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In Webster’s dictionary ‘Science’ is defined as ‘knowledge’ A growing number of scientists in the past few decades have appealed to an intelligent design in trying to explain such complex issues as irreducible complexity and the intricacies of the cell - This because the naturalist process was clearly insufficient to produce these examples and others such as DNA, life’s information system. A mutation or adaptation within species is always a loss of information. Evolution depends on the assumption that mutations or adaptation produces new information. These assumptions have never been observed so this group of scientists promoted a new theory called Intelligent Design. This movement started from within the secular science community and is labeled ID. It agrees in principal with Biblical creationism except that ID doesn’t adhere to strict Biblical timeframes or give credit to the Biblical God. They leave the designer open to interpretation and concentrate on scientific data.

At the core of the Design/Evolution controversy lies some disingenuous motives and some honest misunderstandings. These motives by a select few of the academic elite come to light if we examine the history of key events influencing our modem interpretations. Naturalism has been introduced into origins science as taught today and this is honestly misunderstood by the common man. This was a result of secular and theistic scholars denying the existence of a supernatural force outside of, and not subject to the natural laws of the known world. Over time this became the underlying belief system for scientific thought. Naturalism by today’s definition is associated with natural science. It’s basis is that the natural laws we observe around us is all there is. It has been an accepted philosophy since the days of Aristotle and most probably before that.

Because operational science is something that can be proven by repetition and documentation it has been able to cure diseases, save labor, and explore space. Operational science is based on repeating experiments and trial and error. Watching a baseball fall to the ground every time it is dropped proves that it will continue to and establishes a natural law. Origins science is quite different. The past cannot be repeated therefore it is impossible to confirm how it happened. A dinosaur turning into a bird 150 million years ago is what we are taught as origins science but it is obviously not repeatable. But the naturalists insist that the same science that put a man on the moon is the one that explains the evolution of the universe. This is false.

The popularity of naturalism increased throughout history and this is true not only of the secular world but the religious and Christian world as well. Many within the history of the Church and its theological institutions compromised their beliefs in a supernatural divine Creator in order to provide a co-existence with naturalism that would promote an atmosphere of tolerance. This compromise from some of our prominent theologians had laid the groundwork for a paradigm switch.

After the fall of the Roman Empire and before the Renaissance was a period called the Middle Ages. Human beings have always been spiritual but this was a very superstitious period in history. As mankind’s knowledge accumulated and through the reinvention of the printing press many influential people became opposed to the varied and corrupted superstitions. A feeling of anti-supernaturalism became common. This, of course, included the Bible and its miracles. Miracles and other spiritual non-natural events couldn’t be repeated and tested so consequently anti-supernaturalism left only naturalism and the rules of science were established. This paradigm switch had a bigger impact on our world than the theory of evolution itself.

Origins science was then subjected to the evolutionary view of the naturalists in biology, geology and other natural sciences. In order to understand our origins from a naturalist view the scientific community needed a mechanism to produce the ascent of life. When the scattered ideas of evolution were finally formed into one cohesive theory by Darwin and others, it gave a mechanism for a naturalist explanation for origins. This meant time and mutations and natural selection. With no supernatural explanation to compete with naturalism was free to reach back into our origins and speculate. Naturalism was now married to origins science and the two became indistinguishable from each other. Naturalism won by default but the irony is that it couldn’t be proven either. It just had no competing viewpoint to counter it because supernaturalism was overruled. The naturalists made the rules and naturalism was the only player.

This new paradigm led to more misinterpretations in the other fields of science, history and also theology. Archaeology and Egyptology were in their infancy and were subject to a naturalist bias from the beginning, meaning that any evidence or artifact uncovered was assumed to have developed slowly from a previous culture. Biblical criticism expanded the naturalist philosophy into criticism of the Bible and other historic works such as the Greeks, Homer and Herodotus. Anything that contained a deity of supernatural power and omnipotence was subjected to incredible scrutiny. This was labeled mythology and categorized separately than science or history. The God of the Hebrew Bible was disrespected in the same breath as Poseidon or Zeus. Whether it was a conscious disdain for the self-proclamation of divine authority or an implicit anti-Semitism the Bible received the most extreme and overt scrutiny. Any perceived error or contradiction was deemed enough to condemn the whole historic epic of the Bible stories. The evolutionists and secularists used this Biblical criticism to further the acceptance of the naturalistic ideology. This led the theologians to concede some of the historic facts and also the miraculous elements and cling to ‘the moral objectives in order to salvage enough of their faith to continue. Even that was construed by the naturalists as an evidence of man’s progress. They claimed man’s religion was evolving along with his knowledge.

Many things happened in the course of this journey, religious wars, world wars, strife, starvation, and genocide. Man’s brutality was obvious and yet he seemed to be getting smarter and smarter. Dragging himself up out of the Middle Ages into the Renaissance and on into the Industrial Revolution, man seemed to be progressing. He no longer needed a deity to worship or explain his beginnings. He could explain them through knowledge and human self-government. Naturalism led to other ideas in the nineteenth century, like socialism and secular humanism.

The beliefs of the masses are pyramid shaped, meaning from the top down it spreads out. What our scientific elite and our church hierarchy teach tends to trickle down from the top. The major scientific institutions are 90% atheistic and 100% naturalistic and this ideology is guarded very exclusively from within. Individual scientists that consider intelligent design as a better explanation for anomalous evidence are ostracized in various ways. Graduation from a university is made extremely difficult if you do not go along with the status quo. Sometimes with a creationist viewpoint, the graduate cannot receive endorsement for a job. At the very least, the job they can acquire is non-origins based. Many creationists are in operational science but if they ever write a scientific paper for publication that includes any mention of Intelligent Design the paper is immediately subjected to a peer review of the scientific establishment. The paper does not get published. Then when someone starts to mention teaching Intelligent Design in school the same establishment says that no Intelligent Design material has ever been published and so it is not scientific. The review process at the same time keeps it out and then has the audacity to say that design is not scientific because it is not published in any peer reviewed journal. This is the disingenuous rhetoric that is propagated in the scientific community today.

Every time there is a controversy about evolution there appears a ‘Christian’ to defend evolution. But the truth is, our mainline theological institutions are just as influenced by naturalism as any secular ones. Multiple generations have graduated from liberal seminaries and filled the pulpits with the naturalistic teaching. The most positive part of this for the naturalists is that the ‘Christians’ are complacent and uninterested. The naturalists rely on the misunderstanding of the masses to make evolution the dominant view. Because the education system is dogmatically controlled the only threat to naturalistic domination are the self-educated laymen and an increasing number of abstract thinking scientists.

When the local school boards across the nation try to pass resolutions relating to the teaching of intelligent design along with evolution or just teach the problems of evolution the naturalists come out of their gated community and scream ‘theocracy’ and ‘separation of church and state’ and ‘religious bigotry’ and a host of other politically correct buzz words. Then they scurry back to their safe haven of smug intellectual sanctuary to allow their guardians of the dogma to attack. The ACLU will threaten lawsuits to the small and under funded school boards. Scientific American and others science journals will reassure the curious public that all is well, evolution was safely defended and is secure as always and the watchtower is still standing. Then PBS, and National Geographic will promote another series on what the evolution of life might look like in the future and other speculative and computer generated distractions for the unsuspecting public.

As the Bible was scrutinized mercilessly in the nineteenth century, it is naturalistic science that should now be examined. And it is. Every week we hear of Intelligent Design being discussed in another corner of our country. It will take another paradigm shift to create an atmosphere of independent critical thinking. Either a grassroots revolution to change our interpretation of our past or a catastrophic event and visible miracles witnessed by thousands or millions at once. I’m willing to work for the first one but I’m willing to bet on the second.

Stuart T. Schmidt

• Stuart T. Schmidt

Science-Dating Dinosaurs

I said I would write a column on radiometric dating, but this subject is very complicated and kind of boring, and to understand it we need to understand some other things first.

First of all, when a dinosaur bone or fossil is found, it is not carbon-dated and it usually is not dated using any of the other radiometric dating methods. The fossils are dated, or assigned ages by their position in the geologic column. Here's a little history of the geologic column.

In 1830, Charles Lyell, an atheist lawyer from England, wrote "The Principles of Geology." The geologic column "evolved" from this book and other writings about this time or earlier. One of the reasons for his philosophy was to "free the science from Moses." His hypothesis was that the major sedimentary strata that all the fossils are found in were laid down as slowly and uniformly as we observe it happening today. Thus the uniformitarian view was brought to the scientific community. Charles Darwin read this book and applied biology to a uniformitarian principle and he is credited with the theory of evolution.

We've all seen the geologic column poster in every museum we've been in. (Except the Grand River Museum and a handful of others.) It's a complex graph of different periods broken into Epochs and Ages and within these periods the different geologic formations are found. Hell Creek Formation is the one that covers N.W. South Dakota and parts of North Dakota, Montana and Wyoming. According to the geologic column this formation is dated at Late Cretaceous (about 65-70 million years ago, by evolutionary standards).

This date is arrived at by using an Index Fossil. The index fossil for this formation is the Edmontosaurus, the duck-billed dinosaur. This is the most common fossil in this area. Each formation in the world has a certain common fossil that serves as the index fossil. This fossil then dates the whole formation. All this formation from the long ages, millions of years, evolutionary biased geologic column. A column invented by a lawyer whose main goal was to "free the science from Moses."

The fossils are dated by the rocks or geologic formation they are found in. And the geologic formation or the rocks are dated by the index fossil found there. This circular reasoning has been going on in the scientific community for over a hundred years. Occasionally, a fossil is dated using one of the radioisotope dating methods. Carbon-14 is not used on Cretaceous fossils because there shouldn't be any carbon left in something millions of years old. One of the longer age dating methods are used such as Potassium-argon, Uranium-lead, etc. These give much exaggerated ages because they are designed to. Many samples are taken and the ages compared to the geologic column. The tests that agree are published in science journals as proof and the tests that are disagreeable are ignored or discarded. Actually, there are lots of dinosaur bones found with carbon still in them and all the coal samples ever found have contained some carbon. Many creationists have commissioned Carbon-14 tests on fossils and coal and the range of dates are wide, but mostly in the thousands of years old, not millions.

Radioisotope dating is accepted as fact, but the fact is that there are many assumptions that these methods are dependant on:

1. The starting conditions or amount of parent/daughter elements are known.

2. The radioactive decay rate has been constant.

3. The system was closed and unpolluted by elements since the start.

Hundreds of tests and samples have shown enormously long ages for rocks and fossils of known origin so how can we trust the tests and samples that are performed on fossils of unknown ages. basically, what I'm trying to say today is that if you take away the long ages bias of the geologic column and that the radiometric dating methods are flawed or at least full of assumptions then the millions of years of evolution are very skeptical. Without millions of years, all living life is not possible from a single celled organism. But if God created this earth and all living things (after their kind) supernaturally only a few thousand years ago and most of the dinosaurs died in the Flood, then this is the science that we observe today. One creation and one major earth changing catastrophe. Extinction not evolution.

The Museum Gift Shop has several really good books for sale. One new one is called "Unlocking the Mysteries of Creation." This new color version is a beautiful coffee table book full of wonderful pictures, amazing apologetics and logical answers to complicated questions. A wonderful book for the whole family. Call or write if you want to hear more or have questions.

Stuart Schmidt

The Seven Wonders of Mount St. Helens

Mount St. Helens was a significant event in geologic history. This event gave rise to a view of catastrophism versus uniformitarianism in geology. It also supported the Creation Science view that almost all Earth's features were produced by catastrophe.

1. The mountain rearranged beyond recognition in nine hours.

2. Canyons formed in five months.

3. Badlands (like the South Dakota Badlands) were formed in five days.

4. Layered strata formed in three hours.

5. River system formed in nine hours.

6. Sinking logs look like many aged forests in just ten years.

7. A new model for quicker coal formation.

Everyday earth processes would have taken countless years to form the above features. According to evolutionary geologists, 4.5 billion years to form all these features in the Earth's crust. Yet these seven catastrophically produced formations cut the time to nothing. Globally, the unimaginable forces of the Biblical flood epoch would have destroyed nearly every feature on the Earth's surface and established new ones.

Changing the Earth's crust doesn't take a lot of time if the rates, scales and intensities are large enough.

Have you ever wondered why:

1. The secular science community can't find a missing link between apes and man?

2. Hundreds of mammoths have been found in the Artic with green vegetation in their mouths and stomachs?

3. Some species of animals like crocodiles, alligators, sharks and turtles lived with the dinosaurs, but didn't become extinct?

4. Megalithic structures like the Pyramids are built all over the world and scientists can't agree why?

5. Radiometric dating doesn't work?

6. If life developed slowly over billions of years, why do scientists have a hard time explaining the "Cambrian Explosion" where all life is fully formed and mature almost instantaneously in fossil record?

Creation Science has these answers and many others for you.

Since Henry Morris and John Whitcomb wrote "The Genesis Flood" in 1960 and Mount St. Helens erupted in 1980, catastrophic geology is starting to gain respect even among secular scientists. For a century and a half, uniformitarian thought was the norm in geology, paleontology and most other scientific disciplines. However, a new "catastrophism" view is emerging. Creation Science has it's roots in the literal interpretation of the Bible and so catastrophism fits this paradigm very well. Genesis tells of a worldwide catastrophe called Noah's Flood.

The authority of the Bible was questioned and rejected in the 1800's. Darwin's Theory of Evolution separated the so-called intellectuals from the religious holdouts. To this day, many people try to explain evolution as a science and creation as a religion. However, through recent advances in science, especially archaeology and catastrophic geology, the Bible is regaining its authority as history, even among non-believers. Recent finds of Egyptian chariot wheels by the Red Sea and stone tablets with "Pontius Pilate's" name on them, helped to legitimize the stories of the Exodus and the Crucifixion.

The best theory to date in plate tectonics by any scientist is by John Baumgardner, a creationist. A worldwide flood not only would provide the mechanism for the breakup and drift of the continents and conditions to fossilize millions of fossils, but provided new atmospheric conditions to develop the Ice Age and increased volcanic activity to form all the geologic formations we see today. That is why here on the plains, just like the Grand Canyon, the rivers and creeks are very small compared to their banks. Lots of water in a short time compared to a little water over a long time.

The Institute for Creation Research of San Diego offers graduate courses in Creation Science, Geology, Paleontology, Biology, etc. Many scientists are accepting this new trend for its answers to the questions of an outdated nineteenth century "evolution" theory. Three influential thinkers of the 1800's helped shape the thoughts of the 20th Century, Marx, Freud and Darwin. The first two have fallen. This is the 21st Century. Will Darwin be next?

Here are some very good websites for more information on Creation Science. Don't take my word for it, ask the professionals:

• Institute for Creation Research

• Creation Science Evangelism

How Old is Earth?

How old do you think the world is? Some people claim that the universe was created by a "Big Bang" about 20 billion years ago. Then 4.5 billion years ago, in a warm little pond some place on earth, life spontaneously developed by itself. From this one celled organism, all life evolved into what we now know today.

Would it surprise you to know that today, hundreds of scientists believe that the earth did not spontaneously evolve? Would it surprise you that these same accredited scientists of all different fields accept a very literal Biblical view of our origins? Would it surprise you know that they believe God created this universe in six 24 hour days about six to ten thousand years ago? Or that they believe Noah's flood to be a very real, historical fact? It surprised me.

Hundreds of non-believing, even atheistic scientists have joined the ranks of Bible believing Christians and even accepted Christ because scientific evidence convinced them that someone created this place. Irreducible complexity has convinced many that this did not happen by chance. The complex design of even the most minute organisms are so extremely intricate and interfunctional that there has to be a God. And after viewing the data, God didn't need millions of years of evolution to do it. Moses wrote what God told him about our history and it is becoming more clear all the time.

Geo-chronology is the science of determining the age of the earth. Scientists are aware of over 100 methods of observable, measurable evidences of the earth's age. Only a few are portrayed as supportive of billions of years old, but these few are largely publicized and heralded as the only factual data. The fact is most geo-chronology points to a very young earth. However, outside the scientific circles very few people hear about these because to the mainstream public, secular humanism is very politically correct

Here's a few for example:

1. Evolutionists say that humans have been on earth at least one million years. At a one-half percent growth rate per year, there would be 3 trillion people stacked on this earth. But at the same half percent rate, today's population would take just over 4000 years. A coincidence that Noah's flood was about 4400 years ago?

2. The magnetic field on the earth has been accurately measured for over a hundred years and is steadily decreasing. Over 10,000 years ago, the magnetic field would have been as strong as a magnetic star, like our sun. Not possible for life.

There are too many evidences to list in detail, but we could use helium concentration, topsoil depth, earth moon distance, absent meteorites in geologic column, shrinking sun, and concentration of ocean salt  just to name a few.

What about coal and oil? Long term processes? No, just catastrophic conditions. What about petrified wood? Millions of years to petrify? No, just several weeks under the right conditions. What about carbon-dating or any radiometric dating methods, don't they prove millions of years? I'll save that for a whole column in itself, but let me tell you, it's not as reliable as you've been told. Living snails have been radiocarbon-dated as dead 27,000 years ago.

Not only mainstream scientists are starting to see this new revolution, but mainstream churches and Christian organizations as well. Dr. James Dobson talked in his newsletter about the poor science involved in the giant media PBS extravaganza called "Evolution." In his book called "The Case for Faith" by Lee Strobel, he quotes William Bradley, "The optimism of the 1950's is gone. The mood at the 1999 International Conference on Origin of Life was described as grim-full of frustration, pessimism and desperation." This is the state of our secular scientific circles today. But the mood is changing. There are three brand new books out that will be available in the museum bookstore. "In Six Days" by John F. Ashton, PhD., "Darwin's Demise" and "Creative Defense" by Nicholas Comninellis and Joe White. Excellent material for anyone interested or call and talk to me if you have any questions.

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Last modified: 7/2/08