New Galapagos Film Challenges Charles Darwin’s Views

Joel Kontinen

A trailer of a new Darwin film:



The Mysterious Islands, a new document filmed on the Galapagos islands, challenges Charles Darwin’s thinking on evolution’s holy ground.

The Mysterious Islands is a 90-minute film produced by Vision Forum that follows in Charles Darwin’s footsteps in the Galagapos islands.

Filmed in gorgeous scenery amid extraordinary fauna, the document also includes the comments of creation-believing scientists about Darwin, balancing the mainstream media's evolution bias.

During Darwin’s 200th anniversary, secular science journals have offered him praise practically every week.

The document shows that Darwin made many wrong conclusions about the animals of Galapagos islands, classified them incorrectly and overestimated the power of natural selection.

In the film, doctor John Morris, the President of the Institute for Creation Research (ICR), who has a PhD in geology, contrasts evolution and Christianity. According to the biblical worldview, Jesus Christ, the Creator of everything, who was the fittest of all, died for us, who are much weaker than He.

The Mysterious Islands is not the only critical Darwin film that has been released this year. Creation Ministries International’s Darwin film The Voyage That Shook The World is currently being shown around the world.

Source:

'The Mysterious Islands': New Galapagos Film Challenges Evolution on 'Ground Zero' of Darwinism. http://www.earnedmedia.org/vfm0908.htm

Good Reasons to Doubt Darwin

Image courtesy of Wikipedia.


Joel Kontinen

Charles Darwin’s On the Origin of Species was published 150 years ago but many if not most people who have heard of him are still skeptical about his views and their ability to explain reality.

In a recent ID The Future podcast, Dr. John West of Discovery Institute discusses some good reasons for doubting Darwin.

They are not primarily religious.

Dr. West says the scientific evidence does not support Darwin, as scientists are increasingly skeptical of the tree of life hypothesis and the ability of natural selection and random variation (mutations) to create new species.

We also have reason to doubt Darwin as his theory led to the devaluation of human life. According to Darwinism, we have no more worth than a pig or a rat.

No wonder, then, that Darwin is not exactly the most popular historical character that we have heard of, except, of course, for those whose very worldview would be practically impossible without his ideas.


Source:

West, John. 2009. Doubting Darwin on His Anniversary. ID The Future podcast. Listen here.

Junk RNA Does Not Exist

The chemical structure of RNA. Image courtesy of Wikipedia.




Joel Kontinen

"There is no such thing as junk RNA" is the take home message of a new study conducted by researchers at the University of Pittsburgh. Associate professor Bino John and colleagues published their research in the Journal of Virology.

RNA or ribonucleic acid has an important function in information transfer within the cell.

The researchers noticed that even tiny stretches of RNA of only 15 nucleotides take part in biological processes. Previously, scientists had assumed that they were mere junk.

John and colleagues call these tiny RNA stretches usRNA (unusually small RNA). They found them as they were studying the herpes virus.

According to Science News, the discovery of these very common but hitherto neglected usRNAs ”could lead to new types of biomarkers for diagnosis and prognosis, and new therapeutic targets”.

For many decades, Darwinian thinking conditioned scientists to assume that we were full of leftovers from our animal past. This assumption hampered the progress of medical science. Only with the advent of new biochemical discoveries has science begun to escape from its Darwinian straitjacket.

The consequences have been beneficial.


Source:

ScienceDaily Science News. No Such Thing As 'Junk RNA,' Say Researchers. 18 October 2009.
http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2009/10/091013105809.htm

Charles Darwin Inspired Chinese Revolutionists

Charles Darwin’s ideas inspired Chairman Mao. Image courtesy of Wikipedia.




Joel Kontinen

Nature continues its celebration of Darwin year by relating how his ideas reached China at the end of the 19th century. A naval engineer called Yan Fu studied in England from 1877 to 1879. After returning to China, he introduced the ideas of Charles Darwin and Thomas Huxley to his countrymen.

James Pusey, professor of Chinese studies at the University of Bucknell, surveys the early days of Chinese Darwinism. He points out that Yan Fu misunderstood some of Darwin’s key concepts. Thus, natural selection became natural elimination and evolution became jinhua lun or the theory of progressive change.

The Western powers used Darwin’s ideas to justify imperialism. The writings of this Victorian gentleman inspired them to oppress those who were weaker than them.

China, embroiled in inner turmoil and a prolonged struggle against Japan and the European powers, began to see evolution as change.

Inspired by Darwin, Lenin and Marx, the revolutionaries fought against the Emperor’s forces that had been weakened by war and unrest, believing that the more powerful would eventually overcome their weaker adversaries.

Professor Pusey apologizes that the Chinese adopted the European view that some races are fitter than others.

However, the racist view stems from Darwin’s book Descent of Man and Selection in Relation to Sex (1871) in which he predicted, “At some future period, not very distant as measured by centuries, the civilized races of man will almost certainly exterminate and replace throughout the world the savage races.”

In other words, racism is part and parcel of Darwinism.

The Chinese felt that the Western powers had let them down at the Treaty of Versailles (1919), by giving Japan the Chinese areas occupied by Germany. Darwin’s ideas, flavoured by Marxism, came to their help. They could now only put their trust in power.

Pusey thinks that China would not have embraced Marxism if Darwin's thoughts had not prepared them for a revolution.

”A tree is known by its fruit”, said Jesus (Matt. 12:33). The Cultural Revolution and other experiments remind us of the sombre fact that even in China the fruits of Darwinism were rotten.


Source:

Pusey, James. 2009. Global Darwin: Revolutionary road. Nature 462:7270, 162-163.

Moneron and Other Fictive Creatures as Evidences for Evolution

Ernest Haeckel invented a fictive creature known as the Moneron. He claimed that it was an intermediate form between the living and the non-living. Image: The Swedish translation of Haeckel’s Natürliche Schöpfungsgeschichte (1868). The book’s English translation was entitled The History of Creation.



Joel Kontinen

Evolutionists have seldom been satisfied by merely presenting scientific evidence, but every now and then they have used their imagination to promote their views. The most notorious example is the use of Ernest Haeckel’s fraudulent embryo drawings.

Unfortunately, they are still very much alive on the pages of some biology textbooks. Recently, Richard Dawkins used them as evidence for evolution.

At last weekend’s Darwin Was Wrong Conference, Robert Carter, who has a PhD in marine biology, lectured on the incorrect assumptions behind evolution. Following the example set by Charles Darwin, evolutionists have often thought that life is much simpler than it is.

Darwin assumed that life could have originated in a warm little pond. He did not know anything about the sophisticated structure of the cell.

Doctor Carter also mentioned Ernest Haeckel, who repeatedly used fraud to spread the good news of evolution.

Ernest Haeckel, a German biologist and professor of anatomy, invented the Moneron. He claimed it was an intermediate form, bridging the living and the non-living. He called it Protomyxa aurantiaca.

Thomas Huxley, who was known as Darwin’s bulldog, said he had found the creature in the North Atlantic. Huxley gave it the name Bathybius haeckelii. It later turned out to be gypsum.

Fraud did not end with Haeckel, however. After Moneron there was Nebraska man, then Piltdown man. In 1999 National Geographic magazine made headlines with a feathered dinosaur called Archaeoraptor.

Have evolutionists learnt from their old mistakes?

Probably not very much. Last May we heard of Ida whom they initially introduced as our great-great… great grandmother.

Sources:

Carter, Robert. 2009. Darwin Was Wrong about The Complexity of Life. Lecture at the Darwin Was Wrong Conference. (14 November).

Grigg, Russell. 1996. Ernst Haeckel: Evangelist for evolution and apostle of deceit. Creation 18(2):33–36. http://creation.com/ernst-haeckel-evangelist-for-evolution-and-apostle-of-deceit

”Backward Evolution”: Humans Are Becoming Less Fit

Charles Darwin assumed that natural selection would make humans fitter. New research shows he was wrong. Image courtesy of Wikipedia.




Joel Kontinen


Our generation has, on average, 100-200 more mutations than our parents have and they have as much more than their parents. There is a simple yet not altogether welcome explanation for this: Each time DNA is passed from one generation to the next, it accumulates more mutations.

Most mutations are deleterious. Mutations are genetic copying mistakes but according to Darwinian evolution they should increase the fitness of species over millions of years. Evolutionists assume that natural selection chooses the mutations that are to be passed on to the next generation.

However, evolution is going in the wrong direction.

John Sanford, a professor at Cornell University, lectured on the topic recently at the Darwin Was Wrong Conference. Sanford, who is a geneticist, said that Darwinists had underestimated the amount of harmful mutations since they had not included ”junk DNA” in their calculations. They had thus overlooked 90 per cent of all mutations.

Professor Sanford is not the only one who says that humans are becoming less fit. Recently, research reported by Nature News supported his conclusions. As the researchers sequenced the Y chromosome, they were able to measure the human mutation rate and came up with the numbers Sanford gave in his lecture.

Two Finnish creationists, Pekka Reinikainen, a medical doctor, and Pauli Ojala, who is a biochemist, have also suggested that instead of evolution we are actually seeing devolution, i.e. instead of becoming fitter, humans are deteriorating.

In contrast to what some apologists for evolution have been saying, time is not the hero in this story. Given the high mutation rate, millions of years of earth history would have meant certain extinction for humankind.

Sources:

Dolgin, Elie. 2009. Human mutation rate revealed. Nature News (27 August). http://www.nature.com/news/2009/090827/full/news.2009.864.html

Sanford, John. 2009. Darwin Was Wrong about Natural Selection. Lecture at the Darwin Was Wrong Conference in Costa Mesa, California. (14 November)

When Charles Darwin Took a Wrong Turn

Joel Kontinen


Steven Austin, PhD in geology, explains why Charles Darwin’s view of geology is wrong:




In 1834 H.M.S Beagle arrived at the coast of Argentina. At some stage, Charles Darwin who was on board the ship climbed up a rocky slope and looked down at the Santa Cruz river that meandered in a valley six miles or almost ten kilometres wide. Seeing the valley and the huge boulders, he assumed they were evidences of slow processes that over time had changed the landscape dramatically.

On board the ship Darwin had read Charles Lyell’s book Principles of Geology. Lyell (1797-1875) was a lawyer who was one of the pioneers of uniformitarianism or the view that slow geological processes over a long time explain the features we see today.

Charles Darwin, who was 25 years old at the time, concluded that the river had slowly and gradually carved the huge valley.

Steven Austin, who has a PhD in geology, lectured on Darwin’s erroneous interpretation in the Darwin Was Wrong Conference on November 13.

Dr.Austin, who for instance has done research on the nautiloids in the Grand Canyon, followed in Darwin’s footsteps in Argentina and discovered that he could not possibly have been right.

The Santa Cruz river clearly speaks of a major catastrophe. The river valley is ten times as wide as the river itself. Only massive amounts of water or ice could have formed such a huge valley and brought boulders from tens or hundreds of kilometres away.

Dr. Austin says that there are probably three reasons why Darwin was so wrong about the geology of Patagonia:

1 He was blinded by his presuppositions.
2 He had been reading the wrong book, i.e. Charles Lyell’s Principles of Geology.
3 He was developing an incorrect methodology.

Darwin made a grave error. The assumption that present slow processes could over millions of years form the river valley might have prompted him to apply the same approach to biology.


Sources:

Austin, Steven A. 2009. Darwin’s First Wrong Turn. Acts & Facts 38:2, 26-27 (February 2009).

Austin, Steven A. 2009. Darwin Was Wrong about Geology. Lecture in the Darwin Was Wrong Conference (13 November).