Roland Earnst Archives

May 28, 2026May 27, 2026

Beetle Species Study Is Never-Ending

Beetles are essential to life on Earth, serving as food for many animals, but that isn’t all they do. Some beetles recycle carcasses, and others recycle dung. Some beetles help restore the environment after a forest fire. Others exhibit strange and interesting behaviors, such as spraying a noxious chemical at their enemies. One beetle species walks upside-down underwater. Many more beetles do interesting things and fulfill very important roles. Some beetles damage crops or are pests in other ways, especially when they are accidentally moved to new habitats. However, even those beetles that are a nuisance often fill very important roles in their natural environment.

Scientists estimate that there are between five and ten million insect species, which make up about 90% of the world’s animal species. However, only about 925,000 species have been studied enough to be formally described. Of all insect species, the largest number are classified as beetles. Smithsonian sources identify about 350,000 beetle species, but more are discovered each year.

Of the beetle species, about 70,000 are in the Staphylinidae family. One subgroup within that family is Platydracus. According to Wikipedia, there are more than 280 identified Platydracus species. However, recent research in China has identified and recorded 61 previously unknown species. Classifying all beetle species will be an enormous job that will probably never be completed.

We often fail to realize how much diversity exists in the natural world. God has created so many different species, and we haven’t yet been able to study most of them. Even if life has existed on Earth for four billion years, that is not enough time for Darwinian evolution to produce all the species and variety of animals that inhabit this planet.

The more we learn about God’s creation, including the beetle species, the more we are amazed by the complexity and diversity of the essential species that make advanced human life possible.

Reference: popsci.com

May 26, 2026May 24, 2026

A Neatly Arranged Tree of Life

According to the Darwinian concept, gradual changes over long periods lead to the development of new traits. The Darwinian tree of life displays branches leading to diverse life forms. Along each branch, we see new traits emerging and then being further developed in subsequent generations of creatures. That means similar traits indicate common ancestry. Over billions of years, the result should be a tree, with each branch showing an obvious progression of similar traits. A neatly arranged tree of life should be the result. However, that is not the case.

Convergent evolution throws the tree into disorder. Scientists use the term “convergent evolution” to explain similar characteristics appearing on different branches of the tree. Those similarities show up not only in obvious physical traits but even at the genetic level. According to the common understanding of the evolutionary tree, a trait should appear in a branch and then be carried forward, further developed, or even lost in the succeeding branches or twigs. For a neatly arranged tree of life, the same trait should not appear in other, unrelated branches.

According to Richard Dawkins, “It is vanishingly improbable that exactly the same evolutionary pathway should ever be traveled twice.” In other words, it is unlikely that evolution would cause the same trait to appear multiple times in different evolutionary lines. That is, two separate branches of the tree should not be marked by the appearance of the same evolved trait.

However, in many instances, the same trait shows up in animals or plants that are not closely related. In other words, the same evolutionary change occurred independently many times. According to a paper published April 30, 2026, by Yacine Ben Chehida and others in the journal PLOS Biology, “Convergent evolution, the repeated evolution of similar phenotypes, is widespread in nature.” (Phenotypes are the sets of observable characteristics or traits of an organism.)

Who is correct, Richard Dawkins or the paper in PLOS Biology? How can it be “vanishingly improbable” and yet “widespread in nature?” Furthermore, Simon Conway Morris, who has held the Chair of Evolutionary Paleobiology in the Department of Earth Sciences at the University of Cambridge for more than 30 years, said, “Convergence is ubiquitous.” If by ubiquitous he means present anywhere and everywhere, how can unguided evolution explain that? How can something be “vanishingly improbable” and “ubiquitous” at the same time?

Since a neatly arranged tree of life does not seem to exist, perhaps the existence of a common creator God has more explanatory power than mere chance evolution. For more examples of convergent evolution, read our posts HERE and HERE.

References: scienceandculture.com and journals.plos.org

May 21, 2026May 21, 2026

The Story of Sloth Poop

What if you had to risk your life to go to the bathroom? Imagine what it would be like to know that you might not return home. For three-toed sloths (genus Bradypus), a once-a-week bowel movement can be life-threatening, yet they apparently are not aware of the risk they are taking or of the system they play a role in. The story of sloth poop involves a complex system with three species.

As everyone knows, and their name indicates, sloths are slow. Because of that, they are threatened by fast-moving predators. They have relative safety in the tree tops, but on the ground, they are sitting ducks, or sitting sloths. Being on or near the ground is the main cause of sloth deaths. Their slow climb down and back up is the most energy-intensive thing they do all week. Why don’t these sloths just do their business in the trees and let it fall to the ground? The answer involves another species.

Enter the sloth moths (Cryptoses choloepi) into our story. These moths live nowhere else but in the fur of the sloths. They spend their entire adult lives in sloth fur. The newly emerged moths find a slow-moving sloth, make a home in its fur, and permanently lose their ability to fly. After spending a short adult life in the sloth’s fur, one of two things will happen. The moth will probably die there. A second option for pregnant female moths is to hop off the sloth, land in the pile of poop, lay their eggs there, and die. The larvae that hatch from those eggs will feed on the sloth dung. As they eat and burrow their way into the pile, they create a chamber where they enter the pupal stage.

When the sloth moths complete their pupal stage, they emerge as adult moths. They fly for their first and only time upward into the tree canopy in search of a three-toed sloth. When they find their target, the moths are permanently grounded in the sloth’s fur. There they will live until they die, unless they are lucky enough to hop onto a pile of sloth poo during the animal’s weekly bathroom trip.

But that is not the end of the story of sloth poop. Another species enters the picture. The third participants in this system are the Trichophilus algae, which live only on sloth fur. As we said, many of the moths die in the sloth’s fur. As they decompose, they release nitrogen and phosphorus into the fur, and the algae use that in their photosynthesis. The chlorophyll in the algae turns the sloth’s fur green, giving it natural camouflage in the tree canopy. In addition to giving the sloth a way to hide among the leaves that it eats, researchers have found small amounts of the algae in the stomachs of sloths. Perhaps the lipid-rich algae also provide additional nutrition that the sloth does not get from the leaves.

Completing the circle of life, the following week, when the sloth makes that dangerous trip to the ground, more pregnant moths plop into the precious pile of poo, and the cycle repeats.

It seems challenging to describe a completely natural way for this system to get started. The sloth could just drop its dung from the tree canopy and be safe. The Cryptoses choloepi moths, which live only on sloths, would not be needed. The sloths could probably survive without the Trichophilus algae that live in sloth fur and nowhere else on Earth. Does the story of sloth poop suggest a designed system, or did it just accidentally evolve over time?

Reference: popsci.com

May 15, 2026May 14, 2026

The Creativity of Chance

I’m sitting by my window, looking out at the beautiful trees, green grass, flowers, birds, groundhog, and squirrels, and I’m thinking about Darwinism. According to Darwinism, all living things have evolved from a common ancestor, a single-celled creature about four billion years ago. I’m thinking that it takes a lot of faith to believe in the creativity of chance.

People often cite similarities among living things as evidence that all life originated from a single common ancestor. In their book I Don’t Have Enough Faith to Be an Atheist, Norman Geisler and Frank Turek consider how much faith it takes to be a Darwinist. To believe in Darwinism, you must be able to explain the dissimilarity among living things. I think that may be more difficult than explaining the similarities.

Think about the variation among the millions of life forms. Geisler and Turek point out that if you believe in Darwinism, you must explain the dissimilarity between “the palm tree, the peacock, the octopus, the locust, the bat, the hippopotamus, the porcupine, the sea horse, the Venus flytrap, the human, and mildew.” The question is, how could those and all other species have descended from the first unicellular life by mere chance and without intelligent intervention?

As you ponder that, you must also realize that if you’re going to leave God out of the picture, how did nonliving chemicals organize into that original single-celled organism from which all life sprang into being? Furthermore, how can you explain the existence of the fine-tuned universe that makes life, and especially advanced life, possible? Could chance and time have created all of this, or does it require an intelligent Designer? Believing in the creativity of chance takes more faith than I have.

May 14, 2026May 13, 2026

Space Aliens and Disclosure Day

There has been an explosion of comments in the news media and on social media about space aliens and Disclosure Day, following President Trump’s order to release previously classified information on UAPs (UFOs). At the same time, a “blockbuster” movie by Steven Spielberg is set to be released on June 12, 2026. Its title is Disclosure Day, based on a story by Spielberg, a firm believer in extraterrestrials.

Social media contains comments that the government’s disclosure of information about UAPs will challenge traditional religious beliefs. The current print issue of Moviemaker magazine features an interview with David Koepp, the screenwriter of the Disclosure Day movie. When the interviewer asked him if he believed in aliens, he compared aliens to God or religion. He said, “My personal belief is the same as my personal belief in God, which is why I think religion is an important part of Disclosure Day.” He goes on to say that his favorite theory about aliens is, “Yes, other intelligent life forms exist. Yes, they’ve been here. They may even be here now. We can’t perceive them.”

Thus far, what the government has released from its secret files is not much more than grainy pictures of objects in the sky that seem to move erratically, filmed from a distance. There doesn’t seem to be anything different from what we have seen before. Concerning space aliens and Disclosure Day, Spielberg claims that the movie will contain “more truth than fiction” and will “upend all established order.” That sounds to me like overblown promotional hoopla designed to sell more tickets.

What if the government released materials that conclusively demonstrated that aliens are visiting our planet? Would it mean the end of Christian faith? Would it refute the Bible? The answer is no and no. The Bible deals with the creation of the universe (Genesis 1:1) and the creation of life upon the Earth (the rest of Genesis 1 and 2). It also tells us that God created spiritual beings. It does not tell us whether God created physical creatures elsewhere within the universe. Even if God created life on other planets within the universe, which is questionable, and even if we learned that aliens have visited Earth, that would not refute the existence of God. Those other creatures would have to have been created by God. Only an intelligent force outside of the universe could have created what is within the universe.

Fred Hoyle and other scientists have advanced the idea of “panspermia,” meaning that life on Earth was seeded by aliens from elsewhere in the universe. There is absolutely no evidence for that, but even if true, it would not explain where those intelligent beings came from. It has been scientifically established that the universe had a beginning. That was the beginning of time, space, matter, and energy, so whatever caused the universe’s origin was outside of time and space and not material. That is the way the Bible describes God. Don’t let space aliens and Disclosure Day interfere with your faith in the one who created all things. (See Colossians 1:15-16.)

Reference: moviemaker.com

May 13, 2026May 11, 2026

Yawning is Good for Your Health

A new scientific study defines yawning as “a stereotyped orofacial-respiratory behavior characterized by a prolonged jaw gape and coordinated oropharyngeal movements.” We know what yawning is, and we know it can be impolite to yawn while listening to someone speak or perhaps during a sermon. But maybe yawning is good for your health, according to this new study.

Yawning is not confined to humans—mammals, amphibians, reptiles, and other vertebrates also yawn. We think of yawning as accompanied by taking a deep breath, but even marine mammals, including beluga whales, bottlenose dolphins, and dugongs, display a similar action, gaping their mouths even when they’re underwater so they can’t breathe. Yawning must be good for something.

According to the scientific report, most yawns appear to consist of an initial deep inspiration, a pause, and then a rapid expiration. It was suggested that yawning may play a role in regulating blood oxygen levels, brain thermoregulation, or attention/arousal. According to the study, it may also have something to do with cerebral metabolic waste clearance. In other words, it helps clear your brain, so yawning is good for your health.

The movement of cerebral spinal fluid (CSF) contributes to waste removal in the brain. So, if CSF movement is critical to remove metabolic waste from the brain, how does yawning help with that movement? That was what the group’s research sought to find. They said, “The movement of the jaw and the act of inhaling can impact circulation within the skull.”

Furthermore, yawns may be coordinated by a brainstem central pattern generator (CPG), similar to those that control breathing and locomotion. Swallowing is also organized by CPG circuitry, and the researchers found that swallowing is often tied to yawning, since swallowing frequently occurs within seconds after a yawn.

The bottom line, as far as I can understand, is that yawning is good for your health because it helps clear the brain of waste materials. I presume that means when your brain is busy thinking, a yawn becomes necessary to clear out the waste and give room for your brain to keep on thinking. Perhaps if you’re yawning while reading the posts we present on this web page, we are stimulating your brain rather than putting you to sleep. If that is true, I am encouraged because while writing this, I found myself yawning.

I never cease to be amazed at the complexity of life and the human body that God designed, and yawning is just one more thing that amazes me.

Reference: sciencedirect.com

May 12, 2026May 11, 2026

The Thymus Has an Essential Purpose

A mysterious organ of the human body lies behind the sternum (breastbone) and in front of the heart. It’s called the thymus. Almost 2000 years ago, the Greek physician and surgeon Galen of Pergamon called it the “seat of the soul.” However, as recently as 1961, Nobel Prize-winning British biologist Sir Peter Medawar called the thymus the graveyard for dying cells and “an evolutionary accident of no very great significance.” Today, scientists know that the thymus has an essential purpose in establishing the immune system during childhood and continues to be beneficial throughout life. Since the thymus has been known for thousands of years, why did it take so long for science to discover that it has a purpose?

Recent research at Massachusetts General Hospital has shown the role the thymus plays in a person’s health. It helps regulate aging and immune health. It appears to play a crucial role in a person’s longevity, protecting against cancer, autoimmune disease, and even cardiovascular risks. Medical scientists have found that people with healthier thymuses are less likely to develop lung cancer or die of heart disease or other causes.

The thymus has sometimes been removed because it can get in the way of heart or chest surgery, and the removal is called a thymectomy. In the past, thymectomy was not considered a problem because people seemed to get along very well without the thymus. The research team found that people receiving a thymectomy were more likely to die of any cause within five years than people with a healthy thymus. People without a thymus were twice as likely to develop cancer and were also more likely to develop autoimmune disease.

The thymus has an essential purpose and is not a vestigial organ, as some have thought in the past. It is not a mistake of evolution. A healthy thymus is a predictor of good health in many respects. People with healthy thymuses are less likely to develop lung cancer or die of heart disease. They are also more likely to respond positively to cancer drugs. The research has led to interest in finding ways to slow the thymus’s natural deterioration, which occurs in adulthood.

Too often, we have been led to believe that something is a vestigial organ, leftover from the process of evolution, when, in fact, it plays a role in our health. (For example, tonsils, appendix, and so-called “junk DNA.”) Looking at medical research from an evolutionary viewpoint can sometimes lead to neglect of important health issues. If we believe our bodies are intelligently designed rather than merely accidents of evolution, we have a reason to look for that design. The thymus has an essential purpose because God designed it that way, but science overlooked it for way too long.

References: washingtonpost.com, and New England Journal of Medicine HERE and HERE

May 8, 2026May 4, 2026

Creating a Smell Map

It is easy to overlook the importance of the sense of smell. Smell affects human health and safety. The sense of smell plays an essential role in the taste of food. It can also warn us of spoiled or unsafe food by its rancid odor. Smell can give pleasure, as with the fragrance of flowers, or make us nauseated, as when we smell a foul odor. Fragrances can bring back pleasant memories. The loss of smell can cause depression. With those things in mind, researchers are creating a smell map.

Maps of the receptors for vision, hearing, and touch have been developed previously, but this research was the first to create a detailed map of the receptors for smell. The research began by studying the smell receptors in mice. The challenge in creating a smell map is that it is more complex than the other senses. There are only three main receptor types needed for color vision, but mice have 20 million olfactory neurons and more than 1,000 types of odor receptors that detect unique subsets of odor molecules.

Before creating a smell map, the prevailing theory was that the smell receptors were randomly placed. The study showed that smell receptors form horizontal stripes from the top of the nose to the bottom, and the order matches the brain’s olfactory bulb. Further study will explore human olfactory receptors to compare them with those in mice.

This research is important because it will help scientists develop therapies for people who have lost their sense of smell, as has sometimes been the case with COVID-19. As we learn more about how the sense of smell works, we see evidence of design. The bottom line is that we are “fearfully and wonderfully made” (Psalms 139:14). The design of life, and especially the human body, shows evidence of a Designer, not random chance.

Reference: Harvard Medical School hms.harvard.edu

May 7, 2026May 4, 2026

Humans Are Viruses on the Earth – or Not

Humans Are Viruses on the Earth – Influenza Virus — Influenza virus 3D illustration

Perhaps you have seen posts or comments online claiming that humans are viruses on the Earth. The argument is that human numbers are growing, and we “feed parasitically on the body of the Earth.” They say we are swarming over the Earth and leaving no part of the planet “untouched by our pollution and destruction.”

The mantra is that humans move into an area, multiply until they consume all the natural resources, then move on to another area, like a virus. Critics suggest that all other mammals live in equilibrium with their surroundings, whereas humans behave like viruses that spread and consume resources. So the question they ask is whether humans are a disease, a cancer, or a virus on the Earth, what are we going to do about it? How can we stop this human virus?

As Christians, we believe that humans were made in God’s image and that God entrusted the first humans and us with taking care of the planet and ruling over it (see Genesis 1:28). Perhaps we’ve done a better job of ruling over the planet than of taking care of it. Some have pointed out that even though the Bible says we were created in God’s image, we are also the ones who introduced sin into the world.

Hosea 4:1-3 is a Bible passage sometimes quoted by those who insist that humans are viruses on the Earth. In this passage, Hosea tells the children of Israel that because they have been swearing, lying, killing, stealing, and committing adultery, God will punish them by allowing them to waste away along with the animals, birds, and fish. You could say that applies to us today, but that might be stretching the context.

It is true that God gave humans the job of being stewards of the Earth, to rule over and protect or conserve the creatures that live here. It is also true that we have often failed in that job, but God always gives us another chance to do better. As for humans introducing sin into the world, God also gave us a second chance on that. The most amazing thing we read in the Bible is that God became a human being to live a perfect life, to show us what that is like, and to bear the punishment for our failures.

As we consider whether humans are viruses on the Earth, we must consider our relationship with the Creator. Perhaps if we can accept what God has done through Jesus Christ to restore us to a right relationship with Him, we will find that we can have a right relationship with the Earth God gave us to live on. Remember that God is the giver of every good and perfect gift (James 1:17).

May 6, 2026May 4, 2026

Spoken Language and Linguistics

Animals communicate with each other in various ways, including sounds, movements, colors, odors, and more. Humans are the only creatures God has created that use spoken language. Many scholars have studied language in the field of linguistics. Noam Chomsky is an American linguist who has been called “the father of modern linguistics.” Chomsky is a controversial figure because of his political and atheistic radicalism, but his credentials in linguistics are widely recognized.

Chomsky insists that the principles of language structure are biologically present in the human brain and are genetically inherited from birth. He believes that knowledge of syntax is at least partially inborn and that children need only learn the specific features of the language they are exposed to in their native culture. Thus, Chomsky maintains that there is an innate linguistic capacity in every human, enabling language-based communication in ways no other creature can.

Some animals, such as parrots, can imitate spoken language, but they are just imitating sounds. They are not capable of understanding syntax or communicating in human language. Dr. Stephen C. Meyer has said, “Every single human language has this complexity and suppleness of expression, all the tenses and the declensions and so forth. This was Chomsky’s mantra: There are technologically primitive cultures, but there are no primitive languages. And how you get from what the primates do to what we do is a complete mystery.”

In Genesis 1:28, we find God telling the first couple to “be fruitful and multiply and fill the Earth.” It seems they failed to do so, since at the time of the flood they were still confined to a limited area of the planet that God covered with water. Then, when Noah’s family emerged from the ark, God repeated his command to “be fruitful and multiply and fill the earth” (Genesis 9:1). Again, they failed to do so because they still lived in a limited area, and, working together, they contrived to build a tower to reach heaven against God’s wishes.

It was then that God gave them different languages: “So the Lord scattered them abroad from there over the face of all the earth” (Genesis 11:8). They still had that sophisticated inborn language ability, but they could no longer understand one another or work together to accomplish the project they were attempting. That action of God finally caused them to spread over the Earth. In the genealogies of Genesis 10:25, we read an interesting note. It says that in the days of Peleg, “the earth was divided.” Could that refer to the time when the land bridge between Asia and North America became covered with water, so the people who had migrated to the Western Hemisphere could no longer travel back to the east? The land bridge was no longer needed.

Today, of course, we are scattered over the Earth, but our ability to communicate with one another through spoken language has increased to the point where we can instantly talk with people around the world. Even in cases where we don’t speak the same language, computers and even handheld devices can translate our words into another language. We have today the ability to use language to accomplish prideful things, similar to the people in Babel attempting to build the tower. Or we can use our ability to communicate with one another to achieve peace and bring the message of salvation through Jesus Christ to people all over the world. I pray that we will make the right choice.

References: scienceandculture.com and wikipedia.com