News from Eden
Some recent findings fit naturally with a Genesis view of natural history.
Recent paternity: In the Genesis 10 Table of Nations, the descendents of Japheth (eldest son of Noah) migrated toward Europe after the Tower of Babel disperson. Science Daily just reported that most Europeans are descended from a “handful of Bronze Age forefathers,” (not that the forefathers were so tiny as to fit in a hand). Geneticists from the University of Leicester analyzed Y-chromosome sequences to determine that the recent paternity among European men occurred “due to a ‘population explosion’ a few thousand years ago.” Such a recent event should seem surprising to evolutionists who usually measure human ancestry in hundreds of thousands of years.
Snake legs: In the Genesis 3 account of the Fall and the curse, the serpent is condemned to crawl on its belly. This suggests that snakes originally had some other form, perhaps with legs. It may be a stretch to connect a story on Science Daily with this, but Yale scientists have concluded that the ancestor of snakes “had tiny hindlimbs with ankles and toes” in a period that “coincides with the rapid appearance of many species of mammals and birds on Earth.” According to the evolutionary timeline, “They most likely originated in the warm, forested ecosystems of the Southern Hemisphere around 128 million years ago,” but creationists strongly dispute the dating methods involved. The “rapid appearance” of snakes, mammals and birds sounds like creation. Laura Geggel agrees with this on Live Science: “the rise of snakes coincided with the Cretaceous Terrestrial Revolution, when there was thought to be an intense diversification of animals, including insects, reptiles and mammals“.
Awe; my pleasure: The American Psychological Association says that “Awe may promote altruistic behavior” (Science Daily). There was surely reason for awe when Adam and Eve strolled around a newly-created perfect world, in innocent fellowship with the Creator of it all. It makes sense that part of the image of God he imbued in human nature is a reflection of his own lovingkindness toward his creatures; but how could altruism evolve? That’s been a long-standing mystery to evolutionists (e.g., see Gilbert Roberts struggle to explain it in Current Biology). The APA says,
“When experiencing awe, you may not, egocentrically speaking, feel like you’re at the center of the world anymore,” Piff said. “By shifting attention toward larger entities and diminishing the emphasis on the individual self, we reasoned that awe would trigger tendencies to engage in pro-social behaviors that may be costly for you but that benefit and help others.”
Nature sounds: The first humans were surrounded by the restful sounds of flowing waters and singing birds. It shouldn’t be surprising, then, that Science Daily says, “Natural sounds improve mood and productivity.” Such sounds probably made Adam and Eve productive and happy as they tended the Garden of Eden. Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute studied the effect of natural sounds, and now recommends that offices include them for workers.
Smooth sex: Sometimes human sexuality is portrayed in battle metaphors: the sperm cells fighting and competing their way to the egg. PhysOrg says, by contrast, that the female reproductive tract assists the swimming sperm, guiding them with “critically guide sperm migration without aiding the migration of pathogens.” Sounds like a plan. But did you ever wonder why 250 million sperm are ejaculated to achieve a successful fertilization?
It’s one of the true miracles of life, that moment when hundreds of little sperm make it all the way to an unfertilized egg and one breaches its walls. But what of all those other spermatozoa, the hundreds of millions of little guys that never make anything of themselves, that never fertilize an egg?
PhysOrg says that scientists in Jerusalem approached this question, and found that it’s like launching a search. The tradeoff between sperm cell mortality and successful arrival at the target in a hostile environment necessitates launching a very large number of trials. The Biblical worldview sees a new life beginning at conception. Haploid sperm cells, therefore, are not individual human beings—nor even half-human—any more than skin cells that fall off by the millions each day, though equipped with full complements of the human genome.
Common designs: Evolutionists should not expect any complex systems to be similar for animals very far apart on Darwin’s tree. This opening to an article in Current Biology should be surprising to them: “A recent study shows that brain connectivity in Drosophila melanogaster follows a small-world, modular and rich-club organisation that facilitates information processing,” Marcus Kaiser writes. “This organisation shows a striking similarity with the mammalian brain.” We know that Intelligence can take similar solutions and apply them in very different situations. In Genesis, flies and mammals did not evolve separately over millions of years, but were created within two days.
Health decline: “There was a lot of evidence that earlier humans had stronger bones,” PhysOrg mentions in an article titled, “Agriculture, declining mobility drove humans’ shift to lighter bones.” Doesn’t this imply that early humans had better fitness? Johns Hopkins scientists compared modern bones with early human bones. “When they analyzed the geometry of bones over time, the researchers found a decline in leg bone strength between the Mesolithic era, which began about 10,000 years ago, and the age of the Roman Empire, which began about 2,500 years ago.” Creationists look to the first humans as being stronger and fitter than our mutation-afflicted population.
Rejection of God: If Genesis is true, the highest good for man is fellowship with God. That brings love, joy, and peace. But that relationship was broken at the Fall, when sin and death entered the world. Fast-forward to 2015: Live Science says “Atheists Inspire Thoughts of Death in Many Americans.” Reporter Stephanie Pappas points out that “Atheists consistently rank among the lowest of the low in the court of American public opinion.” She quotes U of Washington psychologists who inferred that the reason is that thinking of atheism reminds people of death. Why would that connection be made? Pappas and the psychologists try to boost the esteem of atheism by saying it’s an unfair bias, but they acknowledge that “inflammatory personalities such as Christopher Hitchens or Richard Dawkins” haven’t helped atheist reputations.
Men over genes: The twisted evolutionary view of humanity is evident in this piece on The Conversation by female anthropologist Jo Setchell, “Why men are not biologically useless after all…” Don’t think her mission is to rescue male self-esteem. Thinking evolutionarily, she writes under a huge photo of Charles Darwin,
The question of why sex is so widespread across nature has intrigued and puzzled scientists for a very long time. From a biological [i.e., evolutionary] perspective, the purpose of life is to pass on your genes to the next generation. Asexual organisms, such as bacteria, do this simply by duplicating themselves. The offspring is an identical copy of the parent, which passes on all its genes.
Sexual organisms, however, need a partner to reproduce. Sexual species have two sexes, but only one of these can bear young. This means that sexual populations can only grow half as fast as asexual populations. Sex is also inefficient for the reason that you need to find a mate, which takes time and energy. Overall, life would be a lot simpler if we could just split in two to reproduce.
Setchell offers various speculations for the conundrum, based on thinking at the University of East Anglia (see press release). Her speculation for now is that “sexual selection – and partner choice – improves the overall genetic quality of a species and reduces the risk of population extinction.” This fails to explain why microbes and other asexual organisms continue to do so well.
One evolutionist famously expressed the selfish-gene view that “a chicken is an egg’s way of making another egg.” Genesis turns that upside down, focusing on the wonder and beauty of the mature organism. The chicken came first. The first humans were made as adults. For us humans, a sperm is a man’s way, and an egg a woman’s way, of making another human being in God’s image. Man and woman were created to be image-bearers of the Almighty God. In the Garden, sex was a means, not an end; it was God’s beautifully designed way to fill a perfect world with beings who would love, worship and obey Him. Sadly, rebellion led to atheism (rejection of the true Creator God) in all its varied forms.
We hope these entries will help dispel the evolutionary fogma from your eyes, and cause you to rejoice in the beautiful fit of science to the creation story found in Genesis. Evolutionary explanations seem forced and unnatural. The timescale is all off. Creation, Fall, Flood, Disperson—all these accounts really happened. Why are we surprised that the evidence fits? Why are we worried that evolutionists have a better “scientific” story? They don’t. They’re largely God-hating atheists who love Darwin. They’re determined to erase God from their thinking. When you acid-wash the Darwin bigotry out of the articles, and then take out the long-age assumptions, the real evidence fits Genesis. Read the book.