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-
- Problems for evolution and the big bang - 1/177
-
- How could plants ever have existed for millions of years without the ability to
- photosynthsize? 1) Where would they get their energy from? 2) How could they
- have developed the extremely complex mechanisms required for photosynthesis over
- millions of years as raw energy pouring into an open system destroys life, and
- every plant that didn't have the full, working mechanisms for photosynthesis
- would die. Say you do have plants that can live in the dark by getting energy
- from some other source. Point 2 would mean that they could not grow in sunlight,
- so they would only flourish in dark caves. So how are they supposed to develop
- the mechanisms needed for turning sunlight into energy without ever having grown
- under sunlight? It would be easier trying to teach a blind man to see. And if
- plants could evolve in caves somehow (!), then they couldn't have supported the
- vast number of species that lives in the open air that would need them for food
- and shelter. 'All things were made by Him; and withoout Him was not anything
- made that was made', John 1:3.
-
- Problems for evolution and the big bang - 2/177
-
- The stars of our own galaxy, the Milky Way, rotate about the galactic centre
- with different speeds, the inner ones rotating faster than the outer ones. The
- observed rotation speeds are so fast that if our galaxy were more than a few
- hundred million years old, it would be a featureless disc of stars instead of
- its present spiral shape.
-
- Problems for evolution and the big bang - 3/177
-
- According to evolutionary theory, comets are supposed to be the same age as the
- solar system, about 5 billion years. Yet each time a comet orbits close to the
- sun, it loses so much of its material that it could not survive much longer than
- about 100,000 years. Many comets have typical maximum ages (on this basis) of
- 10,000 years.
-
- Problems for evolution and the big bang - 4/177
-
- Each year, water and winds erode about 25 billion tons of dirt and rock from the
- continents and deposit it in the ocean. This material accumulates as loose
- sediment on the hard basaltic rock of the ocean floor. The average depth of all
- the mud in the whole ocean, including the continental shelves, is less than 400
- metres.
-
- Problems for evolution and the big bang - 5/177
-
- Every year, rivers and other sources dump over 450 million tons of sodium into
- the ocean. Only 27% manages to get back out of the sea each year. The remainder
- is thought to simply accumulate in the ocean. If the sea had no sodium to start
- with, it would have accumulated its present amount in less than 42 million years
- at today's input and output rates. This is much less than the evolutionary age
- of the ocean, 3 billion years. The usual reply to this discrepancy is that past
- sodium inputs must have been less and outputs greater. However, calculations
- which are as generous as possible to evolutionary scenarios still give a maximum
- age of only 62 million years. Calculations for many other sea water elements
- give much younger ages for the ocean.
-
- Problems for evolution and the big bang - 6/177
-
- The total energy stored in the Earth's magnetic field has steadily decreased by
- a factor of 2.7 over the past 1000 years. Evolutionary theories explaining this
- rapid decrease, as well as how the Earth could have maintained its magnetic
- field for billions of years, are very complex and inadequate. A much better
- creationist theory exists. It is straightforward, based on sound physics, and
- explains many features of the field: its creation, rapid reversals during the
- Genesis Flood, surface intensity decreases and increases until the time of
- Christ, and a steady decay since then. This theory matches paleomagnetic,
- historic and present data. The main result is that the field's total energy (not
- surface intensity) has always decayed at least as fast as now. At that rate the
- field could not be more than 10,000 years old.
-
- Problems for evolution and the big bang - 7/177
-
- In many mountainous areas, strata thousands of feet thick are bent and folded
- into hairpin shapes. The conventional geologic time-scale says these formations
- were deeply buried and solidified for hundreds of millions of years before they
- were bent. Yet the folding occurred without cracking, with radii so small that
- the entire formation had to be still wet and unsolidified when the bending
- occurred. This implies that the folding occurred less than thousands of years
- after deposition.
-
- Problems for evolution and the big bang - 8/177
-
- Strong geologic evidence exists that the Cambrian Sawatch sandstone, formed an
- alleged 500 million years ago, of the Ute Pass Fault west of Colorado Springs
- was still unsolidified when it was extruded up to the surface during the uplift
- of the Rocky Mountains, allegedly 70 million years ago. It is very unlikely that
- the sandstone would not solidify during the supposed 430 million years it was
- underground. Instead, it is likely that the two geologic events were less than
- hundreds of years apart, thus greatly shortening the geologic time-scale.
-
- Problems for evolution and the big bang - 9/177
-
- Radiohalos are rings of colour formed around microscopic bits of radioactive
- minerals in rock crystals. They are fossil evidence of radioactive decay.
- 'Squashed' Polonium-210 radiohalos indicate that Jurassic, Triassic and Eocene
- formations in the Colorado plateau were deposited within months of one another,
- not hundreds of millions of years apart as required by the conventional
- time-scale. 'Orphan' Polonium-218 radiohalos, having no evidence of their mother
- elements, imply either instant creation or drastic changes in radioactivity
- decay rates.
-
- Problems for evolution and the big bang - 10/177
-
- All naturally occurring families of radioactive elements generate helium as they
- decay. If such decay took place for billions of years, as alleged by
- evolutionists, much helium should have found its way into the Earth's
- atmosphere. The rate of loss of helium from the atmosphere into space is
- calculable and small. Taking that loss into account, the atmosphere today has
- only 0.05% of the amount of helium it would have accumulated in five billion
- years. This means the atmosphere is much younger than the alleged evolutionary
- age.
-
- Problems for evolution and the big bang - 11/177
-
- Evolutionary anthropologists say that the Stone Age lasted for at least 100,000
- years, during which time the world population of Neanderthal and Cro-magnon men
- was roughly constant, between one and 10 million. All that time they were
- burying their dead with artefacts. By this scenario, they would have buried at
- least four billion bodies. If the evolutionary time-scale is correct, buried
- bones should be able to last for much longer than 100,000 years, so many of the
- supposed four billion Stone Age skeletons should still be around (and certainly
- the buried artefacts). Yet only a few thousand have been found. This implies
- that the Stone Age was much shorter than evolutionists think, a few hundred
- years in many areas.
-
- Problems for evolution and the big bang - 12/177
-
- The usual evolutionary picture has men existing as hunters and gatherers for
- 100,000 years during the Stone Age before discovering agriculture less than
- 10,000 years ago. Yet the archaeological evidence shows that Stone Age men were
- as intelligent as we are. It is very improbable that none of the 4 billion
- people should discover that plants grow from seeds. It is more likely that men
- were without agriculture less than a few hundred years after the Flood, if at
- all.
-
- Problems for evolution and the big bang - 13/177
-
- According to evolutionists, Stone Age man existed for 100,000 years before
- beginning to make written records about 4,000-5,000 years ago. Prehistoric man
- built megalithic monuments, made beautiful cave paintings and kept records of
- lunar phases. Why would he wait 1000 centuries before using the same skills to
- record history? The biblical time-scale is much more likely.
-
- Problems for evolution and the big bang - 14/177
-
- Abrupt appearance of animals. All the different, basic kinds of animals appear
- abruptly and fully functional in the strata - with no proof of ancestors.
- 'Evolution requires intermediate forms between species and paleontology does not
- provide them.' (David Kitts, paleontologist and Evolutionist) Darwin was
- embarrassed by the fossil record. It contains no proof for macroevolution of
- animals.
-
- Problems for evolution and the big bang - 15/177
-
- Plants appear abruptly. Evolutionist Edred J.H. Corner: '...I still think that
- to the unprejudiced, the fossil record of plants is in favor of special
- creation.' (Evolution in Contemporary Thought, 1961, p.97) Scientists have been
- unable to find an Evolutionary history (beginning to end) for even one group of
- modern plants.
-
- Problems for evolution and the big bang - 16/177
-
- Animals unchanged. Contrary to common belief, most fossils are not of extinct
- types of animals. Most fossils are very similar (and often totally identical) to
- creatures living today. It is said there are many more living species of animals
- than there are types known only as fossils. If Evolution is true, one may wonder
- why the case is not just the reverse! Evolutionary history is supposed to be
- filled with temporary, intermediate stages of Evolution, from amoeba to man.
-
- Problems for evolution and the big bang - 17/177
-
- Sufficient fossils. There is a continuing lack of evidence for Evolution despite
- an enormous number of fossils. Although scientists will continue to discover new
- varieties of fossil animals and plants, it is generally agreed that the millions
- of fossils already discovered (and the sediments already explored) provide a
- reliable indication of which way the evidence is going. That is, there will
- continue to be little or no fossil evidence found to support Evolutionism.
-
- Problems for evolution and the big bang - 18/177
-
- Fast strata formation. There is increasing evidence that many sedimentary rocks,
- which some thought took thousands or millions of years to accumulate, almost
- certainly were deposited in only months, days, hours, or minutes.
-
- Problems for evolution and the big bang - 19/177
-
- Rapid coal formation. The old Evolutionary theory about coal forming in swamps
- is wrong. There is increasing evidence that massive coal deposits were formed in
- deep flood waters. Various coal layers in the U.S. consist mainly of sheets of
- tree bark abraded from huge masses of uprooted trees. The bark layers were
- buried in mud and carbonized into coal. Coal formation is relatively quick when
- heat is applied.
-
- Problems for evolution and the big bang - 20/177
-
- Fossilization requires very special conditions. Dinosaur and other fossils could
- not have formed in the way suggested by most Evolutionary books. Animals almost
- never fossilize unless they are buried quickly and deeply - before scavengers,
- bacteria and erosion reduce them to dust. Such conditions are highly unusual. In
- almost all cases, the very existence of the fossils, in the types and numbers
- discovered, strongly indicates catastrophic conditions were involved in their
- burial and preservation. Without such conditions, there seems to be no plausible
- way to explain their existence. Huge dinosaurs, huge schools of fish, and many
- diverse animals are found entombed by massive muddy sediments which hardened
- into rock. Almost all fossils are found in water-laid sediments.
-
- Problems for evolution and the big bang - 21/177
-
- Wrong order for evolution. It has been reported that '80 to 85% of Earth's land
- surface does not have even 3 geologic periods appearing in 'correct' consecutive
- order' for Evolution.
-
- Problems for evolution and the big bang - 22/177
-
- The fossil record does not provide evidence in support for Evolution. 'Fossils
- are a great embarrassment to Evolutionary theory and offer strong support for
- the concept of Creation.' (Dr. Gary Parker, Ph.D., Biologist/paleontologist and
- former Evolutionist)
-
- Problems for evolution and the big bang - 23/177
-
- Carbon dating extremely inaccurate. For example, Coal from Russia from the
- 'Pennsylvanian,' supposedly 300 million years old, was dated at 1,680 years.
- (Radiocarbon, vol. 8, 1966). Bones of a sabre-toothed tiger from the LaBrea tar
- pits (near Los Angeles), supposedly 100,000-one million years old, gave a date
- of 28,000 years. (Radiocarbon, vol. 10, 1968). A freshly killed seal dated by
- C14 showed it had died 1300 years ago. (Antarctic Journal, vol. 6,
- [September-October 1971], p. 211). Living mollusk shells were dated at up to
- 2,300 years old. (Science, vol. 141, 1963, pp. 634-637). Living snails' shells
- showed they had died 27,000 years ago. (Science, vol. 224, 1984, pp. 58-61).
-
- Problems for evolution and the big bang - 24/177
-
- The universe is far to clumpy to have been created by the big bang, even when
- you invent cold dark matter to make up 99% of the matter in the universe. Also,
- COBE, the instrument that measures background radioation (so called background
- noise of the big bang) found that is was uniform in every direction, but if the
- big bang theory was true, this would not be the case, and this was certainly an
- unexpected result. New Scientist magazine reported that 'Many accepted theories
- of galaxy formation will have to go if the datd build-up from cosmic background
- explorer satelite is published... Big Bang theorists will be in a lot of trouble
- when the data is released', and went on to say, 'But the authorities concerned
- are not releasing the data'. I wonder why!
-
- Problems for evolution and the big bang - 25/177
-
- Another measure from the age of the earth comes from the moon. When space ships
- landed on the moon, evolutionists expected the ships to sink in the thin layer
- of meteoritic dust that should have accumulated on the surface of the moon over
- its assumed age of billions of years. They estimated this layer to be at least
- 16.5 metres deep. But to their disappointment, when Luna landed on the moon, the
- greatest reading it gave was under 0.5 metres, showing that the moon is also
- young.
-
- Problems for evolution and the big bang - 26/177
-
- Breaks 1st Law of Thermodynamics. Energy is neither being created or destroyed.
-
- Problems for evolution and the big bang - 27/177
-
- Breaks 2nd Law of Thermodynamics. All physical systems, when left to themselves,
- will move in a direction from order to chaos.
-
- Problems for evolution and the big bang - 28/177
-
- Breaks 3rd Law of Thermodynamics. Order is maximum at absolute 0 temperature
- (-237°C). Adding raw energy reduces order.
-
- Problems for evolution and the big bang - 29/177
-
- Breaks Laws of Probability. If we are extremely generous to evolution, and give
- it 3 trillion years, and all the space in the universe for reactions that occur
- 100 billion billion times a second, the probability of evolution creating a
- 'simple' cell are 1:10^450, when there are only 1:10^170 possible reactions.
- This is considered a mathimatical impossibility. Similarily, the chances of
- evolution creating a horse is known to be 1:10^3000000.
-
- Problems for evolution and the big bang - 30/177
-
- Breaks Pasteur's Law of Biogenesis. Life can only come from life.
-
- Problems for evolution and the big bang - 31/177
-
- Breaks the Law of the Principle of Conservation of Angular Momentum. This
- principle states that uniform radial motion could never give rise to curvilinear
- motion. Hence the assumption that a linearly expanding gas converted into
- orbiting galaxies and planetary systems is just not possible.
-
- Problems for evolution and the big bang - 32/177
-
- Breaks Law of Cause and Effect. This states that for every effect, there must be
- a cause which is superiour in every aspect, showing that the universe could not
- have created itself as the Big Bang theory assumes. The universe (effect) needed
- a cause which is outside and superior to it. The only Cause that is outside
- space and time and is superior to all things is God.
-
- Problems for evolution and the big bang - 33/177
-
- Kraus, in a recent book, Has Hawking Erred?, calcculated a conservative estimate
- for the mass of the universe as 8*10^25. His conclusion was this, 'the idea that
- a speck of matter smaller than a dust particle on my table could have
- accomidated the condensed mass of the entire universe, streches credibility
- beyond its limits... The Big Bang theory must be seriously questioned'.
-
- Problems for evolution and the big bang - 34/177
-
- The Hubble Space Telescope reported that the stars are older than the very
- universe itself. The 'most perplexing' such galaxy to date has an apparent age
- (according to evolutionary theories) of 3.5 billion years, which is far too
- 'old' for a galaxy at such an alleged early stage (red shift 1.5) of the
- universe's history.
-
- Problems for evolution and the big bang - 35/177
-
- There are many evidences for man having lived with dinosaurs, such as foot
- prints found on a 'pre-historic' beach in Turkmenistan, of both man and
- dinosaurs. Also, many cave paintings and etchings have been discovered of
- dinosaurs. A 'pre-historic' horse that many evolutionists claimed to be an
- ancestor to the 'modern' horse, tan coloured, with a black stripe and black legs
- has been found living in Tibet! And there has been a new species of elephant
- discovered that is indentical to paintings of cave walls and has many features
- such as a sloping back and set-back head, once considered by evolutionsists to
- be a relation to the mammoth, found alive and kicking in Nepal!
-
- Problems for evolution and the big bang - 36/177
-
- Many cells, organs and functions of the body cannot be simplified. They could
- not have evolved either together or seperately as they require each others
- cooperation to have any beneficial value. With any part missing, the unit would
- cease to function, and would be more of a hindrance than a help. For example.
- God has given the wood pecker two backward-facing toes and an arrangemnet of
- tendons and leg muscles, sharp claws, and stiff tail feathers with spines, for
- use as a prop while climbing, a reinforced skull to stop it bashing its brains
- out, shock-absorbing tissue between the beak and the skull, a chisel-tipped beak
- and a stronger bill than most birds, slit-like nostrils with tiny feathers
- blocking them, so the saw dust doesn't enter the beak, muscles which pull its
- brain away from the beak every time it strikes a blow, supurbly coordinated neck
- muscles to keep its head straight while pecking, otherwise the bird's brain
- would tear away, and a long tounge spear-headed with bristles for sensing when
- it has caught a grub. Normal birds store their tounges in their beaks, but
- because the wood peckers tounge is so long, it is stored in its right nostril.
- It emerges, and splits in too halves, each going over one side of the skull
- underneath the skin. Then they come around and up underneath the beak, and enter
- the hole in the beak where they rejoin. Without any one of these features, the
- bird would simply not survive. It couldn't have evolved, like many other things
- such as the Giraffe's long neck.
-
- Problems for evolution and the big bang - 37/177
-
- Mutations are never beneficial. They are only either harmful or deadly. This is
- in keeping with the 2nd law of thermodynamics. Many experiments were carried out
- on fruit flies. Some flies had no legs, others had no wings. None of the
- mutations were beneficial to the fruit fly. Mutations don't add any information
- for creating new features. They are only the rearrangement of proteins in DNA.
- Any time a species was found to have developed a new feature, after
- investigation, it is always found to be just a rearrangemnet of old information.
- If anything, mutations degrade and loose information. Famous exmaples like the
- Giraffe that stretched up to get the leaves of the trees don't work. These kind
- of changes aren't hereditory. And what happened to the young Giraffes that
- couldn't reach any leaves?
-
- Problems for evolution and the big bang - 38/177
-
- Contrary to popular opinion, it doesn't take thousands of years for fossils to
- form. One nice example is of a miner who misplaced his felt hat while working in
- a mine in 1850. Fifty years later, it was discovered and found to have evolved
- from a soft hat into a hard hat! :). And in 'the buried village' in New Zealand,
- there has also been everything from petrified bowler hats, bags of flour and ham
- to sausages believed to be petrified lamp fuel. In Australia, there have been
- fence posts, which are wooden on top, and turned to stone under the ground,
- after being in the ground for only 50 years.
-
- Problems for evolution and the big bang - 39/177
-
- It doesn't take thousand of years for stalligmites or stalligtites to form. One
- famous exmaple if of a fizzy drinks bottle in a cave which already has a layer
- of 3 mm. Another example is of a stalligmite forming on some newly built steps
- in a cave. The guide said that stalligmites take many thousands of years to
- form, but when asked about this one, said to the effect that this rule applies
- to most, but not all stalligmites.
-
- Problems for evolution and the big bang - 40/177
-
- Creationsts do not argue that life is merely complex, but is ordered in a way as
- to defy natural explanation. The order in the proteins and DNA of living things
- is independant of the properties of the chemicals which they consist, unlike a
- crystal of salt where the structure results from the porperties of the salt
- molecule. The order in living things parallels that in printed books, where the
- information is not contained in the ink or even in the letters but in the
- complex arrangement of letters which make up words which make up sentences which
- make up paragraphs which make up chapters which make up books. These components
- of written language respectively parallel the nucleic acid bases, condons,
- genes, operons, chromosomes and genomes which make up the genetic programs of
- living cells.
-
- Problems for evolution and the big bang - 41/177
-
- In all the fossil record, comprising of millions of fossils, not a single
- transitional form is to be found. Evolutionists cannot blame the size of the
- record, as Darwin hinted, for the absence of those forms. According to Newell,
- an evolutionist: 'Many discontinuities tend to be more and more emphasised with
- increased collecting'. Simpson, one of the world's foremost evolutionists wrote:
- 'Regular absense of transitional forms, is not confined to mammals, but is
- almost a universal phenomenon. It is possible to claim that such transitions are
- not recorded because they did not exist'.
-
- Problems for evolution and the big bang - 42/177
-
- Polystrate fossils: These are fossils standing in a verticle position instead of
- the usual horizontal, and spanning more than one layer of 6 metres (20 ft)
- thickness. Outstanding examples are fossil trees 24 metres (80 ft) standing
- vertically or sometimes upside down and spanning 4-5 layers. Each layer,
- according to evolution, must have taken millions of years to be deposited, and
- there is no way evolutionists can explain how such fossilized trees remained
- upright while the layers were being deposited.
-
- Problems for evolution and the big bang - 43/177
-
- Fossilized tracks of man and dinosaur: These appear together in the Paluxy River
- basin in Texas. According to evolution, dinsosaurs are supposed to have become
- extinct 70 million years before man arrived on the scene. But here we have
- evidence that they roamed the world together, wiping out 70 million years of
- evolution.
-
- Problems for evolution and the big bang - 44/177
-
- Frozen mammoths in Siberia: Found with their meals still in their stomachs,
- these show sudden death by freezing. According to evolution, the freezing came
- very slowly. Hence there is no way evolution can explain this sudden freezing of
- mammoths.
-
- Problems for evolution and the big bang - 45/177
-
- Pollen and spores from land plants in Cambrian strata: According to evolution,
- when Cambrian strata were being depositied, land plants had not yet appeared on
- the scene, and there is no way to explain the presence of pollen and spores in
- Cambrian rocks.
-
- Problems for evolution and the big bang - 46/177
-
- The geologic column: Described by geologists as a regular succession of rock
- layers, starting with the 'oldest' at the bottom and the 'youngest' at the top,
- the geologic column is nowhere found complete and is not always as predicted.
- Vast areas of 'older' rocks are found on top of 'younger' ones, so huge, and
- laid down so smoothly that they cannot be explained away as geologic faults.
-
- Problems for evolution and the big bang - 47/177
-
- Evolutionist, W. Stansfield wrote, 'It is obvious that radiometric methods may
- not be the reliable dating methods they are often claimed to be. Age estimates
- on a given geological stratum using different methods are often quite
- different... There is absolutely no reliable long-term radiological clock'.
-
- Problems for evolution and the big bang - 48/177
-
- The potassium-argon method is well known for its inconsistent results. It is
- enough to mention that when this method was applied to volcanic rocks known to
- be 200 years old from the historical record, it gave a range of values from 22
- million to 200 million years old.
-
- Problems for evolution and the big bang - 49/177
-
- In an article in the Anthropological Journal of Canada, under the heading
- 'RadioCarbon, Ages in Error', Robert Lee sets forth the truth of the matter.
- 'The troubles of the radiocarbon dating method are undeniably deep and
- serious... it should be no surprise then, that fully half of the dates are
- rejected. The wonder is, surely, that the remaining half come to be accepted'.
-
- Problems for evolution and the big bang - 50/177
-
- At a symposium on pre-history, Proffesor Brew summarised a common attitude among
- archaeologists towards the C14 dating method: 'If a C14 date supports our
- theories, we put it in the main text. If it does not entirley contradict them,
- we put it in a footnote. And if it is completely out of date, we just drop it'.
-
- Problems for evolution and the big bang - 51/177
-
- Dr. John Eddy, an astro-geophysicist, in a report published in the Geotimes of
- September 1978 makes this comment: 'There is no evidence based solely on solar
- observations, Eddy stated, that the sun is 4.5-5*10^9 years old. 'I suspect', he
- said, 'that the sun is 4.5 billion years old. However, given some new and
- unexpected results, to the contrary, and some time for frantic recalculation and
- theoretical adjustment, I suspect that we could live in Bishop Ussher's value
- for the age of the earth and sun. I don't think we have much in the way of
- observational evidence in astronomy to conflict with that'.
-
- Problems for evolution and the big bang - 52/177
-
- All recorded history and civilizations of the world date back to a maximum of
- 6000 years. Isn't this strange if man, according to evolution, has been around
- for over 1 million years?
-
- Problems for evolution and the big bang - 53/177
-
- The oldest living trees in the world dated accurately by annual growth rings are
- about 4-5000 years old, in harmony with the date of the flood in the creation
- model.
-
- Problems for evolution and the big bang - 54/177
-
- The present world population (about 4 billion people) is in harmony with the
- date of the flood. If we start with 8 people who came out of the ark, and apply
- a growth factor of 2.5 children per family (less than the present rate), we will
- end up with the present population in about 4300 years, which takes us back to
- Noah's time. But if we take the same rate, and apply it to only half a million
- years of evolution of man, there would not be enough surface area on our planet
- to contain the number of people.
-
- Problems for evolution and the big bang - 55/177
-
- Dr. Barnes of Texas University studied the rate of decay of the magnetic field
- of the earth, using recorded data of scientists over the past 300 years. He
- found out that if we go back beyond 20,000 years, the heat from currents causing
- the magnetic field would have been so strong, as to seperate the core from the
- mantle of the earth.
-
- Problems for evolution and the big bang - 56/177
-
- Modern studies (Even by Dr. Libby who discovered the method) show that the C14
- equilibrium state (Which takes 30,000 years to achieve from the start of the
- atmosphere) has not been reached yet, and that C14 formation is still at least
- 24% more than decay. All dates arrived at by this method now require adjustment,
- and such adjustments have reduced the dates dramatically. In RadioCarbon
- magazine, several examples were given, such as coal from Russia, supposidly 300
- million years old, after re-dating, was only 1680 years old!
-
- Problems for evolution and the big bang - 57/177
-
- Modern studies (Even by Dr. Libby who discovered the method) show that the C14
- equilibrium state (Which takes 30,000 years to achieve from the start of the
- atmosphere) has not been reached yet, and that C14 formation is still at least
- 24% more than decay. From these measurements, scientists were able to calculate
- an upper limit to the age of the atmosphere of 10,000 years. Since we cannot
- imagine an earth without an atmosphere, the age of the earth (and mankind!) has
- an upper limit of 10,000 years in conformity with what God has revealed about
- creation.
-
- Problems for evolution and the big bang - 58/177
-
- The Weekend Australian 7-8 May, 1983, described the responce of Richard Leaky,
- the Director of the Natural History Museums in Kenya, to the Lucy find: 'Echoing
- the critism made of his father's habilis skulls, he added that the Lucy's skull
- was so incomplete that most of it was 'imagination made of plaster of Paris',
- thus making it impossible to draw any firm conclusion about what species she
- belonged to'.
-
- Problems for evolution and the big bang - 59/177
-
- The famous research anatomist, Prof. Lord Solly Zuckerman, like many other
- authorities in this field, has questioned the scientific validity of fossil
- finds. In his book, Beyond the Ivory Tower, he writes: 'The record is so
- astonishing, that it is legitimate to ask whether much of science is to be found
- in this field at all'.
-
- Problems for evolution and the big bang - 60/177
-
- The earlier discovery by Richard Leaky in 1973, the Director of the Natural
- History Museums in Kenya, of modern man aged 2.8 million years old (according to
- evolutionist dating methods), wiped out all the previous ape-men related
- findings. Speaking on the find, Leaky said: 'What we have discovered simply
- wipes out everything we have been taught about human evolution and I have
- nothing to offer in its place'.
-
- Evidence of the Bible's inspiration - 61/177
-
- 'He hangeth the earth on nothing' (Job 26:7). Job wrote this fact over 3500
- years ago, yet this is 20th century physics. The laws of gravity which Newton
- discovered do no add anything to what Job recorded, they simply explain how God
- 'hangeth the earth on nothing'. At the turn of this century, scientists believed
- that a space substance called 'ether' existed throughout space, and helped to
- hold the earth in its position. But this has now been disproved, and the most
- scientific statement is still that 'He hangeth the earth on nothing'.
-
- Evidence of the Bible's inspiration - 62/177
-
- 'The host of heaven cannot be numbered' (Jer 33:32). For centuries, there have
- been attampts at counting the number of stars. Ptolemy counted 1056, Brahe said
- 777, Kepler counted 1005. The number has been increased until today it is well
- known that there are well over 100 billion stars in our own galaxy, with
- probably another 100 billion galaxies.
-
- Evidence of the Bible's inspiration - 63/177
-
- 'For the life of the flesh is in the blood' (Lev 17:11). Over the ages,
- scientists argued about the 'life of the flesh', and suggested that various
- organs in the human body carried this responsibility. Blood was never on their
- list. In 1628, Harvey proved that the blood circulates from the heart and back
- to it, reaching all parts of the body via arteries and viens. He was the first
- to discover what is a well known fact today.
-
- Evidence of the Bible's inspiration - 64/177
-
- 'For dust thou art, and to dust thou shalt return' (Gen 3:19). In the late
- eighteenth century scientists developed techniques for analysing minerals, and
- many other such techniques exist today. Chemical analysis of the composition of
- man's body, and the dust of the earth has shown that the following elements
- which make up major constituents of the human body are also present in typical
- samples of dust on the surface of the earth: Calcium, Phosphorus, Potassium,
- Sodium, Magnesium, Iron, Oxygen, Chlorine, Carbon, Hydrogen, Nitrogen and
- Sulphur.
-
- Evidence of the Bible's inspiration - 65/177
-
- The dimensions of the ark have been analysed by experts in the field of
- hydraulic engineering. Dr Henry Morris, who chaired civil engineering
- departments in top America universities, after careful analysis of the
- dimensions came the the conclusion that it is almost impossible to capsize.
- (Morris, H.M. The Biblical Basis for Modern Science, Baker Book House, Michigan,
- 1993, p. 295).
-
- Evidence of the Bible's inspiration - 66/177
-
- Analysis of the stability of Noah's ark has been carried out using a cross
- section of the ark and the forces and moments acting on it as it is tilted about
- by violent storms. They show that the bouyant force tending to right it, always
- acts outside the wieght force tending to capsize it. The result is it will
- always return to its normal floating position. Noah's ark's ratio of length to
- width is 6 to 1 (300 cubits to 50 cubits) tend to keep it from being subjected
- to wave forces of equal magnitude over its whole length, since wave fields tend
- to occur in broken and varying patterns, rather than in a series of long uniform
- crest-trough sequences. Any vortex action to which it might occasionally be
- subjected would also tend to be resisted by its 6 to 1 length to width ratio.
-
- Problems for evolution and the big bang - 67/177
-
- In his book, The Big Bang Never Happened, E. J. Lerner argues that the Big Bang
- is nothing but a myth that contradicts scientific observations: 'The Big Bang
- has flunked every test, yet it remains the dominant cosmology, and the tower of
- theroetical entities and hypotheses climbs steadily higher. Today's cosmologists
- have... thus returned to a form of mathematical myth... Entire careers in
- cosmology have now been built on theories which have never been subjected to
- observational test, or have failed such tests and been retained nonetheless'.
-
- Problems for evolution and the big bang - 68/177
-
- Jeremy Rifkin in his book, Entropy: A New World View writes: 'We believe that
- evolution somehow magically creates greater overall value and order on earth.
- Now that the environment we live in is becoming so dissipated and disordered
- that it is apparent to the naked eye, we are beginning for the first time to
- have second thoughts about our views on evolution, progress, and the creation of
- things of material value... Evolution means the creation of larger and larger
- islands of order at the expense of greater seas of disorder in the world. There
- is not a single biologist or physicist who can deny this central truth. Yet who
- is willing to stand up in a classroom or a public forum and admit it'.
-
- Problems for evolution and the big bang - 69/177
-
- Lipson, the British physicist comments in an article published by Physics
- Bulletin, May 1980, entitled, A Physicist Looks at Evolution: 'If living matter
- is not, then, caused by the interplay of atoms, natural forces, amnd radiation,
- how has it come into being?'. After dismissing a sort of directed evolution, he
- concludes: 'I think, however, that we must go further than this and admit that
- the only acceptable explanation is creation...I know this is anathema to
- physicists, as indeed it is to me...but we must not reject a theory we do not
- like if the experimental evidence supports it'.
-
- Problems for evolution and the big bang - 70/177
-
- Darwin analysed many features of animals and attributed them to survival of the
- fittest. He assumed that new traits, for example, the long neck of the Giraffe,
- were acquired characteristics due to the environment, and believed that these
- could be inherited. Giraffes supossidly got long necks becasue their ancestors
- stretched them to reach leaves high in the trees, then passed on more neck
- 'pangenes' to their offspring. This idea of progress through effort, which
- contributed to the early popularity of evolution, has since been proved wrong
- and discarded.
-
- Problems for evolution and the big bang - 71/177
-
- Denton writes the following as a conclusion to the subject of transitional
- forms: 'In a very real sense therefore, advocacy of the doctrine of continuity
- (eg. evolutionism) has always necessitated a retreat from pure empiricism (ie.
- logic and observation), and contrary to what is widely assumed by evolutionary
- biologists today, it has always been the anti-evolutionists (eg. creationists),
- not the evolutionists, in the scientific community who have stuck rigidly to the
- facts and adhered to a more strictly empirical appraoch... It was Darwin the
- evolutionist who was retreating from the facts'.
-
- Problems for evolution and the big bang - 72/177
-
- Charles Darwin is popularly supposed to have solved the problem of 'the origin
- of species,' in his famous 1859 book of that title. However, as the eminent
- Harvard biologist, Ernst Mayr, one of the nation's top evolutionists, has
- observed: 'Darwin never really did discuss the origin of species in his On the
- Origin of Species'. (In Mayr's book Systematics and the Origin of Species
- (1942), as cited by a prominent modern evolutionist, Niles Edlredge, in his
- book, Time Frames: The Rethinking of Darwinian Evolution and the Theory of
- Punctuated Equilibria (New York: Simon and Schuster, 1985), p. 33)
-
- Problems for evolution and the big bang - 73/177
-
- Not only could Darwin not cite a single example of a new species originating,
- but neither has anyone else in all the subsequent century of evolutionary study.
- 'No one has ever produced a species by mechanisms of natural selection. No one
- has gotten near it...'.(Colin Patterson, 'Cladistics.' Interview on BBC, March
- 4, 1982. Dr. Patterson is the senior paleontologist at the British Museum of
- Natural History)
-
- Problems for evolution and the big bang - 74/177
-
- It is a very curious fact that no one understands how evolution works.
- Evolutionists commonly protest that they know evolution is true, but they can't
- seem to determine its mechanism'. 'Evolution is... troubled from within by the
- troubling complexities of genetic and developmental mechanisms and new questions
- about the central mystery--speciation itself'. (Keith S. Thompson, 'The Meanings
- of Evolution,' American Scientist (vol. 70, September/October 1982), p. 529)
-
- Problems for evolution and the big bang - 75/177
-
- It used to be claimed that the best evidence for evolution was the fossil
- record, but the fact is that the billions of known fossils have not yet yielded
- a single unequivocal transitional form with transitional structures in the
- process of evolving. 'The known fossil record fails to document a single example
- of phyletic evolution accomplishing a major morphologic transition...'. (Steven
- M. Stanley, Macroevolution: Pattern and Process (San Francisco: W.M. Freeman and
- Co., 1979), p. 39)
-
- Problems for evolution and the big bang - 76/177
-
- The ubiquitous absence of intermediate forms is true not only for 'major
- morphologic transitions,' but even for most species. 'As is now well known, most
- fossil species appear instantaneously in the fossil record, persist for some
- millions of years virtually unchanged, only to disappear abruptly...'. (Tom
- Kemp, 'A Fresh Look at the Fossil Record,' New Scientist (Vol. 108; December 5,
- 1985), p. 67. Dr. Kemp is Curator of the University Museum at Oxford University)
-
- Problems for evolution and the big bang - 77/177
-
- As a result of the ubiquitous absence of intermediate forms, many modern
- evolutionists agree with the following assessment: 'In any case, no real
- evolutionist . . . uses the fossil record as evidence in favor of the theory of
- evolution as opposed to special creation...'. (Mark Ridley, 'Who Doubts
- Evolution?' New Scientist (vol. 90; June 25, 1981), p. 831. Dr. Ridley is
- Professor of Zoology at Oxford University)
-
- Problems for evolution and the big bang - 78/177
-
- Not only are there no true transitional forms in the fossils; there is not even
- any general evidence of evolutionary progression in the actual fossil sequences.
- 'The fossil record of evolution is amenable to a wide variety of models ranging
- from completely deterministic to completely stochastic'. (David M. Raup,
- 'Probabilistic Models in Evolutionary Biology' American Scientist (vol. 166.
- January/February 1977), p. 57)
-
- Problems for evolution and the big bang - 79/177
-
- 'I regard the failure to find a clear 'vector of progress' in life's history as
- the most puzzling fact of the fossil record...we have sought to impose a pattern
- that we hoped to find on a world that does not really display it'. (Stephen Jay
- Gould, 'The Ediacaran Experiment,' Natural History (vol. 93; February 1984), p.
- 23. Dr. Gould, Professor of Geology at Harvard, is arguably the nation's most
- prominent modern evolutionist)
-
- Problems for evolution and the big bang - 80/177
-
- The superficial appearance of an evolutionary pattern in the fossil record has
- actually been imposed on it by the fact that the rocks containing the fossils
- have themselves been 'dated' by their fossils. 'And this poses something of a
- problem: If we date the rocks by their fossils, how can we then turn around and
- talk about patterns of evolutionary change through time in the fossil record?'
- (Niles Eldredge, op. cit., p. 52)
-
- Problems for evolution and the big bang - 81/177
-
- The basic reason why there is no scientific evidence of evolution in either the
- present or the past is that the law of increasing entropy, or the second law of
- thermodynamics, contradicts the very premise of evolution. The evolutionist
- assumes that the whole universe has evolved upward from a single primeval
- particle to human beings, but the second law (one of the best-proved laws of
- science) says that the whole universe is running down into complete disorder.
- 'How can the forces of biological development and the forces of physical
- degeneration be operating at cross purposes? It would take, of course, a far
- greater mind than mine even to attempt to penetrate this riddle. I can only pose
- the question...'. (Sydney Harris, 'Second Law of Thermodynamics.' This
- nationally syndicated column appeared in the San Francisco Examiner on January
- 27, 1984)
-
- Problems for evolution and the big bang - 82/177
-
- Entropy can be forced to decrease in an open system, if enough organizing energy
- and information is applied to it from outside the system. This externally
- introduced complexity would have to be adequate to overcome the normal internal
- increase in entropy when raw energy is added from outside. However, no such
- external source of organized and energized information is available to the
- supposed evolutionary process. Raw solar energy is not organized information!
-
- Problems for evolution and the big bang - 83/177
-
- The existence of similarities between organisms--whether in external morphology
- or internal biochemistry--is easily explained as the Creator's design of similar
- systems for similar functions, but such similarities are not explicable by
- common evolutionary descent. 'It is now clear that the pride with which it was
- assumed that the inheritance of homologous structures from a common ancestor
- explained homology was misplaced'. (Sir Gavin de Beer, Homology, an Unsolved
- Problem (London: Oxford University Press, 1971), p. 15. Sir Gavin is a leading
- European evolutionist)
-
- Problems for evolution and the big bang - 84/177
-
- 'The really significant finding that comes to light from comparing the proteins'
- amino acid sequences is that it is impossible to arrange them in any sort of an
- evolutionary series'. (Michael Denton, Evolution: A Theory in Crisis (London:
- Burnett Books, 1985), p. 289. Denton is a research microbiologist in Australia)
-
- Problems for evolution and the big bang - 85/177
-
- The old arguments for evolution based on the recapitulation theory (the idea
- that embryonic development in the womb recapitulates the evolution of the
- species) and vestigial organs ('useless' organs believed to have been useful in
- an earlier stage of evolution) have long been discredited. '...the theory of
- recapitulation...should be defunct today'. (Stephen Jay Gould, 'Dr. Down's
- Syndrome,' Natural History (April 1980), p. 144)
-
- Problems for evolution and the big bang - 86/177
-
- The old arguments for evolution based on the recapitulation theory (the idea
- that embryonic development in the womb recapitulates the evolution of the
- species) and vestigial organs ('useless' organs believed to have been useful in
- an earlier stage of evolution) have long been discredited. 'An analysis of the
- difficulties in unambiguously identifying functionless structures...leads to the
- conclusion that 'vestigial organs' provide no evidence for evolutionary theory'.
- (S.R. Scadding, 'Do `Vestigial Organs' Provide Evidence for Evolution?'
- Evolutionary Theory (vol. 5, May 1981), p. 173)
-
- Problems for evolution and the big bang - 87/177
-
- Salomonsen, writing about the breathtaking navigational feat, says: 'Even when
- birds were anaesthetised for the outward journey, or if their cages were made to
- rotate continuously so that their orientation was constantly changing, they were
- just as able to find their way home as were the control birds. Therefore there
- can be no doubt that birds have a special sense of geographical position, i.e. a
- real navigational sense. The nature of this instinct remains a mystery; even
- more so, the location of the relevant sense organ'. (Salomonsen, F.: Aus der
- Serie: Moderne Biologie BLV Munchen. Basel, Wien, 1969, 210 S)
-
- Problems for evolution and the big bang - 88/177
-
- The origin of the ice age has greatly perplexed uniformitarian scientists. Much
- cooler summers and copious snowfall are required, but they are inversely
- related, since cooler air is drier. It is unlikely cooler temperatures could
- induce a change in atmospheric circulation that would provide the needed
- moisture. As a result, well over 60 theories have been proposed. Charlesworth
- states: 'Pleistocene phenomena have produced an absolute riot of theories
- ranging 'from the remotely possible to the mutually contradictory and the
- palpably inadequate'.'. (Charlesworth, J.K., 1957,The Quaternary Era, Vol. 2,
- London, Edward Arnold, ;. 1532)
-
- Problems for evolution and the big bang - 89/177
-
- Take the Coelacanth. On the basis of fossil evidence, evolutionists believed it
- was intermediate between fish and amphibia. Reconstructions showed Coelacanth to
- have both amphibian and fish-like characteristics. Later, live Coelacanths
- turned up in the Indian Ocean near Cape Province, South Africa. They were fish.
- The reconstructions had been wrong. All of which shows that fossils provide a
- poor basis for detailed inferences about proposed links between classes.
-
- Problems for evolution and the big bang - 90/177
-
- 'Is it really credible that random processes could have constructed a reality,
- the smallest element of which--a functional protein or gene--is complex
- beyond...anything produced by the intelligence of man?'. (Denton, op. cit., p.
- 342)
-
- Problems for evolution and the big bang - 91/177
-
- Evidence of rapid deposition and burial of fossils is found in the Redwall
- Limestone. Along the Colorado River at Nautiloid Canyon, just north of Grand
- Canyon, the Redwall Limestone contains large fossils of nautiloids squid like
- marine animals that possessed a straight shell, sometimes over two feet long.
- The long, slender shells of numerous nautiloids, in Nautiloid Canyon, have a
- dominant orientation, indicating that current was operating, as fine grained
- lime mud accumulated. (Observation of Steven A. Austin in Nautiloid Canyon,
- April 1989)
-
- Problems for evolution and the big bang - 92/177
-
- All of the species of Australopithecus and Homo habilis had long curved fingers
- and long curved toes. Creatures with such anatomical features use them for only
- one purpose--swinging from branch to branch in the trees. So much for the
- supposed human-like upright locomotion of Homo habilis and Australopithecus,
- including 'Lucy.'
-
- Problems for evolution and the big bang - 93/177
-
- Though Darwin hoped fossil transitions would appear eventually, none did. Only
- trivial cases of microevolution, hardly rivaling selective breeding, were
- evident. Nor for more than a hundred years would any accurate measure of
- distances between existing classes become possible.
-
- Problems for evolution and the big bang - 94/177
-
- In all comparisons, the hypotheses of general evolution are false. Denton
- writes: The really significant finding that comes to light from comparing the
- proteins' amino acid sequences is that it is impossible to arrange them in any
- sort of evolutionary series. (Jacques Monod, Chance and Necessity, London:
- Collins, 1972, p. 110 (as cited by Denton, op. cit., p. 289)) The upshot is that
- the whole concept of evolution collapses (Ibid., p. 291) [because] the pattern
- of diversity at a molecular level conforms to a highly ordered hierarchic
- system. Each class at a molecular level is unique, isolated, and unlinked by
- intermediates. (Ibid., p. 290)
-
- Problems for evolution and the big bang - 95/177
-
- Accidental design adjustments, as necessary for general evolution, are logical
- disasters. Random mutations from radiation, replication errors, or other
- proposed sources, rarely result in viable design adjustments, never in perfect
- more advanced designs. Evidence for general evolution is altogether lacking and
- predictions from the theory are false. Darwin confessed the distinctness of
- specific forms and their not being blended together by innumerable transitional
- links is a very obvious difficulty. ( See Charles Darwin, op. cit., p. 307 (as
- cited by Denton, op. cit., p. 56))
-
- Problems for evolution and the big bang - 96/177
-
- Based on the Big Bang theory, cosmologists predicted that the distribution of
- matter throughout the universe would be homogeneous. Thus, based upon the
- so-called Cosmological Principle, it was postulated that the distribution of
- galaxies in the universe would be essentially uniform. No matter in which
- direction one looked, if one looked far enough, one would see the same number of
- galaxies. There would be no large scale clusters of galaxies or great voids in
- space. Recent research, however, has revealed massive superclusters of galaxies
- and vast voids in space. We exist in a very 'clumpy' universe.
-
- Problems for evolution and the big bang - 97/177
-
- The present crisis in Big Bang cosmologies began in 1986, when R. Brent Tully,
- of the University of Hawaii, showed that there were ribbons of superclusters of
- galaxies 300 million light-years long and 100 million light-years thick,
- stretching out about a billion light-years, and separated by voids about 300
- million light-years across.(R. B. Tully, Astrophysics Journal 303:25-38 (1986)).
- dThese structures are much too big for the Big Bang theory to produce. At the
- speeds at which galaxies are supposed to be moving, it would require 80 billion
- years to create such a huge complex, but the age of the universe is supposed to
- be somewhere between 10 and 20 billion years.
-
- Problems for evolution and the big bang - 98/177
-
- Recently (January 3, 1991), Will Saunders and nine fellow astronomers published
- the results of their all-sky redshift survey of galaxies detected by the
- Infrared Astronomical Satellite. This survey revealed the existence of a
- far-greater number of massive superclusters of galaxies than can be accounted
- for by Big Bang cosmologies. (Will Saunders, et al, Nature 349:32-38 (1991))
-
- Problems for evolution and the big bang - 99/177
-
- In an attempt to salvage the Big Bang theory, cosmologists have invented
- hypotheses to explain the failures of their hypotheses. One of these is the Cold
- Dark Matter (CDM) theory. According to this theory, 90-99% of the matter in the
- universe cannot be detected. If CDM existed, it would supply sufficient
- gravitational pull to create large clusters of galaxies. The structures
- discovered during the past few years, however, are so massive that even if CDM
- did exist, it could not account for their formation. Saunders and co-workers
- thus state that the CDM model can be ruled out to at least the 97% confidence
- level.
-
- Problems for evolution and the big bang - 100/177
-
- Recently, the U.S.-European Roentgen Satellite (ROSAT), detecting x-ray
- emissions, discovered evidence of giant superclusters of quasars on the edge of
- the universe, supposedly eight to 12 billion light years from the earth. (R.
- Cowen, Science News 139:52 (1991)). Physicist Paul Steinhardt, of the University
- of Pennsylvania, states that 'This may be the start of the death knell of the
- cold-dark-matter theory. ' Even if this hypothetical matter existed, it still
- could not explain the existence of these giant clusters of quasars'.
-
- Problems for evolution and the big bang - 101/177
-
- Since the Big Bang theory predicted a homogeneous universe with matter evenly
- distributed throughout the universe, evolutionary cosmologists expected that the
- background radiation would be perfectly smooth. That is, no matter in which
- direction one looked, the background radiation would be the same. Just as
- predicted, the background radiation was perfectly smooth. Theorists were
- delighted, smug in the assurance that this background radiation was the leftover
- whimper of the Big Bang. Now it turns out that the universe is not homogeneous,
- but is extremely lumpy, with massive superclusters of galaxies and great voids
- in space. If the background radiation is left over from the Big Bang, it should
- not be smooth, but should be more intense in certain directions than in others,
- indicating inhomogeneities at the very start of the universe, immediately
- following the initial moments of the Big Bang. Astronomers thus began to search
- for differences in the background radiations. All measurements showed it to be
- perfectly smooth. Thus COBE was launched to an orbit 559 miles above the earth,
- carrying sensitive instruments to measure the background radiation. Alas,
- preliminary data from COBE announced in January, show absolutely no evidence of
- inhomogeneity in the background radiation. It is perfectly smooth. (E. G.
- Lerner, Aerospace America March 1990, p. 41)
-
- Problems for evolution and the big bang - 102/177
-
- 'No energetic processes, even unknown ones, could have occurred that were
- vigorous enough to either create the large-scale structure astronomers have
- observed or stop their headlong motion once created. There is simply no way to
- form these structures in the 20 billion years since the Big Bang'. (E. G.
- Lerner, Aerospace America March 1990, p. 42)
-
- Problems for evolution and the big bang - 103/177
-
- The Greenland Society of Atlanta has recently attempted to excavate a 10-foot
- diameter shaft in the Greenland ice pack to remove two B-17 Flying Fortresses
- and 6 P-38 Lightning fighters trapped under an estimated 250 feet of ice for
- almost 50 years (Bloomberg, 1989). Aside from the fascination with salvaging
- several vintage aircraft for parts and movie rights, the fact that these
- aircraft were buried so deeply in such a short time focuses attention on the
- time scales used to estimate the chronologies of ice If the aircraft were buried
- under about 250 feet of ice and snow in about 50 years, this means the ice sheet
- has been accumulating at an average rate of 5 feet per year. The Greenland ice
- sheet averages almost 4000 feet thick. If we were to assume the ice sheet has
- been accumulating at this rate since its beginning, it would take less than 1000
- years for it to form and the recent-creation model might seem to be vindicated.
-
- Problems for the brand-new plasma theory already - 104/177
-
- The plasma universe assumes that electric and magnetic forces are dominant in
- space instead of gravity. However, it has not been shown that electromagnetism
- is capable of forming and shaping galaxies, even with unlimited time.
-
- Problems for evolution and the big bang - 105/177
-
- Galileo: From the Divine Word, the Sacred Scripture and Nature did both alike
- proceed. (From Galileo's letters of 1613-1615. Quoted by Gerald Holton,
- Introduction toConcepts and Theories in Physical Science (Addison-Wesley Pub.
- Co., Reading, MA, 1973, p. 57)
-
- Problems for evolution and the big bang - 106/177
-
- Newton: This most beautiful [gravitational] system of the sun, planets, and
- comets could only proceed from the counsel and dominion of an intelligent and
- powerful Being. (In the second edition of Newton's Principia. Quoted by J. De
- Vries, Essentials of Physical Science. (Wm. B. Eerdmans Pub. Co., Grand Rapids,
- SD, 1958), p. 15)
-
- Problems for evolution and the big bang - 107/177
-
- Newton: When I wrote my treatise [principia] about our [solar system], I had an
- eye on such principles as might work with considering men for the belief in a
- Deity; and nothing can rejoice me more than to find it useful for that purpose.
- (From a 1692 letter. Quoted by Gerald Holton, p. 192)
-
- Problems for evolution and the big bang - 108/177
-
- It should be remembered that astronomers have no satisfying formation mechanism
- for the vast nebulae themselves, from which stars are assumed to grow
- spontaneously. To make the popular assumption that the gas and dust came from
- preexisting stars is simply to reason in a circle.
-
- Problems for evolution and the big bang - 109/177
-
- Over the years, Barnard's Star, 61 Cygni, VB8B, and several other stars showed
- wobbles that were heralded as planet-caused. Each planet report was later
- debunked. (MacRobert, A.M. and J. Rather, The Planet of 51 Pegasi, Sky and
- Telescope 91(1), 1995, pp. 38 40). In 1992, a planet was declared to be orbiting
- a nearby pulsar. (Bailes, M., A.G. Lyne, and S.L. Shemar, A planet orbiting the
- neutron star PSR1329-10, Nature 352(6333), 1991, pp. 311-313). Variation in the
- light signal was later embarrassingly shown to be caused by the earth's own
- orbital motion instead of by a new planet. (MacRobert, A.M., et al. op. cit., p.
- 40)
-
- Problems for evolution and the big bang - 110 /177
-
- The standard model of the Sun assumes that it is around 5 billion years old and
- that it has already passed into its nuclear burning stage. This makes it all the
- more extraordinary that in 1976 a team of Russian astronomers, writing in the
- respected British Scientific Journal Nature showed how their research pointed
- clearly to the startling fact that the Sun does not even seem to possess a large
- dense nuclear burning core. Instead, their results showed the Sun as bearing the
- characteristics of a very young homogeneous star that corresponds with the early
- stages of the computer models.
-
- Problems for evolution and the big bang - 111/177
-
- A team of Russian astronomers have proposed that nuclear reactions 'are not
- responsible for energy generation in the Sun'. They said that such a conclusion,
- 'although rather extravagant', follows from their own research into the analysis
- of the global oscillations of the Sun and is quite consistent with two other
- major observational findings. They cited these other evidences as being the
- observed absence of appreciable neutrino flux from the Sun, and the observed
- abundance of Lithium and Beryllium in the stellar atmosphere. (Severny, A.B.
- Kotov, V.A., and Tsap, T.T., 1976. 'Observations of solar pulsations,' Nature,
- vol. 259, p 89)
-
- Problems for evolution and the big bang - 112/177
-
- A team of Russian astronomers have proposed that the Sun, according to their
- data, could be homogeneous throughout. (Severny, A.B. Kotov, V.A., and Tsap,
- T.T., 1976. 'Observations of solar pulsations,' Nature, vol. 259, p 89)
-
- Problems for evolution and the big bang - 113/177
-
- Evidense for a young sun: The fundamental oscillation of the Sun matches the
- model for a young star. The Solar Neutrino Emission is that of a young star. The
- Lithium and Beryllium abundance in the Sun is consistent with that of a young
- star.
-
- Problems for evolution and the big bang - 114/177
-
- There are a great many confirmatory evidences for a young Sun. One of the most
- recent was the announcement at a major scientific conference in 1995 that the
- temperature at the center of the Sun seems to be varying over a period of
- several months. (Chown, M., 'The riddle of the solar wind,' New Scientist 12th
- August, 1995, p 16) This is extremely hard to understand if the Sun has a huge
- central core with a resulting enormous heat capacity. However, such rapid
- temperature changes are explicable if the Sun is young and homogeneous. In such
- a situation there can be very rapid convective changes in temperature throughout
- the entire Sun.
-
- Problems for evolution and the big bang - 115/177
-
- The Sun still has its normal abundance of Beryllium which is destroyed at a
- temperature of 4 million degrees. (Karttunen, H., Kroger, P., Oja, H., Poutanen,
- M., Donner, K.J., 1987.Fundamental Astronomy Springer-Verlag p 273) If the
- Russian scientists are correct in assuming that the Sun is homogeneous, then
- this means that the temperature throughout the whole Sun must be far lower than
- the 15 million degrees required for the Sun to be an old main-sequence star.
-
- Evidence for Noah's flood - 116/177
-
- Geologists consider most of the great mountainous areas to have been uplifted
- since man has been on the earth. That these areas have been under water is clear
- from the fact that, near the summits, they are formed largely of marine strata,
- often containing recent marine fossils.
-
- Evidence for Noah's flood - 117/177
-
- Although the mechanism of mountain formation is still a subject of controversy
- among geologists, the tremendous energies associatated with the eruptions and
- erosions of the great flood provide the most logical model within which to find
- the true answer.
-
- Evidence for Noah's flood - 118/177
-
- The great mountain uplifts and corresponding ocean basin depressions would
- necessarily be accompanied by an abundance of other tectonic activities, such as
- faults, folds, thrusts and earth movements of many kinds. The present earthquake
- belt and continuing earthquake activities around the world can be understood as
- remnant effects of the great post-diluvian uplifts. The same applies to the
- earth's significant volcanism: the erruptions of the fountains of the deep (Gen
- 7:11). The post-flood isostatic readjustments, especially the mountain uplifts,
- would surely have triggered the release of additional floods of magma, and these
- are reflected in the tremendous recent lava plains around the world, as well as
- the great number of only recently extinct volcanoes, not to mention the
- considerable number still alive.
-
- Evidence for Noah's flood - 119/177
-
- Velikkovsky, in his book Earth In Upheaval writes: 'When a fish dies its body
- floats on the surface or sinks to the bottom and is devoured rather quickly,
- actually in a matter of hours, by other fish. However the fossil fish found in
- sedimentary rocks is very often preserved with all its bones intact. Entire
- shoals of fish over large areas, numbering billions of specimen, are found in a
- state of agony, but with no mark of scavenger attack'. (Velikkovsky, I. Earth In
- Upheaval, Doubleday & Co., New York, 1955, p 222).
-
- Evidence for Noah's flood - 120/177
-
- In his book, Frontiers of Astronomy, Fred Hoyle writes: 'Evidently then and ice
- age would arise if the greenhouse effect of our atmosphere was destroyed. This
- would happen if the concentrations of those gases of the atmosphere that are
- responsible for blocking the infra-red radiation were appreciably reduced. The
- gas of main importance in this respect is water vapour. The question therefore
- arises as to how the amount of water vapour in the atmosphere might be
- systematically reduced, especially the amount at a height of some 6,000 m
- (20,000 ft) above the ground. In this may lie the answer to the riddle of the
- ice age'.(Hoyle, F. Frontiers of Astronomy, Harpers, New York, 1955, p. 8)
-
- Quotable quotes - 121/177
-
- 'Christianity has fought, still fights, and will fight science to the desperate
- end over evolution, because evolution destroys utterly and finally the very
- reason Jesus' earthly life was supposedly made necessary. Destroy Adam and Eve
- and the original sin, and in the rubble you will find the sorry remains of the
- son of god. Take away the meaning of his death. If Jesus was not the redeemer
- that died for our sins, and this is what evolution means, then Christianity is
- nothing.' (G. Richard Bozarth, 'The Meaning of Evolution', American Atheist, 20
- Sept. 1979, p. 30)
-
- Quotable quotes - 122/177
-
- 'I would advise no one to send his child where the Holy Scriptures are not
- supreme. Every institution that does not unceasingly pursue the study of God's
- word becomes corrupt. Because of this we can see what kind of people they become
- in the universities and what they are like now. Nobody is to blame for this
- except the pope, the bishops, and the prelates, who are all charged with
- training young people. The universities only ought to turn out men who are
- experts in the Holy Scriptures, men who can become bishops and priests, and
- stand in the front line against heretics, the devil, and all the world. But
- where do you find that? I greatly fear that the universities, unless they teach
- the Holy Scriptures diligently and impress them on the young students, are wide
- gates to hell.' (Martin Luther, 'To the Christian Nobility of the German Nation
- Concerning the Reform of the Christian Estate, 1520,' trans. Charles M. Jacobs,
- rev. James Atkinson, The Christian in Society, I (Luther's Works, ed. James
- Atkinson, vol. 44), p. 207 (1966))
-
- Quotable quotes - 123/177
-
- 'I am convinced that the battle for humankind's future must be waged and won in
- the public school classroom by teachers who correctly perceive their role as the
- proselytizers of a new faith: a religion of humanity that recognizes and
- respects the spark of what theologians call divinity in every human being. These
- teachers must embody the same selfless dedication as the most rabid
- fundamentalist preachers, for they will be ministers of another sort, utilizing
- a classroom instead of a pulpit to convey humanist values in whatever subject
- they teach, regardless of the educational level--preschool day care or large
- state university. The classroom must and will become an arena of conflict
- between the old and the new--the rotting corpse of Christianity, together with
- all its adjacent evils and misery, and the new faith of humanism.' (John Dunphy,
- A Religion for a New Age, Humanist, Jan.-Feb. 1983, p. 26)
-
- Quotable quotes - 124/177
-
- 'Why has it taken 100 years to learn that one of the largest of all dinosaurs
- Apatosaurus (Brontosaurus of the school book) has been wearing the wrong head?
- That seems rather basic. How did this mix-up occur; and where has the old
- fellow's head been all of this time? The answer to the last question is, of
- course, that its true head has been in the museum's research collection for all
- these many years, patiently waiting for research to catch up to reality.' (Taken
- from the display notebook at Dinosaur National Park Museum, Vernal Utah)
-
- Quotable quotes - 125/177
-
- 'At any rate, almost everything in Hawking's book is based on his fertile
- imagination and logical speculation, with almost no visible evidence or proof.
- This appears to differentiate his work from fiction, which is almost always
- based on obvious, demonstrable fact. In another way, however, physics is a lot
- like fiction or income tax calculating, in that when there is a conflict between
- the world and an intellectual construct, the author adjusts the world to fit an
- imagined plot.' (Roger L. Welsch, 'Astrophys Ed', Natural History, February
- 1994, pp. 24, 25)
-
- Quotable quotes - 126/177
-
- 'Take black matter, for example. As fate would have it, the most recent and
- popular theories in physics just don't work. It's not as if there are some loose
- threads around the edges; the theories don't work at all. If they did, the
- universe would instantaneously fall in on itself or fly apart. Now those of us
- who are not astrophysicists would probably do something like discard the
- theories. Not astrophysicists. They readjust the uncooperative universe to fit
- their theories, postulating a gigantic quantity of invisible gravity-producing
- stuff they call black matter, even though it's not black and maybe not even
- matter. And there you are. Just like that, the modern, popular theories are back
- in business. I can imagine that readers new to physics and its way of doing
- things might be skeptical, but those of us who are higher up in the world of
- science feel nothing but anticipation in all this theorizing. It could, after
- all, be a step toward a newer and even sillier putty.' (Roger L. Welsch,
- 'Astrophys Ed', Natural History, February 1994, p. 25)
-
- Quotable quotes - 127/177
-
- 'All Abortions 25% Off: In January, a Denver General Hospital clinic began a
- program to attract reluctant inner-city pregnant women to get prenatal care by
- offering them free lottery tickets. And in May, a fee-charging family planning
- clinic in Wilmington, Del., began offering abortions at a 25 percent discount to
- women under age 18.' (Chuck Shepherd, News of the Weird, The Salt Lake Tribune,
- July 25, 1993, p. A-17)
-
- Quotable quotes - 128/177
-
- 'In seeking to understand why the Haeckelian view persisted so long, we have
- also to consider the alternatives. We often are highly conservative and will
- hold to a viewpoint longer than is justified when there is no alternative or,
- worse, when the logical alternative upsets the rest of our world view.' (Keith
- Stewart Thomson, 'Marginalia Ontogeny and phylogeny recapitulated', American
- Scientist Vol. 76, May-June 1988, p. 274)
-
- Quotable quotes - 129/177
-
- 'Everybody knows fossils are fickle; bones will sing any song you want to hear.'
- (J. Shreeve, 'Argument over a woman', 1990, Discover, Vol. 11 (8), p. 58)
-
- Quotable quotes - 130/177
-
- 'Imaginations run riot in conjuring up an image of our most ancient
- ancestor--the creature that gave rise to both apes and humans. This ancestor is
- not apparent in ape or human anatomy nor in the fossil record...anatomy and the
- fossil record cannot be relied upon for evolutionary lineages. Yet
- palaeontologists persist in doing just this.' (J. Lowenstein and A. Zihlman,
- 'The invisible ape', New Scientist, Vol. 120 (1641), pp. 56, 57, 1988)
-
- Quotable quotes - 131/177
-
- The Nature of the Fossil Record: 95% of the fossils (by number) consist of
- shallow marine organisms (e.g. corals, shellfish), of the remaining 5%, 95% are
- all the algae and plant/tree fossils (including the coal) and all the other
- invertebrate fossils (e.g. insects), 5% of the 5% (or 0.25% of the entire fossil
- record) are the vertebrate fossils (fish, amphibians, reptiles, birds and
- mammals), only 1% of this 0.25% (or 0.0025% of the entire fossil record) are
- vertebrate fossils that consist of more than a single bone! (e.g. there are only
- about 2,100 dinosaur skeletons in all the world's museums). From a lecture given
- by Kurt Wise at ICR brown bag. Dr. Andrew Snelling and Dr. John Morris vouch for
- it. These statistics are not from one source, but a compilation from many.
-
- Quotable quotes - 132/177
-
- 'Many animals which are well-known and accepted were once controversial--or at
- least 'unexpected.' Some of the more interesting of these cryptozoological
- precedents are: The gorilla, largest of all the primates, discovered in Central
- Africa in 1847; Baird's tapir, discovered in Central America in 1863; The giant
- panda, discovered in China in 1869, but not collected alive until 1936;
- Przewalski's horse, discovered in Mongolia in 1881; The mountain gorilla, a
- subspecies, discovered in East Africa in 1902; The okapi, a fossil giraffid,
- discovered in Zaire in 1901; The pygmy chimpanzee, described in 1929, but not
- brought back to Europe from Zaire until the late 1930's; The coelacanth, a
- 6-foot Mesozoic fish (a true 'living fossil'), discovered in South Africa in
- 1938; The Chacoan peccary, a Pleistocene fossil form, discovered alive in
- Paraguay in 1975; Megamouth, a 15-foot shark, representing a completely new
- species, genus, and family, discovered in 1976.' (International Society of
- Cryptozoology Invitation For Membership)
-
- Quotable quotes - 133/177
-
- 'Today we are confronted with a wide variety of reports of such 'unexpected'
- animals--often appearing under the popular label of 'monster.' Some of those
- which the Society is concerned with are: Reports of unusual felids, such as 'big
- cats' in Britain, continental Europe, and Australia, and large, unknown cats
- reported in Africa and South America: Reports of living thylacines in Tasmania
- ('Tasmanian tigers') and mainland Australian, and possibly other thought-extinct
- marsupials, such as Thylacoleo ; Reports of giant individuals of known species,
- such as giant great white sharks and giant anaconda snakes in South America;
- Reports of giant octopuses spanning 50-100 feet or more; Reports of 'sea
- serpents' in many global marine environments, which may represent unknown
- species of large seals or supposedly extinct primitive whales known as
- archaeocetes; Reports of northern latitude 'lake monsters' in Loch Ness, and
- several other Scottish lochs, and in Irish, Swedish, Soviet, Canadian and U.S.A.
- lakes; Reports of large, long-necked animals in the swamps of Central Africa
- (Mokele-Mbembe) said to resemble Mesozoic sauropod dinosaurs, and flying animals
- resembling Mesozoic pterosaurs; Reports of surviving Pleistocene megafauna, such
- as mammoths in Siberia and giant ground sloths in South America; Reports of
- large hominoids in the Himalayan region (Yeti), Soviet Union and Mongolia
- (Almas), China (Wildman), and North America (Sasquatch).' (International Society
- of Cryptozoology Invitation For Membership)
-
- Quotable quotes - 134/177
-
- 'Insect resistance to a pesticide was first reported in 1947 for the Housefly
- (Musca domestica) with respect to DDT. Since then resistance to one or more
- pesticides has been reported in at least 225 species of insects and other
- arthropods. The genetic variants required for resistance to the most diverse
- kinds of pesticides were apparently present in every one of the populations
- exposed to these man-made compounds.' (Francisco J. Ayala. 'The Mechanisms of
- Evolution', Scientific American, Sept. 1978, p. 65)
-
- Quotable quotes - 135/177
-
- 'Scientists at the University of Alberta have revived bacteria from members of
- the historic Franklin expedition who mysteriously perished in the Arctic nearly
- 150 years ago. Not only are the six strains of bacteria almost certainly the
- oldest ever revived, says medical microbiologist Dr. Kinga
- Kowalewska-Grochowska, Three of them also happen to be resistant to
- antibiotics...In this case, the antibiotics clindamycin and cefoxitin, both of
- which developed more than a century after the men died, were among those used.'
- (Ed Struzik, Dr. Kinga Kowalewska-Grochowska, 'Ancient bacteria revived', Sunday
- Herald, 16 Sept. 1990)
-
- Quotable quotes - 136/177
-
- 'But the reports of Eve's death may have been greatly exaggerated. Indeed, no
- one argues with the idea that all modern humans inherited their mitochondrial
- DNA from one common female ancestor. But what is in dispute is the hypothesis
- first put forth in 1987 by molecular anthropologist Allan Wilson of University
- of California, Berkeley who claimed to know Eve's age and whereabouts-that she
- lived about 200,000 years ago in Africa.' (Ann Gibbons, 'Mitochondrial Eve:
- Wounded, But Not Dead Yet', Science, Vol. 257, 14 August 1992, p. 873)
-
- Quotable quotes - 137/177
-
- 'In the early 1980's, teeth were found that gave better evidence of its
- (Pakicetus) being intermediate between land-dwelling and marine,' Thewissen
- said. 'Those teeth, as well as the ear bones we found, were located in fossil
- deposits in beds of rivers too shallow for an animal of that size to have lived
- in the water. Also, the other bones found with them were certainly from land
- mammals.' No Pakicetus leg or foot fossils have been reported.' (Hans Thewissen,
- Duke University Paleontologist, 'News Notes', Geotimes, April 1993, p. 9)
-
- Quotable quotes - 138/177
-
- 'Now comes the important question. What caused all these extinctions at one
- particular point in time, approximately 65 million years ago? Dozens of reasons
- have been suggested, some serious and sensible, others quite crazy, and yet
- others merely as a joke. Every year people come up with new theories on this
- thorny problem. The trouble is that if we are to find just one reason to account
- for them all, it would have to explain the deaths, all at the same time, of
- animals living on land and of animals living in the sea: but, in both cases, of
- only some of those animals, for many of the land-dwellers and many of the
- sea-dwellers went on living quite happily into the following period. Alas, no
- such one explanation exists.' (Alan Charig, 'A New Look At The Dinosaurs', p.
- 150)
-
- Quotable quotes - 139/177
-
- 'Everybody knows that organisms get better as they evolve.' They get more
- advanced, more modern, and less primitive. And everybody knows, according to Dan
- McShea (who has written a paper called 'Complexity and Evolution: What Everybody
- Knows'), that organisms get more complex as they evolve...The only trouble with
- what everyone knows, says McShea, an evolutionary biologist at the University of
- Michigan, is that there is no evidence it's true.' (Dan McShea, 'Onward and
- Upward?' by Lori Oliwenstein, Discover, June 1993, p. 22)
-
- Quotable quotes - 140/177
-
- 'At one level, of course, it must be: we really are more complex than that first
- cell, and we're not alone. Did natural selection drive organisms onward and
- steadily upward, toward ever greater complexity, because being more complex
- improved their chances of survival? Researchers have always assumed the answer
- was yes. But lately McShea and a few other researchers have been trying to test
- that unshakable assumption with real data.' (Dan McShea, 'Onward and Upward?' by
- Lori Oliwenstein, Discover, June 1993, p. 22)
-
- Quotable quotes - 141/177
-
- 'Until last year Hallucigenia was one of the strangest animals that ever lived.
- This sausage-shaped sea creature, which died out half a billion years ago, early
- in the Cambrian Period, was said to have walked on seven pairs of spikes and to
- have sported a row of wavy tentacles along its back. But last year, in the Yunan
- province of China, paleontologists dug up some new specimens closely related to
- Hallucigenia. Those fossils made clear the Hallucigenia researchers had known
- was a figment of their imagination: they had been looking at it upside down.'
- (Roger Lewin, 'Whose View of Life?', Discover May 1993: p. 18)
-
- Quotable quotes - 142/177
-
- ''Yes, a bit embarrassing,' concedes Simon Conway Morris, the British
- paleontologist who described and named Hallucigenia back in 1977. 'I always
- suspected we might be looking at it the wrong way, but until the Chinese fossils
- came along we couldn't be sure.' If that were all there was to the Hallucigenia
- story, it would be worth a scholarly paper or two and no more. But the confusion
- surrounding Hallucigenia is emblematic of a much larger debate now going on in
- paleontological circles, one that opposes two radically different-indeed,
- inverted-views of the history of life on Earth.' (Simon Morris, 'Whose View of
- Life?', Discover, May 1992, p. 18)
-
- Quotable quotes - 143/177
-
- 'Paleontologists have tried to turn Archaeopteryx into an earth-bound, feathered
- dinosaur,' Feduccia says. 'But it's not. It is a bird, a perching bird. And no
- amount of 'paleobabble' is going to change that.' (Allan Feduccia, Professor of
- biology at University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. 'Archaeopteryx: Early
- Bird Catches a Can of Worms', Science, Vol. 259, 5 February 1993, p. 764)
-
- Quotable quotes - 144/177
-
- 'The family tree of the horse is beautiful and continuous only in the textbooks.
- In the reality provided by the results of research it is put together from three
- parts, of which only the last can be described as including horses. The forms of
- the first part are just as much little horses as the present day damans are
- horses. The construction of the whole Cenozoic family tree of the horse is
- therefore a very artificial one, since it is put together from non-equivalent
- parts, and cannot therefore be a continuous transformation series.' (Prof.
- Heribert Nilsson, 'Synthetische Artbildung', Verlag CWE Gleerup, Lund, Sweden,
- 1954, pp. 551-552)
-
- Quotable quotes - 145/177
-
- 'I have thought about your question and would say that probably, so far as I
- know, there is no professor of Hebrew or Old Testament at any world-class
- university who does not believe that the writer(s) of Gen. 1-11 intended to
- convey to their readers the ideas that: (a) creation took place in a series of
- six days which were the same as the days of 24 hours we now experience. (b) the
- figures contained in the Genesis genealogies provided by simple addition a
- chronology from the beginning of the world up to later stages in the biblical
- story. (c) Noah's flood was understood to be world-wide and extinguish all human
- and animal life except for those in the ark. Or, to put it negatively, the
- apologetic arguments which suppose the 'days' of creation to be long eras of
- time, the figures of years not to be chronological, and the flood to be a merely
- local Mesopotamian flood, are not taken seriously by any such professors, as far
- as I know. (Letter from James Barr of The University of Oxford to David C.C.
- Watson)
-
- Quotable quotes - 146/177
-
- 'It is apparent that the most straightforward understanding of the Genesis
- record, without regard to all of the hermeneutical considerations suggested by
- science, is that God created heaven and earth in six solar days, that man was
- created in the sixth day, that death and chaos entered, the world after the Fall
- of Adam and Eve, that all of the fossils were the result of the catastrophic
- universal deluge which spared only Noah's family and the animals therewith.'
- (Pattle P. T. Pun, 'A Theology of Progressive Creationism', Perspectives on
- Science and Christian Faith, Vol. 39, No. 1, March 1987)
-
- Problems for evolution and the big bang - 147/177
-
- A carefully buried Neandertal infant in a Northern Syrian cave has confirmed not
- only a high level of cultural sophistication, but a larger average brain size
- than people today. (The Weekend Australian, Oct. 18, 1995, p. 49).
-
- Problems for evolution and the big bang - 148/177
-
- German scientists have found perfectly preserved wooden spears, in company with
- other artefacts, suggesting that Neandertals had sophisticated hunting,
- planning, designing and manufacturing skills. A.U.K. archeologist was quoted as
- being 'speechless', not only because of these implications, but because it was
- 'unimaginable' that such wooden items were still intact despite being
- geologically 'dated' at an alleged 400,000 (!) years. (Sydney Morning Herald,
- Feb. 28, 1997, p. 11).
-
- Problems for evolution and the big bang - 149/177
-
- Where did all the SNRs (Supernova remnants) go?. The 3rd stage of SNRs begins
- 120,000 years after the initial explosion at 340 light years in diameter. There
- is 1 supernova about every 25 years. By observational limtation formulae, we
- would expect to see only 14% of 3rd stage SNRs in our galaxy. If the universe
- was billions of years old, there should be (1,000,000-120,000)/25 3rd stage SNRs
- in our galaxy, or about 35,000. Of these, 5,000 should be observable. If the
- universe wasn't billions of years old, but only 6,000 years old, we would expect
- to see none, as none have had time to form yet. Which theory does the evidence
- support? There are actually no 3rd stage SNRs observed in our galaxy!
-
- Problems for evolution and the big bang - 150/177
-
- Breaks the Law of the Principle of Conservation of Angular Momentum. Our sun is
- observed to spin very slowly today while the planets move very rapidly around
- the sun. (In fact, although the sun has over 99% of the mass of the solar
- system, it only has 2% of the angular momentum). This pattern is directly
- opposite to that pattern expected for Nebular Hypothesus. Many scientists today
- no dount assume that modern theories have solved this problem. But a well known
- solar system scientist, Dr Stuart Ross Taylor has said: 'The ultimate origin of
- the angular momentum of the solar system remains obscure'. (S.R. Taylor, Solar
- System Evolution: A New Perspective, Cambridge University Press, 1992, p.53).
-
- Problems for evolution and the big bang - 151/177
-
- Another problem with the general Nebular model is the formation of the gaseous
- planets. As the gas would pull together into the planets, the young sun would
- pass through what is called the T-Tauri phase. In this phase the sun would give
- off an intense solar wind far more intense than the present. This solar wind
- would have an effect of driving excess gas and dust out of the still forming
- solar system and thus there would no longer be enough of the light gases to form
- Jupiter and the other 3 giant gas planets. This would leave the 4 gas planets
- smaller than we find them today.
-
- Problems for evolution and the big bang - 152/177
-
- Io, one of the moons of Jupiter, shows signs of heat remaining in its interior,
- due to massive volcanoes that can be seen errupting on its surface. Small moons
- like this were expected to have cooled off long ago if they really were billions
- of years old.
-
- Problems for evolution and the big bang - 153/177
-
- Ganymede turned out to still have a strong magnetic field, contrary to original
- expectations. If our planet were as close to the sun as Mercury, it would be far
- too hot for any life to exist. Neptune's planet rings not only show evidence of
- youth, its high level of atmospheric activity implies that it has not yet cooled
- off as much as 'old-agers' expected.
-
- Problems for evolution and the big bang - 154/177
-
- An international team of astronomers led by an Estonian academic published their
- analysis of galaxy clusters in the journal Nature (Jan. 9, 1997). They conclude
- that 'the largescale structure of the cosmos is an orderly rectangular, 3d
- latticework of clusters and voids'. The lines of concentrated matter appear to
- be spaced at fairly regular 91 million-light-year intervals. The Washington
- Post's Kathy Sawyer says this is a 'surprise' because 'leading theories' of
- cosmological evolution (ie 'big bang' theories) say that galaxy distribution (as
- you would expect from and explosion) is supposed to be 'random'. An internet
- posting quotes the New York Times (undated) as saying that this finding, like a
- massive 3d chessboard, looks as if it will require some 'new laws of physics' to
- explain it.
-
- Problems for evolution and the big bang - 155/177
-
- Experiments by scientists from the Chicago Natural History Museum have shown
- that fish carcasses lowered onto the muddy bottom of a marsh decay quite
- rapidly, even in oxygen-poor conditions. In these experiments, fish were placed
- in wire cages to protect them from scavengers, yet after only six and a half
- days, all the flesh had decayed and even the bones had become disconnected. (R.
- Zangerl and E.S. Richardson, 'The paleoecological history of two Pennsylvanian
- black shales', Fieldiana: Geology Memoirs 4, 1963).
-
- Problems for evolution and the big bang - 156/177
-
- The Voyager missions in the 1970s and 80s revealed surprising features in the
- beautiful rings of Saturn, which were found to possess a very detailed
- structure, described as 'rings within rings within rings'. The sharp edges of
- the rings and other evidences imply that the rings must be quite young in age.
- (Wayne R. Spencer, 'Design and Catastrophism in the Solar System', Proceedings
- of the 1992 Twin-Cities Creation Conference, pp. 164-5).
-
- Problems for evolution and the big bang - 157/177
-
- Scientists expected the small moon of Uranus, called Miranda, to be undramatic
- and uninteresting, since if it were very old, such a small moon should have
- little heat left for driving geological processes. Actually, Miranda's surface
- has a very extreme topography and many strange geological features that are
- difficult to understand if indeed it is very old.
-
- Problems for evolution and the big bang - 158/177
-
- Neptune, being the 8th planet from the Sun, would not be expected to have enough
- heat energy left for driving high speed winds after more than 4 billion years,
- yet it does. Measurements in late 1995 by the Galileo probe indicate a similar
- situation at Jupiter. Heat for driving the surprising turbulence and strong
- winds in Jupiter's atmosphere must be coming from inside the planet, not from
- the sun or any other external influence (Douglas Isbell and David Morse,
- 'Galileo Probe Suggests Planitary Reappraisal', NASA Press Release Number 96-10,
- Jan. 22, 1996. www.jpl.nasa.gov/galileo. Because the sun is so distant it
- provides little energy to Jupiter).
-
- Problems for evolution and the big bang - 159/177
-
- Neptune's rings have thick regions and thin regions. This unevenness means that
- they cannot be billions of years old since collisions of the ring objects would
- eventually make the ring very uniform.
-
- Problems for evolution and the big bang - 160/177
-
- Io surprised astronomers by indications of volcanic activity. Such a body
- smaller than the earth should have lost all its internal heat long ago if it was
- billions of years old. So in line with the 'old ages' idea, a complex model was
- developed in which Jupiter's gravity rythmically 'squeezes' Io to keep heating
- it by friction. However this heat from Jupiter's gravity cannot account for all
- the heat coming from Io and its volcanoes. This points to Io being young, not
- billions of years old.
-
- Problems for evolution and the big bang - 161/177
-
- Computer simulations of Nebular Hypothesis do not start with initial conditions
- of those like real nebulas, and have other problems. One scientist summarised
- these by saying, 'The clouds are too hot, too magnetic and they rotate too
- rapidly'. (H. Reeves, 'The Origin of the Solar System', The Origin of the Solar
- System, S.F. Dermott, editor, John Wiley & Sons, New York, 1978, p. 9). The
- contraction produces effects that tend to make the formation of planets
- impossible.
-
- Problems for evolution and the big bang - 162/177
-
- What mechanism could have possibly added all the extra information required to
- transform a 1-celled creature progressively into pelicans, palm trees and
- people? Natural selection alone can't do it--selection involves getting rid of
- information. For example, a winged-beetle on a windy island might benefit from a
- mutation that stops the beetle from growing wings, but this is corruption or
- loss of the original information on how to make wings. And what if this mutation
- happened to a beetle living on a continent? Would that be an advantage for the
- beetle? Natural selection can't explain how the beetle got the information to
- make wings in the first place. All mutations degrade information, sometimes they
- have little observable effect, but most of the time are harmful for the
- creature.
-
- Problems for evolution and the big bang - 163/177
-
- Electrical charge is one of the fundamental properties of matter. Electrical
- charge provides the primary basis for chemical reactions. If electrical charge
- did not exist, we would not have atoms, molecules, or life. A scientist can
- develop models which describe the behavior of electrical charge under many
- different conditions. He can use these models to predict very accurately many
- events he sees taking place in the world around him. This approach is the basis
- for modern technology. HOWEVER--he cannot tell WHY electrical charge exists to
- begin with. He is absolutely helpless to explain WHY the universe is a universe
- with electrical charge instead of one without it.
-
- Problems for evolution and the big bang - 164/177
-
- Just when evolutionists were riding high about their success in getting some
- chimps to use a very basic but definite (sign) language, some notable dampeners
- to their enthusiasm have appeared. First, it turns out that there is at least
- one parrot that can rival chimps and dolphins in creative language use and
- complexity of reasoning. Bird's aren't supposed to be our close evolutionary
- cousins, and they have much smaller brains. Perhaps Irene Pepperberg at the
- University of Arizona forgot all that when she trained an African grey parrot
- named Alex, who 'speaks English and means what he says'. He can count up to 6,
- and can recognise and name some 100 different objects, as well as their colour,
- texture and shape. (Scientific American, April 1996, page 23).
-
- Problems for evolution and the big bang - 165/177
-
- It has long been believed that both chimps and orangs are self-aware. When they
- see themselves in front of a mirror with unexpected markings on their bodies,
- they show that they can recognise themselves by inspecting the marked areas on
- their own bodies. However, more that one experimenter is coming to the
- conclusion that self-recognition may not be the same as true self-awareness.
- Daniel Povinelli from the University of SW Louisiana says that over the last few
- years he has 'become much more open to the possibility that chimps may not
- develop a mental understanding of themselves and others, at least not to the
- extent that pre-school children do'. (Science News, Vol. 149, No. 3, Jan 20,
- 1996, pp. 42-43). Povinelli remains a committed evolutionist, and his negative
- results on chimps are reported with cautious, almost grudging wording at times.
- Nevertheless, the results of his studies indicate that 'humans operate in a
- mental realm that may stay off-limits to apes and other animals. By 3-5 years of
- age, children conclude that their peers behave according to unseen beliefs,
- intentions and other mental states' -while 'chimps may not try to decipher
- others' minds in this way'.
-
- Quotable quotes - 166/177
-
- When it comes to the origin of life on earth, there are only 2 possibilities:
- Creation, or spontaneous generation (evolution). There is no third way.
- Spontaneous generation was disproved 100 years ago, but that leads us to only
- one conclusion: That of supernatural creation. We cannot accept that on
- philosophical grounds (personal reasons), therefore, we choose to believe the
- impossible that life arose spontaneously by chance. (George Wald, 1967 Nobel
- Peace Prize in Science).
-
- Problems for evolution and the big bang - 167/177
-
- Scientists are shocked to find out that the universe has an 'up' and a 'down'
- --a north and a south, if you will. 'The observation, if correct, would be one
- of the most surprising and fundamental new insights about the universe to emerge
- in recent years,' wrote science reporter John Noble Wilford in the New York
- Times. 'The notion that space is uniform, that it is the same in all directions,
- with no north and south or up and down, is a major tenet of modern cosmology,
- backed by Einstein's theory of relativity.' Once again, scientists are forced to
- reconsider their most important assumptions about issues such as the birth of
- the universe. Yet, if only these scientists would consider as part of their
- equation the existence of God and the accuracy of the Bible, they wouldn't be
- nearly so perplexed --changing theories and explanations, it seems, from year to
- year, month to month. The Bible tells us there is order to the universe. There
- is a north and a south. In fact, it tells us that the third heaven -- where God
- resides --is in the north! (Isaiah 14:12-14)
-
- Problems for evolution and the big bang - 168/177
-
- The moon - due to tidal friction, is slowly spiralling away from the earth,
- which is slowing down its rotation. If you calculate back a billion and a half
- years ago, the moon would have been in direct contact with the earth. So that is
- a very strong indicator that the moon can't be even a third as old as the
- claimed 4.5 billion years, and it is probably vastly less than that.
-
- Quotable quotes - 169/177
-
- We take the side of science in spite of the patent absurdity of some of its
- constructs, in spite of its failure to fulfill many of its extravagant promises
- of health and life, in spite of the tolerance of the scientific community for
- unsubstantiated just-so stories, because we have a proir commitment, a
- commitment to materialism. It is not that the methods and insititutions of
- science somehow compel us to accept a material explanation of the phenomenal
- world, but, on the contrary, that we are forced by our a priori adherence to
- material causes to create an apparatus of investigation and a set of concepts
- that produce material explanations, no matter how counter-intuitive, no matter
- how mystifying to the uninitiated. Moreover, that materialism is an absolute,
- for we cannot allow a Divine Foot in the door'. (Richard Lewontin, 'Billions and
- billions of demons', The New York Review, Jan 9, 1997, p. 31)
-
- Quotable quotes - 170/177
-
- Writers on scientific method usually tell us that scientific discoveries are
- made 'inferentially', that is to say, from putting together many facts. But this
- is far from being correct. The facts by themselves are never sufficient to lead
- unequivocally to the really profound discoveries. Facts are always analyzed in
- terms of the prejudices of the investigator. (Sir Fred Hoyle, Highlights in
- Astronomy, W.H. Freeman and Company, San Francisco, 1975).
-
- Problems for evolution and the big bang - 171/177
-
- Evolutionists generally believe that stars formed by the collapse of gas clouds
- under gravity. This is supposed to generate the millions of degrees required for
- nuclear fusion. But most clouds would be so hot that outward pressure would
- prevent collapse. Evolutionists must find a way for the cloud to cool down. One
- such mechanism might be through molecules in the cloud colliding and radiating
- enough of the heat away. But according to theory, the 'big bang' made mainly
- hydrogen, with a little helium--the other elements supposedly formed inside
- stars. Helium can't form molecules at all, so the only molecule that could be
- formed would be molecular hydrogen (H2). Even this is easily destroyed by
- ultraviolet light, and usually needs dust grains to form--and dust grains
- require heavier elements. So the only coolant left is atomic hydrogen, and this
- would leave gas clouds over a hundred times too hot to collapse. Abraham Loeb of
- Harvard's Centre for Astrophysics says: 'The truth is that we don't understand
- star formation at a fundamental level'. (Marcus Chown, 'Let there be light', New
- Scientist 157(2120):26-30, 7 Feb 1998.
-
- Quotable quotes - 172/177
-
- Evolution: No Morality. From a debate between 2 evolutionists. Lanier is a
- computer scientist, Dawkins is a Professor at Oxford and an ardent athiest.
- Jaron Lanier: 'There's a large group of people who simply are uncomfortable with
- accepting evolution because it leads to what they perceive as a moral vacuum, in
- which their best impulses have no basis in nature'. Richard Dawkins: 'All I can
- say is, That's just tough. We have to face up to the truth'. ('Evolution: The
- dissent of Darwin', Psychology Today, Jan/Feb 1997, p. 62.)
-
- Quotable quotes - 173/177
-
- The discoverers of skulls are consequently greatly attached to, and jealous of
- the reputation of, their charges. It is not only that it makes the owner a top
- dog in the disipline of palaeoanthropology, and an avoider of the fate of
- perishing through not publishing; finding the oldest member of Hominidae - the
- family of Man - is like winning the gold at the olympics. You can go on lecture
- tours, appear on television and attract corporate dollars. Having your remains
- pushed on to a simian side branch is like being a gold medallist found
- harbouring anablic steroids. (Arthur Woods, The Weekend Australian, Jan 14-15,
- 1989).
-
- Quotable quotes - 174/177
-
- Darwinism - A political ideology: 'If the scientists ever had to retreat on this
- issue, the cultural consequences could be significant. Persons who now have a
- prestigious status as cultural authorities would be discredited, and the
- political and moral positions they have advocated might be discredited with
- them. That is the fear of Michael Ruse, author of Darwinism Defended. Ruse
- proclaims proudly that Darwinism reflects "a strong ideology", and "one to be
- proud of". According to Ruse, contemporary Darwinians "show a strong liberal
- commitment" in both their politics and their sexual morality. Advocates of
- creation, on the other hand, want to restore a "morality based on narrow
- Biblical lines" with respect to marriage and sexual behaviour. Upholding
- Darwinism is therefore an important way of protecting political liberalism,
- feminism and the sexual revolution of the 1960s. Ruse concludes his book with
- these stirring lines "Darwinism has a great past. Let us work to see that it has
- an even greater future"'. Berkely Law professor Phillip Johnson writing in J.
- Buell and V. Hearn (ed.) Darwinism: Science or Philosophy? p. 11, Foundation for
- Thought and Ethics, Richardson, Texas, USA, 1994. Michael Ruse is quoted from
- his book Darwinism Defended, pp 280, 328-329, 1982.
-
- Quotable quotes - 175/177
-
- Evolution = Materialism/Atheism
-
- 'Let me summarize my views on what modern evolutionary biology tells us loud and
- clear... There are no gods, no purposes, no goal-directed forces of any kind.
- There is no life after death. When I die, I am absolutely certain that I am
- going to be dead. That's the end for me. There is no utlimate foundation for
- ethics, no ultimate meaning to life and no free will for humans, either'.
- William B. Provine, Professor of Biological Sciences, Cornell University
- (Origins Reseearch 16(1/2):9, 1994)
-
- Quotable quotes - 176/177
-
- Evolution eroded faith
-
- 'I was once a member of a small graduate seminar in biology. At the time I was
- in my late 40s whereas the rest of the group were young men in their early 20s.
- One afternoon, I was participating in an impromptu rap session on the subject of
- Christian beliefs. In the course of the discussion I was greatly disturbed to
- discover that the whole group were apostate Christians of various mainline
- denominations. As the discussion progressed, it developed that for each of them,
- their Christian faith had been eroded over a period of time as their acceptance
- of the theory of macroevolution grew'. William H. Rusch Snr, Professor Emeritus,
- Biology and Geology, Concordia College, Ann Arbor, Michigan, USA, in his book
- Origins: WHat is at Stake? p 52, Creation Research Society, 1991.
-
- Quotable quotes - 177/177
-
- Primeval soup: failed paradigm
-
- 'Although at the beginning the paradigm was worth consideration, now the entire
- effort in the primeval soup paradigm is self deception on the ideology of its
- champions...
-
- 'The history of science shows that a paradigm, once it has achieved the status
- of acceptance (and is incorporated in textbooks) and regardless of its failures,
- is declared invalid only when a new paradigm is available to replace it.
- Nevertheless in order to make progress in science, it is necessary to clear the
- decks, so to speak, of failed paradigms. This must be done even if this leaves
- the decks entirely clear and no paradigms survive. It is a characteristic of the
- true believer in religion, philosopy and ideology, that he musthave a set of
- beliefs, come what may (Hoffer, 1951). Belief in a primeval soup, on the grounds
- that no other paradigm is available is an example of the logical fallacy of the
- false alternative. In science it is a virtue to acknowledge ignorance. This has
- been universally the case in the hostory of science as Kuhn (1970) has discussed
- in detail. There is no reason that this should be different in the research on
- the origin of life'. Yockey, H.P., 1992 (a non-creationist). Information Theory
- and Molecular Biology, Cambridge University Press, UK, p 336.
-