Archive

People came from hundreds of kilometres away to hear Dr. Steven Ausin speak at CSAA’s Creation Weekend in Edmonton in October. His first lecture on Friday evening, October 24 was on the global flood model, also known as catastrophic plate tectonics. This model provides an explanation for how the earth came to its present state (as a result of a worldwide flood). The model was first proposed in a paper in 1994. There were six authors, Drs. Steven Austin, John Baumgardner, Hubert Humphreys, Andrew Snelling, Larry Vardiman and Kurt Wise (each representing different relevant technical areas of expertise). Read the rest of this entry »

Manatees (family Trichechidae, genus Trichechus), often called sea cows, are large, fully aquatic, mostly herbivorous marine mammals. Three living species exist, the Amazonian, West Indian, and the West African manatee. These are huge animals weighing from 400 to 550 kilograms (880 to 1,210 lb), and 2.8 to 3.0 metres (9.2 to 9.8 ft) long. The females tend to be both larger and heavier.

In many ways manatees are unique compared to all other life forms, a fact that poses major problems for evolutionists. It is almost like a designer selected their traits from a wide variety of existing life forms, from reptiles to fish to mammals. For example, manatees feed almost entirely on aquatic plants and that is “unique among living marine mammals” (Berta, 2012. Return to the Sea: The Life and Evolutionary Times of Marine Mammals. University of California Press. Berkeley p. 127). Read the rest of this entry »

Book Review of Guide to Animals

The author, Frank Sherwin has organized his introduction to animals in interesting ways. The message is conveyed partly by the text, partly by his organization of topics, but also by the amazing variety of beautiful illustrations. In style, this book closely resembles its sister publication Guide to Creation Basics. Read the rest of this entry »

It was in 1909 that Charles Walcott of the Smithsonian Institution, noticed an unusual fossil in Canada’s Rocky Mountains in Yoho National Park. It was the discoloured, extremely thin remains of a soft-bodied marine creature. Now wait a minute, he must have thought! What we normally find as fossils are the hard parts such as shell or bone from once living creatures. Naturally intrigued, Walcott returned to British Columbia for several summers. He found a whole collection of soft bodied creatures previously unknown to science. Read the rest of this entry »

Animals display many remarkable behaviours. To better appreciate their talents, how often have we wished that these creatures could communicate with us? We would love to know where they go during migrations, for example. In recent years however, animal ecologists have developed techniques to allow us to track some of these creatures. As a result, these animals communicate with us simply by doing what comes naturally, during the course of which our little espionage devices report where the animals have gone. 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 »

Imagine that you love solving practical problems like how to build something with straws which will support some weight. No doubt your design will be better than those of your friends and/or siblings!

Well here is a challenge that is fun to think about but difficult to solve. Imagine that you are presented with 600 feet (19000 cm) of shoelace. You are also presented with some small sheets of plastic, each cut into an appropriate shape so that they form a hollow icosahedral container when assembled together. Your assignment is to get the shoe lace into the container! Read the rest of this entry »

Since the early 1990s, the Creation Science Association has published an alternative tour guide to the Royal Tyrrell Museum in Drumheller, Alberta. This world class facility was built in large part to display fossils from western Canada, and particularly Alberta. Also a few fossils from the western United States are on display.

The museum has re-invented its displays many times over the years, probably in an effort to maintain public interest. Certainly there are a lot of interesting new fossil finds now on display. Initially many fossilized marine animals without backbones were on display as well as large land (and marine) reptiles. Now most of the beautiful marine creatures are gone. Also a large simulated scene at the far end of the Great Dinosaur Hall has long since been replaced by a presentation on horned dinosaur diversity and relationships. Read the rest of this entry »

Vance Nelson’s beautiful new coffee table style book on fossils, Untold Secrets of Planet Earth: Flood Fossils, discusses aspects of the topic that will certainly be new to many readers. In addition the author adopts a chatty style which is readily understood by all. Complete with personal reminiscences and historical details concerning each topic, the author builds his discussion of each topic around spectacular illustrations. Read the rest of this entry »

October 24 & 25, 2014  in Edmonton

Ever since Dr. Steve Austin earned his Ph.D. in coal geology from Pennsylvania State University, he has shared his expertise with Christians eager to understand how nature expresses what the Bible tells us happened in the past. Indeed, when it comes to geological research, Dr. Austin’s resume goes on and on, all of it exciting! Read the rest of this entry »

In many parts of North American, the most common wild mammals one sees are  rodents in the order Rodentia. The largest known modern rodent is the South American semiaquatic capybara, which can grow to be 107 to 134 cm (3.51 to 4.40 ft) long, 50 to 64 cm (20 to 25 in) tall and typically weighs 35 to 66 kg (77 to 150 lb). Rodents are classified in one of the most successful mammalian groups today (Churakov et al. p. 1315). Read the rest of this entry »

Most people have a love-hate relationship with rodents. That is, people love to hate them. This is a pity since rodents exhibit various interesting talents. For a start, when we think of rodents, we think of rats. Rats certainly have a bad reputation because they thrive in so many environments where nobody wants them. Nevertheless rats are smart and individually very clean. Most rats live less than a year in the wild. Mama rats however are definitely overachievers. Read the rest of this entry »

Astronomer Halton Arp (1924-2013) represents an excellent example of how mainstream scientists protect their favoured explanations against anyone, no matter how qualified or prestigious, who dares to question the majority position. We see how actual observations made by Arp and colleagues, were/are not allowed to call the Big Bang origins theory into question. Read the rest of this entry »

Sometimes scientific studies seem more frivolous than serious work. That does not happen too often, of course since scientific research is expensive. However there was one study published in 2005 that did seem “cute rather than deep” (in the words of psychologist Steven Pinker of Harvard University.) Actually the study was intended to demonstrate serious evolutionary implications. As such it was chosen as the cover story for the December 22/29 December 2005 issue of Nature. Thus the caption on the cover featured the expression: “Fascinating Rhythm: Dancing’s Role in Sexual Selection.”  However on November 27/13 Nature withdrew this article from its published collection. Read the rest of this entry »

In many ways, the new book The Global Flood: Unlocking Earth’s Geologic History by John Morris, is a repackaging of Steven Austin’s (editor) book Grand Canyon: Monument to Catastrophe. However the new book is written in non-technical language, with many more illustrative maps, diagrams and charts as well as many beautiful photographs. Thus for many people, this new title will prove very useful and popular indeed. Read the rest of this entry »