Trojan Horses. Acts & Facts. 40 (2): 17-18.)

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References (selected)

1. Morris, H. M. and J. C. Whitcomb. 1961. The Genesis Flood: The Biblical Record and Its Scientific Implications. Phillipsburg, NJ: Presbyterian and Reformed Publishing Company, 91.

2. Ibid, 92.

3. Ibid, 95-99.

4. Ibid, 107-113.

Friday, February 25, 2011

Iran's Supreme Leader warns against House Church movement

House church leaders fear a new wave of persecution after a threatening speech by Iran's supreme leader, Ayatollah Ali Hoseini-Khamenei. In a speech on Oct. 19, 2010, he warned against the 'network of house churches' that 'threaten Islamic faith and deceive you Muslims.' Iranian Christians hope the speech will not result in more pressure but instead will draw more Iranians to Christ.

A house church leader from Iran who asked to remain anonymous said, "I think this is the first time that he openly agitates aginst the house church movement and mentions it specifically. Speeches like this often have far raching consequences in the country. Not that the people of Iran react with violence aginst Christians, but behind the scenes, the security services and religious police will take measures. That is what leaders of house churches fear the most at this moment.

"To mention an upside of this," the church leader added, "now that Khamenei mentions and acknowledges that there is a house church movement, this may encourage secret believers or motivate seekers for Christian faith to find out if strands of these networks are available in their city or neighborhood."

(from Voice of the Martyrs, February 2011)

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Thursday, February 24, 2011

Rapid Mountain Uplift is Scientific & Biblical Truth

Secular geologists, who choose to ignore the implications of a Genesis Flood, say that slow continental plate movements lifted the mountains to such great heights. However, this reliance on slow speed causes big problems.

For example, erosion through observed processes of wind, water, and gravity slumping happens much faster today than any slow pace of mountain build-up, so how could mountains ever have reached their current dizzying heights? Instead, it appears that tremendous “great tectonic movements” rapidly pushed up land that was catastrophically carved into today’s steep-sided mountains, perhaps by continental water runoff and heavy post-Flood rains. If mountain uplift was as slow as is often claimed, then “mountains” would be eroded humps, if they existed at all.

Isotope data has confirmed Morris and Whitcomb’s observation “that most of the present mountain ranges of the world are believed to have been uplifted (on the basis of fossil evidence) during the Pleistocene or late Pliocene,” which corresponds to the post-Flood Ice Age.


The evidence for rapid mountain uplift is one of the scientific observations made in the seminal book The Genesis Flood, written 50 years ago this month by John Whitcomb and Henry Morris. It is even more scientifically valid today than when first written. Most of the perspectives that were laid out by John Whitcomb and Henry Morris in their 1961 publication have been verified beyond reasonable doubt by ongoing observations.

(extracted from Frank Sherwin & Brian Thomas, Genesis Flood Insights More Relevant Today than Ever, Acts & Facts, February 2011, Institute of Creation Research)

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Wednesday, February 23, 2011

Chick-Fil-A stands up to Marriage Intolerators

The willingness of Chick-Fil-A to help Pennsylvania Family Institute and its director Michael Geer, by providing lunch at a couple marriage enrichment events next month has landed both in the middle of a cultural battlefield, taking shots from the likes of the Huffington Post, numerous "gay" blogs, and even the notorious internet gossip columnist Perez Hilton, who wrote "Shame on you, Michael Geer" and called him "hateful" for taking a stand on marriage!

It has subjected PFI's staff to dozens if not hundreds of profanity-laced emails and blog posts. Crank calls, nasty emails, an online petition calling them "bigot" and "hate-filled," and calls for a boycott have all arisen out of this friendly partnership as they work together to build stronger marriages. It's amazing how intolerant these "promoters of tolerance" really are.

Given the high rate of broken marriages in today's society, PFI and Chick-Fil-A are pursuing a very worthwhile goal. What was meant for evil, God will use for good. Chick-Fil-A is moving forward, head held high. The company is doing much to promote strong marriages through its Winshape Foundation. I hope that you will reward them by taking your family out for breakfast, lunch or dinner if there's a restaurant near you.

Also, please consider a generous, tax-deductible gift to the Pennsylvania Family Institute, so that they can continue to take bold, winsome stands for family faith and freedom in the public square, and to have strong, healthy marriages and families.

(from Pennsylvania Family Institute newsletter, February 2011)

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Monday, February 21, 2011

Follow me (uMarko) on Twitter

I reached 1,000 Facebook friends today, after less than 6 months on FB, thank you so much everyone!! I would love to hear from you.

If you have a Twitter account, you can now even receive my posts as texts on your cell phone! This is great if you aren't on Facebook that much, or if you can't find my posts on your busy Facebook news feed.

If you are in the USA, just send a text to 40404 that says FOLLOW uMarko. From other countries, send to your Twitter short code. My tweets each contain a link to my blog entry for today that you can display on your smartphone browser. You’ll get Creation Science, interesting Missionary happenings, Christian Devotions, and more. I hope you like my tweets!

If you're old fashioned, and you prefer to receive my posts via a daily email, surf to my blog at http://umarko.blogspot.com, enter just your email address, and click Subscribe.  Or you can click this link where you can sign up: http://feedburner.google.com/fb/a/mailverify?uri=uMarko. You can unsubscribe at any time. (Sorry I don't do faxes, or telegraph, but I'm working on smoke signals...)

May God richly bless you! (Numbers 6:24-26)

Celebrating 50 years of "The Genesis Flood" by Whitcomb & Morris

"The question of the historicity and the character of the Genesis Flood is no mere academic issue of interest to a small handful of scientists and theologians. If a worldwide flood actually destroyed the entire antediluvian human population, as well as all land animals, except those preserved in a special Ark constructed by Noah (as a plain reading of the Biblical record would lead one to believe), then its historical and scientific implications are tremendous."

This quote is from the forward to The Genesis Flood, written by Dr. John C. Whitcomb and Dr. Henry M. Morris in 1961. This February we celebrate the 50th anniversary of its publication.

This book re-defined the science and Bible debate in the 20th century. Earlier in the century, by the time of the Scopes trial in 1925, Christian scholarship had either embraced some form of theistic or day-age evolution, or had consigned the ages of evolution to a “gap” between the first two verses of Genesis 1. Creation was relegated to a “secondary doctrine”—not even included in the famous “Five Fundamentals of the Faith.” Science had become the purview of evolutionists, and Christianity essentially retreated from the scientific arena and capitulated to the intellectual pressure of academic secularism.

The two authors submitted the manuscript to every science-educated Christian they knew of, asking for a serious critique. But so strong was the grip of evolutionary thinking that few would even read the manuscript. Careers and reputations were on the line with any questioning of the status quo. Most preferred to look the other way and ignore the subject. Those who considered the issue at all had comfortably compromised with theistic evolution or the gap theory and did not think it necessary to take a stand.

The Genesis Flood propelled Henry Morris into such prominence that even his detractors refer to him as the father of the modern creation science movement. That book, in the sovereign plan of God, became the catalyst that opened the gates to the pent-up flood of Christian professionals who, like God’s loyal “seven thousand” in the days of Elijah, had not yet bowed their knee to the Baal of evolutionary compromise. A revival among scientifically trained Christians had begun.

Published by Presbyterian & Remormed publishers, The Genesis Flood has been continuously in print for 50 years, and the Institute for Creation Research, which was founded by Dr. Morris in 1970, celebrates the impact of this work and these men. The full impact of this book and these two men will not be known until eternity.

Countless individuals have told how The Genesis Flood changed their lives, giving them a new perspective on science and the book of Genesis. Many have noted that the Christian education movement would never have taken hold without the book, for now the whole Bible could be believed without apology. Certainly this is true for the homeschool movement, which flourished with its underpinnings. The case could also be made that the biblical inerrancy movement would never have gained traction without it, for until that time few held to an inerrant Genesis. It is also true that most of the signers of inerrancy documents did not and still do not hold to a literal and inerrant view of Genesis, yet rank and file Christians could not support inerrancy until Genesis could be defended. This undergirding was supplied by The Genesis Flood.

Many Christian leaders still vilify those who insist the great Flood was global and geologically significant, as is so well expounded in The Genesis Flood. But even evolutionary thinking has shifted in response to many creation challenges, such as catastrophism in geology, gaps in the fossil record, design in living things, etc. Today there are many thousands of creation scientists, hundreds of creation organizations, and millions of creation believers, a movement all catalyzed by the publication of The Genesis Flood.

Over a year ago, ICR published the authorized update to this book with the release of Earth’s Catastrophic Past: Geology, Creation & the Flood by former ICR science researcher Dr. Andrew Snelling. It updates the scientific data, and presents an updated and expanded look at the topic that many see as key to understanding biblical earth history.

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Excerpted from:

Lawrence E. Ford, Executive Editor, "Celebrating the Classics", Acts & Facts, February 2011, Institute of Creation Research.

Henry M. Morris III, A Flood of Influence: The Impact of Henry Morris and The Genesis Flood in Modern History, Acts & Facts, February 2011, Institute of Creation Research.

John D. Morris, The Creation Movement’s Firm Foundation, Acts & Facts, February 2011, Institute of Creation Research.

Sunday, February 20, 2011

Give Me Gasoline and Bibles

"God led me to read Jeremiah 45, and in the last verse it said, 'I will give your life to you as a prize in all places, wherever you go.'"

The Jungle Road: "Having a sense of
mission can erase our fears."
"God gave me this grace. The guerrillas knew I was a pastor, but it bothered them to look at me. I was not like the other pastors they had seen, with polished shoes or a nice shirt. They saw me in my tattered shoes with my machete and an old shirt. The guerrillas looked at me like, 'This guy is insignificant. How is he going to start a church?'"

"But the Lord showed me through Jeremiah 45:5 that he had given me these places as an inheritance, and now I am going to places - jungles, guerrilla camps - places controlled by the guerrillas."

"Everything is in God's hands. Staying active is what brings about miracles. You can't go forward alone; you go forward with Bibles, you go forward with the message, you go forward by encouraging others, like pastors who have been expelled. I say, 'Brother, don't be discouraged. God gives the victory and he gives the blessing."

"My simple appeal for assistance is always, 'Give me gasoline and Bibles, I will do the rest.'"

(testimony of a FARC guerrilla who turned to Christ, Voice of the Martyrs, February 2011)

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Saturday, February 19, 2011

Lost time

After Chinese Christian Gao Feng returned from a three-year prison sentence, his friends lamented his "lost time." Gao replied, "I would rather go to prison for three years for doing something for Jesus than sit at home and do nothing for him."

(Voice of the Martyrs, February 2011)

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Mummified trees found in Arctic can't be millions of years old

How could these mummified trees be millions of years old, since they are not fossilized? What we are seeing are trees that were buried catastrophically by landslides ... during Noah's global flood!!

Selections from Mummified trees found in Arctic, Creation-Evolution Headlines, December 2010.

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Like Narnian children finding a zoo of lifeless stone statues in the White Witch’s wintry realm, scientists have come across frozen trees, leaves and seed pods deep in the Canadian arctic, Quttinirpaaq National Park on Ellesmere Island. “The dry, frigid site is now surrounded by glaciers and is completely treeless,” said National Geographic News. What deep magic left this mummified forest “exquisitely preserved”? The scientific wizards say it was a landslide, up to 10 million years ago.

National Geographic News says “The mummified trees were likely preserved so long because they were buried quickly by landslides and thus protected from air and water, which hastens decomposition.”

But can it protect them for millions of years? How many landslides must be invoked to cover enough rotting mummified trees to raise concerns about greenhouse gases? Even so, no living material lasts forever in its original state, unless replaced by minerals, as in petrification and fossilization. This is real wood.

“When we started pulling leaves out of the soil, that was surreal, to know that it’s millions of years old and that you can hold it in your hand,” one of the researchers announced to the American Geophysical Union last week. A colleague familiar with fossil forests called this find “extraordinary,” speaking of “Finding wood that is millions of years old in such good condition—almost as if you just picked it up from the forest floor....”

The millions of years exist only in their imagination. So tenacious are their faith in millions/billions of years, they cannot see the trees for the forest, or the forest for the trees—the dogma is so thick that you can't see through it unless you are outside it. These trees are not that old. Neither are the dinosaur bones with blood vessels intact. Why do they tell such tales?

They must keep the tale going, because they live in a fantasyland, the world of Blarneya, where it is always winter and never Christmas. They like it that way, because they serve the White Beard, who rules Blarneya with an iron fist. The Chronicles of Blarneya stretch backward and forward billions of years, they teach the children, turning their minds to stone.

(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)

References (selected)

Inman, M. (2010, December 17) Mummified Forest Found on Treeless Arctic Island. National Geographic Daily News. Retrieved December 19, 2010, from http://news.nationalgeographic.com/news/2010/12/101217-mummified-forest-canada-science-environment/

Friday, February 18, 2011

The Original King's Speech

Here is the original "King's Speech", upon which the movie is based. Let us pray for all those with special needs, and who are burdened with anxiety, that God may help them overcome...



H.M. King George VI, broadcast speech to the British Empire from Buckingham Palace on September 3rd, 1939.

During the 78rpm. Era several important speeches by the British Kings were recorded and published on 78rpm records, especially for very distant and isolated parts of the British Empire, where radio listening could be very troubled.

This recording is the speech from September 3rd 1939, at the outbreak of WW2.

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Wednesday, February 16, 2011

Best Qualified Candidate Expelled Over Views on Evolution, Design

For daring to question evolution, an astronomer who was the best qualified candidate to become director of a new observatory lost out. “No one denies that astronomer Martin Gaskell was the leading candidate for the founding director of a new observatory at the University of Kentucky in 2007 – until his writings on evolution came to light,” a report on Courier-Journal reported. Martin Gaskell is suing the University, claiming that his views on evolution, religion and intelligent design cost him the position.

(for more of this article, see Best Qualified Candidate Expelled Over Views on Evolution, Design, Creation-Evolution Headlines, December 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)

(for additional info see Daily Mail, Christian astronomer sues university that said his appointment would be 'huge public relations mistake', 17th December 2010)

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Tuesday, February 15, 2011

The words that put Asia Bibi in prison

On a hot Friday afternoon in June 2009, Asia Bibi left her post to get water for the other women who were picking fruit with her. But the women she worked with on the farm in Punjab province, Pakistan, refused her hospitality, saying the water was contaminated by her Christian hands. Asia and the women had a heated exchange about religion. Her Muslim co-workers taunted her for being a Christian and insisted that she should follow Mohammed.

She finally replied, "Our Christ sacrificed his life on the cross for our sins. What has your prophet done for you? Our Christ is alive. Your prophet is dead. Our Christ is the true prophet of God and yours is not true."

Asia was charged with blasphemy and locked in jail, where she remained for nearly 17 months before being sentenced to death. She is still in jail, pending the outcome of a legal appeal to her death sentence.

(from Voice of the Martyrs, February 2011)

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Monday, February 14, 2011

Mediocrity, the silent killer


From Tom White: In my opinion, corruption is not the main killer of Christian endeavor. We all recognize corruption and sin in our war with the devil. But just as high blood pressure is considered a silent killer in our physical bodies, the silent killer of the gospel is mediocrity - or, in biblical terms, being "lukewarm." A mediocre life is one that is neither good nor bad. Mediocre Christians may enjoy life simply because it is there, believing that as long as they have faith and are "good" people, they don't have to accomplish much of anything.

(Voice of the Martyrs newsletter, February 2011)

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Sunday, February 13, 2011

The guerrilla asked, what are evangelicals?

In Columbia, Rolo and his guerrilla trainer made a surprising discovery one night that left a lasting impression on Rolo. "We learned to travel at night without a flashlight," Rolo said. "one night two of us traveled north without making any noise through the peaks and the pastures. We arrived at a little hill and rested. My partner turned to me and said, 'You can hear the evangelicals over there.' I replied, 'What are evangelicals?'

"We looked about one kilometer over the hill to see a lighted building where people were clapping and singing. We could hear the musical instruments. It was late. Evidently this was an all night prayer worship service. The door of the church was open. It was full. As the breeze carried this sound through the bushes, my partner explained, 'And what do these people do? They worship a god ... a god, I don't know what god it is. They ask for tithes. The old ladies wear these skirts.'

"He left me there and said, 'Wait for me here.' I stayed and listened to more of their songs. I thought, 'How good would it be to be an evangelical? Wouldn't it be better than this?'"

(testimony of a FARC guerrilla who turned to Christ, Voice of the Martyrs, February 2011)

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Saturday, February 12, 2011

But they taught us that man evolved in Africa...

It is well known that the first human being evolved in Africa, and then migrated to all the other continents. Or is it really so?

Science Daily reported, “An international team of researchers, including a physical anthropology professor at Washington University in St. Louis, has discovered well-dated human fossils in southern China that markedly change anthropologists perceptions of the emergence of modern humans in the eastern Old World.” Maybe it was out of Asia instead of Africa. The BBC News has a photo of the cave in China where the bones were found. National Geographic News said that these bones, 60,000 years older than previous finds, “presents a strong challenge” to the out-of-Africa theory and the “traditional early-human time line”.

(for more, see Early Man in Trouble, 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)

Marko's comment: Did you know that Chinese tradition states that Noah (Fohi or Yao) founded Chinese civilization in 2240 BC, which was approximately 10 years after the Tower of Babel dispersion. Noah did live for 350 years after the Flood, and for approximately 250 years after Babel. Is it possible that he was the principle ancestor of the Asian peoples, as Japheth was of the Indo-Europeans, Shem of the Near and Middle Eastern peoples, and Ham of the Africans? See more at the Bible Time-Line.

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Friday, February 11, 2011

New Life in the Midst of Rubble

"Not so long ago Prosper, a middle-aged Haitian man, was living up to his name. He had steady employment (a rarity in Haiti), had built a nice home, married and had a family. He was even able to send his children to college. We came to know his daughter, Valerie, when she came to the university here in Santiago. Then high blood pressure and a stroke left Prosper partially paralyzed and dependent on his wife's care. With difficulty, he learned to walk again with a cane. He still has occasional seizures and suffers from an enlarged heart.

"During the January 2010 earthquake, Prosper's home collapsed, trapping him and his wife. She did not survive. He was pulled from the rubble a few hours later, bruised but breathing.Valerie brought him to Santiago in the Dominican Republic. Prosper's world has now shrunk to an unfurnished, one-bedroom apartment that he shares with Valerie. His possessions are buried in Port-au-Prince. The little that might have been salvaged has been stolen by others in need.

"Prosper feels like he is in prison - unable to descend the stairs of their second-floor apartment unaided, unable to visit with lifelong friends, unable to speak the language of this new country, totally dependent on his daughter.

"Yet, within the confines of his prison, he welcomes us with a wide smile. Although there is sometimes fear in his eyes when a tremor passes, there is no defeat. He is learning to prosper in different ways. He tells us that God saved him from the wreckage of his home, and now, for the first time in his life, he is entrusting himself to God.

"The apartment is still small, his heart is still damaged, but he is learning of the hope that is his in Christ. Valerie, who came to know Christ in Santiago, is studying the Bible with her dad. She, to, is learning to persevere through the pain and the difficulties. Together they are experiencing what it means to be a part of God's family."

(from a missionary newsletter, CrossWorld Current, January 2011)

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Wednesday, February 09, 2011

R.C.Sproul has returned to literal 6 day creation

"According to the Reformation hermeneutic, the first option is to follow the plain sense of the text. One must do a great deal of hermeneutical gymnastics to escape the plain meaning of Genesis 1-2. The confession makes it a point of faith that God created the world in the space of six days."

Excerpted by Karisa Schlehr from Ligonier MinistriesTruths We Confess: A Layman's Guide to the Westminster Confession of Faith (Volume 1). In other settings, Dr. Sproul has also made a point of highlighting Dr. Douglas Kelly's book, Creation and Change, as formative in his position on the subject of Creation. (Reposted from Facebook and Ligonier Ministries)

We are commonly asked for a clarification of R.C. Sproul's position on Creation. Here is his commentary on the Westminster Confession's phrase "…in the space of six days."
 
In the beginning, to create, or make of nothing, the world, and all things therein whether visible or invisible, in the space of six days; and all very good. In the Genesis account of creation, we read; “So the evening and the morning were the first day” (Gen. 1:5). This narrative proceeds from the first day to the sixth, each time referring to “the evening and the morning” and numbering the day. On the seventh day, God rested (Gen. 2:2).

In our time a considerable number of theories have arisen denying that the creation, as we know it, took place in twenty-four hour days. Common to these theories is the acceptance of the dominant scientific view that the earth and life on it are very old. Many consider the biblical account to be primitive, mythological, and untenable in light of modern scientific knowledge.

This crisis has resulted in several attempts to reinterpret the Genesis account of creation. We are reminded of the sixteenth century, when Copernicus and his followers repudiated the old Ptolemaic view of astronomy. They argued that the center of the solar system is not the earth (geocentricity), but the sun (heliocentricity). It was a sad chapter in the history of the church, which had believed for more than fifteen hundred years that the Bible teaches geocentricity, when it condemned Galileo for believing and teaching heliocentricity. Both Luther and Calvin opposed Copernicus’s views, believing them to undermine Scripture’s authority.

Actually the Bible does not explicitly teach geocentricity anywhere. Scripture describes the movements of the heavens from the perspective of someone standing on earth: the sun moves across the sky, rising in the east and setting in the west. We use that same language today. The church thought that because the Bible uses this kind of descriptive language, it was therefore teaching something about the relationship between the sun and the earth. This is a clear case of scientific knowledge correcting the church’s interpretation of the Bible.

There are two spheres of revelation; the Bible (special revelation) and nature (general revelation). In the latter, God manifests himself through the created order. What God reveals in nature can never contradict what he reveals in Scripture, and what he reveals in Scripture can never contradict what he reveals in nature. He is the author of both forms of revelation, and God does not contradict himself.

The church has always taken the position that all truth meets at the top, and that science should never contradict Scripture. Scientific discoveries, however, can correct the theologian’s faulty understanding of Scripture, just as biblical revelation can correct faulty speculations drawn from the natural order. When the scientific consensus on a particular point is on a collision course with the unmistakable teaching of Scripture, I trust Scripture before I trust the speculations and inferences of scientists. That is consistent with the history of the church and Christianity. We believe that sacred Scripture is nothing less than the Creator’s truth revealed.

We have a problem not only with a six-day creation, but also with the age of the earth. Is the earth a few thousand years old or billions of years old (as scientists today insist)? Although the Bible clearly says that the world was created in six days, it gives no date for the beginning of that work. It would be a mistake to become embroiled in too much controversy about the date of creation.

In a Massachusetts college I taught Introduction to the Old Testament to two hundred and fifty students. Because the class was so large, we met in the chapel. Once I opened the old pulpit Bible to Genesis 1, and at the top of the page I read “4004 B.C.” I did some research to see how that date had been determined. In the seventeenth century an archbishop, James Ussher, made some calculations based on the genealogies in Genesis 5 and 11 and other chronological clues in the Old Testament. He even pinned down the day of the week and the time of day when creation occurred. I hasten to tell my students that we must be very careful to distinguish between the text of Scripture and additions to the text. In defending the biblical authority, we are not obligated to defend a theory based on the speculations of a bishop in times past.

If we take the genealogies that go back to Adam, however, and if we make allowances for certain gaps in them (which could certainly be there), it remains a big stretch from 4004 B.C. to 4.6 billion years ago. We also have the problem of the antiquity of the human race. It seems as if every time a new skeleton or skull is discovered, scientists push back the date of man’s origin another million years.

Scholars have proposed four basic theories to explain the time from of Genesis 1–2:
  1. the gap theory,
  2. the day-age theory,
  3. the framework hypothesis, and
  4. six-day creation.
GAP THEORY

The gap theory was made popular by the Scofield Reference Bible (1909), which more than any other single edition of Scripture swept through this country and informed the theology of an entire generation of evangelicals. It became the principal instrument for propagating dispensational theology throughout America. In this Bible, Genesis 1:1 reads, “In the beginning, God created the heavens and the earth,” and verse 2 reads, “And the earth became without form, and void; and darkness was upon the face of the deep.” Other Bibles read, “And the earth was without form, and void; and darkness was upon the face of the deep.” Verse 2 describes what most scholars consider to be the as-yet-unordered, basic structure of the universe—darkness, emptiness. Then the Holy Spirit hovers over the waters (v.2) and God says, “Let there be light” (v.3). Thus came the light and then the creation of the heavens, fish, birds, animals, and so on.

The Hebrew word in verse 2 translated “was” is the very common verb hayah, which ordinarily means “to be.” Hayah means “to become” only in special circumstances, which are not present here. The Scofield Reference Bible translates verse 2 as “became” instead of “was” in order to facilitate the gap theory. As a result, only verse 1 refers to the original creation. Verse 2 then refers to a cosmic catastrophe in which the originally good and properly ordered creation became chaotic, dark, and fallen. After this period of darkness (the “gap”), God recreates the universe which could have been created billions of years ago, followed by a gap of billions of years (including the “geologic column” of immense ages), after which God returned to his distorted creation and renovated or reconstituted it relatively recently. The gap theory has also been called the restitution hypothesis, meaning that the creation narrative in Genesis is not about the original creation, but about the restitution of a fallen creation.

An entire generation was fed this theory through the Scofield Reference Bible. However, Scripture nowhere explicitly teaches that the original creation was marred and then after many years reconstituted. The broader context of the whole of Scripture militates against the gap theory.

DAY-AGE THEORY

According to the second approach, the day-age theory, each “day” of Genesis 1 may be an age. After all, one day in the Lord’s sight is like a thousand years (2 Peter 3:8). Also, expressions like “in the days of Noah” and “in Abraham’s day” can refer to open-ended periods. The Hebrew word yom, translated “day” in Genesis, can mean something other than a twenty-four-hour period, as it must in Genesis 2:4, which refers to “the day that the LORD God made the earth and the heavens.” Accordingly, each “day” in Genesis 1 may refer to a thousand years, and perhaps even to millions of years. This will at least ameliorate some of the difficulties we have with those who argue for a gradual evolution of life-forms on this earth.

However, the day-age theory, like the gap theory, ignores the immediate context as well as the large biblical context. It ignores the fact that each of the six days of creation consists of an evening and a morning. If yom here means something like ten million years, then we need to give the words evening and morning the same kind of metaphorical meaning. From a literary, exegetical, and linguistic perspective, the day-age theory is weak. As a Christian apologist, I would not want to defend it.

The day-age theory tends to accommodate a theory of biological macroevolution that is incompatible with the Bible and purposive creation—the creation of all living things by the immediate agency of the sovereign God. Macroevolution teaches that all life has developed from a single, original cell, and that this happened through a somewhat fortuitous, chance collision of atoms, without an intelligent planner or Creator orchestrating the emergence of these species. Those who favor the day-age theory often link themselves with a position called theistic evolution, which grants the basic premises of biological evolution, but says that God, not chance, guided the process of evolution.

Macroevolution differs from microevolution. While the former teaches that all living things have developed from one original cell, the latter teaches that, over period of time, species undergo slight changes in order to adapt to their environment. Microevolution is not in dispute, either biblically or scientifically. Macroevolution has never been substantiated by observation or experiment, and it places its faith in an endless string of extremely improbable, yet beneficial chance mutations.

A frequent argument for macroevolution is the principle of common structure. All forms of life are made up of the same basic substances: amino acids, proteins, DNA, and that sort of thing. Because all living things have similar constituent parts, the argument goes, they must have developed from common ancestors. A common substance or structure, however, does not necessarily imply a common source. The fact that all forms of life are made of the same basic building blocks neither negates the possibility of evolution nor substantiates it. One would expect an intelligent Creator to have made all life-forms with a similar design—one that works on this earth.

When teaching a university course to thirty upper-level philosophy students, I asked who believed in macroevolution. Almost all the students raised their hands. I then asked them to explain why they believed in it. Their only argument was “common substance, therefore common source.” Most said they believed it because they had been taught in school, and they assumed their teachers knew what they were talking about.

Macroevolution, in the final analysis, is not a question of biology or natural science, which rely upon experimented verification, but of history, which tries to interpret evidence left from the past in a coherent fashion. The discipline of paleontology, which studies the fossil record, claims to put evolution on a scientific footing, but it performs no experiments to substantiate evolutionary processes. It simply lines up similar fossils and infers that one creature must be related to another by common decent.

In the recent past in Russia, leading international scholars who favor macroevolution met. While comparing notes, they found that the weakest evidence for their theories is the fossil record. I remember reading the Royal Society’s bulletin at that time and thinking, “What other source matters?” The fossil record is the one that counts, and yet that is the one that militates against their theory. I read an essay recently in which a professor argued for macroevolution on the basis of certain geological formations. He argued for an old earth on the ground that stratifications in the rocks contain fossils, which indicates a uniformitarian process that took millions of years to produce the whole formation. He then determined the age of each stratum by determining the kinds of fossils contained in each. This is a blatant example of what logicians call begging the question. It is circular reasoning to date the fossils by the rocks, and then date the rocks by the fossils. That just will not work.

We now have good evidence that stratification of rocks proves the antiquity of nothing. Within days after the Mount St. Helens explosion had subsided, scientists discovered that the cataclysmic upheaval of that volcanic explosion had laid down exactly the same rock stratification that had been assumed would take millions of years to develop. In other words, Mount St. Helens proved that catastrophic upheavals can produce the same empirical data as twenty million years of gradual deposition. We will not get into uniformitarianism or catastrophism here, except to say that they have been attempts to accommodate macroevolution. This tends to support and popularize the theory of theistic evolution, and it also uses the day-age theory of Genesis—a dangerous thing to do.

FRAMEWORK HYPOTHESIS

The third approach, called the framework hypothesis, was originally developed by the Dutch scholar Nicholas Ridderbos. He argued that the literary form of the book’s first few chapters differs from that of its later chapters. Certain basic characteristics found in poetry are missing from historical narrative, and certain characteristics found in historical narrative are missing from poetry. For example, the book of Exodus, with its account of the Jewish captivity in Egypt, has genealogies, family names, real historical places, and an unmetered literary style (i.e., lacking a particular rhythm), making it clearly prose and historical narrative. After the account of the exodus, the book’s author inserts the song of Miriam, which is in metered rhythm and is therefore clearly poetry. The literary structure before the song manifests all the characteristics of historical narrative, as does the structure following the poem.

Therefore, it is usually not difficult to distinguish between poetry and historical narrative in the Old Testament. But the opening chapters of Genesis, according to Ridderbos, exhibit a strange combination of literary forms. On the one hand is a discussion of the creation of a man and a woman who are given names that thereafter appear in genealogical accounts. In Hebrew literature this clearly signals historicity. The Garden of Eden is said to be set among four rivers, two of which we know were real rivers: the Tigris and the Euphrates. The style of writing is not metered or rhythmic, as Hebrew poetry normally is. All this indicates that the opening chapters of Genesis are historical narrative.

There are some anomalies, however. We find trees in this garden with strange names: “the tree of the knowledge of good and evil” and “the tree of life” (Gen 2:9). Had they been apple or pear trees, there would have been no problem. But what does a tree of life look like? Is the author of Genesis telling us that a real tree was off limits, giving it a metaphorical meaning as the tree of life? We are also introduced to a serpent who speaks. Because of these two features, some have argued that the literary structure of the opening chapters of Genesis was self consciously and intentionally mythological, or at least filled with legend and saga.

Ridderbos contended that the beginning chapters of Genesis are a mixture of historical narrative and poetry, with part of the poetic structure being the repeated refrain, “So the evening and the morning were the first day” (Gen 1:5), and so on. Ridderbos concluded that Genesis gives us not a historical narrative of the when or the how of divine creation, but a drama in seven acts. The first act ends with the statement, “So the evening and the morning were the first day.” The author of Genesis, then, is trying to show that God’s work of creation took place in seven distinct stages, which incidentally fit remarkably well into the stages identified by the modern theories of cosmic evolution.

Therefore, the framework hypothesis allows one to step into a Big Bang cosmology while maintaining the credibility and inspiration of Genesis 1-2. This is not history, but drama. The days are simply artistic literary devices to create a framework for a lengthy period of development.

In America Ridderbos’s work was widely disseminated by Meredith Kline, who for many years taught Old Testament at Westminster Theological Seminary, then at Gordon-Conwell Theological Seminary, and then at Westminster Seminary California. Because Kline endorsed the framework hypothesis, many people, particularly in the Reformed community, have embraced it, provoking a serious crisis in some circles. Some Reformed pastors today hold to a literal six-day creation, while others hold to the framework hypothesis, and yet they otherwise hold to the same system of orthodox theology.

SIX-DAY CREATION

For most of my teaching career, I considered the framework hypothesis to be a possibility. But I have now changed my mind. I now hold to a literal six-day creation, the fourth alternative and the traditional one. Genesis says that God created the universe and everything in it in six twenty-four-hour periods. According to the Reformation hermeneutic, the first option is to follow the plain sense of the text. One must do a great deal of hermeneutical gymnastics to escape the plain meaning of Genesis 1-2. The confession makes it a point of faith that God created the world in the space of six days.

 

Human Rights Watch slams West for 'cowardice' on rights issues

The reluctance of democratic countries to defend the rights of persecuted Christians around the world is now bearing unfortunate consequences - now non-Christians are also increasingly losing their freedoms around the world as well.

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RFE/RL reports: An international rights group has accused Western powers of not doing enough to pressure abusive regimes to protect basic human rights.

The 648-page Human Rights Watch (HRW) report, a compendium of human rights abuses reported around the world in the past year, criticizes the democracies for their “soft reaction” to repressive regimes.

The report singles out the United States, the European Union and the United Nations for failing to put enough pressure on abusive governments, highlighting what it called a “near-universal cowardice in confronting China’s deepening crackdown on basic liberties.” HRW also charged Western leaders, particularly U.N. Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon, European Union foreign policy chief Catherine Ashton, and U.S. President Barack Obama with focusing too much on dialogue and not enough on confronting abuses.

Leaders of authoritarian governments welcome an emphasis on dialogue because it is likely to “remove the spotlight from human rights discussions.”

The report notes that defending human rights “may sometimes interfere with other governmental interests,” adding that if so, “they should at least have the courage to admit it, instead of hiding behind meaningless dialogues and fruitless quests for cooperation.”

“It became very fashionable in the last couple of years to prefer dialogue – so called dialogue and silent diplomacy – to naming and shaming. And we think it didn’t do any good for human rights worldwide. It showed, actually, that talk behind closed doors doesn’t lead to any improvement in this area.”

(for more, see http://www.rferl.org/content/human_rights_watch_report_/2285529.html)(originally referenced in Ukrainian Weekly, January 30, 2011, 89(5), pp.1, 11)

Tuesday, February 08, 2011

The Testimony of the Human Foot, by Timothy R. Stout

Compare a chimpanzee's foot to a human foot. All of the components, plus various bones, muscles, tendons, and ligaments in the rest of the body, need to change simultaneously and in a coordinated manner in order to "evolve" one to the other.

There are fundamental differences in the design. One is perfect for walking on tree branches, while the other is perfect for running on the ground.

Current research is confirming that barefoot running is easier on a properly trained person's body than running with shoes, particularly if the shoes have thick cushions in the heel.

The human foot and ankle is a strong and complex mechanical structure containing more than 26 bones, 33 joints (20 of which are actively articulated), and more than an hundred muscles, tendons, and ligaments.

The problem facing the evolutionist is that neither a straight-forward path nor a plausible mechanism to bring about such changes. God designed each to work well for the purpose for which He intended it to be used. We should marvel at His wisdom in how well He did His work and give Him the glory for the perfection we observe. We are without excuse for doing less than this.

(from The Testimony of the Human Foot, by Timothy R. Stout, 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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Saturday, February 05, 2011

How far would you go to deliver a Bible?

Flying only a few hundred feet off the ground, Russell opens the window of his Cesna aircraft and carefully drops a parachute over a guerrilla camp. In a bag suspended from the parachute are a Bible and other Christian materials, sometimes including a shortwave radio pre-tuned to two Christian stations that broadcast the Word of God.

"I've been shot at a few times," Russell says, "and one of my aircraft had multiple bullet holes in it."

The danger is real, but Russell (a co-worker with The Voice of the Martyrs) and his team are committed to delivering the Word of God where there is no conventional means of delivery. Being on the ground would be even more dangerous.

"I have seen many guerrillas turn from their violent ways after reading the Bible and listening to our radio broadcasts," Russell explains. "If we want peace in Columbia, we have to point people, even terrorists, to the true source of peace and forgiveness".

(from Voice of the Martyrs, February 2011)

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Wiggling Your Ears & The Dangers of a Leading Question...

"When will we evolve out of our useless appendages?"

Whenever you hear an evolutionist make this kind of statement, don't fall for it! They are using the power of language to push their agenda.

This is the title of an article in the February 2011 issue of Popular Science, by Natalie Wolchover. NOooo, we won't evolve, and WE HAVE NOooo useless appendages. No part of our bodies is useless in our Creator's eyes!

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It is exceedingly interesting that the article answers the question this way:

"Never. We're probably stuck with our appendix, pinky toes, tailbone and just about all of our other evolutionary holdovers. Wisdom teeth may eventually go, but major changes like losing an appendage (teeth included) take millions and millions of years - who knows if humans will even be around that long.

And then the article says some things that a Bible-believing creationist can mostly agree with!!!!

"What's more, most of our seemingly useless vestiges are actually helpful.

"The coccyx, or tailbone, is an attachment point of a number of muscles at the pelvis. We need it for upright locomotion. It would be catastrophic if it went away."

"The appendix ... serves as a kind of safe house for the microbes that aid in digestion. Each of us has 900 to 1,600 species of bacteria in our gut to make sure we have a healthy immune system. If one takes over, or they get all flushed out by a disease, then the appendix works like a holding tank for the good bacteria."

"Even the pinky toe helps keep our balance and diffuses impact throughout the foot when we run."

Now here's something only an evolutionist can say and sound very scientific:

"The muscles behind our ears have very little impact on reproductive success, there's no way to select against them. In other words, the ability to ear-wiggle doesn't interfere with having kids."
 
A creationist's answer is that ear-wiggling muscles show that God has a sense of humor :)

Stillness

"Be still and know that I am God..." (Psalm 46:10a). Stillness is growing extinct in our world. From the time our eyes pop open in the morning until the moment we drift off to sleep at night, our lives are in a state of perpetual motion. The vast majority of people have chosen to fill virtually every waking moment with sensory stimuli to inform, amuse, entertain, educate, and generally distract them so that they are rarely left alone to themselves ... or perhaps to God. It is almost as if they have decided that silence is the enemy.

Yet just the opposite is true. God often uses the silent intervals in our lives to speak to us.

According to the psalm writer, stillness and knowing God go hand in hand. It is virtually impossible for a person to know God if he does not stop long enough to hear Him. The word translated "be still" is actually one that means "to stop striving." It also carries the idea of "relaxing" or "dropping one's hand in surrender." These words were written against the backdrop of a world that was wracked with earth-shattering change, trouble, and fear. And into that context God spoke two simple words: "Be still."

(Dale Losch, Crossworld, January 2011)

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Friday, February 04, 2011

How Old do You Want it to be? Radiometric Cherry-Picking

"Naturalistic radiometric agedating is inconsistent because it yields a variety of dates that can be selected based on expectations of age. For a century, secular natural historians have used this to extract dates most favorable to the prevailing theory."

This is the conclusion reached by Carl Froede in his analysis of the ongoing controversy for the age of the Martian meteorite found in Antarctica.

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How old do you want it to be?

Selections from Radiometric Cherry-Picking, by Carl R. Froede Jr.

(These selections by Marko Malyj are of the article published in Creation Matters, a publication of Creation Research Society, Volume 15, Number 6, November/December 2010, to appear at ttp://www.creationresearch.org/creation_matters/pdf/2010/CM15%2006%20low%20res.pdf. Marko's added comments are in italics)

The subjective nature of radiometric age-dating can always yield acceptable agedates for rocks, minerals, and fossils because naturalists can adjust or disqualify them at will. This has recently been demonstrated by tests performed on a volcanic meteorite from Mars that gained wide notoriety in the mid-1990s.


In 1984, a meteorite (ALH84001) was discovered in Antarctica and was overlooked for 10 years before it was determined to be of Martian origin (Kerr, 1996). While unusual in mineral composition and organic content (i.e., polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons were found in fractures) it sparked an international controversy because of small deposits of carbonate defined by some naturalists as evidence of extraterrestrial life.


So how old do you want it to be?

Door Number One: 4.5 billion years old. That would make it just 100 million years after the planet supposedly formed, making it the oldest rock known from any planet.


According to Wayman (2010), the original radiometric age of ALH84001 was derived from the meteorite’s phosphatic minerals. Naturalistic scientist Richard Kerr (1996) summarizes this original age analysis this way

Radiometric dating shows that ALH84001 congealed from magma to become part of the original Martian crust 4.5 billion years ago, just 100 million years after the planet formed, making it the oldest rock known from any planet. Still early in Martian history, a meteorite impact shattered the rock, leaving fractures where minerals — including the putative traces of life — formed perhaps 3.6 billion years ago. Much later, another impact launched the rock into space. Radioactive nuclei created by deep-space radiation show that it wandered there for 16 million years before blazing through Earth’s atmosphere and crashing into the Antarctic ice cap. It lay buried for 13,000 years until scientists found it on wind-scoured ice in the Allan Hills region of Antarctica.

Door Number Two: 4.1 Billion Years Old. We forgot, the meteorite has to get from Mars to Earth, which supposedly happened 400 millions years later. It's a good thing that we can find an issue with the original dating method.

Unfortunately, such minerals can weather in a manner that alters the isotope ratios, producing spurious age estimates.

Lapen et al. (2010) redated the meteorite using orthopyroxene minerals and the results indicated that the meteorite is 400 million years younger than originally thought.

In their examination of the mineralogy of ALH84001, Lapen and his team (2010) determined that it was derived from the Martian mantle. They believe that the volcanic rock can be linked to long-lived volcanic areas such as Tharsus and Elysium which have been active on Mars for the past 4.0 billion years.

However, the real question is not the Martian origin of the rock, but how it came to reside on Earth. Scientists have invoked a catastrophic event called the heavy bombardment (Appendix I) to explain the rock’s journey. During the heavy bombardment, the solar system encountered swarms of impactors that cratered the terrestrial planets, satellites, and even asteroids. Using orthopyroxene minerals, Lapen et al. (2010) arrived at an age of 4.091±0.030 billion years, a time thought to be close to an alleged period of heavy bombardment — between 4.25 and 4.10 billion years ago (Frey, 2008; Lillis et al., 2008).

Door Number Three: 150 to 570 Million Years Old. All the other meteorites of similar composition are nowhere near 4.1 Billion Years old. We're not quite sure how to explain why this one is 4.1 Billion, and the others are billions of years younger, so let's not go there...

Interestingly, other Martian volcanic meteorites of similar composition (i.e., Shergottites) range from 150 to 570 million years in age – making ALH84001 the oldest Martian rock of this type found on Earth to date.


"Believed to have come from Mars, with 17 known examples by mid-2002; the type member is the Shergotty meteorite, which fell in India in 1865. They all have exceptionally young crystallization ages of 150-200 Ma. Shock metamorphism probably occurred when the shergottites were blasted off the Martian surface."
 How should creationists view the reliability of radiometric dating?

Creationist studies have identified significant inconsistencies and errors in radiometric age-dates, and the naturalist claims that Earth is very old based on various forms of radiometric dating. Some of these are listed below (A-G).

A) Using the Rubidium–Strontium (87Rb-87Sr) method, Austin (1988, 1992) demonstrated that basaltic rocks from a Pleistocene (less than two million years old) lava flow on top of the Grand Canyon dated older (1.34±0.04 billion years) than the Precambrian Cardenas Basalt (dated at 1.07 billion years) found deep within the canyon.

B) In his examination of igneous rocks from the Grand Canyon, Austin (1994) documented several instances where radiometric ages were inconsistent with the naturalistic framework of Earth history. Rocks stratigraphically positioned above others consistently dated older than the underlying rocks. In this same work, Austin documented that different radiometric age-dating methods provide different age-dates for the same rock (i.e., isochron discordance).

C) Snelling (1995) noted the failure of U-Th-Pb dating method for the Koongarra uranium deposit in the Northern Territory, Australia. Three uraninite grains even yield a 232Th/208Pb “age” of 0 Ma.

D) In 1996, Austin seriously challenged the Potassium–Argon (40K-40Ar) dating method. A porphyritic dacite formed in 1986 at the Mount St. Helens lava dome yielded radiometric age-dates ranging from 350,000 (±50,000) to 2.8 (±600,000) million years. Austin concluded (p. 342): "The primary assumption upon which K-Ar modelage dating is based assumes zero 40Ar in the mineral phases of a rock when it solidifies. This assumption has been shown to be faulty."

This dating method has also been challenged by naturalists for submarine pillow basalts from Kilauea Volcano, Hawaii where the subaqueous volcanic rocks believed to be less than a thousand years old dated between 160,000 and 42.9 million years (Dalrymple and Moore, 1968). This finding has serious implications for oceanic crust dated using the potassium-argon method in defense of Plate Tectonic Theory.

E) Snelling (2000) documented the subjective nature in using the U-Th-Pb dating of zircon grains for igneous rocks found around the world. He stated([. iii): "Clearly, the results of U-Th-Pb mineral dating are highly dependent on the investigator’s interpretations."

F) Snelling (2004) documented discordant radiometric age-dates for the Brahma amphibolite found deep within the Grand Canyon. He stated (p. iii): "The radiometric methods, long touted as irrefutably dating the earth’s rocks as countless millions of years old, have repeatedly failed to provide reliable and meaningful absolute ages for Grand Canyon rock layers."

G) Baumgardner (2005) discovered measurable 14C in diamonds believed by naturalists to be over a billion years in age. He stated (p. 624):

"With a half life of 5,730 years, radiometric 14C would be nearly exhausted in 57,300 years, or ten half lives. Finding 14C in a specimen whose age is clearly beyond acceptable secular dating limits should raise serious questions. While 14C contamination can and does occur, finding it in billion year-old diamonds appears to seriously question the assumptions of this dating method."

Clearly, naturalistic radiometric agedating is inconsistent because it yields a variety of dates that can be selected based on expectations of age. For a century, secular natural historians have used this to extract dates most favorable to the prevailing theory. Different minerals and different methods can all alter the final result. Logically, these demonstrated errors add uncertainty to any reported result. Many of the problems have been shown by research by creationists. Clearly, radiometric dates are orders of magnitude too great (or small) for biblical history, yet the inconsistencies also argue against a consistent inconsistency — that a correction for something like accelerated decay in the past can make dates useful for diluvial studies.

Such work demonstrates that radiometric age-dating is not science as much as it is a means of defending the uniformitarian, geologic column model.

References (selected)

Austin, S.A. 1988. Grand Canyon lava flows: A survey of isotope dating methods. Impact No. 178. Institute for Creation Research, El Cajon, CA.

Austin, S.A. 1992. Excessively old “ages” for Grand Canyon lava flows. Impact No. 224. Institute for Creation Research, El Cajon, CA.

Austin, S.A. (editor). 1994. Grand Canyon: Monument to Catastrophe. Institute for Creation Research, El Cajon, CA.


Baumgardner, J.R. 2005. 14C evidence for a recent global Flood and a young earth, In Vardiman, L., A.A. Snelling, and E.F. Chaffin (editors). Radioisotopes and the Age of the Earth: Results of a Young-Earth Creationist Research Initiative, pp. 587–630. Institute for Creation Research, El Cajon, CA, and Creation Research Society, Chino Valley, AZ.

Dalrymple, G.B. and J.G. Moore. 1968. Argon-40: Excess in submarine pillow basalts from Kilauea Volcano, Hawaii. Science 161:1132–1135.

Frey, H.V. 2008. Ages of very large impact basins on Mars: Implications for the late heavy bombardment in the inner solar system. Geophysical
Research Letters
35:L13203.


Kerr, R.A. 1996. Ancient life on Mars? Science 273:864–866.

Lapen, T.J., M. Righter, A.D. Brandon, V. Debaille, B.L. Beard, J.T. Shafer, and A.H. Peslier. 2010. A younger age for ALH84001 and its geochemical link to Shergottite sources in Mars. Science 328:347–351.

Lillis, R.J., H.V. Frey, and M. Manga. 2008. Rapid decrease in Martian crustal magnetization in the Noachian era: Implications for the dynamo and climate of early Mars. Geophysical Research Letters 35:L14203.

Snelling, A.A. 1995. The failure of U-Th-Pb “dating” at Koongarra, Australia. Creation ex Nihilo Technical Journal 9(1):71–92.

Snelling, A.A. 2000. Dubious radiogenic Pb behavior places U-Th-Pb mineral dating in doubt. Impact No. 319. Institute for Creation Research, El Cajon, CA.

Snelling, A.A. 2004. Radioisotope dating of Grand Canyon rocks: Another devastating failure for long-age geology. Impact No. 376. Institute for
Creation Research, El Cajon, CA.

Wayman, E. 2010. Oldest Martian meteorite not quite so old. Earth 55(7):9.