EVOLUTION - PART 14
(Copied from Mark Cahill's book
One Heartbeat Away)
Other recent discoveries include a glowing protein in jelly fish that allows surgeons to illuminate cancerous tissue while they operate to remove it.; and a starfish called the brittlestar, coated with tiny lenses that act as a collective "eye," which engineers are using as a model for creating sensors and guidance systems.
Randy Kochevar, a marine biologist, described the brittlestar as incredible:
"We're looking at these things that are not known to be visual animals yet we're finding these fiascinating optical properties that are built into their bodies."
In his book Superforce:The Search for a Grand Unified Theory Of Nature, Australian Astrophysicist Paul Davies asks us to consider these insightful questions:
If nature is so "clever" as to exploit mechanisms that amaze us with their ingenuity, is that not persuasive evidence for the existence of intelligent design behind the universe? If the world's finest minds can unravel only with difficulty the deeper workings of nature , how could it be supposed that those workings are merely a mindless accident, a product of blind chance?
The giraffe
Being a rather tall person myself (6'6") there are not many beings I look up to - except at the zoo, where I was surprised to find myself looking up - way up! - to a bunch of giraffes! Despite their height - up to 18 feet - they could run very gracefully (unlike me!) . I wanted to find out more about this unusual animal.
One thing I learned is
that the giraffe needs a
powerful heart to pump blood up its long neck to the brain.
If we want to believe in evolution, let's imagine that the very first giraffe manages to evolve the two-foot-long heart it needs to get blood up a neck so long. Its heart is now so powerful that as the giraffe bends its head down, the increased blood pressure is more than enough to burst the blood vessels in its brain.
So this first giraffe must be intelligent enough to realize that an improvement is needed and then set out to somehow grow an incredibly complex organic structure to fix the problem.
And it must do so within a matter of days - before it dies of thirst or brain damage - or else this new species will shortly be extinct. (Of course how would it know an improvement was needed unless it had first had a brain hemorrage? And then it wouldn't know anything. It would be dead.)
Through evolution, which is imagined to consist of mindless, totally random accidental chance processes occurring over long periods of time, the creature manages to quickly devise a protective mechanism to prevent it from blowing its brains out when it gets its first drink of water.
Dr. Jobe Martin describes this amazingly detailed solution :
As the bull bends its head down ...., valves in the arteries in the neck begin to close. Blood beyond the last valve continues moving toward the brain. But instead of passing at high speed and pressing into the brain and damaging or destroying it, that last pump is shunted under the brain into a group of vessels similar to a sponge.... The brain is preserved as the powerful surge of oxygenated blood gently expands this "sponge" beneath it.
However, from this mechanism another problem arises. A lion creeps up and prepares to kill the spotted prey. The giraffe quickly raises its head and, without something to compensate for the reduced blood flow passes out . It got up too fast , generating low blood pressure and diminished oxygen content in the brain. The lion eats a hearty meal, and the giraffe, were it alive, would realize that it had better evolve some mechanism to re-oxygenate its oxygen-deprived brain! We all know that animals that have been eaten by a lion don't evolve anything, even though evolutionists would have us believe that creatures evolve the necessary-for-life improvements as they are needed for survival.
But the giraffe survives! ... as he begins to raise his head, the arterial valves open . The sponge squeezes
its oxygenated blood into the brain ; the veins going down the neck contain some valves, which close to help level out the blood pressure, and the giraffe can quickly be erect and running without passing out and becoming lion lunch.
And it does all of this automatically. The giraffe is another amazing creature that defies the theory of evolution. Do you really think there's any way the giraffe could have gradually evolved and developed its special features randomly over time, as evolution demands?
Remember, if there is even one creature that could not have evolved, then there must be a Creator.
MY FAVORITE PSALMS
PART SEVENTY TWO
The sound of joyful shouting
and salvation is in the tents
of the righteous;
The right hand of the Lord
does valiantly
The right hand of the Lord
is exalted.
The right hand of the Lord
does valiantly,
I shall not die, but live
And tell of the works of
the Lord
The Lord has disciplined
me severely
But He has not given me
over to death.
Open to me the gates of
righteousness;
I shall enter through them,
I shall give thanks to the Lord
This is the gate of the Lord;
The righteous will enter
through it.
I shall give thanks to Thee,
for Thou hast answered me.
And Thou hast become my
salvation.
The stone which the builders rejected has become the chief corner stone.
This is the Lord's doing and it is marvelous in our eyes.
This is the day that the Lord
has made,
Let us be rejoice and be glad
in it
Oh Lord, do save, we beseech
Thee
Oh, Lord, we beseech Thee
Do send prosperity
Blessed is the one who comes
in the Name of the Lord;
We have blessed you from the
house of the Lord,
The Lord is God, and He has
given us light;
Bind the festival sacrifice with
cords to the horns of the altar
Thou art my God and I give
thanks to Thee.
Thou art my God, I extol Thee.
Give thanks to the Lord,
for He is good.
For His loving kindness
is everlasting.
next post 28th July
DID JESUS RISE FROM THE DEAD
3
(copied from Y- Jesus.com)
A Horrific Death And Then
You know what Jesus' last hours of earthly life were like if you watched the movie by road warrior/braveheart Mel Gibson. If you missed parts of The Passion of the Christ because you were shielding your eyes (it would have been easier to simply shoot the movie with a red filter on the camera), just flip to the back pages of any Gospel in your New Testament to find out what you missed.
As Jesus predicted, He was betrayed by one of His own disciples, Judas Iscariot, and was arrested. In a mock trial under the Roman Governor, Pontius Pilate, He was convicted of treason and condemned to die on a wooden cross.
Prior to being nailed to the cross Jesus was brutally beaten with a Roman-cat-o-nine-tails, a whip with bits of bone and metal that would rip the flesh. He was punched repeatedly, kicked, and spat upon.
Then using mallets, the Roman executioners pounded the heavy wrought-iron nails into Jesus' wrists and feet. Finally they dropped the cross in a hole in the ground between two other crosses bearing convicted thieves.
Jesus hung there for approximately six hours. Then, at 3.00 in the afternoon - that is at exactly the time the Passover lamb was being sacrificed as a sin offering ( a little symbolism there, you think?) - Jesus cried out "It is finished" (in Aramaic ) and died.
Suddenly the sky went dark and an earthquake shook the land. An even greater darkness of depression annihilated the dreams of those who had become infatuated with His charisma and joyful vitality.
Former Lord High Chancellor of Britain, Lord Hailsham, notes, "The tragedy of the cross was not that they crucified a melancholy figure, full of moral precepts, ascetic and gloomy.... what they crucified was a young man, vital, full of life and the joy of it. the Lord of life itself..... someone so utterly attractive that people followed Him, for the sheer fun of it."
Pilate wanted verification that Jesus was dead before allowing His crucified body to buried. So a Roman soldier thrust a spear into Jesus side, The mixture of blood and water that flowed out was a clear indication that Jesus was dead. The dead do not bleed ordinarily, but the right auricle of the human heart holds liquid blood after death and the outer sac holds a serum called hydropericardium."
Once His death was certified by the guards , Jesus' body was taken down from the cross and buried in Joseph of Arimathea's tomb. Roman guards next sealed the tomb, and secured it with a 24-hour watch.
Meanwhile Jesus' disciples were in shock. Dr J.P. Moreland explains how devastated and confused they were after Jesus' death on the cross. They no longer had confidence that Jesus had been sent by God. They also had been taught that God would not let His Messiah suffer death, so they dispersed.
The Jesus Movement was all but stopped in its tracks.
All hope was vanquished. Rome and the Jewish leaders had prevailed, - or so it seemed.
next post 26th July
ONE HEARTBEAT AWAY 9
Mark Cahill's Book
Chapter two
I can see clearly now
To suppose that the eye with all its inimitable contrivances for adjusting the focus to different distances , for admitting different amounts of light, and for the correction of sperical and chromatic abberation, could have been formed by natural selection, seems , I freely confess, absurd. in the highest degree. - Charles Darwin.
As we have seen in the previous chapter, the evidence is pretty solid that our universe is designed. Yet, despite the logical evidence pointing to the existence of a Creator, many people still reject the idea of God because they believe evolution is a fact.
We were all told in kindergarten that when a frog becomes a prince, that is a fairy-tale. But when I was in high school and college, they told us that when a frog becomes a prince, that is science!
So, people tend to think that if some scientists say they have conclusive proof that the entire universe came into
being by itself, then no fairy-tale "Creator" need apply.
Because I grew up in a public-school
environment and attended a public university, I was one of the many children taught evolution, from the time I started school. So, as an adult, I thought, "Couldn't evolution be how all of creation came into being?" Then I decided to do some searching - and I was surprised by what I found.
Since this issue is so important in determining, not only whether God exists but what kind of God He is, let's take a few minutes to honestly examine the evidence and see where it leads.
What is evolution?
First let's look at what is meant by "evolution." Evolution has two main branches. One is macroevolution, which involves minor changes in variations
within a species. We see evidence of this all the time. Such as when bacteria become resistant to antbiotics. This is also called adaptation or natural selection. Microevolution is scientific because it is observable and measurable.
The other branch is macroevolution, which is the concept that successive small changes can, over time, gradually change one species to another. It involves not only minor variations, but also the addition of completely new features and body types.
Dr. J. P. Moreland summarises it in this way:
Macroevolution is the general theory that all life arose from non life, in some-prebiotic soup ( where chemical reactions plus some form of energy gave rise to the first life), and all life evolved from the first life up to Homo Sapiens.
Macroevolution - the belief that variations we can see taking place in microevolution (within a species) are supposedly continuous and limitless, so that one species will continue to change and eventually become a new species - is the heart of evolutionary theory.
Macroevolution, however, has never been observed ; therefore it is not scientific.
As I was searching for the truth about evolution, one of the most compelling facts I learned was that microevolution is limited by the genetic code. No features that are not already present in a creatures DNA can ever be produced by natural selection.
So, while there is a variation within species, it is always within these limits. For example, there are many different types of dogs, - from the Chihuahua to the Irish wolfhound, from the Mexican hairless to the Yorshire terrier - yet they are all still dogs.
In The Answers Book,
Ken Ham describes the limitation of microevolution:
Adaptation and natural selection are biological facts;
amoeba-to-man evolution is not. Natural selection can only work on the genetic information present in a population of organisms - it cannot create new information. For example, since no known reptiles have genes for feathers , no amount of selection will produce a feathered reptile. Mutations in genes can only modify or eliminate existing structures, not create new ones. "
Thus, there are always natural limits to biological change. Natural selection is just that - selection. It cannot create anything new; it can only select from the information contained in the organism's genetic blueprint.
Yet, evolutionists ignore this key fact
and claim that one species can gain new information and evolve into another species. Unfortunately for their theory, evolutionists don't have any evidence for this. It has never been proven or observed in nature, and indeed, never can be.
Let's take a look at the two conditions of macroevolution , both of which are necessary for the theory of evolution to be true.
Next post 25th July
ONE HEARTBEAT AWAY 8
Mark Cahill's Book
Consider the conclusion other scientists have reached about the universe's design:
Sir Fred Hoyle (British astrophysicist):
A common sense interpretation of the facts suggests that a super intellect has monkeyed with physics, as well as with chemistry and biology, and that there are no blind forces worth speaking about in nature.
The numbers one calculates from the facts seem to me so overwhelming as to put this conclusion almost beyond question."
Paul Davis, (Australian astrophysicist)
There is for me powerful evidence that there is something going on behind it all .... it seems as if somebody has fine-tuned nature's numbers to make the universe .... The impression of design is overwhelming."
Alan Sandage (the greatest living cosmologist and winner of the Crawford prize in astronomy) :
The world is too complicated in all its parts and interconnections to be due to chance alone. I am convinced that the existence of life with all its order ..... is simply too well put together.
John O'Keefe (NASA astronomer) :
We are, by astronomical standards, a pampered, cosseted , cherished group of creatures ..... if the universe had not been made with the most exacting precision we could never have come into existence. It is my view that these circumstances indicate that the universe was created for man to live in.
Arno Penzias (Nobel prize winner in physics):
Astronomy leads us to a unique event, a universe which was created out of nothing , one with the very delicate balance needed to provide exactly the conditions required to permit life. and one which has an underlying (one might say "supernatural") plan.
George Greenstein (astronomer)
As we survey all the evidence, the thought instantly arises that some supernatural agency - or, rather, Agency - must be involved. Is it possible, that suddenly, without intending to , we have stumbled upon scientfic proof of the existence of a Supreme Being ? Was it God Who stepped in and so providentially crafted the cosmos for our benefit?
Albert Einstein, one of the greatest scientists of all time, said, " I want to know how God created this world." Maybe his desire is something all of us should ponder as we survey the evidence.
Moral Law
Another argument for God's existence is the reality of moral law. Man is a moral being, but evolution cannot explain where our sense of morality comes from. How can we know intuitively that something is wrong unless there is a right? Why do right and wrong exist?
Our moral nature can also be seen in our desire for justice. Although we don't always do what is right ourselves, we certainly don't have any trouble knowing when we've been wronged. And when that happens we demand that justice be done! This moral law that humans live by had to come from somewhere. But where? Mindless, random chance processes cannot explain the existence of a moral code.
The moral code is also related to the Law of Cause and effect, which we looked at earlier. This law dictates that
an effect never precedes its cause, and is never greater than or superior to its cause. Therefore, there must be something that existed before the universe was brought into being, and that cause must be superior to our awesome universe in every way. As with a building, the universe exhibits design, so it must have a designer. Since it exhibits intelligence, its Designer must be intelligent. Since it has life, its Designer must have life; And since it exhibits morality, its Designer must be moral.
When you really get down to it, it takes more faith to believe that there is no God, than to believe that there is a God.
How could matter come into being by itself from nothing? How could an effect come from no cause? How could life come from non-life? How could intelligence come from non-intelligence? How could meaning come from meaninglessness?
These are all things
that an atheist must
believe in order to be
consistent - and they
contradict the irrefutable
Law of Cause and Effect.
How does that sit with your logic? Always base your decisions on evidence, facts and truth. Don't just go with feelings when making decisions; feelings may be important in some aspects of life, but they do not determine what is true.
Well the ice beneath you is beginning to thicken. When considering the evidence from creation, design, art, order, science, and moral law, it is obvious that our search for eternal truth is beginning to narrow.
In the next chapter we will look more closely at the design process for our universe ; then in Chapter three we will consider Who this Designer might be.
next post tommorrow 18th July
TWENTY SEVENTEEN
PART 16
Hello Folks,
31st March. I have not been feeling well for a while now. Electrician is back to finish his work. Apparently there was a loose wire in the switch box and the earthing has some faults that needed repair.
Saturday 1st April, wake up at 5am feeling really rotten. Go to toilet and have the runs. Am very nauseous and vomit about a teaspoon full of blood.
Now on three antibiotics. Too nauseous to eat. Living on dry biscuits and jelly.
It is now Monday 10th April and the first time I am writing my blog because I was too ill to do it. Did not think I was going to survive.
Fortunately my blogs are mostly written in advance and so even on my darkest days I somehow managed to keep it going, though they sometimes appeared on the wrong days. When I was too ill to post I made up for it the next day.
I have been more or less okay now for the past two days and am now eating normally again. Praise the Lord for He is good.
The blogs I neglected were "Jokes" and "Recipe time" .. I missed quite a few of those but they are inconsequential . The Scripture blogs are the ones that count.
I am having great difficulty with my back and am really battling to walk now. It is not easy to get old and frail, nevertheless I must learn to be content - and always remember that God is in control.
Roz paid us a visit sometime in last week - I can't remember what day it was - she was going to come again on Wednesday 12th or 13th, but that did not happen. We enjoyed her visit and looking at photos of their new life.
Friday 14th April - "Good Friday" - Charmaine comes to work - as it is a public holiday we just let her clean the kitchen and then send her home.
Late afternoon Sally bites Ruth quite badly on her right arm. She was trying to break up a fight between Sally and Vlooi (as usual) She does not have any antibiotic medication but puts antibiotic ointment on the wound. Does not look good at all.
Vicky has been weeing blood
for a couple of days now and
Ruth puts her on treatment.
Saturday 15th April, my back is still very sore. I am even finding it difficult to go to the bathroom now. I think it is because of lack of exercise. This place is so small and confined I cannot go for any kind of walk especially as I need my walker and it does not fit in everywhere. There is nowhere to move.
Sunday 16th, receive a call from Japie - he has noticed that there has been no activity from me on whatsapp and correctly deduced that I am out of airtime or data and kindly sent 1Gb data to my tablet. More proof of how God takes care of our needs, without a word being said to anyone - is that not awesome?
Monday 17th - another holiday- we again have Charmaine to just clean the kitchen and then work full day on Tuesday 18th, when she catches up on backlog of ironing our clothes.
next post 23rd July
ONE HEARTBEAT
AWAY
PART 18
Mark Cahill's Book
Evolution defying creatures
If any creature can be found that defies the rules of evolution in such a way that it could not possibly have evolved, then it must have been created.
And if there is even one animal that required God as its Creator, why not believe in God as the Creator of everything else as well? When you honestly examine the evidence, it just doesn't make sense that design could have come about without a designer.
Here are some examples of wonderfully designed creatures that defy evolution.
The Tick
The first "wonderfully designed" creature we are going to look at is the detestable common tick.
Dr. Jose Ribeiro, of the
National Institutes of
Health, gives the tick a
lot of credit: "Ticks
know everything we
know and don't know (chemically) about pharmacology.
The tiny tick has dozens of elaborate chemical weapons in its saliva, which it injects into the wound. To help it camp out on its host for a few days and avoid detection, the tick's saliva contains an anaesthetic so the host won't feel it and interrupt the meal.
To keep the host's blood flowing , the tick's saliva contains compounds to disable the clotting mechanism. It also tricks the immune system into keeping white cells away so the tick consumes a feast of the red cells it needs.
Entomologist Stephen Wikel, who has studied 10,000 ticks, stated: "We probably have a lifetime of work head of us," in order to discover how this complex process works.
Dr. Ribeiro said these tiny creatures "have a very ancient wisdom." Do you think random natural processes could have come up with this incredible chemical cocktail - or could this come only from an intelligent Creator?
The Gecko Lizard: Next consider the amazing gecko lizard., which can walk across the ceiling upside down without falling off. On its toe pads are an estimated 500 million fibers tipped with little suction cups. In addition, the tips of the lizard's toes bend upward so that it can peel off the suction cups gradually at each step and not get stuck to the surface.
Dr. Robert Kofahl explains: The extraordinary microscopic structure of the gecko lizard's toe pads clearly indicates intelligent purposeful design. No remotely plausible scheme for the origin of the gecko's suction cups by random mutations and natural selection has yet been proposed by evolutionary theorists. And should some scientist with a clever imagination succeed in devising such a scheme, he would still be without a scrap of fossil evidence to demonstrate that the hypothetical process of evolution actually took place in the past.
Why would the process of random mutations and blind chance put suction cups on the gecko's feet? Only half a suction cup would make the gecko lunch for some other creature! Too much suction and the gecko isn't going anywhere!
How did mindless evolution know to also create toes that curl upward to control the suction?
Only the hand of God could have created the purposeful design of the gecko lizard.
The ocean sponge
Another creature that boggles the mind, is the seemingly simple ocean sponge., which scientists have discovered actually produces fibre optics better than our most sophisticated manufacturing methods.
The sponge's thin glass fibres are capable of transmitting light better than industrial fibre optic cables used for telecommunication. Commercial manufacturing methods require high temperatures and produce relatively brittle cable that can crack if bent too far. The sponge's fibres, grown at cold temperatures, are much more flexible, and can even be tied in a knot without breaking. By adding traces of sodium to the fibres, the sponge increases their ability to conduct light - something that cannot be done in commercial manufacturing. Scientists at Bell Laboratories hope to eventually learn how to duplicate the manufacturing process of this lowly sponge.
Joanna Aizenburg at Bell Labs admitted, "Modern technology cannot yet compete with some of the sophisticated optical systems possessed by biological organisms. " Most of us would think that an ocean sponge is a pretty rudimentary life form on the evolutionar chart, yet top scientists are trying to copy its "sophisticated optical sysrem."
Do they see evidence of intelligent design and give credit where it is due? Surprisingly, no. Chemist Geri Richmond said of the sponge;
...It's such a wonderful example of how exquisite nature is as a designer and a builder of complex systems. We can draw it on paper and think about engineering it, but we're in the stoneage compared to nature (emphasis added).
According to the journal Nature, there is an emerging field called biomimetics, in which scietists try to understand how biological systems are engineered and apply the principles to developing technology.
Doesn't it strike you that something that's "engineered" and that's more advanced than what scientists can create, couldn't have just happened by mindless, random chance processes? That's what the statistical analyses we looked at before tell us too.
next post 21st August
EVOLUTION - PART 14
powerful heart to pump blood up its long neck to the brain.
