What are your biggest questions about creation science?

I want this blog to answer questions people have about creation and how the Biblical account can be supported by science.

What are your questions? Are there things you wonder about? Post a comment to this post telling me what your questions are, and I’ll try to answer them.

A note about the comments: I’ve set it up so that you have to get approved when you first post a comment. After that, you should be able to comment automatically, and I’ll leave it like that unless I get a lot of spam comments or people harassing and name calling. Don’t be put off by the approval process, it’s just an extra layer of protection to keep out the riffraff.

 

What do you do when you find evidence you don’t expect?

Scientists digging in Poland found footprints of a supposed early land animal. They were surprised to find the footprints showed the animal was much more developed than they expected.

They expected to find extra strong paired fins of an animal whose parents had been fish. But what they found had fully developed toe digits. Further, the trail of footprints showed the animal had true legs, not super-fish-fins-on-their-way-to-developing-into-legs. And also of note, the footprints may indicate that if this animals ancestors were indeed water-dwellers, they dwelled in saltwater, not the fresh water scientists had hypothesized for the first transitional form of land animal. Even more puzzling is that the time frame is off: the date for these animals is earlier than they expected.

I guess they’ll have to re-think their theory just a bit.

 

Neanderthals Wore Make-up

Neanderthals may have lived in caves, but they were fully human. http://www.flickr.com/photos/niravameen/ / CC BY-NC-SA 2.0

Archeologists digging in southern Spain have unearthed evidence  that Neanderthals wore make-up or body paint. They used seashells as containers to store various colors, which they created using complex recipes. There is also evidence that they sculpted other seashells and wore them as jewelry.

The significance of this discovery is that it shows higher level thinking and creativity that many scientists assume was not present in Neanderthals, whom they consider to be a sub-human evolutionary link between humans and apes, or a branch of the supposed evolutionary tree that died out.

But creation scientists believe neanderthals were fully human, a tribe of descendants of Adam and Eve.

Other Neanderthal-related fun facts to know and tell:

• Neanderthals had brains as large as “modern humans,” and maybe even larger.
• Some of them may have engaged in medical procedures to save the lives of other Neanderthals. There is evidence of at least one amputation of a Neanderthal man’s lower arm, which healed and did not cause his death.
• They were skilled hunters and toolmakers, and they cooked their food.
• Examination of their skulls indicates they could talk.
• They buried their dead, sometimes holding flowers.

 

Read through the Bible in a year — using audio files

Every December my church puts out a schedule that helps you read through the Bible in a year. There are many such schedules, some of which get you through the Bible in a year and others that proceed at a more leisurely pace.

Answers in Genesis has a link to a resource that lets you go through the Bible in a year using audio files instead of reading it aloud or to yourself. You can use the default plan or change the settings if you want to do it differently. The version they use is NIV and the audio files require a RealOne player; their page has a link if you don’t have that kind of audio file player.

I was thinking about reading through the Bible in a year recently. Someone in my Sunday school class shared an interesting idea about that a few months ago. The idea was to read through the Bible each year using a different translation. I tend to be a one-translation type of gal. I like the NASB and I tend to stick with that. But earlier this year I purchased a Holman Christian Standard Bible and I also have an English Standard Version that I haven’t read much. There are lots of ways to read through the Bible in a year. If you have a favorite method, why don’t you post about it in the comment section below?

 

Exploring God’s Creation: Great audio resource

I recently discovered a creation science podcast that is really full of wonderful information.

It’s also a radio show, if you happen to live in the Portland, Oregon area, Denver, or Phoenix (which I don’t). So I downloaded the first few episodes and listened to them in my car. I learned a lot, was reminded of a lot of things I already knew and just generally appreciated the comfortable, informative teaching style of Bob Knopf, the host and creator of Exploring God’s Creation.

This is an excellent way to learn the basics of creation science or to introduce someone to it. But it’s got a lot of good information for those who think they know a lot about the subject, as well. I’m looking forward to listening to more. As of this writing, there are 46 episodes online and I have only heard 5 or 6.

 

Scientists find muscle and blood in a fossil

Are fossils really millions of years old? If so, they just found one that still had muscle and blood tissue in it.

I’ve been really busy with not any extra time to blog, but I wanted to make sure this story was listed here. Amazing to think that such tissue could survive millions of years without decomposing.

 

AiG Pocket Guides

I don’t want to make it a practice to review things I haven’t seen, but these books look really good. Answers in Genesis has a series of Pocket Guides and right now, they are on sale (saving you almost $10 if you buy all 5 of them).

The description says that these are meant to be concise and powerful and that they are illustrated. There are 5 topics:

• The Global Flood
• Noah’s Ark
• Social Issues
• Charles Darwin
• The Bible

Each has 96 pages and is softcover. I took a peek at the table of contents of the one on the Flood and there are several authors, and many sub-topics, so though there are less than 100 pages, it seems like the book is packed with information.

In our increasingly busy society, this is one way Christians can quickly keep informed on the main points they need to know about these important issues. I’d love to read comments from anyone who has seen or who owns these.

 

News flash: evolution is not reversible

Apparently some scientists have been studying evolution on a molecular level and have come to the conclusion that evolution is not reversible — it can’t go backwards. What that means is, they think we evolved from a common ancestor of apes, but our great-great-great-great-great grandchildren won’t evolve back into apes.

That’s a relief, isn’t it?

Creationists agree with this. Creationists believe in microevolution — small changes that take place within the boundaries of a “kind” so that there are Dobermans and German Shepherds and Poodles that all came from one dog ancestor. But they don’t believe in macroevolution — meaning that dogs will always give birth to more dogs, there won’t be a dog some day who gives birth to an ape.

Creationists also believe that any genetic mutations result in loss of genetic information. So Adam and Eve’s descendants have many different skin colors and facial features. But if you take two very dark skinned descendants of Adam and Eve and study their descendants, you probably won’t ever find a really light skinned one. Unless one of their descendants marries a light skinned person and the genes come from there. As time goes forward, we lose genetic information, we don’t gain it. So, we can’t go back. We might not ever see a dog that looks exactly like the original dog as God created him.

 

In 20 years, we’ll be able to live forever

When I heard about this story, my jaw dropped into my lap.

To sum it up, a scientist who has made many predictions about technology that have later come true has predicted that within 20 years, we will have developed the technology to become immortal.

This quote especially leaped out at me: “Mr Kurzweil said: ‘I and many other scientists now believe that in around 20 years we will have the means to reprogramme our bodies’ stone-age software so we can halt, then reverse, ageing. Then nanotechnology will let us live for ever.’ “

This kind of thinking is the result of taking the theory of evolution to its ultimate conclusion. We’re supposedly evolving, becoming better and smarter with each generation. We’re going to get better and better until we have eliminated all of the problems of mankind.

The Bible doesn’t tell the story this way. The Bible tells us how God created Adam and Eve. Were Adam and Eve and their children “stone age” people? No, I don’t believe they were. Cain built a city. Tubal-Cain, 5 generations later, forged all kinds of tools out of bronze and iron, and his half-brother, Jubal, was the father of a group of musicians and instrument makers. After the Flood, 2 generations later, people were building boats to travel and spread out into their territories. They built great cities within a few generations of Noah. These “primitive people” built great structures we still marvel at today.

But we also see how quickly men will fall into sin. There was great sin in Noah’s day, and even after such an enormous judgment by God, the generations that came after quickly fell into sin again.

I don’t believe we can use technology to become immortal. As my son said when I told him about this, we haven’t even managed to create a computer that doesn’t crash. But God would have to stop us if we really tried to become immortal, because then we would have to live forever in our sinful state. What a scary thought.

 

Living Fossils

I just heard the fascinating story of Dr. Carl Werner. Someone challenged him to prove evolution, when he was in college. He thought about it for a long time, trying to devise an experiment that could give evidence as to the truth of the theory of evolution. He finally figured out a way to perform such an experiment, and he and his wife traveled around the world interviewing scientists and visiting archeological dig sites. Somewhere along the way, Dr. Werner changed his mind; he started out believing that evolution was true and ended up believing in creation.

He has written two books on the subject and also has a DVD available.

On the page at New Leaf Press where you can find out about his book, you can also download 3 audio files where he talks about the project in more depth. Click on the “podcasts” buttons (though they’re really not podcasts in the sense that it’s not a regularly recurring episodic type of show, just three recordings you can download).