Grow in the Dark: Bottom-Dwelling Bacterium Survives on Geothermal Glow
A microbe discovered in the deepest, darkest reaches of the Pacific Ocean makes its living in an unlikely way — by photosynthesis. The newly described species, announced in the June 28 Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, uses faint light emitted by deep-sea hydrothermal vents to power its metabolism.
[Click here to read the full story]
VFM Comment (taken from www.creationresearch.net):
Where there is light, there may be photosynthesis, but the presence of light cannot make a non-photosynthetic organism become a photosynthesising one. Photosynthesis at any light level requires a precise, highly organized set of physical and chemical reactions and is of no use to a cell until all the components are present. This discovery is also further evidence that volcanic vent bacteria are not primitive cells, having just barely evolved above non-living matter. They carry out complex chemical reactions that industrial chemists can only copy after the application of a great deal of University training, combined with innate intelligence and clever engineering. John Allen is partly right — photosynthesis is as old as life. The first living things God made were the plants on the third day of creation (Gen 1:11).
Mysterious Planet Baffles Experts
A strange, distant world with three suns is baffling astronomers and challenging established theories.
The hefty planet is bigger than Jupiter although it stays very close to its main star; 20 times closer, in fact, than the Earth is to our Sun.
Some experts are puzzled because this intimate location should have stopped the body’s formation.
“You shouldn’t see it, but you do see it,” German researcher Artie Hatzes told news@nature.com.
The planet, which is nestled within the triple star system known as HD 188753, lies 149 light-years from Earth in the Cygnus constellation.
The star at the centre of the system is very much like our own Sun, and its planet whirls around it once every 3.35 days. Then, in a remote binary orbit, at about the distance from our Sun to Saturn, two more stars hug each other closely.
Strange sunsets
Sunsets on this faraway planet would be like nothing we have ever seen. “With three suns, the sky view must be out of this world,” said Maciej Konacki, from the California Institute of Technology, US, who identified the planet.
However, it is not the thought of ethereal sunsets that is upsetting some scientists: it is the planet’s location combined with the existence of the other two suns.
Conventional theory holds that giant planets form far away from their star, with material building up around an icy seed. According to many experts, such nuggets could never begin within the inner reaches of a blazing star.
Of course, some giant planets do ride orbits close to stars, but many astronomers speculate that these “hot Jupiters” grew in further flung places before migrating inwards.
The trouble is, this could not have happened in HD 188753, Professor Konacki believes.
The reason is the binary stars, which are whirling around in just the place — the so-called ice-line — where hot Jupiters should begin their existence. According to Professor Konacki, these two suns would smash any embryonic planets into oblivion.
[Click here to read the full story]
VFM Comment (taken from www.creationresearch.net):
When you find something that shouldn’t exist according to current evolutionary theories, it is time to change the theories. The gas and dust aggregation theory is popularly believed to explain the evolution of our solar system. This new discovery shoots holes in that belief. Over the last few years cosmologists and astronomers have been constantly revising and modifying theories because new discoveries don’t fit with current theories. If they would only believe the Creator’s record of the origin and history of the universe they would be spared a lot of time wasting and frustration, and could get on with observing and understanding what is really out there. The Creator of the solar system tells a very different story — the earth was created first before the sun. The rest of the solar system plus the stars were created for the purpose of providing light on the earth and to provide signs and a calendar for human beings (Genesis 1:14-19).
Researchers Pinpoint Source of Poison Frogs’ Deadly Defenses
The poison frogs of Central and South America are as deadly as they are beautiful, thanks to chemicals called alkaloids that they secrete through their skin. Indeed, the venom from a single golden poison frog, for example, can kill 10 humans. Now researchers have unlocked the secrets of their counterparts in Madagascar and found that they employ the same method of acquiring thier toxins: through careful food consumption.
Studies of these frogs in the Neotropics indicated that a diet rich in ants provided the alkaloids, but whether the same held true for Malagasy populations was unknown. Now Valerie Clark of Columbia University and the American Museum of Natural History in New York City and her colleagues have resolved the mystery. By analyzing three poison frog species from Madagascar and their potential food sources, the team found that ants — including one species not previously known to impart poisonous alkaloids — provide the Malagasy frogs with the chemicals that comprise their toxic secretions. Three of the chemicals are unique to creature living in Madagascar.
Because neither the frogs nor the ants from the two regions are closely related, the results indicate that the ability to utilize ants both as food and as the source of a defense weapon against danger developed independently in two diverse regions of the world.
[Click here to read the full story]
VFM Comment:
This article is incredible for several different reasons. First, is the frog’s incredible ability to ingest dangerous chemicals from the ants, and then to store it without harm, only to be used by their own defense system. How could such a system evolve gradually without killing off the frogs before it was completely done evolving?
Secondly, here we have two frogs that are not related according to evolutionary theory, and yet they utilize the same complex system of defense. How impossible that accidental, random chance could create such a system in the first place. So the idea that it happened twice is impossible — times two! The same thing applies to the ants mentioned in the article. Here we have two completely unrelated ants supposedly evolving the production of similar chemicals.
Thirdly, what an example of a symbiotic relationship between these frogs and the ants they eat. Again, if the unrelated ants and the unrelated frogs didn’t evolve at exactly the same time, how would this relationship even be possible? To be honest, symbiotic relationships in nature show an over-arching design, not randomness.
An author reporting the same story in the New York Times said:
“As evolutionary biologists see it, the underlying principle of evolutionary convergence - that often there is one right tool for the job, and that selective pressures will reinvent the bio-utensil whenever the need arises - exemplifies just how non-random and ostensibly purposeful natural selection can be, and how readily it may be mistaken for evidence of supernatural ‘design.’”
What a statement! A better way to put this would have been is to say that such a discovery: exemplifies just how non-random and ostensibly purposeful the Creator designed living systems, and how readily it may be credited to evolution — so as to deny the Creator (Romans 1:18&19).
Evolution Battle Rages in Kansas
(CBS/AP) The Kansas Board of Education voted 6-4 to include greater criticism of evolution in its school science standards, but it decided to send the standards to an outside academic for review before taking a final vote.
The Kansas school system was ridiculed around the country in 1999 when the board deleted most references to evolution. The system later reversed course, but the language favored by the board Tuesday comes from advocates of intelligent design or creationism.
The belief, which many say is deeply tied to religious belief, holds that some features of the natural world are best explained by an unspecified intelligent cause. Evolution is a fundamental scientific theory that species evolved over millions of years through natural selection.
However, the latest version of the science standards says the board isn’t advocating intelligent design — which says some features of the natural world are best explained by an intelligent cause because they’re well-ordered and complex — as an alternative to the theory of evolution. But the language favored by the board comes from intelligent design advocates who challenge the theory of evolution.
Tuesday’s debate exemplified the divisiveness of the issue, with moderates saying religion has no place in the science classroom.
[Click here to read the full story]
Volcanoes Score One in Dinosaur Extinction Debate
CALGARY (CP) - In the ongoing debate about whether a giant meteor or spewing volcanoes killed the dinosaurs, notch one up for the volcanoes.
At a scientific conference on Wednesday, a French researcher presented a study of Indian lava fields that suggested ancient volcanic activity was intense enough to have caused the climate changes believed to lie behind the extinction of the giant lizards.
“We can see that due to the surface degassing of the lava flow we have a potential impact on climate,” said Anne-Lise Chenet of the Institut de Physique du Globe de Paris.
Some scientists theorize that dinosaurs died out about 65 million years ago - along with more than 70 per cent of all species on Earth - as a result of climate change caused by the impact of a massive asteroid crashing into our planet.
That impact would have sent trillions of tonnes of dust into the air and sparked huge fires. That combination of dust and soot - some estimates suggest 25 per cent of earth’s vegetation burned - would have lowered temperatures and acidified rainfall around the globe, destroying dinosaur habitat.
An undersea crater off Mexico’s Yucatan coast is thought to be the impact site.
But other scientists believe earth’s climate changed as a result of gases belched into the air from an upswing in volcanic activity.
[Click here to read the full story]
VFM Comment:
Much of the public has been convinced that dinosaur extinction has been explained by an extraterrestrial impact that happened 65 million years ago. However, as this article points out, evolutionists still do not have a solid explanation for what killed these great beasts. However, it is interesting that at almost every dinosaur burial site involves some sort of water catastrophe. A much better explanation for these dinosaur burials is the worldwide flood – only thousands of years ago! To see the evidence, see our presentation from the Jonathan Park – Album #1 Study Guide.
Mars Life May Be Contaminated by Spacecraft, Experts Warn
Is there life on Mars? If there is, NASA might be contaminating it with microbes from Earth.
The concern prompted the Washington, D.C.-based National Research Council (NRC) to issue an advisory yesterday urging the U.S. space agency to adopt more stringent spacecraft-sterilization techniques.
[Click here to read the full story]
VFM Comment:
Their assumption is so strong that life might exist on Mars (as the result of evolution), that NASA is being encouraged to protect it — even though there has been no scientific evidence that there are any organisms living there! This shows how an evolutionary worldview is affecting our modern space program. How much better it would be to trust God’s Word that says that life was specially created right here Earth!
A tree from the time of the dinosaurs, recently rediscovered in Australia, went on display Tuesday at London's Kew Gardens.
The so-called Wollemi Pine is believed to have originated 200 million years ago, and has been noted in fossil records dating back 90 million years.
[Click here to read the full story]
VFM Comment:
Before it was discovered in Australia just over 10 years ago, this tree was thought to have been extinct for millions of years. And yet, when we compare the modern tree with and the fossil record, there hasn’t been any evolutionary change in over 90 million years (according to the evolutionary timeline). This is more evidence that evolution isn’t taking place!
Plant discovery implies ‘backup copy’ of genome
In a startling discovery, geneticists at Purdue University say they have found plants that possess a corrected version of a defective gene inherited from both their parents, as if some handy backup copy with the right version had been made in the grandparents’ generation or earlier.
The finding implies that some organisms may contain a cryptic backup copy of their genome that bypasses the usual mechanisms of heredity.
If confirmed, it would represent an unprecedented exception to the laws of inheritance discovered by Gregor Mendel in the 19th century. Equally surprising, the cryptic genome appears not to be made of DNA, the usual hereditary material, but of RNA, DNA’s chemical cousin.
[Click here to read the full story]
VFM Comment:
Obviously this is a new discovery, so much more research will be done. If this study is proved valid, what a marvelous design by the Creator! A similar article in the New York Times stated, “The discovery also raises interesting biological questions - including whether it gets in the way of evolution, which depends on mutations changing an organism rather than being put right by a backup system.” Although evolution has already been shown to be impossible, this would make it even more difficult to explain!
Scientists Find Soft Tissue in T-Rex Bone
WASHINGTON (Reuters) - A 70-million-year-old Tyrannosaurus rex fossil dug out of a hunk of sandstone has yielded soft tissue, including blood vessels and perhaps even whole cells, U.S. researchers reported on Thursday Paleontologists forced to break the creature’s massive thighbone to get it on a helicopter found not a solid piece of fossilized bone, but instead something looking a bit less like a rock.
When they got it into a lab and chemically removed the hard minerals, they found what looked like blood vessels, bone cells and perhaps even blood cells. “They are transparent, they are flexible,” said Mary Higby Schweitzer of North Carolina State University and Montana State University, who conducted the study. She said the vessels were flexible and in some cases their contents could be squeezed out. “The microstructures that look like cells are preserved in every way,” added Schweitzer, whose findings were published in the journal Science.
[Click here to read the full story]
VFM Comment:
This is a major discovery! Evolutionists discover a T-rex bone that has not yet fossilized, and inside are blood vessels and perhaps blood cells? First, it’s interesting that after such an extremely long period of time that the bone hasn’t fossilized. Second, wouldn’t it be impossible for extremely delicate blood vessels and cells to stay in tact for 70 million years? This is excellent proof the dinosaurs did not live millions of years ago!
Fossils prove turtles have winning design
Sydney - Australian scientists have announced the discovery of a dozen fossils from some of the earliest species of sea turtle, believed to be 110-million years old.
Palaeontologist Ben Kear yesterday said the fossils, found late last year in the north-eastern state of Queensland, would help scientists to understand why sea turtles have remained virtually unchanged for more than 100-million years.
“For all intents and purposes, if you were to see one (fossil) it would look basically the same as sea turtles do today,” Kear said.
[Click here to read the full story]
VFM Comment:
Although there is excellent evidence that these evolutionary dates are wrong, this discovery brings up an interesting question. Why is it that 110-million years of evolution has not made a significant change in turtles? This discovery, like so many other animals, shows that their supposed ancestors in the fossil record are similar to their living counterparts. A better explanation may be that macro-evolution isn’t happening at all!
“Hobbit” Brains Were Small but Smart, Study Says
The recently discovered “hobbit” fossils do in fact represent a new human species, according to a new study of a hobbit braincase. What’s more, the little humans seem to have been more intelligent than expected, given their extremely small brains — a finding that may completely change how scientists view human evolution.
Last October a team of Australian and Indonesian archaeologists reported the discovery of the18,000-year-old bones of an adult female hobbit. The only known hobbit skull is from this female, though archaeologists later found partial remains of seven other individuals.
[Click here to read the full story]
VFM Comment:
Some scientists now agree that these bones were humans. They are considered by some to simply be dwarfs, as have been other human populations. Along side these fossils is evidence that they used tools and hunted. There are currently DNA studies being done on this specimen. It will be interesting to see the results! It is also interesting that these bones were not mineralized – they did not yet fossilize. Som creation scientists say this may mean that they are much younger than the evolutionary claims.
There has been much controversy about these bones, and now the latest is concerning the braincase. Some (as in this article) are claiming that even though this person had a small braincase, that it was highly intelligent. This really goes against the “bigger is smarter” idea upon which most of evolutionary re-construction of supposed ape-man history is based. Like this article points out, this “may completely change how scientists view human evolution”.
Instead of trusting the ever-changing theories of man, a better way would be to put our trust in the Creator; that He made humans intelligent from the very start!
Most things that happen in the cell are the work of ‘molecular machines’ complexes of proteins that carry out important cellular functions. Until now, scientists didn’t have a clear idea of when proteins form these machines are these complexes pre-fabricated or put together on the spot for each specific job? Researchers at the European Molecular Biology Laboratory (EMBL), working closely with scientists from the Technical University of Denmark (DTU), have now answered that question by drawing together many types of data in a fascinating new model. The work is published in this week’s edition of Science.
“Past studies of this type have usually left out a crucial element time,” says EMBL Group Leader Peer Bork. “But now a picture has emerged which is extremely dynamic.”
The researchers discovered that in yeast, key components needed to create a machine are produced ahead of time, and kept in stock. When a new machine is needed, a few crucial last pieces are synthesized and then the apparatus is assembled. Holding off on the last components enables the cell to prevent building machines at the wrong times. That’s a different scenario from what happens in bacteria, which usually start production of all the parts, from scratch, whenever they want to get something done.
[Click here to read the full story]
VFM Comment:
As anyone reads this article, how could they deny the clear evidence of design? As a matter of fact this entire article is written with words like “complexes”, “machines”, “pre-fabricated”, “specific job”, “create”, etc. Yet later on in the article, the author attributes these systems to random-chance, purposeless, accidental evolution! Romans 1:20 says that they are without excuse!
Anthropologist resigns in ‘dating disaster’
A flamboyant anthropology professor, whose work had been cited as evidence Neanderthal man once lived in Northern Europe, has resigned after a German university panel ruled he fabricated data and plagiarized the works of his colleagues.
Reiner Protsch von Zieten, a Frankfurt university panel ruled, lied about the age of human skulls, dating them tens of thousands of years old, even though they were much younger, reports Deutsche Welle.
“The commission finds that Prof. Protsch has forged and manipulated scientific facts over the past 30 years,” the university said of the widely recognized expert in carbon data in a prepared statement.
[Click here to read the full story]
Fierce mammal ate dinos for lunch
The specimen belongs to a primitive mammal about 130 million years old and its stomach contents show that it ate young dinosaurs called psittacosaurs. A US-Chinese team of researchers has described the find in Nature magazine. In the same issue, the group reports discovering the largest known primitive mammal from the same locality. The team found the Early Cretaceous specimens in the famous fossil beds of Liaoning Province in north-eastern China.
[Click here to read the full story]
VFM Comment:
VFM Comment (Taken from www.CreationSafaris.com): So evolutionary theory can explain anything, no matter what the bones. But if early mammals were already large and carnivorous, where is the evolution? No problem; just throw in a few new subplots to the never-ending story. Animals just got larger and smaller according to who was eating whom. The old speculation game is alive and well. By the way, Anne added an admission to the public: “Despite the frequently made generalization that Mesozoic mammals were rat-sized, palaeontologists have known for some time that this was not the case” sizeable mammal fossils are also known from North America and Australia.
Are geckos the clean freaks of the animal kingdom? Their feet will stick to virtually any surface, yet collect no grime and never lose their grip, even as they scurry up trees and scamper through dirt.
But a gecko never grooms. It doesn’t have to. A gecko’s feet, scientists have discovered, contain a self-cleaning adhesive.
Unlike artificial adhesives, the millions of microscopic hairs embedded in a gecko’s toes counteract the forces of gravity, while at the same time repelling dirt, the scientists reported. The findings, the researchers say, may open the door to tape that can be reused endlessly, robotic rovers that run swiftly over the Martian surface or even fumble-free football gloves.
[Click here to read the full story]
VFM Comment:
God’s design is seen throughout the animal kingdom!
Reefs get help to beat the heat
KEY LARGO, Fla. - For some time, scientists have predicted that the world’s coral reefs will be among the first ecosystems to suffer devastating damage from global warming. Some reefs, however, are proving surprisingly resilient, researchers say, not because of qualities of the corals themselves, but because of heat-tolerant algae that live with them.
It may even be possible that heat-related episodes of coral bleaching, which had been viewed as ominous previews of mass coral death to come, could allow these robust algae to spread, leaving corals better able to survive in a warmer world.
[Click here to read the full story]
VFM Comment:
There are two worldviews. One says that the earth formed by random chance, and that the balance of nature could be radically disturbed at any moment if we don’t protect it. The second view says that our universe was designed, and even though we must be good stewards, the Creator has designed our earth as a stable living system that varies and adjusts to differing conditions. Again, this scientific discovery supports the latter!
Prehistoric jawbone reveals evolution repeating itself
A 115-million-year-old fossil of a tiny egg-laying mammal thought to be related to the platypus provides compelling evidence of multiple origins of acute hearing in humans and other mammals.
The discovery of the prehistoric jawbone, reported in the Feb. 11, 2005, issue of Science, suggests that the transformation of bones from the jaw into the small bones of the middle ear occurred at least twice in the evolutionary lines of living mammals after their split from a common ancestor some 200 million years ago.
At a dig on the south coast of the Australian state of Victoria, paleontologists found a lower jawbone of the world’s oldest-known monotreme, Teinolophos trusleri, a small primitive mammal much like today’s shrew.
“The ear bones are still attached to the lower jaw, which implies that this shift had to occur in later monotremes and independently of the shift occurring in the common ancestor of marsupials and placentals,” said James Hopson, PhD, professor of organismal biology and anatomy of the University of Chicago and one of the authors of the paper.
Many paleontologists have doubted that such a seemingly complex adaptation could have originated more than once in mammals, but according to the authors of the paper, the evidence of T. trusleri indicates that it did.
[Click here to read the full story]
VFM Comment:
This is a perfect example of what evolutionists call convergent evolution. Convergent evolution says that different animals evolved similar structures completely independently of each other. In this example, the ear has supposedly evolved not once, but twice! However, think of the complexity of the ear. This organ transmits sound through a series of bones and then amplifies it through liquid, eventually converting it into electronic pulses that are then translated as sound by the brain. To say such an amazing organ was produced by random, accidental, mistakes is impossible. But to say it happened twice? That’s impossible times two!
GALEX Finds Massive Young Galaxies In Nearby Universe
Using the sensitive ultraviolet detectors on the Galaxy Evolution Explorer, astronomers have unearthed three-dozen bright, compact galaxies that greatly resemble the youthful galaxies of more than 10 billions years ago. These new galaxies are relatively close to us, ranging from two to four billion light-years away. They may be as young as 100 million to one billion years old. The Milky Way is approximately 10 billion years old.
The recent discovery suggests our aging universe is still alive with youth. It also offers astronomers their first, close-up glimpse at what our galaxy probably looked like when it was in its infancy.
[Click here to read the full story]
VFM Comment:(taken from www.CreationSafaris.com):
Wait a minute; they said before that most of the star birth occurred in the first epoch of the universe, and that galaxies got mature fast. They also told us they found “young” stars in an “old” galaxy. If they don’t even have a handle on the age of globular clusters, which are part of our own Milky Way, how can we believe them when they tell us what is old and young? This many anomalies should cause a serious reconsideration of basic assumptions, but these days in science, the model is the constant, and the data are the variables.
The human parathyroid glands, which regulate the level of calcium in the blood, probably evolved from the gills of fish, say researchers. The gills of ancestral marine creatures were used to regulate calcium levels. A team from King’s College London believe that they were internalised, rather than lost, when four-limbed, land-living animals evolved.
[Click here to read the full story]
VFM Comment (taken from www.CreationSafaris.com):
Three strikes and they are out:
1. Ernst Haeckel, Dr. Sickman Fraud, the toady disciple of Charlie Frown deserves nothing but scorn, but look at what these absent-minded professors do: they point to his classic fraudulent drawings for support of their theory! That makes them accessories to a crime. Strike one.
2. Do they have any idea how complicated the parathyroid system is? It may be located in the neck, but its influence is felt throughout the body, in every cell. It is so essential, it is 4-times redundant, and the manufacture of its special hormone, its packaging in the Golgi apparatus in a dormant state, and its delivery to the blood stream, and then what it accomplishes in terms of regulation... amp;#147; all these interconnected systems are staggeringly complex. Darwinists have no explanation for how any hormone, any cell, any complex regulatory system, just “emerged” by an unregulated process of natural selection; that is the issue, not just homology, whatever that is. Strike two.
It’s not just location that matters; it is function. The parathyroids are located right where they need to be to work. An evolutionist cannot tell simply by location of an organ that animals are related by common ancestry. Evolutionary theory is so flexible, in terms of location and rate, that any observation, even contradictory observations, can be made to fit it. If the parathyroids were located somewhere else, the evolutionists would have an alternative explanation to keep Charlie’s idol from collapsing. Strike three.
When Bats and Humans Were One and the Same
Scientists have used computer analysis to read evolution backward and reconstruct a large part of the genome of an 80-million-year-old mammal. This tiny shrewlike creature was the common ancestor of humans and other living mammals as diverse as horses, bats, tigers and whales.
Actual DNA molecules cannot survive such lengths of time. Mammal fossils from this period are extremely rare. But by tracking the course of mammalian evolution, scientists can pinpoint when a common ancestor existed and what, in general terms, it was like.
By comparing the differences between the genetic material of living mammals, the researchers have now produced what they say is a highly accurate reconstruction of a section of the ancient creature’s genetic sequence.
[Click here to read the full story]
VFM Comment:
This entire analysis is based completely on the pre-assumption that all animals and humans have evolved from a single cell, and that using computers, they can “wind” time backward. Since the proof for evolution cannot be found in the fossil record, evolutionists must rely on computer models like this to tell their evolutionary story. Notice also that this completely fictitious ancestor is being described in this article as “a highly accurate reconstruction”.
Scientists Announce that the North Pole Was Once Tropical
The Arctic Coring Expedition (Acex), an international team of evolutionary scientists which has been drilling beneath the bed of the Arctic Ocean, announced that the North Pole was once a tropical environment. According to a BBC News report yesterday, the Acex scientists claim the North Pole enjoyed a sub-tropical climate 55 million years ago. The finding was based on the recovery of visualized algae in the cores which show that sea temperature was once about 20C, instead of the average now, -1.5C. In addition, the Acex scientists argue that the North Pole was characterized by an extremely warm climate that created a natural greenhouse effect, which caused massive amounts of carbon to be deposited in both sea and air. The Acex discovery is prompting a complete re-evaluation of the history of the arctic basin for evolutionary scientists, including speculation that the North Pole was once a relatively shallow sea, possibly a freshwater lake.
The discovery that the North Pole once experienced a very different climactic environment is no surprise to creation scientists. Many creation scientists believe that the pre-Flood world was (1)a single land mass, and(2)generally tropical because it was protected by a vapor canopy that created a greenhouse effect,resulted in the earth being watered by a dew, and produced different atmospheric conditions. Most of these same creation scientists believe that the tropical climate of the earth continued until the advent of the post-Flood ice age, which was itself a consequence of the tumultuous and radical changes wrought by God in the conditions of the earth at the time of the Flood.
What is the Fundamental Problem With the Acex Report?
Remarkable discoveries by renowned evolutionary scientists have the tendency of both mystifying and intimidating Christians. These scientists tend to be very good at reporting observable data, the problem comes in when they seek to interpret the data in light of assumptions which are entirely unprovable and accepted on faith, based on a broader (and highly religious) evolutionary chronology paradigm.
In this case, a defining presupposition of the Acex scientists is uniformitarianism — the belief that present rates and processes are definitive when interpreting past events. It is this uniformitarianism which drives the assumption that the core samples must be millions of years old. By assuming that layers in the core samples represent vast epochs of time, laid down at present, non-catastrophic rates of deposition, they justify and interpret the data in terms of their a priori commitment — old earth evolutionary chronology.
But what if the layering happened rapidly? What if the rates of deposition were radically different? The result might be that the core samples represent thousands, rather than millions of years.
The ability of a catastrophe to rapidly reconstruct the geological landscape was demonstrated beyond a shadow of a doubt at Mt. St. Helens two decades ago when hundreds of rock layers were laid down in matters of minutes and hours and days, not millennia or long ages, but creating the appearance to uniformitarians that the stratigraphy and rock deposits at Mt. St Helens are millions of years old — when we know they are only decades old and were formed rapidly.
The problem of uniformitarian assumptions can also be tested the next time you take a typical cave tour, as I recently did in Lurray, Virginia. The tour guides are usually trained to tell you that stalactites and stalagmite took hundreds of thousands of years to form. This is a completely fallacious statement based upon the assumption that limestone has always been deposited at the present rate of deposition. But the fully formed stalactites at the base of the Washington Monument (less than a century old) or the examples of bats which were caught and entombed in limestone stalactite graves indicates these cave formations can form rapidly. It all depends on the rates of deposition, which are not constant.
What does The Bible Say About Uniformitarianism?
It is crucial that Christians become more aware of the presuppositons behind the many scientific theories foisted on the public. The bible addresses the error of uniformitarian thought in 2 Peter 3 when it declares that a day will come when men will deny the global flood and claim that everything we see today is a continuation of what has been in the past.
Knowing this first, that there shall come in the last days scoffers, walking after their own lusts, And saying, Where is the promise of his coming? for since the fathers fell asleep, all things continue as they were from the beginning of the creation. For this they willingly are ignorant of, that by the word of God the heavens were of old, and the earth standing out of the water and in the water: Whereby the world that then was, being overflowed with water, perished.
[Click here to read the story on Doug's Blog]
Preliminary comments on the PBS-TV series “Origins”
On Tuesday evening, the television network PBS (Public Broadcasting System) aired the first two hours of a four-hour miniseries on “Origins.” In the series prologue, astrophysicist Neil deGrasse Tyson1 asks a series of questions about history. “How did the universe, our planet, how did we ourselves come to be? How did the first sparks of life take hold here? Are we alone in the cosmos? Where did all the stars and galaxies come from?”
In the first hour, viewers are shown the evolutionary story of Earth’s origins. We are told that the earth formed by accretion of cosmic dust billions of years ago. This primitive earth was allegedly a “fiery wasteland” being heavily bombarded by meteors and comets. The series offers an explanation that comets (which contain a large amount of water-ice) may have delivered water to the infant earth. An object the size of the planet Mars supposedly collided with the primitive earth which ejected material that coalesced and became the moon.2 Although the special effects are very impressive, the story is merely fiction presented as truth. It stands in stark contrast to the historical account of origins recorded in Scripture.
[Click here to read the full story]
Scientists Find Surprising Polar Life
Colonies of microorganisms found thriving under rocks at the north and south poles are evidence that life can exist in harsh areas on Earth which may mimic conditions on Mars, scientists said Wednesday.
“This shows us that places we may think of as extreme — for example, other planets, like Mars — could nurture surprising habitats for life,” Charles Cockell, a microbiologist with the British Antarctic Survey, said in an interview. “No one has described these microbes as actually living under these rocks before.”
Antarctica and the Arctic region are thought to have the most Marslike environments on Earth, and scientists study the polar areas to gain a better understanding of the Red Planet.
[Click here to read the full story]
VFM Comment:
The above discovery shows how the Creator has designed life with the ability to live in the most extreme conditions. It’s also interesting to note how evolutionists automatically assume this is evidence for the evolution of life elsewhere in our galaxy.
Long-Necked Sea Monster Snuck Up on Victims
A long-necked sea reptile that lived millions of years ago in what is now China may have used its stiff neck to sneak up on unsuspecting prey and suck them in, scientists said on Friday.
Dubbed Dinocephalosaurus orientalis or “terrible-headed lizard from the Orient,” the monster had a neck 5.5 feet long, topped by a tiny head. At the other end was its big round body.
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VFM Comment:
Although both the Bible and science disprove the millions of years assumed by evolutionists, this great dinosaur is yet another example of the great creativity of our Lord. This creature may have been fossilized during the catastrophic upheaval of the worldwide flood.
Methane on Mars Causes Controversy
Methane and water vapour are concentrated in the same regions of the Martian atmosphere, say scientists studying data from Europe’s Mars Express orbiter. They say the link may point to a common source — possibly life — but others remain sceptical about the detection.
In March, scientists using the Planetary Fourier Spectrometer (PFS) on Mars Express announced they had found methane in the atmosphere at a level of just 10.5 parts per billion. Two other groups say they have also detected the gas with telescopes in Chile and Hawaii.
Ultraviolet sunlight takes about 300 years to destroy atmospheric methane. These detections suggest the gas is being replenished on Mars in the same way it is on Earth - by processes such as geothermal heating or by life forms, such as bacteria.
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VFM Comment:
This discovery was originally announced in the journal Nature – September 21, 2004. Based on the evolutionary assumption of the spontaneous evolution of life, many are claiming that this seems to be proof of life on Mars. However, this article clearly points out that a natural process like geothermal heating could be responsible for producing the gas.
Orrorin
In November 2000, Martin Pickford and Brigitte Senut from the College de France and a team from the Community Museums of Kenya make a remarkable discovery. In the Tugen Hills of Kenya they unearthed a group of fossils they believe sheds light on the origins of humankind. The team called their find Orrorin tugenensis. It seemed like the discovery of a lifetime. Or was it?
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If Martin and Brigitte find these clues and Orrorin was, indeed, walking on two legs six million years ago, scientists will have to rethink their ideas about how we split from the apes. The standard theories on how, when, and why we learned to walk on two legs would have to be reexamined.
Martin and Brigitte also make a claim about one of the most famous discoveries of all time: “Lucy,” a hominid from just over 3 million years ago in Ethiopia. Donald Johanson, who discovered her in 1974, claimed her to be our direct ancestor.
The fossils from Orrorin have led Martin and Brigitte to the revolutionary conclusion that Lucy and her type, the australopithicines, were not our direct ancestors: rather, they were a branch that became extinct.
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VFM Comment:
This new discovery of Orrorin is causing many to claim that our most famous (and most sited) evolutionary ancestor, Lucy is no longer even considered to be in the lineage of human evolution! This is another example of how one fossil discovery can cause evolutionists to “rethink their ideas”. How much better to place our trust in the unchanging word of God, rather than man’s changing theories.
Uranium/lead dating provides most accurate date yet for Earth's largest extinction
A new study by geologists at the Berkeley Geochronology Center and the University of California, Berkeley, improves upon a widely used dating technique, opening the possibility of a vastly more accurate time scale for major geologic events in Earth’s history.
In a paper published this week in Science, geochemist Roland Mundil of the Berkeley Geochronology Center (BGC) and his colleagues at BGC and UC Berkeley report that uranium/lead (U/Pb) dating can be extremely accurate - to within 250,000 years - but only if the zircons from volcanic ash used in the analysis are specially treated. To date, zircons - known to many as a semiprecious stone and December’s birthstone - have often produced confusing and inaccurate results.
“Zircons have produced complicated data that are hard to interpret, though people have pulled dates out,” said Mundil, a former UC Berkeley postdoctoral fellow now at the BGC, a non-profit scientific research institute dedicated to perfecting dating techniques for establishing the history of Earth and life on Earth. “Many of these studies will now have to be redone.”
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VFM Comment:
Radioisotope dating has always been presented as an exact science. However, in the article above, we can see that there have been some problems with the dating methods. For more on this subject, got to: http://www.icr.org/pubs/btg-b/btg-104b.htm
or
http://www.answersingenesis.org/home/area/magazines/tj/v14n1_radioact.asp
Radioactivity Speeds Up
Nuclear physicists in Japan have shown that the electron-capture decay rate of radioactive beryllium-7 can be increased by almost 1% by placing it inside a carbon-60 “cage”. This is the largest change in the decay rate of an element ever observed. Although the resulting reduction in the radioactive half-life is unlikely to help with the problem of storing nuclear waste, the cages could be used as tracers in medical radiotherapy (T Ohtsuki et al. 2004 Phys. Rev. Lett. 93 112501).
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VFM Comment:
Much of the evolutionary radioisotopes dating methods rely on the assumption that radioactive decay is constant. However, a team of creation scientists (RATE) have been working to show that it actually can change under the right conditions. To read a detailed article on this subject from ICR, click here.
Punching the Timeclock of Life
Ten years ago, Valter Longo had an inkling of a theory of aging that is now challenging the dogma of one of science’s heavyweights — Charles Darwin.
From graduate school to a career as an assistant professor in the USC Leonard Davis School of Gerontology and the USC College of Letters, Arts and Sciences, Longo’s ideas were questioned by peers and students alike as he explored a new way to look at aging that directly opposes principles set forth by Darwin in his theory of natural selection.
[Click here to read the full story]VFM Comment:
This article is interesting for two reasons. First, evolution is often cited as a “fact” of science, no longer just a theory. Yet, as this article demonstrates, not even everyone in the secular world is convinced that evolution is correct. Secondly, the author claims that animals and humans are programmed to die. That certainly fits well with what we read in the third chapter of Genesis!
New Sign Language May Help Show How Languages Develop
A new system of sign language developed by deaf children in Nicaragua may hold clues about the evolution of languages. When the country’s first school for the deaf was established in 1977, children were not taught sign language but developed a system of signs to communicate. That method of communicating now shows similarities to other languages, researchers say in Thursday’s issue of the journal Science.
[Click here to read the full story]VFM Comment:
As it turns out, the origin of language is one of the biggest problems for the theory of evolution.
