Stonehenge: Early Man Was Cleverer Than We Thought

Stonehenge. Image courtesy of Wikipedia. (Creative Commons Attribution 2.0 Generic license).





Joel Kontinen

According to the evolutionary worldview, early man was not supposed to be able to be creative or build impressive monuments. However, archaeology has time and again shown that he was anything but primitive.

The latest discovery features Stonehenge. According to a report published by the British Science Festival:

“Seventeen new extant monuments and many lesser structures all dating from around 3100 BC or earlier, have been found around the site, implying that Stonehenge was not the only ritually important site in the area.”

While the date might be off by a few hundred years or so (due to the effect of Noah’s Flood, which very likely changed the atmospheric carbon-14 levels), the discovery nonetheless shows that people could build sophisticated structures much earlier than previously thought.

The report goes on to say:

“All of these new finds have been located under the grassy fields of Stonehenge and have been viewed using specially developed instrumentation and software by the University of Birmingham and the Ludwig Boltzmann Institute it was announced at the British Science Festival today.”

We should not be surprised that archaeology is revealing a trend seen in Genesis. The early chapters of the Bible indicate that already at the dawn of history, humans were able to smelt and refine metals (Genesis 4:22), just a few generations after creation.


Source:

Karim, Nishad and Aditee Mitra. 2014. Unravelling the mysteries of Stonehenge. The British Science Festival.

An Atheist Believes in God, But Does Not Believe That He Believes in God, Astrophysicist Says

There’s an interesting chapter on the evidence for God and on the faith of an atheist in this book.



Joel Kontinen

Atheists might claim that they do not believe in the existence of any supernatural beings. However, the Bible shows unambiguously that all people believe. Some don’t want to acknowledge this, though.

Jason Lisle, who has a Ph.D. in astrophysics and now serves as the Director of Research for the Institute for Creation Research, wrote

“The Bible teaches that atheists are not really atheists. That is, those who profess to be atheists do ultimately believe in God in their heart-of-hearts. The Bible teaches that everyone knows God, because God has revealed Himself to all (Romans 1:19). In fact, the Bible tells us that God’s existence is so obvious that anyone who suppresses this truth is ‘without excuse’ (Romans 1:20). The atheist denies with his lips what he knows in his heart.”

Dr. Lisle goes on to say:

“Because an atheist does believe in God, but does not believe that he believes in God, he is simply a walking bundle of inconsistencies.”

As a result, the atheist suffers from cognitive dissonance.

The only antidote to this syndrome is to accept a more honest approach to reality. It would involve taking the claims of the Man who said "I AM the Truth" at face value and turning to Him.


Source:

Lisle, Jason. 2010. What Is the Best Argument for the Existence of God? In The New Answers Book 3. ed. Ken Ham. Green Forest, AR: Master Books.

One Gene, Many Proteins: Alternative Splicing Speaks of Design

A recent Harvard study on Caenorhabditis elegans found out that this tiny worm is anything but simple. Image courtesy of Wikipedia (Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 3.0 Unported license).



Joel Kontinen

Caenorhabditis elegans is a tiny worm, but it can disclose big truths. Researchers John Calarco and Adam Norris at Harvard University published a paper on how alternative splicing works in C. elegans.

A report on their research in the Harvard Gazette compared alternative splicing to the work of a film editor:

“Film editors play a critical role by helping shape raw footage into a narrative. Part of the challenge is that their work can have a profound impact on the finished product — with just a few cuts in the wrong places, comedy can become tragedy, or vice versa.

A similar process, ‘alternative splicing,’ is at work inside the bodies of billions of creatures — including humans. Just as a film editor can change the story with a few cuts, alternative splicing allows cells to stitch genetic information into different formations, enabling a single gene to produce up to thousands of different proteins.”

A previous study showed that even bacteria are full of molecular machines.

It is now obvious that tiny living creatures have very complex nervous systems:

“ ‘There are a finite number of genes in the genome, and changing which of those gets turned on or off gives you a certain level of complexity,’ Calarco said. ‘What alternative splicing does is add another layer of complexity, allowing an organism to diversify a cell type even more — we think this contributes a great deal to an organism’s ability to diversify its cellular function and cellular architecture.’ ”

Moreover, it is a huge leap from a worm to a man:

“ ‘We know the human nervous system is very complex,’ said Norris. ‘I think this is one explanation for how that complexity is encoded. We’ve got on the order of billions of neurons, but we’ve only got on the order of thousands of genes. How can you create a complex, billion-neuron network with different capacities for each cell? This gives us one explanation for how an organism can do that.’ ”

Looks like intelligent design.

This kind of research shows that living beings – and especially humans – are fearfully and wonderfully made, as the ancient psalmist put it.

Recent research also adds quality control to the ever growing list of features that speak of design.

Source:

Reuell, Peter. 2014. Neurons at work: Research provides a clearer view of ‘alternative splicing’. Harvard Gazette (August 11).

New Darwinian Story: How the Zebrafish Got Its Stripes

A female zebrafish. Image courtesy of Azul, Wikipedia.




Joel Kontinen

British author Rudyard Kipling popularised the idea of the just so story. 1909 his collection Just So Stories for Little Children included tales like How the Leopard Got His Spots and How the Camel Got His Hump.

The paucity of fossils has prompted evolutionist to speculate on the arrival of countless features in the animal kingdom. A common denominator in these stories is that it would be difficult if not impossible to provide any real evidence for them.

They might be loosely built on discoveries, but often speculation takes over when facts end.

The title of a recent report by on researchers at the Max Planck Institute already suggests the genre of the story: How the zebrafish gets its stripes.

Scientists led by Nobel laureate Christiane Nüsslein-Volhard discovered that it takes three major pigment cell types (black cells, reflective silvery cells, and yellow cells) to give zebrafish their characteristic colour and pattern:

“While it was known that all three cell types have to interact to form proper stripes, the embryonic origin of the pigment cells that develop the stripes of the adult fish has remained a mystery up to now. Scientists of the Max Planck Institute for Developmental Biology in Tübingen have now discovered how these cells arise and behave to form the ‘zebra’ pattern.”

So far, they conducted good operational science. However, then the report deteriorated into speculations:

“Their work may help to understand the development and evolution of the great diversity of striking patterns in the animal world.”

From zebra fish they first go on to extrapolate to other fish and then to other animals that likewise have spectacular patterns on their feathers or skin.

“The authors speculate that variations on these cell behaviours could be at play in generating the great diversity of colour patterns in fish. ‘These findings inform our way of thinking about colour pattern formation in other fish, but also in animals which are not accessible to direct observation during development such as peacocks, tigers and zebras’, says Nüsslein-Volhard – wondering how her cats got their stripes.”

Compared to the real issue of the origin of zebrafish, tigers and zebras, this kind of speculation is rather trite.

Source:

How the zebrafish gets its stripes. Max Planck Gesellschaft. August 28, 2014.

Precambrian Sea Creature’s Weird Relative Is Still Alive?

Dendrogramma. Image courtesy of Jean Just, Reinhardt Møbjerg Kristensen and Jørgen Olesen.




Joel Kontinen

There seems to be little, if anything, new under the sun. A recent study published in PLOS ONE on bizarre deep-sea creatures called Dendrogramma found 400–1,000 metres below the surface in the Tasman Sea illustrates this timeless truth.

Jean Just, a zoologist at the Natural History Museum of Denmark in Copenhagen, and colleagues reported on specimens already discovered in 1986 but they also found some hitherto unnoticed associations.

The Dendrogramma were alive when they were caught but they were dead by the time they were lifted out of the water.

According to Nature news:

“The researchers also found similarities — such as the same branching pattern and lobe-like structures around the mouth opening — between Dendrogramma and a small group of 'medusoids', or jellyfish-like creatures, that lived 600 million years ago during the Ediacaran period.”

Whether creatures resist change or not, “600 million years” is a very long stretch of time. If evolution and millions of years were true, these bizarre creatures would have had plenty of time to change. Alas, they did not:

“Tetyana Nosenko, an evolutionary biologist at Ludwig Maximilian University in Munich, Germany, says that ‘this discovery implies an exciting possibility that the deep-sea of Australia has preserved living descendants of the Ediacara organisms, which were thought to be extinct over 500 million years ago.’ ”

The very existence of living fossils, some of which are tiny and soft-bodied, is an enormous embarrassment for Darwinian evolution, which, after all, should be characterised by change over time.

Source:

Skinner, Nicole. 2014. Sea creatures add branch to tree of life. Nature news (3 September).

Cockatoos Are Better Tool Users Than Chimps

Cockatoos are clever and innovative birds.



Joel Kontinen

Darwinian evolution would predict that apes are cleverer than birds. Fortunately, cockatoos and some other birds, such as crows, do not know this and they tend to outperform chimpanzees in tasks that require innovative tool use.

Recently, Alice Auersperg and colleagues at the University of Vienna, Austria, observed a caged cockatoo named Figaro. The bird was unable to reach a nut that fell outside his cage.

No worries. There was a large piece of wood on the cage floor. Figaro used his beak to cut a splinter. Using it, he was able to retrieve the nut.

It seems that animals are clever and innovative because they were created to be clever.

Source:

Marshall, Michael. 2014. Zoologger: Cockatoos learn to make and use a tool. New Scientist (3 September).

Neanderthal Hashtag Shows Their Artistic Skills

A Neanderthal kid might have looked like this.




Joel Kontinen

The carving in a cave at Gibraltar is very old. Found in a Neanderthal place, it suggests that whoever made it invented abstract art thousands of years before Picasso’s time.

It looks a bit like a hashtag or a grid and it betrays the signs of design. No one could have made it accidentally as a by-product of cutting meat or skins.

Once upon a time, Neanderthals were thought to be very primitive. Darwinists initially hailed them as the first apemen.

But as an increasing number of their artefacts have been discovered, Neanderthals are beginning to look fully human.

In the model based on Genesis, Neanderthals are descendants of Noah. They mostly lived in caves during the harsh ice age winters after the global flood.

Unfortunately, some progressive creationists still regard Neanderthals as soulless creatures who are distinct from humans. Their view has become untenable, however. Neanderthals looked like humans because they were fully human, created in the image of God, just like you and me.

Source:

Gannon, Megan. 2014. Abstract Neanderthal Cave Engraving Discovered. Life Science (2 September).