Darwinian evolution rests on two pillars: Natural Selection and Random Mutation. Random genetic mutations are supposed to provide new biological traits from which natural selection culls out those which are not useful for the organism and preserves the ones that are. This process is believed adequate to have produced all the world’s biological diversity.

Because Darwinists believe that evolution is a purposeless process, they believe that it should be riddled with useless, unnecessary products. The human appendix and the panda’s thumb are the two organs, which are most commonly cited as examples of the undirectedness of this process of random mutation. It is argued that the appendix has no known function with the possible exception of enabling children to obtain an immediate attention from parents by complaining of a pain in the side. The panda’s thumb however has recently fallen out of favor as an example of evolution’s randomness due to studies showing that it is actually a finely tuned adaptation, assisting the efficient stripping of bark from bamboo, it’s main food source thereby allowing the panda can get to the inner soft tissue more efficiently (But that is another story).

However, the most powerful evidence for the randomness of the evolutionary process was “Junk DNA.” Junk DNA’s are portions of DNA molecules that were believed to serve no useful purpose. They appeared to be inactive, not coding for the manufacture of proteins, which is the primary function of DNA. It was believed that junk DNA composed about 98% of all human DNA. The fact that so much DNA appeared to do nothing led to the conclusion that junk DNA represented the results of random natural processes mutating the DNA and producing unusable, nonsensical stretches of nucleotide code.

The New Discovery

In June of this year the Encode Project (Encyclopedia of DNA Elements) published a group of 29 papers produced by hundreds of scientists working in 11 different countries that have completely overturned the view of “Junk DNA” as useless. This work is still in its early stages but to sum it up briefly: the scientists found that over 50% of all human DNA actually codes for RNA’s which do not go on to produce proteins but seem to be involved in other regulatory functions. These functions include keeping chromosomes from unraveling and controlling cell division.

But the most surprising, indeed shocking, contention of all is that most of these RNA’s seems to be standing by in the event that the body is suddenly exposed to an environmental change. In that event, they are immediately available to produce an adaptation to enable the organism to meet this challenge. This raises an enormously difficult question for the Darwinian paradigm: how could these standby RNA’s be maintained throughout numerous generations, possibly even thousands of generations, until they are needed? With no utility to the current generation they should be quickly selected out of the population but they are not.

Why This is Important

If evolution is an undirected process, as Darwinists claim, it should produce nonsensical and useless outcomes on a prodigious basis as was once believed to be the case. It has been estimated that in humans, about 10,000 harmful or useless mutations should accompany every useful one. Junk DNA was thought to be “smoking gun” evidence for this random process. As it is turning out there is probably no such thing as “Junk DNA.” This is powerful evidence for the observation that evolution is not the result of a random natural process but is rather the result of purposeful design and that purposeful design requires a designer. This designer is, of course, God.

Sources:

1. “Intricate Toiling Found in Nooks of DNA Once Believed to Stand Idle” Washington Post, June 2, 2007, p. A1.

2. http://www.genome.gov/ , The Encode Project.

By: Lawrence Vescera, Ph.D.

Claims of Biblical unreliability are becoming more difficult to sustain as archaeological discoveries continue to pour in, which have verified hundreds of passages as factual. These include such findings as extra-Biblical references to King David, the location and destruction of the city of Hazor, the pool of Siloam and many others. These finds have generally provided verification of major figures or events. This has led critics to concede some ground, for example almost all critics are now willing to admit the fact that King David was a real person, but they have launched a new line of attack.

This new line of attack concedes such facts as the existence of David but then argues that the Bible still cannot be trusted to have accurately reported the details of his life. For example, they take the position that while it is true that King David was a real person there is no extra-Biblical confirmation that he ever fought Goliath and therefore the Bible alone cannot be trusted for this sort of information. The claim is that the stories in the Bible are like stories about the Old West, where it is true that Wyatt Earp really existed, but the numerous novels written about him are largely or completely fictional.

In July of this year that line of attack against the Bible became harder to maintain because of a small but important discovery made by Michael Jursa an Austrian Assyriologist translating cuneiform tablets at the British Museum in London. Jeremiah Chapter 39:3 reports that someone named Nebo-Sarsekim, Nebuchadnezzer II’s “Chief Officer”, was with him at the Babylonian siege and conquest of Jerusalem in 587 BC.

The tablet that Professor Jursa recently translated is a receipt from the Babylonian temple of Esanglia acknowledging a payment of 1.5 minas (1.65 pounds) of gold. The year of the payment is 595 BC and the payer is King Nebuchadnezzer II’s Chief Eunuch, Nabu-sharrussu-ukin (Nebo-Sarsekim in Hebrew). This confirms three separate Biblical facts Nebo-Sarsekim actually existed, he was Nebuchadnezzer’s Chief Officer and he lived at the time of the siege.

Why This is Important

It is the very minor nature of the details confirmed by this tablet and similar discoveries that make them so important. In the words of Dr. Irving Finkel, one of the British Museums specialists, “This is a fantastic discovery, a world class find. If Nebo-Sarsekim existed which other lesser figures in the Old Testament existed? A throwaway detail in the Old Testament turns out to be accurate and true. I think that this means that the whole of the narrative takes on a new kind of power.”

Dr. Finkel’s observation is well taken. If such obscure and minor facts as those verified on this tablet, “throwaway detail” as he calls them, are correct, it is likely that other facts reported by Jeremiah and other Biblical authors are also accurately reported.

Source: London Daily Telegraph, telegraph.co.uk, July 11, 2007.

By: Lawrence Vescera, Ph.D.

New evidence Indicates that the continents are Fine Tuned for Life

Genesis 1:9 And God said, “Let the water under the sky be gathered to one place and let the dry ground appear.”…. the third day.

First physicists discovered that there was a single Creation Event now called the Big Bang through which the universe emerged. Then biologists discovered their own big bang, labeled the “Cambrian Explosion”. This biological big bang gave rise to almost all the modern phyla of life. Now it appears that the continental crust of the Earth also had a “Big Bang” of its own. New research indicates that the Earth’s crust appeared rather suddenly in a single burst of creation. This is the conclusion of two prominent geological researchers, Samuel Browning of MIT and Ian Williams of the Australian National University in Canberra as reported in several sources, including the February 1998 special issue of “Earth”.
Browning and Williams have been studying the oldest rocks known on Earth. These rocks appear to be at least 4 billion years old and are found in West Greenland. It is not the age of the rocks that make them so important, for it is generally believed that the Earth is about 4.5 billion years old, it is the composition of these rocks that makes them so intriguing. Most geologists believe that the Earth’s continents formed gradually over a long period of time. This standard model also postulates that continent formation did not begin until 500 million years after the planet had formed. They believe that the continents then began to grow in a series of slow pulses as the result of plate tectonics. This process is still supposed to be in operation today.
Browning and Williams argue instead that continent formation actually began almost at the planet’s birth. The continents then proceeded to grow in one continuous process so that by 3.8 billion years ago there was actually about a third more continental crust on the planet then there is today.
This conclusion is based on a comparison of the ratio of two of the elements found in the ancient rocks studied by the team. Browning, Williams and others at the Australian National University examined the ratio of the element neodymium to the element samarium found in these rocks. Radioactive samarium decays to form neodymium. The Australian team found that the rocks had an unexpectedly small amount of neodymium compared to the amount of samarium. The big question was where had all of the neodymium in these early rocks gone? The answer appears to be that it has gone down into the mantle underneath the crust. This indicates that by 3.8 billion years ago the continental crust had already separated from the mantle and was floating on top of the mantle where it still is today.
It was initially argued that this rather surprising finding could be the result of sampling error because the material tested all came from Western Greenland. Two subsequent tests, however, conducted on rocks from Northern Canada and Labrador also show similar neodymium depletion. Therefore the best current evidence supports the idea that this process was global and not a local phenomenon.
These findings have set off a bitter and acrimonious debate among geologists, particularly between Steven Moorbath of Oxford University and the Australians.

Why This Is Important!

In the mid nineteenth century Charles Lyle, a British lawyer, put forth the idea of gradualism in geology. Lyle argued that the Earth had been formed slowly over a long period of time by a series of processes that could still be observed going on today. This theory known as uniformaterianism is still predominant today. (This idea was later picked up by Charles Darwin and applied to biology). Up until that time most Christian and Jewish theologians had maintained, based on their study of the Bible, that the Earth had been formed primarily by a series of unique creative steps, many of which occurred in a catastrophic or very rapid process. They argued that these formative processes were not observable in the normal, gradual changes taking place now on the Earth on a day- to-day basis. Many mainline Christian theologians of that time and earlier times had in general believed that the Earth had considerable antiquity, at least on the order of hundreds of thousands of years, so the main debate was not just over the Earth’s age, but also over its method of formation.
It is interesting to note that the idea that the Earth is 6,000 years old only gained prominence in the nineteenth century. It had generally not been a major issue in the thinking of church leaders historically. The antiquity of the Earth had been assumed to be at least on the order of hundreds of thousands of years by the many theologians as early as the fifth century AD. Consequently, when evidence of great age for the Earth was found in the nineteenth century, it was generally accepted by the majority of theologians Catholic, Protestant, Orthodox and Jewish.
It is still too early to see what the long-range outcome of the research by the team from the Australian National University will be. However, numerous geological findings in subsequent years points toward the occurrence of single catastrophic or sudden event that shaped the course of the Earth’s development. Such findings include the discovery that many geological eras ended with a major asteroidal impact. These discoveries tend to support the claims of earlier Christian theologians that catastrophes did indeed play a major part in the Earth’s history. It is also of great interest that the above discoveries about the early and rapid appearance of the Earth’s crust tend to support their claim that all of the processes that formed the Earth’s surface are not observable today.
There is also a second major mystery reported in this research, which has even more interesting implications. This comes from the argument made by some scientists who believe that the universe has been deliberately fine tuned to support life here on Earth. They believe that the universe was intelligently designed and is not the result of purposeless natural processes. Life on Earth requires that the Earth’s crust be continuously recycled. New crust comes out of volcanoes while old crust is pulled down into the mantle along subduction zones located on plate boundaries. The ejecta from volcanoes return minerals to the surface that are needed by biological organisms. Without this recycling life above the bacterial level would gradually die out.
Terry Plank of the University of Kansas studies ocean sediments. She has found that the rate of sediment subduction into the mantle is about the same as the rate at which new crust is built. She noted that, “It is pretty remarkable that the two processes are in balance,” The geological gradualists believe that the Earth’s crustal recycling balance simply “developed” as a natural out growth of a continuous slow formative process. If it turns out that the crust appeared all at once, how could such a fine homeostasis between crust and mantle have “developed”? One possible answer is that it was deliberately designed that way.

By: Lawrence Vescera, Ph.D.

The words “Stem Cells” are probably the second most misused term in the current media lexicon, exceeded only by “Evolution”. The word is commonly misused in four ways simultaneously. Not an easy task but when the media is committed to advancing an agenda regardless of the facts, no amount of semantic misuse limits their imagination.

Please allow me to explain. As you have no doubt noticed during the last decade the media has been full of stories critical of those “opposed to stem cell research”. Such people are usually depicted as ignorant, pro-life, Luddites, opposed to scientific progress. Their mindless opposition, according to the media, is resulting in masses of suffering victims who would otherwise be cured if only these backward Christian, Conservatives would end their resistance to scientific progress.

What is the truth? Here are some facts.

A stem cell is a cell that has the ability to differentiate itself into different types of cells. A stem cell can turn into a liver, kidney, brain, hair, skin, bone or any other type of cell. Consequently it is believed that stem cells hold great promises for repairing damaged or diseased tissue. Imagine how wonderful it would be if a victim of liver cancer could be given an injection of stem cells that would go into the body and regenerate a new liver.

There are two main categories of stem cells: Embryonic Stem Cells and Adult Stem Cells. Embryonic stem cells are found in the placenta, placental blood and in embryos. Adult Stem Cells are found in other tissue mainly bone marrow, muscle and the brain. Stem cells are usually obtained from organ donors, fertility clinics and volunteers.

If you have been following the reporting on the subject you may be under the impression that stem cell research in the United States is currently not quite legal but some scientists, brave enough to defy the “zealots” on the Christian right have persisted in the face of persecution nonetheless.

Here are some facts. To begin with, there are no legal barriers to stem cell research carried out within HHS guidelines, absolutely none – none as in zero – despite the media misrepresentation. There are no limits on funding stem cell research with one exception and it is this one exception that the media is using as the source of its disinformation campaign. This one exception is using federal funds to harvest new lines of embryonic stem cells taken from human fetuses. This is the one and only exception. This one exception has come as the result of pro-life groups’ opposition to destroying more human embryos in order to extract their stem cells.

Here are a few other facts the media regularly fails to mention. If you want to harvest new lines of human embryonic stem cells there is absolutely nothing stopping you from doing it, as long as the funds used are not federal funds. So any foreign country, any university, any private company, any state, local government or private individual is completely free to do such research as long as they pay for it. As a matter of fact, several states including California have made funds available for this purpose.

Right now federal funds can be used to do research on all lines of adult human stem cells and all animal stem cells. Additionally in the United States there are currently over sixty lines of existing human embryonic stem cells available for research plus foreign line and privately owned lines for which federal funds can be used. On top of this, to show how truly bogus this entire issue is, new lines of Human Embryonic Stem Cells can be harvested from the placenta and placental blood of new births, making it completely unnecessary to use human embryos as a source for new lines of embryonic stem cells.

However, despite these facts, little money is going into establishing new lines of human embryonic stem cells. The reason for this is simple economics. Investors do not want to throw money away. It was widely believe on theoretical grounds that embryonic stem cells, being more plastic then adult cells, would be more likely to produce viable therapies. However so far this has not proven to be the case as there are currently 60 therapeutic uses of adult stem cells and 0 therapeutic uses of embryonic stem cells. The reasons for this are not entirely clear but seem to be related to genetic level complexities.

One of the reasons for the big push for federal funding of new lines from human fetal tissue seems to be to get funding for projects that would not be funded on economic or scientific grounds. This is being done by portraying denied federal funding as martyrs of “pro-life loonies” rather than people who are trying to pursue, what may very well be, a scientific blind alley.

Why the media distortions?

It is no secret that the media has an extremely strong liberal bias. They want to get their candidates elected and advance their ideological agenda and they are succeeding in this area. Polls have shown that their misrepresentation of this issue has created a very negative impression in the minds of many. The pro-life community is frequently believed to be indifferent to the suffering of disease victims. Additionally the media has succeeded to a large degree in portraying anyone who is concerned about the “slippery slope” of this type of research for any reason as “anti-science.”

By: Lawrence Vescera, Ph.D.

“We do not think with our brains but we cannot think without them.” Mortimer Adler

New research not only supports this shocking claim by the greatest philosopher of the Twentieth Century, but actually goes beyond it to show that this may even be an understatement: indeed consciousness may not depend on your brain.

You have probably read of curiosities such as the well-publicized case of Phineas Gage a railroad worker who had a 3’ by 1.25” iron tamping rod accidentally shot through his brain. He recovered from the accident with little effect and no memory loss even after suffering the destruction of one frontal brain lobe and damage to the other. Okay, you say, amazing but he only lost his frontal lobes. He still had a lot of his brain left so I’m not convinced that it is possible to think without your brain.

How about more extreme cases? Scientific American in an article titled “Strange But True” May 2007 reports on a surgery known as a hemispherectomy, in which half of the brain, one entire hemisphere is removed. These surgeries are most commonly performed on patients who are in neurologically desperate situations such as massive tumors or extremely frequent uncontrollable seizures.

In a study of 111 children who underwent the surgery because of uncontrollable seizures 86% are now either seizure free or greatly improved. But even more surprisingly most suffered no memory loss or personality change. Another study of these patients found that they often improved academically. One even went on to become his state’s Chess Champion. However the outcomes are mixed, the younger the patient the better the recovery usually is. Most often there will be a substantial or total loss of arm movement and vision on the side of the body opposite the lost hemisphere. Language loss, if any, is often recovered regardless of which hemisphere is removed. Okay, you say that is even more amazing but these people still had half of their brains left.

The July 20, 2007 issue of Nature contains an article titled “The Man With a Hole in His Brain.” This is the story of a man named Lionel Feuilet, a French civil servant who was recently discovered to have about 80% of his entire brain missing. The discovery was made during a routine CT scan conducted on him following his complaint of weakness in his left leg. His brain tissue had been slowly replaced through the expansion of his cerebral ventricles by spinal fluid in a process of slow hydocephalicization. His doctors were very surprised that he was behaviorally normal, holding down a fairly mentally demanding job and raising a family.

Wow! You say 80% of the brain gone but still functioning normally - I’m surprised. It really is shocking that this is possible, but perhaps the remaining 20% is still doing everything.

Okay, then how about this one. Science magazine reported in “Is Your Brain Really Necessary” Vol. 210, December 12, 1980 a similar case. However, in this instance the person in question had received a First Class Honors degree in Mathematics from Sheffield University. After complaining of headaches he was given a CT scan. His doctors were shocked when the scan revealed that 95% of his brain, was missing, having been replaced by water. It was estimated that he only had about 1 millimeter of brain tissue left on the outer edge of his cranial cavity, barely enough to be detected in the scan. In effect his brain was literally missing. The article also discussed the fact that other such cases are out there but go undetected because the persons involved have no symptoms.

In all likelihood the mathematician from Sheffield is not the most extreme case in the world. It is very probable that there are a few people walking around right now completely oblivious to the fact that substantially more then 95% of their brain is missing and in effect have no brain.

Why This Is Important

One of the central claims of materialism is that the soul does not exist and that consciousness and all of the processes associated with thought and intellect are merely the result of biochemical activity in the brain. Destroy the brain and you destroy the conscious part of you. This argument is held to disprove the possible of life after death.

While it is true that damage to the brain (in some cases even minor damage) can have catastrophic and tragic consequences, the existence of the anomalies discussed above show examples of people with normal levels of cognitive function, who, for all practical purposes have no brain. This is very strong evidence against the materialist claim that consciousness is nothing but natural biochemical reactions. While it seems evident that the brain has a major role in cognitive functioning there is clearly more to consciousness than physiochemical processes.