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Young-Earth Creationist Leads Award-Winning Research Team

The bombardier beetle is an amazing animal. It has a fully-functional chemical weapon that it uses to protect itself. Inside its body are two chambers that are separated by a muscle-controlled valve. In the first chamber, the beetle makes and stores hydrogen peroxide and hydroquinone. In the second chamber, it makes and stores two enzymes. When the beetle feels threatened, it opens the valve between the two chambers, which allows all the chemicals to mix. The enzymes catalyze a reaction between the hydrogen peroxide and hydroquinone, resulting in the production of a very hot gas. The gas builds up pressure and is then released, shooting from the abdomen and hitting whatever the beetle thinks is a threat. As shown in the video above, this weapon is quite effective.

The bombardier beetle has fascinated young-earth creationists for quite some time, because its chemical weapon is best understood as a product of design. This fascination caused Dr. Andy McIntosh, a young-earth creationist, to lead his research team at the University of Leeds to develop an artificial system that mimics the bombardier beetle’s weaponry. What was the result? New technology that received the 2010 Outstanding Contribution to Innovation and Technology award at the Times Higher Education awards ceremony in London.

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Doubt Can Aid Faith

Robert Boyle (1627 – 1691) is generally considered to be one of the founders of modern chemistry. He took the study of how matter changes out of the mystical realm of alchemy and turned it into a scientific endeavor. He is known by nearly every freshman chemistry student as the author of Boyle’s Law, which tells us how a gas behaves when its pressure changes. In addition to being a brilliant scientist, he was also a devout Christian, and he saw the pursuit of science as a way of learning more about the majesty of God. Here is how he put it:¹

“…when, in a word, by the help of anatomical knives, and the light of chymical furnaces, I study the book of nature and consult the glosses of Aristotle, Epicurus, Paracelus, Harvey, Helmont, and other learned expositors of that instructive volume, I find myself oftentimes reduced to exclaim with the Psalmist, How manifold are Thy works, O Lord! In wisdom hast Thou made them all!”

Even though he was a firm believer in Christ, he was an advocate of doubt. In fact, his most famous work is a book entitled The Sceptical Chymist. In addition to his published works, he kept of series of “work diaries” in which he wrote down his daily thoughts. One of the entries reads as follows:²

He whose Faith never Doubted, may justly doubt of his Faith.

We don’t know whether this is something Boyle came up with on his own or whether he read it and thought it was worth noting in his diary. Regardless, we know it was important enough to him that he wanted to record it. This seems to indicate that Boyle thought doubt was not only a necessary part of science, but it was also a necessary part of the Christian faith.

Why am I writing about Robert Boyle and doubt? Because it relates to the results of a recent survey of college students in the United States.

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Antibiotic Resistance is Not a Modern Phenomenon

Antibiotic resistance in bacteria is often cited as evidence for evolution. For example, in his book, The Greatest Show on Earth: The Evidence for Evolution, Richard Dawkins says:¹

Many bacterial strains have evolved resistance to antibiotics in spectacularly short periods. After all, the first antibiotic, penicillin, was developed, heroically, by Florey and Chain as recently as the Second World War. New antibiotics have been coming out at frequent intervals since then, and bacteria have evolved resistance to just about every one of them.

However, we’ve known for quite some time that at least some antibiotic resistance did not evolve after the production of antibiotics. Instead, it existed before antibiotics were developed. For example, in 1988, bacteria were recovered from the frozen bodies of Arctic Explorers who died in 1845, long before antibiotics had been produced. When the bacteria were revived, some were found to be already resistant to certain antibiotics.² So contrary to Dawkins’s claim, it is not at all clear that bacteria have evolved resistance to just about every antibiotic. Some possessed resistance before antibiotics were ever made

A recent study published in the journal Nature confirms this fact at a very basic level.

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The Inquisition Strikes Again!

On August 4, 2004, an article by Stephen C. Meyer appeared in a rather obscure peer-reviewed journal entitled The Proceedings of the Biological Society of Washington,¹ and it quickly ignited a firestorm of controversy. Why? Did it contain fabricated data? No. That kind of thing doesn’t produce nearly as much controversy. One study, for example, says that 14% of scientists have observed their colleagues fabricating, falsifying, and modifying their data, and 72% have observed their colleagues engaging in questionable research practices.² Did the article contain egregious errors? No. While the article has many detractors, their criticisms were leveled more at the fact that it was published than at the content of the work.

So what caused the controversy? This peer-reviewed article not only had the audacity to argue that the current view of evolution can never hope to explain life as we see it today, it actually dared to say:

An experience-based analysis of the causal powers of various explanatory hypotheses suggests purposive or intelligent design as a causally adequate–and perhaps the most causally adequate–explanation for the origin of the complex specified information required to build the Cambrian animals and the novel forms they represent. For this reason, recent scientific interest in the design hypothesis is unlikely to abate as biologists continue to wrestle with the problem of the origination of biological form and the higher taxa.

That’s what caused the controversy. This well-reasoned paper, full of serious data-based arguments, was an attack on the scientific orthodoxy of the day and dared to argue that intelligent design was a reasonable scientific alternative. As a result, the Inquisition was mobilized. In the end, the publisher of the journal released a statement repudiating the article, the editor of the journal was branded a heretic, and he was then targeted for retaliation and harassment. After the dust had settled, the biological community breathed a sigh of relief, because orthodoxy had been successfully enforced. Another editor would surely think twice before allowing a well-reasoned argument for intelligent design to be published in his or her peer-reviewed journal, regardless of its quality.

Well, it seems that biology isn’t the only scientific field where orthodoxy is enforced by the Inquisition.

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Why Do Muscles Hurt One or Two Days After Weightlifting?

An infrequent but very entertaining commenter on this blog, Black Sheep, asked the following question:

In an effort to drop some pounds, I’ve started focusing on building muscle (instead of endurance) and therefore lifting weights. I understand the basic principle of why muscles get sore, but for me, and most people I know, 2 days after the work out seems to be FAR more painful than the day after. As with my other question, why is this, and is there anything I can do to prevent it?

I would like to use this blog post to answer her question.

There are three basic reasons why muscles get sore in response to exercise. First, there is a buildup of acid in muscles when they are forced to burn energy very quickly. The muscle soreness you experience during a workout is usually the result of acid buildup, but it quickly goes away as the acids are flushed out of your muscles.

The second reason is a bit more long-term. Your muscles work by contracting. In order for your muscles to contract, calcium must be imported into the muscle cell. When the muscle relaxes, the calcium leaves the cell. So repeatedly contracting and relaxing your muscles (which is what you do when you exercise) causes calcium to continually enter and leave the cell. This produces a swelling in the muscle tissue, and that causes inflammation. In addition, this constant import and export of calcium serves as a trigger for the cell to break down proteins and rebuild them so that they can do more. This ends up building up the muscle, but at the cost of some pain.

Neither of these effects explains what is happening in Black Sheep’s case, however. Black Sheep is experiencing Delayed Onset Muscle Soreness (DOMS), and it is the result of a completely different process.

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Good News for the UK

wlc — William Lane Craig (click for credit)

William Lane Craig is Research Professor of Philosophy at Talbot School of Theology. He has a formidable intellect, which is best on display during debates. In fact, noted atheist Sam Harris once described Craig as, “the one Christian apologist who has put the fear of God into many of my fellow atheists.” It’s no wonder that when William Lane Craig announced that he wanted to have a debate during his tour of the UK, most atheists ran for the hills.

Richard Dawkins, for example, was asked to debate Dr. Craig, and he refused. When asked why, his response was:

I have always said when invited to do debates that I will be happy to debate a bishop, a cardinal, a pope, an archbishop – indeed, I have done both, but that I don’t take on creationists and I don’t take on people whose only claim to fame is that they are professional debaters. They’ve got to have to have something more than that. I’m busy.

This answer, of course, shows that his only real reason for not debating Dr. Craig is that he knows he would get destroyed in such a debate.

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Christian Educators – Heed This Survey!

I was sent a link to an interesting article written by Ruth Lukabyo of Youthworks College in Sutherland, New South Wales (Australia). In it, she reports on the results of a survey she gave to “scripture kids” in Australia. What are scripture kids, you might ask? They are children who elect to receive religious training as a part of their schooling.

In New South Wales, students in the government school system are allowed to choose whether or not to attend “special religious education” classes during the school day. These classes, commonly referred to as “scripture classes,” are not funded by the government, but they do take place during school time. The children who choose to attend them are commonly called “scripture kids.”

Well, Lukabyo decided to give 208 of these kids a survey. The children were 11-14 years of age, and since they have chosen to attend these classes, you would think that they are at least a bit more favorable to Christianity than the general public. In addition, since they have actually been attending these classes, you would think that they are better educated about Christianity than the general public. Given those two assumptions, the results are rather surprising.

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Opals Refuse To Obey Scientifically-Irresponsible Theories

Some geologists are very fond of telling us that certain things take a long, long time to form. They confidently state that there is simply no other way for such structures to come about, and therefore is it simply ridiculous to assume that the earth is only a few thousand years old. If we currently see geological formations that we “know” took hundreds of thousands or millions of years to form, the earth simply can’t be a few thousand years old.

For example, in his book, The World of Opals, Allan W. Eckert says:¹

Throughout the study of opals, the scientific papers and textbooks have told that the process of opal formation requires tens of thousands of years, perhaps hundreds of thousands…and some have suggested even millions.

The very presence of opals on earth, then, indicates that the earth is at least tens of thousands if not millions of years old, right?

Wrong! It seems that opals simply won’t behave according to the dictates of scientifically-irresponsible theories.

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Good News in Autism Research

brainlobes — A model of the human brain, highlighting the different lobes. Click for credit.

Autism is a poorly-understood neurological disorder that affects many people throughout the world. Unfortunately, because it is poorly-understood, there is an tendency for people to blame autism on anything they don’t like. For example, there are those who try to claim that vaccines cause autism. When confronted with the overwhelming scientific evidence against such a claim, many of those people simply ignore the data.

For example, not long ago, I did an online debate on whether or not vaccines cause autism. The debate was heavily-publicized by the anti-vaccination group that hosted it, but after the debate, all mention of it was removed from the group’s website. Why? Because I simply presented the data that clearly show there is no way autism could be related to vaccination. The group decided to pull all mention of the debate rather than risk some of their readers learning what the data actually say about vaccines and autism!

Fortunately, most people are more interested in finding the real causes of autism. Thus, they have looked at the data and realize that vaccines simply aren’t a possibility. As a result, they have moved on and are looking at other possible causes. About a year ago, I blogged about a study that tried to pin down the genetic causes of autism. Since autism is a highly heritable disease ¹, it makes sense that the cause should be genetic. However, rather than implicating just a few genes, the study came to the conclusion that there are a lot of genes involved in autism. That made the results rather disheartening, because it is hard enough to treat a disease that is caused by only one or two genes. How can you possibly treat a disease that is caused by lots and lots of genes?

Well, researchers from UCLA might have found an answer to that question.

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Our Galaxy Is “Just About Perfect”

milky_way — A model of what astronomers think the Milky Way galaxy looks like.
(NASA image)

The more we look at our place in the universe, the more we find how special it really is. For example, we are in a solar system that is a part of the spiral galaxy known as the Milky Way. Our place in the Milky Way is quite special, because we are essentially at the corotation distance from the center of the galaxy.¹ This means we rotate around the center of the galaxy at the same rate as the spiral arms of stars that make up the galaxy. This produces a very stable environment for our planet, which is necessary in order for it to support life.

There are many, many other things we have learned about our solar system and the earth in particular that make it clear we are on a very special planet that orbits a very special star. If you are interested in learning more about how special our place in the universe is, I strongly recommend the book The Privileged Planet: How Our Place in the Cosmos is Designed for Discovery by Guillermo Gonzalez and Jay Wesley Richards. It details many discoveries in earth and space science that clearly show how special the earth and its solar system are. If even one of the many, many special factors that make life possible in our little corner of the universe were not present, you wouldn’t be around to be reading this blog post.

Even though we have known for a long time that the earth, the star we orbit, and our placement in the Milky Way galaxy are all quite special, we are just now beginning to find out that even the galaxy itself is special.

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