Exploring the Intersection of Science and Faith in the Spirit of John Ray
Thus far in this series about horses we have we have explored some of the interpretations of the fossil record of horses and demonstrated the difficulty of defining the boundaries of species of modern horses. We have observed that evolutionary theory and most modern young earth creationists propose that the domestic horse, the donkey […]
In our last installment of this series, When is a Horse a Horse? we recognized that the living species of equines (horses, zebras, donkeys etc..) represent groups of genetically divergent individuals that naturally do not interbreed on a regular basis. Each of these lineages of equines is behaving as a species as defined by the biological species concept. This raises the […]
In my introduction to the origin of horses I suggested that a horse is a horse of course, unless of course it isn’t a horse. But that begs the question, how do we know what the boundaries are of what constitutes a horse? Although I suggested that young-earth creationists (YECs) have diverse views of what […]
One year ago witnessed the publication of what Ken Ham and others at the young-earth ministry, Answer in Genesis (AiG), clearly hoped would provide a comprehensive, alternative approach to explaining the origin of species and, more generally, biological diversity within a 6000-year time-frame. As the bold title, “Replacing Darwin: The New Origin of Species,” proclaims, […]
Young life creationists, or baraminologists as they prefer to be called, have experienced a paradigm shift over the past three decades. During that time they have increasingly embracing a model of common ancestry and accelerated evolution as they seek to explain the origins of the vast diversity of life on Earth. This accelerated or hyper-evolution […]
Question: What kind of bird is flightless, waddles standing upright on the ground, is an excellent swimmer, breeds in colonies on rocky shores, lives on a diet of fish and has a white belly and black back, and most importantly is not a penguin? The answer: The extinct great auk. You can think of the […]
Birds, like all organisms, employ many strategies to ensure that their offspring will survive, thereby allowing the continued existence of the species. Some birds produce elaborate nests high in trees, on rocky ledges or even inside caves to protect them from ground-dwelling predators. Others, like penguins and many shorebirds, nest together, overwhelming predators by sheer […]
A few weeks ago I criticized Ken Ham and several of his Answers in Genesis’ colleagues for stating that some living birds have teeth like those of fossil birds. I pointed out that none of the 10,000 living bird species produce true teeth. However, there were some birds that lived alongside dinosaurs during the Cretaceous […]
Some passages of scripture contain detailed natural history information about animals. The book of Job, in particular, records many physical and behavioral traits of animals. One such animal described in Job is the ostrich. The ostrich we know today is a strange bird. It is very large, its wings are not able to provide flight […]
Not long ago I wrote this post criticizing Ken Ham and his research team for their outright errors and misinformed understanding of ancient fossil birds. Subsequently, Ken Ham, with help from his research team, penned a second blog post entitled, “The Duck-Relative That’s Just a Duck.” In that article Ken Ham doesn’t correct his erroneous comparison of […]
Last year I was invited to write an essay reflection on Douglas Axe’s book Undeniable: How Biology Confirms Our Intuition that Life is Designed for the periodical Sapientia (Carl F. H. Henry Center for Theological Understanding an outreach of TEDS –Trinity Evangelical Divinity School). That essay, Undeniably Limited: Designing a Box in Which to Find the […]
Young-earth creationists (YECs) are actively promoting a radical new model of the origin of the diversity of life on Earth. (1) This speculative view borrows a number of elements found in any typical evolutionary biology textbook. For example, modern YECs claim that most and possibly all species alive today—except humans—are related to numerous other species […]
Errors repeated often enough take on the appearance of truth. This is what makes fake news so effective. It can drown out informed opinion and accurate information. At the root of many fake new stories are pieces of information that are either outright false but possibly surrounded with true statements or the facts they report […]
The diversity of life on earth today is staggering. Where did that diversity come from? How is that diversity maintained over time? How long did it take for that diversity to form? These are fundamental questions that biologists are interested in investigating. Conventional evidence-based biological theories ascribe biological diversity to the diversification of life over […]
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 […]
