Focus: news of interest about creation and evolution
Jupiter origin mystery
Information from the Galileo space probe about Jupiter’s atmosphere has left
theorists baffled. It was previously thought that Jupiter had been formed from colliding
comets, so its atmosphere should be similar to that observed in comets. But the
space probe has picked up much higher levels of the ‘noble gases’ argon,
krypton and xenon than expected.
With the accepted evolutionary theory about how the solar system formed now thrown
into doubt, astronomers are looking for other possibilities. For example, could
Jupiter have formed elsewhere in space, later being sucked in towards the sun, to
its present position? However, this raises the problem of explaining Jupiter’s
near-circular orbit around the sun.
New Scientist, November 20, 1999, p. 6.
Nature, November 18, 1999, p. 269.
DNA computer milestone
Researchers have created a ‘DNA computer’ made of strands of synthetic
DNA and used it to solve complex problems. While others have already had success
with DNA computing, this study shows that it can be scaled up and moved out of test
tubes onto the solid surfaces needed to make it practical.
Much more development will be required before DNA molecules replace silicon chips.
However, as one gram of DNA can hold the information-equivalent of a trillion CDs,
scientists are looking to use DNA’s amazingly designed information storage
capacity (able to hold the ‘blueprints’ of life) to overcome looming
limits to microchip power. Also, as the fledgling DNA computer solved problems in
far fewer steps than a conventional computer, the researchers expect biocomputers
to be capable of dealing with problems of greater complexity while using less space.
The Sunday Mail (Brisbane), January 16, 2000, p. 20.
Minneapolis Star Tribune, <http://www.startribune.com/>, January 13, 2000.
Nature, January 13, 2000, pp. 143–144, 175–179.
Planned ‘super-computer’ slower than real life
IBM plans to spend $US100 million building a new ‘supercomputer’ to
simulate a basic biological process—protein folding. Proteins (e.g. insulin)
are assembled as long chains, which then must fold into the correct three-dimensional
shape in order to perform their function. As simulating this basic life process
is beyond the reach of contemporary computing, the ‘Blue Gene’ supercomputer
is being built to run 500 times faster than the world’s fastest computer today.
It is expected to take five years before the supercomputer will be ready to tackle
the ‘grand challenge’ of protein folding. And even if everything works
as planned, it will still take Blue Gene about a year to run a computer simulation
of the folding of a single protein. How long does it take living cells to actually
fold one? Less than a second!
As one IBM researcher noted, ‘It’s absolutely amazing, the complexity
of the problem and the simplicity with which the body does it every day.’
New York Times, <http://www.nytimes.com/>, December 6, 1999.
New Scientist, December 11, 1999, p. 8.
Children believe in God
Psychologists have been surprised to find that children believe in a creator God
regardless of whether they are exposed to religious faith. They reported that children
in Britain and Japan gave similar answers when asked who created various natural
objects. The children had abstract notions of a Creator despite not having been
influenced by concepts of God from organised religions.
As the Oxford University psychologist leading the study reports, her Japanese research
assistants were surprised at the children’s responses, given that ‘We
Japanese don’t think about God as creator—it’s just not part of
Japanese philosophy.’
Religion Today, <http://www.religiontoday.com/Archive/NewsSummary/>, November
2, 1999.
Humans need ‘moral guidance’, say scientists
At the recent World Futures Studies Federation conference in the Philippines, many
scientists on the Science and Technology panel were worried about ‘the international
decline in religious belief.’
Given continuing advances in gene technology, the panel’s main concern was
that with ‘the decline in traditional sources of moral guidance’, humans
were less likely to use genetic engineering knowledge responsibly. The scientists’
preferred future is for our capacity to modify genetic material to be ‘still
circumscribed by some form of spiritual or ethical code.’
New Scientist, December 18, 1999, p. 53.
Ironically, many of those lamenting the loss of belief in moral absolutes have been
active in promoting evolution. For example, Oxford’s Professor Richard Dawkins
admitted in a recent radio interview:
‘… any kind of politics that is based on Darwinism for me would be
bad politics, it would be immoral. Putting it another way, I’m a passionate
Darwinian when it comes to science, when it comes to explaining the world, but I’m
a passionate anti-Darwinian when it comes to morality and politics.’
Without the Creator God of the Bible, no consistent basis for ethics is possible
—morality is ‘just another opinion’.
‘Time’ ages redwood tree
Time magazine recently reported that ‘The world’s oldest tree, known
as “Eternal God”?, is a redwood that lives in the Prairie Creek Redwoods
State Park in California. Eternal God is 12,000 years old.’
In reality, tree-ring counts of drill-core samples show that the oldest living organisms
are 4,000-year old bristlecone pines (‘The oldest living
things’, Creation 10(1):10). Redwood trees
(Sequoia sempervirens, which is Latin for ‘ever-living’) generally range
from 600 to 1,200 years, with the oldest recorded—felled in 1934 — being
around 2,200 years. A Prairie Creek living redwood and tourist landmark, ‘Big
Tree’, is signposted ‘Estimated Age: 1500 yrs’.
Dendrochronologists (tree-ring experts) say that Time’s claim (also in The
Guinness Book of Records) has no basis in fact, with the error possibly due to overzealous
reporting and/or negligence in checking sources. (See also ‘Living
tree “8,000 years older than Christ” (?)’ Creation
17(3):26–27.)
Time, November 15, 1999, p. 18.
The Guinness Book of Records 1998, pp. 228–229.
<http://www.sempervirens.org/RedwoodPrimer.html>, January 14, 2000.
<http://www.swparks.com/us/travel/northcalifornia/redwood/prairie_creek_redwoods.html>,
January 19, 2000.
<http://www.humboldtredwoods.org/direct.htm>, January 14, 2000.
It is very likely that the global Flood some 4,000+ years ago uprooted or buried
all trees, so one would not expect tree-ring dates of living trees today to be any
older.
TV dinosaur walk ‘highly speculative’
The incredible world-wide popularity of the BBC television documentary (and book)
Walking with Dinosaurs was accompanied by accusations from scientists and lay viewers
alike that the producers had abandoned scientific integrity for the sake of attracting
viewers.
Using the example of scenes where cynodonts were suckling their young and pair bonding
for life, the senior editor of the scientific journal Nature said that the series
was ‘irresponsible’ in stating ‘guesswork’ as fact when
it had ‘no proof’. He said that the program is ‘presented as science
and the fundamental tenet of science is that it must be able to be tested. There
must be some way to verify it, otherwise it is nothing more than a bedtime story.’
Even a paleontologist consulted in the making of the series conceded that, ‘Much
of the animal behaviour and natural history in “Walking with Dinosaursâ€?
is pure speculation, with little or no hard evidence to support it. But the program
presents speculation as fact.’ Another consultant agreed that the program
was ‘a highly speculative exercise’ but defended it by saying that ‘Science
is about taking risks, making hypotheses, rather than about certainties.’
Daily Star (UK), October 20, 1999, p. 20.
The Times, October 6, 1999, p. 5.
New Scientist, November 13, 1999, p. 51.
To make the images of these creatures walk on the screen took millions of dollars,
the latest computer technology, and lots of intelligent people—yet evolutionists
say the real ones happened without any intelligent design.
Dating doubt
Radioactive dating techniques ‘prove’ that the earth is billions of
years old, say evolutionists. However, these techniques are based upon several assumptions,
including that rates of radioactive decay have always been constant. Now new research
has shown that decay rates can vary according to the chemical environment of the
material being tested.
While the relatively small variation (1.5%) observed so far is unlikely to persuade
‘old-earthers’ to adopt a biblical time-line, the discovery that radioactive
dating ‘can no longer be called precisely “clocklike”’ prompted
the journal Science to comment, ‘Certainty, it seems, is on the wane.’
Earth and Planetary Science Letters 171, 1999, pp. 235–328.
Science, October 29, 1999, pp. 882–883.
For more details: Journal of Creation 14(1):4–5,
1999.
Fish origins scaled back
The discovery of two fossilised fish in ‘lower Cambrian’ rocks pushes
their supposed age back more than 50 million years on the evolutionary time scale.
The problem for evolution is that this finding makes it even harder to explain fish
origins. This is because it further reduces the time available for them to have
theoretically ‘evolved’ from non-fish, and to have developed their highly
complex nervous system and mode of breathing along the way.
With the fossil record acknowledged as ‘far from complete’, these two
fish add to the evolutionists’ difficulties of explaining what they call the
‘Cambrian explosion’—a ‘seemingly abrupt’ explosion
of life.
New Scientist, November 6, 1999, p. 27.
Nature, November 4, 1999, pp. 42–46.
Man or Mouse Chicken?
A comparison of human DNA with that of mice and chickens concludes that ‘the
organisation of the human genome is closer to that of the chicken than the mouse’—the
exact opposite of expectations from evolutionary theory.
Nature, November 25, 1999, pp. 411–413.
Funding evolution research
In the frenzied reaction to the Kansas School Board’s decision to deemphasise
the teaching of evolution (Kansas controversy, Creation
22(1):8), one common accusation is that creationists in the USA
are winning battles because they are better funded than evolutionists.
A University of California professor has tested that contention by requesting from
various research institutions (e.g. NASA and the Department of Energy) details of
how much public money each agency spends on research guided by evolutionary theory.
The total was $US10 billion—which doesn’t include indirect research
at educational institutions, or the billions of tax dollars spent on textbooks and
audio-visual material for teaching evolution.
Probe Ministries, <http://www.probe.org/docs/c-evolution.html>, October 14,
1999.
Gene frenzy
An international consortium of geneticists working on mapping the human genetic
code has identified 97% of the DNA base (letter) sequence of Chromosome 22 (existing
technology cannot decipher the remaining 3%).
These geneticists strove for five years to work out the sequence on this 545-gene
chromosome, one of the smallest in humans, and there are another 22 chromosome pairs
yet to do. Nevertheless this announcement received huge news coverage.
Some populist media claimed that this ‘breakthrough’ had ‘cracked
the code of life’, revealing ‘how life itself originated’ and
even ‘whether philosophers were right about free will.’(!)
Nature, December 2, 1999, pp. 445, 447–448, 467–468, 489–495.
The Daily Telegraph (UK), December 2, 1999, p. 32.
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