Sunday, December 29, 2013

Common ground with old-earth creationists?

from here
Published: 8 September 2013 (GMT+10)
Old-earth creationists and biblical creationists agree on many things, including rejection of microbes-to-man evolution. But there are some obvious differences too. CMI’s Shaun Doyle discusses the significance of the similarities and differences in the context of the origins debate.
123rf.com/Ryhor Bruyeu
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F.M. from the United States writes:
Hi CMI,
Even though I disagree with your argument that dinosaurs lived together with Human at one point, I still find it intriguing because although I am an OEC [old-earth creationist], I think it would be awesome to see if we really lived with Dinosaurs. Although we disagree on the age of the earth question, I also think both YEC [young-earth creationism] and OEC can make a common ground against Darwinism.
God Bless,
F.
CMI’s Shaun Doyle responds:
Dear F.,
Thank you for your email. I thought I would take the time to explain some of the issues surrounding the notion of ‘common ground’, and why we believe ‘Genesis as history’ creation is so important.
Common ground is a tricky thing—just about any position can find common ground with another. For instance, deep time creationism (DTC) shares common ground with theistic evolution (TE) against biblical creationism (BC)—the deep time historical framework. The important question is this: which group does DTC share theologically significant common ground with?
Consider three of the most important theological objections biblical creationists make in the origins debate: (1) natural evil (especially physical death in humans) before the Fall destroys the integrity of the gospel (for more details see our articles on Romans 5, Romans 8, and 1 Corinthians 15); (2) placing humans at the end of history makes Jesus a teacher of error (cf. Mark 10:6 and Jesus and the age of the earth) and thus untrustworthy on basic history, let alone eternal salvation; and (3) deep time contradicts the whole thrust of biblical chronology (see How does the Bible teach 6,000 years?, Why Bible history matters, and Pre-Adamites, sin, death and the human fossils) and thus undermines confidence in the Bible as God’s word.

None of those objections has anything to do with microbes-to-man evolution per se. On the other hand, they have everything to do with the deep-time historical framework. The biggest theological issues in the origins debate are all derived from issues of chronology, and chronology is the defining difference between DTC and BC. The foundation for the chronology of biblical creationists is the Bible, whereas deep time creationists derive theirs from their interpretations of physical evidence (rocks, fossils, starlight, etc.), which rest on the billion-year evolutionary story. At its most basic, it really is about whether we trust the Bible’s testimony to what happened or man’s conjectures about the past.
Darwinism has produced a disastrous social legacy, and is morally, scientifically, and philosophically bankrupt. On this deep time creationists and biblical creationists can agree. However, the theological agreement DTC shares with TE is far more foundational than any shared with BC. Why? God has revealed himself in history. And DTCs and TEs share the same historical framework against BCs. The debate between DTC and TE is primarily over the mode of divine action in certain events in the history of life. However, the timeline and event sequence each holds to is practically identical to the other.
That is because we identify God not simply as an abstract monotheistic deity but as Yahweh (Exodus 3:14), as Father, Son, and Holy Spirit (Matthew 28:19)—the very concrete triune deity of the biblical narrative who historically talked with humans, acted for (and against) humans, and established covenants with humans. One of the persons of this triune deity even became a human: Jesus Christ. All of these acts have specific dates and locations in the past—they are historical events. Moreover, the theological significance of these events can’t be separated from their historicity. The Bible doesn’t just provide a reliable record of what happened; it also provides God’s authoritative interpretation of the significance of what happened. This includes events such as the Creation Week, the Fall, and Noah’s Flood. As such, historical frameworks are foundational for our knowledge of God. See Why Bible history matters.
Since God has revealed himself in history, to change the history is to change what we know about God. And when that change involves something morally significant like introducing billions of years of death and suffering before the Fall, the changes are irreconcilable. We might as well be worshipping two different gods. See The god of an old earth and Did God create over billions of years?

Note that the points I’m making are about the logical consistency of deep time creationists’ commitment to the God of Scripture, not about the veracity of their commitment to Him (or the legitimacy of their salvation! See Do I have to believe in a literal creation to be a Christian?). It is not the affirmation of deep time history per se that is heretical; it is the consistent application of deep time history as one’s primary axiom that produces either heresy or apostasy. Humans can be inconsistent, and in this case it is often a ‘blessed’ inconsistency. But it is still an inconsistency, and a major one. We owe God everything—including our minds. We should therefore submit our minds consistently to his teaching in Scripture. Deep time creationists don’t do that.
What’s the significance of dinosaurs in all this? Simple: dinosaurs are popular. Proponents of both deep time and biblical history use dinosaurs to try to capture the imagination of their audiences for their own framework. This is simply old-fashioned ideological competition—claiming the popular icon for one’s own ideology keeps people away from other ideologies and can potentially attract onlookers to consider your ideology. The question, of course, is whether either framework can do it legitimately. We believe we can; we believe the historical evidence is consistent with biblical creation. Let the readers decide for themselves: Dinosaur Questions and Answers.
Therefore, while I can appreciate the common ground DTCs and BCs share, it’s rather irrelevant for the theologically significant issues in the origins debate. Simply put: the Bible vs microbes-to-man evolution is just a symptom of the problem; the Bible vs deep time history is the actual core of the problem.
Regards,
Shaun Doyle

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Wednesday, December 25, 2013

The use of creation in the Old Testament

from here
sxcu.hu/umberto
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Published: 10 September 2013 (GMT+10)
Most Christians would affirm that God is the same in the Old Testament as in the New Testament, but sometimes that fails to inform how we read Scripture. We tend to think that God is different in the New Testament compared to the Old Testament. However, the basic, traditional Christian understanding is that God relates to humanity differently in the New Testament because Jesus died to bring believers back into a right relationship with Him. God has not changed, but our relationship with Him has. What God revealed about Himself in the Old Testament is still important for believers today, and, as we will see, it serves as the basis for many statements about God in the New Testament.
Previous articles have established that the New Testament used Creation and the Fall to establish critical elements of Christian doctrine, and that the Old Testament view of Yahweh1 was based on His work of creation. But the actual process of creation is also theologically important in the Old Testament. This is because the way God acts reflects on His character: a God who intentionally speaks the universe into being out of nothing over six days is substantially different from a God who creates over billions of years via a happenstance evolutionary process.
Understanding what the Old Testament says about God’s creative activity will result in an appreciation of the importance of creation, and how it ties the whole Bible together, from Genesis to Revelation. The following verses are only some of the places where the Old Testament testifies to the historical events recorded in Genesis.

Creation

The Bible is clear that God created the universe and everything in it by His word. God’s creation is a sign of His power—He simply speaks and it comes into being. It is also a reason for His creation to worship Him:
By the word of Yahweh the heavens were made, and by the breath of his mouth all their host … For he spoke, and it was done; he commanded, and it stood fast (Psalm 33:6, 9).
You are Yahweh, you alone. You have made heaven, the heaven of heavens, with all their host, the earth and all that is on it, the seas and all that is in them; and you preserve all of them; and the host of heaven worships you (Nehemiah 9:6).
God could have created in any way He wanted, over whatever period of time He wanted. So why did He create over six days? And why did He rest on the seventh, when the Bible is clear that God does not tire? One reason seemed to be so it could be a model for the Sabbath in the Mosaic covenant:

Remember the Sabbath day, to keep it holy. Six days you shall labor, and do all your work, but the seventh day is a Sabbath to Yahweh your God. On it you shall not do any work, you, or your son, or your daughter, your male servant, or your female servant, or your livestock, or the sojourner who is within your gates. For in six days Yahweh made heaven and earth, the sea, and all that is in them, and rested on the seventh day. Therefore Yahweh blessed the Sabbath day and made it holy (Exodus 20:8–11).
Exodus is a historical Old Testament book, but there are other genres of writing for us to consider. God is also praised for His creative activity on the various days in the poetic books. Incidentally, the following is proof that a poetic passage can contain a straightforward description of historical events in elevated language. It also contrasts with the narrative Genesis account:
Day 1, God created Day and Night:
He has inscribed a circle on the face of the waters at the boundary point between light and darkness (Job 26:10).
Day 2, God gathered the water in one place so that dry land could appear:
He gathers the waters of the sea together as a heap (Psalm 33:7).
Or who shut the sea with doors when it burst from the womb, when I made thick clouds its garment and thick darkness its swaddling band, and prescribed limits for it and set bars and doors, and said, ‘Thus far you shall come, and no farther, and here shall your proud waves be stayed’? (Job 38:8–11).
Day 3: Vegetation:
He causes the grass to grow for the cattle,
And vegetation for the labor of man,
So that he may bring forth food from the earth,
And wine which makes a man’s heart glad
So that he may make his face glisten with oil
And food which sustains man’s heart
(Psalm 104:14–15).
sxc.hu/ba1969
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Day 4, God created the sun, moon, and stars:
To him who made the great lights,
for his steadfast love endures forever;
the sun to rule over the day,
for his steadfast love endures forever;
the moon and stars to rule over the night,
for his steadfast love endures forever
(Psalm 136:7–9).
Thus says Yahweh, who gives the sun for light by day
and the fixed order of the moon and the stars for light by night
who stirs up the sea so that its waves roar—
Yahweh of hosts is his name
(Jeremiah 31:35).
Days 5 and 6, creation of sea and land animals:
O Yahweh, how many are your works!
In wisdom you have made them all;
The earth is full of your possessions.
There is the sea, great and broad,
In which there are swarms without number,
Animals both small and great.
There the ships move along,
And Leviathan, which You have formed to sport in it
(Psalm 104:24–26).
Of course, if Yahweh is the creator, He has the right to judge His creation. And in places, His judgment is so severe that it is presented as a sort of ‘uncreation’, a dismantling of the order which He put in place:
I looked on the earth, and behold, it was without form and void;
and to the heavens, and they had no light.
I looked on the mountains, and behold, they were quaking,
and all the hills moved to and fro.
I looked, and behold, there was no man,
and all the birds of the air had fled.
I looked, and behold, the fruitful land was a desert,
and all its cities were laid in ruins,
before Yahweh, before his fierce anger
(Jeremiah 4:23–26).
These references affirm the events of Creation Week in Genesis 1, and that has implications for how we see God. If the universe came into existence over billions of years via an evolutionary process, not only does Genesis lie, but so do these other Scriptures, and we lose the basis for the doctrine that God is Creator.

The creation of Man

The way God created man sets up our understanding of who man is, his relationship to God, and his relationship to the rest of creation. God created man (that is, men and women) in His own image (Gen 1:27). He also created Adam from the dust of the ground (Gen 2:7); whenever this fact is recalled in the rest of the Old Testament, it is to recall the frailty of man, as in Job:
Remember that you made me like clay, and will you return me to the dust? (Job 9:9).
When David contemplated God’s creation of man, as a steward over His creation, he was astounded at the position He gave man:
What is man that you are mindful of him,
and the son of man that you care for him?
Yet you have made him a little lower than God2
and crowned him with glory and honor.
You have given him dominion over all the works of your hands;
you have put all things under his feet;
all sheep and oxen; and also the beasts of the field,
the birds of the heavens, and the fish of the sea,
whatever passes along the paths of the seas
(Psalm 8:4–8, see also 114:1–6).
Malachi affirms that God created all people:
Do we not all have one father? Has not one God created us? Why do we deal treacherously with each against his brother so as to profane the covenant of our fathers? (Malachi 2:10).
When Malachi criticizes the rampant divorce in his culture, he affirms that creation is the foundation of marriage:
Did he not make them one, with a portion of the Spirit in their union? (Malachi 2:15).
One of the major implications of evolution is that humans are just another sort of animal. But reasoning from Genesis, the Old Testament affirms both the extraordinary frailty and the high position of mankind in the created order.

Eden and the Fall

Eden was a garden of extraordinary beauty; in Ezekiel, the great empire of Assyria was compared to it:
The cedars in the garden of God could not rival it,
nor the fir trees equal its boughs;
neither were the plane trees like its branches;
no tree in the garden of God was its equal in beauty.
I made it beautiful in the mass of its branches,
And all the trees of Eden envied it that were in the garden of God
(Ezekiel 31:8–9).
The same passage talks about the King of Assyria, and his arrogance. But then the imagery moves and seems to speak about Satan, comparing to the King of Assyria in a typological sense:
You were in Eden, the garden of God;
every precious stone was your covering
(Ezekiel 28:13).
Interestingly, this Assyria passage, when it predicts Assyria’s fall, seems to indicate that Eden has been buried (and of course, the global Flood would be a prime event for burying it):
To which among the trees of Eden are you thus equal in glory and greatness? Yet you will be brought down with the trees of Eden to the earth beneath (Ezekiel 31:18).
Jean-Baptiste Oudry
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And when God is telling Isaiah about a future state, it is an Eden-like environment, where even carnivorous animals eat plants and dwell peacefully with their former prey:
The wolf shall dwell with the lamb,
And the leopard shall lie down with the young goat,
and the calf and the lion and the fattened calf together;
and a little child shall lead them.
The cow and the bear shall graze;
their young shall lie down together;
and the lion shall eat straw like the ox.
The nursing child shall play over the hole of the cobra,
and the weaned child shall put his hand on the adder’s den.
They shall not hurt or destroy in all my holy mountain;
for the earth shall be full of the knowledge of Yahweh
as the waters cover the sea
(Isaiah 11:6–9).
And:
For behold, I create a new heavens and a new earth,
And the former things shall not be remembered or come to mind
(Isaiah 65:17).
The Old Testament also affirms that humanity fell when Adam disobeyed God:
Your first father sinned, and your mediators transgressed against me (Isaiah 43:27).
But like Adam they transgressed the covenant; there they dealt faithlessly with me (Hosea 6:7).

Noah’s Flood

Often, Genesis 1–11 is treated by scholars as non-historical ‘prehistory’, to allow for modern theories about human evolution that contradict the Bible. However, 1 Chronicles 1 lists the entire Genesis genealogy through the lines of Shem, Ham, and Japheth, treating it as completely historical, before moving on to other genealogies from biblical and extra-biblical sources.
The Bible also treats the Flood and the events surrounding it as completely historical. When the Israelite spies gave their lying report about Canaan, they said:
And there we saw the Nephilim (the sons of Anak, who come from the Nephilim), and we seemed to ourselves like grasshoppers, and so we seemed to them (Numbers 13:33).
They were lying; there weren’t any Nephilim; they all died in the global Flood (See Who were the ‘sons of God’ in Genesis 6?). When Israel invades the land 40 years later, the Bible never records there being actual Nephilim in Canaan at any point. There were giants, like Goliath, but these large men did not seem superior in any other respect to the Israelites (c.f. 2 Samuel 21:15-22). But the Israelites knew about the pre-flood Nephilim, enough that the spies knew that reporting their presence in Canaan would make the Israelites fearful to invade. The only other Old Testament mention of Nephilim is in the context of the sons of God and daughters of men having sons together before the Flood (Genesis 6:1–6).
The global flood was God’s greatest judgment on the earth, and the Bible refers to it in several places:
Behold, he restrains the waters, and they dry up; and he sends them out, and they inundate the earth (Job 12:15).
You covered [the earth] with the deep as a garment;
The waters were standing above the mountains.
At your rebuke they fled,
At the sound of your thunder they hurried away.
The mountains rose; the valleys sank down
To the place you established for them.
You set a boundary that they may not pass over,
So that they will not return to cover the earth
(Psalm 104:6–9).
When God was giving Isaiah promises for Israel, he said that they were as sure as His promise to Noah not to flood the entire earth again; it becomes a prime example of a promise God will never break:
This is like the days of Noah to me:
as I swore that the waters of Noah
should no more go over the earth,
so I have sworn that I will not be angry with you
and will not rebuke you
(Isaiah 54:9).
Interestingly, the Psalms may include a reference to another idea from Genesis—declining life spans after the Flood.
For our days have declined in Your fury;
We have finished our years like a sigh.
As for the days of our life, they contain seventy years,
Or if due to their strength, eighty years,
Yet their pride is but labor and sorrow;
For soon it is gone and we fly away
(Psalm 90:9–10).

The biblical doctrine of Creation

If Creation were only limited to a few incidental references sprinkled in a few places in Scripture, it might be possible to reinterpret Genesis to fit with evolution without much theological fallout. But when practically every book of the Bible and a whole range of doctrines are tied in with Creation, the Fall, and the global flood, interpreting Genesis as non-historical changes all of those other things as well, which assume the historicity of Genesis.
Only the biblical doctrine of a 6-day creation, a historical Adam, his falling into sin, and a global Flood explains the hundreds of creation references throughout the Old and New Testaments. Over and over, God inspired His prophets and apostles to link creation inextricably with how His people should see Him and His works. And because Jesus is our Creator (c.f. John 1) as well as our Savior, our doctrine of creation also affects how we see Him.

Related Articles

Further Reading

References and notes

  1. The covenant name of God is often translated ‘Lord’ in English translations, but the verses given in this article will use ‘Yahweh’ to emphasize the presence of God’s covenant name in these verses. Return to text.
  2. The translation of this word varies; some say “angels” or “heavenly beings”. Return to text.

Sunday, December 22, 2013

Why the epidemic of fraud exists in science today

from here
missing link
Page spread from the November 1999 National Geographic article on the ‘missing link’ fossil Archaeoraptor, which later proved to be a hoax.
The Piltdown hoax is one of the most famous cases of fraud in science.1 Many Darwinists, though, claim that this case is an anomaly, and that fraud is no longer a problem today. However, the cases of fraud or deception in the field of evolution include not only the Piltdown Man, but Archaeoraptor, the peppered moth, the Midwife Toad, Haeckel’s embryos, Ancon sheep, the Tasaday Indians, Bathybius haeckelii and Hesperopithecus (Nebraska Man)—the missing link that turned out to be a pig.2-8 Actually, fraud as a whole is now ‘a serious, deeply rooted problem’ that affects no small number of contemporary scientific research studies, especially in the field of evolution.9 Scientists have recently been forced by several events to recognize this problem and try to deal with it.10
Most of the known cases of modern-day fraud are in the life sciences.11 In the biomedical field alone, fully 127 new misconduct cases were lodged with the Office of Research Integrity (US Department of Heatlh & Human Services) in the year 2001. This was the third consecutive rise in the number of cases since 1998.12 This concern is not of mere academic interest, but also profoundly affects human health and life.13,14 Much more than money and prestige are at stake—the fact is, fraud is ‘potentially deadly’, and in the area of medicine, researchers are ‘playing with lives’.15 The problem is worldwide. In Australia misconduct allegations have created such a problem that the issue has even been raised in the Australian Parliament, and researchers have called for an ‘office of research integrity’.16

One example is the widely quoted major immunological research studies related to kidney transplantation done by Zoltan Lucas (M.D. from Johns Hopkins and Ph.D. in biochemistry from MIT) that recently were found to contain fraudulent data.17 Dr Lucas was an associate professor of surgery at Stanford University. His graduate student, Randall Morris, discovered that Lucas had written reports on research that Morris knew had not been carried out. The reason Morris knew this was that he was to have been involved in the research! The studies were published in highly reputable journals and, no doubt, many other researchers also relied upon the results for their work. As a result of the modern fraud epidemic, a Nature editorial concluded:
‘Long gone are the days when scientific frauds could be dismissed as the work of the mad rather than the bad. The unhappily extensive record of misconduct suggests that many fraudsters believe their faked results, so attempts at replication by others represent no perceived threat.’18
Or they actually believe that no-one will attempt to replicate their work, at least for some time (much science work is not replicated, but medical research is much more likely to be replicated, due to its importance for human health, although it may take years). The fraud problem is so common that researchers who maintain a clean record are sometimes given special recognition, as was Italian scientist Franco Rasetti: ‘Today, we hear a great deal about scientific fraud, and commissions and committees on scientific ethics abound. For Rasetti, scientific honesty was axiomatic and automatic.’19
Fraud exists to such an extent that one study about the problem concluded that ‘science bears little resemblance to its conventional portrait’.20 Although more common among researchers working alone, ‘fakery still abounds’ even in group projects watched over by peer review.21 The accused include some of the greatest modern biologists, and the problem exists at Harvard, Cornell, Princeton, Baylor, and other major universities. In a review of fraud, a Nature editorial noted many cases involved not young struggling researchers, but rather experienced, well-published scientists. This Nature editorial concluded,
‘that the dozen or so proven cases of falsification that have cropped up in the past five years have occurred in some of the world’s most distinguished research institutions—Cornell, Harvard, Sloan-Kettering, Yale and so on—and have been blamed on people who are acknowledged by their colleagues to have been intellectually outstanding. The pressure to publish may explain much dull literature, but cannot of itself account for fraud.’22
The fraud ranges from fudging data to plagiarizing large sections from other articles. A Nature editorial concluded the plagiarism was growing, especially in molecular biology.23 To prevent ‘leaks’, some researchers have even put incorrect information in their papers, correcting them just prior to publication.24 And the problem will likely get worse: we can expect misconduct to occur more often in the future—in particular in biomedicine, where the pressure to publish is very high.25

Fraud among Darwinian researchers

The scientific method is an ideal, but it is especially difficult to use to ‘prove’ certain science hypotheses, such as those involving origins science. A good example of this difficulty is ‘the theory of evolution (which) is another example of a theory highly valued by scientists … but which lies in a sense too deep to be directly proved or disproved’.26 A major issue in dealing with this problem is that no small amount of arrogance exists within the scientific community. Some scientists believe that they know best, and only they have the right to ask questions—and if they don’t, no-one else should.4
One famous case of evolution fraud, that of Viennese biologist Paul Kammerer, was the subject of a classic book titled The Case of the Midwife Toad.6 Kammerer painted ‘nuptial pads’ with India ink on the feet of the toads he was studying. Yet, even though his work, which supposedly supported the Lamarckian theory of evolutionism, was exposed, it was used for decades to support the particular evolution ideology of Soviet scientists such as Trofin D. Lysenko.27 In a similar case, William Summerlin faked the results of a test in the 1970s simply by drawing black patches on his white test mice with a felt-tip pen.28
A recent case of fraud in evolution is that of Archaeoraptor, the ‘evolutionary find of the century’ that purportedly proved bird-dinosaur evolution. The National Geographic Society ‘trumpeted the fossil’s discovery … as providing a true missing link in the complex chain that connects dinosaurs to birds’.3 The authenticity of Archaeoraptor, which ‘some prominent paleontologist’ saw as ‘the long-sought key to a mystery of evolution’ was reviewed by Simons.3 Simons’ research concluded the fossil was a fraud. High-resolution x-ray CT work found ‘unmatched pieces, skillfully pasted over’.29 The fraud was also determined to be ‘put together badly—deceptively’29 involving ‘zealots and cranks’, ‘rampant egos clashing’, ‘misplaced confidence’ and ‘wishful thinking’.3 It was the Piltdown Man all over again. Simons adds that this is a story in which ‘none’ of those involved looks good.3
Another case involving Darwinism concerns ‘one of the world’s leading evolutionary biologists, Anders Pape Møller’, who has published over 450 articles and several books.30 A Science report noted that a
‘government committee has ruled that … Møller, is responsible for data fabricated in connection with an article that he co-authored in 1998 and subsequently retracted. … The charge … has cast a shadow over the relatively tight-knit world of behavioral ecology, the study of mating and other behaviors in an animal’s natural environment. … One point that’s indisputable is Møller’s reputation as a towering figure in the field. Møller has been a key proponent of the idea that traits such as long symmetrical tails in barn swallows, which attract potential mates, are a sign of beneficial genes. He has also shown that stress caused by environmental factors such as parasites can lead to the development of asymmetrical body parts.’30
A concern, as expressed by Oxford University evolutionary biologist Paul Harvey, is the astonishing ‘number of papers he writes with new results and analyses’ and these papers are now suspect,30 a fact that
‘has many journal editors pacing nervously. … Michael Ritchie of the University of St. Andrew, U.K., editor of the Journal of Evolutionary Biology and an officer of the societies that publish the journals Evolution and Animal Behaviour [said] “We need to work out what we should do and get it right. I don’t think there’s [sic] going to be any instant decisions”.’30
The problem first surfaced when a lab technician, Jette Andersen, claimed that a paper in the journal Oikos was based on fabricated data rather than Andersen’s data as Anders claimed. An investigation supported Andersen’s claim. Then concerns were raised over other papers. The fear now is that many of Møller’s papers are flawed. All are clearly suspect.

Some recent cases illustrate the seriousness of the problem

Unfortunately, medicine and biology, especially, have been hit hard by fraud. One study found 94 cancer papers ‘likely’ contained manipulated data.31 Two years later, many of the papers were still not retracted. This confirms the conclusion that ‘even when scientific misconduct is proven, no reliable mechanism exists to remove bad information from the literature’.31
Another case of medical fraud involved cardiologist Dr John Darsee of Harvard University Medical School. This case involved fabricating the data that formed the basis of his more than 100 publications over a period of about three years.32 This case illustrates how just a few persons can produce an enormous number of fraudulent publications. In a study of 109 of Darsee’s articles, the researchers found what can only be described as ‘bizarre’ data that could not be valid, numerical discrepancies, and numerous blatant internal contradictions.33 They also found appalling examples of errors or discrepancies that should have been discovered by the reviewers. The study concluded that the co-authors and reviewers that evaluated the papers were grossly deficient.
Another case involved a biology study that appeared to have ‘overturned a widely accepted theory on cell signaling’. The paper was retracted only
‘15 months after it was published. The retraction has rocked the cell-biology community and, say observers, has effectively ended the career of Siu-Kwong Chan, one of the paper’s co-authors. Gary Struhl, a Howard Hughes Medical Institute (HHMI) Investigator based at Columbia University, New York, and the senior author on the paper, issued the retraction on 6 February.’34
In the retraction, Struhl claims that Chan,
‘a postdoc in his lab, has admitted misreporting or failing to perform crucial experiments described in the original paper (S.-K. Chan and G. Struhl Cell 111, 265–280; 2002). Struhl discovered a problem when he repeated some of Chan’s experiments. When he didn’t get the same results as Chan, Struhl says that he confronted his former postdoc, who had by this time moved to the Albert Einstein College of Medicine in the Bronx. “When confronted with this discrepancy, S.-K. Chan informed me that most of the results … were either not performed or gave different results than presented in the paper,” Struhl wrote in the retraction. “I therefore withdraw this paper and the conclusions it reports”.’
They had worked for five years on the project before publishing their results in October 2002.

How to measure deceit

Photos by Dr M. Richardson et al, ‘There is no highly conserved embryonic stage in the vertebrates: implications for current theories of evolution and development’, Anatomy and Embryology 196(2)91–106, 1997, Copyright Springer Verlag GmbH & Co., Germany. Reproduced by permission.
Ernst Haeckel created fraudulent drawings of embryos to increase the resemblance between them and to hide their dissimilarities (top row), in order to use the idea of embryonic recapitulation to promote Darwin’s theory of evolution. The photographs in the bottom row are of actual embryos. Amazingly, Haeckel’s drawings are still used today.
Even though Broad and Wade conclude that deceit in science has not been the exception but the trend from its beginning until today, it would be helpful to have quantitative measures of the extent of deception in science, both today and in the past. In the past 30 years, for example, do four percent of all scientific papers contain fudged data? Or is it six percent or 30 percent? The percentage depends on how we define fudging, and whether we include unconscious fudging (experimental error or bias). One percent may be considered minor, or, maybe, depending upon our vantage point, epidemic.
If AIDS (acquired immune deficiency syndrome) affected just one-half of one percent of the world population, it would be considered epidemic (or more accurately, pandemic). Furthermore, even if we replicate an experiment and find that the results do not conform to those in the original study, it is still difficult to ‘prove’ deceit because dishonesty in science can often be covered up rather easily. If a scientist claims certain results were produced, unless one’s laboratory assistant testifies that, indeed, the data were fudged, the most we can prove is that, for some reason, replication consistently fails to support the original result.

Reasons why deceit is common

The present system of science actually encourages deceit. Careers are at stake, as are jobs, grants, tenure and, literally, one’s livelihood.35 This is partly a result of the ‘publish or perish’ endemic in academia. Broad and Wade point out that ‘grants and contracts from the Federal government … dry up quickly unless evidence of immediate and continuing success is forthcoming’. The motivation to publish, to make a name for oneself, to secure prestigious prizes, or be asked to join an educational board, all entice cheating. Broad and Wade’s frightening conclusion is, ‘corruption and deceit are just as common in science as in any other human undertaking’. As Broad and Wade stress, scientists ‘are not different from other people. In donning the white coat at the laboratory door, they do not step aside from the passions, ambitions, and failings that animate those in other walks of life.’36
Fraud usually does not involve totally making up data, but most often involves alterations, ignoring certain results, and fudging the data enough to change a close, but non-statistically significant result into a statistically significant difference at the alpha < .05 level. Whether intentional deceit is involved is not easy to determine. Dishonesty cannot be easily disentangled from normal human mistakes, sloppiness, gullibility or technical incompetence. Vested interests operate to prove one’s pet theories, causing researchers to don blinders that impede them from seeing anything other than what they want to see. Once theories are established, they tend to be written in stone, and are not easily overturned regardless of the amount of new information that may contradict the now hallowed ‘written-in-stone’ theory.
Among the other reasons for deceit are the fact that comprehensive theories are the goal of science, not a collection of facts. Because it is sometimes difficult to force facts to conform to one’s theories, such as in situations where there are many anomalies, a strong temptation exists to ignore facts that don’t agree with those theories. The desire to earn respect from one’s peers (and, ideally, to become eminent) has, from the earliest days of science, brought with it a temptation to consciously distort, ignore evidence, play loose with the facts, and even lie.20

Ignoring failures

Owing to the fact that scientific communication is primarily through the printed medium, there exists a tendency to record only the work of those few persons who have successfully contributed to supporting a theory in science, and to ignore the many non-significant findings.37 Significantly, it is common that researchers, both deliberately and subconsciously, tout the facts that support their theory, modify those that do not quite support it, and ignore those that contradict it. Often, though, the fraud is more deliberate. The case of Dr Glueck is one such example:
‘Only one month after the NIMH [National Institute of Mental Health] announced its verdict in the Breuning investigation, the medical community was shaken by yet another scandal. For 22 years internist Charles Glueck had risen steadily through the hierarchy of science. Since graduating from medical school in 1964, he had published nearly 400 papers at the furious rate of close to 17 a year. For his leading-edge research on cholesterol and heart disease Glueck had won the University of Cincinnati’s prestigious Rieveschl Award in 1980. As head of the lipid unit and the General Clinical Research Center at the university, Glueck was one of the most powerful and heavily funded scientists on staff. But last July the National Institutes of Health found that a paper of Glueck’s published in the August 1986 issue of the journal Pediatrics was riddled with inconsistencies and errors. As written, the NIH explained, the paper was utterly shoddy science, its conclusions empty.’38
One wonders how Glueck got a paper ‘riddled with inconsistencies and errors’ past the peer reviews.
The peer review for grant funding results in individuals who determine which applicant is awarded research moneys also having a major influence in what research is done. In-vogue research is funded, and research that has implications that contradict a prevailing scientific belief structure, such as Darwinism, is less apt to be funded. Dalton noted that despite the widely acknowledged problems of peer review:
‘no serious alternative has yet been proposed. “It is easy to say the system is flawed; it is harder to say how to improve it”, says Ronald McKay, a stem-cell researcher at the National Institute of Neurological Disorders and Stroke in Bethesda Maryland. One tweak to the process—asking reviewers to sign their reviews—has been experimented with. The idea is that, if reviewers are obliged to identify themselves, it will improve transparency and discourage anyone who might be tempted to abuse the process under the cloak of anonymity. Rennie is a particular enthusiast for this approach. “This is the only credible, worthwhile, transparent and honest system”, he says. “I’ve made that passionate plea, but the majority hasn’t gone along with it”.’39
There exist ‘lots of flaws in the publishing system’ largely because ‘peer review doesn’t guarantee quality’.40 Some ways to reduce the problems include publishing the names of the reviewers and giving them credit as well. Another is publishing clear and strict acceptance policies, and if a paper does not meet these, it is allowed to be revised until it does.

Is science self-correcting?

The assumption that science is self-correcting was evaluated in a study by the Food and Drug Administration. The study concluded that the Breuning case discussed above was
‘just the tip of the fraud and misconduct iceberg. Investigators at the FDA run across so much shoddy research that they have quippy terms like “Dr. Schlockmeister” for a bad scientist, and “graphite statistics” for data that flow from the tip of a pencil. Every year, as a quality-control measure, the FDA conducts investigations of key studies of researchers involved in getting new drugs to the agency for approval. “This is the last stop for drugs before they go public”, explains Alan Lisook, who heads the FDA investigations. “You’d think we’d get some of the cleanest science around.” But in 1986, when he analyzed the investigations of the previous ten years, Lisook compiled some shocking numbers. Nearly 200 studies contained so many flaws that the efficacy of the drug itself could be called into question. Some 40 studies exhibited not simple oversights but recklessness or outright fraud. In those ten years the FDA banned more than 60 scientists from testing experimental drugs, after finding that they had falsified data or engaged in inept research. As Sprague says, “something is clearly not working”.’41
The claims about peer review are a myth, and as a result, ‘much of what is published goes unchallenged, may be untrue, and probably nobody knows or even cares’.42 Anderson evaluated attempts to defend the technique, such as editor-in-chief of Science Donald Kennedy’s view that ‘peer review has never been expected to detect scientific fraud’. Kennedy concluded that this defense may be partly valid, but the anomalies in some fraudulent papers published in Science and Nature were hardly very subtle. An example he gave was the case of Jan Hendrik Schön. For example in one paper, Schön:
‘used the same curve to represent the behaviours of different materials, and in another he presented results that had no errors whatsoever. Both journals stress that papers are chosen on technical merit and reviewers for their technical skills. Should not the manuscript editors or reviewers have remarked on these discrepancies? These papers were, after all, making claims of huge importance to industry and academia. Ultimately, Schön was unmasked by scientists not engaged in formal peer review.’43
The fact is ‘science has its pathogenic side’ for reasons that include a ‘lust for power’ and ‘greed’ that
‘can infect scientists as well as anyone else. Anyone who has worked in the laboratory, on a university campus, or read the history of science is well aware of the overweening pride, jealousy and competition that can infect those working in the same field. In the effort to “succeed”, some scientists have “cooked” their data; that is, they have adjusted the actual results to fit what they were supposed to get.’44
The major problem with fraud is that of science itself, namely that scientists ‘see their own profession in terms of the powerfully appealing ideal that the philosophers and sociologists have constructed. Like all believers they tend to interpret what they see of the world in terms of what the faith says is there.’45 And, unfortunately, science is a ‘complex process in which the observer can see almost anything he wants provided he narrows his vision sufficiently’.46 An example of this problem is James Randi’s conclusion that scientists are among the easiest of persons to fool with magic tricks.47 The problem of objectivity is very serious because most researchers believe passionately in their work and the theories they are trying to prove. While this passion may enable the scientist to sustain the effort necessary to produce results, it may also colour and even distort those results.
Many examples exist to support the conclusion that researchers’ propensity for self-delusion is particularly strong, especially when examining ideas and data that impugn on their core belief structure. The fact is ‘all human observers, however well trained, have a strong tendency to see what they expect to see’.48 Nowhere is this more evident than in the admittedly highly emotional area of evolution.
The effect of experimental perceptions on the part of the researchers was studied by Robert Rosenthal in a now-classic set of experiments.49 In one of these experiments, Rosenthal asked researchers to test what he said were ‘maze bright’ and ‘maze dull’ rats. The rats were actually randomly divided into the two groups and none was specially trained. The ‘maze bright’ rats were then ‘rated’ as superior by researchers when, in fact, they were not. The experimenters saw what they wanted (or expected, thus the phenomenon is now called the ‘expectancy effect’), perhaps unconsciously; the researchers may have pressed the stopwatch button a fraction of a second too early for the ‘maze bright’ rats and a fraction of a second later for the ‘maze dull’ rats. Other similar experiments have produced similar results.

Use of science as a bullying tactic

One method of discrediting unpopular theories, especially those involving biological origins, is to label them ‘non-science’ and the competing theories ‘science’. Sociologists have for years explored the pernicious effects of labelling via dichotomizing concepts. This method then places a broad positive term on one half of the artificial dichotomy, and a broad negative term on the other half. The appropriate response to any science controversy is to argue each proposition solely on its merits, using only the tools of science.
In their exploration of fraud in science, Broad and Wade conclude that the term ‘science’ is often a label used to imply that something is true or false. In their words, the conventional wisdom concludes that:
‘science is a strictly logical process, objectivity is the essence of the scientist’s attitude to his work, and scientific claims are rigorously checked by peer scrutiny and the replication of experiments. From this self-verifying system, error of all sorts is speedily and inexorably cast out.’50
The authors then show why this common belief about science is false. The result of their investigation can help us to understand the activity of science from a far more realistic standpoint than is common today. They demonstrate that the supposedly ‘fail-safe’ mechanisms of scientific inquiry often do not correct the frauds that they claim have become ‘epidemic’ in modern science today. The idea of being ‘first’, the need to obtain research grants, trips to exotic places for conferences, and the lure of money and prestige, lead many scientists to abandon any lofty ideals they may have once had as a neophyte scientist.

Conclusions

The published literature, and the interviews I have carried out at the faculty of a medical school, consistently confirm the problem of fraud in science today. The reasons for this include money, tenure, promotions, grant renewal concerns, professional rivalry, and the need to prove one’s theories and ideas. Another factor is the rejection of Christianity and moral absolutes which has resulted in a collapse of the moral foundation that is critical in controlling fraud. Fraud is especially a problem in the fields attempting to support Darwinism, and in this field it tends to take a long time to root out. Hundreds of well-documented cases of fraud have been discussed in the literature.9,13,20,51 Unfortunately, save replication (which is uncommon in many fields), fraud in science is difficult to detect. Usually, laboratory assistants and colleagues are the ones who uncover fraud, and they are often unwilling to report it,9 because doing so could cost them friends, tarnish their reputation, and result in retaliation. Roman claims that for these reasons, snitchers are ‘rare’.9
As a result, fraud in science is considered by many to be endemic.20 Biological research is one of the chief areas of concern. Some conclude that over 10% of all researchers in this area are less than honest. Indeed, probably most researchers have quoted data that are fraudulent, or at least inaccurate. Few extensive research investigations on fraud under the present system exist (and the cases unearthed probably represent only the tip of the proverbial iceberg).

Related Articles

References

  1. Miller, R., The Piltdown Men, St. Martins Press, New York, 1972. Return to text.
  2. Bergman, J., Ancon sheep: just another loss mutation, TJ 17(1):18–19, 2002. Return to text.
  3. Simons, L.M., Archaeoraptor fossil trail, National Geographic 198(4):128–132, 2000. Return to text.
  4. Hooper, J., An Evolutionary Tale of Moths and Men: The Untold Story of Science and the Peppered Moth, W.W. Norton, New York, 2002. Return to text.
  5. Wells, J., Haeckel’s embryos and evolution, The American Biology Teacher 61(5):345–349, 1999. Return to text.
  6. Koestler, A., The Case of the Midwife Toad, Random House, New York, 1972. Return to text.
  7. Pennisi, E., Haeckel’s embryos: fraud rediscovered, Science 277:1435, 1997. Return to text.
  8. Assmuth, J. and Hull, E.R., Haeckel’s Frauds and Forgeries, Examiner Press, Bombay and Kenedy, London, 1915. Return to text.
  9. Roman, M., When good scientists turn bad, Discover 9(4):50–58; 1986; p. 58. Return to text.
  10. Abbott, A., Science comes to terms with the lessons of fraud, Nature 398:13–17, 1999; p. 13. Return to text.
  11. Campbell, P., Reflections on scientific fraud, Nature 419:417, 2002. Return to text.
  12. Check, E., Sitting in judgment, Nature 419:332–333, 2002; p. 332. Return to text.
  13. Kohn, A., False Prophets: Fraud and Error in Science and Medicine, Barnes & Noble Books, New York, 1988. Return to text.
  14. Crewdson, J., Science Fictions; A Massive Cover-Up and the Dark Legacy of Robert Gallo, Little Brown, New York, 2002. Return to text.
  15. Roman, ref. 9, p. 52. Return to text.
  16. Dennis, C., Misconduct row fuels calls for reform, Nature 427:666, 2004. Return to text.
  17. Kohn, ref. 13, pp. 104–110. Return to text.
  18. Campbell, ref. 11, p. 417. Return to text.
  19. Kerwin, L., Obituary: Franco Rasetti (1901–2001), Nature 415:597, 2002. Return to text.
  20. Broad, W. and Wade. N., Betrayers of the Truth: Fraud and Deceit in the Halls of Science, Simon and Schuster, New York, p. 8, 1982. Return to text.
  21. Roman, ref. 9, p. 53. Return to text.
  22. Anonymous, Is science really a pack of lies? Nature 303:361–362, 1981; p. 361. Return to text.
  23. Dewitt, N. and Turner, R., Bad peer reviewers, Nature 413(6852):93, 2001. Return to text.
  24. Dalton, R., Peers under pressure, Nature 413:102–104, 2001; p. 104. Return to text.
  25. Abbott, A. and Schwarz, H., Dubious data remain in print two years after misconduct inquiry, Nature 418:113, 2002. Return to text.
  26. Broad and Wade, ref. 20, p. 17. Return to text.
  27. Kohn, ref. 13, p. 47. Return to text.
  28. Chang, K., On scientific fakery and the systems to catch it, The New York Times Science Times, 15 October 2002; pp. 1, 4. Return to text.
  29. Simons, ref. 3, p. 130. Return to text.
  30. Vogel, G., Proffitt, F. and Stone, R., Ecologists roiled by misconduct case, Science 303:606–609, 2004; p. 606. Return to text.
  31. Abbott and Schwarz, ref. 25, p. 113. Return to text.
  32. Stewart, W.W. and Feder, N., The integrity of the scientific literature, Nature 325:207–216, 1987. Return to text.
  33. Stewart and Feder, ref. 32, p. 208. Return to text.
  34. Struhl, G., Cell 116:481, 2004. Return to text.
  35. Dalton, ref. 24, p. 104. Return to text.
  36. Broad and Wade, ref. 20, p. 19. Return to text.
  37. Broad and Wade, ref. 20, p. 35. Return to text.
  38. Roman, ref. 9, p. 57. Return to text.
  39. Dalton, ref. 24, p. 103. Return to text.
  40. Muir, H., Twins raise ruckus, New Scientist 176(2369):6, 2002. Return to text.
  41. Roman, ref. 9, p. 55. Return to text.
  42. Kohn, ref. 13, p. 205. Return to text.
  43. Kennedy, D., More questions about research misconduct, Science 297:13, 2002. Return to text.
  44. Zabilka, I.L., Scientific Malpractice; The Creation/Evolution Debate, Bristol Books, Lexington, p. 138, 1992. Return to text.
  45. Broad and Wade, ref. 20, p. 79. Return to text.
  46. Broad and Wade, ref. 20, pp. 217–218. Return to text.
  47. Randi, J., Flim Flam! Prometheus, Buffalo, 1982. Return to text.
  48. Broad and Wade, ref. 20, p. 114. Return to text.
  49. Rosenthal, R., Experimenter Effects in Behavioral Research, Irvington, New York, pp. 150–164, 1976. Return to text.
  50. Broad and Wade, ref. 20, p. 7. Return to text.
  51. Adler, I., Stories of Hoaxes in the Name of Science, Collier Books, New York, 1962. Return to text.

Wednesday, December 18, 2013

Opposites (liberal theology)

from here
contradiction.jpg
A favorite updated for your reading pleasure.
One of my irritations with liberal theology is that it pretends to be slightly different from orthodox Christianity while it is usually 180 degrees away on the essentials of the faith.  Please note that by “liberal theology” I don’t mean the theology of political liberals.  I am referring to people who call themselves Christians but deny the essentials of the historic faith (i.e., the kinds of things countless martyrs died for — Jesus’ divinity and exclusivity, the authority of scripture, etc.).  If you want to debate the disputable matters, go right ahead.  I’m flexible on those.  But words mean things, and far too many people use the term Christian in error.
For example, claiming that Jesus is one of many paths to God isn’t a little different than saying He is the only way, it is the opposite.  There is either one way or there is not one way.  The Bible has over 100 passages teaching directly or indirectly that Jesus is the only way to salvation.  If you don’t agree that it is your prerogative, but please don’t claim to be a Christian.
Claiming that Jesus isn’t God isn’t a little different than saying He is God, it is the opposite.  He is either God or He is not God.
Claiming that the original writings of the Bible were not inspired by God isn’t just a little different than saying they were inspired by God, it is the opposite.  The Bible is God’s Word or it is not God’s Word.  It makes roughly 3,000 claims to speak for God, so if liberal theologians think those are all false then why do they bother with the Book at all?
Claiming that miracles never happen (Virgin birth, loaves & fishes, healings, the physical resurrection, etc.) isn’t just a little different than saying they did happen, it is the opposite.
Claiming that marriage can be for two men or two women isn’t a little different than saying it is between a man and a woman, it is the opposite.  It is claiming that marriage is not just between a man and a woman and that “marriage” is now whatever we want to define it to be.
Liberal theology claims the opposite of what historic, orthodox Christianity does regarding the essentials of the faith.   They are entitled to their opinions, of course, but it is disingenuous and misleading for them to call themselves Christians while espousing those beliefs.
They have invented their own religion, which is their right.  It would just be less confusing if they would give it a new name.  And it would be more intellectually honest to stop taking money from people who do believe in the essentials that those denominations were founded upon.
As Total Transformation would say, they appear to worship a fictional Gandhi-Christ.  It appears to me that the most accurate description would be that of a Hindu sect (nothing personal, Hindus!).

Sunday, December 15, 2013

Purgatory and indulgences: Still around. Still anti-biblical.

from here
I wish this was a parody: Vatican offers ‘time off purgatory’ to followers of Pope Francis tweets.
Many people think that the false teachings about purgatory* and indulgences have gone away, but the Catholic religion still adheres to them.  The distinctions below should appear to be arbitrary to you, because anti-biblical teachings like these are man-made and inevitably loosely defined.
I note that they are anti-biblical (the opposite of the Bible) and not just non-biblical (not in the Bible) because they are works-based and teach that what Jesus did on the cross was helpful but not sufficient.  Any implication that Jesus’ death and resurrection weren’t enough to save you is a sure sign of a false teaching.  If you say you need Jesus plus your works, that is false.  If you say you don’t need Jesus, or that He is just an option, that is false.
In its latest attempt to keep up with the times the Vatican has married one of its oldest traditions to the world of social media by offering “indulgences” to followers of Pope Francis’ tweets.
The church’s granted indulgences reduce the time Catholics believe they will have to spend in purgatory after they have confessed and been absolved of their sins.
The remissions got a bad name in the Middle Ages because unscrupulous churchmen sold them for large sums of money. But now indulgences are being applied to
the 21st century.
They should have had a bad name for mocking the cross and being false teachings.  The idea that they were only bad when peddled by unscrupulous churchmen charged too much just added to the falsehood.
But a senior Vatican official warned web-surfing Catholics that indulgences still required a dose of old-fashioned faith, and that paradise was not just a few mouse clicks away.
“You can’t obtain indulgences like getting a coffee from a vending machine,” Archbishop Claudio Maria Celli, head of the pontifical council for social communication, told the Italian daily Corriere della Sera.
Indulgences these days are granted to those who carry out certain tasks – such as climbing the Sacred Steps, in Rome (reportedly brought from Pontius Pilate’s house after Jesus scaled them before his crucifixion), a feat that earns believers seven years off purgatory.
That sounds a lot closer to getting a coffee from the vending machine than it does to the Bible.
But attendance at events such as the Catholic World Youth Day, in Rio de Janeiro, a week-long event starting on 22 July, can also win an indulgence.
Mindful of the faithful who cannot afford to fly to Brazil, the Vatican’s sacred apostolic penitentiary, a court which handles the forgiveness of sins, has also extended the privilege to those following the “rites and pious exercises” of the event on television, radio and through social media.
“That includes following Twitter,” said a source at the penitentiary, referring to Pope Francis’ Twitter account, which has gathered seven million followers. “But you must be following the events live. It is not as if you can get an indulgence by chatting on the internet.”
Yeah, what kind of silly process do you think this is?!  I had to double check and ensure I wasn’t quoting from The Onion.
. . .
“What really counts is that the tweets the Pope sends from Brazil or the photos of the Catholic World Youth Day that go up on Pinterest produce authentic spiritual fruit in the hearts of everyone,” said Celli.
If the spiritual fruit is authentic then the first thing they will do is leave the Catholic religion.  I know many people who go to Catholic churches who sound like Protestants in their theology.  They don’t hold to the false teachings but go out of habit.  Or their organizations may be led by “bad Catholics” (by which I mean good) who never teach things like this.  I wish they would move to churches that are God-honoring.
I realize that it may be initially frustrating to hear about such things, but I encourage people to consider what a great tool it is to educate Catholics about what their religion really teaches.  So many of them think that the church doesn’t really teach about indulgences, purgatory, Marianism, praying to the dead, etc.  When they slip up and show how they still hold to these doctrines we should help them publicize it.
Like I always say, the Reformation happened for a reason.  Actually, 95 of them.  And they haven’t changed.
* pur·ga·to·ry (in the belief of Roman Catholics and others) a condition or place in which the souls of those dying penitent are purified from venial sins, or undergo the temporal punishment that, after the guilt of mortal sin has been remitted, still remains to be endured by the sinner.

Wednesday, December 11, 2013

God, You’re too Harsh!

from here
The parable of the talents, as depicted in a 1...
The parable of the talents, as depicted in a 1712 woodcut. The lazy servant searches for his buried talent, while the two other servants present their earnings to their master.

Jesus told this parable where He was the master and we the servants: Then the servant with the one bag of silver came and said, ‘Master, I knew you were a harsh man, harvesting crops you didn’t plant and gathering crops you didn’t cultivate.’ Matthew 25:24 NLT

It wasn’t easy deciding whether this was a topic to cover on a blog “for kids”, but the more I run into arguments against worshipping and loving God, the more I realize our kids need to have answers, and soon.

What is it unbelieving people are telling us about God? “Atheists” like Richard Dawkins spend an awfully lot of time talking about how horrible the God of the Bible, the only real God, is. If they really believed God was invented by people, why work so hard to smear His character?
Eagerly they seek out the goriest accounts in the Bible seeking to prove God is too disgusting to deserve our worship. It seems the only kind of God they would consider worthy is a spineless softy who let everyone get away with murder (literally).

Interestingly, these people never touch the worst case of “genocide” in the history of the universe, Noah’s Flood. They don’t dare take that one seriously, or it would give us the opportunity to point to the mountains of evidence for the Flood having really happened.

So how can a God-fearing believer in Jesus respond to such a low blow? Let’s see how Jesus, the Master, responded to the fearful servant in the story:
Parable of the Talents
Parable of the Talents
But the master replied, ‘You wicked and lazy servant! If you knew I harvested crops I didn’t plant and gathered crops I didn’t cultivate,why didn’t you deposit my money in the bank? At least I could have gotten some interest on it.’ Matthew 25:26,27 NLT
Did he claim to be a kind and gentle master? Not at all. He accepted the accusation and turned it back on the servant. “You knew I was like this, so why didn’t you meet my expectations?” That’s not what we would have said! But it’s what Jesus claimed.
What’s more, here are the consequences for the servant’s bad attitude and fearful actions:
“Now throw this useless servant into outer darkness, where there will be weeping and gnashing of teeth.” Matthew 25:30 NLT
Our God, the God who is, makes a terrifying enemy indeed! But there’s something else going on. Remember who the guy is? He is one of the master’s “servants”, but doesn’t have the master’s protection. He isn’t part of the family.
This tells us every person on earth, no matter what their attitude about God is, still is one of Jesus’ servants. He gives them “talents”- skills, opportunities, and character traits to help them accomplish God’s work on earth. They are expected to return a profit for Jesus’ kingdom no matter what.
Here’s the bottom line. God made everything, including all people. He gets to decide when a person is to die or live. If we ignore Him, thumbing our noses at His rules and mistreat His creation, God will eventually say, “enough is enough.”
tombstone shadows
tombstone shadows (Photo credit: Rick Payette)
That thou givest them they gather: thou openest thine hand, they are filled with good. Thou hidest thy face, they are troubled: thou takest away their breath, they die, and return to their dust. Psalm 104:28,29
God isn’t “pro-life” the way we are called to be. He does love all of us, but there comes a point of no return:
 “How I wish today that you of all people would understand the way to peace. But now it is too late, and peace is hidden from your eyes. Before long your enemies will build ramparts against your walls and encircle you and close in on you from every side. They will crush you into the ground, and your children with you. Your enemies will not leave a single stone in place, because you did not accept your opportunity for salvation.” Luke 19:42-44 NLT
God was, is, and will be terrifyingly mean to those who hate Him. But, He offers each and every one of us a way to find protection-  by hiding ourselves in Him through Jesus’ life and cleansing.

Sunday, December 8, 2013

Moon formation theories way off orbit

from here

Journal-of-creation-cover
Published: 25 July 2013 (GMT+10)
Astronomer Dr Ronald G. Samec reports in the latest Journal of Creation 27(2) that a recent study of moon rocks calls into question the present lunar formation theory.1,2
“This may bring us back full circle to one of the earliest theories—that of George Darwin’s ‘fission hypothesis’”, Samec said.
Samec explained that according to the fission hypothesis, the early earth rotated faster, as more dense elements sunk to its core. When the earth exceeded breakup velocity, the material that would become the moon tore from Pacific Ocean Basin, leaving a scar (ridges).

“The problem,” Samec explained, “is that the initial spin or angular momentum is not conserved in the present earth–moon system (50% loss). Also, the orbit of the moon and the obliquity of the ecliptic (likewise the inclination of the earth) should coincide, and they do not.”
The earth’s inclination is about 23.5° to the orbital plane (the ecliptic) and the moon’s orbit is inclined by some 5°.
Another theory Samec deals with is that the moon was captured by the earth as it passed by in an earth-crossing orbit. He said that one major problem with this idea is that capture is an extremely rare event.
“Even if this unlikely event took place,” Samec said, “the moon would likely have swung by in a parabolic or an elliptical trajectory, rather than the near-circular orbit of the present day moon.”

A separate article in the Journal about recent moon discoveries by physicist D. Russell Humphreys3 reported findings published by ClĂ©ment Suavet et al. in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.4 Humphreys explained how measurements of magnetization of lava from a basalt ‘sea’ of the moon conflict with models of how the magnetic field works.
Journal-of-creation
“The report shows that uniformitarian scientists, because they assume the world is billions of years old, are still very puzzled about the moon’s magnetic field,” Humphreys said. “They don’t understand why it was formerly strong but now doesn’t exist, or how it could exist in the first place.”
“On the other hand, the moon’s magnetic data fit creation science theories very well. A Bible-based theory for how God created the initial magnetic fields of planets and moons gives a created (6,000 years ago) field for the moon that is about as strong as the earth’s field is today, in accord with the measurements in the latest moon samples.”
These latest findings from the moon are reported in the latest Journal of Creation along with much other creationist research. The latest issue, 27(2), which is mailing now, has other fascinating reports on a diverse range of issues including:
  • More evidence ‘Lucy’ was an extinct ape.
  • Conflicting approaches to Flood geology.
  • Claims that Genesis 1 is just reworked Babylonian myth.
  • The subtle connection between ‘global warming’ alarmism and the creation–evolution controversy.
  • Appeals to ‘consensus science’ and why they are actually anti-science.
  • Whether the relative timing of radioisotope dates can be applied to biblical geology.
  • Enlightening book reviews:
    1. The Politically Incorrect Guide to the Bible by Robert J. Hutchinson.
    2. Mind and Cosmos: Why the Materialist Ne-Darwinian Conception of Nature is Almost Certainly False by Thomas Nagal.
    3. Revisiting the Days of Genesis by BC. Hodge.
  • … and much more.
Subscribe today and receive your Journal of Creation, beginning with the latest issue and its reports on moon formation theories.

Related Articles

References

  1. Samec, R.G. Lunar formation—collision theory fails, J. Creation, 27(2):11–12, 2013. Return to text.
  2. Meier, M.M.M., Moon formation: earth’s titanium twin, Nature Geoscience 5(4):240–241, 2012. Return to text.
  3. Humphreys, D.R. More secular confusion about the moon’s former magnetic field, J. Creation, 27(2):12–13, 2013. Return to text.
  4. Suavet, C. et al., Persistence and origin of the lunar core dynamo, Proceedings of the National Academy of Science, published online before print on 6 May 2013, www.pnas.org/content/early/2013/05/02/1300341110.full.pdf+html?sid=44d30a0b-9f5a-45e3-8ed5-bafb01b5f5e7, accessed 13 May 2013. Return to text.

Wednesday, December 4, 2013

The Asteroid Vesta—‘old’ yet ‘young’!

from here
NASA, JPL-caltech, UCLA, MPS,DLR, IDA
Asteroid-Vesta
NASA’s robotic spacecraft ‘Dawn’, launched in 2007 to go to the asteroid belt between Mars and Jupiter, has now orbited around Vesta—second largest of the asteroids. And it’s sent back eye-popping photos and other data that have shocked and surprised scientists, to say the least.
For example, Vesta has a south polar mountain three times the height of Everest. Twenty-one kilometres (13 miles) higher than the surrounding terrain, it is one of the largest mountains in the solar system,1 yet stands on a body smaller in width than Texas. Why should Vesta have such “surprisingly complex”2 structural features, compared to other asteroids?

However, with its equatorial troughs and other large impact basins, Vesta had another surprise reminiscent of some of the outer-planet moons like Enceladus and Miranda: parts that look ‘old’, and parts that look ‘young’!

The northern half of Vesta, seen on the upper left of the photo here, appears to show some of the densest cratering in the solar system, while the southern half is “unexpectedly smooth”.3 That’s because—according to uniformitarian assumptions about meteorite impacts—the greater the number of craters, the greater the age. But why then is the southern half not as pock-marked—even “smooth”? As Science Daily headlined it, “Massive Mountains, Rough Surface, and Old-Young Dichotomy in Hemispheres.”2 Our own moon has a similar asymmetry in cratering. Astronomer Danny Faulkner suggests that instead of bombardment over millions of years, most craters were caused by a narrow, intense, but brief swarm of impactors that passed by before the moon had moved very far in a single orbit, perhaps during the year of the Flood.4 A similar explanation could apply to Vesta.
Perhaps planetary scientists may have to concoct a new word like yold for this oxymoronic dichotomy. It’s yet another example of the contradictory evidence and problems inherent in using crater density, or any other feature observable at present, to guess the unobservable past history of the bodies in our solar system. Such ‘dating’ methods don’t work5—only a true eyewitness account of the asteroid’s origin can definitively provide its age.

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Further Reading

References and notes

  1. It is just 3 km (2 miles) shy of the record holder on Mars, Olympus Mons. Return to text.
  2. Dawn at Vesta: Massive Mountains, Rough Surface, and Old-Young Dichotomy in Hemispheres, Science Daily, www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2011/10/111003093344.htm, 3 October 2011. Return to text.
  3. Nemiroff, R. and Bonnell, J., Astronomy picture of the day—2 August 2011, apod.nasa.gov/apod/ap110802.html. Return to text.
  4. Faulkner, D., A biblically-based cratering theory, J. Creation 13(1):100–104, 1999; creation.com/cratering; Spencer, W.R., Response to Faulkner’s biblically-based cratering theory , J. Creation 14(1):46–49, 2000; creation.com/crateringresponse. Return to text.
  5. Coppedge, D., Young Saturn, Creation 33(3):44–46, 2011. Return to text.