Goodbye, Torosaurus!

New Scientist suggests that there were fewer dinosaur species than we thought.



Joel Kontinen

There were probably fewer dinosaur species than previously thought. This week New Scientist reported on the research of John Scannella and Jack Horner at the Museum of the Rockies. They compared the skulls of 29 Triceratops and 9 Torosaurus and noticed that no one had ever found the fossil of a young Torosaurus.

They suggest that as a species Torosaurus does not exist but it is instead an adult Triceratops.

Last October, National Geographic produced the documentary Dinosaurs Decoded that suggested that a third of assumed dinosaur species never existed.

Seen from a creation perspective, reducing the number of dinosaur species was expected. Evolutionists have all too often assumed that a new fossil find is a new species.

Source:

Lawton, Graham. 2010. Morph-osaurs: How shape-shifting dinosaurs deceived us. New Scientist 2771 (28 July)

150 years ago: Wilberforce and Huxley debate evolution

In the summer of 1860, Thomas Huxley, who was known as Darwin’s Bulldog, and Samuel Wilberforce, the bishop of Oxford, debated evolution. Darwinists remember details of the debate that probably never happened. Image of Huxley, courtesy of Wikipedia.



Joel Kontinen

Darwinists are fond of myths. They have made them of Galilei, the 1925 monkey trial at Dayton, and of a very famous early debate on evolution.

In a meeting of the British Association in Oxford on June 30, 1860, Thomas Huxley and bishop Samuel Wilberforce debated Darwinian evolution.

Many people assume that instead of using rational arguments, Wilberforce asked Huxley, ” Is it on your grandfather's or grandmother's side that you claim descent from the apes?”

Never afraid of a good fight, Huxley retorted, ” I would rather be descended from an ape than a bishop.”

However, while evolutionists like Darwin’s friend Sir Joseph Hooker would have liked to believe that this is what happened, it is a myth that is not supported by the evidence.

Samuel Wilberforce, who was the son of the Christian politician and anti-slavery activist William Wilberforce (1759-1833), knew more about Charles Darwin’s theory than skeptics assume. Five weeks before the debate the bishop had written a review of The Origin of Species in the Quarterly Review.

In July 1860, Darwin himself wrote to Hooker about Wilberforce’s criticism: ”I have just read the "Quarterly". It is uncommonly clever; it picks out with skill all the most conjectural parts, and brings forward well all the difficulties.”

Huxley had some strange ideas. He for instance thought that the Salvation Army was a dangerous sect. This is not a myth but is well-documented by the letters Huxley wrote to The Times.

In the debate Wilberforce, who was a fellow of the Royal Society, brought up the central ideas of his article, showing that the evidence did not support Darwin’s theory.

But in a crowded and noisy room it was probably easy for Darwinists to hear what they wanted to, including details that were never put to words.

Sources:

Huxley, Thomas H. 1893 (2006). Evolution and Ethics And Other Essays. New York: Barnes & Noble.

Lucas, John. 1979. Wilberforce and Huxley: A Legendary Encounter. BeThinking.org.

The Noachian era – but only on Mars?

Was the red planet once blue? Image courtesy of NASA.




Joel Kontinen

Recently, Science published a paper on the assumed watery past of Mars. It even mentioned the Noachian era that obviously caused the red planet to change its colour to blue.

In their paper, Richard Morris and colleagues acknowledge that the evidence for ” outcrops rich in carbonate minerals [on Mars]… has been sparse”.

However,

”Using the Mars Exploration Rover Spirit, we have now identified outcrops rich in magnesium-iron carbonate (16 to 34 weight percent) in the Columbia Hills of Gusev crater. Its composition approximates the average composition of the carbonate globules in martian meteorite ALH 84001. The Gusev carbonate probably precipitated from carbonate-bearing solutions under hydrothermal conditions at near-neutral pH in association with volcanic activity during the Noachian era. ” (italics added)

For them, carbonate-rich outcrops suggest that Mars was once warmer and wetter than it is now.

For reasons that do not sound very scientific, some secular scientists are willing to accept the Noachian era – as long as it occurred on Mars four billion years ago and not on Earth 4,500 years ago.

However, the evidence points to a real global flood - on Earth.

Source:


Morris, Richard V. & al. 2010. Identification of Carbonate-Rich Outcrops on Mars by the Spirit Rover. Science 329: 599023, 421 – 424 (23 July 2010).

What did an ancient spider trapped in amber look like? Like a spider, of course

Spiders have hardly bothered to change. Image courtesy of Pdphoto.org.





Joel Kontinen

Insects trapped in amber do not support Darwinian evolution. Usually the fossils, which are assumed to be tens of millions of years old, are practically copies of the same animals we see today.

Recently, Physorg.com published an article on David Penney, an expert on fossilised spiders at the University of Manchester, who travels around the world examining fossilised insects.

Insects trapped in amber show what animals used to look like aeons ago. Doctor Penney’s specimens would hardly have caused Charles Darwin to leap for joy. On the contrary, they might have caused him to pull out his hair in agony since fossilised insects do not support his theory at all.

However, they support the Genesis model nicely.


Source:

Your chance to live forever in spider form. Physorg.com 21 July 2010.

An echo of Genesis: Black parents, white baby

A few years ago, Creation magazine had an article of unusual twins





Joel Kontinen

Although Nmachi Ihegboro is just a week old, she already is a celebrity in the UK. Born to Angela and Ben Ihegboro, who are of Nigerian ancestry, the girl is blond and blue eyed. She is not an albino.

There are no known cases of ”genetic mixing” in the families of either parent. Her mother calls Nmachi a miracle baby. The father Ben Ihegboro is certain that the girl is their child.

Nmachi Ihegboro is a good example of the Genesis teaching that all people, regardless of skin colour, are relatives.

The little girl reminds us of Genesis. Adam and Eve probably had middle-brown skin, like most people even today. Their genetic makeup could produce all possible skin colours from very light to very dark in their descendants in just a few generations.

This does not have anything to do with Darwinian evolution. It is genetics that is based on Genesis.



Sources:

Jack, Andy. 2010. Blonde Bombshell: Black Couple's White Baby. http://news.sky.com/skynews/Home/Strange-News/Genetics-Experts-Baffled-By-Black-Couple-Who-Have-White-Baby-Nmachi-Ihegboro/Article/201007315667867. Sky News (20 June).

Two-tone Twins. Creation 29:2, 28-29 (March 2007).

One of the most elegant creations – the hen’s egg

An ”elegant creation” that is a dilemma for Darwinists.


Joel Kontinen

Hens might not be the most elegant of creatures. However, according to Science, the egg is definitely one of the most elegant creations.

Science reports on a study published in the international edition of the journal Angewandte Chemie. Researchers used a computer simulation to model how the eggshell, which mostly consists of calcium carbonate, could be formed.

The one thing that they do not know is which came first, the hen or the egg. This is still an enigma for evolutionists.

The creation model does not have this problem. The hen came first.


Source:

Berardelli, Phil. 2010. ScienceShot: How to Make an Egg. ScienceNow ScienceNow (12 July).

New research: Darwinian ”island thinking” is an illusion

Did Darwin encourage his followers to think magically? Image courtesy of Wikipedia.



Joel Kontinen

Evolutionists will give us the impression that they are all for science and against magical thinking. However, new research published in the journal Global Ecology and Biogeography throws a dark cloud over this kind of thinking.

Shai Meiri, a zoologist at Tel Aviv University, and colleagues refuted one of the central assumptions of Darwinian evolution or the hypothesis that isolated islands are special laboratories for evolution. The name Galapagos speaks volumes of this kind of thinking.

Dr. Meiri’s research team compared the (assumed) evolution of animals on continents and on islands statistically and found out that contrary to what evolutionary thinking had assumed for a long time, islands do not cause small mammals to grow bigger and big mammals to become smaller.

Darwinists (and the popular media) have made much of a few exceptions so that many have begun to believe that there is something magical about islands that changes both animals and people like the Hobbits.

According to a report in ScienceDaily,

”The reason for science and mankind's fascination with island communities could boil down to ’better press,’ says Dr. Meiri. If observers investigate human beings on 3,000 different South Pacific islands and all but one of the islands are populated by ordinary-sized people, they will tend to concentrate on the unique case. They forget about the other 2,999 islands in the South Pacific with normal-sized humans, and focus on the unusual.”

This, Dr. Meiri suggests, is ”purely a psychological bias… It's just magical thinking. Nothing more."


Source:

'Magical Thinking' About Islands an Illusion? Biologist Refutes Conventional Thinking on Evolution. ScienceDaily ScienceDaily 8 July 2010.

Scientists seek inspiration from gecko feet design for tiny robots

These feet are made for walking on all kinds of surfaces. Image courtesy of Bjørn Christian Tørrissen, Wikipedia.



Joel Kontinen

Gecko feet are so well designed that they are able to walk on almost all kinds of surfaces without slipping, even upside down on ceilings. The feet of these little lizards are covered with tiny hair-like structures called setae. (There are 14,000 setae per square millimetre), and they make use of weak van der Waals forces to keep their feet firmly on any surface.

A research team made up of American and South Korean scientists is trying to use the gecko feet design as a model to build a tiny robot that could walk up on all kinds of surfaces.

Once again, scientists seek to model their gadgets on what they see in nature. Unfortunately, they often assume that the ingenious solutions found in nature are the result of random processes.

In real life design always requires a designer and information always requires a sender.

Source:

Reproducing nanoscale surfaces with adhesion properties similar to gecko footpad. Physorg. com 29 June 2010.
http://www.physorg.com/news197049851.html

Does a 3,200-year old bronze tablet support the historicity of Sisera?

A recently discovered bronze tablet might be a part of a battle chariot like this. Image courtesy of Paul Volz, from Die biblischen Altertümer (1914).


Joel Kontinen

The Old Testament book of Judges tells us about a Canaanite warlord called Sisera who lived at Harosheth Haggoyim and enslaved the Israelites for 20 years. Recently, Oren Cohen, at the Zinman Institute of Archaeology at the University of Haifa, announced the discovery of an ancient bronze tablet found near Katzir in central Israel.

It might well have once been the linchpin of Sisera’s chariot. A linchpin kept the wheel of a battle chariot in place.

The bronze tablet was found in the area where Sisera is assumed to have lived. The tablet describes a woman’s head. Warlords often used illustrations of enemy subjects as linchpins in their chariots so the discovery fits in well with what the Old Testament says about Sisera.

The researchers cannot be absolutely sure that the object was a part of Sisera’s chariot but it nonetheless is very likely as only rulers and prominent warlords could afford highly-decorated linchpins in their chariots – or even chariots.

Once again, archaeology shows that the Bible is not a collection of myths. It tells us about real people who lived in a certain geographical place at a certain time in history.

You can see a picture of the find at Physorg.com.

Source:

3,200-year-old bronze tablet identified as battle chariot linchpin. Physorg. com (1 July 2010) http://www.physorg.com/news197198109.html

Were Mesoamericans kicking bouncy rubber balls 3000 years ago?

The pyramids of the Mayans speak of advanced culture. Image courtesy of Sergio Blázquez, Wikipedia. The Mayans could probably also make bouncy rubber balls.

Joel Kontinen

Mesoamericans are known to have played a ball game resembling soccer thousands of years ago. A new study reveals an intriguing detail of how they made their balls.

The Aztecks, Olmec, and Maya might well have kicked a bouncy rubber ball 3000 years ago, if researchers at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology have interpreted their data correctly. They believe that the Mesoamericans knew how to mix the juice they got from morning glory vines with the latex they harvested from natural rubber trees to make the rubber more durable and bouncy.

The Aztecs also made durable sandals from rubber.

Popular culture that draws inspiration from Darwinian evolution has tried to convince us that ancient men were simple and uncivilised, although for instance they knew how to build sophisticated structures such as the pyramids and were no simpletons in other areas of their lives, either.

This might be a big surprise for Darwinists who believe that humans gradually evolved from ape-like ancestors and after that lived for ages in caves.

However, the Bible tells us that humans have been intelligent and innovative from the beginning. Many discoveries support the Genesis account of the skills of our ancestors.

You can see a photo of an ancient rubber ball on the National Geographic website.


Source:

Kaufman, Rachel. 2010. Aztec, Maya Were Rubber-Making Masters? National Geographic News (28 June).

Nanotechnology within us

Joel Kontinen

Our state-of-the-art nanotechnology pales in comparison with what is happening within us all the time. In this brief video clip produced by Creation Ministries International a tiny linear motor transports proteins along a highway made of microtubules to the correct address. To travel one millimetre, it has to take 125,000 steps.

The brave little motor is not afraid of walking.



The kinesin linear motor speaks of intelligent design.


3000 years ago, King David of Israel wrote:

” I praise you because I am fearfully and wonderfully made; your works are wonderful, I know that full well.” (Psalm 139:14).