Monthly Archives: June 2017

Plant Sensors

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Intelligent design predicts we will continue to find complex systems in living creatures. This prediction is affirmed almost daily in scientific papers around the world. I’ve highlighted a few of these, such as the systems that allow reef squid to communicate by writing on their own bodies. For this post, let’s look at plants.

Plants generally get their energy from light; through an amazingly engineered process we call photosynthesis. Sensors help them capture and process the light. Here’s Jeffrey Thompkins, Ph.D.:

One of the key factors in a plant’s life cycle is processing sunlight in the form of duration (day length), light quality (wavelength), and light intensity. All of these interconnected light-related factors are monitored within the plant’s leaf cells by a family of sensor proteins called phytochromes. When the red to far-red region of the visible light spectrum changes during the day, or because of shade from neighboring plants, the conformation (3-D shape) of the phytochrome proteins becomes altered and they act like genetic switches. They turn on and off a whole host of genes that modify plant metabolism, physiology, growth, and development. Phytochromes also help set the plant’s circadian rhythm (day/night clock) in addition to telling the plant what time of year it is, when it should flower and make seeds, or go dormant for the winter.

This has been known for some time. What’s new is that scientists have now found that these same sensors also measure temperature. The sensors are already fantastic machines in measuring and responding to light, so no one expected they would also be respond to temperature. But they do. Tompkins again:

This temperature-sensing capacity and seamless integration with the light sensory function is so finely tuned that it enables the plant to make a wide variety of adjustments in growth and development both during the night and during photosynthesis in daylight.

Wow! In other words plants, life that you might think is relatively simple, has complex, engineered systems far beyond human technology. We’re talking nanotechnology, engineering at the atomic level, that works perfectly for that dandelion in your yard. All life is more complex than we can possibly imagine.

So ask your Darwinist friends how they explain this. You might get, “well obviously it ‘evolved’ because it’s good for the plants.” Don’t let them get away with that nonsense. You can’t mathematically get any technology by chance, much less an integrated system that can sense and respond to both light and temperature.

And speaking of integrated systems, what about the human brain? How can anyone possibly believe the human brain – with its ability to process information from each of our senses and combine that with analytic reasoning, memory, spatial perception, image recognition, and so so much more – arose from a chance-based process? The truth is plainly obvious, and it always has been, notwithstanding the nonsense we hear from Atheists. Human beings were designed.

Thanks for reading. And please, please, spread the good news of science.

Is Darwinism a Scientific Theory?

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Tom Wolfe is a powerful thinker and writer. His books include The Electric Cool-Aid Acid Test, The Right Stuff, and Bonfire of the Vanities (the last two were adapted into motion pictures). His most recent book, The Kingdom of Speech, annihilates claims that Darwin’s theory of evolution is science:

There are five standard tests for a scientific hypothesis. Has anyone observed the phenomenon – in this case, Evolution – as it occurred and recorded it? Could other scientists replicate it? Could any of them come up with a set of facts that, if true, would contradict the theory (Karl Popper’s “falsifiability” tests)? Could scientists make predictions based on it? Did it illuminate hitherto unknown or baffling areas of science? In the case of Evolution … well … no … no … no … no … and no.

[Tom Wolfe – The Kingdom of Speech, 2016, p. 27.]

Let’s look more closely at how evolution scores.

1. Has anyone observed the phenomenon?

There has never been a case where anyone has observed a new biological system or technology being created from random mutations and natural selection. Franklin Harold, a Darwinist, admits: “We must concede that there are presently no detailed accounts of the evolution of any biochemical or cellular system, only a variety of wishful speculations.” Scientists see systems that they imagine “evolved,” but they have never observed evolution in action. In one decades-old experiment involving 65,000 generations of bacteria, no new systems were created. Instead, systems not needed to survive during the controlled conditions broke down.

If you look at the complexity of life, and in particular at the fantastic improbability of ever forming by chance a single new functional protein, much less a complete new biological system, it’s not hard to see why. See Counting To God, pages 105 to 112.

2. Could other scientists replicate it?

Obviously, no. Scientists can’t observe or replicate Darwinian evolution.

3. Are there facts which, if false, would contradict the theory?

To me this is the most important test for a scientific theory. If a theory is scientific, there must be a way to test it, to create an experiment that, if the results don’t turn out right, would show the theory is false. Quantum Physics and Einstein’s Theory of General Relativity have each been confirmed to about 13 decimal places. A tiny discrepancy could prove either theory false. Karl Popper wrote: “In so far as a scientific statement speaks about reality, it must be falsifiable; and in so far as it is not falsifiable, it does not speak about reality.”

Here’s Cornelius Hunter:

Being an evolutionist mean there is no bad news. If new species appear abruptly in the fossil record, that just means evolution operates in spurts. … If clever mechanisms are discovered in biology, that just means evolution is smarter than we imagined. If strikingly similar designs are found in distant species, that just means evolution repeats itself. If significant differences are found in allied species, that just means evolution sometimes introduces new designs rapidly. If no likely mechanism can be found for the large-scale change evolution requires, that just means evolution is mysterious. If adaptation responds to environmental signals, that just means evolution has more foresight than was thought. If major predictions of evolution are found to be false, that just means evolution is more complex than we thought.

Evolution cannot be falsified because it makes no predictions (other than change happens). Evolution has no mathematical equations. Karl Popper wrote: “Darwinism is not a testable scientific theory, but a metaphysical research program.”

4. Could scientists make predictions based on it?

Scientists have made predictions based on Darwinism, and those predictions have consistently been proved false. One major prediction was that, because according to Darwin we were created from random mutations, most of our DNA is “junk.” This was disproved by over 400 scientists in 2012 as part of the ENCODE project. See Counting To God, pages 153 to 158.

5. Did it illuminate hitherto unknown or baffling areas of science?

Darwinism has not led to a single scientific discovery. It has led millions to lose faith in God. It has led to a disregard for human beings, and two major world wars. It gave Hitler, Stalin, and Mao justification to kill 100 million people.

Darwinism is a delusion to deny God. Here’s a video that goes into more detail on this subject.

And let’s not forget about the multiverse, another major and unprovable fantasy of Atheists who seek to deny God. The multiverse by definition cannot be observed or replicated – because it is not in the observable universe. There are absolutely no facts or experiments that can contradict the multiverse delusion – all we can do is observe and experiment in our universe. The multiverse leads to no predictions and no new science.

The complexity and beauty of life prove the existence of God. The complexity and fantastic fine-tuning of our universe, fine-tuning in the constants of physics, the laws of physics, and even the structure of time and space, prove the existence of God. There is no scientific theory that can explain these proven facts without God. In each case, the scientific evidence of design is overwhelming. True science proves God.

Thanks for reading.

Dinosaurs

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I’m excited about this post. I’m also worried. Some of this is going to sound strange, to go against what you might think is firmly established, and you might reject it without considering the evidence. Please keep an open mind and let’s see where modern science takes us.

When I was a kid, I was enthralled by dinosaurs. I still am. They were real, yet more fantastic than many fictional creatures. I remember admiring the brontosaurus; a gigantic plant-eating creature with an enormous tail. A brontosaurus, or a cousin of a brontosaurus (there’s a lot of confusion over the names of dinosaur species, for reasons I won’t get into here) found in Argentina was 130 feet long and weighed 100 tons! That’s well over ten times the weight of a large elephant. Dinosaur fossils are all over the world.

Scientists have found these fossils contain not just bones, but soft tissue, original dinosaur proteins. Proteins are complex formations of amino acids linked together, and they decay over time. Crudely stated, flesh rots. Scientists have found collagen throughout dinosaur fossils. Collagen is a structure protein that helps build bones, tendons, and cartilage. Scientists have found also dinosaur skin, complete dinosaur cells, dinosaur blood vessels, and even dinosaur ink!

How is this possible? I was taught, and most likely you were taught too, that dinosaurs became extinct 65 million years ago. Yet soft tissue has been found in fossils of dinosaurs that supposedly became extinct over 200 million years ago. For that reason, initial reports of dinosaur soft tissue were laughed at. But the findings are so numerous, so detailed, and so amazing that they are now accepted. Scientists have found soft tissue in dinosaur fossils.

If you search the internet on this subject, you may find suggestions that perhaps iron in some of the specimens helped preserve the soft tissue. One experiment added iron to soft tissue, sealed it, and the soft tissue survived for two years. But I, for one, don’t think you can extrapolate that into a conclusion that soft tissue can survive for hundreds of millions of years. These fossils weren’t sealed, they were buried alive in water and rock, and then subjected to pressure, heat, and cold. More careful experiments have found that, even under ideal conditions, soft tissue cannot possibly survive for one million years.

So when did dinosaurs live? You have two conflicting theories. The original theory, what I was taught, was that we can date rocks accurately by measuring their radioactivity, and that’s how we know the dinosaurs became extinct many millions of years ago. But, and I don’t want to get into this too deeply right now (maybe a later post), radioactive testing is far from exact. Rocks created by volcanic explosions in human history (like Mount St. Helens) have been dated as millions of years old. A lot of assumptions go into radioactive dating, including how much radioactivity the rock had when it was formed. Radioactive dating also yields inconsistent results, depending on what radioactive isotope is being measured. One way scientists date objects is by carbon-14, which has a half-life of 5,000 years (half of it decays every 5,000 years.) This means after 100,000 years the amount of carbon-14 will be too small to detect. Yet carbon-14 has been found in all fossils, so the radioactive dating of fossils by carbon-14 indicates they are not millions of years old.

You might ask why, if dinosaurs lived just thousands of years ago, there are no records of people coming into contact with them? Well, and this may surprise you (as it did me), there are! Dinosaurs have been found painted on cave walls. Here is a website that collects pictures.

I hope you take the time to read it carefully. You will see an intricate stone carving of a stegosaurus on a column of an 800-year-old temple in the jungles of Cambodia. How did that happen? Some suggest dinosaur paintings were just the work of primitive imaginations. But why do these drawings, from all over the world, look like the modern reconstructions? Look at that stegosaurus carving carefully. Obviously, the artist had a real stegosaurus for a model.

Two dinosaurs are mentioned in the book of Job, which may be the oldest book in the Bible. Here’s God speaking in Job 40:15-18:

Behold, Behemoth, which I made as I made you; he eats grass like an ox. Behold, his strength is in his loins, and his power in the muscles of his belly. He makes his tail stiff like a cedar; the sinews of his thighs are knit together. His bones are tubes of bronze, his limbs like bars of iron.

Tail stiff like a cedar? Cedars in the Middle East grow to 40 feet. What kind of animal has a tail 30 or 40 feet long that sticks out straight? Only one I can think of is a brontosaurus. No animal currently living comes close.

There are many reports of people encountering dinosaurs. Alexander the Great reported seeing a huge hissing dragon in a cave. Roman historians report flying serpents with deadly poison. Other examples are given on this website.

I made a serious mistake when I wrote Counting To God. I accepted the standard theory of deep time and millions of years, and I refused to look at evidence it could be wrong. I am now transformed by the evidence. I am now convinced that Adam and Eve and Noah were real people for a multitude of reasons.

You may say, so what? Who cares whether dinosaurs lived thousands of years ago or millions of years ago. But if you are a Christian, or considering the Christian faith, it’s very important. This post is already longer than most, so if you want to explore that issue, and see even more evidence that dinosaurs lived among us, please watch the movie “Is Genesis History?” It’s available on Netflix.

Thanks for reading.

Courting Cephalopods

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Researchers from Taiwan have uncovered a complex system of communication among oval squid in the East China Sea. This last month from Science Daily:

The animals make use of naturally occurring chromatic components, which are stored within their bodies. They use these to paint their skin with lines, spots and stripes, of varying shades and complexities, to signal their desirability to future lovers and warn off potential foes.

The researchers described this, in the title of their paper, as a “grammar of visual signals.”

How do you get a “grammar of visual signals”? First, you need something to make signals with. Here, the squid write on their own bodies, using chromatic components. In other words, they can create lines, spots, and stripes on their bodies with different colors and shades. How did they get that ability? Science Daily describes this technology as “naturally occurring,” which suggests it’s no big deal, just a “natural” thing. Now I don’t know about you, but I sure can’t write on my body without using my hands, and, to state the obvious, squid don’t have hands. Where did they get this technology? Using nothing more than their brains, these squid can draw on their bodies, and they can change the writing. That’s mind-boggling, fantastic technology. Where did that come from?

You need more to communicate. These signals, these writings, would be useless if other oval squid couldn’t read them. Now not only do squid not have hands, but (I don’t know any squid personally but I’m fairly certain of this) squid do not go to school. They are not taught by their parents or other squid how to make sense of the signals. They just know. They are born with this knowledge, with the complete ability to understand each of the signals, each of the variations of “line, spots and stripes, of varying shades and complexities,” the complete “grammar of visual signals.” How did that happen?

It’s even more complex. The researchers also uncovered “elegant and specific movements that varied depending on the gender and social status.” So the squid somehow can create, and can understand, an “intricate language of patterns, movements and associated behaviors.” Again, the squid are born knowing how to do this, how to create the patterns, how to perform the movements, and what each pattern and movement means.

This system is irreducibly complex. You need both the fantastic technology to write on their bodies, and the knowledge to know what the writings and movements mean. With just the technology, there is no language. Without the knowledge, there is no language. How could they both have “evolved,” in the Darwinian sense, simultaneously? Obviously, they couldn’t have. Darwinian evolution is a process of random mutations, of errors in the code if you will, and natural selection of the best “errors.” How could the “errors” to create the technology have been preserved, if they were totally worthless without the full knowledge of what they mean?

These courting cephalopods, these oval squid of the South China Sea, prove the existence of God. As Lord Kelvin said in 1903, “If you think strongly enough you will be forced by science to the belief in God.”

Thanks for reading.