Cane Toads in Australia

A cane toad (click for credit)
A reader E-MAILed me asking about an article she had read regarding cane toads in Australia. The article seemed to have some implications regarding evolution, so she asked if I would look into it. Since I will be speaking to homeschoolers in Australia near the end of June, I wanted to learn more about this issue. As a result, I looked into it, and it is all quite fascinating.

Cane toads are not native to Australia. Indeed, there are no toads that are native to Australia. They were brought there from Hawaii in 1935 in order to control sugar cane pests in northeastern Queensland.1 Now you would have thought that those in charge would have learned from the famous rabbit fiasco that was recognized as a serious problem in Australia by the turn of the century, but apparently they did not. Instead, they brought the cane toad in to control the pests and, not surprisingly, it started to spread far beyond where it was originally brought. The map below shows you how incredibly far it has spread in only about 75 years.

A map of the original introduction of the cane toad (black), the current extent (brown line), and the expected range (green). Click for credit.

Continue reading “Cane Toads in Australia”

Mass Does, Indeed, Warp Spacetime

An artist's representation of how the mass of earth warps spacetime, which is represented by the blue grid. (Public Domain Image)
There are lots of experimental results that seem to confirm Einstein’s General Theory of Relativity. For example, general relativity predicts that time passes slowly in the presence of strong gravitational fields and quickly in the presence of weak gravitational fields. The Global Positioning System confirms this prediction every second of every day.1 However, there are some fundamental assumptions of general relativity that are significantly more difficult to confirm.

One of those fundamental assumptions has to do with the very nature of gravity itself. General relativity says that what we perceive as the force of gravity isn’t really a force at all. It is merely a consequence of the way that mass warps spacetime, which is a four-dimensional construct that combines the three typical dimensions of space (length, width, and height) with time. While this assumption produces all sorts of testable predictions that have been confirmed experimentally, the assumption itself has never been directly confirmed…until now.

In April of 2004, Gravity Probe B started circling the earth from pole to pole. It did so for 15 months, and all the while, precise observations were made of four gyroscopes that were roughly the size of ping-pong balls. The gyroscopes were covered with a superconducting surface. Once they started spinning, they each produced a nice magnetic pointer. Those pointers were actually able to measure two effects that the earth’s mass has on the surrounding spacetime.

Continue reading “Mass Does, Indeed, Warp Spacetime”

Ultrafast Underwater Traps

This video shows how the incredible traps used by bladderworts work. The narrator is hard to understand, but the video is worth watching.

When you study the living world, you can see how the Creator designed organisms to meet the needs of every ecosystem on the planet. Consider, for example, carnivorous plants. Plants form the foundation of many food webs. Using carbon dioxide and water, they convert the energy of sunlight into food for themselves, but they produce much more food than they need. As a result, they are used as a food source by many animals, which in turn are used as a food source by many other animals. Plants, therefore, are crucial to many ecosystems.

The food they make for themselves supplies plants with energy, but like all other organisms, plants need more than energy to live healthy and reproduce properly. They also need specific chemicals to build the molecules they need for survival. Most plants use their roots to absorb those chemicals from the soil. But what about places where the soil isn’t nutritious or it isn’t practical to absorb nutrients from it? Those ecosystems need plants as well, so there need to be plants that can survive in such places.

Enter the carnivorous plants. They capture and digest living organisms, but they don’t use those organisms for energy. Instead, the they use the organisms’ constituent chemicals as building blocks for all the elegant chemistry that they need to do. That way, they don’t have to absorb nutrients from the soil. Even the most barren soil can host carnivorous plants.

While all carnivorous plants are amazing in their own way, a recent study in The Proceedings of the Royal Society B has highlighted the amazing design of one type of carnivorous plant: the bladderwort (genus Utricularia).

Continue reading “Ultrafast Underwater Traps”

Modern Science Is a Product of Christianity

I received an E-MAIL from a student a few days ago. He had just finished Stephen Hawking and Leonard Mlodinow’s book, The Grand Design, in which the authors claim that God is not necessary in order to explain the universe. While I have not read the book yet, reviews (even from non-Christian sources) are far from flattering.

The student informed me that Hawking and Mlodinow credit the Ionian Greeks with the discovery of natural laws. This confused him, because in my book, Exploring Creation with General Science, I make it very clear that modern science was born out of Christianity. This is because the concept that nature operates according to strict laws is a natural consequence of the fact that it was created by a Supreme Lawgiver. Without the concept of a law-giving Creator, there would have been no reason to search for natural laws. Indeed, as Dr. Stanley Jaki tells us:1

…the Christian belief in the Creator allowed a breakthrough in thinking about nature. Only a truly transcendental Creator could be thought of as being powerful enough to create a nature with autonomous laws

The search for the laws that govern nature was inspired by Christianity, and as a result, modern science is a product of Christianity.

So what of the Ionian Greeks? Did they do something related to natural laws? Not really. They did do something related to science, however, and their contribution should not be downplayed. Nevertheless, it needs to be put in the proper context.

Continue reading “Modern Science Is a Product of Christianity”

What Do Evolutionists Do When One of Their Own Is Honest about the Data?

Dr. Lynn Margulis, member of the National Academy of Sciences (click for credit)
Dr. Lynn Margulis is a very interesting person. When she was a young scientist, she wrote a paper entitled “On the origin of mitosing cells.” It was rejected by several scientific journals, but it was eventually published in the Journal of Theoretical Biology more than 40 years ago. In that paper, she proposed an endosymbiotic theory for the origin of eukaryotic cells.1 If you don’t recognize that term, there are two basic kinds of cells in creation: prokaryotic and eukaryotic. Just as the human body has distinct, smaller organs that each perform specific functions, eukaryotic cells have distinct, smaller organelles that each perform specific functions. Prokaryotic cells are smaller than eukaryotic cells and do not have distinct organelles. While humans, animals, plants, and many microscopic organisms are made of eukaryotic cells, bacteria are made of a single prokaryotic cell.

In her paper, which is now considered a landmark publication, she put forth the idea that the organelles in eukaryotic cells formed because one prokaryotic cell engulfed another, and they both somehow survived to work together. The engulfed cell became the organelle, while the cell that did the engulfing became the first rudimentary eukaryotic cell. While this idea did not originate with Dr. Margulis, her landmark paper was the first to provide biochemical data that supported the view. As a result, she has gotten the lion’s share of the credit for the endosymbiotic theory of the origin of eukaryotic cells.

Now there are serious problems with her theory. For example, she makes much of the fact that mitochondria (eukaryotic organelles that power the cell) are similar to bacteria. As a result, it should make sense that mitochondria were actual bacteria at one time. However, the similarities are rather trivial. There are significant structural and biochemical differences between the two, which makes the idea that mitochondria came from bacteria quite untenable. Nevertheless, endosymbiotic theory is currently the consensus view among evolutionists for how eukaryotic cells arose. Thus, it is not surprising that Dr. Margulis was elected to the National Academy of Sciences in 1983.

While the problems associated with endosymbiotic theory are interesting, what really fascinates me is how two well-known evolutionists have reacted to her recent interview, published in Discover Magazine.

Continue reading “What Do Evolutionists Do When One of Their Own Is Honest about the Data?”

More on Mutualism

Sweet Potato Whiteflies (public domain image)
I write and speak a lot about mutualism (see here, here, here, here, and here, for example). Not only do I find it to be incredibly fascinating, but I also think it is a clear indication that the living things we see around us have been designed. Indeed, the various ways in which two or more organisms work together to survive are often so intricate and precise it seems crystal clear to me that these mutualistic partners were made for each other.

One of the very common types of mutualism you see in creation involves microorganisms inhabiting and helping plants, animals, and people. As I mentioned in a previous post, for example, our bodies are teeming with microorganisms, and without them, we would not be nearly as healthy. Animals and plants also harbor an amazing variety of microorganisms, which help them do such diverse things as digest cellulose (in the case of termites) and resist heat (in the case of panic grass). Well, I recently came across yet another example of mutualism between an animal and a microorganism, and it adds yet another level of complexity to the process.

Continue reading “More on Mutualism”

Yet Another Example of “Old” Fossils that Look Young!

This is a model of what a eurypterid might have looked like (Click for credit)
Scorpions are part of phylum Arthropoda, which contains all animals that do not have backbones but do have an outer coating of “armor,” which scientists call an exoskeleton. This exoskeleton is a complex structure that is formed primarily with proteins and a molecule called chitin (pronounced KY tin). While the scorpions we know today live on land, the fossil record holds remains of some very scorpion-like animals that most likely lived in water. They are called eurypterids, or sea scorpions.

As far as we know, sea scorpions are now extinct, but you can find their fossils in rocks near the bottom of the geological column. Using scientifically irresponsible dating techniques, paleontologists think that the oldest sea scorpion fossils are well over 400 million years old.1 Evolutionists think that those sea scorpions eventually found their way out of the water and invaded land, evolving into modern-day scorpions.

So why am I telling you this? Well, a new report published in Geology tells us about a surprising discovery made by scientists who were studying a sea scorpion fossil they say is 417 million years old and a land scorpion fossil they say is 310 million years old. This discovery casts a lot of doubt on those outlandish ages.

Continue reading “Yet Another Example of “Old” Fossils that Look Young!”

Birds Use Quantum Mechanics to Navigate?

A European robin like the ones used in the study
(Click for credit)
In a previous post, I mentioned that some Christians don’t like the idea of quantum mechanics. In fact, some take great pains to fight against it, considering it a threat to a Christian worldview. Whether or not you like a theory, however, has little to do with its validity. Only the data are important, and when it comes to the data, there is overwhelming support for the validity of quantum mechanics. As a result, it’s hard to fight against it. In fact, a recent study suggests that rather than fight against it, we should marvel at how God has used it to accomplish some truly incredible things.

The study focused on how European robins sense the earth’s magnetic field. Lots of animals have been shown to be sensitive to the earth’s magnetic field, and they use it to help them navigate. In some cases, such as that of the rainbow trout, it has been shown that the animal does this with magnetite particles in a certain tissue. Those particles move in response to the earth’s magnetic field, allowing the animal to use them to orient itself.1

Migratory birds and homing pigeons have also been shown to be sensitive to the earth’s magnetic field. Magnetite has even been found in the upper beaks of such birds, which lends support to the idea that they sense the earth’s magnetic field in a way that is similar to that of the rainbow trout.2 Oddly enough, however the magnetic sensitivity of these birds is affected by light. Yellow and red light, for example, disrupt the birds’ ability to sense the earth’s magnetic field.3 This is more than a little odd, since the motion of magnetite in a magnetic field should not be affected by light.

Continue reading “Birds Use Quantum Mechanics to Navigate?”

Intelligent Design in Science?

A stone tool, somewhat similar to those discussed in the article (click for credit)
I am not sure how this ever made it past the reviewers, but an article in the January 28, 2011 issue of the journal Science discussed research from an intelligent design standpoint. The article reports on research done by Hans-Peter Uerpmann and his colleagues. They were excavating a rock shelter at the end of a long limestone mountain near Al-Madam, Sharjah Emirate (of the UAE), and they found stones that were shaped rather differently than most of the other stones in that same area. Most of them were tapered at one end and curved at the other, and there were specific surfaces that seemed perfectly suited for fingers to hold onto the stones.1 The research is considered important, because if the results stand up to scrutiny, they upset current ideas regarding the migration of human beings out of Africa.

It is hard to keep track of the evolutionary model of the origin of human beings, because it changes abruptly every time new data cannot be forced into compliance. Nevertheless, the evolutionary view currently accepted by the majority of evolutionists is that modern human beings evolved in Africa and then started migrating from there about 50,000-75,000 years ago. Dr. Uerpmann’s research team, however, found these stones in the Arabian peninsula, and based on scientifically irresponsible dating techniques, they claim the stones are 125,000 years old.

Continue reading “Intelligent Design in Science?”

Alvin Plantinga on Divine Action and Science

In my two previous posts, I reported on a lecture series given at Taylor University by world-renowned philosopher Dr. Alvin C. Plantinga. In this post, I want to discuss his final lecture, which was, by far, the most interesting of the three.

As was the case with his other two lectures, Dr. Plantinga began with a couple of funny stories. He then jumped into the topic at hand, which is how science should deal with divine action in the world. Not surprisingly, there are many who think that any consideration of God taking action in this world is an assault on science. For example, he quoted Dr. H. Allen Orr, a professor of Biology at my alma mater (The University of Rochester), as saying:

It’s not that some sects of one religion invoke miracles, but that many sects of many religions do…I agree of course that no sensible scientist can tolerate such exceptionalism with respect to the laws of nature.

Surprisingly, enough, however, there are many theologians who have the same view. Dr. Plantinga noted that Rudolf Karl Bultmann (a Lutheran theologian), John Macquarrie (an Anglican theologian), and Langdon Brown Gilkey (an American Protestant theologian) all agree that modern science forbids God to do any miraculous works. As Dr. Plantinga noted, these theologians believe that since God put the natural laws in place, even He cannot break them.

Continue reading “Alvin Plantinga on Divine Action and Science”