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

Ernst 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 Ernst 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 Ernst Haeckel, who repeatedly used fraud to spread the good news of evolution.

Ernst 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).

Will the World End on December 21, 2012?

The ancient Mayan calendar is said to predict that the world will end on 21st December, 2012. Image courtesy of Wikipedia.





Joel Kontinen

”The world is coming to an end. The planet Nibiru, discovered by the ancient Sumerians, will collide or come very close to Earth on December 21, 2012 and put an end to our civilisation.” This is what we are told on many blogs and websites.

How credible is this scenario?

At least Hollywood has turned it into dollars. The film 2012, directed by Roland Emmerich, released on Friday, November 13, is based on the assumed ending of the ancient Mayan calendar.

The calendar is said to end with the winter solstice, i.e. December 21, in 2012.

Wait a minute. Our calendar ends on the 31st of December but this does not necessarily mean that the world will end.

There is a further problem with this end of the world scenario. In contrast to what some conspiracy theories claim, the planet Niburu does not exist.

Several decades ago, Zecharia Sitchin, a science fiction author, claimed he had found ancient Sumerian manuscripts that describe the discovery of a planet called Niburu. However, no archaeologist has verified the existence of such texts.

Niburu could possibly be associated with the Babylonian god Marduk who is not exactly known to be a planet.

The hype concerning 2012 has been influenced by both new age ideology and evolutionary faith in the existence of intelligent life in outer space. A psychic named Nancy Lieder claims she had been contacted by aliens living on a planet revolving round the star Zeta Reticuli. They warned her of a planet that would collide with Earth in May 2003.

When May 2003 came and went without the predicted collision, the catastrophe was postponed until 2012 and associated with the Mayan calendar and the hypothetical reversal of Earth’s magnetic poles that are supposed to cause great upheavals.

Describing impending catastrophes and the end of the world have proved to be efficient means of making money in the past.

G.K. Chesterton, a famous British author, wrote that people who espouse materialism are credulous and easily believe everything.

When one rejects the Bible’s revelation, one might soon come to believe in UFOs, parapsychology, horoscopes and even the Mayan calendar.

Sources:

Neuhaus, Richard John. 2005. RJN 12.31.05 One more word... First Things (31 December). http://www.firstthings.com/onthesquare/2005/12/rjn-123005-one-more-word.


Nibiru and Doomsday 2012: Questions and Answers. http://astrobiology.nasa.gov/ask-an-astrobiologist/intro/nibiru-and-doomsday-2012-questions-and-answers

2012: Beginning of the End or Why the World Won't End? NASA. http://www.nasa.gov/topics/earth/features/2012.html

Soft Tissue Found in an ”18 Million Year” Old Salamander

Soft tissue was found in an ”18 Million Year” old salamander fossil. Image courtesy of Wikipedia.




Joel Kontinen

After an animal dies, its soft tissue is destroyed rather quickly. However, researchers at the University College Dublin report that they have found muscle tissue in a salamander fossil estimated to be 18 million years old.

Dr. Maria McNamara, a geologist at UCD, and colleagues reported their discovery in the Proceedings of the Royal Society B. They analysed a salamander fossil found in southern Spain carefully to ensure that their sensational discovery was not due to contamination.

In 1997 Mary Schweitzer, a paleontologist at North Carolina State University, found remnants of red blood cells in T. rex bone.

At the time, evolutionists were reluctant to believe that the discovery was genuine but later Schweitzer and her research team found remnants of haemoglobin and collagen in a Tyrannosaur estimated to be 68 million years old.

Earlier this year Dr. Schweitzer and her colleagues found collagen, haemoglobin, elastin and laminin in a Hadrosaur assumed to be 80 million years old.

The newest discovery makes it more difficult to believe in
millions of years of earth history.

Sources:

Ancient muscle tissue extracted from 18 million year old fossil. Physorg. com. (5 November)
http://www.physorg.com/news176660912.html


Wieland, Carl. 2009.
Best ever find of soft tissue (muscle and blood) in a fossil. (11 November) comment at the Creation. com website of Creation Ministries International.

Coming Soon: Darwin Was Wrong Conference

The Darwin Was Wrong Conference brochure. Click on the image for a more detailed view.




Joel Kontinen

Charles Darwin has been in the news several times during his double anniversary and the end is not in sight. During November 13 – 14, 2009 Logos Research Associates and Calvary Chapel Costa Mesa are hosting a two-day conference on Charles Darwin from a creationist perspective.

The conference will be held at Calvary Chapel of Costa Mesa, Fairfiew, Santa Ana, California.

The following experts are speaking at the free event:

Pastor Chuck Smith (Senior Pastor of Calvary Chapel Costa Mesa)
Dr John Baumgardner (PhD, Geophysics)
Dr Steve Austin (PhD, Geology)
Dr Marcus Ross (PhD, Paleontology)
Dr E. Thomas McMullen (PhD, History and Philosophy of Science)
Dr Robert Carter (PhD, Marine Biology, research scientist and speaker for CMI–US)
Dr John Sanford (PhD, Plant Breeding and Plant Genetics)
Dr Jerry Bergman (PhD, Human Biology)
Dr Charles Ware (President, Crossroads Bible College).

You can also listen to the conference live via the Internet. For more information, please go to
Darwin Was Wrong Conference .

Carl Sagan: ”The Cosmos is all that is”

Carl Sagan was born 75 years ago. Image courtesy of NASA.




Joel Kontinen

Next week, skeptics will celebrate Carl Sagan’s 75th birthday. Sagan, an astronomer and author who died in 1996, did not acknowledge the existence of the supernatural. For him, the cosmos was all that there is.

Sagan often pointed out that there was nothing special about Earth, "a pale blue dot". Made up of recycled stardust, man could not rely on anyone else expect himself in a vast, unfriendly universe. There was no room for the spiritual realm in his worldview.

” The Cosmos is all that is or ever was or ever will be,” was Sagan’s creed.

Humanists might have a veneer of tolerance but they tend to have a rather rigid conception of what they should believe in. They have published three manifestos that might be thought of as creeds. They deny the existence of the supernatural and will only accept naturalistic explanations.
.
Fred Edwords characterised the humanists’ worldview as follows:

“Human beings are neither entirely unique from other forms of life nor are they the final product of some planned scheme of development… Humans are the current result of a long series of natural evolutionary changes, but not the only result or the final one. Continuous change can be expected to affect ourselves, other life forms, and the cosmos as a whole. There appears no ultimate beginning or end to this process.”

Carl Sagan was one of the more prominent humanists.

Guillermo Gonzales and Jay W. Richards happened to criticise Sagan. In their book The Privileged Planet (2004), they showed that Earth seems to be designed for life.

Gonzales was an associate professor of astronomy at Iowa State University. Infuriated by the book, some of his colleagues, Hector Avalos in particular, complained of the teaching of intelligent design at Iowa State and he was eventually expelled from his post. Ben Stein’s movie Expelled: No Intelligence Allowed documented his case.

David Warren, a columnist for The Ottawa Citizen, said: ”Atheist materialism is vastly more sensitive to heresy than any previously known religious orthodoxy.”

It seems that the humanistic inquisition sees to it that no one dares to deviate from the official doctrine (i.e. everything is a result of random processes).

Carl Sagan shared this humanistic dogma that a priori ruled out the possibility of design in the Cosmos.



Sources:

Edwords, Fred. 1984. Humanism in Perspective. American Humanist Association. The Humanist, Jan/Feb 1984.

Nye, Bill. 2006. A Tribute to Carl Sagan: Our Place in the Universe. Skeptic 13:1. http://www.skeptic.com/reading_room/our-place-in-the-universe

Warren, David. 2007. The Limits of Atheism. The Ottawa Citizen. (12 August). http://www.canada.com/ottawacitizen/news/story.html?id=c43112b1-d4b9-4a09-ac0f-8517f0b931d5

What Was an Ancient Spider Spinning? Answer: A Web, of Course

Spiders have followed their traditional ways for a surprisingly long time. Image courtesy of Wikipedia.




Joel Kontinen

Recently, BBC News reported on spider webs encased in amber. Found in East Sussex, GB, they are assumed to be 140 million years old. Professor Martin Brasier, a paleobiologist at the University of Oxford, published a study of the discovery in the Journal of the Geological Society.

According to professor Brasier, the discovery is the oldest known spider web. He says that the creature that spun it is related to modern garden spiders.

Evolution is often defined as change. However, it seems that spiders have hardly changed their habits in 140 million years.

According to the Darwinian story, dinosaurs became birds and the early four-footed mammals became humans in roughly the same time, but squid have remained squid, Coelacanths have remained Coelacanths, horseshoe crabs have remained horseshoe crabs and tuataras have remained tuataras throughout this time.

After its kind seems to be a principle that is still not outdated. We should keep in mind, however, that the Genesis concept ’kind’ (baramin) has a wider meaning than the term ’species’ used in modern biology.


Source:

Spider web confirmed as 'oldest' . BBC News 31 October. 2009.
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/uk_news/england/sussex/8335719.stm

When Neanderthals Were Depicted As Apemen

Recent discoveries have shown that Neanderthals were not ape-like. Reconstruction of a Neanderthal girl. Image courtesy of Christopher P.E. Zollikofer, Anthropological Institute, University of Zurich, via Wikipedia.




Joel Kontinen

In the 19th century, anthropologists had not yet discovered any fossils of our assumed forefathers in Africa so they used Neanderthal men as their poster boys for Darwinism, depicting them as grunting, stooped cavemen. Evolution needed spectacular evidence and ape-men were well-suited for the task.

Chris Stringer, an anthropologist at the London Natural History Museum, acknowledges that Neanderthal men were not ape-men although they differed from us in some respects. For instance, they had larger brains than H. sapiens.

Dr. Stringer has not become a creationist but he nevertheless pointed out some misconceptions in a recent Scientific American podcast.

Neanderthal men were cleverer than we thought. (You can read more here , here and here.)

Neanderthals have made headlines recently. Svante Pääbo, a geneticist at the Max Planck Institute, and his research team are sequencing the Neanderthal genome and hope to publish some preliminary results in the near future.

Pääbo believes that H. sapiens and H. neanderthalis lived near each other for long ages in Europe and the Middle East and they probably came into contact with each other. However, he does not think that there was any genetic mixing between them and us.

According to the creation model, Neanderthal men were the descendants of Adam. They most probably lived after the global flood of Noah’s day so we would not be surprised to see Neanderthal traits in some of our fellow-travellers.

Sources:

Callaway, Ewen. 2009. Genetic evidence for human-Neanderthal hanky panky? New Scientist blog (27 October.) http://www.newscientist.com/blogs/shortsharpscience/2009/10/genetic-evidence-for-human-nea.html

Scientific American podcast, 23 October 2009
http://www.scientificamerican.com/podcast/episode.cfm?id=human-evolution-lucy-and-neandertha-09-10-23&sc=WR_20091027

New Discovery: Tropical Plants Have Hardly Changed in 58 million Years

The remains of the Titanoboa. Image courtesy of Ray Carson, Florida Museum of Natural History, via Wikipedia.




Joel Kontinen

Fossilised tropical plants found in a Colombian coal mine suggest that although climate has changed considerably from the time since they flourished, they can be identified as the same plant families that still grow in warm climates. There were fewer species than there are now but the discovery shows that legumes, palms, avocados and bananas have hardly changed in 58 million years.

According to the Darwinian view, climate change should cause evolution or major changes in species. However, this has not happened in these Colombian plants.

Recently, the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences published research online, analysing this discovery of over 2000 megafossils. Previously, the fossil of the giant snake called Titanoboa that closely resembles modern boas and anacondas was found in this same Cerrejón Formation in northern Columbia.

They are not the only plants that have resisted change for surprisingly long aeons. In 1994 scientists found a living Wollemi Pine (Wollemia nobilis), a tree that already existed during the time of the dinosaurs. It has remained unchanged for 200 million years. At the time, Professor Carrick Chambers, director of Sydney Royal Botanic Gardens, said that finding this living fossil was as significant as discovering a small dinosaur alive.

These new discoveries call into question both plant evolution and the belief in millions of years but they support the Genesis creation model of after its kind. We should remember, though, that the biblical concept of kind (Heb. baramin) is wider than the modern term species used in biology.


Sources:


Thomas, Brian. 2009. New Fossil Cache Shows Plants Haven't Changed. (28 October) http://www.icr.org/article/4998/

University of Florida. 2009. Plant fossils give first real picture of earliest Neotropical rainforests (15 October) http://news.ufl.edu/2009/10/15/neotropical/

Whitehouse, David. 2003. Jurassic pot plants on sale soon. BBC News. (25 September) http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/science/nature/3139450.stm

Big Green Men in Great Britain?

Recently, the British press reported on UFOs and crop circles. Image courtesy of Wikipedia.




Joel Kontinen

We often assume that green men are little but a British police sergeant who was driving past a field near Silbury Hill in Wiltshire said he saw aliens who were at least 6 ft or 183 cm tall and had blond hair. He thinks they were looking at a fresh crop circle.

He stopped his car to have a closer look. As he approached the aliens, they hurried away. The sergeant said that humans could not possibly have run so fast.

He also reported having seen a UFO. The local police do not want to comment on the incident.

The incident occurred at the beginning of July but it took the press several months to learn about it. The name of the sergeant was not disclosed.

This was not the first time crop circles were associated with UFOs and aliens. Often, however, there is little or no evidence for this kind of connection.

In addition to discussing UFOs, Gary Bates also takes up the issue of crop circles in his book Alien Intrusion. He says that they are hoaxes. In 1991 Doug Bower and Dave Chorley, two British gentlemen in their sixties, acknowledged that they had drawn crop circles for fifteen years. They said that they had made 250 circles, some of which were sophisticated geometric patterns.

Bower and Chorley made advertisements for Weetabix and Mitsubishi, for instance, and they soon got imitators. Some innovators wrote the text We are not alone in a field.

According to Bates, this gave the game away. Little green men would have written, “You are not alone”.

Many people have read about strange encounters with supposed aliens. Is it any wonder, then, that they might interpret crop circles and strangers in the night who are looking at them as evidence for extraterrestrial life?

It seems that for many individuals who are more familiar with the Star Trek series and the Planet of the Apes than the writings of Moses, UFOs have become a surrogate religion.

UFOs also have a significant evolution connection. If we believe that life on Earth is the result of random naturalistic processes, what will keep us from believing that the universe is teeming with little green men who are eager to contact us?

However, if we believe that our planet is unique and that God has especially created life here, we will take a more skeptical approach to UFOs, crop circles and aliens.

Sources:

Bates, Gary. 2004. Alien Intrusion. Green Forest: Master Books.

Jamieson, Alastair. 2009. UFO alert: police officer sees aliens at crop circle. Daily Telegraph. (20 October) http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/newstopics/howaboutthat/ufo/6394256/UFO-alert-police-officer-sees-aliens-at-crop-circle.html