Posted on 10/28/2012 9:06:23 AM PDT by CHRISTIAN DIARIST
They never stop – the God-deniers who worship at the altar of evolution. Who pay homage to their high priest, Charles Darwin. Who continue to place their faith in theories they contend to be indisputable science.
The latest example is a new fossil study, published in the journal Science, co-authored by David Green, an anatomy professor at Midwestern University in Illinois, and Zeresenay Alemseged, chair of the anthropology department at the California Academy of Sciences.
The study claims that that the 3.3 million-year-old remains of a baby monkey, discovered in Ethiopia, somehow confirm that our early human ancestors swung from trees before evolving into the ground-dwellers we are today.
The fossil, a member of the species Australopithecus afarensis, has been nicknamed “Lucy’s Baby.”
It’s a reference to a 3.2 million-year-old fossilized ape, “Lucy,” which was previously discovered in Ethiopia, and which evolutionists claimed for a time to be the proverbial “missing link” between simians and homo sapiens.
The science media is now reporting a supposed link between Lucy’s so-called Baby, which National Geographic refers to as a “toddler,” and human beings as if it’s Gospel truth; as if it’s proof positive that the Bible’s creation story is a fiction.
But not every scientist who sings from the Darwinist hymnal endorses the notion, advanced by Green and Alemseged, that human beings are made not in God’s image, but are evolved from Lucy’s Baby.
The fossil just “doesn’t seem human like,” Carol Ward, a University of Missouri paleoanthropologist, told NatGeo News.
“I don’t think it’s the smoking piece of information that says those guys were climbing trees,” added Scott Simpson, a CaseWestern ReserveUniversity paleoanthropologist.
Ward and Hayes did not express doubts about Lucy’s Baby because they renounce Darwinism.
It’s because they don’t want to risk their scientific reputations by giving their imprimatur to the wild claim that a few ancient bones unearthed in Africa prove beyond a reasonable doubt that humans descended from arboreal monkeys.
Indeed, Alemseged and his colleagues at the Cali Academy of Sciences compared the fossilized remains of Lucy’s Baby with those of living apes, humans and other supposed early human species.
According to NatGeo News, they found that the sockets of the fossil’s shoulder joints point upward, as they do in apes; that the boney ridge that runs along the fossil’s shoulder blades is set at a similar angle as in chimpanzees; that the fossil’s scapula, long and curved fingers, and short clavicle are all gorilla-like.
Well, I’m no anatomy professor, no anthropologist, no paleoanthropologist. But, it seems to me that, if the fossilized remains of Lucy’s Baby look exactly like those of a monkey, it must have been a monkey.
And no matter how much Green and Alemseged want Lucy’s Baby to be the missing link, to prove that man transmogrified from monkey, it’s just more false advertising by scientists who believe in Darwin, rather than God.
I believe in God, the Father almighty, creator of heaven and earth.
This affirmation of God as Creator is repeated in subsequent doctrinal formulations which are accepted by all Christian churches, such as the Nicene Creed:
We believe in one God, the Father Almighty, Maker of all things visible and invisible.
It is the duty of anyone who claims to be a Christian to affirm the fundamental belief in God as Creator. Granted, the creative process is shrouded in mystery, and surely transcends human comprehension. However, whatever their belief in the development of species, Christians are bound to affirm God as Creator.
Those who claim to be both Christians and evolutionists might want to consider Francis Schaeffer's "Ghost in the Machine" analogy:
Suppose someone who is given to myths and superstitions insists that the clock in the tower above the town square is actually powered by ghostly figures. To which a rational person would respond: "Any sane person can see that the clock is operated by a nuts & bolts mechanism of gears and levers. You are free to believe it is due to some mystical 'power,' but it is quite certain that your superstition is utterly superfluous." I.e., the clock works perfectly well without an imagined "ghostly presence."
Likewise, Christian evolutionists may insist that some unseen Divine power lies behind the process of evolution, to which evolutionists respond: "The mechanisms of evolution are well-established and fully explicate the existence of the universe and all that is in it without resorting to some invisible mystical force."
The term "affirm" is important - and quite revealing: you who are so quick to defend the Infallibility of scientists and to "affirm" the theory of Evolution, are you also as ready to affirm the historic Christian belief in God as Creator?
Yes, like how the theory of gravity and Newtonian motion fall apart because we do not fully understand the nature of the quark.
[/sarc.]
Back to magic poofs and clay to creatures theory, it is!
In the beginning God created the heavens and the earth...
It is no small matter for Christians to claim that this actually refers to an impersonal process of pure chance and mutation.
In the beginning God created the heavens and the earth...
It is no small matter for Christians to claim that this actually refers to an impersonal process of pure chance and mutation.
Found him? We elected him President!
New stars go through a lengthy period where the spew out vast amounts of water ~ at 50,000 atmospheres pressure (a trivial pressure in the water being shed by those stars) water forms into a double-helix molecule ~ much like at 0 degrees C it forms crystals.
You actually don't need to use the theory of evolution to come up with gigatons of DNA-like structures ~ all you need are double-helix molecules, sufficient degrees of activity to allow for contact with other elements and molecules (seeding the nascent DNA water molecules with the bridges needed for self-replication) and you are virtually guaranteed to have DNA that can make proteins.
The next stage ~ self-assembly ~ is probably not as random as some would like things to be ~ in fact, probably isn't random at all. DNA, once it's cut loose in the proper environment to enable it's higher forms to survive, then simply builds itself into remarkably similar creatures.
Again, that's not evolution ~ just teeny-tiny machines doing what they are supposed to do.
In the end the Universe is filled with life ~ and, given the resilience of this hardy molecule, all the Universes in the Multi-verse itself are also filled with life.
Complex biological molecules and protocells
Sidney W. Fox experimented with abiogenesis and the primordial soup theory. In one of his experiments, he allowed amino acids to dry out as if puddled in a warm, dry spot in prebiotic conditions. He found that, as they dried, the amino acids formed long, often cross-linked, thread-like, submicroscopic molecules now named “proteinoids”.
In another experiment using a similar method to set suitable conditions for life to form, Fox collected volcanic material from a cinder cone in Hawaii. He discovered that the temperature was over 100 °C (212 °F) just 4 inches (100 mm) beneath the surface of the cinder cone, and suggested that this might have been the environment in which life was created—molecules could have formed and then been washed through the loose volcanic ash and into the sea. He placed lumps of lava over amino acids derived from methane, ammonia and water, sterilized all materials, and baked the lava over the amino acids for a few hours in a glass oven. A brown, sticky substance formed over the surface and when the lava was drenched in sterilized water a thick, brown liquid leached out. It turned out that the amino acids had combined to form proteinoids, and the proteinoids had combined to form small, cell-like spheres. Fox called these “microspheres”, a name that subsequently was displaced by the more informative term protobionts. His protobionts were not cells, although they formed clumps and chains reminiscent of cyanobacteria. They contained no functional nucleic acids, but split asexually and formed within double membranes that had some attributes suggestive of cell membranes.
An amino acid has been found on a comet for the first time, a new analysis of samples from NASA's Stardust mission reveals. The discovery confirms that some of the building blocks of life were delivered to the early Earth from space.
Amino acids are crucial to life because they form the basis of proteins, the molecules that run cells. The acids form when organic, carbon-containing compounds and water are zapped with a source of energy, such as photons – a process that can take place on Earth or in space.
Previously, researchers have found amino acids in space rocks that fell to Earth as meteorites, and tentative evidence for the compounds has been detected in interstellar space. Now, an amino acid called glycine has been definitively traced to an icy comet for the first time.
"It's not necessarily surprising, but it's very satisfying to find it there because it hasn't been observed before," says Jamie Elsila of NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center, lead author of the new study. "It's been looked for [on comets] spectroscopically with telescopes but the content seems so low you can't see it that way."
Comets and asteroids are thought to have bombarded the Earth early in its history, and the new discovery suggests they carried amino acids with them.
"We are interested in understanding what was on the early Earth when life got started," Elsila told New Scientist. "We don't know how life got started ... but this adds to our knowledge of the ingredient pool."
Jonathan Lunine of the University of Arizona agrees. "Life had to get started with raw materials," he told New Scientist. "This provides another source [of those materials]."
The amino acid was found in samples returned to Earth by NASA's Stardust mission, which flew by Comet Wild 2 in 2004 to capture particles shed by the 5-kilometre object.
The samples in Elsila's study came from four squares of aluminium foil, each about 1 centimetre across, that sat next to a lightweight sponge-like "aerogel" that was designed to capture dust from the comet's atmosphere, or coma.
The researchers reported finding several amino acids, as well as nitrogen-containing organic compounds called amines, on the foil in 2008. But it was not clear whether the discoveries originated in the comet or whether they were simply contamination from Earth.
The researchers spent two years trying to find out – a painstaking task since there was so little of the comet dust to study. In fact, there was not enough material to trace the source of any compound except for glycine, the simplest amino acid.
With only about 100 billionths of a gram of glycine to study, the researchers were able to measure the relative abundance of its carbon isotopes. It contained more carbon-13 than that found in glycine that forms on Earth, proving that Stardust's glycine originated in space.
"It's a great piece of laboratory work," says Lunine. "It's probably something that couldn't have been done remotely with a robotic instrument – it points to the value of returning samples."
Elsila says she would like to see samples returned not just from a comet's coma but from its main body, or nucleus. "There might be more complex mixtures [of amino acids] and higher levels of them in a comet nucleus," she told New Scientist.
Europe's Rosetta spacecraft should help shed light on the issue. The first mission designed to orbit and land on a comet's nucleus, it will reach the Comet 67P/Churyumov-Gerasimenko in 2014 after a 10-year journey from Earth.
Journal reference: Meteoritics & Planetary Science (forthcoming)
“I’m no anatomy professor, no anthropologist, no paleoanthropologist.”
I guess he be out of his field.
Since “Lucy” is just a collection of bones found in a field filled with all sorts of bones it’s been a bit of disappointment but nevertheless a deep well of speculation.
What is “Lucy”? Who knows? Some gorilla bones possibly, no hands, no feet, a leg bone from something, how many different animal bones assembled? Unknown. But for certain not one individual.
The list includes respected scientists from such universities as Yale, Princeton, Stanford, MIT, UC Berkeley, UCLA, among others.
I looked over that list. What I saw is that very few of the signatories actually have any experience in an evolutionary science. Some of them do claim to have knowledge in sciences that are closely impacted by evolutionary considerations, but even in disciplines most closely impacted by evolution, it is possible to find a niche where one can do some research without considering the evolutionary implications. I saw that the crackpot Michael Behe is on the list... that's not a great recommendation for that list. Many of those scientists cannot be verified, since they are in countries where information is difficult to obtain (Czech Republic, etc.)
I also counted: there are approximately 44 names per page, for 18 pages. Another two pages have maybe another 50 names. So that is less than 1,000 signatures--out of around 20,000 PhD scientists in the US, plus who knows how many from other countries, plus who knows how many Masters level science technicians... that's not a very large number. In the real world, there is no controversy about evolution. At work, we spend plenty of time talking about details, like how much Neanderthal DNA is present in the genomes of people of European descent? But I have yet to come across an actual scientist who questions evolution.
As I said before, it harms the cause of bringing more people into the fold by portraying Christians as scientifically illiterate.
You haven’t “come across an actual scientist who questions evolution”?
How about Richard Smalley, winner of the 1996 Nobel Prize in Chemistry; Sir John Eccles, winner of the Nobel Prize for Physiology or Medicine in 1963; Ernst Boris Chain, winner of the 1945 Nobel Prize in Medicine and Physiology; Wolfgang Pauli, winner of the Nobel Prize for Physics in 1945; and Guglielmo Marconi (1874–1937), winner of the 1909 Nobel Prize in Physics?
Not one of those actual scientists endorsed Darwinian evolution.
How about Richard Smalley, winner of the 1996 Nobel Prize in Chemistry; Sir John Eccles, winner of the Nobel Prize for Physiology or Medicine in 1963; Ernst Boris Chain, winner of the 1945 Nobel Prize in Medicine and Physiology; Wolfgang Pauli, winner of the Nobel Prize for Physics in 1945; and Guglielmo Marconi (1874–1937), winner of the 1909 Nobel Prize in Physics?
Not one of those actual scientists endorsed Darwinian evolution.
What I don't see in that rather short list of scientists who supposedly reject the overwhelming evidence of evolution is a single scientist who works (or worked) in a discipline directly related to evolution. I also notice that all but one predates the molecular biology revolution, which verified and advanced the field of evolution far beyond what anyone would have thought possible even 50 years ago.
It is one thing to find a scientist working in a normally evolutionary science who avoids doing any research related to evolution. There are a handful of those. (By actively avoiding evolutionary research, they are, in fact, acknowledging its existence.) But let me know when you find an actual scientist who works within a normally evolutionary discipline, whose work uses evolutionary principles, who claims that evolution doesn't happen.
As I said, I have never met a scientist who denies the process of evolution, and I've met a lot of scientists. My own PhD work was very much based on evolutionary questions.
The truth is that it is a mystery. We don’t know the “how” and trying to find evidence of it is as futile as trying to locate Rose’s jewell at the site of the Titantic.
The silly thing is trying to locate the remains of the ancestors of the first human. It is mere sensationalism.
The silly thing is trying to locate the remains of the ancestors of the first human. It is mere sensationalism.
Me too.
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