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 →
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 →
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 →
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 →
I am now blocked from commenting on the Facebook page of the Institute of Creation Research (ICR).  This was no surprise to me, nonetheless I felt rather sad that they felt they had to cut me off.  Below is a screenshot of the ICR meme on which I had made what I thought was a substantive comment.  About 20... Continue Reading →
The pace of discovery of ancient human activities continues unabated. That alone should tell us that that there is much yet to discover and learn. The latest revelation come from deep—more than 1000 feet—inside a French cave.  In the blackness of a large opening there are peculiar "structures" constructed from fragments of stalagmites. Found many... Continue Reading →
Ecology is the branch of biology that studies the interactions of organisms with each other and their environment.  The animals and plants around you are living in relationship with each other and the environment, including yourself. Around your home you may have considerable control over the environment - moisture, nutrients, lawn-mowing, week control, pest removal - and thus you are probably... Continue Reading →
Two years ago the South African palaeoanthropologist, Dr. Lee Berger, announced that possible ancient hominin remains had been discovered in an isolated chamber deep in a South African cave system. He assembled a group of scholars and cavers to enter the chamber and retrieve what he hoped would be a new set of ancient hominin... Continue Reading →
Naturalis Historia 