Author Archive

Some years ago, I had occasion to collect a water sample from a small pond south of Lake Manitoba. The fun part was going back to the lab and looking at a drop of the sample under the microscope. I was sampling lakes and ponds every day, but on this occasion I screamed at what I saw. There before my wondering eyes were relatively large, brownish algal cells with fierce looking spines. They were spinning slowly as I watched.

Everyone knows that there are amazing phenomena in the natural world which are totally unexpected. Consider, for example, the male horseshoe crab whose eyes are one million times more sensitive to light at night than during the day. Shakespeare referred to such situations when he had Hamlet declare: “There are more things in heaven and earth, Horatio, then are dreamt of in your philosophy.” (Act 1 Scene 5)

In that context, would you believe that there is a night flying moth that migrates long distances using the night sky for its navigation system? Let’s see what that moth would need to achieve this:

Once a qualified and interesting scientist has agreed to headline our next Creation Weekend, the members of CSAA’s executive have the fun task to choose which presentations will be featured. Every speaker has a menu of titles, but not all of them can be accommodated in one weekend. Choosing the line up of presentations is no easy task. Each member has different preferences and some choices were more recently presented than others. Nevertheless, year after year, the actual material presented fits together beautifully and seems to be the best of possible choices. So it was again this year that our speaker’s three lectures were stimulating, upbuilding and interesting.

I joined the Creation Research Society in 2023 because God put a desire in my heart to do research and publish technical papers.  My undergraduate science degree has no major, and I’ve received some criticism for that, but the program I enrolled in allowed me to try a bit of everything and get a well-rounded base of scientific knowledge.  Then God gave me a job where I have the freedom to do the things I love.  I needed some intellectual stimulation, though, so I told God, “I need some science I can sink my teeth into.”  In September 2024, He answered by handing me a paleoanthropology assignment and connecting me to a co-author, Carol Adams.  We decided to attend the 2025 CRS Conference at the end of July, and Carol suggested that we submit an abstract and present our work. 

Creation Weekend with Dr. Brian Thomas

More information about Dr. Brian Thomas

Exciting free presentations
October 24 and 25, 2025
Sessions – Friday at 7 pm, Saturday at 10 am and 1:15 pm

Providence Canadian Reformed Church
(12905 122 Ave NW, Edmonton, Alberta)

Event details:
Poster (downloadable)
Handout (downloadable)

Understanding genetics was so straightforward back in the good old days. I am not sure when those days were, but our picture of control systems in our bodies was easier when obvious stretches of DNA, called genes, were believed to control specific traits like eye colour and blood type. It used to be that we talked about genes and ‘junk DNA’. Now there are genes and there are control systems.  It was the use of supercomputers which changed our understanding of how the human genome works.

Back in the days when television was new to North American society, there was a show called Perry Mason. This featured a lawyer who specialized in courtroom drama. In predictable fashion, Mr. Mason set out to defend an accused person, but the facts of the case looked very discouraging for the defendant. However, thanks to great sleuthing by Perry Mason’s two assistants, some important new details were discovered. In the courtroom, as the show drew toward a close, Mr. Mason triumphantly asked a witness, “Isn’t it true that ….?” And some new facts were revealed which changed the whole story. Everyone was all smiles when the defendant was exonerated. The point is that partial information can lead to wrong conclusions.

Commercial movies come and go and many are soon forgotten. Of those movies that I saw as a university student, there is only one that I remember. Inherit the Wind was the lesser feature on a double bill in a small theatre in Quebec. But the content packed a powerful message! The story line was about a trial involving Christian townsfolk in an American town who were ignorant and boorish, as opposed to evolution supporting educators there who were informed and civilized. Everyone understood that the movie claimed to portray an actual event, the Scopes Trial of July 1925 in Dayton, Tennessee. Thus, we reflect on the centenary of this trial which some claim represents the most significant trial of the century. What was it all about, and what is its legacy?

The importance of the mineral calcium phosphate to living organisms can hardly be overstated. It is used by many organisms, including humans, to build their bones and skeletons.  This is especially true for fish, crustaceans, and some brachiopods.  Besides that, and even more importantly, phosphate ions are required for major building blocks of life, such as DNA and RNA.  It is also required for the production of adenosine triphosphate (ATP)—the molecular fuel of living cells (Brady, Tostevin and Tosca 2022).

Evolutionists struggle to explain how life could have arisen from non-life—a concept known as “abiogenesis” or “spontaneous generation.”  One of the problems is the importance of phosphate ions for biological molecules and the prohibitively low concentrations of phosphates in nature for those molecules to form spontaneously.  There just isn’t enough phosphate.  Phosphate minerals tend to be insoluble under most conditions, so only trace amounts exist as dissolved minerals in seawater.  In fact, on average, seawater contains only about 0.071 parts per million of phosphorous (Simandl, Paradis and Fajber 2012).