"Thy word is a lamp unto my feet and a light unto my path." Psalm 119:105
Media misrepresenting science?
posted Wednesday, May 20, 2009 :: 3:09 PM
Updates posted at articles end. Original article posted Wed 20 May 2009.
This new fossil which I blogged about yesterday is being hailed everywhere as the missing link. Even look at Google's home page today (see the Google doodle here), and what they have done to honor this find! However, World Net Daily has an excellent article up, with an interview with Ken Ham and many others. Some of the scientists are trying to get the media reports to tone down their sensationalism of this find, even saying that it is NOT the missing link, but the problem they are having, is that a headline like MISSING LINK FOUND! sells a lot more newspapers than a headline like LEMUR ANCESTOR FOSSIL FOUND!
:::::: 22 May Update:Answers in Genesis has posted an informative article, quoting all the scientists who were unconvinced of the "missing link" claim, and the problems in the science which may have been a result of media pressure brought to bear on the researchers. Once again, it appears the media slants the coverage to present something as fact, which it wishes was fact, however, the actual facts themselves, under scrutiny, hardly bear out their claims.
Quite a sensational news article hit the internet this morning: Scientists Unveil Missing Link in Evolution. They mean, the missing link between humans and primates. How did they accomplish this feat, that darwinsists have been dreaming of for over 150 years? They found the fossil of an extinct lemur- like primate, and have decided that since, they believe, it shares a common ancestor with modern primates, that they have found the missing link between primates and humans.
Did you notice the leap of faith too, in which they might have found evidence for a common ancestor between modern lemurs and modern primates, however the explanation of how that proves a common ancestor between primates and humans remains cloudy?
Well, since they ASSUME primates and humans have a common ancestor, finding a common ancestor between lemurs and primates PROVES it! Such is the twisted logic of the modern evolutionist ... they want to find what they want to find sooo bad, that any incredibly thin straw will suffice.
So two comments about how this news story is presented to the public. First, it is LONG, like reading a dissertation in itself. And dry, and technical. It almost makes you wonder if the decision was made to put a technical and scientific- sounding article up, with a compelling headline, and then make it so interminable and convoluted, that 98% of Joe Public will give up on actually trying to read or understand the thing after a few paragraphs -- thus only retaining the sensational headline, as fact. They draw your conclusion for you by making it incredibly difficult for anyone with average intelligence to draw their own conclusion.
Second, the first commenter on the article was Ken H., and his lucid response pointing out the logical inconsistencies and errors made in coming to the conclusion the article states, took the scientific legs right out from under the erroneous claims. My son sent me the link to the article, directing me to look for Ken H.'s comment. He said, "I wonder if its Ken Ham (of the great ministry, Answers in Genesis). By the time I clicked on the article, the powers that be had deleted Ken H.'s comment, and I could not read it, other than to report on it through my son's witness, who did read it. But the proof remains that Ken H. left a comment: another poster a little later begins his comment with, "I agree with Ken H. ..." I wonder how long it will take them to excise THAT comment too.
So here is the nature of the thought controllers. They are obviously NOT certain at all that their claim that they have found the missing link is true. How can I say that? Truth reveals its nature under examination and criticism. That is why they cross examine witnesses in murder trials. But if someone is trying to put forward a FALSE claim, then every criticism of that claim must be suppressed, deleted, and censored, because criticism reveals the falsity of the false claim, just as it would reveal the truth of the true claim. If the claim were true, they would let the criticism of it stand, because the criticism would only highlight its truth. But since it is false, they must censor all dissenting viewpoints. Thus the deletion of Ken H.'s comment.
Oh ... Answers in Genesis had heard about this claim and reported on what they knew of it before it was publicly revealed. I am sure that now that it has been made public, they will soon devote a full article to it -- I'll keep checking and post a link for you as soon as they do.
The high priests of darwinian religion are unhappy
posted Thursday, December 6, 2007 :: 1:27 PM
Swiss creationists were successful in having a passage on divine creation included as a possible origin for life alongside darwinism in a science textbook used in schools. But, of course, the evolutionists are screaming bloody murder because of it, and The Big Debate on whether religion should be taught in a science class has ensued. My opinion: No it should not, and the sooner we get the religion of evolution out of science class the better.
Let me just state one more time for the record: telling us how life came to be is a question which is beyond the scope and authority of science, since science can only tell us what is true about what can be tested and repeated Here and Now. Answers which have to assume unprovable axioms (which evolution as an origin of life answer does) ARE NOT scientific answers. Questions involving unprovable axioms belong to the realm of philosophy.
This is basic science 101, I had it drilled into my head as a science major at university (but was very familiar with it having been taught it in junior high and high school EVERY YEAR before that). Now I wonder if they bother to teach it anymore, since no one seems to know that scientific answers must be testable and repeatable. I have never heard a single journalist, government official, school board member, or scientist they get to quote for these articles bring up this point, have you?
Now there are a lot of unbelievable jaw droppers in this article, but the two that really blew me away are:
"But angry scientists and education experts soon forced the revision of the divisive passage, arguing that teaching creationism in science classes implies a controversy when there isn’t since evolution has been “proven beyond all reasonable doubt.”
And if that isn't bad enough:
"The assembly warned that creationist ideas in the form of science – once almost exclusively restricted to the United States – has spread throughout Europe and could threaten human rights and democracy."
Belief in the Creator is only a threat to fascists, dictators, and power- hungry oppressors everywhere. But let not the suppressors of academic and intellectual freedom cry about human rights and democracy.
The Creation Museum opens this weekend; so if you are anywhere near Cincy, Ohio, plan on attending this summer! The Christian Post has a great interview with Ken Ham about the Museum and its opening. My sweet dh and I are very excited about going to see the Museum -- I am not sure how soon we can get there, but as soon as we can, we are going.
There's an interesting set of articles on World Net Daily today. The first, God did speak world into existence, tells of the theory of university student Samuel Hunt. Hunt has theorized that God's Spirit, in the form of a magnetic field, covered the earth, which was a watery deep. Then His voice speaking, Let there be light, carried sonic waves into the liquid, producing light photons. Researchers have verified the phenomenon known as sonoluminesence: the production of light from bubbles when sound is passed through a liquid. There is some interesting reading about the reaction of Hunt's professors to his questions and theories.
The second is a New York Times article concerning Marcus Ross, now a Ph.D who completed his thesis and received his doctoral degree in geoscience in December. Why the interest in this particular doctoral candidate? He is a young earth creationist who wrote his thesis from the framework of darwinian evolution and millions of years. Some folks are very upset that a creationist has received a doctoral degree by turning in a thesis from within the darwinian framework. The university says he did solid science to earn his degree. The National Center for Science Education is especially concerned that fundamentalists capitalize on "secular" degrees to "miseducate the public."
I guess the panic is so deep because over 700 Ph.D. scientists worldwide (not including medical doctors, of which there are also many) have publically and formally challenged the validity of darwinian evolution as a creative mechanism.
Now a debate is brewing whether a doctoral candidate's religious beliefs should be made known, then considered, before deciding to confer a degree.
Now isn't this screaming proof of the point I have been consistently making, that naturalism is an unproven belief system, and not science? The science presented by the doctoral candidate in his thesis cannot be faulted, therefore the degree is conferred. But the debate is among naturalists who are panicked that scienctists should hold to a philosophy other than naturalism. You can see throughout the article that there is a subtle attempt on the part of the naturalists (and the ignorant media) to define science itself as naturalism, which it most certainly is not.
Case in point:
But Dr. Scott, a former professor of physical anthropology at the University of Colorado, said in an interview that graduate admissions committees were entitled to consider the difficulties that would arise from admitting a doctoral candidate with views “so at variance with what we consider standard science.” She said such students “would require so much remedial instruction it would not be worth my time.”
That is not religious discrimination, she added, it is discrimination “on the basis of science.”
Dr. Dini, of Texas Tech, agreed. Scientists “ought to make certain the people they are conferring advanced degrees on understand the philosophy of science and are indeed philosophers of science,” he said. “That’s what Ph.D. stands for.”
Excellent suggestion, Dr. Dini. We cannot put that great idea into practice soon enough. Science would benefit greatly from scientists who understood the philosophy of science. And its distinction from the philosophy of naturalism.
Tomorrow the Supreme Court is going to hear a case on whether the government should change the way its deals with the threat of global warming, by deciding whether it should regulate carbon dioxide emissions by classing CO2 as a pollutant. Hey, don’t people emit carbon dioxide when they breathe? How is the government going to regulate that?
It scares me when the government gets into regulation using incomplete or faulty science as its justification. Congrats to the Bush administration for resisting, unless forced into it by the Supreme Court.
We
were talking about the assumptions behind the reasoning of the day age
theory: that Scripture is consistent with an old age of the earth; for,
science has proved age beyond doubt, therefore theology must be made to
support science, in order to remain viable as truth. We discussed the first two assumptions behind that reasoning.
3.
The third assumption is that every axiom which is currently held in
science (such as the old age of the earth), is absolute and will remain
an axiom in future generations. In fact, science is the truth
discipline which has experienced the greatest change in its axioms
throughout its history. If a snapshot of the axioms held by science as
authoritative were taken in 100 year intervals, from the rise of
Grecian supremacy until today; you would find them at great variance
and even contradiction. In fact, there is one axiom about science that
is almost absolute, and that is that the axioms of science are always
changing. This is not because nature is itself unstable, necessarily,
but it is because our knowledge of nature is-- that is, imperfect and
incomplete.
In
light of the changeable history of science’s axioms, it is much more
logical to suppose that new evidence will bring today’s ‘proved beyond
doubt’ statements into question at some point in the future, than it is
to suppose that today’s statements will remain settled through future
generations.
Now,
we are approaching the question of the age of the earth from theology
first, and then we will look at it from science. For both theology and
science are truth disciplines, and they should not contradict each
other. This principle of non- contradiction is why so many have worked
so hard to explain how Scripture is consistent with an old age of the
earth; for, they suppose, science has proved age beyond doubt,
therefore theology must be made to support science, in order to remain
viable as truth.
This reasoning behind the day age theory
contains many underlying assumptions, which at first glance might go
unnoticed. As these assumptions, although unspoken, have a great deal
to do with the outcome of the question, we should know what they are.
1.
In equating the truth disciplines of science and theology, the
assumption is that they both carry equal weight in the final outcome of
what is considered ‘true.’ In fact, science can only comment on the
truth of that which can be observed and repeated in the natural world
at the present time. Theology conveys those eternal and absolute truths
in all spheres, including the natural world, as revealed by God the
Creator. They are not equal in weight or authority.
2. The
second assumption is that science has proved age beyond doubt. We will
discover that there is evidence which contradicts this ‘fact.’ When new
evidence contradicts an established fact, that is your first clue that
your truth examination is lacking, therefore, your statements based on
that examination are lacking.
But our pastor did not come down on the side of old earth or young earth creation, saying there were unanswered questions with both positions, which made it impossible to know which was right, or perhaps that made both right.
I can understand his ambiguity; for while I do not have any unanswered questions about young earth or old earth; I do in other areas of theology; and I know how hard it can be to find those answers when so many sincere people so passionately declare for one side or the other with equal fervency and recourse to Scripture.
He also said that anyone who says they have the answers, is not telling the truth, because there are questions out there which cannot be answered. I see his point, but I don't think I agree with this statement, and am still working out why. That will be my first post.
He posed the questions he found which neither old earth or young earth answered, for us to work out for ourselves; and since he requested we not discuss it with him, I decided to work out for myself his questions here. I am a convinced young earth creationist in my own mind. I am not afraid of discussing difficult questions, because I believe that truth shows up its nature under questioning. The spotlight illuminates both the truth and the falsehood more brightly. So, why am I a young earth creationist? I will use evidence from both science and theology in an attempt to address the questions our pastor brought out.
I just discovered yesterday that our Natural History museum has been carrying this exhibit called Bodyworlds. I have not seen it. We have not supported our local temple to the anti- God religion of death for some time.
According
to my extended family, it is a display of real people, who have died,
and, um, different layers of their flesh have been removed so that
people can see just under the skin, in stages, all the way down to the
bones. The bodies are encased in plastic to keep them from decaying.
Apparently this exhibit has been packing in the visitors.
When
the horrified shock registered on my face, I was told that everyone had
given permission for their bodies to be used in this way, to further
science and education.
Oh, well, that makes it all better, then. Even if these people did not believe that they were made in the image of God,
that does not change the fact that they were. Desecrating their dead
bodies and then putting them in a museum display degrades their innate
nobility, for man was made a little lower than the angels, crowned with glory and honor.
By reflection, it attempts to degrade God’s glory, as well, even though
man can do nothing to diminish God in reality. Am I wrong to be
horrified?
The Creation Museum, set to open next
spring, is really making progress! The Creation Museum has its own
website and blog, where you can meet the people and volunteers working
on the exhibits; where photos of the work in progress are almost daily
posted. I just visited for the first time in a month or so today, and
WOW! A lot is going on. The museum is really taking shape now and the
exhibits look out of this world! I do remember reading that one of the
major designers of the rides and exhibits for Universal Orlando left his job
there to oversee the design and exhibits for the Creation Museum. God
has uniquely prepared so many to contribute to the museum and make it
world class.
Even if we cannot get out to Kentucky to volunteer,
donations of any size will help, since this whole complex is being
built debt- free as God gives AiG increase! Already we are planning our
fall vacation for next year (once school has begun and the rush for
books has slowed to a trickle); to the Ohio - Kentucky area. We cannot
wait to see the Museum, and hope to bring Zane and his family along as well; visit my
cousin and her family, who live in Ohio; see the Amish country; and
tour the Homer Laughlin China factory, where they make Fiesta dinnerware, my
favorite dishes of all time.
Today let’s dissect a news article from this week and fact- check
it for unproveable assumptions or untruths. I will highlight the
questionable bits in the news article I am quoting:
“WASHINGTON
(AP) - Scientists have found what might have been the ideal ancient
vacation hotspot with a 74-degree Fahrenheit average temperature,
alligator ancestors and palm trees. It’s smack in the middle of the
Arctic.
“First-of-its-kind
core samples dug up from deep beneath the Arctic Ocean floor show that
55 million years ago an area near the North Pole was practically a
subtropical paradise, three new studies show.”
I wonder if those core samples had a label attached saying “55 MILLION
YEARS OLD!” No, of course not. So how do the scientists determine that
their core samples are 55 million years old? The article doesn’t say,
but a methold in common use is to look at the fossils in the rock. The
article says alligators and palm trees were present. Then you look up
alligators and palm trees on the geologic column, and it says the rock
they are in must be 55 million years old. How did they come up with the
geologic column? Evolutionary theory, silly!
Is there a fact anywhere that says these core samples MUST be 55
million years old? Noooooo ... All we can really know is that the area
must have once been subtropical, and that alligators and palm trees
lived there, which died, and were buried in rock layers laid down by
water. (Let’s see, do we have any history which tells of catastrophic flooding even in the Arctic? Why yes, lots of it, in fact!)
“The
scientists say their findings are a glimpse backward into a much
warmer-than-thought polar region heated by run-amok greenhouse gases
that came about naturally.”
How
do the scientists know how the Arctic region was heated, back in the
days supposedly before humans walked the earth and there was no one
around to record what was happening? Good question: we have another
unproveable assumption. The news article makes the statement about
greenhouse gases as if it were fact, early on. But only if you read
much deeper into the article, do you pick up this bit of information:
“Millions
of years ago the Earth experienced an extended period of natural global
warming. But around 55 million years ago there was a sudden
supercharged spike of carbon dioxide that accelerated the greenhouse
effect.
Scientists
already knew this "thermal event" happened but are not sure what caused
it. Perhaps massive releases of methane from the ocean, the
continent-sized burning of trees, lots of volcanic eruptions.”
There
are so many assumptions in this one paragraph alone: the millions of
years mentioned twice; the carbon dioxide spike; the methane gas, tree
burning, and volcanic eruptions. My guess as to how they came up with
this ridiculous theory is that scientists have been told that CO2
causes the global greenhouse effect, and that methane gas from cattle
puts CO2 in the air, as does forest fires, as do volcanic eruptions.
Therefore the warming must have been caused by extra CO2 from methane
(of course it was from the ocean, everyone knows that cattle had not
evolved yet), forest fires, and volcanoes.
It is a house of cards built on one assumption after another. Now here
is a fact: plants breathe CO2. Who is to say that the more CO2 is
released into the atmosphere, the more plants grow to use it up, so
that an equilibrium of sorts is maintained? ??? They
haven’t even done that study in today’s world, let alone to be
confident enough to exclude it from the possibilities affecting the ancient
world.
Conclusion: beware “news” articles which are propaganda vehicles in disguise.
Global warming is in the news today, I guess because Al Gore’s new movie, about the horrors of global warming,
opens today. Glenn Beck made a good point on the radio today. He said
that if there are fossils of palm trees in Antarctica [and there are],
that is your first clue that the earth changes on its own. They have
not found any fossils of the combustion engine with those palm tree
fossils in Antarctica, so how did man cause the last global warming?
I have blogged before
about how warm winters were common in centuries past long before the
combustion engine was invented. Remember back in the 70s the doomsday
prediction was that global warming was going to cause a new ice age?
That was why Earth Day
was begun. It has only been thirty years, but today the doomsday
prediction is the opposite: the earth is turning into a desert. When
that doesn’t happen in thirty years, I wonder if they will go back to
the ice age theory. A good website for balanced science and facts --
not hysteria -- on global warming is globalwarming.org.
Of course, those of us who believe ancient history as it has been revealed and recorded in Genesis,
know that the climate was universally temperate or tropical in the
beginning, then all the living things on the earth were destroyed by a
global flood (which laid down fossils in sedimentary rock layers all
over the earth), after which seasons began. The global flood triggered an ice age for some centuries, and then we had warming for some centuries while the climate stablized, and the climate has been cyclical ever since.
Recently the Vatican astronomer told a newspaper
that 6- day creationists believe in a form of “superstitious paganism,”
and he called the history presented in the first chapters of Genesis a
“destructive myth.”
I sincerely believe the Vatican is deeply afraid of being portrayed as repeating a Galileo moment.
They will side with secular science against creationists every time, no
matter the evidence, to avoid being portrayed as repeating a Galileo
moment.
Have they forgotten that the theory all the scientific and academic
world -- including the Vatican astronomers -- believed at the time,
that the sun revolved around the earth, was the established theory of
the day, and that Copernicus and Galileo were little Davids standing up
to the Goliath of their day with new evidence?
Have they forgotten that the accepted theory was proposed by a pagan
Greek, Ptolemy, 1500 years prior, and had been taught as the received
wisdom for so long, that questioning it was out of the question?
It
is interesting that it is the official Vatican astronomer that calls
creation science a “destructive myth.” I don’t know what the official
Vatican biologist or official Vatican chemist think, if such exist. The
problem most astronomers seem to have with creation science is
the How can there be distant starlight in a young universe question.
You know, light travels so much distance per second,
or so much distance per year (one light year). We can see stars that
are billions of light years away, therefore the universe must be that
many billions of years old. So explain that, you young earth
creationists! Hah!
Dr. D. Russell Humphreys, nuclear physicist specializing in light
theory at Sandia National Laboratories in New Mexico, has, brilliantly.
Starlight and Time: Solving the Puzzle of Distant Starlight in a Young
Universe is available in book form or on DVD.
The Vatican astronomer should pick up a copy, if nothing else than to
be well- versed in the current theories being avidly discussed and
debated among astronomers. And if nothing else than to know as
much about the debate as your average homeschooler graduating high
school. Who knows, he might find his faith and his respect for the
unchangeable and infallible Word of God encouraged as well.
Here is the CCH breakdown (we will be working on the CCH curriculum
catalog all summer, and these changes will be incorporated into the recommendations and lesson plans there):
Grade 1:Living books study outlined at CCH
I do believe The World of Plants, the first book in the new series, is
a tad too much for most first graders who are just learning to read and
write. The living books study outlined at CCH for first graders is
designed to encourage and support their reading and writing practice,
as well as introduce them to the concepts basic to science and nature
study which are often ignored or taken for granted in most science
curriculum.
Moreover, these texts work particularly well to do an all ages together
science study, as long as the children are all in the grammar stage.
Just begin with the first book and work your way through at your own
pace until you have completed the last book. They are too basic to use for
dialectic and rhetoric stage students.
The dialectic stage (grades 7-9)recommended science: Rainbow Science, creation science, and the origins science debate.
An alternate course of study for the 6th grade year would be a living
books history of science study, forgoing the chemistry and physics
study from the God’s Design series, since Rainbow Science more than
adequately covers chemistry and physics (as well as an overview of
biology) in its one year course.
And
note this too. You cannot find out which view [either materialism, the
view that matter and space is all there is, and can itself be explained
by matter and space, or creationism, the view that matter and space is
not all there is, and that matter and space can only be explained by an
intelligence outside of either of them] is the right one by science in
the ordinary sense. Science works by experiments. It watches how things
behave. Every scientific statement in the long run, however complicated
it looks, really means something like, ‘I pointed the telescope to such
and such part of the sky at 2:20 a.m. on January 15th and saw
so-and-so,’ or, ‘I put some of this stuff in a pot and heated it to
such and such a temperature and it did so-and-so.’ Do not think I am
saying anything against science: I am only saying what its job is. And
the more scientific a man is, the more (I believe) he would agree with
me that this is the job of science--and a very useful and necessary job
it is too. But why anything comes to be there at all, and whether there
is anything behind the things science observes--something of a
different kind--this is not a scientific question. If there is
‘Something Behind’, then either it will have to remain altogether
unknown to men or else make itself known in some different way. The
statement that there is any such thing, and the statement that there is
no such thing, are neither of them statements that science can make.
And real scientists do not usually make them. ... After all, it is
really a matter of common sense. Supposing science ever became complete
so that it knew every single thing in the whole universe. Is it not
plain that the questions, ‘Why is there a universe?’ ‘Why does it go on
as it does?’ ‘Has it any meaning?’ would remain just as they were?
He
then goes on to say that those questions are not hopelessly
unanswerable, but that they are answerable by means other than science.
Really, ID ought not to be taught in schools any more than darwinism*
should. The questions of the origin of life are questions of philosophy
and theology, and by the time students are studying those--i.e.,
college--they are, or ought to be, equipped enough to discern truth
from error.
* For clarification purposes, I use the term darwinism
to mean that theory in which life is explained by non-living chemicals
organizing themselves, at some time in the distant past, into
self-reproducing organisms. I am not speaking of natural selection, for which there is abundant scientific evidence, when I use the term darwinism.
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I am researching the holy days which were instituted by God as a celebration of the Messiah, instead of celebrating the holy days which were instituted by man to honor nature in place of nature's God.
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