04.24.08

Two Movies, a Lizard, and a Letter

Posted in Uncategorized at 10:26 am by Administrator

Today, I’ll forego discussion on a single topic and just mention a few things I’ve found interesting recently. The first is the release of Ben Stein’s Expelled: No Intelligence Allowed. It was released on Friday of last week and I watched it on Sunday. World Net Daily reported that it got on the top ten box office for the weekend, and I saw that it was number ten on the Yahoo Movies chart. That’s impressive, considering the film only opened in a little over a thousand theaters (or so I hear). I liked it. It’s one of those love it or hate it things, and every review I’ve seen has reflected that. If you believe in any sort of a [C]reator, then you’ll likely be happy to see that there’s finally been a film exposing the insanely strong bias against God in the scientific establishment. Diehard atheistic (or practically atheistic) evolutionists will hate the film, since, well, darkness hates the light. People who don’t care too much one way or the other tend to like the film simply for its entertainment value. I won’t give my own detailed review, though. There are already plenty enough out there.

Another piece of movie related news floating around out there was in regards to the crystal skulls that the upcoming Indiana Jones movie is based on. Some French scientists conducted research on the supposed South American skulls and concluded that every one of them is fake. I was, of course, interested in the headline and read through the article only to be amused by their “evidence”. It turns out they concluded they were fake because 1) the crystal apparently originated in Germany and 2) it would have been impossible for the skulls to be carved by the tools available to the South Americans prior to the colonial era. Can those reading see the problems with this evidence? Right: it’s assuming exactly the opposite of what certain people are trying to prove by using the crystal skulls as evidence. The scientists first assumed that the Mayans or whoever would not have access to either German crystal or technologies such as the wheel (if their hypothesis of how the skulls were made is correct). Others who think that the skulls might in fact be genuine see them as evidence that those who were in South America prior to Columbus were more technologically advanced than we give them credit for. As for the crystal being of German origin, I think that could point to the existence of trade between Europe and the Americas in pre-colonial times.  It’s fully possible that the skulls are fake, but it’ll take more than this recent research to bring the issue to a conclusion.
Skipping to another topic, there’s an article in the National Geographic about some lizards that were introduced in 1971 to Pod Mrcaru, a little island off the coast of Croatia. These ten reptiles were watched by researches these past decades, with one extended interruption during the war in those parts. In 2004, they were able to resume their research, and now they’re publishing their findings that the descendants of the original ten lizards in addition to somehow wiping out the indigenous lizard population have rapidly evolved to better digest the local vegetation. No, you ecstatic Darwinists, I’m not going to deny that the change in their digestive tracks happened. Instead, I’m going to point out that this is an incredible validation of the model of rapid speciation after the Flood.

Last is the issue of whether or not to capitalize the word Flood when referring to the global flood of Genesis. I’ve had two college instructors tell me that it shouldn’t be capitalized because you wouldn’t capitalize the term industrial revolution. It’s one of those little things that tend to catch me off guard when interacting with humanists. One of them told me right afterwards that she understood why I capitalized the term, but the other was more adamant (she happens to be the faith and reason lady). It’s not that big a deal, but I am the type who likes to philosophize about grammar. I am standing fast for the capitalization of the Flood, because I think it is not like the term industrial revolution. It refers to a singular, physical event that covered the whole world with water, wiped out all land and air life on earth, split up the continents, etc. It was a worldwide incident brought about directly by God as a judgment against humanity. The Resurrection and Judgment Day are both capitalized. I don’t see why Flood shouldn’t be, unless one so despises the Bible that even the slightest hint of the events recorded in it being significant and proper is appalling. Then again, there are many Christians who do not capitalize the term, but the English language is a flexible thing with many exceptions to rules and an ever changing personality. Spelling and capitalization are two aspects that have changed dramatically over time, and I’m pretty sure that it is only recently that Noah’s Flood has become flood.

Expelled in top ten:

http://www.wnd.com/index.php?fa=PAGE.view&pageId=62152

Crystal skulls fake?:

http://www.independent.co.uk/arts-entertainment/film-and-tv/features/indiana-jones-and-the-heap-of-old-junk-811846.html

Evolving lizards:

http://news.nationalgeographic.com/news/2008/04/080421-lizard-evolution_2.html

04.15.08

Days of evolution?

Posted in Uncategorized at 11:03 am by Administrator

Despite its widespread popularity, the claim presented by theistic evolutionists that Genesis 1 describes the correct order of evolution is quite easy to find flaws with. It’s not even necessary to debate about the Flood and the rate of fossilization and erosion. The simple order of events is quite enough, because the order of the creation days does not “easily fit”, but rather must be shoehorned in.

Day 1: God begins His creative act with water, and on the first day He adds light.

Evolution starts with the big bang, and it takes a very long time for the Earth to form. Earth certainly did not start out as water.

Day 2: God separates the waters into that below and that above, creating the sky.

Sure, evolution has the Earth going on to create its own atmosphere, but this is still after the formation of stars. At this point, Genesis does not have the stars formed yet.

Day 3: God creates land and plants.

Evolution has water arising from land, I think. Land plants are supposed to have come after aquatic life.

Day 4: God creates the extraterrestrial universe, including the sun, moon, and stars.

Evolution has the sun and stars forming before the Earth. I’ve heard the argument that God actually created the sun and stars first, and on day four He just withdrew a heavy layer of clouds and allowed these things to be seen. I’ll let the matter rest on your own reason.

Day 5: God creates aquatic life and birds.

Okay, evolution has aquatic animals coming first, I think (but also before plants). Birds, on the other hand, are out of order. They’re supposed to come after land animals.

Day 6: And here God creates land animals and finally humans.

Evolution has humans “coming on the scene” rather late as well, but what took the land animals so long?

When conversing with one theistic evolutionist, I was presented with the argument that the days of creation were not necessarily in the order in which they are written. We should then be scratching our heads as to why the days would be numbered in the Genesis record. But even if the days were in a different order, there were days on which two categories of the creation were created. Genesis has aquatic animals and birds being created together. Evolution requires that aquatic animals came first, then land animals, then birds. Day 6 would have to be squeezed into the middle of day 5 for this, but then another problem arises: man coming before birds. Well, let’s just merge days 5 and 6 and cut everything up to make it fit. That’ll work, right? We can also place day 4 before day 1. The order of water and land is still out of wack a little, but it works well enough. Oh, wait, I forgot that day 3 has plants before aquatic life. Have to cut out the plants part and stick it in our day 5/6. While were at it, we can stick the first part of day 3 before day 2. Never mind that it makes no sense for land to come out of water before there’s any water.

Boy, it’s hard to get all of this right. It’s almost as if God wrote Genesis 1 specifically to confound our attempts to reconcile it with evolution….

References and further reading:

http://creationwiki.org/index.php/Arguments_against_theistic_evolution

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Timeline_of_evolution

http://www.bbc.co.uk/schools/gcsebitesize/biology/variationandinheritance/3evolutionrev8.shtml