Evolution for the Avid Creationist/Bible Believer

Clues to Abiogenesis; Chemical Origins of Life

2012-01-24T10:42:00.001-08:00

The amino acids that make up life are all left-handed, even though naturally occurring amino acids come in both left and right-handed forms. In the same way, organic sugars (those that are involved in life) are all right-handed despite the fact that both right and left-handed forms are found in nature.

Now researchers have shown a link between left-handed amino acids and right-handed sugars.

What we have achieved is the first step on that pathway to show how simple sugars -- threose and erythrose -- originated. We generated these sugars from a very simple set of materials that most scientists believe were around at the time that life began.

The Ica Stones Prove Humans and Dinosaurs Co-existed?

2011-11-03T13:28:00.001-07:00

I put up a new page on my Proof of Evolution site on the Ica stones, astonishing evidence that humans and dinosaurs co-existed ... if they can be proven genuine!

Taking the Anti-Evolutionist Side Today

2011-11-02T11:49:00.000-07:00

I do have to grant one argument to the anti-evolutionists. Sometimes science oversteps its bounds.

This Discover article could have been requested by Answers in Genesis so that they would have an article to abuse.

Holy Nebraska Man, Batman! Discover actually led the article with a picture of one molar with which they are claiming to overturn early European human history!

Given, we can analyze internal and external structures better than we ever could. Determining that a tooth aligns better with archaic Homo sapien fossils than with Neandertal fossils is more possible than ever. Nonetheless, this finding is overriding determinations previously made, probably in similar confidence. Couldn't we at least issue the report a bit more humbly? "It appears ... " or "It may be ... " would be excellent expressions to find in this article.

What are the odds that other leading anthropologists are going to dispute the conclusions of this team? I'd say it's extremely likely. All sorts of confident statements were issued about Australopithecus sediba, but it was mere days before Donald Johanson, famous for discovering "Lucy," was disputing the conclusions of the discoverers.

I don't even want to run into an anti-evolutionist and hear them bring up the last falsely identified tooth one more time. Their argument may be pointless and irrelevant, but it's annoying. Why throw fodder to them when science is supposed to be known for its tentative conclusions.

My Best Argument for Evolution Directed at Creationists

2011-10-30T09:48:00.000-07:00

This is an email I sent to an inquirer. I put a lot of effort into it, and so I want to preserve it on this site. It is, I believe, the best concise effort to defend evolution as a Christian, godly, and reasonable position to take on the creation and progress of life.

I'm glad to hear the leukemia blog is inspiring. A Christian who can live in submission and faith before God can do anything. Joseph was in a prison cell for two years(!!) and never lost his faith in God. That is true belief.

I believe in gifts of healing and gifts of faith, but I don't believe that being divinely healed of leukemia is the only way to express faith. Putting oneself in the hand of God, no matter what, is the faith we must all have. He can show us where we need to pray for deliverance and where we can rest in confident trust that all things work together for good.

Okay, on to evolution.

Why would our Savior himself even consider utilizing such an unstable process when it could become a conduit for disproving his very existence? That is how I feel about God using evolution as a creation tool.

You're younger than me. You put a bit more stock in "why" questions than I do. I know the answer to a lot of those questions is "I don't know."

I don't prefer evolution. I see that the evidence indicates that it's true. I was against evolution when I began this quest, just like you and many other Christians. I wasn't trying to find out that the evidence overwhelmingly supports evolution, I just did.

So the question of "why" is irrelevant to me. I'm stuck with the fact that it's so. I can come up with answers to "why," but that doesn't make evolution more or less true.

Does that imply that if you were to gather columns of fossils from all over the world and then order them, that it would produce a geologic column?

The geologic column is unlikely to be complete anywhere in the world, though it is complete in several places. The only way for the geologic column to be complete is for one spot on earth to have been accumulating sediment for the last 600 million years. (Before 600 million years is bedrock.) On that sort of time frame, continents move, mountains rise and fall, and weather changes dramatically. Thus, any one spot is likely to experience both erosion and sediment accumulation during its history. So there will always be gaps in any one spot in the geologic column.

However, what should always be true if evolution is true, is that anywhere that the triassic, jurassic, and cretaceous layers (the Mesozoic era) are found, they should be below layers from our current Cenozoic era. They should contain certain types of flora and fauna and not contain other types. In other words, you will find dinosaurs and other huge reptiles, but you will find only small mammals of a certain type. In the Cenozoic layers, however, you should find no dinosaurs and lots of mammals. In fact, as you go up through the Cenozoic layers, you should see a progression that makes geographic and evolutionary sense, progressing from the earliest mammals to modern ones.

And that's exactly what we find.

There are exceptions. Earthquakes thrust layers out of the ground over the top of other layers. However, this is almost always easy to recognize, especially now that we've identified the major tectonic plates.

After doing my research I've found that no matter where you go on earth, you cannot find a reliable depiction of the geologic column that scientists describe.

Actually, one of the places the geologic column is complete is right here in the good ol' U.S. of A.! It's in North Dakota!

John Woodmorappe has written a rebuttal, but (sorry about being so honest here) like most creationist rebuttals, it's irrelevant. He argues that the sedimentation there is not thick enough. He does not deny that every layer of the geologic column is there.

He says that if you add up the largest thickness of each of the layers anywhere on earth, it would add up to over 100 miles, and the thickest you ever find all the layers together is 16 miles?

I have to ask, what's the point? Does that change the fact, that there, in one place, is the whole lineage from Cambrian fauna to trilobites to fish to amphibians to reptiles to mammals? It's a full picture of the smaller picture we find everywhere else in the world.

I ask you, do you believe in the creation process illustrated in the beginning chapters of Genesis at all, or do you completely disregard that and resort to God-induced evolution?

If the evidence were questionable, I would be fashionable and stay out of the whole debate. The evidence, however, is not questionable. It is overwhelming and one-sided (for a person willing to keep digging past where the creationists want you to stop, explained below).

As a result, I have no choice but to believe that life evolved because God's earth says that life evolved.

It was only after I gave in to the evidence that I was forced to ask questions about the literal accuracy of Genesis. Once I did, the whole idea of taking a stand against science based on Genesis 1 seemed extremely presumptuous, even naive.

Now keep in mind, God was kind to me. He made it easy on me. I had already been reading the writings of the earliest Christians for four years before I was confronted with the evidence for evolution. I already knew two key things about the apostles' churches that most modern Christians don't know because they're unfamiliar with the second century writings of the church:

The Old Testament is to be taken primarily figuratively. The narratives may be true history as well, but inspiration primarily means that God has put messages in that history from which we are to learn.

God teaches us through nature as well as through the Scriptures. The seasons and the daily rising of the sun are testimonies and proofs that the resurrection is true. There is nothing in nature that doesn't teach us about God.

Augustine begins his commentary On the Literal Meaning of Genesis by saying that every Christian has to understand Genesis figuratively. After that, we can then determine what is literal as well. He based that on 1 Cor. 10:11, where he reads "Now all these things happened to them figuratively and are written for our admonition" (On the Literal Meaning of Genesis, ch. 1).

Moses was writing a Law. The covenant laws of the Middle East of that time, known as "suzerain covenants," had three parts:

What the Suzerain did for the people

What the Suzerain required of the people

The blessings and cursings for obedience and disobedience

In Moses' case, the Suzerain is Yahweh. Yahweh had done a lot for Israel, including creating the world and creating man. Thus, "Genesis" is not so much about beginnings as it is about what God did for man and how he came to be Suzerain of Israel.

This does not require God to inspire Moses to produce a factual, scientifically-accurate account of creation. Moses can simply write down the creation story as it was known to himself and the rest of the Hebrews. The point was only that Yahweh is Creator.

Now you may say, "But it was inspired!" To that I say that modern Christians have lost an effective, practical, and more accurate understanding of inspiration.

To the early Christians inspiration meant that God guided Moses to write the story in such a way that it would provide admonition and divine guidance for spiritual, born-again, sons of God in the Church despite the fact that it was orginally written for carnal, non-born-again servants of God in Israel.

So my answer is that I do not consider the story in Genesis one to be scientifically accurate or necessarily accurate at all, just a story that was passed down among the Hebrews, albeit one that is remarkably more reasonable than most creation stories involving turtles, snakes, elephants, and a man with the world on his shoulder.

I do believe that the message of Genesis 1 is that God made everything, and that inside that chapter are remarkable lessons that we miss when we argue over science. The third day is an incredible picture of the Word of God and how it works inside of man. The fourth day testifies of the life of Christ, light and darkness, and the role of the church in the world.

Finally, I mentioned that early Christians understood nature to portray the work of God in us. When we are born again, made into new creations, are we as Christians created complete as we ought to be, and then slowly devolve into less than we were when we were born again? Or do we not, as new creations, evolve into something beautiful through a process of suffering and dying to ourselves?

According to the beginning chapters, all mammalian life was created within 3 days of each other ... and would immediately make the geologic column irrelevant to Christians.

And this is why I wrote all that I wrote about inspiration. If modern Christians are right, and inspiration means that Genesis one must be scientifically accurate, then we are going to look really bad because we're losing the evolution argument badly (for those willing to go further than creationists want, which I'll explain in a moment).

Does God want me to trust the description of the days in Genesis one more than the evidence of the earth? That's a premise that must be proven to be true, and I don't believe that the early churches, those started by the apostles, would have agreed with that view of inspiration. In fact, I can produce at least two (Origen and Augustine) who directly argue against that and complain that it makes Christians look foolish.

Could it be possible that those layers, found at different depths all around the world, are accounted for by the Flood in Genesis 6?

Here I'll explain what I mean by going further than creationists want us to.

Brilliant men have been trying to explain how the flood could account for the layers of the earth ever since Henry Morris wrote The Genesis Flood back around 1960. That's a half a century!

The problems have not been resolved. Even if you agree with them that the flood caused the entire geologic column, there are lots and lots of unresolved questions.

Let's look at one, for example. Creationists like to say, "What if there were a vapor canopy over the whole earth prior to the flood? Animals and people would have lived longer due to UV rays being blocked by this canopy. That's why there were dinosaurs, because reptiles grow their entire lives and dinosaurs are just long-lived reptiles. That would also explain why the sun and moon weren't seen until day four even though there were plants. The sun and moon weren't created on day four, they just weren't visible through the canopy until day 4. And the vapory canopy also explains 'the waters above the firmament.'"

The problem? One, the whole system doesn't work very well. A vapor canopy doesn't explain day four or the waters above the firmament. The waters are above the firmament, and the firmament has the sun, moon, and stars in it. You can't hide the sun, moon, and stars above the waters; the waters are above the sun, moon, and stars.

Further, if there were a vapor canopy that large, the weight of it would compress the air on the earth and heat it above what life could bear.

Is what I just said true? It's so true that Answers in Genesis has cried "uncle," and they now include the vapor canopy among their arguments that creationists shouldn't use.

The best canopy model still gives an intolerably high temperature at the surface of the earth. (Noah's Flood - Where did the water come from?)

John Baumgardner is famous for designing a computer program that can mimic the movement of the continental plates. He's also a young earth creationist. He's been working on his own model of how the flood could have laid the geologic column.

The problem is, it's not working any better for him than for anyone else. In a discussion with Joe Meert, Joe pointed out that Baumgardner's model has a "heat problem." Baumgardner's response?

Yes, we recognize that we have cooling problems to solve. Specifically, how are we going to cool all that oceanic lithosphere.

Really, though, it's more than that. I have a page on the a href="http://www.proof-of-evolution.com/haymond-formation.html" target="_blank">Haymond Formation, which is a formation in Texas, from the middle of the geologic column, that has 15,000 alternating layers of shale and sand. The shale has burrows dug in it. This indicates thousands of years of time, right in the middle of layers that the flood was supposed to have laid.

Creationists like for us to just stop at "the flood laid the geologic column." They don't like us to go further and see whether that's plausible.

In fact, I wrote a blog on John Woodmorappe's response to the Haymond Formation that illustrates the same thing. His answer to the Haymond Formation is that it was possibly dug by shrimp underwater or that the burrows were created by escaping gas.

So what about that response? Creationists want us to stop, not ask more questions, but if we want the truth, we have to follow through on our theories and postulations.

If shrimp dug the burrows underwater, does that change anything?

No, not at all. You still have the problem of 15,000 alternating layers right in the middle of the geologic column. If the flood laid the column, then all 15,000 of those layers, and the burrows, had to happen in the one year of the flood. That's nonsensical.

What about gas escaping?

That still doesn't explain how the shale and sand created 15,000 alternating layers, but it has a further problem. You can look at the burrows and tell how they were formed. It's not enough to say, "What if?" You have to check and see what is. You can tell the difference between gas escape tunnels and burrows.

True Inspiration and Nature

Well, I don't know that this constitutes "taking it easy on you," but I feel like if I say something small and incomplete to you, then I can shake your faith. If I tell you the whole truth, as I see it, then it ought not to shake your faith. You can stand on inspiration when you know what it is. You can stand on the inspiration of God and perhaps get more out of Genesis 1 than you ever dreamed possible.

You can also look at nature and get its message to you. Out of death comes life, and suffering and struggle produces the most marvelous beauty ever.

Let me add one final thing, since I'm on the message of nature.

The final blow for me was finding out about supernovas. Yeah, stars.

Stars give off heat by nuclear fusion. They fuse hydrogen into helium, then helium into carbon, and then carbon into the higher elements.

You probably know that when you fuse hydrogen into helium, great amounts of energy are produced. What you may not know is that as you fuse larger elements into even large elements, once you reach iron, energy is not produced; it is consumed.

When a very large star begins to make iron, the fusion of iron consumes energy, creating a void in the middle of the star. The star then collapses on itself, creating intense heat. The intense heat drives the entire star into fusion (rather than just the core) and the star explodes.

The result can be a beautiful bright object in the sky if it happens in our galaxy. The other result is that carbon-based molecules are scattered like dust across vast reaches of space.

Do you know what we call carbon-based molecules?

We call them organic molecules. They are the molecules from which all life is made.

Am I supposed to believe that God made these huge stars, most of which we cannot see, which blow up in incredible beauty, producing the very dust from which we are made, and then believe that God did that to no purpose? Is it really possible that he never meant to make us from that dust despite creating it in such a beautiful and remarkable fashion?

I can't believe that. I believe those stars explode at the will of God, that he lovingly gathered that dust over eons, and that the end of all that gathering was people who are "the called according to his purpose."

Anyway, that's what I believe.

Bad Creationist Arguments: "There's Such a Thing As"

2011-10-21T23:27:00.001-07:00

On a blog inappropriately titled Truth Matters, I read a complaint against Glenn Morton, one of my favorite writers on the evolution vs. creation debate. That complaint is an excellent illustration of one of the most common bad arguments by creationists: the appeal to "There's such a thing as ..."

Caveat on "Creationist"

I hate referring to anti-evolutionists as creationists. I'm a creationist, too. I believe that God created everything. I just happen to believe the evidence that says he did so by evolving life on earth.

The only reason I refer to "creationist" arguments rather than "anti-evolutionist" arguments is because there's very few of us using "anti-evolutionist" as a term. As a result, if I use "anti-evolutionist," then those who search for "creationist arguments" won't find my blog. If I'm going to write arguments, I'd like for them to be read!

Let me explain what I mean by "There's such a things as ... "

In this case, Truth Matters complained about Glenn Morton's claim that creationists had never answered the things he's written about burrows in relation to the global flood. An excellent example of this is covered on my Haymond Formation page, which is largely based on Glenn Morton's much more complex page on the Haymond Formation.

The Haymond Formation is 15,000 alternating layers of shale and sand. Many of the shale layers have burrows in them, which were then filled with sand. Another shale layer was laid, then more sand, etc., for 15,000 layers.

Of course this argues for many thousands of years of deposits. The problem is that since these layers are below the tertiary they are older than the tertiary period, which means they are older than 65 million years. To creationists, those layers are part of the flood. Explaining how 15,000 alternating layers of shale and sand with burrows in the shale was deposited during the flood is simply impossible.

Glenn Morton claims that no one has answered the Haymond Formation data.

Truth Matters believes Glenn's claim is false.

Truth Matters appeal to John Woodmorappe, a man who needs to be commended for bravely defending his creationist views even when they are easily torn apart by more honest scientists. Woodmorappe is obviously a very brave man.

This, however, is the sort of evidence Truth Matters appeals to based on Woodmorappe and some of their own material:

Shrimp can make burrows, and they can do it even deep under the ocean bottom when they are buried by mud.
Morton claims that the organisms that make the burrow were killed by the sand coming in. Truth Matters argues that there are other ways they could have died.
The escape of trapped gases could cause burrows, as could plant roots that later decayed.
Morton makes up the numbers for his math, and so his math shouldn't be trusted. The math to which Truth Matters is referring is that Morton allowed the ridiculously short period of one day for each set of layers to be laid, burrows to be dug, and sand to fill them, destroying the burrowers. At 15,000 layers, this would have taken about 4 years, not the one year of the flood.

So let me ask. Do your own thinking. Do any of these arguments provide even address the real problem, that these layers could not have been laid during the one year of the flood?

If you said, yes, number three does, then take a prize. Number three does indeed at least address the problem. Numbers one, two, and four however don't resolve the problem even if they're true.

So what about number three? Could these layers have been laid by the flood due to some sort of sorting process, trapping gas underneath, which then pushed out through the shale and sand? In the muddy shale, could gas have left burrows, but the sand have quickly collapsed on itself, destroying the sand burrows and filling the shale burrows?

Maybe. If I leave it at that, it seems extremely unlikely, but let's say it's wildly possible. Somehow, the flood dropped 15,000 layers of shale and sand through some mysterious sorting process, and it only did it in one place! This didn't happen all over the world. It happened in just one place in what is now the southern United States. It looks to be the sort of thing that would happen due to flooding, probably in a marine environment. And it would be limited to one place because only that one place was a repeatedly flooding marine environment pushing sand up into shale, probably on same annual cycle. That makes much more sense, but let's assume it's possible that the flood dropped 15,000 alternating layers of shale and sand.

This is what I mean by "There's such a thing as ... "

Yes, there's such a things as gas bubbling up through mud and leaving burrows. The question is, did gas bubble up through the mud and create these burrows?

Morton takes the time to post pictures of the fossil layers. He quotes researchers who examined the burrows. He also explains how we know those burrows were made by organisms, not gas.

We know that the burrowers who were buried did not survive. If they had, they would have had to dig up through the sand to escape their entombment. There are no burrows going up through the sand. And if there had been these burrows, there should be little circular piles of sand with a central crater pocking the entire upper surface of the sand. (ref)

Whether or not there is such a things as gas bubbling up to create burrows, there is conclusive evidence that gas didn't bubble up and create these burrows.

Honest scientists do not quit at "There's such a things as" gas bubbling to create burrows. They go a very easy step further and try to determine whether gas bubbled up to create the Haymond Formation burrows. It is not any burrows that matter, but these burrows that matter.

It is any surprise that Glenn Morton continues to claim that no creationist has answered his data on burrows? Creationists have thrown out several "There's such a things as ... " arguments ("There's such a thing as shrimp that burrow"), but these arguments do not constitute a direct answer to the data concerning the Haymond Formation without a lot of imagination and wishful thinking. Imagination, wishful thinking, and "Hey, there's such a thing as ... " do not make good science.

2011-10-18T13:06:00.000-07:00

I realized that I write a lot of responses to people to which I give a lot of thought, but no one ever sees it except that one person who asked the question by email. I'm going to make sure those get posted. In this case, I'm talking about people who have written me through my Proof of Evolution site.

What's good about the responses is that we get to address the whole issue of Genesis and evolution from various standpoints.

When you're a Christian, and you've had real experiences with Jesus Christ, you can be thrown for a loop when you find out that all the evidence indicates that life on earth evolved. How does that fit into the idea that God created everything? In fact, that Jesus Christ created everything? Jesus certainly seemed to believe that the Genesis stories were literal? If he's the Creator, wouldn't he know?

Nonetheless, all the evidence indicates that life evolved. In my opinion, there is so much evidence that we cannot ignore it. It's time to face the fact that evolution happened.

On the other hand, our experiences with Jesus Christ have been real as well, no matter how much scoffers mock the idea.

How does one deal with both things being true?

That is a subject that is complicated enough to be worth a lot of words. One web page is not going to do the trick.

So here's one effort I made at addressing Genesis one and evolution. There have been and will be many others. Maybe together, we can come to an understanding that is satisfying to the soul and glorifying to the One who created everything ... by letting life evolve.

*************

The question that prompted my response was:

Doesn't Genesis say that Adam was formed from clay rather than evolved?

I have a pretty long explanation of the whole issue of what is literal and what is allegory in Genesis . That should answer your questions more thoroughly.

I have a friend who likes to point out that the Bible doesn't say how Adam was formed from clay.

Personally, though, I think Genesis one is meant to be a brief explanation that God created everything. I think it was the standard creation story passed among the Hebrew people, and Moses included it as he learned it. He was writing a law, and the law needed to include three things:

What the King did for the people
What the King required of the people
The blessings and cursings for obedience or disobedience

The Law of Moses includes all those things. The "King" in Moses' law is God, so what the King did for the people goes all the way back to the creation.

For the things that happened before Moses, I don't believe God gave Moses special revelation about historical details. Historical and scientific details didn't matter. God created everything, and he preserved the people, who were the descendants of Noah after the flood. That was enough for them to know.

To the early churches, inspiration wasn't necessarily exact historical accuracy. Instead, inspiration was God breathing his life and his guidance, infusing his Word into the text. Thus, though the Genesis 1 story was never meant to be an exact description of what happened, it is carefully guided by God to contain his Word, messages that will guide is today in how we live.

We who are spiritual need our hearts open to receive those messages.

For example, the first and most important thing is light. The beginning of creation, and the beginning of the new creation, is for light to come and to distinguish between light and darkness. Then there is a separation of waters. Waters represent people in the Bible, and there is a separation between the heavenly waters and the waters of the earth. Our fellowship is to be with the heavenly people.

But we live on earth. We live in the midst of earthly people, so God separates the waters, and he gives us dry ground on which to live. We have a place to stand, and it is immediately covered with plants, which are to be for our food. For us, that food is the Word of God, which Scripture compares to a seed.

I could go on like this through days 4 through 6, but the point is that Scripture is to guide us, not to create a scientific history of the universe. In fact, as we learn from nature (as Scripture commands us to, Ps. 19:1-4) we can see that Genesis is not a scientifically accurate history of the universe. This will not stumble us if we know the real purpose of the Scripture and if we have a real relationship with God which can sustain us through everything we face.

How Long Will the Sun Last, and What Does That Have To Do with Evolution?

2011-09-10T19:29:00.000-07:00

These are questions that I was asked by email:

How long did evolution take?

3.5 billion years ago, there were bacteria on this earth. The earth is 4.5 billion years old. So life arose on earth in less than 1 billion years. No one knows how that happened, though scientists have some guesses. Nonetheless, whether it was by divine command, by DNA from other planets, or through the theories that scientists have, life did arise.

Generally, though, the origin of life is not considered part of the theory of evolution. The origin of life is abiogenesis.

By about 550 million years ago, many of the basic body forms that make up life were around. There were some very primitive fish, but no amphibians, no reptiles, no birds, and no mammals. Again, the path from the first bacteria to 550 million years ago is not well known.

From the Cambrian explosion, which happened about 540 million years ago, until now we have a pretty good understanding of what happened and a pretty good fossil record.

How much fuel is in the sun?

The sun is absolutely amazing! It consumes 600 million tons of hydrogen PER SECOND!!!

Nonetheless, even at that rate, it would take 70,000 years to consume the mass of earth. The sun, being much larger, has about 10 BILLION years of usable hydrogen in it. It's about halfway through that cycle, so we've got something over 5 billion years left.

Of course, even then it won't burn out. It will then start converting helium to carbon, which will cause it to expand, become a red giant, and destroy earth (5 billion years from now).

Is evolution possible based on how much fuel is/was in the sun?

Sure. Now, if DNA wandered here on meteoroids from another solar system, then perhaps abiogenesis needed a bit more time and began longer ago. Like I said, abiogenesis is still somewhat of an unknown.

However, over the last 3.5 billion years, yes, we can track how evolution occurred and at what rate it occurred.

When will the sun burn out or supernova?

Our sun is not big enough to supernova. When it gets through its red giant phase, it will collapse down into a white dwarf and last a few billion more years.

So, the sun will destroy life on the earth—and probably the earth as well—in 5 billion years, but it has several billion years after that to survive.

NASA has some great answers to questions about the sun on their web site.

Lots of Earth-Like Planets

2010-10-29T13:00:00.000-07:00

I'm at least as fascinated by how they find earth-like planets around other stars as by the fact that they have.

I read an article once in Discover Magazine—a magazine I highly recommend as interesting, reliable, and readable—explaining some techniques for finding planets.

Think about how hard that would be. You look in a telescope at some distant sun, shining as brightly or more brightly than ours, that is between 4 and 50,000 light years away. Next to it is an unlighted object between 5 and 60 light minutes away from its sun and a million times smaller.

If I used my scientific calculator—an app on my android phone—correctly, which I doubt, then the angle difference between a sun that is 100 light years away and a planet orbiting it at the same distance as earth is less than 2 tenths of one millionth of a degree.

Keeping in mind that an earth-sized planet orbiting an sun-sized star is going to be only one millionth of the size of that sun.

At those distances, it seems like it would be impossible to see the planet.

Nonetheless, scientists at the earth-bound Keck observatory in Hawaii were able to survey 166 sun-sized stars and find 38 earth-sized planets around them.

Amazing.

NASA has an article on 4 ways to to find such exoplanets.

Sauropod Evolution Find

2010-10-29T12:23:00.000-07:00

I thought about not doing this blog anymore due to lack of time. I have a blog on historic Christianity, as well as a web site on Christian history, which is my main focus. Now I've added a site and a blog on fitness.

Combined with being an entrepreneur, small business owner, and father of 4 children that are still at home, there's not a lot of time, and this isn't anywhere near my most popular blog.

But, as I keep reading interesting articles on evolution—and seeing interesting videos—I can't resist commenting even if few people see it.

I guess I'll just learn to keep it short, although with the links it's already taken a little time to write the first couple paragraphs.

Sigh ...

Anyway, scientists have found one more transitional form, this one a sauropod. A sauropod is one of those really big, 4-legged dinosaours, which was mainly the brontosaurus when I was growing up.

That was over 30 years ago, though, so now Brachiosaurus and Diplodocus are the most well-known sauropods ... and there's a new one.

This find is so new that the presentation on it isn't to be given until Sunday (Oct. 31).

An abstract has been written on Yizhousaurus sunae, though. The entire skull plus a lot of the skeleton are preserved. It was found in China, as a lot of recent discoveries have been.

This sauropod was about 9m (29 ft.) long, though I can no longer find the article I read that length in. The abstract says no such thing.

This is one more of millions of examples of transitional fossils that dishonest anti-evolutionists—who are almost always "Christians" as well, which is very sad—say don't exist. As the abstract puts it, Yizhousaurus sunae "fills a critical gap in the early evolution of sauropod dinosaurs."

The Nature of Transitional Fossils

Of course, by filling one big gap, this nearly complete skeleton creates two more gaps, one on either side of itself, that anti-evolutionists will use to argue that transitional fossils don't exist.

The Nature of Christians

It's very sad, really, that most anti-evolutionists are Christians. Somehow, many Christians seem to think that if they are defending God's reputation—or if they think they're defending God's reputation—then it's okay to be purposely ignorant, embarrassingly close-minded, and openly deceitful.

It's not.

The Nature of Christ

I believe that King Jesus is the Truth. He's not just true, he is the Truth.

Thus, I believe that he never espouses dishonesty.

I believe that what The Truth says is true.

Thus, I believe that it's true that those who keep seeking find and those who keep asking receive. I believe that this is especially true when you are pursuing truth.

Pursuing truth will not lead to deception. Pursuing truth will lead to the Truth.

Thus, we can stand up for what's true. We can even be wrong in our pursuit of the Truth, and we will not suffer or fall away for it. Seeking, by definition, suggests that you will first look in the wrong places. That is how you seek. If you don't wind up believing a falsehoods, or at least experimenting with a few falsehoods, then I submit that you have never sought truth.

One Request

Yizhousaurus sunae is a "basal sauropod." Due to the high proliferation of the articles on this find, I was unable to quickly find an explanation of what a basal sauropod is. I did find that they are classified "solely on the basis of fragmentary postcranial material."

Postcranial means back of the skull (basically).

However, it would be nice to know what distinguishes a basal sauropod from other sauropods.

If you happen to read this article and you know, please comment!

Thank you!

Nimbadon Fossils and Proof of Evolution

2010-07-19T21:58:00.000-07:00

Science Daily reports that a limestone cave in Australia has produced many well-preserved fossils of a marsupial called a Nimbadon.

There's all sorts of neat information in that cave for scientists. They've learned about the growth cycle of this ancient, extinct marsupial. There's some interesting descriptions of how quickly the brain grows, what the skull was used for, how quickly the fetus moved from the womb to the pouch, etc.

But that's not what is of interest to me.

Proof of Evolution

Here's what the find has to do with evolution.

There are no nimbadons any more. (See the original University of New South Wales article for a picture of the skull, which is pretty neat.)

Antievolutionists say all the time—falsely—that there are no transitional fossils. Not only is this not true, but every fossil find is a transitional fossil, filling in the gaps in the evolutionary record.

The earth provides us fossils in tidy succession. Nimbadons won't be found with more modern mammals—like humans, for example. It also won't be found with any Brontosaurs or Tyrannosaurus Rexes.

Instead, they are found with "galloping kangaroos, primitive bandicoots, a fox-sized thylacine [note: same genus as the Tasmanian wolf] and forest bats."

All of those are marsupials except the bats, and all of those can be traced to specific time periods. They will always be found together and never found with earlier or later fossils.

Taxodium dubium, a miocene era conifer. Even the flora consistently lines up with the fauna in the fossil record.

Thus, either evolution happened or God had a large number of creations and re-creations.

Primates and the Slender Loris

2010-07-19T21:16:00.000-07:00

There's news today about photographs of a primate thought to have been extinct. It's called a Horton Plains slender loris, and it hasn't been seen since 1939.

The loris is a cute creature with huge eyes.

However, rather that just mentioning this discovery, which has little or nothing to do with proving evolution, I wanted to use this as an opportunity to describe what a primate is.

Perhaps the most distinctive feature of a primate is that they have opposable thumbs, like we do. Take this aye-aye, for instance ...

I never really thought about a whole group of creatures having opposable thumbs. Lemurs, monkeys, and apes all do. It's the most defining characteristic of primates, though there are others.

There's more information on primates at my Ape to Human evolution page.

More Arguments Against Evolution

2010-07-06T09:06:00.000-07:00

My answers give a unique perspective on arguments against evolution. Remember, I'm first and foremost a born-again, radical, Christian teacher. By the grace and kindness of God, I even get to be a part-time missionary and church planter.

Evolution is a side note to the Christian life. It is not primary, and it ought not to be a distraction.

Honesty, though, is central to growing in Christ, and honesty is always what I'm after. We may be human and prone to biases and misconceptions, but there is still a difference between those that follow the evidence and those that only gather evidence to bolster their own position.

So here's my answer to 1.) a biblical argument, 2.) a speculative, almost philosophical argument, and 3.) a pseudo-scientific argument. On the scientific one, I am attempting to keep the argument on what matters. Most scientific arguments against evolution are inaccurate, but the ones that are accurate are usually irrelevant.

This post is actually a response to an email I got. Since I don't quote the person who emailed me, I felt free to use it as a blog post.

Introduction: On Evolution and Following Christ

First, it's important to me that you know that I am first and foremost a follower of Christ. I address the evolution issue because it is prone to making people stumble. There are people who see all the scientific evidence for evolution, and it makes them question their faith. I am trying to help them not to stumble or question. A faith based in a powerful, real relationship with Christ will not be shaken by evidence for or against evolution.

That's the issue that matters to me. If evolution turns out not to be true, that wouldn't bother me a bit. I believe God is involved with creation from front to finish whether it happened by evolution or whether it happened instantly through a command of God.

That said, it appears unquestionable to me that the evidence for evolution is very strong, and Christians are failing miserably at finding good arguments against it. That's no problem to me, since I don't think we have to bother coming up with arguments against it. Even if evolution is true, God is still Creator, Jesus is still Lord, and the Gospel still transforms those who embrace it.

Okay, to your questions and arguments ...

1. There are many definitions for "firmament."

I don't believe that's true. I think that the concept of a firmament being something solid is basic to the word, and we just refuse to admit it because we don't like it. I consider the word "expanse" to simply be a dishonest translation, not one of many options.

I don't think the research into that word is that hard. And even if we avoid admitting that firmament is something solid, then we still have to contend with Job 37:18, which specifically says the sky is hard and hammered out flat like metal.

2. The earth only looks like it evolved, though created recently.

Why would God make the world to look like it evolved? I can understand the appearance of age. It takes time for light to get from distant stars to us, so if he created the universe 6,000 years ago, it would be good to have the light already made so we can see the stars.

But really, do we want to believe about God that he created the world to look like it evolved when it didn't? Why would he do that? And why would he tell us to pay attention to his creation in order to learn about him (Rom. 1:20; Ps. 19:1-4) if the creation is tricking us?

3. Inbreeding Depression

This term was used by the person who wrote me. He's referring to the fact that inbreeding causes genetic problems in a population. That being the case, he asks, how can new species evolve from one or two individuals. The new population would have all sorts of genetic defects.

It is much harder to prove that something is impossible than to prove that it is possible. Even many scientists used to believe that it was impossible for a human to run a 4-minute mile. Obviously, it's not; it's been done.

We all know that inbreeding causes problems with DNA. So how could life have evolved from just one original life form?

The correct answer to that question is that it's irrelevant.

There is lot's of evidence that life evolved. For example, one of the strongest pieces of evidence is that the same sorts of fossils are in the same layers of the earth the world around. Where you find dinosaurs, you don't find horses or humans. Where you find ancient amphibians, you don't find any reptiles or mammals at all. Where you find "Cambrian Explosion" fossils, you don't find any vertebrates at all--no fish, reptiles, amphibians, mammals or birds.

There's a progression in the earth, and when you conclude from that progression that life evolved, then thousands of other pieces of evidence fall into place.

Thus, somehow, evolution happened despite the problems that inbreeding can cause.

Of course, there's also a good explanation. The earliest life didn't reproduce sexually. Those cells simply copied themselves, so there was no inbreeding. Later, it's whole populations that evolve, not one or two individuals.

Even in a lab, you can isolate two populations of bacteria--or even two populations of moths. Let them reproduce through a thousand generations, and changes happen. Not the same changes in both populations. At the end of those thousand or thousands of generations--which can be seen in a lab due to rapid rates of reproduction in insects--and the two populations are different enough that they won't breed together anymore.

Nature has conducted such experiments throughout earth's history. Populations get large enough to spread over a large geographic area, and sheer size sometimes separates them into groups. Other times, they're on two sides of a mountain with different climate on either side. Or one ends up in the forest and one out. Or they spread across a group of islands. Etc., etc., etc.

Please understand, these questions have been asked. Science was not started by atheists trying to disprove God. Most early scientists were Christians. Evolution is the result of looking at the earth, not the product of people hoping that life evolved.

The people who first suggested evolution had to face intense scrutiny, and questions like the ones you're asking have been asked over and over again. Answers have come pretty easily, which is just further evidence that life evolved.

Charles Darwin's On the Origin of Species

Even Darwin's original On the Origin of Species was full of arguments he had received against his theory of "descent with modification." His answers are amazing and full of natural examples. You can learn a lot about nature from his book, and most of it is fascinating. It's sad more people don't read it. He wrote the book as a believer in God--though he had his doubts--so it is not an attack on people's faith. He had a wife he dearly loved who was a Christian.

2 Billion Year Old Multicellular Life!!!

2010-07-01T12:28:00.000-07:00

Now this is something.

The Cambrian explosion has always been a dilemma. We can follow the development of life all the way back to the Cambrian period, about 570 million years ago, and we find some seriously developed organisms, all with no ancestry. As far as fossils go, life before the Cambrian was all unicellular—one-celled organisms.

Not any more ...

A Note on the Cambrian Explosion

The Cambrian explosion is NOT an argument against evolution. Even if science never explained the origin of the organisms that existed during the Cambrian, we still have to deal with the fact that life has changed dramatically since that time.

Not one vertebrate existed during the Cambrian period. Yes, our phylum—the chordates—was represented, but it was represented by something similar to a sea squirt. No fish; no amphibians; no reptiles, no dinosaurs, no birds, no bats, no cats, no primates.

See the sea squirt picture below. If God created all the phyla 570 billion years ago, suddenly and miraculously, you still have to explain how we got from sea squirts to us!

Photo by Nick Hobgood
Used with permission

Scientists have found 250 multicellular fossils from 2.1 billion years ago.

These fossils are up to a foot long, and they push multicellular life back far further than expected. It was surprise enough to find that prokaryotic (single-celled life without a nucleus) goes back 3.5 billion years, just a billion years after the earth formed.

It is true that findings are reforming science, but not in the direction of a young earth.

The author of this blog is a Christian who believes the Bible is inspired by God—all of it—but who does not believe we ought to resort to fabrication, deceit, quote-mining, and ignorance when it comes to looking at God's creation. It's the Bible that tells us to learn about God from nature, and what we learn is that God has chosen the painful, slow process of evolution to develop life.

Should that surprise us? Isn't that what we experience following Jesus Christ? Do we not progress slowly and painfully through death and suffering after we are born again?

New Australopithecus Afarensis Skeleton

2010-06-22T06:53:00.000-07:00

Scientists have described a new Australopithecus afarensis skeleton, dubbed "Big Man," because at over 5 feet tall, he dwarfs Lucy, his famous afarensis cousin.

I use this every day (really). I can vouch for its quality and ease of use.

I asked my wife's back surgeon about inversion tables, and he said, "I have one. I use it every evening. What does that tell you?"

A little later, he added, "What can I tell you? They just work!"

The description is more a display of how hard it is to interpret 3.6-million-year old evidence than it is further insight into A. afarensis as a species.

Was Lucy's Last Name Walker?

The founders believe the skeleton proves that afarensis was an excellent walker and maybe even a runner. They cite long legs and the shape of the pelvis. They also say they have enough of the rib cage, plus a shoulder blade, to say that Australopithecus afarensis had a narrow chest like humans.

The part about the narrow chest didn't seem to be disputed, and it does appear that our ancestors are less chimp-like than we previously imagined.

Everything else, however, was disputed.

Critical scientists said that there's not enough of the leg, just one partial lower leg bone, to confidently assert that "Big Man" had longer legs than previously speculated for afarensis. They say the evidence for skilled walking is inconclusive.

On the other hand, we do have 3.6-million-year old footprints found 30 years ago in Tanzania. These indicate a longer stride than Lucy's, and if "Big Man" had the long legs his discoverers say he had, then he could have made those footprints.

The footprints also indicate A. afarensis had arches, another indication of advanced bipedality.

Australopithecus Afarensis and Climbing

The other controversy was swinging from trees. The discoverers of "Big Man" say that he indicates his species couldn't climb trees like apes.

In this case, whether I agree or not, I loved the critic's response ...

"Riddle me this," asks Jungers in considering Hailie-Selassie's emphasis on a ground-dwelling A. afarensis. "Where did they sleep? Did they wait for fruit to fall to the ground? Where did they go to escape predators?"

Riddle me this? Do you think he was a little irritated?

Scientists are human, too. That's what I got from this finding.

How to Remove a Cow Brain

2010-06-01T06:55:00.000-07:00

I found out the hard way that one of the things you can't find on the internet is how to remove a cow brain from a cow skull!

When my daughter asked me to remove a cow brain from a cow head she'd bought from a friend of mine, I thought she was joking.

It turns out that my friend had bought a slaughtered, whole, grass-fed cow, and apparently the head comes with it. My daughter needed an animal brain for a science presentation, and, ta da ... I ended up with a skinned cow head in my front yard.

WARNING!!!

My family and friends tell me that some of the pictures that follow this first one are ... um ... disturbing. Make sure you have a strong stomach!

If the first one disturbs you, imagine an electric saw added to the picture before you scroll down the page.

We plan our attack. I'm the guy on the right.

How Novices Remove a Cow Brain

We had no idea what we were doing, so we just started cutting. In case it's not already obvious to you, that's not a good idea.

The head was frozen, so we simply used a circle saw, thinking we were going to remove the "skullcap."

We tried a hammer ...

We tried a hand saw ...

Finally, we just started cutting everywhere with the skilsaw and peeling and prying away what we could ...

All of this was to no avail. In an act of mercy, my daughter, who is 14 years old by the way, suggested we thaw the skull over night and try again the next day.

I went in the house to shower, covered with sweat and small, ground-up pieces of muscle and skull. For some reason, everyone in the house fled from my presence ...

How to Remove a Brain from a THAWED Cow Skull

The next day was a lot better. I thought the head would stink to the heavens after thawing all night and all morning, but it really wasn't bad.

I do live in Christian community of 250 people or so, though, so kids were walking by and parents driving by the whole time I'm doing this. Several of the kids commented that the skull stunk.

The meat was still fresh, though.

A Real Meat Head

You would not believe how much meat is on a cow skull. I am certain I removed 3 pounds of meat from the jaw, cheeks, and, literally, between the ears! It all looked good, too, like it would have tasted excellent in a frying pan.

Since my whole family was horrified at such a thought, I didn't try it. I think if that meat had touched one of our frying pans, I would have been hit with the frying pan.

How We Succeeded in Removing the Cow Brain

Unfortunately, I didn't remember to take pictures the 2nd day. We were focused on getting the brain out.

First, that evening I had looked up a diagram of a cow skull so I knew where the brain was. It starts a little behind the eyes, and it goes back to the vertebra that was visible on the back of the cow skull.

The vertebra is those bones that look like a beak in the center of the picture.

As a result of learning where the brain was, I was very concerned about this cut we had made the previous day ...

We had made that cut because one of my daughter's friends had looked up the thickness of a cow skull for us. The internet said it was 4 inches thick.

That's true in places, but it's not true in the place we're cutting in the picture.

As it turned out, that cut had just nipped the front of the brain. We had done a little damage, but when we got the brain out, you couldn't tell.

The way we got it out was first to cut off all the meat we could. A lot of meat was around the area of the ears, below the horns. In fact, we were practically able to cut the horns off without cutting any bone. They were attached mostly by skin and cartilage.

Once the horns were off, I was able to pry off large pieces of bone on the forehead.

Bit by bit that exposed the brain.

Removing the Brain

Once the brain was exposed, my daughter's science partner showed up. This is another young lady of 13 or 14 years of age.

Believe it or not, she was very excited to help get it out.

Together, we figured out that you could reach right in through the vertebra at the back of the skull and help lift the brain out of its cavity. If you do, you will get blood and goop all over your hands, but she didn't seem to mind.

It was a special moment when our fingers touched, mine from the hole in the top of the skull, hers through the vertebra at the back, both of our hands covered in messy liquids that we would normally diligently avoid. We both laughed, as young friends, both male and female, provided a background chorus of oohs. It was like a movie.

It took about an hour, but now that I know the process, I think I could do it in an hour, even with the inappropriate tools we were using.

The Process

Thaw the head
Remove all the meat possible with a very good kitchen knife (carefully!!!)
Remove the horns. You can make cuts with the circle saw to do this. You have at least 2 or three inches from the top of the skull down to the brain.
Be careful above the eyes. The brain starts shortly behind them, and the skull is thinnest—about an inch—in the lower center of the forehead. (A slaughtered cow will probably have a hole in the forehead at the thinnest spot.)
Cut shallow and pry pieces off with a big screwdriver.
Once you expose the brain, it seems to hold together pretty well while being removed. Just reach in, separate it from the cavity with your fingers, and lift it out. Reaching in through the vertebra at the back of the skull allows you to reach some difficult to reach places.

There. Now the internet has a "how to remove a cow brain" page.

Homo floresiensis

2010-05-21T20:53:00.000-07:00

Most of you probably already know that a miniature species of human, dubbed Homo floresiensis, was discovered on the island of Flores in Indonesia in 2003.

Today I found a terrific article on Homo floresiensis' brain size.

Here's the basics ...

Someone actually did a comparative study between brain size and body mass on 37 current species of primates and 23 fossil species. They then traced various possible evolutionary scenarios trying to track the growth in brain size relative to body mass.

They then took their results and applied them to Homo floresiensis.

Their conclusion was that if floresiensis descended from Homo erectus, then the decrease in relative brain size is an anomaly. It's a surprise. Though it happens, this reduction in brain size is too much.

However, if Homo floresiensis descended from Homo habilis—Homo erectus' most likely predecessor, for whom there's no indication they ever left Africa—then the increase in relative brain size from Homo habilis would be normal for primate evolution.

They had an even better suggestion, in my opinion, in Homo georgicus being the possible ancestors of the Flores hobbits. Georgicus was described in 2002 and seems intermediate between erectus and habilis.

Homo Gautengensis

2010-05-21T20:35:00.000-07:00

The new species in the human evolution timeline are coming fast and furious now. A Discovery blog says there are more to come ...

Get ready for more big human evolution announcements in the coming months, as anthropologists have shared with me that a number of bones even older than those for Homo gautengensis await study and classification.

Homo gautengensis is a 3-foot, 110-pound, bipedal tree-dweller that lived from 2,000,000 to 600,000 years ago. The identification is based on, "partial skulls, several jaws, teeth and other bones found at various times at South Africa's Sterkfontein Caves, near Johannesburg" (ref).

3 feet tall and 110 pounds! This was a short brute!

Apparently, though, the features of the skull are even more human than Australopithecus sediba, which was being touted by its founders as the most human of the australopithecine lineage.

Homo gautengensis is not considered to be a human ancestor, but a side branch of our family tree.

As stated above, many more such branches are expected to be found. Homo floresiensis, the "hobbit" species of Homo, which died out about 10,000 years ago, is another side branch found in the last few years.

Homo gautengensis is from East and South Africa. Personally, I think Homo sapiens arose from the Great Rift Valley in Kenya, Ethiopia, and Tanzania, and I consider all the southern branches of Australopithecus and Homo to be side branches.

But then, I'm not a scientist.

I'm sure there's more coming! Have you heard the recent news that we have Neandertal genes in us? That's from the same scientist who thought we didn't based on mitochondrial DNA.

Now, however, with much of Neandertal Man's nuclear DNA sequenced, it turns out that we share a lot of unique genes with our evolutionary cousin.

Biodiversity, the Power of Nature, and the Foolishness of Man

2010-05-19T16:06:00.000-07:00

An interesting article at Scientific American talks about the lessons we learned at Mount St. Helens.

I took special note of the following statement:

... forest managers took notice that areas left untouched by human hands after the eruption fostered greater biodiversity than places where people attempted to speed recovery by salvaging dead trees and planting new ones.

I live in the US South, where fields of kudzu remind us that mankind still doesn't understand nature very well. As in the quote above, usually it is far better for us to leave nature alone.

There's so many examples of our lack of understanding. I'm not going to look these all up, just mention some of them.

I read an article a couple years ago with a pie graph giving exact percentages for each source of methane on earth. Cows, for example, produced 6% of the earth's methane, according to the graph. A week later an article reported scientists' surprise that forests produced methane, perhaps up to 30% of the earth's methane. Oops! It wasn't mentioned on the graph!
Only a few months ago, an article discussed why the earth hadn't warmed as much as climatologists had predicted. I knew the answer, of course. Scientists don't understand climate near as well as they sometimes claim. Later, Phil Jones—the head of the Climate Research Unit who had to resign after the "Climate-gate" scandal—admitted that the earth's been cooling, though by a "stastically insignificant" amount for the last 12 years.
It's a paper put out by Natchez Trace State Park near Lexington, Tennessee that reports that kudzu—the remarkable rapidly-growing vine, able to grow 12 inches and more a day—was introduced to the US to control erosion. Without natural enemies, it grew out of control. Nor did it control erosion. It's root is a single long tendril sinking up to 14 feet into the earth, making it very difficult to kill, though it's proven not so hard to prevent its spread.

Then, a report I read today talked about using friendly bacteria from our nose to control methicillin-resistant S. aureus.

Surely it's not a problem to spray what we know to be a friendly, helpful bacteria into a person's nose, right?

I can't imagine why I wonder ...

Are Theistic Evolutionists Liberal? Are They Just Creationists in Disguise?

2010-04-30T07:20:00.000-07:00

I found a blog today that says theistic evolutionists are "loonier than the evolution deniers."

Warning: I went ahead and linked to the blog. It does not have family-friendly language, especially at the end. If your faith is fragile, you might not want to go there either.

Anyway, I wrote a response there that I think will make a great blog post here:

Hmm. Most theistic evolutionists I know like being called creationists, and we don’t like young earthers having sole access to the term. Of course, the ones I know are very committed, radical Christians.

There’s an underlying assumption here I don’t agree with. I believe in God and Jesus because of a miraculous encounter with him that I was not seeking, and 28 years of experience has only propped up that belief. I didn’t choose to believe this way because of how I was raised. I had been a New Ager and atheist before I became a Christian.

I believe in evolution because there’s excellent scientific evidence for it.

To me, I think, "What’s that got to do with the Bible? Why even bring the Bible into it?"

The problem is that a lot of Christianity in the world is powerless and intellectual, based on tradition and nothing else. Those that are part of it don’t care that much about what the Bible says about how they live. (Where’s the giving up their possessions, denying worldly pleasures, and being as one with one another as the Father is with Jesus?). Thus, if they ignore God’s commands for their tradition, why should they expect God to answer their prayers?

Those that do live the way Christ taught have a very hard time not believing in Christ because so much happens for them. I was listening to a friend–a friend, someone I know, not rumor passed around–telling me about some of the healings they’ve seen when they were baptizing people in Mexico. He lives with the Indians, in a hand-built house without electricity, taking in single mothers and orphans, and sharing his life as well as his Gospel with the Indians.

I believe the stories because I’ve seen some of them myself. My nephew was healed of a year-long infection that had blinded one eye after prayer. The military had moved my sister to the Washington DC area so my nephew could be treated at the military hospital there. They didn’t know what to do, and my sister finally called us for prayer. We prayed, and his sight returned and the infection went away in less than a week.

Those are the dramatic stories. The fellowship with God, the restoration of relationships, the instant transformation of people’s lives that can be seen in their faces, etc., etc., etc. leaves those of us who are willing to take Christ seriously pretty much unable to disbelieve.

So when we find out there’s good scientific evidence for evolution, many of us think, "Hmm. I guess that’s how God created the world," and then we go on obeying Christ and living this powerful, glorious life from heaven we live.

We have a real God that does real things today. I don’t need a magic book as well. The Bible was written by people of our spiritual race. God doesn’t miraculously make them scientific phenoms or inerrant story tellers today, so why should I think he did that with Moses or Paul?

On the other hand, following the spiritual teachings of those who have the best relationship with God leads to having a similar relationship with God. God gave the Gospel to the apostles, not the science book, nor a miraculous ability to tell stories without any mental errors.

Who Believes the Word of God?

2010-04-24T20:00:00.000-07:00

Today someone wrote and accused me of handling the Word of God irreverently and casually. I understand. She had happened upon my Proof of Evolution site, and the evidence on it had shaken her.

However, there is nothing irreverent or casual about my handling of the Scriptures, which I have followed wholeheartedly for 28 years.

I hope the following answer is helpful for all those that have to face the fact that truth is truth, whether God sends it through nature or through the Scriptures.

I know you have to disagree with me on many points. I understand that.

I do have to point out a couple things:

You mention not having a background in science, and then you follow that by saying you haven't investigated the waters separated by the firmament. However, the waters separated from the firmament is a Biblical issue more than a scientific one. The waters are above the sun, moon, and stars according to Scripture, not science.

That creates an issue for you to have to deal with. For most Christians it creates a real crisis of honesty.

I have investigated science, so my crises of honesty are bigger.

In the end, I am willing to choose God over science. However, I've been watching God for 28 years. I've been watching him back up the message of Jesus Christ as Lord. I've also taken note of what messages he completely ignored and didn't back up.

For example, I used to avoid holidays like Christmas, thinking they were pagan. God, however, showed no interest in that message. He didn't back it up. He didn't give me peace. Instead, he appears to back up mercy, love, and kindness. I still avoid the commercialism of Christmas, but I tell people merry Christmas, and I teach my children to enjoy and commend the "good cheer" the world promotes for a few weeks each year.

I have also never seen God support the people who are defending a literal Bible. They don't have peace, and God just doesn't support them or back them up. Most of them eventually embrace dishonesty in their attempt to defend God from something God doesn't seem to care at all about defending himself against.

I am anything but irreverent and casual about the Word of God. Standing up for the Word of God has cost me everything that the world holds dear. I have given up jobs, and I have camped out homeless and jobless next to a lake with my wife and three children because I was trying to follow God. God backed me up doing that, too. He worked daily miracles to supply our needs.

Fortunately, God has taught me to hold none of those things I lost dear.

Over time, because of a devotion to knowing the will and Word of God, I have studied the writings of the earliest Christians, hoping to learn better what it is the apostles taught. I got to see situations throughout history where God moved on behalf of the church, raising up godly and powerful men. I got to see other situations where the church was weak and powerless.

It was commitment to obeying Jesus and overthrowing the flesh that made the difference. Commitment to strict, literal Bible interpretation was not one of the things that made a difference. Theophilus, bishop of Antioch around 165, was a literalist. he thought the earth was 5698 years old. Origen, bishop of Caesarea 60 years later, thought such a viewpoint was ignorant.

Both were powerful men of God. Origen was tortured for Christ until he was crippled. Later he was arrested and tortured again, and God let the 2nd torture heal him!!!

Neither Origen nor I thought that figurative means useless or not the Word of God. Have you read any of my blogs on Genesis one? We had a teaching recently about Genesis 3 from a young man that was incredibly powerful. He tied the creation of plants to Christ as the Word of God. The third day represents the resurrection, and Christ the Word rose within us, not needing the natural sun, but only the light of God to blossom in our hearts.

The Word of God is referred to as a seed a couple times in James and 1 Peter.

God has incredible things to say through the creation stories Moses chose.

Moses did not need to choose a creation story. He was writing a law. A law in those days needed three things. First, it gave what the king had done for the people, then what the king required of the people, and then the blessings and cursings for obeying or disobeying.

Moses' Law had all those things. Only in this case, the King was God, so the creation of the earth was the first thing he had done for the people.

Literal is not the only way to be a Bible believer. In fact, for a long time it was not the normal way. It has been for the last few hundred years, but do we really want to use the divided, worldly Protestants as the standard we want to follow?

Why Talk About Evolution

2010-04-08T09:33:00.000-07:00

I am a creationist.

As a follower of Jesus Christ, I believe that God, the Father of our Lord, created all things through his Son.

I happen to think that the way he did it was through a long, slow process we know as evolution. I believe the universe has been evolving for something over 14 billion years and that in the beginning there was a big bang that humans don't understand very well.

Really, though, I don't care very much about how he did it. Whether life evolved and whether the universe is billions of years old matters very little to me.

What matters is that I know and follow Jesus Christ, the Word of God and co-creator with God.

So ...

Why Talk About Evolution?

When I was born again and my life—and, seemingly, the whole world—changed, I listened to the Christians around me, thinking that they'd all had the same real, profound experience with God that I had. (I now know most of them haven't.)

Thus, I became a young earth creationist.

Then, somewhere around 1987, I read a book put out by InterVarsity Press on evolution. I only read it because it was put out by IVP, a conservative Christian publisher I respected. (I believe they're affiliated with Campus Crusade for Christ, one of the most effective Christian organizations there's ever been, in my opinion.)

I can't seem to find the book to link it for you, but it was put out by 4 scientists who said, "We can't keep silent anymore."

They said they were fed up with the dishonesty practiced by Christians who argued against evolution. They just had to speak up.

At that point I became open to evolution, but I really didn't think about it much.

As a result over the next few years, being very much a Biblical literalist, I simply slipped back into an anti-evolution mode.

Then, in 1994, I watched a series of television shows on evolution put out by some creation museum. It was on for an hour each Saturday, and I saw three episodes. (I was in Knoxville, TN at the time.)

Right about the same time, I was doing a lot of discussing on the CompuServe religion forum (remember them?).

Three people showed up on the CompuServe forum and began arguing for evolution. They were not Christians; they were agnostics. I immediately rolled up my sleeves and took them on.

Why shouldn't I? The creationist museum had told me that evolution was all a hoax. They had no evidence. All I had to do was point out the fallacies of evolution that the TV show had shown me, and they would be silenced. What could they say when I pointed out their complete lack of substance?

I was really excited about one trump card that I had.

Dr. Robert Gentry had said on the TV program that Lucy, the Australopithecus afarensis "missing link," was a hoax being perpetrated on us by her discoverer, Dr. Donald Johanson.

Dr. Gentry explained that Lucy's knee was one of the major pieces of evidence that she walked upright. And, of course, walking upright is one of the major pieces of evidence that Lucy's species, A. afarensis, is a human ancestor.

Then, he dropped the bombshell. Apparently, Dr. Johanson found Lucy's knee joint over a mile away from the rest of the skeleton!

All Dr. Johanson had to establish that his knee joint belonged to Lucy was "anatomical similarity." Worse, Dr. Johanson didn't admit this until confronted by creationists in 1986, some 13 years after finding Lucy and the controversial knee joint.

What could evolutionists possibly do when confronted with such obvious dishonesty?

Slander and Liars for Jesus

They could expose it.

The evolutionists sent me to articles giving the real story. Far from concealing the fact that the knee joint was found a mile from Lucy's skeleton, Dr. Johanson had written a book on it in 1980.

He could prove in print that he had concealed nothing!

Worse, in 1974, Dr. Johanson had found what became known as the "first family," a set of A. afarensis skeletons all buried in the same place. Several knee joints were included in that discovery, thus establishing without doubt that Dr. Johanson was correct. Anatomical similarities had indeed accurately shown that the knee joint he found was an afarensis joint.

Yet, in 1994 a published scientist and Christian, Dr. Robert Gentry, was announcing on TV that Lucy was a hoax and that Dr. Donald Johanson was purposely perpetrating this hoax.

The evolutionists on CompuServe complained to me about such "liars for Jesus."

They explained that they thought Christians were primarily supposed to be honest.

But creationists were proving to them that Christianity has nothing to do with honesty.

Christianity Has Everything To Do with Honesty and Truth

Friends, we can't be liars for Jesus.

Jesus is the Way, the Truth, and the Life. Remember?

He said the truth would set us free. Remember?

Why do I talk about evolution? It's not because I care a whit whether God took 14 billion years, 10 thousand years, 6 thousand years, or 3 seconds to create the world as we know it today.

It's because I care about the testimony of Jesus Christ.

Ignorance and dishonesty will never establish the Gospel.

Holiness, commitment, and obedience will establish the Gospel.

We need to pay a lot more attention to a literal interpretation of the Sermon on the Mount, where Jesus tells us to seek first the kingdom of God and forget about storing up treasures on earth, than to a literal interpretation of Genesis one and arguing that there were three literal 24-hour days without a sun, moon, or stars.

We need to pay a lot more attention to a literal interpretation of John 17, where Jesus tells us that our unity will prove he's sent by God, than to arguing that the irreconcilable accounts of creation in Genesis one and Genesis two are both literal.

We need to pay a lot more attention to a literal interpretation of Galatians 5:19-21, where Paul tells us that denominationalism and division will keep us out of the kingdom of God, than to arguing that Noah brought kangaroos from Australia and sauropods from the Jurassic onto the ark.

We also need to pay a lot more attention to the ten commandments, especially the one about not bearing false witness, than to finding any wild, unsubstantiated story we can use to defend God by being ignorant and dishonest.

That's why I talk about evolution.

I hope you understand. But if you don't, I'm going to talk about it, anyway.

X-Woman: New Human Species?

2010-03-24T11:58:00.000-07:00

Discover magazine's web site has a story today about a fossil dubbed "X-woman."

The fossil is nothing but a finger bone—and a pinkie at that—but scientists managed to sequence the mitochondrial DNA. It's hominid DNA, but it differs from human by twice as much as Neanderthals do.

There's not really much more information on the creature from whom this pinky came. You can't tell what a hominid looks like from its pinky.

But here's what we can know ...

Mitochondria DNA

All of us have little cells inside our cells. These cells are called mitochondria, and they produce power for our cells.

Mitochondria (no, not medichlorians, this is not Star Wars) have their own DNA, separate from the DNA in the nuclei of your cells.

The DNA in your cell nuclei is inherited from your father and mother and combined. The DNA in your cell mitochondria is inherited only from your mother. It is not recombined, and it is not changed. It changes only through errors in duplication, called mutation.

Fascinating Mitochondrial History

The history of mitochondria may be very cool. Mitochondria may be the best surviving species in history.

It's been suggested that mitochondria were once single-celled creatures living on their own like bacteria or amoeba. Somehow, one managed to get itself embedded in another cell and provide a service for it. Over time, they came to inhabit every living cell.

That is why there's a completely separate packet of DNA in the mitochondria of cells.

If this is true, then mitochondria have been the most successful species ever, and they did so by serving all other living things.

Now that's an interesting allegory for a Christian: "If you want to be great in God's kingdom, learn to be the servant of all."

Mitochondria and Human Evolutionary History

Because mitochondrial DNA only changes by mutation, and because we know—roughly—the rate at which it mutates, when we run across divergent DNA, it's possible to determine—roughly—how recently we share a common ancestor.

In the case of Neanderthals, it's about 460 thousand years. In this case, it's just over a million.

There are some other ways that rogue mitochondria DNA could have descended to 50,000 years ago, which is the age of the fossil, but it is very possible that we have discovered a new species. It's only been since 2004 that we found a third modern hominin species (besides us and Neanderthal man), Homo floriesiensis, the "hobbit."

Anyway, we'll wait to hear more. They are going to continue to search the area—Siberia, in this case—for fossils, and they're busily working on this creature's nuclear DNA, which they were also able to extract.

Quote Mining Produces Explosion in Cambrian Rock!

2010-03-11T12:57:00.000-08:00

Well, in my daily searches for good arguments for creation, I ran across this page that contains a video from a geologist identified only as Dr. Patton.

Dr. Patton's video employs one of the more effective anti-evolutionist methods: quote mining.

Quote mining, in the case of the creationism vs. evolution debate, means digging up quotes by evolutionists and presenting them out of the context of their original discussion so that it looks like the people who believe in evolution are speaking against it!

I wrote down the first 13 quotes that Dr. Patton used.

To the ignorant person, they're powerful.

To someone even minimally educated on the subject of evolution, only one of them is actually relevant. The rest don't defend creationism even on the surface unless you don't know anything about evolution at all.

For example, Dr. Patton titles one slide "Separate Living Kinds," which made me laugh out loud. I hope it makes you laugh, too, once you know why it's funny.

The quote is from the April, 1993 issue of Discover magazine. It says:

… demonstrates that the large animal phyla of today were present already in the early Cambrian and that they were as distinct from each other as they are today … a menagerie of clam cousins, sponges, segmented worms, and other invertebrates that would seem vaguely familiar to any scuba diver.

The person who is ignorant of what the Cambrian is and what phyla are might be very impressed by such a quote. "Wow," they might think, "All the Biblical 'kinds' are represented here, right from the beginning."

In fact, that's what the title of Dr. Patton's slide suggests. "Separate Living Kinds,"s says the title over the quote.

Well, let's discuss those kinds.

One of those kinds is the phylum chordata. That's the phylum we belong to. Oh, it's also the phylum fish belong to. Oh, it's also the phylum reptiles belong to. Oh, it's also the phylum frogs belong to.

In fact, it's the phylum that bluebell tunicates belong to:

Photo by Nick Hobgood

And it's the phylum that these sea squirts (also tunicates) belong to:

As you can probably figure out, there are no sharks, sting rays, salmon, frogs, salamanders, dinosaurs, snakes, bats, tigers, people, or duck-billed platypi in Cambrian rock.

For some odd reason, since they're not there, and since they all belong to the phylum Chordata, scientists think they evolved since.

Hmmm, I wonder why.

So, is Dr. Patton suggesting that the phylum Chordata qualifies as a "kind" according to Genesis? That would be very convenient for Noah, since he would only have to take a gross-looking jar of sea squirts onto the ark, then let them evolve in the last 4,500 years into all the animals of the world.

Surely Dr. Patton is not suggesting that. So what is he suggesting?

Is he suggesting that the alternative explanation is a series of creation events in which God would later create fish, then sharks, then amphibians, then reptiles, then mammals, and then man?

Because that is what the fossil record says happened. Not one of Dr. Patton's quotes changes that at all. Thus, all but one is irrelevant to the topic.

Did Dr. Patton know what I just told you?

I'll leave you to figure that out.

I will tell you, though, that people like Dr. Patton make me angry, and I think they make God angry as well.

What About the Relevant Quote

The relevant quote was:

It is now clear that the pride with which it was assumed that the inheritance of homologous structures from a common ancestor explained homology was misplaced; for such inheritance cannot be ascribed to the identity of genes. The attempt to find homologous genes has been given up as hopeless.

That's from the Oxford Biology Reader, from an article entitled "Homology, an Unsolved Problem." It's written by Sir Gavin DeBeer, a professor of embryology at the University of London.

Important quote, but his statement is unjustified.

Conclusion

Oh, well. One more attempt to justify young earth creationism fails.

Hey, what about old earth creationism?

Well, as far as I can tell, I'm an old earth creationist, but I can't figure out the difference between that an believing in evolution. I'd have to suppose that every evolutionist that believes in God is an old earth creationist.

And here's how I address Intelligent Design.

Dealing Straight with the Evidence

2010-03-07T23:28:00.000-08:00

I've been doing some reading lately just to document some attempts to find real arguments against evolution. I've been reading such articles for 15 years, but now I want to have a record of some attempts.

In this case, a blogger gave me some articles that would establish that scientists are systematically deceiving us as he had claimed.

The first article was a real one about falsified results. The article points out that they do exist, and perhaps in greater numbers than we realize.

True enough. However, no one is claiming that the fossil record is different than what we know it to be. We still find trilobites below dinosaurs and dinosaurs below mammoths. Oil companies can still predict at what depth they'll find oil by the fossils and layers they hit in their drilling.

In fact, this blogger's second article, called Darwin's Rubber Ruler, complains about what he calls Darwin's plasticity:

If new forms appear, the credit goes to creative natural selection; if old forms fail to change, the conservative force is called stabilizing selection.

Let me ask, are we allowed to think? Or should we just complain without ever exercising any of the higher brain functions that God supplied us with?

This sounds like a credible complaint on the surface, but it only takes a moment to realize this argument is ridiculous.

He says, "If new forms appear, the credit goes to creative natural selection."

So what should we credit new forms to? Do Christians now believe in a series of creations? There was a time when dinosaurs ruled the earth, there were few mammals and no people, and then God killed the dinosaurs and created thousands of new mammal species ex nihilo?

Once we admit that new forms have appeared, which is what the fossil record announces loudly and clearly, then of course scientists assume they evolved. What's the alternative explanation?

We have a mechanism: DNA. We have a pattern. Not only do fossils show a pattern of change from ancient life to modern life, but it's geographically sorted. Ancient giant sloth fossils are found in South America, near where sloths live now. Ancient giant armadillos are also found where modern armadillos live.

Over and over, the geographic pattern and the pattern of the fossils in the layers of the earth show that life transitioned.

If we also find that some species have remained relatively unchanged for long periods of time, should we then reject what we know about change? Or shouldn't we simply conclude that in certain situations species don't change very much at all?

In other words, isn't it wise to inject plasticity into our theories? That will allow our theories to adapt to the evidence, which is how you wind up with an accurate theory.

It is the lack of plasticity in the "theory" of a young earth that has caused its defenders to say nonsensical things like the complaint above.

Is Evolution Based on Logical Fallacies?

2010-03-05T12:24:00.000-08:00

I saw a blog today called Logical Fallacies of Evolution. I thought, "Okay, one more time I'm going to give someone a chance to point out real evidence against evolution."

For about the thousandth time in a row (with the possible exception of Robert Gentry's Polonium Halos) there was nothing there but smoke.

As used by evolutionists, this fallacy can be stated like this: "Since all scientists believe in evolution, evolution must be scientifically correct."

That was one of his two arguments. The other was just as weak. Here's the response I wrote on his blog:

What's true is that if all scientists agree on a theory, then it's very, very likely to be scientifically accurate.

Here's why.

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Scientists are a large and diverse group of people, from young earth creationists like John Baumgardner to outspoken atheists like Richard Dawkins. Their specialties vary, and their general knowledge of their specialties vary.

As a result, their biases vary, too.

For a scientific theory to gain acceptance, it has to make predictions and have those predictions tested over and over. Each time a prediction is tested, the method and results of the test has to be published in a journal that scientists of that specialty read.

This allows other scientists to reproduce the experiment and verify or falsify the conclusion.

The only way you are going to get almost all scientists agree is if you have excellent evidence and excellent reasoning from that evidence that silences all or almost all opposition.

And there will be opposition. The fact is, any scientist who could prove that evolution could not have happened would be gloriously rich and famous. Sure, he might face opposition and even harrassment at the outset, but in the end, he's going to be rich, famous, respected, and honored.

Anti-evolutionists have not been able to do this. I've been looking for a good, strong anti-evolution argument for 15 years—and I'm a committed Christian, a member of a Christian community, a part-time missionary, and a full-time Bible teacher.

I can answer, easily and in language laymen can understand, almost all the arguments presented by ICR, AiG, and others against evolution. It's not even very hard.

That's why scientists agree evolution is true. They agree because the evidence is extremely convincing. That's the only reason that almost all scientists agree on a theory, and it's also the reason that their agreement will usually turn out to be scientific truth.

Basically, unless you're extremely biased against evolution, the discovery of DNA basically put the nail in the coffin of arguments against evolution. There was the mechanism. Change the DNA in the cell—and we know it changes through mutation—and you can turn any living cell into any other living cell. Simple as that.

Combined with the order of fossils in the earth, the consistent geographical location of those fossils and their relation to living creatures, there's really no argument against evolution left.

As a result scientist agree, and as a result—of the evidence that made them agree, no as a result of their agreement—the idea of evolution is almost certainly scientifically true.