Category: Evolution

Podcast Number 8

The pendulum has swung, and now many scientists are admitting that the evidence supports the concept of design and a designer. However, scientists are not willing to accept the Bible, instead calling for Christians to compromise with them at some middle ground. Unfortunately, some Christians are doing just that.

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The difficulty scientists are having developing artificial intelligence with computers is a strong argument for the design of humans, and thus a designer. If scientists can not design AI, how did chance come about with the real thing?

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Sermon Title: Apologetics

The Christian faith must be defended by Christians. There is credible evidence which can be supplied to answer in the affirmative the following questions: 1) Does God Exist?; 2) Is the Bible Inspired?; 3) Are our Bibles today dependable?; 4) Did the Man Jesus Really Live on Earth?; 5) Is Jesus the Son of God?

(Note: The audio of this lesson came from Stan Cox’s presentation of the material at the Forum Terrace church of Christ on May 12, 2006. The material was also presented by Stan at the West Side church in two parts on Sunday, May 14th).

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Faster than a speeding bullet — actually, more than 10 times faster than a speeding bullet, Stardust will conclude its 7-year, 4.63 billion kilometer (2.88 billion mile) round-trip journey to comet Wild 2 Sunday, January 15, Pacific Standard Time (PST), making an historic re-entry in the wee morning hours to drop its precious comet cargo in the Utah desert well before dawn…

…”We are star stuff.”

Carl Sagan liked to remind people of that. Now, just a little more than a decade after the passing of The Planetary Society co-founder, Stardust is coming home with a bona fide sample of star stuff and the concept is being revisited in a very real way.

Continue reading “Comet Mission Returns Home” →

A COMPREHENSIVE chart of the genetic differences between human beings has been drawn up for the first time, promising breakthroughs in the hunt for the genes that influence common diseases such as cancer, asthma and diabetes.

The International Haplotype Map, or HapMap, provides an index to the human genetic code, allowing scientists to identify inherited variations that affect human health with much greater speed and simplicity…

…While the Human Genome Project has sequenced the 99.9 per cent of DNA that is shared by every person, the HapMap has started to plot the other 0.1 per cent – the individual idiosyncracies that make people different and often underlie ill health.

“The human genome sequence provided us with the list of many of the parts to make a human,” Peter Donnelly, Professor of Statistical Science at Oxford University and one of the project’s leaders, said.

“The HapMap provides us with indicators – like Post-It notes – which we can focus on in looking for genes involved in common disease. This report describes a remarkable step in our journey to understand human biology and disease.”

Panos Deloukas of the Wellcome Trust Sanger Centre near Cambridge, which conducted much of the work, said: “Humans are genetically 99.9 per cent identical: it is the tiny percentage that is different that holds the key to why some of us are more susceptible to common diseases such as diabetes and hypertension or respond differently to treatment with certain drugs.”

The Times OnlineBritain, October 27, 2005 ~ Mark Henderson

Analysis:

Two things stand out whenever I read articles such as this, detailing the amazing progress being made in genetics research.

First, such discoveries underscore the obvious divine fingerprint that is on human life. All life, in fact. The DNA sequence is as complex as any computer code, and governs every aspect of human appearance, health, and physical characteristics. The DNA “code” demands the recognition of a “code writer.” It is ever more obvious that life is not a chance event. “For since the creation of the world His invisible attributes are clearly seen, being understood by the things that are made, even His eternal power and Godhead, so that they are without excuse” (Romans 1:20).

Second, the ethical quandaries men face continue to multiply. Just because men have developed the ability to accomplish a scientific task (stem cell research and cloning come to mind) does not mean that they have the right before God to exercise that ability. While I am certainly for progress, a willingness to brush aside questions regarding the ethicality or morality of such experiments is troublesome. Christians need to be aware of such dangers, and speak out against unethical practices that are defended by an appeal to “progress” and “the common good.” The end does not justify an unethical means.

Last autumn, Dover’s (Pennsylvania, SC) school board instructed its ninth-grade biology teachers to tell students the theory of evolution is an incomplete one, and that intelligent design, which says biology’s minutia presents evidence of an intelligent creator, is an alternative argument to evolution”…

…”Supporters of intelligent design say the argument has nothing to do with the Bible, God or the Judeo-Christian account of life’s origins found in Genesis. But a group of doubting parents sued the district in December, saying intelligent design amounts to a religious belief, and has no place in a biology course.

The three-paragraph statement read to students is unconstitutional, they say, because it implicitly endorses a superhuman creator, and that breeches the church-state separation wall. Thompson argues it’s ironic that a group advocating civil liberties would endorse the censorship of a particular idea.”…

…”The Harrisburg trial is not the first to consider the ideas of evolution and religion. There’s the 80-year-old Scopes “Monkey Trial,” during which defendant John Scopes was found guilty of a state law that banned the teaching of evolution. In 1968’s Epperson v. Arkansas, the U.S. Supreme Court overturned an Arkansas statute which prohibited the teaching of evolution. In the 1980s came McLean vs. Arkansas and Edwards vs. Aguillard, which overturned acts demanding schools give equal time to the evolution and “creation science.” And in Georgia, a suburban Atlanta district is still fighting a judge’s order to remove stickers in science textbooks which say evolution is “a theory, not a fact.”

Bill Toland
Pittsburgh Post-Gazette

Analysis:

Evolutionist advocates have long held it to be inappropriate to entertain in the classroom the viability of the creation account. “That is religion”, they say, “and a violation of the principle of the separation of church and state.”

Now that an argument regarding the intelligent design of the universe is being made based upon scientific principles rather than an appeal to scripture, the complaints remain.

However, the assertion that the concept of a divine being is unscientific, is just that, an assertion. Just because it contains an element of “religion” does not make it invalid. In effect, scientists are not willing to entertain a plausible explanation of the origins of the universe and life just because it does not fit into their arbitrary pigeonholes.

An intellectual bombshell dropped last week when British professor Antony Flew, for decades one of the world’s leading philosophers of atheism, publicly announced that he now affirms the existence of a deity.

To be sure, Mr. Flew has not become an adherent of any creed. He simply believes that science points to the existence of some sort of intelligent designer of the universe. He says evidence from DNA research convinces him that the genetic structure of biological life is too complex to have evolved entirely on its own. Though the 81-year-old philosopher believes Darwinian theory explains a lot, he contends that it cannot account for how life initially began.

We (the Editorial Board of the Dallas Morning News) found this conversion interesting in light of last year’s controversy regarding proposed revisions to the state’s (Texas) high school biology textbooks. Our view then was that while religion must be kept out of science classes, intellectual honesty demands that when science produces reliable data challenging the prevailing orthodoxies, students should be taught them.

We were bothered by Harvard geneticist Richard Lewontin’s statement that for scientists, materialism must be “absolute, for we cannot allow a Divine Foot in the door.” That’s called stacking the deck.

Mr. Flew may be dead wrong, but it’s refreshing to see that an academic of his stature is unafraid to let new facts change his mind. The philosopher told The Associated Press that if admirers are upset with his about-face, then “that’s too bad. My whole life has been guided by the principle of Plato’s Socrates: Follow the evidence, wherever it leads.”

If the scientific data are compelling enough to cause an atheist academic of Antony Flew’s reputation to recant much of his life’s work, why shouldn’t Texas schoolchildren be taught the controversy?

Editorial Board
Dallas Morning News
December 15, 2004

Analysis:

I came across this four month old admission by Antony Flew just this past week. The web site where I found it had an accompanying article with the following statement concerning Jonathan Witt of the Discovery Institute: “Witt noted that Darwin and his contemporaries thought a single cell was a simple blob of protoplasm and that it wouldn’t have been difficult for nature to randomly produce something so simple. ‘In those days the cell was a black box, a mystery. But in the 20th century, scientists were able to open that black box and peek inside,’ he notes. ‘There they found not a simple blob, but a world of complex circuits, miniaturized motors and digital code. We now know that even the simplest functional cell is almost unfathomably complex, containing at least 250 genes and their corresponding proteins.'”

While we appreciate the fact that some evolutionists are beginning to recognize that complexity indicates intelligent design, it is a contention creationists have made from the very beginning of the controversy. As the Psalmist wrote, “I will praise You, for I am fearfully and wonderfully made; Marvelous are Your works, And that my soul knows very well” (Psalm 139:14).

“Atlanta – A federal judge on Thursday ordered a suburban Atlanta school system to remove stickers from its high school biology textbooks that call evolution ‘theory, not a fact,’ saying the disclaimers are an unconstitutional endorsement of religion.

“‘By denigrating evolution, the School Board appears to be endorsing the well-known prevailing alternative theory, creationism or variations thereof, even though the sticker does not specifically reference any alternative theories,’ U.S. District Judge Clarence Cooper said.

“The stickers were put inside the books’ front covers by Cobb County public school officials in 2002. They state: ‘This textbook contains material on evolution. Evolution is a theory, not a fact, regarding the origin of living things. This material should be approached with an open mind, studied carefully and critically considered.'”

The Indianapolis Star [January 14, 2005]

Analysis:

The preceding article is yet another indication of the active antagonism modern culture expresses toward the faith the Christian holds dear.

Continue reading “Evolution Stickers Must Go” →

In our previous article, we noted that the existence of the universe indicates either “self-existence”, or a divine first cause. Since the universe is finite with regard to time, with energy which remains usable (The Law of Entropy), the evidence suggests that a self-existent being created it at some point in the past.

Continue reading “The Divine Watchmaker” →

Doctors are studying a 5-year-old German boy whose upper arms and legs are almost twice the size of his peers to learn what happens when the body does not produce a protein that limits muscular development.

The boy, whose mother is a professional athlete in Germany, is far stronger than other boys his age and lacks the protein, known as myostatin, doctors reported in Thursday’s New England Journal of Medicine.

He appears healthy now, but researchers are concerned the child may eventually develop abnormalities in the heart, which is a muscle.

The discovery could help doctors find a chemical to increase muscle mass as a treatment for several medical problems, such as muscular dystrophy, or the muscle deterioration seen in the elderly and among people in the advanced stages of cancer…

Reuters, June 24, 2004

(Note: Picture is of the child at the age of 7 months)

Analysis:

The interesting discovery of a “superboy”, reported in the New England Journal of Medicine, has captured the imaginations of health researchers and athletes alike. Researchers believe that the mutation in the five year old may give them information which will help in the treatment of disease. Athletes hope that the finding may open the door for larger muscles and greater strength.

Some may believe that the mutation gives credence to the theory of evolution, which claims such mutations as the mechanism through which general evolution occurs. Actually, the discovery helps to show the inadequacy of such a claim.

First, you will note that the child is still human. In fact, the doctor who is in charge of the study emphasized that the boy is “just a normal kid” who just happens to be stronger than his peers. Second, no genetic material has been added, which would be necessary to account for general evolutionary theory. Scientists believe that the child obtained myostatin genes that were “turned off” from both the mother and the father. This has been documented on the mother’s side by genetic testing. Third, doctors fear that the mutation is not actually beneficial. (The vast majority of mutations are destructive, which would lead to devolution rather than evolution). Doctors fear that the child may develop heart disease in the future. No, the German “superboy” is not a product of evolutionary processes, he is just a normal, strong kid.

April 1st came and went, and I managed to get through the entire day without being made a fool. Maybe it was because I spent the entire day in my office, working to get Watchman Magazine posted for April, and didn’t see anyone all day.

Of course, the day is a favorite of children and pranksters, as they try to play practical jokes on others.

Continue reading “April Fool” →