Our perceptions of the age of a subject are frequently based on our common experience with similar subjects. Most people have some ability to guess the age of children with seemingly very little prior information. We might call this ability to guess age our intuition but this "intuition" is the scientific method working automatically in our minds. Our... Continue Reading →
Scattered across the upper surface of a hard layer of limestone in the badlands of the Bighorn Basin in Wyoming are the tell-tale signs of dinosaur activity: footprints. Over one thousand footprints have been identified here, most of them on one exposure of rock in a small gully in the Red Gulch region. On our family vacation this... Continue Reading →
If you have followed my blog for the past six months you know that I have been discussing the feasibility of the young-earth creationist’ (YEC) rapid-speciation model which proposes that hundreds of thousands of species of plants and animals have been formed by natural selection in just the past couple thousand years (YEC Hyper-evolution article archive). More... Continue Reading →
In remote western Kansas, groups of rock pillars stand like a natural Stonehenge over the grassy plains. One such group of these pillars south of Oakley is named Monument Rocks. Returning from our Wyoming and Colorado adventure, we stopped overnight in Scott City, Kansas just south of this interesting rock formation. The following morning we made our way along many... Continue Reading →
Young earth creationists (YECs) are the most vocal skeptics of evolutionary theory, however, they recognize organisms do change over time. But how much? Everyone agrees that organisms have the capacity to adapt to their environments. This adaptive ability can lead to the formation of isolated genetic lineages we identify as species. Evolutionary theory posits that continued... Continue Reading →
The fact that bacteria are able to develop resistance to antibiotics has been a textbook example of evolutionary processes in action. Mutations and natural selection—two primary agents of change—work together to sculpt new genetic combinations allowing individuals to exploit resources unavailable to bacteria previously unable to resist antibiotic chemicals in their environment. Now you can watch a powerful... Continue Reading →
Just 10 days after the grand opening of the Ark Encounter on July 7th, I traveled down to Kentucky to pay a visit to Ken Ham's latest evangelistic outreach endeavor. It was a Friday and I arrived less than one hour after opening and spent the better part of six hours on the Ark Encounter premises. ... Continue Reading →
Just how many animals where on Noah's Ark according to 6-day creationists? That answer has varied considerably over the past century. With the completion of the Ark Encounter, the most visible attempt to show the feasibility of preserving all land animal diversity from a global flood, more people are being exposed to a modern answer to... Continue Reading →
Do places on Earth exist where annual records have been stored for tens of thousands of years and can be accessed today? Ice-cores and tree rings can preserve long records of yearly events but some of the best records come from layers of sediment underlying some lakes which, if formed under the right conditions, can be read like the annual rings of... Continue Reading →
What does it mean to evolve? What is natural selection? Where did the genetic variation come from that allows evolution to happen? Why are there so many species of animals today? What can mutations do? These are some of the questions that Answers in Genesis speaker Bryan Osborne addressed at public talks given at the young-earth... Continue Reading →
Guests at the Ark Encounter will observe many descriptions and artistic impressions of what happened before, during and just after Noah's Flood. One set of images was especially interesting to me because it visualized different stages of the Flood. One panel which explains how the Flood waters prevailed over the highest mountains was particularly perplexing because of... Continue Reading →
Ken Ham’s Ark Encounter presents it visitors with exhibits with odd-looking creatures and explains that just 4350 years ago these were the common ancestors of animal species we know today. How and when did this transformation of "kinds" into thousands of species happen? At present, the consensus among young-earth creationists is that Noah's Ark contained far... Continue Reading →
Ken Ham posts a picture and comment almost daily on Twitter about the thousands or of visitors that are flocking to the Ark Encounter and Creation Museum each day. I would expect nothing less from any leader responsible for the success of a 100 million dollar theme park. The very existence of the Ark Encounter owes... Continue Reading →
So many highlights from our vacation but I am going to hold off on some of my favorites until I am able to work through my images and develop more back story to go with them. Instead, I will start with a short stop we made at Badlands National Park in South Dakota. We were there all... Continue Reading →
The past month has been quite an adventure. It has been good to get a break from my job and this blog, which was starting to feel like a job. Hopefully I am refreshed and bring some new perspectives - and photos - to share with you in the coming months. Below are a couple of highlights... Continue Reading →
Naturalis Historia 