Creationism Archives : Page 12 of 29 : Proslogion

More Evidence That Earth Is Designed to Resist Warming

The earth’s polar regions have large amounts of permafrost, a thick layer of soil underground that stays frozen throughout the year. It has been suggested by climate alarmists that as the earth warms, this permafrost will begin to melt, and that will lead to disastrous consequences. Why? Well, there is a lot of organic material in this permafrost, and it doesn’t decompose much, because decomposition is slowed significantly due to the soil being frozen. As the permafrost thaws, decomposition will increase, and that will lead to a significant amount of carbon dioxide and methane being released into the atmosphere. The release of these greenhouse gases, of course, will further accelerate global warming. This affect is known as the permafrost carbon feedback, and here is what the United Nations Environment Programme says about it:¹

If the permafrost thaws, the organic material will also thaw and begin to decay, releasing CO2 and methane into the atmosphere and amplifying the warming due to anthropogenic greenhouse gas emissions…The permafrost carbon feedback is irreversible on human time scales. Warmer conditions and increased atmospheric CO2 will enhance plant growth that will remove CO2 from the atmosphere, but this can only to a small degree compensate for the much greater carbon emissions from thawing permafrost.

Notice how strongly this is worded. The effect is “irreversible,” and even though a warmer climate will result in more plant growth, this will not come close to offsetting the devastating amount of greenhouse gases released by the thawing permafrost.

Well, the results of a 20-year experiment have been published in the journal Nature, and not surprisingly, they show that the effect is precisely opposite of the nonsense quoted above.

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My New Elementary Science Series

I swore I would never do it. I would never write an elementary science course. After all, I have no experience with the age group. We adopted our only daughter when she was in her teens. I have taught at the university level and the high school level, but never at the elementary level. I simply couldn’t imagine any scenario in which I would write an elementary science series.

Well, God clearly has a sense of humor, because over the past three years, I have been doing just that! It wasn’t my idea. Honestly. When I left my previous position three years ago, I tried to write a math program. I worked hard on it for about two months, and when I looked at it critically, I realized that it just wasn’t very good. I showed it to a math teacher I respect and admire, and he quickly agreed!

As I prayed about what I should be doing, a conversation I had with a brother in Christ kept coming back to my mind. He suggested that I should write an elementary science course that used the days of creation as detailed in Genesis to introduce scientific concepts. The more I prayed about it, the more comfortable I became with the idea, so I started writing a course I originally called Science in the Creation Week, a title my lovely and patient wife never liked.

I decided to change the title of the course when I started seriously praying about what the rest of the series would cover. It seemed to me that the Lord was leading me to write a series that introduced scientific concepts in historical context. Since the creation account in Genesis is the beginning of history, it made sense to call the course Science in the Beginning. Now that I have spent three years writing, I can present an overall plan for the series.

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The Inquisition Strikes Again – Twice!

In March of this year, I wrote a post about an article that would later appear in the peer-reviewed journal Acta Histochemica. It was an exciting report about soft tissue recovered from a fossilized Triceratops horridus horn. Unfortunately for the lead author, Mark Armitage, it was too exciting for the High Priests of Evolution. According to Creation Ministries International:

Until recently, Mark served as the Manager for the Electron and Confocal Microscopy Suite in the Biology Department at California State University Northridge. Mark was suddenly terminated by the Biology Department when his discovery of soft tissues in Triceratops horn was published in Acta Histochemica.

He is currently seeking relief in a legal action for wrongful termination and religious discrimination by the University.

Now, of course, the exact details of why Armitage was fired from California State University Northridge are not publicly known. However, the timing of the event speaks volumes. It’s not every day that a university employee gets fired right after publishing a paper in a peer-reviewed journal!

If the article was the motivation for Armitage’s termination, it wouldn’t surprise me. As more and more evidence against the ruling scientific dogma of the day continues to accumulate, the only thing the fervently faithful can do is call out the Inquisition in an attempt to squelch that evidence.

That’s what happened when Grand Inquisitor Jerry Coyne decided that Dr. Eric Hedin at Ball State University had to be silenced. He called in the attorneys and forced the university to cancel a course that introduced students to Intelligent Design, as well as the arguments against it. Obviously, the university had to give in to the attorneys, since there was no way it could afford to face an easily-avoided lawsuit. The only good news that comes from this Orwellian situation is that Dr. Hedin will not be fired.

Of course, squelching competing ideas is incredibly anti-science, and it never works. The evidence will win out, and science will eventually correct itself. Thus, the High Priests of Evolution are fighting a losing battle. The only thing their Inquisition can do is delay the inevitable.

Riddle of the Feathered Dragons

Despite the fact that no evidence of feathers has ever been found associated with a Deinonychus fossil, this model of the dinosaur at Canada's Royal Ontario Museum is covered with feathers in an attempt to emphasize the supposed evolutionary relationship between dinosaurs and birds.
(Click for credit)

Dr. Alan Feduccia is a world-class evolutionary biologist whose research has focused on the natural history of birds. He is the S.K. Heninger Distinguished Professor Emeritus at The University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill, and even his abbreviated list of publications is the envy of most scientists. He has received numerous honors for his scientific accomplishments, including having an extinct species of bird named after him: Confuciusornis feducciai.

Despite his incredible scientific accomplishments, he is ridiculed by some in the scientific community because he doesn’t think that dinosaurs evolved into birds. There are those who call him a “BANDit” (BAND stands for “Birds Are Not Dinosaurs) and lump him in with the hated creationists and the global warming “deniers.” Why don’t these people listen to a man who has contributed so much to the biological sciences? Because they follow the consensus, and the consensus is that birds evolved from dinosaurs. Anyone who questions this consensus, regardless of the data they present, are simply ignored and ridiculed.

In his latest book, Riddle of the Feathered Dragons, Dr. Feduccia has something to say about this consensus:

The word “consensus” has no place in science and is never a validation of any hypothesis, yet one frequently sees trust in “consensus” for validation of important scientific concepts. (pp. 4-5)

I couldn’t agree more. When you hear the word “consensus” used to support a scientific argument, you know the speaker has stopped thinking. Rather than examining evidence for himself or herself, the speaker is simply allowing the majority to rule. Majority rule might be a good system in some social applications, but it is the worst possible method for doing science.

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“Ancient” Bacteria Use Quantum Mechanics!

lh2_pb — The light-harvesting antenna complex of purple bacteria (Click for credit.)

The quantum world is a strange one. In a process called “quantum tunneling,” particles can pass through barriers as if they aren’t there at all. As a result of a process called “perturbation,” empty space can give rise to virtual particles that “blip” into and out of existence. Because of a phenomenon known as “quantum coherence,” a particle can be in several different places at once. These ideas defy common sense, but they have been experimentally verified in many different ways.

It turns out that photosynthesis (the process by which some organisms convert the energy in sunlight into energy that they can use) exploits quantum coherence in an incredible way. When light strikes a photosynthetic organism, its energy must be captured so that it can be used in an amazingly complex process that will convert it from radiant energy into chemical energy. It has long been known that photosynthesis is about 95% efficient when it comes to the first step of capturing light’s energy.¹ Until now, however, scientists have not understood how photosynthesis could be that efficient.

After all, harvesting light in a biological environment is difficult. Even though photosynthetic organisms have a well-designed “antenna” system for capturing that light (an example is given above), a living organism is usually in motion. Its environment is also constantly stimulating it in different ways. As a result, even though the antenna system is well designed, it will be distorted and deformed as the organism moves and responds to its environment. This means there should be times when the antenna system is well-aligned, producing very efficient transfer of energy, but there should also be times where it is misaligned, reducing its efficiency. Nevertheless, photosynthesis stays very efficient, regardless of how the antenna complex is distorted.

How does the antenna complex stay efficient? The answer is incredible.

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Another Example of Three-Way Mutualism

mealybugs — Mealybugs feeding on a hibiscus plant (Click for credit)

As anyone who has been reading this blog for a while knows, I am fascinated by the phenomenon of symbiosis: two or more species living together in a relationship. In my opinion, the most interesting form of symbiosis is mutualism: two or more species living together in such a way that each species benefits. I have written several different articles about it over the years (see here, here, here, here, and here, for example), and I personally think it is a picture of what creation was like before the Fall.

As scientists have studied mutualism over the years, they have found some really complex examples. In the past, I wrote about a three-way mutualistic relationship that exists between a grass, a fungus, and a virus. Later on, I wrote about a three-way mutualistic relationship that exists between seagrasses, clams, and bacteria. Well, I just learned about another example of a three-way mutualistic relationship. Scientists have known about it for more than 10 years, but it was the subject of a recent study that comes to some rather startling conclusions.

The biggest member of this relationship is the mealybug, which is shown above. It feeds on the sap of plants, but that presents a bit of a problem. In order to make all the proteins it needs to survive, the mealybug must have certain amino acids at its disposal. It can get some of them from its diet, but plants don’t make all the amino acids that the mealybug needs. As a result, it must manufacture some of them. By itself, however, it can’t get the job done. It can make some of the chemicals that are necessary to produce the amino acids, but it can’t make them all. If left on its own, then, the mealybug could not survive.

In 2001, Carol von Dohlen and her colleagues demonstrated that the mealybug has help in making those amino acids. A bacterium, Tremblaya princeps, lives in the mealybug, and it helps the mealybug make the amino acids it can’t get from its diet. However, the bacterium can’t do that job on its own. As a result, a smaller bacterium, Moranella endobia, lives inside it. Together, these two bacteria make the chemicals that the mealybug needs but cannot make itself. All three species are needed in order for the mealybug to survive.¹

So here’s the arrangement: a bacterium inside a bacterium inside a bug. It reminds me of an exchange from one of my favorite Dr. Who episodes:

Lily:Where are we?

The Doctor:In a forest, in a box, in a sitting room. Pay attention!”

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Optics Is Starting to Catch Up to the Arthropods

dig_eye — This is one of the digital cameras inspired by the design of arthropod eyes (Click for credit.)

There are two basic designs for animal eyes: “simple” eyes and compound eyes. Your eyes are called “simple” eyes, because each has only one lens. The lens focuses light that enters your eye onto a layer of tissue called the retina, which has light-sensitive cells. Those cells detect the light and send electrical impulses to your brain, which then produces an image of what the eye is seeing. In contrast, many arthropods (a broad class of animals including insects, crustaceans, spiders, etc.) have compound eyes. Each compound eye has many lenses, and each lens focuses light onto its own set of light-sensitive cells. The brain then collects the information from each of these optical units (called ommatidia) and produces a composite image.

Each eye design has its own strengths and its own weaknesses. A simple eye produces a very sharp image of whatever the lens is focused on. However, the farther anything is from the center of a simple eye’s vision, the more distorted it becomes. In addition, a simple eye has a narrow depth of field. When it focuses on an object, other things in the field of view are blurry if their distance from the eye is much different from the object being focused on. The compound eye, on the other hand, does not produce very sharp images. However, because its lenses are so small, there is very little distortion of objects that are away from the center of the eye’s view. In addition, the small lenses have a nearly infinite depth of field – objects stay in focus whether they are near or far from the eye.

The practical upshot is that compound eyes tend to be very valuable if you want a wide, panoramic view. In addition, they are very sensitive to motion. If you’ve ever tried to swat a fly, you understand that. The fly seems to see your hand no matter how slowly you move it or where you are relative to the fly. Simple eyes, on the other hand, are more valuable if you want very a very sharp, clear image of what you are focused on. So far, the cameras produced by human science and technology have been modeled after simple eyes. They give sharp, clear images of what the camera focuses on, but the view is not panoramic and the depth of field is narrow.

Now that has changed.

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Give Her What She Wants!

An old proverb says, “The way to a man’s heart is through his stomach.” Some birds, like Eurasian Jays (Garrulus glandarius), have their own take on that proverb. These birds are monogamous,¹ and they have an elaborate courtship ritual. Part of that ritual involves the male offering food to the female. For these birds, then, the way to the female’s heart is through her stomach. Obviously, the male wants to offer the female something appealing, but how does he know what she wants?

It has been generally assumed that the male simply offers the female food that he likes. After all, the ability to consider another individual’s feelings is rather advanced. There is some evidence that great apes are able to consider the feelings of human beings,² but in general, it has been thought that most animals don’t have the intellectual ability to realize that a different individual might have different feelings or preferences. A recent experiment involving Eurasian Jays indicates that might not be correct.

In the experiment, a male was separated from a female by a wire fence. The male could watch the female as she ate large meals of either moth larvae or mealworm larvae. The male was then given a single mealworm larva and a single moth larva. Consistently, the male would pick up the food that was not in the female’s meal and offer it to her through the wire fence. The researchers concluded that this was because the male realized the female would be tired of what she had eaten in her large meal, and therefore the other food would be more appealing to her. This, of course, would mean that the male realized the female might have a different preference than he did, and he took that into account when deciding what to offer her.³

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Nematode Nervous System: A 1-in-40-Million Design

I have been doing an “interstate book club” with one of the most brilliant people I know. She and I read the same book and call each other on a regular basis to discuss it. We are currently covering Jerry Fodor and Massimo Piatelli-Palmarini’s book, What Darwin Got Wrong. I suspect that I will do a complete review of the book at some point, but I ran across something that I found so amazing, I had to write about it today. It has to do with the roundworm known as Caenorhabditis elegans, which is pictured above. This tiny (about 1 millimeter long), transparent worm has been studied extensively. In fact, it was the first multicellular organism to have its genome fully sequenced.¹

Before that happened, however, Christopher Cherniak did a detailed analysis of the creature’s nervous system. Approximately one-third of the cells in the roundworm’s body are nerve cells, so the nervous system is obviously important to this tiny animal. The system is made of clumps of nerve cells (called ganglia) in the head, tail, and scattered throughout the main nerve cord, which runs along the bottom of the worm’s body. While this system is “simple” compared to the kind of nervous systems you find in many other animals, it has served as a model for helping scientists understand how nervous systems develop and function in general.

Of course, since the nervous system has to process sensory information and control various muscle movements, the ganglia must be connected to one another, to the receptors that sense the outside world, and to the muscles that the nervous system controls. Obviously, then, there is a lot of “wiring” involved. Cherniak wanted to know what determined how this wiring was done in the animal, so he computed all the possible ways that the worm’s nervous system could be wired, given its structure and the number of components it had. His computation indicated that there were 39,916,800 ways the wiring could have been done.

Now that’s a lot of possibilities, but even back in 1994, computers could easily analyze all of them, so he used 11 microcomputers to analyze all 39,916,800 ways the nervous system could be wired. It took them a total of 50 hours to churn through the analysis, but what they found was incredible!

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Are We Becoming Less Intelligent?

Somewhere around 200 BC, a man named Eratosthenes learned that at noon on the Summer Solstice in Syene, a man looking down a deep well would see no light in the well, because his shadow would block all the sunlight. He reasoned that this meant the sun was directly overhead in the city of Syene at that moment. Well, he lived in Alexandria, which was about 500 miles south of Syene. He measured the length of a pole’s shadow in Alexandria at noon on the Summer Solstice and from that determined the angle at which the sun shined on Alexandria when the sun was directly overhead in the city of Syene.

Why would Eratosthenes do this? Well, like all ancient natural philosophers (including the Christian ones who would come a few hundred years later), he understood that the earth is a sphere. If you are under the mistaken impression that most ancient people thought the earth was flat, you need to realize that this is a textbook myth that is repeated over and over again but is nevertheless quite false. Since he knew that the earth is a sphere, he used his measurement to reason that the distance between Syene and Alexandria is about one-fiftieth of the distance around that sphere. He then took the known distance between Syene and Alexandria and multiplied by 50 to get the total distance around the earth. The unit he used to measure distance (the stadium) had different definitions at the time, but assuming he used the one that was typically used for long journeys, his measurement was correct to within 2% of today’s accepted value.¹

Does that surprise you? It shouldn’t. In today’s culture, we think of ancient people as ignorant savages, but in fact, many of them were incredibly intelligent. According to at least one geneticist, they were probably more intelligent than we are! In a two-part series published in the journal Trends in Genetics, Dr. Gerald R. Crabtree states:²

I would wager that if an average citizen from Athens of 1000 BC were to appear suddenly among us, he or she would be among the brightest and most intellectually alive of our colleagues and companions, with a good memory, a broad range of ideas, and a clear-sighted view of important issues.

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