News to Note, October 21, 2006

1. LiveScience: Discovery Points to Our Fishy Heritage

Evolutionists are excited this week over the latest piscine “transitional form.” Scientists led by Australian John Long are reporting on the first complete fossil of an extinct fish called Gogonasus, discovered by Long's team last year. Gogonasus is being hailed as a transitional form because it “had more advanced features than previously thought,” including middle ear structures and limbs that “resemble those of land vertebrates” (emphasis added). When resemblance is seen by a person wearing a lab coat, the inevitable result is the claim that something is a transitional form, even though there is usually no other evidence to indicate such status.

Even with the hubbub surrounding this fossil, scientists caution that its limbs-reputed to be similar to those of land vertebrates-are actually “less advanced” than those of Tiktaalik, another alleged transitional form.

Ultimately, it's best to remember the evolutionary claims that have risen to a din and then abated in the past, such as with the coelacanth. For years, the coelacanth (which is found in fossil layers allegedly 70 million or more years old) was believed to be an extinct transitional form, one of the “proofs” of evolution because of its fleshy, lobed fins. But those claims died after a living coelacanth was discovered in 1938-using its meaty fins to swim like a normal fish, and not to “transition” to land life.

2. Cincinnati Enquirer: Creation Museum costs rise

“Explaining the origin of life just got a little more expensive,” reports Andrea Remke of the Enquirer. Indeed, museum costs have risen two million dollars, though the vision for the museum has grown just as much-the extra funding is needed for expansions of Noah's Café and visitor parking and for a tripling of the size of the museum lobby. These expansion projects are the result of the overwhelming audience expected to visit the museum-at least 250,000 in the first year, according to recent research into projected attendance.

Interested in learning more about what's in store for museum visitors? Take a quick tour or keep up-to-date on the latest by reading the Museum blog.

3. BBC NEWS: Charles Darwin's works go online

There's been much made in the news of the near-complete work of Charles Darwin available online in a project run by Cambridge University. The collection “features many newly transcribed or never-before-published manuscripts written by the great man,” in addition to more famous works, such as several editions of Origin of Species (though not the first edition, perhaps partially due to the racist implications in the book, whose original full title was On the Origin of Species by Means of Natural Selection or the Preservation of Favoured Races in the Struggle for Life). Although Answers in Genesis certainly doesn't specifically support this project, we do not believe Darwin's beliefs need any “censoring” of any kind-a fair examination of evolutionary topics and the evidence shows that Darwin's ideas come up short.

Of course, the Bible is online, too.

4. BBC NEWS: Human species 'may split in two'

Are you an evolutionist? If so, your progeny might eventually constitute two (or more) species in the distant future. Evolutionist Oliver Curry believes humanity may eventually divide into a “genetic upper class and a dim-witted underclass.” The upper class would be “tall, slim, healthy, attractive, intelligent, and creative,” whereas the underclass would be “dim-witted, ugly, squat goblin-like creatures.”

The article compares such a future to the one in author H.G. Wells' science fiction classic The Time Machine, and indeed, Dr. Curry's theories are entirely speculative. That said, if evolution were true, it wouldn't be a surprise for the human species to split many times over eons, with the fittest surviving and the weak falling behind. But the apostle Paul, in the book of Acts, explains: From one man he made every nation of men, that they should inhabit the whole earth (17:26). While evolutionists claim humanity has evolved from apemen, and will eventually evolve into other species, the Bible claims that humanity is one and, having been made in the image of God, the “capstone” of the creation.

5. AP: Storms Alter Canyon in Southern Arizona

What? Storms alter canyons? Flooding can cause significant geological change in short periods of time? Although uniformitarians have impressed their “little water, lot of time” idea upon the public mind, the evidence for such slow-and-gradual ideas continues to erode. Instead, we read about Arizona's Aravaipa Canyon, which the AP reports “is no longer what it used to be.” The small creek that runs through the canyon became a veritable river, with a rate of flow of 18,000-25,000 cubic feet of water per second (or perhaps “far more,” according to locals). Then we come to the key point:

The stream bed has widened tremendously in spots and cut deep in others. [Emphasis added.]

If an overwhelmed creek-turned-river can cut deep into a streambed, how much more could the Flood of Noah and its aftereffects cut through sediment to form the geology of places like the Grand Canyon?