Proslogion

Some Perspective on the Deepwater Horizon Disaster

jlwile — Fri, 03 Sep 2010 14:59:32 +0000

Tugboats fight the flames on the Deepwater Horizon oil rig.
(Image in the public domain.)

The disaster at the Deepwater Horizon oil rig was horrendous. Let’s make no mistake about that. Because not enough attention was paid to safety and environmental concerns before the explosion, an estimated total of 4.9 million barrels of oil (210 million gallons)¹ were dumped into the ocean. The oil killed wildlife and will probably negatively affect parts of the environment for years to come. With that said, however, I want to look at the disaster from a scientific perspective. If nothing else, such a perspective will give you a deeper appreciation for the wonderful creation God has given us.

The first thing you need to realize is how much oil seeps into the Gulf of Mexico naturally. Probably the best estimate done to date was published by the National Academies Press. It indicates that about 140,000 tons of oil (about a million barrels) leak into the Gulf of Mexico each year due to natural oil seeps.² So the Deepwater Horizon disaster dumped as much oil as 5 years’ worth of natural seepage.

Now, of course, there are some big differences between the way the Deepwater Horizon disaster spilled oil into the gulf and the way the natural seeps do it. First, the natural seeps release oil into the gulf much more slowly. Second, they release oil into the gulf over a wider area so it is not as concentrated. Third, since no one is trying to stop them, there isn’t all the pollution associated with engineers doing everything they can to stop a leak. As a result, the natural oil seeps do not produce the environmental devastation that the Deepwater Horizon disaster did.

However, because oil seeps naturally into the ocean, you would expect that the ocean has a way to deal with it, and indeed it does. What we have seen already as a result of the Deepwater Horizon disaster tells us just how well the oceans have been designed to deal with oil pollution.

A recent study published online by the journal Science³ examined the dispersed plume of oil that came from the Deepwater Horizon disaster, and the authors note that the ocean’s “natural cleanup crew” is already working to reduce the effects of the disaster.

What is the ocean’s “natural cleanup crew?” Well, when it comes to oil, it is a host of bacteria that love to feed on oil. Remember, oil seeps into the ocean naturally, and that oil needs to be cleaned up. The Designer of this planet understood this, of course, so among the plethora of bacteria He created are those that can digest oil so that it doesn’t build up in the oceans.

When the scientists involved in this study looked at the oil plume, they found all sorts of these bacteria busy digesting away the oil. As the authors state in the abstract:

Here, we report that the dispersed hydrocarbon plume stimulated deep-sea indigenous γ-proteobacteria that are closely related to known petroleum-degraders.

So when they looked at the bacteria in the oil plume, they found ones that are very similar to other bacteria that are known to degrade petroleum. In the end, they say that the oil plume stimulated these bacteria. Of course, this makes sense. Give the bacteria more of what they want to eat, and their population will increase.

The details of the report are even more fascinating. They analyzed the genes of the bacteria found in different parts of the oil plume, and they found that those genes varied depending on the specific hydrocarbons that were in that area of the plume. Remember, oil is a mixture of chemicals that contain hydrogen and carbon (hydrocarbons), and the molecules range from very small to very large. Thus, you might worry that these bacteria are good at degrading specific hydrocarbons but will leave others untouched. That’s not what the researchers found. Instead, they found that different bacteria tend to be better at degrading different hydrocarbons, and each type is found where the hydrocarbons they are good at degrading can be found.

So the researchers conclude:

These results indicated that a variety of hydrocarbon-degrading populations exist in the deep-sea plume and that the microbial communities appear to be undergoing rapid dynamic adaptation in response to oil contamination.

So the “cleanup crew” that was designed to take care of the oceans seems to be doing its job and doing it very well. Indeed, it seems that the “cleanup crew” was even designed to adapt to the specific mixture of hydrocarbons they encounter, so that no matter what type of oil is spilled, it can be taken care of! The paper ends on a very hopeful note:

These results also imply that there exists a potential for intrinsic bioremediation of oil contaminants in the deep-sea, and that oil-degrading communities could play a significant role in controlling the ultimate fates of hydrocarbons in the Gulf.

So at least based on this study, there is a good chance that a large amount of the ecological damage caused by the Deepwater Horizon disaster will be mitigated by the incredible design of the ocean and its inhabitants. Does that let BP off the hook? Of course not! Does that mean we shouldn’t work to keep this kind of disaster from ever happening again? Of course not!

What data like these tell us is that the oceans were made for us, and even when we mess up royally, there are safeguards in place that will mitigate the effects of our mistakes. Let’s be thankful that God has designed our world so well, and let’s do everything in our power to make sure we don’t have to “test” His awesome design again!

REFERENCES

1. Campbell Robertson and Clifford Krauss, “Gulf Spill Is the Largest of Its Kind, Scientists Say,” New York Times, August 2, 2010. available online
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2. Committee on Oil in the Sea, Oil in the Sea III: Inputs, Fates, and Effects , National Academies Press, 2003, p. 70 available online
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3. Terry C. Hazen, et. al., “Deep-Sea Oil Plume Enriches Indigenous Oil-Degrading Bacteria,” Science DOI: 10.1126, 2010, available online with subscription
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More Evidence for Variable Radioactive Half-Lives

jlwile — Wed, 01 Sep 2010 23:41:36 +0000

One of the foundational assumptions of the various radioactive dating techniques that attempt to measure the age of things is that the half-life of a radioactive isotope does not change significantly over the time period being measured. Even though we have been measuring half-lives for only about 100 years, those who want to believe that the earth is billions of years old are forced to assume that over those billions of years, the half-lives of various radioactive isotopes have not changed significantly. As I have pointed out before, this is a terrible extrapolation, and a careful scientist should avoid using it unless there are very good reasons to believe it is justified. As more and more data come in, it becomes more and more clear that there are very good reasons to believe it is not justified.

I previously discussed data that indicate radioactive half-lives are not constant, but over the past year and a half, some new information has come out that lends more strength to the claim. As I discussed previously, two independent labs noticed that the decay rate of certain isotopes were influenced by the distance between the earth and the sun. They produced a paper in 2008 reporting on their findings: the rate at which these isotopes decayed varied in perfect sequence with the changing of the distance between the earth and the sun ¹ Many in the scientific community blamed this on experimental errors such as environmental changes or problems with the detectors that were monitoring the isotopes. Studies published over the past year and a half, however, seem to have ruled out these possibilities and have lent even more credence to the idea that the sun influences radioactive decay rates.

The scientists have ruled out factors such as temperature, atmospheric pressure, and humidity as causing the observed effects ², and they have also shown it is not the result of changes in background radiation.³ As a result, it looks like the original data are not the result of experimental error. The detected variation in radioactive decay is, most likely, a real effect.

In addition to this, the same investigators have shown that the radioactive decay of magnesium-54 decreased during the solar flare of December 13, 2009.⁴ Indeed, as the solar flare caused a monitor detector to register high levels of protons and X-rays coming from the sun, the detectors monitoring the radioactive decay of magnesium-54 showed a distinct reduction in rate. In addition, another “blip” of increased protons and X-rays coming from the sun four days later coincided with another decrease in the rate of the decay of magnesium-54.

So there seems to be a real interaction between the sun and the rate at which certain radioactive isotopes decay. Since these are relatively new results, not a lot of extra investigation has been done, so we don’t know how widespread this interaction is. It could be between the sun and all radioactive isotopes, or it could be between the sun and just a few radioactive isotopes.

Now don’t get all excited. These results are measureable, but they are small. If you are looking for something that shows “billions of years” worth of radioactive decay could occur in a few thousand years, these results will not please you. The observed effect is simply too small to affect radioactive dating techniques in any significant way. There is evidence that what appears to be “hundreds of millions of years” of radioactive decay can occur very quickly, but as you might expect, that evidence is indirect. The experiments I am discussing here are direct evidence that at least some radioactive half-lives can change at least somewhat.

While these studies don’t directly affect the validity of radioactive dating techniques, they nevertheless tell us something very important: We clearly do not understand the process of radioactive decay as well as some would have you believe. Until the original study was published, no one would have believed that the earth-sun distance had anything to do with the rate of radioactive decay here on earth. Even after the study was published, many refused to believe it, blaming environmental issues or detector problems. Now that the follow-up studies produce even more evidence for the reality of the effect, nuclear scientists still have no real idea of what could possibly be causing it. Sure, there are some guesses being bandied about, but none of them make sense given what we know about radioactive decay.

So what’s my point? It’s quite simple. We have only been studying radioactivity for about 100 years. In order to believe radioactive dating techniques that tell us the earth is billions of years old, you have to assume that radioactive half-lives have stayed constant for billions of years. “Don’t worry,” old-earth scientists have assured us, “we KNOW that radioactive decay rates cannot fluctuate based on any natural processes, so there is no reason to doubt the results of these radioactive dating techniques.”

Well…now we KNOW that at least one natural process (something having to do with the sun) does affect radioactive decay rates. What we don’t know is the extent or possible magnitude of the process. We also don’t know what other surprises lie in store for us when it comes to radioactive decay. The extrapolation involved in radioactive dating techniques can only be justified if we KNOW that radioactive half-lives cannot change significantly as a result of natural processes. Since these data make it clear that we DON’T KNOW the extent to which natural processes can cause changes to radioactive half-lives, it is obvious that the extrapolation is simply not justified.

REFERENCES

1. Jere H. Jenkins, et. al., “Evidence for Correlations between Nuclear Decay Rates and Earth-Sun Distance,” arXiv preprint 0808.3283v1 [astro-ph], August 25, 2008. Available online
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2. Javorsek II, et. al., “Power spectrum analyses of nuclear decay rates,” Astroparticle Physics, 34:173-178, 2010.
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3. Jere H. Jenkins, et. al., “Analysis of environmental influences in nuclear half-life measurements exhibiting time-dependent decay rates,” Nuclear Instruments and Methods in Physics Research A, 620:332-342, 2010.
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4. Jenkins, J.H. and E. Fischbach, “Perturbation of nuclear decay rates during the solar flare of 2006 December 13,” Astroparticle Physics, 31:407-411, 2009.
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Speculation Above Data – Standard Fare for “Global Warming”

jlwile — Tue, 31 Aug 2010 20:31:50 +0000

Wallace Smith Broecker, known to friends and colleagues as “Wally Broecker,” has an earned PhD in geology from Columbia University. He is a professor in Columbia’s Earth and Environmental Sciences department and has published more than 450 journal articles in various earth science disciplines. He also has 10 books to his credit, including Fixing Climate: What Past Climate Changes Reveal About the Current Threat–and How to Counter It.

While Dr. Broecker’s list of academic accomplishments is very impressive, he is best known among earth and atmospheric scientists as the man who coined the phrase “Global Warming.” In 1975, he authored a paper entitled, “Climatic Change: Are We on the Brink of a Pronounced Global Warming?” ¹ In that paper, he predicted how temperatures would rise due to increased carbon dioxide emissions.

Interestingly enough, he doesn’t like being called the “father of global warming.” In a recent interview in the journal Science, he says he offered a $200 reward to anyone in his class who could find an earlier reference to “global warming” so that someone else can be given that title. Unfortunately for him, no one could find an earlier reference.²

What I found fascinating about the interview, however, was his admission that the data really don’t support the idea that “global warming” will be a catastrophe.

In response to the question, “What’s the most misunderstood thing about climate change?”, Dr. Broecker said this:

I always tell people that if all we had was a natural record, we would be in a weak position with regard to saying we should do something about carbon dioxide. But our position is really based on physics, which says if you add greenhouse gases to the planet, it’s going to warm…If it doesn’t happen, that would mean that we’re in the dark ages as far as understanding climate.

So the “father of global warming” admits that the natural record (the data) really doesn’t show that increasing carbon dioxide leads to increased global temperatures. Indeed, that is certainly the case. If you look at the most accurate measurements of global temperature since 1978, you see no significant trend in the data:³

Satellite Measurements of Global Temperature since 1978

So why does the father of global warming believe that global warming is such a serious threat to our well-being? He says that physics tells us it is. The problem is that physics does not tell us that. Physics tells us that if we increase the amount of carbon dioxide in a container, the container will warm in the presence of sunlight, and the more carbon dioxide that is added to the container, the warmer it will become.

Dr. Broecker seems to be confusing the earth with a container. But there are some huge differences between earth and a container, and the presence of negative feedback mechanisms is very important among them. As I have already noted, the earth is amazingly well designed, with lots of negative feedback mechanisms that keep it hospitable to life even when important “operating parameters” (like the amount of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere) change. So what the father of global warming (and many others who overhype the issue) is missing are the many negative feedback mechanisms that are built into the earth. Only by ignoring such mechanisms can you say that physics tells us more carbon dioxide means higher global temperatures.

The only thing physics tells us is that more carbon dioxide means more heat trapped in the atmosphere. If nothing else happened as a result, then of course global temperatures would increase. However, we know that there are negative feedback mechanisms associated with climate, and that is borne out by the fact that satellites see no significant warming trend despite thirty years of increasing carbon dioxide levels.

In the end, then, the father of global warming is telling us to ignore the data and concentrate on speculations that are based on an incredibly naive view of atmospheric physics. Sorry – I prefer to make decisions based on the data, not naive speculations!

REFERENCES

1. Wallace S. Broecker, “Climatic Change: Are We on the Brink of a Pronounced Global Warming?,” Science 189:460-463, 1975.
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2. “Three Q’s,” Science 329:613, 2010.
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3. Global Hydrology and Climate Center, University of Alabama, available online
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Those Bones Keep Looking Younger and Younger

jlwile — Sat, 28 Aug 2010 19:02:10 +0000

Fossil mosasaur that contained soft tissue. (Image from the PloS One article mentioned below)

Mosasaurs are aquatic reptiles that are (as far as we know) extinct today. According to evolutionists, they went extinct about 65 million years ago. Regardless of when they went extinct, there are several fossils of these large creatures, and some of them are quite well preserved.

On August 9, 2010, PloS One published a paper by Johan Lindgren and his colleagues, and it discusses the fossilized remains of a mosasaur that belongs to genus Platecarpus. The fossil is exceptional because it is largely intact, the bones are well-articulated, and it contains soft tissue.

Of course, soft tissue in dinosaur fossils is not new. As I mentioned in a previous post, Mary Schweitzer and her colleagues stunned the world in 2005 by discovering soft tissue in a Tyrannosaurus rex femur that is supposed to be 65 million years old. Some scientists tried to discredit the claim, but it held up under scrutiny. In addition, other fossils that are supposedly millions of years old have been found to contain soft tissue.

So why am I blogging about this particular find of soft tissue in a fossil that is supposedly about 80 million years old? Because the details found in the soft tissue are quite remarkable.

The soft tissue to which I refer is described by the authors as “purplish matter,” and they conclude that it is composed of remnants from the mosasaur’s retina, which is the delicate, multilayered, membrane that lines the inner eye and houses the necessary tissues for sensing light and relaying what is sensed to the optic nerve. How do they come to this conclusion?

First, they make it clear that this soft tissue could not have been produced by bacteria. If you read my previous post about Mary Schweitzer’s find, you will recall that scientists who didn’t want to believe that a 65-million-year-old fossil could contain soft tissue tried to claim it was actually a biofilm made by bacteria. Well, the authors nip that dodge in the bud by stating quite clearly that the remains:

…are embedded inside the fossilized tissues (probably representing their in situ position) rather than forming a superficial coating, as would be expected had they instead been part of a microbial biofilm.

Second, the main reason the authors think the soft tissue comes from the retina of the mosasaur is that it contains small bodies that have all the characteristics of retinal melanosomes. What are retinal melanosomes? They are organelles found in cells that make up part of the retina. Their job is to hold a pigment called melanin, which absorbs light. The melanosomes don’t help the retina detect light; instead, they protect the retina from certain dangerous chemical reactions that can occur when there is a lot of light (which is focused on the retina) and oxygen (which is found in the capillaries that nourish the retina’s cells).

Not only do these meolanosome-like bodies appear right where they should appear if the soft tissue is, indeed, from the mosasaur’s retina, but they don’t appear in other parts of the body. According to the authors:

Moreover, melanosome-like microstructures were not found in any other part of the mosasaur examined under scanning electron microspectroscopy (SEM), including scales, visceral traces, intestinal content, surrounding matrix, and the film that defines the former body outline.

So the case seems pretty strong. These authors have found what appears to be the remains of retinal tissue in a fossil that is supposed to be 80 million years old. As I mentioned in my previous post, laboratory studies seem to indicate that soft tissue decays in a matter of 50 weeks or so, and it was thought that proteins would break down after only 30,000 years, unless special circumstances were present. However, here we have complex cellular organelles in a fossil that is supposed to be about 80 million years old. The very fact that these organelles are present indicate that this fossil isn’t anywhere close to 80 million years old. Instead, given that melanosomes contain proteins, the fossil is probably less than 30,000 years old.

As I have said before, it is a wonderful time to be a young-earth creationist!

Are Autism Rates Really Rising?

jlwile — Thu, 26 Aug 2010 19:32:50 +0000

In a previous post, I discussed the rise in autism that seems to be occurring in the United States. In that discussion, I made it clear that genetically-based diseases can increase over time. One commenter (Eric) suggested that autism is not rising all that rapidly in the United States. This prompted a spirited exchange, which I enjoyed, and I hope Eric enjoyed as well.

The comments on that article are now closed, but Eric recently commented on another post to add a link related to that previous discussion. It is an excellent link, so I want to share it in a post that clearly relates to autism.

In essence, the author (an academic clinical neurologist at Yale) is skeptical that there is any significant increase in autism itself. Instead, he thinks that broadened diagnostic criteria for autism as well as increased surveillance have caused the number of diagnosed cases of autism to increase, but the actual number of autism cases has not increased much over the years. We are just doing a better job of diagnosing it, watching for it, etc.

You should read the article and see what you think. I personally think the Bearman studies he mentions (it was a series of studies, not just a single study – see this New Scientist article) are the most convincing, and they argue that there is a real increase in the rate of autism. Even the author of the original link seems to be willing to admit that increasing parental age (which I highlighted in my previous post) is causing at least some real increase in the prevalence of autism.

How Do Bacteria Smell? Very Well!

jlwile — Wed, 25 Aug 2010 14:54:36 +0000

One of the fundamental ideas behind the evolutionary hypothesis is that organisms fall in a range from “simple” to “complex.” The organisms that are supposed to be simple, like bacteria, are assumed to be more reflective of the kinds of organisms that existed on earth a few billion years ago. As the evolutionist waves the magic wand of time, it is assumed that those “simple” organisms slowly evolved into “complex” organisms. What we see on earth today, then, is a range of complexity in nature. “Simple” organisms (like bacteria) are reminiscent of the first kinds of organisms that existed on earth, and “complex” organisms (like mammals) are the products of the long, slow process of macroevolution.

Of course, this goes counter to the creationist view. In the creationist view, organisms do not fall in a range from “simple” to “complex.” Instead, as my coauthor and I stress throughout our biology book, there is no such thing as a simple organism. Even organisms like bacteria are marvelously complex. Thus, if there is a range of complexity in creation, it is from “really complex” to “ridiculously complex.”

The more we learn about science, the more it confirms the creationist view of complexity. Organisms that evolutionists call “simple” are actually amazingly complex.

The most recent installment in this march to confirm the creationist view comes from Reindert Nijland and J. Grant Burgess. ¹ They studied the bacterium Bacillus licheniformis. It is a common bacterium found in the soil and on bird feathers.² It is a very useful bacterium, because it is easily cultured to produce an enzyme (protease) that breaks down proteins into water-soluble chemicals. That enzyme is widely used in biological washing powders.³

In the study, the authors learned that when ammonia is present, these bacteria form a slimy colony. It is assumed this happens because bacteria eat things like ammonium sulfate and convert them to ammonia. As a result, the presence of ammonia indicates that bacteria are eating, which signals the fact that food is present in the environment. Since these bacteria feed more effectively as a slimy colony than as a bunch of individuals, they tend to form the slimy colony when they detect ammonia. So…if you add ammonia to a dish that has some of these bacteria in it, the bacteria form a slimy colony in preparation for a feast.

Interestingly enough, however, the researchers found that you don’t have to add ammonia to the dish in order to get this response. Instead, if you put a dish containing only ammonia next to a dish that contains the bacteria, the bacteria will still form a slimy colony. In addition, if you put a dish of bacteria farther away from the ammonia-containing dish, the bacteria will still form a slimy colony, but not with the vigor of the bacteria close to the ammonia-containing dish.

What does this tell us? It tells us that the bacteria are sensing the airborne molecules of ammonia that are drifting out of the ammonia-containing dish and wafting to the bacteria-containing dishes. The farther the dish of bacteria is from the ammonia, the fewer airborne molecules reach the bacteria, and the weaker their response is. Nevertheless, the results are clear – bacteria are detecting airborne, food-related molecules.

What do we call it when organisms detect airborne molecules? We call it smelling. Thus, these bacteria are actually smelling the ammonia. Of course, bacteria are assumed to be so “simple” that no one expected them to have a sense of smell (which is typically called “olfaction”). Neverthelees, this paper shows that at least these bacteria do, indeed, have a sense of smell. That’s why the paper is entitled “Bacterial olfaction.”

One of these days, evolutionists will be forced to admit that there is no such thing as a simple organism. Until that day, creationists will just have to keep pointing out every new advance that illustrates this simple fact of nature.

REFERENCES

1. Reindert Nijland and J. Grant Burgess, “Bacterial olfaction,” Biotechnology Journal 2010, available online
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2. Frank B. Gill, Ornithology, W. H. Freeman (third edition), 2006, p. 95
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3. Andrew Allott, Biology for the IB Diploma: standard and higher level, Oxford University Press, 2001, p. 15
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Free Webinar

jlwile — Tue, 24 Aug 2010 13:12:44 +0000

Webinars are seminars given on the internet, and they are wonderful things. You can attend them right in your own home, you don’t have to get dressed up (or even dressed) to attend, and you can ask questions of the speaker in relative anonymity. I will be doing a free webinar through the The Home Scholar on Tuesday, September 21 at 7:00 PM Eastern. The title is:

Homeschooling – Discovering How and Why it Works

In the webinar, I will be discussing studies (new and old) that show how incredibly effective homeschooling is, and I will also speculate on why it produces such excellent students.

Many homeschoolers find this talk encouraging, and others find it very educational. If you have the time, you might want to consider attending. You can sign up here.

Quivering Daughters

jlwile — Sun, 22 Aug 2010 19:50:40 +0000

The book cover for Quivering Daughters

This book is nothing short of amazing. It was written by a woman who grew up in the “patriarchy movement,” which is gaining quite a bit of popularity in the homeschooling community. In essence, the patriarchy movement suggests that if you follow a basic formula that includes parental authority, emphasis on family, homeschooling, and adherence to the “divinely-ordained” roles of the man as the head-of-the-house/breadwinner and the woman as the keeper-of-the-house/helpmeet, then you will be rewarded with a legacy of godly children. Typically, those in this movement say that children are a blessing, and God should determine how many children you have. Thus, many in this movement have very large families. Since Psalm 127:3-5 says, “Behold, children are a gift of the LORD…Like arrows in the hand of a warrior…How blessed is the man whose quiver is full of them,” people will often refer to such families as “quiverfull” families, and that’s where the title of this book comes from.

Why is this book nothing short of amazing? Actually, there are several reasons. First, it is really intended for a very limited audience: women who grew up in the patriarchy movement and were harmed by it. Please note the “and” in that sentence. While the author was clearly harmed by the patriarchy movement, she does not contend that all women are harmed through it. This is actually one of the amazing aspects of the book. The author has every right to feel angry towards the patriarchy movement and those who promote it, but she doesn’t express any anger at all. To be sure, she discusses in several places why the patriarchy movement is unBiblical, but she never once condemns the people leading it or participating in it. I find that quite laudable.

The book is also amazing because even though it is intended for a very limited audience, it actually affected me in a profound way. Being neither a woman nor someone who grew up in the patriarchy movement, I still learned a great deal from it. In fact, I strongly recommend it to all fathers who have daughters. I truly wish this book had been around a long time ago. If I had been able to read it before I adopted my little girl, I would have been a better father to her.

The book is essentially the author’s story of the pain she experienced growing up in a patriarchal regime. However, it is also filled with quotes and stories from other “quivering daughters.” The way she weaves her story with the experiences of other women like her is almost mesmerizing.

It starts out a bit dry, with an academic essay by Rachel D. Ramer on the patriarchy movement. It discusses the general characteristics of people in the patriarchy movement as well as some of its more disturbing aspects. Thankfully, Ramer makes a clear distinction between homeschoolers and patriarchal families. While all members of the patriarchal movement are homeschoolers, not all homeschoolers are a part of the patriarchal movement.

With the dry stuff out of the way, the author dives into some very tragic, very personal issues. Using her own diary entries from when she was a child, she details some of the horrible things in her life that were brought on by living in a patriarchal family. Continuing the theme of working through the pain without condemning those responsible, she says that the diary itself is a reminder of the love she has for her father and that it is the best gift she has received from anyone, except God and her husband.

Once you have gotten a good idea what it was like for her growing up, she fast forwards to an episode in her adult life that brought me to tears. I sat on a beach chair on the shore of Lake Michigan and wept like a schoolboy when I read this:

A few years ago, I found an old family picture taken when I was thirteen. I stared at myself, at my shapeless face, awkward body, weird clothes, frizzy hair, and red cheeks. I couldn’t stop the thought – it lurched from some deep, raw place and assaulted her, the girl in the photo, with a lifetime’s accumulation of disgust.
You. Are. So. Ugly. (p. 23 – emphasis hers)

Think about that for a moment. Almost every girl thinks she is ugly (at least for a time) while she is growing up. However, as adults, most grow out of that idea. This young woman’s childhood was filled over and over with the lesson that she was an ugly, worthless girl. Indeed, this was drilled into her so deeply that even as an adult, she could not think of anything else when looking at a childhood photo. I would not wish that kind of childhood on my worst enemy.

But wait a minute. Patriarchal families constantly say that children are a blessing. Why would a family that sees children as a blessing treat this woman so badly when she was a child? She addresses that question with keen insight:

While Quiverfull teaching exalts children as supreme blessings, it doesn’t reveal its grim underside – the silent reality that takes place in hundreds of homes every day and of which I learned: I am only a blessing when I am useful, helpful, obedient, kind, unselfish, submissive, compliant, and responsible. And only these kinds of blessings deserve love… (p. 13)

I grieve for this young woman and those like her. Children are definitely a blessing, no matter what. They also deserve unconditional love.

Now I told you that this book profoundly affected me. It wasn’t just that it brought tears to my eyes on more than one occasion. It affected me on a much more serious level. While the author is telling her story, she gives a lot of good advice about what daughters need in order to thrive. For example, she says:

Want to know how a daughter should be treated? A little girl should feel safe. She should feel that her mind, body, and heart are all tucked in at night…A little girl should feel wanted…and not be required to learn survival and fear as a constant way of life. A little girl should be encouraged, not broken. (p. 153)

I honestly wish I had the benefit of this author’s wisdom before I adopted my little girl. Even though I probably did a lot of what she suggests simply because I deeply love my daughter, if I had been consciously aware of a little girl’s needs in the vivid way this author describes them, I probably could have done a better job.

Here’s the bottom line. When I got done reading this book, I dried my eyes, screwed up my courage, and called my little girl, who is now an adult. I apologized to her for any mean thing I said to her while she was growing up, and I apologized for anything I might have done to make her feel unwanted, unsafe, unloved, or broken. A little girl is a precious thing, and like most precious things, she needs to be handled with extreme care. I think I would have been a bit more careful with my own daughter if this book had been around 17 years ago.

Will Evolutionists Ever Learn?

jlwile — Wed, 18 Aug 2010 13:48:16 +0000

Cover of the June 25, 2010 edition of the journal Cell, which put the final nail in the coffin of the idea that the primary cilium is useless.

Evolutionists are very fond of the idea that there are useless things scattered throughout the living world. Darwin suspected that there were many, many useless organs in several members of the animal kingdom. After all, since he thought “higher” animals evolved from “lower” animals, he assumed that some of the important organs in the “lower” animals would serve no function in the “higher” animals. Nevertheless, since those organs were already there in the “lower” animals, they might continue to appear in the “higher” animals, because making a useless organ was not enough of a disadvantage for natural selection to remove it. He likened such useless organs to the silent letters in a word – they tell you things about the word’s origin but serve no function. In the same way, a useless organ serves no purpose for the animal, but it does tell you about the animal’s evolutionary ancestors.

Since Darwin, evolutionists have continued to point to useless organs and even useless DNA that supposedly litter the living world. The only problem is that annoying functions keep being discovered for these supposedly useless things. Up until about 2004, it was confidently taught that the human appendix is useless, but now we know it serves a vital function. It was once thought that large sections of the genomes of most organisms have “junk DNA” that serves no useful purpose, but time and time and time again, DNA that was confidently described as useless has been shown to have important functions. Evolutionists have been wrong time and time again when it comes to claiming that a given structure in creation is useless.

Well…we now know that evolutionists were wrong…AGAIN.

In 1898, Swiss anatomist K.W. Zimmerman was studying kidney cells and noticed a structure that looked like a tiny “hair” jutting out of each cell. Now it’s not unusual for some cells in the body to have “hairs” jutting out of them. They are called cilia (the singular is cilium), and they generally beat back and forth to produce motion. For example, the cells that line your bronchial tubes (which carry air to your lungs) have cilia. Those cilia beat back and forth to push mucus up the tubes. The mucus traps foreign particles from the air so that those particles don’t get into your lungs, and the cilia push the mucus up the tubes so you can swallow it to get rid of it.

The cilium that Zimmerman found in each kidney cell was odd, however. It didn’t move. It became known as the primary cilium, and as time went on, it was shown that almost all the cells in the human body (as well as almost all the cells in all mammals) have a primary cilium.

What did scientists think was the function of the primary cilium? They thought it had no function. Since evolutionists think that our ancestors were once single-celled organisms, and since many single-celled organisms use cilia to move around, it was thought that the primary cilium was simply a leftover vestige of evolution. It was supposedly a structure that was in our ancestors (single-celled organisms) and continued to be produced by our cells, even though it serves no purpose. Indeed, as one scientific paper states:

It was previously thought that primary cilia were vestigial remnants of a free-swimming unicellular predecessor ¹

That very paper ended up casting doubt on the evolutionary interpretation of the primary cilium. Not surprisingly, the more scientists learned about the primary cilium, the more they saw how wrong the evolutionary interpretation is.

Studies that focused on primary cilia in different kinds of mammalian cells showed that the they act as “antennas,” sensing signals that allow the cells to adjust what they are doing so as to help the organism as a whole.² As time went on, studies began to link abnormalities in primary cilia to diseases such as cystic kidney disease.³

Well, a recent study ⁴ has really put the last nail in the coffin of the idea that the primary cilium is a vestigial remnant of evolution. In this study, Jin and colleagues studied genes that have been implicated in Bardet–Biedl syndrome (BBS), a genetic disease that is fairly rare. It comes with a host of nasty symptoms, including blindness, obesity, and kidney malfunction.

They find that the proteins produced by these genes are involved in moving other proteins around in the primary cilum. If the BBS-related proteins are abnormal due to genetic mutation, they can’t do their job, and as a result, the primary cilium doesn’t work properly. Because the primary cilium doesn’t work properly, all sorts of cellular work doesn’t get done. For example, retinal cells cannot detect light properly, which eventually leads to the blindness mentioned above. The authors note that since a wide variety of symptoms can be linked to problems with the primary cilium, it is probably a very important part of each cell.

In the end, it is hard to imagine how the evolutionary interpretation of the primary cilium could have been more wrong. If evolutionists were just willing to learn the simple idea that God doesn’t make junk, they wouldn’t be so wrong about so many things.

REFERENCES

1. C. Anthony Poole, Michael H. Flint, and Brent W. Beaumont, “Analysis of the morphology and function of primary cilia in connective tissues:A cellular cybernetic probe?” Cytoskeleton 5:175–193, 1985
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2. Veena Singla and Jeremy F. Reiter, “The Primary Cilium as the Cell’s Antenna: Signaling at a Sensory Organelle” Science 313:629-633, 2006
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3. Bradley K. Yoder, “Role of Primary Cilia in the Pathogenesis of Polycystic Kidney Disease” Frontiers in Nephrology 18:1381–1388, 2007
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4.Hua Jin, et. al., “The Conserved Bardet-Biedl Syndrome Proteins Assemble a Coat that Traffics Membrane Proteins to Cilia” Cell 7:1208-1219, 2010
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The Old Schoolhouse Expo

jlwile — Tue, 17 Aug 2010 20:07:20 +0000

On October 4-8, The Old Schoolhouse Magazine will be hosting its second online convention, and I will be one of the speakers. It’s not the first time I’ve done an online convention, but I am very excited about it. In order to promote the convention, they are having a couple of “preview” events, and I am speaking at the one on August 24th. The topic is one that I have not spoken on before, but it is very near and dear to my heart:

Be Open-Minded, but Don’t Let Your Brain Fall Out!

This topic is very important to me because if I had not been open-minded, I would not be a Christian today. I was an atheist at one time, but as a result of being taken to an “Atheism versus Christianity” debate, I ended up realizing that I had been incredibly closed-minded regarding my atheism. Thus, I opened my mind and read some books by Christian thinkers, and it changed me forever! I am truly a new creation, but only because I decided to open my mind and read what people I disagreed with said about serious issues.

Over the years, I have tried to apply that same kind of open-mindedness in all I investigate. I honestly believe that’s why I am a young-earth creationist. I could easily have been a theistic evolutionist if I had simply accepted uncritically what my teachers and my textbooks told me. However, because I was willing to consider views that were not necessarily in line with “mainstream” science, I ended up coming to the conclusion that young-earth creationism is the most reasonable scientific position to hold.

So open-mindedness is quite important to me, but at the same time, it brings along a tension. To exercise my open-mindedness, for example, I read a variety of works, including those by atheists. While most atheists (like Richard Dawkins, for example) are rather easy to dismiss because of their irrationality, every now and again, I read atheists like Bradley Monton who make me uncomfortable, as they bring up some excellent rational points.

My goal, then, is to be open-minded, but not so much that my brain actually falls out, and I end up believing everything I read. How do I accomplish that? Come find out!