CRS Blog

Unique atmospheric conditions during and immediately following the Flood have recently been postulated based on the results of numerical computer modeling. This modeling suggests that the heating of the atmosphere and oceans could have produced conditions suitable for the development of super hurricanes, or “hypercanes.” Unfortunately, the atmosphere provides no historic record of such events. However, proxy records might be found in the rock record. In fact, it is probable that hypercanes would have created large-scale tempestites (i.e., storm deposits) across various portions of the continents while they were covered by Floodwater. Such storm deposits occur across the United States Gulf Coastal Plain. One such stratigraphic unit is the Gosport Sand Member of the Lisbon Formation (Eocene), which extends across southwestern Alabama. A Gosport Sand outcrop at Little Stave Creek in Clarke County exhibits sedimentary evidence that it formed from a single massive hypercane during the Middle Flood Event Division.

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Two of the six water gaps through the Alaska Range will be briefly described. These water gaps fit in with a worldwide pattern of well over one thou­sand water gaps. Water gaps are a major mystery to uniformitarian geology. The three main uniformitarian hypotheses for the origin of water gaps will be analyzed and found wanting. There does not appear to be any evidence for either of the two hypotheses suggested for the origin of the Alaska Range water gaps. However, the Flood paradigm successfully explains these water gaps, as well as practically all others, and even wind gaps. Both wind and water gaps could have been rapidly carved during the Channelized Flow Phase of the Flood, when strong water currents were flowing perpendicular to mountains or ridges. An analog for a water and wind gap occurred during the gigantic Lake Missoula flood at the peak of the Ice Age.

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Astronomers think that stars end their existence as one of three possible stellar remnants. In recent decades, astronomers have amassed a tremendous amount of observational data and theoretical models to support an evolutionary interpretation of stellar remnants. We survey this topic and discuss possible creationary responses to it.

Recent issues of this quarterly have contained articles dealing with stellar remnants (Davies, 2007; DeYoung, 2006). In this article, we explore three topics. First, we review the types of stellar remnants recognized in the astronomical field. Second, we briefly describe the observations and physics that support the identification of these objects. Third, we discuss the evolutionary framework that astronomers generally think explains these different objects. In the conclusion we will discuss some of the possible creationary responses to these evolutionary ideas. As creationists, we reject evolutionary explanations and ought to respond to them with criticisms and creationary alternatives. However, in our critique of these evolutionary ideas, we must be very careful that we do not mistakenly “throw the baby out with the bath water” by dismissing some of the conclusions that are based upon good observations and physics. As difficult as it may be, we must separate the evolutionary speculations from the well-established ideas.

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Lichens are a life-form composed of a fungus called the “mycobiont,” growing in close union with some alga or blue-green bacterium known as the “phycobiont” (Howe and Armitage, 2002). Some workers consider this to be a symbiotic union, while others see it as a mild form of parasitism. Lichen pigments probably play many important physiological roles, while their brilliant colors provide considerable aesthetic enjoyment (Howe and Armitage, 2003). The versatile array of lichen asexual reproductive bodies and other features of the lichen upper surface have been illustrated by using scanning electron photomicrography (Armitage and Howe, 2004). Lichen algae and fungi are woven together forming “tissues” that resemble the tissues of unrelated “higher plants” in a generalized fashion (Armitage and Howe, 2006). In this two-part article (our fifth lichen paper) we show that the cellular ultrastructure of lichen provides evidence favoring design and direct creation. Our hope here, as with the other lichen papers, is that the readers’ knowledge of the Creator and their esteem for His handiwork will be enhanced by the study of lichens.

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Polystrate fossils are one of numerous evidences for the rapid deposition of strata, as opposed to the uniformitarian belief in slow deposition over millions of years. They are briefly described from the Joggins Formation, Nova Scotia; Yellowstone National Park, Montana and Wyoming; Ginkgo Petrified Forest State Park, Washington; the Geodetic Hills of Axel Heiberg Island; the Lompoc diatomite, California; and a diatomite from Peru. Uniformitarian geologists usually ignore polystrate fossils or claim that they represent only local rapid deposition, but they rarely supply any supporting evidence. A new location with polystrate petrified trees is described from open-pit coal mines in Alaska. About twenty upright trees at many different levels support rapid deposition of the strata there. The upright trees can be explained by the log mat model, and evidence from the coal mines supports that interpretation.

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The biosystematic method of baraminology has grown significantly in the past decade. Its conceptual foundations were discussed in the evolution/creation debates of the nineteenth century, long before Frank Lewis Marsh coined the term baramin in 1941. Currently, baraminology has been applied to dozens of groups, and the results of 66 baraminology studies are summarized and evaluated here. Though bias in group and character selection prevents firm conclusions, it appears at this time that Price’s suggestion that the family is an approximation of the “created kind” may be correct. Criticisms of baraminology from evolutionists and creationists alike can be resolved with further research. Whatever its future, baraminology is at present a useful tool for investigating God’s biological creation.

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This paper extends the applicability and accuracy of the cost of substitution beyond its traditional range, and demonstrates a useful calculation method. Using my previous clarification of the fundamental cost concept, this paper derives a method for computing the cost of substitution under wide genetic circumstances, including haploids; and diploids with varying degrees of dominance, inbreeding, and with a sex-linked locus. Unlike the traditional approaches, this method is accurate even under fluctuations in parameter values (such as population size, selection coefficient, dominance, and inbreeding coefficient). To display general- purpose results, the parameters are then held constant, and the total cost of substitution is graphed. This includes cases where the selection coefficient is not small and where the traditional equations become highly inaccurate. It is shown that neither environmental change nor soft selection reduces cost problems, at least in single substitutions.

Note added in publication: This paper offers previously unpublished clarifications, derivations and graphs, and refutes widely accepted solutions to a central problem in evolutionary genetics known as Haldane’s Dilemma. It was submitted to the journal Theoretical Population Biology, where all the peer-reviewers found no errors. Nonetheless, they rejected it from publication on the grounds that it is not a “sufficient advance,” and “there is little interest in this subject today among population biologists; it is one of those subjects which has sunk almost beyond trace.” This has all been very unfortunate, as there continues to be widespread misunderstanding within the scientific community regarding these important matters, even among those who have studied the cost literature for years. It is hoped that the clarifications presented in this paper will eventually reach the greater scientific community.

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David E. Stoltzmann

An optical image is a very organized and specified collection of information governed by the laws of optics. The formation of an image, and its correct interpretation by sighted living creatures, is a unique example of the great complexity in the living world. While many other functional features of living organisms are extremely complex and point to the handiwork of a designing God, an optical image demonstrates a unique mapping process of the eye-brain system that is very useful to the organism. The transfer of light from an object scene to a visual detection system involving the eye and brain conveys an enormous amount of information. Unless that information is correctly organized into a useful image, however, the exchange of information is degraded and of questionable use. In this paper I examine the “connections” necessary for images to be interpreted correctly. I also address the additional complexity required for the dual-image mapping involved in stereovision. Statistics are presented for “simple eyes” consisting of a few pixels to illustrate the daunting task facing random-chance, purposeless, undirected evolution in the origin of any form of a functional eye. It is concluded that evolutionary processes cannot account for the perception of images by living organisms and that only a creator could produce complex visual systems. Read more…

Jerry Bergman, Ph.D.

Mammal body hair is a complex structure that involves several basic parts, including a shaft, a root, and a follicle. The most common theory currently in vogue is that hair evolved from reptile scales. Although both scales and hair preserve well in the fossil record, especially in amber, no
evidence of hair evolution has been found after more than a century of searching. Another problem is that all primates have thick, coarse hair called fur, and explanations as to how this fur was lost in human evolution are deficient and contradictory. Read more…

D. Russell Humphreys, Steven A. Austin, John R. Baumgardner, and Andrew A. Snelling

Experiments co-sponsored by the Creation Research Society show that helium leakage deflates radioisotopic ages. In 1982 Robert Gentry found amazingly high retentions of nuclear-decay-generated helium in microscopic zircons (ZrSiO4 crystals) recovered from a borehole in hot Precambrian granitic rock at Fenton Hill, NM. We contracted with a high-precision laboratory to measure the rate of helium diffusion out of the zircons. The initial results were very encouraging. Here we report newer zircon diffusion data that extend to the lower temperatures (100º to 277º C) of Gentry’s retention data. The measured rates resoundingly confirm a numerical prediction we made based on the reported retentions and a young age. Combining rates and retentions gives a helium diffusion age of 6,000 ± 2,000 years. This contradicts the uniformitarian age of 1.5 billion years based on nuclear decay products in the same zircons. These data strongly support our hypothesis of episodes of highly accelerated nuclear decay occurring within thousands of years ago. Such accelerations shrink the radioisotopic “billions of years” down to the 6,000-year timescale of the Bible. Read more…