In My Fantasies, I'm the Hero Too!

I know just what to do if the Russians invade. I know this because I spent a substantial portion of my childhood thinking about it. Ask my brothers. I've shot camouflaged commies from every angle. I've taken the weapons off their still-warm corpses and continued the fight until I saved the country from certain tyranny and destruction! And then I woke up.

Many, many scientists need a similar awakening, even though sleeping is so pleasant. Most scientists are taught an anti-God worldview during their formative years in high school and college. Those that go into research (as opposed to applied sciences, such as chemical engineering or national defense) never escape the scholastic environment that taught them their humanist faith. Humanism, of course, teaches folks everything should be judged on how it benefits mankind. Ultimately, it teaches that man is God.

It should be no wonder, then, that in scientists worldview, they are the super hero.

If you're a microbiologist or some variant working at the CDC, then you're trying to find the next super bug that will wipe out half of earth's population. Even relatively benign viruses like Swine Flu are good candidates to underscore your importance to all of humanity!

So we must: Cover out mouths, wash our hands, don't drink after anyone, use a paper towel to open the bathroom door, use hand sanitizer!

If you're a climatologist, then you're sacrificing a quiet life to convince the hordes of distracted sheeple that they need to dramatically change the way they live in order to avoid consigning humanity to the fossil record!

So we must: Recycle, walk, car-pool, buy a hybrid, drink tap water, don't eat beef (I choked here), buy offsets, sell your private jet (to whom? Al Gore?) and fly coach, drip irrigate your garden, install solar panels, turn your thermostat to 80 degrees during the Summer, use electric hand dryers, don't consume electricity...with..your..electric hand dryers!

If you're a astronomer, then you want obscene amounts of money and political clout in order to find the next big rock flying through space that might wipe out all life on earth! In your worldview, you're the hero and can't understand why the world doesn't see how important your work is.

So we must: Strangely, I don't think there's anything you can do. Good bye, then.

At least the astronomer will have the satisfaction of being right, just one last time. Super!

So this Halloween, when many of the super-hero costumes aren't returned to the costume shop, you might want to run down to the college campus an check the science department. They don't like to wear white lab coats! That's just a cover up to conceal their secret identity!

Altered Beast: So Much From So Little 2

Story telling is a gift to those that have that talent. Story writing is even more of a gift, for I've never seen someone who couldn't tell a story they themselves wrote.

Some stories fascinate me. Without having had the experience of being marooned on an island, how could one sit in his attic and write a book like Robinson Crusoe? Even less likely, how could a man from the 20th century write a series of books like the Chronicles of Narnia? As a side note, how could he sell them given and odd name like "The Lion the Witch and the Wardrobe"? It must be intrigue...Anyway. But C.S. Lewis and Daniel Defoe must bow their heads in reverence to the talents of our next authors.

In a recent article in the National Geographic, scientists published their findings gleaned from a newly found insect. The insect was the largest insect on record: larger than a man! The scorpion-like insect was a heavy-weight champion weighing in at 8.2 feet in length! It fed on fish, and even each other. It was the alpha predator of its day! Its legs were too weak to lift its body without the buoying effect of the water. Contemporary sea creatures, such as fish, developed hardened heads and mouths to contend with the pressure from these mammoth sea scorpions! These terrible claws were designed for shooting out and grabbing any nearby prey, much like the Praying Mantis of today! The largest lobsters of our day would be mere bite-sized morsels for Jaekelopterus rhenaniae, the given name of this ancient insect!

Now, wait a second here. What did they say they found? A fossil? So a rock, then? It must have been a big rock, since Jaekelopterus rhenaniae was 8.2 feet in lengh and all. Oh, wait a second, they didn't find the whole creature...just an 18 inch claw. Hm. Well, all the flourishes did make it more readable! I might not have even read the article were it not for all the made-up parts. I kinda' think that was the point. Intrigue, I guess.

This is the first novel I've read from this emerging author, but he has a bright future, especially as much as the world of evolutionary biology appreciates good fiction these days!

The Forgiving Darwinist: Hope for Me!

In reading a recent article on the National Geographic Online website, I came across a startling admission. In previous posts, I've protested the sub-sub-categorization of fish species. Every time Evolutionary biologists come across a specimen who's fin is slightly smaller or dots are slightly lighter, they want to declare it to be a new species, give it a Latin surname and celebrate the onward march of evolution, right before our very eyes!

Now, my argument, and that of many others, has been that this is not an example of evolution, but is only a slight variation in what the Bible calls a 'kind'. God proclaimed that each should reproduce after it's kind. Evolutionists haven't been able to show that to be untrue, and never will. The variation between trout species does not make them each their own 'kind', just variations within a single 'kind'.

Now this article continues to push the evolutionary faith just like everything else on the National Geographic website. But it also contains a shocking admission that I've never seen before: that out of zeal for the evolutionary faith, past scientists tended to find many species in the fossil record where few or one actually existed. Here's the full text of the admission in question:

Mistakes Made

Andy Currant is a paleontologist at the British Natural History Museum in London who was not involved in the study.

"Most large fossil herbivores tend to tune down to a smaller number of taxa [biological classifications] when you look at them closely," he said.

But, he added, the mistakes made by early investigators are easy to forgive. Researchers used to be hypersensitive to variation in specimens and did not really understand how much variation there can be between males and females within a population, he said.

Marcelo Sánchez, a paleontologist at the University of Zurich in Switzerland, said: "Solving such a specific taxonomic problem may not seem important. But individual-species research like this is ultimately what major claims about evolution depends[s] upon."

Now let's quickly break down what this man is saying.

First, he's pointing out that when paleontologists and taxonomists look "closely" at the evidence, what was once thought to be evidence of many species is found to be very few. There is a pressure on paleontologists to discover new species of dinosaurs to fill in the "gaps" in the evolutionary tree! Their theory is not benefited by fewer unique animals. They need more!

But, thankfully, Kaplan has struck a conciliatory tone with past scientists for skewing scientific evidence to support their evolutionary presuppositions. Magnanimity on this scale is rare to the scientific community. Perhaps it's part of a rising trend of a traditionally Christian valu...er...never mind.

I haven't found the website where you register to be forgiven by the scientific community, but perhaps there is now hope for me!