The Grand Canyon - Undeniable Proof of Evolution?

The Grand Canyon is one of America's most recognizable proofs of long-ages - small river cuts through rock slowly, and carves a path through solid rock over millions of years. With the relatively tiny Colorado River winding its way through it, slowly chipping away at the massive walls, it is conceivable that this veritable stream could carve through the solid rock that the Grand Canyon is made of.

As the diagram shows, the Grand Canyon has been chopped up into several sedimentary layers, each of which represents a long period of time in the Earth's life. However, the fact remains that the Grand Canyon is not, and can never be, conclusive evidence for the long-age theory. For it to be conclusive, we would have to be able to observe and test it, which is impossible given the long time spans involved. However, it is plausible that the Grand Canyon is not millions of years old, but rather dates from Noah's Flood, which was a catastrophe that was certainly capable of carving such a huge gash in the earth. This idea is supported by the rapid formation of huge gorges in days and weeks even nowadays. For example, the Canyon Lake Gorge was formed in a matter of days following a reservoir overflow.

The gorge pictured above was formed rapidly in 2002, when we could observe it carefully. The gorge was formed after Canyon Lake, a reservoir in Texas, overflowed catastrophically following extensive flooding of the Guadalupe River. Nine people were killed and around $1 billion were lost through damages through this rush. However, this gorge was also formed, stretching about a mile, being hundreds of yards wide and up to fifty feet deep at points. Clearly, if this gorge could have been formed so rapidly by such a (relatively) small flood, it makes sense to say that the Grand Canyon could have been formed just as quickly during Noah's Flood.

Quote of the day: In the absence of any other proof, the thumb alone would convince me of God's existence - Isaac Newton.

The Big Bang - The Start of it All?

The Big Bang is the stereotyped "beginning of it all", and is generally accepted as suitable explanation for the origin of the universe. In a sentence, it is "the prevailing cosmological model that explains the early development of the Universe", and says that "the Universe was once in an extremely hot and dense state which expanded rapidly." It has large amounts of data to back it up, such as the Inflating Universe, the red-shift, and more. However, creationists have dug up sizable amounts of evidence to refute this popular theory. Who is right?

The Expanding Universe Theory

Evolutionists have put forward both observational and hypothetical explanations for this popular theory. The observational evidence is the well-known fact that space itself is expanding, as though after some massive explosion in the center of it. However, even Wikipedia says that "little is known about the earliest moments of the Universe's history". To have created the Universe, it needs to have reached the Planck Temperature, which can only be reached if the Law of General Relativity breaks down entirely. Creationists also point to other possible impossibilities which must be surmounted to have caused the Big Bang, such as the problem of baryon asymmetry (for more information, see http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Baryon_asymmetry).

When the Universe was formed, there was supposed to have been an equal amount of matter and antimatter that was formed. However, as things stand today, there is actually a very small amount of antimatter in the Universe now. This can be explained by either saying that the antimatter is merely in a separate part of the Universe, away from the matter, or by saying that it (for some reason) repels regular matter, thereby halting any interactions. Now, these small problems above are hardly enough to topple such a large, well-backed theory, and probably won't. Nonetheless, the fact remains that we cannot tell anything about what happened in the past; we can merely tell what might have happened judging by the things we can see now.

I hope to present more arguments in a later post.

Radiometric Dating - Proof of Old Earth?

Radiometric dating is one of the single greatest pieces of evidence that evolutionists have for their theories of millions and millions of years. After all, if these rocks are 65 my (million years) old, then it stands to reason that the earth is that age too, right? Actually, there are some bugs in the program. Radiometric dating is a technique that measures the amount of a naturally occurring radioactive isotope in a substance, and then compares that with the known decay rate of the isotopes in modern substances. This extrapolation can give us a very good idea of how old the rocks are supposed to be.

So what do creationist's, who believe in a 6,000 year old Earth, have to say to this? Well, Answers in Genesis, the leading Christian apologetic group has a well-researched paper on the probability of cataclysms in the past grossly speeding up the decay process, thereby misleading present day scientists. Also, they show that nuclear decay rates do not always remain constant, because even small changes to the environment can have massive repercussions on atoms (http://www.answersingenesis.org/articles/aid/v2/n1/radioisotopes-earth). There are plenty of arguments out there, but the strongest one for the creationist's has got to be the famous dating of the Mt. St. Helen's volcano shortly after it's eruption

When Dr. Steve Austin took samples from recently solidified rocks that had just hardened from lava, he no doubt expected the dates to be under a year at the least. When he and his team analysed it, however, they found that it was dated from between .35 to 2.8 million years ago, which is a huge margin of error!! This is not the first time that this has been documented, though. According to Dr. Keith Swenson (http://www.creationism.org/articles/swenson1.htm), a former scientist named Dalrymple had taken samples from other recent volcanic explosions, and had found them to be way off target. He wrote some papers on this (Dalrymple, G.B., 1969. 40Ar/36Ar analysis of historic lava flows. Earth and Planetary Science Letters, 6:47-55), but was not noticed.

Of course, none of this proves that radiometric dating is wrong, as evolutionists have been quick to point out. They have made valid claims that perhaps Dr. Steve Austin messed up somewhere (http://www.noanswersingenesis.org.au/mt_st_helens_dacite_kh.htm), or that he used the wrong type of dating for the rocks (http://skeptoid.com/episodes/4146). The long and short of it, though, is that no one can disprove radiometric dating until conclusive evidence is found after hundreds of trials have been done. So, this theory still is partially valid, and is left for the individual to decide;

Animal Evidence #2 - The Bombardier Beetle

The bombardier beetle. The name of this unique bug pretty much says everything we need to know. This incredible beetle is equipped with a miniature "turret" that it can aim exactly like a cannon, and fire burning chemicals at any possible threat. This has been held by Intelligent Design proponent Michael Behe as an example of irreducible complexity, meaning that the entire firing system either had to be there as a whole, or not at all. Any intermediate forms of this would not work and would explode, destroying the beetle and any chances of it's future evolution. Evolutionists counter this by saying that the evolution of the firing mechanism can be broken down into fifteen simple steps (http://www.talkorigins.org/faqs/bombardier.html) which are in themselves beneficial, and would have probably occurred. Creationist's counter it with hypotheses like those discussed in the video:

In this clip, Dr. Job Martin says that while the fifteen steps given by evolutionist's are rather neat and simple, if the beetle ever tried firing it's gun with even one of the features slightly distorted, the whole bug would blow up. While this is also a plausible theory, evolutionist's point to the time factor, i.e., we weren't there, so therefore either of us could be right. And thus, it is left with us, the open-minded reader, to tell which of the two theories is more valid than the other.

Animal Evidence #1 - The Giraffe

The giraffe - the symbol of Africa, and a creature who's evolutionary background is extremely easy to guess. A creature was browsing along one day, looked up, saw the leaves on a tree, tried to get them, and lengthened it's neck somehow. Over years of this happening, the giraffe got it's long neck. However, as nice as this cute story may be, even leading evolutionists today say that it is utterly preposterous. Rather, they claim that an organism that had a longer neck than usual would be able to eat the leaves on taller trees, thereby granting it extra food, and ensuring that it would reproduce. After millions and millions of years of this, the giraffe as we know it came to be. Simple, right? So what could creationist's possibly have to put against this obviously right hypothesis?

The tallest giraffe has the least competiton

Creationists point to an extremely interesting system that the giraffe has "evolved" somehow. The giraffe naturally needs an extremely powerful pump to get blood through that long neck and into the brain. It's heart, which can weigh up to 25 pounds, shoots the blood up the neck fast enough to counter gravity's pull down. But the question is, since the blood is shooting so fast up a giraffe's neck, what happens when it bends down to drink water? Then the massive heart would be working with the flow of gravity, and would blast the blood down the neck so fast it would destroy the brain! Clearly, there is some kind of safety mechanism involved here.

As the diagram shows, when the giraffe bends down, a completely separate set of blood vessels is triggered (the blue tube), that lets the blood slow down considerably, after which it hits a soft sponge under the brain, which gently fills and feeds the blood on to the brain. Evolutionists have a hard time explaining this kind of thing, because how on earth would something like a giraffe evolved? When it got it's powerful heart, it would die when it bent over. Without it's powerful heart, it would die when it stood up (through lack of blood to the brain). The system displayed above could not have "evolved" slowly, as it would be useless, and dead weight until everything was in place. This means that even if it evolved it's long neck, it would have to simultaneously develop this safety mechanism. Even the slightest mistake would result in failure, and instant extinction. Evolutionist's have not answered the question of how it evolved yet, and probably never will be able to.

Tiktaalik Roseae - The Fish-Amphibian Link?

Tiktaalik Roseae, the famous "fishapod" (thus dubbed by Neil Shubin), was found in 2004 on Ellesmere Island in Nunavut, Canada. The scientific community eagerly snapped this fossil up, and a new transitional form was found. This creature apparently had gills, fins and scales, all of which are characteristics of fish. It also appears to have had a fully functional neck, rib cage and pair of lungs, as well as half-fish characteristics such as joints and wrists, as well as the ear structure. It is remarkably well-preserved for a specimen that has been "dated" as 365 my (million years) old.

The model displayed above seems to give crushing evidence against any arguments - after all, if they have enough of the skeleton to make a model, then there surely can be no opposition, right? Actually, CMI says that Tiktaalik Roseae appears to be a fully functional creature that has simply gone extinct. Even the discoverers of the fossil agreed and said that they "have almost no information about the step between Tiktaalik and the earliest tetrapods, when the anatomy underwent the greatest changes." So, this fossil could possibly be some undersea creature like the tripod fish, which uses it's stiff fins to "stand" on the ocean floor, which would ruin the chart of reptile evolution.

Also, CMI says that the fin, which is claimed to have been able to support the fish in shallow water, simply would not be able to support the creature's full weight on land. They also point to the coelacanth, a fish that had similar stiff fins and was thought to be extinct. However, when a living specimen was actually found in 1938 off the coast of Africa, by a fishing boat, it was found that their fin was merely used for some dextrous maneuvering while turning, which would imply that the same could be true regarding Tiktaalik. Of course, if Tiktaalik was still around today, I hold the view that it would be regarded as yet another one of Nature's oddities, rather than a transitional form.

Hudson River Tomcod - Evolution Before our Eyes?

It has been much touted lately that the Atlantic tomcod present in the heavily polluted waters of the Hudson River has evolved, in just 50 years, to become resistant to toxic chemicals" (http://www.dailymail.co.uk/sciencetech/article-1358316/Atlantic-tomcod-immune-Hudson-Rivers-toxic-chemicals-just-50-YEARS.html). However, is this "super-fish" really all that it seems to be? On closer examination, it turns out that it is not at all!

The mutation that made the fish resistant to poisons was, according to Dr. Mark Hahn of the Woods Hole Oceanographic Research Institution , a loss of two of the 1,104 amino acids normally found in this protein (the protein was a gene called AHR2). The AHR2 gene was the receptor for the dioxins and PCB's which attacked the fish.The mutation resulted in the dioxins and PCB's not being able to latch onto the gene as they previously had been able, thereby making the fish resistant to the chemical poisoning. So, it turns out that the fish really has evolved, right?

One would like to think so, but when you realize that these "super-fish" account for only 5% of the population of Atlantic tomcods in cleaner waters. This is because the missing information results in the fish becoming more susceptible to other diseases, as well as growing slower (http://creation.com/rapid-tomcod-evolution). The mutation actually resulted in the damaging of perfectly fine original equipment, in order to survive in a polluted environment. The thing to note, however, is that if the pollution cleared up, the super-fish would die out rapidly! This mutation would actually have been harmful in any other environment, and was not the creation of new data (as real Evolution is), but was rather the loss of old data, that cannot be regained.

Bill Nye - Creationism is Inappropriate for Children

I recently came across a fascinating video on YouTube by Bill Nye, the "Science Guy". It was entitled, "Creationism is Inappropriate for Children", and the gist of it was that creationism was fine for adults who chose to delude themselves, but children should be taught the 'truth' of evolution. He used some mocking terms,  and said (as Diocletian did almost 2 millennia ago) that soon the Christian worldview will disappear, and "everyone will know the truth".

I dug some more, and found an answering video by Creation Ministries International called "Evolution is not Appropriate for Anyone". This war of videos was hilarious, especially because the Creation argument was a literal spoof of Bill Nye's video, using the same derogatory terms he had used, and turning his "Big Think" logo into "Think Bigger".

I was rather disappointed with both of the makers of the videos, but was definitely more disappointed with Mr. Nye than CMI. Bill Nye presented absolutely no evidence for Evolution, relying more upon popular belief (i.e, "everyone knows its true") than on hard scientific  evidence. CMI almost did the same thing, but they did at least present the evidence of soft tissue in "ancient" dinosaur bones.

Nebraska Man - One of Evolution's Biggest Mistakes

The Nebraska Man, formerly classified as Hesperopithecus haroldcooki, was a great evolutionary find. After farmer Harold Cook handed him a tooth in 1917, paleontologist Henry Osborn's mind instantly jumped to the conclusion that the tooth belonged to a previously unknown species of a human transitional form - the Nebraska Man. A picture of the new species was promptly drawn and published in the Illustrated London News, and is depicted below:

In his defense, Osborn was not impressed with the picture, and called it a "figment of the imagination[,] of no scientific value, and undoubtedly inaccurate." In 1925, research showed that the tooth was actually from an extinct species of pig, called the cannary. This recall was made after a scientific expedition visited the area where the tooth had been found and recovered other bones from the creature. The tooth was tossed away, and the entire incident was dismissed as a fanciful flight of imagination. However, one asks oneself, why would there be so many of these "false" claims, and even some hoaxes? The answer that would strike an observer from a point of stasis would be that they just want to find some evidence. But I wouldn't dare to be so presumptuous as to imply this. Oh no, not at all.

Note: If you require resources on either side of the debate, let me recommend two excellent sites to you. For you creationist's out there, look at http://www.answersingenesis.org/; and for you evolutionists, look at it's opposite counterpart http://www.noanswersingenesis.org.au/, These websites contain huge amounts of information, well-backed or not.

Murchison Meteorite - Life from Outer Space?

So, anyway, apparently I don't have much to do right now, so I'm just typing away here. This post is about the Murchison Meteorite, a meteorite that was observed while falling in Murchison, Australia, way back in 1969. When it was examined and tested, scientist's were shocked (and delighted) to find that it had around 50,000 individual organic compounds (compounds that contain carbon) in it, including over 70 amino acids. The amino acids were found to be racemic (that means that their chirality was equal, or that there was an equal number of right- and left-handed molecules in it). This implied that it did not originate from the planet Earth.

So how did creationist's respond? They rapidly pointed out that for life to develop, the amino acids had to be homochiric, that is, they either had to all be left-handed, or all be right-handed. This is quite a problem for the evolutionist's, but Dr. Ronald Breslow had postulated that "right circularly polarized light in this sector of the universe" may have selectively destroyed all of the right- or left-handed molecules, thereby leaving the remainder homochiric, and therefore fit for the production of life. However, the enemies of this (including myself) are quick to ask what the odds are of such an incident occurring. Also, even if the meteorite managed to crash onto the Earth and "seed" the planet, I have already demonstrated the enormous odds (17^124) against any amino acids, in the most favorable of circumstances, forming by chance.

Please comment if you have a question.

Amino Acids and Protein - What are the odds?

Everyone who ever took a biology class knows what an amino acid is - one of the 'building blocks' of the body, the main constituents of protein, etc. Evolutionists have many theories as to how they  have been formed - some say they could have formed in the primordial soup millions of years ago, as the Miller-Urey experiment seems to have proven; others say they could have been "imported" from meteorites that crashed into the earth, but the fact is that they got here somehow, and now they need to find out how they did.

Proteins are made up of large numbers of amino acids, with ribonuclease (one of the simplest proteins) containing 124 of them. The real reasons that we have been unable to replicate proteins (which would be extremely useful, medically speaking) are: 1. We have been unable to create all of the amino acids necessary for life, and 2. It is very difficult to get all the amino acids into the right order. A diagram is shown below:

As we can see from the picture (if you bothered to look carefully at it),there are seventeen different types of amino acids that go into one strand of ribonuclease, and there are a total 124 amino acids in one strand. Therefore, we can deduce that the odds of one strand of ribonuclease forming (Under the assumption that we have the right number and types of amino acids in a contained environment) are exactly 17^124, which works out to almost double the estimated number of atoms in the known universe! Clearly, this provides quite conclusive evidence against the odds of protein forming naturally. However, given enough time, anything is said to be possible; so this argument can also be overcome.

Hello!

Greetings to all! Just to give you an idea of what this blog is going to be about (if the title didn't already tell you), I will post evidence both for and against the Theory of Evolution and it's many offshoots. Everyone has their own personal worldview, and I appreciate that. However, I believe that there are far too many claims out there saying that evolution is a proven fact, written in stone, and anyone who disagrees is just non-scientific. As a creationist and a Christian myself, I think that these claims should be refuted as conclusively as possible. I do not say anything regarding the validity of either theories, and will let the reader decide which side of the fence they're on.

I may not post very frequently, but I will update as regularly as possible. I will not be focusing on any particular topics, so the topics may range from the fossil record to proteins. If you have any arguments, please leave a comment, and I will get back to you as soon as I can.

Enjoy!