Category: Government and Faith

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Evolution in Action: The Incredible Goldfish

Bubble Eye Goldfish
Bubble Eye Goldfish

In Ocean Park in Hong Kong there is a “Goldfish House” which features some 300 different varieties of fish that appear to be creatures from another world. The Red Bubble Eye, for example, has two cheeks that bulge out like huge balloons with a yellow color bridging off from an orange body. The tricolor Dorsal-Finned Bubble Eye looks similar, but it has a large dorsal fin and its body is black and white and it has a long flowing black and white tail. The tricolor Ranchu has a face like a bulldog and a multicolored body and the Black Dragon Eye has two huge eyes that protrude from the body and large, delicate fins. All of these fish that look so different from one another descended from the Prussian carp, also known as Gibel carp, which were raised by Chinese Buddhists in the Tang Dynasty. By the tenth-century these fish which we call “goldfish” were prized as pets.

The Japanese took many of these very different kinds of goldfish back to Japan where raising unusual looking fish became a hobby of many people. By 1850 breeding clubs were formed in the United States and in Great Britain, there is a Goldfish Society with a large number of members. Goldfish have two sets of chromosomes from each parent, which means that mutations are preserved and expressed in many ways. Over 300 varieties exist at the present time.

Our local breeder of goldfish calls this “evolution at its best.” There are practical uses for this hobby. Most of these fish are small–four to ten inches–but there are varieties that grow to 25 pounds. I can remember crappie fishing in the 1960’s with goldfish minnows, which were raised by a fish farm in Martinsville, Indiana. They were effective as bait because of their visibility, but the rapid growth of these fish makes them ideal as a food source in some areas of the world.

Evolution is not a synonym for “man from monkey.” Evolution is a tool for producing new varieties of life which can benefit us in many ways. In the case of the goldfish there is aesthetic value in these changes, but also economic and nutritional value. When young people study biology in high school, they learn about how these genetic processes work and why. The design of the genetic materials that allow all of this is incredibly complex. In the Bible, Jacob used evolutionary change. The flocks of Laban were modified in a beneficial way by Jacob using these same principles. (See Genesis 30.)

All of the goldfish in the world are from the one species. It takes a creative imagination to visualize how some of these strange looking varieties of fish can form, but the changes do not involve adding organs or making massive changes in biological digestive processes.

God is the author of this process, and trying to understand how all of this was designed and how it came to be applied to all the life forms that exist on the earth today is an enthralling field of study for young biology students. Everywhere we look in the natural world we find that a wonder-working hand has gone before. Changes like those shown in the goldfish speak eloquently about how beautiful and creative the genetic design of life can be.
–John N. Clayton © 2017

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Sophisticated Sonar

Pod of Narwhals with Single Spiral Tusk Visible
Pod of Narwhals with Single Spiral Tusk Visible

Let me introduce you to an animal that lives in the Arctic Ocean, spending much of its time under the pack ice. This animal has a refined sonar that is so intense and so directional that it can narrow or widen the sonar beam to find prey over short and long distances. The sound beams are asymmetric, narrowing on the top which minimizes noise clutter coming from the surface of the ocean or from the pack ice it swims under.

This is the most sophisticated sonar observed in a living species, and the animal that possesses it is the narwhal. The mechanism that generates the sonar is like that of a porpoise with clicks being emitted by the animal. The narwhal can do things that no other animal can do. Because narwhals can scan vertically as they dive, they always know where open patches of water exist so they can get back to a place where they can breathe.

Animals live everywhere on earth, but some places like the Arctic Ocean pose significant problems. Not only are there the obvious problems of cold, darkness, and hundreds of square miles of pack ice but the narwhal’s food is spread out over the entire Arctic area. Locating food would be virtually impossible without some specialized equipment, and the narwhal has a tool that humans have only learned to apply to similar situations in recent years. Everywhere we look in the creation we see that a wonder-working hand has gone before. Data from Plos One researcher’s report for November 9, 2016.
–Jnohn N. Clayton © 2017

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Mormons Teach that God Has a Wife.

Mormon Temple in San Diego, California

One of the doctrines of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints (LDS or Mormons) is that “All human beings, male and female, are beloved spirit children of heavenly parents, a Heavenly Father and a Heavenly Mother.” (Quoted from the LDS.org website.) They teach that God is a mortal from another world who was resurrected and Mormons are told they too will become gods. These teachings and many others of the LDS church are in direct contradiction to the Bible and the teachings of Christianity. They are also completely without justification. If you would like to learn more about how to counter the false LDS teachings for yourself or someone you know, we recommend getting a copy of The Salt Lake City Messenger of the Utah Lighthouse Ministry. You can check the article index at: www.utlm.org/navnewsletters.htm. You can also subscribe for free. These Mormon doctrines fly in the face of the Bible and deny the very nature of God. If you are interested in learning more about God, you can read our free pamphlets online at www.doesgodexist.org. A good place to start is with the pamphlet “Who Created God?” www.doesgodexist.org/Pamphlets/WhoCreatedGod.html
–John N. Clayton © 2017

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The Frillfin Goby–A Fish with a Built-in GPS

Frillfin goby

One of the most studied fish in the ocean is a three-inch long shore fish called the frillfin goby (Bathygobius soporator). This little fish has even gotten attention from the New York Times which ran an article about studies by Dr. Jonathan Balcombe on this fish and how it survives (May 15, 2016).

This fish lives in the intertidal zones in the Atlantic Ocean. When the tide goes out, the fish lives in small tidal pools which are isolated and free of the large predatory fish which pose a threat when the tide is in. The problem is that these small pools can be hunting grounds for shorebirds and crabs so sometimes the fish needs to change pools. The goby does this by jumping out of its pool and landing in a nearby pool that offers better protection. The obvious problem with making this jump is knowing where the next pool is to land in it and not on bare rock. In 1971 a study was done at the American Museum of Natural History to see how the frillfin goby learns where to jump and how far to jump to land in the pool. Their conclusion was that the goby swims over the area at high tide and makes a mental map of the topography of the sea-floor. It can use this mental map 40 days later to escape from a predator. Essentially they have a mental GPS that allows them to make what would otherwise be a very dangerous escape.

This is not a chance driven device. Observers did not see any case where the goby missed its pool. The accuracy of the jumping is far beyond chance. This instinctive drive and the biological features that sustain it are an evidence of an intelligence providing for life in every nook and cranny of the world around us. For more information see the Annals of the New York Academy of Sciences 188 (1): 378-392.
–John N. Clayton © 2017

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What Is an Eyewitness Account and What Isn’t?

Kids Riding a Triceratops

The DOES GOD EXIST? ministry tries very hard to focus on evidence, and not scientific or biblical speculation. In 1 Timothy 6:20 Paul tells Christians to “avoid profane and vain babblings and oppositions of science falsely so called…” The Greek word used here for “falsely” is pseudonumos which has a close connection to the modern phrase “pseudo-science”. So much of what dominates the headlines of the media today is not science at all, but wild speculation much of which is not testable or falsifiable. There is no way to test most of these proposals, and so they fall outside the realm of science. String theory, brane theory, multiverses, parallel universes, and even some versions of quantum mechanics fall into this category. These areas of study rely on equations and interpretations of those equations. In string theory, for example, there are 10 to the 500th power different equations to choose from, and no one can maintain that one equation has been observed to work.

This same problem occurs when one looks at the fossil record and what we can observe from the fossils or from the remains of human drawings and accounts. There is no valid evidence that humans and dinosaurs lived at the same time, but some apologists continue to crank out claims that eyewitnesses of the dinosaurs exist. Andrew Snelling who works with Ken Ham in his amusement parks in Kentucky claims that Norwegian and Chinese writers provide eye-witnesses of dinosaurs and humans living together. To do that he makes references to Chinese scrolls showing dragons pulling the chariots of emperors, and a Norwegian fictional story called Beowulf in which a king slays a dragon.

The reason that these are not eyewitness accounts is that the scrolls and fictional stories cited also have stories and pictures of centaurs (horse bodies with human torsos), and a variety of spirit creatures. Superheroes are not a modern invention. Characters that would make our video game and movie heroes look pale in comparison dominate all of these ancient cultures. Claiming that these records contain “accurate historical information” as Ham does in his Creation Museum is very misleading and certainly not what should be called “an eyewitness account.” We set up children to have their faith destroyed when we give them bogus information that an informed atheist can quickly refute. We have solid evidence for what the Bible actually says, but not for denominational claims of things the Bible doesn’t say.
–John N. Clayton © 2017

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A “Christian” Congress?

US Captial

The recent election is unpopular with lots of people for many different reasons. Atheists are unhappy because the percentage of elected officials who call themselves “Christian” is the highest it has been in many years. All but three members of the Senate call themselves “Christian” when asked their religious faith, and the same percentage applies to the House of Representatives. Atheists in their blogs are not very excited about that.

When prisons release the faith preferences of inmates, “Christian” dominates prisoner choices. In most prisons, over 90% of the prisoners say they are Christians. The number of atheists is in the single digits. Atheists like to brag about that, but there is a simple explanation of why prisons have so many “Christians” and so few “atheists.” First of all, in most prisons, the information cards the inmates fill out do not have “atheist” as a choice. They are forced to check a Christian denomination, Buddhist, Hindu or Muslim. The more important point is that prisoners are anxious to please the warden or powers that can facilitate their release, so they will check whatever they think will get them out sooner.

Politicians are prisoners of the dominant religion of the people voting for them. The fact that some politicians might not know the difference between 1 Corinthians and 2 Corinthians could be a clue as to how much influence their faith has on their votes on social issues. We’ll see if any Christian values show up in the next two to six years.
–John N. Clayton © 2017

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“Whose Tools Are These?”

Capuchin Monkey

That is the title of an article in the January 2017 issue of Scientific American (pages 11-12) by Kate Wong. The article deals with the discovery that wild capuchin monkeys in Brazil’s Serra da Capivara National Park have been observed banging rocks together to break them and thus isolating conchoidal fractured chips and flakes which could then be used as cutting tools. When researchers study the flakes and chips, they find that they look very much like the flakes and chips found in caves and shelters where early humans are thought to have lived. However, part of the reason that humans were assumed to have been in those locations was the finding of tools similar to the capuchin monkey flakes.

There are some interesting points connected with all of this. One obvious point is that you cannot define what is human and what is not human by whether they fashioned tools or not, and that has been a method used by scientists studying this question. We have known that some birds and chimps use objects found in the wild to secure food. Chimps use sticks to get ants by pushing the sticks into an ant hill and eating the ants that cling to the sticks. Birds have been observed dropping objects on eggs to crack them open to eat the contents. Making a tool is another issue, but once again this does not seem to be a good indicator of whether or not a specimen was human.

The Bible describes humans as being created in God’s image. This doesn’t involve tool use at all but has to do with human capacity for creative activity, worship, and feeling guilt, sympathy, or self-sacrificing love. That definition is superior to any physical criteria, but it is hard to use in studying a fossil in most cases.
–John N. Clayton © 2017

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Welcome to Something New!

Since 1972 the Does God Exist? Ministry has had a journal that contained articles showing the compatibility of science and faith, examples of design, book reviews, and a discussion of current events that affect faith in God and the Bible as God’s Word. The journal started as a ditto mailed to 30 or so interested people and gradually evolved to a 32-page four-color periodical mailed to over 10,000 people in print as well as in an audio format to the visually impaired. By the end of 2016, it was obvious that we had to make a change in the periodical. One problem was that news was coming so rapidly that the time between what happened and when we could discuss it was in months. The second problem involved cost factors in both printing and in mailing the periodical.

Many of our readers do not have access to or do not want to read the material online, so we intend to continue to mail it, but will do so quarterly, not bimonthly. For everyone else, we intend to supplement the quarterly issues with this website we call DOES GOD EXIST? Today. We hope you will find it more useful, more current, and more practical than just getting the quarterly printed copy. There will be some duplication, but there will be much here that will not be in our quarterly mailed version. As has been our policy, there is no charge for either of these, but any donation to this ministry is greatly appreciated.
–John N. Clayton © 2017