Climate Change – The Real Story with Special Guest Dr. Jay Wile ~ Episode 25

We want to be good stewards of our environment, but the climate change advocates keep changing the definitions. So, today I have a noted scientist, Dr. Jay Wile who will take some of the mystery out of climate change and explain it in a way that we can understand!

*One main point near the end of the broadcast will shock you!

Dr. Jay Wile has a Ph.D. from the University of Rochester in nuclear chemistry and a B.S. in chemistry from the same institution. He has won several awards for excellence in teaching and has presented numerous lectures on the topics of Nuclear Chemistry, Christian Apologetics, Homeschooling, and Creation vs. Evolution. He has articles on these subjects in nationally recognized journals and has authored or co-authored thirteen award-winning science textbooks designed to be used in a homeschool setting.  Books by Dr. Jay.

Climate Change Articles – Search Climate change of Dr. Jay’s blog – here is the search results.

Scientists created computer models of climate that were predicting warming. And as they were tracking the warming of the globe the models did not show this huge increase as per predictions and scientific models. The theory was as the years progressed the computer models and data collection would show definitely that the earth was indeed warming and it would be a huge problem for people on earth. The problem was the globe has not warmed much, so it’s been hard to convince people that it is a problem. The greatest warming took place before the 1970s.

Here are some things we know about global warming. The globe has not warmed enough so in essence the science now focuses on a new term, “climate change.” The theory is the carbon dioxide is not warming the planet but due to the carbon energy it is trapping it is causing the extreme weather we are seeing. There is evidence that the earth has warmed a little bit since the mid-1800s. Long before the build-up of carbon dioxide. The question is what has caused it, and scientifically we really don’t know. We do know that carbon dioxide traps heat.

The big question is the “equilibrium climate sensitivity” and that is a question we will address in this broadcast. It is the single most important piece of data related to climate change, and therefore the question that should be asked and is often avoided or even unknown by many of the politicians campaigning on this topic.

What is it? In Dr. Jay Wile’s own words: “Equilibrium climate sensitivity is defined as how much will global temperatures increase if the amount of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere doubles.” And that question is completely unanswered. It is somewhere between zero degrees and 3.5 degrees. There is no trend! Some studies show a very very low equilibrium climate sensitivity so we could easily double the carbon dioxide and nothing significant would happen other studies produce a very large climate sensitivity which means everything gets really hot and bad things to happen.

The most recent studies show no one agrees. If that single more important question what is equilibrium climate sensitivity can not be answered scientifically then you can’t say scientifically that global warming is a problem. You just can’t!

Anything we do in the short term can’t produce a long term effect. It will be making a minor difference. That is just standard scientific reasoning. I can’t take a short term action and produce a significant long term effect. For example Paris climate accord. Everyone agrees in this accord that if every country followed the Paris Climate Accord the average temperature of the earth would drop by .01% and that is if every country agreed–which we know they won’t or can’t.

Extrapolated data that scares children and gloom and doom. “Anxiety caused by people who are afraid of climate change,” is actually a thing. Dr. Jay says this is not reflected in the scientific literature. If you do a search on all of the scientific literature on climate change you will find virtually no scientific literature that expects a catastrophic outcome. And for the ones that talk about a catastrophic outcome, it is an outcome for certain regions of the world.

There is nothing in the scientific literature that says the world is going to end due to climate change, not even the most radical proponents. Things published in the scientific literature are peer-reviewed and they know they can not publish something that is just conjecture.

We have weaponized science. 

That is taking science and weaponizing it to fit a political agenda. And, this is done all of the time in various ways including philosophical arguments. It just doesn’t work if you look at the true scientific findings and not extrapolated data.

Dr. Judith Curry is a favorite climate scientist. NASA climatologist for years. She had to resign due to craziness in the field of climate scientists. When reporters talked to her she told the truth. She pointed to the scientific literature. Reporters were shocked and contacted others and she would get punished for telling the truth to these reporters. She has a blog, Climate, etc. it is a balanced approach to climate science.

We have to realize this science has become ridiculously political. There are some whose livelihood depends on everyone believing there is a crisis and if there was not a crisis their job would be in trouble. Some people probably do believe there is a crisis. Dr. Jay says read both sides of the issues. And, contrast how they are looking at the data.

What we are seeing is the extrapolated data presented. We have three ways of measuring global temperature. But is the data unbiased? Dr. Jay explains the way that temperature is tracked today?

1. We have thermometers scattered across the earth that take the temperature and those numbers are averaged.
2. We have satellites that are constantly orbiting the earth tracking the microwaves and are constantly tracking the temperature of the earth.
3. We have weather balloons that use radio waves that determine the temperature.

All three ways come up with different answers. And what is bad is thermometer data is shown because they show the greatest change. What scientists don’t realize is that data is constantly “tweaked.” Even the data from the early 1900s is changed in the present. In order to do these averages, you have to be able to do a model. Every time the model changes all the past data changes as well. The scientific data is “changed.”

Blog post-2018- Does anyone really know how it is? It shows the raw data and the currently adjusted the early temperatures.  Tweaked the data to show their hypothesis.

When people look at data through the lens of assuming that global warming is happening. Climate scientists don’t even know how this data is adjusted on the fly. You never see the raw data. You see only the massaged data.

The argument is that the Paris accord is the first step and that makes sense, but unless you give me a plan to make a greater change than .01% — if you are going to make gasoline and electricity more expensive I won’t make the sacrifice. No one in the scientific literature can tell the answer. No one knows climate sensitivity.

Some changes are good: Forced auto manufacturing to put catalytic converters get rid of carbon monoxide (most of it), to pre-industrial levels but it had a good outcome.

Climate Change: we don’t’ talk about what the outcome is going to be. Every time you raise prices on electricity prices people die. 

If I know the increase the electricity prices will cause people to die because they can not afford their electricity, the correct question is: “How many old people are you willing to kill to stave off something that may not happen!” If we don’t even know it will happen — the changes — then how can we make these ridiculous (ed. emphasis here) assumptions that can cause death?

Bullet train fiasco in California – cost billions.

2020 prediction that the Glacier National Prak would disappear. Well in 2019 the sign was removed when Dr. Jay and his wife visited because they knew it was nowhere near disappearing. Also Al Gore and his false predictions that the North Pole would melt in 5 years – it has been over 10 years since his prediction and the North Pole is still incredibly icy.

The fact that the globe is warming right now still shows cooler temperatures than we have seen in the past. The Northern hemisphere was warm during the medieval period. It has been significantly hotter in the past. Studies show that in every major region the temperatures are due to a natural cycle.

 

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Junk DNA and EpiGenetics Episode 24 with Dr. Jay Wile

What is Junk DNA and how does the study in epigenetics show that scientists are still confounded as a creator God is definitely evident. Special guest, Dr. Jay Wile shares his expertise!

Visit Dr. Jay Wile, who has a Ph.D. in nuclear chemistry and he’s also the author of several different science series. Visit his website.

Thanks to our Sponsor, The Star Movie now out on DVD!

What is Junk DNA?

For years, since the early seventies, junk DNA has been a staple of evolutionary thinking. Back in the 70s, we didn’t know a lot about DNA. The only stuff we really knew about DNA was parts of DNA contain these recipes for the cells. And it tells the cells how to make a particular kind of chemical called a protein. And that those recipes make up about 2% of DNA. And as far as we knew back the other 98% must be just useless junk. Evolution has had a ready explanation for why there’s junk DNA because after all, evolution is driven by mutations and mutations are random. They tend to destroy information much more than produced new information.

So if I’ve got a whole bunch of mutations, they’re mostly going to be degrading DNA. They’re not going to be improving it. So there must be a lot of DNA that got degraded from these mutations. But of course, the organism has to carry it along anyway. So the higher evolved an organism is the more junk DNA it should have. And so it’s not surprising according to evolutionists that 98% of the human genome is junk because we’re a very highly evolved species. Evolution had to make a lot of mistakes before it made us. And so a lot of those mistakes are reflected in the junk DNA. And that was a real popular view. Eventually, junk DNA became an engine for evolution because initially, evolution thought is that if you have a protein, you have a gene and a mutation occurs, maybe that mutation can make it a little better.

And if a series of mutations over a long period of time can take one gene and turn it into a completely new gene over time, evolution has found, well, the biochemical data doesn’t support that. We don’t see lots of little steps in genes and it’s extremely hard to understand how I can take a gene that the organism needs and mutate it to into something else and lose what it was originally coded for. So the thought was, well, if I’ve got all this junk DNA lying around, it’s just free to mutate, it’s not going to affect anything. And magical new genes can come out of that junk DNA. And by the early nineties, it was thought that the vast majority of evolution comes from this junk DNA.

Computer Junk DNA Simulations

A computer program called Avida is sort of the gold standard in computer simulations of evolution. In order for Avida to get evolution to happen at all, 85% of the genome of these organisms has to be junk because that’s where all the good stuff is coming from. Then a problem occurred. If the junk isn’t being used, then it’s free to mutate and eventually you’ll get something wonderful, right? In theory, all these great new genes are coming from this part of the genome that’s not used. And all this worked really well on the evolutionary view until 2012 and actually there were hints of this before then because there was a big study on the topic. But in 2012, the first big results from a study called nCode was produced now nCode was a huge study. It looked at more than 1600 data sets and had hundreds of scientists involved in it.

And basically they said, look, we have identified the cell using 80% of the human genome. So at a minimum, 80% of the human genome is functional. And in fact, the lead data analysis coordinator said that actually it’s going to be much more than that because they only looked at certain types of human cells. There are certain human cells they haven’t looked at yet. Those probably use different parts of the DNA. So in the end, he says he expects that 80% number to go up significantly.

Now, this is a real problem. If 80% of the genome is not junk and we now know that at most 20% of the human genome as junk, which means the lower evolved species have even less than 20% junk DNA. So in the end, it’s extremely hard to understand how evolution can function without a large pool of junk DNA.

A professor named Dan Grauer, who is a professor of evolutionary biology has made the statement that if nCode is right, then evolution is wrong. So what he’s saying is, if the results of this study is true, then evolution can’t happen. And he’s saying, not only do we need junk DNA to have a source for all these new wonderful genes. He’s saying it’s even worse than that because if you have the human genome, 80% of it is functional. That means natural selection has to keep 80% of the DNA from mutating significantly in order for it to work. And he said, in order for that to happen, on average, every couple would have to have 15 children and most of them would die because the mutations in their DNA would kill them.

But out of 15 children, 2.3 of them would live, which would allow the human population to continue. And so he’s saying, and code can’t be right. We can’t have that much functional DNA cause there’s no way natural selection can keep, keep it clean for millions of years. But I, and I agree with that. I agree. There’s no way natural selection is going to keep the human genome clean for millions of years. But humans have a, been around for billions of years. So it’s really easy to understand the encode results in from a creation standpoint because we know from a, a biblical standpoint that people lived longer in the past, specifically because their DNA was less mutated. And so natural selection has not been able to keep the DNA clean. It has been degrading and that’s why we have shorter lifespans than the people during Noah’s time and things like that.

So in the end, this whole idea of 80% or more of the gene of being functional perfectly fits in the young earth gracious perspective. And in fact, young-earth creationists, we’re predicting this all the way back when, when evolutionists were first talking about a junk DNA, a young earth creationist were saying, “No, there may be a little bit of junk DNA because of all of the degradation that’s occurred since the fall, but the vast majority of DNA has to be functional. And now we know that young-earth creationist prediction is correct. And the biochemical data strongly support that time. Now, a lot of times evolution just makes honest mistakes, many scientists make honest mistakes. So I never fault evolutionists for that. But when we look at the large number of fake fossils and the large number of faked experiments all trying to support the evolutionary view that to me is a real problem.

Sometimes evolutionists and some creationists both really distort science because evolutionists de desperately want their view to be true. And so they’re willing to lie in textbooks so that students are more likely to come to their view.

Dan Brower’s point is very true and I think what we’re gonna learn is the code is right and therefore evolution is wrong.

Epigenetics

The term of the prefix epi means above. So your epidermis is the top layer. Your skin. Epigenetics is something that happens above genetics. So the way we typically talk about genetics, genetics are determined by the sequence of in of nucleotide basis in the DNA. So the DNA contains these chemicals called nucleotide basis. And they act like dots and dashes in the mall Morse code. If you have this the nucleotide basis in one sequence, it means one thing. If you have them in a different sequence, it means a different thing. And for a long time, it was thought that it was the sequence of these bases that determines everything structurally about an organism. So if I look at your eye color and I find enough genes that relate to eye color, I can look at the sequence of those genes and I can tell you exactly what your eye color is going to be.

And so all of your physical characteristics can trace back to a sequence on your DNA. And we now know that’s not true because we’ve gotten really good at using animals that are genetically identical while they’re there. There are cloned animals. So we know they’re genetically identical. And yet when we put them in different situations, they end up having different physical characteristics. And this has been really well known for a long time. There’s a a cat that was cloned from another cat and the cloned cat is called copy cat, which is kinda cute. And copycat never ever looked like the original cat that it was cloned from. It had a lot of features the same, but like its markings were different. And its personality was different because these things go beyond or are on top of genetics.

And we’ve learned that it’s surprising how much goes on top of genetics. A Study: Genetically identical mice were taught to be scared of a particular color. So they trained them. Every time they saw that color, they got shocked. So they trained them to be afraid of that color. Other of the same genetically identical mice didn’t get trained that way. Then they looked at the offspring of those mice. The offspring of those mice were immediately removed from the parents at birth. So the parents never raised the baby mice. Another surrogate parent surrogate mice raise the baby mites. So the baby mice never had any contact with the parents yet. The baby mice were never trained to be afraid of that color and the baby mice are genetically identical across the board. Yet since one set of parents was trained to be afraid that somehow got transmitted and we don’t know the specifics of how that happened, we only know that it did. And so that’s what epigenetics is. It’s stuff that’s going above just the sequence of the DNA.

Now that’s a pretty high-level mechanism. It took us a long time to learn genetics. So genetics is complicated enough. Now we add something on top of genetics that makes everything even more complicated. It was thought that only higher evolved organisms would have epigenetic processes, genetics evolve first and then epigenetics evolved later. It’s a higher level of control over an organism’s traits. So it should have come later. Well, it turns out that we’ve just looked at what is considered the most primitive kinds of bacteria that live on the planet. These are called thermophilic bacteria. They’re bacteria that live in hot springs. These are supposed to be incredibly primitive. They’re actually called archaea bacteria. And archaea means outdated or old because these are the oldest kind of bacteria that ever lived. They’ve got epigenetics too. It’s been shown that two of these bacteria are genetically identical. They are completely different when it comes to the kinds of environments they can live in.

And so it has to be epigenetic. So epigenetics is supposed to be an even higher level thing than genetics and now we find it appears in the most primitive organisms. And so once again, this whole idea of evolution is we start with really simple organisms and then over millions of years we get more and more complex organisms. That’s not what we see in nature. What we see in nature is even the simplest organisms are ridiculously complex. So this whole of life getting more complicated over time does not play out when you actually look at life from a scientific perspective.

The best example of that is professor Richard Lee Walton, he’s a geneticist and an evolutionist.  He says it is not that the methods, it is the institutions of science have somehow compelled us to accept a material explanation of the phenomenal world. But on the contrary, we are forced by our adherence to material causes to create an apparatus of investigation and a set of contents that produce material explanations that materialism is absolute, we cannot allow a defined foot in the door.

He’s saying it doesn’t matter what the science says, we’re just not going to let it happen.

Materialism is the idea that there’s nothing supernatural. Everything can be reduced to atoms and molecules and energy. And there’s nothing else than that. So even this concept that we call love isn’t really real. Love is just a manifestation of the way electrical stimuli run through our nervous system.

It is extremely hard to be a knowledgeable geneticist and be an evolutionist. It used to be thought that once we figured out genetics, we’d finally figure out all these evolutionary trees. We’d know what evolved for what and so forth. Well, what we found is if I try and construct evolutionary trees based on genes, if I use one set of genes, I get one evolutionary tree. I use a different set of genes. I get a completely different evolutionary tree. We’ve learned that there’s no way natural selection can, can keep the genomes clean because the genomes have a lot more stuff that natural selection has to clean. And this whole epigenetic stuff is showing that if all of these sorts of things that we’ve always thought were based on the environment –  if there’s this whole other way of inheriting that adds a completely new level to what evolution has to keep track of.

And according to this study of on a thermophilic bacteria, this has been around since the most primitive organisms. And so here’s now another thing that has to pop out of nowhere, not only does DNA have to pop out of nowhere, but now epigenetic mechanisms have to pop out of nowhere. And so the more we learned about genetics the less and less tenable evolution has become. That’s why evolution, at least nowadays in papers in the scientific literature is questioning evolution. In the early 2000’s you could say there’s not a single paper in the peer-reviewed literature that questions the validity of evolution. Now there are lots of papers in the scientific literature, the peer-reviewed secular scientific literature that’s questioning evolution because, in the end, genetics is pointing so strongly against it.

Our next episode with Dr. Jay Wile is on Global Warming.

 

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Exciting Creation News ~ Episode 23

It is a fabulous time to be a creation scientist, especially with the exciting Creation Science News! Join Felice Gerwitz and Dr. Jay Wile, an author and acclaimed scientist who will discuss why this is a great time to be a Creation Scientist.

Thanks to our sponsor, Media Angels, and the Truth Seekers Mystery Series

Dr. Jay Wile – Learn more about here on his website and his blog.

Dr. Jay L. Wile, who holds an earned PhD in nuclear chemistry. He is best known as the author of award-winning elementary, junior and senior high school science courses including the Science through HisStory, “Discovering Design with…”, and “Exploring Creation with…” series.

Exciting Creation News:

There’s an enormous amount of scientific work that keeps confirming creationist predictions. Some of it’s coming from the secular scientific community, but some of it is coming from the creationist community as well. And that’s probably the most exciting aspect.

Creationists used to be focused and still are focused on talking to the common person, the laypeople and letting them know, hey, look, science, that doesn’t support evolution in the way people, some people claim it does. And that’s a very important part of creationism.

And obviously I do that in my textbooks, but science moves forward when scientists do research about new things. For a long time, there just weren’t enough creationists. There wasn’t any money in creation, in research and so forth. So there wasn’t much actual research going on. But nowadays, creationists are doing experiments. Some of them are publishing in the secular literature, like Dr. John Sanford, is publishing several genetic studies in the standard secular literature.

Exciting Creation News:

The audio has details about the following:

1. H1N1 virus showed that natural selection doesn’t weed out the harmful mutations.
2. But that’s not what we see in the data. Fischer’s Theorem—which mathematically supports evolution in secular literature doesn’t work.
3. Nylon digesting bacteria – thought they were new genes – but it was natural genes. This is fascinating and a lot of this is confirming predictions that creationists have made for years.
4. Human genome project – and there’s a really famous scientist named Dr. Dan Graur. He says, if the findings are right, then evolution is wrong because there is no way evolution can maintain 80% of the human genome. (Read more about this on Dr. Wile’s blog here.) This has confirmed creation prediction and it goes way, way counter to everything evolutionists have taught us since the ‘70s when it comes to the human genome.

What Makes A Theory Scientific

What makes a theory scientific isn’t that it explains the data. It’s not that it makes sense. What makes a theory scientific is it can be used to predict data that are not known because that’s how you really decide whether a theory is useful and whether or not it’s close to reality. Because if it can make a prediction about something that is not known and then it’s investigated, it turns out that prediction is true. That gives you a lot of support for the theory

More Exciting Creation News:

1. Dinosaur bones tested have been found to have C14
2. This indicates that the maximum age is about 30,000 years old. Now, we think it is less than that because carbon 14, is very difficult to get a solid done number beyond 3000 years. But nevertheless the evolutionist says zero C14. The creationists say some and the creation is right.
3. The lab (the best there is) with the particle accelerator refused to allow further testing when they realized the results found were on dinosaur bones –instead they’ve decided to do is put on the blinders and say, we don’t care that there’s carbon 14 in there and we don’t care to ever explain that because that challenges our belief that they’re millions of years old. That’s not science that’s religion.

When I started researching, different data related to the age of the earth, I became skeptical about these billions of years specifically because I saw how radioactive dating is done.

1. Error bars: this is when the dating says plus or minus 10,000 years. This is the first thing that I (Dr. Wile) saw that was really ridiculous. These error bars are totally unrealistic. For example, several years ago now, there were diamonds from Zaire and they were dated to be 6 plus or minus point 3 billion years old. So according to that error bar, the youngest they could be is around 5.7 billion years old. Problem is the earth is supposed to be only 4.6 billion years old.
2. Evolution requires billions of years because it requires complete luck. Initially, there’s no life on earth according to the evolution, the naturalistic evolutionary model. Suddenly we have to create something out of just random chemical reactions. Evolution says the chance of this happening is really low, but if you got billions of years to get it done, it’ll eventually happen. So it took billions of years to get the first life form. Although even when using their own numbers, they know that’s not right now. The earliest living thing in fossil records supposed to be 3.8 billion years old, so they absolutely need, billions of years or older for that to work, and that is why it’s just taught that way because, without it, there’s no evolution possible.
3. Back in 2005, a paper was published by Mary Schweitzer, she found a fossilized femur dinosaur bone and found soft tissue in it. And she said, based on all of her analyses that she could do before publishing the paper, it wasn’t something that got introduced later. Nearly everyone on the planet said she’s nuts. There’s no possible way. This is true. If these bones are 65 million years old. Soft tissue doesn’t last that long. However, she kept doing some chemical tests and she found it in another dinosaur. So some people got interested.
4. Other people started looking and finding soft tissue. They picked seven scrappy dinosaur bones from a museum. They didn’t even know what dinosaurs they’re from only that they’re found in Cretaceous rock. And out of those seven, four of them had soft tissue in them. And with a scanning electron microscope, this soft tissue looks like it’s got red blood cells in it.
5. Most paleontologists, not all, now agree there is soft tissue in dinosaur bones and that’s exciting enough. Cause once again, how in the world can you expect soft tissue to hang around and still be soft 65 million years later.
6. But what’s really cool about this as a creationist researcher has gone to the next step. He’s been taking dinosaur bones and dissolving them in weak acid. This gets rid of all the minerals and what’s left is the soft tissue, then he isolates bone cells from it. So he’s actually got soft bone cells from dinosaurs. He’s done it with a triceratops so in the end, he’s collecting soft dinosaur cells. And of course, the cell should have DNA in them. And in fact, he has actually extracted the DNA from the cell, nobody in the evolutionary literature has ever tried to extract the dinosaur cell before. See more information Mark Armitage and the video with dinosaur cell extraction here.Theories of Evolution.

Darwinism, neo-Darwinism, punctuated equilibrium model shows abrupt appearances of new organisms in the fossil record. (Creationists believe that was because of the Flood) Evolutionists see that most all of the organisms die, but a couple of them—by “happy coincidence” they have good mutations that they end up producing a new creature just in the span of a couple of generations or a few generations. They look at the fossil record and see things appear quickly because their intermediates only existed for a few generations. So those intermediate varieties existed, but they didn’t exist long enough to fossilize, to become part of the fossil record.

So in the end evolution happens too quickly to fossilize. But then if you ask an evolutionist, why don’t you see new species, or not new species, of original organisms appearing now, they’ll say because evolution happens too slowly to observe. So it happens too slowly to observe and to quickly to fossilize. And that’s, that’s where we are right now. And some people are calling that science. That’s punctuated equilibrium. And that’s the only model right now that’s at least consistent with the paleontological data. However, a lot of folks are moving beyond that even.

Evo-Devo

Single-celled organisms can swap genes from different species. Bacteria are particularly good at this, and they can actually absorb DNA from dead organisms that are not even anywhere close to them in terms of species and so forth. And if some of that DNA is useful, it gets incorporated. There’ve been a couple of cases where it’s been shown in fairly simple animals. The sea slug for example, when it eats a photosynthetic organism can actually incorporate it and has the ability to do photosynthesis. This is called horizontal gene transfer. It’s not vertical in a sense. It’s going from parent to child. It’s horizontal in a sense. It’s going from one organism to a completely different organism that’s well known in single-cell creatures known in a few animals but not many.

There are a lot of evolutionists are saying that’s the big deal. All sorts of horizontal gene transfer are occurring. And that’s why we can’t track evolution the way it happened because it’s getting blurred by all of this horizontal gene transfer. Other folks are saying that it’s all in development. We do know that there are some genes that make radical changes during embryonic development, and if those genes get changed just a little bit, the results can be radically different. So evolution during development is Evo-Devo.

 

 

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Yellowstone National Park – A Window into Earth History Episode 22

Yellowstone is the gateway to understanding earth history, in this episode we’ll listen to Patrick Nurre as he shares information about the park and the earth.

Thanks to our sponsor Media Angels, Inc and the Truth Seekers Mystery.

Yellowstone National Park is America’s first national park signed into law in 1872 by U.S. Grant, 18^th President of the United States.

The Park is 2.2 million acres, amounting to over 3,400 square miles of forest, mountain ranges, several lakes, 10,000 thermal features, 300 waterfalls and over 300 geysers. It is a veritable laboratory for getting a window into the past geological history of Earth. It is a testament to the Genesis Flood and its aftermath.

The origin of the word Yellowstone is unknown. Many think Yellowstone got its name from the altered and colored lava of the Grand Canyon of the Yellowstone, most of which is colored a variety of yellow hues due to hydrothermal (or hot water) alteration within the canyon walls.

Yellowstone National Park is a small part of a much larger ecosystem. This ecosystem contains the greatest amount of fossil trees in the world, the largest fresh water lake in the US at altitudes over 7,000 feet, the largest concentration of geysers in the world, a vast glacially sculpted landscape and quite possibly the largest concentrated amount of volcanic ejecta in the world to have been erupted by volcanoes (9,000 cubic miles of volcanic material). To give you an idea of just how big that is, Mt. St. Helens erupted just .25 cubic miles of volcanic material in 1980.

Yellowstone is actually part of a greater volcanic feature dubbed a “supervolcano.” The main crater of Yellowstone is 45 miles long and 35 miles wide. Mt. St. Helens, by comparison, left a crater 1 mile wide and a ½ mile deep.

No one knows for sure what lies underneath Yellowstone. Geologists estimate that there is initially a depth of about 1-2 miles of a special type of volcanic rock called rhyolite, produced by explosive volcanoes. In addition, the temperatures just 400-500 feet below the surface are very hot.

There is no doubt that if one of these giants were to erupt today, it would have a devastating effect on our biotic globe and climate. Many geologists have proposed a sort of an ice age that would creep over several parts of our Earth.

Some ask if Yellowstone will erupt again. Despite what Hollywoood says, the official park literature states that they do not expect any kind of an eruption within the next 10,000 years. The closest eruption of any magnitude in our recent Earth history was in 1815 with the eruption of Mt. Tambora in Indonesia. 1816 has been called, “The year without a summer,” as freezing temperatures, and snow and crop failure were reported in June of 1816 throughout many parts of the world.  There have been many such eruptions in Earth’s geological past – the Mammoth Lakes Caldera in eastern California and the La Garita Caldera in southwest Colorado were two of the largest.

What would have produced this violent volcanic eruption? The Yellowstone eruption is a bit of a mystery in modern geology. It does not fit the typical plan for volcanic activity. Scientists tell us that most of Earth’s volcanoes lie along cracks in the Earth called The Ring of Fire. These cracks are labeled as the edges of shifting plates, as modern geology describes them. But Yellowstone does not lie along any edge of a plate. It is thousands of miles from The Ring of Fire. This is also true of the Hawaiian Islands, themselves made of many volcanic eruptions. Yellowstone nevertheless is a huge crack or hole in the Earth.

Many of us learned in school that volcanoes were the crucibles of creation; that our atmosphere and water and the early conditions for life on our planet came from millions of years of repeated eruptions. James Hutton, the Father of Modern Geology, in the late 1700s, viewed the Earth as having constantly recycled itself in volcanic eruptions, processes of metamorphosis and sedimentary deposition throughout untold ages. There is another way to look at this.

Genesis 1 says “In the beginning, God created the space and the Earth….” This is a far different picture of Earth history. One of the best things you can do in sharpening your worldview is to read and know Genesis 1. Very few Christians who know the Scriptural presentation of origins and the global Flood that followed.

In Genesis 1 a straightforward reading would tell us that the Earth was created by an all-knowing, all-powerful God, with purpose and design. And this space and Earth and everything in them were created over a period of 6 days. This would make the origin of the Earth a relatively recent event in Earth history, quite at odds with modern geology. At the end of day 6, the Scripture states, “God saw all that He had made, and behold, it was very good. And there was evening and there was morning, the sixth day.” Earth, upon its completion, seems to have been a perfect place, fashioned by the Creator for very special people – Adam and Eve. There does not seem to have been death, disease, and other crippling effects of decay. But this is not what volcanoes produce. Volcanoes produce: sulfur dioxide, hydrogen sulfide, hydrogen fluoride or hydrofluoric acid, very poisonous gases, as well as dangerous amounts of carbon dioxide and carbon monoxide, acid rain, hydrochloric acid, sulfuric acid and destruction of the ozone layer of Earth. In addition, these particles of dangerous things rise up into our atmosphere and affect our climate and disrupt our existence. For example, airports are closed and crops and animals are killed through the deposits in the form of thousands of tons of volcanic ash. All in all, volcanoes are destructive to man’s existence, not creative. Looking at things from a Biblical point of view, there is another idea to consider for the creation of volcanoes: the Genesis Flood.

Genesis 7:11 very effectively describes the first day of the Genesis Flood. “In the six hundredth year of Noah’s life, in the second month, on the seventeenth day of the month, on the same day all the fountains of the great deep burst open, and the floodgates of the sky were opened.” To a geologist, this historical statement should cause one to think of many different geological events. For instance, huge cracks and holes could open in the crust of the Earth with the eruption of all kinds of hot water, nasty radioactivity, and lavas, and the ripping apart of soils laid down just 1500 years earlier. All of Earth now exhibits these effects in the rocks, topographical scars, and billions of fossil creatures and plants over the entire globe.

Geologists estimate that there are over 50,000 volcanoes of all kinds spread out over the surface of the Earth and on the ocean floor. Rocks and landforms that were a part of the original creation would have been changed or metamorphosed for the rest of Earth history as a reminder of the judgment of God. Only a remnant of the original creation remains. But the devastation of a global flood has left its mark as a reminder that God holds all mankind accountable for its rebellion. The Genesis Flood is the only world-wide catastrophic event in Earth history, mentioned in the Scripture, that all mankind experienced. It was not a localized judgment such as Sodom and Gomorrah. Cracks all over the ocean floor and present-day faulting and earthquakes are a testament that this global event indeed did happen.

However, geologists tell us that the Yellowstone volcano erupted 640,000 years ago. How do they know this? They don’t. The age is based upon an assumed behavior of radioactivity. Radioactivity or radioactive decay can be measured in the present, but we have no idea whether this decay rate has continued unabated into the distant past. Geologists merely assume it has been constant. They assume this because they refuse to consider the Genesis Flood as anything more than myth. But if the Flood indeed did take place, as Scripture records, then all geological processes we know today would have been affected by extreme heat, alteration and mixing of materials and violent chemical reactions.

So, how old is Yellowstone? From a Biblical point of view, the answer lies in historical documents, not in science. Science can only verify what it can observe, test and repeat. The Yellowstone supervolcano erupted at some point in Earth’s history. Deciphering that is a matter of examining historical documents and eyewitness accounts. The science of Yellowstone deals with excavating its fossils and identifying its rocks. But the origin of Yellowstone is a matter of history and that is the task before us.

Christians have three main sources for determining the age of Yellowstone:

• The genealogies and chronologies of chapters 5 and 11 of Scripture
• The witness of Jesus Christ who quoted from the book of Genesis more than any other Old Testament book of the Bible and took all that it stated at face value
• The signs produced by the Creator throughout Earth history and witnessed by hundreds and in some cases thousands of people

As the chronologies in Genesis chapter 5 clearly indicate that there were a little less than 1700 years from Adam to Noah, then Yellowstone cannot be any older than about 4,500 years, the date of Noah’s flood. Any evidence of a volcanic eruption prior to that would have been wiped away by the Flood.

All these historical events have been recorded and preserved in our Scripture so that we might know who created us, what happened to the human race and how man can be restored to a right relationship with his creator.

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Rock Strata and the Fossils in Geology Episode 21

Does rock strata and the fossils in geology show anything important? Absolutely in this presentation with Patrick Nurre, he’ll share the scientific basis of this and key information.

The study of rock layers in secular geology and what they mean is called stratigraphy. The study of the fossils as they appear in the rock layers is called biostratigraphy. The literal rendering of the Greek word stratigraphy is layer writing.

A good book on this subject is The Key to Earth History – An Introduction to Stratigraphy, (by Peter Doyle, Matthew R. Bennett, and Alistair N. Baxter, 1994). The whole premise of secular stratigraphy is that the physical history of the Earth is written in the rock layers. Secular geologists believe that they can discern and write the history of the Earth by studying the rock layers. Remember, however, that there are no words or dates written in the rocks. There is no history book or history revealed or recorded. The rock layers must be interpreted. And that involves human reasoning and ideas. Science is that which can be observed, tested and repeated. Science should ask the question, “Has anyone ever observed these rock layers in the process of forming? Has anyone ever seen the rock layers accumulate with petrified remains?”

Rock layers are just that, rock layers. We can tell what kind of sedimentary rock is contained in the layers, and we can often identify the fossils in the rocks. But the rock layers do not tell us how old they are or how they got that way. That deals with the realm of history. History deals with one-time unique events recorded by eyewitnesses or written documents. Secularists interpret the history of rock layers using a particular philosophical framework that they claim gives us or writes a history of the Earth.

From a secular perspective, stratigraphy is the key to Earth history. History should ask the question, “Has anyone seen this process or know of a record or eyewitness account of this process?” The Biblical account gives a fairly detailed and historical record of an event that can explain the rock layers and the fossils in them. Modern geology does not have this kind of record. The secularist constructs the story as he/she believes it happened based on a purely naturalistic paradigm. The Biblicist, on the other hand, looks at the written record of the Bible and uses it to interpret the history of the rocks and fossils. Therefore, we don’t make up the explanation as we go but frame it according to these very old written records.

These rock layers with fossils in them have never actually been observed in their formative process. Coming at the problem from a whole different perspective – Biblical history, the rock strata containing the fossils can easily be explained by a creation and global flood. It is a historical question. How the rock layers got that way cannot be solved by science because there was no observation involved.

Biostratigraphy

Secular scientists believe that the rock layers containing fossils can not only be dated by these fossils but also that evolutionary history is contained in the rock layers and can be ascertained by studying the fossils. Bio means life. And it is the life that is preserved as fossils in the rock layers that secular geologists believe tell the story of evolution over millions of years.

By the late 1800s, the study of fossils and the rock layers were so thoroughly intertwined, that it is now impossible in modern geology to study one without the other. A belief in evolution tells us how old the fossils are and therefore how old the rocks are.

How did rock layers come to be interpreted as millions of years of Earth history? The Father of Modern Geology, James Hutton, is credited with developing an idea called uniformitarianism in the 1700s. Uniformitarianism has to do with uniformity of geological processes and rates operating over long periods of time.

James Hutton was a man of his time – the Enlightenment. The Enlightenment was a time of questioning and skepticism regarding the Bible and the church. Hutton was one of the Fathers of the Scottish Enlightenment. As he contemplated the sedimentary rock layers at Siccar Point, Scotland, he reasoned that these layers of rock must have been deposited and eroded over an immense amount of time, and had to be older than the Biblical timeline. The Enlightenment was a reactionary movement. If the Bible declared one thing, the Enlightenment declared just the opposite.

This is what gave birth to the word agnosticism, coined by Thomas Huxley a century later. Huxley insisted that one could not know the truth of what was declared in the Bible, because it had not been observed by qualified scientists. Of course, this is the same complaint that creationists lodge against the secularists. You could reasonably come to the conclusion that the word agnosticism was born because what had been declared in the Bible and by Jesus had been rejected. The Christian witness teaches that we can know certain things because God made them known through His Scriptures. If you take away the revelation of God, obviously it is impossible to naturally know the things declared in the Bible. But He has left us an account in the Scriptures and Jesus verified this over and over again.

If the Scripture declared that the Earth was created in six days, the Enlightenment declared that the Earth must be ancient. And it must have been formed by processes we can now observe, not as a result of the involvement of any supernatural being or god. If the Scripture declared that a Flood, lasting a year, destroyed the Earth that existed before Noah, then the Enlightenment insisted that the Earth must have been a product of slow processes of sediment deposition and erosion. This meant that stacks of rock layers represented time – lots of time. Rocks on the bottom of any given set of layers were not only older but were the oldest. This also meant that fossils buried in these bottom-most layers of rocks were the oldest biological creatures. Time took on a completely new dimension – deep time as opposed to a young Earth that the Bible taught.

The process of redefining time, the layers of rock and the origin of fossils took about a hundred years to complete. By the end of the 19^th century, no scientist spoke of Scripture in terms of actual geological history. The account of the creation and the flood were relegated to myth. All of these changes were accomplished by philosophical reasoning, not by actual science. The new paradigm was set first and then used to interpret the stacks of rock layers. This is one of the reasons why secular geology is such a bewildering subject. It is philosophy dressed in scientific language.

Stratigraphy is actually a belief that the rock layers tell a history which must be interpreted by the men and women of science. In reality layers on the bottom of any stack of rocks gives us a relative positioning in relation to the rocks on top. There is nothing in the rocks themselves that tells us how old they are. If we simply lay a different template over the rock layers, the template of the historical Flood, then if the rock layers have been undisturbed since their inception, then the layers on the bottom were laid down first in relation to the ones above them. In other words, they may actually be quite young!

It falls to biostratigraphy to guide a secular geologist to interpret the rock layers as to how old they are. Biostratigraphy is also a belief. Secular geology believes that since fossils must tell a story of gradually evolving life, and life must have taken millions of years to evolve, then the fossil life in the bottom-most layers must be millions of years old and consequently the rocks are also. But again, if we simply shift our belief to a Genesis global flood which took place about 4,500 years ago, then the arrangement of the fossils are the result of burial and sorting by the catastrophic flood over a very short period of time. The rock strata are there and so are the fossils. But the age of these things must be determined not by science, but by history and philosophy.

When science speaks of millions of years (deep time), it is almost impossible to fathom. History over the last few thousand years makes sense because of commonly shared human experiences and the records that have been preserved. But a million years or even millions of years is incomprehensible. We have nothing to relate it to.

The John Day Fossil Beds National Monument in north-central Oregon lately is a fascinating “other world” of badland topography, layers and interesting formations. And it is a great place to study stratigraphy. Stratigraphers have worked out the evolutionary order and timeframe for the rock layers of the John Day fossil beds. The stratigraphic column of time and the evolution for this area spans about 55 million years according to secular reasoning. It comprises three distinct geological units, which if stacked one on another, would total about three miles in thickness, each having some similar and some different fossils in them. This hypothetical column, published by the National Park System, is portrayed as a vertical column emphasizing the passage of time from the bottom-most layers to the present.

The National Parks has a road guide that helps you orient where you are. This guide shows that the same portions that comprise the Monument are the same three units that comprise the stratigraphic column. But the units are spread out and separated by miles from one another and are horizontal to each other, not vertical. In other words, the units have been humanly arranged into a vertical column on paper so that we can visualize what secular geologists believe took place.

So, how do geologists know that these units should be on top of one another? How do we know that they didn’t in fact exist together at the same time? We don’t. We must accept the premise that both the uniformitarian and Biblical perspectives are paradigms; that both are beliefs about what happened here. Secular geologists ridicule this approach as religious and devoid of understanding. That is because they have accepted their paradigm as scientific fact. The history of modern geology is filled with examples of the confusion of paradigms with scientific facts.

Secular geologists have arranged the three units of the John Day fossil beds into a time column based on the belief that the fossils found in these units have evolved over millions of years. In fact, these various sedimentary rock layers and the fossils in them could have been arranged by a catastrophic flood washing bones and mixtures of sand, silt, and volcanic ash into the area.

Stratigraphy and biostratigraphy are two foundational paradigms in modern geology. Secular stratigraphy and biostratigraphy are fundamental to education in secular geology. If you want to pursue the study of geology as a career, you will need to thoroughly understand these two important areas of study and thought.

Conclusion: The rock layers and the fossils in them were either deposited, eroded, and evolved over millions of years, or they were deposited and buried during a catastrophic global flood which has been recorded as a historical event in the Bible. Both of these are ideas. Both are paradigms or perspectives. Neither can be proven scientifically. Only one, however, is based on a historical document. One of these paradigms will destroy faith in the Scriptures and in the God of the Scriptures, the other will promote faith in the Scriptures. For the Biblicist, the whole of the Christian faith rests on the accuracy of Biblical history.

There is secular stratigraphy based on naturalistic reasoning and a rejection of the Scriptures, and there is Biblical stratigraphy based on the historical framework of the Bible. Both cannot be true.

• Products and links:
• Geology and the Genesis Flood (Kit) http://northwestrockandfossil.org/index.php?route=product/product&filter_name=genesis+flood&product_id=361
• Bedrock Geology (Book) http://northwestrockandfossil.org/index.php?route=product/product&path=59_66&product_id=305
• Bedrock Geology (Kit) http://northwestrockandfossil.org/index.php?route=product/product&path=81&product_id=289
• Fossils, Dinosaurs and Cave Men (Book) http://northwestrockandfossil.org/index.php?route=product/product&path=59_64&product_id=308
• Fossils, Dinosaurs and Cave Men (Kit) http://northwestrockandfossil.org/index.php?route=product/product&path=81&product_id=303
• Genesis Rock Solid  http://northwestrockandfossil.org/index.php?route=product/product&path=59_77&product_id=318

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Evolution Taught To Kids As Truth ~ Episode

I’ve heard it all! Evolution has nothing to do with a kid’s faith. But when evolution is taught to kids as truth the problems begin. It is one of the reasons that kids leave their faith as they get older. There are many excuses given for how a kid raised in a Christian, God-loving home can leave their faith behind. Maybe the kids never believed. Maybe they didn’t really mean it when they accepted the Lord as their personal Savior. Maybe they didn’t make their faith their own, or they weren’t really “saved.” No one can answer this question other than the person who once believed and now doesn’t.

In my experience talking to hundreds of parents in the years since I co-authored my first book on the topic of Creation, in 1994 the common theme was, evolution. The child bought into the lie taught as fact in the schools they attended. The biggest question I’ve asked is why is a theory taught as a fact? I think the answer is as varied as the person asking the question. Again, the common theme is because the “other” (Creationism) is faith and evolution is science. Evolution is a theory. It is not a scientific law.

In fact on further examination evolution contradicts scientific laws like Thermodynamics. But of course, we sweep this under the rug. Upon digging deeper we also learn that Darwinian evolution is discounted (because the fossil record never substantiated Darwin’s theory) and neo-Darwinism is in. Or is it? Now scientists think neo-Darwinism is in need of a replacement.

Many Christian households teach a Biblical Creation as stated in Genesis 1: God created… and many also are at a loss on how to fit their faith into evolution. News Flash! You don’t have to “fit” faith into evolution because evolution is a lie. Is there microevolution, changes within a kind. Absolutely. But macroevolution – goo to you by way of the zoo is a myth. Now scientists realize that what they thought was DNA “junk” randomly evolving human genome can’t happen. In fact, 95% of human genomes can not evolve. Really? We knew this. So, why do evolutionists keep insisting that Genesis is a myth?

Evolution Taught To Kids as Truth – The Problem

Once kids are taught that evolution is a “valid” theory (aka educated guess) kids think their parents lied, or worse. They park their faith at the door and feel that maybe Genesis is the fairy tale. In my many years of study into creationism and evolution, I learned that kids need to be taught both of the faith systems because truthfully both are based upon faith. We have faith in the unseen, we were not present when God created the world and we were not present when the big-bang or whatever other theory started the world, and from this disorder came order – and everything in between. There are many theories of origins and as demonstrated earlier, they keep changing. Some Christian believe that Almighty God chose to begin the world by evolution (Theistic Evolutionists).

So much of this has been debated and truthfully, it is up to each one of you to make this determination on your own. But, I’m warning you, if your kids are brought up with a strong faith and yet believe in evolution as a theory of molecules-to-man, they will be hard-pressed to defend their faith when they are in higher education. My co-author on the Creation Science Series, Jill Whitlock use to lament that those who believed in Theistic Evolution were lost, souls. I don’t go that far. Sure, you can believe in God, have a relationship with the Almighty and still believe in evolution. But what a loss.

Explaining to children that the Bible (especially Genesis) is an allegory or fairy tale, and then jumping to Genesis 1:27 – “Oh, but we believe that God created Adam and Eve, just not as He said in Genesis. You see, these organisms evolved and then at some point when a human was formed, God infused a soul into the first man and then the first woman, and called them Adam and Eve.” That is confusing to say the least. We must believe that Almighty God used death and destruction and “chance” as the molecules formed themselves eventually into a human, to then infuse a soul? Wow.

Never mind that there is no evidence that evolution happened. No fossil record. No verifiable scientific data. Only a theory.

Why are people so adamant that Creationism is false? That Genesis is not to be read literally? Because then a person must change and follow God and the “rules” which they believe are limiting.

Recently some big names in the Christian world have abdicated their faith. They’ve decided they are no longer Christians because of the “definition” of what it means to be a Christian. In the same sentence they added – oh, by the way, I am also getting divorced. We see the tragedy of sin in the priest scandal. We see pastors of various denominations falling prey to sin. How does this happen? It begins by turning away from the truth and coming up with the slang of the day “speaking your own truth.”

And when evolution is taught to kids as truth then nothing is sacred. Kids begin to question:

• We don’t have to believe the Bible as written?
• Do we have to believe in Noah’s ark? That was pretty far fetched, anyway.
• Jonah and the whale – yeah, that was hard to believe, too.
• Moses parting the Red Sea – yeah, totally weird.
• Jesus born of a Virgin? How can that be?
• Jesus the Son of God? Wow. I don’t know.
• Jesus and the miracles of the loaves and fishes. How can that happen?
• Jesus dying for our sins? If Adam and Eve didn’t exist then why did he have to die?
• Jesus rising from the dead? Not sure about that one either.

Never mind that the disciples that walked with Jesus (except for John) were all martyred for their faith as well as thousands upon thousands of Christians. You don’t give your life for a myth or allegory.

Kids think in ways that many adults tend to think and if we begin questioning the truth of the Bible or a loose interpretation of it, then nothing is sacred. Friends, don’t believe me. Research creationism side-by-side with evolution. No one has all the answers but evolution is sure based on a bunch of theory by scientists who have very little if any evidence that points to a conclusion that is substantiated.

Hug your kids. Teach them the truth. You will be happy you did.

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Special Thanks to Our Network Sponsor -Overcomer Movie

Life changes overnight for coach John Harrison when his high school basketball team’s state championship dreams are crushed under the weight of unexpected news. When the largest manufacturing plant in town suddenly shuts down and hundreds of families begin moving away, John must come to grips with the challenges facing his family and his team. Urged by the school’s principal to fill-in and coach a sport he doesn’t know or like, John is frustrated and questioning his worth… until he crosses paths with a student struggling with her own journey.
Filled with a powerful mix of faith, a twist of humor, and a ton of heart, the Kendrick Brothers return to theaters with OVERCOMER, their newest feature following FACING THE GIANTS, FIREPROOF, COURAGEOUS, and the #1 box-office hit, WAR ROOM. The inspiring family film stars Alex Kendrick, Priscilla Shirer, Shari Rigby, Cameron Arnett, and introduces Aryn Wright-Thompson.

Opening nationwide on August 23, OVERCOMER dares to leave you filled with hope, inspired to dream, and asks the question: what do you allow to define you?

Click here to learn more!

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Deism and Modern Geology – Episode 19

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