Archive

A friend, a while ago, articulated some possible critical arguments concerning advocacy for young earth creation which are based on observations from nature. Here are some reflections on that conversation. Read the rest of this entry »

Hippopotamus, called hippos, are monstrous, mostly herbivorous, semiaquatic mammals native to most of Africa. Only in the Sahara Desert are they not found. Their origins have always been a problem for evolution because they  are like no other living animal. Only two extant species exist, the Nile hippo (Hippopotamus amphibius), and the pygmy hippopotamus (Choeropisi liberiensis). During the daytime they are aquatic, floating in the water world, and at the nighttime they are land animals consuming mostly grasses, soft plants, and some succulent fruit. (Macdonald,1987, p. 507) They were named from the Greek words for river horse. Read the rest of this entry »

I remember that when I was a child, we tried to grow date palms from the pits or seeds in the fruit. None ever germinated. But that was then and time has passed. When we had fresh dates (with seeds inside) at Christmas a few years ago, I decided to try again. Accordingly, I took a deep margarine tub, punctured several holes in the bottom to drain out water, and filled it with good potting soil. Then each day, as the dates were consumed, I tucked their seeds into the soil. Maybe twenty or more seeds went into the pot. And nothing happened. But I kept watering. Then after eight weeks or more, a pure white shoot about 2 mm in diameter finally appeared. It looked like a growing shoot from a corn seed, only thicker. Next day another shoot appeared. It took several days for these to turn green. Eventually we had five young seedings, each of which developed a bright green leaf. More leaves followed, one at a time. These plants are monocots, like corn and grasses and bamboo. That is why they send up only a single leaf at first. Read the rest of this entry »

Everyone likes to communicate, to share what we have learned. And there is so much to learn!! While we all enjoy sharing our latest news with friends, sometimes this news involves events or objects observed in nature. Did you hear about the bear that so and so saw in their back yard?! Naturally you want to be the first to report this interesting piece of information. But as we get a little older, sometimes it is fun to make a study of an issue and be the first to report our findings to our friends.  Nature is so full of interesting features and processes and events. Have you ever asked yourself, what is happening here and why is it happening? Read the rest of this entry »

Genetic information is so detailed that questions often arise as to where it came from. Genes may either be homologues to genes in other species (similar in composition to genes in other organisms and assumed to have originated from a common source), or they may be entirely different. These different genes are called orphan genes. Orphan genes (often spelled ORFan genes) are species specific genes that are significantly different from all other known genes, and are thus genetically isolated from the enormous set of genetic possibilities. Read the rest of this entry »

During his second lecture at Creation Weekend 2018, Dr. Gordon Wilson stimulated our appreciation of the creation with his presentation entitled “The Magnificence of the Mundane” The words in the title, he pointed out, are actually contradictory. While the word “magnificence” communicates excitement, the term “mundane” suggests that something is boring or dull. But what he wanted to share with us is that God’s work in creation is amazing, displaying God’s wisdom and finesse (Ps. 104:24). And in this context, we are told that King Solomon, full of wisdom, spoke about trees, herbaceous plants, beasts, birds, reptiles and fish (I Kings 4:33). Read the rest of this entry »

Some people actually like numbers and mathematics, and some people don’t. Everybody knows that! Some people however sound positively lyrical on the subject of numbers. Dr. David Berlinsky, for example, in his book infinite ascent: a short history of mathematics (2005) describes the inexhaustible variety of natural numbers and their personalities. (Modern Library Paperback edition p. 5). He lists various demanding disciplines that mathematicians have developed. Beyond the practical and theoretical challenges that mathematics provides however are the insights into nature. As Dr. Kurt Wise pointed out in Faith, Form and Time (2002) “The universe seems to operate with mathematical precision, and natural laws have a mathematical form.” (p. 91)  Astronomer Dr. Timothy Ferris elaborates on  mathematics in his 1997 book The Whole Shebang: “[M]athematics [is] a codified form of logic that embodies the faith of science that nature works in a rational way.” He adds “Like all scientific theories, relativity is expressed in terms of mathematical equations-” Read the rest of this entry »

Every year, it seems, we hear about anniversaries, some obscure and some more significant. But 2019 is big!! It is the 150^th anniversary of a major step forward in our understanding of the chemical elements. In March 1869, Dimitri Mendeleev, an obscure Russian scientist, managed to explain chemistry in a way that made sense. Thus, UNESCO has designated the year 2019 as the Year of the Periodic Table of the elements. Some people consider that this single document is one of the most powerful icons in science. Read the rest of this entry »

Do you like to watch your favourite team show off their talents? Are you happy when they win? Sometimes it’s fun to be a spectator. All you have to do is cheer. Let’s be spectators in temperature races featuring that special competitor, the yeast cell.

Yeast is a tiny mold made up of a single cell. Yeast has the remarkable ability to turn sugar into alcohol and carbon dioxide gas. If there are more yeast cells, naturally, sugar is turned into alcohol and carbon dioxide gas at a faster rate. The happier the yeast is kept, the faster it grows and the more product it produces. Let’s see if temperature has any effect on how happy the yeast is and thus on how fast it grows and how much product it produces. Read the rest of this entry »

Aardvarks (Aard-Vark, Dutch for “earth-pig”), are one-of-a-kind animals, one of the strangest mammals you will ever encounter. They have a body like a large rat, a long snout like an ant eater, a pig nose, long ears like a rabbit, pink skin with coarse hair like a pig (but in contrast to pigs, aardvarks have very thick skin and lack a fat layer), short legs, feet like a pig and a long thin tail that resembles a kangaroo’s tail (Hutchins, 2004, p. 155). Their barrel-shaped body weighs between 100 and 180 pounds (50 to 83 kg). The greatly elongated head-snout is set on a short thick neck. The tail is thick at the base and gradually tapers. So strange was it that, when described to European naturalists, many doubted its reality (Catchpoole, 2014, p. 28). Read the rest of this entry »

Dr. Gordon Wilson’s presentations at Creation Weekend 2018 were extremely well received. The first lecture dealt with natural evil. Mankind has long pondered why our beautiful creation is so full of cruelty and death. Indeed our ecology as it is now, runs on death. And many creatures survive entirely by consuming other creatures. The big question, Dr. Gordon Wilson declared, is how this situation came to be since God created everything in an unfallen state, all of it very good. Moreover, Scripture tells us that there was no physical death, animal or human, before the fall. All animals were vegetarian. Read the rest of this entry »

Biologists tell us that the ability to detect and identify odours is perhaps the most important sense that animals need to survive. By means of odour detection, insects locate food, avoid toxins and predators, and communicate with others of their own species. Their sense of smell is located mainly in their antennae.

One insect that is particularly talented in many respects, is none other than the famous fruit fly. For example, these red-eyed beauties exhibit extremely good abilities to find rotting fruit. Because fruit flies are easy to culture, biologists first studied odour detecting talents in these creatures. The study was expected to be interesting but scarcely earth-shattering. But guess what! Drosophila (fruit fly) was the tip of the iceberg to reveal that insects exhibit odour detecting abilities that are highly unusual and a major problem for evolutionary expectations. Since then similar studies have been conducted on moths, beetles, other flies, cockroaches and social insects. Read the rest of this entry »

Despite the fact that Edmonton suffered through periodic snowfalls from mid-September onward, the days before the Creation Weekend and on the weekend itself, were warmish and dry. As a result, a number of people were able to drive long distances to our sessions. Some people came from Grande Prairie, the Northwest Territories, northwest British Columbia, Calgary and far southern Alberta.  Those from far and near all appreciated the sessions. Read the rest of this entry »

Creation Weekend 2018 October 26 & 27

The Creation Science Association of Alberta is excited that our featured speaker for Creation Weekend 2018 is Dr. Gordon Wilson of New St. Andrews College in Moscow, Idaho. Dr. Wilson’s enthusiasm for biology is infectious and the topics which he will present are ones that are very relevant to our lives as Christians today.

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Tree sloths are one of the strangest families one could imagine and seem to have very little in common with any other animal kind (Edmonds, p. 38). They are the world’s only inverted quadruped (Cooke, p. 52). Sloths are almost comically slow-moving mammals, deliberately moving so slowly that it looks like a movie of them is being played in slow motion. Neither prodding nor threats will make them move much faster, partly because when on the ground, their small legs are so weak that they have to drag their heavy middle along the surface (Cooke, p. 51). A tortoise would easily beat them in a race. Their cruising speed is a mere 0.19 miles per hour, but they can climb a tree at a fairly good clip, for a sloth that is.  They often sleep, or appear to sleep, one cannot always tell, about 10 hours a day in trees in the Central and South America rain forests. In contrast to most mammals, they are neither strictly nocturnal nor diurnal, but frequent nappers instead (Hoke, p. 88). Read the rest of this entry »