Focus: creation news and views
Media bias on stem cells
Last year, there was much propaganda about the need for embryonic stem cell research
(ESCR), which results in destruction of newly conceived human beings, although it
has produced no useful cures. Conversely, ‘adult’ (i.e.
somatic / non-embryonic) stem cells, which do not require destruction of
embryos, have over 70 proven cures. If the pro-ESCR crowd were
truly interested in healing people, they would have publicized that. But nothing
must detract from the putsch to extort tax dollars for ESCR, because of its major
role in dehumanizing the unborn by treating them as commodities.
Wikipedia.org
A colony of embryonic stem cells.
And there was much tugging at heart strings. For example, the late quadriplegic
Christopher Reeve begging for embryonic stem cell research that would supposedly
cure him. Ironically, he and his supporters ignored that umbilical cord
stem cells enabled a 37-year-old woman in South Korea to walk after 19 years of
paralysis. Such stem cells have also grown a small artificial liver, which should
greatly help drug testing.
Other 2006 successes involving adult stem cells include: SCs from fatty tissue
forming into smooth muscle cells—the involuntary type essential to movement
of the intestine, blood vessels and urinary tract; SCs from blood that
can be directed to turn into five types of cells, including bone, blood vessel and
nerve cells; SCs from bone marrow producing the insulin-producing cells
which could cure diabetes; SCs from small blood vessels growing new muscle
tissue, ideal for treating muscular dystrophy; heart valves have been grown from
SCs extracted from amniotic fluid; and heart tissue damaged by an attack
has been repaired by SCs extracted from a tiny amount of heart.
SC medical research that involves the killing of unborn human beings is not only
totally unethical, it is also totally unnecessary. See www.creation.com/stem_cells
for original sources and much more information.
Atheists vs Christians
Various antitheists are fretting that homeschooling and Christian universities are
destroying the secular monopoly on education by actually providing an alternative.
But despite implying that reason and faith are incompatible, they have to admit
that the biblical creationist Patrick Henry College (US) ‘boast[s] high academic
standards’. That college has out-reasoned even the prestigious University
of Oxford (UK)—beating them twice in debating competitions. And: ‘For
the past two years, the college has won the moot court national championship, in
which students prepare legal briefs and deliver oral arguments to a hypothetical
court.’
So despite telling us for ages that creation would lower standards, the antitheists
admit that some creationist schools have the highest standards—and
that is why they are so worried. The idea of Christians actually being salt in the
world, defending the faith and demolishing arguments, is a threat to their atheistic
faith (Creation 28(4):6, 2006; <www.creation.com/mind>).
That’s why they don’t want to relinquish their monopoly, so they can
fail Christian students for refusing to write homosexual propaganda, (www.creation.com/intolerant)
or cut off the microphone of the valedictorian (dux) giving her speech when she
thanked Jesus Christ (see www.creation.com/christfree.) Make no
mistake—they did not remove ‘faith’ from schools, just replaced
the Christian faith with the atheistic one. As these and many other cases show,
there is no such thing as ‘neutrality’—their ‘neutral’
position is an unstable equilibrium that has turned into hostility.
New Scientist 192(2577):20–23, 11 November 2006.
NASA
‘Fresh-faced’ moon
The moon has long been thought to be geologically inactive, with the last of its
volcanoes erupting nearly a billion years ago.
But researchers studying images and spectrographic readings from recent space probes
have found some areas have a ‘freshness’ which they say indicates gas
emissions have occurred more recently.
This is not the first time that lunar observations have defied previously-accepted
long-age ideas of the moon’s history. For further reading on the real age
of the moon (6,000 years), see <www.creation.com/moon and Journal
of Creation 17(1):5–6, 2003.
New Scientist 192(2577):18, 11 November 2006.
Nature 444(7116):184–186, 9 November 2006.
Leading evolutionist criticises fellow evolutionists
Renowned evolutionist Lynn Margulis (President of Sigma Xi—The Scientific
Research Society), musing in American Scientist as to why the teaching
of evolu tion ary theory is so controversial, admitted, candidly:
‘Evolutionary biologists act certain that they know how new life
forms originate and complexify. But they don’t.’
Dr Margulis is no doubter of evolution, as she makes clear in her article. However:
‘But many biologists claim they know for sure that random mutation
(purposeless chance) is the source of inherited variation that generates new species
of life and that life evolved in a single-common-trunk, dichotomously branching-phylogenetic-tree
pattern! “No!” I say.’
Margulis goes on to criticise those evolutionists who proclaim with ‘dogmatic
certainty’ the ‘tree of life’—she says they are ignorant
of ‘alternative topologies’ such as ‘webs’.
American Scientist 94(3):194, May–June 2006.
Sick? Fever helps
When you are ill, an elevated body temperature helps the immune system identify
the cause of an infection and then eradicate it. A higher-than-normal temperature
somehow activates cells in the lymph nodes, resulting in rapid multiplication of
lymphocytes that can combat infection.
Of course, there was no sickness in the ‘very good’ world before Adam
sinned. But even today, it appears that God in His mercy has provided His created
beings with features apparently pre-programmed to ameliorate the effects of the
Curse.
New Scientist 192(2577):17, 11 November 2006.
Super sniffer
New research has shown that rats can use their two nostrils to localize the source
of an odour. This is similar to the way that having two ears enables us to locate
the source of a sound.
Although rat nostrils are only three millimetres apart, these animals can detect
whether an odour source is to the left or right using time-of-arrival differences
or concentration differences. That is, which nostril received the smell first or
is receiving the stronger odour. (When one nostril was covered, the rats could no
longer identify the direction of an odour, confirming that ‘rats smell in
stereo’, say researchers.)
What’s more, rats can locate an odour source in just 50 milliseconds—i.e.
within a single sniff.
Surely the designers of odour-tracking robots (Creation 26(4):9,
2004) should be impressed (Isaiah 55:9).
Science 311(5761):666–670, 3 February 2006.
Dinos had stomach worms
A duck-billed dinosaur fossil found in Montana, USA, is so well-preserved that researchers
have been able to study great detail of the animal’s insides. The fossil revealed
chewed-up plants in its gut (useful for helping to identify what duck-billed dinosaurs
ate) and also more than 200 suspected parasite burrows. The researchers say the
burrows were most likely made by tiny worms similar to stomach parasites that infest
animals today.
Note that such a degree of preservation, where the carcass was not divided and scattered
by scavengers but ‘apparently buried before it had a chance to fall apart’
is consistent with having been buried in an unusual event (Genesis 6–9).
Note, too, that such a find shows the indefensibility of long-age compromise positions
such as that espoused by Hugh Ross (see www.creation.com/plant_death)—did
stomach worms afflict this dinosaur in the ‘very good’ world before
Adam sinned, or after? (No-one would describe stomach worms as ‘very
good’ today, so the obvious answer is: after.) See also our earlier
articles on cannibal dinosaurs (www.creation.com/grotesque)
and cancer-afflicted dinosaurs (www.creation.com/dinotumour).
ABC NewsOnline, www.abc.net.au/news/newsitems/200610/s1772272.htm,
25 October 2006.
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Different colours, same species
Lemur photos by stockxpert
Genetic analysis has revealed that lemurs that had been thought to be three separate
species because of their strikingly different coat colours actually belong to the
same species (Microcebus griseorufus).
This demonstrates the fluidity and subjectivity of the definition of ‘species’—a
human construct which does not usually equate to the biblical ‘kind’.
A common skeptics’ objection against the Bible is to claim that Noah’s
Ark could not possibly have carried all the different species in the world. In fact,
it was only male and female representatives of each kind of air-breathing
land animal and bird that needed to be taken on board—probably only around
8,000 pairs in total. (See also How could Noah get all
the animals on the Ark?)
BMC Evolutionary Biology 6:98, 16 November 2006, www.biomedcentral.com/1471-2148/6/98.
NASA
Star ‘old before its time’
Astronomers are puzzling over a neutron star that ‘behaves like it is millions
of years old’ yet which they say couldn’t possibly be that old. They
estimate the neutron star (identified as 1E161348-5055) is only 2,000 years old,
based on the size of the shell of gas and dust around it. But that doesn’t
fit with measurements suggesting it is rotating just once every 6.7 hours, because:
‘It would normally take a neutron star millions of years to slow down that
much.’
In reality, man’s attempts to ‘measure’ the age of things will
likely fall wide of the actual age—assumptions can never match the accuracy
of an eyewitness account. The Bible’s eyewitness account says the stars were
made on Day 4 of Creation Week, around 6,000 years ago.
NewScientist.com news service, www.newscientistspace.com/article/dn9495-bizarre-neutron-star-is-old-before-its-time.html,
6 July 2006.
People link ‘startling’
Analysis of DNA from living people and of DNA from ancient human remains is ‘startling
US anthropologists by linking people thousands of miles and years apart’.
From a biblical perspective, they should not be so startled. All people today share
ancestry from Adam and Eve, created only about 6,000 years ago. And all people today
also share ancestry from Noah, whose descendants have multiplied and spread out
across the earth since the Ark landed somewhere in ‘the mountains of Ararat’
just 4,500 years ago.
PHYSORG.COM, www.physorg.com/news77213798.html, 14 September 2006.
Who really cares?
When Syracuse University professor Arthur C. Brooks set out to investigate charitable
giving in the USA he did not anticipate what he would find—that religious
conservatives are more generous than secular liberals.
His findings are documented in a book titled Who really cares: The surprising truth
about compassionate conservatism. Brooks cites extensive data analysis
to demonstrate that values advocated by conservatives—e.g. church attendance,
two-parent families, ‘the Protestant work ethic’—result in conservatives
donating far more money than secular liberals to all sorts of charitable activities,
irrespective of income.
Ironically, as Brooks writes: ‘For too long, liberals have been claiming they
are the most virtuous members of American society. Although they usually give less
to charity, they have nevertheless lambasted conservatives for their callousness
in the face of social injustice.’
Professor Brooks writes in the Introduction that, before he embarked on the study,
‘I have to admit I probably would have hated what I have to say in this book.’
Compare our article ‘You should be feeding the hungry’, <www.creation.com/hungry>.
The Post-Standard (Syracuse, NY), www.maxwell.syr.edu/news/online_clips/061029_PS_brooks.asp,
20 November 2006.
Fossil lamprey ‘modern’
stockxpert
The discovery of a fossil lamprey (Priscomyzon riniensis), which evolutionists
describe as looking ‘surprisingly modern’, is forcing a ‘reassessment’
of ideas about lamprey evolution. That’s because it’s said to be 360
million years old, i.e. before lampreys were thought to have evolved. In
the words of one evolutionist, ‘lamprey morphology has been astonishingly
stable’ [our emphasis].
Christians, however, can take a different view. The fact that lampreys today are
just the same as fossil lampreys is no surprise—God created all the various
kinds of land animals, birds and aquatic creatures to reproduce ‘after their
kind’. And the millions-of-years ideas ignore the biblical account of history—all
things were created only around 6,000 years ago. This recently-discovered fossil
lamprey dates from the Flood of Noah’s day, around 4,500 years ago—the
fact that such soft-bodied (boneless) creatures can be so well-preserved as fossils
right around the world speaks of that unusual, global, event (Genesis 7:11).
Nature 443(7114):921–924, 981–984, 26 October
2006.
Joining with the enemy
stock.xchng
Under the headline ‘No creationism please’, the popular weekly magazine
New Scientist reported in October that: ‘Christians and atheists
joined forces last week to urge the British government to prevent creationism infiltrating
school science classes.’
Specifically, it was the British Humanist Association that wrote a joint letter
with ‘the UK Christian think tank Ekklesia.’
Can a professing Christian organisation be yoked to antitheists in that
manner? Not according to Scripture, e.g. Psalm 1:1 and 2 Corinthians 6:14. And one would think that the atheistic
bias behind evolutionary thinking would alert Christians of the need to oppose it.
Sadly, however, large sections of the Church have tried to reconcile Christianity
and evolution by denying a plain reading of Genesis. And doubting Genesis has, in
many cases, led to doubt of the rest of the Scripture. As we have previously written
(www.creation.com/iscast): ‘No wonder that many churches that
started by rejecting biblical authority in “science” areas now have
ministers who actually reject the Resurrection and Virginal Conception of Christ,
and even have floats in the Gay Mardi Gras!’
It turns out that Ekklesia is a prime example of that. Their website reveals that
their activities include sponsoring a conference ‘organised by the Lesbian
and Gay Christian Movement, which will look at the links between religion and homophobia.’
New Scientist 192(2572):7, 7 October 2006.
Ancient man had modern mind
The widely-held assumption that the ‘characteristic features’ of the
‘modern’ human mind first evolved between 50,000 and 40,000 years ago
needs to be pushed back much earlier, according to Lawrence Barham, of the University
of Liverpool.
Dr Barham told the British Association for the Advancement of Science that accumulating
evidence of early art—which he says indicates symbolic thought and language—points
to the evolution of ‘modern’ mental capacities at least 100,000
years before the earliest accepted date. And with the discovery of mixed paints
found at the Two Rivers cave complex in Zambia, he even suggests that the ancestors
of modern human beings may have been practising art up to 300,000 years
ago.
Of course all such dating, which presupposes evolutionary origins, is wrong. From
the first (i.e. Creation Week, around 6,000 years ago), people were endowed with
language and intelligence. There’s an important message here for ‘progressive
creationists’ such as Hugh Ross who compromise with secular long-age dates
and therefore have had to stretch the biblical timeline past breaking point to place
Adam at 60,000 years ago.
So, now that those same secular dating methods place ingenious human behavior even
earlier, what now?
It’s far more logical to trust the Bible’s dates and recognize that
secular dates are based on assumptions.
See also, Neandertals
were fully human in thinking, <www.creation.com/article/4611/>.
The Times, 9 September 2006.
NASA images
Titan lifeless
The Cassini–Huygens space probe to Saturn’s moon Titan has given no
joy to those who had hoped to find life there.
Larger than the planet Mercury, Titan has long been a popular setting for science-fiction
tales of human colonization and exploration. But its atmosphere lacks oxygen, its
surface temperature is minus 180ºC (-356ºF), and there’s no liquid
water on the surface because it’s too cold. NASA researchers say the data
show it was unlikely Titan could support life.
Red Orbit, www.redorbit.com/news/space/317813/life_on_saturns_moon_titan_unlikely/,
9 March 2006.
Jellyfish poison a lifesaver?
Toxins from several species of deadly jellyfish will be the subject of a world-first
study by Dr Jamie Seymour and his colleagues from James Cook University in Cairns,
Australia, to extract compounds to treat heart ailments.
‘Given that the venom is predominantly a heart venom, so it kills the heart,
it wouldn’t surprise me if there’s compounds in there that we can use
for various heart complications,’ Dr Seymour said. ‘We’ve isolated
a compound from the box jellyfish venom which actually kills bacteria that’s
[sic] resistant to a lot of the medications presently used.’
A commonly-asked question is: ‘If God is good, and God created everything,
then why does nature [including jellyfish—see Creation 25(4):28–31,
34–35, 2003; <www.creation.com/jellyfish>] have so many poisons?’
Virtually all chemicals, even poisons, have an important function in life or human
society. For example, Vitamins A and E are critical for life, but highly toxic if
taken in high dosages. Nothing is toxic in very tiny amounts, but all chemicals
are toxic at sufficiently high levels—i.e. ‘the dose makes
the poison’.
Compounds which are highly toxic in some situations can be life-saving in others.
For example, the most poisonous substance known is botulin. It is six million times
more toxic than rattle-snake venom. Yet, this toxin is a miracle drug for those
suffering from dystonias and other health problems (as well as temporarily curing
wrinkles—botox).
See also Jerry Bergman’s article, Understanding poisons from a creationist
perspective, Journal of Creation 11(3):353–360,
1997, <www.creation.com/poison>.
The Courier-Mail (Brisbane), 7 November 2006, p. 12.
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