News to Note, September 1, 2007

A weekly feature examining news from the biblical viewpoint

on September 1, 2007

Featured in News to Know

A whole lot of nothing, preserved pollen, spider scuba tanks, atmospheric changes, more moths, supersonic hail, and an evolutionist exposing Darwin’s errors round out this weeks News to Note.

1. Scientists Found Nothing, Delighted

News flash: nothing has been found in the universe, reports a University of Minnesota team of astronomers—or, at least, that they have found an “enormous void” in space with nothing in it.

2. BBC News: “Orchids date to time of the dinos”

Orchids, the most diverse plant group on earth, aren’t frequently found in the fossil record—which is why the recent discovery of ancient orchid pollen is causing such a stir. Found affixed to a bee trapped in amber, the orchid pollen suggests to evolutionists that the orchid was blooming while dinosaurs roamed the planet.

The research, published in Nature, reportedly “indicates that orchids arose between 76 and 84 million years ago, making them far older than experts had previously thought.” Yet the bee carrying the pollen was dated to “only” 15 to 20 million years ago. How was the date of orchid origination determined, then? BBC News explains:

By building a “family tree” of orchids, the scientists could move back in time [using the molecular clock method] to see when the species first appeared, as well as where and how it spread. They found that the most recent common ancestor of all modern-day orchids lived in the twilight of the dinosaurs, during the Late Cretaceous period.

The problem with conclusions like this, frequently found in evolutionary literature, is their basic presupposition of evolution and old-earth dating paradigms. The molecular clock dating method is only valid if evolution is assumed in the first place. Dating of the now-extinct bee is based on bees found in the fossil record, which is interpreted by evolutionists through uniformitarian assumptions.

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3. Relocation or Indoctrination: the Mennonites' Choice

A small Mennonite community in a small town in Quebec is planning a possible exodus to the provinces of Ontario or New Brunswick to protect their children from evolutionary indoctrination, antibiblical teaching, and low “morality standards,” reports Canada’s National Post.

4. Amazing Design: Scuba Spiders

A unique type of spider that spends its entire life underwater uses silk to spin personal “scuba tanks” for various purposes, including oxygen supply.

5. Troublesome Underwater Volcanoes

Underwater volcanoes spewing oxygen-devouring gases delay the evolutionary timetable, according to a new study.

6. Peppered Moths V. 2.0

Peppered moth experiments have been repeated and . . . confirmed? More inside.

7. Supersonic Hail and Boulder Teams

Scientists searching for water among the stars may have a new ally with an earthly counterpart: hail.

8. Bloomberg News: “It turns out we may not be ‘big-brained apes’ after all”

Barely reported news from the University of Pennsylvania calls to light something creationists have been saying (and nearly all humans have been noticing!) for a long time: humans and apes, despite physical similarities, are not on the same plane when it comes to intelligence. Pennsylvania’s David Premack spent eight years reviewing mental processes, including language, planning, and teaching, and concluded that there are “more dissimilarities than similarities in complexity and purposes among species” than what was assumed by Charles Darwin. The research was reported in Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.

Although Premack sounds like a creationist, even saying that “Darwin is wrong in claiming this theory between humans and animals,” other comments indicate that despite his research, he still accepts that apes and humans share a common ancestor: “The [evolutionary] reorganization of the human brain has not been without cost,” he says, speaking of neurodegenerative diseases.

Let’s pray that Premack (and others) realize the full impact of his conclusions!

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