As an adult, you have experienced an astounding number of mutations during your lifetime – several quadrillion, to be specific. This number may seem unfathomable, but it's true. It's natural to wonder how you're still alive with such an immense number of mutations. How do we even know how many mutations have occurred in our... Continue Reading →
Birds are not Dinosaurs? Examining Ken Ham’s Hypocritical Viewpoint
Ken Ham, the founder of Answers in Genesis USA, has no doubts about the proper classification of birds and dinosaurs. He believes that identifying birds a type of dinosaur should be rejected and labeled a compromised view, influenced by evolutionary theory. However, it would appear he has no problem considering whales and bats to be... Continue Reading →
Ken Ham Finds Threats to Young-Earth Creationist within Young-Earth Creationism
Ken Ham has fired the first of what, apparently, will be many volleys against what he believes is one of the biggest threats to young-earth creationists: other young-earth creationists!! hanging them with the pejorative title of "young-earth evolutionists." Yes, Ken Ham is suggesting that one of the biggest danger to creationism--as defined by Answers in... Continue Reading →
Are Cliff Swallows Evolving to Avoid Automobiles?
Natural Selection can be difficult to observe in natural populations. In the video linked below I examine a fascinating example of possible adaptation via natural selection of cliff swallows to the challenge of fast-moving vehicles in their environment. In the paper we will examine it was observed that over a period of 30 years, the... Continue Reading →
Are Species Created with Hidden Information Pre-adapted for Future Environments?
How did the incredible species diversity today manifest itself from just a few individual animals preserved on Noah's Ark? How much speciation has happened? What are the mechanisms for young-earth speciation? Is there evidence that rapid speciation has occurred in just the past few thousand years? These are enduring questions that young-earth creationists have been... Continue Reading →
Did Adam have a Tail? Ken Ham, Adam and Eve and a Tale of Tails
Ken Ham recently tweeted about a baby born with a "tail." I agree with his assessment that these are not cases of bony tails, homologous to tails in almost all vertebrate species, but then I wondered, can young-earth creationists be sure that Adam and Eve did not have true bony tails as adults? After all,... Continue Reading →
Ham and Thomas get their Platypus Egg-Genes Scrambled
Reading and understanding original research publications can be difficult when the content is outside your field of expertise. Sometimes reading that original research is just avoided and popular summaries are used to inform us of the importance of new research. The latter appears to be the case when Ken Ham writes about his love of... Continue Reading →
Kind of Confusing – Young-earth Creationist’ Classification of the Bombardier Beetle
Young-earth creationists in the twenty-first century take a broadly inclusive view of the relationship of existing and extinct species as they relate to the kinds of organisms that God created one days four, five, and six of the creation week. For example, the image below is from a new display of the origin of the... Continue Reading →
A Six-day Evolutionist? It depends on what you mean by evolution
Young-earth creationists like to talk about two types of evolution, one is real (microevolution), and the other is a lie from the pit of hell (macroevolution). They act as if their were a chasm between the two as large as the Grand Canyon. But when their literature is explored identifying where microevolution ends and macroevolution... Continue Reading →
Chimps, Orangutans and Gorillas Evolved from a Common Ancestor on Noah’s Ark
When the Creation Museum in Kentucky opens back up on June 8 they will have a new exhibit on great ape origins. There you will be able to learn how all gorillas, orangutans, chimpanzees and all species of fossil apes including australopiths share a common ancestor no more than 4500 years ago. Ken Ham has... Continue Reading →
Dissent with Modification: Young-Earth Creationists Deny and Accept Macroevolutionary Theory
How can a population of organisms reproduce and over some period of time diversify into hundreds of species each of which has its own menagerie of unique characteristics? This is a fundamental biological question for which many different mechanisms have been proposed as solutions over the past 200 years. Young-earth apologists say they have replaced... Continue Reading →
A Family History of Coronavirus–Origins and Future Prospects
The talk of the world is coronavirus-so many questions. How did it come to infect humans? How should we go about controlling its spread? Will the virus mutate and become more infectious or deadly? Are there any effective treatments? There is no shortage of speculation and ongoing research hoping to provide answers to these questions. ... Continue Reading →
A Primer on Young-Earth Views of Speciation, Mutations and Natural Selection
How did the earth become populated by billions of species of living things? Conventional evolutionary biology provides an explanatory framework to answer that question. Intelligent Design advocates provide another as do Progressive Creationists (Old Earth Creationists). But a large segment of the population looks to creation scientists (Young-earth creationists—YECs) to answer the question. How do... Continue Reading →
Young-Earth Creationism Leads the Short-Necked Okapi to Identify as a Giraffe
The Ark Encounter theme park in Kentucky is filled with signs and displays that promote young-earth interpretations of geology, astronomy, biology, archaeology and theology. I have critiqued many of these interpretations before (e.g. My Trip to the Ark Encounter and Depicting a Real Flood with Unrealistic Images). Today, I want to talk about one sign.... Continue Reading →
Young-Earth Evolutionists? Talking about Hyper-speciation and Theological Implications
I recently attended the annual meeting of the American Scientific Affiliation held at Wheaton College. About 300 professional scientists who are professing Christians had gathered to discuss a variety of topics related to science and faith. Monday morning I delivered my presentation titled: “Young Earth evolutionists? Adaptation of young-earth creationist models, and implication for the... Continue Reading →