evolution – Poetry, Short Prose and Walking

Evolutionary Magic vs Mutation Rates

To pull a rabbit out of a hat you need a rabbit, a hat and a lie. The lie of abiogenesis provides the rabbit – if you believe the lie.

But where did the hat come from?

To get the hat dark matter magically guides stuff the big bang blew up down gravity rabbit holes to produce stars by overpowering the normal functioning of the natural law of hydrostatic equilibrium. Then stars blow up again only to coalesce again and again. After a gazillion years a hat appears in the magician’s hand.

There are easier ways to get a hat, but what does the magician really have up his sleeve? And why are we watching the show?

Rebekah Davis of Examining Origins interviews Matt Nailor of Standing For Truth

How To Look

I added the following time markers with my notes to the video above because it is rather long. These parts stood out for me in this battle between evolutionary magic and evolution-refuting mutation rates.

0:50 Mutation rates are FAST. They are based on observed pedigree data, but evolutionists need them to be SLOW so their calibrations fit the long phylogenetic chronology they have read into the fossil record.

14:45 Genetic diversity is measured by mutations in the mitochondrial DNA (mtDNA). However, not all regions of the mtDNA mutate at the same rate. The most accurate regions as far as a clock goes are the two hypervariable regions.

20:15 Thomas Parson’s pedigree study using the FBI blood bank filled with samples from diverse people groups focused on the two hypervariable regions of the mtDNA. They provide the most useful data for forensic science. From this data our earliest female ancestor, Mitochondrial Eve, was estimated to have lived about 6,500 years ago.

40:55 Other pedigree studies confirmed Parson’s results. Genealogical rates also aligned with the pedigree studies.

50:55 Slowing the mutation rate by 15% to add in selection that evolutionists need only pushes Biblical Eve from 6,500 years to a maximum of 7,657 years ago. It fits the Septuagint biblical chronology even better covering the date for Creation at 5554 BC which would be 7,578 years ago (where 7,578 equals 5554 BC plus 2025 AD minus 1 overcounted zero year).

52:30 The genetic diversity for whales, thoroughbred horses, cats and chickens all align with human mtDNA data. There is no time for anything to have evolved from a single common ancestor that evolutionists predicted had occurred.

1:09:00 Everything we see around us that can be historically dated only goes back about 5,000 years. That includes written records, pottery, astronomy, mathematics, metallurgy, brewing beer, irrigation, or the oldest leather shoes. Claims that there are sites which are much older, such as Göbekli Tepe, are easily discredited. This fits nicely in the Septuagint flood date of 3298 BC which was about 5,322 years ago (where 5,322 equals 3298 BC plus 2025 AD minus 1 overcounted zero year).

1:15:00 All of this lands right on the biblical timeline and even in the biblical places after the flood. The only thing that disrupts this are the conflicting, but old, radiometric measurements of the ages of rocks that evolutionists hang onto like a life raft. But rocks aren’t alive. As far as life is concerned, the creationist model is the only one that can handle the data.

1:16:40 Genetic diversity across species varies much less than expected or needed by evolutionists. These species emerged about the same time as humans from what evolutionists see and need as a global bottleneck since species also have genetic boundaries that are too distinct for evolutionist tastes. It was almost as if all species got in a boat two by two which saved them from a global catastrophic flood in order to replenish the earth once more. Evolutionists need some global bottleneck to account for the lack of genetic diversity, but they insist it was NOT the biblical flood.

1:46:00 Why not the flood? Now we are positioned to look up the magician’s sleeve. The theory of evolution started as a lie with an agenda. The goal was to free science from Moses by discrediting the historicity of the biblical record. That is why evolutionists will not consider the biblical flood as their needed bottleneck. If they did, that would credit the Bible with providing accurate information suggesting that creation itself might have occurred.

2:06:00 Bottom line: Evolution is “pseudo-science to the max”. Even as magic, evolution is not very convincing once one looks up the magician’s sleeve.

When a rabbit pops out of a hat
stay alert. Check those sleeves looking at
what might harbor a lie.
Keep on looking. Pass by
that sly grin gracing Alice’s cat.

Theological Naturalism and the Elephants in One’s Living Room

Most people don’t want elephants in their living rooms. If we have any and we don’t know they are there, it’s because we have a blind spot. It’s not that we don’t bump into those elephants multiple times. We do, but we can always come up rationalizations to explain why the walls keep moving about without having to admit that there are elephants in our living rooms.

While chasing out my own elephants, I ran into Cornelius Hunter whom Rebekah Davis has interviewed multiple times on her YouTube channel, Examining Origins. Hunter is a philosopher of science and a biologist. He is also a Christian, but for scientific reasons he is neither a creationist nor an evolutionist.

That means evolutionists don’t like him, because he allows for evolution to be false. They think he is compromising with creationism. That also means creationists don’t trust him, because he allows for evolution to be true. They think he is compromising with evolutionism even though he has shown that evolution has been scientifically falsified so many times that it is useless as a model of origins.

Theological Naturalism

Theological naturalism is neither atheism nor skepticism. Rather, it is a naturalism that arose out of Judeo-Christianity polluted over the millennia with Gnosticism and Greek philosophy. It is a naturalism justified by ideas of God as too omnipotent, too good, or too omniscient to be bothered with our messy (think, evil) world. Such involvement would damage His dignity.

Theological naturalism puts God on a pedestal. It is a theological position that removes God from His messy creation by handing His creation over to the idols of natural law and chance. It is a theological position that rejects Genesis 1-11 where we are told how evil entered the world.

As Hunter puts it in his book, Science’s Blind Spot: The Unseen Religion of Scientific Naturalism:

The move to [theological] naturalism is neither atheism in disguise nor a scientific discovery. Instead, the move to naturalism was mandated largely by thinkers within the church. Religious skeptics gladly accepted the move, but their position has always been a parasitic one.¹

Hunter notes that in spite of evolution being a failed scientific model, few want to reject it. They reason (correctly) that if they did reject it, the only alternatives would be some form of creationism, but any form of creationism, biblical or not, would bring God too close to the messiness of the universe.

Science As Useful Modeling

Hunter wants to separate science from theology or metaphysics. He points out that science is much easier to do than metaphysics. In science you make a public statement. Then you make vulnerable predictions from that statement, that is, predictions which are falsifiable. Others check the predictions against reality. If the model survives these checks, it can be provisionally accepted – not as true, but as useful – until a better model with tighter predictions comes along.

Bottom line: a scientific model or theory makes useful predictions.

Metaphysics and theology on the other hand go after a bigger prize that is more difficult to achieve. They want truth. Often they only rely on reason to get that prize. That is, they don’t want to rely on revelation such as that provided in the Bible. All they are willing to use to ground their rationalizations are mere assumptions that they think must somehow be true. But mere assumptions lead one into all kinds of nonsense.

Getting back to those elephants, my take away from Hunter is to recognize the difference between science and metaphysics. As soon as I confuse them, I’ve got an elephant in my living room. To get rid of these elephants I have to see them for what they are: theologically motivated rationalizations masquerading as useful science.

______

Hunter, Cornelius. Science’s Blind Spot: The Unseen Religion of Scientific Naturalism (p. 32). Baker Publishing Group. Kindle Edition. ↩︎

Entropy, Evolution, Devolution, Creation

Entropy

Change leads to decay which can be described as entropy. With real natural processes doing their thing, things run down. They don’t run up.

Erosion washes the landscape into the oceans. People grow old and die. Species undergo mutational meltdown leading to extinction. Even stars blow up.

The universe is overrun with death at all levels. Death through disobedience is what the fall in Genesis 3 is all about. If you want to own the universe without the Lord you will have to hold it together all by yourself. Entropy is your enemy.

Evolution

Although entropy is all around us, what we don’t see is evolution (except in the imaginations of some biologists). We don’t see stuff becoming more complex through some natural process before the real natural processes leading to entropy, decay and death expose the fictitious ones as fantasies.

We don’t see pond scum turn into fish, dogs or dragons. Various kinds of living creatures do go extinct because they suffer genetic entropy which leads to mutational meltdown. Dinosaurs (better known in the past as “dragons”) simply died off. They did not evolve into chickens or tooth fairies. They went extinct and some of them left their remains as fossils. Indeed, some of those fossils still contain soft tissue showing that all of this happened not very long ago giving evolutionary magic no time at all to work.

In a similar way we don’t see stars form out of gas clouds (except in the imaginations of some astronomers). They do blow up. Entropy is real; evolution is not.

Devolution

If evolution didn’t happen, what about devolution, the flip side of evolution? If there are no natural processes for evolution (except in the imaginations of evolutionists), then there would be no mechanisms for devolution either. Things just run down, decay, blow up, erode or die. They don’t devolve.

We don’t see dinosaurs turn into pond scum. Pond scum, already present, might eat a dead dinosaur, but dinosaurs don’t devolve into pond scum. Dragons (aka “dinosaurs”) simply died off. They did not transition into an evolutionary biologist’s tooth fairy.

Creation

We do see the effects of creation. We see stars. We see the world around us. We experience ourselves. How do we know the world was “created”? God told us so in Genesis 1.

Someone might ask, “Are you asking me to believe the Bible?”

Sure. Why not? It is the best explanation for what we see around us and why we are here. It is more plausible than the pseudoscientific magic tricks offered in its place to waste our lives.

Conclusion

If you’re an atheist thinking you can overcome entropy, then get off your butt and do so. Stars are exploding all over the universe. What are you waiting for? Species have or will undergo mutational meltdown. Follow the serpent’s lead and hold this universe together all by yourself.

Or, smarten up. Realize that the Lord loves you, even you. He wants none to perish. Stop wasting your life on fantasies.

If you’re a Christian with a pastor, with a Bible school teacher or with a seminary professor promoting the pseudoscience of people like Hugh Ross or the big bang idolatry of people like William Lane Craig, find a real church. Find a real Bible school. Find a real seminary. God has a plan for your life. Follow His lead, not the lead of rebellious men.

If you’re into New Age spirituality, how has that sentimental nonsense been treating you? Gaia does not exist. Neither does the tooth fairy. The devil, on the other hand, does. The only thing the devil wants to do is to get you to waste (that is, abort) your own life. This present life is shorter than you think. Only the real thing, only Jesus, is worth your attention. He won’t lead you astray. Thank Him. Praise Him. You will never be the same again.

No matter who you are, make sure you are on board before the last days end and the Lord shuts the door.

Without God You Can’t Get There From Here

I woke up in the middle of the night with an idea for a great story. I take no credit for the idea. It suddenly manifested, but I was tired. It was like I found a shiny treasure on the ground and all I had to do was pick it up, but I was tired.

Since it was a great story and it kept repeating, I eventually did get out of bed and started typing. I wrote the following sentence.

Then Timothy said something else as if it all depended on his words, but it didn’t all depend on his words.

I knew I should have written more before I went back to bed, but I was tired. Since I knew what I should have done, but didn’t do it, I disobeyed. When I finally woke up and read that sentence, the bare bones of the great story, I realized I lost it. I am left with a reminder that disobedience brings consequences. Sure God loves me and all, but if I don’t want to receive a great story by waking up long enough to write it down how can I receive what I have chosen not to receive?

Here’s the point of this essay: Can I get that story back with my own mental abilities?

I don’t think I can, but that is because I don’t think these things come from my own mental abilities in the first place. I’m not a materialist. That noodle on top of my head can only do so much. All this applies to you as well, of course. Even if we pooled our heads together and used our best efforts we could not come up with that great story again.

Hopefully I finally learnt my lesson because this was not the first time I was too tired to receive a blessing. Knowing my tendency to get tired, I have even kept a notebook by the side of the bed so I have less excuse not to write what comes from dreams or even from thoughts upon awakening, but I still get tired.

I’ve got to stop letting my body tell me what to do.

If you really understand that you can’t get there from here you will not waste any time trying to do so. In the case of my story, I will wait for fresh inspiration and stay awake next time.

Inspiration comes from God. If you don’t believe in God, it doesn’t matter. Inspiration still comes from Him. However, those who deny God lose a Way Maker. He’s still there but they have to delude themselves by inflating their own abilities or the abilities of nature to pretend to get stuff done without Him. There’s nothing like delusion to help one come up with ways to go from there to here or here to there forgetting that without God, most of the time, you can’t get there from here or you’d wish you hadn’t if you did. Without God we get lost.

There are many ways people try to get there from here without God. Here are a few that come to mind.

You can’t get a starry universe from a big bang

Since an orderly universe exists those seeking to explain how it got here without God have a lot of explaining to do. Some think a big bang might work. If you are trying to get order out of chaos an explosion has to be the worst starting point.

To make a star after the big bang makes a mess you need a cloud of gas. Gravity brings the gas together, but only if it can overcome the pressure to expand by somehow staying cool. Assuming you do get enough gas compressed that it becomes a thermonuclear accident waiting to happen, you then need a star to come along and blow itself up to ignite that “protostar” so it can blow itself up as well.

At least that is how I understand the alleged process which suggests to some that the laws of physics can’t explain star formation.

You can’t get reality from simulations

The whole point of artificial “intelligence” is to reduce human intelligence to machine-executable instructions. Then human beings could be thought of as made in the image of a machine, rather than made in the image of God.

A simulation takes this further and reduces reality itself to computer code. For me a simulation nightmare would start with the thought of a teenager in his basement in a galaxy far far away deciding to simulate a universe and suddenly I find myself in it.

That’s when I’d wake up.

You can’t get a diversity of creatures from mutations

It is amazing how often those who want to get where they’re going without God rely on decay processes to do so.

In the case of biological evolution, if you want a new kind of creature without God creating that creature you start with a creature and hope random mutations will turn the creature into something else before the mutations decay the creature to the point that it can no longer reproduce.

Mutations are decay processes. They don’t add information; they destroy it. On the way to extinction one may get a large variety of the same kind of creature, mutated, for sure, but one doesn’t get a new kind of creature with a lot of fresh information for mutations to destroy.

One is always racing against the clock when one relies on decay processes or has to counter them. Having a gazillion years to get it all done doesn’t really help. All it does is give those decay processes more time to decay stuff.

Conclusion

Face it: you can’t get where you want to go without God’s assistance. Without God, you can’t get there from here. With God, you have a Way Maker. Without Him, why bother?

Just because I wake up with an idea, a gift from the Holy Spirit, for a great story does not mean I can go back to sleep and come up with that story again later on my own when I am awake. I didn’t get that story in the first place on my own. All I could do on my own is write it down, that is, receive it.

I will have to wait for the Holy Spirit to offer something new, perhaps, something like this essay as a kind of repentance for my disobedience.

https://youtu.be/n4XWfwLHeLM?si=7nl3O4S_PiDNuOOd

Exploration 86 – The Dust-To-Darwin Problem

And the Lord God formed man of the dust of the ground, and breathed into his nostrils the breath of life; and man became a living soul.
Genesis 2:7 King James Version

Bob Sorensen used the phrase “dust-to-Darwin” to describe evolution. This phrase succinctly describes the mythopoetic rationalization underlying evolutionary speculations. It brings two contrary things to mind. First, the word dust brings to mind Genesis 2:7 where we have a “dust-to-Adam” creation by God. Second, the word Darwin brings to mind those who promote a mindless, deterministic/random evolutionary explanation of how we got here.

The dust-to-Darwin problem is the realization that the speculations attempting to replace Genesis are no longer plausible, if they ever were. The problem for atheistic speculations is that science never has been on the side of atheism in spite of it being institutionally force-fed. That’s because experimental science doesn’t sit still. Scientists, some of them witlessly, keep pushing down the atheist fencing, because that fencing doesn’t fit reality.

For example, although mutations in DNA might look like the driving force of evolution, look closer and they point to genetic entropy and single, recent male and female ancestors. Although the fossil column might look like it could be dated to be hundreds of millions of years old, look closer and that dating falls apart when scientists estimate the entire geologic record would be eroded away in a mere ten million years assuming measured rates of erosion. Experimental science measured this entropy and erosion. Those measurements undermined speculative philosophy’s attempts to justify atheism.

Even more fundamentally, the dust-to-Darwin problem is that the philosophy of atheism offers no plausible way for any kind of dust to get here in the first place without God. It presents no plausible explanation for how that dust came alive without God. It has no plausible way to explain why men and women are inhabiting earth right now without God.

But the most serious part of the dust-to-Darwin problem comes when normal, ordinary people realize that they have been deceived, fooled into filtering reality through atheistic mythology.

Weekly Parashah Readings
Parashah: Tazria 1 Nissan, 5782 – April 2, 2022
Torah: Leviticus 12:1 – 13:59
Haftarah: Ezekiel 45:18 – 46:15; Isaiah 66:1; Isaiah 66:23-24; Isaiah 66:23
Brit Chadashah: John 6:8-13; Matthew 8:1-4
Resources: Chabad, Hebrew4Christians, Weekly Torah Readings, Calendar

Happy Question Evolution Day!

Today, February 12th, is Darwin’s birthday and also Question Evolution Day.

The kind of evolution being questioned is biological evolution, not the alleged evolution of solar systems or galaxies, although I don’t think that kind of evolution is possible either. The universe is winding down through entropy. It is not evolving into something more complicated than what we see around us.

Biological evolution is also not the differentiation of a specific kind of animal into new breeds or sub-species. That comes about routinely with either artificial or natural selection. However, no new kind of animal can be formed by this selection process alone.

Biological evolution is a way to go from something simple to something complicated without involving the free will of any agent such as God. The whole point of biological evolution is to do away with God as an explanation.

Since God is not involved, evolution will need some mechanism by which change can take place making a transition from slime mold to ourselves plausible. The current mechanism offered is random mutations. Given mutations over long periods of time DNA is supposedly changed so slime mold can turn into a chicken or maybe a dinosaur and the dinosaur can turn into an ape and the ape can become a human being.

However, it has become apparent that mutations aren’t enough to make that happen.

The reason mutations won’t work is because they are generally deleterious. Rarely do they benefit the species undergoing them. That is why our bodies try to correct them, but they do not always succeed. We pass on some of these mistakes to our children who pass them on to their children with additional mutations. A mutational load builds up generation after generation.

This increasing mutational load is what John Sanford calls genetic entropy. Natural selection cannot stop it. The end result of genetic entropy is not some superior creature, but mutational meltdown. That’s when a species is no longer able to reproduce. It goes extinct.

So, unless there is some mechanism for biological evolution to occur besides mutations to supplement natural selection, biological evolution is not possible. Genetic entropy prevents it.

That’s why I celebrate Question Evolution Day.

Admittedly the extinction part is depressing. However, God said that He not only created a very good world with us in it, but in response to the fall of Adam and Eve, He offered us His Son whose sacrifice almost two thousand years ago would allow for a new heaven and a new earth. Given genetic entropy, we are going to need it.