Focus: creation news and views
Not enough phosphorus
Out of big bang cosmology and evolution theory comes the idea that the Earth, dated
at 4.5 billion years old, is the product of nuclear reactions in the stars billions
of years earlier. So we too (and all other living things) are assumed to be the
product of the stars.
But there’s a problem. While certain chemical elements in our bodies, such
as oxygen, carbon, and nitrogen, are indeed also abundant elsewhere in the cosmos,
phosphorus is not. Yet phosphorus is an essential component of DNA, RNA as well
as many other important molecules of life.
This leaves evolutionists trying to explain how phosphorus could have become concentrated
on Earth, ultimately becoming part of us. Enrique Maciá, writing in Chemical
Society Reviews, says he and other researchers are so ‘motivated
by this apparent paradox’ that they are scouring the cosmos using satellite
and other technology in hopes of detecting the missing phosphorus. ‘We hope
that such detections will shed light on phosphorus’s journey from the stars
to Earth,’ he says.
Notice how this fervent and costly search for an evolutionary answer to the conundrum
of the ‘missing’ phosphorus is based on the starting premise that life
happened by chance. But there is no phosphorus ‘missing’—life
didn’t happen by chance, it was intelligently designed. And the Designer has
told us that Earth is not the product of the stars; rather He made the Earth before
He made the stars (Genesis 1:1–16). And our ancestor, the first man Adam,
was made from the dust of the Earth (Genesis 2:7), not stardust.
Nature, 9 February 2006, pp. 636–637.
Photo by NASA
Saturn’s rings ‘too clean’
Photographs from the Cassini spacecraft continue to reveal unexpected features about
Saturn and its rings. New Scientist quipped that ‘Saturn’s
rings just get weirder and weirder the closer we look’ and ‘it remains
to be seen whether Cassini can solve the deepest mystery of the rings—their
origin.’
Cassini has confirmed that Saturn’s rings are made of ice fragments ranging
from a few centimetres up to tens of metres across. It had been thought that the
rings were four billion years old—orbiting leftovers from the formation of
the Saturn system. But the problem with that idea is that the rings’ material
is clean and bright—99% pure ice.
As planetary scientists have realised, if the rings really had been gathering space
dust for billions of years, their ice ought to be dark and grimy by now—but
they’re too clean to be that old.
New Scientist, 14 January 2006, pp. 34–35.
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Dawkins’ faith in Darwin
In response to the question ‘What do you believe is true even though you cannot
prove it?’, renowned atheist Richard Dawkins said:
‘I believe that all life, all intelligence, all creativity and all “design”
anywhere in the universe is the direct or indirect product of Darwinian natural
selection. It follows that design comes late in the universe, after a period of
Darwinian evolution. Design cannot precede evolution and therefore cannot underlie
the universe.’
While many people (including Dawkins) believe evolution is a fact, his own response
to this particular question makes it clear that ultimately his belief is something
that can’t be proved, i.e. a starting assumption based on (blind) faith.
Edge,
www.edge.org/documents/archive/edge152.html, 1 March 2005.
‘Simple’ organisms aren’t simple
According to evolutionary reasoning, ‘the more genetically complex an organism
is, the loftier its place on the evolutionary tree.’ Or, put another way,
‘simpler animals ought to have correspondingly simpler genomes’.
So when researchers started identifying active genes in cnidarians, e.g. ‘the
lowly sea anemone—one of the simplest animals on the planet’, they got
a surprise. ‘We estimate they have somewhere between 20 and 25,000—the
same ballpark humans are in,’ said one researcher.
This was not what evolutionists expected.
‘The genomic complexity of … cnidarians is much greater than expected,’
said John Finnerty, an evolutionary biologist at Boston University. ‘There
is no simple relationship between the numbers of genes an animal possesses and its
complexity at the morphological level.’
ScienceNOW Daily News,
sciencenow.sciencemag.org/cgi/content/full/2005/1206/2, 9 March 2006.
New Scientist, 3 December 2005, p. 10.
Photo by NASA
Galactic line-up
The giant Andromeda galaxy is the nearest spiral galaxy to the Milky Way, and is
surrounded by numerous dwarf galaxy satellites. Using the Hubble Space Telescope,
astronomers have found that 80% of Andromeda’s satellite mass lines up on
a single plane perpendicular to Andromeda’s own plane. Traditional theories
of galaxy formation cannot account for this.
The findings left cosmologist Michael Turner, of the University of Chicago, intrigued.
‘It’s getting at this very simple question: how did our backyard get
assembled?’
The ‘strange’ lining-up of Andromeda’s satellite galaxies is yet
another indicator that ‘our backyard’ did not assemble itself (Genesis 1:14–19).
Space.com,
space.com/scienceastronomy/060123_andromeda_plane.html, 3 February 2006.
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Jurassic mammals
A hundred years of evolutionary teaching that only tiny, furtive shrew-like mammals
lived with the dinosaurs has been overturned. A fossil of a beaver-like mammal unearthed
in Inner Mongolia has been dated by evolutionists to 164 million years ago, around
100 million years before dinosaurs are said to have died out.
Of course, the evolutionists’ long-age view of rock layers and fossils as
being a ‘record’ of evolutionary history is always going to be prone
to revision. In contrast, armed with the biblical view of sedimentary rocks and
fossils as being a legacy of the Flood and its aftermath, there’s no problem.
Science, 24 February 2006, pp. 1109–1110, 1123–1127.
‘One-way evolution’
Do evolutionists observe organisms gaining complex traits, in accordance
with microbes-to-man evolution? Actually, no—but there’s abundant evidence
of organisms losing traits (e.g. eyes, wings). And for years many have
suspected the loss of complex traits is irreversible (an idea known as
‘Dollo’s Law’).
And now a study of variation in a gene found in many members of the plant family
Solanaceae (e.g. tomato, tobacco plants) adds to the mounting evidence that complex
characteristics are lost, not gained. In this case it was the ability to recognise
and reject their own pollen, thereby avoiding self-fertilization and the harmful
effects of inbreeding. In plants that have lost that ability (e.g. certain varieties
of garden tomato), it has not been regained.
‘An intriguing aspect of this study is that the mechanism for ensuring cross-fertilization
is very old, often lost, and never regained,’ said lead researcher Joshua
Kohn, of the University of California, San Diego.
Indeed. Organisms originally were made ‘very good’, and in this ‘cursed’
world which is ‘in bondage to decay’ (Genesis 3:14-19, Romans 8:21), as mutations (copying mistakes in the
genes) have accumulated, it’s been downhill ever since. As reports of this
latest study put it, ‘evolution’ has been ‘unidirectional’
or ‘one-way’—the wrong way, so really devolution.
Thus ‘evolution’ involves loss of traits, which is irreversible.
So how did those traits evolve in the first place?
Physorg.com,
www.physorg.com/news10022.html, 9 March 2006.
Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, 31 January 2006, pp. 1359–1363.
Avid about evolution
With a grant from the National Science Foundation, researchers at Michigan State
University are developing a computer program ‘to bring students face to face
with evolution.’ Dubbed ‘Avida’, the program shows digital ‘organisms’
called Avideans allegedly becoming more complex through replication, mutation and
natural selection.
University staff praised Avida. A professor of philosophy said that ‘it lets
students see that evolution works as advertised.’
Actually, it does nothing of the sort, for many reasons (see
Information Theory Questions and Answers). Watching preconfigured images
of ‘Avideans’ on a computer screen behaving according to instructions
written by a programmer is in no way representative of the claims made of biological
evolution. For one thing, the pretty screen ‘organisms’ don’t
have to contend with the destructive effects of real-world chemistry. The strongly
pro-evolution Scientific American, quoting the leading evolutionist John
Maynard Smith, perhaps had the most astute criticism of this field:
‘Artificial life, a major subfield of complexity studies, is “fact-free
science”, according to one critic. But it excels at generating computer graphics.’
And it begs the question: if there really is all the ‘evidence for evolution’
in the real world as evolutionists claim, why the need for digital simulation to
teach students that evolution ‘works’? It speaks volumes that an Avida-proponent
commented that the program is ‘your best counterattack to ID [Intelligent
Design], which is not science.’
Yet watching Avideans is considered ‘science’?
Science, 10 February 2006, pp. 769–771.
Scientific American, June 1995, pp. 74–79.
‘Goliath’ pottery shard
Archaeologists have unearthed a shard of pottery in southern Israel bearing an early
Semitic-style inscription saying ‘Alwat’ and ‘Wlt’, likely
Philistine renderings of the name Goliath.
Dated to around 900 bc, the shard was found about two metres underground at Tell-es-Shafi—the
site of the biblical city of Gath (1 Samuel 17:4).
The Guardian, 14 November 2005, p. 18.
Titan’s non-fossil fuel
The Cassini-Huygens probe has found abundant methane on Saturn’s giant moon
Titan—and it is not of biological origin, but geological.
This discovery is being hailed excitedly by the increasingly vocal group of scientists
who for some years have argued that oil and natural gas deposits on Earth are forming
currently from geological sources of methane (See Creation 27(3):9)
rather than over millions of years from ‘the debris of dead dinosaurs and
ancient forests.’
Thomas Gold (1920–2004), an astronomer at Cornell University, was probably
the leading advocate of this theory. He had wryly noted that he was sure there had
not been any ‘big stagnant swamps on Titan’ to produce the biological
debris that science textbooks teach was required on Earth to produce oil and natural
gas as a ‘fossil fuel’.
(N.B.: Coal is a fossil fuel, but the evolutionists’ millions-of-years ‘stagnant
swamp’ theory doesn’t explain coal’s origin either. However, the
global Flood event of Genesis 6–9 sure does. See
www.creation.com/coal)
Nature, 8 December 2005, pp. 756–802.
WorldNetDaily,
www.worldnetdaily.com/news/article.asp?ARTICLE_ID=47675, 23 January 2006.
Thomas Gold, The Deep Hot Biosphere: The Myth of Fossil Fuels, 1998.
Ancient dentistry
Perfect tiny holes in two human teeth dated at 8,000 to 9,000 years old, found in
Pakistan by archeologists, suggest that ‘even prehistoric man had to fear
the dentist’s drill’.
Photo stock.xchng
The teeth were still attached to their respective jaws, so were not used as part
of a necklace. Investigation ruled out other possibilities such as dental decoration
or tooth sharpening. The holes were too perfectly round to have been caused by bacteria
and contained concentric grooves, which scientists think were caused by a drill
with a tiny stone bit.
A spokesperson for the British Dental Association said the find was ‘surprising’.
It ought be no surprise, however, to Bible-believing Christians. Man was originally
created (just 6,000 years ago) with very high mental abilities by God—e.g.
in only seven generations, people were experts in metallurgy (Genesis 4:22). Note that ‘prehistoric’ man has
never existed because there were no people before written history. Note, too, that
the evolutionists’ ‘8,000 to 9,000’ date is wrong—the teeth
most probably date from after Babel, certainly no older than around 4,500 years
ago.
BBC News, <news.bbc.co.uk/l/hi/health/1272010.stm>, 23 January 2006.
Signs of the times
It seems it’s not just belief in Jesus that’s declining in
the UK, but also a basic knowledge of anything about Him. A British newspaper
reported one of the symptoms:
‘A Christian charity is sending a film about the Christmas story to every
primary school in Britain after hearing of a young boy who asked his teacher why
Mary and Joseph had named their baby after a swear word.’
Such ignorance is understandable when parents and society neglect to pass on the
knowledge of God to their offspring (the Israelites were warned against this—Deuteronomy 11:19, 31:11–13). Instead, their children are taught
at school and by the media that everything made itself without God.
Nor should it be unexpected, given the decision four years ago to abolish the terms
‘BC’ and ‘AD’ in UK schools, replacing them with a politically
correct system known as the ‘Common Era’. Both dating systems use the
birth of Christ as their reference point, but the secular version refuses to acknowledge
this. (’Common’ refers to the fact that the Christian calendar is the
most widely used around the world.)
The Latin term Anno Domini—’in the year of our Lord’—becomes
Common Era, or CE, while Before Christ becomes Before the Common Era, or BCE.
TheTimes (UK),
www.timesonline.co.uk/article/0,,13509-1811332,00.html, 5 October 2005.
This is London (from the Evening Standard),
www.thisislondon.co.uk/news/articles/531644;, 21 September 2005.
Photo stock.xchng
Underwater hibernation
Some freshwater turtles are known to hibernate underwater, remaining submerged for
months.
While researchers haven’t yet found evidence that other turtles (e.g. ocean-going
turtles) have this ability, it gives us an insight into how turtles survived the
Flood.
(Being aquatic creatures, turtles would not have been taken aboard Noah’s
Ark as obligate passengers—Genesis 6–9.)
And it leaves us wondering just how evolutionists might explain how evolution taught
the hibernating turtles to do their trick.
BBC Wildlife, June 2005, p. 19.
Biology Letters, 22 March 2005, pp. 82–86.
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Alien ‘trees of life’
In anticipation that extra-terrestrial life forms will be discovered, Peter Ward
of Washington University’s NASA Astrobiology Institute says that the current
view of an evolutionary ‘tree of life’ needs to be expanded. He says
that there’s no place in the current classification system to fit alien life
forms, e.g. those based on a different chemistry to life on Earth.
So he proposes a classification to include different ‘trees of life’
called arborea.
‘Let’s face it, the universe is so huge there’s got to be so many
different chemistries and for each one you need a whole new tree,’ Ward says.
‘I think there’s a forest out there.’
Such thinking presumes that evolution explains life on Earth, and if life evolved
here, then it must have elsewhere, too. [See
Gary Bates‘ book
Alien Intrusion]
The Scientist, 21 November 2005, p. 12.
Out of Asia?
According to a study published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences,
human ancestors originated in Asia, not Africa.
The claim, based on fossil teeth found in the Bugti Hills of central Pakistan, challenges
the belief that apes evolved into humans in Africa. Lead author, Dr Laurent Marivaux,
and his team named three new anthropoids, which were tiny and similar to today’s
lemurs.
Marivaux said the Oligocene fossils of south Asia are almost totally undocumented
paleontologically, and that it is not surprising that new discoveries ‘change
or modify substantially our previous view’.
But which story are we to believe—Africa or Asia? Instead, let’s rely
on the true record of human history in the Bible. We are not evolved from lemurs
but are descended from Adam and Eve, created (around 6,000 years ago) by God in
His image.
This makes much more sense than the wishful thinking of evolutionists, who go to
great lengths in their attempts to connect humans and animals. (See e.g., Sarfati,
J., Micro-primates … a transitional
form or just heel-bone hype?)
Discovery News,
www.abc.net.au/science/news/ancient/AncientRepublish_1381883.htm, 1 June
2005.
‘Rock concert’
The University of Wisconsin—Madison has held a rock concert (using rocks as
percussion instruments and synthesiser recordings of rock strikes) to celebrate
what secular geologists claim is the world’s oldest rock. The rock—a
crystal of zircon found in Western Australia—is no larger than a grain of
sand and has been ‘dated’ at 4.404 billion years.
The university’s website says the rock concert was staged to ‘explore
the idea of Deep Time’, and to provide a ‘musical answer to the question,
“what is 4.4 billion years?”‘
Sadly, despite such concerted efforts to proclaim the idea of ‘long ages’
at every opportunity, the radiometric dating techniques supposedly reflecting ‘deep
time’ are actually deeply flawed. (See, e.g.
Flaws in dating the earth as ancient)
There really is a ‘Rock of Ages’ (Isaiah 26:4, Psalm 62:7), but the rock concert glorified the wrong
rock, wrong ages.
Herald Sun (Melbourne, Australia), 9 March 2005, p. 31.
The University of Wisconsin,
www.geology.wisc.edu/~museum/symposium/home.html, 21 November 2005.
Warm oceans = more ice
Map,USGS
Computer models simulating global warming suggest that warmer oceans could enhance
the amount of Antarctic sea ice. This is because evaporation from warm oceans is
much higher than that at cooler water temperatures. Higher evaporation rates lead
to enhanced cloud formation with greater precipitation—including snowfall,
which in higher altitudes and/or latitudes means greater buildup of ice sheets,
glaciers, etc.
While the claimed evidence for global warming remains contentious (see
www.creation.com/warming), the point that increasing temperatures result
in greater snowfall certainly makes sense. Long-age geologists struggle to find
a mechanism that would generate the warm sea temperatures needed for an Ice Age.
But consider the biblical account of the ‘springs of the great deep’
(Genesis 7:11) breaking open, inundating the entire planet
and drowning all people, air-breathing animals and birds except for those on the
Ark, and the mystery fades. See
The Answers Book, chapter 16: ‘What
about the Ice Age?‘
NASA News Release,
www.nasa.gov/vision/earth/environment/sea_ice.html, 13 September 2005.
What an idea!
The European Space Agency’s chief scientist, Dr Bernard Foing, has suggested
that a Noah’s Ark—a DNA library of every plant and animal species—should
be built on the moon just in case life on Earth is wiped out by nuclear holocaust
or asteroid impact.
‘You could repopulate the Earth afterwards like a Noah’s Ark’,
he said.
BBC News,
news.bbc.co.uk/go/pr/fr/-/2/hi/science/nature/3635972.stm, 8 September 2004.
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