More Slight of Hand: Reverse Engineering

Reverse engineering happens when one group of engineers takes the finished product of other engineers, say a missile, and disassembles it, noting the size, shape, weight, materials, color, density and other properties they find along the way. Done thoroughly, the reverse engineer is able to produce blueprints that may be used to build many more missiles without having to do the normally requisite research and development work. The one thing the reverse engineer is not able to reproduce is the manufacturing processes necessary to fabricate the component parts.

Reverse engineering is a well-known technique in the technology world. If the Chinese can't steal the process documentation to build a Stinger missile, they will simply try to acquire a working missile through shady channels and reverse engineer it. Their final product will look a little different and have slightly different behavioral characteristics than the superb U.S. Stinger missile, but will do most of the same job as the stinger.

One problem that evolutionists have is explaining how complex systems like the human eyeball, the bombardier beetle's explosive defense mechanism, or the amoeba's flagellum came into existence by gradual and accidental means. The flagellum on an amoeba has some 27 components (plus or minus) that had to exist all at the same time for the flagellum to work in the job of propelling the whole amoeba through a liquid medium. If only one of those components were missing, the flagellum would not function. So did all the components come into existence at once? Wouldn't that kinda' hint at design rather than accident? Well, yes, but...

This problem for scientists is called irreducible complexity. Now don't get too excited and call up your evolutionist buddies. Evolutionary biologists treat anything exuding irreducible complex characteristics as merely a matter of time. Because their faith precludes the existence of God, they will never yield because of it. Rather, they "hold judgment" until science gets around to solving the problem. One technique they've used for defeating irreducible complexity is to say that the complex system must have served other purposes in the past than it does now. They'd say that only when all the components were in place did the complex system serve the purpose it does today. They couldn't say what, but it musta' been!!

Another mechanism evolutionists use to defeat the problem of irreducible complexity is reverse engineering. Evolutionary Biologists are renown reverse engineers. They'll start by breaking they eyeball into it's component parts and dissecting each of them. They'll catalog all of the unique chemical compounds that make up the part. Then they'll go in search of other natural means that produce those chemical compounds. When they've done all their research, they'll start a "musta' been" story line that explains how the human eyeball came into existence. Whatever they come up with (which is usually completely different than another group of scientists on the other side of the world), MUST be the truth! That's how it happened. Never mind the amount of human input into the formula, never mind the unlikely or impossible nature of many of the steps in their hypothesis, never mind the total lack of evidence to support their claims!! It's settled! To argue with them would be...well...unscientific.

Sound exotic? It's exactly what's happening in a laboratory near you! The most unlikely mechanisms are being used to explain what we see (or see with) in today's organisms. Their only merit: They did it without having to admit that there is a God who designed these extraordinarily complex systems.

Now to illustrate their technique, let me explain how the H3 Hummer came into existence:

The hummer has an impressive cam shaft weighing approximately 65 pounds. It's made of heat tempered iron, chrome alloy and can withstand extreme temperatures. This kind of metal mixture was discovered in 1892 in South Bend, Indiana. Therefore the most logical assumption as to where the modern Hummer rose is that approximately 420 million years ago, a volcano erupted spewing lava over a cliff hang that would some day be South Bend, Indiana. The lava super-heated the granite in the cliff until the iron ore inside the granite liquefied and dripped onto the valley floor below making a crudely shaped metal spike pointing upwards. Tens of thousands of years later, a rock came crashing down from the cliff above, smashing the spike into a tempered-iron bar. The rock on top of the bar slowly eroded over the course of a hundred thousand years and left the bar there exposed. During a flood shortly thereafter, it was washed off the face of the hill into the stream at the floor of the valley where it was tumbled over and over for tens of thousands of years, giving it the shape we now see. (The Journal Hummer, Issue XXXIV, vol. 12, p. 87)

Get the picture? The fiction I just made up follows the same reverse logic they use, but my invention is MUCH simpler than the ones evolutionary biologists come up with. You see how absurd it is. Yet this is just the kind of slight-of-hand they employ in explaining away what they can't explain. They'll drown you in details too obscure and impossible to test, so field-specific, that anyone reading couldn't possibly substantiate or refute their claims. Readers can only choose to believe it or not believe the scientist.

Hey, that dilemma seems familiar somehow! Oh, yes, that's what God asks of us concerning His Word!! We can either choose to believe It or not believe It: Believe God or not believe God. No refutation, no substantiation, just believe.

In digesting the nonsense that scientists publish, a little logic goes a lot farther than years of book study. The techniques alone that evolutionists employ to prop up their claims should make them the targets of much scrutiny and suspicion. King David proved more educated than all Evolutionary Biologists when he cried out to God: "I am fearfully and wonderfully made"!

Missing Link! A Trip Through the Woods

An recent story by the National Geographic magazine online proudly announced the discovery of a new dinosaur species with the never before heard headline of "Missing Link" Dinosaur Discovered in Montana!

First, the title. According to evolutionists, EVERY species is a "missing link" species! Can we stop saying "missing link" at the beginning of every sentence?! Missing link, missing link, missing link! There, it's been said, can we drop the prefix???

Second, they dropped in a couple Freudian slips into the article. The first one was in this paragraph:

An unusual new species of dinosaur discovered in a Montana fossil provides a long-sought link between a primitive group of dinos in Asia and those that roamed North America, experts say.

Now how can this fossil be a long-sought link, when it had never been seen before? Isn't this what we call "pre-judging the evidence"? It's like a defense attorney hired to defend a murderer: he's already decided that the knife, the footprints, the gloves, the blood in the white blazer...oops, am I betraying my thoughts? Anyway, he's already decided that they were planted and fabricated by the police. These guys have already decided.

Also, note how they only tell us about the "missing link" that they "knew" was there when they find it! How do we know they knew? Have you ever been lost in the woods following someone who claims to know where he's going? It's like that. Every so often, he lets out an "Oh, yes, there we go!" and then marches boldly toward some tree or rock. After about ten OhYes's, you start to catch on that this guy has no clue where we are! Can the blind lead the blind? shall they not both fall into the ditch?

The second gem was in this paragraph:

"We knew that [the two groups] were related, but we didn't have any fossils that showed a mixture of characteristics like this and thus [demonstrated] the split between the Asian group and the North American group."

So, if you didn't have any fossils showing characteristics of both groups, then how did they know they were related?!? Oh, that's right, we're all related, I forgot. How about this:

"We knew that [humans and Pediculus humanus (body louse)] were related, but we didn't have any fossils that showed a mixture of names like this and thus [demonstrated] the split between the tiny insect group and the North American, listening-to-ipod group."

There. Mine is as valid as theirs. Filled with slight of hand, self-aggrandizing affirmations, and ridiculous, unproven assertions. And, best of all, now everyone thinks I'm smart!

Rats! One More Extinction

In a recent article published by Reuters, the author dropped a scientific bomb while discussing the need to wipe out rats on one of the Aleutian islands. What did he say that was so stunning to read? Here goes!

Once informed about the environmental destruction wrought by rats, citizens are generally determined to avoid them. Rats are blamed for causing about half the extinctions of various species worldwide since the 1600s and are persistent nuisances once established, said Clarke.

Did you catch it? Now I thought that mankind was the chief evildoer in our delicate ecosystem! But it appears we've been playing second fiddle for quite some time now!

Now with species like cockroaches and skunks and termites still plaguing the planet, I think that mankind must redouble his efforts to reclaim his dominion over the pests of the world.

So I'd like to applaud these scientists for their role of improving the planet by means of unnatural selection.

Rapid "Evolution": Like Watching Water Boil

Something very interesting has been simmering in the world of evolution fantasy.

First some groundwork. We, at least I, believe in variation and a tiny bit of natural selection. I believe that the great-great-great-great grand lizards of today's lizards may look slightly different than today's lizards. Longer tongues, shorter noses, more brown, less green, larger scales, rounder claws, etc...

What I don't believe in is evolution: the belief that the great^60,000 grand lizards of today's lizards will be butterflies.

Now one tenant of evolution is the belief in the old age of the earth (anything longer than 10,000 years would fall into that bucket, but normally it's hundreds of millions to hundreds of billions of years). This belief is in stark contrast to the Biblical truth that states that mankind is only a couple days younger than his primate and especially his eukaryotic, earthly co-habitants, somewhere around 6,500 years. By hanging all evidences upon a framework of many millions of years, evolutionists try to circumvent the presuppositional belief that the universe has far more ancient origins than it actually does.

Using Biblical chronology and genealogies, the Bible sets forth a world around 6,500 years old. Many evidences in science corroborate this rough age, but they don't get much press because of the agenda of atheistic scientists. After all, the whole point of teaching evolution is to establish as consensus a world view that excludes the possibility of a literal Biblical Creator. Certainly, if there is a Creator, then homosexuality and other moral blights are sins, rather than evolutionary aberrations; and homosexuality is a deliberate act of rebellion rather than a natural behavior out of our hands.

Thus, one front in the battlefield of creation versus evolution has long been the age of the earth.

Closely tied to that issue is the argument about how rapidly living things change generationally. The extreme variation seen in living things can only be explained in a hand full of ways. Biblically, God created the world in 6 literal days. We know this to be true from God's Hold Word. But evolutionist believe that the living things we see in the world are the survivors of a huge tree of living things dating back to the first living thing that came together accidentally in the primordial goo.

Within the big-tree crowd, there are two camps: the Gradualists and the Punctuated Equilibrium...ists. The Gradualists believe the species changed ever so slowly into their current form. The Punct...the other guys believe that stable ecosystems tended to keep the species stable for millions of years, and then suddenly, cataclysmic events (volcanoes, asteroids, ice ages, Democratic takeovers of congress) caused abrupt changes in ecosystems which forced anatomical and genetic changes in hosted species.

The punctuated equilibrium theory is useful to Darwinists because it helps explain what they've coined the "Cambrian Explosion". The Cambrian Explosion is a time way back there, when supposedly, after hundreds of millions of years of relatively slow evolution producing only algae, nematodes and trilobites, suddenly in 53 million years or so (yes, that little), nearly all known types of life suddenly appeared, presto chango!! They attribute this explosion to a sudden and abrupt change in the worldwide ecosystem. But does that hold water?

One factor I've never seen them take into account is migration. They assert that ecosystems had to change in order for host species to change. But I noticed something recently to which I've never seen them pay much attention, but I think is very relevant! In walking a short distance here in Utah, the kind of ecosystem changes very rapidly. You can go from deciduous forests (leaf bearing trees), to conifer forests (pine trees) in a hour's walk. You can move from high stony mountains to low sandy deserts in a short walk. You can go from lush river-side fauna to scorched, broken earth where nothing grows in a short drive. In a few minutes you can ascend above the tree line on surrounding mountains.

What's my point? There are many different ecosystems in a relatively small area. If ecosystems played the central role in punctuated equilibrium, then wouldn't migration tend to be a far more prominent player in speciation (multiplication in species) than global climate change?

I think that scientists that hold to global climate change as the primary mechanism of speciation show, not only that they are easily fooled, but a tendancy to play to whatever modern political correctness dictates.

Additionally, studies (here, and here [read both]) have shown that species can change very quickly, though always within boundaries. A single species of lizard placed on several different islands developed short or long legs depending on the type of vegetation on each island. The entire study lasted only 10 years, yet the results were conclusive and apparent. Migration was the mechanism; the changes were sudden, by evolutionary biologists' expectations.

If migration is a more powerful means of speciation and speciation is vastly more rapid than evolutionists think, then 6,500 years should be plenty to turn the thousands of "kinds" created in Genesis into the millions of "species" we see today.

Darwinists measure evolution in terms of "darwins". The changes that occur in an organism in millions of years may amount to only 1 darwin in traditional, evolutionary thinking. The studied lizards evolved at a rate of 2000 darwins!! Clearly, evolutionists are wrong on this count. The original reason for insisting upon billions of years is because they thought they needed that amount of time to explain the changes in the species through gradualism.

If evolutionists would invent a term like, say, "ecos" that measured how much the climate was changing globally, then you could conclude that there are areas here in Utah that are thousands of "ecos" different from each other.

What is observable is rapid change due to varied ecosystems, exclusively observed by means of migration, not global ice ages and meteor strikes. The thousands of species God created have, each of them, the ability to vary according to the climate, diet, vegetation and cohabitants in any particular ecosystem. By the time the Eden butterfly reached the other end of the globe, it may have speciated into thousands of distinct species. But this isn't evolution. It's variation. As some men are midgets and others giants, so the potential exists in all living things to survive in a broad spectrum of ecosystems and vary accordingly.

God made it that way. Evolutionary Biologists have yet to even discover it.

Scholastic Intimidation

Scholastic intimidation is rampant in colleges and in the professional scientific community. Students, professors, researchers; few dare break ranks with the party for fear of the retaliation they'd suffer.

In several of my past posts, I've made statements that presuppose that a scientist would be excoriated by his peers and funding sources if he were to propose anything outside the accepted dogma. If, for instance, a scientist were to purport that there was no ice age, or that the effects currently attributed to an ice age were possibly the effects of a global flood, he would suffer all forms of intimidation and protest. Un-Darwinistic ideas aren't even allowed to be considered as possibilities in the scientific community. Proposing something potentially Christian would draw even greater ire. The message they send: "It's not worth it! Just tow the line!" And the message could not be clearer. Don't debate contrary ideas upon the merits. Ridicule the authors and the ideas. Accuse them of being unenlightened. State that they probably think the earth is flat or that leeches should be used by surgeons!

This casts a shadow of doubt on all scientists. Which are conducting themselves ethically, reporting their observations, and which are cow towing to their own interests, or at least their own fears? Which ones are intimidated and which are intimidators?

I've seen many stories like this, but it finally occurred to me to post these things on my blog. This story is of a scientist who is being called every kind of Hitler for simply stating that trans gender behavior is a product of one's own perverted mind (that's not what he says, but I think anyone with brain can recognize the symptoms in this article) rather than being "born a woman in a man's body", thus making it God's fault if there is a God (Even Christians are buying this sort of garbage these days!).

When I come across other links, I'll post them here as well. In the mean time, Oh be careful little mouth what you say!

National Geographic Corroborates Bible...Accidentally.

I know this is a little off topic for an evolution blog, but I found it too interesting to ignore.

In a recent article by the National Geographic, archaeologists have discovered substantial evidence of a "volcanic eruption" around 1500 BC that leveled several cities in or near Sinai. They don't document precisely where the volcanic rock came from, a known volcano or eruption. Rather, they have different theories about how the Mediterranean Sea washed the lava rock onto Egyptian soil, either through a tsunami caused by the alleged eruption or gradually over many years. I think this second theory arose when they realized that tsunamis are Japanese (I looked it up), and that back then tsunamis weren't so fashionable the way they are today.

The Bible tells of the Hyksos king that was not of the previous dynasty which knew of Joseph. The Hyksos are known historically as Egypt's 15th dynasty.

Exo 1:8 Now there arose up a new king over Egypt, which knew not Joseph.

The actual plague is recounted in Exodus 9.

Exo 9:22 And the LORD said unto Moses, Stretch forth thine hand toward heaven, that there may be hail in all the land of Egypt, upon man, and upon beast, and upon every herb of the field, throughout the land of Egypt.
And Moses stretched forth his rod toward heaven: and the LORD sent thunder and hail, and the fire ran along upon the ground; and the LORD rained hail upon the land of Egypt.
So there was hail, and fire mingled with the hail, very grievous, such as there was none like it in all the land of Egypt since it became a nation.
And the hail smote throughout all the land of Egypt all that was in the field, both man and beast; and the hail smote every herb of the field, and broke every tree of the field.

Some date the plagues of Egypt at 1491 B.C. That's fits pretty well with their description "around 1500 B.C.". Of course they will try to explain everything in natural terms, and I can't say that God didn't use some volcano to cause this plague (though it makes the hail hard to explain), but I do believe that these guys have uncovered evidence of God's hand of judgment on Egypt in the days of the Hyksos Pharaoh.

They've pegged the place, the time and the plague, but I'm sure it's all just a coincidence.

You just gotta' laugh...

First, read this article.

Sometimes you just gotta' laugh at the reasoning of evolutionary biologists (formerly scientists), in how they choose to interpret new archaeological findings. In this article about a recently uncovered Mastodon, learned team leader Evangelia Tsoukala of Aristotle University expresses her high hopes in this paragraph:

The scientists hope the rare find might shed some light on why mastodons went extinct in Europe about two million years ago, even though the mammals continued to roam North America until about 11,000 years ago.

Did you catch it?

This Mastodon was found in Greece. Greece is in Europe, in case you didn't know.

The learned scientists are of the firm persuasion that Mastodons went extinct 2 million years ago in Europe. Yet here one is buried in 4-5 feet of dirt. "But it's 2 million years old!", right? Wrong. Look at the tusks. They are laying right where they were uncovered (thus the red and white scaling bar above the tusks). They are inverted (pointing in opposite directions, yet parallel)! This Mastodon was buried by human hands! But...in Greece...2 million years ago???

No, this animal was buried much more recently than that. They'll never admit it, but this find dashes their belief that the Mastodon became extinct in Europe 2 million years ago. Again, they've disproved their previous assumptions but dare not say so for the retaliation they'd suffer.

The theories that evolutionary biologists entertain might as well be Dinotopia for the little light they shed and fiction they contain.

Extreme Variation: Alot of explaining to do!

In a recent visit to Fairhaven Baptist Church, the church/college I attended in Chesterton, Indiana for many years, I discovered I had at least one reader left. That being true, I felt bad for my long sabbatical from writing on the topic of evolution versus science. So here is my next installment, I hope you (singular) enjoy it.

One thing that has been holding my attention recently is the number of highly unusual anatomical features, behaviors and other facets that must be explained in terms of gradual development if we are to believe evolutionists fairy tale about the origin of these species.

For a simple example, consider nest-building instincts. How did the inclination, ability and proficiency to build a nest come to any one set of animals? Would the inclination mean anything without the ability (strength, dexterity, skill)? Would the ability mean anything without the inclination? Even more, how did the inclination, ability and proficiency to train their offspring come to them? How did the offspring develop a mechanism by which to learn and remember the behavior once demonstrated?

A nest must be made of certain materials, constructed a certain way, at a time right for the offspring, not too early not too late. It must be located in a place safe from predators and accidental injury to the offspring. The temperature must be just right. Not in the direct sunlight, nor if full shade. It must be sturdy, and constructed of materials that don't attract the attention of unwanted eyes. And what's the point. If I (the parent bird) got here alright, then why do I need to build a nest for my eggs? Nest building is akin to basket-weaving, but with only a vague sense of symmetry. Where would one go to school for weaving? How will I transport the materials? And how will I secure them in the tree until they are all collected? Should the edges of the nest go up or down? Will this branch sway too much in the wind? It's not so simple as it seems!

Even if you come up with a story that explains all these problems, what is the mechanism of memory? If you say that it is simply mental memory, then how do you explain orphaned animals that exude the same basic characteristics and behaviors as their parents without ever having known them? If you say that it's genetic memory, then the problem only worsens! Since evolution's storyline relies upon accidental changes in the genome, then how could a learned behavior possibly be accidentally coded into the genome within the same generation as it was learned, so as to pass that behavior on to the ensuing generation. I'm not a gambling man, but I'd take odds on that one!

If the genetic alteration came before any learned behavior, then why aren't we seeing birds attempting to speak and elephants attempting to fly....without Disney? If they hold to the genetics-first method of passing on behavioral characteristics to offspring, then their whole theory on "gradual improvements" is lost. A thousand deleterious changes should occur for every one beneficial change!

Evolutionary Biologists would certainly come back with the ol', "only beneficial changes get passed down, because non-beneficial changes cause the host to die out" line. But these people have never raised children. Any parent knows that both good and bad behavioral characteristics are passed to our children without either dying out. And scientist can's explain any reason why that would be different in the rest of the natural world.

But if the God of Heaven created these creatures by special creation, then none of these things present any problem. As God is infinite, so do we see His infinite nature reflected in the natural world He created. Through the vastness of space, the speed of light, the complexity of life and the power of the atom, we see things so vast that our mortal eye cannot discern between these and things infinite. Truly, "The heavens declare the glory of God; and the firmament sheweth his handywork." Psalm 19:1

To Come on the topic of Extreme Variation:

• Vastly differing habitats of extant species (extremophiles and the like)
• Vastly differing forms of communication of extant species
• Vastly differing forms of navigation of extant species (where are the bees going?)
• Vastly differing diets of extant species (You eat what?)
• Vastly differing forms of housing of extant species (You built that....yourself?)
• Vastly differing forms of predation of extant species
• Vastly differing defense mechanisms of extant species (zap, kaboom, vanish, bloat, poke, and die)
• Vastly differing methods of reproduction of extant species (hover-craft)
• Vastly differing interdependencies of extant species (I'd lichen it to co-habitation)
• The vast number of fully unique behaviors and mechanisms found in extant species (this one's very interesting!)

Lazarus Effect: Frilled Shark

I came across another Lazarus species that I thought I'd try to chronicle for the sake of those who care. I've posted a link at the bottom of this post.

If you recall from past posts, the Lazarus Effect is the phenomenon that happens when our learned evolutionary biologists discover a species that was known only from the fossil record until someone found one walking/swimming/crawling around. Lazarus species often appear not to have changed in the past hundred million years or so. Evolutionists often try to say that these species have changed very little over the eons, but that is merely an exercise of their faith. In fact, they can't easily quantify how they've changed. Typically what they call "little changes" are far less in magnitude than the variations present in, say, modern humans.

Of course, we know that God created these animals less than 8,000 years ago pretty much as they are today. When we read that the fossil record appears identical to a walking, breathing (swimming) creature, it comes as no surprise to us. The flood of Noah covered the earth. Entire regions were covered in sediment and mud in a cataclysmic event that changed the face of the entire earth.

Evolutionists also try to appear somewhat composed when this kind of news comes out. They straighten their jacket, put on a good face and pretend they expected that. They merely lack an explanation! Give them time, they'll concoct something.

A recent, anonymous reader accused me of being "against science". Nothing could be further from the truth. I believe that science is a worthy profession. But science gives solutions, not answers. I debated fellow a few weeks ago who believed that science was owned by Illuminati types and we weren't hearing the whole story. He said that everything we've been told is a lie. I pointed at my Ford pick-up truck and said, "My truck is a product of a thousand concrete scientific inventions! And it runs!!" Science is real. It gives us useful solutions to nagging problems. But only faith gives answers. In order to find answers in science, you have to read into things a bit. Better to do your soul searching with someone who believes you have a soul!

Hopefully I'll have time to comment on my recent trip to the Chicago Field Museum of Natural History. It's a hoot!! Wait till you find out how asexual reproduction swerved into sexual (2 part) reproduction!

It takes a big man to admit when he is wrong. In modern science, there aren't many big men.

Shark Species Filmed
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Frilled_shark