A LINGERING MYTH OF EVOLUTION
Romans 1:21-22
“For although they knew God, they did not honor him as God or give thanks to him, but they became futile in their thinking, and their foolish hearts were darkened. Claiming to be wise, they became fools.”
Ernst Haeckel is famous for having produced diagrams of embryos, to show their similarity. His idea was that “ontogeny recapitulates phylogeny”. In other words, the developmental stages, through which an embryo goes (ontogeny), are a sort of recapitulation of the evolution of that organism (phylogeny). I clearly remember being taught this, as an evidence of evolution, when I was in elementary school. As I remember which teacher taught this, I know that I must have learned this in 1971. Haeckel’s famous drawings were published in 1874, but almost immediately criticized. Haeckel’s theory has been known to be false since at least 1965[1]. His drawings were not just an error. The drawings were deliberately shaped, to support his recapitulation theory, even though the actual shapes of the embryos did not show such similarities. Yet, when I became a schoolteacher in 1983, teaching at a government school in England, I was handed a science curriculum, which included this very concept, 20 years after it had been shown to be false, and twelve years after I had been taught it.
In my office, I have a copy of a number of high school science textbooks. One of the best known Biology textbooks is that published by Prentice Hall. My edition was published in 2002, nearly 40 years after Haeckel’s ideas were debunked. Yet, this book includes that concept as one of the main evidences for Darwinian evolution[2].
One is forced to conclude that evolutionists mislead themselves, because they desperately want evidence for their ideas, and the evidence is simply not there.
[1] Simpson, G.G. and Beck, W. (1965), An Introduction to Biology (New York: Harcourt Brace and World), p241.
[2] Miller, K. and Levine, J. (2002), Biology, (Needham, Massachusetts: Prentice Hall), p385.
Lord God, You have shown us in Your word that You made everything from nothing, in just six days, and that it was all very good. Thank You that all of creation points to You, and in that creation, Your invisible attributes are clearly seen.
Image: G.J. Romanes (1892), Public Domain (due to age)
Romans 1:21-22
“For although they knew God, they did not honor him as God or give thanks to him, but they became futile in their thinking, and their foolish hearts were darkened. Claiming to be wise, they became fools.”
Ernst Haeckel is famous for having produced diagrams of embryos, to show their similarity. His idea was that “ontogeny recapitulates phylogeny”. In other words, the developmental stages, through which an embryo goes (ontogeny), are a sort of recapitulation of the evolution of that organism (phylogeny). I clearly remember being taught this, as an evidence of evolution, when I was in elementary school. As I remember which teacher taught this, I know that I must have learned this in 1971. Haeckel’s famous drawings were published in 1874, but almost immediately criticized. Haeckel’s theory has been known to be false since at least 1965[1]. His drawings were not just an error. The drawings were deliberately shaped, to support his recapitulation theory, even though the actual shapes of the embryos did not show such similarities. Yet, when I became a schoolteacher in 1983, teaching at a government school in England, I was handed a science curriculum, which included this very concept, 20 years after it had been shown to be false, and twelve years after I had been taught it.
In my office, I have a copy of a number of high school science textbooks. One of the best known Biology textbooks is that published by Prentice Hall. My edition was published in 2002, nearly 40 years after Haeckel’s ideas were debunked. Yet, this book includes that concept as one of the main evidences for Darwinian evolution[2].
One is forced to conclude that evolutionists mislead themselves, because they desperately want evidence for their ideas, and the evidence is simply not there.
[1] Simpson, G.G. and Beck, W. (1965), An Introduction to Biology (New York: Harcourt Brace and World), p241.
[2] Miller, K. and Levine, J. (2002), Biology, (Needham, Massachusetts: Prentice Hall), p385.
Lord God, You have shown us in Your word that You made everything from nothing, in just six days, and that it was all very good. Thank You that all of creation points to You, and in that creation, Your invisible attributes are clearly seen.
Image: G.J. Romanes (1892), Public Domain (due to age)
MATERIAL DESIGN
Ecclesiastes 1:7
“All streams run to the sea, but the sea is not full; to the place where the streams flow, there they flow again.”
When I was a department head in a high school in Wales, I had to kit out a new science laboratory. My team and I chose laboratory work surfaces, made from a specially designed material. This artificial material was resistant to corrosion by strong acids, and other chemicals and solvents. It was impervious to ink, so that graffiti left by schoolchildren could easily be removed. The material could also be ground down, like wood or stone, so that more severe damage could be rectified. And, of course, the material would not burn. In short, the material did what it was designed to do.
Many materials in nature give an appearance of design. Consider just a small number of properties of water. It freezes from the top down. We are so used to this, that we forget how unusual it is. All other liquids freeze from the bottom up, but if that happened in ponds and rivers, fish would never be able to survive through winters. Water has a tiny molecular mass, so the molecules can pass through semi-permeable membranes, enabling the movement of water through cell walls, and yet the molecules associate together, held by forces called hydrogen-bonds, so that the melting point and boiling point are much higher than we should expect from the size of the molecules.
Of course, there are those who think such properties are coincidental. But these properties, and many others, are precisely what we would expect, given that the world was designed and created by God.
Lord God, when we look at the way you designed even the way that molecules interact, we are again and again amazed and in awe of all that You have done, and we praise Your Holy Name. Amen
Image: Adobe Stock photos, licensed to author
Ecclesiastes 1:7
“All streams run to the sea, but the sea is not full; to the place where the streams flow, there they flow again.”
When I was a department head in a high school in Wales, I had to kit out a new science laboratory. My team and I chose laboratory work surfaces, made from a specially designed material. This artificial material was resistant to corrosion by strong acids, and other chemicals and solvents. It was impervious to ink, so that graffiti left by schoolchildren could easily be removed. The material could also be ground down, like wood or stone, so that more severe damage could be rectified. And, of course, the material would not burn. In short, the material did what it was designed to do.
Many materials in nature give an appearance of design. Consider just a small number of properties of water. It freezes from the top down. We are so used to this, that we forget how unusual it is. All other liquids freeze from the bottom up, but if that happened in ponds and rivers, fish would never be able to survive through winters. Water has a tiny molecular mass, so the molecules can pass through semi-permeable membranes, enabling the movement of water through cell walls, and yet the molecules associate together, held by forces called hydrogen-bonds, so that the melting point and boiling point are much higher than we should expect from the size of the molecules.
Of course, there are those who think such properties are coincidental. But these properties, and many others, are precisely what we would expect, given that the world was designed and created by God.
Lord God, when we look at the way you designed even the way that molecules interact, we are again and again amazed and in awe of all that You have done, and we praise Your Holy Name. Amen
Image: Adobe Stock photos, licensed to author
THE OCEAN OF ENCELADUS
Psalms 147:4
"He telleth the number of the stars; he calleth them all by their names."
Could the stuff of science fiction be a reality in the outer reaches of our Solar System? As a boy, I read two sci-fi novels, which proposed that the planet Venus was covered in ocean: Lucky Starr and the Oceans of Venus, by atheist writer Isaac Asimov (published in 1954 under the pseudonym Paul French) and Perelandra (1943), by Christian writer C.S. Lewis.
Now that we know that Venus is actually a super-hot forbidding world, with a runaway Greenhouse of an atmosphere, attention for such worlds is placed farther away. The Cassini spacecraft, launched in 1997, and nearing the end of its life, is studying Enceladus, a moon of Saturn. Studies have suggested the presence of hydrogen, pouring into the floor of an ocean, which is believed to exist below a crust of ice. This is exciting to evolutionary scientists. The Science Daily website enthuses thus:
Life as we know it requires three primary ingredients: liquid water; a source of energy for metabolism; and the right chemical ingredients, primarily carbon, hydrogen, nitrogen, oxygen, phosphorus and sulfur. With this finding, Cassini has shown that Enceladus � a small, icy moon a billion miles farther from the sun than Earth � has nearly all of these ingredients for habitability.
There are bacteria, which can manufacture methane from hydrogen and carbon dioxide, but there is no mechanism by which these bacteria could have appeared on Enceladus. Whether or not God has placed such bacteria on Enceladus � and I suspect not � the discovery of this mix of chemicals provides no evidence for the non-existent process of evolution.
Once again, Lord, we look at your heavens, and are reminded of how great You are, and amazed at why You care for us. We praise and magnify Your Holy Name. Amen
Ref: NASA/Jet Propulsion Laboratory. "New insights into 'ocean worlds' in our solar system." ScienceDaily. ScienceDaily, 13 April 2017. <www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2017/04/170413140838.htm>. Image: NASA, Public Domain.
Psalms 147:4
"He telleth the number of the stars; he calleth them all by their names."
Could the stuff of science fiction be a reality in the outer reaches of our Solar System? As a boy, I read two sci-fi novels, which proposed that the planet Venus was covered in ocean: Lucky Starr and the Oceans of Venus, by atheist writer Isaac Asimov (published in 1954 under the pseudonym Paul French) and Perelandra (1943), by Christian writer C.S. Lewis.
Now that we know that Venus is actually a super-hot forbidding world, with a runaway Greenhouse of an atmosphere, attention for such worlds is placed farther away. The Cassini spacecraft, launched in 1997, and nearing the end of its life, is studying Enceladus, a moon of Saturn. Studies have suggested the presence of hydrogen, pouring into the floor of an ocean, which is believed to exist below a crust of ice. This is exciting to evolutionary scientists. The Science Daily website enthuses thus:
Life as we know it requires three primary ingredients: liquid water; a source of energy for metabolism; and the right chemical ingredients, primarily carbon, hydrogen, nitrogen, oxygen, phosphorus and sulfur. With this finding, Cassini has shown that Enceladus � a small, icy moon a billion miles farther from the sun than Earth � has nearly all of these ingredients for habitability.
There are bacteria, which can manufacture methane from hydrogen and carbon dioxide, but there is no mechanism by which these bacteria could have appeared on Enceladus. Whether or not God has placed such bacteria on Enceladus � and I suspect not � the discovery of this mix of chemicals provides no evidence for the non-existent process of evolution.
Once again, Lord, we look at your heavens, and are reminded of how great You are, and amazed at why You care for us. We praise and magnify Your Holy Name. Amen
Ref: NASA/Jet Propulsion Laboratory. "New insights into 'ocean worlds' in our solar system." ScienceDaily. ScienceDaily, 13 April 2017. <www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2017/04/170413140838.htm>. Image: NASA, Public Domain.
THE ART OF FOLDING
Ecclesiastes 3:11
�He has made everything beautiful in its time.�
As a child in the 60s, going for a meal at my Godmother�s house was a fascinating experience. In those days, many families would get out the best dinnerware for such occasions, and would probably provide napkins�or serviettes as we called them.. But my Godmother would fold the paper serviettes into swans, rabbits and all manner of beautiful objects. It seemed such a shame to have to unfold them, so it made this child far more careful than normal not to eat messily!
Origami, the art of paper folding, is a wonder to behold. Those engaged in the activity need to know exactly where to fold the paper. The pattern required is memorized, but it still exists. To teach the subject, one might produce templates, or nets, showing exactly where the folds, and, in some cases, the tears and cuts, need to be made. In later years, I watched a warehouse robot fold packaging in exactly the right way, time after time, to wrap some particularly fragile products.
An article on the BBC website[1] expresses justifiable awe at the way that nature folds things. The article reports that scientists are copying such natural designs, to produce better robotic algorithms, for packaging purposes.
We know that the programming to facilitate such folding is in the DNA of the organism. As we often mention in these broadcasts, the information in DNA can only have come from an intelligent source. But that is what we expect, because we know that God created everything, just as He said in Genesis.
[1] Ball, Phillip (2003), Better Origami Using Nature and Maths, <http://www.bbc.com/future/story/20130510-nature-maths-better-origami>, accessed 04/17/2017
When we look at how a bud unfolds into a flower, or into a leaf, once again we stand in awe of Your work, O God. Thank You that You made everything so well, and that You order our lives. Amen.
Ball, Phillip (2003), Better Origami Using Nature and Maths, < http://www.bbc.com/future/story/20130510-nature-maths-better-origami >, accessed 04/17/2017
Image: Andreas Bauer. License: Creative Commons Share-Alike 2.5 Generic
Ecclesiastes 3:11
�He has made everything beautiful in its time.�
As a child in the 60s, going for a meal at my Godmother�s house was a fascinating experience. In those days, many families would get out the best dinnerware for such occasions, and would probably provide napkins�or serviettes as we called them.. But my Godmother would fold the paper serviettes into swans, rabbits and all manner of beautiful objects. It seemed such a shame to have to unfold them, so it made this child far more careful than normal not to eat messily!
Origami, the art of paper folding, is a wonder to behold. Those engaged in the activity need to know exactly where to fold the paper. The pattern required is memorized, but it still exists. To teach the subject, one might produce templates, or nets, showing exactly where the folds, and, in some cases, the tears and cuts, need to be made. In later years, I watched a warehouse robot fold packaging in exactly the right way, time after time, to wrap some particularly fragile products.
An article on the BBC website[1] expresses justifiable awe at the way that nature folds things. The article reports that scientists are copying such natural designs, to produce better robotic algorithms, for packaging purposes.
We know that the programming to facilitate such folding is in the DNA of the organism. As we often mention in these broadcasts, the information in DNA can only have come from an intelligent source. But that is what we expect, because we know that God created everything, just as He said in Genesis.
[1] Ball, Phillip (2003), Better Origami Using Nature and Maths, <http://www.bbc.com/future/story/20130510-nature-maths-better-origami>, accessed 04/17/2017
When we look at how a bud unfolds into a flower, or into a leaf, once again we stand in awe of Your work, O God. Thank You that You made everything so well, and that You order our lives. Amen.
Ball, Phillip (2003), Better Origami Using Nature and Maths, < http://www.bbc.com/future/story/20130510-nature-maths-better-origami >, accessed 04/17/2017
Image: Andreas Bauer. License: Creative Commons Share-Alike 2.5 Generic
THE BEGINNING OF WISDOM
Proverbs 9:1
�The fear of the LORD is the beginning of wisdom, and the knowledge of the Holy One is insight.�
What arrogance to tell someone that he is a fool! How much more arrogant, if that man is a highly educated, highly qualified scientist, with a strong of degrees and doctorates to his name. Such a man might think that he has the right to comment on the existence, or rather the non-existence, of God, and that his intellectual superiority will be sufficient to convince his hearers.
We know of quite a few such scientists�both men and women�who would fit the description just given. And yet the Bible�s definition of foolishness does not place this negative quality in opposition to intelligence. Instead, foolishness is the opposite of wisdom.
Wisdom is demonstrably not the same as intelligence. It is possible�and, I would submit, common�for a highly intelligent scientist to be foolish. The Bible tells us, in Romans 1:20, that God�s invisible attributes have been clearly seen since the creation of the world. That verse goes on to state that those who reject God are, therefore, without excuse.
�The fear of the Lord is the beginning of wisdom, and the knowledge of the Holy One is insight�, says the proverb. Notice that the fear of the Lord is not the end of wisdom. There is much still for us to find out, and a wise man will become wiser, as he studies God�s word and finds out more about Him. Notice also that insight is not gained by knowing about the Holy One. Insight and wisdom is gained by knowing God personally. Intelligence is good. Intellectual development is good. But knowing God is of supreme importance.
Lord God, I want to know You more and more. Like Solomon, I pray that You will give me wisdom, to carry out all the work that You have chosen for me to do. Amen.
Ref: Romans 1:20, Proverbs 9:10 Image: Adobe Stock Photos, licensed to author
Proverbs 9:1
�The fear of the LORD is the beginning of wisdom, and the knowledge of the Holy One is insight.�
What arrogance to tell someone that he is a fool! How much more arrogant, if that man is a highly educated, highly qualified scientist, with a strong of degrees and doctorates to his name. Such a man might think that he has the right to comment on the existence, or rather the non-existence, of God, and that his intellectual superiority will be sufficient to convince his hearers.
We know of quite a few such scientists�both men and women�who would fit the description just given. And yet the Bible�s definition of foolishness does not place this negative quality in opposition to intelligence. Instead, foolishness is the opposite of wisdom.
Wisdom is demonstrably not the same as intelligence. It is possible�and, I would submit, common�for a highly intelligent scientist to be foolish. The Bible tells us, in Romans 1:20, that God�s invisible attributes have been clearly seen since the creation of the world. That verse goes on to state that those who reject God are, therefore, without excuse.
�The fear of the Lord is the beginning of wisdom, and the knowledge of the Holy One is insight�, says the proverb. Notice that the fear of the Lord is not the end of wisdom. There is much still for us to find out, and a wise man will become wiser, as he studies God�s word and finds out more about Him. Notice also that insight is not gained by knowing about the Holy One. Insight and wisdom is gained by knowing God personally. Intelligence is good. Intellectual development is good. But knowing God is of supreme importance.
Lord God, I want to know You more and more. Like Solomon, I pray that You will give me wisdom, to carry out all the work that You have chosen for me to do. Amen.
Ref: Romans 1:20, Proverbs 9:10 Image: Adobe Stock Photos, licensed to author
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