Joel Kontinen
In 1884 the British author Edwin Abbott Abbott introduced the concept of a two- dimensional world with his novel Flatland: A Romance of Many Dimensions. Flatland was a satire of the English society of the Victorian era.
The inhabitants of Flatland only know two dimensions, length and breadth. Professor A. E. Wilder-Smith (1915–1995) used this idea to illustrate people who deny the existence of the supernatural dimension.
Wilder-Smith had three earned science doctorates. His many books, especially The Natural Sciences Know Nothing of Evolution, probably caused some skeptics to suffer from a bout of hypertension.
Some years ago Creation magazine published an article that used the concept of Flatland to illustrate the difference between a naturalistic understanding of reality and the biblical view in which God intervenes in human affairs by entering our world.
According to the Bible, God is transcendent. He is beyond time and space. Stephen Hawking and other skeptics, who only believe in naturalistic causes, have to infer that physical laws created the entire universe since they are not sure whether there is anyone or anything beyond the cosmos. They are like the inhabitants of Flatland who only see that what is happening in the two dimensions of their tiny world.
Source:
Grigg, Russell. 1999. The gospel in time and space. Creation 21(2):50–53.
Saturday, 9 October 2010
The UN appoints a space ambassador to welcome ETs to Earth
The UN wants to welcome ETs to the planet Earth. Image courtesy of Wikipedia.
Joel Kontinen
Visitors hailing from outer space do not have to be at a loss as to whom they should approach first. The UN will give them a friendly welcome.
The UN has appointed Mazlan Othman, a Malaysian astrophysicist, to welcome extraterrestrial visitors to Earth. The organisation is not actually known for making quick decisions but the recent discovery of Gliese 581g, which is assumed to be an earth-like planet, might have nudged it to prepare for what some science fiction fans and other individuals believe is inevitable – the appearance of ETs on Earth.
The belief in extraterrestrial life has a Darwinian connection. Evolutionists believe that life must have evolved on myriads of planets all over the universe.
Source:
Ethirajh, Gopal. 2010. UN appoints Malaysian astrophysicist as ‘space ambassador” for ET contact. Asian Tribune (28 September).
Monday, 4 October 2010
When a fish walks…
Joel Kontinen
If this tiny fish had become extinct and Darwinists found its fossil, they might shout for joy.
However, this fish still lives at the bottom of the ocean and it is not a transitional form but a true handfish.
Creation magazine has published at least two articles on this Australian fish that belongs to the family Brachionichthyidae. Earlier this year, National Geographic also published a few photos of this intriguing marine creature that has not yet decided to walk ashore
.
Charles Lyell, the pioneer of Uniformitarism: the purpose of my book is to ”free science from Moses”
Sir Charles Lyell (1797 – 1875), who popularised Uniformitarism and was a friend of Charles Darwin, wanted to free geology from Moses. Image courtesy of Wikipedia.
Joel Kontinen
When Charles Darwin sailed around the world on the Beagle, he had Charles Lyell’s book Principles of Geology with him.
In 1830 Lyell sent a letter to his friend Poulett Scrope who reviewed his book, stating that his aim was ”to free the science from Moses”. By science he meant geology. In other words, he wanted to replace Moses, Genesis, creation and the flood with millions of years over a century before the first dating method had even been invented.
Terry Mortenson, who has a PhD in the history of geology, says that almost all pioneers of the old earth view were either atheists or deists (who believed in a God who created the universe but otherwise remained aloof from the world).
According to Dr. Mortenson, these pioneers were not objective seekers of the truth but they wanted to bring their own ideology into science.
Sources:
Lyell, Katharine. 1881. Life, Letters and Journals of Sir Charles Lyell, Bart. Part 1. London: Murray.
Mortenson, Terry. 2004. The Great Turning Point: The Church’s Catastrophic Mistake on Geology – Before Darwin. Green Forest, AR: Master Books.
Sunday, 3 October 2010
New research: Hobbit was a modern human suffering from iodine deficiency
Did Frodo and Sam suffer from iodine deficiency?
Joel Kontinen
The debate on the status of the Hobbits or Flores Men has been quite lively in the past few years. (You can read more here, here and here.) According to fresh research, the Hobbit was not a distinct human species but a true H. sapiens suffering from iodine deficiency.
Found on the Indonesian island of Flores, the diminutive Hobbits were named after the heroes of Tolkien’s Middle-Earth story.
Recently, Charles Oxnard, an emeritus professor at the University of Western Australia, and colleagues published a paper in PloS ONE, comparing the bones of humans suffering from cretinism, chimpanzees and healthy humans to those of Hobbits or Homo floresiensis. The study suggests that Hobbits were H. sapiens whose small size probably resulted from cretinism caused by iodine deficiency.
In 2008 Professor Oxnard and colleagues examined the Hobbit skull. According to ScienceDaily they found out that it ”showed evidence of endemic dwarf cretinism resulting from congenital hypothyroidism and were [sic] not a new species of human.”
More recently, Oxnard and his colleagues tested their theory by examining the post-cranial skeleton of Hobbits. The study supported their view.
Earlier last month another research team also found evidence for the theory that Hobbits are fully human.
Robert Eckhardt, professor of developmental genetics and evolutionary morphology at Pennsylvania State University, and Maciej Henneberg, professor of anthropological and comparative anatomy at the University of Adelaide, examined the skull of the Hobbit known as LB1 that was found in the Liang Buan cave on Flores and published their findings in the American Journal of Physical Anthropology.
Professor Eckhardt criticises the approach of some researchers who have classified the Hobbit as a distinct species on the basis of a single asymmetrical skull instead of seeing it as a deformed H. sapiens skull.
Eckhardt adds that although LB1’s braincase was badly asymmetric, this does not make Hobbit into a species distinct from H. sapiens.
According to professor Eckhardt, there still are people on the island of Flores who resemble Hobbits. The jaw and teeth of present-day Floresians hardly differ from those of Hobbits although they have a bigger and more symmetric skull.
Commenting on his research, professor Oxnard says: "Cretinism is caused by various environmental factors including iodine deficiency -- a deficiency which would have been present on Flores at the period to which the dwarfed Flores fossils are dated."
Professor Oxnard points out that cretinism is still quite common in Indonesia, including the island of Bali that is not far from Flores.
Seen from the creation perspective, the research results of these two Hobbit studies were expected. All people are the descendants of Adam. As the apostle Paul said, ”The God who made the world and everything in it is the Lord of heaven and earth … From one man he made every nation of men, that they should inhabit the whole earth.” (Acts 17:24, 26).
Sources:
Researchers offer alternate theory for found skull's asymmetry. PhysOrg.com .(6 September 2010).
'Hobbit' Was an Iodine-Deficient Human, Not Another Species, New Study Suggests. ScienceDaily. (28 September. 2010).
Saturday, 2 October 2010
Scientific American: humans are still evolving
Evolutionists do not agree on whether humans are still evolving. Image courtesy of José-Manuel Benito Álvarez, Wikipedia.
Joel Kontinen
At times, there are interesting twists and turns in the discussion on evolution. Two years ago Steve Jones, professor of genetics at University College London, announced that human evolution was over.
Recently, however, Scientific American published an article that suggests that professor Jones might have been a bit hasty with his pronouncement. Just ask the Tibetans who have continued their evolution by adapting to living at a high altitude.
Tibetans have not ceased to be H. sapiens. According to the article they have managed to overcome altitude sickness and other problems resulting from a low level of oxygen with the help of evolution.
Scientific American might have forgotten to tell its readers that the changes wrought in the Tibetans do not have anything to do with Darwinian evolution but they reveal that humans were designed to adapt to various climates and circumstances.
This ability speaks of very intelligent design.
Source:
Pritchard, Jonathan K. 2010. How We Are Evolving. Scientific American (22 September) http://www.scientificamerican.com/article.cfm?id=how-we-are-evolving&sc=WR_20100928.
Gliese 581g is an Earth-like exoplanet – or perhaps not
In 2007 Gliese 581c, the sister planet of the new ”Goldilocks planet” caused a disappointment to those who were hoping to find life in outer space. Image courtesy of ESO.
Joel Kontinen
The discovery of a potentially habitable planet has made lively headlines in the popular media. It might be good to remember that the sister planet of 581g caused a considerable amount of excitement in 2007. Later, however, researchers found out that the planet named Gliese 581c was probably as warm as Venus.
Steve Vogt of the University of California Santa Cruz, who was a member of the research group that discovered Gliese 581g, says, ”Our findings offer a very compelling case for a potentially habitable planet." He was quoted as saying that he is 100 per cent sure of ”the chances of life” on the planet.
Gliese 581g orbits a red dwarf twenty light years from Earth. Red dwarfs are known to be unstable and Gliese 581g orbits it closer than Mercury our sun.
It is a world of extremes. One side of the tidally locked planet faces the sun perpetually, while the other is in darkness. The planet has a mass of 3 – 4 Earths and its temperature is expected to range from around + 71 degrees Celsius (160 degrees Fahrenheit) on the sunny side to -34 degrees Celsius ( - 29 degrees Fahrenheit) on the dark side. The habitable zone is assumed to lie in between these two extreme areas.
Jay Richards, who co-authored the book The Privileged Planet with Guillermo Gonzalez, takes a critical approach to this claim:
”The planet in question is tidally locked, so the same face perpetually faces its star. So it won't have a pleasing climate. It's about three times more massive than Earth, and it's quite close to its star, which is an M dwarf. Such stars are probably not good hosts for habitable planets due to their high activity levels…
Venus and Mars are much more Earth-like that this or any other extrasolar planet we've yet been able to detect. For instance, they're around a star known to host a habitable planet, and they're both quite close in orbit to that habitable planet. And yet, neither is home to life of any sort.”
While Gliese 581g might orbit its sun within the Goldilocks or habitable zone, this does not necessarily mean that the planet is habitable. Plate tectonics and a big moon would also be necessary for life. Doctor Don DeYoung has shown that if the Earth did not have a sizeable Moon, there would be no tides, the oceans would be stagnant and marine life would die.
Recently, New Scientist disclosed that the birth of the Moon was one of the ”ten accidents that made us”.
According to Genesis, the Moon is not the result of a lucky accident but of a definite act of creation. In contrast, we do not know whether Gliese 581g has any kind of moon, so the joy of Vogt and colleagues might be a bit premature.
Sources:
Alleyne, Richard. 2010. Gliese 581g: the most Earth like planet yet discovered. Telegraph. co. http://www.telegraph.co.uk/science/space/8033124/Gliese-581g-the-most-Earth-like-planet-yet-discovered.html. (29 September)
DeYoung, Don. 2006. Our Created Moon. Answers in Genesis DVD.
Richards, Jay. 2010. Science Reporters Should Quit Crying "Life!" http://www.evolutionnews.org/2010/09/science_reporters_should_quit_038781.html#more (30 September).
Subscribe to:
Comments (Atom)
Posts
