China Keeps Christian Lawyer Behind Bars

Freedom of religion is a mere dream in the land of Chairman Mao’s successors. Image courtesy of Wikipedia.





Joel Kontinen



Twenty years after the Tienanmen Square massacre, freedom of religion is still a mere dream in the People’s Republic of China. Christian attorney Gao Zhisheng, who has defended house church Christians, was arrested in early February. He has not been released although there is no legal reason to keep him behind bars.

Chinese authorities have not disclosed where Gao Zhisheng is being kept. He has repeatedly been tortured and imprisoned for defending Christians.

Western Christians have appealed to Chinese authorities to release Gao Zhisheng. However, Chinese officials have been reluctant to comply to international pressure.

You can read more about Gao Zhisheng here and also sign a petition demanding his release.

Archaeological Discoveries Do Not Support Darwinian Evolution

T. H. Huxley’s view of man’s development. Archaeological discoveries do not support this story. Image courtesy of Wikipedia.



Joel Kontinen


According to the Darwinian view, advanced civilisations evolved rather recently. They were preceded by hundreds of thousands of years of primitive culture.

Archaeology does not support this old evolution-based story, however. The oldest discoveries reveal that humans have always been creative and inventive.

Old pottery fragments were recently found in Hunan province in China. Based on carbon-14 dating of charcoal and bones discovered at the site, the shards are estimated to be 18, 000 years old.

Physicist Elisabetta Boaretto of the Wiezmann Institute of Science in Rehovot, Israel and archaeologist Xiaohong Wu of Peking University and their colleagues recently published a paper in the journal Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences outlining the discovery. They concluded that humans were able to make pottery much earlier than previously assumed.

A Venus figurine carved from mammoth ivory was recently found in Germany. Probably used as a pendant, the figure is estimated to be 35, 000 years old. The figure shows that at least some early Europeans were clever artists.

The Darwinian great story tells us that humans have a long common history with ape-like creatures. Archaeological discoveries do not support this view, however.

We should take a skeptical approach to carbon dates of tens of thousands of years. They are based on the assumption that Earth’s atmosphere has remained practically unchanged for hundreds of thousands of years.

According to Genesis, the global flood of Noah’s days changed our planet thoroughly. Torrential rain and volcanic eruptions broke Earth’s only continent and most of the plants were probably also destroyed. The C-14 content of the atmosphere was changed dramatically. In other words, many older C-14 dates are unreliable.

When we take this into account, we will notice that archaeological discoveries support the biblical view – and even timescale - of mankind’s past.

Sources:

Nature. 2009. Prehistoric Pinup. Nature video. http://www.nature.com/nature/videoarchive/prehistoricpinup/

Watzman, Haim. 2009. Earliest evidence for pottery making found. Nature news 1 June http://www.nature.com/news/2009/090601/full/news.2009.534.html?s=news_rss




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Laugh Like An Ape?

Don’t tickle me. New ape study examines similarities between laughter in humans and apes.




Joel Kontinen

Since the days of Charles Darwin, evolutionists have attempted to see human traits in animals and animal traits in humans. A new study published in the journal Current Biology observes this tradition of Darwinian storytelling faithfully.

A research team led by psychologist Marina Davila Ross of the University of Portsmouth, UK, tickled 21 young orangutans, gorillas, chimpanzees, bonobos, as well as one siamang and three human babies. They examined the resulting laughter, using 11 acoustic variables.

Davila Ross and her colleagues concluded that the laughter of the gorillas and the bonobos resembled human laughter most.

It might still be difficult to bridge the gap between apes and humans with laughter. Apes prefer to use four legs for walking and they usually breath in synchrony with their walking. Humans are able to breath independently of their walking and are not known to crawl on all fours.

The difference in how humans and apes laugh might remain a ticklish issue. After all, laughter is not the only thing that separates us.

Professor Stuart Burgess of the University of Bristol, UK, has pointed out that whereas apes have about 26 facial muscles, humans have approximately 50. Moreover, with all their muscles apes can produce four expressions, none of which are especially pretty. In contrast, humans can produce 10 000 expressions. Some of them can be quite beautiful.

It might thus be difficult to make monkeys out of humans with any amount of laughter. Or humans out of apes.

Moreover, one should probably only choose small apes for laughter experiments. A King Kong sized gorilla might bite the researcher’s little finger, in spite of its being Darwin year.

Sources:

Burgess, Stuart. 2006. The Design Argument. Lecture in the Creation Without Compromise conference in Swanwick, UK, 22 April 2006.

Laursen, Lucas. 2009. Human-ape links heard in laughter. Nature news 4 June.
http://www.nature.com/news/2009/090604/full/news.2009.541.html

Science and Nature Express Doubts About Grand Aunt Ida

Grand Aunt Ida seems to be the great grandmother of lemurs but not of humans. Image courtesy of Wikipedia.




Joel Kontinen

Leading science publications Nature and Science have taken a surprisingly critical approach to Grand Aunt Ida who has recently been basking in the limelight.

The lemur fossil found in Germany is remarkably well preserved. Ida was dubbed Darwinius massillae in honour of Charles Darwin’s 200th anniversary. The latter part of the name comes from Messel, the place where her remains were found.

The popular press claimed Ida was the link that had long been missing between humans and apes. For instance, BBC’s webpages called her our earliest ancestor.

However, many leading evolution researchers think Ida has little if anything to do with human origins and development. A Nature editorial calls Ida a hyped-up fossil find. “In normal circumstances, the interpretation of the specimen given in the paper (J. L. Franzen et al. PLoS ONE 4, e5723; 2009) would have been no more contentious than that of any other fossil primate, and a good deal less so than some.”

Nature suggests that Ida has “little to do with human ancestry”. Ann Gibbons, writing in the journal Science, concurs: “Many of the leading scientists who study primate evolution don't think Ida lives up to her billing as a human ancestor; most think she's a relative of lemurs instead.”

She goes on to say, “Some worry that the publicity framing Ida as a human ancestor will backfire as her true identity and lowly origins are revealed.”

Even before Franzen et al. submitted their paper to PLoS ONE, a TV-documentary and a book were in the works. Although Ida was not presented as a human ancestor in the original paper, the words The Link, used in both the documentary and the book, gave the general public a misleading view of the lemur fossil.

It seems that Ida is just a lemur’s great aunt and no amount of hype will be able to change her into a monkey’s aunt.

Perhaps Ida says more about what some people want to hear than what an old lemur fossil represents. In a time when bread might be becoming scarce, the public will still want their circuses.

Sources:

Gibbons, Ann. 2009.Celebrity Fossil Primate: Missing Link or Weak Link? Science 324: 5931, 1124-1125. (29 May)

Nature. 2009. Media frenzy. (Editorial). Nature 459: 7246, 484 (28 May. 2009). http://www.nature.com/nature/journal/v459/n7246/full/459484a.html

Creation Museum Celebrates Its Second Anniversary

Next week, Answers in Genesis’ Creation Museum celebrates its second anniversary. The 7 C's of History are used as a model explaining the past, present and future of our planet.




Joel Kontinen

Two years ago Answers in Genesis opened its Creation Museum for the public in Petersburg, Kentucky. The international media were present at the opening ceremonies. The reporters were not exactly silent on what they thought about the idea of a non-atheistic view of earth history, either.

Humanists and atheists who are known for their great love for freedom of speech – as long as it has to do with their freedom, that is – joined the celebrations by demonstrating against the museum. They even hired an aeroplane and flew it around the building. A banner festooned with the words “Thou shalt not lie” was seen flying in the wind behind the plane.

The free publicity obviously increased interest in the museum and the interest has not waned in the two years it has been open. Last week, Answers in Genesis estimated that over 715 000 visitors had been to the museum.

In contrast, the evolutionists’ tour starring our supposed grandmother Lucy (aka Australopithecus afarensis ) has not been able to attract as much attention as they had hoped for.

The Creation Museum relates the history of our planet from a biblical perspective. Adam and Eve are seen as real, historical people. The visitor will probably notice that the Christian view of reality that consists of the seven C’s of history (Creation, Corruption, Catastrophe, Confusion, Christ, Cross and Consummation) provides a better explanation than the atheistic great story based on Darwinian evolution.

Much Ado About Great Aunt Ida

For a lemur, happiness is finding a long lost Great Aunt. Image courtesy of Wikipedia.





Joel Kontinen


The ado about a primate fossil known as Ida brings to mind the media circus surrounding the supposed finding of Jesus’ family tomb in 2007. The similarities are striking. A press conference and maximum publicity before an in-depth examination of the case.

Many serious scientists then protested the by-passing of peer review. Indeed, when they examined the case more closely, they found that the evidence was anything but convincing.

The Ida case is slightly different. While the fossil was introduced to the public at the American Museum of Natural History in New York on May 19th, it also had a research paper written and published in PloS ONE.

However, some scientists suspected that the study was far too superficial. They maintained that Science or Nature, for instance, would not have published such a paper. New Scientist also suspected that the ”hoopla” was ”unbridled”.

Sometimes, when there is a rush to publish a book and produce a TV documentary, money might be a more pertinent criterion than careful research.

Ida, who measures a metre or over three feet including the long tail, was named Darwinius massillae in honour of Charles Darwin’s 200th anniversary.

A private collector found the bones in 1983 in Messel, Germany. But it was not until Jörn Hurum, a paleontologist at the Oslo Natural History Museum obtained the remains of Ida that the era of Great Aunt speculation began in earnest.

There is a tendency in Israel, for instance, to be suspicious of finds bought from private collectors. China has had her share of fossil scandals, also. While not all collectors are crooks, we should not throw caution to the winds, either.


Ida, who is supposed to be 47 million years old, is remarkably well preserved: 95 per cent of her earthly remains are present. In contrast, Lucy (Australopithecus afarensis), one of the more complete fossils ever found, is only 40 per cent intact. Moreover, even the contents of Great Aunt Ida’s stomach are present.

Ida resembles the lemurs that are still found in Madagascar although she does not have a ”tooth comb” that they use for grooming their fur or a long ”grooming claw”.

The earthly remains of Great Aunt Ida are remarkably intact. Their preservation suggests a rapid catastrophic burial. Seen from a creationist perspective, poor Ida might well have met her end in the same world wide flood that probably also took the life of another icon of evolution – Grandmother Lucy.


Source:

Beard, Chris. 2009. Why Ida fossil is not the missing link. New Scientist. (21 May) http://www.newscientist.com/article/dn17173-why-ida-fossil-is-not-the-missing-link.html

Ancient Hair Discovery Raises Questions About Dating Methods

Old human hairs were found in hyena coprolite. But just how old are they? Image courtesy of Wikipedia.




Joel Kontinen

A new study published in the Journal of Archaeological Science raises new questions about the reliability of the ages assigned to ancient human fossils. Dr. Lucinda Backwell of the University of Witwatersrand in Johannesburg, South Africa, and her colleagues found old human hairs in coprolite or fossilised dung in a cave used by hyenas.

They assume that the hairs are 200 000 years old, which would by far be the oldest discovery of its kind. According to Dr. Backwell, “This find is so unusual as the human fossil record at this time is exceedingly poor, and of course hair is relatively fragile and degrades easily. It is the first non-bony material in the early hominid fossil record.”

The width of the hairs matches that of modern humans and the shape is also similar. In other words, the find does not support Darwinian evolution.

Backwell and her colleagues think that the hairs belonged to either Homo heidelbergensis or to what are assumed to be the earliest Homo sapiens.

From a creationist perspective, the find is interesting. Is it really logical to believe that human hairs can last 200 000 years? Like the recent discovery of soft tissue and collagen in a Hadrosaur bone thought to be 80 million years old, it seems to stretch credulity past the breaking point.

Source:

Gray, Richard. 2009. 200,000 year old human hair found in dung. Telegraph. co.uk http://www.telegraph.co.uk/earth/environment/archeology/5299352/200000-year-old-human-hair-found-in-dung.html