Influenza in fish “600 million years old"

 

Image courtesy of Christian GUY/imageBROKER/Alamy.. 

Joel Kontinen 

Since humans fell into sin, disease has rampant in humans and animal that are 600 million years old. 

Now scientist have noticed influenza viruses in fish that are "600 million years" old.

They say that viruses can be found in humans, birds, cats, whales and dolphins but they do not know the evolution of the virus.  

Source: 

 

Wong,  Carissa, 2023.   Influenza viruses may have originated in fish 600 million years ago. , New Scientist 1 March

 

Mole rats stay fertile all their lives

 

Image courtesy of UPM. 

Joel Kontinen

Unknown to science, female naked mole rats develop new eggs throughout their entire lives,  Native to East Africa, naked mole rats (Heterocephalus glaber) live for up to 37 years and form underground colonies with social structures similar to those of bees.

As a  contrast, mice only live approximately four months after their fertility drops. They are then 9 months old.

Unlike other creatures, these tiny rodents hardly age at all. While they will eventually die, they can live well over 30 years in captivity, which is a huge age for rats.

This reminds us of the diversity seen in the animal kingdom.

They remind us of the longevity of the early humans mentioned in Genesis after the Fall. 

 Source:

 Lesté-Lasserre,  Christa, 2023  Naked mole rats reveal biological secrets of lifelong fertility, New Scientist 21 February. 

Ancient weaons were deadly

image courtesy of Donny Dust.

Joel Kontinen 

Tests of a prehistoric dart-throwing weapon have shown it is even more effective than previously thought. The atlatl weapon can puncture vital organs in bison carcasses and travel so far through the body it protrudes from the other side.

After the Fall, man became bad.

“Some prominent archaeologists are starting to become sceptical that [prehistoric humans] were capable of killing big animals on a regular basis,” says Devin Pettigrew at the University of Colorado Boulder. “But for all intents and purposes, these are highly effective weapons capable of penetrating skins, 

When man decided to disobey God, violence crept into the world. We see this as wars, 

Hsu, Jeremy. 2022.Prehistoric dart-throwing atlatl weapon even more deadly than thought New Scientist 15 July.  

 

Spiders Eat Snakes - Hundred Times There Size

 

Image courtesy of Rick West, fair use doctrine

Joel Kontinen

Yes, after the Fall,  Spiders and snakes  got to be venomous. They could take on snakes, which are also venomous

There was no death before the fall,but after it death prevailed.

Now a study looks at how spiders take on snakes, The study researchers found 319 records of spiders killing and feasting upon snakes, 297 of which were naturally occurring events in the wild. (The remaining 22 were staged in captivity.) About a third of those examples came from scientific observations published in journals, while the rest were found on news or social media sites.

Source:

Pappas, Stephanie . 2021.These spiders take down snakes hundreds of times their size Live Science  22 June .

An Organ That Helps Birds Detect Sounds

Image courtesy of the Maungatautari Ecological Island Trust, public domain

Joel Kontinen 

Joel Kontinen

An organ that allows some birds to detect the movement of hidden prey by plunging their beaks into the ground seems to have been present in early birds 70 million years ago, and probably first appeared in their dinosaur ancestors.

It probably arose during the fall of man, when animals were also affected and diseased.

Special “remote touch” sensory receptors known as Herbst corpuscles, which are found within densely packed pits in the beak’s tip, help birds detect the movement of worms in soil or small fish in water – even several centimetres away from the beak. This effectively gives birds a “sixth sense”, according to Carla du Toit at the University of Cape Town in South Africa and her colleagues.

To work out when the sixth sense evolved, du Toit and her colleagues studied the beaks of hundreds of modern and ancient birds,  including four species of lithornithids, an extinct group of birds that lived alongside dinosaurs during the Cretaceous period.

Lithornithids belong to one of the two major types of birds alive today, the palaeognaths, which include kiwis, ostriches and emus.  The other major group is the neognaths.

By examining specimens of modern birds, the researchers identified distinct pitting patterns in the beak associated with Herbst corpuscles, says du Toit. The team then found those same patterns in lithornithid fossil beaks, which suggests that lithornithids had the same sensory abilities and were probe-foraging birds.

The discovery makes sense because Herbst corpuscles are found in both palaeognaths and neognaths. The two groups separated from one another more than “70 million years” ago, which would suggest that Herbst corpuscles evolved in the common ancestor of both bird groups.

That millions of years is based on not taking the Noah’s Flood into consideration.

In fact, the sensory structures might have evolved in dinosaurs, says du Toit. A “sixth sense” feature might have helped carnivorous theropods such as Neovenator find prey by probing their snouts into mud or murky water, she says.

The researchers hope in future to find if the pitting was present in the beaks of an ancient group of winged reptiles, the pterosaurs. However, the poor quality of most fossils make such an analysis difficult, says du Toit.

Source:

Lesté-Lasserre, Christa. 2020.  Bird beak extra sense evolved more than 70 million years ago.  New Scientist 2 December

The 10 Coolest Shark Stories of 2019

Image courtesy of NOAA Office of Ocean Exploration and Research, Windows to The Deep, 2019.



Joel Kontinen

This summer, an underwater remotely operated vehicle from the Okeanos Explorer, a National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) research vessel, filmed an incredible scene of nearly a dozen dogfish sharks feasting on an enormous swordfish carcass that had fallen to the sea floor.

As if that wasn't impressive enough, a few minutes into filming, a goliath grouper (a really big fish) slipped into the picture and gulped one of the sharks down, swallowing it whole. The rest of the sharks remained laser-focused on getting as much of the carcass into their bellies as fast as they could, undisturbed by the larger predator in their midst.

This speaks of the world as it is now, with a predator that will not even spare other predators in the fallen world.



Source:

Hickok, Kimberly. 2019. The 10 Coolest Shark Stories of 2019. Live Science (29 December).

Would Human Extinction Be a Tragedy?

James Jacques Joseph Tissot: Adam and Eve Driven from Paradise, public domain.





Joel Kontinen

Todd May, a professor of philosophy at Clemson University, writes about human extinction. Would it be necessary for furthering life on the planet?

“It is humanity that is committing a wrong, a wrong whose elimination would likely require the elimination of the species, but with whom we might be sympathetic nonetheless.”

“Human beings are destroying large parts of the inhabitable earth and causing unimaginable suffering to many of the animals that inhabit it,”

“First, human contribution to climate change is devastating ecosystems, Second, increasing human population is encroaching on ecosystems that would otherwise be intact. Third, factory farming fosters the creation of millions upon millions of animals for whom it offers nothing but suffering and misery before slaughtering them in often barbaric ways.

How many human lives would it be worth sacrificing to preserve the existence of Shakespeare’s works?”

This tragedy is caused by the Fall, Adam's sin, that has enticed us.


Source:

May, Todd, 2018 Would Human Extinction Be a Tragedy? The New York Times (17 December).

Spiders Defy Darwinian Expectations

Image courtesy of Little Grove Farms, Creative Commons (CC BY 3.0).




Joel Kontinen

Spiders keep on amazing us with their skills, Some can glide for over 20 metres, some gather water with their webs.

As David Attenborough puts it, we have yet to invent a material that would be as strong, light and elastic as spider’s silk.

Using their webs, spiderlings can climb hundreds of metres into the air, and with a little help from strong winds, practically fly for thousands of kilometres.

There’s more:

• Bagheera kiplingi is a Central American spider that mostly eats vegetables.
• Peacock spiders are astoundingly beautiful.

Spiders have remained practically unchanged for aeons. A ”49 million years” old specimen trapped in amber looks very much like today’s spiders, as does an older one dated at ”165 million years”.

They remind us of the wonders of creation as well as the consequences of the Fall.

Source:

BBC Earth. 2017. When Baby Spiders Leave the Nest, They Take to the Air. (1 April).

Violence in France, Turkey, Afghanistan and Elsewhere Shows the Bible is Right About the Fall

Charles Darwin’s shadow in Verdun. Image courtesy of Ketounette, Creative Commons (CC BY-SA 3.0).




Joel Kontinen

We should not be surprised by the recent spate of violence and killings in France, Turkey, Germany, Syria and Afghanistan.

Often, when people see or hear about violence and death, they think that God is somehow responsible for it. How could He allow such things to happen?

This is an old dilemma, technically known as the theodicy problem. If God is good and omnipotent (all-powerful), why does He not protect people from evil?

Sometimes He doesn’t.

Should we then blame God?

By no means!

The ones doing evil deeds are humans. They are evil.

God is – and has always been – good.

Recently, BBC news reported on a tweet that claimed God forgot Afghanistan:

The tweeter didn’t understand the problem of evil. Violence does not just happen. It is a consequence of sin.

When Adam and Eve rebelled against their Maker in Eden, they opened the door to suffering and death.

Sin led from violence to more violence. Cain killed Abel. By the time of the great Flood, only Noah and his family were righteous.

Violence increased dramatically after Darwin published his views on man’s past. We’ve had wars, holocausts, bombings and mass shootings with no end in sight.

Theistic evolutionists don't have an answer to the problem of evil. They tend to believe that violence just happens, because it has always happened – and evolution needs it.

They’re probably causing much harm to the Church and for Christian testimony by pushing views that are anything but Christian.

But we who believe in the Bible understand that it describes the human condition and the origin of evil correctly.

What is more, we know that Jesus Christ stepped into human history to solve the problem of sin.

He died for us so that we could live with Him forever through faith in His name.

Source:

BBC News. 2016. 'God forgot Afghanistan' (30 July).

Meat-Eating Lion Good, Plant-Eating Lion Bad, New Book on Genesis Suggests

A new book argues for animal death before the Fall.




Joel Kontinen

Yesterday (30th April), Christianity Today published a web-only article entitled Reading Genesis Without Philosophical Blinders. However, it seems that something happened as CT changed the title to Reading Genesis, Red in Tooth and Claw, which certainly describes the ideas of Ronald Osborn’s book Death Before the Fall: Biblical Literalism and the Problem of Animal Suffering (IVP Academic) more accurately.

Writer Tim Stafford says that a traditional understanding of creation is “overly literal”. If this is so, then Jesus and the Apostle Paul were overly literal in the sense that they believed Genesis 1 and 2 to be historically true.

We might all agree with Osborn (and Stafford) that animal suffering, whether after or before the Fall, is a problem. However, Osborn thinks that a lion that would not be a predator would be an “unlion”.

But in light of the promised restoration “the cow and the bear shall graze; Their young ones shall lie down together; And the lion shall eat straw like the ox” (Isaiah 11:7), would it still be an unlion?

Methinks not.

Moreover, recent history knows of some lions (and other predators) that have absolutely refused to eat meat.

This is an echo of the original creation. In Genesis 1: 30, God said, “ ‘Also, to every beast of the earth, to every bird of the air, and to everything that creeps on the earth, in which there is life, I have given every green herb for food’; and it was so.”

One might suggest that philosophical blinders – in the form of some degree of scientific naturalism – are needed for reading Genesis in a way in which good is not good and green plants are red meat, and the Fall hardly did anything, and the Millennial Restoration is not really a restoration at all.


Source:

Stafford, Tim. 2014. Reading Genesis, Red in Tooth and Claw. Christianity Today (April 30).

A Fresh Reminder of Eden in the Bird Kingdom in Australia

Joel Kontinen

Birds in Queensland, Australia, can be quite noisy at times, especially in the evenings. However, at least some seabirds are surprisingly tame. In Brisbane, for instance, a big bird can suddenly land on a stretch of street reserved for pedestrians and start walking among humans.

Some seabirds can be very inquisitive. Yesterday, two big birds marched towards our verandah with their pencil-thin legs. For five minutes they kept on staring at us, without moving or giving any indication of fear or aggression. Finally, they calmly walked away.

These birds remind us of the Garden of Eden before the Fall. Adam was not afraid of the animals and the animals were not afraid of Adam. The only things about the non-predatory birds of Queensland that remind us of the Fall are the shrill calls at night. Otherwise one might almost imagine being in Eden – if only the weather were a bit cooler.

However, there are occasional reminders of the Fall, with eagles and other predators.

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 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:

Consequences of the Fall In the Bird Kingdom

The fieldfare (Turdus pilaris). Image courtesy of Martin Olsson, Wikipedia.




Joel Kontinen

We can see the effects of the Fall in the bird kingdom in the autumn. A few days ago a very aggressive fieldfare (Turdus pilaris) wanted to eat all ripe hawthorn berries for himself and drove a redwing (Turdus iliacus) away.

The aggression turned out to be in vain, however. The next day, there were enough berries for Bohemian waxwings (Bombycilla garrulus) and common blackbirds (Turdus merula).

Quarrelling birds tell us that we no longer live in a perfect world. ”We know that the whole creation has been groaning”, the apostle Paul writes in Romans 8:22 (NIV).

This groaning is a consequence of the Fall. Although birds cannot sin, even they suffer from the wrong choice Adam and Eve made at the dawn of history.

Ignoring the Fall: Atheist Errs on Edible Plants in Genesis

Thorns and thistles are consequences of the Fall.



Joel Kontinen

If one has a basically uniformitarian view of the past, i.e., if one assumes that the present is the key to understanding the past, one might easily reach incorrect conclusions and fail to notice it.

At About.com, Austin Cline has written a series of posts on supposed errors in Genesis. In his latest instalment he argues that Genesis has to include errors since God gave all plants as food for humans and animals and since some present-day plants are poisonous, Genesis has to be wrong.

However, we would not expect to find poisonous plants in the very good world of Genesis. Death, suffering, thorns and thistles are consequences of the Fall. Adam and Eve’s disobedience had severe repercussions on creation that until then had been perfect.

This is not the first time Mr. Cline uses highly questionable arguments in trying to persuade his readers that his atheistic worldview is consistent. He has, for instance, suggested that Darwinian evolution is as much fact as gravity or plate tectonics and that Jesus probably never existed.

Many experts would definitely disagree with him.

As I have said before, some people will not let facts spoil their pet theory.

Source:

Cline, Austin. 2011. Errors in Genesis About the Safety of Eating Plants. About.com.

The Question of the Week: ”What If Evil Exists?”

Genesis 4 describes the consequences of the Fall. Cain killed his brother Abel. Image from the Answers in Genesis Creation Museum.





Joel Kontinen

The recent bombing and the deadly shooting incident in Norway that took the lives of over 90 people caused the media to ponder the reason for the atrocities. Sari Torvinen, a reporter of the Finnish daily Aamulehti, asked a hard, yet pertinent question: ”What if evil exists?”

If we think about the rule of terror in the Soviet Union under Stalin, the holocaust of the Jews during the Second World War, Pol Pot and the Khmer Rouge in Cambodia, Idi Amin’s tyranny in Uganda as well as the genocides in Rwanda and Sudan, we will notice that the question is still very timely.

In contrast to many school shootings and for instance the 9/11 attacks in New York, this time the perpetrator was probably not an atheist, who had assumed a Darwinian worldview, or an Islamist relying on the promise of a reward in paradise but a Norwegian, who obviously considered himself a patriot.

Unfortunately, the political climate in Europe is beginning to resemble that of the years between World War I and II when great ideologies were struggling for hegemony in the heart of Europe. Fear of the spread of communism gave rise to right-wing movements that saw their mission as defending the continent's cultural heritage.

After the fall of the Berlin Wall, many Europeans thought that the threat came from the Islamic world. The bombings in London and Madrid showed that the fear was not entirely unfounded.

It seems that Anders Breivik, who acknowledged he had committed the murders, had had enough of the inability of western Europe to rise up to the challenge of Islam and wanted to send the Norwegian government a macabre message that reminds us that we are living in a world that is stained by sin.

Already at the beginning in Genesis 4, sin lead from murder to murder.

However, even in a world that is as evil as it is, the gospel has the power to liberate us from sin, hatred, fear and the vicious circle of revenge, since Jesus Christ has carried our sins to the cross.

Christianity is not an ideology but it has to do with new life that is no longer focused on one’s ego but on God, who ”became flesh and dwelt among us” (John 1:14, NKJV) and also gave us His moral commandments.

If all people would observe the golden rule (i.e., “whatever you want men to do to you, do also to them”, Matt. 7:6, NKJV) and other teachings of the Sermon on the Mount, no one would want to take the life of one’s neighbour.

Source:

Torvinen, Sari. 2011. Pahuudelle ei ole selitystä. Aamulehti 24 July, A6.

God’s Promise to the First Mother

The first mother had time to admire the beauty of Eden.


Joel Kontinen

The life of the first mother was a mixture of drama and tragedy. She was created into a perfect world that knew nothing of suffering but then she broke God’s commandment.

This marked the beginning of sufferings. In addition to Eden, Eve also lost his son Abel, and Cain had to flee from home following the first murder.

However, God did not discard Eve or her husband Adam. He pronounced judgement on the serpent and predicted: ”And I will put enmity between you and the woman, and between your offspring and hers; he will crush your head, and you will strike his heel.” (Genesis 3:15, NIV).

Theologians usually think that this pronouncement (known as the protoevangel) was the first promise of the Redeemer.

God would send a Saviour who on the cross would pay the price incurred by the first humans in Eden and crush the serpent’s or Satan’s head.

Bizarre Claim: ”Jesus Would Believe in Evolution”

Karl Giberson defends Darwin. Image courtesy of Wikipedia.


Joel Kontinen

In a recent blog post, doctor Karl Giberson laments that according to a Gallup poll conducted in 2010, four in ten Americans believe that God created “human beings pretty much in their present form at one time within the last 10,000 years or so.”

Giberson, the vice president of BioLogos Foundation, wants to change these figures. He claims that Jesus would believe in evolution, since He said He is the truth and “He cares for the Truth”.

For Giberson, truth means evolution and faith in millions of years. He claims that a literal understanding of Genesis amounts to robbing it.

Appealing to Jesus sounds bizarre, since the Bible depicts Him as the Creator, who in the New Testament did miracles in an instant and in Genesis created the entire universe in six days.

Giberson’s claim is also ironic, keeping in mind that Darwinists have had to retreat on many fronts in biology and anthropology in the past few years. Recent research has for instance shown that junk DNA has turned out to be a myth and that most fossils provide support for creation.

In addition, Jesus said of the creation of man: ”But at the beginning of creation God ‘made them male and female’.” (Mark 10:6).

According to theistic evolution, man stepped on the stage four billion years after the beginning of planet Earth, so Giberson has a lot to explain.


Source:

Giberson, Karl W. 2011. My Take: Jesus would believe in evolution and so should you. CNN Belief Blog (10 April).

”The Whole Creation has been Groaning as in the Pains of Childbirth”

The destruction caused by the tsunami that followed the recent earthquake in Japan. Image courtesy of US Navy.




Joel Kontinen

The biggest tragedy of mankind was the Fall, which brought death, sickness and suffering to the world. The apostle Paul wrote in Romans 8:19-22:

“For the creation waits in eager expectation for the children of God to be revealed. For the creation was subjected to frustration, not by its own choice, but by the will of the one who subjected it, in hope that the creation itself will be liberated from its bondage to decay and brought into the freedom and glory of the children of God. We know that the whole creation has been groaning as in the pains of childbirth right up to the present time.”

Almost all theologians agree that Paul was referring to the Fall.

The world is in turmoil since compared to the very good world of Genesis it is abnormal.

Because of the sin of Adam and Eve, it has become a valley of the shadow of death.

The recent earthquake in Japan and the tsunami that followed in its wake add to the catastrophes and turmoil of the past few months – the quake in New Zealand, the flooding in Australia, the uprisings in North Africa and the killings in Israel and Pakistan, where the country’s only Christian minister Shahbaz Bhattin was assassinated.

And it’s not so long ago that we heard of the Haitian earthquake and the volcanic eruption in Iceland.

It is good to remember that Jesus promised that turmoil, bloodshed and earthquakes would be signs of His approaching return.

In spite of all the turmoil, He has promised to be with those who love and serve Him.

He has not left us alone.

New Research: Friendly Bacteria Fight Against Influenza

A T cell on the right. Image courtesy of Electron Microscopy Facility, The National Cancer Institute, Frederick (NCI-Frederick).



Joel Kontinen

Not only do bacteria promote digestion. They also help organisms resist influenza infections. This is the take-away message of a recent study at Yale University led by Akiko Iwasaki.

As reported in Nature news, “neomycin-sensitive bacteria naturally present in the mice's bodies provided a trigger that led to the production of T cells and antibodies that could fight an influenza infection in the lungs.”

Iwasaki and colleagues published their research in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.

Although the results of mice tests cannot be applied directly to humans, the research suggests that in the very good world of Genesis all bacteria were beneficial and only later the Fall caused some to become harmful.

Source:

Maxmen, Amy. 2011. Friendly bacteria fight the flu. Nature News (14 March).