Classifications, Cladistics, and Creation

To classify things is probably a part of human nature, whether with kitchen utensils, music collections, software, living organisms, and so forth. When classifications are uniform, then we can communicate with other people who need to have the same references. The cladistics system has numerous serious flaws, including circular reasoning.

Family of Acrobats with Monkey/Pablo Picasso, 1905

Biological classifications went all the way back to the beginning, but Carl Linnaeus (a Christian and a creationist) initiated the system that we use today. Evolutionary sidewinders bushwhacked Linnaeus and made biological classifications all about their fundamentally flawed worldview. It has been skewed to affirm evolution, and similarities in organisms supposedly do just that. This is circular reasoning (using evolution to prove evolution through cladistics), and they choose to ignore the fact that the Creator saw fit to use similarities in his designs.

In addition, evolutionists get into the occasional dust-up over cladograms and such because the whole thing is arbitrary and subjective; it is not science. Stuck in the middle of all this are Christians who are trying to work in biological sciences but have no real choice but to use the evolutionary classifications as reference. The same happens with us reg'lar folk as well.

While God built certain classifications into the creation, man has named animals since the Garden of Eden. One of Adam’s first jobs was to classify the animals. “Now out of the ground the Lord God had formed every beast of the field and every bird of the heavens and brought them to the man to see what he would call them. And whatever the man called every living creature, that was its name. The man gave names to all livestock and to the birds of the heavens and to every beast of the field. But for Adam there was not found a helper fit for him.” Adam was the world’s first taxonomist. He spent part of the sixth day naming the birds and the beasts. While this was a much easier job then than it would be today since no variation had occurred yet, it still would have taken him perhaps a few hours to name the kinds.
. . .

When Darwin came along, the classification system Linnaeus envisioned was hijacked to imply that the structure inferred from the taxonomic system actually existed in nature and was used to allege a continuous relationship into the past. “[T]he theory of evolution states that the apparent relationships of organisms in a systematic classification are real relationships, because “relationship” in such classification is not a metaphor but is actually to be ascribed to community of descent.”5 In other words, the structure of the classification system is actually the structure of a giant, universal family tree of all life. While this was not the Linnaean intent, it is what classification has come to in the modern world.

To read the entire article, click on "How Should Christians View Biological Classification?".




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Pseudogenes and Evolutionary Pseudoscience

While scientists work from their presuppositions and interpret the evidence accordingly, many owlhoots will attempt to force-fit the evidence into their views. For years, proponents of muck-to-misotheist evolution have claimed that we have "junk" DNA, arguing from ignorance. In addition, they claim that we have pseudogenes. This was also based on assumptions and lack of knowledge. Then they commenced to making excuses with what they called pseudo-pseudogenes.

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There is still a great deal to learn from the science of genetics that Mendel began (peas be upon him), so a bit of humility from scientists is in order. Similar "mistakes" in different organisms are illogically hailed as evidence for evolution. Not hardly! When further scientific research with better methods is conducted, we learn that there is no "junk" DNA and that pseudogenes do indeed have functions. Important functions.


Yes, sometimes they have broken down due to mutations and genetic entropy. That does not mean that the Master Engineer was not involved; he put things in place for specific reasons. Biblical creationists have maintained that God did not make junk, nor did he use evolution. Unfortunately, naturalists cannot admit to evidence for creation, so they continue with their unscientific vexatious antics.

Some evolutionists have promoted the idea that similar sequences in pseudogenes strongly support common ancestry, especially between humans and great apes. The alleged disruptions in the sequence are attributed to random copying errors. If two organisms appear to carry identical disruptions, then it is considered far more likely that they both inherited them from a common ancestor than that those errors occurred independently. While created genes might need to be identical in some regions to carry out their normal function, no-one would expect a creator to put the same error in two different organisms.

To read this article from the beginning, click on "Pseudo-pseudogenes: revealing further complexity in the genome".




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SETI Fans Cherish Failed Drake Equation

Evolutionists have their invisible imaginary friends that they call extraterrestrial beings. Like dark matter, they have never been scientifically observed but secularists believe in them anyway. This is probably because they know abiogenesis is impossible on Earth, so it must have happened out there. Our Creator made Earth a special place, and they don't take kindly to that fact. One concept to justify belief in ETs is the Drake equation.

Credit: RGBStock/Dez Pain

Alien enthusiasts do not have much hope, as it seems that every time NASA comes up with more exoplanets, their hopes are dashed (such as those around TRAPPIST-1, for example). Indeed, the habitable zone is fraught with problems. Unlike it's smarter brother the Fermi Paradox, Drake's equation looks very math-like. It was illogical and unscientific from the get-go, but it is still dogma for SETI folks; you could fly a starship through the holes in it. Secular astrophysicist throws down on the Drake equation, and what he says supports what biblical creationists are encouraging: the use of critical thinking and rejecting excessive variables.

Paul Sutter has a way with words. In a Space.com article entitled “Alien Hunters, Stop Using the Drake Equation,” he says, “The Drake equation is simply a way of chopping up our ignorance, stuffing it into a mathematical meat grinder and making a sausage-guess.” What is the Drake equation, you ask?
. . .

An equation needs certainty, Sutter argues. Without some grasp on precision with the factors in the equation, it becomes useless, no better than a wild guess. The equations of physics deal with measurable factors that can be ascertained often to many decimal points of precision. How do you specify the uncertainty in some of Drake’s factors?

To read the rest, click on "Time to Ditch the Drake Equation".
 

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Underground Oil Buffet Thwarts Old Earth Beliefs

Evolutionists and other proponents of deep time have insisted that oil and natural gas are evidence that the earth is very old. Creationists have pointed out that evidence shows that oil formation requires proper conditions such as temperature and pressure, not huge amounts of time. Secular scientists also have to deal with problems in keeping the oil in a usable form.

Credit: Freeimages/Enrico Nunziati

When you hear that drillers struck oil, it tends to kind of strike back. It is often under a great deal of pressure, and experts need to get it under control.

When oil wells catch on fire, they are dangerous in many ways. This includes the environment. What may be the most dangerous job in the world is putting out an oil well fire, and I'll be switched with snakes if I'd even consider doing that!

Creation scientists point out that over the millions of years that secularists allege, oil pressure would have dissipated and it would not be enthusiastically offering itself to us (Creation Research Society Quarterly 44:1 PDF). Instead of admitting that they have a problem, secular geologists don't pay it no nevermind and throw out some rescuing devices that Darwin's Flying Monkeys© use to "refute" creation science and claim victory. That'll be the day!

Another problem for underground oil reserves is that they are buffets for microbes. They don't need to search much for the chuckwagon, because there are so many of them available for chow time. You guessed it, microbes eat oil. This has been observed in a big way when they were involved in cleaning up oil spills. So why isn't the ancient oil in the earth all eaten up? Evolutionary owlhoots suggested that oil was pastured by temperatures. A long study was recently released that refutes that notion, and indirectly supports not only recent creation, but biblical creation science models about the making of oil and other products.

Secular geologists have long claimed that oil can survive millions of years underground because it somehow becomes pasteurized at 80^o C (176^o F), preventing further biodegradation. . . . it will all somehow remain pristine for eons of time.

However, a recent announcement detailing the results of a 10-year study involving 1,200 scientists from 52 countries has challenged that pasteurized notion.

To read more about this slick study, slip on over to "New Reservoir of Life Eats Oil".




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Coral Confounding Evolutionists

When people discuss coral, they are usually talking about the hard accumulations of calcium carbonate, since the animal itself is small and rather unattractive. Those deposits of coral in reefs and atolls are mighty bad news for ships and divers as well. Coral are evidence against evolution and in favor of special creation.

Coral reefs, Kwajalein Atoll image credit: US Geological Survey/Curt Storlazzi
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Corals have many characteristics that cannot be explained by universal common ancestor evolution. Although they are animals, they also process nutrition through photosynthesis. Although they are hunters and snag vittles with their tentacles, they need more, so they have a symbiotic relationship with algae inside their cells and receive nutrition while giving algae a nice homestead. When stressed, they commence to doing something called bleaching, where they expel the algae and corals themselves turn white.

Some corals diversify themselves. As they grow, so do their food needs. In some cases you can be seeing one animal with many mouths. This is another evolution-defying evidence that the Master Engineer front-loaded them with this ability, along with having an extremely complex genome.

Evolutionists and deep time proponents claim that coral reefs are evidence of an old earth, but that is the opposite of the truth. Those things can only be built under certain conditions. They are not deep, just wide. Secular scientists admit that, even in their time frame, coral colonies cannot be more than a few thousand years old. Indeed, coral reefs are thriving communities for many denizens of the deep.

God designed corals to be both hunters and farmers, and they do both very well. They don’t have eyes, but they can detect light, and react to passing shadows by retracting into their homes. Corals are active predators, snagging small floating food particles with their tentacles. There is not much food in the clear tropical waters, but they are very good at grabbing what is there. That food (small crustaceans and bits of organic debris) is protein-rich but has little in the way of carbohydrates (sugars).

To read the entire article, I won't mind atoll if you click on "Coral: The animal that acts like a plant, but is an active predator, and makes its own rocks for a house".



Want to see a coral? Here's a cuttlefish, the master of rapid disguise, doing an imitation:

Cuttlefish disguising itself as coral. pic.twitter.com/nbcz1vV6o4

— The Depths Below (@thedepthsbeIow) February 8, 2019

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Exterminate Humans for a Better World

One of the dangers of evolutionary thinking is the way some two-bit owlhoots use their fundamentally flawed worldview to saddle the rest of us with their dictates. While taking care of the environment is a biblical principle, radical environmentalism is downright dangerous. Some think killing off people will bring about a utopia.

Credit: Pixabay/Free-Photos

The ugly kid brother of radical environmentalism is the fanatical cult version of anthropogenic global climate change, and some tinhorns use the scare tactics of that to inflate the bigger picture that they imagine. To make the world a better place, eliminate a whole heap of humans. (This also fits with eugenics and abortion concepts.) Killing off many people is not new to the radical environmental movement, but this is a variation on a theme. Maybe the socialistic "Green New Deal" by Ocasio-Cortez will head in this direction if implemented?

To be consistent with their evolutionary worldview, we should be able to do what we please because we clawed our way to the top of the food chain and you can just deal with it. Biblical creationists know that we are not just another animal, but are created in God's image and responsible to take care of our world. Do you want people who rebel against the living God deciding who is worth keeping alive for the sake of their twisted vision?

Humans must be re-imagined, then re-made to fit the new global utopia, according to an environmental evolutionist.

Reimagining the human (Science Magazine). As Eileen Crist writes in part of Science Magazine’s “Tomorrow’s Earth” series, she forgets the horrors of past generations that tried to “re-imagine” human beings to fit an elite agenda. As usual, the elite only wants to “help” mankind avoid an imagined threat. Crist has a whopper to scare people about:

To read the rest, click on "New Utopian Vision Requires Drastic Demotion of Humans".





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Book Review: Creation, Evolution, and the Handicapped

by Cowboy Bob Sorensen

This is something rather different for Question Evolution Day but it is about a subject that I think is largely neglected. As we have seen many times, atheism is irrational and unable to deal cogently with the conditions of human experience. Foundational to atheism are materialism and evolution.

To be consistent with evolutionary thinking, "survival of the fittest" would, according to materialistic presuppositions, entail leaving anyone less than perfect  behind — or even eliminating them. The Nazis referred to Jews and other "subhumans" as "useless eaters" who consume food and resources but did not contribute to society. The same could be said for people with handicaps, but there are still people with a Christian worldview that will not let the handicapped be subjugated or exterminated.

The "science" of eugenics (which justifies abortion) was popular in the United States in the early 20th century. This had people forcibly sterilized because others decided that they were unfit to breed. If the concept continued, it would have led to the elimination of many people. (When Nazi Germany took eugenics to its logical conclusion, it fell out of favor, but is gaining popularity again.) Eugenics is one form of social Darwinism. Biblical creationists believe that humans are created in God's image and have intrinsic value, so it is ironic when handicapped anti-creationists attack those of us who oppose the worldview that would (if its adherents were consistent) have them put away.


Pastor Corwin was visiting The Question Evolution Project and mentioned that he had written this book which was published in 2016. The ebook was affordable on my budget, so I bought a copy. The full title is Creation, Evolution, and the Handicapped: Crushing the Death Image. I was expecting a social consciousness diatribe that would browbeat Christians into feeling sorry for those with handicaps, but I was very mistaken. I will tell you straightaway that I learned some things that would be useful for any biblical creationist.

The word handicapped has many definitions. There were two times in my life when I had injuries or conditions where I had a special handicapped parking permit. One of these was a "hidden handicap", so people probably wondered why a guy that wasn't limping or using a wheelchair was getting a special parking place. For that matter, I was informed that my medical records had a condition listed for me of which I was unaware! Then there are the more obvious physical handicaps.

Creation, Evolution, and the Handicapped has this propositional statement:

I will defend the following proposition: that Evolution is not a logical theory, it is self-contradictory, self-fulfilling, dogmatic, and simply “scientism” cloaked in the guise of a first century religion. I will show the evolutionary hypothesis is detrimental to operational science and that only the Biblical worldview sustains the preconditions for intelligibility sufficient to sustain empirical science. Finally, I will show that if evolutionary dogma is followed to its logical conclusion, it promotes a climate of death, a devaluing of life, and is directly detrimental to the disabled and handicapped.

As biblical creationists have pointed out for a mighty long time, evolution was not invented by Darwin. It is actually an ancient religious and philosophical concept that he modified, slapped his version of natural selection on it, and presented it as science. Atheists and religious compromisers went ape over it. Richard Corwin explains some of the philosophical and ancient religious underpinnings of evolution and scientism.

Pastor Corwin contrasts the evolutionary worldview with the biblical worldview. Bible-believing scientists of the past set up the foundations for modern science, essentially "thinking God's thoughts after him". Our worldview is based on the ultimate truth and leads to great progress when the Bible is given preeminence. Richard also demonstrates that the Bible contains real history which is supported by archaeology. Modern science has devolved, emphasizing materialism and leftist political trends over truth.

The third chapter should prove interesting to fans of C.S. Lewis. Despite the claims of theistic evolutionists, Lewis was no fan of Darwin.

C. S. Lewis understood that not only the Biblical worldview, but also the foundations of modern empirical science would make no sense without the rational construct provided by the Word of God. When one dismisses the Biblical worldview, the concept of the “Uniformity of Nature” becomes irrational.

Lewis knew that the uniformity of nature cannot be found in naturalism, but only through biblical foundations.

What follows is a chapter that will make you work your cognitive skills. Corwin postulates that the first evolutionist was Satan. Using Scripture and history, he shows us that Satan gave a huge emphasis to Gnosticism (which has taken many forms over the years) to distort the truth.

The Gnostic Gospel of evolution is as old as Genesis 3 and as new as the New Age religions of the twenty first century. The new Gnosticism includes the “idea that human beings can together form a global Brotherhood of Man and create heaven right here on earth.” Evolutionary Gnosticism is not a pastime but a system of dogmas that postulate that mankind will be able to save itself through enlightenment. The evolutionist would dismiss any Christian eschatology, but firmly defend the doctrine as applied by evolutionary metaphysics.

If you study on it a spell, you can see that evolutionary thinking is Gnosticism, as evolution is supposedly the esoteric path to truth. Evolution's true doctrine is absolute materialism and has its own religious tenets, and these claims are explained in the book. The consequences of the evolutionary worldview are shown in Nazi Germany (as well as in Socialism and Communism), as this philosophy is not only dependent on, but also leads to, nihilism and death.

Later on, we learn how the biblical worldview crushes Satan's death image of evolution. We are created in God's image, but live in a fallen world. Atheists and evolutionists can't handle the truth. Darwin's disciples promote death as a creative animistic or pantheistic force which leads ultimately to no purpose in life — and ultimately to more death. God has the ultimate victory and gives life to his people.

There is a great deal to learn in this book, especially for Bible-believing Christians as well as seekers of truth. There are some practical aspects and encouragement for those who know or live with those who are handicapped.

Elsewhere, I wrote about Jack, my oldest brother. He was born "severely retarded" with Down Syndrome. Despite the claims and predictions of medical science, he lived far longer than was expected. His handicap was obvious. He spent most of his time in state institutions because of his needs, and only came home on short visits. As the youngest of three boys by a ten-year margin, I was lousy at dealing with by oldest brother's handicap all those decades ago. Many of us "normal" folks need educating in how to deal with and treat those with handicaps; we can accidentally be insulting to them.

Creation, Evolution, and the Handicapped challenges professing Christians to properly deal with handicapped people — whether the handicap is visible or not. There is suffering and guilt already:

Individuals with handicaps suffer from guilt as they see their family suffer. The family suffers from guilt as they are forced to stand by helplessly as their loved one suffers. The Church suffers from guilt because they do not know what to say or do.

There are also lessons to people who have handicaps, and how they can have fulfilling lives in Christ. I have seen some who not only feel sorry for themselves, but use their conditions as a means to bitterly manipulate others and spread suffering. Instead, submission to Jesus and the authority of the Word of God is the way for anyone to have fulfillment in their lives.

There is quite a bit of material so I must curtail my review because it might become cumbersome. I hope I provided enough to spark your interest.

While I strongly recommend Creation, Evolution, and the Handicapped: Crushing the Death Image, there are some things that bothered me a bit. First, I do not know Pastor Corwin's theology, but there was nothing amiss that I found in this book. Second, he used the King James Version exclusively as far as I could tell, which may hinder some readers. At least he did not use The Message or some other bad translation! Third, I was not thrilled with the formatting. Richard underlined instead of italicized, which falls into the category of "get used to it"; I simply did not prefer this method. Also, I would have liked to see an emphasis on repentance. The concept is there, but I would have liked to see it used more directly.

I have a Kindle version, and the pagination works as expected. Swipe up, you go to the next chapter. Tap on the chapter title, and you are sent to the table of contents. When you tap on a chapter title, you go directly to it. Richard backed up his claims with a few hundred endnotes, and they were at the end of the book (which is something I prefer). He also had a "Select Bibliography" of many books. Obviously, he put quite a bit of work into writing this book!

On a side trail, my mind kept going back to a fiction book that I reviewed earlier, Taking Up Space by Steven J. Wright, which deals with similar subjects. Mayhaps you'd like to read Creation, Evolution, and the Handicapped as well as Taking Up Space so you can see what the two have in common.

What follows is the beginning of a 2015 video by Dr. Georgia Purdom. It is extremely interesting and the points made are relevant to this discussion. It can be found in its entirety at "Eugenics, Abortion, and Genetics" for free viewing or for purchase.




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