‘ANTARCTIC FLOWERING PLANTS “A CLIMATE WARNING”: Scientists from Italy and UK have been
studying the plants on Signy Island, a small island near Antarctica. They found two native flowering plants named Deschampsia antarctica and Colobanthus quitensis have increased their growth rate and range of habitation over the past decade. They are low growing grasses that grow in clumps on an otherwise rocky, snow-covered island. Researchers suggest the increased grow rate and expansion is the result of warmer summer temperatures and less trampling by fur seals. Whilst the changing conditions are good for these two plants the researchers are concerned that increased temperatures may allow non-native species to gain a foothold and cause “irreversible biodiversity loss and changes to these fragile and unique ecosystems”. They concluded that if global warming proceeded according to the worst case scenario proposed by the IPCC “Earth’s climate by as soon as 2030 could resemble warmer periods such as those recorded during the mid-Pliocene”.
References: Science Alert 19 February 2022, Current Biology 14 February 2022, doi: 10.1016/j.cub.2022.01.074.
ED. COM. These researchers admit the earth has been warmer in the past. Whilst we don’t agree with the
evolutionary timetable that places the Pliocene warm period millions of years ago, we agree there is ample evidence in the fossil record of a warmer world with lush vegetation in the past. So why do these
researchers complain about new warming and new growth? A warm environment with plenty of lush
vegetation makes for a better place for living things than the present cold, barren environment of the
islands around Antarctica.
Similar changes have happened in the northern hemisphere, where we know from history some frozen
wastelands, such as Greenland and Iceland were once warm enough for people to live and grow crops.
The dire predictions about “non-native” species moving in exposes the hypocrisy of modern
environmentalists – they believe in evolution, which is a process of survival of the fittest. The whole concept of “native” species assumes these plants evolved here and cannot live anywhere else. The reality is these plants survive here because others can’t, and there is no reason they could not or should not grow somewhere else given the opportunity. Currently these two Antarctic grasses are the fittest, but if the climate changes and other plants can move in, the new more successful ones will be the fittest.
Again, we are left with the hypocrisy of environmental evolutionists – they claim to believe in continual
evolution, but they don’t want anything doing it!
The IPCC’s latest report, with all its dire predictions, came out in August 2021 and has now been endorsed
by the United Nations.’https://creationresearch.net/wp-content/uploads/2022/Enews/enews-20220303.pdf
Evolution
Good Ole Charles ‘Darwin proposed that evolutionary changes occur by a long series of small incremental changes over long periods of time. Six decades later Richard Goldschmidt proposed that evolution happened by sudden large changes resulting in new organisms with new structures and functions, which he called “hopeful monsters”. A group of evolutionary biologists at University of California Santa Barbara claim to have found an example of a sudden large change brought about by mutations in a single gene in a plant named Aquilegia coerulea, otherwise known as the Colorado Blue Columbine.
They noticed that approximately one quarter of the population of A. coerulea in central Colorado had flowers that lacked the distinctive nectar spurs seen in Columbine flowers. Instead, the flowers had an extra row of sepals. They studied the genetics of normal and spurless plants and found the change resulted from mutations to a gene named APETALA3-3. The mutations made the gene non-functional.
Hodges, a professor of Biology at UC Santa Barbara explained: “This finding shows that evolution can occur in a big jump if the right kind of gene is involved. When it’s broken, those instructions aren’t there anymore, and that causes it to develop into a completely different organ, a sepal.” He went on to comment: “We did not have a good example of a hopeful monster due to a single genetic change until now.”
The researchers wondered how the loss of function mutations survived in such a large proportion of the population, especially as the mutant flowers lacked nectar spurs. The plants are normally pollinated by moths that feed by inserting their proboscis into the spur, which positions the moth’s head in the right place to collect pollen. According to Scott Hodges, “To get that many of this mutant type really suggests that there’s selection favouring it somehow.” It turns out the mutant plants can be pollinated by bees so they could still reproduce, but the selection advantage that enabled them to survive and thrive was the fact that aphids and deer, which feed on Columbines, did not like the mutant plants as much as the normal plants.
References: ScienceDaily 16 February 2022; Current Biology 16 February 2022 doi: 10.1016/j.cub.2022.01.066
Editorial Comment: Richard Goldschmidt (1878-1958), who proposed the “hopeful monster” theory also recognised that some sudden large changes result in loss of function and he called these “hopeless monsters”. As the mutant columbines can survive, due to being disliked by aphids and deer, they not hopeless, but they are not hopeful either.
As the researchers admit, the change was caused by a gene being broken, i.e. a loss of genetic information. That is degeneration, not evolution. The plant has not gained a structure it did not have before. In fact, it has lost an important structure, the nectar spurs, which reduces its options for being pollinated. If moths with their long proboscises try to feed from the centre of the flower, rather than from the nectar spurs their heads are not close enough to collect any pollen.
The extra row of sepals is not a new structure, and the broken gene didn’t form them. The plant already had sepals. The extra row results from the loss of the signal to make petals muddling the complex sequence of genetic control that occurs during flower formation.
An extreme form extra sepals resulting from muddled genetic signalling occurs in flowers known as green roses. In these the flower bud can only make sepals, and it makes multiple rows of them resulting in a cluster of green sepals with no other flower parts. These are definitely “hopeless monsters” as they cannot reproduce themselves, but they survive because people like them and propagate them by grafting. Creation Research has several specimens in our collection of unusual plants.’https://creationfactfile.com/6475/hopeful-monster-flowers/
‘DARWIN’S ABOMINABLE MYSTERY SOLVED YET AGAIN as scientists have found a fossil plant with leaves, a fruit and a flower bud in rocks from Inner Mongolia. These are distinctive features of angiosperms, the scientific term for flowering plants. The fossil plant has been named Florigerminis jurassica and is the oldest dated flowering plant found so far. The fossil is dated as 164 million years old, placing it in the Jurassic period of the evolutionary timetable. Until recently angiosperm plants were believed to have evolved in the Cretaceous, (65 – 145 million years ago) but scientists have speculated they must have evolved far earlier so they had time to evolve the great diversity of flowering plants that exists now and in the fossil record. This problem was noted by Darwin, who called the origin of flowering plants an “abominable mystery”. The research team who studied Florigerminis jurassica commented that their specimen along with two other recently discovered Jurassic fossil flowers “demands a rethinking of angiosperm evolution”.
Sources: Science Alert 16 January 2022, Geological Society, London, Special Publications, 6 January 2022, doi: 10.1144/SP521-2021-122
ED. COM. Every time someone finds a fossil flowering plant in Jurassic or early Cretaceous rocks they claim to have solved Darwin’s abominable mystery. However, finding a fully formed flowering plant never solves the mystery of how non-flowering plants turned into flowering plants because, like this new fossil, it is already a flowering plant. In fact, this “mystery” will never be solved because it exists only in the minds of Darwin and his followers. Flowering plants have always been flowering plants – the evidence supports that just as Genesis explains it – because God created all green plants according to their kinds, which included the plants we now classify as angiosperms. See Genesis 1:11-12. It’s seen in both the fossil record, and in our observations of living plants, which always reproduce after their kind.’https://mailchi.mp/creationresearch.net/creation-research-email-update-9th-february-2022?e=ce21bf0337
RICH DIVERSITY OF FOSSILS FROM “THE ‘DEAD’ HEART OF AUSTRALIA”. A team of researchers in Australia have been studying a mass of exquisitely preserved fossils found in the Central Tablelands in the Australian state of New South Wales. The deposit contains a great variety of plants and animals, including insects, spiders, fish and a bird feather. The fossils are so well preserved that microscopic structures and soft tissues can be clearly seen. Scientists were also able to identify pollen grains on the insects, and the stomach contents of fish. According to Matthew McCurry, of the Australian Museum, who led the study, “Our analyses suggest that the fossils formed when iron-rich groundwaters drained into a billabong, and that a precipitation of iron minerals-encased organisms that were living in or fell into the water.”
The rich diversity of the fossils, including many rainforest plants indicate they lived in a warm, moist environment. McCurry commented: “The fossils we have found prove that the area was once a temperate, mesic rainforest and that life was rich and abundant here in the Central Tablelands, NSW.” The fossil site is dated as 16 million years old, putting it in the Miocene epoch, considered to be a time when Australia was starting to dry out, and the landscape was changing from widespread rainforest to scrubland and arid regions.
Sources: Science Alert and SciTech Daily 7 January 2022, ABC News 8 January 2022 Science Advances 7 January 2022, doi: 10.1126/sciadv.abm1406
ED. COM. The description “The ‘Dead’ Heart of Australia” comes from the headline in Science Alert and SciTech Daily. While this may inspire visions of scientists toiling in a lifeless desert in a remote area of outback Australia, the Central Tablelands is a farming and woodland region in the mountain range that runs parallel to the eastern seaboard. This region may not be lifeless, but it is no longer a rainforest. It has a temperate climate with frosty winters, and the areas that are not farmed are dry sclerophyll forest, consisting mainly of gum trees and scrubland. This fossil site, with its rich diversity of plants and animals, is a good reminder that climate change is real and Australia has dried out significantly, but it happened without any human industry.
For those who don’t speak Australian, a billabong is an oxbow lake. However, merely falling into a lake would never preserve the delicate structures and soft tissues found in these fossils. The exquisite preservation of these fossils could only happen if they were rapidly and deeply buried before any decay processes could destroy the delicate structures. Such fine preservation and the huge variety of organisms, including fish, land animals and land plants, fits well however with it being a washed in deposit, where floodwaters have washed across the landscape collecting and mixing whatever was living there and then dumping it quickly.
PS – Climate change has been happening ever since God warned Noah that there would be hot times and cold times as long as the earth endured. See Genesis 8:22.’https://mailchi.mp/creationresearch.net/creation-research-email-update-9th-february-2022?e=ce21bf0337
Theistic evolutionist ‘Dr. Francis Collins, former director of the National Institutes of Health (NIH) and founder of the evolutionary creation advocacy group BioLogos, has become a lightning rod within evangelicalism for promoting vaccines for COVID-19, especially among pastors and other faith leaders.
In a BioLogos-sponsored webinar last week, Collins chided many of his fellow white evangelicals for not getting the vaccine and alleged “the culture war is literally killing people.”
Collins cited Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) estimates that vaccine hesitancy or resistance contributed to more than 100,000 deaths from COVID-19, the Religion News Service reported. He suggested vaccine resistance was partly the result of Christians falling for misinformation.
Yet in a recent Daily Wire article that’s been widely circulated, conservative writer Megan Basham questioned why evangelicals haven’t interrogated Collins more rigorously before sharing their platform with the federal official she called “Caesar’s agent.”
Citing news reports, Basham accused Collins of trying to suppress questions surrounding the source of COVID-19 and the efficacy of the federal COVID-19 response. She also accused Collins himself of being “willing to compromise transparency and truth for PR considerations.”
Basham also questioned whether it was appropriate for Collins to recruit evangelical leaders like Wheaton College dean Ed Stetzer to help him spread the government’s preferred narratives about COVID-19.
On a podcast with Stetzer in September, Collins said, “I want pastors once again to try to use your credibility with your flock to put forward the public health measures that we know can work.”
But Basham asked, “(I)s it truly the pastor’s job to tell church members to ‘trust the science?’”
Spokespeople for the NIH and BioLogos didn’t immediately reply when The Roys Report reached out asking for a response to the Daily Wire piece. TheDaily Wire didn’t receive a response when it reached out to Stetzer, public theologian Russell Moore, and other high-profile evangelicals mentioned in the piece.
‘Misinformation . . . and conspiracies’
Collins regularly cites his faith in BioLogos podcasts and elsewhere, sometimes comparing his path to Christ to that of C.S. Lewis. Collins, who headed the Human Genome Project, is author of the best-selling book The Language of God: A Scientist Presents Evidence for Belief, which won a Christianity Today Book Award.
Because of his substantial scientific credentials and professed Christian belief, The Washington Post described Collins as being in an “unusual position to address people of faith.”
In last week’s BioLogos webinar, Collins said he was surprised by how much his shared faith mattered to Christians. Researchers, he said, have found that “unless that truth comes at you from somebody you trust, you’re not going to call it truth at all.”
Collins also highlighted how white evangelicals were somewhat less likely than average to have gotten vaccinated for COVID-19.
About two-thirds of white evangelical Protestants had gotten at least one dose of COVID-19 vaccine when Pew Research polled Americans in late August. At the time, 70% of black Protestants had done so, and almost three-quarters of Americans in general.
Collins told RNS he blamed “misinformation and lies and conspiracies” for part of white evangelicals’ hesitancy about COVID-19 vaccination. He also thought his messaging about the pandemic could have been better.
Credibility as an evangelical
However, Basham called Collins’ credibility with evangelicals into question.
Under Collins’ watch, she wrote, the NIH has funded research using abortion-derived fetal tissue and factored in diversity criteria when awarding grants. NIH funding has also gone to research on “sexual and gender minorities,” she wrote.
BioLogos, which Collins founded, also advocates for “an evolutionary understanding of God’s creation.”
According to Pew Research, only about a third of evangelicals think humans evolved and a majority oppose abortion and same-sex marriage.
Basham suggested Collins gained his credibility from “character witnesses” like Stetzer and former Southern Baptist leader Russell Moore, who praised Collins’ “Christian humility.”
After the article’s publication, Basham noted on Twitter that BioLogos suddenly canceled an interview she had scheduled with Collins on a different topic. When she asked why, an organization spokesperson replied that “the tone and claims” of her article were “inconsistence” with BioLogos’ aims.
Responses Mixed
Responses to the controversy have been mixed.
Jay Richards, a research fellow with the Heritage Foundation, urged pastors and religious leaders to apologize for “this naïve propagandizing for Collins.”
Kelley Owens, a kids director at a church in Indianapolis, tweeted: “If nothing else, this pandemic has served to increase my discernment and give me pause before I uncritically accept any position . . . Even if it comes from someone I have previously trusted.”
However, a medical doctor noted on social media that Collins was “far from the only medical doctor urging, masking, vaccination, and reasonable public health interventions. In fact there have been doctors and nurses in churches all across the country giving the same message to evangelicals.”
One reader likened the pushback against Collins to how Christians interacted with former U.S. Surgeon General C. Everett Koop.
Erick Erickson, a conservative Christian pundit, initially said he was “disturbed” by Basham’s article. But later, he published a blog post calling for an end to what he characterized as “infighting” among Christians trying to bolster their own credibility.
“(M)aybe those in positions of leadership need to realize there are others they’re inspiring to tribalism, not to the trials of the Christian life,” he wrote. “Maybe instead of picking sides, pick Jesus.”’https://julieroys.com/francis-collins-draws-fire-vaccine-advocacy-top-evangelicals/?mc_cid=27c313549b&mc_eid=b13d34ad49
If you have read this far Collins is wrong in both his belief on how God created and on the effectiveness of the Covid vaccines. Genesis 1:31 ¶ And God saw every thing that he had made, and, behold, it was very good. And the evening and the morning were the sixth day and THERE IS NO WAY OF GETTING THEISTIC EVOLUTION out of that!
Psalm 31:15-16
“My times are in thy hand: deliver me from the hand of mine enemies, and from them that persecute me. Make thy face to shine upon thy servant: save me for thy mercies’ sake.”
‘Ray Bradbury’s classic 1952 short story “A Sound of Thunder” featured a company called Time Safaris Inc. They took clients back in time to the date evolutionists believe dinosaurs roamed the Earth. They find a dinosaur which is about to die, then allow the clients to shoot it. During one safari, a character slips off the force-field pathway and, unknowingly, treads on a butterfly, killing it. On return to the present, they discover that the present is different from the present they left. Evolution has proceeded by a very different route because of the death of that butterfly.
As a teenager, brought up to believe evolution, the story seemed plausible to me. Evolution would surely multiply such errors. But researchers at Los Alamos National Laboratory have suggested that quantum physics gives a different answer – that the proceeding evolution would correct itself and little overall change would occur. Bradbury’s story led to the coining of the term “the butterfly effect”. The Los Alamos researchers suggest there is no butterfly effect. Who has it right?
The answer is, of course, neither. For so many other reasons, we know that Darwinian evolution, requiring increased new information, is impossible. So Bradbury’s short story was based on a false premise. But so was the Los Alamos research. Their computer model, however sophisticated, is a designed environment and can therefore never simulate random processes. Meanwhile, the revelation of God’s word in Scripture stands as the only true key to the past.’https://creationmoments.com/sermons/butterflies-and-time-machines/?utm_source=rss&utm_medium=rss&utm_campaign=butterflies-and-time-machines&mc_cid=87247e4849&mc_eid=00c1dcff3c
‘Perhaps you remember the story of Chicken Little, the hen who got excited when an acorn fell on her head. She began running around hollering, “The sky is FALLING! The sky is FALLING!” On the way to tell the King about this catastrophe, she met her friends – a rooster, a duck, a goose and a turkey – who then became seized by fear, achieving a kind of mass animal hysteria. By the time they all met the fox, their judgment was essentially consumed by the mania, and they fell for the fox’s deception about a shortcut to see the King. So they followed the fox right into his den where they became dinner for the Fox family.
When people are fearful, they are more easily deceived, controlled and oppressed! This is why the Bible says in many places to “Fear not.” Because we can put our trust in our great and loving Creator, the Bible says to “abide under the shadow of the Almighty”, to “say of the Lord ‘He is my refuge and my fortress’ and “Surely He shall deliver thee from the snare of the fowler” (Psalm 91:1-3). When preoccupied by fear, we can’t discern truth and think as clearly – hence, the critical importance of abiding in God and Christ!
Faith in the law-giving, principle-giving Creator God of the Bible is the foundation for true “science” (the Latin word for “knowledge”). This is why the scientific revolution, the foundation of modern science, came from countries that had a biblical worldview – and on the heels of the protestant reformation and the printing and publishing of the Bible in the common languages. The development of true science required faith in the law-giving Creator of the Bible, who thus must also have created principles which the Bible said were there for mankind to discover. Cultures which believed the Bible thus sought and discovered the scientific laws. And the scientific laws are, in turn, proof of the law-giving Creator of which the Bible speaks!
When science is divorced from its Creator, as it is with evolution, it is open to all kinds of error and pseudo-science. One such error has been the so-called “scientific justification” for racism and for eugenics. Prolific writer, philosopher and lay theologian G.K. Chesterton wrote about the degrading effects of this kind of science: “The thing that really is trying to tyrannize is Science…That creed is the great but disputed system of thought which began with Evolution and has ended with Eugenics”.
Chesterton predicted tyranny from this kind of “science”, forecasting what later unfolded with the Nazis in Germany. Eugenics, including the ranking of people based on skull shapes and sizes, is now almost universally recognized as a pseudo-science … though Communist China revived it for its one-child abortion policies and racial-cleansing efforts.
Divorcing science from the God of the Bible through evolution promotes tyranny. It encourages the deconstruction of divine principles such as the sanctity of life, private property, and liberty. This is because social principles can be deconstructed or debunked if they do not carry the authority of our Maker. Chesterton points out, for example, that a godless science can argue, “After all, what is human life? Brief at best, sad at the brightest, it is itself but a disease from which, etc, etc.” So why not kill?
Or it can say, “After all, what is property? Why should material objects be artificially attached, etc, etc.” So why not steal? Or “After all, what is liberty? Man must live as a member of a society, and so must obey those laws which etc, etc.” So why not totally regulate and tyrannize individuals?
Today, science is so divorced from God through evolution that we are allowing biological men to compete against biological women in sports! And deconstruction of the great divine truth that God created them “male and female” (Genesis 1:27) is so entrenched through the deception and intimidation of pseudo-science that otherwise perfectly smart people capitulate to and join with this grand deception, daring not even to debate it!
Fear, indeed, accompanies godless evolution. For if we accept evolutionism, we accept that God is unnecessary or impotent or completely absent from the created order. And God the Creator gets replaced by Chance and Survival of the Fittest. We all become vulnerable to the whims of Chance – the impersonal, uncaring, fickle, capricious, merciless “god” who keeps us in fear.
Like island dwellers sacrificing their children to the volcano god to keep it from erupting by appeasing it, we might sacrifice our freedoms in fear to a culture of deception and death, including lives of the unborn to appease the enforcers of conclusions from godless science. We must be careful that we are not led into a trap as were Chicken Little and her friends!
As always, the answer to the dilemma of mankind is found in believing the Bible for all that it has to say, including, “God is our refuge and strength, a very present help in trouble. Therefore we will not fear, though the earth be removed, and though the mountains fall into the midst of the sea” (Psalm 46:1-2).
In many ways, our culture is based on modernized witchcraft. We are really no better than the ancients. Control, domination and manipulation – the ancient practice of shamans and witches over people to help them “avoid disaster” – is, in many ways, the practice of today’s rulers.
“Trust the science,” they tell us, except that such science is based in godlessness, with plenty of dishonesty, corruption, deception and deconstruction of divine truth along the way. “To avoid disaster, switch to electric cars, keep wearing your masks, and vaccinate your kids!” they say. “And teach them Critical Race Theory (CRT)”, thus reviving evolution-based racism, mixed with evolution-supported Marxism. “Oh and by the way, if you resist what we tell you to do, WE’RE COMING FOR YOU!” Godless science will try to work in the fear-factor in many ways.’https://creationmoments.com/newsletter/evolution-and-the-sum-of-all-fears/?mc_cid=dd42f56b70&mc_eid=00c1dcff3c
Matthew 16:2
“He answered and said unto them, When it is evening, ye say, [It will be] fair weather: for the sky is red.”
‘One good test of whether a theory is scientific is whether the theory can accurately predict new and surprising findings. If you have a barometer, you may do this all the time. The sky may be clear, but the barometer is falling fast. No matter how nice the weather looks, you know that rain is likely.
Creation scientists believe that humans have been on Earth in their present so-called “modern” form ever since the model first came out. Since that was on day six of creation, humans have been on Earth as long as any creature. So creation scientists have predicted that as we find more fossils, we will find fossils of “modern man” in older and older rocks. Such a discovery would shock the evolutionists!
Evolutionists say that, according to their theory, “modern” humans have been around for only a small part of the world’s history. In their inflated estimate, they say we have been here for only 35,000 years. Evolutionists received a surprise when that age recently had to be almost tripled. A new discovery pushed the date for “modern” humans back 92,000 years. As a result, evolutionists had to admit that we turn out to be older than some of the creatures from which we were supposed to have evolved!
Of course, one has to take the hot air out of those evolutionary dates. They can be adjusted down to a number that fits the biblical calendar. However, the scientific prediction made by creation scientists has proven out. And creationists are predicting that the history of “modern” humanity will continue to be pushed back further and further!
