Sheep and Goats

Category: Evolutionists

  • Ryan, Sean Carroll, and the Leprechauns

    “Of all the scientists in the world today, there is no one with whom Charles Darwin would rather spend an evening than Sean Carroll.” So says Michael Ruse, author of The Evolution-Creation Struggle. Hmmm….well, how does he know? Maybe if Sean met the Great Man, the latter wouldn't be able to stand him. Sort of reminds me of that passage in Up the Down Staircase where the student gets an F for wrongly interpreting a poem. He protests, but the grade stands. It even stands when he brings the poet himself to class, and the poet says yes..that's exactly what he meant when he wrote his poem. Nonetheless, the incident does change school policy. From that point on, only dead poets are the subject of essays. It's much easier to make assertions after someone has died.

    But this is just idle chatter to fill up a paragraph. I've nothing against Sean Carroll. No doubt he's a great guy. Probably, Charles Darwin would indeed salivate over the prospect of meeting him. At any rate, a certain blogger named Ryan read Carroll's book The Making of the Fittest: DNA and the Ultimate Forensic Record of Evolution and was effusive in his praise. It moved him to marvel how he himself could ever have failed to march to the evolutionist drumbeat. Once, he had believed creation. But that's all history now. Science has simply come so far. Now it's evolution all the way!

    See, scientists today have mapped the genome. They can read the DNA in existing creatures, even the “fossil DNA”. This DNA sequence is found here, and here, but not there. These two beings share x percent of their DNA, those two beings y percent. This critter has a certain sequence of DNA, and so does that critter from a faraway time and place! So like a giant game of Clue, evolutionists run numbers, and make deductions about the development of life.

    The evolution theory is now firmly proved, Ryan concludes. “People who believe otherwise are no different in any major respect than flat earth proponents or people who believe in leprechauns.” To be sure, he says, “It is possible that a thinking person could have doubted evolution 100 years ago or even 50 years ago but now those days are past.” Sigh….presumably he, as a foremost example of both thinking person and one-time creation adherent, left the creation camp the last day it was possible for a thinking person to still believe it, and switched off the light on his way out.

    I wasn't in the mood. I took him up on his “it is possible that a thinking person could have doubted evolution 100 years ago or even 50 years ago…” That point was not conceded 100 years ago or even 50 years ago, I commented. Then, as now, the mantra was “People who believe otherwise are no different in any major respect than flat earth proponents or people who believe in leprechauns.” We all know it. To these guys, evolution was unquestionable fact the day Darwin stepped off the boat. Will DNA analysis prove to be the silver bullet that, once and for all, establishes evolution? Should I lose my cookies when they claim – this time for sure – to have found the ultimate trump card? I'm not ready to bolt just yet. We've heard that claim many times before.

    Still, I haven't exactly read anything by evolutionists lately in their own words. Ooh…wait. Yes I did. I read Carl Zimmer's Evolution: the Triumph of an Idea (2001). (and worked it into a post here) But that was a book on CD. Maybe that's not really reading. At any rate, maybe it's time for another book, especially since the evolutionists say they have new ammo.  What have these guys been up to since decoding the DNA? I picked up Sean Carroll's book, since he is Darwin's favorite.

    And……upon reading the book, it seems to me that the biologists have made great strides in an aspect of evolution that Jehovah's Witnesses barely had any problems with in the first place, that of micro-evolution. That is, variation within that vague Biblical term “kind.” The stuff of animal husbandry, and selective breeding. The science behind the proliferation of superbugs, now that overuse of antibiotics has eliminated all the wimpy germs. They've found the workings behind such things, the mechanics of it, and…..does it indeed involve glitches in gene duplication culled by natural selection? Apparently, we are to be so awed by these findings, that we readily extrapolate them in macro-evolution (one “kind” emerging from another “kind”), where the footing is much less firm.

    First, we begin with a discussion of the icefish, a significant variation within the fish “kind,” to be sure. These creatures live where it's too cold to exist without a form of antifreeze within their blood. The blood itself is not red, lacking hemoglobin. Then some explanation as to just how mutations occur. Breaking the genetic code has enabled scientists to track these things on a much more intricate level than ever before, and….well….you have to respect that. Then other chapters track, for example, the development of color vision. Here's a discussion of “fossil” DNA, remnants of one time functional genes which have deteriorated due to "use it or lose it" syndrome, their possessors entering new surroundings. And much discussion of the forensic record revealed.

    But aren't people mistaking tonnage for proof? Like the time I strove to prove a matter of property ownership to the city, and my lawyer opined that submitted materials simply had to “weigh enough?” All this abundant stuff is consistent with evolution. But that's not the same as proving it, for it is equally consistent with creation. Yet these guys carry on as if every gene they discover is the final coup de grace to creation, as if created life would have Bible scriptures in their genes, and not DNA. Look, wheels are common to all vehicles, yet they were all manufactured. You might, by studying changes in design, figure out, in time, the order of the manufacture, the descent and relationships of various automakers, but you have nothing to suggest they were not manufactured.

    But repeat anything often enough and forcefully enough and people begin to think there must be something to it. It's just the way we are. Precious little in this book deals with macro-evolution. And there's nothing at all mentioned, so far as I can see, with regard to the third leg of the evolution Trinity: that of origin itself from non-living materials. It's all micro-evolution, variation within a biblical kind. But there's little to suggest any……oh…wait….Sean addresses it here (pg192):

    “Much of the resistance to Darwin's theories was or is based on doubts about the validity of such extrapolations (e.g, not accepting the “adding up” of effects over vast periods of time). To this point in the book I, too, have implied a degree of extrapolation.” Whereupon he devotes some pages, but not too many, to describe parallels of development in vastly different life forms, with the footnote that material about macro-evolution is to be found in another book of his….to be fair, one he has already written, not one he has yet to write. Then there follows on page 215 a certain “coaching” section climaxing in how to answer creationists, in which Carroll discouragingly leaves his research to turn political. Ah, well, he's the author, so I guess he can go anywhere he likes. Besides, he does liken this part to the after-dinner conversation, where the learned ones tilt back in their chairs while the less learned tend to the cleaning up or knitting, and say “now what are we going to do about these infernal creationists?”

    You know, I will read that other book eventually. I doubt I'll get to it right away. Alas, I must go to work every day. And carry on my normal routine. And do my best to dodge Mrs. Sheepandgoats when she comes around to inform that this or that aspect of the house is falling down. In the meantime, jihad may strike, or WWIII, or the earth itself may fry from any number of always increasing man-made threats. Or the Great Great Depression might commence, since anyone who knows anything says forces which triggered the late financial meltdown are still firmly in place, entirely uncorrected. Moreover, the good news continues to be preached, of which I have a share, since unfolding calamities are all in accord with the Bible's overall message that human rule can end in nothing but chaos. An intense anti-religious air takes hold among the world's movers and shakers, a natural and Revelation-foretold (Rev 17:16) consequence of centuries of outrages in the name of God. Has anyone other than Jehovah's Witnesses pointed to such a occurrence?

    So it will come, reading that second book, but in due time. Meantime, and ironically, Ryan has removed his post from the web, along with his entire blog, so far as I can see. You can no longer pull it up. But I remembered key words, and by googling them, and then googling again the results, I was able to reconstruct the original. Yes, I tracked forensic fossilized google snippets! You can do the same using key words like Ryan, evolution, flat earth, and leprechauns. But only if you are an evolutionist. Fossilized google evidence is not something creation people know how to handle and we don't believe in it for a second.

    [edit…Update here.

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    ******  The bookstore

  • Darwin’s Eye

    There was great joy in the atheist world during 2010, where they celebrated the 200th birthday of Charles Darwin! Sigh…..that left Jehovah’s Witnesses doubly out in the cold: we don’t celebrate Darwin and we don’t do birthdays. Nonetheless, it’s a Charles Darwin statement that will be used as a starting point for this post. It’s taken from Origin of the Species, chapter VI. Call my recognition a belated birthday present, if you must.

    Darwin wrote:

    “To suppose that the eye with all its inimitable contrivances for adjusting the focus to different distances, for admitting different amounts of light, and for the correction of spherical and chromatic aberration, could have been formed by natural selection, seems, I freely confess, absurd in the highest degree.”….

    Q: If you quote this line, do you really have to add:  “of course, this is not to suggest that Darwin does not believe in his own theory of evolution by natural selection”?

    I would never have thought so. I mean, what do you expect his next words to be? “Thus we can see that my entire theory is a load of horse manure. But I’m in this to win the praise of my peers, who for some reason, eat this stuff up. That, and maybe there’s a buck to be made. So I’m putting lipstick on this pig. I’m sticking to my guns, even though you know, and I know, that it’s all nonsense.”??

    No! He’s not going to say that! He’s going to say something like: “Still, many now-established truths seemed equally absurd when first proposed. Evidence is scanty with relationship to the eye’s development….no one’s saying otherwise….. but we can expect future researchers to uncover corroborating material.”

    That’s my prediction (without peeking). In fact, he says almost exactly that:

    “When it was first said that the sun stood still and the world turned round, the common sense of mankind declared the doctrine false; but the old saying of Vox populi, vox Dei [“the voice of the people = the voice of God “], as every philosopher knows, cannot be trusted in science. Reason tells me, that if numerous gradations from a simple and imperfect eye to one complex and perfect can be shown to exist, each grade being useful to its possessor, as is certain the case; if further, the eye ever varies and the variations be inherited, as is likewise certainly the case; and if such variations should be useful to any animal under changing conditions of life, then the difficulty of believing that a perfect and complex eye could be formed by natural selection, should not be considered as subversive of the theory.”

    Alright, then. Pretty much what I predicted he would say. Any donkey ought to realize Darwin’s not throwing in the towel on his own theory by admitting evolution of the eye sounds ridiculous. If you use his quote to suggest he considers himself a charlatan, that’s dishonest. But if you use his quote to show he acknowledges some pretty high hurdles exist in proving his theory…..well, what’s wrong with that?

    Now, statements like that of Darwin appear all the time in evolutionist literature. And Watchtower publications have been known to pick up and run with them, without appending the “of course, so-and-so still believes in his own theory.” So the grumblers have accused them of deliberate misquoting. But Watchtower hasn’t done that at all. They’ve used all such quotes properly. (Though I won’t vouch for non-Witness publications, some of which may well use such quotes in misleading ways)

    Regarding quotes, you may have noticed that if you quote someone and don’t reach the same conclusion he does, he will invariably say you must consider his context. If you do that, and still don’t agree, he will want you to expand the context. If you do that, even to the point of quoting the entire article, and still don’t agree, he will call you a fool. That’s just the way people are.

    Whenever the Watchtower quotes an evolutionist, it’s understood that he believes his own theory! You don’t have to spell that out.  If he says something that sounds far-fetched, and the Creation book picks it up, do you really think the authors wish to imply that he is gleefully lying through his teeth, willfully advancing a fraudulent notion? Of course not! It’s obvious he believes his own belief!  Anybody howls dishonesty when their quotes are used to support a conclusion they themselves have not reached. All you have to do when quoting someone is relay their words accurately, as they were stated, without insertions or deletions. If you can’t even do that, then you shouldn’t allow cross-examination in jury trials….where an opposing lawyer uses a witness’s own words to trip him up. It shouldn’t be allowed! Just ask the witness what impression he wishes to make upon the court, and leave it at that.

    Nonetheless, to placate the critics, Watchtower just released new material geared to defending creation at the 2010 District Conventions, and they’ve taken to pointing out, whenever quoting an evolutionist discussing some glitch in his theory, that “nonetheless, so-and-so still believes his own idea.” I don’t think it’s ethically necessary. But I see why they did it.

    For example, on page 5 of The Origin of Life: Five Questions Worth Asking, (published by Watchtower, 2010), Prof Robert Shapiro of New York University discusses the famous 1953 experiments of Stanley Miller. He says “Some writers have presumed that all life’s building blocks could be formed with ease in Miller-type experiments and were present in meteorites. This is not the case.” Shapiro probably says this because evolution textbooks have implied just that for the past 50 years. He further states that the likelihood of a RNA molecule arising from such a mixture “is so vanishingly small that its happening even once anywhere in the visible universe would count as a piece of exceptional good luck.”

    And at this point, there is a footnote, explained at the bottom of the page:

    *”Professor Shapiro does not believe that life was created. He believes that life arose by chance in some fashion not yet fully understood.”

    There! Happy? Don’t ask what congregation of Jehovah’s Witnesses he attends. He’s not one of ours. He’s one of theirs.

    On the next page, the booklet mentions “researcher Hubert P Yockey, who supports the teaching of evolution, [and] ….. states ‘It is impossible that the origin of life was proteins first’” [an order long insisted upon by evolutionary theory, as proteins are building blocks for RNA].

    See? Don’t lose your cookies. No one’s saying he’s one of ours. He supports the teaching of evolution, even though he points out the long supported protein-RNA sequence of events is “impossible.” (quote marks mine) There must be some other sequence that is “possible,” he apparently thinks. All that remains is to discover it.

    Apparently, both proteins and RNA molecules have to simultaneously appear at the same place and same time….one cannot precede the other…. for their life-forming cooperation to take place. “’The probability of this happening by chance (given a random mixture of proteins and RNA) seems astronomically low,’ says Dr Carol Cleland, [who adds] ‘most researchers seem to assume that if they can make sense of the independent production of proteins and RNA under natural primordial conditions, the coordination will somehow take care of itself,’” with all efforts to explain that coordination being not “very satisfying.”

    And again a footnote. *”Dr Cleland is not a creationalist. She believes that life arose by chance in some fashion not yet fully understood.”

    Okay? Again, Watchtower doesn’t suggest she one of us. She’s not.

    At this point, the booklet observes: “Similarly, if scientists ever did construct a cell, (see eighth paragraph of link) they would accomplish something truly amazing – but would they prove that the cell could be made by accident? If anything, they would prove the very opposite, would they not? …..All scientific evidence to date indicates that life can come only from previously existing life. To believe that even a “simple” living cell arose by chance from  nonliving chemicals requires a huge leap of faith. Given the facts, are you willing to make such a leap?”

    And on it goes. Other scientists are quoted: Radu Popa, Richard Feynman, Francis Crick, Eric Bapteste, Michael Rose, David M Raup, Henry Gee, Malcolm S Gordon, Robin Derricourt, Gyula Gyenis, Carl N Stephan, Milford H Wolpoff, and maybe some I missed. Each and every time, the publishers point out, usually in separate footnote, that these folks do not believe in creation. They believe in evolution. It’s just that each of them have pointed to separate long-held tenets of the belief to observe that….um….it doesn’t….ahh….exactly work the way it has long been supposed to. That’s not to say they’ve thrown in the towel. No! They’re merely wrung it out and jumped into the fray afresh. It almost seem silly to include so many footnotes…as if catering to the whiners. Still, there’s a lot of whiners, and they make a lot of noise. Maybe this will shut them up for a moment or two.

    All of those quoted are respected scientists. None of them believe in creation. They all accept evolution, and they’ll continue to accept it, more likely than not. That way they get to remain respected scientists. No, they are not in our camp. They are “hostile witnesses,” every last one of them. They say things we latch onto, even though they don’t agree with us. But there’s nothing wrong with quoting them. Where would Perry Mason, Bobby Donnel, or the Boston Legal crew be if they couldn’t cross-examine hostile witnesses?

    The bookstore

     

     

  • Evolutionary Psychology and the Whitepebble Institute

    The last thing we expected for 2010 was to be awarded First Prize for Scientific Achievement, owing to our recent research contribution on the evolutionary origin of boisterous flatulence. But, indeed, the prestigious Wonderful Scientist Magazine did so honor us, and now Tom Whitepebble, President of the Whitepebble Research Institute, to which I belong, is looking forward to the honorary dinner and hobnobbing with other eminent contributors to the scientific field.

    The odd thing (besides the Whitepebble Research Institute being a Biblical research institute) is that our contribution was sent in as a joke. It was intended for the “Those Wascally Scientists” page. Light humor: that's all it was. But later I checked with Tom Pearlsandswine in the mail room, and discovered that, in the crush of business, he did not specifically address our contribution to that page. Hence, it was taken as a serious item, and against all expectations, won top honors.

    They couldn't tell it was a joke? I mean, the idea was, back in stone-age eat-or-be-eaten days, you wanted to evolve everything you possibly could to scare off predators. And boisterous flatulence would scare the bejeebers out of them, quickly clearing the area, just like it does in more modern times. So our ancestors that were able to do that survived and procreated, but our more polite ancestors who would never ever evolve such crude goings-on were all eaten, and died out. The scientific community has gone bonkers over our submission. What insight! Yes, of course that's how loud flatulence came about! What else in evolutionary thought could possibly account for it!

    Tom Whitepebble was speechless (for once). He was obviously elated to be honored by such an august group, but also dumbfounded as to how they could be so stupid. So he made us all comb the pages of Wonderful Scientist Magazine, especially exploring the category of “evolutionary psychology,” and the mystery soon cleared up. It turns out that our theory, asinine though it is, is only slightly more asinine than what currently hails for ground-breaking research.

    For example, consider the fact that, as a species, we can't reason our way out of a paper bag. Now, this is not good news for evolutionists. It would seem to make buffoons of those who naively chant “Let Reason Prevail!” like those atheists did at the Illinois nativity display. Newsweek's Sharon Begley grapples with this awkward circumstance in that magazine's August 5th, 2010 issue. She writes:

    “The fact that humans are subject to all these failures of rational thought seems to make no sense. Reason is supposed to be the highest achievement of the human mind, and the route to knowledge and wise decisions. But as psychologists have been documenting since the 1960s, humans are really, really bad at reasoning. It’s not just that we follow our emotions so often, in contexts from voting to ethics. No, even when we intend to deploy the full force of our rational faculties, we are often as ineffectual as eunuchs at an orgy.”

    Needless to say, if you are hosting an orgy, you should never invite eunuchs. They will spoil it. And our poor track record for reasoning would seem to spoil evolution. Instead, it would seem to support the Bible's view that, from a perfect start, we are steadily degenerating as inherited sin takes ever-increasing hold.

    Not to be outmaneuvered, evolutionary psychologists have come up with an answer. Faulty reasoning evolved…it is really our friend….and it enabled our ancestors to learn argumentation! See, if there was no faulty reasoning, nobody would have anything to argue about. Throw any issue before the masses, and they'd all instantly agree. Thus, how could “survival of the fittest” take place? Smart people can only evolve if they have idiots to stomp into submission with their clever argumentation! (I swear I'm not making this up….read it all here in the Newsweek article The Limits of Reason: Why Evolution may Favor Irrationality)

    As a second example, recall one of the things which proved “too wonderful” for Solomon: “the way of an able-bodied man with a maiden.” What of that “wonderful” attraction between male and female, and the prettier the female, the better?  (Prov 30:18) Not wonderful at all, say the evolutionary psychologists. Guys are drawn to pretty women for purely evolutionary reasons. See, a pretty woman is shapely, and thus has convenient shelves upon which to balance babies. But a less shapely woman lacks those essential shelves, and thus tends to drop all her babies, killing them, which is not good for proliferation of the species. So guys choose shapely babes. It's pure science, and oogling has nothing to do with it. Didn't I write about all of this here?

    As a third example, consider the near-universal human urge to worship. A strong indication, the Watchtower (and many others) has long said, that we are designed with need to worship inborn. Not so, counter the evolutionary psychologists, it all evolved! See, in any advancing society, you have to have a means to keep the riffraff, the louts, and the neer-do-wells in check, for the good of everyone else. Trouble is, the riffraff doesn't like being put in check by humans, so they fight back and extract revenge, which retards societal advancement. Better to have a superhuman cop, with whom you can't fight back, but who is ever-ready to cast you into hellfire if you don't shape up! So God and religion evolved through the good old mechanism of evolutionary science, and if you believe there really is a God….well, I guess you're quite the scientific dimwit, aren't you? God did not create us; we created God!

    There's more, of course. Did you know the evolutionary basis of depression? It's an adaption so that life's losers may adjust to being beaten out by the fitter ones.

    And what of masturbation? Years ago, you could count on the fingers of one hand how many persons thought of science as they were carrying on so. Now, apparently, they all do. Masturbation is hygienic, cleaning out the bad sperm. It's also good advertizing, dazzling potential mates with one's leftover virility. Read it (and weep) here.

    Homosexuality? Surely that must be a fly in the ointment of the race to procreate. Not so, say the E.P.s. See, gay men tend to be nurturing, and so they nurture the entire clan, giving everyone a leg up in the fight for survival, including themselves!

     Now, what is striking about this entire field of evolutionary psychology is that it's all pure speculation. Not one shred of the scientific method is to be found. Where are the experiments with which one can test hypotheses, so as to confirm them or devise others? Are there any to be found? It's all guesswork. Evolutionary psychology is entirely analogous to the religious person saying something is proved “because the Bible says so.” In fact, it's not as strong, for one can demonstrate whether the Bible really does say this or that. But, even upon acceptance of an evolutionary foundation for life, one cannot demonstrate whether or not the notions of the psychologists are valid. Yet it parades on the pages of scientific journals as if it were the most learned wisdom, rather than the embarrassment to science that it really is. Speculation is free. But isn't it like the small town circus Huck Finn gushed over?….”It didn't cost nothing, and it was worth it, too!”

    But who can resist a tsunami? Not we here at the institute. We've hung our plaque from Wonderful Scientist prominently in the Whitepebble lobby. You can't miss it as you enter. It instantly impresses important persons that come to visit, and we have a lot of them, I can tell you. In fact, I'm going to stop admitting to them that it was a joke. If those donkeys so readily buy into all those other fat-headed notions….well, there's nothing inferior about ours. Where's our proof, you ask? Apparently none is needed in this field. Pearlsandswine might well have learned to “rip one” in exactly the manner our theory describes. Maybe our contribution will be like that of Piltdown man. By the time anyone catches on, we'll be long gone.

     

    ******  The bookstore

  • Epigenetics and Darwin’s Update

    "The potential is staggering," gushes Time Magazine (Jan 6, 2010) over the benefits epigenetics might bring humanity.  "For decades, we have stumbled around massive Darwinian roadblocks. DNA, we thought, was an ironclad code that we and our children and their children had to live by. Now we can imagine a world in which we can tinker with DNA, bend it to our will."
     
    Yes, they can imagine it, but as ought to be apparent to anyone grounded in reality, it won't work that way. Epigenetics will not be our salvation. However, it just might give insight into today's worsening conditions.
     
    Who has not entertained the suspicion that today's folk just aren't made of the same stuff as previous generations…that those old-timers were just plain tougher than we are? Tom Oxgoad, the Bethelite, made that point with me once. "Those old-timers must marvel at how frail we are," he said. "In the old days…say…back in the 1950's or before, one Bethelite might counsel another: 'you've got a rotten attitude and you'd better straighten up!'  And that fellow would straighten up, and he'd say 'thanks for the counsel!'" Or maybe he wouldn’t. Maybe he'd decide "this is not the life for me," and leave. But either way, he wouldn't melt into a puddle of mush, his fragile self-esteem dissolving, as we can so easily picture happening today. Does the newly explored field of epigenetics offer an explanation?
     
    The upshot of epigenetics is that heredity works not just through Darwin's mutation and natural selection…a painstakingly slow process. We also pass along traits acquired via environment factors; furthermore, these changes can be dramatic and quick,  manifesting themselves in but a generation or two. Thus, Time says, a "long-standing deal" we've had with biology is now off the table, namely: "whatever choices we make during our lives might ruin our short-term memory or make us fat or hasten death, but they won't change our genes – our actual DNA. Which meant that when we had kids of our own, the genetic slate would be wiped clean."
     
    No longer applies. Choices we make do change our genes, and our kids do not start with a slate wiped clean. The very idea is heresy to Darwin True Believers, but scientists are now quite sure of it. To put it more accurately, our genes do not physically change from generation to generation, but whether they are expressed or not changes. The epigenome sits just outside the genome and switches the various genes "on" or "off." It does so by smothering – masking gene portions meant to be “off” and leaving visible gene portions meant to be “on.” The illustration now in vogue is that of hardware (the genome) being manipulated by software (the epigenome). Hardware alteration via the Darwin heredity, as we all learned about in school, comes about slowly. But the new-found software changes happen quickly.
     
    Furthermore, life-style and environment factors…..such as stress, such as smoking, such as gluttony, alters the epigenome, which in turn alters the genome, which in turn inflicts adverse results upon one’s children and grandchildren. Dr Lars Bygren studied a rural population of two centuries past, a physically isolated population that literally vacillated between feast and famine, depending upon the harvest. When the harvest was bountiful, youngsters gorged themselves. Their  grandchildren, Bygren discovered, had life expectancies reduced by as much as three decades!
     
    In another study, published in 2006, Drs Bygren, Marcus Pembrey, and Jean Golding found the sons of those who began smoking before age 11 were at higher risk for obesity and various other health problems. Time Magazine summed it up: “you can change your epigenetics even when you make a dumb decision at 10 years old. If you start smoking then, you may have made not only a medical mistake but a catastrophic genetic mistake.” And to think I’ve been lectured before by atheists…capitalizing these very words….that, whereas I do what some god TELLS me to do based on a BELIEF, they act upon REASON based upon EVIDENCE. But in this case, as in so many others, you were far better off to quit smoking because God TOLD* you to, trusting he might be AWARE of EVIDENCE as yet UNDISCOVERED by humans.
     
    *as inferred from 2 Cor 7:1
     
    All this goes to show, BTW, that you need not lose your cookies when evolutionists rule creation absolutely out of the question. Nor should you feel you must wait for them to come on board. Opinions change fast. In 1996, Dr Pembrey, mentioned above, had a hard time getting published. Major scientific journals rejected his paper. Ten years later, it is “considered seminal in epigenetic theory.” Is that not a tidal change in scientific thought? For decades evolutionists carried on as if they knew all there was to be known - the essence of their subject was well-understood, and little remained but to mop up a few relatively insignificant details. With the discovery of epigenetics' role, if history is any guide, they will act as if now they know all there was to be known, save for a few odds and ends. Heaven help you if you choose a course of faith before it has been authorized by them. Yet the mapping of the human epigenome (already underway in Europe) will, when complete, "make the Human Genome project look like homework that 15th century kids did with an abacus," says Time. How immodest to have made grandiose, dogmatic claims, based upon a supposed thorough understanding of the genome, which now turns out to be but the tip of a submerged iceberg.
     
    Look, don't think I'm anti-science. I'm not. Whenever scientists say they have discovered this or that I tend to accept it, but I do so tentatively, always with the caveat that these guys are frequently full of themselves, bursting with pride at human accomplishment, and intolerant of any layman who would question their theories, until they themselves revise them. Or – I suspect, its not so much those front line empirical scientists who are the problem, but a second buttressing layer of scientist-philosopher-cheerleader-atheist types, who ram science down all of our throats as the be-all and end-all. Me, I tend to side with that famous scientist and ex-Beatle John Lennon, who said "everything they told me as a kid has already been disproved by the same type of 'ex
    perts' who made them up in the first place." [quoted in interview with Playboy, so plainly I got this second-hand] As if to confirm Lennon's cynicism, Time writes of an upcoming epigenetics book by David Shenk: The Genius in All of Us: Why Everything You've Been Told About Genetics, Talent and IQ is Wrong.
     
    You know, the epigenome comes a lot closer to explaining Rom 5:12 than does any Darwinian explanation, since Adam’s sin is obviously an acquired characteristic:
     
    "That is why, just as through one man sin entered into the world and death through sin, and thus death spread to all men because they had all sinned…"
     
    Furthermore, back to the present, Time reports Dr. Pembrey speculating: what if the environmental pressures and social changes of the industrial age had become so powerful that evolution had begun to demand that our genes respond faster? What if our DNA now had to react not over many generations and millions of years but, as Pembrey wrote, within “a few, or moderate number, of generations”?

    Extrapolating from his statement, could it be that epigenetics in our stressful times sheds light on the outworking of 2 Tim 3:1-5?
     

    "But know this, that in the last days critical times hard to deal with will be here. For men will be lovers of themselves, lovers of money, self-assuming, haughty, blasphemers, disobedient to parents, unthankful, disloyal, having no natural affection, not open to any agreement, slanderers, without self-control, fierce, without love of goodness, betrayers, headstrong, puffed up [with pride], lovers of pleasures rather than lovers of God, having a form of godly devotion but proving false to its power; and from these turn away."

    We all know in our heart of hearts that these ugly traits are on display today as never before. Yes, I know, I know….such is human nature and people have always been that way. But it’s a matter of degree; the unrestrained expression of these traits is what's new. After all, Paul's contemporaries might easily have labeled his ‘prophesy’ a yawner: "People will be ugly, Paul? So what's new?” But they didn't say that. They knew what he meant.
     
    In seeking to understand these ugly, seemingly accelerated traits, Alan Greenspan's book The Age of Turbulence: Adventures in a New World, offers insight with regard to the barbarous slaughter that began in 1914. He writes: "World War I was more devastating to civility and civilization than the physically far more destructive World War II: the earlier conflict destroyed an idea. I cannot erase the thought of those pre-World War I years, when the future of mankind appeared unencumbered and without limit. Today our outlook is starkly different from a century ago but perhaps a bit more consonant with reality. Will terror, global warming, or resurgent populism do to the current era of life-advancing globalization what World War I did to the previous one?"

    Could the barbarism unleashed in 1914, augmented by ever-increasing stressors of modern life, be triggering harmful genetic changes, as Dr Pembrey suggests can occur? The more one ponders the astounding woes that afflict persons today, the more plausible the idea sounds.

     

    *******  The bookstore

  • Picking Flowers for Heaven’s Garden

    Every married man my age, bar none, has seen the film Steel Magnolias. Not one wanted to see it. They were all dragged along by their wives. When it was my turn, I wisely went along without fuss, so as not to be accused of insensitivity toward womenhood. It wasn’t a bad film, mind you; it had its moments; it’s just not the type of film a guy would ever choose, at least, not of his own free will.
     
    I mention Steel Magnolias because it’s the first example that comes to mind of that stupid “God is picking flowers” analogy. One SM character loses a son, and another- a recent convert – comforts her by suggesting God is picking flowers for his beautiful garden in heaven! He doesn’t want wilted stuff, of course, he wants only the best! That’s why he chose that woman’s son, implying she should feel privileged to lose a son for so great a Cause.

    She doesn’t.

    Who would ever think such an analogy could be comforting? It’s monstrous! No wonder people go atheist! Take away the most precious thing a person has simply because you have a vacancy, and expect her to be comforted over that? Yet we hear it all the time, and the younger the deceased, the more likely some sappy preacher will use it: God has a garden. He grows pretty flowers, see – absolutely the best. But he needs one more; there’s one spot that’s just not right. Ah! The missing ingredient is your flower. He’ll pick it. Surely, you’ll be happy. What’s that? You’re not? Tough!
     
    The “picking flowers” illustration is nowhere found in the Bible. But, just once, the Bible uses an illustration parallel in all respects except the moral, which is exactly opposite from the PF.  It takes place after King David, drooling over Uriah’s knockout wife, takes her as his own. 2 Samuel 12:1-7 tells us:
     
    The LORD sent Nathan [a prophet]  to David. When he came to him, he said, “There were two men in a certain town, one rich and the other poor.  The rich man had a very large number of sheep and cattle,  but the poor man had nothing except one little ewe lamb he had bought. He raised it, and it grew up with him and his children. It shared his food, drank from his cup and even slept in his arms. It was like a daughter to him.

    “Now a traveler came to the rich man, but the rich man refrained from taking one of his own sheep or cattle to prepare a meal for the traveler who had come to him. Instead, he took the ewe lamb that belonged to the poor man and prepared it for the one who had come to him.”  David burned with anger against the man and said to Nathan, “As surely as the LORD lives, the man who did this deserves to die!  He must pay for that lamb four times over, because he did such a thing and had no pity.” Then Nathan said to David, “You are the man!”
                
    Now, this analogy is just. The man is not expected to be comforted that the king stole his wife! So anyone who’s ever recoiled in disgust at the “picking flowers” analogy is reacting exactly as the Bible says they should! It’s the preacher who is suggesting what is obscene! The flower picker is not to be praised. He deserves death!
     
    Since the illustration is slanderous toward God and not found in the Bible, why do preachers routinely use it? The answer is, just as in Mean Things God Doesn’t Do, Part 1, church preachers have bought into unscriptural, unreasonable doctrines that unfailingly paint them into moral corners. You make a god-awful mess trying to escape from these corners, just as you would from a real corner.
     
    The unscriptural doctrine here is that, when we die, we don’t really die. There is some component of us, usually called the soul, that lives on. It is immortal. Have you been good? Or are you a cuddly child? Then death is your friend. You get promoted to heaven, and how can anyone not be happy to see good people promoted? It’s a win-win!
     
    Trouble is, people don’t behave as if it’s a win-win. People mourn at funerals; they don’t rejoice. They take a long time to readjust. Some never readjust to the death of their child; children are not supposed to die before the parent. Death is unnatural. It is not a friend, as most religions would have us believe. It is an enemy, which is what the Bible says. (1 Cor 15:26)
     
    Wasn’t it Abraham Lincoln who said he wasn’t smart enough to lie? Meaning, of course, that once you’ve told a lie, you never know when you’ll have to make up another fiction to uphold that lie – in this case, a fiction like “picking flowers,” to uphold the lie that we have immortal souls that survive our deaths. We don’t.
     
    The Hebrew word from which soul is translated is nephesh. It occurs in the Old Testament 754 times. Only twice in the KJV is soul translated from any other word. Therefore, find the meaning of nephesh, and you’ve found the meaning of soul.

    The first OT instance of nephesh applied to humans (four prior times in Genesis chapter 1 it is applied to animals) is at Genesis 2:7:
     
    “And Jehovah God proceeded to form the man out of dust from the ground and to blow into his nostrils the breath of life, and the man came to be a living soul. “
     
    Now…. a man who comes to be a plumber is a plumber. He doesn’t have a plumber. A man who comes to be an architect is an architect. He doesn’t have an architect. A man who comes to be an atheist is an atheist. He doesn’t have an atheist. And a man who comes to be a soul is a soul. He doesn’t have a soul. Soul, therefore, is the individual himself. In some cases, it represents the life an individual enjoys as such. It never stands for some mystical substance that survives our death. That latter notion is common among ancient peoples, but is nowhere found in the Bible. Attempting to infuse those ancient philosophies into the Bible, various theologians seized upon nephesh as the equivalent of that immortal substance, but thorough consideration of the Hebrew word indicates it means something else entirely.
     
    The Bible is unique among religious books in that it does not teach an immortal soul.
     
    Here the New World Translation does something so intrinsically honest that its translators ought to be lauded for it, rather than accused of slipping in their own doctrinal bias. Every time nephesh occurs in the Hebrew, the NWT translates it soul. Thus, it’s rather easy to look at every instance of soul and discern what the word means by its context. Few Bibles do this. They bury the word amidst multiple renderings so you can’t tell what it means.
     
    For example, the English Revised Version (1881) translates nephesh as soul 472 times, but in the other 282 places renders it by any of forty-four different words or phrases! What determines how these translators render nephesh? Is it not obvious they have a preconceived idea of soul? They translated nephesh as soul when it fits their preconceived idea; they translate it otherwise when it doesn’t! To then claim that the Bible teaches immortal soul is dishonest in the extreme. They have doctored their translation to make sure it does so!
     
    Genesis 2:7, quoted above, is one verse that usually doesn’t “make the cut” for nephesh being translated soul. Many modern translations like to render nephesh here as living being or creature, such as the New International Version (1978):
     
    “…then the LORD God formed the man of dust from the ground and breathed into his nostrils the breath of life, and the man became a living creature.”
     
    also NASB (1971), NKJV (1982), RSV (1952)
     
    It’s a recent development. Older Bibles render this instance of nephesh as soul, just as they do in its other 700 places. For instance:
     
    and man became a living soul  (ASV  1901)
    and Man became a living soul  (Darby  1890)
    and man became a living soul.  (Douay-Rheims 1609)
    and man became a living soul.  (KJV  1611)
    and the man was a liuing soule  (Geneva Bible 1587)
    And so was man made a lyuynge soule (Miles Coverdale Bible 1535)
    and man was maad in to a lyuynge soule. (Wycliffe  1395)
     
    The innovative modern translators will tell you they’ve chosen being or creature to make their Bibles more readable. Well….maybe. The words surely do no harm to readability. But the inconsistent translating also serves to confound anyone trying to investigate soul (nephesh) as described in the Bible. By rendering nephesh any old way they like, those translators are able to leave the impression that nephesh is the equivalent of the immortal soul beliefs held among the ancient Egyptians, Babylonians, Greeks, Romans, and others. One wonders if that isn’t the real reason for the selective translating of nephesh.
     
    In his early days, Charles Darwin toyed with becoming a church minister. Such a ministry was then a respectable choice for a man of letters who couldn’t decide what else he wanted to do with his life. Darwin had a daughter named Annie, who was, by all accounts, his favorite child. At age 10, Annie contracted scarlet fever, and died after six weeks of agony. Also a casualty was Darwin’s faith in a beneficent Creator. The book Evolution: Triumph of an Idea, by Carl Zimmer, tells us that Darwin “lost faith in angels.”
     
    Did those sappy preachers tell him that God was picking flowers? that he needed just one more angel to make his garden perfect? I wouldn’t put it past them. Again, you almost have to do it if you want to uphold the ‘immortal soul’ lie. Devastated, Charles Darwin was later to pen the work that would pull the rug of authority out from under all those clergymen. No longer would they be the guardians of Sacred Truth and Wisdom. Instead they’d become the guardians of Childrens’ Stories and Nonsense.

    One can only wonder how things might have turned out had Darwin been comforted with the Bible’s actual hope of a resurrection (something not possible if one is still living via their ‘immortal soul’). Death is an enemy, not a friend, the Bible realistically tells us. It was never part of God’s plan, it came about only through rebellion early in human history, and it is to be eliminated once God’s purpose reaches fulfillment:
     
    That is why, just as through one man sin entered into the world and death through sin, and thus death spread to all men because they had all sinned—.  (Rom 5:12)
     
    Next, the end, when he [Christ] hands over the kingdom to his God and Father, when he has brought to nothing all government and all authority and power. For he must rule as king until [God] has put all enemies under his feet. As the last enemy, death is to be brought to nothing   (1 Cor 15:24-26)
     
    And he will wipe out every tear from their eyes, and death will be no more, neither will mourning nor outcry nor pain be anymore. The former things have passed away.   (Rev 21:4)

     
    False religion leaves a vacuum which is quick to be filled with other reasonings. As discussed here, the pull of evolution is as much emotional as it is scientific. One can only wonder…. how different history might have been had Darwin known the truth about death. Not just Darwin, of course, but everyone of his time, as well as before and after. Instead, fed a diet of phony pieties….junk food, if you will…..he and others of inquisitive mind searched elsewhere in an attempt to make sense of life.

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    The bookstore

  • Smart Ancient Syndrome (SAS) and the Evolutionist Parade

    Archeologists dug up something from Canaanite days and the story we heard is the story we always hear: this was an advanced civilization. Surprisingly advanced. We have no idea how they did what they did without power tools.

    I should have a dollar for every report like this one:
     

    An archaeological dig in Jerusalem has turned up a 3,700-year-old wall that is the largest and oldest of its kind found in the region, experts say.
     
    Standing 8 meters (26 feet) high, the wall of huge cut stones is a marvel to archaeologists. “To build straight walls up 8 meters … I don’t know how to do it today without mechanical equipment,” said the excavation’s director, Ronny Reich. “I don’t think that any engineer today without electrical power [could] do it.”
     
    “You see all the big boulders — all the boulders are 4 to 5 tons,” adds archaeologist Eli Shukron. Canaanites built it.
     
     
     
    Just once I’d like to hear archeologists say “My god! these people were stupid! It’s a wonder they figured out how to procreate!” But no! It’s always about how smart they were!

    This is not what you expect from the evolution model. It’s as if the Evolutionists’ Parade – that troupe of creatures emerging from the slime, each more upright then the one before – reverses itself and marches back into the “primordial soup” from which it came. Folks are supposed to be dumber back then, not smarter. They’re supposed to be like that 2001 Space Odyssey ape straining his feeble brainpower to capacity, suddenly realizing he can use dry bones as clubs, and consequently, clubbing everything in sight – all to the ecstasy of Survival of the Fittest evolutionists! Instead, we find case after case in which those ancients without fuss (or power tools) did things that we still don’t know how to do.
     
    A Canaanite wall is small potatoes. Likely, the Egyptian pyramids offer most striking example of Smart Ancients Syndrome (SAS). To this day we don’t know how they built them. How did they get multi-ton cut blocks over 400 feet up? A gently-sloped inclined plane would be a mile long; “packing it down” enough to support the weight tough to imagine. There’s no trace of any ramp today. Surface stones of the pyramids are cut within 0.01 inch of perfectly straight. the gap between them is 0.02 inch – modern technology cannot do better – and filled with a cement stronger than the blocks they join. Height to base is a multiple of pi. Height of a side to its hypotenuse is a Fibonacci multiple. Interior shafts point precisely to various stars at certain times of the year.
     
    One can get lost in pyramid claims. Alas, I haven’t the time nor incentive to check them out. Is the Great Pyramid really at the exact center of earth’s land mass – that is, does a north-south meridian and an east-west latitude passing through the structure really encounter more land than one drawn anywhere else? It’s no wonder that some have thought space aliens built these things, and others have thought they hold some prophetic significance.

    But if evolutionists are taken aback by such engineering marvels, they fit well with how the Bible presents matters. According to the Bible, we are not ascending from cavemen. We are descending from Adam. That’s why the early Bible record has humans living to 900. Centuries later it is 500. Later still it is 200. Didn’t it get down to around 30 in the Dark Ages before applications of hygiene (not discoveries, since the Hebrews knew it 2000 years before) and later scientific advances brought it back up to the present 80, like a correction in a bear market? Those ancients were not inferior to us; they were superior. They were not dumber than us; they were smarter.
     
    Well…. if they were really smarter than us, why didn’t have cars? Why didn’t they go to the moon? Why didn’t they read the genome?  I can hear the objections now. The answer is that knowledge accumulates. The invention of the printing press speeded it up, as did the invention of the computer. So, just as you can accumulate wealth in a declining stock market, collective human accomplishment forges ahead even as our individual capacities deteriorate.
     
    One is reminded of God’s words from Genesis 11:6:
     
    Look! They are one people and there is one language for them all, and this is what they start to do. Why, now there is nothing that they may have in mind to do that will be unattainable for them.
     
    They’re supposed to be dumber than us. Even Geico knows that. “So easy that a caveman can do it,” goes the slogan. It’s from the evolutionist model. But against all evolutionist expectations, those “cavemen” weren’t all that dumb. We could learn some things from them.
     
    …………………………………
     
     
     
    EDIT:  Hmmmm. Not saying it dovetails in all respects, but here is supplemental material from a geologist and carbonate sedimentologist, under the title Ancient People Were Smarter Than Us.

     

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    The bookstore

  • The Salvation of Moore’s Law

    You must admit, it's a cute ad. People from TV invade the Intel briefing room, only to find those therein on hands and knees looking for their newest chip – some clod apparently dropped it. 'It's – uh – not big,' murmurs the chairman. 'Ah – here it is!' And he holds it high at tweezer's end. Even magnified, you can't see it. Our big ideas aren't your big ideas, says the ad, and then everyone sings the Intel song. "Our big ideas" is the phrase we want to hold onto.

    Back in 1965 Intel co-founder Gordon Moore had his own big idea, which all technogeeks know by heart. Dubbed Moore’s Law, it decrees that every two years you’ll be able to double the components that will fit on an integrated circuit. His prediction has proven valid. Thus, in my school days, our high school had an IBM 360 computer for "computer science" class. It took up an entire room, required air conditioning, was fed data via punchcard, impressed the daylights out of anyone then, and moved snail-like compared to anything now.

    In recent years, scientists have started fretting over how much longer Moore’s Law can hold. It’s not that they can’t imagine chips getting yet smaller. It’s that the tools to make them so will become so expensive that nobody will be able to afford chips made thereby. But now IBM claims to have the answer: use the DNA molecule – the very building block of life – as a scaffold upon which to assemble the new chips! They're cheap, tiny, intricate, predictable, and readily reproducible. Pour your pre-mixed nanotube (strands of carbon atoms that can conduct electricity) goo over them and see it mold into the form you want, much like intricate snowflakes form on molecules in the cold atmosphere. Will it work? IBM swears it will, though it will be 10 years before it reaches production. Once it does, the current crop of designer tools, costing hundreds of millions of dollars, can be replaced with less than a million dollars of polymers, DNA solutions, and heating implements.

    Is that clever, or what? "What we are really making are tiny DNA circuit boards that will be used to assemble other components," says Greg Wallraff, IBM scientist. Will IBM, like Intel, start boasting about their "big idea?" If so, who could deny them?

    Still, isn't there something incongruous about praising human ability to copy nature, while insisting nature itself arose by pure accident, nurtured only by natural selection? Billion dollar companies, with million dollar facilities, employing the best brains on the planet, building upon generations of accumulated research, and their ultimate accomplishment is, not to design something new, but to mimic something already occurring in nature – a pure freebee once they figure out how to copy it! Even the most impressed-with-himself counterfeiter acknowledges the greater skill and organization of those whom he copies. And even the dumbest construction worker tromping on literal scaffolds, building IBM headquarters, knows those scaffolds didn't just set themselves up. But today's scientists aren't inclined that way. They've mastered a few card tricks, so they figure themselves David Copperfield's equal.

    Humans lifting ideas from nature to devise this or that "invention" happens so often that there is a word for it: biomimicry. You can even go here and view the Nature's Top 100 List. But humans giving credit to the originator of the ideas is a rare phenomenon. Today, it almost never happens. It wasn't always like that.

    Four hundred years ago Johannes Kepler worked out the laws governing planetary motion. They move in ellipses, not circles, with the sun at one focal point. Over any given time unit, the triangle connecting planets with both focal points sweeps out equal areas of space, regardless of where they are in their orbit. He published his findings in his treatise Astronomia Nova. Sure, he was pleased with himself, but he kept his big head in perspective. He saved his praise for the one who designed what he had only discovered. Smack dab in the midst of his treatise, he inserted:

    "The wisdom of the Lord is infinite; so also are His glory and His power. Ye heavens, sing His praises! Sun, moon, and planets glorify Him in your ineffable language! Celestial harmonies, all ye who comprehend His marvelous works, praise Him. And thou, my soul, praise thy Creator! It is by Him and in Him that all exists. that which we know best is comprised in Him, as well as in our vain science. To Him be praise, honor, and glory throughout eternity."

    His third law he call the "harmonic law," for he believed it revealed the harmony God had instilled into the solar system. "I feel caried away and possessed by an unutterable rapture over the divine spectacle of the heavenly harmony," he enthused. 

    Galileo voiced similar thoughts regarding his own discoveries, as did Newton. And it was only a few generations ago that collecting artifacts of nature in the belief that studying such could teach one about God was a popular pastime. Alas, no more. Is it really inexcusable, as Romans 1:20 states, not to percieve God through the things he has created?

     

    *******  The bookstore

     

  • I Don’t Do Floods

    Every so often someone will challenge me to “prove” the flood with science. But I don’t do floods. The cost/benefit doesn’t work out.

    I mean, if you’re going to debate something in Genesis, do creation. There are incentives to demonstrating creation; it is a truth that has consequences. For example, Paul, writing to the Corinthians, tells how the last Adam undoes the damage caused by the first Adam:

     It is even so written: “The first man Adam became a living soul.” The last Adam became a life-giving spirit.   1 Cor 15:45

    Adam’s sin impacts not just himself. It also impacts the generations that would come from him, condemning them to sin and death. Jesus (the last Adam) takes the consequences of that sin upon himself, and so he provides a basis for freeing humankind. Without a first Adam, the whole provision of Christ’s sacrifice is meaningless. So there is a reason to establish the creation account as genuine. But the flood? There’s no real consequences to establishing that as true. Here and there other Bible writers refer to it, as they do to most OT events, but other than that, what really hinges on it? If you win, all you’ve done is demonstrate the Bible is correct on that particular point, leaving all the other points for grousers to take aim at.

    Moreover, as an explanation for life’s origin, one can maintain that the opposite of creation – evolution founded in spontaneous origin-of-life – is ridiculous.. But there’s nothing especially preposterous about the opposite of a flood: a ‘no flood.’ So why go there? You should not run with this ball. You should punt.

    Of course, it’s not as though you are left – ahem – high and dry. You can garner bits of supporting evidence. You can answer questions like:

    Q: Where did the water come from?

    A: Let an expanse come to be in between the waters and let a dividing occur between the waters and the waters.” Then God proceeded to make the expanse and to make a division between the waters that should be beneath the expanse and the waters that should be above the expanse. And it came to be so. And God began to call the expanse Heaven.    (Gen 1:6-8)  So it looks as though earth at one time had waters suspended above “the expanse,” maybe they served to moderate temperature extremes that pummel the planet today – like a giant greenhouse. This might also explain why ancient tropical animals are excavated in arctic areas today. When this expanse emptied, earth’s climate changed in a flash:

    In the six hundredth year of Noah’s life, in the second month, on the seventeenth day of the month, on this day all the springs of the vast watery deep were broken open and the floodgates of the heavens were opened. And the downpour upon the earth went on for forty days and forty nights.    Gen 7:11,12

    Q: Where did the water go?

    A: If you took the earth and made it “rounder,” we’d all be under water. Conversely, if you take a round earth, raise some mountains and sink some ocean trenches, you have provided a place for the waters to drain. Did this happen?

    Mountains proceeded to ascend, valley plains proceeded to descend—to the place you have founded for them.    Ps 104:8

    Q: Where is the geological evidence for a flood?

    A: We maintain it is all around us, largely misinterpreted as evidence of “ice ages.”

    So you have some answers. You’re not left a sitting duck for those who challenge you about the flood. Still, it’s merely corroborating evidence. It doesn’t prove anything. In the final analysis, you end up saying you accept the flood because “the Bible says so,” thus provoking howls and catcalls from the atheists. Why go there?

    So I don’t like to debate it, since even if you win, you’ve gained nothing. Yes, yes, the demons had their downfall just before the flood, provoking it. But you really think that will help your case? If some atheist challenges you about the flood, don’t think telling him about demons will bail you out.

    Now, there is nothing so terrible about something who’s proof lies mostly with internal evidence – in this case “the Bible says so.” The same can be said of evolutionary pschology, which rests completely upon absolute acceptance of biological evolution. You could not attempt to prove it otherwise. Yes, there are facts that corroborate with the notion, just like I have outlined a few for the flood, but nothing that even begins to prove it.

    A while back, former staff scientist here at the Whitepebble Institute, Tom Tombaugh, achieved scientific stardom when he proposed that ear-splitting flatulence evolved over the eons as a defense mechanism to scare off predators. But then his colleagues discovered he was joking. Tom had thought he might actually pull it off, though, in view of this recent letter published in the Economist (Jan 24th, 2009). Referring to a previous article on evolutionary psychology, the writer notes:

    “Everything is ex-post reasoning: we can run fast, detect cheating, kill our stepchildren, because…and here you simply insert anything from the days of being a member of a small, close-knit endangered tribe to justify this. With this one can explain almost everything without actually ever bothering to prove anything.”

    Pretty much the same as ‘I believe the flood, since the Bible says so’, I’d say.

    Are there aspects of a worldwide flood that seem to contradict current findings of science? Yeah, there are. But perhaps today’s conclusions will change. For now, a guy really can’t go wrong quoting the former Beatle, John Lennon. He observed: “everything they told me as a kid has already been disproved by the same type of ‘experts’ who made them up in the first place.”

    Just try challenging a former Beatle on this blog. Just try it.

    ******  The bookstore


     

  • Cabinets of Curiosities, Solomon, and the Bombardier Beetle

    If you threw a party back in Bible times, there was one person you just had to invite: Solomon. He was absolutely essential. You only have to read what 1 Kings 4:33 says about him:

    And he would speak about the trees, from the cedar that is in Lebanon to the hyssop that is coming forth on the wall; and he would speak about the beasts and about the flying creatures and about the moving things and about the fishes.

    I mean, could this guy liven up things, or what? What more can you ask for at your party than someone who tells you all there is to know about warthogs?

    Tempting though it may be to write Solomon off as a insufferable bore, upon inspection it is clear that most generations throughout history would consider his remarks fascinating. It’s only in the last hundred years or so that we’ve come to substitute football, horsepower, entertainment, and babes as talking points. Well, probably “babes” has always been around, but before our modern age of soft porn TV and hard porn internet, even they could hardly have been the obsession they are today. Just like Solomon, the average Joe of the nineteenth century figured you could do no better than rattle on about the trees and beasts and flying creatures and moving things and fishes.

    There used to be a permanent exhibit at the Rochester Museum and Science Center, first floor, entitled Cabinets of Curiosities. Alas, it has been replaced with wiz-bang Jurassic Park dinosaurs. I mean, dinosaurs are okay, but who doesn’t have them? Cabinets, though much more modest in scale, offered unique insight. The exhibit was a vast collection of stuffed birds, insects, mammals, shells, minerals, plants, leaves, rocks, and so forth. Explaining it all was a sign:

    “Throughout the first half of the nineteenth century, Nature was seen as evidence of God’s work and people believed that studying it would bring them closer to the Creator. Darwin’s evolutionary theory, which replaced God’s role in creating species with natural selection, shook society to it’s foundations.”

    So people collected these things….showed them off….studied them. They were part of the Book of Nature; they revealed things about God. Prominent scientists of the age: Newton and Kepler, Faraday and Hertz, thought of their work in much the same light. But people gradually adjusted to Darwinian thinking…..and little by little….natural things lost their appeal. One might as well collect hub caps.

    So Solomon’s cherished topics of conversation and those of the nineteenth century are pretty much the same. It is we who can’t imagine what people could possibly find intriguing about “trees and beasts and flying creatures and fishes.“ Our times are the aberration, not those of Solomon.

    Lately, though, the Awake! magazine has started talking up trees and beasts and flying creatures and moving things and fishes, highlighting one brief (too brief) example every issue. There’s more to these creatures than most people know.

    For example, the bombardier beetle (December 2008) defends itself by spraying boiling, stinking liquid from its rear, sending spiders, birds and frogs running for cover. I mean, the liquid is actually boiling, it’s 212 degrees Fahrenheit. Built-in reactive chambers and release mechanism are potent enough to change speed, direction, and consistency of its toxic spray. Scientists try to learn from it, try to adapt it to various modern gadgets. “Andy McIntosh of the University of Leeds, England, says ‘Nobody had studied the beetle from a physics and engineering perspective as we did – and we didn’t appreciate how much we would learn from it.’”

    The article concludes (as they always do) with “What do you think? Did (whatever the subject under consideration) develop by chance? Or was it designed?”

    I can picture modern day devotees of reason and logic….the ones who idolize science as even scientists themselves do not….frothing livid at the question. You can‘t just ask that question point blank, they fume, first you must explain the ground rules concerning admissible evidence and the scientific method, otherwise people may come to conclusions you don’t want them to come to. But I see nothing wrong with the question. In fact, it seems foolish not to ask it.

    The impetus behind the evolution model today applied to all living things is mutation, an “error” in replicating of this or that gene. The driver of the theory is natural selection. Errors, just like when you screw up something at home or in your workplace, are almost always bad. But every once in a while your bungling improves matters….we all know that can happen. And so it is with gene replication. There’s zillions of bad errors, and because they are bad they die out or get lost in the shuffle. But the one good error gives its recipient a leg up in the “fight for survival.“ Thus, natural selection sees to it that the good error is preserved for succeeding generations, while the bad ones disappear.

    Now, nobody here has any problem applying this theory to the things Darwin observed in finches: changes of shape, color, beaks, feet, and so forth. Essentially it is animal husbandry. It’s been around forever. Everyone knows about it. But do you really, really expect us to believe that the same theory is enough to explain the bombardier beetle’s blasting butt? Just how many billions of these happy errors have to accumulate….each one nurtured by natural selection before being built upon….to equip the beetle this way?

    The more successive coincidences you need, the more astronomical is the time required. If it takes you so long to flip a penny heads five times in a row, it will not take you twice as long to flip it so ten times in a row. Probability doesn’t work that way. The time required does not increase lineally, it increases geometrically. With enough needed permutations, you exceed the quantity of time supplied by even the boldest of physicists, for even time is not thought to be inexhaustible.

    They are short articles, those Awake! snippets, thus frustrating those who confuse wisdom with tonnage. But Solomon would be pleased. You’d book him for after-dinner remarks and he’d regale one and all with tales of beetle flatulence.

    Tom Irregardless and Me     No Fake News But Plenty of Hogwash

     

  • It Doesn’t Make You Want to Run Out and Hold Up a Banner for Atheism

    Well well well. Look what we find in the Rolling Stone. (9/4/08)

    Here is singer/songwriter Randy Newman in interview. His just released album is Harps and Angels. Um, isn’t that religious, Rolling Stone wants to know. Had you been sick when you wrote it? No, he just likes that kind of imagery, he replies. Besides, “sometimes you do think, ‘Jeez, it’d be great if there were an  afterlife.’ Especially if  you’re sixty something, like I am…..I mean, it doesn’t make you want to run out and hold up a banner for atheism.”

    No it doesn’t. Precisely. This is an example of why you should always read the Rolling Stone. Now I will go out and buy all of Mr. Newman’s records.

    His remarks are timely, too. Because I’ve been lately swapping emails with this young (relative to Mr. Newman and I) atheist covering all the usual ground. Conceding that the odds against life originating spontaneously are so astronomical that you might almost wipe the notion off the court based on probability, he nonetheless observes….

    “for a long time now there have been and indeed there still are, many intelligent minds at work on the problem. Over time and slowly but surely, they’re working out how it all really happened and how it all really works. The key here is to have an open mind but who knows, if you can just find a little more funding, then one day someone might just find the answer…”

    Doesn’t one have to ask why? I mean, what’s in it for them other than discovering that they’ll soon be dead? Now, if it was circumventing the (much more likely) odds of choosing the winning lottery numbers…..well, I can understand why clever minds might want to work hard on that problem. [though they don’t…..everyone knows that probability is pretty insurmountable] But the prize for defeating the staggering odds against a random origin of life is certain knowledge of a death sentence. Why, at age 60, would one eagerly pursue that line of thought?

    Because we humans have an innate curiosity. We want to find how things are. We like to know how stuff works, or some such reply…I can hear the atheists now. But I’m not so sure. If you’re going to live forever you want to discover the truth of all things. But if you’ve only got twenty more years? When my car was brand new, I carefully attended to all dings and scratches. I maintained it well. But as it got older, I began to say “I can live with that” for more and more problems. I mean, what’s the point of pouring in expensive maintenance when it’s all going to be scrap in a few years anyway? Is it really any different with us, if we’re going to be scrap in a few years? As Randy Newman said, being 60 doesn’t make you want to run out and hold up a banner for atheism.”

    It’s probably the same principle that would operate in concentrated form if you were to learn you had terminal cancer. It’s the rare person who wouldn’t quickly reassess goals. Innate curiosity for how stuff works would promptly give way to more immediate concerns on what makes life meaningful.

    Look, regarding atheism, if you believe it you believe it. But I can’s see why anyone would celebrate it. It’s a great tragedy if true. Early atheists like H. G. Wellsreadily conceded this. Yet the current atheists …..you know, guys like Dawkins, Harris and Hitchens…..carry on as if a few decades and then gone forever is a great triumph for humanity, a true liberation of the human spirit. Today’s new atheistic thinking….this life is all there is. It must be what is behind this ridiculous “he (or she) is 80 years young” description we hear all the time. For crying out loud, If they are 80 years young, then why are they dead in the next year or two?

    As a fallback position…..well, maybe then I can see it. Having lost faith in God and his purpose, well….at least revel in what years remain. But it’s sort of like the fellow who loses his millions in the stock market. Oblivious, he shrugs it off in a day or so and celebrates the ten dollars he still has left.

    No question about it; faith is a casualty of the last days, at least among the world at large. Does it not make you think on Jesus’ question?

    Nevertheless, when the Son of man arrives, will he really find the faith on the earth?         Luke 18:8

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    [EDIT:   sigh….updates here and here .]

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