‘ENCOUNTERS WITH SCIENCE EDUCATORS reported by our Tasmanian Rep, Craig Hawkins MSc, who writes: While serving at the counter of our tourism business recently I was challenged by a Victorian high school science teacher who had seen creation materials in our gift shop, as to why a place like ours would be associated with such a thing like creationism. I politely responded that as the owner I believed it was a much better explanation of the origins of the universe than the religion of evolution. Well, that was enough to almost witness spontaneous combustion. I briefly, casually explained how there is a complete lack of observable, measurable and repeatable evidence in all the major steps required by evolution, including the Big Bang, life arising from non-living chemicals, and the need for increasing genetic complexity to evolve from amoebas to man. This science teacher, who teaches Aussie children that evolution is a fact, was unable to counter these basic facts and line of argument. In order to try and disregard the line of logic that I had used she resorted, in front of other customers, to argue that it can be theoretically shown that 1 plus 1 does not equal 2, and therefore you cannot always believe what otherwise appears obvious. Worldview suitably challenged; the poor teacher then stormed out. The next customer, a very typical Aussie, came up to the counter and said: ‘Sorry mate but I couldn’t help overhearing all that. As a butcher for many years I can say that if I added 1 kilo of sausages to another kilo of sausages I always ended up with 2 kilos!’
The butcher’s profound summary of the need for real facts properly used and interpreted, was eminently more sensible than vague claims by a science-graduated teacher as to the authority of secular, humanistic “science” over the obvious intricacy of design in creation.
Later that same evening, I was reminded how we achieve science teachers with such narrow understandings of evidence, whilst reviewing my eldest son’s first week science lectures at Southern Cross University. After using all the typical evidences for evolution, including known frauds such as gill slits in human embryos and faked whale transitional fossils such as Rhodhocetus along with Darwin’s theory of natural selection, comparative anatomy, the fossil record, rock strata etc. the professor said: ‘If you look at the body of evidence for evolution and natural selection as an idea, but as a theory [sic] it’s almost unbelievable that people still argue that creationism is an alternative.’ (Prof. Renaud Joannes-Boyan, Assoc. Professor of Science SCU, Organisms and Environments, Online lecture 8/3/21)
It is important we note that 1) the lecturer used many examples of “evidence” that has been soundly refuted by both non-creationists and creationists over many years, and 2) that science lecturers such as this, all over the country are not only telling young science hopefuls what to think regarding the origins of life but are also basically saying you are an idiot if you believe anything else. Undergraduates face a very daunting situation in daring to question such professors. A young Christian must be very careful in how they phrase their essays or ask questions challenging evolutionary assumptions. It is easy to see how dissent and alternative opinions are crushed at the very outset.
So speaking as someone who has a Master’s degree in Science, I encourage young Christians to take up science degrees at University because evolution is irrelevant to most of the great science you can do, but you will have to put up with the religion of evolution as you do. To succeed, despite the evolutionary brainwashing, keep your eyes on the true Creator Jesus Christ, who will actually strengthen your capacity to “demolish arguments and every pretension that sets itself up against the knowledge of God and take captive every thought to make it obedient to Christ”. (2 Corinthians 10:5).’ An email from https://creationresearch.net/
Evolution
THIS JUST HAPPENED WITHOUT A DESIGNER?
Genesis 1:1 In the beginning God
Isaiah 40:22 “It is he that sitteth upon the circle of the earth, and the inhabitants thereof are as grasshoppers; that stretcheth out the heavens as a curtain, and spreadeth them out as a tent to dwell in.”
‘Words can be difficult to follow because the same word can be used in a technical sense in different ways, depending on the context. To an economist, inflation refers to the rate of rising prices. To a cosmologist, however, inflation refers to a hypothetical era billions of years ago.
The relative timescales are very important to help us evaluate this concept. According to deep-time cosmologists, the universe began in the so-called Big Bang, 13.7 billion years ago, when a quantum event caused a singularity to come into existence. 10-36 seconds later, the universe expanded at a hugely accelerated rate. 10-36 is one over one with 36 zeros after it. At 10-32 seconds after the Big Bang, this inflation ceased, and the universe carried on expanding at what might be termed a “normal” rate for 13.7 billion years, minus 10-32 seconds.
Inflation theory is required to explain how cosmic microwave background radiation is so uniform. It is also required to explain a number of other phenomena, such as the non-existence of magnetic monopoles, or why the universe is flat.
But this rapid inflationary expansion required energy to cause it to happen. Where did that energy come from? The only model they can use suggests that other bubbles of space-time could, and probably have, opened up elsewhere, forming multiple universes, without any realistic beginning.
The lack of logic involved in such deep-time cosmology is staggering – especially when we consider that God has already told us how He made the universe.’ https://creationmoments.com/sermons/cosmic-inflation/?utm_source=rss&utm_medium=rss&utm_campaign=cosmic-inflation&mc_cid=685257ac52&mc_eid=00c1dcff3c
Jeremiah 5:31 The prophets prophesy falsely…
‘The Washington Post turns loose its fact-checkers on John Kerry’s claim that we have just nine years to save the planet, which he arrived at by saying we had 12 years three years ago and doing the math. But um he’s not a climate scientist, and to their credit and our surprise, the Post gives him two Pinocchios (out of a possible four) for “Significant omissions and/or exaggerations.” Along with a dressing down for not realizing that in the IPCC’s 2018 Special Report, “the key date was 2050, when the gain in emissions needs to be halted” although contradictorily, “The report’s key finding was that action needed to be taken immediately — not in 12 years.” Thus “With the ‘12-year’ fixation, he [Kerry] somehow managed to both make the task seem less urgent and also more hyperbolic.” Sadly the fact checkers themselves deserve at least two Pinocchios because their finding is quite reasonable but their explanation interlaces sensible points with hyperbole about extreme weather, bad math about warming, and scare stories.
The piece starts fairly well, warning that “Kerry is using a figure that is frequently cited but often misused. It’s a good example of how scientists may write a long and complex report, and then it’s interpreted by the news media, pundits and politicians in ways that make the scientists frustrated that their nuanced conclusions have been twisted into a talking point.” But lest they should get cancelled, they immediately add “If anything, scientists say, Kerry’s phrasing understates the problem facing the planet.”
Oh, scientists say, do they? Which scientists? You know. Them. The scientists. “The question of whether humans have contributed to climate change may still be a subject of debate in the political sphere, but it has been a settled issue among climate scientists for years.” Which they bolster by citing Anderegg et al.’s infamous 2009 paper that looked at people who published a lot of papers saying there was a climate crisis and found that they said there was a climate crisis.
The fact-checkers also cite without fact-checking it that the 2018 IPCC report “said the planet — which has already warmed 1 degree Celsius (1.8 degrees Fahrenheit) above preindustrial levels (approximately 1850 to 1890) — would warm 1.5 degrees (2.7 degrees Fahrenheit) between 2030 and 2052 unless significant steps were taken to reduce carbon dioxide emissions.” As we’ve pointed out, the idea that we can determine to a decimal place the change in temperature between the Great Exhibition and the election of Donald Trump is silly, and the fact that it always comes out to a round number is highly suspicious.
Now speaking of round numbers, about which yes we told you so, in one of its stronger passages the fact-check quotes Drew Shindell of Duke University, a lead author of that IPCC’s “mitigation chapter”, that “To save computer time, the research community typically evaluates future climate scenarios every decade rather than every year, choosing multiples of 10. So when we wrote the IPCC report in 2018, we could examine possibilities for 2020, 2030, etc., going forward. There really wasn’t enough time to make changes in economic systems by 2020 starting from 2018, so the first time at which we could see major changes was 2030, and that’s why we could draw conclusions about how much our emissions needed to be cut by 2030 to have much chance of meeting our climate targets…. the point of all this is that there is nothing at all special about 12 years or 2030. If we cut emissions by 2029 or 2031, the necessary cuts would be similar, but we only had years that were even multiples of 10 to look at.”
So saying well, it was 12 years in 2018 so it’s now nine means you have no idea what the scientists were actually doing. It’s pseudo-precision along the lines of saying the planet has warmed by 0.8C since 1880 with 2/3 of it since 1975, which implies we know it warmed 0.26C in the century after 1880. Without having measured the temperature in about 99% of it in 1880 or, come to think of it, 1975 either. Or 2016.
Not to get themselves in trouble, the fact-checkers then cite the IPCC that “Coral reefs, for example, are projected to decline by a further 70-90% at 1.5°C (high confidence) with larger losses (>99%) at 2°C (very high confidence).” Which they rightly say means there’s a continuum or, as Judith Curry bluntly put it in advocating more realism in both science and adaptation, “1.5C is a made up problem.” Not that the fact-checkers are taking her view.
Instead the piece warns that the continuum thing means “the damage would have already started before 1.5 degrees was breached.” Which also means that if it hasn’t, including the corals not dying, there’s a bit of an issue here with the whole scary picture. As with their subsequent claim that “the world is heating unevenly. A Pulitzer Prize-winning Washington Post series showed that, despite an average global increase of 1 degree Celsius, in several parts of the world the 2 degree threshold has already been reached. In those regions, this has resulted in major weather changes that have upended livelihoods and cultures. More than 1 in 10 Americans — 34 million people — are living in rapidly heating regions, including New York City and Los Angeles.”
Curious that the fastest-warming places are either (a) wherever the journalist lives or (b) a giant metropolitan agglomeration with a major Urban Heat Island effect. That one they did not fact check. Or the idea that weather has upended livelihoods and cultures in New York and LA.
Finally, they quote someone telling Kerry to stop talking about specifics and scare people with vagueness, recommending this formulation: “The scientists have been telling us for decades that we need to act as fast as possible to avert the worst consequences of climate change. Despite that, substantive action has been delayed so long that we’re now bearing witness to the harm caused by warming that has already occurred in communities around the world. It is still well within our power to turn the tide, slowing and eventually halting global warming by bringing our net carbon emissions to zero. But we have to act now to prevent ever greater societal harm and disruption in the coming years and decades.”
The trouble, of course, is that if you talk that way people might ask who the scientists are, what the worst consequences might be, what harm you have in mind and what you want us to do. And then you’ll be back to specifics some fool might fact-check. Like that one about the polar bears dying out, which Facebook may still slap your wrist for pointing out is untrue.
Man, there are a lot of Pinocchios out there.’https://climatediscussionnexus.com/2021/03/03/speaking-of-predictions-2/
‘Students in public schools have no chance to hear the reasons why life cannot “emerge” from rocks and water.
The recent landing of the Perseverance Rover has ramped up talk about life on Mars (17 Feb 2021). In all cases in secular media, the assumption is made that life (if it exists) would have made itself by chance. Another common assumption is that once simple life emerges, nothing stops it from proceeding all the way to intelligent brains because of the assumed creative power of Darwinian evolution.
Advocates of intelligent design and creation are always loaded for bear to address origin-of-life issues. They never get the chance to explain the reasons, though, because Big Science and Big Media and Big Education control the messaging to students.
Mars in a Minute: Why is Curiosity Looking for Organics? (NASA/JPL). The video aimed at children argues that finding organic molecules is equivalent to finding the conditions for life. See also the classroom activity “Looking for Life” aimed at grades 4-8.
Organics are carbon-based molecules – key ingredients to life. If Curiosity finds organics in ancient rocks, there’s a better chance Mars once had good conditions for small life forms called microbes.
Curious Kids: We have been trying to contact aliens – but do they want to contact us? (The Conversation). An eight-year-old student named Sai asks if aliens want to contact us. Jacco van Loon, astrophysicist and Director of Keele Observatory steps up to the microphone in the “Curious Kids” service of The Conversation to give the official Darwinian answer. He admits that nobody knows what aliens are thinking, but he never questions the existence of aliens, and why they must be there.
The question presumes that aliens do exist. And again, because we haven’t found any yet, we don’t know if they do. It is possible they may exist, for one simple reason: we exist. Whatever made the likes of bacteria evolve into complex bodies with intelligent brains on Earth may have also occurred on another planet.
He mentions “whatever” not “whoever.” The idea of a Creator with intelligence is completely ignored. Notice, too, that he assumes that “evolution” has the power to take life from bacteria to the human brain by “whatever” – the impersonal, chance-based Stuff Happens Law.
Time is the magic wand that lets miracles happen by chance, van Loon goes on to explain, but his answer is based on ignorance, not observation.
On Earth this transformation seems to have taken place quite suddenly some 700 million years ago. At that time the Earth was already almost 4 billion years old, and had been inhabited by simple lifeforms such as bacteria for much of that time. Why did it not happen sooner? And what made it happen? Until we find the answers to those questions we cannot tell how likely it is that it also occurred elsewhere.
It is fallacious to build a case on an example of one. van Loon speculates that since humans are curious and want companionship, aliens probably want that, too.
Some aliens might simply not be interested in life beyond their own world.
On the other hand, it may be that life such as ours is actually very common. With so many worlds and civilisations to choose from, we may simply not yet have caught their eye. If that is the case, we might soon detect alien life around nearby stars for ourselves.
Poor Sai never had a chance to hear an alternative view that life was created for a purpose. He was never taught that the requirements for life preclude a naturalistic origin. He will keep looking up to the silent stars waiting for ET to phone home.
Has life existed beyond Earth? (Purdue University). This is a piece about Briony Horgan, associate professor of Earth, Atmospheric, and Planetary Sciences at Purdue University, who is a member of the NASA Perseverance Rover team, and how she is “going to great lengths” to find out if life ever existed on Mars. This piece is typical of NASA press releases that assume that if life ever existed on Mars, it evolved—it was not created. As for why Jezero Crater was selected for the rover’s landing site,
“… we think Jezero Crater is the best location to search for evidence that life existed on Mars, if it ever did. And what we find will help us learn more about whether or not we are alone in the universe.“
Students are inspired to be like Briony, growing up to be good evolutionists, and eventually, to become brainy scientists like Dr Horgan, who believe that water and rock are sufficient to produce living organisms and brains.
Life of a pure Martian design (University of Wien). Scientists at this university put earth life on soil from a Martian meteorite to see if it would grow. Fallacy alert: this has nothing to do with whether Mars life exists. At most, it shows how hardy Earth life is. They think it gives NASA a way to look for “biosignatures” on Mars to distinguish life from non-life. But what if Mars life (if it ever existed) is completely different from Earth life? (Fallacy alert #2).
Could game theory help discover intelligent alien life? (Phys.org). The answer is, naturally, “It could, and if pigs had wings, they could fly.” Like the previous example, this SETI article assumes what aliens are thinking.
“Soon we should have the first catalog of planets that may be inhabited by civilisations who already know something about our World. They may know just enough to be tempted to send a message. These are the worlds we really need to focus in on. If they know about game theory they’ll expect us to be listening.”
The above is a string of empty speculations held together by the word “may.” But if the assumption is wrong, the conclusions are completely bogus.’https://crev.info/2021/02/nasa-indoctrinates-kids-to-expect-aliens/
In preparing for my weekly radio program on a local station I came across the Aquatic Ape Theory.
‘The Aquatic Ape Theory (AAT) was formulated by Alister Hardy in year 1960. The theory attempts to answer a lot of unanswered questions that have plagued mankind about our heritage – why do we walk on two legs? why are we naked? why do we sweat? How come that babies automatically hold their breath under water? etc. Hardy suggested that we during the evolution have spent a considerable time on the coastlines and adapted to a semi-aquatic environment, not on the hot dry savannah or in the forest with the other primates.’ https://theaquaticape.org/human-evolution/aat/
So, as a born-again Bible believing Christen this stirred me to search what a Christian creationist had to say on the subject and this is a paper I found at https://creation.com/images/pdfs/tj/j21_1/j21_1_111-118.pdf.
As atheists and theistic evolutionists seek to answer their own questions I’ll stay with Genesis 2:21 And the LORD God caused a deep sleep to fall upon Adam, and he slept: and he took one of his ribs, and closed up the flesh instead thereof; 22 And the rib, which the LORD God had taken from man, made he a woman, and brought her unto the man.
When lawmakers debate whether there is more than two genders you know the country is in a bad way. The USA and the Western world has gone crazy. We elect politicians that have swallowed the PC culture of the day and will implement it no matter what the public may believe. Live with it! The politician loves to spout the ‘science is in’ even when true science goes against their lunatic beliefs. Now, ‘A debate on the House floor over the Equality Act, a bill that would extend civil rights protections to the LGBTQ community, spilled over into the halls of Congress on Wednesday.
Rep. Marie Newman, D-Ill., who has a transgender daughter, raised a transgender pride flag outside her office across the hall from Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene, R-Ga., who responded to Newman by hanging a sign that read: “There are TWO genders: MALE & FEMALE. Trust The Science!”
During the floor debate on the Equality Act, Greene made a motion to adjourn in an effort to block consideration of the bill because she claimed it would put the rights of transgender Americans above those of women and children, particularly when it comes to sports. “Biological women cannot compete against biological men,” she said. “Biological little girls cannot compete against biological little boys, and they shouldn’t have to.”
Earlier in the week, the freshman congresswoman, who was stripped of her committee memberships for promoting false and extremist views, called the Equality Act “a direct attack on God’s creation” that would ensure “men who dress and think they are women will have rights over all real girls and women.”
Newman, who is also a freshman congresswoman, gave an impassioned speech on the House floor in support of transgender rights.
“I rise today on behalf of the millions of Americans who continue to be denied housing, education, public services and much, much more because they identify as members of the LGBTQ community,” Newman said. “Americans like my own daughter, who years ago bravely came out to her parents as transgender. I knew from that day on, my daughter would be living in a nation where [in] most of its states, she could be discriminated against, merely because of who she is.”
As video of Newman’s speech went viral, Greene responded with a tweet in which she refused to refer to the Illinois congresswoman’s daughter as a woman.
“As mothers, we all love and support our children,” Greene wrote. “But your biological son does NOT belong in my daughters’ bathrooms, locker rooms, and sports teams.”
Newman tweeted a video of herself hoisting the flag with a message for her GOP counterpart.
“Our neighbor, @RepMTG, tried to block the Equality Act because she believes prohibiting discrimination against trans Americans is ‘disgusting, immoral, and evil,’” Newman wrote. “Thought we’d put up our Transgender flag so she can look at it every time she opens her door.”
Greene then put up the poster outside her office.
“Our neighbor, @RepMarieNewman, wants to pass the so-called ‘Equality’ Act to destroy women’s rights and religious freedoms,” Greene tweeted. “Thought we’d put up ours so she can look at it every time she opens her door.”
The poster stunt was criticized by lawmakers on both sides of the aisle.
Rep. Sean Casten, D-Ill., called Greene’s sign “sickening, pathetic, unimaginably cruel.”
“This hate is exactly why the #EqualityAct is necessary and what we must protect @RepMarieNewman’s daughter and all our LGBTQ+ loved ones against,” Casten tweeted.
“This is sad and I’m sorry this happened,” Rep. Adam Kinzinger, R-Ill., tweeted Wednesday night. “Rep. Newmans daughter is transgender, and this video and tweet represents the hate and fame driven politics of self-promotion at all evil costs. This garbage must end.”
“Your sign is incorrect because it’s not what the science says,” Rep. Ted Lieu, D-Calif., wrote on Twitter. “‘The science is clear and conclusive: sex is not binary, transgender people are real.’”
At her weekly press conference on Capitol Hill Thursday, House Speaker Nancy Pelosi called Greene’s stunt a “sad event” that illustrates the need for Congress to pass the Equality Act.
“It’s necessary,” Pelosi said. “I wish it weren’t. It breaks my heart that it is.”’https://www.aol.com/news/marjorie-taylor-greene-escalates-lgbtq-154934892.html
The only way for America to go when this kind of lunacy takes over is further into the camp called crazy!
‘ALIVE OR DEAD, THEY ARE FLIPPING GOOD AT IT! Dragonfly backflips described in articles in ScienceDaily 9 February 2021, Imperial College London news 10 February 2021, and PNAS 10 February 2021 doi: 10.1098/rspb.2020.2676. Dragonflies are noted for superb aerial manoeuvres, including flying backwards, but even the most agile flyer can be knocked off balance or flipped upside down. A group of scientists at Imperial College London studied common darter dragonflies to see how they could right themselves after being dropped in an upside-down position. They found the dragonflies righted themselves with a head-first backwards somersault. Anaesthetised (unconscious) dragonflies also did the same backflip, but were slower. Not surprisingly “dead dragonflies did not perform the manoeuvre at all”. However, when researchers used wax to fix wings of the dead dragonflies into the same position as the unconscious dragonflies the dead dragonflies righted themselves, albeit in a slightly more ungainly way. These results led researchers to conclude that the righting process is mainly a passive result, dependent on wing position and muscle tone (live or dead). Samuel Fabian of the Department of Bioengineering commented: “Planes are often designed so that if their engines fail, they will glide along stably rather than drop out of the sky. We saw a similar response in dragonflies, despite the lack of active flapping, such that some insects, despite their small size, can leverage passive stability without active control.” He went on to say: “Passive stability lowers the effort requirements of flight, and this trait likely influenced how dragonfly shapes evolved. Dragonflies that use passive stability in flight are likely to have an advantage, as they use less energy and are better able to recover from inconvenient events.” The researchers concluded: “This lesson from biology can inspire design principles for failsafe attitude recovery in micro aerial systems.”
Links: Imperial College, ScienceDaily
ED. COM. If aerodynamically stable aeroplanes need to be designed so they don’t drop out of the sky, why would anyone believe that aerodynamically stable dragonflies evolved the same characteristic by chance random processes? Particularly when they are dead. Passive stability is certainly an advantage once a dragonfly has it, but, as the experiments with dead dragonflies show, there is only one chance to get both muscle tone and wing position right. Otherwise flipped over dragonflies would drop out of the air and not get any chance to evolve. These experiments are further proof that design is the only way to fly. If you ever had the misfortune to be in an aircraft whose engines failed you would give thanks to the engineers who built a failsafe glide into the design to get it safely back on the ground. Therefore, the lesson to be learned from biology is there is no excuse for failing to give thanks to the Creator Christ for designing wonderful flying creatures like dragonflies that can keep themselves flying even when flipped and dropped.’https://creationresearch.net/
