‘SCIENTISTS’ BALDERDASH BEATS GURUS: An international team of researchers have conducted a survey to see whether people have higher regard for statements made by scientists compared with spiritual leaders, even if the people don’t understand what has been stated. To do this they presented people with apparently erudite statements that were really nonsense generated by a computer algorithm that puts together modern-day buzzwords and technical terms into grammatically correct but meaningless sentences. The statements were neither overtly scientific or religious. The team surveyed 10,195 participants from 24 countries, asking them to rate how credible they found the statements. The sources of the statements were ascribed to either a person with a fictitious name and described as “a spiritual authority in world religions” or to someone else with a different fictitious name yet described as “a scientific authority in the field of particle physics”. Overall, the survey revealed people gave higher credibility rating to the “scientific authority” source than the “spiritual leader”, even by people who identified as being “religious”. The research team called this phenomenon the “Einstein effect” and summarised their results: “across all 24 countries and all levels of religiosity, scientists held greater authority than spiritual gurus”. They then concluded: “These findings suggest that irrespective of one’s religious worldview, across cultures science is a powerful and universal heuristic that signals the reliability of information”.
References: Science Alert 13 February 2022; Nature Human Behaviour published online 7 February 2022, doi: 10.1038/s41562-021-01273-8.
ED. COM. This last statement may also sound like it came out of the balderdash producing algorithm, but it does make sense if you understand the term “heuristic” which means enabling someone to discover or learn something for themselves. Therefore, these researchers were claiming that people see science, and therefore the teachings of scientists, as the way to find the truth. It is interesting that even people who considered themselves religious put scientists above spiritual leaders. This has provably happened in the Christian church over the past century and a half, as the evolutionary words of Darwin, Lyell, Dawkins and Attenborough and their followers have been elevated above the Word of God on Six Day Creation, Noah’s Flood and other Biblical issues.
It pays to remember that when something is not true, it won’t ever be made true by being said by scientists, no matter how many university degrees they may have. To find the truth you need to go to the One who is the truth – The Lord Jesus Christ. He spoke the truth and backed up His words with actions that only the Creator could do.
Finally, don’t let anyone bluff you with ‘heuristic’ balderdash or big words. If something looks or sounds like balderdash it probably is, and being said by a scientific or religious authority will not change that. God’s Word uses plain language, meant for all to understand. If someone claiming to have scientific or religious authority tries to make it more complicated than it is, or change the plain meaning to suit current popular theories, don’t let them confuse you. If someone tries to bluff you with big words don’t be intimidated. Politely ask them to explain. If they can’t give you an answer in plain language, they probably don’t know what they are talking about.
We were recently called upon to deal with this issue when we were asked about a book by Ken Coulson, a Science PhD who proposed a new theory that to many appears to reconcile Darwin’s and Lyell’s theories with Genesis. The same author also made claims about dogs and evolution. For our response to both his claims see the questions:
What do you think of the book ‘Creation Unfolding’ by Ken Coulson? Is it evolutionist? Answer here.
Dogs have undergone many changes since people have been breeding them. Surely this is evolution? Answer here. Also see the item on dog genes in this newsletter below.
Further questions related to the issue of scientific authority:
A School Chaplain claims students lose faith unless we teach God used evolution. How do you reply? Answer here.
Can you show me one error made by Richard Dawkins? Answer here.‘https://mailchi.mp/creationresearch.net/creation-research-email-update-23rd-february-2022?e=ce21bf0337
Evolution/Creation
All posts tagged Evolution/Creation
John 1:10
“He was in the world, and the world was made through Him, and the world did not know Him.”
‘Scientists have, for the first time, successfully communicated with honeybees in their own language! Scientists have for some time known how to interpret many of the elements of the bees’ so-called “waggle dance.” This dance is used by scouts to communicate the location of food sources to the food gatherers in the hive.
A couple years ago researchers decided to see if they could confirm their understanding of bee communication. But how do you talk to a bee and get confirmation that she understood what you said? Scientists decided that the only way to do this was to build a robot bee through which they could communicate. The first attempts at building a robot bee acceptable to real bees did not work well. Early models were viciously attacked.
Scientists finally perfected a computer-controlled robot bee that real honeybees accepted. These scientists describe honeybee language as elegant and precise. Yet they found they had learned enough bee language to communicate successfully a food source and its location to real bees. They also discovered that they have much more to learn about bee language. As a result, it may someday be possible for farmers to direct bees to crops that need pollination.
Just as bees can best understand other bees, we humans can best understand other humans. That explains why, when God our Creator wished to communicate with us, He became a human being. That human, Jesus Christ, taught us about God; and He also made peace with God for us, making possible the forgiveness of our sins.’https://creationmoments.com/sermons/robot-bee-communicator-2/?utm_source=rss&utm_medium=rss&utm_campaign=robot-bee-communicator-2&mc_cid=c83190c013&mc_eid=00c1dcff3c
Genesis 1:24
“And God said, Let the earth bring forth the living creature after his kind, cattle, and creeping thing, and beast of the earth after his kind: and it was so.”
‘Staying with some family members in Kentucky, I was delighted one dark evening to see little flashes of light in the air, low over the garden lawn. Although I was too far away to see the insects concerned, these must have been fireflies. Fireflies are not actually flies – they are beetles. Their light-producing organs are in their abdomens. Most species use these bioluminescent displays for courtship.
The bioluminescence is caused by a type of luciferin molecule, commonly called firefly luciferin. The name has nothing to do with evil! It comes from the Latin word for light. Firefly luciferin reacts with oxygen, and the reaction is catalyzed by an enzyme, luciferase, as well as the presence of magnesium ions and adenosine triphosphate – the energy-giving molecule ATP. Luciferin first forms another highly tensed molecule called a dioxetane, which releases CO2 to form a ketone. The ketone is in a highly excited electronic state, so it “relaxes” back to normal state by releasing energy. This energy is at exactly the right frequency to be in the visible light range. The fireflies in Kentucky emitted yellow light.
If one were an evolutionist, one would have to wonder – what would have been the evolutionary advantage for the beetle to produce luciferase if there was no luciferin, or vice versa? We have a lot more work to do to investigate the chemistry of the process, but we still marvel at the wonder of God’s design for these insects.’https://creationmoments.com/sermons/fireflies/?utm_source=rss&utm_medium=rss&utm_campaign=fireflies&mc_cid=5dc2fcd79c&mc_eid=00c1dcff3c
‘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!
Genesis 2:7 And the LORD God formed man of the dust of the ground, and breathed into his nostrils the breath of life; and man became a living soul.
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
Psalm 139:14
“I will praise thee; for I am fearfully and wonderfully made: marvellous are thy works; and that my soul knoweth right well.”
‘Over a decade ago, British geneticist Dr. Steve Jones, of University College, London, opined that human evolution had ceased. He stated that there are three factors influencing evolution: natural selection, mutation and random change. Jones attributed the end of evolution to men becoming fathers much later in life than earlier centuries and, therefore, having a shorter reproductive period. This, he claimed, led to less deleterious mutations being removed from the population.
Referring to the same three factors, researchers at New York’s Columbia University have reached the opposite conclusion. They state that human evolution continues apace. Lead researcher Dr. Hakhamanesh Mostafavi said, “If a genetic variant influences survival, its frequency should change with the age of the surviving individuals”, suggesting that harmful variants should be less common in older populations, if that deleterious mutation has led to more deaths. His team suggests that “parents surviving into old age in good health can care for their children and grandchildren, increasing the later generations’ chances of surviving and reproducing.”
We should first note that such survival and selection of genetic traits is not evolution. Deleterious mutations are removed by natural selection, but any new mutation is likely to be deleterious to survival in the short term. Besides, none of this involves the creation of new genetic information, so this is not evolution. God made human beings with the genetic abilities to weed out harmful mutations. Positive generational care – a biblical concept – was God’s idea, not the result of random chance.’https://creationmoments.com/sermons/are-humans-evolving/?utm_source=rss&utm_medium=rss&utm_campaign=are-humans-evolving&mc_cid=973ea0d325&mc_eid=00c1dcff3c
