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Praeceptor Germaniae has an interesting quote by G.K. Chesterton on teaching evolution and religion in public schools, when that became an issue during the Scopes Trial.  His early thoughts on the changing nature of public education was perceptive:

The professor can preach any sectarian idea, not in the name of a sect, but in the name of a science. The professor can preach the devilish destructiveness of the glass of sherry, and call it a lesson in psychology or pathology. The professor can preach the advantages of polygamy, and call it a lesson in anthropology or history. The professor can insinuate any ideas about life because biology is the study of life.

Visit the link for the rest of the quote.  Does anyone know exactly what Chesterton means by "Bible-worship"?

Over at Evolution News & Views, intelligent design theorists Logan Gage and Michael Behe are talking about genetic similarity, the phenomenon of biochemical similarities that evolutionists constantly use to promote their case for random evolution and common descent. Gage has this to say:

My hope is that one day thinking about Darwinian Theory will become clearer in the public square. Recall that Darwin made two claims: (1) all living beings descend from one or a few original ancestors, and (2) the mechanism driving the changes among species is the blind, unguided mechanism of natural selection.

The controversial claim, of course, is the second one—the idea that a purely material mechanism, without any intelligence involved, is responsible for all of the genetic information necessary for life (DNA) and hence for all of life’s diversity.

Clines and others seem to think that evidence for claim one establishes claim two. This is poor thinking. Sequence similarity may indeed be evidence for a common origin—but it does nothing to show that the common origin stems from a material cause rather than an intelligent cause.

Behe makes the same argument in his post about metal mousetraps. 

But I'm a little confused. Both Behe and Gage make excellent points about the absurdity of thinking that similar biological features prove a common ancestor, yet neither is willing to condemn the theory of common descent outright. Why not? I realize that, even from a creationist perspective, we still don't have a firm grasp on exactly what the original created kinds were. That's an area for biology to keep exploring. But aren't you shooting yourself in the foot to build a case for design without challenging the Darwinian model of common descent at the same time? Darwin + Design = Theistic Evolution, as far as I can tell. And what good is theistic evolution if it doesn't challenge any mechanical aspects of the Darwinian model?

That was something that seemed a little strange to me as I read Behe's Darwin's Black Box.  Behe went at great lengths to show how certain biological systems (such as irreducibly complex ones) could not have evolved randomly--yet at the same time he wrote he had "no particular reason to doubt" (pg 5) that those systems originated by a single common ancestor. All I can conclude is that Behe believes that biological processes are in a state of either constant or punctuated creation. --That is, the designer is constantly tinkering (or guiding, as a theistic evolutionist would say) with his creation.

The kernel of truth to this view is the Colossians 1:17 reference to the co-creator, Christ--"He is before all things, and in him all things hold together."  But although God maintains the existence of the universe, that isn't the same as saying he is tweaking biological systems under our noses. The seventh day of Genesis 1 & 2 more-than-subtly implies that God's regular creation activities are over. Any consequent acts of supernaturalism are exceptions, miracles, and always treated as such in the Bible. This viewpoint is better supported by Scripture and is, for obvious reasons, a much more dependable scientific model to work with.  Jump on board, Behe.

Reuters reports on the problem of the missing honeybees.  Scientists are baffled at the steady decline of honeybee numbers throughout the world:

The phenomenon was first noticed late last year in the United States, where honeybees are used to pollinate $15 billion worth of fruits, nuts and other crops annually. Disappearing bees also have been reported in Europe and Brazil.

Commercial beekeepers would set their bees near a crop field as usual and come back in two or three weeks to find the hives bereft of foraging worker bees, with only the queen and the immature insects remaining. Whatever worker bees survived were often too weak to perform their tasks.

Scientists don't see any evidence that the deaths are due to pesticides or other chemicals.  The trend is alarming since honeybees are used to pollinate many significant crops, like apples, almonds, and blueberries.

Do any of you have any hypotheses to explain the mysterious disappearance of these insects?  Could it be mites again, their old enemies? Just wondering out loud, would it be a help if more people began raising bees privately?

 This entry courtesy of Crevo at Creationism and Bariminology Research News.

In the paper The Return of a Static Universe and the End of Cosmology, [Hat Tip: IDTF] the authors argue that in the (very, very far) future, we will no longer be able to detect the evidences that lead us to the conclusion of the big bang. And, in fact, our observational data would lead us to view the universe as static. IDTF thinks that this is evidence that we live in a privileged place and time in the universe. That may or may not be true, but the theoretical questions that this paper brings are far more interesting.

Assuming that the paper is correct (and I certainly don't know enough about cosmology to say anything there), then that means that we know that it is possible for the evidence to indicate a false understanding of the universe. Think about that -- we have a paper that demonstrates that physical evidence can lead to a false understanding of cosmology even if the data is measured 100% accurate.

So that brings up the question - how do we know that our current view of cosmology is not flawed? How do we know that the data that we need to understand the beginnings of the universe is still in existence? If we know that physical evidence can lead to a false understanding of the historical development of the universe even given uniformitarian assumptions, how do we know that we ourselves are not missing similar types of evidence needed to understand the universe itself?

Let's extrapolate ourselves out into the far, far future described by Krauss et al. Let's say that some astronomers are doing some calculations and trying to come up with a cosmology. Let's say that all that is left from our century is a basic introductory textbook describing the universe. These astronomers/cosmologists are trying to create a cosmology based on the evidence. Based on the evidence, they propose a static universe (which is what Krauss et al say is what the data will in fact point to at that time). Let's say that a historian comes in and says, "Wait! The ancients (that's us) said that the universe is expanding!" The scientists would laugh and say, "those were primitive people and didn't have access to the same data that we do. Our data firmly supports a static universe. That "expanding universe"/"big bang" idea was just a mythology of creation that they made up to fill their gaps in knowledge." But in fact, it would be us (the ancients) who were the only ones able to detect the evidence. They problem is not that one group is smart and the other is stupid, but that one is working closer to the event and the other is extrapolating from circumstantial data (actually, in this case they both are extrapolating from circumstantial data, just different sets).

So, in the case of Genesis, why should we not believe what has been handed down? The question is not what does the evidence say. Today's evidence is only circumstantial, and, as this paper points out, circumstantial evidence can lead to dramatically wrong conclusions. The question is who do you trust? This is the ultimate question, and cannot be settled based on circumstantial data.

original post here. used by permission.

Wouldn't you know it, now it's being reported that global warming may reduce, not increase, the number of strong hurricanes that form each year.  Oceanographer Gabriel Vecchi (Princeton) and his colleagues are proposing a model of hurricane formation that takes into account wind shear, the erratic wind conditions caused by increased upper and lower level wind speeds over the Atlantic.  It was El Nino-induced wind shear that was blamed for the utter lack of destructive hurricanes during the 2006 season. (See here)

So what should we expect for the 2007 season, so ominously predicted to be a humdinger earlier this month?  Who knows.  If you have your own prediction, maybe you should throw it in the pot.

My family and I had the privilege this weekend to hear to Dr. John Whitcomb teach for several hours on prophets of the Old Testament, eschatology, the Isaiah prophesies related to Jesus, and other subjects.  Dr. Whitcomb is a fountainhead of knowledge and wisdom.  He has spent 50+ years as a seminary professor, and has written respected commentaries on the biblical books of Daniel and Esther.  He's also well known for his creationist writings, in particular The Genesis Flood, co-authored with Dr. Henry Morris.

The Genesis Flood was published in 1961 and is widely thought to have launched the modern creationist movement.  Although Whitcomb was at first a theistic evolutionist, he later became convinced that the biblical text could not support such a position.  His careful study of the Bible's words on origins and the Noachian flood made him (along with Henry Morris) a founder of modern creationism.  Of course, creationism is only modern in the sense of being scientifically modern--creationism as a philosophy has been here since the beginning of time.  It is evolution as a theory of origins that is new on the scene.

I wish every one of you could hear Whitcomb speak.  He has such a gracious, faith building spirit about him.  If you're unable to make one of his conferences, go to Whitcomb Ministries and order some of his books or teachings on CD, and check his radio schedule.

 Whitcomb photo copyright Daniel James Devine

BBC News has posted their coverage of Answers in Genesis' Creation Museum.  Not by surprise, reporter Martin Redfern offers a biased and subtly sarcastic perspective of Ken Ham and creationism's tenets of belief, comparing the religious, charismatic Ham against that defender of science (and children's education), Eugenie Scott.

Personally, I would say that Ham's success in raising the $27 million for the museum is due to his humility rather than "charisma," as BBC put it.  And Scott I would refer to as a defender of evolution, not science.  Bless her soul, I'm sure she's sincere, but Scott certainly isn't helping public school kids while she's defending a theory of origins that has repeatedly failed to provide the evidence needed to support its own weight. The evidence supporting creationism and ID, conversely, is growing rapidly.

Did anyone else get a chuckle over Ken Ham and Eugenie Scott's photo shoot when it first appeared on Ham's blog?  The one where they're almost arm in arm?  BBC has posted a similar photo with their article.  I still get a kick out of those pictures. . .

The forecasters who cried "Hurricane:"

Experts are again predicting a busy Atlantic hurricane season, with up to 17 named tropical storms forming - nine of which could become hurricanes.

At least one major storm is expected to make landfall in the US during the 1 June-30 November season, Colorado State University forecasters said.

Last year, leading forecasters wrongly predicted a bad hurricane season.

However the record-breaking 2005 season saw 15 hurricanes, including Katrina which devastated New Orleans.

 El Nino, which surprised climatologists last year and overturned predictions of a dire hurricane season, has subsided and apparently is not expected to interfere with Atlantic storms this year.  Because of warm Atlantic Ocean temperatures, many tropical storms--and subsequently many hurricanes--are expected to form during the 2007 season, which begins in June and lasts through November.

Last year forecasters--including those at the National Hurricane Center--expected 4 to 6 major hurricanes (that is, those which are category 3 or higher).  Only two major hurricanes actually developed, due to the unexpected appearance of El Nino.

 Weather it's rain or hurricanes, it's hard for us small guys to win against forecasters: If we believe them, and they're wrong, we've wasted time and money planning for weather that didn't come.  On the other hand, if we don't believe them and they turn out to be right . . . well, if you were a forecaster wouldn't you say "I told you so," too?