Are billions and billions of pieces of stone found strewn across the African continent the product of intelligent design (purposeful actions) or random processes? Last year I presented a Stone-Age artifact challenge to the young-earth creationist' chronology. Dr. Mortenson, from Answers in Genesis, responded to the evidence that I presented of vast stone-tool production in... Continue Reading →
What do giraffes, cows, sheep, antelope, pronghorn and deer have in common? Foremost, they all share a specialized digestive system that includes a four-chambered stomach that allows them to obtain nutrients and energy from vegetation that is inaccessible to most mammals. This ability and other shared morphological traits are used by scientists to classify all... Continue Reading →
As the strict young-earth creationists at Answers in Genesis work to complete their Ark Encounter "theme park," they have expended an impressive amount of energy organizing the millions of species of land animals alive today into a handful of small groups they call "baramins." Creationists insist that while adaptation or speciation within a particular "baramin" is observable (and, indeed, necessary in order to account for the present observed diversity of life), there is never any overlap between separate kinds. Unfortunately for the young-earth model, the push to minimize the number of animals riding on the Ark has exposed a major problem with this view.
I ended my previous article, Ken Ham's Darwinism, with the following observation: Ken Ham has fully embraced Post-Flood Rapid Evolution as a mechanism of creating the amazing variation we see today. As he slides further down the slippery slope into the rabbit hole of radical accelerated evolution he has now become, ironically, more accepting of naturalistic... Continue Reading →
Young life creationists, or baraminologists as they prefer to be called, have experienced a paradigm shift over the past three decades. Initially, young-life creationists (YLCs) made a point of identifying every possible unique characteristic of a species as the result of direct special creation and intelligent design. However, they are now increasingly embracing a model... Continue Reading →
Dinosaurs are fascinating to kids and many adults. If an organization is looking to generate an audience, bringing in a speaker to lecture about dinosaurs is one sure means to succeed. This fall I had the opportunity to attend two public lectures about dinosaurs both of which were aimed specifically at kids. The first, “Dinosaur Accoutrements,”... Continue Reading →
Image you are living in 200 BC in the Middle East and you come by the skull to the right (Fig. 1) as you plow your field or when you explore the local cave complex. What if you are wandering the desert in Egypt and happen upon the bones in the second figure. Or what... Continue Reading →
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 →
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 →
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 →
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 →
The Nubian Desert, which encompasses 400,000 square kilometers of the eastern portion of the Sahara Desert, contains a rich assortment of stone tools and products of Stone Age industries. Scattered stones among the drifting dunes speak of a time long past during which this land was covered by grassy hills and ungulates, lions, and hyenas... Continue Reading →
Naturalis Historia 