Category: Creationism

The New Creationism

Paul Garner is a British environmental scientist and Fellow of the Geological Society of London. He is a very active young-earth creationist researcher, currently doing original geological research in collaboration with Dr. John Whitmore and Dr. Steve Austin. He also recently authored a book called The New Creationism.

The word “new” in the title does not mean that he is offering some fundamentally new concept in creationism. Instead, the purpose of the book is to give the reader an understanding of the latest creationist models in the areas of astronomy, geology, and biology. In this purpose, Garner succeeds admirably. He is not only a very understandable writer, he is also very knowledgeable in a wide range of fields. As a result, this book is easy-to-read and (mostly) accurate.

There are many things l really like about this book, and one of them is that Garner makes sure the reader is not fooled by terminology. For example, in his second chapter (“The Sun, Moon, and Stars”) he discusses how astrophysicists think main sequence stars (such as our sun) eventually turn into different kinds of stars (like red giants, white dwarfs, and supergiants) and perhaps even supernovae. He then says:

Some creationists have instinctively reacted against this idea because the process of change is usually referred to as ‘stellar evolution.’ However, it is perhaps better to think of it as ‘stellar ageing’ because the changes are nothing more than an outworking of the law of entropy, the tendency of all natural systems to move towards a disordered state. (p. 37)

This is a very important point. What is generally referred to as “stellar evolution” has nothing to do with evolution as the term is generally used. It certainly has to do with change, and “evolution” can mean “change.” However, the general use of the term “evolution” implies an increase in complexity, and that is certainly not what goes on in stellar evolution.

Another thing I really liked about the book is that it concentrates on the evidence that supports creation and only discusses the evidence against evolution when necessary. Many creationist books are nothing more than attacks on evolution. While it is important to show a competing theory’s weaknesses, science should never be focused on shooting down opposing ideas. It should be focused on building up your own ideas. As a result, Garner gives the reader a lot of evidence that supports various creationist models.

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Another Failed Evolutionary Prediction

In science, one of the most important things a hypothesis can do is make predictions that can be verified by experiment or observation. If a hypothesis makes predictions that are then confirmed by experiment or observation, its scientific value is high. The more confirmed predictions it makes, the more likely it is to be a good, scientific explanation for whatever phenomenon it is describing. However, if a hypothesis makes several predictions that are shown to by false by experiment or observation, its scientific value becomes questionable.

Dr. Cornelius Hunter has done an excellent job detailing many of evolution’s failed predictions. I have discussed a few on this blog as well (here, here, here, here, here, and here). Not surprisingly, as more and more research is being done, more and more evolutionary predictions are being falsified. The latest one involves bats and insects.

As most people know, bats have an amazing echolocation system that allows them to hunt in the dark. They send out high-frequency sound waves that bounce off anything in front of them. They receive the reflected sound waves, analyze them with sophisticated mathematics, and determine all sorts of useful information, such as the size, position, and speed of what’s in front of them. This amazing echolocation system allows bats to hunt and eat insects even when it is pitch black outside.

Well, it turns out that some insects are able to hear these high-frequency sound waves. This alerts them to the fact that a bat is hunting them, and they are then able to take evasive maneuvers. For many, many years, evolutionists have claimed that this kind of hearing in insects evolved after bats evolved. For example, a book that discusses the echolocation systems found in bats and dolphins says:1

The evolution of ultrasound sensitivity in nocturnal insects evolved in response to predation pressures exerted by echolocating bats.

Another evolutionary book makes a very similar statement:2

…before bats evolved…moths and other nocturnal insects owned the night sky, flitting about unmolested by predators. The appearance of bats forced them to evolve a novel antibat strategy – a way of hearing the echolocating calls of hunting bats, in effect a radar detector.

So evolution predicts that the high-frequency hearing in some insects arose after bats evolved, as a response to the bats’ new way of finding prey among the insects.

Like most evolutionary predictions, however, this turns out to be dead wrong.

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The Appendix: More Evidence That the Creationist Prediction Is Correct

The Human Appendix (Gray's Anatomy Image)
For many, many years, evolutionists have called the human appendix a vestigial organ. In their view, our supposed ancestors needed a large cecum for digestive purposes. Over time, however, we evolved so that we didn’t need such a large cecum anymore. However, mutation and natural selection never got around to completely removing the large cecum and, as a result, we have a leftover, useless, small version called the appendix. As one evolutionist put it:1

…we have an appendix (a small remnant of a prior ancestor species’ intestinal sack) which not only is of no use to us but which can sometimes kill us when it gets clogged up and infected! What kind of god or other “intelligent designer” would design organisms with such useless, imperfect, wasteful, and sometimes even harmful physical features?

As I wrote previously, there is strong evidence that this evolution-inspired idea is incorrect. Evidence indicates that the appendix acts as a safe reservoir of the beneficial bacteria that usually populate your intestine. That way, when you have a disease that wipes out those bacteria, they can quickly repopulate your intestine so as to restore your normal level of health. This function conforms quite nicely to a creationist prediction made several years before this evidence began to mount.

Of course, a few pieces of evidence do not make a clear-cut case. As a result, it is important to test the idea that the appendix has a vital function in the human body by making predictions based on that assumption and then seeing whether or not the predictions are confirmed by the data. This has recently happened. In 2007, some medical scientists wrote a paper suggesting that the appendix served as a reservoir for the beneficial bacteria that live in our intestines.2 As a result, they predicted that if specific intestinal diseases were investigated, it should be found that people who have those diseases are better able to fight them if they have an appendix.

Well, a study that tested this prediction was recently published, and the prediction was dramatically confirmed.

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More on Comparing the Human and Chimpanzee Genome

A schematic representation of DNA, concentrating on the nucleotide bases that encode biological information. (Click for credit)
How similar is the human genome to the chimpanzee genome? Since both genomes have been fully sequenced, you would think that would be an easy question to answer. Unfortunately, it is not. After all, how do you compare the genomes of two different species? You might think that the most straightforward way would be to simply line the two genomes up and see how much they overlap. If that’s the way you are comparing the genomes, then the answer is relatively easy. Based on the analysis done by the Chimpanzee Sequencing and Analysis Consortium, about 75% of the two genomes overlap well. There is an error rate of about 3% within that overlap, however, so the two genomes are 72% similar based on this kind of analysis.

The problem is that simply lining two genomes up and looking for overlap might not be the best way to compare them. After all, it seems that genomes have been designed to change. Genes and their regulatory agents can move around, be copied to different parts of the genome, etc. As a result, when you compare genomes between species, you might need to be a bit more careful in how you do it.

One popular means by which geneticists compare genomes today is by looking at chunks of DNA in one organism and comparing them to the genome of the second organism. One common way to do this is to use the computer program called BLAST (Basic Local Alignment Search Tool). This program takes a chunk of DNA from one organism and splits it into a series of short sequences called “words.” It then looks through the genome of the second organism, trying to find regions where there is a lot of similarity with the words generated from the first organism. If the similarity is above a specified threshold level, BLAST scores it as an overlap, keeping track of precisely how similar the two sections of DNA are within that overlap.

In other words, rather than looking for long stretches of DNA that overlap between two organisms, BLAST looks for smaller regions of overlap. This makes sense, of course, since a given gene or a given regulatory piece of DNA takes up only a small part of the total genome. By comparing small parts of two genomes rather than the genomes in their entirety, you are better able to find the functional units within the DNA that are similar.

So…when scientists use a comparison method such as BLAST, how similar are human and chimp DNA? Surprisingly, the jury is still out on the definitive answer to that question!

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Certainty and Science Do Not Go Together!

Dr. Daniel Botkin holds a PhD in ecology and is currently Professor Emeritus in the Department of Ecology, Evolution, and Marine Biology at the University of California, Santa Barbara. He is best known for his books about nature, and has been called “one of the preeminent ecologists of the 20th century.” His website has a lot of good material, including an excellent FAQ regarding global warming.

The reason I am blogging about Dr. Botkin is that he authored a fantastic article in the December 2, 2011 issue of the Wall Street Journal. The article starts with an incredibly unscientific quote which comes (ironically enough) from NASA senior scientist Michael J. Mumma:

Based on evidence, what we do have is, unequivocally, the conditions for the emergence of life were present on Mars—period, end of story.

This kind of statement might excite people, but it does nothing to promote science. In fact, it does quite the opposite. As Dr. Botkin masterfully points out in his article, the phrase “period, end of story” should never be uttered by anyone who is trying to be scientific. The fact is that in science, we never have the end of the story. New information comes in constantly, and sometimes, it overturns old ideas, despite the fact that those ideas might be accepted by virtually every scientist on the planet. As the title of Dr. Botkin’s article correctly proclaims, absolute certainty is not scientific.

Dr. Botkin goes on to discuss how global warming advocates hurt their cause by making statements with absolute certainty, and I agree with his assessment. As I read his article, however, I couldn’t help but think about the hypothesis of evolution.

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The Debate Rages On…At Many Levels

I spend a lot of time discussing the creation/evolution debate. It is a popular topic on this blog, I have an entire series of young-earth creationist textbooks that discuss the debate, and I even discuss it among my own friends, many of whom are either atheists or theistic evolutionists. Every now and again, I even get the chance to publicly debate an evolutionist. This is a rare occurrence, however, as it is incredibly difficult to find an evolutionist willing to actually defend his or her view in a public debate. My last opportunity was in 2009, when I debated Dr. Robert A. Martin, vertebrate paleontologist and author of Missing Links: Evolutionary Concepts and Transitions Through Time. The debate was held at West Kentucky Community and Technical college. The audience was huge, and their response was enthusiastic. After the debate, I talked with many students, some of whom disagreed with me. Nevertheless, they all said that they appreciated the debate and were very happy that they attended.

Of course, the bigger question is whether or not such debates make any difference at all. Do any minds actually get changed as a result of a debate? I can tell you that mine did. I was an atheist at one time, and what led me down the road to accepting the truth of Christianity was an “Atheism versus Christianity” debate that I attended. The debate made me actually investigate the evidence for the existence of God, and when I did so, I found the evidence to be overwhelming. As a result, I ended up believing in God and, eventually, I came to realize that He is the God of the Old and New Testaments. However, I often wonder if a debate has changed anyone’s mind on the creation/evolution issue.

Well, I received an E-MAIL from a homeschool graduate who is now a biology major pursuing an MD/PhD. He says:

I was home educated from preschool all the way through high school and thoroughly enjoyed all of your science textbooks throughout high school…In fact your biology textbook was what got me interested in science in the first place.

It’s nice to know that contrary to what Dr. Jerry Coyne claims, good young-earth creationist textbooks do encourage students to study the sciences.

The reason I am blogging about his E-MAIL, however, is that he tells me from his own experience that a good debate about evolution can change people’s minds.

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Another Goldilocks Planet?

An artist's rendering of Kepler 22b.
NASA image in the public domain.
More than a year ago, I discussed a planet named Gliese 581g. It was hailed as a “Goldilocks planet,” which means it is not too far away from its star and not too close to its star. Instead, it is at just the right distance, allowing it to receive the right amount of energy from the star so that stays warm enough to support life. Unfortunately, it’s not even clear that the planet really exists. One team of astronomers is confident that it does exist, but another team is confident that it does not. The latest analysis that I have seen adds more evidence to the “does not exist” side of the debate.

Well, the Kepler project has found another Goldilocks planet. I blogged about the Kepler project just a few days ago. It is a project designed to find planets that are roughly the same size as earth. They have found many, many such planets, and one of them, currently called Kepler 22b, is about 2.4 times the size of earth. What makes it special, however, is that it orbits a star similar to the sun, and it orbits that star at a distance which would allow it to receive just the right amount of energy to keep it warm enough to support life. Unlike Gliese 581g, there seems to be no doubt that the planet exists.

The popular media is abuzz with the news, and as usual, they aren’t being very accurate in their reporting. For example, here is how a space.com writer tells the story:

Kepler-22b’s radius is 2.4 times that of Earth, and the two planets have roughly similar temperatures.

Such a statement is nonsense, given what the Kepler team actually discovered.

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Plant/Fungus Symbosis Is A Real Relationship

The white fuzz on this root is a mycorrhizal fungus that lives in partnership with the plant. Click for credit.
If you have been reading this blog for any length of time, you know that I am fascinated by symbiotic relationships that are common throughout creation. Some of these relationships are between two specific species, others are between three specific species, and others are between many, many different species. Of all the incredible symbiotic relationships out there, one of the most ubiquitous is the relationship between plants and fungi. It is estimated that 90% of all plant species form a relationship with one or more species of fungus.1 Because these relationships are so common, we give them a special name: mycorrhizae.

In this relationship, the fungus invades a plant’s roots and takes carbon-based nutrients from the plant. At first glance, you might think the fungus is a parasite that infects the plant and takes nutrients from it. If you look at the picture above, for example, you might be inclined to think that the root is infected with a fungal parasite. That’s not the case, however, because while the fungus does, indeed, take nutrients from the plant, it also supplies the plant with critical nitrogen- and phosphorus-based chemicals that the plant has a hard time extracting from the soil. Thus, this is a mutually-beneficial relationship, which is often called a mutualistic relationship.

Because mycorrhizae are common throughout creation, there are many species of plants and fungi that participate in them. Nevertheless, the details of how mycorrhizae work are poorly understood. A new study has started to unravel those details, and the results are truly fascinating.

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Life Isn’t All That Special?

Dr. Seth Shostak has a B.S. in physics from Princeton and a PhD in astronomy from the California Institute of Technology. Obviously, then, he knows a thing or two about astronomy. His original research started out using radio telescopes to measure the motion of distant galaxies, but for quite some time now, he has been involved in the search for extraterrestrial intelligence (SETI). He is currently the senior astronomer at the SETI institute.

In a recent report, CNN interviewed him to lead off a discussion about the possibility of extraterrestrial life. Here’s what he said:

…one thing that strikes you is that every time we learn something new about the universe, what we learn is that our situation doesn’t seem to be all that special, and that suggests that life is not all that special, either.

When I heard that statement, the first thing I wondered was, “How can such a well-educated astronomer say something that absurd?” Really? Our situation isn’t all that special? We live on a special planet that orbits a special star (at just the right distance) that resides in a special part of the galaxy. Yet our situation isn’t all that special?

And then there’s the last part of the statement. Life isn’t all that special? Really? Even with all our technology, we can’t come close to making it. Indeed, single-celled organisms can stitch DNA together better than we can. Despite a lot of looking, we haven’t found life anywhere else in the universe. Nevertheless, according to Dr. Shostak, it isn’t all that special.

I was hoping that the rest of the video would explain how in the world anyone could consider such a statement to be even remotely reasonable. However, it never did.

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Former Scientific Heretic Wins the Nobel Prize in Chemistry

Nobel Laureate Dr. Dan Shechtman (Click for credit)
Dr. Dan Shechtman is a courageous scientist. Starting in 1975, he was on the faculty at Technion, the Israel Institute of Technology. He taught in the department of materials engineering, which investigates how the atomic structure of a material affects its observable properties. Back in the early 1980s, he spent his sabbatical at Johns Hopkins University, where he studied rapidly-solidified alloys of aluminum, and he discovered something that was revolutionary. It was so revolutionary that when he first saw it, he said to himself:

Eyn chaya kazo

which is Hebrew for “There can be no such creature.” Nevertheless, the more he studied, the more he was convinced of what he saw.

What revolutionary thing had Dr. Shechtman discovered? He discovered a kind of crystal that the scientific consensus said could not possibly exist. Until Dr. Shechtman’s discovery, it was thought that when substances form crystals, their atoms form an arrangement that is both ordered and periodic. An ordered arrangement just means there is a discernible pattern to the arrangement, and a periodic arrangement is one that repeats the same pattern in all directions. Thus, once I find the basic unit of a crystal’s pattern (called the “unit cell”), I can tell you what the entire crystal looks like by just repeating that pattern over and over again in three-dimensional space.

Well, chemists have been studying crystals for a long, long time, and because of the way atoms pack together, the mathematics of an ordered, periodic arrangement of atoms has been thoroughly worked out. These mathematics produced an absolute statement: There are only certain possible patterns for crystals. Some crystals can be rotated by one-half and end up looking the same as they did before they were rotated. Others can be rotated by one-fourth and end up looking the same as they did before. Others can be rotated by one-sixth and end up looking the same as they did before. However, it is impossible, quite impossible for a crystalline substance to have a structure that can be rotated by one-fifth or one-tenth and end up looking the same as it did before. Such atomic arrangements, called quasicrystals, simply cannot exist in this universe.

Nevertheless, that’s what Dr. Shechtman saw. Some of the crystals he saw forming in his experiments were quasicrystals. They were ordered, but not periodic. As a result, they had a structure that could be rotated by one-fifth or one-tenth and end up looking the same as it did before. As is typical for most scientists, he was initially very skeptical. But as he continued his experiments, he became more and more convinced of what he saw. Thus, as is typical for most scientists, he decided to communicate his findings to others.

That’s when the trouble began.

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