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Bob Compton

X-Nilo Files, 2(3), November 1999

Creation Scientist of the Month

Bob Compton, DVM, Ph.D.

(check out information on other Creation Scientists, past and present)

Dr Bob Compton obtained his Doctor of Veterinary Medicine at Washington State University and a Ph.D. in Physiology at the University of Wisconsin/Madison. He helps veterinarians, cattle ranchers, and dairymen develop animal health programs by giving them information about immune systems and the viruses and bacteria that cause disease in beef and dairy herds. Over the last 20 years, scientific research has uncovered vital information about cattle diseases and how the immune system functions. Dr Compton writes booklets and conducts workshops that educate veterinarians and animal producers, showing them how to apply current research into their herd health program. In addition to animal health, Dr Compton also educates on soil nutrition and soil management, which helps farmers and ranchers to produce healthier plants and animals. ’

Tidbits

What were your favorite subjects in high school (secondary school, pre-college level)?

As a young boy, my goal was to become a veterinarian and own a cattle ranch. On my parents’ farm I had responsibility for raising rabbits, pigs and chickens, milking the cows, and tending the garden. During my high school years, I did farm chores and also had a 20-30 hour a week job. Any spare time I had was spent hunting, fishing or horseback riding. This didn’t leave much time or inclination for school work. As a result, I was only a mediocre student. However, just before I started college I received my educational ’wakeup call.’One day, the college president called me into his office and told me that if I intended to qualify for veterinary school then I had to pass all my subjects with ’A’s’. He emphasized that only top scholars were selected for veterinary school. This ’wakeup’call forced me to develop effective study skills and soon I had a strong desire to learn that continues to this day.

When did you decide you wanted to be a ’creation scientist’?

Throughout high school and college I was taught that evolution was a scientific fact. I accepted this as truth, but later on, I discovered that many aspects of evolution didn’t make sense. Although confused, I attributed my doubts to my lack of understanding. Over the years, I came across articles and books that challenged many of the basic assumptions of evolution. Further study convinced me that evolution was only an ’ingenious story’and not ’fact.’I learned that evolution lacked credible evidence for all of its claims. I discovered contradictions between ancient earth/evolution and the foundational teachings of the Bible.

What is your favorite part about being labeled a ’creation scientist’?

In recent years, I have been very active in efforts to expose the fallacies of evolution. As part of this effort, I am involved with reviewing high school biology textbooks to ensure that the content of each textbook is scientifically accurate, factual, and objectively balanced. I believe that the biases and inaccuracies in most modern science textbooks frustrate students and hinder educational excellence. As a ’young earth’creation scientist, I strive to find factual scientific evidence that harmonizes with the basic truths of the Bible. I believe that God’s power and glory is evidenced in all of creation.’

Could Monkeys Type the 23rd Psalm?

Probability of a DNA molecule forming by chance

Let us imagine a special typewriter, ’user-friendly’to apes, with 50 keys, comprised of 26 capital letters, 10 numbers, one space bar, and 13 symbols for punctuation, etc. For the sake of simplicity we shall disregard lower-case letters and settle for typing all to be in capitals, and we shall disregard leap years.

How long would it take an operator, on the average, to correctly type the 23rd Psalm, by randomly striking keys? To obtain the answer, let us first consider the first verse of the Psalm, which reads: ’THE LORD IS MY SHEPHERD, I SHALL NOT WANT.’

According to the Multiplication Rule of the Probability (in simplified form)1 the chance of correctly typing the three designated letters ’THE; from possibilities is 1 in 50 x 50 x 50, which equals 125,000. At a rate of one strike per second, the average time taken to make 125,000 strikes is 34.72 hours.

The chance of randomly typing the eight keys (seven letters and one space) in the right sequence of the two words THE LORD is 1 in 50 x 50 … eight times (i.e. 508). This is 1 chance in 39,062 billion. There are 31,536,000 seconds in a year, so the average time taken in years to make 39,062 billion strikes at the rate of one strike per second would be 1,238,663.7 years.

The time taken on the average to correctly type the whole of verse 1 of the 23rd Psalm, which contains 42 letters, punctuation, and spaces, would be 5042 divided by 31,536,000 (seconds in a year), which is 7.2 x 1063 years.

And the time taken on the average to correctly type the whole of the 23rd Psalm, made up of 603 letters, verse numbers, punctuation, and spaces, would be 50603 divided by 31,536,000 which is 9.552 x 101016 years.2 If the letter ’b’stands for billion (109), this could be written as about one bbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbb
bbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbb years.

By comparison, the evolutionists’ age of the earth is (only) 4.6 billion years, and the evolutionists’ age of the universe is (only) almost 15 billion years.

References and notes

  1. The formula used here, 1/pr, is not strictly accurate, but is used for the sake of simplicity in the comparison of time. According to W. Feller, An Introduction to Probability Theory and Its Application (3rd Edition, 1957), Vol. 1, pp. 332-324. ’Application to the theory of success runs,’the formula for the mean time u measured in number of symbols is given by u = 1-pr/qpr or u - 1-pr/qpr where q = 1-p. In our case p = 1/50, and the whole Psalm r = 603. But for practical purposes it hardly differs.
  2. If we take the solar year of 365 days, 5 hours, 48 minutes, 46 seconds, or 31,556,926 seconds (from which the concept of leap year is derived ), the answer would be 9.546 x 101016 years (using 1/pr for ease of comparison).

Excerpt from Creation Ex Nihilo13(1):30-33 December 1990-February 1991. Then Apologia3(2):59-64, 1994.

What is DNA?

DNA—deoxyribonucleic acid. Say that fast five times! (Pronounced dee-ox-ee-rye-bow-new-clay-ick acid)

Since it’s easier to just say D-N-A, deoxyribonucleic acid has been shortened—or abbreviated to DNA!

DNA is the ’program’of life. DNA is composed of substances called bases (guanine, cytosine, adenine, and thymine) that are attached like rungs of a ladder to a backbone of alternating deoxyribose and phosphate. These bases specifically pair (guanine always with cytosine and adenine always with thymine) together in a single chain. Since these base pairs (as they’re called when they are joined) only code in one way, DNA is a self-reproducing information storage/retrieval/copying system—it could never have come about by chance.

Are you confused? Don’t be. The fact is: DNA exists in every living thing. It is God’s method of encoding the information of life. There is so much variability (called ’heterozygosity’) built into your DNA that if it were physically possible, your parents could have 10 x 102017 (that’s 1 followed by 2017 zeroes!) children and no two would be the same!

And here’s some more information on DNA—the base-pair ’rungs’are structured to form a double helix. This shape is the most efficient way to allow such an awesome amount of information to be stored.

During the process of transcription, when the DNA message is transferred to the new cell during cell division, special enzymes ’unzip’the DNA, allowing it to be copied into the new cell.

What a fantastic Creator we have! One who planned us so well, that we have the ability to grow and pass on our genetic information to new generations!

Written by Jay Horn, former Seminar and Outreach Director, Answers in Genesis, USA. Mr Horn is a former teacher, not only in a public high school, but also at the US Air Force Academy in Colorado, of which he is a graduate.

Did You Know?

In the John Scopes ’monkey trial’in Dayton, Tennessee in 1925 a substantial amount of ’scientific’evidence for evolution was submitted. A number of businessmen conspired to have the trial in Dayton, Tennessee for the publicity, and looked for a volunteer. John Scopes was that person. Clarence Darrow (a prominent humanist lawyer) and the ACLU purposed to ’show up Christianity’by having Scopes prosecuted under a Tennessee law that prohibited the teaching of evolution. Speaking for the creation side at the trial, William Jennings Bryan offered a very poor response to the alleged evolution evidence.

Look at the ’compelling’, ’convincing’and ’certain’evidence for evolution offered in 1925. That evidence was: ape to man evolution ’proved’by Nebraska man, Piltdown man, Neanderthal man, and Java man, embryonic recapitulation (‘phylogeny recapitulates ontogeny’) as proposed by Haeckel, 180 vestigial organs in the human body and the so called ’horse series.’Today, in 1999, no credible scientist would cite any of these as proofs of evolution. All of these so-called proofs have been rejected.

Science changes as we make new discoveries. Since evolution is an idea that deals with the past it can never be proven by normal (operational) science, and people who claim it can be are being, at best, dishonest.

Taken from Charlie Liebert’s web site: http://www.sixdaycreation.com/may98.html

Refuting Evolution

The Gaps are Huge!

If you haven’t gotten your very own copy of Refuting Evolution (by Dr Jonathan Sarfati) you should! See the special offer section below and find out just how easy it is to get a copy.

The X-Nilo Files has been summarizing the book chapter by chapter. We’re already up to Chapter 3—’The Links are Missing.’

The gaps are huge. There is a vast gulf between non-living matter and the first living cell, single-celled, and multi-celled creatures, and invertebrates and vertebrates. These gaps should be enough to show that molecules-to-man evolution has no foundation.

There are examples of different organisms appearing abruptly and fully formed in the fossil record—the first bats, pterosaurs, and birds were full-fledged flyers!

Evolutionists make excuses for these gaps. Some of these excuses are: changes in a population might occur too rapidly to leave many transitional fossils; the fossil record isn’t perfect; the conditions weren’t right for the fossils to form; and so on. However, these excuses are not valid because the fossil record is, in fact, remarkably complete (see p. 52 of Refuting Evolution). Additionally, fossilization requires specific conditions—rapid burial and cementing agents to harden the fossil quickly.

Perhaps the best way to form fossils would be to dump a load of cement on top of the creature you wanted to fossilize!