Focus: news of interest about creation and evolution
It isn’t junk
We have many times reported (e.g. Creation 25(2):26–31,
2003) mounting evidence against the evolutionists’ ‘junk DNA’
idea.
Much fly DNA was previously derided as ‘junk’, because it did not contain
instructions for protein-coding genes and had no known function. But now, yet another
study has concluded that the ‘junk’ must play an important role, although
its role has not yet been identified.
As one commentator observed, ‘It is truly amazing how little we know quantitatively
about mutation and selection in the genomes of even the most well-studied organisms.’
Nature, 20 October 2005, pp. 1106, 1149–1152.
University of California, ucsdnews.ucsd.edu/newsrel/science/mcjunk.asp, 25 October
2005.
Scientists finally copy Creator’s super-rubber
The stretchiest rubber in the world, resilin, comes from insects (not the
rubber tree). It is responsible for the super-jumping abilities of fleas and the
deafening chirps of cicadas. It also has an important role in insect wings. In fact,
it was first found in dragonfly wings about 40 years ago. Resilin must also be stable
enough to last an insect’s lifetime, because the adult insect does not manufacture
it.
A team led by Chris Elvin, a molecular biologist at CSIRO Livestock Industries in
Australia, has finally reproduced this super-rubber. But they had to copy the Manufacturer’s
instructions. The resilin gene had been found within the fruit fly genome in 2001,
so they copied the gene into common gut bacteria, Escherichia coli. Then
the bacteria were made to follow the instructions to produce the raw protein.
Photo by Robert Jensen
But this is not enough. The protein chains must be linked together in very specific
ways to produce the super-rubber. So insects require not only the instructions for
the proteins, but also instructions for processing the proteins. Elvin’s team
used bright light with a ruthenium metal catalyst to make the proteins link in the
right way.
This artificial resilin was as good as the natural insect rubber. It was ‘almost
perfectly elastic’, while even polybutadiene ‘superballs’ lose
20% of their energy with each bounce. And it can ‘stretch to three times its
unstressed length without breaking’.
As Science Now put it, ‘The living world puts human engineering to
shame.’ Hardly surprising, since its Engineer’s ways are as high above
ours as Heaven is above Earth (Isaiah 55:8–9).
Nature, 13 October 2005, pp. 999–1002.
Science Now, sciencenow.sciencemag.org/cgi/content/full/2005/1012/1,
24 November 2005.
Downhill, not backwards
China’s hairiest man, Yu Zhenhuan, has thick hair over 96% of his body. (He
is pictured here after surgery to remove hair that was impeding his hearing. Yu
has previously had five operations to remove hair in problem areas, including from
his nose and gums.)
He has an average of around 40 hairs per square centimetre (256 per square inch)
of his skin—a condition reported as atavism, defined as ‘reversion
to an earlier or primitive type’.
But note that such a definition presumes evolution, i.e. that Yu’s
condition is a ‘throwback’ characteristic possessed by some hairy ape-like
ancestor. In fact, it is almost certainly the result of a mutation (copying mistake
in his genes) which has disrupted control of his normal hair growth. Note that apes
do not have problems with hair growing in the ears, nose and gums, so this is not
an example of a reversion to an ape-like state.
Such copying mistakes in the genes sadly testify not to atavism, but to the truth
of the Bible’s account of an originally ‘very good’ Creation now
sliding downhill, in ‘bondage to decay’, as a result of the first man’s
sin.
Guangzhou Morning Post, 19 August 2004, p. 16.
MSNBC, msnbc.msn.com/id/5763610/, 24 November 2005.
Rats ahoy!
Researchers released a single Norway rat onto a deserted 9.5 hectare (23.5 acre)
island off New Zealand to find out why rats are so hard to eradicate—and then
couldn’t catch it.
Despite an aggressive combination of traps, baits and sniffer dogs, the rat eluded
recapture for 18 weeks. It turned out the rat had simply swum to a neighbouring
island! (It was finally caught in a trap baited with fresh penguin.)
This provides another insight into how rats, rapidly reproducing and spreading out
from the Ark’s landing site after the global Flood (Genesis 8:16–19), populated islands in the world today.
(‘Land bridges’ during the Ice Age—when sea levels were lower—would
have helped, too.)
Nature, 20 October 2005, p. 1107.
Church ‘meltdown’
The former Archbishop of Canterbury, Dr George Carey, said recently that Britain’s
churches are in such decline that if they were shops, they would have been declared
bankrupt long ago.
Observing that Christian denominations had suffered plunging congregations, Dr Carey
spoke of the Church ‘becoming a club for the elderly’. The Archbishop
warned that it was ‘approaching meltdown’ and that the ‘last rites’
could be administered at any moment.
Hopefully Dr Carey’s words will be seen as a wake-up call to the Church—and
long overdue. See ‘When will the
Church wake up?’ Creation 17(3):16–18,
1995.
The Telegraph (UK), news.telegraph.co.uk/news/main.jhtml?xml=/news/2005/10/12/nchur12.xml,
17 October 2005.
Evolution is religion
Michael Ruse, of Florida State University, is a rabid anti-creationist. But in his
latest book, The Evolution-Creation Struggle (Harvard, 2005), Ruse acknowledges
the religious dimension to evolution. A review in Science journal summed
it up:
‘Michael Ruse interprets the last 200 years of conflict between biology and
religion as a struggle between evolutionism and creationism. Evolutionism is not
merely an endorsement of the scientific theory of evolution. It consists of “the
whole metaphysical or ideological picture built around or on evolution,” including
a belief in progress and attempts to reduce cultural and ethical values to evolutionary
biology. As such, it constitutes a “secular religion.” Thus, for Ruse
(a philosopher of science at Florida State University), the debate over creationism
is more a conflict between two religions than one between religion and science.’
Science, 22 July 2005, p. 560; cf. the review in Journal of Creation
(formerly TJ) 20(1), 2006.
‘Frozen Mars’ bar to life
NASA
For those hoping to find evidence of life on Mars, there’s been yet another
disappointment.
Researchers have concluded from studying meteorites supposedly from Mars found on
Earth that liquid water could never have existed for long on the Martian surface.
‘Mars may have just cooled off too quickly [for life to evolve]’, lamented
one researcher.
The New Scientist headline summed it up: ‘Life was unlikely on frozen
Mars’.
New Scientist, 30 July 2005, p. 14.
‘Too salty and hot’
A geologist at Arizona State University is challenging the widely accepted idea
that animal life evolved in the oceans before moving onto land. Paul Knauth says
that the oceans were too salty and hot for that to have happened.
So he’s suggesting instead that animals evolved in freshwater pools or lakes,
migrating to the oceans later. New Scientist reports that Knauth is now
looking for fossils of freshwater animals that would support his claim. So far he
hasn’t found any, but said, ‘I haven’t given up yet.’
Often evolutionists themselves come to realize that a particular evolutionary scenario
is impossible. But this does not shake their faith in evolution. They simply suggest
an alternative (evolutionary) scenario, and try to find evidence to fit—which
shows that evolution is based on (blind) faith, not fact.
New Scientist, 5 February 2005, p. 17.
Kalahari cowherders?
There’s a widely-held view that man evolved from some primitive ape-like hunter-gatherer,
later advancing to farming, and keeping livestock. An implication of this—spoken
or unspoken—is that hunter-gatherer societies such as the Bushmen of the Kalahari
Desert (also known as the KhoiSan people) are therefore ‘primitive’
in an evolutionary sense.
But anthropologist Larry Robbins of Michigan State University and his colleagues
report evidence that the KhoiSan were in fact tending livestock 2,000 years ago.
So the skills and knowledge of animal husbandry which earlier generations once practised
has since been lost.
While this might surprise evolutionists, it’s entirely consistent with the
biblical account of history, which tells us that people have grown crops and kept
flocks from the beginning (Genesis 2:15, 3:19, 4:2).
New Scientist, 13 August 2005, p. 18.
Doting dinos
The Liaoning fossil beds in China have provided evidence that at least some dinosaurs
may have been doting parents.
A ‘dramatic specimen’ of the dinosaur Psittacosaurus sp. (‘parrot
lizard’) shows 34 juveniles clustered around an adult. The ‘consistently
lifelike postures’—the adult and juveniles were all buried in an upright
position, with heads raised—suggest that the psittacosaurs were rapidly entombed
while still alive. Researchers suggest volcanic debris, a collapsing burrow or flooding
of a nest may have been to blame.
The tightly clustered Psittacosaurus, with such a large number of advanced
juveniles, shows parental care was extensive, say the researchers.
This collection, and many others right around the world, are evidence of rapid burial
in the global Flood (Genesis 6–9).
Nature, 9 September 2004, pp. 145–146.
Star formation mystery deepens
Astronomers have recently discovered that the galaxy known as NGC 300 is much larger
than previously thought—a very large, but very thin and flat, disk.
But finding such large thin flat objects in the universe presents ‘some serious
conundrums’ for astronomers trying to understand how stars, galaxies and the
cosmos itself could have formed.
Current evolutionary theories say that galaxies form as a result of matter colliding.
But Professor Jos Bland-Hawthorn of the Anglo-Australian Observatory and his colleagues,
who reported their NGC 300 findings in The Astrophysical Journal, point
out that crashing objects together tends to form round objects rather than
flat ones.
Compounding the mystery is the fact that redshift indicators point to such flat,
thin galaxies in the early universe already being very large. Also the current theory
that stars form where there is a high density of gas doesn’t fit with conditions
in the outer part of a disk galaxy where stars are found.
As Bland-Hawthorn observed: ‘It’s getting harder and harder to explain
how stars form.’
Not surprising—when the Creator is ruled out and His Word is disregarded!
ABC News in Science, www.abc.net.au/science/news/stories/s1435182.htm, 15 August
2005 ; cf. Young galaxies too old for the
big bang, Creation 26(3):15, 2004.
Alaskan dino track
A three-toed dinosaur footprint has been discovered in Alaska. From its size (22
cm (9 in) long, 15 cm (6 in) wide), the curator of Earth Sciences at the Dallas
Museum of Natural History, Anthony Fiorillo, estimates it was a meat-eater 2.7 m
(9 ft) to 4 m (13 ft) long.
‘You are looking at a very large, birdlike animal except it has teeth and
a tail and instead of wings, it has arms,’ he said. He also estimates it to
be about 70 million years old.
But how could anyone deduce that degree of detail from a mere footprint? One might
just as easily say: ‘From this footprint, I deduce you’re looking at
a reptile-like creature, except it suckles its young and is warm-blooded, and instead
of scales, it has fur.’
Sadly many people will be taken in by such confident assertions, trusting the millions-of-
years age ascribed to the footprint, instead of the Bible’s clear teaching
that nothing is older than around 6,000 years.
ABC News, <abcnews.go.com/Technology/wireStory?id=912572>, 15 December
2005.
Interesting question
The British popular science magazine Focus, on receiving a reader’s
question, ‘How soon could Adam and Eve have populated the world?’, published
the following response:
‘If you believe the Biblical account of the Creation, it’s possible
to get a very rough estimate of the time when Adam and Eve existed. The trouble
is that it inevitably involves assumptions about birth and death rates, and these
can have a dramatic effect on the final estimate. If we assume a historical average
net rate of population growth of 0.5 per cent (around one-third of today’s
rate), it would take around 4,400 years to get from Adam and Eve to today’s
six billion people. But by changing that growth figure to 0.4 per cent, an extra
1,000 years must be added.’
Their 4,400 year figure equates to the time that Noah and his family (from whom
all people today are descended) came off the Ark. Such straightforward thinking
ought to make people doubt claims that man has been around for hundreds of thousands
of years. See also Where are all the people?.
Focus, December 2004, p. 49.
Lungfish not ‘primitive’
Evolutionists refer to lungfish as ‘living fossils’, unchanged for over
100 million years. They regard the Australian lungfish (Neoceratodus forsteri)
as ‘the most primitive of the living lungfishes’ and consider it the
closest living relative to the first creatures on land—our ancient ancestors.
(In broad terms, the evolutionary progression is microbes-fish-amphibians-reptiles-mammals.)
Wikipedia.org, released under the GFDL
But recently-discovered complex ‘Technicolor’ vision in the Australian
lungfish is anything but ‘primitive’. These unusual fish have genes
for five different forms of visual pigment in their eyes (humans have only
three). And this in a large, slow-moving fish for which vision had been assumed
to be of little importance.
So, a puzzle for evolutionists: why should such complex vision have evolved? From
a biblical perspective though, there’s no mystery. Lungfish were created by
an obviously masterful Designer to reproduce ‘after their kind’—lungfish
have always been lungfish, since God created the universe around 6,000 years ago.
And the evolutionists’ conundrum of ‘living fossils’ arises out
of their wrongly viewing rock strata as a record of evolution (and extinction) over
millions of years rather than as a legacy of the cataclysmic global Flood about
4,500 years ago.
PHYSORG.COM, www.physorg.com/news6588.html, 21 September 2005.
Settlers feared the bunyip
Sketch courtesy of The Geelong Advertiser
1990 sketch in the Geelong Advertiser based on their 1845 report.
When Europeans settled in Australia, Aboriginal stories about a bellowing water
monster said to live at the bottom of billabongs (ponds/lakes) were understood by
many settlers as more than myth. Aboriginal people living along the Coorong in South
Australia described the ‘bunyip’ as a huge man-eating creature having
a long neck, a head like a bird, and an elongated body. In the 1800s, some settlers
claimed to have fleetingly seen it, and many others reported ‘its blood-chilling
cry’ was akin to that of a distressed seal.
And in the 1930s Depression, vagrants living off the land were said to have been
threatened by the creature.
Reported sightings have declined in recent years—perhaps because of human
encroachment on its habitat, forcing it into more remote areas or even into extinction.
In Creation 15(2):51, 1993, we reported Aboriginal accounts
of a different ‘bunyip’ described in a Victorian newspaper in 1845.
The description bore a strong resemblance to what today are known as duck-billed
dinosaurs—and that news report was published 13 years before
the first duck-billed dinosaur fossils were described.
The Advertiser (Adelaide), 12 March 2005, p. 55.
Attenborough’s anti-God musings
When asked about a Creator, renowned nature documentary presenter Sir David Attenborough
(pictured) replied:
‘Think of a parasitic worm that lives only in the eyeballs of human beings,
boring its way through them, in West Africa, for example, where it’s common,
turning people blind. So if you say, “I believe that God designed and created
and brought into existence every single species that exists,” then you’ve
also got to say, “Well, he, at some stage, decided to bring into existence
a worm that’s going to turn people blind.” Now, I find that very difficult
to reconcile with notions about a merciful God.’
This objection to a Creator ignores the biblical account of the Fall. The world
we have today is no longer the ‘very good’ world that God made (Genesis 1:31) but a cursed world into which has come death,
disease, bloodshed. It’s a world ‘in bondage to decay’ because
of the first man’s sin ( Genesis 2:16–17, 3:6, 14–23 ; Romans 8:21). (See The Creation Answers Book ch. 6, Refuting Evolution II ch. 4, Walking through Shadows—contact
addresses p. 2.)
Sadly, Sir David’s influence is such that his musings receive wide publicity.
New Scientist quoted his opinion regarding human extinction:
‘If we [humans] disappeared overnight, the world would probably be better
off.’
This comment flies in the face of God having originally installed man to ‘fill
the earth and subdue it’ and to ‘rule’ over the living creatures
(Genesis 1:27–28). And of course it’s obvious
that humans will still be here (i.e. will not be extinct) when Jesus returns (1 Thessalonians 4:16–17).
Enough Rope, www.abc.net.au/tv/enoughrope/transcripts/s951650.htm, 23
November 2005.
New Scientist, 19 November 2005, p. 10.
‘No God’ research
A team of researchers will receive US$1 million annually from Harvard University
over the next few years in a special initiative to study how life began. But it
seems the researchers have already made up their mind about how life didn’t
begin.
‘My expectation is that we will be able to reduce this to a very simple series
of logical events that could have taken place with no divine intervention,’
said David Liu, a professor of chemistry and chemical biology at Harvard.
Millions of dollars … in an apparent desperate quest to show there’s
no God, despite overwhelming evidence of a Designer (see e.g. Design Features Questions and Answers). The researchers
would do well to heed the words of the Creator Himself, which are ‘trustworthy,
making wise the simple’ (Psalm 19:7):
‘You turn things upside down, as if the potter were thought to be like the
clay! Shall what is formed say to him who formed it, “He did not make me”?
Can the pot say of the potter, “He knows nothing”?’ (Isaiah 29:16).
MSNBC News, www.msnbc.msn.com/id/8959763/, 25 November 2005.
Ancient complex machines
The distinctive spiral grooves found on an ancient jade ring indicate that 2,500
years ago China was already using complex machines.
While simple machines that move in only one way (like a potter’s wheel) were
in use earlier, this is the oldest evidence yet of compound machines—those
which combine two types of motion—circular and radial.
Man has been intelligent from the beginning of creation, e.g. making and using metal
tools (Genesis 4:22).
New Scientist, www.newscientist.com/news/news.jsp?id=ns99995103, 28 June
2004.
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