News to Note, January 5, 2013

1. New Loris Species Emerges

Lots more loris species than previously thought, all sweating out their survival

2. What Carved the Grand Canyon?

What carved the Grand Canyon?

3. Denisovan Human Genome Sequenced

Revolutionary DNA sequencing technique said to be “a powerful new tool to fish for genes that have recently evolved.”

4. Evolutionary Language Search Lands at Babel

Search for evolutionary explanation of languages falls short and lands at Babel.

5. Science Teacher Reveals Unscientific Bias, Blind Spot

Science teacher reveals his unscientific bias and blind spot.

And Don’t Miss . . .

• “What Should Teachers Say to Religious Students who Doubt Evolution?” is the title of a recent blog in Scientific American. In it college teacher John Horgan declares that it is his job to prod young people “into questioning their most cherished beliefs.” Christians young and old should examine their beliefs in light of God’s Word. (Acts 17:11, 1 Thessalonians 5:21, 1 John 4:1, and numerous other Scriptures exhort us to be biblically discerning.) All of us need to practice using the trustworthy “biblical glasses” provided by our Creator to correctly understand everything from morality to science. But Horgan is attempting to subvert students’ confidence in God’s Word by replacing God’s authority with his own. He explains in the article how by distancing himself from God-bashers like atheist Richard Dawkins and those who claim evolutionary science has answered life’s “whys” as well as the “hows,” he is able to teach religious students that “the theory of evolution by natural selection is arguably the single most profound insight into reality that humanity has ever achieved” and that it is supported by “mountains of evidence” from fossils to DNA. Like other evolutionists, he mistakenly believes that scientific insight into realities of the untestable past can be made without reliance on worldview-based assumptions. We cannot know about the unobservable past without some sort of eyewitness account. God provided this in the Bible. Furthermore, the “mountains of evidence” in the fossil record and DNA do not show evolution from one kind of creature into new more complex ones and do not show how molecules-to-man evolution could or even did happen. Such evolutionary conclusions are interpretations that assume—without any scientifically testable support—that life could randomly emerge from non-living elements through natural processes and that organisms could acquire genetic information to increase their own complexity. Read more about Horgan’s claims in Ken Ham’s blog at blogs.answersingenesis.org/blogs/ken-ham/2012/12/31/professors-who-deliberately-shake-the-faith-of-our-children