Creation Ministries International, the third of the big-three literal solar-day young earth creationist organizations, weighed in yesterday with their own assessment of the remarkable set of bones found in the deep recesses of a South African cave. The scientists who recovered and examined those bones over a two-year period have identified them as belonging to a... Continue Reading →
If dinosaurs lived with people not long ago then what happened to them? Any Literal Solar-Day Young Earth Creationist is going to have to contend with this question. At the Answers in Genesis conference that I attended recently the speaker, Bryan Osborne posed this very question to the kids in his audience knowing they would... Continue Reading →
Dinosaurs play an important role in forming the public—and children's in particular—perception of the age of the Earth. I was reminded of this when I had the opportunity to attend two talks about dinosaurs both targeted at kids. The first was a presentation by Jack Horner of Jurassic Park fame but more importantly a researcher... Continue Reading →
Just how far can the pocketbooks of donors to young earth creation-based organizations be stretched? We may soon find out as the Institute for Creation Research (ICR) based in Dallas Texas has announced an ambitious new creation museum named the “Dallas Museum of Science and Earth History.” This $24 million dollar project, long in the... Continue Reading →
The human fossil record is probably one of these least understood yet frequently discussed topics in the Christian church. I have neither the expertise nor the desire to attempt to resolve the debate over whether particular fossils represent human ancestors or not. I understand that human origins is a sensitive topic, especially within the conservative evangelical church... Continue Reading →
Soon after the revelation that the remains of at least 15 individuals had been found in the deep recesses of a cave and that these bones looked as if they had been deposited there purposely, I asked the question: How Will Creationist’s Respond to a Huge New Hominid Fossil Find? The first responses came within... Continue Reading →
While reading literature by young earth creationists, I am frequently struck by how often authors seeking to resolve one problem are unaware of how many new problems their explanations create. I recently read an article by Dr. Snelling of Answers in Genesis in which he provides a young-earth hypothesis for the recent origin of oil and coal. He has... Continue Reading →
There are spacecraft and rovers at work right this moment collecting data on planets, moons and other solar system bodies. These sophisticated instruments are beaming back data to Earth on a nearly daily basis. Much of that data would not be easy for most of us to interpret but the images they send back give... Continue Reading →
Fossilized bones of dinosaurs, whales and mammoths get all of the attention but trace fossils provide important evidence for interpreting when and how organisms lived on Earth in the past. Trace fossils are not the fossilized remains of organisms themselves but rather are evidence of the past presence of organisms. The most recognizable trace fossils... Continue Reading →
The largest collection of hominin bones ever found in Africa is causing massive waves in the anthropological world and beyond. When it was first announced, I wrote about how I thought some creationist organizations might respond to questions posed by hominin fossils and their geological setting (see: Bones of Contention: How Will Creationists Respond to... Continue Reading →
Where no animal except a lost owl and rodent has ever found themselves, through skinny passages that I could not fit through, laying on or just under fine sediments, the partially fossilized bones of at least 15 individuals have been found deep in a cave in South Africa. UPDATE: I have written a follow-up to... Continue Reading →
Where are the fact checkers in Young Earth Creationist' (YEC) organizations? And why do simple errors and profound misconceptions of science persist among their ranks? I have commented multiple times that the YEC organization Institute for Creation Research (ICR) has a self-editing problem. As I have documented (Eg. The Case of the Shrinking Comet and the Age... Continue Reading →
There is much interest in determining the likelihood of future asteroid and meteorite impacts on Earth. It is very difficult to estimate the probabilities of such events but we can learn something by looking to one of our solar system neighbors - Mars. Because the surface of Mars changes so slowly new impacts there can... Continue Reading →
In our tour of African stone artifact collections, we now travel to a remote portion of the Sahara Desert in southern Egypt. Stone artifacts are probably abundant in nearly all parts of northern Africa, but they are not easily found everywhere. The shifting sands of this forbidding desert have buried most of the evidence of... Continue Reading →
My daughter is very attentive to the insect population around our house. She spends many hours collecting all sorts of insects and other animals. In the fall of 2013 she brought me a leaf that she thought had a caterpillar of some sort on it. She is well aware that bugs make little... Continue Reading →
Naturalis Historia 