We are charged in Scripture never to worship anything in the heavens, because these are things that God has created, but it is right and proper to consider stars, planets, galaxies and so on, and to stand in awe at all that God has made.
In Genesis 1:14, God tells us that one of the purposes of the night sky is to mark signs and seasons for us. When night falls, it will be different stars that appear on the horizon at different times of year, because of the position of the Earth in its orbit around the Sun, so we keep track of the seasons. But also, by measuring the angles of certain stars above the horizon, and above the equator, we can work out what latitude we are at. Coupled with the longitude, calculated using accurate time, we can pinpoint our position on the Earth.
With our modern technology of smartphones and satellites, we take such matters for granted today. But God provided us with time-keeping and positioning software in the sky, right from the beginning of creation. That is certainly a cause to praise His Name!
Prayer: As we gaze into the heavens, Lord, we see that they declare your handiwork. We are amazed by the beauty of the sky, and our amazement increases, as we learn more about it. We praise You, for You are great and holy. Amen. ------------------- “When I consider thy heavens, the work of thy fingers, the moon and the stars, which thou hast ordained; what is man, that thou art mindful of him? and the son of man, that thou visitest him?” When I was a boy, there were nine planets. I remember reports in 1982 about the discovery of a tenth planet. Nobody actually saw the alleged tenth planet through a telescope. However, measurements were made of the orbits of other planets, and perturbations from where they thought the orbits should be were noted. It was assumed that these perturbations were caused by a large planet beyond the orbit of Pluto. Of course, the discovery of Pluto, being such a small planet, did not fully explain the motion of Neptune and Uranus, so further calculations in 1982 suggested the existence of Planet Ten.
Pluto was demoted from planetary status in 2006, but this did not stop speculation that there might be a ninth planet similar to the newly defined eight. In 2016, scientists once again thought that the discovery of Planet Nine was inevitable. They now had the evidence of orbits of other Pluto-size objects beyond the orbit of Neptune – the so-called Trans-Neptunian Objects, or TNOs. In 2017, all these ideas are on hold again as other scientists think that the perturbations of the orbits of Pluto, Eris and other TNOs can be explained by other TNOs.
As Bible-believing Christians, we are encouraged to stand in awe at the universe because it declares the glory of God. That so much interesting speculation can be made about small movements in the orbits of bodies within this Solar System reminds us again of the greatness of God, who made this entire universe. -------------------- Eggs and Evolution “The evolution of the amniotic egg was key to vertebrates leaving the oceans and colonizing the land and air.” So claimed a recent article on the evolution of the egg. The article noted that there are different-shaped eggs among birds. Researchers conducted a statistical study of the eggs produced by 1,400 species of bird. It was assumed that the shape of the egg was determined by the behavior of the bird, how fast it flies, what it eats, etc.
However, there are some anomalies. For example, the albatross and the hummingbird have very similar-shaped eggs, yet their life cycles are entirely different, and their genetics will be different, too. So how could these birds produce eggs that are almost exactly similar? To be fair, the study suggested a similarity between the birds; that they are both very powerful fliers. Yet, merely commenting that they are powerful fliers does not begin to recognize the difference between the way that these birds use their power in flight or how the eggs of other very powerful fliers, such as hawks, have completely different-shaped eggs.
The general evolutionary assumption is that creatures producing shelled eggs – such as reptiles and birds – evolved from creatures with non-shelled eggs, such as amphibia. Yet, the hatching of a salamander, for example, is dependent on the softness of the egg membrane. How would a salamander tadpole hatch from a partially shelled egg? Or how would the first reptile have survived when its partially enabled shells were broken by amphibian predators?
Shelled eggs are a wonder, not of evolutionary processes, but of God’s design.
Prayer: Each example we see of Your creation, Lord, reminds us of how great You are, and how insignificant we are. Therefore, we praise You again that You consider us. ------------- Whales on Land “And God created great whales, and every living creature that moveth, which the waters brought forth abundantly, after their kind, and every winged fowl after his kind: and God saw that it was good.” A small boy was asked in class, “What family does the whale belong to?” Nervously, he replied, “I don’t know, sir. No family on our street has one!”
What the teacher was getting at was the evolutionary idea that whales have evolved from land mammals. In London’s Natural History Museum, one display cabinet shows a mesonychid, thought to be a land-dwelling ancestor, on the left, a fossil of a modern-type dolphin on the right, and in the middle there is a supposed intermediate form – an ambulocetus.
The display is clearly meant to show the evolution of the whale from the wolf-like mesonychid, through the ambulocetus, to the modern whale. One would confidently expect, therefore, that the oldest fossil on display would be the mesonychid. And one would be wrong!
The oldest of the three fossils is actually the ambulocetus. This is a huge problem because the NHM has to justify why it has arranged these three fossils that way. Their justification is this; the ambulocetus is one of the first of its kind, so they draw an error bar accordingly. On the other hand, they have decided that the mesonychid is one of the last of its kind, so its error bar shows that the fossil displayed in the NHM is from just before the species became extinct. The reason for producing such asymmetric error bars? Well, the fossils must be in that order because that is the order in which they have evolved. In other words, they have been arranged according to an evolutionary worldview. Then, the arrangement is offered as a proof for that worldview. This is circular reasoning.
Prayer: In Your word, Lord, You were clear about how everything happened. Thank You for your great wisdom, displayed throughout creation. Amen. ------------------ Two Liquids Called Water The Science Daily website recently published an article suggesting that water is not one, but two liquids.
One would have thought that we knew everything that there was to know about water. It covers 70 percent of the Earth’s surface. Up to 60 percent of the human body is made up of water. It is essential for life, and we are familiar with it in our everyday life, in ponds, streams, rivers, lakes, and so many different bodies of water worldwide.
However, we are also familiar with the fact that water has many anomalous properties which set it apart from other liquids. A team of researchers at Sweden’s Stockholm University have discovered, using X-ray analysis, that there are two different arrangements for water molecules in liquid water, especially at low temperatures, just above the melting point of ice. We know that if water had a melting point consistent with the small size of its molecule alone, its melting point would be very low.
However, water molecules associate together in different formations because of the so-called hydrogen-bonding between molecules. Apparently, at low temperatures, this can cause such a high association between molecules that the liquid, or at least portions of it, can become a thick, viscous liquid just as it freezes into ice.
That such a seemingly simple material can still have properties for us to research shows something of the creativity of God. At once simple and highly complex, molecular and inter-molecular arrangements in water cause this common, yet mysterious liquid, to do so many things for us that we tend to take for granted. ---------------- Where Did All the Water Go? “There can’t possibly have been a worldwide Flood. Where would all the water have gone after the Flood?” This is a common objection to belief in the biblical account of the Flood of Noah’s time. Did the water drain away, or evaporate?
This misconception is because our society is very Western-centered. As a child, growing up in Britain, all pictures of the Earth would have London at their center. This is, after all, where the 0ยบ longitude line is! In America, most similar images would show the United States at the center. But what if we center our image on the Pacific Ocean? Then we will see a hemisphere almost entirely made up of ocean. This reminds us that nearly three quarters of the Earth’s surface is water. What if all the existing water on the Earth could be spread out? French diver and filmmaker Jacques Cousteau used to say:
Were the crust of earth to be leveled – with great mountain ranges like the Himalayas and ocean abysses like the Mariana Trench evened out – no land at all would show above the surface of the sea. Earth would be covered by a uniform sheet of water – more than 10,000 feet deep!
This agrees with what the Bible says in Psalm 104:8:
The mountains rose, the valleys [or deeps] sank down to the place that you appointed for them.
The rising of the mountains and the lowering of the ocean deeps at the end of the Flood easily explains where all the floodwater went. It didn’t go anywhere. It is all still on planet Earth. -------------------