Articles » Intermediate

Special eyes

Horseshoe crabs don’t look mysterious and enigmatic, but they are. Normally one would not expect any very deep questions to be evoked concerning creatures which resemble miniature tanks, moving with ponderous dignity across the beach. But these marine creatures with shells, these “crabs”, are not actually miniature when compared to other animals of the seashore. These animals weigh as much as 4.5 kg (10 lbs) and they may grow to be 60 cm (2 ft) long. To find one such specimen would be memorable enough – but where there is one, there are generally thousands or hundreds of thousands. At the appropriate time in the spring, some beaches along the Atlantic seaboard from Maine to Yucatan Peninsula, are invaded by thousands or even millions of these apparitions. Read the rest of this entry »

Advance warning of a spectacular media blitz arrived at PBS affiliates as the past school year ended. The memo, dated June 15/01 was entitled “The Evolution Controversy: Use it or Lose it.” According to the memo, the affiliates should prepare not only to promote the eight hour series entitled Evolution, but they were also to promote the very concept of evolution itself. The series would run in September as the new school year began. This project, which was two years in preparation, was co-produced by WGBH Boston (of NOVA fame) and Clear Blue Sky Productions. The program was declared to be a “comprehensive PBS project, not just a television series.” The objective was to reach as many people as possible (including teachers and ten million students over a ten year period). To that end, a feature-rich web site had been prepared as well as a HarperCollins companion book. Among the target audiences the memo listed religious leaders and government officials. These are not usually expected to pay particular attention to general interest science programming. But this was to be no apple pie and motherhood “beauty of nature” sort of show. Indeed one of the “outreach” objectives was to “co-opt existing local dialogue about teaching evolution in schools.” To support this more serious political agenda, the advertising campaign would include television, print media and “guerrilla/viral marketing” whatever that may be (but it doesn’t sound good). Read the rest of this entry »

Sometimes the good old days look so appealing. Wouldn’t it be nice to return to the optimistic and traditional 1950s, for example? Alternatively a nice isolated cottage in the woods somewhere would be fine. We could spend our days far from the terrors of technology and pure science. Obviously however, such visions are unrealistic. Christians were placed in this world to be the salt of the earth. There is no escape from the dilemmas of this life. Read the rest of this entry »

 The Ice Age and Climate Change

Reviewed by Andrea Reitan

Climate change alarmism seems to be a cultural obsession these days, among both Christians and non-Christians alike.  Much of the hoopla around climate change stems from the claim that there is a scientific consensus and that we need to change our ways, but is this true?  Should Christians jump aboard the climate change crusade?  In The Ice Age and Climate Change, Jake Hebert aims to examine the evidence commonly used in climate discussions, arguing that a Young-Earth Creation (YEC) framework leads to different conclusions than the mainstream narrative.

We hear all the time about how complicated living cells are. It makes us think that such entities  were designed to work as they do. People who support the idea that all things came about by natural processes, however, do not want to think that there is a mind behind what we see in all living creatures from microbes up to the largest, most complicated organisms. These latter people want to show how the living cell developed spontaneously, without any direction. So they want to demonstrate that there were early cells which were much much simpler than what we see today, cells that could have appeared through natural processes. These scientists want to demonstrate that the barriers to spontaneous development are not too high. Read the rest of this entry »

Dinosaurs are such showy, dramatic creatures, and their fossils are found in such variety that they have naturally attracted a lot of attention from scientists and the public alike. The question “where did they come from?” has attracted a lot of attention from specialists who seek an evolutionary answer. Nevertheless, a recent article on the topic remarks that relationships (lines of evolutionary descent) between the major groups of dinosaurs have historically been uncertain.  Why would that be? Have we seen any improvement in this situation with new analyses? [David Cerny and Ashley L. Simonoff. 2023. Statistical evaluation of character support reveals the instability of higher-level dinosaur phylogeny. Nature https://doi.org/10.1038/s41598-023-35784-3 (2023) 13:9273 open access]

One of the great strengths of the intelligent design community, is the large variety of people from diverse scientific disciplines, who contribute to the discussion. With many minds and original approaches, the arguments are honed, and honed again. Everybody wins. In similar fashion, the appearance of a new creation based book with original arguments gives us occasion not only to cheer – but also to pay attention to its contents. Read the rest of this entry »

Some of the first preserved fossils were trilobites. Most paleontologists thus consider trilobites to be one of the most ancient of known fossil groups. Fortunately, a large number of well-preserved examples exist, which allows a detailed study of the animal. As a result, much is known about its well-designed, complex eye. New research on the workings of the trilobite eye shows that it is far more complex and better designed than thought even just a few years ago. Such a discovery is contrary to evolution theory. Read the rest of this entry »

While secular astronomers and cosmologists agree that the universe is beautiful, they mean something altogether different from mere appearance of celestial objects. What the scientists appreciate is elegant mathematical equations. They care very little about actual bodies out in space. However, the relationship of mathematics to the universe is a matter of assumption. Read the rest of this entry »

Among the wonders of the natural world are plants that eat animals, and the best known example is the Venus flytrap Dionaea muscipula. In Charles Darwin’s book on insectivorous plants, he described the plant and its ingenious design in great detail, but did not offer even a clue about its possible evolution (Darwin, 1896, pp. 286-320). He even called the plant “one of the most wonderful plants in the world” (p. 286).

This carnivorous plant is found growing in peaty sandy soil mainly in one small place, the extreme far east coast of North Carolina (Schnell, 2003, p. 85). It catches its prey, mostly ants, beetles, spiders and other crawling arachnids, with a complex, well designed, mitt-shaped trapping mechanism located at the terminal portion of the plant’s leaf (Ellison, 2006; Ellison and Gotelli, 2009). Read the rest of this entry »

A special section in the December 11, 1998 issue of the journal Science was devoted to a celebration of the roundworm Caenorabditis elegans. Although a lengthy name has been conferred on this creature, the organism itself is actually at most about 1 mm long. Of the 20,000 or so known species of roundworm or nematode, most are parasites. This species, however, (generally called by the more catchy title of C. elegans), lives free in the soil. Hardly visible to the naked eye, an individual worm nevertheless appears very large when viewed through an ordinary microscope. Except for cells destined to become eggs or sperm, this animal consists of only 959 cells. The whole creature is quite transparent so that, through the microscope, one can easily view the various cells and organs. Development of an individual is fast too, requiring only three days in a life span of two or three weeks. Such an organism seemed ideal for laboratory studies. Thus in 1963 Cambridge biologist Sydney Brenner began a research program which continues to the present. And what fascinating results have been obtained! Read the rest of this entry »

From time to time, CSAA adds relevant new discussions to HeadStart, our amazing information resource (headstart.create.ab.ca). While many online discussions provide definitions and current views on an issue, HeadStart typically provides the history of how this science-related discipline came to be developed and what that means for us today. For example, within the past year we have added new topics related to dinosaurs and fossils, all written at the introductory level. All these items are posted under the Investigate Further banner. These topics include dinosaurs; extinct Alberta creatures (marine reptiles); record in sedimentary rock; geological column; and fossils.

Symbols are powerful tools for communication. Is there anyone who does not know what the golden arches stand for, or the Nike “swoosh”? The Canadian maple leaf for example, and the Olympic five intertwined circles convey images in our minds of completely different institutions – the one a country situated just north of the United States, and the other an international body regulating competitions in amateur sport. In Canada the “crown” refers in symbolic terms to the authority of federal or provincial governments. In the 1960s a circle with an inverted Y inside conjured in everyone’s minds anti-nuclear messages typified by the “Ban-the-Bomb” slogan. In science, a circle with an arrow attached, borrows from Greek mythology. It is supposed to depict Mars (the war god’s) shield and by inference, the male gender. Similarly a circle with a handle was chosen to represent Minerva’s mirror, and by inference, the female gender. Most people recognize these symbols for male and female. Read the rest of this entry »

It is easy to imagine the excitement astronomers felt when the telescope was invented early in the seventeenth century. Until that time, mankind’s observations had been confined to five bright planets, moving against a starry background. Nevertheless 150 more years passed until another planet was discovered. In England in 1781, German-born musician and telescope maker, Sir William Herschel, announced that he had discovered a new planet. This body was named Uranus after the most ancient of the Greek gods. Read the rest of this entry »

In recent years, people have become really interested in genetics.  They ask questions like “Who were my ancestors?  What can I learn about my family through our genes?  What mix of nationalities do I have?”  As the genomes of various species, including humans, have been mapped, scientists have reflected on many issues.  One of those issues is molecular clocks.