Think Plants Are Simple? WRONG!

If you think plants are simple, you would be wrong. According to those who believe that all living things are a result of evolution, life evolved from simple to complex. Plants, which are simpler than animals, are believed to have evolved before animals. When we started learning about the genetic codes of living things, it was expected that plants would have simpler genetic codes than complex living things. This is turning out not to be the case.

Almost 300 researchers completed their work in 1999 to learn the exact DNA sequence of two of the five chromosomes of the wild mustard plant. They learned that chromosomes #2 and #4 of the plant have almost 8,000 genes.

By contrast, human chromosome #22 has only 550 genes. To be sure, humans are more complex than the wild mustard plant. But, researchers say, the wild mustard is definitely more complex than animals such as worms and flies!

Scientists point out that the reason for the unexpected complexity is that while worms and flies can only adapt to limited environmental conditions and remain worms and flies, the mustard plant can adapt to a great range of conditions and produce very different types of plants.

These findings strike two blows to evolution. Plants can be genetically more complex than some so-called "highly-evolved" animals. Second, this genetic complexity is wisely designed to give plants greater adaptability in a wide range of conditions. Our Creator designed the DNA code with purpose; He certainly did not let it develop by chance.

References: "Chromosomes show plants' secret complexity," Science News, 12/18 25/99, p.389. Creation Moments 2008

2009 Christian Nature

I know that You can do everything, and that no purpose of Yours can be withheld from You. Job 42:2

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Weeping Fig Trees and Unsung Heroes

I had tried to talk my customer out of buying such a large ficus benjamina, explaining a smaller tree would acclimate better to her home environment. But she couldn't wait for the tree to grow, so now, three months later, she was lamenting a bare trunk and stems sitting in her dark den. A younger tree would not have rebelled so violently and would have retained most of its leaves.

Human beings are a lot like plants: the younger we start teaching them about Jesus and His love, the greater the opportunity for that child to know Jesus--not only as Savior, but also as Lord.

My customer's Weeping Fig Tree rebelled by shedding all its leaves, leaving only the bare trunk and branches for "beauty." Had she purchased the younger tree and taken time to acclimate it to darker surroundings, she would have a beautiful tree in her den. Now she was paying for her impatient I-want-it-now decision.

To paraphrase Proverbs 22:6, "Train up a ficus when it is young and as it ages, it will not rebel by shedding its leaves."

In our churches we have loyal child trainers who rarely ever get noticed. We drop off our children and then head towards the pastor who will train us out of The Word. We certainly wouldn't want the job of dealing with all those noisy children!

Do we ever think about what our children, still with unformed brains, are being taught? There is no one in the church who has a more thankless job than the teacher of toddlers and preschoolers. If the custodian doesn't do his job, we notice! But it’s not the same with these faithful people who are planting seeds in our children's minds and hearts.

Far too often, we overlook those faithful nursery workers and preschool teachers in our churches. I'm ashamed of the "babysitter" mentality we seem to project upon them. When we get to Heaven, we may well find out they were the most effective seed planters of all!

I thank God for all those unsung heroes who, Sunday after Sunday, without any bravado or recognition, plant seeds in the precious soil of our children's hearts and minds. Maybe these kids will have a fighting chance at productive lives as they become adults.

Copyright 1990-2009 Christian Nature

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Is The Walking Whale a Myth?

Whales pose some interesting problems for those who believe that all living things slowly evolved to their present forms over millions of years. According to evolution, sea creatures gradually adapted to life on land because they could make a better living there. That's where mammals supposedly evolved. Then, for some unknown reason, some of those mammals – Darwin said it was the bear – decided to return to the sea.

This required the mammal ancestors of the whale to lose their legs, readapt to locomotion in water, develop new vision abilities, and move its breathing nostrils to behind its brain. huh?

As unlikely as all of this sounds, some evolutionists make one more amazing claim. They claim that some whales still have the vestigial bones of their pelvises or legs embedded in their bodies. Some have even claimed that certain whales have been seen that still had vestigial legs growing out of their bodies. However, no trace of these so-called "legs" can be found in any scientific literature.

The small bone that some whales have is not a vestigial pelvis. It is not even attached to the backbone or any part of the skeleton but is situated within the body as an anchor for some of the whale's organs. In short, any talk of whales with legs or vestigial walking structures is pure myth.

God created the whales, just as the Bible says. The great whales glorify God with their great majesty and power.

References: "The strange tale of the leg on the whale," Creation, 6 8/98, pp.10 13 Creation Moments 2008

2009 Christian Nature

Praise the LORD from the earth, You great sea creatures and all the depths…Psalm 148:7

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Hacked Emails Cause Climate Debate

This week has been abuzz about the alleged corruption of the whole global warming (climate change) religion. I have found it most interesting!

Hundreds of private emails and documents allegedly exchanged between some of the world's leading climate scientists during the past 13 years have been stolen by hackers and leaked online.

The computer files were apparently accessed earlier this week from servers at the University of East Anglia's Climate Research Unit, a world-renowned centre focused on the study of natural and anthropogenic climate change.

Climate change sceptics who have studied the emails allege they provide "smoking gun" evidence that some of the climatologists colluded in manipulating data to support the widely held view that climate change is real, and is being largely caused by the actions of mankind.

The veracity of the emails has not been confirmed and the scientists involved have declined to comment on the story, which broke on a blog called The Air Vent.

The files, which in total amount to 160MB of data, were first uploaded on to a Russian server, before being widely mirrored across the internet. The emails were accompanied by the anonymous statement:

We feel that climate science is, in the current situation, too important to be kept under wraps. We hereby release a random selection of correspondence, code and documents. Hopefully it will give some insight into the science and the people behind it.

In one email, dated November 1999, one scientist wrote:

I've just completed Mike's Nature [the science journal] trick of adding in the real temps to each series for the last 20 years (ie, from 1981 onwards) and from 1961 for Keith's to hide the decline.

There will, no doubt, be an investigation. I would like to know who will conduct it and with whom they are aligned. Too many people have made loads of money on the teaching of global warming (or climate change, or whatever it is called now), not the least of which is Al Gore who has profited in excess of $100 Million. I say, 'follow the money'.

2009 Christian Nature

The thoughts of the righteous are right, but the counsels of the wicked are deceitful. Proverbs 12:5

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Your "Little Angel" Isn't

Modern psychologists and social engineers generally hold that children are born innocent. Any evil they do is learned from those around them. Based upon this notion, they advise that children should not be spanked because that spanking only teaches violence. This modern teaching contradicts the biblical teaching that we are born in original sin, inherited from Adam. Belief in original sin is accepted in some form by most Christians, Jews and practically everyone who has ever raised children!

In 1999, science stepped into the debate. Psychologist Richard Tremblay of the Universite de Montreal studied 511 children, all under 18 months old. He found that 70 percent of the children grab things. Forty-six percent push others, 21 percent physically attack others, 23 percent fight, 27 percent bite and 24 percent kick.

These evil behaviors were going on long before the children could have learned them from those around them. Psychologist Tremblay concluded from his study that the parents' real task is not to teach children to be themselves but rather to teach children to obey moral principals.

This research supports the biblical teaching of original sin, and by implication, supports the Bible's account of Adam and Eve. One theologian pointed out that this explains why parents must daily battle against self-idolatry and must do this for their children until their children learn to do this for themselves. This study simply supports what the Bible has been saying for thousands of years.

References: Alberta Report, 8/16/99.

2009 Christian Nature

Behold, I was brought forth in iniquity, and in sin my mother conceived me. Psalm 51:5

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Jaw of Texas Threadsnake Bears Witness to God's Greatness

When you are a small animal whose diet could injure or even kill you, eating can be positively dangerous. That danger increases if you belong to a family of animals that normally takes minutes or even hours to swallow a victim.

An adult Texas threadsnake is only about six or eight inches long, a little thicker than a strand of spaghetti and has a jaw unlike any other creature. It eats ants – ants that could seriously injure or kill it.

As you may know, snakes generally take several minutes or even hours to swallow their food as they slowly stretch their jaws around their prey. But this method wouldn't work for the threadsnake. By the time it was swallowed, the snake's lunch would have killed the snake. So the threadsnake has a lower jaw, filled with teeth, and a hinge in the middle. As the lower jaws hinge in and out – several times a second, like a swinging door – ants disappear into the snake in the blink of an eye. Thus, they are able to down dozens of ants a minute!

The Texas threadsnake is more than a witness to God's wise design. Its unique jaw structure is essential to its survival. If evolution is true, the Texas threadsnake would have become extinct during the millions of years it waited for evolution to find a solution to its problem. In addition, since there is no other vertebrate with a jaw like the Texas threadsnake, from what could it have evolved? Unlike the serpent in the Garden of Eden, the threadsnake truly bears witness to God's greatness!

References: "Weird jaws let tiny snake gulp fast," Science News, 12/4/99, p.361 Creation Moments 2008

2009 Christian Nature

The eyes of all look expectantly to You, and You give them their food in due season. Psalm 145:15

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How Long Did It Take God to Create the Earth?

So you are a 'Creationist' and believe God created all things. How long do you think it took God to create all things in heaven and earth? Do you take "on the first day" literally? Or do you think a day could have been a 'as a thousand years'?

"Mine hand also hath laid the foundation of the earth, and my right hand hath spanned the heavens: when I call unto them, they stand up together." (Isaiah 48:13)

This is one of many passages in Scripture which not only tells us that God is Creator of both heaven and earth, but also that He created them instantaneously. Creation is not a "process," but a miraculous event! With a wave of the hand, so to speak, God simply called them into being.

This is also the testimony of the incomparable account of creation in Genesis. "In the beginning God created the heaven and the earth" (Genesis 1:1). This primeval testimony does not say: "From the beginning, God has been creating heaven and earth" as theistic evolutionists would say. Creation of all things was an event completed in the past.

The divinely inspired psalmist agrees: "By the word of the Lord were the heavens made; and all the host of them by the breath of his mouth. . . . For he spake, and it was done; he commanded, and it stood fast" (Psalm 33:6, 9). "For he commanded, and they were created. He hath also stablished them for ever and ever" (Psalm 148:5-6).

Furthermore, according to our text, when God spoke into existence the heavens and the earth, they both proceeded to "stand up together!" He did not create the heavens 15 billion years ago, then the earth only about five billion years ago, as some creationists allege. They stood up together! "In six days the Lord made heaven and earth, the sea, and all that in them is" (Exodus 20:11).

It is important to recognize the recent creation of all things, not only because God said so, but also because the multi-billion-year framework of cosmic evolution, pushing God as far away and long ago as possible, is merely the modern pseudoscientific way of getting rid of Him altogether! Christians should not compromise with such a system!

Reference: Institute for Creation Research

2009 Christian Nature

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Explaining The Theory of Evolution

With the 150th anniversary of Charles Darwin's The Origin of Species fast approaching, Dr. Meyer explains the holes in the theory of evolution and the magnificent ode to intelligent design.

Dr. Stephen Meyer is director and senior fellow of the Center for Science and Culture at the Discovery Institute. After completing undergraduate degrees in physics and geology and working in the oil industry, he went to Cambridge in 1986 to pursue a degree in the philosophy of science. Fascinated with the question of how life began and the possibility of intelligent design, Meyer embarked on a journey to find the answer. His book, Signature in the Cell, is the story of that journey.

1. Darwinism has been around for 150 years. How has the theory affected our culture?

Darwin, along with Marx and Freud, other 19th century thinkers, provided the basis of a comprehensive materialistic worldview. Many people associate materialism with spending sprees, supermalls and the slogan, "he who dies with the most toys, wins," but materialism is more than a lifestyle of conspicuous consumption. It is also a philosophy that treats the material world as the whole of reality. Materialism asserts that matter and energy, not God, are the things from which everything else comes. As the late Stephen J. Gould put it, "Matter is the ground of all existence; mind, spirit, and God as well, are just words that express the wondrous results of neuronal complexity."

This materialistic worldview made belief in God seem less plausible to educated people; it also changed our conception of human nature. The materialistic conception of human nature ultimately infected almost every area of Western thought and culture, from politics and law to literature and personal mores. Materialists denied objective moral standards, claiming that the right and wrong evolved to suit societal needs and personal preferences. As Michael Ruse and E.O. Wilson put it in The Evolution of Ethics: "Morality ... is merely an adaptation put in place to further our reproductive ends … Ethics as we understand it is an illusion fobbed off on us by our genes." Materialistic thinking undermined belief in personal responsibility. If human behavior is determined solely by genetics and environment, then everyone is a victim and no one can be held accountable. Materialists also devised utopian political schemes. Thinking they could manipulate people like mathematical variables, social theorists advocated coercive government programs that promised heaven on earth, but often produced the opposite.

2. Your latest work, Signature in the Cell, presents a new case for intelligent design. Tell our readers about that.

The foundations of scientific materialism are in the process of crumbling. In Signature in the Cell, I show how the digital code in DNA points powerfully to a designing intelligence behind the origin of life.

For example, in 1953 when Watson and Crick elucidated the structure of the DNA molecule, they made a startling discovery. The structure of DNA allows it to store information in the form of a four-character digital code. Strings of precisely sequenced chemicals called nucleotide bases store and transmit the assembly instructions — the information — for building the crucial protein molecules and machines the cell needs to survive. Francis Crick later developed this idea with his famous "sequence hypothesis" according to which the chemical constituents in DNA function like letters in a written language or symbols in a computer code. As Bill Gates has noted, "DNA is like a computer program, but far, far more advanced than any software we've ever created."

This discovery has made acute a longstanding scientific mystery that Darwin never addressed or solved: the mystery of how the very first life on Earth arose. To date no theory of undirected chemical evolution has explained the origin of the digital information in DNA needed to build the first living cell on Earth.

Yet, modern scientists who argue for intelligent design do not do so merely because natural processes have failed to explain the origin of the information in cells. Instead, they argue for design, because systems possessing these features invariably arise from intelligent causes.

DNA functions like a software program. We know from experience that software comes from programmers. Information — whether inscribed in hieroglyphics, written in a book or encoded in a radio signal — always arises from an intelligent source. So the discovery of digital code in DNA provides a strong scientific reason for concluding that the information in DNA also had an intelligent source.

3. There have been scientists who have spoken out about intelligent design — with disastrous consequences. Why?

One of my friendly debate partners, Dr. Michael Ruse, has explained this very well. He has explained that Darwinism has, for some time, functioned as a secular religion. Like many people, when Darwinists have their beliefs challenged by arguments they can't answer, they often respond emotionally, sometimes using the power at their disposal to suppress dissenting scientific opinions. This phenomenon was vividly documented in the movie Expelled, starring Ben Stein.

4. Some say Darwin refuted his own claims on his death bed. Is that true, or just an urban legend?

All the evidence suggests that he remained committed to his theory right to the end of his life.

5. What will it take for the scientific community to open up to the possibility of intelligent design?

While there is still resistance, I think the scientific community is increasingly becoming more open to the evidence and the case for intelligent design. I was pleasantly surprised when my book received endorsements from a number of prominent scientists that had not yet publicly weighed in on intelligent design, such as Dr. Phillip Skell, a member of the National Academies of Science, and Dr. Norman Nevin, a prominent British geneticist. There are many more endorsements and reviews of the book at www.signatureinthecell.com that show a growing interest in intelligent design based on the information bearing properties of DNA.

FOR MORE INFORMATION
Learn more about intelligent design and Dr. Meyer's book.

First published by Focus on the Family, Citizen Link 2009

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Jane Goodall's Search For Hope

Where do you find hope? Christians find their hope outside themselves in the sure promises of God in Jesus Christ. These promises are found throughout the Bible from Genesis to Revelation.

But what happens to our hope when we decide to be selective about what we want to believe of the Bible's teachings and/or when we add other beliefs that are not from the Bible?

One good example of what happens can be found in Jane Goodall's autobiography, Reason for Hope: A Spiritual Journey.

Goodall became famous for living with and studying chimpanzees in Tanzania. While her family doesn't appear to have had a strong Christian faith, Jane's grandmother is described as having a very deep faith and wishing the same for Jane.

By her own accounting, by the time she was in her teens, Jane decided she would be selective about the Bible's teachings, believing what she wanted and discarding the rest. Then she started adding beliefs from non-Christian religions to her belief system. She admits that this left her with the problem of where to find hope.

In her autobiography, Goodall writes that she finally found four reasons for hope. They include: the human brain, the resilience of nature, the indomitable human spirit and the energy and enthusiasm of young people. But, we add, in a sinful world, all of these things are more likely to lead to suffering than to provide hope.

Our only real hope is found in Jesus Christ and His victory over sin, death and the devil.

References: World, 10/30/99, "Scientists need faith." Creation Moments 2008

2009 Christian Nature

For whatsoever things were written aforetime were written for our learning, that we through patience and comfort of the scriptures might have hope. Romans 15:4

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Does The Rook Bird Prove The Legend of the Phoenix?

The legend of the phoenix goes back thousands of years. According to that legend, the phoenix bird lived for hundreds of years in the Arabian Desert. Then, to renew itself, it burned itself up in its own funeral pyre. It would then rise from its own ashes, renewed for several hundred years.

Dr. Maurice Burton, a British naturalist, has suggested that this legend may have some basis in fact. He points out that some birds like to play with fire. The British rook is a bird that is a little larger than a crow. When Dr. Burton hands a rook at his nature preserve an unlit match, the rook holds the match so it can peck at it. Once the rook gets the match to light, it quickly puts the burning match under its wing, appearing to want to set itself on fire.

When supplied with straw and a match, the rook will set the straw on fire and then lie, wings outstretched, on the burning straw until the fire goes out. It is possible that in ancient times people saw this behavior and developed the legend of the phoenix to explain what they saw.

Dr. Burton points out that this behavior is common among intelligent birds, such as rooks and jays, who pick up discarded cigarettes that are still burning and fly off with them. It is even likely that this strange behavior is responsible for many house fires. While the legend of the phoenix may be a misinterpretation of a real event, we can trust that the Bible accurately records real creation events.

References: Toledo Blade, 10/8/59, "Phoenix Rises Again In Bird Fire Addicts." Creation Moments 2008

2009 Christian Nature

And because the haven was not commodious to winter in, the more part advised to depart thence also, if by any means they might attain to Phenice, and there to winter; which is an haven of Crete…Acts 27:12a

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How Long Have Shoes Been Around?

If you were to venture a guess, how long would you say shoes have been around? The answer may surprise you!

While evolutionists portray early man as unskilled and primitive, the Bible portrays him as skilled and sophisticated, even by today's standards.

Martin Luther, in describing Adam before the fall, said that we today would probably consider him to be a type of superman.

The Bible's view of ancient man was supported when researchers found a collection of 18 shoes and sandals in the Arnold Research Cave in central Missouri. While some of the shoes were dated at about 1,000 years old, others have been radiocarbon-dated at many thousands of years old.

The shoes impressed researchers with their excellent design. Two of them are made of leather; the rest are made of plant fibers. They include both sandals and slip-ons. Those woven from plant fibers are equally sophisticated, whether they are only 1,000 years old or many thousands of years old. Left-and right-foot shoes and sandals are easily evident, and some even show toe impressions.

Archaeologist Michael J. O'Brian of the University of Missouri at Columbia summed up the quality of the footwear, saying, "These people certainly knew what they were doing."

The shoes were so well designed that there was no need to improve the design over thousands of years. This supports the biblical view of man's history. Man's skill and intelligence were gifts of God from the beginning.

This story is no surprise to me. I know 'God don't make no junk!'

References: Science News, 7/4/98, "Ancient North Americans shoes step to fore." Daily News, 7/9/98, "Ancient shoes show fashion is nothing new."

2009 Christian Nature

And he said, Draw not nigh hither: put off thy shoes from off thy feet, for the place whereon thou standest is holy ground. Exodus 3:5

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How Long Does It Take to Make a Fossil?

How long does it take to make a fossil? Walk through just about any museum and you will find fossils with explanations saying that they are "millions of years old." Many people find this claim plausible since the fossils are often from creatures very different from those we see today. And for many people, this is convincing evidence that the story of the evolution of life over millions of years is true. These fossils convince many that young earth creationism is wrong.

This line of evolutionary thinking would be shown to be completely invalid if it could be demonstrated that fossils don't need millions of years to form.

While most fossils don't come with labels that allow you to work out their age, a recent fossil find off the coast of Victoria, Australia, does. It is a ship's bell, firmly encased in solid rock.

In former times, ship's bells carried the name of the ship on which they served. Found in about three feet of water, this fossil identifies itself as being from the sailing ship Isabella Watson, which sank off that coast in 1852. That means that this fossil, and the rock in which it is encased, is less than 150 years old!

This is but one of several examples of young fossils. Each of these young fossils demonstrates that it does not take millions of years for fossils to form. Every fossil ever found fits easily within the time line provided by young earth creationism. HMM


References: Creation, March May 1998, p.6 Creation Moments 2008

2009 Christian Nature



The LORD liveth; and blessed be my rock; and exalted be the God of the rock of my salvation! 2 Samuel 22:47

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Beetles Love Bitter Substances - Yuck!

At least one ninth of all 900 species of gourds produce chemicals known as cucurbiticins. The 10 cucurbiticins so far identified are the most bitter substances known to human taste.

In tests, subjects were able reliably to identify amounts as diluted at one part per billion! Cucurbiticins are also poisonous. Livestock have been known to die from eating gourds containing the chemical. But most plant eaters, including insects, know to stay away from the gourds that contain this chemical.

Despite the bitterness of cucurbiticins, a family of 1,500 species of beetles, including cucumber beetles, love to eat the chemical. They can detect the chemical in plants several yards away, or even further if the gourd is injured. When these beetles find a gourd with the chemical in it, researchers say they almost seem compulsive about eating it. As a test, researchers laced tiny grains of sand with cucurbiticins. The beetles actually ate the sand!

Much of the bitterness in our lives comes when we try to live life by our own rules rather than the rules of our Creator. Think of the Bible as an owner's manual for your life on Earth. Not only does it tell us how God designed us to live, but it tells us of our Savior Who came to rescue us from the consequences of our disobedience to God.

References: Bombardier Beetles and Fever Trees

2009 Christian Nature

The full soul loaths a honeycomb; but to the hungry soul every bitter thing is sweet. Proverbs 27:7

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Do Magnetic Monarch Butterflies Have Compasses?

Scientists have always wondered whether monarch butterflies have built in compasses to help them in their fantastic migrations. After wintering in Mexico, monarchs head to their northern breeding ranges in the eastern United States and Canada. Flying 1,000 miles a day and never having seen their breeding range, they find it every year.

By the time they begin their migration south, they are the great-great-grandchildren of the individuals who left Mexico the previous spring. Yet, never having seen their wintering area, they find the same area in which their distant relatives wintered.

Researchers placed monarchs that were migrating south into a room shielded from the Earth's magnetic field. When the Earth's magnetic field was allowed to be normal in the room, released butterflies flew to the southwest, as they should.

When researchers set the room to have no magnetic influence, monarchs flew in all directions. And when researchers generated a magnetic field in the room opposite that of the Earth's, the butterflies flew northeast. Researchers add that this demonstration of compasses within the monarchs still does not fully explain the wonders of monarch migration.

I believe it takes more faith to believe that monarchs and their migration habits evolved than to believe that these are the work of a wise and intelligent God Who also gave the Earth a magnetic field.

References: Science News, "Monarch butterflies use magnetic compasses," 11/27/99, p.343 Creation Moments 2008

2009 Christian Nature

The north and the south thou hast created them: Tabor and Hermon shall rejoice in thy name. Psalm 89:12

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How Do You Make Any Taste?

How do you make something that is sweet? For that matter, how do you make any taste? We're not talking about adding sugar to a recipe. Let's say that God provided you with all the atoms of the various elements you needed to make a molecule that tastes sweet.

If you were to make such a molecule, you would need to know the construction of the sweet taste receptors on your tongue.

You would need to know which molecular shapes would bind to those receptors.

Then you would have to understand how all the different elements bind to one another and what molecular shapes they would have.

The complexity of this task was well illustrated when researchers at the University of Wisconsin-Madison released a computer model of a protein called brazein.

Brazein is 2,000 times sweeter than sugar and found naturally in a West African fruit. Brazein's coiled molecular shape is responsible for its sweetness, but if the molecule uncoils, it loses all its sweetness. Its structure closely resembles scorpion poisons and proteins used by some plants for self-defense. The more we learn about how things work in the world around us, the clearer it becomes that everything that exists has been carefully designed to interact in very specific ways. We learn more about this Creator, though, not from molecules, but from His holy Word.

References: Science News, "Protein's shape may give extra sugary shape," 6/20/98, p.389 Creation Moments 2008

2009 Christian Nature

How sweet are thy words unto my taste! yea, sweeter than honey to my mouth! Psalm 119:103

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The Trilobite Eyes of the Xenos peckii

A tiny parasitic insect has eyes and a lifestyle that are unique among living things. Actually, only the male members of the species Xenos peckii have eyes. The females spend their short lives inside the paper wasps they infest and don't have eyes. After a male hatches inside a wasp, it emerges from the wasp and uses its entire two hour adult lifespan searching for a wasp infected with a female of its species.

The males' eyes are unlike the eyes of any other living thing. Each faceted eye has 50 lenses. And each of the bulging lenses has more than 100 photoreceptors. Researchers say that about 75 percent of the parasite's brain is devoted to processing the visual information collected by the eyes. This in itself shows design, since the males have only two hours to find a mate within another paper wasp. Aren't you glad you are a human being?

While no other living creatures have a visual system like this, the structure of the eyes seems similar to the now-extinct trilobite. While tiny and seemingly unimportant, this small parasite is a testimony to God's ingenious creativity. What's more, the fact that it has a unique visual system carefully designed for its unique way of living leaves no known creature for it to have evolved from.

References: Science News, "Living insect with eyes like trilobites'," 12/4/99, p.361
Creation Moments 2008

2009 Christian Nature

For the invisible things of him from the creation of the world are clearly seen, being understood by the things that are made… Romans 1:20a

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Survival of the Fittest?

Charles Darwin popularized the phrase "survival of the fittest." Ever since, this idea that evolutionary change is driven by the necessity of survival has been essential to the idea of evolution.

Evolutionists examine each feature of a plant or animal to try to determine why that feature evolved to help the creature survive. Researchers have modeled survival using two creatures with different features. Each feature gave the two creatures advantages over each other in differing situations.

When conditions favor one of the creatures, it prospers, while the other suffers unless it evolves some advantage. While such simple models often appear in textbooks, such simplistic situations almost never happen in the real world.

In 1999, researchers in the Netherlands constructed a more complex model of changing conditions based on the real world. They examined phytoplankton populations where 20 to 40 species of algae and diatoms can exist in a cubic centimeter of water.

They used a computer to model the various needs of each species and the resources available to them. And when one species thrives, it sets up the conditions for other species to thrive as it uses up the resources it prefers. In the end, who's thriving among the 20 to 40 species varies over time, but there is no deadly competition for survival.

Our survival depends not on the principles of survival of the fittest but on the provision of our gracious Creator.

References: Science News, "Algae need not be fittest to survive," 11/27/99, pp.340-341. Creation Moments 2008

2009 Nature Girl

Thus saith the LORD: The people which were left of the sword found grace in the wilderness; even Israel, when I went to cause him to rest. Jeremiah 31:2

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Ancients Could Have Moved Saturn V Rocket!

I look at Egypt's pyramids and wonder how the ancients built these great structures. Such questions are really about the source of man's intelligence and creativity. Were intelligence and creativity created within us by an ultimately intelligent and creative God, or are these a result of blind evolutionary forces?

In the ancient city that the Greeks called Heliopolis, the Romans converted an ancient Greek temple into a temple for Jupiter. The original temple must have amazed even the Roman builders. It is 2,500 feet long, making it one of the largest stone structures in the world.

Twenty-six feet above the foundation of this structure are three of the largest stones ever moved by man. These limestone blocks measure 10 feet by 13 feet by 60 feet long. They weigh 1.2 million pounds each, three times the size of any stone used in the pyramids!

Not only were the stones raised 26 feet into the air, but also they were moved from a quarry that is three-quarters of a mile away. At the quarry is an even larger stone weighing two million pounds that would have crushed any logs used to roll it to the temple.

The first time in recorded history that man ever moved anything so heavy was when NASA moved the giant Saturn V rocket to the launch pad on its now-famous giant tracked vehicle.

The reason that these ancient people could have moved the Saturn V rocket is that intelligence comes from our Creator, not chance evolution.

References: Science Frontiers: Some Anomalies and Curiosities of Nature, William Corliss, "Unbelievable Baalbek," pp.17-18. Creation Moments 2008

2009 Nature Girl

Who hath put wisdom in the inward parts? or who hath given understanding to the heart? Job 38:36

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Ever Thanked God for Your Brain?

Have you ever thanked God for your brain? I have! Do you realize we could do nothing if we didn't have a brain? I have always been intrigued by the complexity of the brain, and if I could live my life over, I would study it in depth.

One of the most difficult problems for those who believe that we are the product of millions of years of evolution is the human brain. The human brain has ten billion times 25,000 neural connections. If you work it out, this means that a miracle would have to take place if we evolved from an ape like creature on the time scale that evolutionists propose: every generation would have had to have many thousands more neural connections than the last!

Even more astonishing is the fact that we are not born with a brain that is a blank slate. Several studies have shown that even infants as young as three months expect things to behave in certain ways. In one study, three month old infants showed surprise when researchers made an object they were looking at disappear. Another study showed that young infants expect inanimate things not to move by themselves. But they expect living things to move all by themselves. Such built in "programming" in the brain enables us to progress more quickly as we learn about the world around us.

The problem of the complexity of the human brain, and the fact that it seems to come preprogrammed, ultimately caused Alfred Russel Wallace, an influential evolutionist, to switch to belief in a Creator. The more we learn about what God has created, the more likely we are to conclude that we are indeed the work of a wise Creator. He has even given us a brain capable of seeing that.

Thank You, dear Father, for the brain and the intelligence You have given me.

References: Natural History, 9/97, "The Nature of Learning," pp.42 45. Creation Moments 2008

2009 Nature Girl

Forasmuch then as we are the offspring of God, we ought not to think that the Godhead is like unto gold, or silver, or stone, graven by art and man's device. Acts 17:29

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God's Omnipotence in Nature

If you see a watch, I hope you assume there’s a watchmaker. And if you see the precise atomic flux of the universe, I hope you don’t believe that happened by chance.

Genesis 1:1 - "In the beginning God created the heaven and the earth."

God is omnipotent in nature.

An eloquent preacher once said, “God stepped from behind the curtain of nowhere and stood upon the platform of nothing and spoke a world into existence.”

God is the creator of all that your hand can touch, your eye can see, your ears can hear, and your nose can smell.

The evolutionists believe that if you take billions of years and add time plus chance (years+time+chance), that you can turn frogs into princes.

In school they call that fairy tales. In the laboratory they call it science.

2009 Christian Nature

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The Sky Is Not Blue?

(Baltimore, Maryland)—British astrophysicists Dr. Karl Glazebrook and Dr. Ivan Baldry were at John Hopkins University in Baltimore when they discovered that the light emitted by 200,000 galaxies combined to produce the color beige.

As reported in The Telegraph UK, the scientists actually dubbed the color "cosmic latte," although other suggested names for it were 'univeige' and 'skyvory'. (Photo: Xeno)

Said Dr. Baldry: "Really the answer is very close to white. The colour is interesting but in fact the cosmic spectrum is rich in detail and tells us a lot more about the history of star formation in the universe."

According to the report, the findings suggested the universe started off as a shade of blue but a generation of "red" stars evolved so that the universe will become redder and redder. The change in color over time, from pale turquoise to beige, it added, is similar to the color of the sky at sunset.

Source: Richard Alleyne - The Telegraph UK

2009 Nature Girl

Ah, Sovereign Lord, you have made the heavens and the earth by your great power and outstretched arm. Nothing is too hard for you. Jeremiah 32:17

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Big Bang - Really?

Classical evolutionary cosmology has the universe coming into being through a giant explosion of matter and energy called the Big Bang. The question that modern physics has struggled with for years asks whether there is enough mass in the universe to cause it to stop expanding at some point. Would the universe begin to collapse in on itself at some time in the future only to produce a second Big Bang?

In 1997, researchers announced that not only is the universe expanding, but also it is expanding faster now than it was shortly after its creation! The finding was based on the fact that very distant exploding stars are much dimmer than expected. After more than two years of further research and dozens of observations, scientists are beginning to agree that the universe's apparent expansion is increasing. Researchers' inability to explain why has led them to conclude that they don't have a theory about the universe that works. One researcher referred to this problem as "the biggest embarrassment" in modern physics.

So next time you hear a scientist speaking with certainty about the Big Bang, the age of the universe, or how it might end, you will know that, in truth, such certainty does not exist in the halls of science. For all they know, the universe could keep expanding until it dissipates like a puff of smoke. But we know from the Bible that the universe will end when our Creator returns to take those who trusted in Jesus Christ as their Lord and Savior home to a new and perfect Heaven and Earth. I am so glad I'm ready for His return!


References: James Glanz, "Calculating weight of emptiness is No. 1 cosmological mystery," Star Tribune, Sunday, December 5, 1999, p.A19. Creation Moments 2008

2009 Nature Girl

And then shall appear the sign of the Son of man in heaven: and then shall all the tribes of the earth mourn… Matthew 24:30a

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Why Is That Leaf Still Green?

If you live in a climate where fall brings colors to the leaves before they fall, you've probably noticed something strange. Once the leaves start to fall, the ground is littered with their color. But among all those fading leaves, you might find a perfectly healthy looking green leaf.

Why is that leaf still green? That green leaf is probably the work of one of God's more amazing tiny insects.

Several species of beetles, flies and moths go through a larval stage in which the larvae burrow into leaves. These leaf miners gain their nutrition from the leaf. But when fall comes, and the leaves lose their green chlorophyll, they stop making food for the larvae. So the larvae secrete a hormone that prevents the leaf from losing its chlorophyll and shutting down to die. This hormone enables a leaf to stay green and produce food for the larvae even long after the leaf would normally have turned color and dried up on the ground.

Leaf miners present several problems for those who think that mindless evolution produced the variety of life that we see around us today.

How did the larvae learn to make just the right hormone to preserve the leaf on which it depends? Are we to believe that these larvae kept evolving from something else until one of them figured out the chemistry of the leaf? And finally, are we to believe that this unlikely evolutionary event happened in several species?

Just as the sprouting of new leaves in the spring means that summer is near, so the cleverness of the leaf miner should tell us that the hand of God created this insect. And we can reliably conclude that God made the entire creation.

References: Joachim Scheven, "Green Islands," Origins, June 1999. Creation Moments 2008

2009 Nature Girl

Now learn a parable of the fig tree; When her branch is yet tender, and putteth forth leaves, ye know that summer is near. Mark 13:28

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What Dogs See, Smell and Know

I watched the most enjoyable interview this weekend on the wildly popular show Huckabee. He had his Shih Tzu on his lap as he interviewed Alexandra Horowitz, scientist and author of Inside of a Dog: What Dogs See, Smell, and Know, a book I have already read.

Now Alexandra thinks we don't know enough about our dogs, and some of what we know is wrong. She is out to change our perception of dogs and to do it scientifically. She has to work at making herself a detached observer, though. She might be a psychologist who has studied cognition in humans, dogs, bonobos, and rhinoceroses, but among the first sentences of her book is the sentence I am a dog person. Boy, is she ever!

This is a fascinating book, full of terrific details and interesting research about dogs. So many of the specific elements that she describes still stick in my head. There's great material in here, for instance, about dog's noses and how they smell, and how much they encounter the world through scent and odor. It's not simply that Horowitz tells us that dogs have a powerful sense of smell; it's that she goes well beyond that to help us think about how different their sense of time must be, for instance, since they are smelling old smells along with new ones at the same time. That's just one example of many. The book is chocked full of the latest research about dogs, but told in a winning and delightful manner.

That's worth stressing: the writing in this book is great. It's colorful and idiosyncratic. Sometimes the syntax of a sentence is intriguing all on its own. The book is fun to read, in part, just because Horowitz writes so darn well. And, I should add, with a fair bit of whimsy and playfulness. She is a talent as a writer, as well as a scientist. And she makes the science accessible, interesting, and sometimes laugh-worthy.

But the book is also wonderful because it's so full of Horowitz's own enthusiasm for how great dogs are. She's a scientist, but she's hardly clinical. Her excitement about dogs comes pouring out in the small praise-of-dog moments that abound in the book. I feel like I finished the book not only knowing more about dogs (and impressed by all the things that Horowitz knows), but wanting to spend more time with dogs, looking at other people's dogs on the street, and thinking about when we might be able to get a dog of our own again. Her interest in the dog-human relationship -- which is so much the focus in the last chunk of the book -- spills over with her joy in it, and it's an infectious joy.

I highly recommend this book for every dog person!

2009 Nature Girl

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Are Earthquakes Really Bells Ringing?

Every bell made has its own tone, depending on its size, shape and composition. It turns out that the Earth, too, rings like a bell. This ringing, called free oscillation, is caused by earthquakes.

A powerful earthquake in Chile in 1960 with a magnitude of 9.5 left the entire Earth ringing for days afterward. As the Earth rang, its entire surface rose and fell by a centimeter every 54 minutes. But it happened so slowly it could be detected only by sensitive instruments.

It was while studying these earthquake-caused oscillations that Japanese researchers discovered that the Earth also constantly vibrates. These vibrations appear to have nothing to do with earthquakes.

The vibrations were discovered using an extremely sensitive instrument that measures gravity. These constant vibrations, with periods ranging from two to eight minutes, raise and lower the surface of the Earth the diameter of a single molecule. In 1998, scientists at the University of California, Berkeley, tried to confirm the vibrations.

What's causing this constant vibration? There is so much energy in these vibrations that they cannot be accounted for by small earthquakes. Scientists are theorizing that it could be caused by the Earth's winds. They say that there is enough energy in the Earth's winds to cause the vibrations. Others speculate that there could be some unknown processes going on within the Earth that may be causing the vibration.

Or, we might suggest, scientists have discovered that the Earth does literally praise its Maker through these low-frequency vibrations.

References: Richard Monasterksy, "Ringing Earth's Bell," Science News, v.154, July 4, 1998, p.12.

2009 Christian Nature

Let the heavens rejoice, and let the earth be glad; let the sea roar, and the fulness thereof. Psalm 96:11

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