One method of examining a student’s grasp of a complex topic is to confront that student with an alternative point of view and ask them to critique it. If that student has a good working knowledge of the subject, they should be able to recognize the broad philosophical underpinnings of that alternative viewpoint and be able... Continue Reading →
Ken Ham continues to beat the drum over record-breaking attendance at the Ark Encounter and Creation Museum. On a nearly weekly basis he claims record-breaking crowds. He shows videos and pictures of people pouring into his attractions. He continually posts rave reviews of the Ark and Creation Museum.  As visionary of both of these tourist... Continue Reading →
The Xenarthrans include the armadillos, anteaters and sloths.  What makes these animals different from other mammals? They all have a unique projections on their vertebral (back) bones; the ischium and sacrum bones of the hip are fused, unlike all other mammals; the males have internal testicles (no external scrotum) located near the bladder and they experience... Continue Reading →
Young-earth creationists (YECs) routinely appeal to post-flood hyper-evolution to explain the diversification of pairs of ancestral animals into dozens and even hundreds of descendant species in the space a few hundred years following a global flood 4500 years before present.  For example, a pair of ancestral canines are said to have evolved in less than 1000... Continue Reading →
The young-earth inspired attraction, the Ark Encounter, opened one year ago near a small town in Kentucky.  When it opened there were many questions about how this themed religious attraction would fair. Would the Ark Encounter become a sort of Christian Mecca? A place that fundamentalist Christians would feel they have to see once in... Continue Reading →
Young-earth creationists (YECs) are at odds with each other about whether a large collection of  fossils found deep in a South African cave should be categorized as humans (Homo naledi) or apes.  But what about other hominin fossils that the scientific community have generally considered the remains of distant relatives of humans?  What about... Continue Reading →
Thousands of bone fragments have now been reported from chambers deep in the same cave system in South Africa. They belong to what has been described as a new hominid species;Â Homo naledi. When the first set of bones and the context in which they were recovered were revealed, young-earth creationists (YECs) scrambled to set the... Continue Reading →
The documentary-style film, Is Genesis History, (IGH) lays out clearly and concisely the implications of a literal-six-day and global flood interpretation of the early chapters of Genesis.  While providing only a bare-bones defense of the biblical case for a literal-day interpretation, the film uses most of the screen time to explore how young earth and global... Continue Reading →
A central tenet of young earth creationism is the belief that the entire world before Adam’s transgression experienced no animal death.  What would such a world have looked like? Examining YEC depictions of Eden you would think that the animals looked like those alive today except that all extinct things, eg. dinosaurs, were also alive... Continue Reading →
So how long can DNA or even cells survive in the environment once an organism dies?  This has been a topic of considerable debate in the scientific literature since the advent of high-throughput DNA sequencing techniques.  This growing field of scientific inquiry is fascinating to me and promises to shed new light on old questions.  I have... Continue Reading →
News is starting to leak out about what appears to be the imminent announcement of new discoveries and analyses of the perplexing bones found deep in a cave in South Africa. In addition to providing a much younger date for the fossils than expected and the revelation that there is a second chamber with additional specimens,... Continue Reading →
Billions of footprints are preserved in the rock record. While bones get all the attention, fossil footprints likely outnumber bones. How can we make sense of this observation?  Surely, preserving a bone must be far more likely than preserving a footprint? I have written about how paleontologists use information from footprints and bones to reconstruct... Continue Reading →
Dinosaur tracks and eggshells are abundant findings within the geological column, capturing the attention of numerous dedicated paleontologists. Their relentless pursuit involves uncovering, studying, and interpreting these remnants of long-extinct creatures. However, is all this painstaking effort merely an illusion when considering the young-earth perspective? Could the majority of paleontological work be seen as fabricating... Continue Reading →
Nine hundred feet below a Mexican desert hundreds of giant white crystals, some more than 90 feet long and 13 feet wide, fill a hot (137 F) and humid cavern.  Pictures of people exploring this crystal palace look as if Rick Moranis had shrunk them down to the size of an ant and then put them into... Continue Reading →
Three years ago Ken Ham very publicly promoted what he believes is a biblical model of biological evolution to explain the diversity of life on Earth.  However, I have a book before me that provides compelling evidence that his model of evolution is wrong. That book is the Bible. For those that follow young earth creation literature nothing... Continue Reading →
Naturalis Historia 