The Word of God, sharper than an AK-47

Ahmed and Mechela, the men who once picked up the hitchhikers in the desert, were again bumping over a desert road in Muslim African—hitting potholes, slogging through muddy ruts, choking on dust—when the check engine light came on. Ahmed did not have the tools or spare parts needed to repair his old Land Cruiser. The engine died and the vehicle rolled to a stop.

Fortunately, they were less than three kilometers from a small African village where there was a Christian colleague, Waseem, whom Ahmed had trained in making disciples. Unfortunately, they knew that it would take a minimum of three days for a truck to arrive with the spare parts they needed. So Ahmed and Mechela left the vehicle and walked the remaining distance to Waseem’s home.

That evening, after milking his cows, Waseem invited the two men to join him for his Discovery Bible Study. Ahmed and Mechela readily agreed, picturing a short walk to a peaceful round hut with thatched roof, owned by a quiet family in the village. Waseem smiled innocently, then led his friends on a long, arduous trek under the desert stars. After several hours, Ahmed saw a large hut in the distance. It was indeed round with a thatched roof, and things were certainly quiet, but perhaps too quiet. The three men entered the hut and Ahmed stopped dead in his tracks.

Huddled inside was a group of some thirty men. All were dressed in desert camouflage, and all were heavily armed. Several of the men had automatic rifles in their hands or within reach. Most had ammo belts draped across a shoulder, and all had unwelcoming eyes focused toward the strangers. Ahmed recognized the men as a group of rebels, whom the Western press would term “freedom fighters,” but whom most Africans know as dangerous brigands. Had Ahmed known in advance that these men would be here, he would never have agreed to come. But Waseem simply beamed his smile once more, then sat down next to the rebel leader, who pulled out a Bible and opened it!

“You have heard that it was said,” the rebel leader read, “'An eye for an eye and a tooth for a tooth.' But I tell you not to resist an evil person. But whoever slaps you on your right cheek, turn the other to him also. If anyone wants to sue you and take away your tunic, let him have your cloak also. And whoever compels you to go one mile, go with him two. Give to him who asks you, and from him who wants to borrow from you do not turn away.” Then the leader asked, “What did Isa say here, in your own words?”

For the next hour, the thirty men discussed the words of Jesus, considering His commands that were so radically opposed to their own traditions, and wrestling with their conviction that they must begin to obey them. Ahmed and Mechela sat silently in a corner, gazing with amazement as many of the men, including the leader himself, wept openly over their sinful condition, These rebels, and many others like them, cloaked their crimes under the guise of fighting for independence, but they supported their “initiatives” by old-fashioned highway robbery. Indeed, these were the very types of men that Ahmed had feared when he passed the elderly hitchhikers some weeks earlier, knowing that they habitually hijacked cars and trucks in the desert, frequently murdering the passengers under the old adage “dead men tell no tales.”

The rebel leader blinked through his tears at Ahmed, then started to laugh. “You don’t have to be afraid, my friends,” he said, gesturing toward the fearful countenances of the two church planters. “You are in the safest place in the region!” The entire band broke into laughter as Waseem translated, many nodding in agreement as they hefted their loaded weapons. Ahmed smiled politely, but his eyes measured the distance to the door.

“My brother,” the rebel leader said in a serious tone, “our friend [pointing to Waseem] has been reading God’s Word to us, and it has changed our lives,” He glanced around the hut at his comrades. “We have been changed. We used to do all the stealing and… and other things… but now, now we are children of God!” As Waseem translated these words, a few men at the rear of the group scowled and exchanged glances, but many others nodded with smiles or tears; a few cried “praise God!” in their native tongue. Many of the rebels had already given their lives to Christ, and the group had slowly been diminishing as, one by one, the new believers returned to their homes to share the Word of God with their families. Some were still hardened in their ways of wickedness, but God had not finished yet. It was for that very reason that the leader himself yet remained, working to obey God’s commands by urging his men to continue following him into eternal life through Jesus Christ.

The next morning, the rebel leader sent several men with donkeys to tow the Land Cruiser back to the rebel hideout. “It will be quite safe here,” he joked. Ahmed and Mechela remained with the band for several days, until the spare parts arrived, and in spending time with these men, whom they had once feared, their understanding of God’s Word was transformed.

“These men were my brothers,” Ahmed explained later.

(excerpted from Jerry Trousdale, Simple Churches: Dramatic Transformations, Rapid Replication, Mission Frontiers, Sep/Oct 2012)

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A review of How to Know God Exists, by Ray Comfort

Ray Comfort is the author of over 70 books, including several on the creation-evolution debate. In his book How to Know God Exists, he shows the reader that evolutionary theory is incapable of explaining such dilemmas as the origin of life, gaps in the fossil record, and macroevolution.

 

Perhaps author Comfort’s best argument for the existence of God, is his discussion of the conscience and morality.

(selections from Reagan Schrock's book review, published in Creation Research Society Quarterly Journal, Volume 48, Number 4, Spring 2012)

If we are simply highly evolved animals, why and how do we know right from wrong? What makes us decide, for example, that murder is wrong? “The problem with atheism,” writes Comfort, “is that it has a shifting morality. There are no moral absolutes. How can there be, when [according to atheism] morality is thought to come through human consensus, rather than divine mandate” (p. 87)? If humans are just biological machines composed of random chemicals that formed over millions of years, there is no reason to believe in moral absolutes.

As Comfort points out on the same page, this is one of the clearest differences between humans and animals. If humans are just animals that are more highly evolved than the rest, why are we the only species to have a clear sense of justice? Why do we punish wrongdoers? No other animal does anything like this. If someone is wronged, most of us naturally want to make it right.

“We know right from wrong,” continues Comfort, “because the conscience is an impartial judge in the courtroom of the mind. It speaks to us irrespective of our will” (p. 87). This is why a lie detector (polygraph) works so well to detect lies. Our conscience tells us lying is wrong and we react physically. For example, a person’s blood pressure and heart rate will spike when he lies and the polygraph picks up the changes. If there were no absolutes, the polygraph would not work because we would not have a conscience to tell us when we err.

This book is a welcome addition to the field of apologetics, especially for the layman.

How to Know God Exists by Ray Comfort
Bridge-Logos Publishers,
Alachua, FL, 2007, 192 pages,
$13.00.

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Pennsylvania Scholarships help kids go to Christian schools

The state of Pennsylvania's Education Improvement Tax Credit Program (EITC) has been greatly expanded for the 2011-12 school year, to give scholarships to families so that their kids can attend Christian and other private schools.

The way EITC works is this: businesses operating within Pennsylvania that pay certain taxes have the option to contribute some or all of what they owe to scholarship organizations, like the Pennsylvania Family Institute's Family Choice Scholarship Program. The state will give them a generous tax credit. Those scholarship programs, in turn, distribute those monies in the form of grants to students to attend private (including Christian) schools. It's a great concept - businesses get nearly a dollar-for-dollar credit and deduction off their state taxes, and families and children get greater choice.

(from Pennsylvania Citizen, Fall 2012, published by Pennsylvania Family Institute)

Reaching Filipino Muslims with Living Water

Bringing fresh water to a remote area in the Philippines has opened the door to share living water. When Life Resource Foundation graduates Bebot*, Inday,* Dudong* and Yeye* moved to an impoverished area on a small island at the Southern end of Mindanao, they had to walk two hours to get fresh water! The well they brought to this isolated area served to earn a hearing for the Gospel.

The need for church-planting teams among least-reached Filipino Muslims is staggering-far greater than a handful of Christar missionaries can meet alone. However at the Life Resources Foundation (LRF), Christar partners with the existing evangelical church in the Philippines , training Filipino men and women to plant churches.

The Filipino missionary team of Bebot, Inday, Dudong and Yeye has seen 14 from this community trust Christ for their salvation and several have been baptized! The team continues to live and work in this remote area.

To read more about the LRF, see http://christar.org/life-resource-foundation.html.

Incredible Energies of the Global Flood quickly created the Appalachian Water Gaps

Mainstream "millions of years" scientists oscillate back and forth between failed explanations for the formation of water gaps. But the Global Flood described in the book of Genesis leads to a very reasonable explanation!

The retreating waters started with sheet flow that ultimately deposited the continental shelves. The sheet flow then diminished to channelized currents with ultra high velocities and scale, the only kind of flow powerful enough to form aligned water gaps in a series of perpendicular ridges, seen throughout the Appalachians. This ultra high energy channelized flow stopped so quickly that it left many water gaps high and dry to make wind gaps. 

Once again, a creationist explanation is the one that holds water!
Selections from the second section of Origin of Appalachian Geomorphology, Part III: Channelized Erosion Late in the Flood, by Michael J. Oard.

(These selections by Marko Malyj are of the article published in Creation Research Society Quarterly Journal, Volume 48, Number 4, Spring 2012)

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The Appalachian Mountains are a complex fold and thrust belt in the eastern United States. There are five uniformitarian hypotheses for the origin of water gaps in these mountains and other mountain chains around the world:

1. relief inversion plus reversal in drainage
2. faults
3. the antecedent stream
4. the superimposed stream
5. stream piracy

But uniformitarian geomorphologists seem to bounce from one hypothesis to another, stuck in the rut of their failed paradigm.

"What was written in 1932-33 can still be quoted today: 'The Appalachian problem, like the poor, we shall have with us always.'" (Bryan etal., 1932/3 3, p. 318, quoted in Clark, 1989, p. 225, 229).

If all of the classical uniformitarian hypotheses are insufficient, then we must conclude the necessity of searching for an explanation within a completely different paradigm. Ironically, the features of these landforms readily can be explained by the great nemesis of modern geology- the Genesis Flood. The retreating stage of the Flood, with its two phases, readily accounts for all of these features, including erosion surfaces, plateaus, and the many wind and water gaps cutting through the mountains along its entire length.

Sheet Flow created the Continental Margin

Sheet flow produced extensive erosion surfaces, mainly on the Piedmont and on the plateaus west of the Valley and Ridge Province. As the combination of uplift and base-level decline caused the Appalachian Mountains to emerge from the Flood, the flow diverged from either side of the rising peaks. Sediments eroded west of the Appalachian divide were transported west, where they merged with water flowing east from the rising Rockies, carrying vast amounts of sediment that would form the massive Gulf of Mexico coastal plain and continental margin sediments. Erosion surfaces were later formed on either side of the Appalachian Mountains.

As the sheet currents began to diminish into large embayments and channels, they would have still been flowing perpendicular to ridges (Figure A), initiating the water gaps. Water gaps appear to be the last large-scale features formed by the Flood’s recession off the Appalachians. The water (and wind) gaps indicate that the water was at first flowing perpendicular to the mountains when the Appalachian erosion surfaces were formed, since it takes perpendicular flow to create water and wind gaps. When the water and wind gaps were first started, the flow velocities would have been incredibly high, and locally variable (Schumm and Ethridge, 1994, p. 11). The water flow may have taken advantage of possible structural weakness or a low spot on the ridge.

This type of process is seen on a small scale in the breaching of an earth dam by water flowing over its top. Finding a zone of weakness, the sheet flow over the top rapidly cuts a narrow deep notch that channels the water through. Most of the remainder of the dam wall usually remains intact. Also, the anomalously high velocities and the scale of the channelized currents is the only feasible explanation for the phenomenon of aligned water gaps in a series of perpendicular ridges.

The extent and speed of these currents is evidenced by the extent and nature of the erosion, as well as by the gravel veneer deposited on top of the erosional surfaces. But the best way to visualize the energy involved is to understand that the shelf-slope system on the present continental margin was rapidly deposited from eroded Appalachian sediments.

Continental margin off the northeastern United States.

Channelized Flow then Created Water and Wind Gaps

As the Floodwater transformed from sheet flow into channelized flow, the erosion became narrow and linear. Valleys, canyons, and water and wind gaps would then be cut until the Flood ended. This is similar to the two-step erosion on the Colorado Plateau: (1) the Great Denudation from sheet flow, and (2) the Grand Canyon, Zion Canyon, and other canyons from channelized flow (Oard, 2010, 2011a, also see the excerpted article Did Noah's Flood make the Grand Canyon?).

Once a notch was cut, water would have sought that channel, increasing flow velocity relative to the surrounding area (Figure B).

The notch would quickly grow as more water was forced through the narrow opening. In addition, the faster water would have carried abrasive particles, cutting the gap even faster (Figure C).

The Flood explanation also differentiates between wind and water gaps. Wind gaps represent early water gaps that were left high and dry as the water level rapidly dropped or the current velocity diminished quickly, leading to the cessation of erosion (Figure D). These would have remained as remnants at high elevations while the lowering water carved new gaps at lower elevations, establishing the basic post-Flood drainage patterns. Today, only wind traverses the higher gaps, while the rivers naturally take advantage of the low water course through the water gap established at the very end of the Flood.

Conclusion

Mainstream "millions of years" scientists oscillate back and forth between failed explanations for the formation of water gaps. But the Global Flood described in the book of Genesis leads to a very reasonable explanation.

The retreating waters started with sheet flow that would have been flowing perpendicular to ridges and ultimately deposited the continental shelves. The sheet currents initiated the water gaps by cutting narrow deep notch that channeled the water through. Most of the remainder of the mountain wall remained intact.

The sheet flow then diminished to channelized currents with anomalously high velocities and scale. They are the only feasible explanation for the phenomenon of aligned water gaps in a series of perpendicular ridges, as seen throughout the Appalachians. This ultra high energy channelized flow stopped so quickly that it left many water gaps high and dry. These resulted in the many wind gaps, unexplainable by any uniformitarian model involving millions of years.

Once again, a creationist explanation is the one that holds water.

References (selected)

Clark, G.M. 1989. Central and southern Appalachian water and wind gap origins: review and new data. Geomorphology 2:209–232.

Oard, M.J. 2010. The origin of Grand Canyon part IV: the great denudation. CRSQ 47:146–157.

Oard, M.J. 2011a. The origin of Grand Canyon part V: carved by late Flood channelized erosion. CRSQ 47:271–282.

Schumm, S., and F.G. Ethridge. 1994. Origin, evolution and morphology of fluvial valleys. In Dalrymple, R.W., R. Boyd, and B.A. Zaitlin (editors), Incised-Valley Systems: Origins and Sedimentary Sequences, pp. 11–27. SEPM Special Publication No. 51, Tulsa, OK.

You can switch off the loudspeaker now, I have found God

During Stalin's time in the country of Czechoslovakia, a leading communist named Loeb was imprisoned by his comrades and subjected to brainwashing. Alone in a cell, he had to listen day and night to a loudspeaker blaring at him maddening words: "Spy! Traitor! Counter-revolutionist! Oh, no, I beg your pardon. Dear and faithful comrade, no, spy! Traitor! No, comrade! You will be hanged! It is a confusion; you will be released soon. Your arrest has been a mistake. Rogue, rascal, beloved comrade, innocent victim of injustice!" This went on for weeks.

Then he had a moment of illumination. The thought occurred to him: "If communists torture Christians or other enemies, it makes sense. We cannot triumph without destroying them. But if communists torture communists, this is wickedness without any sense; it is evil for evil's sake. I have now seen the final depth of evil. But there is no electricity without two poles, no coin without two faces. If there exists an extreme depth of wickedness, there must also be an extreme height of love. This then is God."

After this, when he was called to a new interrogation, he told the police officer: "You can switch off the loudspeaker now. I have found God."

(from Voice of the Martyrs newsletter, August 2012)

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Water Gaps could not have Formed over Millions of Years

As Michael J. Oard tells us: "the origin of water gaps has not been explained, despite all the attempts. What was written in 1932-33 about water gaps in the mountains of the eastern U.S. can still be quoted today: 'The Appalachian problem, like the poor, we shall have with us always.'"

"Uniformitarian geomorphologists seem to bounce from one hypothesis to another. They have tried the antecedent stream hypothesis, the superimposed stream hypothesis, even stream piracy. They are stuck in the rut of their failed paradigm."

"We must conclude the necessity of searching for an explanation within a completely different paradigm. Ironically, the features of these landforms readily can be explained by the great nemesis of modern geology- the Genesis Flood."

Selections from the first section of Origin of Appalachian Geomorphology, Part III: Channelized Erosion Late in the Flood, by Michael J. Oard.

(These selections by Marko Malyj are of the article published in Creation Research Society Quarterly Journal, Volume 48, Number 4, Spring 2012)

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Water Gaps

Many master streams flow in deep gorges through ridges of resistant rock, with the Valley and Ridge of Pennsylvania having the most dramatic examples. The problem of how streams were able to cut through such obstacles has fascinated many geomorphologists.

Water gaps are numerous in the Appalachian Mountains (VerSteeg, 1930; Thompson, 1939; Strahler, 1945; Ahnert, 1998). Hundreds of them have been cut through resistant ridges (Thornbury, 1965). Speculation and controversy over the origin of water gaps have been going on for about 150 years. Although the major rivers Bow through water gaps of the Valley and Ridge and Blue Ridge Provinces, many tributary streams also Bow through water gaps, especially in the northern Appalachians (see Figures 23 and 24).

One of the most famous is the series through which the Susquehanna River flows. The river cuts through the folded and eroded ridges of Blue Mountain north of Harrisburg, Pennsylvania (Figure 4). The river, on the 37-km stretch upstream from Harrisburg, could have flowed around four out of five of the resistant ridges, had it followed the expected course at lower elevations over softer rocks (Strahler, 1945).

Figure 4. Coogle Maps Image of Susquehanna River water gaps north of Harrisburg, Pennsylvania. Note that the last two water gaps are aligned and the third to the north is almost aligned (© Google 2010).

Figure 9. Shaded relief map of New River. Downstream toward top. Note that the river cuts almost straight through the Valley and Ridge Province(© Google 2010).

The New River starts near the Blue Ridge Escarpment in North Carolina and cuts northwest through at least four ridges of the Valley and Ridge Province via major water gaps (Figure 9) (Bartholomew and Mills, 1991; Ward et al, 2005).

Uniformitarian Hypotheses and Problems

A water gap is "a deep pass in a mountain ridge, through which a stream flows; esp. a narrow gorge or ravine cut through resistant rocks" (Neuendorf et al., 2005, p. 715). This applies to any perpendicular cut through any topographical barrier, including a plateau (Douglas, 2005).

There are five uniformitarian hypotheses for the origin of water gaps, also called transverse drainage (Oberlander, 1965). William Morris Davis was one of the first to attempt an explanation in the early twentieth century, by relief inversion plus reversal in drainage. This explanation is not taken seriously today. The second is that gaps are the surface expression of faults cutting through the mountains. However, most water gaps in the Appalachians are erosional and cannot be attributed to faulting. In fact, many well-known faults have not resulted in water gaps (e.g., Strahler, 1945, pp. 46, 63-65).

That leaves three current uniformitarian hypotheses: (1) the antecedent stream, (2) the superimposed stream, and (3) stream piracy (Stokes and Mather, 2003, p. 76).

Antecedent Stream Hypothesis
The antecedent stream hypothesis, defined above and illustrated in Figure 1, seems to have been the first invoked to explain transverse drainage. John Wesley Powell simply assumed the Green River
through the Uinta Mountains and the Colorado River through Grand Canyon had been eroded by antecedent rivers. Most other geologists accepted this hypothesis until the mid 1900s, when
it ran into severe problems.

Figure 1. The antecedent stream hypothesis shown on a plaque near a Yakima River water gap, Washington. First, a stream is established; then, as a ridge slowly uplifts, the stream erodes through the barrier.

One must prove that the river in question predates uplift, but that is difficult (Twidale, 1976). Furthermore, uplift must be slow enough and steady enough so that the river's course is not deflected
(Ranney, 2005). If uplift was too rapid, a river in an enclosed basin would become a lake. If a water gap through one barrier is difficult to achieve, aligned water gaps through multiple uplifts, such as on the Susquehanna north of Harrisburg (Figure 15), would be much less likely.

Figure 15. Coogle Maps close-up view of aligned water gaps of the Susquehanna River north of Harrisburg, Pennsylvania.

Superimposed Stream Hypothesis

In the superimposed stream hypothesis, a landscape is buried by renewed sedimentation, usually by a marine transgression. Then, a stream or river is established on the generally flat cover of sediments or sedimentary rock, called the "covermass." As erosion takes place over millions of years, the stream erodes downward in the same location (Figure 2). In that way, after millions of years, the stream ends up flowing through structural barriers. At the same time, the rest of the covermass not in the path of the river is somehow eroded or mostly eroded, leaving behind the stream or river flowing through ridges or mountains.  If so, that surface would have been generally level, and rivers flowing across it were assumed to have cut down into older deformed sedimentary rocks.

Figure 2. Block diagram of the superimposed stream hypothesis. The stream maintains its same course as most of the covermass (top layer) is eroded. Drawing by Bryan Miller.

What is actually observed is that many tributaries do flow parallel to the ridges, but then they mysteriously jump across ridges through water gaps. Von Engeln (1942) also pointed to the aligned water gaps as evidence of superimposition, since these features would not be likely caused by antecedence or stream piracy.

The most significant problem is the absence of evidence for the proposed transgression, the great volume of "covermass." Cretaceous marine deposits do not occur within the Appalachian fold belt (Kaktins and Delano (1999, p. 382). Another difficulty is the tendency of modern rivers to take the path of least resistance. We would expect a downward-cutting river to change course as it encountered a more resistant anticline, and flow through the more easily eroded covermass.

Superimposition has a problem with removing the covermass in between the rivers. If the rivers are cutting vertically, then why would we expect laterally extensive erosion of these sediments on the ridges between the rivers? The hypothesis requires the river to maintain the same course and
downcut into both resistant and nonresistant formations, while at the same time having the drainage basin erode the covermass all across the remainder of the region. Thus, the soft rocks are cut into valleys and leave the more resistant rocks as ridges, while the main rivers do not change course through the ridges (Crickmay, 1974 ).

Stream Piracy

Figure 3. Schematic of stream piracy drawn by Peter Klevberg. As the stream valleys erode, a tributary stream supposedly erodes through the intervening ridge and eventually captures part of the stream on the other side of the divide.

In a flume experiment, Douglas and Schrneeckle (2007, p. 38) discovered hat the mechanism of stream piracy is very difficult and needs extra "help":

The final piracy experiment successfully produced a transverse drainage through headward erosion, but required the retreat of a strongly asymmetrical scarp ridge and required much more time than the other experiments. This supports Bishop's (1995) argument concerning piracies over utilization.

All Uniformitarian Hypotheses Fail

Hack (1989) acknowledged that the origin of water gaps has not been explained, despite all the attempts. Uniformitarian geomorphologists seem to bounce from one hypothesis to another, stuck in the rut of their failed paradigm.

"What was written in 1932-33 can still be quoted today: 'The Appalachian problem, like the poor, we shall have with us always.'" (Bryan etal., 1932/3 3, p. 318, quoted in Clark, 1989, p. 225, 229).

If all of the classical uniformitarian hypotheses are insufficient, then we must conclude the necessity of searching for an explanation within a completely different paradigm. Ironically, the features of these landforms readily can be explained by the great nemesis of modern geology - the Genesis Flood.

References (selected)

Ahnert, F. 1998. Introduction to Geomorphology. Arnold, London, UK.

Bartholomew, M.J., and H.H. Mills. 1991. Old courses of the New River: its late Cenozoic migration and bedrock control inferred from high-level stream gravels, southwestern Virginia. GSA Bulletin
103:73–81.

Bishop, P. 1995. Drainage rearrangement by river capture, beheading and diversion. Progress in Physical Geography 19(4):449–473.

Clark, G.M. 1989. Central and southern Appalachian water and wind gap origins: review and new data. Geomorphology 2:209–232.

Crickmay, C.H. 1974. The Work of the River: A Critical Study of the Central Aspects of Geomorphology. American Elsevier Publishing Co., New York, NY.

Douglass, J.C. 2005. Criterion approach to transverse drainages. PhD thesis, Arizona State University, Tucson, Arizona.

Douglass, J., and M. Schmeeckle. 2007. Analogue modeling of transverse drainage mechanisms. Geomorphology 84:22–43.

Hack, J.T. 1989. Geomorphology of the Appalachian Highlands. In Hatcher,R.D. Jr., W.A. Thomas, and G.W. Viele (editors), The Geology of North America, Volume F-2, The Appalachian-Ouachita
Orogen in the United States, pp. 459–470. Geological Society of America, Boulder, CO.

Kaktins, U. and H.L. Delano. 1999. Drainage basins. In Shultz, C.H. (editor), The
Geology of Pennsylvania, pp. 379–390. Pennsylvania Geological Survey, Harrisburg, PA, and Pittsburgh Geological Society, Pittsburgh, PA.

Neuendorf, K.K.E., J.P. Mehl, Jr., and J.A.Jackson. 2005. Glossary of Geology, 5th
Edition. American Geological Institute, Alexandria, VA.

Oberlander, T. 1965. The Zagros Streams: A New Interpretation of Transverse Drainage in an Orogenic Zone. Syracuse Geographical Series No. 1, Syracuse, NY.

Ranney, W. 2005. Carving Grand Canyon: Evidence, Theories, and Mystery. Grand Canyon Association, Grand Canyon, AZ.

Stokes, M., and A.E. Mather 2003. Tectonic origin and evolution of a transverse drainage: the Río Almanzora, Betic Cordillera, Southeast Spain. Geomorphology 50:59–81.

Strahler, A.N. 1945. Hypotheses of stream development in the folded Appalachians of Pennsylvania. GSA Bulletin 56:45–88

Thompson, H.D. 1939. Drainage evolution in the southern Appalachians. GSA Bulletin 50:1,323–1,356.

Thornbury, W.D. 1965. Regional Geomorphology of the United States. John Wiley & Sons, New York, NY.

Twidale, C.. 2004. River patterns and their meaning. Earth-Science Reviews 67:159–218.

Ver Steeg, K. 1930. Wind gaps and water gaps of the Northern Appalachians, their characteristics
and significance. Annals of the New York Academy of Sciences 32:87–220. 

Von Engeln, O.D. 1942. Geomorphology: Systematic and Regional. Macmillan, New York, NY.

Ward, D.J., J.A. Spotila, G.S. Hancock, and J.M. Galbraith 2005. New constraints on the late Cenozoic incision history of the New River, Virginia. Geomorphology 72:54–72.

He always carries a copy of the laws of Vietnam, and the Bible in his heart

Ma was a deputy to the chief of police and a Vietnamese communist party member.

In 1996, his nephew showed him a New Testament. When Ma's entire family got sick, he remembered what he had read about Jesus healing people. Twelve members of Ma's family had died of illness, so Ma asked a pastor to pray for a young nephew. Ma' s nephew was healed, and Ma gave his life to the Lord!

But a year later, he lost his job when the party learned of his conversion.

So he returned to his village and began to tell others about God. Although he had no training - he knew only what he had read in the Gospels and what the pastor had told him - 100 people came to
Christ in the first year of his ministry.

In 1998 he was arrested.

"They kept me for three days and beat me because they knew me from when I belonged to the
communist party," he said. Ma used the time to share the gospel with his former comrades, and six of the party members became believers. He was released.

Ma, now 62 years old, at this point oversees nine house churches and nearly 1,800 believers. Christians face many restrictions in the region where Ma works. They are not allowed to gather in groups of more than 20, and, unlike other villagers, Christians are not provided houses by the government. In addition, Bibles are not allowed, so Christians must hide their Bibles and read them only after dark.

Ma leaves his Bible behind when he travels to preach, afraid that it would be confiscated if discovered. Instead, he writes his sermon on paper and hides the Scripture in his heart.

He always carries a copy of the laws of Vietnam so that when he is questioned he can confront the police with their own laws. Despite government harassment and restrictions, Ma has learned how to continue his ministry and continue sharing the hope of Jesus Christ.

(from Voice of the Martyrs newsletter, August 2012)

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Birds, Insects, and Bats Fly by Design, not by Accident!

Evolutionary philosophy tells us that "we can now safely say (!) that the illusion of design in living creatures is just that — an illusion.” But as any engineer or inventor can tell you, the mind staggers at the amount of planning which would be needed to accomplish this outrageous, systematic “appearance of design.”  The amazing and completely different ways that birds, insects, and bats are able to fly is a case in point, the workmanship of a majestic Creator!

(Selections from Gary Howell, "Naturalistic Evolution: a Dangerous Humanistic Philosophy" published in Creation Matters, a publication of Creation Research Society, Volume 17, Number 4, July/August 2012, to appear at http://www.creationresearch.org/creation_matters/pdf/2012/CM17%2004%20for%20web.pdf)

The grand difficulty revealed with the study of nature is that ineffable, pesky, enigmatic, and inviolable appearance of design; it just won't go away! Worse yet, the more layers that are peeled away, the more design is confirmed.

Speaking as an engineer with 17 domestic and international patents, I maintain that the proposition of complex systematic designs emerging devoid of preparation, concepts, planning, technological building blocks, and thinking is scientifically untenable and insulting. No matter how complex the design interaction, with design interdependency built upon design interdependency, evolutionary philosophy simply insists these only “appear designed.”¹

Leonardo da Vinci’s plans for an ornithopter,
a flying machine kept aloft by
the beating of its wings; about 1490.

Another assertion of naturalistic evolution is that multiple solutions to the same problem evolved independently. Take flying for example. Leonardo da Vinci dreamt of it and advanced unsuccessful designs, including the ornithopter.² It was not until we began to get the drift of differential pressure as a result of airfoil (Bernoulli's principle) did anything near a successful flying machine emerge. But the animal kingdom "solved" this system-intensive problem three different ways: birds, insects, and mammals.

Bird Flight

Birds fly by means of multiple technologies, but principally via a feature called feathers. Feathers are manufactured in hair-follicle variants consisting largely of finger-naillike material, β­-keratin.³
There are numerous feather variants that can be described within six general categories: tail, flight, semiplume, filoplume, bristle, and downy.⁴  Of these, downy or down is the simplest, having no barbs and barbules, or “hooks” latching adjacent filaments.  Being the “simplest feather” nonetheless, no manmade material to date approaches down’s thermal, weight, and rebound characteristics.

“Light as a feather” is more than a cliché as an engineering design team ponders equaling the feather’s specifications: strength-to-weight ratio, modulus of elasticity, ductility, hollow-tapered-cantilevered central-support beam — and let us not underestimate the incidental design detail — it must grow in place!



Bird wing is a true airfoil

Feathers must be sized and placed quite accurately, and hooked together, creating a contiguous outer surface. Bird-wing architecture is a true airfoil. Its arched geometry causes air passing over the top to travel at a greater velocity than air passing below the wing. This causes negative pressure above the wing which lifts the bird.  It’s fascinating for birds (that are, we’re told, dinosaur derivatives) to have solved this systematic, technological difficulty without intent or intelligence!

It is exactly the means of lift utilized by 747’s and F-15’s. But bird wings are much more complex than modern aircraft wings, because they are variable airfoils! With anticipatory, neural-feedback networks, bird wings adjust to situational events involving propulsion, ascent/descent, air speed, cross winds, air density, proximity, and the like. Modern aeronautical engineers can only dream of variable airfoils, as da Vinci dreamed of flying.

Insect flight

Naturalistic evolutionary philosophy alleges that insects evolved from different origins than did birds, but insects nevertheless "solved" the difficulties of flight with quite unusual features. Not with feathers but with chitin, a naturally-occurring, structural polymer called a polysaccharide.

Insect flight employs some elements of airfoil design, but insect propulsion and lift are largely credited to vortices which are created at the leading edge of the insect wing, and to the flapping motion that causes the vortices to spiral out to the wing tip.⁵ It is certain that man-made flight abhors vortices (turbulent air flow versus laminar air flow), but insect flight deliberately induces powerful vortices, and uses them effectively for lift, propulsion, and maneuverability!

Schematic reconstruction of wake pattern during wake–wing interaction in fruit fly and dragonfly model wings

Bird lift and propulsion are limited to the downward stroke, but insects are capable of rotating their wings fully backward so that the wing’s upper surface creates lift in the upward stroke also — i.e., every stroke provides lift and propulsion. They can fly upside down, as in landing on a ceiling, or backwards and sideways. The mind staggers at the number of prototypical iterations which would be needed to accomplish this outrageous, systematic “appearance of design.”  Entomologists and aeronautical engineers are just beginning to understand and appreciate the extreme airborne capability of these diminutive creatures.

Mammalian flight

Bat wing anatomy

Bats are mammals — live birth, warm bodies, milk-fed young — and quite different from bugs and birds, but they are creatures that once again solved the flying enigma by altogether different design stratagem and materials selection. Bats, after all, “simply” stretch a skin membrane over a bony structure and take to the air. But it’s hardly that simple, as the skin/bony structure must make up the aforementioned airfoil, with the neuro-muscular systems in place to vary wing geometry and, thus, to sustain intrepid, long-distance flight and crazy acrobatics.

Oh, and dare we mention the incidental, fully integrated, co-developmental echo-location feature! No big deal, according to our best collegial biology professors, but these cavalier academics never designed and developed anything themselves! It is scientifically antithetical and a hopelessly vacuous proposition (let alone a factual imperative) to suggest the mechanisms purported by naturalistic philosophy could produce any of these flying machines, and especially to do so by three distinctly differing methodologies.

Final thoughts

The evolutionary empire has grown so vast and powerful that no other viewpoint is tolerated at any venue. This is especially true in agencies associated with government. No competing view is permitted at schools or work places with government tentacles. Those who dare are ridiculed at best, but most often spurned, dismissed, and persecuted. No written, oral, private, or public dissention is tolerated.

Scriptural premise, especially Christianity, as a competing religion to that of naturalistic evolution, will not be tolerated.

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References (selected)

1.  Dawkins, R. 2006. The God Delusion. Houghton Mifflin Company, Boston, MA.  [See p.. 139, “We live on a planet where we are surrounded by perhaps ten million species, each one of which independently displays a powerful illusion of apparent design.”; and p. 158, “Darwin and his successors have shown how living creatures, with their spectacular statistical improbability and appearance of design, have evolved by slow, gradual degrees from simple beginnings. We can now safely say that the illusion of design in living creatures is just that — an illusion.”

2. Fuller, J. 2012. Top 10 bungled attempts at one-person flight: 9. Leonardo da Vinci's Complex Ornithopter (c. 1505). HowStuffWorks. Retrieved August 11, 2012, from http://science.howstuffworks.com/transport/flight/classic/ten-bungled-flight-attempt2.htm.

3. Anonymous. 2012. Feather. Wikipedia.  Retrieved August 11, 2012, from http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Feather.

4. Kazilek, C.J. 2012. Feather biology. Ask A Biologist, Arizona State University.  Retrieved August 11, 2012, from http://askabiologist.asu.edu/explore/feather-biology.

5. Anonymous, 2004. Animal Flight Group: Aerodynamics. Department of Zoology, University of Cambridge.  Retrieved August 11, 2012, from www.zoo.cam.ac.uk/zoostaff/ellington/aerodynamics.html.