Professor Stuart Burgess: Sceptics Can’t Avoid Irreducible Complexity: They’re Standing on a Knee Joint That’s Irreducibly Complex

Prof. Stuart Burgess speaking at the recent Creation Declares conference in London.





Joel Kontinen

While evolutionists expect to see bad design, there is no such thing in nature.

Richard Dawkins was as wrong as wrong could be when he wrote about what he thought was poor design, especially when he claimed that the human eye was the work of a complete idiot.

It is actually a good example of superb design and has inspired engineers to build better cameras.

But, then, Dawkins has never designed anything.

Everything we see in nature is designed very well, even in a fallen world. Many excellent features in the animal kingdom and in us are better designed than the smart devices humans have built.

Prof. Stuart Burgess of the University of Bristol, UK, lectured on biomimetics at the recent Creation Declares conference in London.

In his talk, he quoted Charles Darwin, who said:

“If it could be demonstrated that any complex organ existed which could not possibly have been formed by numerous, successive, slight modifications, my theory would absolutely break down.”

There are numerous such things, not only in animals but also in us. In addition to the dragonfly’s delicate design, birds’ wings, fish jaws, we also have something that every sceptic needs, i.e. the knee joint that is irreducibly complex.

Source:

Burgess, Stuart. 2016. Inspiration from Creation: Lessons from Biomimetics. Lecture given at the Creation Declares Conference in London, UK. (9 September).

Creation Declares Conference: Biblical Creation Is Becoming More Popular in Europe

Creation Ministries International (CMI) arranged a two-day conference in central London.




Joel Kontinen

When I attended my very first creation conference in the United Kingdom in 2006, it drew some 400 participants. Now, ten years later a two-day conference attracted almost a thousand people from 12 countries.

The speakers at the Creation Declares were some of the best scientists and theologians within the creationist movement, including professor Stuart Burgess, and doctors Jonathan Sarfati and Vij Sodera.

The talks they gave at the conference reminds us that creation declares the glory of God, even after the Fall that brought bad things into the world and Noah’s Flood by which He punished the evil that was rampant in the ancient world.

RIO2016: The The Ryan Lochte Case and the Science of Lying

The Darwinian world does not see lying as a big issue.




Joel Kontinen

Can science explain why some people choose to tell lies?

Live Science published an article that attempts to say that it does. The conclusion was inspired by the story that U.S. swimmer Ryan Lochte and three of his team mates told the press.

They claimed that they were robbed at gunpoint.

However, surveillance cameras told a very different story. The article suggests that the swimmers lied in order to avoid embarrassment.

It speculates that lying starts at a very young age. Adults might use the same strategy they learnt as kinds to wiggle out of a difficult situation. The obvious motive is to avoid punishment and embarrassment.

It should not matter in a Darwinian world whether individuals told outright lies, as it does not acknowledge the existence of a Divine Lawgiver who ultimately sets the rules.

Even scientists can’t always resist misconduct.

It’s a very different story in a Christian world. Truth is all-important, and God’s Word infers that lying is a sin.

Source:

Kubota, Taylor. 2016. Lochte's Lies: How Science Explains Fibbers. Live Science (19 August).

Hagfish – The Strangest Living Fossil Hasn’t Changed in “300 Million Years”

Eptatretus polytrema. Image courtesy of J. H. Richard, Public Domain.





Joel Kontinen

There’s probably only one living fossil that can tie its body in a knot and still survive.

Discussing the bizarre features of the hagfish in a BBC Earth article, Colin Barras seems to be overwhelmed by the creature’s uniqueness. He says they are vertebrates, but

“They do not actually have bony vertebrae in their backs: they are literally spineless. They have several hearts, and at least twice as much blood in their bodies as other fish. On top of that, they have only half a jaw, yet they can still tear through tough flesh.”

But the strange features don’t end here:

“What's more, hagfish have skin so floppy that it should seriously compromise their swimming. They lack scales, they can absorb some of their food straight through their skin – bypassing their half-jawed mouths altogether – and they have an almost unrivalled ability to turn seawater into thick gloopy slime.

Put simply, hagfish are like nothing else in the animal kingdom. But it is possible that many of their unusual traits can be explained by one final feature. These fish can tie their bodies into tight knots.”

While evolutionists might describe them as primitive, modern hagfish haven’t given away the features their “300 million year old” ancestors had.

In other words, Darwinists would acknowledge that hagfish were around before the heydays of the dinosaurs and other dino-age creatures.

Stasis or the absence of evolution is a not-so-rare element in the fossil record, often more common than change that always occurs after its kind, just like Genesis shows us.



Source:

Barras, Colin. 2016. Hagfish are a strong contender for the strangest fish alive BBC Earth (8 September).

The Quick Non-Evolution of the Tasmanian Devil

Sarcophilus harrisii. Image courtesy of Mike Lehmann, Creative Commons (CC BY-SA 3.0).





Joel Kontinen

Perhaps best known as a fierce cartoon character, the Tasmanian devil (Sarcophilus harrisii) has for decades been on the verge of extinction.

Many of these notoriously ferocious marsupials suffer from a cancer known as the devil facial tumour disease (DFTD) that is very contagious.

However, researchers recently noticed that the devil's immune system is helping it to recognise the cancer and fight against it.

They saw changes in seven genes, five of which are known to have an effect on “cancer or immune function” in other animals and also in humans.

This development is being hailed as rapid evolution, though we can’t see any morphological changes in the animals, i.e., their size and shape hasn’t changed at all.

But their immune system is fighting against disease, like it does in all living creatures.

It seems that this is yet another case in which Darwinists use the e-word for something that has nothing to do with any of the classical definitions of (goo-to-you) evolution.

Source:

Boddy, Jessica. 2016. Tasmanian devils are rapidly evolving resistance to a contagious cancer. Science (30 August).

Latest Space Signal Is a False Alarm, As Usual

Anyone there? The Atacama Large Millimeter/submillimeter Array (ALMA). Image courtesy of ESO/José Francisco Salgado (josefrancisco.org), Creative Commons (CC BY 4.0).



Joel Kontinen

The latest space signal is almost certainly a false alarm. No aliens there.

Last year, Russian astronomers picked up a strong radio signal coming from the star HD 164595, some 95 light years away from us.

The signal has been making headlines in recent weeks, probably due to discoveries like the nearest exoplanet Proxima b and Tabby’s star or KIC 8462852 that initially seemed to send a regular message that could not be explained by orbiting planets.

But like the famous wow signal, the message was probably caused by comets.

SETI (search for extraterrestrial intelligence) is (in)famous for searching for life in the wrong places.

Its history is fraught with false expectations, and very often science fiction has trumped science.

Despite all the false alarms, New Scientist is confident that aliens must be lurking somewhere in the universe:

“Although we don’t know enough about the origin of life to say for sure, it is almost certain that aliens have arisen from the primordial goo elsewhere. Even if the odds of life are incredibly low, a universe 93 billion light years wide provides ample rolls of the dice to get things started. For Earth to be the sole flame of light in the darkness suggests some kind of outside influence, whether a supreme being or the reality that we live in an artificial simulation. Aliens are far, far more likely.”

But only if we a priori rule out the God who in the beginning created everything.

Life cannot create itself.

Source:

Aron, Jacob. 2016. Spoiler alert: Why strange signals are never really from aliens. New Scientist (1 September).

Darwin’s Abominable Mystery Is Good for Us

Darwin didn’t understand their origin, but they’re good for us.


Joel Kontinen

Charles Darwin called the origin of flowering plants an abominable mystery that was difficult to account for by his theory.

Flowers do appear suddenly and fully formed in the fossil record. Even the earliest flowers look very modern.

Flowers need pollinators and pollinators need flowers. Evolutionists might need to invoke co-evolution, mutualism or symbiosis, but flowers are nevertheless beautiful, and many insects do a good job in helping them spread.

A recent paper in Nature concludes that the more variety in flowers (and insects) there is in a meadow, the more beneficial it is for us.

Science Daily summarises the findings of the research:

“The more it swarms, crawls, flies the better it is, say scientists. A diverse ecosystem populated by many species from all levels provides higher ecosystem services. Even rather unpopular insects and invisible soil-dwelling organisms are important.”

They are good for our health.

Reminds us of the very good world of Genesis.


Source:

Technical University of Munich (TUM). 2016. Flowering meadows benefit humankind: Greater biodiversity in grasslands leads to higher levels of ecosystem services. Science Daily. (17 August).