Evolution and Entropy: Are Things Getting More Organised?

Joel Kontinen

We live in a world where disorder increases almost daily. Things tend to run down instead of spontaneously becoming better. The second law of thermodynamics states that disorder increases in a closed system.

Evolution, however, relies on the assumption that order improves over time. Evolutionists have argued that Earth is not a closed system because it does get energy from the Sun, but an influx of raw energy rarely if ever brings about order and progress.

Mathematics Professor Granville Sewell (University of Texas, El Paso) has written several papers on the second law. The following video illustrates his main points:

Whatever Happened to Richard Dawkins’ Atheism?

Richard Dawkins is full of surprises. Image courtesy of Wikipedia.





Joel Kontinen

Our old friend Richard Dawkins keeps on surprising us. A few years ago, he admitted that a serious case could be made for a deistic God. Recently, he went a step further.

Dawkins acknowledged that he is not fully certain that God does not exist. In a debate with Rowan Williams, Archbishop of Canterbury, he described himself as an agnostic instead of an atheist. He said that the probability of God’s non-existence is 6.9 on a 7-point scale.

That would be 98.57 per cent. Expressed as a probability it would be 0.985714285.

It is not difficult to calculate that it would be easier to win the top prize in the Finnish lottery (in which the odds are one in 15,380,937. Yet every year someone manages to win a few million euros.

The probability for this is 0.0000065.

It is by far a much smaller number than 1- (6.9 / 7.0) or 0.014285714. Thus, according to Dawkins’ logic, the probability that God exists is by far much greater that winning a few million euros in the lottery.

Source:

Webb, Al. 2012. Richard Dawkins, Famous Atheist, Not Entirely Sure God Doesn't Exist. The Huffington Post (24 February).

Iranian Court Sends Youssef Nadarkhani Nearer to Death

Pastor Nadarkhani and his family. Image courtesy of Present Truth Ministries.






Joel Kontinen

Recently, Fox News reported on Youssef (Youcef) Nadarkhani, the Iranian pastor who is facing the death sentence for converting to Christianity. Sources close to Nadarkhani and his legal team say that an Iranian court has made its final verdict in the case.

Nadarkhani’s supporters are afraid that the pastor might be executed at any time.

The Present Truth Ministries website has a page on instructions for helping pastor Nadarkhani and his family.

“The greatest power we have on earth is prayer. God works mightily and powerfully through the effectual fervent prayers of the righteous,” the ministry website reminds us. It also suggests practical ways for helping pastor Nadarkhani and all who are persecuted for trusting in Jesus Christ.

Sources:

Daftari, Lisa. 2012. Iran court convicts Christian pastor convert to death. Fox News (22 February).

How you can help. Present Truth Ministries.

Creation Ministries International Launches New Online Bible Study Tool

Joel Kontinen

We cannot understand the New Testament without knowing what happened in the Old Testament. The Book of Genesis lays the foundation for many essential Christian doctrines.

Unfortunately, many Christians assume that our view of origins is not important. In contrast, Jesus and the New Testament writers believed that Genesis is history.

To help us understand Genesis better, Creation Ministries International has launched an online Bible study tool focusing on the book of Genesis.

Read more here.

40 Years Ago: Eldredge and Gould Criticise Gradualism

Darwin’s gradualism is not supported by evidence. Image courtesy of Wikipedia.






Joel Kontinen

What do evolutionists do when the fossils do not support gradual Darwinian evolution? They try to salvage evolution by proposing an alternative approach that does not need to be supported by fossil evidence.

40 years ago, Niles Eldredge and Stephen Jay Gould published a paper entitled "Punctuated Equilibria: An Alternative to Phyletic Gradualism". In addition to criticising classical Darwinism, it also emphasised that scientists are not at all objective.

“All observation is coloured by theory and expectation,” they write.

They quote Paul Feyerabend, who claimed (1970) that theories “act as ‘party lines’ to force observation in present channels, unrecognised by adherents who think they perceive an objective truth.”

They go on to say,

“A theory often compels us to see the world in its light and support. Yet, we think we see objectively and therefore interpret each new datum as an independent confirmation of our theory.”

It is not difficult to agree with them. All too often Darwinists have “seen” evidence of evolution in humans, for instance vestigial organs and “junk DNA” that in real life have never even existed.




Source:

Eldredge, Niles and Stephen Jay Gould. 1972. Punctuated Equilibria: An Alternative to Phyletic Gradualism.

Nobelist Ada Yonath: The Architecture of the Ribosome is Ingeniously Designed

The ribosome. Image courtesy of Wikipedia.





Joel Kontinen

The ribosome is tiny, measuring only 20 nanometres (a nanometre is one billionth of a metre), but without it there would be no protein synthesis and thus no life.

In 2009 three ribosome researchers shared the Nobel prize in Chemistry. Recently, Ada Yonath, who was one of them, repeated what she had said in her Nobel lecture:

”The architecture of the ribosome is ingeniously designed.”

Yonath is an evolutionist, but she cannot deny intelligent design.

Source:

Yonath, Ada. 2009. Hibernating bears, antibiotics and the evolving ribosome.

Blind Arachnid: Evolution is Going in the Wrong Direction

Malorerus randoi is a blind arachnid that only lives on the Spanish island of Fuerteventura.




Joel Kontinen

Darwinian evolution needs change. Thus, many evolutionists will regard any kind of chance as evidence for evolution.

In the real world, changes speak about something very different.

For instance, the blind cave crabs of Lanzarote have lost a trait they once had.

Malorerus randoi, a blind archnid that only lives on the island of Fuenteventura, shares the fate of these crabs. It has also lost its eyesight.

The loss of genetic information suggests that there is something amiss with Darwinian explanations.

Evolution has gone in the wrong direction.

“Non-Scientific Creation?”

Genesis speaks of a literal Adam and a literal Eve.


Joel Kontinen


For many people, Genesis is a hard nut to crack. In recent weeks, several scholars have stated their doubts about the historicity of Genesis.

I recently received this comment on Genesis from a Bible scholar:

“Some have suggested that the creation stories are neither scientific nor pre-scientific but non-scientific.”

This is a rather strange view, as (1) there is only one creation account in Genesis and (2) if the account is not history, what is it?

Of course, scholars are entitled to believe what they believe, but Jesus and the New Testament authors taught that Genesis was real history.

New Origin of Life Theory Attracts Criticism

Two years ago, a black smoker was seen as a potential cradle of life. Image courtesy of P. Rona, NOAA.






Joel Kontinen

Naturalistic origin of life theories are not known by their longevity. Two years ago researchers discarded the primordial soup view and replaced it with a black smoker hypothesis.

Researchers have suggested an arsenic lake, meteorites and comets as the birthplaces of life. A common denominator of these theories is their brief life span.

Recently, Armen Mulkidjanian at the University of Osnabrück showed that life could not have emerged in the oceans. He suggested that the first life on earth originated in hot springs in Russia.

According to the journal Nature, Mulkidjanian’s paper has caused a stir in the origin of life community. Nick Lane, a biochemist at University College London, sees that Mulkidjanian’s view is “problematic both biologically and geologically.” He feels that there was not enough dry land in the beginning to give life a foothold. Jack Szostak, a molecular biologist at Harvard Medical School, also thinks that the new suggestion is problematic.

The basic problem with naturalistic origin of life theories is that they are incapable of explaining the emergence of life.

Much more than just water is needed for life.


Sources:


Barras, Colin. 2012. Russian hot springs point to rocky origins for life. New Scientist (13 February).

Switek, Brian. 2012. Debate bubbles over the origin of life. Nature news (13 February)

Hundred Years Ago: Piltdown Man Was Seen as Evidence for Evolution

Piltdown Man is one of the greatest hoaxes of science. Image courtesy of J. Arthur Thomson, The Outline of Science, 1922.




Joel Kontinen

People often see what they expect to see. A hundred years ago (1912), Piltdown Man was the best evidence for Darwinian evolution. For several decades it was almost treated as a relic.

Recently, the British daily The Observer reported on a project that was launched to find out what Piltdown Man was really about. This icon of evolution was shown to be a fraud in 1953.

Piltdown Man was a mixture of three different creatures: a human skull hailing from the Middle Ages, an orangutan’s jawbone and a chimpanzee’s tooth. The bones had been chemically doctored to make them look older than they were and the teeth had been filed.

In the early 20th century, Great Britain lacked its own ancient human fossil. The Germans had Neanderthal Man and the French had their Cro Magnon fossil, so this might explain why British scientists accepted Piltdown man without examining the fossil critically, although the signs of fraud were obvious.

It is probably no coincidence that so many of the greatest hoaxes in science have a Darwinian connection. This might say something about the willingness of people to believe in evolution.


Source:

McKie, Robin. 2012. Piltdown Man: British archaeology's greatest hoax. The Observer (5 February).

What Richard Dawkins Forgot: The Name of the Book Darwin Wrote

Richard Dawkins forgot the full title of this book. Image courtesy of Wikipedia.




Joel Kontinen

Recently, our old friend Richard Dawkins said that most people in the UK who say they are Christians are not real Christians because they don’t go to church, read the Bible or even know the name of the first book of the New Testament.

In the BBC programme in which Dawkins made these claims he was asked whether he knew the subtitle of Darwin’s famous book. He said he did, but actually he stammered a bit and had to admit that he didn’t remember.

The full name of Darwin’s famous book is On The Origin of Species by Means of Natural Selection, or The Preservation of Favoured Races in the Struggle for Life.

Source:

Majority of Christians 'tick the box'. BBC News 14 February 2012.

Discovery: Neanderthal Men Were Cave Artists

Neanderthal men also made ivory flutes.




Joel Kontinen

Cave paintings depicting seals are changing our view of the artistic skills of Neanderthal man.

Recently, José Luis Sanchidrián of the University of Cordoba, Spain, and colleagues reported on a discovery of cave paintings near Malaga. Originally found in 1959, they are assumed to be the oldest cave art ever found.

The researchers dated charcoal remains found near the paintings at 42,300 – 43,500 years before present and assume that they are as old as the artwork.

Just a few decades ago evolutionists thought that Neanderthals were dim-witted cavemen, but views have changed. Now researchers believe that Neanderthal man was a talented artist.

According to the model based on Genesis, the Neanderthals lived during the ice age following Noah’s Flood. They were Adam’s descendents and thus fully human, just like us.

The global Flood would also make carbon dating unreliable, because it ignores the vast amounts of carbon dioxide produced during that year-long catastrophe.

Source:

MacErlean, Fergal. 2012. First Neanderthal cave paintings discovered in Spain. New Scientist (10 February).

Jurassic Cricket Knew How to Sing Like Today’s Crickets

A modern cricket. Image courtesy of Roberto Zanon, Wikipedia.




Joel Kontinen

Darwinian evolution requires change but fossils often suggest that the desired change does not happen. Many animals do not change into anything else even in extremely long periods of time.

The fossil of the cricket Archaboilus musicus provides a fresh example. Assumed to be 165 “million years” old, the male cricket knew how to attract females by the same method modern crickets use.

According to BBC Nature,

“Just like modern bush crickets - also known as katydids - the Jurassic insects produced music with their wings. A "plectrum" on one wing was dragged along a microscopic comb-like structure on the other.”

In other words, crickets have not changed their habits since the time of T. rex.

Last week, an international research team published its findings in the web version of the journal Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America (PNAS). A photograph that accompanied the study revealed the cricket’s comb-like instrument.


Sources:

Gill, Victoria. 2012. Jurassic cricket's song recreated. BBC Nature (6 February).

Gu, Jun-Jie & al. 2012. Wing stridulation in a Jurassic katydid (Insecta, Orthoptera) produced low-pitched musical calls to attract females. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America (6 February).

New Research: Stripes Protect Zebras From Horseflies

Joel Kontinen

For a long time, zoologists have been puzzled by zebra stripes. Darwinists have suggested several hypotheses for the origin of their black and white stripes.

Stripes do not help zebras to hide from predators so they must have some other function.

Already in the 1930s researchers found out that stripes protect zebras from tsetse flies. Now they also know that stripes keep horseflies away.

Recently, Adam Egri at Eötvös University in Budapest, Hungary, and colleagues reported that they had found the answer. According to New Scientist, they ”believe zebras evolved stripes to protect themselves from blood-sucking insects.”

However, this typical Darwinian storytelling is not convincing. Zebras do not have the ability to produce stripes for themselves and natural selection cannot anticipate a need before it occurs.

The most logical solution is that God knew that in a fallen world zebras needed to have a mechanism for protecting themselves from insects. The light reflected from the stripes makes it difficult for horseflies to land on a zebra.

Sources:

Egri, Adam, Miklós Blahó, György Kriska, Róbert Farkas, Mónika Gyurkovszky, Susanne Åkesson and Gábor Horváth. 2012. Polarotactic tabanids find striped patterns with brightness and/or polarization modulation least attractive: an advantage of zebra stripes. The Journal of Experimental Biology.

Zukerman, Wendy. 2012. Zoologger: Don't bite – how the zebra got its stripes. New Scientist (9 February).

Evolution Sunday: Darwin Goes to Church

Many churches will soon welcome Darwin’s thoughts. Image courtesy of Wikipedia.




Joel Kontinen

Charles Darwin’s birthday is just around the corner – next Sunday, February 12th, to be more specific, and atheists are already getting religion.

But it’s not the Christian religion although the “good news” might be preached in hundreds of churches.

In the beginning – six years ago, that is – some atheists, not satisfied with the low popularity ratings of Darwin and Darwinism, decided to get some support from churches. This year, The Clergy Letter Project, as their project is called, once again attempts to get more churches to welcome Darwin into their pews.

The Darwinians want the churches to preach about evolution.

The problem with Darwinian evolution is that it is diametrically opposed to Christianity that is based on an all-powerful Creator God. There is no need to welcome extra-biblical ideologies into any Christian church.

This Week’s Monkey Fable: “Clint Eastwood Helps Reveal Secrets of Brain Evolution”

Four rhesus monkeys watched a Clint Eastwood movie – for scientific purposes. Image courtesy of J.M.Garg, Wikipedia.





Joel Kontinen

This week’s monkey fable features four indomitable rhesus monkeys.

Evolutionists believe that although human brains are bigger, they structurally resemble monkey brains.

Recently, Wim Vanduffel of Harvard Medical School in Boston and the Catholic University of Leuven, Belgium, and colleagues tested this hypothesis by showing 24 people and 4 rhesus monkeys the film The Good, the Bad and the Ugly featuring Clint Eastwood.

Vanduffel and colleagues scanned the brains of the people and monkeys watching the film and noticed that the monkeys’ brains reacted to the movie slightly differently than the humans.

In other words, the researchers did not find support for Darwinian evolution. But at least the four monkeys were able to get a glimpse of the not-so-peaceful-goings on of Clint Eastwood and his fellow humans.

The research was published in the journal Nature Methods.


Source:

Grossman, Lisa. 2012. Clint Eastwood helps reveal secrets of brain evolution. New Scientist (5 February).

The Long War Against God

Joel Kontinen

Mankind’s long war against God did not begin with Charles Darwin. The rebellion originated in Eden when Adam and Eve turned against their Maker.

The rebellion had tragic consequences that we still witness in the media. In addition to thorns and thistles, the Fall also had an effect on human morality. It is not only seen as wars and mass murders but also in attitudes.

Often, people chose to deny the very existence of God. Some others, like Adam and Eve, assumed that God does not mean what He clearly says (for instance, about His Word, His nature, man’s origin and marriage.)

Bad choices and bad strategies always lead to bad consequences. Melanie Phillips, an award-winning British journalist and author, has shown that in Great Britain the overemphasis on ”tolerance” has led to the trampling of Christian values and to a real discrimination of Christians.

According to Phillips, irrationalism has increased drastically in Great Britain. Homosexuals and Muslims are favoured and Christian values are despised. Anti-Semitism is increasing and is seen as rabid opposition to almost anything Israel does.

The apostle Paul says in Romans that when people begin to worship created beings instead of the Creator, the result is a huge catastrophe.

Sources:

Morris, Henry M. 2000. The Long War Against God: The History and Impact of the Creation/Evolution Conflict. Green Forest, AR: Master Books.

Phillips, Melanie. 2010. The World Turned Upside Down: The Global Battle over God, Truth, and Power. New York: Encounter Books.

The Resurrection of Jesus: Skeptic Brings Back the Old Hallucination Hypothesis

Noel Coypel: The resurrection of Jesus (1700). Image courtesy of Wikipedia.





Joel Kontinen

In the 19th century, German theologians in particular attempted to explain all supernatural elements in the Bible by natural causes. At that time, sceptics attacked Jesus’ miracles and especially the resurrection.

However, relying on rationalism also had its drawbacks. The French physicist Jean-Baptiste Pérès (1752–1840) used the same methods that the German theologians had embraced and succeeded in ”proving” that Napoleon had never lived but that he was an allegorical figure developed from ancient Greek mythology.

Recently, Gary Whittenberger brought back these old rationalistic arguments. He attempted to prove that after the resurrection, Jesus’ disciples might have seen hallucinations.

This view is not credible. It would be very strange if the New Testament writers had based their accounts on hallucinations. After all, the apostles had lost all hope when Jesus was put to death and they did not expect to see Him alive.

It is not possible to explain the change in the apostles by appealing to hallucinations. After Jesus’ death they were in hiding, afraid to speak about their Master. After seeing the resurrected Lord, they were ready to speak out.

For instance, it would be exceedingly difficult to explain away the account in John 21 as a mere hallucination. Jesus and the apostles ate real fish and not imaginary ones. The other post-resurrection accounts also have details that show that they are eyewitness accounts of real events (and not dreams or hallucinations) that happened to real people.

Perhaps the major reason why sceptics are reluctant to believe in a real resurrection is that they do not want Christianity to be true.


Sources:

Whittenberger, Gary J. 2012. On Visions and Resurrections. E-skeptic (1 February).

How Napoleon Never Existed, or The Great Error, Source of an Infinite Number of Errors To be Seen in the History of the Nineteenth Century.

No Peer-Reviewed Intelligent Design Papers? Think Again

In recent years, design has made a comeback into areas once monopolised by Charles Darwin’s views. Image courtesy of Wikipedia.




Joel Kontinen

Darwinists often claim that there are no scientific papers that take a pro- intelligent design approach. They tend to believe that all Darwin-doubters are motivated by religious convictions and nothing else.

This view is misleading. Since 2004, the number of pro-intelligent design papers that have been published in peer-reviewed science journals and academic books is no less than 50.

The number of papers that take a creation approach is even greater:

· The Answers Research Journal has published 19 peer-reviewed papers in four years.

· The Journal of Creation has published peer-reviewed papers for 25 years.

· The Creation Research Society Quarterly has published peer-reviewed papers for 48 years.

Source:

In Time for Darwin Day, It's Our New List of Pro-ID Peer-Reviewed Scientific Papers; 50th Paper Published in 2011. Evolution News and Views. 1 February 2012.

Prominent Scientists in Wall Street Journal Op-Ed: “No Need to Panic About Global Warming”

This planet of ours is obviously not warming as fast as some alarmists believe. Image courtesy of NASA.





Joel Kontinen

In September 2011 Ivar Giaever, a Nobel winning physicist, resigned from the American Physical Society (APS) as a protest to its policy statement that regards the evidence for climate warming as incontrovertible.

Last week 16 prominent scientists published an op-ed in The Wall Street Journal, criticising the tendency to regard climate warming as a fact that cannot be criticised. They pointed out that the global climate has actually not warmed in over ten years.

“In spite of a multidecade international campaign to enforce the message that increasing amounts of the ‘pollutant’ carbon dioxide will destroy civilization, large numbers of scientists, many very prominent, share the opinions of Dr. Giaever. And the number of scientific ‘heretics’ is growing with each passing year. The reason is a collection of stubborn scientific facts,” they write.

However, many scientists have been reluctant to express their views, as they have feared repercussions from the scientific community. Climate scientists have tended to embrace the same strategy as leading Darwinists of the Expelled: No Intelligence Allowed fame.

The Wall Street Journal article points out that carbon dioxide is not a pollutant and that its harmful effects have been greatly exaggerated.

Later, William Happer, a physics professor at Princeton University, disclosed that many other scientists would also have wanted to include their names in the op-ed.

Last week the journal Nature reported on a more comprehensive climate study than the previous ones. It revealed that the “climate system may be less sensitive to greenhouse-gas warming than many models have predicted.”

In other words, globally, climate is warming more slowly than previously assumed.

Sources:

No Need to Panic About Global Warming The Wall Street Journal 27 January 2012.

Warming, but not as much. Nature 481 (7382), 413. (26 January 2012).