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From Creationism and Baraminology Research News, a report on this paper about why Scriptural Geology (aka flood geology--understanding the rock strata as products of a global flood) was quashed as movement during the 19th century.

GRISDA has a paper by Warren Johns explaining why he thinks that scriptural geology failed in the 1800s. It has some good ideas. Here are his suggestions:

• Restricting flood layers to higher and higher portions of the geologic record


• Lack of human fossils in geologic strata


• The shift away from the hard facts of geology by the scriptural geologists


• The major journals and educational institutions were hostile to traditional religious beliefs


• The professionalization of geology made it difficult for part-time geologists (such as the scriptural geologists) to have a voice


• Liberal theology was replacing orthodox theology as the dominant view

The Southern Baptist Convention is taking a less skeptical approach to global warming. Convention president Frank Page has signed "A Southern Baptist Declaration on the Environment and Climate Change,” an initiative that was signed by two previous presidents of the SBC. Speaking for the SBC, Jonathan Merrit of Southeastern Baptist Theological Seminary in Wake Forest says his conviction regarding planet care came when “I learned that God reveals himself through Scripture and in general through his creation, and when we destroy God’s creation, it’s similar to ripping pages from the Bible.”

What do you think? Is destroying creation like ripping pages from the Bible?

 There are some controversial new theories in the news: One is about the "Hobbit" fossils from Flores (it seems there will never be agreement about them); the latest idea is that they were diseased cretins--cretinism being a form of hyperthyroidism, when it doesn't refer to stupid, insensitive people.  There is also a new view on the Grand Canyon, suggesting it is millions of years older than the current long-age ideas say, prompting outcries from geologists who are criticizing Science for publishing such a thing. As long as Science doesn't mind stirring geologists up, why not publish a young earth perspective on the Canyon, say something by Steve Austin? We can hope.

The earliest known photo of Helen Keller has been released. View it at the link.

Could the Phoenicians have brought Hebrew culture--and the Ten Commandments--to North America thousands of years ago? Watch this video and see what you think. 

How's this for the great cause of evolutionary environmentalism: Some geologists from the University of Leicester are proposing that the earth has entered a new epoch of terrestrial history, moving us from the Holocene to the Anthropocene. As the name might imply, this newly proposed epoch is characterized by the supposed marks of man--the altered erosion and deposition of sediment (that means dirt), an upset carbon cycle that is promoting global warming, and a new rate and pattern of extinction among the world's plants and animals.

In old-earth chronology, the modern epoch, the Holocene, is the most recent in a long list of time periods spanning the earth's alleged four-and-a-half billion years of existence. The Holocene is said to have begun about 11,500 years ago and to have marked the rise of human civilization. In an old-earth timeframe, 11 thousand years is the blink of an eye--so it makes sense that an old-earth geologist would be worried about the changes happening on the earth in the last few millennia.

In the young-earth view, however, a few millennia is a long time. Creationists believe the earth was intended to be inhabited, and has held up fairly well under the "impact" of civilization. Although we oppose pollution and support conservation, we're opposed to the view that mankind is inherently a devastator of the planet. Humans are in a privileged position among living things, and wildlife does well when people are living with it in mind.

National Geographic News has a rather extensive article about the Gospel of Judas translation controversy, stirred up by scholar April DeConick, who claims the National Geographic Society's translation of the Gnostic gospel is incorrect and fundamentally misleading. (See my previous post on DeConick here.) In a fair treatment of both sides, NG news gets opinion from several of the scholars who worked on the text, including Marvin Meyer, who helped translate the National Geographic version of the text.

Meyer, meanwhile, dismissed any suggestion that his team set out with any kind of agenda to rehabilitate the image of Judas in its translation of the gospel.

"Our only agenda was to interpret the text, make sense of it, and get it out as quickly as possible," he said.

"To produce a first translation and the first critical edition is a thankless task, because you know you're putting yourself out on a limb. And chances are pretty good that at least a part of that limb is going to come down as time passes," Meyer added.

"That's just the way scholarship works."

Also: Would you be willing to undergo liposuction to power this "ecoboat"? It chugged nine miles on human fat.  It's captain (who donated to the fuel tank) is hoping to make a new speed record circumnavigating the globe in March, but he'll likely be using something other than laid up Christmas cookies for that.

Just another example of why you shouldn't believe what you read in forwarded emails. For more doctored photos, and to see how this one was made, go here.

In spite of hoaxes like the one above, the Bible and other ancient texts do indicate that races of giants once lived on the earth, albeit not as large as what is falsely portrayed above. If you find that hard to believe, just take a look at these two fellows. 

The New York Times has an Op-Ed by April D. Deconick about the gnostic Gospel of Judas, publicized (and translated) by the National Geographic Society last year. Deconick has translated the gospel for herself and says the translaters employed by the Society got it all wrong: According to the text, Judas wasn't a hero, he was a demon.

Deconick criticizes the Society's decision to not allow outside scholars to review the translation before it was published with so much fanfare:

That said, I think the big problem is that National Geographic wanted an exclusive. So it required its scholars to sign nondisclosure statements, to not discuss the text with other experts before publication. The best scholarship is done when life-sized photos of each page of a new manuscript are published before a translation, allowing experts worldwide to share information as they independently work through the text.

Another difficulty is that when National Geographic published its transcription, the facsimiles of the original manuscript it made public were reduced by 56 percent, making them fairly useless for academic work. Without life-size copies, we are the blind leading the blind. The situation reminds me of the deadlock that held scholarship back on the Dead Sea Scrolls decades ago. When manuscripts are hoarded by a few, it results in errors and monopoly interpretations that are very hard to overturn even after they are proved wrong.

To avoid this, the Society of Biblical Literature passed a resolution in 1991 holding that, if the condition of the written manuscript requires that access be restricted, a facsimile reproduction should be the first order of business. It’s a shame that National Geographic, and its group of scholars, did not follow this sensible injunction.

Deconick is the author of The Thirteenth Apostle: What the Gospel of Judas Really Says.

A new evaluation of an ancient seal (originally discovered in 1964) suggests that the seal--impressed with what appear to me to be hieroglyphs, although perhaps they're just symbolic icons--belonged to Jezebel, the biblical wife of Ahab. The Jezebel hypothesis was put forth when the seal was discovered, but was criticized because the spelling of Jezebel's name is incorrect. The new study proposes the missing letters of Jezebel's name were located on the broken upper edge of the stone.

Hat Tip to Young Cosmos, where there are several interesting posts up, including this one on "ancient amphibian" fossils.

Image courtesy Israel Museum, Jerusalem

Many scientists have been skeptical over ancient Polynesians' naval navigation abilities, but recently more and more evidence has seemed to indicate the ancient mariners were more skilled than we give them credit for. A study of 19 adzes, made with stone from various pacific islands--including Hawaii--lends considerable weight to the idea that early Polynesians were capable of navigating thousands of miles of open water.

National Geographic has a photo gallery of some of the best science images of 2007, and also of a freak wildebeest pileup during a river crossing that drowned some 10,000 of the animals.

The saber-toothed cat had a weak bite compared to modern lions, a new study shows. That's surprising to those of us who like to think of all extinct animals as extra-tough, extra-large and extra-powerful.

British researchers think the Incas fattened up the children they were preparing to sacrifice. It never ceases to amaze me how some people continue to admire Early American cultures such as the Incan and Mayan civilizations in spite of the perverse human sacrificial religious system they followed. Let's be realistic.

No roundup would be complete without the most recent story on Arctic ice melt, which was especially extensive this year. Read and develop warming theories as you like.

In the first such observation in space history, a coronal mass ejection (CME) from the sun was caught ripping the tail off a comet. That's gotta hurt.