Creationism

After another unfortunately lengthy break, we’re at it again. This post is my latest response to Francis Smallwood. Francis is first and foremost, a dear friend, but also a Christian neo-Darwinist. He writes at his blog Musings of Science. This response is part of a long-term (hopefully lifelong), dialogue on many different topics relating to the theory of intelligent design and neo-Darwinism. We are both very excited about continuing this project. Francis’ previous response can be found here: http://musingsofscience.wordpress.com/2012/02/26/debating-darwin-and-design-science-or-creationism-4/ Debating Darwin and Design A dialogue between two Christians 1. Is Intelligent Design science or ‘creationism in a cheap tuxedo’? 12th September 2013 Joshua Gidney – Third Response   One of the many benefits of taking part in a written dialogue, Read More ›

YECs are very interested in mechanism of accelerated nuclear decay. Ironically, so is the mainstream in order to find better methods of dealing with nuclear waste instead of burying it underground (or worse putting it in containers and tossing it in the sea). Here is a breaking development published in a peer-reviewed article in 2013: Accelerated alpha-decay of uranium isotopes induced by exposure of aqueous solution of uranium salt with gold nanoparticles to laser radiation a pre-print of the work is available here: Accelerated alpha-decay of 232U isotope achieved by exposure of its aqueous solution with gold nanoparticles to laser radiation One notable highlight was that nuclear decay was accelerated by a factor of 6-trillion! In other words, the half-life Read More ›

I had advocated Barry Setterfield’s decaying speed of light model as a possible mechanism for seeing distant starlight on shorter time scales than billions of years. At this time I need to appraise those who have followed my defense of Barry’s theory, that I no longer think Setterfield’s versions of the c-decay are workable as stated. Although we still have potentially anomalous data points in the measurement of the speed of light that could argue for a universal, isotropic decaying speed of light (as reported in Nature), and even though Joao Magueijo, John Barrow, Paul Davies have argued for the possibility that the speed of light was universally faster in the past, I have not been able to resolve difficulties Read More ›

There are many devout Jews and Christians who believe the universe is old. Unlike Darwinism, the presumption of an old universe has real support from science. Philosophically, something as grand and as powerful as the entire universe would reasonably seem to be eternal. Standard thermodynamics and the Big Bang hypothesis changed all that, and the age of the universe is no longer viewed as eternal. Perhaps God did not want us to believe the Cosmos is all powerful and eternal, but rather transient and passing. Thermodynamics tells us the stars cannot burn forever, and thus thermodynamics has left us evidence that the known cosmos is not eternal… As much as Young Earth Creationists (YECs) hate the Big Bang, the Big Read More ›

Why would a Biblical creationist be interested in the Design argument? Isn’t enough for a creationist to know “God did it?”. No! God also wants creationists to know the level of His genius, and that is where the Design argument has benefit for creationists. Design research will glorify the Creator in ways revealed theology cannot. To illustrate: a creationist could say “God created birds” but a Design theorist could say “God made birds and there is genius in the design of flight…” The Design theorist then shows the genius of the Creator rather than merely asserting “God did it”. Scripture doesn’t describe every design in the universe. There may be designs out there remaining to be discovered. Things a Biblical Read More ›

John C. Sanford’s work is part of the Smithsonian National Museum of American History: Bioloistic Particle Gun Gene guns were the brainchild of plant geneticist Dr. John C. Sanford, who spent much of the early 1980s looking for a way to insert foreign DNA into plant cells in order to create transgenic plants. At the time, the most successful process for doing this relied on a species of bacteria. The method, however, only worked for certain plant species and was not successful with important crops like wheat, rice, or corn. Sanford considered a variety of techniques, including piercing cell walls with a laser, but it was not until he teamed up with Dr. Edward Wolf of the Cornell engineering labs, Read More ›

For the sake of argument, let us assume, as Michael Denton did, that there is universal common ancestry. The problem, both in terms of comparative anatomy and biochemistry, is that an unprejudiced view of the data suggests we didn’t evolve from fish. When I brought the topic up earlier in Taxonomic nested hierarchies don’t support Darwinism, in the course of my arguments in that thread, it became ever more apparent even at the molecular level, it was hard to justify the claim that we evolved from fish. Linnaeus and other creationists perceived Platonic forms we know by names today such as: Vetebrates, Mammals, Primates, and Humans. These forms defy the story that we evolved from fish. Again, let us suppose Read More ›

There is the forgotten book Shattering the Myths of Darwinism written by a non-creationist agnostic Richard Milton. Milton expressed his skepticism of mainstream claims of the old-age of the fossil record. His work further motivated me toward the idea that there could an empirically driven critique of the accepted ages of the fossils. This is a short bio of Milton: Richard Milton is a science journalist and design engineer based in London. He is a member of Mensa, the international high-IQ society, and writes a column for Mensa Magazine. He has been a member of the Geologists’ Association for twenty years, and did extensive geological research for this book. He has been featured on the BBC, NBC, and other television Read More ›