The 50th Anniversary of The Genesis Flood

Joel Kontinen

A book can have a powerful effect. Just think about the Bible. It has changed the lives of millions of people, giving them new hope.

In 1859 Charles Darwin published his manifesto On the Origin of Species. While it did not explicitly address the issue of origins, for many people it served to make the Creator redundant.

A century later (1961), two professors - a scientist and a theologian - published a book that brought fresh hope for countless people. The Genesis Flood by doctors Henry Morris and John Whitcomb has become a Christian classic.

Massive Whale Graveyard in a Dry Desert over a Kilometre above Sea Level

The Flood of Noah’s day left huge fossil graveyards all over the world.




Joel Kontinen

Whales do not usually end up in a dry desert over a kilometre (0.6 miles) above sea level. But this is what has happened in the Atacama Desert in Chile. Palaeontologists dug up at least 75 well-preserved whale fossils. They found the mass graveyard when the road leading through the desert had to be widened.

Most of the fossils were of eight metre (25 feet) long baleen whales. They also discoverd a sperm whale and a dolphin with tusks. A sloth and a seabird bigger than a condor were found elsewhere in the desert.

The researchers assume that the whales met their end ”2-7 million years” ago. The idea of millions of years is an ideological view that should be examined critically, however.

Dating methods do not measure age but the proportions of different isotopes in rock, for instance. The idea of radiometric dating is based on the assumption that circumstances on earth have been rather similar throughout history – although even evolutionists admit that this is not true.

Nicholas Pyenson, a curator at the Smithsonian's National Museum of Natural History, thinks that the desert was once a lagoon.

A more logical explanation would be that the whales met their end either during the Flood of Noah’s days or in the ice age following it. Genesis describes a yearlong global catastrophe that changed our planet’s topography radically. Huge fossil graveyards have been found all over the world. They are testimony of a catastrophe that destroyed life on the early Earth.


Source:

Vergara, Eva and Ian James. 2011. Whale fossil bonanza in desert poses mystery. MSNBC.com (20 November).

The Miracle of Human Life

Joel Kontinen


The human body is a marvel. It certainly looks like it has been designed very intelligently. In a lecture he held last year, mathematician Alexander Tsiaras spoke about his research on the pre-birth development of a human being.

The expressions he used are rather revealing.

· Just made you marvel
· The marvel of this information
· It was hard not to attribute divinity to it.
· It's mystery, it's magic, it's divinity.
· The mathematical models of how these things are done are beyond human comprehension
· Even though I look at this with the eyes of a mathematician I ... marvel.
· How do these instruction sets not make mistakes as they build what is us?

3,000 years ago King David said, “I praise you because I am fearfully and wonderfully made; your works are wonderful, I know that full well”. (Psalm 139: 14, NIV)

Thanking the Universe – or Thanking the One Who Deserves to be Praised

The universe might be full of marvels but this does not mean that it made itself. Image courtesy of Mila Zinkova, Wikipedia.




Joel Kontinen

It’s Thanksgiving Day on the other side of the Atlantic, reminding us that we have many reasons to be thankful.

Some people who are marketing the Law of Attraction will remind us that we have plenty of reasons for thanking the universe – as if the universe somehow deserves our praise. This approach sounds a lot like new age nature worship, which, of course, is not a new invention.

The apostle Paul warned about such people: “They exchanged the truth about God for a lie, and worshiped and served created things rather than the Creator” (Romans 1:25, NIV).

In his first letter to the Thessalonians, Paul exhorted: “Rejoice always, pray continually, give thanks in all circumstances; for this is God’s will for you in Christ Jesus.” (1 Thess. 5:16-17, NIV).

Yes, we should give thanks to the One who deserves to be praised – the almighty God who created everything by His Word at the beginning.

"A most mischievous superstition”: Disparaging Christianity Is Not a Recent Invention

The Roman historian Tacitus thought Christianity was "a most mischievous superstition." Image courtesy of Wikipedia.




Joel Kontinen

Disparaging Christianity is not a recent invention. Describing the fire that destroyed parts of Rome in AD 64, historian Cornelius Tacitus (AD 56 – ca. AD 117) characterised the early Roman followers of Christ in all but flattering terms in his book Annales:

”Consequently, to get rid of the report, Nero fastened the guilt and inflicted the most exquisite tortures on a class hated for their abominations, called Christians by the populace. Christus, from whom the name had its origin, suffered the extreme penalty during the reign of Tiberius at the hands of one of our procurators, Pontius Pilatus, and a most mischievous superstition, thus checked for the moment, again broke out not only in Judæa, the first source of the evil, but even in Rome, where all things hideous and shameful from every part of the world find their centre and become popular.”

In our time, some atheists are walking in Tacitus’ footsteps. However, if they bothered to take a closer look at the Bible and its reliability, they might well change their mind.

Source:

Cornelius Tacitus: The Annals. Translated and edited by Alfred John Church and William Jackson Brodribb.

Christians Are Turning To Genesis

Michelangelo: The Creation of Adam (ca. 1511). Image courtesy of Wikipedia.



Joel Kontinen


While the BioLogos Foundation is spreading the view that Christians can believe in evolution and the Bible, more and more laypeople think otherwise. In August, Creation Ministries International’s Super Conference in Canada brought together 800 people and tens of thousands watched the event on the Internet. This week, the All-Asian Creation Conference featuring Ken Ham and other speakers from Answers in Genesis was also a great success:

“Upwards of 1000 people attended various sessions at the All-Asian Creation Conference in Malaysia this week. Twenty countries were represented. It was amazing to meet people from Nepal, Italy, India, Indonesia, Japan, Taiwan, Australia, USA, England, the Philippines—and the list goes on,” Ken Ham, President and CEO of AiG-USA, writes in his blog.

The problem with theistic evolution is that it is incompatible with what we know of the nature of God. Genesis speaks of an initial very good creation that only later was spoiled by sin. Evolution, in contrast, has death at the very beginning.




Source:

Ham, Ken. 2011. Worldwide Epidemic Threatens Church. Around the World with Ken Ham.

Why Is Genesis Important?

Jesus believed that Adam and Eve were real historical people.



Joel Kontinen

Genesis is the key to understanding the Bible. Chapters 1-11 tell us about:

· The origin of the universe
· The origin of man
· The nature of man
· The origin of sin, suffering and death
· God’ goodness and faithfulness
· The horror of sin ( the Fall, the Flood, the confusion of languages at Babel)
· The biblical model of marriage (one man, one woman)

In addition:

· Genesis is the key to understanding the gospel and atonement.
. Genesis is history.
· A consistent Christian worldview requires us to accept Genesis as a historical account of beginnings.
· We cannot defend Christianity or even proclaim the gospel logically, if we do not accept the historicity of Genesis.

Theologians have developed many explanations (for instance, the gap theory, the day-age theory, theistic evolution) in order to make the creation days in Genesis compatible with the assumed millions of years of geology.

The theories have huge problems:

· Has God really said?
· Who is our ultimate authority?
· Radiometric dating methods are based on assumptions. It is impossible to test whether the assumptions are reliable.
· Carbon-14 in diamonds, dinosaur soft tissue, comets
· In the Old Testament, day + number always means a literal day.

” For in six days the LORD made the heavens and the earth, the sea, and all that is in them but he rested on the seventh day.” (Exodus 20:11).

God does not say one thing in the Bible and mean something else. He did not need billions of years for creating the universe. In the New Testament Jesus turned water into wine in a second and raised Lazarus from the dead in an instant. He is almighty.

Jesus regarded Genesis as history:

· ” Haven’t you read?”
· ” At the beginning of creation God ‘made them male and female’.” (Mark 10:6)
· “If they do not listen to Moses and the Prophets, they will not be convinced even if someone rises from the dead." (Luke 16:31)
· "I have spoken to you of earthly things and you do not believe; how then will you believe if I speak of heavenly things?" (John 3:12).
· ” What may be known about God is plain to them, because God has made it plain to them. For since the creation of the world God’s invisible qualities—his eternal power and divine nature—have been clearly seen, being understood from what has been made, so that people are without excuse.” (Romans 1:19-20)

(Scripture passages from the NIV.)

Accepting evolution would distort the Bible and give a false testimony of God.

A Thinking Neanderthal Is No Longer an Oxymoron

Neanderthals obviously enjoyed music.


Joel Kontinen

Not so long ago, evolutionists were reluctant to believe that Neanderthals could think very deeply about anything. However, in the past 150 years researchers have had to change almost everything they thought they knew about these early humans.

In this week’s issue of Nature, Clive Gamble, professor of archaeology at the University of Southampton, UK, reviews How to Think Like a Neanderthal by Thomas Wynn and Frederick Coolidge (Oxford University Press 2011), a book that attempts to examine what the Neanderthals were thinking.

The review article shows that we have our prejudices about these people who are separated from us by time and culture. Since as far as we know they have not left us written records, our best attempts at understanding them are only guesses. However, researchers no longer believe that the Neanderthals, once dismissed as primitive ape-men by early Darwinists, were so primitive after all.

According to the biblical model, the Neanderthals were Noah’s descendants who mostly lived in Europe during the ice ago following the global Flood. The harsh climate explains in part why they differed from us.

Source:

Gamble, Clive. 2011. Neuroscience: Neanderthals in Mind. Nature 479, 294–295.

20 Years Ago: Law Professor Challenged Darwinism

Joel Kontinen

Twenty years ago Berkeley law professor Phillip E. Johnson challenged Darwinian materialism with his book Darwin on Trial. He took a critical look at the philosophical foundation of evolution and found it was all but objective.

The book made headlines and it sold over 250,000 copies. What On the Origin of Species was to evolutionists and The Genesis Flood to the creation movement, Darwin on Trial was to the intelligent design movement.

Darwin-doubters liked it and evolutionists such as Eugenie Scott and Stephen Jay Gould did not.

Discovery Institute launched a new website and released a trailer to commemorate the 20th anniversary of Darwin on Trial:

Evolutionist: “Corruption is Normal”

If people believe that they are descended from apes, they will not have an objective basis for morality – or that’s what they will assume.




Joel Kontinen

“When looked at in evolutionary terms, clinging to the moral high ground could be seen as an irrational position,” Laura Spinney concludes in New Scientist magazine. Spinney examines the views some psychologists have of corruption and cheating.

New Scientist is right: If people believe that they are descended from apes, they will not have an objective basis for morality, or they will at least think so. They will feel that they are not accountable to any transcendent authority for their deeds. No wonder that corruption is rampant here and there.

Christianity offers an entirely different view of human accountability. We are ultimately accountable to God for our words and deeds. While we live in a world spoiled by the Fall, the gospel can change us so that we will resist our inclination to corruption and – as Jesus said in the Sermon on the Mount – live as salt and light in the world.

Source:

Spinney, Laura. 2011. The underhand ape: Why corruption is normal. New Scientist 2837: 42-45.

New Darwinian Explanation of the Origin of Language: Young Apes Invented It by Gesticulating with Their Arms

The newest Darwinian fable features an ape. Image courtesy of Wikipedia.




Joel Kontinen

The origin of language is a big mystery for Darwinists who only accept naturalistic explanations. A recent explanation has to do with the origin of languages.

Katja Liebal, of the Max Planck Institute, and colleagues examined the communication of young great apes (chimpanzees, bonobos, gorillas, orang-utans) and published their results in the American Journal of Primatology.

At a very early stage young apes learn to communicate with older apes by gesticulating with their arms. Liebal’s research team found out that only humans and great apes learn to use their arms to communicate at an early age.

From there it’s a small Darwinian step to the origin of language (especially in some popular pro-evolution publications). However, in real life the intellectual leap is considerably longer.

Darwinian explanations might be intriguing but they often have little if anything to do with real science. Even now, some researchers doubt whether this ape research at all relates to the origin of language. We should not forget that all animal species communicate in one way or another. Different species might not understand the ”language” of other species. A cat, for instance, moves its tail for a purpose that differs entirely from that of a dog wagging its rear end.

According to Genesis, Adam could speak from the very beginning, so language never evolved.

Source:

Schultz, Nora. 2011. Baby apes' arm waving hints at origins of language. New Scientist (10 November).

New Research: Hoatzins Crossed the Atlantic on Rafts

Hoatzins. Image courtesy of Cláudio Dias Timm, Wikipedia.




Joel Kontinen

Problems for Darwinian evolution are not about to disappear. More difficulties are cropping up all the time. The latest features the South American bird Hoatzin (Opisthocomus hoazin).

Last month, a team of German, Brazilian and French scientists published a paper in the journal Naturwissenschaften on the origin of the Hoatzin. They compared Hoatzin bones found in Brazil to bones assumed to be 17 million years old found in Namibia and suggest that the bird lived in Africa before crossing the Atlantic.

Science Daily describes the problem caused by the new discovery:

“Africa and South America were once part of a supercontinent called Gondwana, but this had already broken up much longer than 20 million years ago, the continents being separated by the Atlantic. So Hoatzins must have crossed the ocean at some stage in order to get from one continent to the other.

But how does a bird, which is an especially poor long-distance flyer, manage to cross a sea that is over 1,000 kilometres wide? Even if the flying capabilities of the Hoatzin's ancestors were better, it is highly unlikely that they could have managed this distance in the air.”

The researchers suggest that instead of flying, the Hoatzin probably crossed the Atlantic on “drifting flotsam”. Some time ago, evolutionists proposed a similar method for getting African monkeys into South America.

Once we disregard the millions of years, the explanation begins to sound like the scenario that probably occurred after Noah’s Flood.

Source:

Across the Atlantic On Flotsam: New Fossil Findings Shed Light On the Origins of the Mysterious Bird Hoatzin. Science Daily (4 October).

Palestine, UNESCO and the Kristallnacht of November 1938

The roof of this synagogue in Munich was badly damaged on the Kristallnacht as a result of Nazi vandalism. Image courtesy of Wikipedia.




Joel Kontinen

There is nothing new under the sun. The Jews have throughout history been accused of almost anything, for instance the Black Death of the 1350s. The real reason, in addition to anti-Semitism, has often been jealousy.

The western press and the political leaders in most countries have obviously learnt nothing from the pogroms and the holocaust during World War II, but now, on the eve of the anniversary of 1938’s Kristallnacht, they decided to reward the Palestinians with UNESCO membership.

The Palestinians have not given up their aim of destroying Israel. The Gaza strip has become a launch pad for rockets. Hamas is hitting the Jews with much more destructive weapons than the Nazis who in November 1938 destroyed hundreds of synagogues and shops owned by Jews all over Germany and Austria.

The Beauty and the Ugliness of Life

Joel Kontinen

The world is full of beauty, which is testimony of creation. Tiny birds and even smaller nano motors speak of wonderful design. However, we also see or hear about bad things, such as earthquakes and tsunamis that are consequences of the Fall.

Answers in Genesis posted a new video clip in which Ken Ham speaks about death:

Theistic Evolution Leaves Sceptic Unconvinced

A sceptic has no need for God in this scenario. Image courtesy of José-Manuel Benito Álvarez, Wikipedia.





Joel Kontinen

Sceptics are not actually fond of Alvin Plantinga, emeritus professor of philosophy at Notre Dame University, as he has repeatedly criticised “the four horsemen of the new atheism” (as he calls them), or Richard Dawkins, Daniel Dennett, Sam Harris and Christopher Hitchens.

Although Plantinga has successfully defended the theistic worldview, sceptics have noted that he is not exactly logical in all aspects of his argumentation. Professor Plantinga thinks that God might have used evolution as His mechanism of creation.

He has said that religion (especially Christianity) is compatible with the naturalistic view of science (that is all too often newspeak for Darwinian evolution).

In his book Where the Conflict Really Lies: Science, Religion, and Naturalism (Oxford University Press, 2011), Plantinga suggests:

“The scientific theory of evolution is not incompatible with Christian belief; what is incompatible with it is the idea that evolution, natural selection, is unguided. But that idea isn’t part of evolutionary theory as such; it’s instead a metaphysical or theological addition.”

Recently, Tim Callahan examined Plantinga’s views critically in e-Skeptic, the newsletter of American sceptics. Callahan finds it difficult to believe that the God of the Bible (or any creator) would have resorted to a Darwinian mechanism. He points out that fossils speak of mass extinctions and death. During the assumed millions of years, life on Earth has been on the verge of total destruction several times.

Genesis describes a world that was originally perfect in every way. Callahan is right in saying that Plantinga is inconsistent. Theistic creation and atheistic evolution are incompatible.

The Bible speaks of an almighty God who did miracles instantly in both the Old and the New Testament. He did not need to wait for billions of years before being able to create man in his image. He made him on the sixth day of creation that lasted only a fraction of the time that Darwinian evolution assumes it took to evolve humans.

Source:

Callahan, Tim. 2011. Where the Substance Really Isn’t. e-Skeptic (2 November).

Design in Nature

Erosion can carve canyons but few would believe that it could carve presidents. Image courtesy of Wikipedia.



Joel Kontinen

It is not all too uncommon for sceptics to claim that design in nature is merely an illusion. Richard Dawkins, for instance, assumes that “the illusion of purpose is so powerful that biologists themselves use the assumption of good design as a working tool.”

Few would believe that erosion carved the US presidents on Mount Rushmore. However, the same people might refuse to believe that the human cell that uses nanotechnology to communicate with its environment and with other cells is intelligently designed.

Might this refusal to admit the obvious have more to do with ideology than with anything else?

The apostle Paul writes in Romans: “For since the creation of the world God’s invisible qualities—his eternal power and divine nature—have been clearly seen, being understood from what has been made, so that people are without excuse” (1:20, NIV).

Source:

Dawkins, Richard. 1995. River Out of Eden. London: Phoenic.

Newspeak: “Opponents of Science are Experts at Winning the Battle for Hearts and Minds”

This week's New Scientist takes a look at those who are not convinced by ideas like Darwinian evolution.




Joel Kontinen

Evolutionists have studied their Orwell well and adopted his newspeak. As exemplified by this week's New Scientist, they characterise dissidents as “opponents of science”, “the forces of anti-science” and those who hold “apparently perverse positions.”

New Scientist informs us, for instance, that Discovery Institute is “a conservative think-tank that seeks to undermine the teaching of evolution in US schools… After failing to get biblical creationism taught in science classes, the institute came back with the ‘scientific’ concept of intelligent design, and two carefully researched talking points: ‘evolution is just a theory’ and ‘teach the controversy’. "

One cannot obviously expect New Scientist to check its facts as very little (if anything) in the above quote is actually true.

The basic problem is that Darwinian evolution is taught as dogma in schools almost everywhere. The only thing that dissidents have an issue with is the dogmatism of evolutionists. They propagate their pet theory with almost religious zeal and do their utmost to silence all dissent.

Sources:

Aldhouse, Peter. 2011. Science in America: Selling the truth. New Scientist 2836: 42-45.

Why America should put its trust in reason. New Scientist 2836: 3.