John MacKay
All posts tagged John MacKay
| ‘SEAHORSE DADS BUILT FOR BIRTH. Seahorses and pipefish males carry developing babies in a brood pouch and give birth to live young. Scientists at Sydney University have studied the process of how males gave birth. They originally thought it would be like the female birth process in other vertebrates that give birth to live young, where the babies grow in a uterus that has layers of smooth muscle in its walls. When the young are ready to be born hormones stimulate the smooth muscle to contract and expel the babies. Smooth muscle, also known as “involuntary muscle,” is the muscle found in internal organs and is controlled by hormones as well as the nervous system. However, the research team found the seahorse brood pouch had very little smooth muscle, and did not respond to hormones that stimulate contractions. They then compared the muscle and bone anatomy of male and female seahorses and found that male seahorses had three bones near the pouch opening. These had robust skeletal muscles attached to them and were oriented so that contraction of the muscles controlled the opening of the pouch. The research team suggest that seahorse males give birth by contracting these muscles and bending their bodies. This combination of movements opens the brood pouch and expels the babies. The researchers wrote: “We propose that these muscles control the opening of the seahorse pouch, allowing seahorse fathers to consciously control the expulsion of their young at the end of pregnancy.” In an article in “The Conversation” they commented: “Our unexpected results suggest male seahorses use different mechanisms to give birth compared to female pregnant animals.” They went on to say: “Despite the similarities that male seahorses share with female mammals and reptiles during pregnancy, it seems seahorse fathers have a unique way of giving birth to their young.”References: ABC News 2 September 2022; The Conversation 2 September 2022; Placenta, 6 August 2022, doi: 10.1016/j.placenta.2022.07.015 ED. COM. These findings confirm the fact that seahorses are a unique kind of fish, with their own distinctive well designed structure and function. As such they are a challenge to the belief they evolved from a general fish ancestor, but confirmation of Genesis, which tells us that living creatures were created as fully functional separate kinds. All the evidence we have of studying living and fossil seahorses confirms they only reproduce after their kind, in their own distinctive way. Creation Research has a connection with seahorses. The seahorses studied in the research described came from Seahorse Australia, a seahorse breeding facility run by our Tasmanian colleagues Craig and Rachelle Hawkins. Next to this is our Tasmanian creation museum. John Mackay and Diane Eager will be joining Craig for the official opening of the museum this weekend. Diane will be bringing three seahorse fossils to the museum. These were originally obtained by our UK colleague Joseph Hubbard, but they had to wait until they could be safely carried to Australia when Diane returned from a trip the UK earlier this year.’ |
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‘Alex regularly interviews John on Vision180 radio. Here they discuss the school science textbook.
Q John, let’s talk more about evolution. Well, biology I guess. Because I studied biology in senior school, and I remember going through my textbook…
A And I heard a rumour you actually did moderately well.
Q I did, just humbly. I was quite good at biology. I was I think second in the class. I wasn’t first. If I was in class with you, if we were the same age, you would have been first for sure.
So I remember going through my biology book, and looking at some of these things, and going ‘that doesn’t make sense as a Christian’. You start to question lots of things. So one of the things I remember, and I actually saw this on your website, that’s what jogged my brain, is about the peppered moths. SO the peppered moths — you can correct me if I’m wrong — they ‘change colour’ to suit their environment ‘over time’ because of the pollution in the air. When they were sticking on the trees, their prey would eat them, because they could see them so clearly with the pollution. So they changed.
A Good example of natural selection, adaptation, all the other things in the chapter on evolution. SO if moths can change colour, fishes can turn into radio commentators.
Q Are you calling me a fish?
A Well, David Attenborough is. An evolved fish. So we have to be honest about what this theory is all about. So I’m not surprised you felt challenged. And one reason we set up the Ask site on creationresearch.net is to put the answer that we’ll give you briefly now, in depth with more references.
So what’s interesting is, you find in England, they noticed in 1950 that a famous collection of moths was not quite the same as it was in the real England of the 1950s and 60s. So a man called Kettlewell actually began to study the number of black and white versions of the peppered moth. Now we’d known they’d been around for a long time, because if you go to the 1850s and 1860s, there are collections of these in the Naturalista Museum. And you can see the ratio of them. But when he counted them in the trees outside of Manchester, high industrial area, lots of smoke for a hundred years, trees dirty, what he noticed was the lighter ones seemed to be fewer in number, and the darker ones had increased in number, compared to the original trays in the Naturalista museum.
So as an evolutionist, he said: ‘Ah, example of evolutionary change’! The reason why the dark moths are increasing is because, in the old days, the trees were clean. The birds could see the dark moths on the clean trees. Peck! Less dark moths, right? Now in dirty England, in dirty trees, the birds can see the white moths, so peck! So it changes the number. So this was put up as an example of natural selection. Natural selection is used as a keystone to Darwin’s evolution and in Darwin’s evolution, fishes give rise to people.
Now secondly, I had to do a debate in Manchester University Museum, for public television, against the head of their evolutionist society. But what was interesting is, the reason why the people picked the University Museum for the debate was they had a big display on the peppered moths. And this is now in the early 2000s. And what they’d noticed by the 1990s, hmm, over in America where the trees didn’t get dirty, the moths changed numbers in the same way! So it can’t be due to the change in colour of the trees. Therefore it can’t be due to the birds being able to see the white ones easier, because something else is involved here. So therefore the museum display now said: ‘We no longer know if this is even connected to natural selection.’ In other words, it’s got no connection to evolution at all.
So go to creationresearch.net, and learn how to think. God gave us all a brain, and He expects us to use it. But one thing that stops us is our textbook sounds so authoritative. It teaches us what to think, and this stops us thinking.’https://vision180.org.au/2020/07/11/the-peppered-moth-controversy/
QUESTION: ‘MAN & WOMAN: Is there a real definition of man and woman in a world that wants fluid gender?
Answer by John Mackay and Diane Eager
The easy bit is that the word “man” refers to an adult human male, and a “woman” is an adult female human. But can we actually give a testable, provable meaning to the traditional words “male” and “female”, or are they just roles allocated for convenience which can be abandoned as life evolves?
This is a battle being fought hardest in school classrooms to conquer the minds of the next generation. Consider the following actual events:
A woman teacher was caught up in a staff room debate about who could use the girls’ toilets and change rooms at her schools. A transgender supporter claimed ‘We can be whatever gender we choose and therefore we must be allowed to use whichever toilet suits our choice’. The frustrated lady teacher retorted: “Why don’t we just look between their legs – that should settle it!”
Second event – November – 2020! Two Christian parents spend several frustrating hours with a Government school principal and deputy. What’s the problem? Their daughter has reported to them that their school class has been ordered to call one boy she.
Mum and dad ask why the school is forcing their child to lie. ‘But that’s just your opinion’ retorts the deputy. ‘If the boy feels he’s a girl we have to accept that. It’s the law!’
But my wife and I are both scientists, state the parents. We can give you a testable definition of what a male or female is. All the creatures we work with have very observable features of male and female. The boy is the one with the testicles who makes sperm. And in every case they are provably different from the females who make ova and babies. And we humans are the same.
So why are you teaching my daughter to lie? And why are you lying about this yourselves? Did you intend to tell us as parents that you had ordered the class to call this boy a girl?
“No,” replied the increasingly embarrassed principal, while a very emphatic “NO!” was uttered by an obvious radical feminist deputy. Government policy is that we must accept whatever gender the students feel they are, and this student feels they are female no matter what your opinion is.
The result? Despite being long-term participants and active supporters on school councils, both parents advise the Principal that because you’re teaching our children to lie and you are lying about it, our children are out of here today – not this afternoon, but right now!
Of course, the school authorities are rightly concerned about what they should tell students’ parents, especially other Christian parents in the school.
How should we react when atheist governments and education are actually lying about gender and sex? How do we define boy or girl, male or female, man or woman? And can we go deeper than that and have a meaningful scientific and legally enforceable definition?
Male and Female
Let’s start with the obvious differences between what we traditionally call gender. Being male or female, whether infant or adult, is provably determined by a person’s chromosomes, and indicated by the resulting reproductive systems and naturally produced hormones. At different stages of a person’s life reproductive systems and related hormonally induced changes to body structures will go through maturation and degenerative processes, but an individual remains either male or female throughout his or her life, from conception, through childhood and adulthood, to death.
The chromosomes that determine whether a person is male and female are named X and Y. A male has an X and a Y, usually written as XY, a female has two Xs, usually written as XX. These are inherited at conception and remain in every cell in the body, with one notable exception for each sex* (see below) for the rest of a person’s life.
Therefore, it doesn’t matter what manipulation is done to the body or mind after conception – a person is male or female throughout life. It doesn’t matter what bits they may get cut off or added on, or any alterations caused by the chosen addition of alternative sex hormones or by blocking their own hormones. In spite of efforts by transgender activists to drive a wedge between gender and sex, neither gender nor sex are determined by an individual’s choice, or by feelings, by externally administered drugs or hormones, or by social acceptance of someone’s choice.
*The only cells in the body that do not have the XY or XX chromosome identity are the reproductive cells, i.e. sperm in a male and ova (eggs) in a female. When these cells are formed the chromosomes are separated and each sex cell gets one of the sex chromosomes. Therefore, sperm will have either an X or a Y, ova will have one of two X’s. But such cells are still male or female, as only males can produce sperm and only females can produce ova?
Where Did Male and Female Come From?
Each human being is formed from the union of one sperm, carrying an X or a Y chromosome, and one ovum, carrying an X chromosome. An X carrying sperm will give rise to a female when its X combines with the X in the ovum. Y carrying sperm give rise to a male when it combines with the X in the ovum. This process can be traced back through the generations to the first human beings – Adam and Eve. Sex is not something you can evolve. It has to be right first time or you die out!
Adam was created male. Therefore, he had an X and a Y chromosome. Eve was created from tissue taken from Adam. All the components needed to make a woman were already in Adam. To make a female from male tissue God took out the Y chromosome and duplicated an X. From then on human beings have reproduced by the process described above.
Adam and Eve were created individually by God. Adam was made from “dust of the ground” i.e. raw materials, and Eve was made from tissue taken from Adam. They were not derived from any other living creature. Human beings are unique and separate creations, and therefore it is irrelevant if other living things, such as fish or plants, can change sex in certain circumstances.
So, theistic evolutionists take note: Those who want to believe in evolution but defend God’s word on men and women, and marriage, will find themselves on shaky ground. If evolution is true, human ancestry goes back to creatures with no distinct sexes and/or interchangeable sexes, and those who oppose God’s rules can claim that blurring the sexes is just part of the natural world, and Christians should not impose their views on it.
It is time to humbly accept that in the beginning God created humans male and female just like He said He did.’https://askjohnmackay.com/mand-woman-is-there-a-real-definition-of-man-and-woman-in-a-world-that-wants-fluid-gender/
‘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
whatyareckon 