Welcome to all of the new subscribers!
This is the “When I get a round tooit” Creation/Evolution newsletter from Ian Juby and the traveling Creation Science Museum of Canada.
In this “Egads that’s long!” newsletter:
1) Subscriber Sneak Peek: CrEvo Rants!
2) Oxygen there from the beginning
3) More badyear, and “Would you believe, a Hippo is a pig?”
4) Zeitgeist?
5) Texas votes for critique of evolution
6) Contest winners
7) ‘sokay, creationism is just a mental illness
8) Donations?
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1) Subscriber Sneak Peek: CrEvo Rants!
(Ssshhh! Don’t tell anybody!) Don’t you guys feel lucky? You get to see the CrEvo (creation/evolution) rants before the public does. Yes, one of the many benefits of being a subscriber to the Creation/Evoution newsletter – and thanks for being a subscriber, and sharing the newsletter with your friends and family.
The CrEvo rants (Screen capture to the right) were a project started about two years ago, but was shelved in order to focus on, and finish, the Complete Creation video series. The rants will be posted on youtube (probably late Tuesday or Wednesday this week), and are intended to be fast, hard-hitting, humorous, and sometimes even a little bit “in your face” commentary on creation, evolution and current events. For the kick-off, four rants have been shot and edited, and y’all get a (SShhh! No telling!) sneak peek at them:
CrEvo Rant # 213: Creationists are Scientists too
CrEvo Rant # 12: Mailbag part 1: An Angry Caller (WARNING: rated PG!)
CrEvo Rant #117: “God of the gaps”
CrEvo Rant # 107: Mathematical impossibility of evolution
PLEASE NOTE: These videos will be removed from my website and posted on youtube within a couple of days. The pages above will be redirected to the appropriate video.
As you can see when viewing the rants, there are many, many, many more to come, complete with open captions for the hearing impaired. They will all be posted on the CrEvo Rants playlist on my youtube channel, so please share this link with friends and family:
While you can view the videos without an account on youtube, I’d appreciate it if you subscribed to my youtube channel (you’ll need a free youtube account) to rate and rant!
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2) Oxygen there from the beginning
http://www.creationbible.com/News.php?nid=104
As previously mentioned in The Complete Creation, the presence of oxygen in the early earth is a fatal problem to the origin of life by “natural” means. Amino acids cannot form in an oxygenated environment, because they will become oxydized (destroyed). But aminos make up the basic building blocks of life, proteins. This is why Miller removed oxygen from his apparatus when attempting to “simulate” the world at the beginning (shown on right, artist’s depiction of the world at the beginning, according to NASA) and attempting to produce synthetic amino acids in the lab (See Complete Creation, part 12)
So in the article cited by Dye, the scientists conclude that there was oxygen in the oceans “3.46 billion years ago.” The oxygen can only be there if there was oxygen in the atmosphere (that’s Boyle’s law), so therefore, there was oxygen in the atmosphere, even at the beginning of the earth according to the evolutionary timescale.
Oxygen at the beginning would destroy any building blocks of life. No building blocks, no life. No life, no evolution. So evolution is dead in the water before it even gets started.
Even if we removed the oxygen from the atmosphere, then we would have no ozone layer (ozone is a form of oxygen), which means that ultraviolet light would come streaming in, unhindered, from the sun, striking the earth’s oceans and breaking apart the water molecules into hydrogen and … *gasp!* … free radical oxygen!
Nope, you can’t get away from the oxygen problem and its fatal consequences for a “natural” origin of life.
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3) More badyear, and “Would you believe, a Hippo is a pig?”
There was some surprising feedback to my last newsletter – thank you to the readers and other alert news searchers who send me tidbits from the media that they think I would find interesting: You help keep us all informed!
You’ll recall Dr. Jessica Theodor from my last newsletter. (Photo left, courtesy of CTV news, and used without any permission whatsoever)
She had railed on the Big Valley Creation Science Museum on National TV the year it opened, and so we challenged her to a public, scientific debate. She declined, and one of her remarks in her response was:
What she considers “worth her time”
Apparently Dr. Theodor thinks it’s worth her time to argue in a “peer reviewed journal” (Nature) over whether a Hippopotamus is more like a whale, a pig, or a dog. (NATURE, Vol 458, 19 March 2009, “Hippopotamus and whale phylogeny”) Yes, Dr. Theodor was responding to a previous Nature article, in which the authors claimed that a Hippo was most closely related to whales, because of the fossil evidence. In her response, Dr. Theodor claimed that when one looks at the DNA of the various creatures, clearly the Hippo is most like the pigs!
Theodor took the original article’s fictitious phylogenetic tree (which is a faith-based construct of relationships between various organisms) and reorganized it according to her interpretation of the DNA of the various organisms:
WHO is “cherry picking” the evidence here??? Her re-organization of the cladogram shows just how subjective all of these cladistic diagrams are! Look at the radical changes that take place whether one goes by the “fossil evidence” or the “DNA evidence.” In fact, in the article, she mentions “…and [the authors of the original article] do not cite a recent paper that disagrees with their (and our own) results.” In other words, she pointed to an article which had a third interpretation, and presumably a third re-ordering of the oh-so-scientific cladograms above.
Cladograms are faith-based fiction.
Here is a fourth, proposed fictitious cladogram:
My cladogram is just as scientific as theirs, as I can make all kinds of arguments from genetics and fossils to affirm the point. Don’t believe me? Watch carefully:
Our ancestral relationship to…. the duck billed platypus?!?
Francis Collins, head of the US Genome project, had this to say after the DNA from the duck-billed platypus had been unravelled:
(from US news, italics and emphasis mine)
The Evolution of Santa Claus:
This is Ardipithecus ramidus kadabba.
 |
Here is what the evolutionists at TIME magazine think Ardipithecus ramidus kadabba looked like: 
Or, perhaps this is what |
The Fossil Evidence:
Fossil evidence is meaningless if you have no mechanism for evolution: Fossils are evidence of dead things, not evidence of evolution. I’ll get into the supposed fossil evidence for the “evolution of the whales” in a later newsletter. For now, because Theodor decided she wanted to focus on genetics, I’ll focus on that as well.
No Mechanism for Evolution:
There is no mechanism for genetic evolution on the scale required to turn either a pig-like creature, or a whale-like creature, or a dog-like creature, into a hippopotamus. There is loads of observable, repeatable and testable science that states that such changes are flat out impossible.
Mutations are supposed to be the driving force of evolution – but it would require tens of millions of changes (hundreds of millions?) in the DNA to turn a pig-like creature into a hippo – when as little as one change to the DNA can be fatal to an organism.
Further to this, there are complex repair systems that do nothing but look for errors (changes) in the DNA and fix them, because changes in the DNA can be deadly. Certainly the millions of changes required for evolution are deadly! If you remove the repair systems, errors rapidly accumulate and kill the organism, along with the supposed evolution that has happened.
The DNA tells the tale:
It is amazing that such nonsensical claims about the relationship between whales, hippos and pigs is published in one of the holiest of grails in the peer-reviewed world, Nature magazine. The only ancestral relationship these creatures have is that they all had the same Creator!
But Theodor insists that evolution has been “extensively tested and has such strong evidence that it has not been able to be falsified in 150 years” Apparently she is either unaware of, or ignoring, the powerful arguments from genetics that 
refute evolution and have been published in peer-reviewed journals. You simply cannot make radical changes to the genome of an organism without killing it – end of discussion. This is verifiable and repeatable. A quick visit to Chernobyl will affirm what I am saying.
But rather than reinvent the wheel, I will merely point the readers to an excellent book by Dr. Jonathan Sanford (co-inventor of the gene gun) called “Genetic entropy and the mystery of the genome.”
It can be a tough read, but most people could wade through it. The point of the entire book is that the genomes of life are deteriorating. This is exactly backwards to evolutionary expectations. As Sanford put it, not only does evolution fail to patch the holes in the boat, it can’t explain where the boat came from in the first place!
Also, Dr. Jean Lightner put together an excellent, easy reading article on genetics and evolution. This was written in response to Sciam’s January article “From atoms to traits” and is posted on the AiG website.
Creationists haven’t published in peer reviewed journals?
But Theodor went on with more errors in her response to the board of the Big Valley Creation Museum, saying “…and [creation] has had zero published data supporting it in peer-reviewed journals. “
It is well known that secular peer-reviewed scientific journals are bigoted towards creationists and that they will not publish openly creationist material. So Theodor’s claim has absolutely nothing to do with whether creationist claims are scientific or not. See these two articles, “Do Creationists Publish In Peer Reviewed Journals” one by Canadian David Buckna, and the other by Dr. Russell Humphreys.
Apparently Dr. Theodor is unaware of the many peer reviewed papers that creationists have published over the years, including some that specifically affirm creation.
For example, Dr. Robert Herrmann, professor of mathematics (ret.) at the US Naval Academy, has some 72 publications, of which 57 appear in non-theologically related, peer-reviewed scientific journals. Of those 57, 15 have direct application to his General Intelligent Design model, (not to be confused with the ID models propagated by the Discovery Institute) or the origins of the universe! His peer-reviewed models demand a Creator.
From his website:
As Dr. Herrmann put it,
Mathematics provides evidence for creation just as powerful as the evidence from genetics. See Rant # 107 for a taste of what I mean.
More Badyear:
The fall-out continues over the Science and Technology minister, Garry Goodyear’s, remarks. If you’ll recall, I ran a report on his remarks and even wound up in a live radio debate on national radio – see my March 2009 blog entry.
In the days following my last newsletter, a letter to the editor appeared in the March 23 issue of the Ottawa Citizen from a mis-guided clergy with the United Church of Canada. The contents of this letter are probably one of the symptoms of a much larger, underlying problem. A recent Canadian poll showed that believers in “God” are down. This should come as no surprise when we see “clergy” who make statements like you’re about to read. You might want to take some gravol before you proceed.
When a “clergy” who claims to be a “Christian” says things like
scholarship has been educating us to understand the Book of Genesis and
much of the Hebrew and Christian Bible as treasured myth, not record of fact.”
She stated:
thinking of our age, all good “hard” science and social science, supported
by the revelations of quantum physics which offer striking parallels to a
mystical or religious understanding of reality.”
Ms. Barrington would do well to start by watching part 7; “What would Jesus believe?”
She says her “Christian theology must stand the test of embracing all the best thinking of our age….” WOW. That’s all I can say.
Essentially, what she is saying is that truth must embrace falsehood. All the best thinking in the age of Darwin believed that dead meat gave rise to life because if you left dead meat outside, ‘life would grow from it.’ All the best thinking of his age was wrong. We now know of the laws of biogenesis which state that life only comes from life – which demands a supernatural creator I might add.
Theistic evolutionists:
Now, I am very patient with theistic evolutionists (people who believe God used evolution), because I realize there has been a lot of people who have been brainwashed into believing evolution, who have had a personal encounter with their Creator. They realize that there’s a Creator, but are convinced of evolution, so they conclude (incorrectly) that God used evolution.
Persuaded by the evidence
In fact, I am presently shooting for a video called “Persuaded by the evidence” which is interviews with scientists who were once evolutionists and atheists who became born-again, young-earth creationists. (Dr. Jerry Bergman to the right)
Most of those I’m interviewing went through a phase in their Christian walk where, like Dr. Bergman, they believed evolution, until they realized that evolution didn’t work. Evolution did not work scientifically, and certainly did not work theologically. So I’m patient with theistic evolutionists, as I understand and am sympathetic, and am hopeful that they too will realize the error of evolution.
However, with Ms. Barrington, it is very much black-and-white. This may offend some people, but I must be blunt: Ms. Barrington, by her own admission, is not even a Christian, so Christians need not fret over her vacuous claims. A Christian follows and believes Jesus Christ.
Ms. Barrington stated (repeatedly) that Genesis and the Bible were “myth.” Well, Jesus was quite clear that Genesis was to be read literally:
In fact, Christ was clear that the stories of Noah, Jonah, and creation, were literal history that He believed. Ms. Barrington believes neither Moses, nor Christ, by her own admission. She repeatedly called their words “myth.” I’m curious – how many of my readers follow a spiritual leader, while simultaneously believing nothing that spiritual leader says? Barrington’s comments are rife with contradictions – a surficial symptom of the foundational errors in her logic, thinking, and clearly new-age, anti-christ worldview! I mean, she claims to be a Christian (a follower of Christ), yet simultaneously describes the things He said as “myth.” That is anti-christ, by very definition of the word.
“Flight 291 now departing for the Lake of Fire at gate 12”
Barrington said “No religion has any exclusive claim on God.” This has nothing to do with exclusivity of religion – this has to do with truth and error. Ms. Barrington obviously does not even consider that there may be a real truth.
When you go to the airport, you carefully check to see which airplane is flying to your destination. You do not just hop aboard any old plane and assume it takes you where you want to go, do you? This is logical – yet what Barrington is saying is akin to going to the airport and hopping on the first plane you see and trusting it to take you to your desired destination. Only in this case, the plane will take you to life, or to death. Are you going to just hop aboard any airplane transporting your eternal soul??? Yet Barrington’s heretical statements suggest that you can do just that.
For people who do not believe Christ:
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4) Zeitgeist?
Since it’s release a couple of years ago, I’ve had on-again/off-again requests for comment on the movie “Zeitgeist.” Zeitgeist is an anti-Christ movie containing some truths (even stunning truths), combined with a raft of flat-out falsehoods and poor research. But of course, that’s the best way to sell a lie: Package a whole lot of truth together with a little bit of lie.
In the “religion” section of the movie, the producer (Peter Joseph) tries to build a case that Jesus Christ was merely a fictional character – a composite of many different “sun gods.” Most Christians are unaware of the common myths found within the Christian beliefs (i.e., that Christ was born on December 25th and wise men came to visit him while He lay in the manger), and so fall prey to the false claims made in such movies.
Enter Richard Rives. Rives, author of “Too long in the sun,” is a biblical historian who is attempting to expose the influences of ancient sun-god myths on modern Christianity. If you think the previous sentence is surprising, you really need to check out his books and videos, and in particular, his response to Zeitgeist:
http://www.zeitgeistisright.com (scroll down, there are several video clips on the page)
I’m not going to waste a whole pile of time re-inventing the wheel when other apologeticists have done a fine job of dismantling the myths propagated in the Zeitgeist movie. The above videos do a fine job of that, and WorldNetDaily also had an excellent and short article on the subject:
http://worldnetdaily.com/index.php?fa=PAGE.view&pageId=92903
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Amazing – the Texas State board of Education actually voted to encourage critique of evolution in the classroom! They are to be commended. It’s astonishing the uproar that has taken place over this one act they have done. I mean, do you know of any science or scientific claims that want to be protected from critique? Physics can stand up to critique, so can biology and chemistry. Are people in those fields desperately lobbying politicians and school boards for protection from scrutiny???
Evolution cannot stand up to critique, which is presumably why so many are irate that it is allowed to be scrutinized in public school classrooms.
See a report here from the Discovery Center:
http://www.discovery.org/a/9851
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6) Contest winners
Congratulations to our winners from the last newsletter give-away.
Ian Murray, Ontario – 1st place
Je Rome Kellar, Ohio -2nd place
Philip Schembri, Arizona -3rd place
More contests and give-aways to come!
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7) ‘sokay, creationism is just a mental illness
Yup, believe it or don’t, if you believe in “God,” you’re just mentally ill – it’s a scientific fact you know!
http://www.sciam.com/article.cfm?id=creationism-feels-right-but-that-doesnt-make-it-so
Too funny. The article is packed with priceless quotes:
The author of one of the psychological studies never stopped to ask if her brain was intelligently designed, but proceeded to makes all kinds of sweeping claims with her analysis of the human mind. As the Sciam author, Jesse Berring says,
In fact, blogger “rbullock” on the Access Research Network gave an excellent, humorous write up on the dilemma that evolutionary biologists face every day: The dilemma of obvious design in nature!
http://www.arn.org/blogs/index.php/2/2009/02/28/darwinists_on_design_jumping_to_confusions
This dilemma is so serious, that some have suggested a desperate (and bizarre) attempt to remove the word “design” from biology. As rbullock wrote:
“Biology can continue to operate (as it does, truth be told) in terms of design, and because there is no English word for ‘apparently-designed-yet-actually-unintelligently-caused’ with respect to observed objects, evolutionary theory can adopt a more proper substitute term: adesign.”
Yup. They can’t even use the word “design” because that implies a designer, and of course we all know there is no designer, so we must not use the word…. even though all of life looks so obviously designed…
This is not science folks, this is DENIAL.
Who’s got mental illness?
(priceless poster to the right part of the despair.com collection)
Wait a minute – self inflicted delusion is most certainly a “mental illness.” In fact, it is one of the most powerful, and in my opinion, dangerous forms of mental illness.
So why is it then that the creationists are the ones mentally ill, when it is the evolutionists who are even admitting that they must convince themselves of what is contrary to obvious logic and observation?
Ask yourself who is of sound mind: The one who looks at a car and concludes it had a creator, or the one who looks at a car, denies the blatantly obvious and desperately tries to convince himself that the car was formed by natural processes?
And yet a car pales in comparison to the complexity seen in even the simplest, most isolated parts of the human body.
The evolutionists have even admitted that what they are looking at, looks designed…. and they then proceed to claim it had no designer.
C.S. Lewis, a former hard-core atheist, pointed out this dilemma with regards to the human mind (see my response to Sciam, https://ianjuby.org/jan2009sciam.html) when he wrote:
 “If the solar system was brought about by an accidental collision, then the appearance of organic life on this planet was also an accident, and the whole evolution of Man was an accident too. If so, then all our present thoughts are mere accidents – the accidental by-product of the movement of atoms. And this holds for the thoughts of the materialists and astronomers as well as for anyone else’s. But if their thoughts – i.e., of Materialism and Astronomy – are merely accidental by-products, why should we believe them to be true? I see no reason for believing that one accident should be able to give me a correct account of all the other accidents. It’s like expecting that the accidental shape taken by the splash when you upset a milk-jug should give you a correct account of how the jug was made and why it was upset.”-C.S. Lewis |
Lewis realized that his brain had to have had an intelligent designer. Denying of this obvious fact… is self-delusion – a form of mental illness.
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8) Donations?
I got a gentle rebuke from one of my supporters and a couple of want-to-be supporters. “Ian, you really need to put a big, prominent link on the front page of your website with big words ‘Donate here’ instead of the ‘I dare you to donate to me if you can find the donate button’ system you have.”
I appreciate the fact that people would want to support me financially in what I do, and thank you to those that do. You have no idea what it means to me, because it’s not just money (some only give five dollars), it’s the principle of the matter – it’s the fact that someone thought that what I did was worthy enough for support.
The fact of the matter is, I hate asking for money. I don’t like putting big, bold “donate” buttons all over the place. But because people have continually asked, alright:
DONATE HERE:
The scoop:
I cannot give tax receipts for any donations. If you need a tax receipt, drop me an email first and I can get that arranged. Donations can be made via paypal (No paypal account is required) here or at:
https://ianjuby.org/donate.html
Another way to support me and my ministry is to buy a DVD; this is a double-blessing: you get the weapon of information in your hands – something that can even be shared with others, and it helps me pay the bills.
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I realize this makes little difference to your argument that tree topology is derived from nothing more than haphazard whimsy (which is demonstrably false), but contrary to your blog post, Dr. Theodor is NOT advocating that hippos are most closely related to pigs. I think if you read the paper again, you will find that she advocates hippos and cetaceans as being most closely related among living mammals. This is significant because it implies a single evolutionary origin of aquaticism among ungulates. You can read a good summary of her work here:
http://scienceblogs.com/laelaps/2009/03/rearranging_the_whale_family_t.php
God bless!