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Faulty Reasoning in Plant Evolution Stories

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Believers in universal common ancestor evolution want others to believe as they do, so they commence to posturing. Since people are willing to bow down to what they perceive as superior knowledge by scientists, they tend to self-censor any questions. We have seen numerous times that Just-So Stories are passed off as serious research (a recent example is in the  post about electric fish ), but they evosplain much without giving any real science. Since all life supposedly began in the sea, evolutionists must explain how plant life developed on land. Hedge Bindeweed, my photo modified with FotoSketcher Mayhaps the self-censoring of questions and objections is partly because people are not taught critical (logical) thinking skills much nowadays. They might see in an article all the assertions without evidence, and appeal to secular miracles.   Yes, secularists have their own miracles, but they have antipathy toward admitting it, so they rename them. Sound familiar? Atheists and Darwin'

Explaining Dry Valleys on the Jurassic Coast

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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

Electric Fish and Non-Evolution

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Sharks and rays are in the same biological grouping, which gives us some interesting characters. Manta rays are nice to watch as they appear to fly underwater. Unfortunately, rays have a tendency to be unattractive. They have some interesting and unique traits. There are several kinds of fishes that have electric organs, but none of them are Hammond organs used with amplifiers in rock bands. The organs (or structures) play a vital part in the lives of these fish, including sensory and offensive/defensive applications. Spotted Torpedo, Flickr / Philippe Guillaume ( CC BY 2.0 ) Have you ever seen animated cartoons where a character gets zapped by an electric "eel" and they light up while jumping around? Yeah, those fish can pack quite a punch like the spotted torpedo and others, but they are not closely related. Darwin's disciples unconvincingly evosplain how those structures evolved. It's called the Stuff Happens Law , sort of like: "How did it get that way?"

Monkeying Around with the Evolution of Morality

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Rusty Swingset, foreman at the Darwin Ranch near Deception Pass, was all excited about new efforts that are being made to show how morality itself evolved. Those rascals keep trying to find ways of explaining immaterial things using materialistic presuppositions. That is, only naturalism: No Creator need apply. Their efforts do not go well. To have morality, it stands to reason that consciousness itself must exist. Secularists cannot explain the evolution of consciousness . Then there is the puzzle of how morality evolved, but that is not explained either . Are new efforts to explain the evolution of morality faring any better? Puzzled chimpanzee is puzzled, Pixabay / Marcel Langthim , modified at PhotoFunia Before we go any further, a bit of history. While Charles Darwin gets applause for creating evolution ( no, he did not ), Alfred Russel Wallace is sometimes credited as a co-discoverer of evolution through natural selection. What is less known is that, although they maintained a c

Thieving Vegetable-Eating Spider

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Try as they might, Pseudomyrmex ants cannot successfully protect their property from certain invaders. Especially that pesky jumping spider known as  Bagheera kiplingi —  just a moment. If you are like me, you probably skip over the Latin names for the most part, but take a look. Bagheera was the panther in The Jungle Book , which was written by Rudyard Kipling. (He also wrote Just-So Stories , and when Darwinists evosplain things, they sounds like Kipling could have written them.) The author was honored by those names in 1896. But those stinging ants want that raider behind bars. Or something. Bagheera kiplingi image: Wikimedia Commons /  Wayne Maddison  ( CC BY 3.0 ), modified with Ckler clipart This jumping spider doesn't use a web very much, relying instead of stealth, cunning, and other traits. It likes the same vegetable matter that the ants want. Interestingly, the tree they call home gives them food and shelter, and the ants protect the tree. That's an excellent examp

Wing-Flapping Drones and Biomimetics

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The word drone  has many meanings, but is clarified by context. People drone on about boring subjects, a drone can be a mindless person, bagpipes and other instruments have single-note drone pipes, and more. Our focus today uses what is arguably the most common defintion today, that of unmanned vehicles controlled remotely or by computers. (This child has embedded videos by drones (often called quadcopters) on this site several times.) Modern drones are impressive, but some researchers want to improve their performance. Swift, Wikimedia Commons /  Dr. Raju Kasambe ( CC BY-SA 4.0 ) People may recall grainy silent videos of early attempts at flight, some including vehicles that had flapping motions. These may be considered biomimetics , which is drawing inspiration from creation for human applications. Those were on the right track, but the flapping of wings is far more intricate than people can see with the unaided eye. Researchers developed drones that are not flying with propellers.

Bat Wings are Intricately Engineered

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Way back when, I was watching the Adam West and Burt Ward Batman  series and asked my father if Batman could fly. Superheroes do that, right? Well, no version of Batman was a superhero, and he could not fly naturally. He needed something that was intelligently designed. Bats did not need to call Alfred the butler to bring them wings — they were born with them. If one asks a typical Darwinist how bat wings came to be, the response will probably be something along the non-science lines of, "It evolved ." No, thinking people are not interested in naturalistic blind-faith assertions. Flying fruit bat, Flickr / Tambako The Jaguar ( CC BY-ND 2.0 ) Thinking a bit further, it should not be a surprise that an evolutionist would wave off a question about how  the bat got its wings. That's because there is no evidence in the fossil record of bat evolution : A bat is still a bat, as time goes by. Now consider the wing itself. The bat's wings are extremely flexible and capable of

Influencing Great Tit Evolution?

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by Cowboy Bob Sorensen  Not surprisingly, Scientific American  promoted evolution in " Humans May Be Influencing Bird Evolution in Their Backyards ." The study focused on Great Tits in the U.K., and said that evolution is happening in "real time." I like tits as much as the next guy, but will not be seeing Great Tits in these parts. We like the Tufted Titmouse, and Blue Jay, and Northern Cardinal, and Rose-breasted Grosbeak, and... One way these owlhoots stack the deck is by labeling every kind of change as an example of evolution, even though what is observed has nothing to do with goo-to-Great Tit evolution. That's the ol' bait and switch equivocation fallacy . Great Tit, Pexels / John Thorne I rode off the trail a bit, didn't I? Getting back to it now, a long-standing "evidence" for evolution cites the Galápagos Finches (also called "Darwin's Finches", even though he didn't know what they were when he visited there). They h

Immanuel Kant, the Enlightenment, and the Old Testament

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There was a period in certain parts of Europe called (with a passel of hubris in the eyes of this child) the Age of Reason  or the Enlightenment . These things do not simply spring up on their own, but are developed from religious, cultural, intellectual, political, and other cultural views that happened before. The Enlightenment was by no means unified. Some had a fondness for Classical things (Socrates himself was particularly missed by Voltaire). Some wanted knowledge without the senses, others believed knowledge could be achieved by reason alone. This period is sometimes considered a triumph of atheism (indeed, the bloody French Revolution was the culmination). Erasmus Darwin, the grandfather of Charles, was an atheist who lived at this time. His Zoonomia  was unfluential to Charlie . Immanuel Kant by Johann Gottlieb Becker, 1768, modified with PhotoFunia Criticism of the Bible was widespread at this time with efforts to find excuses to intellectualize it away. (For that matter,

The Engineered Nitrogen Cycle

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If asked what we breathe, people will probably say air . When asked for a bit more detail, they may say oxygen.  Yes, we need oxygen and we need it quickly. Pure oxygen is explosive and we can get too much, so it is about twenty-one percent of the atmosphere. Most of the rest is nitrogen. Oxygen is easy to get. Just breathe. Nitrogen is also essential for life, but breathing does not help much. Someone stranded on a desert island can be surrounded by water and die of thirst because salt water is not usable. Similarly, nitrogen needs to be made usable for us. The Top of the Atmosphere, NASA / ISS013-E-54329 (usage does not imply endorsement of site contents) The Master Engineer makes sure we have what we need to survive and thrive (e.g., those fossil fuels some love to hate), and he has given the world the nitrogen cycle . One would probably never guess that lightning striking the ground is beneficial! It activates a process where bacteria convert nitrogen gas into stuff that plants c