“Things We Know to be True:” "Scientific American" Challenges God (Part 2)

In these very volatile times, one needs an anchor.  One needs a set of rules by which to live.  One needs a set of rules that are certain and sure, that don’t change with the spirits of gradualism, that only lead to the next level of error, the next level of Satan’s bondage.  There is such an anchor: The Holy Bible, the anchor of the soul.  GodSaidManSaid is a proof-platform where God’s Word is third-party certified, supernatural, and inerrant—really an anchor that never moves. 

This book of Holy rules tells us that Jesus Christ, whose name is the only name under heaven by which men can be saved, is the mediator between God and man.  He shed His blood to make a way of escape, cleansing those that believe upon His name of all sin and shame.  He gave us the opportunity to be born again—to literally become the sons and daughters of God.  These words are true and faithful. 

Are you born-again?  Will today be the day you embrace the true anchor of your soul?  Click onto “Further with Jesus” for childlike instructions and immediate entry into the Kingdom of God.  NOW FOR TODAY’S SUBJECT. 

GOD SAID, Genesis 1:1:

In the beginning God created the heaven and the earth.

GOD SAID, Exodus 20:11:

For in six days the LORD made heaven and earth, the sea, and all that in them is, and rested the seventh day: wherefore the LORD blessed the sabbath day, and hallowed it.

GOD SAID, Proverbs 3:19-20:

19 The LORD by wisdom hath founded the earth; by understanding hath he established the heavens.

20 By his knowledge the depths are broken up, and the clouds drop down the dew.

MAN SAID: According to evolutionary biologist Ernst Mayr, “No educated person any longer questions the validity of the so-called ‘theory’ of evolution, which we now know to be a simple 'fact.'”    

Now THE RECORD:  Welcome to GodSaidManSaid feature 821 that will once again certify the supernatural veracity of the Holy Bible.  All of these marvelous features are archived here in text and streaming audio for the edification of the blood-bought and as bait for the fishers of men.  Every Thursday eve, God willing, they grow by one. 

Be sure to take advantage of these powerful features:

1. You have questions?  God has answers.  Whatever your question, type a keyword into the search bar (top right) and watch the screen populate with related information—from Adam and Eve to quantum physics.
2. Use the Tell-A-Friend feature above to send a message to someone you love.  It is so quick and easy!
3. Imagine—you can download nearly 296 hours of GodSaidManSaid features to your electronic device!  Listen to one every day.

Thank you for coming.  May God’s face shine upon you with Light and Truth. 

This is Part Two in a three-part series addressing Scientific American’s challenge to the God of the Bible.  Several positioning pages from last week’s feature follow:

The deceivableness of unrighteousness is unashamedly ballyhooed in the November 2016 issue of Scientific American.  The headline on the front cover reads: “5 Scientific Facts (That People Often Get Wrong).”  When you arrive at the multi-page feature inside, you find this headline: “5 Things We Know to be True,” with the subhead, “A compendium of irrefutable facts for these fact-starved times.”  A few sentences from their prelude follow:

Scientific truths are always provisional at some level.  We once believed that the continents were fixed on the surface of Earth; now we know they move.  We thought the universe was static; now we know it’s expanding.  We thought margarine was healthier than butter and that hormone-replacement therapy was the right treatment for vast numbers of postmenopausal women; now we know better.  [End of quote]

GodSaidManSaid would just like to point out a few other things they’ve gotten wrong:

• Ramapithecus;
• Australopithecines;
• Peking Man;
• Java Man;
• Neanderthal Man;
• Cro-Magnon Man;
• Nebraska Man;
• Piltdown Man;
• Lucy;
• China’s fake chicken-lizard;
• Rethink fossilization, after soft tissue was discovered in dinosaur bones. 

And, we should add:

• Raw milk;
• Raw honey;
• Whole wheat;
• Olive oil;
• Salt;
• Eggs;
• Circumcision;
• Breast-feeding;
• The U.S. food pyramid;
• And so much more. 

Now, back to the prelude in Scientific American:

We ordinarily report on the latest advances in scientific and technological research, but we thought it appropriate to take a step back and discuss some of the science’s firmly established facts.  There is essentially no debate among legitimate scientists about these truths, which are based on verifiable evidence, which have been accepted for decades, and which have only become more strongly established as new evidence continues to accumulate.  [End of quote]

Pretty bold talk, don’t you think, when the first of the five “facts” they present is the theory of evolution.  Note: That’s theory of evolution—not fact of evolution by their own admission.  

An excellent book, by Dr. Grant Jeffrey titled Creation, records the following:

Darwin himself was perplexed and very worried about the lack of fossil evidence.  In his own words:

Why, if species have descended from other species by fine gradations, do we not everywhere see innumerable transitional forms?  Why is not all nature in confusion, instead of the species being, as we see them, well defined?  … But, as by this theory innumerable transitional forms must have existed, why do we not find them embedded in countless numbers in the crust of the Earth?

He expressed his fears about his possible error in the following comments:

I have asked myself whether I may not have devoted my life to a fantasy…I…am ready to cry with vexation at my blindness and presumption. 

Darwin admitted:

If it could be demonstrated that any complex organism existed which could not possibly have been formed by numerous, successive, slight modifications, my theory would absolutely break down. 

[Darwin] honestly believed these fossils would eventually be found in the thousands, and prove his theory to be true beyond a doubt. 

To date, though, every species discovered in the fossil record appears perfectly formed.  Paleontologists have never discovered a fossil showing a partially-formed species or a partially-formed organ.  Despite the fact that tens of thousands of scientists and millions of dedicated amateurs have been searching worldwide for these missing-link fossils to support evolution, they have never found a single example. 

The late Dr. Stephen Jay Gould was an internationally-respected professor of geology and paleontology at Harvard University.  He was a strong and eloquent supporter of evolution.  However, he honestly admitted that the illustrations of evolutionary development found in the university textbooks and television documentaries are actually fictitious inventions of creative artists that do not accurately represent scientific facts. 

Professor Gould admitted that the claim in science textbooks of the fossil record supporting evolution is false:

All paleontologists know that the fossil record contains precious little in the way of intermediate forms; transitions between major groups are characteristically abrupt. 

In other words, Dr. Gould admitted that the fossil record does not actually support the theory of gradual evolution (something that creationists have been claiming for many years).  The new “punctuated equilibrium” theory states that evolution proceeded in rapid jumps that left no fossil evidence, followed by long periods with no changes. 

Professor Gould also wrote:

The advent of the theory of punctuated equilibrium and the associated publicity it has generated have meant that for the first time, biologists with little knowledge of paleontology have become aware of the absence of transitional forms.  [End of quotes]

The lead article in “5 Things We Know to be True” is authored by Michael Shermer.  Speaking of the theory of evolution, Shermer writes:

Not only are the dates consistent, but the fossils also show intermediate stages—something anti-evolutionists still insist don’t exist.  There are now at least six intermediate fossil stages in the evolution of whales, for instance, and more than a dozen fossil hominins.

Finally, vestigial structures are signs of evolutionary history.  The Cretaceous snake Pachyrhachis problematicus had small hind limbs, which are gone in most of today’s snakes.  Modern whales retain a tiny pelvis for hind legs that existed in their land-mammal ancestors.  Likewise, flightless birds have wings.  And of course, humans are replete with useless vestigial structures—a distinctive sign of our evolutionary history—such as wisdom teeth, male nipples, body hair, the appendix, and the coccyx.  [End of quote]

The following excerpts are from the GodSaidManSaid feature “Darwin’s Whale Returns with Mouth Open Wide:”

Because they refuse to retain God in their knowledge, because unbelief is from whence their quest for knowledge begins, carnal scientists fall prey to the curse of the deceivableness of unrighteousness, which the Bible declares in II Thessalonians 2 and Romans 1. The results are strong delusion and reprobate minds.  They will readily believe a lie over the obvious.  The position of evolutionary scientists dominates the global narrative:  According to them, the entire and intricately marvelous earth and all its magnificent lifeforms, and its awe-inspiring, precisely-calibrated universe exploded into existence from basically nothing—strong delusions, reprobate minds. 

Another great pair of examples of the “deceivableness of unrighteousness” concerning the water buffalo and the banana are from the GodSaidManSaid feature “Their Imaginations Became Vain:”

Evolutionists were forced to come up with a plausible theory on how sea-going mammals such as whales, dolphins and porpoises evolved. Remember, mammals supposedly evolved from the sea, so how did these mammals end up back in the water? Some evolutionists suggest that an even-toed land mammal like the water buffalo is the likely candidate to have evolved into the present day whale. They speculate that the water buffalo liked to hang around the water a lot and over eons of time his hind legs simply fell off and his front legs changed into flippers—and the science students said, "No kidding?" The water buffalo’s hairy hide simply changed into smooth thick blubber and his nostrils slid up to the top of his head to form a blow hole. Then his tail evolved into flukes and because he was floating around in the water all the time, his body became enormous—and the students said, "Isn''t that interesting?"

Sound absurd? Do you think I''m exaggerating? The following excerpt is from volume 50 of National Geographic, written by V. B. Scheffer:

The whale''s ascendancy to sovereign size apparently began sixty million years ago when hairy, four-legged mammals in search of food or sanctuary ventured into water. As eons passed, change slowly occurred. Hind legs disappeared, front legs changed into flippers, hair gave way to a thick smooth blanket of blubber, nostrils moved to the top of the head, the tail broadened into flukes, and in the buoyant water world, the body became enormous.

Finally, consider this idea. Evolutionary biologist Robert May was quoted in the January, 2001 issue of Discover magazine: "The more we learn about genome, the more it teaches us about our own place in the web of life. For example, we share half our genes with the banana. (Actually, it would be more accurate to say bananas share half their genes with us, because their genome is smaller.) This is a fact more evident in some of my acquaintances than others." The article's author said, "This year the mapping of the genome shocked us, revealing a truth even more humbling and amusing: We are not just monkeys but their favorite snack as well." The title of the article is, "Your Cousin, The Banana." And the class of students said in concert, "No kidding?!" [End of quotes]

Strong delusion?

Because they begin in unbelief, the end of their search is strong delusion and a reprobate mind.

The March 2016 issue of Acts and Facts published a feature titled “Are Whales and Evolution Joined at the Hip?”  Much of that article follows:

Some evolutionists used to imagine that whales could evolve from an animal like a bear.  Charles Darwin considered how black bears can swim for a long time.  Once, he wrote about such bears:

…swimming for hours with widely open mouth, thus catching, like a whale, insects in the water.  Even in so extreme a case as this, if the supply of insects were constant, and if better adapted competitors did not already exist in the country, I can see no difficulty in a race of bears being rendered, by natural selection, more and more aquatic in their structure and habits, with larger and larger mouths, till a creature was produced as monstrous as a whale.

Darwin’s thought about a bear-like animal evolving into whales is now seen more as an illustration than a reality.  For many years, evolutionists held that whales evolved from an extinct carnivorous mammal group called mesonychids.  Their interpretation of fossils supported their conclusion.  Ernst Mayr said in 2001, “A beautiful series of intermediate stages also exists between the mesonychid ungulates and their descendants, the whales.” 

But now most evolutionists reject the mesonychid as ancestors for whales.  Instead, important new fossils discovered in Pakistan are interpreted as filling that role.  DNA sequences have also been compared between whales and living animals that have features similar to those of the new fossils.  Evolutionists now have “a firm understanding” that whales evolved from an animal more related to giraffes and camels. [Well, what about the “hanging around the water” issue?] 

Evolutionists believe they see greatly reduced pelvis or hip bones in some whales.  They teach this observation as hard evidence for whale evolution.  Just like the human appendix, these “hip” bones are interpreted as a vestigial structure.  Jerry Coyne from the University of Chicago sums up the evolutionary position nicely:

Whales are treasure troves of vestigial organs.  Many living species have a vestigial pelvis and leg bones, testifying…to their descent from four-legged ancestors.  If you look at a complete whale skeleton in a museum, you’ll often see the tiny hindlimb and pelvic bones hanging from the rest of the skeleton, suspended by wires.  That’s because in living whales, they’re not connected to the rest of the bones, but are simply imbedded in tissue.  They once were part of the skeleton, but became disconnected and tiny when they were no longer needed. 

For decades, evolutionists did not search for any other uses for these bones.  Why?  Because a vestigial pelvis was what they expected to find. 

Matthew Dean of the University of Southern California and Jim Dines of the Natural History Museum of Los Angeles County examined “hip” bones in whale and dolphin skeletons.  Their painstaking research of more than 10,000 unsorted bones turned “a long-accepted evolutionary assumption on its head.”  According to the report, “common wisdom has long held that those bones are simply vestigial, slowly withering away like tailbones on humans.”  But their results “[fly] directly in the face of that assumption, finding that not only do those pelvic bones serve a purpose—but their size and possibly shape are influenced by the forces of sexual selection.”  This new analysis of whale hips was published in the scientific journal Evolution. 

Dines and Dean are evolutionists.  They still believe that whales evolved from a four-legged land mammal.  Thus, they believe that they really are studying vestigial hip bones.  But, as reported, “‘everyone’s always assumed that if you gave whales and dolphins a few more million years of evolution, the pelvic bones would disappear.  But it appears that’s not the case,’ said Matthew Dean.” 

Dean did admit that “our research really changes the way we think about the evolution of whale pelvic bones in particular, but more generally about structures we call ‘vestigial.’  As a parallel, we are now learning that our appendix is actually quite important in several immune processes, not a functionally useless structure.”

The assertion that these bones are hip bones or a pelvis is a mystical claim.  Thus Coyne’s defense that whale “hip” bones are truly vestigial remnants invokes mysticism.

ICR’s Brian Thomas provided an excellent synopsis on the whale bone research.  He described the problems with seeing these bones as evolutionary adaptations.  He offered a better explanation of bones designed for a specific purpose. The bones in the lower abdomen in some whales do not connect to other bones but are embedded in several muscles.  Bone provides a firm anchor for other structures that are manipulated by these muscles.  It seems that these bones may be vital for extremely large bodies to mate in a fluid environment.  Similarly, many animals and also humans have a bone called the hyoid in their neck region.  It also is affixed only by muscles above and below it.  The hyoid provides a firm anchor for these muscles to help manipulate the tongue, larynx, and pharynx.  Both the hyoid and whale abdominal bones are a good design solution for the movement of accessory structures.  [End of quotes]

 In the prelude of Scientific American, a statement reads: “There is essentially no debate among legitimate scientists about these truths.”  [End of quote]  Is this the truth?  In the GodSaidManSaid feature “Scientists Come Out of the Closet,” you’ll find the following:

The issue purposely gets scant publicity, but scientists with prestigious credentials are regularly arriving at the God position.  Making a public stand for a Creator—essentially “coming out of the closet”—is not a wise career move for many, but come out they continually do. 

Concerning creation scientists and their credentials, Lee Strobel, in his book The Case for a Creator, weighs in with the following:

Scientists who utterly reject evolution may be one of our fastest-growing controversial minorities…Many of the scientists supporting this position hold impressive credentials in science. 

—Larry Hatfield in Science Digest

There were one hundred of them—biologists, chemists, zoologists, physicists, anthropologists, molecular and cell biologists, bioengineers, organic chemists, geologists, astrophysicists, and other scientists.  Their doctorates came from such prestigious universities as Cambridge, Stanford, Cornell, Yale, Rutgers, Chicago, Princeton, Purdue, Duke, Michigan, Syracuse, Temple, and Berkeley. 

They included professors from Yale Graduate School, the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Tulane, Rice, Emory, George Mason, Lehigh, and the Universities of California, Washington, Texas, Florida, North Carolina, Wisconsin, Ohio, Colorado, Nebraska, Missouri, Iowa, Georgia, New Mexico, Utah, Pennsylvania, and elsewhere. 

Among them was the director of the Center for Computational Quantum Chemistry and scientists at the Plasma Physics Lab at Princeton, the National Museum of Natural History at the Smithsonian Institute, the Los Alamos National Library, and the Lawrence Livermore Laboratories.

And they wanted the world to know one thing: they are skeptical. 

After spokespersons for the Public Broadcasting System’s seven-part television series Evolution asserted that “all known scientific evidence supports [Darwinian] evolution” as does “virtually every reputable scientist in the world,” these professors, laboratory researchers, and other scientists published a two-page advertisement in a national magazine under the banner: “A Scientific Dissent From Darwinism.” 

Their statement was direct and defiant.  “We are skeptical of claims for the ability of random mutation and natural selection to account for the complexity of life,” they said. “Careful examination of the evidence for Darwinian theory should be encouraged.” [End of quotes]

“5 Things We Know to be True,” Scientific American? 

The Holy Word of God, penned thousands of years ago, is true and righteous altogether—a place to build a life that will last forever.  The hordes of academics who rail upon this Book would be wise to consider the admonition of Jude 1:14-15:

14 And Enoch also, the seventh from Adam, prophesied of these, saying, Behold, the Lord cometh with ten thousands of his saints,

15 To execute judgment upon all, and to convince all that are ungodly among them of all their ungodly deeds which they have ungodly committed, and of all their hard speeches which ungodly sinners have spoken against him.

GOD SAID, Genesis 1:1:

In the beginning God created the heaven and the earth.

GOD SAID, Exodus 20:11:

For in six days the LORD made heaven and earth, the sea, and all that in them is, and rested the seventh day: wherefore the LORD blessed the sabbath day, and hallowed it.

GOD SAID, Proverbs 3:19-20:

19 The LORD by wisdom hath founded the earth; by understanding hath he established the heavens.

20 By his knowledge the depths are broken up, and the clouds drop down the dew.

MAN SAID: According to evolutionary biologist Ernst Mayr, “No educated person any longer questions the validity of the so-called ‘theory’ of evolution, which we now know to be a simple 'fact.'”   

Now you have THE RECORD.

 

 

References:

Authorized King James Version

GodSaidManSaid, “Darwin’s Whale Returns with Mouth Open Wide”

GodSaidManSaid, “Scientists Come Out of the Closet”

GodSaidManSaid, “Things We Know to be True: Scientific American Challenges God (Part 1)”

Shermer, M., “5 Things We Know to be True,” Scientific American, November 2016

• Go Further With Christ
• Email To a Friend
• Comments or Questions?