Piltdown Superman

People try to find value (or validation) in many places, something to make them feel...complete. It is natural to wonder what standard is used to give a person value. Comparing ourselves to other people is common, but it gets discouraging because there is always someone better at something. Computers and robots are better at many things than humans, but those are designed for specific purposes. Artificial intelligence is highly advanced software. It often mimics human thinking, and some folks think it can surpass humanity. Bionic eye, Pixabay /  intographics A person is unlikely to feel inferior to a robot or computer because a comparison is unreasonable — and they do not look like us. AI is being implemented into human images, and perhaps some people are intimidated by something that seems human but is superior as well. Is the worth of a person based on performance or the expectations of what he or she can contribute to society? My wife worked for an agency that supported mentally...

For Darwin's disciples, time is a hero in their evolution stories. It has been pointed out before that evolution requires millions or billions of years to happen. Cosmologists, geologists, and others strive to "find" those years — which are constantly assumed anyway. Consider that geologists tenaciously cling to slow and gradual uniformitarianism, reluctantly admitting rapid processes occur when they are in a corner. Also, the myth that humans and chimpanzee DNA is 98%–99% similar was debunked, but pertinent information was obscured in footnotes  because the timeline was too small. Sulawesi crested macaque, Wikimedia Commons / R.Rahasia ( CC BY-SA 4.0 ), modified at PhotoFunia Obscuring the data, denying the evidence, and even lying outright are not science, old son. Those are tactics to protect the narrative. People are desperate to deny the fact that life was created, and created recently. An old attempt to make evolution plausible (which presupposes deep time) is the ...

The word badlands  is often used to mean that an area is not good for living in, growing crops, and so forth. South Dakota has badlands. The Badlands National Park  takes up the area of three counties. Also in the badlands area is a National Historic Site involving deactivated nuclear missile silos . Nuclear missiles make good days go bad.  So why make a national park? A passel of wildlife call the area home. It also has geologic formations, and the study and removal of fossils needed to be regulated. Badlands National Park, Unsplash / Wesley Sharp Geologists and paleontologists who presuppose millions of years interpret what they observe into an interesting story. It does not hold up. Biblical creationists also has presuppositions, the main ones being that the Bible is true about recent creation and the devastating global Flood. Using Flood geology and models, the formations are explained in a way that makes sense. The eroded cliffs of the Badlands terrain of west centra...

Some biblical creationists do not cotton to the expression "YEC," as young earth creationist  implies that a young earth is the starting point. Rather, we believe that the earth is young because the Bible clearly indicates recent creation; it is true from the very first verse. It may come as a shock to some people, but when reading the creation account, Genesis 1:30 says that everything was vegetarian! If something has nasty sharp big pointy teeth, that does not guarantee it is carnivorous. Many are, of course. Pterosaur eating leaves, made at Bing image generator using DALLE-3 Aside from the spaghetti-loving lioness and other modern exceptions to the "pointy teeth means carnivore" assumption, take a look at the pterosaur that was eating greens. Advanced technology used on a pterosaur fossil showed that it did just that. There were two strong indicators that this was not just an exception or that it scarfed down some green garnish along with meat. What has been di...

The other day, I went to visit Hammond Suisse at his spread and helped with some odds and ends. Day became night. We were taking a break, looking up at the stars. That always stirs me on the inside. Canada geese were honking and flying in formation, darker areas against the night. "Do they use the stars to know where they're going?" he asked. I replied, "Sure do. The Creator gave us the sun, moon, and stars for lots of things including navigation," I replied. "We're not the only ones to take advantage of them." Male bogong moth ( Agrotis infusa ), Wikimedia Commons / Birgit E. Rhode ( CC BY 4.0 ) Down 'Straya way, researchers performed some interesting science on bogong moths. Some of these critters migrate 1,000 km (621 miles) at night. Testing revealed that they navigate by the stars. Since the world turns, so they had to adjust for that as well. It is not a learned or taught behavior, as they do not live long enough to pass along the inform...

Biblical creation science is usually rejected out of hand by misotheists and other believers in dust-to-dispatcher evolution, but they seldom examine whether or not it is internally consistent. Our view covers a great deal of ground because it involves theology as well as science. Creationists maintain that God created everything very good  and creatures were vegetarian in the beginning. What we see now is carnivory, attack and defensive mechanisms (some of which are very impressive), and parasitism. Something must have drastically changed between creation and today. Specifically, a Pacific rattlesnake, USFWS / Miguel Jimenez (PD) The origin of those things admittedly involves speculation, and we have to be consistent with both the Bible and science. (Darwin's disciples evosplain with speculation and arbitrary assertions, then pretend they are offering scientific conclusions.) Creatures need to eat, others do not want to be eaten. It is reasonable that (among other factors), the ...

My wife was a lover of blue jays in our area, and talked to them like they were pets. I told her about their cousins the scrub jays that live out west. Very recently, I learned about green jays which live in southwest North America. Thrill jaybirds by giving them peanuts (in the shell) and hazelnuts. Although the ranges of blue and green jays are separate, a couple got romantic and a hybrid of the blue and green jay was born in Texas. Not just different species, but up one level as different genera . Blue (a), hybrid (b), green (c) jays, WikiComm / B.R. Stokes and T.H. Keitt ( CC BY 4.0 ) Jaybirds are intelligent, along with other corvids like crows, ravens, magpies, and the like. The fact that this hybridization happened brings up the concept of the biblical created kinds . Some folks believe that kind is another word for species, but that is not the case. (Conventional scientists often disagree on definitions of species.) Biblical kinds are similar to the family level in biological...

If you ride toward the left coast of the formerly United States, go through Nevada, then comes California. Yosemite National Park has its eastern boundary bumping up against the Nevada border. Yosemite has Sam , wildlife, mountains, waterfalls, and all that good stuff. Lots of wilderness in its 1,200 square miles. There are many aspects of geology to be studied at Yosemite. Although conventional scientists are mostly locked into deep time and uniformitarianism, there are clues that the granite mountains were formed rapidly. They also display signs of the Ice Age. Yosemite National Park valley, Unsplash / Mick Haupt Worldviews are important. Secular scientists view evidence and try to interpret data through their deep time evolutionary glasses. Biblical creationists believe the Bible is true and it teaches recent creation and the Genesis Flood, so we reject deep time interpretations. If conventional scientists would cowboy up and look at the data without evolutionary presuppositions, t...

Have you ever heard of parallel dimensions, also called the multiverse? The concept is quite ancient. My first introductions to it was a young adult book The Forgotten Door . In it, a boy fell through a hole in his world and ended up in ours — similar, but with noticeable differences. There are various concepts of the multiverse. A common version is that our universe resides in a bubble, and other universes are in their own bubbles in a much larger universe. Since things appear finely tuned, we are the results of dumb luck. Multiverse, geralt (Gerd Altmann) / Pixabay The fine-tuning argument for the design of the universe is frequently used by biblical creationists and Intelligent Design advocates. A couple of atheists on a podcast rejected it, saying that there is no scientific evidence (they must not look around much). Instead, the fact-free fantasy of the multiverse, a rescuing device for the Big Bang and atheism in general, passes for science to them. This is another example o...

Love it, fear it, hate it, artificial intelligence is common nowadays. Customer service is often turned over to AI, but people do not like it . They want to talk to a human. Indeed, the online typed "chat" with AI has seldom resolved my issues and I usually needed to talk to a real person. We use AI with internet searches. The military is programming missiles with it. It seems ironic that many people dislike artificial intelligence, but it is designed to think like humans — or superior to us. Many times it fails. Charles Darwin playing chess with a life-sized silver robot, made at  Bing AI image creator , then modified The AI graphics program refused to give me the picture that I desired, so I had to settle for Charlie Darwin playing chess with a robot. People are rapidly getting irritated at short videos that are on social(ist) media because so many are fake. (I don't mind comedy AI that is not trying to deceive people.) Deep fakes are a real threat used to deceive and ...