Senate Supports Sound Science 06/30/2001
The June 30, 2001 issue of World Magazine mentions
that a two-sentence amendment to the Senate education bill has passed by an 91-8 margin.
It mentions simply that students should be taught “to distinguish the data or testable
theories of science from philosophical or religious claims that are made in the name of science.”
The amendment was framed by Sen. Rick Santorum (R-Pa.) with help from Berkeley law professor
Phillip Johnson who has long maintained that schools indoctrinate
children with naturalistic philosophy in the way they teach Darwinism. The bill passed with
large bipartisan support from liberals and conservatives. According to World, even
Sen. Ted Kennedy said, “I hope all of our colleagues will vote in support of it. We want
children to be able to speak and examine various scientific theories on the basis of all the the
information that is available to them.”
And yet the National Association of Biology Teachers opposes
the amendment! What possible harm could it do to teach children the art of critical thinking,
and separating the facts of science from philosophical assumptions? What could more clearly
demonstrate the attitude of the evolution establishment, that they are not interested in open inquiry
but in the power of indoctrinating our children in their philosophy? The amendment simply
states what creationists have been asking for all along: teach all the science, including the
facts that oppose evolution. Phillip Johnson has often said that we want to teach more
Darwinism than the Darwinists want the kids to hear.
Next headline on: Schools. •
Next headline on: Politics. •
Next headline on: Darwinism.
Astronomer Claims Dark Matter is a Fantasy 06/30/2001
The August issue of Astronomy contains a lead article about
astronomer Stacy McGaugh who is questioning the conventional wisdom that 90% of the universe
consists of an unknown substance called dark matter. He proposes a Modified Newtonian
Dynamics (MOND) model that doesn’t need it. “It’s an embarrasment that
the dominant forms of matter in the universe are hypothetical,” he says.
We include this story to point out that science often is not the
gradual self-correcting process that we are led to believe in school. Often there is a majority
view that dominates all the media and all the funding for decades or even centuries sometimes,
but then the lone ranger turns out to be correct. We are not jumping on the MOND bandwagon,
but just pointing out again how long
we have been indoctrinated that dark matter exists, and yet here is credible evidence it does not.
Could the establishment be wrong about the age of the earth, the fossil record, and the big bang?
Don’t blindly accept majority rule in science. Respect the brute facts, but learn to
separate the facts from the storytelling.
Next headline on: Cosmology.
Stalactite Calls Carbon Dating Into Question 06/29/2001
Cave divers studying a submerged stalactite in the Bahamas
found unexpected “huge peaks” in radiocarbon
levels embedded in the limestone, reports the
BBC
News. The article claims this finding might help improve the
accuracy of radiocarbon dating, which is known to be increasingly
unreliable for alleged dates older than 16,000 years. But it
issues this caution: “Already, it is clear that some ancient items
could have been wrongly dated by several thousand years because of the
sharp fluctuations in radiocarbon levels revealed in the
stalagmite.”
Radiometric dating is riddled with circular reasoning and hidden
assumptions. This story just underscores the fact that empirical data
do not always support the conventional wisdom. Despite their
bluffing about the stalagmite helping improve the accuracy of
radiocarbon dating, how do we know that another finding tomorrow
wouldn’t introduce another fudge factor? Remember
Skinner’s constant: “that number which, when added to,
subtracted from, multiplied or divided by the number you got,
gives you the number you should have gotten.”
Next headline on: Geology. •
Next headline on: Dating Methods.
Cells Use Triple Fail-Safe Systems During Division 06/28/2001
During cell division, when millions of DNA base pairs are duplicating,
a lot could go wrong and lead to runaway duplication – e.g.,
cancer. Now, scientists have found at least three mechanisms that
drastically reduce the chance of failure.
According to Scientific
American. Joachim Li at the University of California,
San Francisco, said, “We eventually demonstrated that not one or
two but at least three distinct controls have to be turned off
simultaneously for cells to start replicating again. This is
unlikely to happen by accident, so this multilayered protection is
virtually fail-safe. That’s what you want when there is
no room for error.”
The remarkable thing is not that errors
occur in a world governed by Murphy’s Law, but that they occur
so rarely. Consider how many billions
of organisms each with trillions of cells reproduce themselves over the
ages nearly flawlessly. If it were not for tight security
and fail-safe controls, the first generation would never
even make it to birth, and natural selection would be helpless.
All we have to do to help thinking
people realize evolution is untenable is to just keep reporting
stories like this. Unless these controls existed from the start,
life could never have survived. It is not just this
story but a thousand others that proclaim Intelligent Design.
Next headline on: The Cell and Biochemistry. •
Next amazing story.
Lightning Bug Flashing Explained 06/28/2001
Scientists have known about the complex proteins luciferin and
luciferase that combine to form biological light in fireflies and
many other animals,
but they didn’t know till a report published this week in
Science
that the switching on and off of firefly lanterns was signalled
by nitric oxide (NO). Normally, the mitochondria are busily
consuming the oxygen that would otherwise let the lights shine.
But when the nerves send a signal to produce nitric oxide, the
mitochondria immediately stop, allowing the oxygen to flow
to the light-producing organelles and turn them on.
Another signal starts the mitochondria up again, consuming the
oxygen and switching the lights off. Thus the mitochondria
act like a gatekeeper, feeding the oxygen fuel to the lanterns
in response to the nerves. By experiment, the researchers found
that nitric oxide is an essential signal for firefly’s amazing
ability to blink on and off in short bursts – a feat that makes
a million kids each year wonder, “How do they do that?”
How, indeed, did a little beetle
“evolve” the ability to orchestrate a complex suite of
generators, switches, and power plants to send its little morse
code I love you messages to its mate?
Next headline on: Bugs. •
Next amazing story.
Ray Bradbury Believes Genesis? 06/27/2001
Exclusive
Science fiction writer Ray Bradbury, author of The Martian Chronicles and Fahrenheit 451,
referred to the mystery of life’s origin in remarks to the
Cisco Networkers Conference in Los Angeles
Wednesday. He described the idea that life arose from a primordial soup and decided to animate
itself as “impossible, but here we are.” It’s too far back, too mysterious, he
claimed. He asked himself (paraphrasing), “Do you believe in Darwin? Yes.
Lamarck? Absolutely. Genesis? Of course. I take a religious smorgasbord
approach . . . What’s it all about? I’ll tell you what it’s all about.
It’s no use having a universe without an audience. You were created to behold. The
universe had to create eyes to see, ears to hear, and mouths to speak. We represent God, the
Creator, the cosmos, the universe – use your own label – but celebrate and pass it on.
Create and pass it on. Improve it as you go.” He marks Apollo 11 as the greatest
day in the history of the world, the Independence
Day of the human race from earth, because it insured humanity can be immortal
by travelling through space and populating the universe.
Bradbury received a standing ovation from the assembled Internet gurus as he feebly walked with his cane
back to his chair. One has to wonder if the 81-year old author, friend and colleague of Carl Sagan,
is feeling a little unsatisfied with
atheism as he approaches the end of his earthly sojourn. Or maybe he just doesn’t want to offend the god(s)
in case they exist. The God of the Bible, of course, demands we make a choice of Him apart from all the false
gods of the nations. Despite how exuberant Bradbury felt in 1969 when Armstrong stepped onto the moon,
is it really a comfort to him now? Even if his science fiction dream were to become reality in the distant
future, how can the achievements of people he will never know console a man when it comes time to face the dark beyond
naked, alone, and unredeemed?
Next headline on: Origin of Life. •
Next headline on: Bible.
Trees Changed the World 06/26/2001
According to evolutionists from the Geological
Society of America, the evolution of trees on land had drastic effects on climate and animal evolution. Trees
soaked up more carbon and added lignin to sediments, and produced much more
oxygen allowing the growth of giant insects.
The use of computer models adds an air of respectability to evolutionary storytelling,
but there’s no reason the same data could not explain different conditions in antediluvian times. Before the
Flood conditions could have been very different allowing for a lush biota that was impoverished by the deluge.
Next headline on: Plants.
Mountains Erode Much Faster than Expected 06/25/2001
Steep mountains in Idaho are eroding at rates 17 times faster than
previously estimated, according to a news story in the journal
Science
titled “Mountains Crumble Quickly, Catastrophically.”
Researchers from Berkeley, instead of observing bulk erosion from cliffsides,
measured cosmogenic radionuclides (produced in surfaces exposed
to cosmic rays) from selected samples around the mountains. They
calculated erosion
rates much higher than those estimated from observations of soil and
gravel washed into reservoirs, measured by geologists over decades.
They postulate that freak catastrophic events must have produced the
higher rates of erosion. A hydrologist with the U.S. Geological
Survey questions their conclusions: “They’re talking
about truly extraordinary erosional events, and I don’t know where
the evidence for that is in the geologic record.”
How long have we been led to believe that
mountains grow and erode over many millions of years, and that this is
evidence for an old earth? While not necessarily accepting this
study’s methods or conclusions, we can see this story illustrating
how geologists themselves find surprising evidence for much faster rates,
and that some of their colleagues are skeptical because the
conclusions don’t jive with assumed long ages.
Consider
how quickly large changes have been seen to occur in human history.
A million years is a very long time, too much time for
evolutionists to be smug with the amount of change that
must have occurred. But even so, whatever rate is measured today,
extrapolating it back into the unobservable past is based on the
assumption of uniformitarianism; a belief, not a scientific fact.
Next headline on: Geology •
Next headline on: Dating Methods.
Bacteria Genes Evolved, Not Hopped, into Human Genome 06/25/2001
Evolutionists have come up with an explanation for 113 genes that
were earlier reported to be candidates for horizontal gene transfer
from bacteria to humans. They say that the genes have a
common ancestor, but that some lines lost the gene. The
explanation is published in Nature
Science Update, which claims that “the gold standard for
establishing whether horizontal gene transfer has occurred is
drawing up evolutionary trees to trace a candidate gene’s
inheritance.”
Do you see the
circular reasoning
here? Evolution is the “gold standard” by which
all explanations must be judged! If the explanation does
not fit the assumption of evolution, out it goes.
Next headline on: The Cell and Biochemistry.
Editor Explains “Cosmologic Illogic” 06/23/2001
The August Sky and Telescope is on newsstands, and editor Rick Fienberg in his opening Spectrum
editorial tries his best to explain the seemingly contradictory and illogical statements from modern cosmology.
He imagines a conversation with a nonastronomer:
“The universe began with the Big
Bang.” “Where’d it happen?” “'It didn’t happen anywhere; it
happened everywhere. Now the universe is expanding. “Into what?” “Not
into anything; space itself – space-time, actually – is expanding and carrying the galaxies with
it. Astronomers used to think the expansion was slowing down as galaxies tugged on eath other with gravity.
Now they think the expansion is speeding up.” “Really? What’s pushing it?”
“Something scientists call the ‘cosmological constant’ or ’vacuum energy.’ Most
people just call it ‘dark energy.’” “Oh, so it comes from dark matter?”
“No, that‘s different. Dark matter, like ordinary matter, pulls on stuff with its gravity. Dark
energy pushes on stuff. “So the universe has been expanding faster and faster since the Big
Bang, pushed by dark energy?” “Not exactly. In the first fraction of a second after the Big
Bang, the universe inflated like a balloon, but over the next few billion years the expansion slowed.”
“But you just said it’s speeding up.” “It is now, but it wasn’t in the
distant past, except during the early burst of inflation. It took a while for the outward push of dark matter to
overcome the inward pull of dark matter and begin to accelerate the expansion.” “Oh. Well,
what exactly is the dark energy?” “Nobody knows. Some astronomers think it has
something to do with quantum physics or higher dimensions.” “Hmm. How about the
dark matter – what’s that made of?” “Nobody knows that either. Some
of it may be made up of black holes, small planets, or dead stars too faint to see in telescopes. But most of it
is probably made up of subatomic particles that haven’t been discovered yet.” “The whole
thing sounds made up to me.”
After this impasse, Fienberg comments: “Of course, it’s not all made up – it’s
backed up by abundant data, much of it very recent and very compelling. Nevertheless, modern cosmology is so
counterintuitive that it sounds like nonsense. I guess I shouldn’t be surprised that more people say they
believe in a religious story of creation than in the story told by cosmologists.”
He’s referring to all Bible-believers, of course. And why should we not
question the cosmologists’ story? It is a hodgepodge of fudge factors designed to keep the universe
safe for atheism. There is so much leeway in all the parameters it can be made to fit any new data. The
inflation theory is so ad hoc and counterintuitive and lacking in physical basis, it surely out-amazes any theistic account
of creation. The followers of Ptolemy’s cosmology kept it going as more and more anomalies were found
by adding more epicycles, which were simply fudge factors trying to “save the appearances” from
the theory (or vice versa). Should we not ask whether that is happening again
with the Big Bang theory? Follow the chain links to see some of the recent problems with modern cosmology.
Next headline on: Cosmology. • Next dumb story.
Jupiter’s Moon Io Is Hot All Over 06/22/2001
Scientists from the Jet Propulsion Laboratory meeting in Boulder, Colorado are
puzzled that Io is hot all over. Most bodies like earth are
hotter at the equator, which receives more sunlight, but a new
temperature map shows
that Io is just as hot at the poles as at its equator.
This is an update on the
first story we reported on
Creation-Evolution Headlines.
Next headline on: Solar System. •
Next headline on: Geology.
Neandertals Smart and Savvy, but Needed Better Tailor 06/21/2001
If clothes make the man, then Neandertals went extinct because they
went out on the hunt half-dressed. Is that the implication of a new
theory summarized in Scientific
American? Two researchers at Northwestern University analyzed
Neandertal skeletons and deduced that their owners were active and had
high energy requirements, contrary to the popular image of sluggish,
beetle-browed, bow-legged brutes. They figure Neandertals
must have been intelligent, good hunters, and “more like us
than is commonly portrayed.” So why did anatomically
modern humans overtake them? “...cultural modifications
such as improved clothing and shelter may have given moderns the
evolutionary edge by reducing the metabolic costs of daily survival,
which could have allowed them to allocate more energy to
reproduction.” “Not tonight, dear; I’m freezing!”
The storytelling talent of
evolutionists is a wonder to behold. All this drama from a
few bones. It’s like a Peter Steiner political cartoon
that shows a lecturer proclaiming, “If there was
water on Mars, there could have been life,
which means there could have been elections, which
means there could have been lawyers.”
Don’t swallow this
current tall tale, or you will be disappointed tomorrow when it all changes
again. Remember just three weeks ago,
when they claimed Neandertals died because of their red meat diet?
The main thing to notice is that after all these years of museum
displays and TV documentaries and textbook artwork showing brute
beasts, the evolutionists finally admit that there is no essential
difference between Neandertals and rocket scientists, except for
their clothes.
Next headline on: Early Man. •
Next dumb story.
Outsider Poses Origin-of-Life Alternative 06/20/2001
MSNBC News
posted an origin-of-life article about outsider Gunter Wachtershauser, (a
patent attorney with only a side interest in abiogenesis) who
in 1988 realized that conventional theories about life originating in
a primordial soup wouldn’t work. “It is by definition
one of the most complex problems there is,” he told Reuters.
“It is 4 billion years in the past. You can’t observe
it. You can only theorize about it. But the theories are so
inadequate that we need new theories.”
He realized
assembling building blocks in 3D was enormously improbable, even
impossible. So he theorized that the improbability might be
reduced by having the building blocks form on flat surfaces, such as
minerals or the ocean floor near deep-sea vents. This, he
believes, makes the process easy and it happens
“lickety-split.”
Jeffrey Bada, a NASA astrobiologist, and many others,
have major disagreements with the theory, however.
Nevertheless, Wachtershauser believes the mystery of life’s origin
will be solved in 20 years. “The origin of life
still isn’t solved. Don’t think my theory is the be all and
end all in this field. The most one can hope for is if one is
proved wrong in a fascinating way.”
The reason there are critics among other
ardent astrobiologists is they know it won’t work. You still
have the left-handed amino acid problem, the hydrolysis problem, and
the major problem of all - the origin of information. And to
claim it is more probable on 2D than 3D is smoke-blowing bluff.
If a con artist reduced your odds of losing on a lame horse from one
in 1040,000 to one in 1039,999 (Wow! Better by
a factor of 10),
would you change your mind and bet on it? Would the horse now run
lickety-split? The main point to glean from this outsider’s
opinion is that theories of the origin of life from naturalistic
presuppositions are woefully inadequate, and that we need
new theories, actually a very old and reliable one –
Intelligent Design.
Next headline on: Origin of Life.
Royal Society Urges Worldwide Ban on Human Cloning 06/20/2001
According to the BBC
News, the Royal Society has said the only way to stop progress
on controversial human cloning is with a world-wide ban:
Reporting for the Royal Society to the House of Lords Ad Hoc
Committee on Stem Cell Research, Professor Richard Gardner said cloning
techniques should not be employed in human reproduction. “Our
experience with animals suggests that there would be a very real danger
of creating seriously handicapped individuals if anybody tries to
implant cloned human embryos into the womb,” he said.
The Society, however, opposes a ban on therapeutic cloning of embryos
for harvesting stem cells.
Brave New World is here, with the
scientific elite making ethical decisions for us.
Next headline on: Politics.
PNAS Explores How Cells Transport Freight 06/19/2001
The June 19 Proceedings
of the National Academy of Sciences has a colloquium section devoted to
molecular kinesis, a fancy term for the study of how cells ship their
freight around, such as from nucleus to cytoplasm and back.
If you are not too frightened by technical
jargon, glance through some of the abstracts to get just a feel for how
complex cells are. You don’t have to understand biochemistry
to get the point: cells are dazzlingly complex, with multitudes of
finely-tuned operations and functions all harmonizing together.
Some common themes in the colloquium are: (1) Cells are much
more complex than we previously thought; (2) There is still much we
don’t know; (3) Any slip-ups in the machinery mean disease or
death. Now, look at a rock, a cloud, or jar of salt water.
See any processes anything that complex going on in any of these
objects? The difference in complexity between life and non-life
is monumental.
Yet evolutionists are compelled by their world view and a priori
assumptions to believe that, somehow, these marvels arose from rocks,
clouds, and salt water, and some unknown impersonal energy source, without
any intelligence or directing purpose whatsoever.
Recently in casual conversation, an evolutionist was
asked about the complexity of life as an argument for a Designer.
He agreed scientists do not have answers, but resorted to faith in
what science will discover someday. When shown
that the probability is vanishingly small to get a reproducing cell
by chance, such as Hoyle’s estimate
of 1 chance in 1040,000, he replied, “So there is a
chance! You just said it, one chance in 1040,000.
That means it is not impossible, by definition!” If you can
see the fallacy in this reasoning, you have just unmasked the evolutionary
bias for what it is: willful unbelief, in spite of the evidence.
Let’s hope this evolutionist is not a gamblin’ man.
Next headline on: The Cell and Biochemistry.
Is There a Dino in the Congo? 06/18/2001
The Discovery Channel aired a segment
of Nigel’s Wild, Wild World about the deep, dark Ndoki rainforest of the Congo and gave some
respectability to the local legends of a mysterious creature the Pygmies call Mokele Mbembe.
Showing Japanese airborne fuzzy footage of a long-necked creature swimming in remote Lac Tele,
and interviewing Pygmy eyewitnesses, the narrator says though unlikely a dinosaur could
survive after millions of years, the Congo is the one place left on earth that is
so remote, it just might be true. After
teasing the listener the whole hour, though, Nigel identifies M.M. as just a rhino. He
shows rhino photos to the Pygmies who say, “Yeah, that’s him!” Nevertheless, as the
program rhapsodizes about the Congo being a panoply of evolution and the ancestral home
for early man, it leaves the possibility Mokele Mbembe is something more.
Showing new airborne footage revealing vast unexpected grasslands south
of Lac Tele, it makes a surprising claim that most of the Congo was grassland as recently
as 2000 years ago, and was home to large human farming populations.
The Discovery Channel is advertising its next computerized make-believe
dinosaur tale, “When Dinosaurs Roamed America,” to air in July. (See the June 14
story about “Walking with Dinosaurs.”)
One should not be too quick to accept or dismiss the local legends. If Ndoki is truly
the last great unknown, perhaps hopes of finding a dinosaur alive today are fading. We have seen
recently, however, other living fossils from age of
dinosaurs turn up in unexpected places, so who knows? Wouldn’t that be a headline.
Certainly this part of the world is home to exotic creatures, some of which, like the Okapi (1901),
were only discovered recently. It’s exciting to see new knowledge coming from one of the last
unexplored regions of the earth, but important to recognize that the amount we don’t know still
probably exceeds what we do. Let the watcher beware, therefore, and learn to filter the
confident-sounding claims of the evolutionists.
Next headline on: Dinosaurs. •
Next headline on: Movies.
Is Religion a Property of the Brain? 06/18/2001
An article in the Times
of India discusses a Washington Post story on efforts by some
neurologists to determine whether
spiritual experience is a property of brain cells and chemistry, similar
to the effect of drugs or epilepsy.
One researcher used radioactive dye to watch areas of
the brain altered during meditatitve trances by Buddhists. He
argues the brain is predisposed to having religious experiences
and that is why people believe in God.
Another neurologist, admittedly an atheist, reported that
four out of five wearers of helmets fitted with magnets expressed having a
mystical experience, and made this claim: “religion is a
property of the brain, only the brain, and has little to do
with what is out there.”
In response, the article quotes John Haught, professor
of theology at Georgetown University: These people, he says, talk of
religious experience but they are actually talking of meditative
experience. “Religion is more than that. It involves
commitments and suffering and struggle – it is not all meditative
bliss. It also involves moments when you feel abandoned by
God.”
There you have it, reductionism
alive and well in academia. The article’s ending says it
well: “Belief and faith, believers argue, are larger than the sum
of their brain parts. Daniel Batson, a University of Kansas
psychologist says: ‘to say brain produces religion is like
saying a piano produces music.’”
This article also illustrates the
Self-Referential Fallacy.
Let’s ask these neurologists if their atheism is “a property of the
brain, only the brain, and has little to do with what is out there.”
Maybe they are constrained to have “scientific experiences” as a
response to pheromones or genes or neurotransmitters. If so,
the gig is up; nothing has any validity any more, including their
science. Under their own ground rules, they can no longer claim
to sit outside their brains like little gods making pronouncements
about what is true and what is not.
Next headline on: Human Body.
More Feathered Dinosaurs Alleged 06/18/2001
Fossils have been found in New Mexico similar to the species
bearing apparent feathers in Asia, according to a report in
BBC
News. The headline trumpets, “More Feathered Dinosaurs
Found,”, but the last sentence reads: “No fossil evidence
was found of feathers, but Wolfe noted that similar dinosaurs from
Asia were found with feathers and speculated that this one had ‘a
loose gaggle of feathers around the head and along the spine, back
of the arms and legs’.”
This is dishonest reporting. People who read the headline only
are going to think actual feather impressions were found. The
Asian specimen is still questionable, and of course
Archaeoraptor was a foolish hoax. The
presupposition that birds evolved from dinosaurs is driving the
search by these paleontologists, as
well as the desire to be first. A feathered dinosaur may turn
up some day, but so far, the evidence is highly doubtful.
Furthermore, these specimens are late in the evolutionary time scheme,
certainly not ancestral to birds. Also, did you notice
these animals weighed over a ton? Better flap those wings hard.
Worse, any alleged feathers on these
species would have been hindrances. If they served no purpose
because they were not fully formed for either body warmth or flight,
the very process of natural selection would have evolved them away.
Next headline on: Dinosaurs. •
Next headline on: Birds. •
Next headline on: Fossils.
Mystery of Missing Solar Neutrinos Solved? 06/18/2001
Scientists using the new gigantic
Sudbury Neutrino Observatory (SNO)
in Ontario, Canada have announced their first results, and it is a
celebration: they are claiming success in solving a 30 year old mystery,
according to the
BBC
News. For decades, solar neutrino counts have amounted to only a
third of predictions, leading to doubts about our understanding of nuclear
fusion reactions in the sun’s core. Now, physicists
using the new detector, which uses 1000 tons of heavy water in a
nickel mine 2000 meters underground, claim
the neutrino emissions have been correct all along, but the neutrinos
have evaded detection by changing “flavors”en route to earth.
(Neutrinos come in three flavors; experiments had suggested that
the expected electron-neutrinos could change to tau-neutrinos or muon-neutrinos,
but only if they have slight mass.) They claim a 99% confidence
that this is the explanation for the missing solar neutrinos.
The measured mass, however, indicates that neutrinos cannot supply the
“missing mass” to halt the expansion of the universe.
Also, in accordance with
the Murphyism that every solution breeds new problems, the article
states: “The finding raises new questions about the so-called
Standard Model of Particle Physics, which seeks to explain the basic
building blocks of matter.” (The Standard Model does not allow
neutrinos to change flavors.)
This is a preliminary finding that
will have to be followed closely. Some creationists had argued that
the missing neutrinos indicated that fusion was not
powering the sun, but rather gravitational energy, which would put
upper limits on the sun’s age, far too low for evolution.
Many other creationists have long accepted the fusion model, however.
There are plenty of other indications that conventional dating methods are
vastly in error (follow the Chain Links).
Next headline on: Solar System. •
Next headline on: Stars. •
Next headline on: Cosmology •
Next headline on: Physics. •
Next headline on: Dating methods.
Do We Really Know What Killed the Dinosaurs? 06/15/2001
NASA’s Astrobiology
Website posted a layman’s explanation of current thinking
about the asteroid theory for extinction of the dinosaurs. Buck
Sharpton, planetary geologist for the University of Alaska,
doesn’t feel that dust kicked up by an impact was a sufficient
cause for so much death. He says that
although the Chicxulub impact seems to be the
logical cause of the K-T extinction, there’s still a lot we
don’t know. In fact, he says we may never know the exact
cause of extinction. “We have good circumstantial
evidence,” says Sharpton. “In a general sense, we have
it nailed down, the case is closed. But as to the particular
cause of the extinction, be it dust, sulfur, CO2, or smoke,
we don’t know. When you roll all those things up together,
it’s a wonder that anything on the planet survived! “It
makes me think sometimes that we’re all out to lunch – that
there’s something critical that we’re overlooking.”
So the case is closed, and they’ve
all gone to lunch. Their entire case is based on circumstantial
evidence, but some of it doesn’t fit. Lawyers have sent
innocent men to death row with this kind of logic; but of course,
the Discovery Channel will present the impact theory as gospel truth,
complete with dramatic computer graphics and sound effects of the
asteroid hitting the earth.
On the other
hand, maybe there is
“something
critical they’re overlooking.”
Next headline on: Dinosaurs. •
Next headline on: Fossils. •
Next headline on: Dating methods.
You Have Fruit Fly Genes 06/15/2001
Scientists at the
University
of California, San Diego have identified 548 genes in the genome of the
fruit fly, Drosophila, that have very similar counterparts in human
genes known to be implicated in 714 genetic diseases. This may make
fruit flies useful candidates for testing potential cures. Noting
that the similarities only have a 1 in 10 billion chance of being
accidental, Ethan Bier say “That means that the proteins these
genes code for are so similar that all of them or part of them most
likely came from an ancestral protein.”
Similarity only proves relationship if
you start with the assumption they are related. This is a priori
reasoning (begging the question).
It overlooks other possibilities for the similarities, such as transposition
or common design for common function.
Next headline on: Human Body. •
Next headline on: Bugs.
Flowers Are Glorified Leaves, Gene Researcher Claims 06/15/2001
Researchers at the Salk
Institute claim to have found that plants use the same gene for leaves
and stems to establish the central pattern for the flower. Another
gene terminates the flower after it has produced the fruit. Says
Dr. Weigel, “Now, we show that the pattern arose through clever
recycling of another pattern that plants had previously used in shoots,
for other purposes. This is a big step toward solving the
‘abominable mystery,’ as Darwin put it – the
evolutionary origin of flowers and flowering plants.”
This discovery runs an inch and claims
a mile. It is still an abominable mystery if you are an
evolutionist. This story sees orchids and pansies and irises
through reductionist eyes as nothing more than modified leaves.
If you scuttle the evolutionary assumptions, you can have a very
different interpretation: design efficiency in genetic
coding and signalling. The whole process of producing a flower
and a fruit is monumentally more complex than this article simplistically
describes it. Complex specified information never arrives from
materialistic, mechanistic, impersonal causes. Let’s give
credit to the divine Mind that designed such marvels as
flowers.
Next headline on: Plants. •
Next headline on: Darwinism.
Walking With Dinosaurs To Be New Theme Park(s) 06/14/2001
Ananova
reports that the popular BBC computer-animated series
Walking With Dinosaurs is “set to be turned into a theme park
attraction with BBC bosses in talks to licence it worldwide.”
Evolutionists use dinosaurs to push
evolution, when in fact dinosaurs (like everything else) appear in
the fossil record abruptly and fully formed, and then (like most
other things) go extinct. This is not evolution. The
series uses computer animation, weaving fact and fiction into a
modern myth about the ancient world. Much of what is depicted
is probably plausible, but much is pure speculation about things
scientists could not possibly know from bones, but to viewers it is
a seamless facade. Where does the virtual end and the reality
begin? Take a look at
dinosaurs
from a creation perspective.
Next headline on: Movies. •
Next headline on: Dinosaurs.
Cell Nucleus Surface More Complicated than Expected 06/14/2001
Researchers at
North
Carolina State University made an unexpected
discovery: cell nuclear membranes are groovy. The surfaces
of some plant cells were found to contain tunnels and grooves with
complex channels used by RNA, enzymes and organelles to enter and exit the
cell’s master control center.
They found that parts of the endoplasmic reticulum
(a system of folded channels) passes right into the center of the
nucleus, and watched organelles moving along actin filaments in
the grooves. Dr. Nina Allen, botanist at the university, said,
“The implication of this discovery is that we need to look
more closely at communications between the nucleus and the cytoplasm,
and we need to understand why these grooves and tunnels are there.”
What they witnessed was a highly complex
transportation system at work. Imagine a city with overlapping
monorails shuttling cargo loads in all directions, with loading
docks, signalling systems and security checks: this is what goes
on in miniature inside the cell. The picture of the cell that
is being slowly revealed to our instruments is one of bewildering
complexity. Every day, it becomes increasingly difficult to
imagine Darwinism surviving the onslaught of such discoveries.
Next headline on: The Cell and Biochemistry.
Inflation Theory Flattened by Magnetism 06/12/2001
The Big Bang theory was rescued in 1981 by Alan Guth’s
hypothesis of inflation, i.e., that the universe expanded at a
fantastic rate for a brief instant at the beginning. Now,
however, Christos Tsagas writing in Physical
Review Letters says that large magnetic fields, if present,
would have prevented such inflation (see summary in
Scientific
American). Moreover, magnetic fields might damp out any
hoped-for gravity waves that cosmologists building expensive new
devices are trying to detect, hoping they would reveal clues about
the early universe, black hole formation, and other cataclysmic events.
Whether this will another serious wet blanket on top of other
problems with the Big Bang theory remains to be seen, but it
sounds ominous. How come “Until now, though, no one has
merged relativity with magnetism to find out the effect that these
fields might have on the shape of space”? Whoops . . . .
Next headline on: Cosmology.
German Scientists Apologize for Nazi Social-Darwinist Human Experiments 06/12/2001
Better 56 years late than never; Max Planck Institute president Hubert Markl
offered a historic apology to victims of human experimentation performed
with the aid of German scientists from 1933-1945, reports
Science
Now. A translation of the
entire
speech can be read at the Institute’s site, which is examining
the cooperation of Kaiser Wilhelm Institutes in Hitler-era human
experiments. In his apology, Markl stated (emphasis added):
National Socialism’s entire body of racist thought is an
expression of a materialistic, Social Darwinist, dehumanized form of
biology, for which Charles Darwin himself, however, in contrast to his
racist disciples, is the last one who can be held responsible.
For certain, the roots of this body of ideas were planted before 1933
and were even international and not just confined to Germany.
But, here in Germany, doctors and biologists, having accepted that man
descended from animals, went one step further: to treating human beings
like animals. The guilt for utilizing human beings as laboratory
animals can be specifically placed on biomedical science that was
robbed of every moral boundary, a science whose racist theories do
indeed not deserve to be called “scientific”, but which
cannot deny that it is also to blame for the terrible consequences to
which they led.
Can we really let Darwin off the hook
so easily? His views were racist, too (On the Origin of Species,
and the Preservation of Favoured Races in the Struggle for Life).
And Social Darwinism,
no matter how much today’s Darwinists try to distance themselves
from it, is a logical outworking of the principle of survival of the
fittest. When evolutionists counter that Christians have also committed
atrocities, consider that you cannot derive the Inquisition and racism from
Jesus’ two most fundamental principles of loving God with all
your heart and loving your neighbor as yourself. But you can
derive Auschwitz from the principles of competition for resources and
survival of the fittest, and you can derive human experimentation from
the belief that humans are just evolved animals. Isn’t that what
is happening with stem-cell research and human cloning today?
Dr. Markl speaks glibly about moral boundaries
(he uses the stem moral fifteen times),
but “moral” is a vacuous term to a
Darwinist; morals evolve like everything in the universe.
Anti-Semitism and racism were moral to the Nazis; they were doing the
scientifically moral thing, according to their reasoning: they were
advancing the onward natural struggle as defined by Darwin.
Hitler thought it very immoral to allow the unfit to corrupt
the purity of the race. If there is no absolute standard
of what constitutes moral, than the word gets to be
defined by the party in power.
Scientists today are still stepping over themselves
to absolve Darwin for any responsibility for the effects of his ideas,
while the blood of millions is crying from the ground.
Next headline on: Politics. •
Next headline on: Darwinism.
Scientific American Plays the Dating Game 06/11/2001
In a short Explore article “The Dating Game” on their website,
Scientific
American has published a layman’s explanation of dating
methods.
“These days hardly a week goes by without important discoveries
concerning the history of life on Earth making headlines,” the
article begins. After giving some examples of such headlines, it
continues:
“Although visual inspection of the rocks, fossils and archaeological
remains used to reconstruct our planet’s past provides critical
information, only by ascertaining their ages can researchers put
this data into a meaningful context.” The article proceeds
to tell the history of dating methods, and discusses various
methods such as radioactive isotopes, thermoluminescence and electron
spin resonance, and amino acid racemization.
What this explanation lacks is
critical
examination of the assumptions
behind the methods, such as how much parent and
daughter were present from the beginning, and whether or not we really
know the rates are constant. Such assumptions are incapable
of proof. It also fails to identify
many
other methods that produce far younger ages,
and neglects to point out that scientists often toss out results
that do not coincide with their preconceived evolutionary notions.
In actual practice, evolution is the guiding paradigm
about how old rocks are. Radioactive dating is just an
“expert witness” brought in to testify about what has
already been decided in Darwin’s kangaroo court.
If it were not, you would see scientists having to toss out their
evolutionary tales as often as they toss out anomalous radioactive
dates. This is
not
to say evolutionists are intentionally deceitful;
they are so just convinced evolution is a fact that
it’s intuitively obvious to them that a young-age
result can’t possibly be correct, so onto the cutting room
floor it goes.
Next headline on: Dating methods.
“Evolution” Movie Opens in Theaters 06/08/2001
From Netscape’s Openings page:
“David Duchovny plays a former government scientist busted to community college teacher in Ivan Reitman’s latest film.
When a meteor crashes on Earth, bearing one-celled organisms that begin multiplying faster than reality TV shows, Mulder, er,
Duchovny has to team up with the always-dishy Julianne Moore
to save the world. With Orlando Jones and Seann William
Scott. Rated PG-13.”
One reviewer quips, “. . . the movie is visually witty and even marvelous when it comes to depicting the spectacular creatures
evolving at a speed previously known only in the Bible.” Good grief, they can’t even get the Darwinism right. If this were
reality TV, you’d have to watch it for millions of years, and then still nothing would happen except entropy. When the whole premise
is dumb, what do you expect? Here’s a review from a
reliable source.
Next headline on: Movies. •
Next dumb story.
Scientists Argue Over Ancient Bacteria Claim 06/07/2001
We reported on Oct 19 about scientists
who had claimed to revive
250 million year old bacteria from a New Mexico salt deposit.
Now, the BBC News
reports that rival groups are at odds whether the specimens are
really that old or not. Critics claim the samples are too
similar to modern bacteria, but proponents are standing their
ground. “we have no idea about how fast mutations occur in
living microbes. There is some new evidence emerging that bacteria
evolve faster in the lab than they do in the wild. It suggests that in
some instances bacteria in the wild take centuries to change in a way
that takes only days in the lab,” claims one of the proponents.
This is an example of some of the
infighting between evolutionists that rarely makes the press.
What this illustrates is that neither side has a clue how old these
bacteria are, and that molecular clocks for dating them are
completely unreliable and based on evolutionary assumptions.
Next dumb story.
Early Mammal Chewed Its Way to Success 06/07/2001
A fossil from Central Russia of a mammal-like reptile shows the first evidence
of power chewing. Published in Nature (see summary and picture in
Scientific American),
the finding is based on microscopic analysis of the jaws and teeth.
Co-author of the study Robert Reisz speculates this created the
modern ecology of zoology: “There is a link between the time
when land-dwelling herbivores started processing food in the mouth
and a great increase in animal diversity,“ he says. “So
you can say that the evolution of the moden terrestrial ecosystem
with lots of herbivores supporting a few top predators is based
on animals efficiently eating the greenery on land.”
You can say anything you want as long
as it assumes evolution, then you can turn right around and use it
as evidence for evolution, then you can say nothing in biology makes
sense without evolution. Take one fossil, place it in your
scheme assuming evolution, then weave a gigantic tale about
the whole vertebrate ecology. That is what is happening here.
Take a look at the picture - the raw data - and see if the tale is
justified if you do not begin by assuming evolution. If
evolutionists had to justify their tale, they would be accused of
begging the question.
They don’t have to justify their tale, of course, because
as every reasonable person knows (this excludes creationists
by definition), evolution is a fact.
Next headline on: Mammals. •
Next headline on: Fossils.
Chaplain Forbids Christian Presentation on Science, Prays to Witches 06/07/2001
Dean Ortner has been giving stage presentations on science with a
gospel message for 30 years as part of Moody Institute of Science,
and now with Whittier Christian Schools. Many of these have been
at military bases and academies with outstanding response.
In his latest newsletter, however,
he wrote: “A chaplain at a recent air base emailed his entire
congregation and talked with lay leaders forbidding them to attend
the Wonders of Science programs at the base theater because, as he
put it, “They are against our religion.” At a later
military banquet, this same chaplain was asked to offer the opening
prayer during which he invoked the Native American spirit gods,
Mother Earth and Wicca (witches)!
He then called ahead to other bases and the
Air Force Academy and ‘warned’ select chaplain
friends about the upcoming programs with Wonders of Science
and ‘the gospel that guy promotes.’”
Military chaplaincy ain’t what it used to be.
Who is the our in “our religion”?
If interested in Dean’s excellent and amazing stage presentations,
call (562) 698-0433 X 280 or email WCSWonders@aol.com.
Next headline on: Schools.
Scientist Studies How Ants Stick to Glass Upside Down 06/05/2001
A German researcher was intrigued by how insects can stick to smooth surfaces even upside down and yet not
stick to their own feet, so he studied their tiny footpads under the microscope, according to
Science News 06/02/2001 (159:22), p. 341.
Dr. Holldobler found secrets that would make nanorobot designers envious: claws that engage retractable adhesive footpads under
hydraulic pressure. He found that the footpads that secrete a sticky substance are only deployed on
smooth surfaces, and that the fancy footwork doesn’t require
brain power, but activates even when the legs are separated from the body. Bees employ an additional
mechanism similar to elastic springs. Some insects can hold objects 100 times heavier than
they are when hanging upside down, and not be bowled over by a raindrop hitting them broadside.
How many times have you watched a little ant scurrying up a window and
thought it a nuisance, rather than a marvel of nanotechnology? Next time, look, wonder, and give God
the glory.
Next headline on: Bugs. •
Next amazing story.
Early Man Researchers Look to Children for Answers, Get Gibberish 06/05/2001
The cover story of Science News 06/02/2001 (159:22), pp. 346-348,
“Evolution’s Youth Movement”, by Bruce Bower, says early man researchers have missed some
important clues by examining only adult skeletons. The article considers possibilities, debates, unknowns,
controversies and potential misinformation the few known skeletons, skulls and fragments of juvenile human ancestors
reveal, and concludes, “The moral of this tangled developmental tale is a cautionary one: Give fossil kids due
respect when investigating human origins. Just don’t expect them to blurt out any precocious
evolutionary insights.”
Read this article to get a feel of how subjective evolutionary paleoanthropology is. Among their own, evolutionists are
at odds and don’t know what to make of the data. Are juvenile skeletons of different species more alike than adults?
On second thought, maybe it’s the other way around. But some living baboons show both trends. Is it
diet that makes the difference? Lifestyle? Neoteny? Nobody knows. The data are so fragmentary and
inconclusive, and evolutionary theory is so flexible, that rivals can claim the evidence supports opposite conclusions.
Let this be a lesson when watching the next Discovery Channel TV special on early man; it’s a snow job.
Next headline on: Early Man.
Editorial 06/05/2001: In the Closing Thoughts of the 06/09/01 issue
of World
Magazine, Andree Seu takes on the reductionist science of Andrew
Newberg’s new book Why God Won’t Go Away: Brain Science and
the Biology of Belief, claiming “y’ can’t get there
from here.” She argues science has not proved anything about
the origin of religion.
Quasars Found Closer to Big Bang 06/05/2001
Preliminary results from the
Sloan
Digital Sky Survey were shown
to members of the American Astronomical Society, says
Space.Com, and revealed two quasars just 800 million years
after the big bang. The President of the AAS was enthusiastic
about the initial survey data:
“It’s going to turn a great number of astronomical theories
on their head and confirm others.”
The title is a bluff; the article is
primarily about the Sloan Survey, an important new wealth of 3D
astrometric data on the sky. What the article doesn’t
say is that finding quasars this soon after the alleged big bang is
part of the “lumpiness problem” in cosmology: too much
structure too soon.
It is analogous to the Cambrian explosion in biology.
Next headline on: Cosmology.
Copper-Grabbing Proteins Essential for Life 06/05/2001
A developing embryo dies before birth if it does not contain
a working set of proteins that can pull copper ions into the cell
and transport them to the proper subcellular compartments
where copper-dependent enzymes are manufactured.
Dr. Dennis Thiele and colleagues at the University of Michigan
published their findings in the June 5
Proceedings
of the National Academy of Sciences.
They isolated a gene that codes for Ctr1 protein that is able to
transport copper through the cell membrane.
Working with mice, which have the same Ctr1 proteins as humans, they
found that embryos without the proteins develop major deformities and
die before birth. Summaries of this paper can be found on
NewsWise
and Scientific
American.
Proteins, you recall, are made up of hundreds of
amino acid units, all left-handed, that must be arranged in the proper
sequence. The Ctr1 protein has a unique shape that binds to copper
then inverts and carries it inside the cell membrane, where it hands
it off to chaperone proteins that transport this essential
micronutrient to the manufacturing plants that need it. This
report freely describes the entire process as copper transport
machinery. It is one of thousands of small wonders that
constantly take place in all living things. When broken, this
process results in death. How can intelligent people believe
such things just happened by hit-and-miss methods, like evolution?
Next headline on: The Cell and Biochemistry.
Ethicist Defends Stem Cell Research As Consistent With Christian Morality 06/04/2001
Dr.
Louis Guenin, ethicist at Harvard Medical School,
argues in this month’s entry in Science Magazine’s
Essays on
Science and Society, that stem cell research is not opposed to Christian
ethical principles of sanctity of life and what he terms “zygotic
personhood.” Since Catholicism is the strictest argument, and its own
principles, when examined, do not oppose it (he claims), and since no
other moral systems oppose it, stem cell research should be encouraged
on the grounds of the Golden Rule which is advocated by all moral systems.
Dr. Guenin makes a valiant effort to
defend the argument They’re going to die anyway, so why not
use them for good? He fails to adequately treat the problem
that moralizing stem cell research gives abortionists and fertility clinics
ammunition to justify their practices: if you donate your embryo, you may
help advance medical science and save millions of lives.
Even granted the researcher is not responsible for the source of the
material, this creates a potentially lucrative black market in
embryos and, by extension, fetal body parts.
He also creates a straw man, calling Christian
teaching that personhood begins at conception
“this materialist thesis, this radical genetic reductionism.”
In this he appears to misunderstand the doctrine of
traducianism, that personhood is passed on through the parents, not
created individually by God for each soul.
Further, he fails to recognize that an
arbitrary political standard of what is permissible will never endure.
It may pass majority vote now to forbid research beyond 14 days, but
what tomorrow? Someone will argue 15 days, then a month, and on it
goes, all the way to birth.
In his most polemic moments, Dr. Guenin appears to
be making a pragmatic argument: the end is so good, it justifies the
means; or, forbidding federal research will only give away the technology to private interests. These are slippery arguments
for calling something moral. Maybe his argument will become a
non-issue, however; other lines of research are showing promise for alternate
sources of pluripotent stem cells, without our having to play God with
human reproduction - and its concomitant moral issues of life and death.
Next headline on: Politics.
Galaxy Evolution Stumped by New Findings 06/04/2001
Two presentations at the June 4 meeting of the American Astronomical
Society in Pasadena indicate that theories of galaxy evolution
are far from complete.
EurekAlert
reported on observations of spiral galaxy M33 using adaptive optics at
the new Mauna Kea 8-meter Gemini North Telescope.
Astronomers did not expect to find
young and middle-age stars in the central bulge, which is presumed to be
older than the disk, but the population of stars was similar to those in
the spiral arms. Another presentation was made to the society by two
astronomers from
Johns Hopkins
who focused Arizona’s Kitt Peak 4-meter telescope, equipped with
a new sensitive
CCD device, on a distant patch of sky the size of the moon. They
found 150 galaxies with unexpected high energy spectra.
Noting that current models cannot explain the strength of the lines,
one of the astronomers said,
“We’re going to have to think harder about
what’s happening in galaxy formation and star formation at these
times, early in the history of the universe.”
If nothing else, Creation-Evolution
Headlines points out the difference between the raw data and the
way stories are fed to the public. If this were the Discovery
Channel, Time Magazine or a popular astronomy book, you would hear glib talk about
old and young stars, old and young galaxies, how galaxies evolved
throughout billions of years, and other tales as if they were
eyewitness news. (News sources are headlining the second
article with titles like
“Astronomers
Report Galactic Baby Boom” –
come on!) Real astronomy is done by individuals gathering
faint pixels and spectra from distant objects, squeezing their
instruments to the limit of the possible, and attempting to fit
the data into poorly-understood models of stellar and galactic
evolution. We are 70 years past Edwin Hubble’s first
attempts to explain how galaxies evolve, and still appear to be at
square one. Here are two stories that find unexpected
results (a common occurrence), but this should not be surprising to
those in the know. JPL astronomer Brian Rush says,
“I think these articles simply point out how little
we already know about galaxy formation. They don’t
really poke holes in current theories, because current theories
are so general and vague as to allow for all sorts of tweaks
. . . .
Observations like these wouldn’t have been a
surprise to astronomers who realized how unspecific
their models already were.”
Next headline on: Stars. •
Next headline on: Cosmology.
Great Barrier Reef Surprisingly Young 06/03/2001
Why, it’s less than a million years old, a mere youngster, says
Science
magazine about the Great Barrier Reef. A combination of seismic data,
radioactive strontium, and paleomagnetic estimates leads scientists publishing
in the June issue of Geology to the surprising estimate that it
could even be 500,000 years young, much younger than the 45 million year
old coral atolls in the South Pacific.
Does this give you any confidence in the
ability of evolutionary scientists to date things? Just browse
through the other Chain Links on dating to see that the anomalies that
keep cropping up. The dating techniques assume long ages to start
with (circular reasoning) and have huge error bars they won’t admit;
the whole scheme is a house of cards.
If the Great Barrier Reef is so much younger
than the others, how do they know they others were older?
Remember these stories
when you hear their confident claims about the ages of things.
This whopper of a tale was off by two orders of magnitude!
(Maybe it’s still not right. Maybe they need to lop off a
couple more.)
Next headline on: Dating methods.
Egyptian Behemoth Discovered 06/01/2001
A massive sauropod, possibly the largest known, has been unearthed in Egypt and was
announced in Science today, according to a news release in EurekAlert. It has been given the name Paralititan, or “tidal giant.” It
could have been 100 feet in length and weighed 80 tons. The area appears to have been a dinosaur heaven.
Bet this behemoth had a tail like a cedar tree (Job 40:15-24).
Next headline on: Dinosaurs.
Cosmologists Still Lack Many Basic Answers 06/01/2001
The June issue of Astronomy Magazine has as its cover
story “The Ultimate Cosmic Mysteries.” Astrophysicist Mark Sincell lists “The Eight
Greatest Mysteries of Cosmology” which sound pretty great, indeed:
- How multidimensional is the universe? (We don’t understand gravity.)
- How did the universe begin? (How did an explosion produce such smoothness?)
- Why does matter fill the universe? (There should be an equal part of antimatter.)
- How did galaxies form? (“The details are devilishly difficult to understand.”)
- What is cold dark matter? (What is the other 95% of stuff that must be out there?)
- Are all the baryons assembled in galaxies? (Astronomers have only found a tiny fraction of what they expect.)
- What is the dark energy? “Physicists have tried to calculate the observed dark-energy
density from accepted theories of physics, but their results don’t jibe with reality. So far, the
computed value is roughly 1060 times greater than the observed value. (Others say
the number could be off by a factor of up to 10130, but let’s not quibble over the
details.)”
- What is the destiny of the universe?
And you were taught the Big Bang Theory explained everything. If you sweep away the facades of
bluff in this article, you find that cosmologists really don’t know very much at all. For instance,
inflation is still the rage, but the author says: “What drove inflation? Nobody knows.
Physicists have suggested different models to describe the inflating universe, but all the solutions are
mathematical conveniences with no particular physical basis.”
(See inflation, below). Regarding dark energy, “The
biggest problem with this idea is that no one has any idea what dark energy is. ‘So far,
all we’ve been able to do is name it,’ says [Michael] Turner. ‘It could be the
energy associated with nothing [sic!], or the influence of hidden spatial dimensions.’” Sincell
figures we will have all these mysteries solved by 2010, but provides no assurance that cosmologists are
actually moving forward instead of backward. That is why it is so disengenuous for compromise
creationists like Hugh Ross to confidently tell uninformed audiences that the Big Bang is well
established except for a few minor details.
Cosmologists are often guilty of the Best-In-Field
Fallacy, defined and roundly trounced by Norman Macbeth in his excellent book Darwin Retried (Gambit, 1978).
Astronomers admit that the Big Bang has problems, but respond that it’s the best theory we have (assuming,
of course, that only naturalistic theories are permitted, so theism is ruled out by definition).
So if the Big Bang is the leader of problematic theories, Macbeth would claim this is faint praise. “Is there any
glory in outrunning a cripple in a foot race? Being best-in-field means nothing if the field is made
up of fumblers” (Macbeth, p. 77). He continues (p. 78), “It seems that the standards of
the evolutionary theorists are relative or comparative rather than absolute. If such a theorist makes
a suggestion that is better than other suggestions, or better than nothing, he feels that he has accomplished
somthing even if his suggestion will obviously not hold water. He does not believe that he must meet
any objective standards of logic, reason, or probability.”
#2 - How did universe begin: see Genesis 1:1. #8 - Destiny of universe: see
Revelation 20-22. Take your pick of the best in field; at least these have an Eyewitness.
Next headline on: Cosmology.
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