Some speculate that part of Darwin's mental problems were due to his nagging, gnawing fear that he had devoted his "life to a fantasy"—and a "dangerous one" at that. This fear was that his theory was false and there was, in fact, a divine Creator.
At the close of the creation week, the first chapter of Genesis records that “God saw every thing that he had made, and, behold, it was very good.”1 But some aspects of today’s world—for example, certain aggressive behaviors—are negative, dangerous, or destructive. How could that be, if everything God created was good? New research has suggested a solution to this particular dilemma.
Investigating the effects of certain genes on fruit flies, a research team led by Trudy MacKay of North Carolina State University discovered specific mutations that caused aggressive behavior. They found “59 mutations in 57 genes” that had an effect on such behavior, and “32 of the mutations studied resulted in increased aggression while 27 caused flies to become more placid.”2 Before the study, none of the 57 genes had been suspected to have an effect on aggressiveness.
Moreover, one of the conclusions of their study, published in the open access journal BMC Biology, is that “given the conservation of aggressive behavior among different animal species, these are novel candidate genes for future study in other animals, including humans.”3
What if some aggressive behavior is rooted in Genesis 3, not in Genesis 1? The third chapter introduces the universal tragedy of the Fall, in which mankind disobeyed God and brought corruption, disease, and death to the world.4 It may be that some aggressive animal behavior is not a reflection of God’s originally perfect creation, but instead results from the sin-caused curse under which the whole creation presently suffers.
Evolutionists Explain Design Using Unscientific "Magic Words"
The term "magic words" is used here as a concise idiom that describes the best words evolutionists use to explain "apparent" design. Evolutionists confidently insist that a complex biological feature simply "appeared," "emerged," "arose," "gave rise to," "burst onto the scene," "evolved itself," "derived," "was on the way to becoming," "radiated into," "modified itself," "became a miracle of evolution," "was making the transition to," "manufactured itself," "evolution's way of dealing with," "derived emergent properties," or "was lucky."
How do words like "appeared" explain design? Just like magic, the use of this word invokes mysterious powers within unseen universes that are capable of leaping over enormous scientific obstacles without having to provide any scientific consideration for how a particular physical result was achieved. Magic words convey wish-like convictions that if evolutionists just believe deeply enough, their explanations must be true and someday will be true--though currently resisted by all scientific evidence. Explaining design by believing it "arose" appeals to imaginary special forces which help evolutionists to connect the evolutionary dots. But as in any magical kingdom, the connections are mental fantasies that are not grounded in reality.
Magic words lack explanatory power because they fail to tie real observations to detailed descriptions of how features of design originate. Claiming that novel biological features "burst onto the scene" abandons the need for experimental verification; indeed, the implication is to not even try. Take any biological observation. In evolutionary thinking, any observation can be transformed into a proof that explains its own existence by applying the magic phrase: "It exists because it is favored by natural selection." In reality, observations are only observations and are neither proofs nor explanations.
Engineers, medical doctors, and other scientists who rely on studies or experiments do not use these kinds of words. Their products do not "emerge" but develop via thought-filled processes. They rightly call filling a knowledge gap with narrative stories "arm waving," which calls to mind a stage magician.
In conversation with others, it would be difficult to overemphasize how important magic words are to evolutionary theory. Remark on how these words pervade elite journals like Science, popular magazines like Scientific American, and television shows like NOVA. "Magic words" pour from evolutionary literature like water over Niagara Falls. Challenge your listener to carefully observe the communication in these forums, noting how many paragraphs or statements pass without the use of these words. They are the lifeblood of the evolutionary community's most profound and highest-quality scientific literature.
Brain-eating amoebas caused six deaths last year, representing a spike in cases that concerns health officials. WebMD reported in May that the young men who died had picked up the amoebas while swimming.1
Many skeptics argue that a God who could make creatures that do this would not be the all-good God described in the Bible. So, where did these organisms come from?
According to Genesis, God made amoebas, along with every other living creature and organism on earth.2 God described His new creation as “very good,” therefore the original amoebas were good. That was before sin entered the world and the creation was corrupted by evil. When people reject Genesis history, they also reject the concept of the Fall. According to biblical history, evil has intruded, by man’s choice, into creation. The Fall was a consequence of Adam’s rejection of God’s word.
Brain-eating amoebas are not good, but God did not originally create them for the purpose of eating human brains. The species responsible for these infections, Naegleria fowleri, typically graze on bacteria and algae in the beds of warm, freshwater bodies, helping to maintain a good ecological balance. These amoebas can cause evil only when they are misplaced. This will not be the case forever, as God has promised an eventual end to all evil.3
We do not yet know the reason for these tragic deaths, but we do know that sin caused death and that God has provided an escape from the ultimate consequences of sin: faith in Jesus Christ,4 the resurrected One who created amoebas and will return to restore righteousness to the earth.5
[a FUndie goes to the Galapagos]
The islands abound with unusual life. Going there was a wonderful "animal experience" for all of us, for the animals show little fear of humans...
Evolutionists make much of the adaptation of land-based iguanas to ocean life. But is this evolution? No! The two rather different "species" freely interbreed in the wild. Evolution is about the origin of new species from existing species, but here we see the amalgamation of species, the opposite of evolution.
Evolutionists trumpet the several Galapagos finch "species" as arising by adaptation from one species. Creationists agree, but this did not happen through evolution. Normally the finch types segregate by lifestyle according to their beak shape, but in times of stress they interbreed and combine. No evolution here. The flightless cormorants are recognizably related to other species of cormorant on other continents, but these have lost the use of their wings. Since when is the loss of a useful structure an evolutionary development? The real question is how animals acquire wings in the first place, not how they lose them.
No, there is no evolution happening on the Galapagos Islands. They really are a showcase for creation. On display is God's wise creative design in preparing robust gene pools in each created "kind" that enable all of God's creatures to adapt and survive varying conditions.
[Regarding the vandalism of an athiest billboard in Charlotte, NC]
While vandalism should not be condoned, these recent events shed light on what some Americans will do when they feel that their freedom of speech is threatened. An atheist spokesman in North Carolina said their message is needed to "let people know we exist and that there's a community here."
Yet he failed to mention the concerted effort of atheist groups to stop religious Americans from freely exercising their religion. Not content with having the freedom themselves to worship or not as they see fit, militant atheists increasingly seek to shackle the beliefs of their fellow citizens through their own distorted interpretation of "separation of church and state."
It is perhaps not surprising that some of those fellow citizens object.
The Bible never refers to plants as living. They may "grow," or "flourish," but they do not "live." Neither do they "die." The Bible teaches that they may "wither," or "fade," but not "die," since they are not "alive," having neither "life" (nephesh), nor breath of life" (ruach), nor "blood" (i.e. "the life of the flesh is in the blood" [Leviticus 17:11]). This state may be analogous to lack of consciousness, so that, while biologically alive, plants are therefore not Biblically "living." A similar argument can be made for some of the "lower" animals (perhaps some types of worms, sponges, etc.), and certainly for protozoans and viruses. Their "death" would not constitute death of truly living organisms.
Why Does Nearly Every Culture Have a Tradition of a Global Flood?
by John D. Morris, Ph.D.
Evidence for Creation Evidence from Science Evidence from the Earth Sciences The Global Flood Is the Key to the Past Geological Evidence Indicates Rapid Formation
"Where is the wise? where is the scribe? where is the disputer of this world? hath not God made foolish the wisdom of this world?" (I Corinthians 1:20)
One of the strongest evidences for the global flood which annihilated all people on Earth except for Noah and his family, has been the ubiquitous presence of flood legends in the folklore of people groups from around the world. And the stories are all so similar. Local geography and cultural aspects may be present but they all seem to be telling the same story.
Over the years I have collected more than 200 of these stories, originally reported by various missionaries, anthropologists, and ethnologists.
While the differences are not always trivial, the common essence of the stories is instructive as compiled below:
Is there a favored family? 88%
Were they forewarned? 66%
Is flood due to wickedness of man? 66%
Is catastrophe only a flood? 95%
Was flood global? 95%
Is survival due to a boat? 70%
Were animals also saved? 67%
Did animals play any part? 73%
Did survivors land on a mountain? 57%
Was the geography local? 82%
Were birds sent out? 35%
Was the rainbow mentioned? 7%
Did survivors offer a sacrifice? 13%
Were specifically eight persons saved? 9%
Putting them all back together, the story would read something like this:
Once there was a worldwide flood, sent by God to judge the wickedness of man. But there was one righteous family which was forewarned of the coming flood. They built a boat on which they survived the flood along with the animals. As the flood ended, their boat landed on a high mountain from which they descended and repopulated the whole earth.
Of course the story sounds much like the Biblical story of the great flood of Noah's day. The most similar accounts are typically from middle eastern cultures, but surprisingly similar legends are found in South America and the Pacific Islands and elsewhere. None of these stories contains the beauty, clarity, and believable detail given in the Bible, but each is meaningful to their own culture.
Anthropologists will tell you that a myth is often the faded memory of a real event. Details may have been added, lost, or obscured in the telling and retelling, but the kernel of truth remains. When two separate cultures have the same "myth" in their body of folklore, their ancestors must have either experienced the same event, or they both descended from a common ancestral source which itself experienced the event.
The only credible way to understand the widespread, similar flood legends is to recognize that all people living today, even though separated geographically, linguistically, and culturally, have descended from the few real people who survived a real global flood, on a real boat which eventually landed on a real mountain. Their descendants now fill the globe, never to forget the real event.
But, of course, this is not the view of most modern scholars. They prefer to believe that something in our commonly evolved psyche forces each culture to invent the same imaginary flood legend with no basis in real history. Instead of scholarship, this is "willful ignorance" of the fact that "the world that then was, being overflowed with water, perished"
In 1984, when no space craft had yet reached Uranus and Neptune, I published a theory predicting the strength of the magnetic fields of those two planets in the Creation Research Society Quarterly, a peer-reviewed creationist scientific journal. I made the predictions on the basis of my hypotheses that (A) the raw material of creation was water (based on II Peter 3:5, "the earth was formed out of water and by water"), and (B) at the instant God created the water molecules, the spins of the hydrogen nuclei were all pointing in a particular direction.
The unobserved process of evolution and its bizarre history has been
thoroughly entrenched in the minds of millions. For decades there were
facets of this theory that one was never to question, but irritating
scientific discoveries continue to unravel the Darwinian garment.
For instance, decades ago it was routinely taught that vertebrates
arose long after the Cambrian period. Evolutionists maintained that
the Cambrian (beginning "542 million years ago") was when "simple"
life was first getting established. It would take many millions of
years to produce the first animals with backbones -- the fish. In
fact, two evolutionists stated in a well-known text, "Fish arose
during the Ordovician |beginning '488 mya'|. . . ."1 But in 1999
fossil fish were found in lower Cambrian sediments in south China.2
Several years back, this writer attended the International Conference
on Dinosaur/Bird Evolution. One afternoon, a number of us took a field
trip led by a recognized "expert." He asked us if the field in which
we were standing could have been a dinosaur-age environment. Several
said no, because there was grass present. Evolutionists maintain that
grasses were not present during the age of dinosaurs --
In my review |i.e., Eschberger, ed.| of Disney's new movie "Dinosaur,"
I mentioned that one of the few scientific inacurracies |sic| that I
found in the movie was the presence of grasses in the dinosaur nesting
grounds.3
However, in a 2005 report we read, "Plant-eating dinosaurs munched on
grass, say scientists who had thought the plants emerged after the
beasts died off."4
Students were taught that the only mammals during the "age of
dinosaurs" were small, and barely able to stay alive among the
terrible thunder lizards. Evolution theory said that the mammals were
nothing more than "shrew-like insectivores that hunted at night." That
radically changed with the recent discovery of large, dinosaur-hunting
mammals!5
One of the more spectacular discoveries that has done much to dispel
the myth of dinosaurs living many millions of years ago is the
unearthing of soft dinosaur tissue (see Acts & Facts Origins Column).6
How could dinosaur tissue remain soft for 70 million years?
These discoveries, while devastating Darwinism, clearly support the
creation model, with all things created within one week, not long
ago.
The New State Religion: Atheism
It seems that atheism has become the official stance of America’s school system. One way in which many schools and teachers are attempting to indoctrinate students is by the use of new terms to hide the actual intent of the policy maker. For example, the current euphemism for an atheist is a nontheist or naturalist. Even if a naturalistic explanation is not true, scientists must still try to explain all events from this worldview.
Knowing that their functional atheism could hinder them from obtaining grants or public support, scientists often skip around these conclusions in their writing and teaching. Some, though, are open and honestly reveal their atheism. One example is William B. Provine, professor of biological science at Cornell. He notes that at the beginning of his class about 75% of his students “were either creationists or believed in purposive evolution” guided by God or a divine power. Research on his incisive, direct, hard-hitting teaching on origins (how students often describe his lectures) reveals that the number of creationists and those who “believed in purposive evolution” dropped to about 50% by the end of the course. No one has hauled him into court for his openly indoctrinating students in atheism, and indeed, scientists in general have applauded him.
Scientists generally not only support Provine’s one-sided teaching but are determined not to allow the other side in the classroom. Further, scientific orthodoxy teaches that human existence has no God-given purpose, but is a chance event, a blip on the radar screen in the infinity of time. No God had any part in the creation.
Evolutionists claim that evolution is a scientific fact, but they almost always lose scientific debates with creationist scientists. Accordingly, most evolutionists now decline opportunities for scientific debates, preferring instead to make unilateral attacks on creationists.
Many scientists, such as the ones in this study, ignore the destructive genetic changes that lie behind flower color variation and instead focus on how the resulting shades of color are acted upon by various types of pollinators, presupposing that the flowers are somehow changing to match the available birds and insects. But while the diverse pollinators may serve to propagate different flowers of certain colors, they induce no new structures. They actually show off the resiliency built into creation by the Creator, who made flying creatures with just the right kinds of mouth parts to pollinate these plants, as well as enough flexibility in their visual systems to still be able to recognize mutant, degenerate flower colors.
Certainly national pride was involved, as the U.S. was engaged with the Russians in a race to put the first man on the moon, but there is no doubt that the motivation of those planning and directing the project was to investigate the origin of the moon and to confirm one of the several theories concerning its evolutionary origin.
Creation scientists, based on the clear and unequivocal statements in the Word of God, and firmly supported by well-established natural laws and the failure of all theories on the evolutionary origin of the universe, accept the supernatural, special creation of the universe, which, of course, includes the origin of the solar system with its earth and moon.
...
Thus, using special processes operating nowhere in the natural universe today, God created all the heavenly bodies, including the earth, the moon, the sun, and all the other objects in the solar system.
"Global warming may affect some parts of our society negatively but would likely benefit others. In fact, the current warming trend may be returning our global climate closer to that prevalent in the Garden of Eden."