Something We Can Learn From the Harold Camping Nonsense

A truck advertising Harold Camping's Failed Prediction of Judgement Day (click for credit)

I am sure that you’ve probably read everything you want to read about Harold Camping and his failed prediction that the Rapture of the church would occur on May 21, 2011. However, I would like you to indulge me for just a moment, because I think his failed prediction can actually teach us something about how we Christians need to respect the Bible a bit more than we currently do.

Look at the picture of the van above. It proclaims Camping’s prediction of the coming Judgment, but note what it says on the bottom right. It says, “The Bible Guarantees It.” Now, of course, anyone who knows much about the Bible knows that it actually guarantees that no one (not even the angels) knows the hour or the day of Christ’s return (Matthew 24:36). Thus, to say that the Bible guarantees Camping’s prediction is absurd.

Unfortunately, however, many Christians make one of the the same mistakes that Harold Camping made. They may not be so Biblically illiterate as to think they can state the date of the Rapture, but they do claim the Bible says something when, in fact, the Bible doesn’t even come close to saying that.

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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.

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Dr. Karl Giberson Does Not Want You To Think For Yourself!

There is a very interesting discussion going on at Patheos. Dr. William Dembski posted part 1 of a four-part discussion with Dr. Karl Giberson. Essentially, it is Dr. Dembski’s review of The Language of Science and Faith: Straight Answers to Genuine Questions, a book co-written by Dr. Giberson and Dr. Francis Collins. The book’s goal is to promote theistic evolution. It claims to show that real science supports evolution and that evolution is not contrary to Christianity.

I actually agree with the second part of that statement. While there are those who think that the concept of evolution is inherently anti-Christian, I most certainly do not. Jesus tells us that we are to judge a tree by its fruit (Matthew 7:15-20), and there are many theistic evolutionists (Dr. C.S. Lewis, Dr. Alister McGrath. Dr. John Polkinghorne, and Dr. Alvin Plantinga, for example) who have produced amazing fruit for the kingdom of God. To assume that these people hold to an inherently anti-Christian idea borders on the absurd.

Where I disagree with this book is in its first statement – that evolution is supported by real science. Dr. Dembski apparently disagrees as well, judging by his review of the book. While his comments are useful, they are not what I find really interesting about this discussion. The interesting stuff comes in Dr. Giberson’s response, which is part two of the discussion.

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Oh Dem Young Bones

An osteocyte-like structure found in a supposedly 70-million-year-old fossil (Click for credit)
In three previous articles (here, here, and here), I discussed bones that are supposed to be millions of years old and yet have soft tissue and large organic molecules in them. This is quite hard to understand if the fossils truly are that old, since soft tissue and large organic molecules are expected to decay fairly rapidly, even under ideal conditions. For example, an interdisciplinary approach to understanding how large organic molecules such as protein and DNA could be preserved over time suggested that even if a fossil were kept at the freezing point of water, collagen (a protein found in bone) should decay away so that it becomes undetectable in just under three million years.1 Nevertheless, collagen has been found in fossils that are supposed to be more than twenty times that old!

Of course, if you are desperate to believe in an ancient earth and are therefore forced to think such fossils are really that old, you could hope that either very special conditions existed for the fossils in which the soft tissue and proteins were found, or you could hope that the soft tissue and proteins were the result of some kind of contamination. A recent paper in PLoS ONE has, in my opinion, laid both of those hopes to rest.

The paper examines samples from a mosasaur fossil that is 70 million years old, according to scientifically-irresponsible dating techniques. A microscopic analysis of this fossil showed all sorts of amazing things. For example, when the bone was etched with acid and then examined with a microscope, several structures that look like mature bone cells (called osteocytes) were found. In addition, all sorts of fibrous tissue was found, and amazingly enough, that fibrous tissue absorbed dye just like connective tissue from a modern bone!2

But what was the fibrous tissue made of? The authors show beyond all reasonable doubt that it contained collagen, which is a complex protein found in all bones. In my mind, their detailed analysis is part of what makes this paper so important.

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Another Homeschooled Superstar

Evan O'Dorney, a homeschooled superstar
(picture courtesy Intel)
I have met a lot of really impressive homeschooled students over the years. Some of them have won spelling bees, geography bees, debate tournaments, and the like. Some of them have risked their lives going as missionaries to countries where they could have been killed for sharing the Gospel. Some of them have sacrificed greatly to help others in need. Some of them have dedicated themselves to raising another generation of homeschooled students. Some of them simply radiate the love of Christ to all who have the privilege of meeting them. I am usually not surprised, then, when I read about a specific homeschooled student and his or her special accomplishments.

However, I have to admit that I was shocked to open up the March 25, 2011 issue of Science and read a short interview with Evan O’Dorney, the winner of this year’s Intel Science Talent Search. If you aren’t familiar with this program, it is the nation’s most prestigious high school science competition. Students from across the nation submit their original science research, and the winner receives a $100,000 scholarship to the university of his or her choice. There 39 other awards given out, ranging from $75,000 to $7,500. I was privileged enough to work with a high school student (Alexis Michael) who ended up receiving an award from this competition back in 1993, when it was named the Westinghouse Science Talent Search.

It didn’t surprise me that Science ran an interview with the winner of this prestigious competition. They generally do that each year. What surprised me was that the article actually mentioned that the winner is a homeschooler.

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The MassHOPE Convention

Last weekend, I spoke at the MassHOPE convention. I have spoken there many times over the course of the past 15 years, and it is one of my favorite conventions. It is held in a great facility, and it is very well-organized. Also, while I was young, I used to spend a lot of time in Massachusetts because my father grew up there. It is always fun to go back and listen to people who talk like my dad.

I gave five talks while I was there. Two of them were on homeschooling. I dealt with elementary science in one of the talks and junior-high/high-school science in the other talk. In my elementary science talk, I stress how important mathematics is for science, and I tell the parents that while science is important, during the K-6 years, mathematics is even more important. Thus, if you want to stress anything during the K-6 years, stress the math. That will pay off huge dividends in science later on. As a result, while you should do some science in the K-6 years, you should do it only from time-to-time. You should be stressing mathematics, reading, and writing during that time in your child’s life.

What I find interesting is that most parents seem to instinctively know this already. I can’t tell you how many people come up to me after I give that talk and tell me that they have been doing just that for quite some time. However, they have always felt vaguely uneasy about only doing science from time-to-time and are glad that someone like me has validated what they are doing. I think this is an example of how parents really do know what’s best for their child’s education, even when they don’t have the benefit of advice from an “expert.”

My other three talks were on science. I talked about the scientific evidence for Christianity, about the prophecies in the Old Testament that have been fulfilled in both history and in the life of Christ, and about the amazing science that you find in the Bible. I got two questions from that last talk which are worth covering in this post.

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Amazing Ant Rafts



It has long been known that when some ants are faced with a flood, they build “living rafts” that float on the water in search of land. The earliest reference I know of to this phenomenon comes from the book Insect Architecture, which was published in 1838:1

The ants consisting of the basis of this group, lay hold of some shrub for security, while their companions hold on by them; and thus the whole colony, forming an animated raft, floats on the surface of the water until the inundation (which seldom continues for longer than a day or two) subsides.

So scientists have known about this for a long time, but how such rafts manage to float has been a mystery. You see, a single ant can float on water for two reasons: First, water has surface tension, and that tension must be broken in order for something to sink. If laid carefully on the surface of water, for example, a metal needle will float. Even though the density of the needle indicates it should sink, the water’s surface tension will keep it afloat. Second, the water-repelling nature of an ant’s outer covering (its exoskeleton) causes tiny bubbles of air to cling to it. The combination of the air bubbles’ buoyancy and the water’s surface tension keeps the ant afloat, but not by much.

Now…if I start stacking ants on top of each other, only a few of them will be in contact with the water. The water’s surface tension combined with the buoyancy of the ants that are actually in contact with the water just isn’t enough to keep the whole stack of ants afloat. Thus, something else must be going on when ants get together to form rafts.

A recent report on fire ant rafts was just published online in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, USA. It tells us what is actually going on in ant rafts, which is really quite fascinating.

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Land Plant Evolution – Another Example of Mental Gymnastics

Spirogrya are part of the Zygnematales, which are now thought to be the closest living relatives of land plants. Click for credit
It is difficult to be an evolutionist these days. Back when morphology (the study of the form and structure of organisms) was the only way we could compare organisms to one another, evolutionists could spin tales of evolution unchecked. However, as science and technology improved, we became able to test those evolutionary tales against genetic data, and the results were devastating. Evolutionary relationships inferred from morphology are often quite different from those inferred from genetics.1

To make matters worse, evolutionary relationships based on genetics are confusing as well. For example, while most of an organism’s DNA is in its cells’ “control center” (the nucleus), some of an organism’s DNA resides in its cells’ powerhouses (the mitochondria). In most muticellular organisms, this DNA (not surprisingly called “mitochondrial DNA”) is thought to be inherited only from the mother. Well, when evolutionary relationships are inferred from mitochondrial DNA, they disagree with evolutionary relationships inferred from nuclear DNA.2 Even when you concentrate on nuclear DNA, the evolutionary relationships inferred from one set of genes disagree with those inferred from a different set of genes.3

These problems came to mind recently as I read a study on the supposed evolution of land plants. Evolutionists have long thought that the the Charales, a biological order of pondweeds, are the closest living relatives to the ancestors of land plants. This is because the Charales are algae, but they are thought to be the most complex form of algae. In addition, they sexually reproduce by making freely-moving sperm cells and much larger, stationary egg cells. This is also the way modern land plants reproduce.

It only makes sense, then, that the most complex algae with the same basic reproductive mode as land plants must be closely related to land plants, right? Wrong…at least according to the genetic data.

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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).

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Fruit Fly Genome Studies Confirm That There Is Little “Junk DNA”

Creationists and ID advocates predict little junk DNA in nature, and studies confirm that prediction.
Creationists and Intelligent Design advocates long ago predicted that the more we learn about genetics, the more we will see that there is very little “junk DNA” in nature. About a year ago, I discussed the first results that came from project ENCODE. Those results indicate that there is very little DNA in the human genome that is not used by the cell, indicating that there is very little “junk DNA” in people. Not surprisingly, as the genomes of other organisms are studied, we are finding that they also have very little “junk DNA.”

To understand what fruit flies are telling us about “junk DNA,” you need to understand the term “transcription” as it applies to genetics. The information in DNA is stored in a code, which must be read and translated in order for it to turn into something useful for the cell. It turns out that the cell has an elegant mechanism to do this, and that mechanism can be described in two phases: transcription and translation. In transcription, the code is copied and then transported out of the nucleus of the cell and to the protein-making factories in the cell. At that point, the protein-making factories perform translation, where the code is translated into proteins that perform all sorts of vital functions for the cell.

Since transcription requires a large amount of energy and resources, it is assumed that a cell won’t perform transcription on any portion of DNA that isn’t used by the cell. Thus, by seeing what portions of DNA are transcribed, we can see what portion of the genome is functional. Just as the entire collection of DNA is called a “genome,” the entire collection of transcribed DNA is called the “transcriptome.”

With that background, you can now understand what studies of the fruit fly transcriptome have told us about “junk DNA.”

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