12/31/2024
| Seismic Frogs… |
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| The male white-lipped frog of Puerto Rico communicates using more than a variety of sounds. The frog also sends seismic signals through the ground. Researchers studying the frog have learned that it is more sensitive to seismic signals than any other creature. The male white-lipped frog communicates using chirps, chuckles and thumps on the ground. The male begins to establish his territory by sending out a rapid stream of chirps. When he is sitting on the mud, each chirp begins with a thud. The thud is a thump on the ground that is strong enough to travel for some distance. It’s thought that he does this by inflating his throat pouch so rapidly that it thumps on the ground, setting up a seismic wave. The thump is an important part of the frog’s territorial strategy. While his chirps tell other males his direction, they don’t let the others know how far away he is. However, the seismic wave travels through the ground at a different speed than the chirp travels through the air. This difference allows the other males to know both the distance and direction of the male by the different times at which they hear the thump and the chirp. The other males respond to the chirps and thumps with longer sounds called chuckles. Who taught the frog this complicated, but precise system? Who taught him how to measure distance by using both airborne and seismic waves? Only our wise Magnificent Creator God could have done this. |
12/30/2024
| How Old Are Fossils… |
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| How long does it take to make a fossil? Would you believe that when the correct natural conditions are duplicated in the laboratory, the process only takes a few days to get underway? Anything that was once alive can become a fossil. Bone, hair, feathers and even cloth can fossilize. However, the conditions must be just right, or the candidate simply decays. This is what happens to most things that were once alive. To become fossilized, the candidate for fossilization has to be protected from air and other things that could cause decay. Then the original once-living molecules are replaced by molecules of silica before they can decay. We are often given the idea that it takes millions of years for something to be fossilized. Scientists who believe in creation have never accepted that fact because they do not believe that the world is that old. Research into how things fossilize shows that believers in a young creation were right. For example, scientists made a discovery while they were studying fossilized silk fabric from a human burial site. They discovered if copper was buried with the person, the copper atoms would be washed into the silk by water and begin to deposit within the fiber. The result was a fossil that even showed the detail of the original threads in the cloth. In lab tests, researchers found that it only takes a few days for a considerable amount of copper to deposit in the silk. The truth is, you could be older than a fossil! All things are the way they are because our Magnificent Creator God had a plan! |
12/29/2024
| Just an ant… |
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| Honeydew is one of the favorite foods of ants. There are a number of insects, including thorn bugs and aphids, who consume so much honeydew that they cannot digest it all. These insects are designed so that ants can milk them for the excess honeydew, just the way a farmer obtains milk from a cow. Many species of ants will milk the honeydew-collecting insect by stroking its abdomen with its antennae. The tree hopper actually slows its secretion of excess honeydew to the milking ant so that the ant may drink his honeydew “fresh from the cow” so to speak. Some ants construct clay pens and shelters in which they enclose certain species of aphids, just as a farmer keeps his herd. Like the farmer, the ants move the aphids to better honeydew feeding sites when necessary. They also care for the aphid eggs during the winter. Herding ants are even better able to protect a young tree hopper than its parents. It is not unusual for a tree hopper parent to turn her young over to herding ants because they can do more for the young insect than she can. Such complex relationships between creatures points to a God who is both a Magnificent Creator God and Teacher—even to insects!!! |
12/28/2024
| Just another mother… |
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| You might not think of the crocodile as a particularly loving creature. In reality, the crocodile is among the most gentle and loving of parents. Mama crocodile lays between 40 and 80 eggs in a large nest. For the 90 days they take to hatch, she will keep close watch over them, even foregoing food so as not to leave the nest unattended. Even the father stays close to guard the eggs that are a delicacy to many animals. At the end of this three-month watch the babies begin to chirp from within their eggs. Before long there may be dozens of babies chirping from the nest of buried eggs. This brings the mother who carefully uncovers the eggs, one by one. The young are only nine inches long and weigh just four ounces. Yet the gentle and loving mother picks up each one and with a flip of her head places them in a special pouch in her mouth. When some of the young have trouble breaking out of their shell, mama picks up the eggs and delicately works the eggs inside her mouth with her tongue, freeing the imprisoned baby. Once collected, all the young are taken to a special protected nursery where they will be just as carefully tended for months. Most amazing is that, should the mother not be present to tend to the hatchling chores, the father offers the hatchlings the very same help and care! Our Magnificent Creator God loves even the crocodile! And his acceptance of you and me, because of what Jesus Christ has done for us, is an even greater wonder than the loving crocodile! |
12/27/2024
| Ancient Eye Surgery… |
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| Man has always treasured his ability to see. And since man was created as a highly intelligent creature, rather than a simple primitive, it seems that man has practiced eye surgery as far back as we have records. Eye surgery is no more a modern development than malpractice penalties. Ancient Egyptian eye doctors applied various kinds of salves to the eye. Some of their stranger salves contained mud from the Nile river and crocodile dung. Before you laugh, you should know that modern eye specialists admit that these strange ingredients may have contained effective antibodies to relieve infections. Eye surgeons were busy in India six or eight centuries before the birth of Christ. A surgeon named Susruta performed a surgery in which he pushed an opaque lens that sits behind the pupil of the eye into the interior of the eyeball; there, the lens would no longer block vision. The oldest record of eye surgery, however, dates to 4,000 years ago. The Code of Hammurabi said that the surgeon who saved a man’s eye was to be paid the same fee that was given to a doctor who saved a man’s life. On the other hand, if the surgeon caused the eye to be lost, the law required the surgeon’s fingers to be cut off. There were lesser penalties if the patient was merely a slave. History records that man has always been an intelligent creature with a surprising amount of knowledge. Although sometimes some has been lost, knowledge is a gift from our Magnificent Creator God. |
12/26/2024
| Human Magnets… |
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| Do you know that you have something in your head besides bone, soft tissue and blood? You have rocks in your head! Well, sort of, anyway. Scientists recently announced that they have discovered that the human brain is laced with tiny magnetic particles made of magnetite. Magnetite is the same mineral that occurs naturally in lodestones. While the particles are distributed throughout the brain, they seem to be more concentrated in the membrane that encloses the brain. Scientists said that they had not seen the particles before because they are so tiny. The smallest are about a millionth of an inch in diameter, while the largest are a hundred-thousandth of an inch in diameter. Added together, all the particles in the average brain amount to only one millionth of an ounce. The particles are identical to those found in many bacteria, pigeons, salmon and whales. The particles help those creatures navigate, using the earth’s magnetic field. Scientists are not prepared to say that they serve the same purpose in humans. Instead, they continue to study the particles to learn what purpose they serve. At the time our Magnificent Creator God made everything, the earth’s magnetic field was several times stronger than it is today. When Christ walked this earth, the magnetic field was twice as strong as it is today. Perhaps in that stronger magnetic field, human beings were easily able to keep track of their direction, something few people can do today. |
12/25/2024
| The Giant Helper… |
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| Nearly everyone has heard of the giant fungus in Michigan’s Iron County, near the Wisconsin border. The 38-acre fungus weighs as much as a blue whale. Scientists estimate that it is about 1,500 years old, based on its current rate of growth. Strange life forms such as this fungus bring out the whimsy in some people. A California health food store suggested that eating some of the fungus might help people live longer. Since we at Creation Moments can’t resist living things that can be regarded as “strange,” the fungus is a natural for us. We thought that you might like to know, however, more about the Armillarias fungus and its unique life. Like most fungi, Armillarias is made up of tiny tendrils growing almost invisibly underground. The honey mushrooms that sprout above ground are merely the fruiting bodies of the organism. Armillarias are commonly found in hardwood forests throughout North America. The species is territorial, which means that no two individuals will share the same area. The fungus serves a crucial purpose in the forest ecology. It breaks down dead wood for reuse by other plants. In the process, it makes carbon dioxide for the forest plants to turn into oxygen. Without the Armillarias, the forest would eventually die, choked with dead wood. Our Magnificent Creator God has designed the Armillarias to be a primary recycler of waste wood in the forest. |
12/24/2024
| The Dynamic Rainforest… |
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| The environmental movement has rightfully shown concern about the South American rainforest. While it is true that the entire rainforest system is a delicately balanced harmony of thousands of subsystems, it is generally believed that it has taken millions of years to evolve. After all, each living thing forms part of the environment for other living things so that adaptation is a dynamic process seemingly taking much longer than might be imagined. This is why the rainforest is spoken of as being a fragile ecosystem. Anthropologist Anna Roosevelt of the Field Museum of Natural History, Chicago, has found, in Brazil, the oldest evidence of pottery in the Americas. The site where the pottery was found supported a large and industrious population. Roosevelt points out that the descendants of these ancient peoples conquered large parts of South and Central America. They cleared rainforests, built cities and spread their culture and industry. After the invasion of the Europeans in the 1500s, these cultures died out and the rainforests again took over. Thus, today’s rainforests are likely only a few hundred years old, meaning that it has not taken millions of years of adaptation. While we are not advocating greedy exploitation of the rainforest, it would seem from previous history that the most fragile element of the ecosystem is not the plants and animals but the indigenous human populations. And once more we realize that all of this is just a small part of our Magnificent Creator God’s Plan. |
12/23/2024
| Clouds of Beauty… |
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| The painted lady butterfly gets its name from the beautiful design in orange, black and white on its wings, which average about two and a half inches in full span. Every year, millions of these little creatures are seen in full migration. The painted lady is the most widespread of all species of butterfly. It is found in Asia, Africa and South America. The species familiar to North Americans migrates from Mexico all the way to Canada. This is a one-way trip because the female butterfly lays her eggs in Mexico, then migrates to Canada, where she eventually dies. In some way the following year, each newly hatched butterfly in Mexico knows exactly when and where to migrate, but this is one of the great mysteries of migration. Some years there are more painted lady butterflies than others, and Dennis Murphy, director of the Center for Conservation Biology at Stanford University, has pointed out that the migrating population can be a thousand times greater in an exceptional year compared to normal years. Dr. Murphy believes that these unusually large populations are the result of drought conditions that also produce a greater crop of weedy thistles. The painted lady butterflies live on these thistles and never threaten any other crop. God’s design of the painted lady butterfly bears witness to His work as an artistic Magnificent Creator God who paints the landscape for thousands of miles with these beautiful creatures and a logical Creator who maintains the balance of nature. |
12/22/2024
| How many could there be…. |
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| How many ants are there in the world? No one has actually counted them all or asked them to fill out little ant census forms. However, scientists have estimated that there are about 10 million billion ants in the world, waiting for you to have a picnic. That’s more ants than there are mammals, reptiles, birds, and amphibians combined. God made so many ants because ants are important housekeepers for the earth. Ants, not earthworms, turn most of the world’s soil, drain it, and enrich it. Ants dispose of 90% of the corpses of small dead animals. As the world’s gardeners, ants spread and plant more seeds than any other creature. Like bees, ants have a sophisticated society, which includes workers, nurses, soldiers, hunters, farmers, and even builders. Each of these different classes have specialized organs for their work. The soldier ants of one species are walking bombs. They are loaded with poison and literally explode when under attack, spraying poison on their enemies. Army ants in Central and South America march across the countryside in a line that can be nearly 50 feet long. The solid column sweeps along, flushing out even small animals, as it looks for food. The huge variety of living things around us represents more than simply variety. That variety carefully includes creatures to do every job that needs to be done to maintain life on earth. This, in itself, is a witness to both the creativity and wisdom of our Magnificent Creator God!!! |
12/21/2024
| And The Lesson Is… |
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| If your measuring stick is inaccurate, you could end up with too much wallpaper or too little. If your map tells you that your destination is 200 miles away when it’s really only 50 miles away, you might drive right past it. If your map of the universe is inaccurate and stars are a lot closer than you expect, you will arrive at the wrong age for the universe. Most science textbooks solemnly teach that the universe is 10 to 20 billion years old. A distant galaxy in the Virgo cluster is one of the primary measuring sticks used by astronomers to figure out the distance of other objects in space. Ultimately these distances are used to compute the age of the universe. Recently, though, astronomers were finally able to see individual stars in this distant cluster. Using a new, high-resolution camera, astronomers saw stars that are very much like stars in our own Milky Way galaxy. Since they know how bright these stars are, they were able to check their computations on how far away the measuring-stick galaxy is. Instead of the expected 100 million light-years, their new figures told them that the galaxy was only 50 million light-years away. This means that the universe might only be half as old as they thought. The lesson for us in this is that the millions and billions of years many scientists talk about are mere speculation. Many measuring sticks for the age of the universe are available, and many of them support an age in the biblical range of only thousands of years. The only source for the age of this universe is our Magnificent Creator God himself!!! |
12/20/2024
| The Miracle of Hearing… |
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| Your high school biology textbook may have given you the idea that modern science understands how hearing works. While science understands the general principles, researchers are still trying to understand the details. Hearing starts with the skin and cartilage on the outside of our heads that we call the ear. This tissue is carefully designed to collect sound waves and focus them into the hole in the lower center part of the external ear. That hole is a tube that runs for about an inch to the eardrum. As the eardrum vibrates with the incoming sound, tiny specialized bones pick up the vibrations. One of these bones changes the vibrations into hydraulic pressure. The sound, now converted to hydraulic pressure, is sent to the cochlea. This coiled, bony canal is lined with tissue that has four long rows of hair cells. A vibration as small as the width of an atom will move these hairs. Each movement of the hair causes a change in the electrical potential of the hair cell’s membrane. This change triggers a current that is fed to the auditory nerve and interpreted as sound by the brain. Each of the hairs in the ear responds best to a specific frequency. The ability to hear could have been engineered using a much less complex design. Such a design, however, would leave us unable to hear the subtleties of an orchestra or a bird’s song. Our Magnificent Creator God is not only capable of excellent workmanship, but also generous in His creation. |
12/19/2024
| A Star Takes a Swan Dive… |
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| The life cycle of a star is supposed to be millions of years; thus, human observers should not be able to see the birth and death of an individual star. Now a star that first became visible in the year 1600 is causing some astronomers to rethink their theories about the time it takes for stars to evolve. According to the evolutionary way of dating things, some stars – like our sun – have been burning for billions of years. Astronomers say that stars go through different stages in their lifetimes. As a result, they can tell by color and brightness just how old a star is. The Bible says, of course, that the stars were created by God in the much more recent past. In the year 1600, a star in the constellation of Cygnus, the swan, suddenly became bright enough to see from earth. Astronomers report that the star, called P Cygni, has gotten gradually brighter and is half again as bright today as it was in 1700. This brightening is expected in the normal lifetime of a star. The problem is, at this rate the star is aging too fast, even for a large star. One scientist noted that the time scale for star aging can be measured in centuries rather than hundreds of centuries. In other words, so-called “old stars” can be much younger than expected. That being the case, our Magnificent God’s universe itself is seen to be much younger than expected – perhaps only thousands and not billions of years old. |
12/18/2024
| Crunchy Medicine… |
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| Celery is an old Asian folk remedy for mild cases of high blood pressure. In one unscientific test, the father of a University of Chicago medical student lowered his mild hypertension simply by adding a quarter pound of celery to his diet every day for a week. Now his son, a doctor named Quang T. Le, believes he has discovered how celery lowers blood pressure. His discovery could change the way high blood pressure is treated. Hypertension is caused when the smooth muscle lining of the blood vessels tightens. This makes vessels narrower, making it more difficult for blood to get through. Stress hormones in the blood cause the muscles to tighten. Dr. Le discovered that celery contains a chemical that relaxes the smooth muscle tissue of the vessels. It does this by getting to the root of the problem. Stress hormones are made by the body using a specific enzyme. The natural chemical in celery prevents the enzyme from forming into stress hormones, thus preventing the chemistry that creates high blood pressure. The researchers hope that the chemical will lead to a more effective treatment for high blood pressure. They also recommend against eating celery to lower blood pressure since it contains sodium and other chemicals that can be harmful to some people when taken in high dosages. How did the ancient Asians learn about this natural solution to hypertension? Clearly, so-called ancient man had a great deal of knowledge about the creation that we are only just learning. Once more we owe everything to our Magnificent Creator God! |
12/17/2024
| Miracle Bugs… |
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| God designed and made the universe from nothing. That’s creation. Man takes what God has made and simply rearranges it to make things that help him. That’s building. The wonderful abilities that God built into plants and animals come from the genetic information that God built into them. Man has now started to use the genetic information created by God to build harmless creatures that better serve our needs. For example, the silk of the golden orb spider is five times stronger than steel, yet more elastic than any similar material we could manufacture. It could be used to make light and comfortable bulletproof vests and helmets. The problem is, it takes over half a million spiders to make a pound of silk. So scientists have taken the spider gene that makes the silk and put it into a harmless bacterium. When that bacterium divides, it makes more bacteria, complete with the gene. Today there are millions of bacteria making usable amounts of spider silk. This technology has resulted in what has been called the greatest revolution since industrialization. Bacteria are now making insulin, vaccines and even chocolate. Today, bacteria are mainly used to manufacture medicines. Man has learned a great deal about how to make use of the creation. However, the genetic information that makes this all possible in the first place is a product of the genius of our Magnificent Creator God. |
12/16/2024
| Insulated Blackbirds… |
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| European blackbirds love southern Germany so much that many of them stay for the winter. Some of the blackbirds migrate to North Africa, Spain or southern France to escape the cold. Like the robin in North America, however, some European blackbirds don’t migrate. European blackbirds are able to live through the cold German winter because they are designed with several features that use sophisticated principles from biochemistry and physics. To cope with the winter cold, the birds fluff up their feathers. This creates more insulating dead air spaces between their warm bodies and the cold. Then they tuck their head inside the feathers, making their body into a ball. A round ball is the most heat-conserving shape possible for any object. The ball also protects poorly insulated parts of their bodies – like feet, legs and beak. Food is also more scarce in the winter. On top of that, the birds’ need for energy is five times higher at 20 degrees below zero (F) than it is during the summer. The blackbirds reduce their energy needs by lowering their body temperature at night when they are curled into a ball. Scientists have found that, as a result, European blackbirds are in no danger of freezing, even at 20 degrees below zero, as long as they can get enough food! The intelligent special designs found in the European blackbird reflect a sophisticated knowledge of biochemistry and physics. By its very existence, the European blackbird glorifies our Magnificent Creator God. |
12/15/2024
| The Talk Of The Land… |
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| Some people have the green thumb in their family. Others may complain that they fail with plants because plants don’t tell them when they need care. Of course, most people can do well with family pets, who are enthusiastic about letting their needs be known. Now scientists have learned that plants do indeed cry out when they need attention. We just haven’t heard them because the sounds made by a thirsty plant are about five times higher-pitched than we can hear. But scientists with tiny, specialized microphones have heard corn plants calling for water. During their study, researchers learned that plants make a great deal of noise. Corn leaves and stalks make noises as they slide against each other during growth. We have all heard the sound of plant leaves rattling in the wind. Corn stalks also make noise as they bend in the wind. However, another sound was heard when the corn didn’t have enough water. It was a high-pitched popping noise. Plants have water tubes in them that carry water and nutrients up from the roots to the leaves. Water flows up these tubes under tension. When there is not enough water, the tension becomes too great and the tubes fracture. The popping is the sound of those tubes fracturing. The result of fractured tubes is a wilted plant. When water is restored, the tubes refill, the popping noises stop, and the plant again looks healthy. The purpose of this research was to learn when to water crops and how much water they need. Now that we have learned how plants communicate, crops can tell farmers when to water! Aren’t we blessed to have a Magnificent Creator that took care of so much minute detail!!! |
12/14/2024
| A Giant In The Land… |
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| Imagine a huge living creature covering about one square mile and made up of almost a third of a billion cells. Imagine each of those living cells being able to move about independently of the others. No, it’s not the plot of a new science fiction movie. Some scientists have suggested that ant colonies may be thought of as one large living organism. They suggest this because of the way individual members within ant colonies behave. Ant colonies have many kinds of members, each with its own specific task. The soldier ants in a colony have extra large heads and heavy-duty jaws for fighting. Other ants are concerned only about finding and returning food. Still other workers do nothing but process and store food. Within the colony another caste of ants does nothing but tend the eggs. Others prepare the food for the larvae and deliver it to other specialized ants who do nothing but feed the next generation. If this sounds complex, imagine the largest known ant colony. This Japanese ant colony has an estimated 306 million worker ants, and more than a million queens. The colony occupies 45,000 interconnected underground nests that range over about a square mile! There is obviously intelligent design and control behind ant society—intelligence not found in ants or in nature itself. This intelligence comes from outside nature. Here is yet another witness that no concern of any living thing is too small for our Magnificent Creator God’s complete attention!!! |
12/13/2024
| The Problem of Genius… |
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| We have for so long been led to believe that early man evolved from the animal kingdom and, thus, began with little intelligence. But is our mental capacity today really the result of evolution from brute beginnings? From time to time, individuals display a mental capacity that far exceeds their need of it. This anomaly presents a serious challenge to the theory of evolution. Consider the example of George Koltanowski, International Chess Grandmaster. In 1960 he played against 56 other chessmasters simultaneously, winning 50 games and tying 6. He took about 10 seconds per move and was blindfolded throughout the entire nine-hour marathon! This is an incredible achievement of the human memory. Evolution is said to depend upon chance mutations that give the individual a survival advantage, but it is difficult to see how this would explain George Koltanowski’s extraordinary memory capacity. It is sometimes suggested that most of us only use part of our brain capacity, while a genius uses almost all of it. But why would an evolutionary process have given us all this capacity in the first place? A far more reasonable argument is that today’s genius is simply an unusual retention of ancestral brain capacity that reminds us that our Magnificent Creator God created man in His own image. |
12/12/2024
| Octopus School… |
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| Can an octopus be as smart as a dolphin or even a human? The octopus is thought by those who believe in evolution to be an early, primitive form of life. They certainly look primitive, but that’s a subjective opinion based upon the many imaginative illustrations we have all seen in books and films. And we might also say that they do not appear to be very intelligent, but again, do we really know for sure? In some recent work, researchers had two tanks of octopi and placed a red ball in one and a white ball in the other. The octopi in each tank were trained to attack the balls in their tank. They then placed another tank of untrained octopi close by where they could watch their trained companions. A red and a white ball were then dropped into their tank and, sure enough, those who had watched a red ball being attacked did the same thing but ignored the white ball. Not only did the untrained octopi attack the same color they had watched being attacked, but they learned the lesson much faster than the first group. This discovery about the intelligence of the octopus is even more surprising because they’re not social creatures. Social vertebrates tend to appear more intelligent because they learn from one another. In a similar way, the Magnificent Creator God of this universe became a human being in the person of Jesus Christ so that we could learn by watching and listening to Him. |
12/11/2024
| A Fish Story… |
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| School biology textbooks offer students good facts but often bad interpretation of those facts. For example, when explaining how fish evolved into air-breathing land animals, students are usually offered a great deal of misinformation about living and extinct fish. It is not true that lungfish are an odd class of fish and that no other fish have lungs – many do, and some have lungs as well as gills. The textbook explanation says that all early fish had air-filled swim bladders, as most fish do today. The textbooks go on to say that the bladders in some of these fish eventually evolved into lungs. Then, as these fish spent more time on land, some of them gradually lost their gills and developed from amphibians into reptiles. The facts are shown in the fossil record where, according to evolutionists’ own inflated system of dating, lungs actually appeared in fish before swim bladders! A logical evolutionist would have to conclude that the fish’s air bladder evolved from lungs. The problem for evolutionists is that this is precisely opposite of what they need for the theory. If we telescope the evolutionary years into historical years, however, the fossil record agrees with Scripture. In other words, fish with lungs and fish with swim-bladders both appeared on day five of creation. The lesson for us here is that when science tells the truth, it actually confirms those seemingly simple statements found in the Bible about our Magnificent Creator God. |
12/10/2024
| Humans: artists… |
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| Genesis 4:21 “And his brother’s name was Jubal: he was the father of all such as handle the harp and flute.” What is more likely to last buried in the ground for a few thousand years, a wooden spoon or a stone hammer? Since the hammer will last long after the wood has decayed, the further back we go in human history, the more likely we are to find only the most durable things that humans left behind. This general principle explains why those who believe in evolution talk about “stone age” people. They often portray “stone age” people as primitive brutes who carried clubs, grunted a lot, and definitely needed a bath. Those of us who know that humans have always been human know that this portrayal is not accurate. It is unfortunate that, for example, the literature of our earliest ancestors, or the toys they no doubt made for their children, have not survived to this day. Do you think it sounds strange to talk about the literature of the “stone age” people? However, modern science does recognize their art. The so-called prehistoric people have left us hundreds of beautiful paintings in caves around the world. More than 220 paintings are found in Lascaux, France alone. Research reveals that the painters who created this beautiful and sensitive art did so using artificial lighting, palettes and scaffolding. They carefully ground and mixed minerals to create a variety of colors that remain bright and rich thousands of years later. Looking at the paintings left by those so-called “stone age” painters, we can clearly see that the claims that humans have progressed upward from a brute animal state are false. We clearly owe it all to our Magnificent Creator God. |
12/9/2024
| Moth Talk… |
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| Scientists are learning that there is much more going on among those moths that flutter around your yard light than they ever expected. Scientists have long known that moths communicate with each other, using hormones called pheromones. A female moth who is ready to mate will send a pheromone into the air. Males who sense the pheromone will seek out the female. Research now shows that the moths’ system is much more elegant than this. The female who wants to contact a male doesn’t simply send out a scented invitation. Rather, she releases her pheromones in a series of pulses. These pulses are released at the rate of from one to more than two pulses per second. Scientists used powder to study the pulses. To their surprise, they discovered that the pulses can be propelled for up to a meter. That’s equivalent to you being able to blow out a candle from 60 feet away! These pulses had researchers puzzled. Then they realized that the pulses would help male moths locate a female as they were drawn near by the scent of the pheromone. This seems to be confirmed by the fact that the male’s antennae send a signal to its brain that has the same frequency as the female’s pulses. The creation shows much more than design. Each of the details of the creation have the elegant intricacy of a master Designer. This is, in part, what St. Paul refers to when he writes that the very Godhead of our Magnificent Creator God can be seen in the creation. |
12/8/2024
| No Instruments Required… |
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| How would you like to be a dental hygienist for a crocodile? That’s how the crocodile bird makes his living. Of course you do need to know that the crocodile bird doesn’t show up to do his work with any drills or needles. He and the crocodile are on good terms with each other. After eating, the crocodile climbs the river bank and relaxes with his mouth open. The little crocodile bird enters the crocodile’s mouth to clean up the scraps that are left. While the crocodile bird makes most of his living as sort of a crocodile dental hygienist, he also helps keep the crocodile free of pesky insects that lodge in his skin. The crocodile also receives one other service from the crocodile bird. Whenever the bird senses approaching danger, he gives his sharp warning call and flies off. The crocodile, now warned, can quickly roll over into the water where virtually no animal can get the best of him. This is but one of many unlikely cooperative arrangements that we find in the plant and animal kingdoms that our Magnificent Creator God has designed!!! |
12/7/2024
| Unique Individuals… |
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| Most of us are familiar with the body’s response to foreign tissue. Transplant patients must be carefully matched and then patients still must be given powerful drugs to prevent destruction of the transplanted tissue. Our bodies’ immune system identifies tissue that’s not its own and then tries to destroy that tissue. As we have learned more about the immune system, doctors began asking themselves why a pregnant mother’s body doesn’t reject the foreign tissue of the baby growing inside her. The answer to this mystery is not fully understood, but research has suggested some answers. From conception the unborn child is a genetically unique individual. Researchers think that the most important protection the unborn child has is the trophoblast. This tissue, known as the caul, seals the growing infant from its mother. However, the trophoblast itself develops from the same cells as the infant. So why doesn’t the mother’s immune system attack? It appears that under normal conditions the trophoblast is a special set of cells that the body cannot identify as foreign. In addition, the trophoblast makes cells that encourage the mother’s immune system to protect it. Scientists now believe that this amazing feature may actually be provided by the father’s genetic information. In effect, the baby, with the help of the father, immunizes the mother’s system so that it doesn’t reject the baby! So, even before birth, the mother nurtures and the father protects the child. What a Magnificent Creator God we have!!! |
12/6/2024
| Intelligent Artists… |
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| The ancient, yet beautiful, paintings in the Lascaux cave in France were discovered more than 80 years ago. The paintings are thousands of years old and there seems to be no other record of the painters. In those 80 years, researchers studying the paintings have deepened their admiration for the intelligence and skill of the artists. Researchers have found the scaffolding used by the artists as well as the stone lamps they used to light the work area. The palettes and even the pigments still on the palettes have also been found. Using scanning electron microscopes and other high-tech equipment, researchers learned that the artists collected a range of local minerals. Mineral deposits within 15 kilometers of the cave were able to provide a full range of colors. The minerals were ground into fine powder and mixed to create pigmented paints that hold their color and beauty to this day. As we look around the creation, we can clearly see that our Magnificent Creator God has a love for beauty. When He made us, He gave that appreciation for beauty to us as well. However, in our day we have also seen how man’s rebellion against God can twist art into ugliness and evil. Christians today need to face the question of what is art and what isn’t. As we do this, we can ask ourselves whether a given piece of art reflects our Creator’s love of beauty, or whether it reflects the ugliness of man’s sin and rebellion against his Creator. |
12/5/2024
| Crystalline Silk… |
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| Scientists have been studying the safety line used by the common garden spider to save itself when falling. This safety line is as strong as nylon and has twice as much stretch. The drag line silk is only one of several kinds that the spider can make. Scientists report that the silk is made of sections that are crystalline and sections that are like rubber. This makes it both stretchy and strong. Amazed chemists note that usually when you make something stronger, you also make it more likely to break rather than stretch. Since spider silk is twice as strong as silkworm silk, why hasn’t it been used to make more things? To harvest enough spider silk for study, scientists place a spider on a piece of cardboard. Then they bump the spider off the cardboard. As the spider makes the drag line silk, a scientist turns the cardboard to reel it in. One spider made half-a-mile of silk in ten minutes! This fact might give you a hint about why spider silk isn’t used to manufacture items. It’s too fine. In the early eighteenth century, an inventor did make gloves and stockings from spider silk. However, his experience showed that it would take more than half a million spiders to make a pound of silk! The spider and its silk are engineering marvels that clearly show why we must rely on a our Magnificent Creator God to explain the world in which we live. |
12/4/2024
| Smart Bacteria… |
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| How smart do bacteria need to be? You might be surprised. Scientists were. Some bacteria swim toward things that they like and away from things they don’t like. That may seem simple enough to us, but it’s not that simple for a bacterium. E. coli swim through liquids using whip-like hairs called flagella. However, because they are so tiny, their movement through water is like a human trying to swim through molasses. They only move when they rotate their flagella. When rotated counterclockwise, their six or eight flagella wind together, forming a propeller that rotates at 140 revolutions per second! This moves the bacterium along in a straight line. However, periodically the bacterium will reverse its propeller, causing the flagella to unwrap and spinning the bacterium into a tumble. This led scientists to wonder how a bacterium ever got where it wanted to go. Scientists also realized that for a bacterium to get to something that attracts it, it must have sensors and a memory. A bacterium must be able to say to itself, “It smells better here than where I was a moment ago. I’ll keep moving in this direction.” In other words, scientists are trying to figure out what makes bacteria so smart and gives them so many unexpected abilities. The intelligence and abilities of bacteria are no mystery to those who know that we have an intelligent Magnificent Creator God. We would expect everything He made to reflect His great abilities. |
12/3/2024
| A Matter of Life or Death… |
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| According to the Bible, God created the heavens and the earth in a perfect condition – without disease or death. However, when man did his own will instead of God’s will, death became a reality, just as God had warned. On the other hand, evolution says that death has nothing to do with man’s disobedience to his Creator. Evolution also says that our genetic information has developed over the years to help us survive. Can these opposite claims be tested? Biologists have discovered that living cells have a built-in suicide gene. The suicide gene remains dormant until it is necessary for the cell to die. For example, as a tadpole turns into a toad, its tail is no longer needed. As a result, the suicide genes in the tail cells instruct them to die. In other words, living cells have a gene in them that prevents the death of the cell until its appointed time. So in a sense, we can test the Bible’s and evolution’s conflicting claims about life and death. Why would evolution develop genes that order death? By definition, such a gene would not aid survival. However, our Magnificent Creator God told our first parents that the day that they sinned, they would die. It was obviously the curse of sin that created the genetic instructions for cell death, on the very day that they sinned. What biologists are learning about the cell’s workings fits much better with Scripture than with evolutionary claims. |
12/2/2024
| Riders on the Wind… |
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| The tiny insect called ice plant scale has no wings. That’s why scientists were surprised to learn that the creature uses sophisticated preflight and flight strategies to move from one ice plant to the next. Ice plant scale infects ice plants, which are plants used in landscaping. To study the insect, scientists had to observe ice plant scale hatchlings under the microscope because they are only one-fiftieth of an inch long. It was in this setting that scientists saw an unexpected insect ballet. Sensing a wind of ten miles per hour or more, a scale would determine the wind direction with its antennae and turn its back to the breeze. It then reared back on its hind legs and extended its antennae and legs. This doubles the insect’s surface area and makes it possible for the insect to be lifted and carried by the wind. By extending its legs and antennae, the insect slows the rate of fall so that it can be carried further by the wind. Scientists noted that even insects that are one day old are knowledgeable about flight and ready to migrate. These actions are designed to allow the wingless insect to take every advantage of the principles of flight. The only scientific conclusion that makes sense is that this knowledge was wired into the insect by its Magnificent Creator God Himself. |
12/1/2024
| The animal world was provided with their own drugs and the knowledge of how to use them… |
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| In a clever scheme of self-protection, the more poisonous the male rattlebox moth is, the more prized he is by the female rattlebox moth. In the caterpillar stage the male moth favors the pods of certain legumes. These pods contain a powerful poison that seems to have no effect on the caterpillar. After the caterpillar has become a moth and it’s time for mating, the male releases a scent produced by the poison. Those who have more poison in their bodies release a stronger scent, while those with little poison release only a weak scent. Female rattlebox moths prefer males with a strong scent. During mating the male coats the eggs with some of the poison, making them unpalatable to predators, like ladybugs, who might eat the eggs. So the more poison a male has, the better protected the female’s eggs will be. Studies have shown that female rattlebox moths will ignore males that have collected no poison. Likewise, the male of the queen butterfly species collects another plant poison in his system. This poison is produced by plants for protection against insects. The butterfly doesn’t attack the plant; rather he drinks the poison from already injured plants. Here, too, the female queen butterfly favors those males with the most poison. It appears that human beings are not the only creatures who go to the drug store to get needed medicines. Our Magnificent Creator God has provided the animal world with their own drug store and the knowledge of how to use the chemicals He has provided!!! |
11/30/2024
| Important tools of medical science… |
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| Fireflies may help light the way to new medical breakthroughs. The gentle glow of a firefly on a summer evening is produced by the chemical luciferase. The firefly has a gene with the code that makes this chemical. When that gene is added to the genetic information of other plants or animals, the cells begin to glow harmlessly. Researchers have been using the firefly gene to test their ability to add genetic information to a cell. When human heart arteries become clogged, a medicine called TPA is among the treatments doctors use. TPA is a natural clot-dissolving protein that helps prevent heart attacks. The problem is, without a continuous supply of TPA, the artery may reclog. It would help if the artery could make its own TPA 24 hours a day. Since TPA is a natural protein for which there is a genetic code, researchers wanted to know if genetic information could be added to artery cells. To find out, they injected dogs with the genetic code for luciferase. If genetic information could be added to the cells through this method, they would actually see the results in the glowing tissue. Tissue samples taken three days later did, in fact, have the distinctive glow of the firefly proving that the method works. They warn that several years of research lie ahead before artery cells may be able to dissolve their own clots. Those glowing fireflies that delight children and adults show God’s design in the creation in an unexpected way. The chemical that makes the glow is proving to be an important tool of medical science. What a magnificent creator we have to preplan our needs!!! |
11/29/2024
| Did Humans Evolve from Cockroaches? |
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| Scientists who believe in evolution will argue that similarities between different species are the result of evolution. They say that similarities between humans and apes show that we are closely related. The fact that we are so unlike sponges or microbes, says this argument, shows that we have evolved much further. The problem with this argument is that it often leads to absurd conclusions. Take, for example, the discovery that a chemical in the brains of cockroaches closely resembles two human hormones. Does that mean that humans evolved from cockroaches? Evolutionists are quick to deny an evolutionary link between humans and cockroaches. However, they add that humans and cockroaches must have a common ancestor. Or, consider the protein abbreviated CK that is found in the brains of many species. Evolutionists would expect that the CK would be most similar in the most closely related species. From what evolutionists say, one would expect humans and apes to have the most similar CK. However, when scientists compared all the CK information they have, the two most closely related creatures turned out to be the domestic housefly and the African elephant! When facts such as these are interpreted in terms of the theory of evolution, it simply flies in the face of reason, but this is the only option when our Magnificent Creator God of the Bible is denied. |
11/28/2024
| Your Sixth Sense… |
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| “Name the five senses.” Every school child is asked that question. However, now the question is outdated because a sixth sense has been discovered. Years ago, University of Utah anatomist David L. Berliner noticed a strange reaction among coworkers. Normally his coworkers did not get along well. However, when he was working with open vials of extracts from human skin, there was a noticeable rise in friendliness. A few months later, when he sealed the extracts, coworkers were again unable to get along with each other. That experience led Berliner, thirty years later, to discover the purpose of the vomeronasal organ – VNO for short. In animals, the VNO detects odorless pheromones – chemicals used to communicate readiness to mate and similar messages. Evolutionists thought that the human VNO was a useless vestigial organ left over from our evolution. Berliner discovered that the centimeter-long organ in our nose detects odorless human pheromones. It uses a system completely different from your nose. The VNO sends its messages to the hypothalamus while the nose is wired to other sections of the brain. The hypothalamus controls basic drives and emotions. Scientists long ago thought that they had identified all the senses. The discovery of the VNO shows that science still has very much to learn about the material creation by our Magnificent Creator God. That places science in a poor position to pass judgments on biblical truth. |
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09/11/2020 What Does The Bible Say About Creation vs. Evolution?September 11, 2020With 1 commentPosted byDave WinsteadPosted inUncategorizedEditKnow The Creator Today
Published by Dave Winstead
I am the Chairman Of FaithByTheWord Ministries in Burlington, NC. View more posts
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