Green Pea Galaxies and Creation

One of the hallmarks of Big Bang cosmologists is the ability to continually modify their story to dodge the facts. (We saw something very similar in the post about phylogenetic trees, too.) When in doubt, resort to the complex scientific principle of Making Stuff Up®. Things called green pea galaxies caused some mighty fancy footwork over at the Hawking Honky-Tonk.

Image assembled from Clker clip art and a NASA image of the M-81 galaxy.

Now, don't get all het up, these aren't galaxies made of green stars. The green light comes from a combination of circumstances between the stars. These galaxies are much smaller then other galaxies, and are round, so when you put it all together, can't say as I blame them for calling them green peas. Some folks will tell you that these galaxies are a problem for creationists, but that's only from the string of storytelling based on cosmic evolutionary presuppositions — not from actual facts. What they are less likely to admit is that they are a problem for Big Bang advocates, and that's where the wild tales come in.

Most stars congregate into gravitationally bound structures called galaxies. The sun is part of the Milky Way, a large galaxy containing about two hundred billion stars. It is about one hundred thousand light years across. Dwarf galaxies are much more numerous than large galaxies. Green peas are a rare type of dwarf galaxies, which are, at most, 10% the size of the Milky Way.

The name for green peas comes from their round shape and green color. A galaxy’s color normally is a composite of its stars’ colors. But stars never appear green, so how do green peas get their distinct color? Indeed, it is this question that led to the recognition of the green pea class of galaxies less than a decade ago. The answer lies in very strong emission at a wavelength of 500.7 nanometers (a nanometer is one-billionth of a meter). This is smack in the middle of the green part of the spectrum, and the emission is so strong that it dominates the light of pea galaxies. The emission comes from doubly ionized oxygen in the interstellar medium, the space between the stars in the galaxy.

To read the rest of the article in context, peas click on "Are Green Pea Galaxies a Problem for Creationists?" Much obliged, pod-ner.

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Stromatoporoids and Oil?

It's one thing for the Darwinistas to argue among themselves about what happened when and what is responsible for evidence that is being examined. But they are not in agreement, despite what deep time and evolution proponents may say. It's bad enough that false science gets into the textbooks, but worse when textbooks don't get the story straight.

Stromatoporoid reef in Alberta, Canada.
Image credit: Georgialh / Wikimedia Commons CC BY-SA 4.0

Stromatoporoids were creatures that were fond of building ocean reefs, and are considered to be closely related to sponges. A secular science book got it wrong when the owlhoot author wrote that stromatoporoids were responsible for the oil reserves in Alberta, Canada, millions of years ago. Yes, they were involved, but it's implied that they turned into oil. A better secular explanation has a few things right (inadvertently paralleling the creation science model), but the comparatively recent Genesis Flood is a far better explanation as to what went on back yonder.

Today’s feedback comes from J.H. of Canada who asked for help with evolutionary ideas in a book their children were reading.

In a book I was reading to my children about Alberta, Canada, it gave credit to the stromatoporoids for our oil wealth. There was a definite evolutionist agenda to the chapter, so I wondered if this was true. Their claim being:

Stromatoporoids lived in the water and grew by continually discharging a hard calcium based substance which formed huge reefs in the Bearpaw Sea that attracted other ancient sea creatures. When the seas disappeared the reefs were buried under rock. As ‘millions more’ years passed the weight and heat of the earth turned the remains of the reef creatures into oil.

Can you offer me a young earth explanation that I can give my children?

CMI geologist Tasman Walker responds:

To see Dr. Walker's response, click on "Stromatoporoids and the oil resources of Alberta, Canada", eh?

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Bad Science, Bad Peer Review

Much of the Western world holds scientists in high esteem beyond that which is fitting. They are not monoliths of objectivity, and are subject to the same fallacies as the rest of us; having a degree or scientific prestige is not a guarantee of morality nor objectivity — they have their biases and avarice, and those are clearly seen. Unfortunately, science suffers for this.

Made at Redkid.net

Scientists are sinners like us reg'lar folk, and it often transfers into their work. Evolutionary scientists reject God and seek to utilize naturalistic presuppositions in the interpretations of the evidence. Ironically, they claim to have their own ethical and moral standards (perhaps they could have Dinsdale come around to bad scientists and nail their heads to the floor because they transgressed the unwritten law — cruel but fair). In addition, the vaunted secular peer review process has a passel of problems. Even their own scientists are dismayed by the ineffectiveness of their peer review process.

Science may be “out there” in the world, but its discoveries are mediated by fallible scientists.

“We can’t trust common sense but we can trust science.” That’s Peter Ellerton’s message on The Conversation. Ellerton, a lecturer in critical thinking at Queensland University, relays the typical triumphalist view of science as the rational alternative to intuition: “science is not about common sense,” he intones. Our intuitions don’t apply in quantum mechanics nor in what “feels right” about reality. It’s instructive that two examples he gives of “common sense” being wrong are opposition to gay marriage and unbelief in man-caused climate change. So while he warns of “cognitive biases,” did he warn himself?

Ellerton finds strength in numbers. “In science, the highest unit of cognition is not the individual, it is the community of scientific enquiry.… We are smarter together than we are individually, and perhaps that’s just common sense.” Let’s see if that holds up under scrutiny, based on some recent headlines. Does the scientific community deserve our unqualified trust?

“How did that make it through peer review?” In this PLoS Blog, vertebrate paleontologist Andrew Farke is slightly more cynical (realistic?) about collective wisdom in science. From his own experience for years as a researcher, reviewer and editor, Farke exposes the sausage-making that goes on in back rooms of journal companies about peer review, that assumed gold standard of scientific self-correction and trustworthiness.

To read the rest, click on "If You Can’t Trust Scientists, You Can’t Trust Science".

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A Confusion of Phylogenetic Trees

The hands at the Darwin Ranch are so busy making trees for science presentations, you'd might think it was continually Arbor Day down there. Besides, these trees are the written kind, and the only growing they do is in the minds of evolutionists. Some of them are a mite impressive.

Speculatively rooted tree for rRNA genes.
Image credit: Modified from NASA image by Eric Gaba

These trees are based on evolutionary presuppositions and circular reasoning. In reality, they little value other than showing certain similarities.

When the evolutionary stories do not fit the facts, and additional information is discovered, the phylogenetic trees are pruned, grafted, and even made from scratch. If they had a creation-based approach, scientists would produce something more useful.

At the 75th annual meeting of the Society of Vertebrate Paleontology, held this year [2015] in downtown Dallas, the world's foremost fossil experts presented scores of research summaries. Researchers described extinct giant mammals from Argentina, one-of-a-kind bird fossils from China, and good-old North American classic dinosaurs. Amazingly, almost all of these fossil descriptions included phylogenetic (evolutionary) tree diagrams. Today's paleontologists show a religious-like devotion to fit their finds in an evolutionary tree. And with equally amazing regularity they describe problems with this process of constructing evolutionary trees. Are these problems significant enough to cast doubt on the whole exercise?

To read the rest, click on "Can't See the Forest for the Trees".

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The Puzzling Colugo

If you get to roaming around the jungles of Southeast Asia, watch your step, know when and where to look (what with many being elusive and all), you'll find a whole heap of beasties that defy evolution. Yesterday's post was about the tarsier, and this time, another tree-dweller called the colugo. I reckon one reason some things are "elusive" is that they live way up yonder in the trees, and are very difficult to observe and track. And colugos kind of fly away.

Image credit: Wikimedia Commons / Lip Kee Yap / CC BY-SA 2.0

One name for the colugo is "flying lemur". It's not a lemur, and it doesn't exactly fly, it glides. Quite a long way if it has a mind to. Evolutionists don't know how to classify it, and it's currently in a class by itself. Creationists believe it is from a separate biblical kind. (By the way, just because creationists use a different categorization method in some cases doesn't give anyone call to go all haywire and call them stupid or liars, you savvy?) The colugo is clearly built for its specialized way of survival by their Designer.

You might think the colugo (ka-LOO-go) of Southeast Asia is a clumsy creature — well, maybe at first glance. On the ground, these odd, squirrel-like creatures seem to flop and jump along with the awkwardness of a baby bird. They also make climbing a tree look like a laborious process, which involves scraping at the bark with sharp claws and then hopping up quickly on their tiny paws. You get exhausted just watching them.

But once they’ve reached high into the canopy of the rainforest—the place where they belong—something amazing happens. These clumsy ground-walkers take to the air in an elegant display of aerodynamics. They glide like no other mammal on earth and prove, once again, that our ingenious Creator knows how to surprise us.

To read the rest, glide on over to "Colugos—Soaring Above Expectations". You might want to catch the short video below of the creature in action, too.

  

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Speaking Loudly but Not Being Heard

There's a critter in Philippine jungles that's about as big as your hand, has big eyes, and runs its mouth a lot. You can't hear anything, though. But they can. The tarsier has its own special means of communication that is more than three times the upper limit of what humans can hear. I can name some people that it would be nice if they spoke beyond human hearing frequencies, but never mind about that now.

Image credit: NOAA / Tarsier in Philippines by Laura Fralinger, 2008

Naturally, some owlhoots had to spoil the real science with evolutionary assertions, saying things that are nothing but assertions put forward as science. They get paid for this. I'm in the wrong job, I bet I could make up "science", too. Hey, here's one: tarsiers have long legs and can jump huge distances, so they must have evolved from frogs. But seriously, evolutionary "science" aside, the tarsier is another example of the ingenuity of the Creator, and has nothing to do with particles-to-primate evolution.

It used to be thought that when the Philippines tarsier (Tarsius syrichta) opened its mouth it was simply yawning or stretching—because we couldn’t hear any sound. But when researchers took equipment used to record bats’ high-frequency chirps into the jungle, they discovered that these tiny nocturnal big-eyed primates were communicating with each other using ‘pure ultrasound’.

The dominant frequency of the tarsier’s ultrasonic call was 70 kilohertz, ranging up to 75 kHz—among the highest recorded for any terrestrial mammal. And the researchers discovered that tarsiers could hear up to 91 kHz (way beyond the 20 kHz limit of human hearing).

To read the rest, click on "The tarsier’s ‘secret speech’". 

 

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Losing Face to Neanderthals

Depictions of Neanderthals as stupid, ugly, partially evolved brutes are becoming increasingly unrealistic. Studies of the inner ear, surprises by advanced art techniques, interbreeding with modern humans, heated water and organized their homes, and more factors show that they were inaccurately portrayed. If you study on it, you'll realize that the differences between us and them is shrinking all the time.

Beautiful and Ugly by Adriaen van de Venne, 1634

There was a variety among Neanderthals. Indeed, there is a wide variety among the people you pass on the street every day. Were Neanderthals "ugly"? By what standard? Additional research on their facial constructions shows that the "ugly" features were bone constructions, and in fact, modern humans may actually be physically inferior to them! Let's face it, they are not the products of evolution, and neither are we. Humans are created beings, as are all creatures.

The facial differences between us and Neanderthals amount to a slight matter of bone resorption during development.

Neanderthal faces look a bit weird to us, but they could brag (were they here to weigh in on the discussion) that they are better built. There’s only a slight morphological process that separates our faces, Science Daily says. During development, we moderns have more osteoclasts (bone-absorbing cells) that resorb bone that was laid down. Neanderthals, by contrast, keep more of their facial bone. That’s why it looks a bit protruding to us. The only way we moderns could argue ours are better is by claiming, “less is more.” That’s pure subjective opinion.

The paper in Nature Communications that talks about this indicates that the processes that lead to these variations are very slight, and even appear among modern humans. In “Ontogeny of the maxilla in Neanderthals and their ancestors,” Lacruz et al. state this about earlier studies:

To read the rest, click on "Face Up: We Are Less than Neanderthals". Also, Neanderthals are problematic for not only evolutionists, but so-called "progressive creationists", see "Flights of Fancy". ADDENDUM: This just in: "It’s over, folks. The Neanderthal myth is dead, and with it the mythical timeline of early man evolving upward toward us. The evolutionists have been wrong for over 150 years!" For this, click on "Neanderthal Concept Has Imploded".

  

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Darwin Day Religiosity and Question Evolution Day Summary

by Cowboy Bob Sorensen

This article is about the religious nature of evolutionism, reactions of anti-creationists to the fifth annual Question Evolution Day , a discussion of some behind-the-scenes aspects of QED, and more.

Spreading the Word

A few years back, a reporter asked me if there were "supporters" for Question Evolution Day. I figured that he meant famous people or organizations. In the past, I had several interviews on radio and podcasts, usually about QED. This year, I increased my efforts to obtain interviews or at least mentions on sites and things. Of the twenty or so contacts I made, most did not bother to reply. (That's a mite disheartening, since most of them agree in principle with the purposes of QED.) One gave a brusque brush-off, one waited too long to reply, another got the notion to do an interview when time was short, but there was no time, what with conflicting schedules and all.

There was only one interview, but it was a good one! Chris Rosebrough of Fighting for the Faith had me on for a return engagement, and we had fun as well as discussing some serious matters.

Ian Juby of Genesis Week promoted QED again this year, for which I am truly grateful. The event had support from Creation Today, and I was pleased with a Weblog post again this year. However, Eric Hovind surprised me with additional plans, and actively promoted Question Evolution Day, including a "webinar" hosted by Eric, with guests Mark Spence and Sye Ten Bruggencate. Creation Ministries International presented my article, and used the words "Question Evolution Day" in several Facebook posts.

Although it was not written to promote the event, Kimberly Winston briefly mentioned it in "Darwin Day notwithstanding, evolution debate keeps, well, evolving" at Religion News Service. RNS supplies other news agencies with material (such as the Colorado Springs Gazette and the Washington Post), and was a source for an article at the Mormon-run Deseret News (interestingly, Mormonism is materialistic and evolutionary in nature). There were a some minor errors where I was concerned in this piece that the author adjusted. There was also a passel of links to various materials on all sides of the issue in a post at Religion Link. 

Promotion and publicity are mighty helpful, but don't do all that much without the guidance of God and the involvement of people. There were folks who were spreading the word on social media. I searched Pages on Facebook that were promoting QED — some of which I had never heard of before. Part of the goal was for people to do whatever they can or will, whether it's sharing links on social media, writing Weblog articles, writing their own timeline posts, or whatever else. I saw activity on Twitter as well. For the people who were involved, I am truly thankful!

Activity

Having an online "event" is difficult go gauge. Only a few people clicked on the event listing as "going", but many more were involved. I reckon that those event listings are for business promotions and such, where tickets are sold and people register to attend something. Obviously, QED was nothing like that.

In previous years, I was unaware of participation until something showed up in a search engine or unless someone directly informed me, and it will be the same again. Doing searches can be right tricky, as I've seen search results including material from previous years as well.

Web counters are iffy at best. My sites have had a marked increase in traffic according to those, and other visits I know about were not recorded. But this was not about just my site, as people were encouraged to share biblical creation science materials from various organizations.

Negative Reactions and Darwinist Religious Zealotry

There were surprisingly few anti-creationist Evo Sith trolls on Question Evolution Day itself, but some did show themselves later at The Question Evolution Project. They don't cotton to having their worldview challenged with science and logic, so they go on the attack. Two questions for them are, "Why should I change my beliefs and convert to evolution", and "Why do my beliefs matter to you in the first place?" They demonstrate the Mighty Atheist Intellect™ by using childish taunts and amazingly poor reasoning skills.

This first one is very, very typical:

Using that question-begging epithet, I seriously doubt that's his real name. Atheists do that frequently.
Used under Fair Use provisions for educational purposes.

Here's Rajah, supporting his Darwinian religion with an absence of both logic and civility:

Used under Fair Use provisions for educational purposes.

Although they don't like the facts, these people are religious about their evolution. After all, evolutionism is religious in nature. Look at Nirmal's Facebook profile and timeline pictures, which are all about Darwin. They bolster Darwin as a "great scientist", ignoring that he was a plagiarist and a bungler as a scientist. (See the secularist jihad and religious fervor of the atheopaths in the comments at the Religion News Service article. But don't look for sound reasoning.) Indeed, the "Darwin Fish" symbol is a direct mockery of Christianity. Personally, I prefer the "Truth Fish" that I have on my car.

Here's an excerpt from the aforementioned Deseret News article:

It's Darwin Day — the 207th anniversary of the birth of scientist Charles Darwin, marked worldwide by hundreds of events, many of which are detailed at the American Humanist Association's International Darwin Day website.

This year, celebrations include lectures, birthday parties and dinners where guests can partake of "primordial soup." There is also an annual, week-long Darwin festival in Salem, Massachusetts, that has been operating since 1980 and is one of the first known organized celebrations, according to the International Darwin Day Foundation. The AHA began its events in 1995 and now manages the Darwin Day website.

Yes, they have a heap of Darwin Day events, and here is one example of Darwinian marketing. Sure sounds religious to me! Add to that that there are no big festivals for Copernicus, Newton, Pasteur, Einstein, Kepler, Pascal, and others. Nope, just Darwin's excuse to "explain" origins without the Creator, and that made all the difference. If you study on it a spell, this secularist admiration of Darwin, as well as evolutionary disinformation, makes Question Evolution Day is more important than ever. 

After all, we are dealing with people who use bad science, worse logic, and are even willing to resort to fraud in order to buffalo people into believing in the evolutionary worldview. For example, we often get, "How about a Question Gravity Day?", which shows their ignorance of science and logic. Also, many are downright lazy, unwilling to do their homework on not only what creationists believe and teach, but research their own belief system. Reactions from village evolutionists (not reasoned responses, but emotional reactions) can often be summed up as, "You dare to question evolution? Boy, are you stupid! I'll attack people instead of ideas, that'll learn ya!"

EDIT: Evolutionists are so unwilling to let their religion undergo scrutiny, a BBC commentator may be barred from employment because he rejects evolution. His views on the subject have nothing to do with his job, but that doesn't matter in the world of the new atheo-fascism.

The Future

From what I've been seeing, the fifth annual Question Evolution Day has been the most successful yet, and I hope it continues to grow. Eventually, it will spread, and I will become an obscure footnote in the archives (after all, it's not about glory to Bob, but glory to God), and people will be continue to proclaim the truth of creation. Although each February 12 is a great day to unify and make ourselves heard, we need to be able to saddle up for the truth of creation every day. Ministries like this one, and others that I point to, seek to equip biblical creationists to present the faith. I pray that you will not only grow in your faith, but in the grace and knowledge of the Lord Jesus Christ, and in knowledge of creation.

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Information on the Brain

Remember that post about how DNA stores a tremendous amount of information, and there are biomimetics efforts to develop DNA for data storage? Well, this ain't it. It's been known for a long time that there is a great deal of information stored and processed in the brain, but discoveries of what's happening at the cellular level show that there is more going on than was ever dreamed of.

Image credit: Pixabay / geralt

Y'all probably know that the Web has a passel of people all over the world sending, receiving, sharing information, right? That's a lot of computing power and memory going on. Your brain has more power than that. Instead of 1 and 0, the brain transfers 26 levels of synaptic information, and is inspiring ideas of biomimetics for future computer development. Let's face it, cells could not possibly have evolved from simple organisms into such specified complexity — which is still not fully understood. No, the Creator was behind all this.

Whoever said the human brain is the most highly organized collection of matter in the universe was more correct than they could have known. New research modeled tiny structures within nerve cells and discovered a clever tactic brains use to increase computing power while maximizing energy efficiency. Its design could form the basis of a whole new and improved class of computer.

Neurobiologists from the Salk Institute of La Jolla, California, and the University of Texas, Austin, collaborated to build 3-D computer models that mimic tiny sections of rat hippocampus—a brain region in mammals where neurons constantly process and store memories. One of the models, published in the biological journal eLife, helped reveal that the sizes of synapses change within minutes.

To read the rest, click on "Your Brain Has More Memory Than the Internet". Also, I recommend "Hi-Tech Human Brain Better Than Thought". The first part is a brief mention of the article featured here, then it goes on into some very interesting material.

  

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Hawaiian Islands and the Genesis Flood

The words paradise and Hawaii have often been used in the same sentence, although Hawaii is a series of islands, not just one. The "Big Island" is named Hawaii, though most travel is to O'ahu. And no, it's not just off the coast of California, that's just an effect map makers use. Amazing how we're living in a wrecked world; something that gorgeous came out of the Genesis Flood, so we cannot rightly imagine the pre-Flood world.

Waikiki image credit: Pixabay / chopie80

For people interested in geology, however, the Big Island has the volcanoes Mauna Loa and Mauna Kea. Mauna Loa is active, too, letting loose with lava now and then. The Hawaiian islands came from volcanoes, but these volcanoes are different from most of the rest on Earth. Uniformitarian geologists give an age to the islands and their positioning in the millions of years (assuming that the plate tectonic rate was the same in the distant past as it is today). Biblical creationists have a Flood geology model that makes far more sense.

Mention Hawaii, and it conjures up thoughts of a tropical paradise. Pristine waterfalls, luxuriant creeping vegetation, and squawking, duck-like coots remind millions of annual visitors about the Creator’s handiwork.

But red hot lavas slowly moving across fields and engulfing roads are never far away. Indeed, the Hawaiian Islands are a string of active and extinct volcanoes that hint at a catastrophic past. No Garden of Eden, this charming landscape is a product of catastrophic forces unleashed by Noah’s Flood. This modern-day “paradise” speaks unmistakably of God’s recent judgment.

If the volcanoes that formed Hawaii’s eight major islands had been formed before or during Noah’s Flood, the Flood would have deposited sediments on their flanks. But they have none. So we know the volcanoes must have erupted following the Flood.

So how did eight islands pop up in a neat row in the middle of the Pacific Ocean after the Flood, 3½ miles (19,297 feet, or 5882 m) above the surrounding seafloor? The origin of these gems gives us a fascinating window into the incredible tectonic forces that tore apart the planet during the Flood. Indeed, we now have enough geologic clues to begin reconstructing what took place in the Pacific while Noah’s family was landing on the mountains of Ararat and then settling the Near East.

To read the rest, click on "Hawaii’s Volcanic Origins—Instant Paradise". 


 

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Bears and Variation

People who go camping in parks populated with bears need to take certain precautions, because having a grizzly or some other Ursus in your campsite — ain't nobody got time for that. Those critters can get right ornery, especially since you're on their territory.

Play a little game. If you commence to searching for species and subspecies of bears, you'll find quite a few. Then ask your friends how many bears they can name. Worse would be to try to get people to identify them by pictures: brown, black with lighter fur, grizzly, the Kodiak (Alaskan grizzly or Kodiak brown), that can be a mite confusing. Even bears that are considered to be closely related can have wide varieties.

Photo credit: Polar bear by Steven C. Amstrup / USGS

Evolutionists will tell you that all those bears are different because of mutations over long periods of time. But mutations do not add genetic information to account for the diversification. Yes, creationists do accept speciation and natural selection, which support our paradigm. The biblical creationist view on the varieties of bears makes a great deal more sense than the arbitrary assertions and circular reasoning from the Darwinistas.

From the thick stomach lining of the panda and the partially webbed paws of the polar bear, to the insect-sucking muzzle of the sloth bear, bears provide a fascinating example of the variety of specialized characteristics existing within one family.

The bear family (Ursidae) consists of eight species, four of which are contained in the Ursus group: the brown bear, American black bear, Asiatic black bear and polar bear. Even within this group (known as a genus) the variation is wide.

The brown and American black bears are mainly vegetarians with appropriate dental features for crushing plant material. However, the first has claws suited to digging while the other has claws more suitable for climbing. The Asiatic black bear, which also has claws for climbing, is an opportunistic omnivorous feeder (eating meat and plants as available).

To read the rest, click on "Bears across the world".


 

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Excessive Occult Cosmology

Secular cosmologists continually conjure Big Bang cosmology, loading it with excessive occult baggage in their efforts to deny the Creator. Mythology masquerading as science regarding the origin of the universe is continually changing and relying more on powers of "darkness".

Image from Clker clip art

The wizards of the Big Bang invoke dark matter and dark energy, which are placeholders for what is not known, but believed by faith. Evidence keeps mounting against the Big Bang, but they're locked into their fatally flawed worldview. This "science of the gaps" keeps on getting money and, and they have been making excuses for many years. Sorry, old son, that ain't science.

To read all about it, click on "Occult Cosmology Mutters Dark Matters".

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More Dinosaur Blood Vessels Refute Long-Age Paradigms

Soft tissues in dinosaurs has cause considerable agitation at the Darwin Ranch, and reactions have been disbelief, ad hoc excuses, weak extrapolations of tissue preservation possibilities, and the expected ad hominem attacks. But the evidence against long-age paradigms just keeps on rolling in.

New soft tissues and blood cells from dinosaurs and other critters that have been dead for millions of Evo Sith years are being recalcitrant, instead supporting young Earth biblical creation models. The truth is there, and is being presented, that God created the world recently, and the Genesis Flood is the best explanation for what has been found.

Scientists keep finding short-lived biochemicals and even soft tissues in fossils! Over the years, they have found unmistakable evidence of specific proteins like collagen and hemoglobin, and even what look like red blood cells and bone cells, in dinosaurs and other fossils. Most soft-tissue structures occur as mineralized remains that preserve merely an impression or outline, but a few preserve decayed remnants of the original cellular structures. These original structures should be long gone after about one million years. A new report of intact blood vessels in a duck-bill dinosaur bone pinpoints ways that such discoveries challenge old ideas about fossils.

A team of biomedical and earth scientists first chemically removed everything but the blood vessels from deep within the dinosaur bone. They found 10 proteins, including tubulin, actin, myosin, tropomyosin, and histone H2A. A chemical analyzer read sequences of amino acids in each protein—like reading each word in an essay. They found enough similarities between the dinosaur proteins and those of reptiles and birds to conclude they were from a real animal, but enough differences to suggest that it was an extinct animal, like a dinosaur.

To read the rest, click on "Duck-bill Dinosaur Blood Vessels". 

 

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Rocky Reefs, Autumn Leaves Without Fruit

by Cowboy Bob Sorensen

This article is the conclusion of "Waterless Clouds, Wandering Stars". I recommend that you read that part first, since this article is not a "stand alone". 

What About Barriers?

We can take this "barrier" business to its logical conclusion. If we compromise and say, "God did not really mean what he said in Genesis, Earth is ancient, God used evolution, there was no global Noachian Flood", what then? If that is true, Jesus was wrong or lying, because he referred to a literal Adam and Eve (Mark 10:6). The lineage of Jesus includes Adam (Luke 3:38), Paul refers to Jesus as the last Adam (1 Corinthians 15:45), and the Genesis Flood was believed and taught in the New Testament (Luke 17:26, Hebrews 11:7, 1 Peter 3:20). Some say the Flood was only local (a silly idea even on the surface, Noah could have simply pulled up stakes and moved on). So, when Peter likened the Genesis Flood to the coming Judgment by fire (2 Peter 3:5-7), will that be a "local" event as well?

In this age of feel-good teaching, a Scottish preacher stated:

"It is an obstacle because it depicts God as a potentate who demands blood for offenses He has suffered. Our sins have offended Him and He demands a blood sacrifice," McKenna said. "I'm almost embarrassed explaining this theology because it is well past its sell by date, and in some sense is quite immoral."[1]

Where does he get his morality? If we have no respect for the authority of the Word of God, then we have nothing, no consistent basis for it.

Image credit: Pixabay / wuzefe

How Do Theistic Evolutionists Treat Biblical Creationists?

You are unlikely to find genuine expressions of Christian love from TEs. There is a great deal of ridicule and defamation, such as evidenced by Tyler Francke. He has defamed Calvin Smith of Creation Ministries International (assisted by an atheist who supplied personal correspondence) [2], ridiculed Ray Comfort's documentary [3], admits that he has ridiculed the biblical creationist viewpoint [4], uses a straw man approach to misrepresent biblical creationists by indicating that we say creation is a salvation issue [5], and much more. He posts to anti-creationists (click screenshots for larger images) [6]. Although I am not a fan of the Discovery Institute, he proceeds to misrepresent and ridicule them as well [7].

Francke wrote a piece called "10 Theological Questions No Young-Earth Creationist Can Answer" [8]. Two writers who gave him extensive answers are Tony Breeden, who wrote a four-part series at "Defending Genesis" [9], and Steve Risner has given even more discussion at the "Worldview Warriors" Weblog [10]. Also, Francke had a post called "An agnostic asks me four common questions about faith and scripture" [11]. But I did not see the gospel there. Does Tyler know the gospel in the first place?

Elsewhere, Francke commented to me, "...folks like yourself are useful shills for the likes of CMI, AiG and ICR to make millions off their false teachings" [12]. Upholding that the Bible means what it says is a false teaching? Not hardly! And the "make millions" claim is libelous. After I called him out on logical fallacies and assertions, he banned me [13].

Digging deeper — what is a shill? According to Dictionary.com, the first definition of a shill is, "a person who poses as a customer in order to decoy others into participating, as at a gambling house, auction, confidence game, etc" [14]. So, that does not fit. The second definition is, "a person who publicizes or praises something or someone for reasons of self-interest, personal profit, or friendship or loyalty" [14]. There is no self-interest when I promote biblical creation science ministries, and certainly no remuneration. Loyalty? Perhaps some, since I believe those ministries are teaching the truth of Scripture.

For someone claiming to be a Christian, he has shown nothing but contempt for those of us who believe the Bible. His site and comments therein express admiration for N.T. Wright, who also accepts TE [15], has contempt for biblical creationists [16], and has a "new perspective" on Paul that is actually recycled heresy [17].

Tyler Francke is only a minor player in theistic evolutionism, but what I have seen is common in my experiences with these people. I saw someone ridiculing a creationist and I thought the ridiculer was an atheist. Then he claimed to be a Christian that believes in evolution, he only acted like an obstreperous atheist. There are TEs who are a mite more civil than many others that we encounter online.

What Are Other Problems with Theistic Evolution?

TE revisits the old Pelagian heresy [18]. Also, TE and other old Earth "creationism" deny the authority of Scripture, the global Genesis Flood, a literal Adam and Eve, and set a chain reaction all through Scripture — making Jesus either uninformed or a liar [19]. No, compromising with evolution not only sends a mixed message (using the magisterial view of science to interpret God's Word), but is also dangerous [20].

To be blunt, many TEs are shills for Satan, deceiving them about the truth of God's Word, defaming biblical creationists, and siding with enemies of God. That is not how the Bible says Christians are supposed to act.  TEs often resort to ridicule and hand-waving, but are unable to refute the apologetics of biblical creationists. There is a great deal of self-congratulation between TEs and atheists with what amounts to, "You sure told him!", but lack substance and have a passel of logical fallacies behind them. Instead of showing love for other Christians (Galatians 6:10, John 13:35), they side with enemies of God, supporting and encouraging atheists [21]. Instead of proclaiming the gospel, they are actually enablers of atheism [22] while pretending to be a part of the body of Christ. Their religion is evolutionism, to which they give priority.

Someone who distorts biblical teachings and embraces "deep time" interpretations is Hugh Ross. Although he claims that he is not a theistic evolutionist (instead using the title "progressive creationist"), some of his teachings seem to contradict that non-TE stance. He also denies the literal days of creation and the Genesis Flood. To see more, click on "Hugh Ross, ICR, and the Bible", "Hugh Ross lays down the gauntlet!", and "A Review of Hugh Ross’ Latest Book, Navigating Genesis". The sites at those links have other materials about Ross that are worth investigating.

If you have a mind to spending time on TE and old Earth "creationist" sites, there are some things I suggest you look for. First and foremost, is there a clear presentation of the gospel? Next, do they uphold the authority of Scripture? How do they treat biblical creationists? Do they elevate science to an authoritative position? Are they consistent on their Christian claims?

I recommend that TEs, old Earthers, "progressive creationists", and even biblical creationists, take a look at the Genesis Week video, "What Would Jesus Believe?" 

Where Does This Lead Us?

If you study on it a bit, you'll see that science philosophies and things that are considered "facts" are constantly changing. As Christians, our ultimate authority is to be the Word of God, which is unchanging (Isaiah 40:8, Psalm 119:89, 1 Peter 1:25), which Peter said "more sure" than the voice of God that he heard at the Transfiguration (2 Peter 1:16-21). (Did you ever notice that with theistic evolutionists, old Earth teachings, and other compromisers, the Bible is what has to give way and not "science"?) We have no business submitting Scripture to atheistic interpretations of science philosophies.

In addition, we must be equipped. Some Christians do not seem to take their Christian lives seriously, nor do they work on understanding biblical creation science — not just the science aspects, which can become quite deep, but also the biblical side. Sharing captioned pictures is not going to cut it. Those who become apostate or are deceived by false teachers frequently show little understanding of what the Bible actually teaches.

We must be grounded in the Word so we are not taken captive by false philosophies, and know what to look for in the utterances of false teachers. Compare what is taught with the Word, and do not let "science" become the arbiter of truth for your faith.

Are There Resources on False Teachers and Apostasy?

For people who want to round up some excellent teachings (and were strong inspirations for this article), I herded a few into the corral that will keep you busy and informed — and help you spot false teaching. They are all free to listen and download.

First, two by Dr. John MacArthur: Ten teachings on "Spiritual Terrorism", and four more on "Avoiding Spiritual Counterfeiters". Many have printed transcripts if you would rather read them.

Second, the ongoing mission of Chris Rosebrough's "Fighting for the Faith" will help teach you some discernment and how not to be deceived.

Third, I urge people to listen to (or watch the videos) from Ray Comfort called "True and False Conversion" and "Hell's Best Kept Secret". Links to those are here.

Naturally, I hope people will check out the links I supplied throughout this article to creation science ministries for not only science material, but problems with theistic evolution, old Earth, and other conflicts with a plain reading of Scripture.
  

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