Creationism Archives : Page 17 of 30 : Proslogion

Those Plates, They Are A-Movin’

In the theory of plate tectonics, the earth’s surface is broken into several distinct plates which move about, carrying the continents with them. As a result, a fixed location on the planet is not really stationary. It is actually moving along the earth! We don’t notice the motion, of course, because it is happening very slowly. However, according to the theory, it is always happening. If scientists make certain assumptions about how this motion occurred in the past, they can conclude that at one time, all the continents on earth were grouped together in a supercontinent called Pangaea. Over time, the motion of the plates then separated the continents into the positions we see today.

If you assume that the plate motions we think are happening today are representative of how fast the plates have always moved, you find that it would take hundreds of millions of years for the continents to have moved from Pangaea to where they are today. However, many young-earth creationists think that plate motions were much faster during the worldwide Flood, and some have produced detailed computer models that attempt to explain how the Flood happened in the context of this catastrophic plate tectonics. Other young-earth creationists are skeptical about plate tectonics, claiming that there isn’t a lot of evidence to support it.

I tend to disagree with the young-earth creationists who are skeptical about plate tectonics. While I am definitely not a geologist or geophysicist, I do think there is a lot of indirect evidence to indicate that the plates are real and that they are really moving. Interestingly enough, I recently ran across an article by Dr. John Baumgardner that, in my mind, really clinches the case for the reality of plate tectonics.¹ Not only that, the data used in the article are just plain cool!

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The MidSouth Homeschool Convention

Over the past weekend, I spoke at the Midsouth Homeschool Convention, which is a part of the Great Homeschool Conventions series. It was held in Memphis, TN, so pictures and tributes to Elvis were abundant everywhere except the convention itself. I didn’t give as many talks at this convention as is typical, so that left more time for my favorite part of a homeschool convention: talking with students and parents.

Since I am not selling anything at homeschool conventions these days, my booth in the exhibit hall looks rather odd. It consists of a plain black-and-white sign that just has my name on it, an empty table, two chairs, and me. In contrast to most of the other booths that try to attract people in with color banners, comfy couches, potted plants, and videos, mine looks pretty bare. The CEO of Home Educating Family thought it was just too bare, so he added one “decoration.” On my plain white sign, he wrote “The Doctor Is In” and gave me a sticky note that said “OUT.” When I left my booth, I could cover the word “In” with the sticky note. Perhaps it doesn’t sound funny to you, but I thought it was hilarious, and I used it the whole time I was there. I regret that I did not take a picture of it before I left.

Although the bulk of this post will deal with a question I got in one of my talks, I do want to mention one thing that really impressed me. It turns out that during the conference, some low-life broke into several of the vendors’ vans. While most vendors didn’t lose much, one vendor’s van was loaded with an iPad and some other important technology, so they were looking at a serious financial loss. In order to help them out, several other vendors took up a collection. Now these vendors are all competitors. If you buy a math course from one vendor, that probably means you won’t buy a math course from any other vendor. Nevertheless, the vendors all gave generously. That really impressed me. Even in business, Christians should put compassion first, and that’s what I saw happening in Memphis.

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How Meaningful are Genome Comparsons?

dna — The information in DNA is stored in specific sequences of the nucleotide bases adenine (A), thymine (T), cytosine (C), and guanine (G). (Click for credit)

We hear a lot about how similar the human genome is compared to the chimpanzee genome. As I have discussed previously, if we compare the genomes one way, they are 72% identical. If we compare them another way, they more than 95% identical. If we compare them yet another way, they are 88-89% identical. That’s a wide range of results! Why can’t we say definitively how similar the human genome is to the chimpanzee genome? There are probably several reasons for this, but I want to highlight a basic one. Even though the human and chimpanzee genomes have been sequenced, we still don’t know them as well as you might think.

To understand why we don’t know these sequenced genomes very well, you need to know a bit about how DNA stores information. As most people know, DNA is a double helix. Each strand of this double helix has a sequence of chemical units called nucleotide bases. There are four different nucleotide bases: adenine (A), thymine (T), cytosine (C), and guanine (G). Taken three at a time, these four nucleotide bases code for a specific kind of chemical called an amino acid. The two strands of the double helix hold together because the nucleotide bases on one strand link up with the nucleotide bases on the other strand.

As shown in the illustration above, the way the nucleotide bases link up is very specific. Adenine (A) links only to thymine (T), and cytosine (C) links only to guanine (G). Because of this, if you know the sequence on one strand of DNA, you automatically know the sequence on the other strand. After all, A can only link to T, so anywhere one strand has an A, the other strand must have a T. In the same way, C can only link to G, so anywhere one strand has a C, the other strand must have a G. So the two strands of the DNA double helix are held together by pairs of nucleotide bases.

As a result, we count the length of a genome in terms of how many base pairs there are. The illustration above, for example, has 14 base pairs (the black G is hiding a C behind it, and the black A is hiding a T behind it). Obviously, then, the larger the number of base pairs in the genome, the longer the genome is. Believe it or not, even though the human and chimpanzee genomes have been sequenced, we don’t know for sure how long either of them are!

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The Evidence from Mercury: Inconclusive

Mercury is a difficult planet to study because of its proximity to the sun. As a result, there are only two robotic spacecraft that have visited it. Starting on March 29, 1974, the Mariner 10 spacecraft flew by Mercury a total of three times, but it never entered orbit. Then, on March 18, 2011, the spacecraft known as MESSENGER (MErcury Surface, Space ENvironment, GEochemistry and Ranging) settled into a comfortable, near-polar orbit of the planet and has been studying it in detail ever since.

As a scientist, I am always excited to learn new information about God’s creation, so I have been watching MESSENGER’s progress with interest. As a young-earth creationist, however, my interest in MESSENGER was somewhat heightened, because its mission included collecting data on Mercury’s magnetic field. The young-earth model of planetary magnetic fields had made a prediction about what MESSENGER would find once it collected those data, so I was naturally very interested in the results of the measurement.

Since the previous measurement of the field was made more than 35 years ago, and since the young-earth model predicts that all planetary magnetic fields should decay fairly rapidly, the young-earth model predicted that Mercury’s magnetic field should have decayed by roughly 4 percent since Mariner 10’s previous measurement. By contrast, the old-earth model predicts no measurable change at all. Because the young-earth model has been successful in three other predictions,¹ I was hoping that MESSENGER would provide a fourth.

Unfortunately, that didn’t happen.

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The Gorilla Genome Falsifies Another Evolution-Inspired Idea

There is a vast gulf between humans and the great apes. While we share some superficial similarities with them, they are dwarfed by significant differences. For example, most (but not all ¹) evolutionists think that our closest living relative is the chimpanzee, because our genomes are the most similar (72%-95% similar, depending on how you make the comparison). Nevertheless, there are distinct anatomical and behavioral differences between humans and chimpanzees. Indeed, nearly every bone in the chimpanzee body is individually recognizable as chimpanzee and not human simply by its shape and size. Humans and chimpanzees also have different postures, different means of moving around, and different methods of obtaining food. Of course, the biggest difference between chimpanzees and humans is that of intelligence. People have a level of intelligence not seen anywhere else in creation, and it is apparent through our ability to create amazing technologies, produce breathtaking works of art, develop philosophies, and communicate across the generations.

But wait a minute. Haven’t experiments shown that apes can communicate in a very sophisticated way? If you read too much of the popular press, you might think that’s true. However, consider the words of Dr. Jonathan Marks, Professor of Anthropology at UNC-Charlotte and an expert on communication in apes:²

For all the interest generated by the sign-language experiments with apes, three things are clear. First they do have the capacity to manipulate a symbol system given to them by humans, and to communicate with it. Second, unfortunately, they have nothing to say. And third, they do not use any such system in the wild…There is in fact very little overlap between chimpanzee and human communication. (emphasis mine)

So what is it that produces the remarkable difference between apes and humans when it comes to communication? Evolutionists thought they might have at least a partial answer to this question. If you look in detail at human genes and chimpanzee genes, you see some remarkable differences among those genes that deal with hearing. As a result, it has been widely suggested that the human lineage experienced “accelerated” evolution in its hearing genes, which in turn produced our ability to utilize language, which in turn produced our ability to communicate in a sophisticated way.

Not surprisingly, additional data have falsified this evolution-inspired notion.

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Could This Be a Clue About the Origin of Pathogens?

house_finch — A house finch, which is now susecptible to a new eye infection. (Click for credit)

The origin of pathogens is of particular interest to creationists. When God finished creating the world, he pronounced it “very good.” Now as I have pointed out previously, the term “very good” does not mean perfect. Nevertheless, it is hard to understand how disease-causing pathogens could fit into to a “very good” creation. So where did pathogenic organisms come from? One of the first steps toward an answer to that question came in 2003, when J.W. Francis proposed that microscopic organisms were created to serve as a link between macroscopic organisms and their physical environment. This link helped to channel necessary chemicals from the environment to the macroscopic organisms. However, when the Fall occurred, mutations began happening, and those mutations ended up turning beneficial microorganisms into pathogenic microorganisms.¹

This makes sense in light of certain forms of cooperation between organisms. For example, a while ago I wrote about a relationship that exists between a grass that flourishes in hot soils, a fungus, and a virus. Scientists don’t know the details of the relationship, but they know that in order for the plant to grow in hot soils, it must be infected by a specific fungus. However, that fungus will not do the plant any good unless it is infected by a virus. Obviously, the fungus supplies some necessary chemicals to the plant, allowing it to live in hot soil. However, in order for the fungus to be able to do that, the virus must be providing necessary chemicals to the fungus. So in this situation, you have a viral link between the environment and a fungus, and then a higher-level link between the fungus and the plant. Obviously, if one of those links was corrupted, it could turn a beneficial relationship into a deadly one.

Over time, other creationists have suggested ideas for the origin of other pathogens. Dr. Peter Borger, for example, has a very interesting hypothesis on the origin of RNA viruses. He suggests that the genomes of all creatures were originally created so that they could produce fast adaptations to changes in their environment. As a result, all genomes contain variation-inducing genetic elements – sections of DNA that are specifically designed to produce changes that will aid in adaptation. He postulates that RNA viruses have been produced as a result of a corruption in certain variation-inducing genetic elements. This idea is intriguing because it solves the the RNA virus paradox, a recognized problem in the evolutionary literature.²

The real question, however, is what are the specific mechanisms by which this might happen? Exactly how could a beneficial microorganism (or genetic element) become pathogenic? As I was perusing the scientific literature the other day, I ran across an article in PLoS Genetics that might help us begin to answer that question.

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Arched Necks In Dinosaur Fossils: Is Water to Blame?

opisthotonic — The position of the head and neck in this fossil is common among dinosaur fossils (Click for credt).

Relatively complete dinosaur fossils are fairly rare. Additionally, fossils in which the bones are essentially preserved in their proper arrangement (called fully articulated fossils) are even more rare. However, among these rare, fully-articulated fossils, there is a common feature: the head is often thrown back, curving the neck, as shown in the fossil on the left. This is so common it has its own scientific term. It is called the opisthotonic posture. Since it is so common among dinosaur fossils, it has been recognized for a long time. Indeed, the first reference to it in the scientific literature can be traced to a German paper that was written by A. Wagner back in 1859.¹ Since then, paleontologists have been trying to figure out what causes this unusual “death pose.”

This investigation has produced a lot of speculation, but in the end, a study that was published in 2007 seemed to have settled the issue. It was done by a veterinarian, Dr. Cynthia Marshall Faux, and a vertebrate paleontologist, Dr. Kevin Padian. That seems like a perfect team when it comes to figuring out what’s going on here. The veterinarian would understand the various physiological and anatomical features of living vertebrates and how they would change during the death process, and the paleontologist would understand the details regarding the fossilization process. Their conclusion was:²

It is not postmortem contraction but perimortem muscle spasms resulting from various afflictions of the central nervous system that cause these extreme postures.

So according to Faux and Padian, the opisthotonic posture occurs at or near the time of death (perimortem) due to problems related to the central nervous system. It has nothing to do with what happens after death (postmortem). Their study got a lot of press and was considered by some to be the final say on the matter.

That is, until last year.

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Is This a Miracle Tree? Not Really – It’s Just the Result of Amazing Design!

Moringa oleifera (commonly called the “drumstick tree”) is probably one of the most useful plants on earth. It’s leaves and flowers are eaten in many parts of the world. When its fruit is still developing, it can be cooked in a variety of ways. Even its roots can be eaten. These parts of the tree are rich in iron, minerals, proteins, and vitamins B and C. Its seeds produce an oil that can be used for both cooking and lubrication, and to top it all off, the tree is very hardy. It withstands significant droughts, making it easy to grow and maintain. Finally, unlike many trees, it matures very quickly. It usually bears fruit during its first year of growth, which means it can be used as a very productive crop.¹ It’s no wonder that some sources call it “the miracle tree.”

It seems that the usefulness of the drumstick tree doesn’t end there, however. Back in 1987, Madsen and colleagues found that if you crushed the seeds of the drumstick tree into muddy water, the water would not only clear up, but it would also be free of most of the bacteria that were originally there.² As a result, they suggested that the seeds of the drumstick tree could be used to purify water in third-world countries where no other means of water purification existed. Since drinking bacteria-laden water is a leading cause of death in many third-world countries, this could be a major benefit in many parts of the world. Unfortunately, carrying around the seeds and crushing them into water is fairly inefficient if you want to clean water on a large scale.

Eventually, the “active ingredient” that produces the water-purifying properties of the drumstick tree was identified. It turned out to be a series of proteins that are fairly small (as proteins go, in any case) and have a strong, positive charge.³ These proteins were dubbed “MOCP,” which stands for “Moringa oleifera coagulant proteins.” In February of 2010, the journal Current Protocols in Microbiology published a step-by-step procedure by which MOCP could be extracted from the seeds of the drumstick tree to make it easier to use.⁴ All of this represented great progress, but the question still remained: How can we most effectively use MCOP so that it becomes a cheap, efficient means of water purification?

That question might have been answered.

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Silver Foxes Change Rapidly… and in Surprising Ways

silver_fox1 — In the experiment, farm-bred silver foxes went from being agressive towards people (left) to being friendly (right) in as little as six generations. (Photos from reference 1)

I recently read about a fascinating experiment that has been going on in Russia for the past 50 years. Dmitry K. Belyaev acquired some silver foxes from a farm that breeds them for their fur. The farm started about 50 years prior to the experiment, so several generations of foxes had experienced human contact to some degree. However, the foxes still did not care for human contact and were quite aggressive if they were forced into such contact.

Belyaev took this group of foxes and began trying to develop a new trait: tameness. Each fox was exposed to a human for a specific amount of time at specific ages. The fox was then evaluated based on how well it reacted to the human, and only the foxes with the best overall reactions to humans were bred. In a mere six generations, some foxes were born that not only enjoyed human contact, they actually craved it! This behavior became characteristic of the entire population, so that the foxes now behave like dogs – wagging their tails, whimpering, licking people, and generally doing all they can to interact with people.¹

Now these results are cool on at least two levels. First, I was shocked at how quickly the foxes adapted to human socialization. For human-friendly foxes to appear in a mere six generations just astounds me. I know that dogs were domesticated from wolves, but I always imagined that it took a long, long time. After all, a lot has to change in order to take an animal that avoids people and is aggressive towards them and turn it into an animal that not only jumps up on your lap to cuddle with you but begs to be able to do so! According to this experiment, however, the change can happen quickly. Second, I just think it would be incredibly cool to have a pet fox. From time to time, I see a wild red fox in the neighborhood where I live. I would love to have such a beautiful animal as a pet!

Those are the cool aspects of the experiment. However, there are a lot more interesting aspects to the experiment, and they indicate that we still have a lot to learn when it comes to genetics.

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From Atheist to Creationist: Several Have Made That Journey

I receive a regular newsletter from Creation Ministries International (CMI), a young-earth creationist group made up of scientists from around the world. While I was reading the October, 2011 edition of that newsletter, I ran across an article entitled “Eternal fruit – from atheist to creationist.” According to the article:

Sai-Chung was an atheist activist attending church to study Christianity – so as to be effective at undermining it!

Well, it turns out that this man attended a talk on creation science given by Warwick Armstrong, who used to be a speaker at CMI but is now retired. Recently, Sai-Chung contacted CMI and told them that Armstrong’s talk (which was given in 2003) was instrumental in him coming to faith in Christ. He is now a youth group leader in the Chinese extension of one of Australia’s largest churches. He was actually contacting CMI because he wanted some assistance in polishing off his first talk on creation.

So here is someone who attended church specifically to learn how to undermine it. Obviously, then, he was not predisposed to believe what the Church (or the creationist speaker) was telling him. Nevertheless, what he heard was so convincing that he not only decided to put away his atheism and become a Christian, he also decided to become a young-earth creationist! That story, in and of itself, is quite interesting. It also got me to thinking: Sai-Chung isn’t the only one who made the journey from atheist to young-earth creationist. I made that same journey, albeit by taking a slightly different path.

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