News to Note, September 16, 2006

1. LiveScience: Wild Chimps Use Crossing Guards

Dominant male chimpanzees were recently observed acting as “crossing guards” when their chimp group crossed roads, scientists report, suggesting that this helps show how social organization emerged in primates-and, of course, implying the evolutionary connection between chimps and humans.

But really, is this any different than the various social behaviors we observe in other animals? The fact that animals display certain forms of social organization-and, usually, increasing levels of organization as intelligence increases-is only evidence for evolution if one already presupposes the evolutionary worldview. The creationist interpretation sees this as evidence of a Designer who created animals and humans to be social creatures and interact with one another.

2. LiveScience: Since Mendel: From Counting Peas to Fluorescent Pigs

Chicago's famed Field Museum, not exactly known for supporting creationism, opened an exhibit highlighting a creation-believing scientist yesterday. Gregor Mendel, considered the father of genetics, was a monk whose work on peas opened the door into the then-unseen world of genetics. Mendel's theories were later stuffed into Darwinism, but in fact, they remain strong support for creation. Does the exhibit discuss Mendel's belief in the Creator? Don't hold your breath.

3. CNN: 'Survivor's' race for ratings

There's a twist to the new season of the popular American television program Survivor. In Survivor: Cook Islands, the twenty wanna-be survivors (who compete for a lot of money) were split into four teams based on race: asian, black, hispanic and white. The idea has caught flak from several angles, though the show's host defended the concept as promoting “ethnic pride, not discrimination.”

We imagine fewer would be upset in a world that hadn't already experienced millennia of racism, all tracing back to the Confusion at the Tower of Babel. Of course, creationists know that people of all people groups are of one blood, because we all descended from the same ancestor, Noah, and then dispersed around the world after the Tower of Babel. For more on this topic, see the book One Blood, available free online.

4. The Observer: Kenya bishop leads anti-evolution fight

According to secular media accounts, well-meaning clergy are putting up a fight over the display of a fossil collection at the National Museum of Kenya. The collection includes a variety of pieces of alleged “apemen,” including “those of the 4 million-year-old apeman, Australopithecus anamensis, the 1.5 million-year-old remains of the Nariokotome boy . . . and a series of other bones that highlight crucial phases of our evolutionary past.”

Bishop Boniface Adoyo, one of the clergy, was quoted to say that the fossils are “a big weapon against Christianity that's killing our faith … [w]hen children go to museums they'll start believing we evolved from these apes.”

On one hand, we agree with Bishop Adoyo that evolutionary indoctrination-which comes through both public schools and museums-is a danger to children and can result in a fatalistic mindset (and the consequences of such a mindset) when students accept that life is just an accident. But while we oppose evolutionary indoctrination, we do not believe students should be prevented from hearing the sad story of evolution-as long as they are exposed to the “whole story,” evolution warts and all. When both interpretations of the evidence are presented, the lack of support for molecules-to-man evolution may lead people to see that the Bible does make sense!

5. BBC NEWS: Colourful beginning for humanity & FOX NEWS: Neanderthals May Have Hung On Longer Than Thought

In the first story, scientist Lawrence Barham believes the range of pigments found at an archaeological dig in Zambia indicates that ancient humans used colors symbolically far earlier than previously thought. This discovery pushes back “the earliest known example of abstract thinking by at least 100,000 years.” So evolutionists believe “apemen” were thinking abstractly for hundreds of thousands of years before we began the development of oral history or writing?

In the second story, evolutionists are changing the timeline for Neandertals1—who were fully human—because they have radiocarbon dated charcoal from Neandertal fires to “maybe as recently as 24,000 years ago.” This is making evolutionists wonder if Neandertals and so-called “modern” humans interbred. Unsurprisingly, “[Q]uestions remain about whether the skeleton really does resemble a Neanderthal's.” If it's so easy to get Neandertal skeletons confused with those of modern humans, should we really believe Neandertals were oh-so-different?

In both these stories, we read about evolutionists trying to grapple with evidence that rewrites their human development timelines. Of course, the timelines are further flawed by the acceptance of radiocarbon dating as authoritative. The question is, will it take 100,000 years for evolutionists to realize that there never were any apemen and that the evidence we find of abstract thinking and “human-like” behavior is exactly that-evidence for fully formed, non-transitional humans!

6. ScienceDaily: Paleontologists Find 67 Dinosaurs In One Week

A single week of excavation for a Montana State University team yielded 67 new dinosaur fossils. Paleontologist/evolutionist Jack Horner was specifically looking for the bones of Psittacosaurus-a dinosaur widely unknown to the public. What is interesting is whereas many dinosaurs that are prominent in the public eye, such as T. rex and the large sauropods, are very large (and, indeed, behemoth!), Psittacosaurus was much smaller. “The [Psittacosaurus] skeletons ranged in length from one to five feet and stood about two feet tall.”

Many people forget, when asking how Noah fit all the animals on the Ark, that the average size of dinosaurs was likely that of sheep, and there were many dinosaurs even smaller.

7. ScienceDaily: Astronomers Trace The Evolution Of The First Galaxies In The Universe

Astronomers have supposedly looked 13 billion light-years across the universe to probe back in time to the “early universe,” trying to determine what things were like 700 million years after the big bang. They discovered relatively few galaxies, which astronomer Garth Illingworth explained by saying:

The bigger, more luminous galaxies just were not in place at 700 million years after the Big Bang. Yet 200 million years later there were many more of them, so there must have been a lot of merging of smaller galaxies during that time.

The question is, would any discovery have dissuaded these researchers from the big bang model? Because the big bang model is a presupposition for many astrophysicists today, and because these astronomers believe they're looking back in time toward the big bang, whatever is discovered will be interpreted within the big bang model. See our Astronomy topic page for more on creationist astronomy/astrophysics and problems with the big bang model.