Posts

Showing posts from December, 2014

Submerged Britain

Image
Although there is abundant global evidence for the Flood, the British Isles are an area that warrant special study. Uniformitarian assumptions keep leading researchers on dusty trails to dead ends and wrong destinations. Great Britain was completely submerged at one time during the Genesis Flood, but uniformitarian geologists refuse to accept this, and often will often refuse to examine the evidence. For example, Siccar Point in Scotland does not have much information about it because of uniformitarian assumptions; this is the same kind of bad science that has held back research in biology (such as "junk" DNA) and other areas because they think they have things all figured out. FreeImages / Ben Nevis via Carn Mor Dearg Arete / biscuits17 Radiometric dating is no account because of the bad assumptions involved (knowing the beginning "parent" quantities, the decay rates, and the ending "daughter" amounts). Further, those decay rates have been show...

Asteroid Impacts, Lava Flows, and Dinosaur Extinction?

Image
So what was it really that done in them dinos, anyway? Some people claim that "science knows" what happened to them, but "science" knows nothing. After all, science is not a sentient being. Also, even thought the dominant theory among secular scientists is that an asteroid smashed into the earth, that raises more questions and speculations, such as why mammals didn't all die, too. There are actually many guesses as to why the dinosaurs cashed in their chips , and some parts of the "theories" that scientists are not so forthcoming about, as you'll see in the article linked below. Image assembled from components at Clker clipart Some are going to volcanic activity for the demise of the dinosaurs. Or maybe a combination of volcanic activity, long-term decline, and the asteroid. Oh, boy. May as well add in the constipation theory to the volcanoes and fireball from the sky. Or we can use the biblical creationist models of the Genesis Flood, th...

Does Martian Methane Matter?

Image
The gas known as methane is known to exist throughout the universe. Most of the stuff on Earth is made through various biological processes. Methane is in places where it is accepted that there is no life, just as the gas giants in our own solar system. When it was detected on Mars, people got excited, thinking that it may be the product of life. Gale Crater on Mars NASA/JPL-Caltech/University of Arizona (slightly modified) Many evolutionists think that Mars is the most likely place in our solar system outside of Earth to have life. They play the odds, even though the odds have been greatly reduced . (For that matter, the chances against life on Mars are a million to one.) Biblical creationists generally dismiss the idea of life elsewhere in the universe because of scientific reasons against evolution, and more importantly, from scriptural interpretations. The Bible doesn't flat-out say that there's nobody home out there, but that's the most likely interpretations. ...

Ant Beetle in Amber

Image
Aside from being the name of a color, amber is fossilized tree resin. Paleontologists love it, because it trapped insects and things, and preserved them. Nowadays, scientists can examine the fossils. (Amber with bugs in it is also used as jewelry, which strikes me as a mite odd.) A new discovery of an ant beetle in amber is called a "transitional fossil". Really? Credit: Pixabay / PublicDomainPictures Mayhaps one reason there's so much disagreement about "transitional fossils" (supposedly something evolving into something else) is that the definition of the term is so loose. I reckon it means that something looks like maybe it could be similar to something else. This new ant fossil? They're really reaching when they call it "transitional". If ancient history according to Scripture is true, then what should we expect to find in animal fossils? Surely excellent body designs would top the list, closely followed by a lack of "transitio...

Biblical Genealogies

Image
At this time of year, many Christians read our Bibles for the Christmas story. And I reckon many of us read the genealogies in Matthew and Luke (and other ones) very quickly, if at all. I don't know many people who actually like them because we want to get to the "good parts". But they're important nonetheless. Biblical creationists maintain that the Ussher chronologies are reliable , and an indicator that the earth is young (our foundation is God's Word, you know). There are several detailed lists in Scripture. But there are some marked differences between the listings in Matthew and Luke, and mockers who don't bother to research claim that they're contradictory.  Not hardly. The genealogies are there for a purpose, and are reliable. Many Bible readers are tempted to just skip over the long lists of names that sometimes seem to interrupt the narrative of Scripture. These genealogies appear often in Genesis, Chronicles, and other places in the Old ...

Christmas and Creationists

Image
by Cowboy Bob Sorensen Yes, I know that there are many misconceptions about Christmas. Jesus was probably not born on or about December 25. Isn't that reason enough for Christians to ignore celebrating ? Not hardly!  Also, the "three wise men" were unlikely to have shown up at the manger. Instead, it may have been quite a while later. And three? The Bible doesn't say, but it names three gifts. I won't discard them from the creche scene, though. "No room at the inn" implies that the hotels were booked. The "inn" is more accurately rendered "guest quarters" ( the International Standard Version has it right ), or "lodging place" ( Young's Literal Translation and the Holman Christian Standard Bible ). Still, I cowboy up and ride along. I'm not going to fight with people about traditions, or even if Christians are wrong for celebrating Christmas. Here's a corral-load of links with historical information and ...

Equine Evolutionary Exasperation

Image
Evolutionists like to claim that the evolution of the horse is one of the best evidences of biological evolution, and their evidence is in the geologic record. But the evolution of the horse is not what they claim , being loaded with assumptions and bad logic — and the horse was never a good example of evolution. It's not as simple as before, more like a patchwork quilt with things added and others taken away. New developments should make equine evolution stories only fit for telling around the campfire. Vito (left) and Royal are both American horse breeds. Thanks to Michelle Studer for the picture. Once again, genetics is an enemy of evolutionary ideas. Populations, reproductive isolation, "positive selection" and so on need to be addressed. For that matter, equine populations and species show remarkable diversity. In the picture above, Vito (on the left) is a 16-hands tall cart-pulling Standardbred, and Royal is a 30-inch Miniature who can also pull his own cart...

Field Trip to Giant's Causeway

Image
Tas Walker conducted a large field trip to Giant's Causeway, a World Heritage Site in Northern Ireland. A causeway is an elevated road, often above wet ground or water. The legend for this one is that it was built by a giant. Giant's Causeway is interesting not only because of the rock formations, but is studied by geologists. This trip had several participants (and even had a few tourists there join in). Giant's Causeway / Pixabay / Ben_Kerckx Most of the time, all people here is the biased viewpoint of uniformitarian old earth geologists, and other views are rejected as "not science" because they do not support evolutionary ideas. Here, Dr. Walker explained the geological features from a biblical creationist Genesis Flood perspective, and showed how the standard views are often lacking. Edit: Moments after this was published, I found out that today is Tas Walker's birthday. In the off chance he sees this, happy birthday! In September 2014, I visite...

Java Man Flexes Mussels

Image
Java man was discarded as a transitional from between apes and humans a long time ago, and has been mixed in with the Homo   erectus  gang. The original was conjured up from a skull cap and some artifacts that were found on Java over a century ago. Using a great deal of artistic license and just-so storytelling, Java man was put into the evolutionary parade of "what you evolved from" for a while. Those owlhoots can sell you a bill of goods with a sculpture built from mostly imagination, can't they? Anyway, some mussel shells found in the same area have been examined. They are showing activity that is consistent with the other artifacts: precision and ingenuity. Some Java man or people bored holes in the shells, and occasionally engraved them. Not quite the activity that fits with the "Me Og, me stupid and not quite evolved yet" preconceptions of evolutionists. Interest in human origins persists generation after generation, and researchers continue t...

Bill's Un-de-Nye-Able Propaganda

Image
So, Bill Nye wrote a book. Ken Ham, his debate opponent on February 4, 2014, has authored, co-authored and edited dozens of books. Ham writes a lot, nobody bats an eye. Nye writes one book, and everyone loses their minds . The difference is that Nye is a celebrity propagandist for evolution, which he equivocates with "science", and Ham teaches biblical creation science — which is considered "cool" to bash nowadays. Wikimedia Commons / Ed Schipul  ( CC BY-SA 2.0 ) Bill Nye apparently can't stand Ken Ham. In interviews and things, he refers to Ham as "that guy" . The question has been raised that if Nye trounced Ham in the debate like his fans claim, why doesn't he promote the video, which is available to watch free online? Perhaps it's because he misrepresented many things and told several untruths. Or maybe because the debate format itself was appallingly bad. Even so, Ken Ham's not afraid or ashamed of the debate. I had to edit i...

Astrobiology Fantasies Fading Fast

Image
The pseudoscience of astrobiology has less justification for its existence all the time. Using scenarios that look good on paper but have no evidence, astronomers are speculating that Earth's primordial atmosphere may have been blasted away by multiple impacts when the solar system was forming. (I didn't see any explanation about oxygen's presence in "old" rocks, belying the idea of an old atmosphere that was replaced later on.) These are people that believe in the Oort cloud, you know. The "impacts destroy atmospheres" concept does not bode well for planets elsewhere in the universe, even by evolutionary reckoning. Additional observations and speculations are hostile to the future of astrobiology. There are people who use Sagan-esque speculations based on the presupposition that evolution is true, then play the odds that since there are so many stars and galaxies, there must be life out there. That hope has been diminished by 90 percent, due to s...

Can Darwin Give You a Hand?

Image
The human hand is a marvel of engineering. With it, a cowboy can maneuver to throw his lariat, and then hang on once he lassos the critter. Dexterity, sensitivity, strength. Very complex, very useful — there's nothing else quite like it among the animals. Even with admiring the intricacies of the hand, Darwinists still want to give praise to blind, purposeless evolution and to natural selection. Storytelling is passed off as "science". Amazing how their faith keeps them from giving deserved credit to the Creator. As part of a television series called Dissected, Britian’s BBC website has published an article written by the show’s presenter Dr George McGavin titled ‘The incredible human hand and foot’. In it, Dr McGavin outlines several fascinating features of our hand, which gives us a powerful grip but also allows us to manipulate small objects with great precision. This ability sets us apart from other creatures. The muscles in the hand are ‘strangely’ arrange...

Ciliate Makes Evolution Sillier

Image
Once again, genetics is showing how evolution is increasingly ridiculous. Single-celled creatures that were considered "simple" are, upon closer examination, amazingly complex. A ciliate under study has two genomes, and after reproduction, they scramble and rearrange the genomes — with an encryption that would cause envy in IT people. Blind and purposeless? Nope. The complex product of a Creator with a purpose in mind? You betcha! One-cell creatures called ciliates are expanding our knowledge of genome dynamics and complexity. Now a newly sequenced ciliate genome reveals unimaginable levels of programmed rearrangement combined with an ingenious system of encryption. Contrary to the evolutionary prediction of simple-to-complex in the alleged tree of life, one-cell ciliates are exhibiting astonishing genetic complexity. The ciliate Oxytricha trifallax has two different genomes contained in separate nuclei. The micronucleus is dense and compact and used for reproduction...

Dinosaurs, Birds and Making Tracks

Image
Tracks can give some decent information about who or what made them, including size, weight, stride and so on. Fossil footprints are a bit less reliable because they are usually made in some kind of mud. The stuff distorts the footprint, and the fossilization process also adds some distortion. Grallator track / NPS.gov Researchers have a new technique for studying dinosaur tracks. They study birds making tracks in poppy seeds. I reckon that some people can't get past the disputed dinosaurs-evolved-into-birds story, even though not all paleontologists are in agreement with it, dishonesty in museum displays , and the fact that dinosaurs ate birds. Still, they want to use birds. The technique is interesting, but does not support evolution in any way. Nor does it shed light on how fossil footprints formed, and how they lasted for alleged millions of years. That  is best explained by biblical creation Genesis Flood models. By devising a ground-breaking technique to peer beneat...

Archer Fish Takes Aim

Image
Just for fun, this was scheduled to post on the thirteenth of December, 2014 at 10:11 AM Eastern Time. So, for Americans, we can say 10:11, 12-13-14. Little things like that amuse me. One creature that creationists and Intelligent Design proponents have long liked to discuss is the archer fish's hunting abilities . It was already impressive, knowing that it could lurk below the surface of the water and squirt out a jet of water, knocking an insect off a branch into the water below as a guest for lunch. Wikimedia Commons / Pearsman Scott Foresman The argument for design becomes even more impressive with the fact that further research shows that a fair amount of physics is involved with the archer's arching. Too many details are present that can be accounted for by evolutionary means. The secret of the archer fish’s powerful spits has been discovered, and it isn't powerful muscles. The fish that shoots bugs out of the air uses physics, a paper in PLoS ONE decla...

When Did the Very Good Creation Get Very Bad Things?

Image
How do biblical creationists explain some of the things we see in nature? After all, the Bible clearly teaches that everything was created vegetarian in the beginning, and God said his creation was "very good". I suspicion that "very good" supports the contention that living creatures, נפש ×—×™×”, did not experience death for a short time because death was not a part of God's creation. freeimages.com / mexikids Indeed, death entered through sin (Romans 8.19-23a), and death is an enemy (1 Cor. 15.26) — do you reckon that death will be a part of the new creation at the end of it all? Not hardly! So, back to the big questions: From a biblical creationist perspective, where did death, pointy teeth, venom, poison and all that stuff enter into the picture, and can this be addressed without compromising on scriptural truth? There are answers that are theologically sound, and also have scientific support. One of the most common questions asked of Christians is so...

Evolutionary Dating Methods and Stonehenge

Image
Stonehenge has been the subject of study, tourism, speculation, occult lore, the A303 , and so on for a very long time. The consensus is that it was built thousands of years before the time of Christ. But this dating is based on the common practice of evolutionary thinking, which is to reject records and other indications of age that don't square with evolutionary preconceptions. Then they get surprised that "ancient primitives" (not fully evolved yet) had the notions to do some intricate design work and amazing labor. From a biblical creationist perspective, it was built after the Genesis Flood by intelligent people. Stonehenge, circa 1890 / PD Using historical documents (and working around some of the less-than-historical material), plus some other conjectures, we get a much more recent date for the construction of Stonehenge; I wonder if this will affect the dating of the Rollright Stones ? (Evolutionary thinking also influence people to reject the Bible as a his...

Planet-Sized Deflector Shields?

Image
In the early days of space exploration, belts of radiation were detected around Earth. They were named the Van Allen belts. Their structure has been studied for a long time, but scientists were a mite surprised to learn that there is a shield in there that protects Earth from dangerous radiation. It's been likened to stuff from "Star Trek". More and more, we keep seeing that there's just something special about our own planet (such as how Saturn's tilt and orbit affect life here , and that gamma-ray bursts should have already exterminated life on our world according to evolutionary reckoning .) The unique properties of Earth, our solar system and more seem to make the search for life in the great unknown even less likely. Secularists are baffled by this, can't figure out how it evolved, which is a common happening in space studies these days. It is another case of seeing the design of the Creator but refusing to admit it. He has safety measures in place ...

Iceland, Zircons, and Hades-Earth

Image
Some ancient Earth advocates believe that zircons are proof that our planet is old. This is based on uniformitarian ("the present is the key to the past") assumptions and circular reasoning. You can't use zircons to decorate your horse's bridle, though, they're tiny. But tough, since they withstand a lot of abuse from geologic action. Vocano / PD / US National Park Service The idea is that zircons were formed in the Hadean time when Earth was very young and a hot place, and getting bombarded with rocks from space. Based on that story, zircons were compared with other zircons from Iceland, which has volcanic activity. Those zircons were formed under "lower" temperatures, relatively speaking (not that much lower, really). Of course, the press went wild and gave some stories that were probably embarrassing to the geologists. Do zircons reveal anything about early Earth? Not hardly. There is a story, but no plausible model or evidence. Biblical cre...

Disagreements About Natural Selection

Image
The article by Dr. Jonathan Sarfati (linked below) has caused me to rethink my views a mite. Yes, natural selection is something that most creationists agree on. In fact, we agree with evolutionists that it exists. What we do not  agree with is the idea that it is a creative force. Natural selection does nothing of the kind. I've been known to use some of the arguments that natural selection implies a kind of entity or active force to do the selecting. In my experience, some of Darwin's Disciples treat it just that way, personifying both natural selection and evolution. Problem is, there are uninformed evolutionists who still believe that natural selection adds genetic information ; they are out of touch with current trends in evolutionary hypotheses, and act like there is something to do the selecting. Evolution and natural selection are not the same thing, and Darwin's ideas on that have been left behind for the most part. So I'm kind of in the middle here, k...

Letters to a Mocker: Response to Scientism, Part 2

Image
This is the promised conclusion of the last article ( I recommend that you read Part 1 ). To recap, I was included in some spamming, and received permission to show replies to the anti-creation spammer. Last time, I made some introductory comments and presented the first part of his responses. I have edited both of them a little, but the substance is intact. Note that the spammer is dodging the important matters and attacking the person. — Cowboy Bob Sorensen Your response affirms my statements, including the fact that no one can "observe" the unobserved past events. Thus, this is not "meaningless mantras" but a repeated statement of scientific "fact".  I further note that you have addressed none of issues I raised, and provided NO "testable" and verifiable "experimental" science to substantiate any of the necessary stages of the "hypothetical" evolutionary continuum. Nor have you provided any "directly obse...