evolution Archives - Page 3 of 16 - DOES GOD EXIST? TODAY

March 18, 2021March 17, 2021

Changes in Earth’s Magnetic Field

People who promote the theory of evolution generally ignore historical events that would be Inconsistent with neo-Darwinism. Darwinism depends on an acceptance of uniformitarianism, the belief that no process has ever operated in the past that is not going on today. Previously, we have talked about past asteroid collisions with the Earth, which is an example of a process that isn’t shaping our planet and life on Earth today. Researchers in New Zealand have released a new study of changes in Earth’s magnetic field. That process, which radically altered the Earth some 42,000 years ago, is not a factor in understanding modern geologic processes.

In a magnetic reversal, changes in Earth’s magnetic field cause the north and south magnetic poles to switch. Researchers at the University of New South Wales have shown that this transition took nearly 800 years to complete, and during that time, the planet would have had no magnetic field.

The lack of a magnetic field would have been a major catastrophe which is not going on today. Our magnetic field acts as a shield against high-energy charged particles coming primarily from the Sun. Without that shield, there would have been severe environmental threats to life on Earth. Their study suggests that tropical rain belts shifted, glaciers stretched across North America, and a severe drought hit Australia. The effects of the increased radiation on living things would have a strong genetic impact.

The researchers suggest that humans living during Earth’s magnetic field changes would have to retreat to caves for shelter from the radiation and the harsh weather conditions caused by the magnetic reversal. Chris Turney, one of the authors of the study, said that any humans living at that time would have seen what was happening as “the end of days.”

The notion that Earth has been a quiet incubator for life over a very long time is inconsistent with the evidence. Losing our magnetic field would be the start of a domino effect of changes, all of which would harm life. Our magnetic field is slowly decreasing now, but this data, and other studies like it, suggest that magnetic reversals are prolonged events lasting 800 years.

The Bible makes it clear that catastrophic events are rare in Earth’s human history. Noah’s flood, the death and resurrection of Christ, and His second coming seem to be the most apparent biblical events that are catastrophic. Our planet’s stability is a part of God’s design, and without it, we would not be here. But history is punctuated with events on the Earth that are not uniformitarian such as changes in Earth’s magnetic field. Those changes have altered our planet to make it hospitable for human life. They also make it impossible to have a faith that says chance and time can account for all life we see on planet Earth.

Reference: The Week, March 12,202,1 page 21.

March 12, 2021March 11, 2021

Aye-ayes Have Many Unusual Characteristics

Scientists use animal classification systems based on old evolutionary assumptions. The result is that many times an animal turns up that doesn’t fit any evolutionary model. An excellent example of this is a species of long-fingered lemurs called aye-ayes. They are nocturnal animals found only in Madagascar. Aye-ayes have many unusual characteristics giving a name that comes from a local phrase meaning something like “I don’t know.” Here are a few of the aye-aye’s traits:

1) They have large round eyes, which aid in night vision.
2) They use their continually growing incisor teeth to tear a hole in trees to reach grubs. Their teeth are so strong they can chew through cement blocks.
3) Their long middle finger is skeletal and has a ball-and-socket joint used to hook onto wood-boring grubs.
4) Their big toe is opposable to enable them to hang from tree branches.
5) They have fur with guard hairs they can raise to appear to double their size.
6) They use a unique system of foraging by percussive tapping on wood. They sense the echo with their bat-like ears to detect hollow areas where grubs are.
7) They build elaborate spherical nests made of leaves and branches.

Because of their teeth, nesting behavior, and long tail, your first guess might be that they are rodents. Despite the face of a possum, the teeth of a mouse, and the ear of a bat, they are classified as primates. This lemur is so unusual it has its own taxonomic family.

Aye-ayes have many unusual characteristics that point out weaknesses in the evolutionary taxonomic system. Systems such as cladistic taxonomy have gained weight as science discovers more animals like this in fossils and places like Madagascar. From an apologetics standpoint, it seems clear that God has created a variety of animals and given them characteristics to fill various ecological niches. Aye-ayes seem to be a special creation for a unique environment.

References: World Wildlife Federation magazine for Spring 2021, Britannica and National Geographic websites for 3/10/21.

February 22, 2021February 21, 2021

Could Adam Create Art?

One of the characteristics unique to humans is the creation of art. Some people have made desperate attempts to prove that gorillas, chimps, and elephants create art. When you look at their “art,” you realize that it is merely swashes of color enabled by the researchers working with the animals. Is art just something that evolved, or could Adam create art?

Archaeologists and other scientists have found that ancient humans created art. That very ancient art is not simple swashes of color but complex pictures. Paintings found on the Indonesian island of Sulawesi seem to portray a fight between a group of pigs. This discovery is significant because evolutionists have always maintained that humans did not create art until Ice Age Europe. They insisted that humans had not evolved to the point of being able to express historical events in pictures until that time.

Archaeologists have found an even older example of artwork in the Ramie region of Israel, and it consists of symbols cut into a bone fragment. Symbols tell of beliefs beyond survival and express thoughts beyond the mundane affairs of life. People used symbolic expressions from the very beginning of human history. These examples tell us that humans were created with the capacity to express themselves in art.

So the answer to the question, “could Adam create art” would be “yes.” The unique capacities of humans were built into Adam because he was created in the image of God. The human spiritual makeup expressed itself in art from the earliest days of human existence.

Genesis 4:19-26 tells about the first descendants of Adam and Eve. Jubal “was the father of all who play the harp and flute.” Those verses also tell us that Tubal-Cain was the first artisan in brass and iron. These descriptions were all before the birth of Seth. That means Adam and Eve were still around as musical instruments and artisans in metal were doing their creative works.

Reference: Science News, February 13, 2021, page 32 and Bible History Daily for February 18, 2021.

February 5, 2021February 4, 2021

Biological Barriers to Evolution

For all living things to evolve from a single common ancestor, an incredible number of beneficial changes must occur. The problem is that biological barriers to evolution get in the way.

Although Darwinism looks for genetic mutations to fashion new and beneficial genetic changes, the vast majority of mutations are harmful. Since fruit flies have a short reproductive cycle, scientists have worked with enormous numbers of fruit fly generations, trying to demonstrate evolution. They have produced mutated fruit flies with four wings rather than two. However, the extra wings are a useless encumbrance to the fruit flies because there are no muscles to move them. Additionally, they are still fruit flies, not even houseflies or horseflies.

Darwin saw that the beaks of finches changed over time. However, those beak variations were not anything new; they had always been there. Changes in the habitat caused the birds with beneficial beak sizes and shapes to reproduce in larger numbers. When the climate or other conditions changed again, the predominant beaks changed again. The beak adaptations were not permanent changes, and the birds were still finches.

Mutations do not add new data to the DNA, and for a mutation to be passed on to the next generation, it must occur in the reproductive cells. A genetic change in body cells can’t be passed on to future generations any more than a woman who has had an appendectomy will give birth to a child with no appendix. Mutations in bacteria are well known and can cause them to become immune to the effects of antibiotics. But again, those are just hereditary fluctuations around a median point. They do not become new creatures.

Hundreds or even thousands of years of plant and animal breeding by humans has shown that intelligent breeding can produce remarkable changes and improvements. But new dog breeds are still dogs, and new rose varieties are still roses. If biological barriers to evolution limit intelligent humans to making improved changes within certain limited boundaries, could purely random chance mutations create the wide variety of life-forms in the world today? Billions of years are not enough time to do the impossible.

November 21, 2020November 21, 2020

Architect-Engineer, Magician, or Chance

One of the things that John Clayton often emphasizes is that God is an architect-engineer. Some people see God as a magician. As John likes to say, they see God “zapping” things into existence. So which is correct— architect-engineer, magician, or chance?

If we think of God as a magician, we are rejecting science. We are like the ancients who saw magic in lightning, volcanoes, wind, fire, and everything else. They saw magic in the created things, and they worshipped the creation. So they had a god of the volcano, a god of the river, a god of the harvest, and on and on.

Science today has told us what causes volcanoes and hurricanes, so we no longer see them as gods. Science tells us how stars begin and how they die. It tells us how the elements are formed within stars. Science also tells us how our solar system developed. Plate tectonics reveals the processes that gave us today’s continents, and scientists are studying the formation of our atmosphere. We see how millions of things came together to provide us with a habitable planet. Were all of those merely fortunate accidents, or were they intelligently designed? Remember, the alternatives are architect/engineer, magician, or chance.

The greatest mystery of all is how non-living elements became life. How did those elements come together to form amino acids, proteins, RNA, DNA, and living cells? We are still far from understanding that, but it is evident that the chance of it happening without a guiding intelligence is vanishingly small.

However, once that life threshold has been crossed, the accepted faith in the science community is that evolution took over from there. The accepted science dogma today is the worship of evolution. That dogma says naturalistic evolution is the god that developed all forms of life, including ourselves. For a scientist to deny that dogma is to commit heresy. Any scientist who wants to keep his or her job, credentials, prestige, or credibility must adhere to the dogma and worship the god Evolution. It all happened by natural selection acting on random mutations, and you better believe it, or at least pretend you do.

But, is chance a viable explanation? Does our everyday experience of designed things, from shovels and lawnmowers to cars and computers, tells us anything? It should say to us that those things don’t design themselves. It should be evident that intelligence, not mere chance, was involved in all of them.

Again, the alternatives are architect-engineer, magician, or chance. If we rule out chance, that leaves us with two options. If God is a magician who “zapped” everything into existence and made it look old, the study of science becomes futile. Why would God try to fool us into thinking we can study the ancient creation processes when there is no such thing?

If God is an architect-engineer, we can study the creation and see how He worked to design and engineer the universe, our solar system, our planet, and even life. We don’t see those creations as gods. Instead, we see the God who created them, and we worship Him. The bottom line is that we see evidence of God in the things He has made (Romans 1:20).

August 25, 2020August 24, 2020

Teaching Human Evolution

Researchers at Penn State University and the National Center for Science Education report that teaching human evolution in public schools has doubled since 2007. The study shows that the percentage of public school science teachers who teach evolution as established science has grown from 51% in 2007 to 67% in 2019. Simultaneously, the percentage of science teachers who discuss intelligent design has dropped from 23% to 14%.

The problem with data like this is that terminology is not defined. There is a difference between teaching human evolution according to neo-Darwinian theory and teaching the fact that living things can change. Nobody denies that new breeds of dogs, roses, corn, cattle, and fish have come into existence within recorded human history. There is also no doubt that racial variations of humans are happening as we watch. The Bible even describes evolutionary change as we read about what Jacob did with Laban’s flocks in Genesis 30:31-43. It is difficult to imagine a competent biology teacher not explaining how these changes come about, and how we can use them to solve the problems of hunger and disease today.

It is also easy to see how a teacher can destroy children’s faith by teaching that chance physical changes determine everything about humans. Teaching human evolution from primates makes humans no different from any other form of life on Earth. Children do not need to be taught that survival of the fittest governs every part of all life. There is a close correlation between the teaching of human evolution, playground bullying, and the historical justification of slavery. They all center around the survival of the fittest.

This ministry is based on the belief that science and faith in God are symbiotic. They support each other. It is bad science to teach theory as fact. It is also wrong to be selective in what valid data we use to make decisions about what we teach children. As a science teacher in public schools for 41 years, I know the pressure that teachers face. But avoiding bad science and bad theology is the answer to the evolution/creation controversy. The current pandemic may offer parents and teachers a unique opportunity to improve the education of our students and reduce the tension between science and faith in America today.

Data from Christianity Today, September 2020 page 22 and CHRISTIANITYTODAY.COM.

July 6, 2020July 5, 2020

Fish That Can Live Out of Water

Evolutionists often try to use fish that can live out of water to support various theories of the origins of living things. One example is a family of fish known as mudskippers (Oxudercinae).

Mudskippers can live as long as 2 ½ days out of water. They live along the shorelines in tidal pools where there is very little oxygen. They burrow into the mud when the tide goes out and stay there until the next incoming tide. Mudskippers inflate their mouth and the cavity around their gills with air. When the fish emerges from the mud, it deflates and immediately takes another gulp of air. Their mud burrows contain enough oxygen for the fish and its eggs to survive. This is a case where the fish modifies its environment to survive in a place where life would otherwise be impossible.

In Michigan, we have a fish called the bowfin (Amia calva) or popularly called dogfish. This species of fish shows up in some of the earliest rocks of the Earth. They have obviously been around for a long time, so sometimes they are called “living fossils.” In addition to gills, they have gas bladders with a small pneumatic duct that allows them to gulp air and survive for some time out of water.

Do these fish that can live out of water show a transition between aquatic and land animals? The short answer is “no.” They do show that living things were designed to adapt to changing environments and even to modify their environments for survival. The more science researches living things, the more we realize that God has designed animals and plants to make every ecosystem alive with life. It is up to us to take care of the environment as we marvel at God’s creative power and wisdom.

March 13, 2020March 11, 2020

Second Law of Thermodynamics

Yesterday we looked at the First Law of Thermodynamics. I said that in my 41 years of teaching high school physics, the hardest part was getting students to see how the subject applied to their lives. If they understood that life is not possible without the laws of thermodynamics, they would realize the importance of the topic and find it easier to understand. As with the First Law, the Second Law of Thermodynamics is essential to our existence.

THE SECOND LAW OF THERMODYNAMICS: In Any Energy Conversion, Some Energy is Lost in the Form of Heat, Which Cannot be Recovered as Useful Energy.

This statement of the Second Law is known as the Clausius statement. What it describes is heat death. In any closed system, things tend to move toward a condition of disorder. We call that disorder “entropy.” The law does not say that energy is destroyed, because that would violate the First Law. It merely states that there is always some energy that cannot be recovered in any physical process. Things always move toward a condition of disorder.

To help students understand the Second Law, I would have a student put a spoon on the desk. While I was talking to the class, one end of the spoon would get hot and start to smoke. I would deny it was hot by picking it up at the other end and then putting it back right where I found it. There it would continue to get hotter and hotter on one end. The class would go ballistic, and I would ask them, “What’s the problem?” After a barrage of nutty answers (it’s haunted, it’s an illusion, etc.), I would point out that they had faith in the Second Law of Thermodynamics.

Common sense tells them that order (the cold end) cannot exist at the same time as disorder (the hot end). I had an induction coil under the desk-top that was heating the spoon, but we all know that one end cannot remain hot, and the other end cold. Gases diffuse, things fall apart, and people get old because of the Second Law of Thermodynamics.

My favorite example is a teenager’s room, which becomes more and more disordered with time in conformance to the Second Law. It is essential to understand that all of these examples assume that no one is improving the order from the outside. If Mother comes along and makes you clean up your room, then the room is no longer a closed system. Organizing energy is added from the outside. The Second Law applies to systems in which no external organizing energy is added to the system. The induction coil made the spoon an open system.

The Second Law of Thermodynamics has enormous implications for cosmology. It says that, like us, all stars and all galaxies will eventually die. The cosmos is not eternal. There had to be a specific point at which the cosmos had no unusable energy. At that point, there was no entropy. The biblical statement that there was a beginning is strongly attested to by the Second Law of Thermodynamics.

We must point out that it is incorrect to apply the Second Law to planet Earth or to anything on Earth. Some creationists have attempted to attack evolution based on the Second Law, but Earth is not a closed system. Photosynthesis works because the Sun is adding energy to the Earth. Biological systems can have energy added to them by any number of methods such as light, radiation, heat, or thermal vents. The added energy improves order, reducing entropy. Although the Second Law verifies many biblical statements, it is not a tool to attack evolution.

Tomorrow we will examine the Third Law of Thermodynamics.

Note: Laws are quoted from Physics, Principles and Problems, Glencoe Publications of Macmillan/McGraw Hill, PO Box 508, Columbus, Ohio 43216, pages 256-259.

January 3, 2020December 27, 2019

Mysterious Denisovans and Anthropology

Mysterious Denisovans - Anthropologist finding Human Skull

Over ten years ago, scientists found some human remains in Siberia’s Denisova Cave. They looked different from any human remains known at the time. Scientists have continued to study the mysterious Denisovans.

The past year of 2019 turned out to be a banner year for more data on these ancient humans. A breakthrough came with more remains that have been found in Tibet. Genetic evidence relates these specimens to humans in East Asia, Indonesia, and Papua New Guinea. New genetic studies show that there are Denisovan genes in Neandertal and Homo sapiens. Paleogeneticist E. Andrew Bennett says that there is no doubt that interbreeding occurred among all of these ancient humans.

The biblical account tells us that all humans on Earth came from a single ancestor. The Hebrew word translated Adam literally means “of the ground,” and the description of that first human is not dated or timed. The biblical point that all humans came from one, simply means that there are no different species of humans. The variations in the human genome are racial. They show the adaption to various climates, altitudes, and diets. Bennett says, “It is better to talk about different populations, not different species.” The mysterious Denisovans are merely another population of humans.

Reference: Science News December 21, 2019.

December 20, 2019December 19, 2019

Evolution Experiments and their Results

What if we could speed up time to test the concept of evolution? A scientist can’t wait millions or billions of years to study the process of natural selection as it creates new creatures. With that in mind, science must devise evolution experiments to study many generations in a much shorter time.

More than thirty years ago, Richard Lenski, who teaches at Michigan State University, began a project to study the evolution of the bacteria Escherichia coli, commonly known as E. coli. The project is called the Long-Term Evolution Experiment (LTEE). The scientist and his assistants carefully track the naturally-occurring random mutations in succeeding generations of E. coli. The environment for the bacteria is optimized for these one-cell creatures to grow and reproduce. Mutations are often harmful, but sometimes beneficial mutations lead to an improvement in the bacteria’s reproductive ability. Natural selection removes the bacteria with harmful mutations while those with beneficial mutations become more fit and reproduce. It’s what we call survival of the fittest.

Since 1988, the evolution experiment has continued, and scientists have kept careful records of the changes. Since the generation period of these bacteria is much shorter than that of humans, the study has gone through 70,000 generations. That is equivalent to more than 1.75 million years of human generations.

Through thousands of generations, there have been billions of mutations. Beneficial mutations that have lasted and accumulated amount to dozens. It is interesting that as time passes, successful mutations become increasingly rare. What the scientists are looking for is what they call “historical contingency,” which means a succession of small, almost inconsequential changes that accumulate to create significant changes.

So how has the E. coli changed after the 70,000 generations in this evolution experiment? The latest generation of E. coli can reproduce 70% faster than their ancestors. They are still bacteria. In fact, they are still E. coli bacteria. They have not mutated into some more advanced form of life. Dr. Lenski wants to see funding made available to continue the experiment for another 30 or even 300 years in the hope of seeing more dramatic results.

The LTEE has inspired other scientists to conduct evolution experiments. There is one at Harvard experimenting with yeast. Other scientists have experimented with fruit flies (Drosophila) to study the evolution of multi-cell creatures. They have bombarded the fruit flies with radiation and chemicals, changing light levels, and changing temperatures. After thousands of generations, the result has been mutant fruit flies with extra eyes or wings that didn’t function. They were still fruit flies.

The bottom line is that multi-generation evolution experiments have not resulted in new creatures or even greatly improved old creatures. The changes resulting from mutations and natural selection are either harmful or insignificant. God created animals to adapt and change due to environmental forces. Humans can change and sometimes improve animals by selective breeding. We see that very clearly in the many and very different breeds of dogs. But the evidence seems to indicate that only God can make a Canine or a Drosophila or an Escherichia—or a human.

You can read about the LTEE in the December 2019 issue of Discover magazine, page 49.