News to Note, July 28, 2012

1. Salmon: Rapid Evolution

Salmon said to have evolved rapidly.

2. Tiny Tracks Trouble Evolutionary Rate

Tiny tracks trouble evolutionary rate.

3. Fine Filaments for Feathered Dinosaurs

Fine filaments on Bavarian theropod boasted to “bridge the considerable gap”1 between “feathered dinosaur” groups.

4. Source of Earth’s Water

Carbonaceous chondrites steal comets’ credit for watering the early earth.

5. If California’s Uniform Parentage Act Becomes Law

Radicalization of the family imminent if amendment to California’s Uniform Parentage Act becomes law.

And Don’t Miss . . .

• Some months back we heard from the UK that people who accept the reality of a Creator God are insane.2 Now we are hearing that those who would dare tell a child that God is real, much less that His eyewitness account of the creation of a literal Adam and Eve is genuine, are guilty of “child abuse.” While sanctioning the teaching of common multicultural values, the author of a blog column in the Independent–UK says those who teach creationism as fact are “perverting education.” The blogger’s basis for this statement rests on her anecdotal experience—that the so-called “committed Christians” in her life “don’t for a moment believe that Adam and Eve were ever a physically living people”—and her conviction that there is “more than one sort of truth.” Yet, logically, contradictory things cannot be true at the same time. Furthermore, because fallible and rebellious human beings over millennia have often chosen to worship false gods, the fallible and rebellious human being who wrote this blog column believes “God” is only “man’s name for the almost unimaginable force which drove (drives) the process of evolution and change – a personification.” Yet God’s account of Creation and the global Flood are consistent with the biology and geology we see in this world. The blogger extols the virtues of teaching children “to think and reason for themselves.” It seems, however, that she is only in favor of allowing children this privilege after they have been thoroughly indoctrinated to believe there is no God. She derides those who would “withhold facts and information” from children. Yet she would withhold from them an honest and open exposure to the Word of God and an honest exposure to the multitudinous scientific criticisms of the myths of evolution and millions of years. Frankly, her hypocritical stand can be summed up like this: “Children should be taught to think and reason for themselves so long as it is certain they will accept as true the things their atheistic instructors tell them are true; then if they decide there is moral value buried in Bible stores, they are free to enjoy them.” How sad this blogger has not known “committed Christians” who actually accept the whole truth of Scripture. Christians who adopt compromise positions regarding evolution and millions of years cannot offer consistently defensible answers to this world. For more information see “The Search for the Historical Adam” and Population Genomics.