Piltdown Superman

When one mentions South Dakota, Mt. Rushmore may come to mind. More exciting to geologists are the Black Hills and Badlands. Millions of people flock to Badlands National Park  every year. It would definitely be a different kind of experience. Secular geologists have their slow 'n' gradual uniformitarian views of how the rock formations came to be, but their stories do not support scientific facts. Indeed, creation science models of the Genesis Flood present far better explanations of what is observed. Badlands formations with prairie grasses, NPS Photo / Troy Hunt (usage does not imply endorsement of site contents) Clay, mudstone, shale, all that good stuff is claimed by secular geologists to have been laid down over long periods of time — just look at the way it is now! Sure, some of that is happening nowadays, but this shows a mighty big flaw in their paradigm. Present processes are not a guarantee that things happened tin the same way all along. Come on, man, that's ma

Down New Mexico way, there is a place called White Sands National Park because it has, well, white sands in the Tularosa Basin. The story goes that during the Ice Age, Lake Otero was in the Tularosa Basin. It was a nice place with a wet climate. This area is famous for fossilized footprints, and the radiocarbon dating came up with an age of 22,000 years for one particular set from the Lake Otero Basin. Since rock cannot be Carbon-14 dated, seeds that were found in the area were subject to the analysis. It did not go well. Lake Otero image cropped from NPS (usage does not imply endorsement of site contents) Those seeds were not dated properly, and the radiocarbon atoms did not come from the ancient atmosphere but from old water. After recalculating, the age originally assigned had to be discarded. They were way  off. Unfortunately for secular scientists, their desires for deep time and the methodology used raise several serious questions. Maybe if they get that correlation with the ma

A few days ago, my prospector friend Stormie Waters and her friend Ruby Slippers stopped at my place. (They were taking a break from wedding plans for Stormie and Roland Meadows.) Ruby tried her hand at panning for gold but instead found a nice stone. I have reference material. This was a peridot, and I suggested to Ruby that if it was cut and polished, it might be turned into a fine piece of jewelry. Then I told them that secular scientists have a mistaken notion that it takes huge amounts of time for them to form. Assorted gemstones in a spiral, Unsplash / Edz Norton We talked for a while about how Ruby shares a name with a pricey gemstone, what makes some valuable and others affordable, things like supply and demand, luster, superstitions of powers, and all that good stuff. In the last part of the book of Revelation, God uses gold and precious stones as building materials. Many gemstones are found in granite. The formation involves molten rock, cooling, and crystals. Secular scienti

If you took a notion to visit Mackinac Island State Park way up yonder between the peninsulas of Michigan, it would be a hefty drive. Using I-75 from the state capital of Lansing and going in almost a straight line by the map, count on driving 3-1/2 hours one way. You would probably find it worthwhile. Despite spelling discrepancies with -nac and -naw, it is pronounced MACK-i-naw. The island is in view of the huge suspension bridge. A creation geologist can use the physical features to describe stages in the Genesis Flood as well as the Ice Age. Old Fort Mackinac from the pasture (cropped), ca. 1900, Library of Congress People who read biblical creation science material are likely to learn some things about the Genesis Flood, especially since it was not simply rain and the fountains of the great deep. As is observed, there are many megasequences laid down by water, and these span continents. Depositions occurred in stages. At Mackinac Island, some of the first laid down by the Flood w

Something other biblical creationists and I emphasize is the importance of definitions. Despite our efforts, the corral gate is occasionally left open, a pony wanders through, and clarification is needed. Some of the difficulty is because of assumptions by readers. For example, I was using the phrase special creation  and assuming that the definition was clear to everyone. Since I had that wrong, I wrote an article specifying which meaning I use . The concern about wording this time involves reports of soft tissues and fossils. Aerodactylus scolopaciceps with soft tissue, Wikimedia Commons / Steven U. Vidovic, David M. Martill ( CC BY 2.5 ) This is not the same as complaining about someone referring to pterosaurs and ichthyosaurs as dinosaurs (even though they were contemporaries and their names ended in -saur). Such brabbling can be waved off. The problem occurs when reports and other things refer to soft tissues . Those words make creationists prick up our ears like a Scottish terr

We have been through this origin of the moon stuff before, but they keep gnawing on those old bones. Dipping an old bone in sauce may make it taste better for a spell but it is still an old bone. None of the stories make sense, but naturalists need an origin story, so the best of the worst is the impact theory. The story goes that Earth was a molten blob, and another inconsiderate planet came along and smashed into it. Instead of rendering both planets a mess of cosmic splatters, Earth evolved into what we have today, and some stuff formed the Moon. Yes, secularists believe such things, and NASA is sliding downhill with the rest of the secular science industry. Artist's concept of planetary collision, NASA (Usage does not imply endorsement of site contents) NASA brought this thing to the fore because they were playing with a video game. "That's silly, Cowboy Bob!" I took that term from the article featured below because it fits. Researchers were tinkering with makin

Once again, a uniformitarian (slow and gradual processes over millions of years) assumption was challenged by researchers who wanted to give something a closer look. Volcanoes have a habit of blasting out lava, erupting for centuries all the way down to a year or so. Some eruptions are more like geological indigestion and do not send sonic waves around the world. Where do they get all that magma, anyway? (Magma is molten rock, and when it is sent through the earth's crust, it is called lava.) Geology is a historical science, and there are magma chambers  below the earth's crust. Magma builds up there until eruptions occur. Lava Toe Forming at Kilauea, US Geological Survey / Hawaiian Volcano Observatory (usage does not imply endorsement of site contents) The Yellowstone supervolcano has a pair of sizeable magma chambers that are detected through seismic tomography , which brings to mind the procedures used in medical CT scans. Radiometric dating has failed scientists, who trus

While the prevailing view is that a big rock from space smashed into Earth, causing dinosaur extinction and the rise of the mammals, it was never accepted by all secular scientists in those fields. There are reasons to doubt that it happened . For a spell there, volcanoes were thought to play a big part in dinosaur extinction. It was suggested that an asteroid hit and then volcanic activity took over. Volcanoes were put on the back burner (heh!), but now someone wants to bring them back. Yucatán asteroid impact illustration, WikiComm / Donald E. Davis (NASA, public domain) Evolutionists have not been honest about the facts. Even in their scheme, dinosaurs coexisted with birds and mammals — which causes serious problems for them to promptly ignore. (Also, the possibility of one or more asteroid strikes at the time of the Genesis Flood has been proposed by some biblical creationists, and volcanic activity is also involved!) Secular scientists thought that the impact caused the volcanism

While I get along most of the time with Rusty Swingset, Cliff Swallows, and their workers at the Darwin Ranch, their vexatious antics get tiresome. It seems that atheists and other evolutionists get overwrought about biblical creation science, so they refuse to consider our answers to what they are attacking. In this case, the ice sheets of Antarctica and Greenland. There are several and all are given huge ages in Darwin years. That is considered proof that the biblical timescale is wrong and should be discarded. Not hardly! Greenland ice sheet, Flickr / Bernt Rostad ( CC BY 2.0 ) The main problem with deep time is that facts are first filtered through...wait for it...the narrative. Secularists take interpretation-laden "facts" and use them to support their views. Scientific material that does not support the narrative is ignored, waved away, or adjusted so it fits. Meanwhile, biblical creationists do  have an explanation for the Ice Age, ice sheets, and other cool stuff usi

 Not too long ago, we discussed some interesting things about  Yellowstone National Park . Now we can go just a short distance south and take in  Grand Teton National Park . Folks in the formerly United States may want to experience nature there in autumn. Many things are happening, including migrations of birds and animals. The wildlife is diverse, and foxes are prominent there. Have you ever seen those pictures that say, " Firefox has crashed ", and it shows a fox half buried head first in the snow? Grand Teton National Park, view from Blacktail Ponds, National Park Service /  J. Tobiason  (usage does not imply endorsement) Aside from being funny to us, foxes have a good reason for those actions. They are hunting some critters by their hearing  — plus magnetism. Believers in universal common descent wave off these fox features with a hearty " It evolved ", which fails as an explanation. For that matter, substitute "It happened by magic", and see how well

Scientists decided to cut sign for dinosaurs up yonder at Dinosaur Provincial Park in Alberta, Canada, and found what may be the best-preserved dinosaur yet. They say it was a juvenile hadrosaur, but not which kind of hadrosaur. Mayhaps because most of it is still encased? The researchers had a fanciful story with deep time and how lucky they were to be around when this dinosaur, buried for supposedly seventy-six million years, was becoming visible. Blinded eyes cannot see the light that the tissues could not have lasted that long. Magnapaulia laticaudus (hadrosaur), WikiComm / Dmitry Bogdanov ( CC BY 3.0 ) There are other speculations made that raise questions as well. In fact, some additional recent dinosaur news could prompt questions like, "Why is there a boneyard of assorted dinosaurs if Lethosaurs were supposed to be in a group for safety?" Once again, the evidence points to the global Genesis Flood, which would have provided the necessary rapid burial for such excep

On numerous occasions, secular scientists use words like exciting  as a cover for when discoveries threaten their deeply-held beliefs. It seems that such things are uttered by cosmologists as well as paleontologists. Oops, they did it again. Paleontologists found a fossil of a critter related to the modern aquatic animals in the phylum Cnidaria. From the report,  Auroralumina attenboroughii seems to have been quickly buried by a sweeping deluge of volcanic ash caused by the Genesis Flood. This upsets their notions of when modern animals first evolved. Cnidarians, NOAA Office of Ocean Exploration and Research (usage does not imply endorsement of site contents) Secularists have a heap of trouble dealing with the Cambrian explosion in the first place. Now this thing pops up 20 million Darwin years before the Cambrian explosion, so they have to evosplain it away while calling it "exciting." Well, it's exciting for biblical creationists as well, but for very different reaso

Radiocarbon (Carbon-14) dating is not the thing that believers in deep time use to affirm that Earth is old. This is a common mistake. Instead, C-14 is used to get a handle on the age of something organic. C-14 atoms are unstable, and their therapy is to break down into nitrogen-14, which is a random process (for more on how it works, see " Carbon-14 Dating — Understanding the Basics "). Since C-14 does not last a huge amount of time, it has been somewhat useful to approximate the ages of some things. It is helpful to corroborate it with historical artifacts. Charcoal is almost entirely carbon, Pixabay / Rudy and Peter Skitterians Carbon-14 itself is affected by conditions on Earth. Nuclear bomb experiments decades ago made big changes, but also gave scientists some calibration. However, that is dissipating. In addition, carbon dioxide from fossil fuel emissions is hindering the effectiveness of carbon-14. This will be problematic for old-Earth advocates, who are still deali

The magnetosphere of the earth is, in a way, a simple but profound testimony to the Master Engineer. As science progresses, we are learning more about the various ways it is essential for survival. There are also some surprises about it that have come to light. It is huge. But then, so is the Earth, so it would have to be. Space is a dangerous place, full of cosmic radiation from the solar wind (plasma and charged particles from the sun) as well as galactic radiation from parts of our own galaxy. Without our force shield, life could not exist. Earth's magnetosphere, NASA / Goddard / Aaron Kaase (usage does not imply endorsement of site contents) In addition, the magnetic field is decaying at a known rate. Calculating backward, it should have been gone long ago and Earth would be subjected to all those destructive forces. Believers in deep time know this and try to find rescuing devices, but they can provide no plausible evidence for their speculations. The magnetic field also show

Secular cosmologists and cosmogonists continually look for evidence of deep time out there, thataway , to support their preconceptions. Probes to other planets in our solar system provided data that surprised them. Later probes astonished them, as planets, moons, and so on did not act billions of years old. They also have a fondness for bigger and better telescopes. The Hubble was expected to provide insights into the Big Bang and extra-solar planets. The Big Bang busted, and exoplanets are consistently uncooperative in providing possible homes for life. Cartwheel Galaxy, NASA , ESA, CSA, STScI (usage does not imply endorsement of site contents) The next big thing was the ambitious James Web Space Telescope. There were many things for this expensive project that could have gone wrong, but it's there and working just fine. (Some people expected images that would only be useful to scientists because it worked on infrared, but those were adjusted for the human eye as well.) Even more

Way down Argentina way, paleontologists found themselves a new dinosaur, and named it Meraxes gigas after a critter in George R.R. Martin stories. They were cleaning and studying it for about ten years. The skeleton is said to be more complete than any others of this type. They were so thrilled, this thing was given its own genus. M. gigas  was like T. rex  in body structure, including short arms and a big head. This bad boy was supposedly stomping around about twenty million Darwin years before T. rex  lived. Interesting that tyrannosaurid fossils have not been discovered in the Southern Hemisphere.   Excellent artwork of Meraxes gigas , WikiComm / Carlos Papolio  ( CC BY-SA 4.0 ) As regular readers have seen, evidence for the evolution of dinosaurs is based on stories and graphics, not facts. Riding along the science trail, consistency, logic, and other things dropped with loud plops. The secular non-science miracle of convergent evolution  was invoked to explain big heads and small

The Big Bang has been frequently Frankensteined with rescuing devices when observed data do not fit the deep-time narrative. After all, it has very little resemblance to what was proposed early in the twentieth century. Biblical creationists are not the only ones who reject the Big Bang . Some folks think that, according to their physics, the universe should not even exist ! Others are beginning to ride for the oscillating universe brand again . A new observation may cause more secularists to abandon the Big Bang, or at least do some more Frankensteining to salvage it. Tucana Dwarf Galaxy and 47 Tucanae, ESA / Hubble & NASA (usage does not imply endorsement of site contents) It is thought that there is a supermassive black hole at the center of our own Milky Way galaxy. (Fun fact: Galaxy  is ultimately derived from the Greek word  galaxías , part of which means milk .) A black hole cannot be observed because of its immense gravitational force — not even light can escape. They eat

Uniformitarian (slow and gradual processes) scientists are baffled by the woolly mammoths, those elephants frequently associated with the Ice Age. These critters primarily lived in the upper areas of the Northern Hemisphere. A huge mystery is why they went extinct. Among the millions of remains, those found in permanently frozen soil way up north baffles secularists the most. These areas did not have glaciers, so they are not found in glacier ice. Imaginative speculations about these mysteries have stampeded for many years. Mammoths image, Flickr /  Andrew Wilkinson  ( CC BY-SA 2.0 ) Some people think (and I bought into this years ago) that they were frozen very quickly. A reason people got that idea is because food was still in their stomachs. That concept fails for several reasons, including elephant stomach biology and the fact that they died in different seasons, not all at once. These and other problems for evolutionists are answered by using biblical creation science models of t

Linked below is a technical article dealing with the geology of the Jurassic Coast, but if this child can learn something from it, so can you. Since such articles are written more for people with scientific backgrounds than for folks like us, they contain specialized language. One is geomorphology , the study of changes in land features ( geo and morph ). The predominant word  periglaciation was new to me so I had to look it up . It involves permafrost areas, and uniformitarian (slow and gradual processes over long periods of time) geologists believe that periglaciation, which is the freezing, thawing, and land-shaping that occurred around glaciers, may have formed the dry valleys of the Jurassic Coast. Jurassic Coast, Dorset; Pixabay /  Roman Grac Dry valleys are dry. That is, no rivers flow through them. Secular scientists expect rivers to carve out valleys over long periods of time. They have twenty possible explanations for the dry valleys. Periglaciation is the one they like bes

Over yonder past Deception Pass, you can find the Darwin Ranch. Rusty Swingset is the foreman. He can be pleasant when he is not overworked or moody. Today he is on the prod because of a report on the seafloor spreading. This involves that fun phrase, oceanic plate subduction . The idea that the earth has moving plates on its outer shell, some of them continent-size, began to take hold in the 1960s. When they collide, something has to give. That is where one plate asserts dominance and the other is pushed underneath. What has been observed is troubling to uniformitarian geologists. World Ocean Floor, Library of Congress / H. Berann et al. Uniformitarianism is the secular doctrine that geological processes were slow and gradual over great periods of time. Plate tectonics  is the description of how those plates are moving (the older theory was called continental drift ). Right now, they're moving, subducting, and so on at a slow and constant rate. The predominant view of biblical cre