Thursday, February 19, 2015

Evolution Thrives In Ignorance

Professing to be wise, they became fools, (Romans 1:22 NASB)

"If it could be demonstrated that any complex organ existed, which could not possibly have been formed by numerous, successive, slight modifications, my theory would absolutely break down. But I can find out no such case."
Charles Darwin, Origin of Species (1859), Chapter 6

Cells
Evolution thrives in ignorance. In the days when cells were thought to be blobs of protoplasm, evolution is easy to believe. Today, we know that living cells can be pictured as a "large bustling hugely complicated city that is occupied by micro-machines. And these micro-machines really are the heart of life, these micro-machines, which are the envy of nano-technologist all the world over are self-directed, powerful, precise accurate devices that are made up of strings of amino acids. And these micro-machines power how a cell moves. They power how a cell replicates. They power our hearts. They power our minds." (Quoted from this TED video, "David Bolinsky: Visualizing the wonder of a living cell")

Evolutionists now struggle to tell us how these micro-machines can be formed by mindless and purposeless evolution. See how they struggle:
QUOTE
Living things (even ancient organisms like bacteria) are enormously complex. However, all this complexity did not leap fully-formed from the primordial soup. Instead life almost certainly originated in a series of small steps, each building upon the complexity that evolved previously:
1. Simple organic molecules were formed.
Simple organic molecules, similar to the nucleotide shown below, are the building blocks of life and must have been involved in its origin. Experiments suggest that organic molecules could have been synthesized in the atmosphere of early Earth and rained down into the oceans. RNA and DNA molecules — the genetic material for all life — are just long chains of simple nucleotides.
2. Replicating molecules evolved and began to undergo natural selection.
All living things reproduce, copying their genetic material and passing it on to their offspring. Thus, the ability to copy the molecules that encode genetic information is a key step in the origin of life — without it, life could not exist. This ability probably first evolved in the form of an RNA self-replicator — an RNA molecule that could copy itself.
Many biologists hypothesize that this step led to an "RNA world" in which RNA did many jobs, storing genetic information, copying itself, and performing basic metabolic functions. Today, these jobs are performed by many different sorts of molecules (DNA, RNA, and proteins, mostly), but in the RNA world, RNA did it all.
Self-replication opened the door for natural selection. Once a self-replicating molecule formed, some variants of these early replicators would have done a better job of copying themselves than others, producing more "offspring." These super-replicators would have become more common — that is, until one of them was accidentally built in a way that allowed it to be a super-super-replicator — and then, that variant would take over. Through this process of continuous natural selection, small changes in replicating molecules eventually accumulated until a stable, efficient replicating system evolved.
3. Replicating molecules became enclosed within a cell membrane.
The evolution of a membrane surrounding the genetic material provided two huge advantages: the products of the genetic material could be kept close by and the internal environment of this proto-cell could be different than the external environment. Cell membranes must have been so advantageous that these encased replicators quickly out-competed "naked" replicators. This breakthrough would have given rise to an organism much like a modern bacterium.
4. Some cells began to evolve modern metabolic processes and out-competed those with older forms of metabolism.
Up until this point, life had probably relied on RNA for most jobs (as described in Step 2 above). But everything changed when some cell or group of cells evolved to use different types of molecules for different functions: DNA (which is more stable than RNA) became the genetic material, proteins (which are often more efficient promoters of chemical reactions than RNA) became responsible for basic metabolic reactions in the cell, and RNA was demoted to the role of messenger, carrying information from the DNA to protein-building centers in the cell. Cells incorporating these innovations would have easily out-competed "old-fashioned" cells with RNA-based metabolisms, hailing the end of the RNA world.
5. Multicellularity evolved.
As early as two billion years ago, some cells stopped going their separate ways after replicating and evolved specialized functions. They gave rise to Earth's first lineage of multicellular organisms, such as the 1.2 billion year old fossilized red algae in the photo below.
UNQUOTE

The above is quoted from Evolution 101 From Soup to Cells - the Origin of Life.
(Updated on 2018-07-08: the link is now "How did life originate?")
See the words they use - almost certainly, could have been, probably, full of uncertainty because everything they said could not be reproduced in a proper scientific experiment. Steps 3, 4 and 5 simply state that membrane is evolved, DNA take over RNA and single cell become multicellular. How? Not even a speculation. It is too much of a struggle for Evolution 101. More knowledge is required to understand those speculations. What I can say is membranes are complex and according to evolutionist speculators, they require co-evolution.

Stars
According to today's knowledge, "Stars form when giant gas clouds start to clump together and gravity begins to pull the clumps toward each other. This clumping is often caused by energy waves from nearby exploding supernovae.These clouds are made of mostly hydrogen and some helium. These are the fuel a star uses to shine brightly. Once gravity pulls the molecules together strongly enough, nuclear fusion will begin to occur in the core of the star. This process will continue throughout the life of the star, until all of the fuel is used up." (quoted from Space Academy)

Our knowledge of the universe is very limited. We found that our universe are full of dark energy and dark matter, things that we do not understand. That is why we can write confidently about how stars are formed and evolved. That is why the language used by Space Academy is much more certain than From Soup to Cell. When we know little, we are very confident about evolution. When we finally find out what dark matter and dark energy are, we will write with more uncertainty about how stars are formed. Like cells, stars may need to have co-evolution.

Tuesday, February 3, 2015

Belief is Obedience

Whoever believes in the Son has eternal life; whoever does not obey the Son shall not see life, but the wrath of God remains on him. (John 3:36 ESV)

By faith Abraham obeyed when he was called to go out to a place that he was to receive as an inheritance. And he went out, not knowing where he was going. (Hebrews 11:8 ESV)

Sunday, February 1, 2015

Test God By Obedience, Not By Prayer Request

Again the Lord spoke to Ahaz, "Ask a sign of the Lord your God; let it be deep as Sheol or high as heaven." But Ahaz said, "I will not ask, and I will not put the Lord to the test." And he said, "Hear then, O house of David! Is it too little for you to weary men, that you weary my God also? Therefore the Lord himself will give you a sign. Behold, the virgin shall conceive and bear a son, and shall call his name Immanuel. He shall eat curds and honey when he knows how to refuse the evil and choose the good. For before the boy knows how to refuse the evil and choose the good, the land whose two kings you dread will be deserted. The Lord will bring upon you and upon your people and upon your father's house such days as have not come since the day that Ephraim departed from Judah - the king of Assyria." (Isaiah 7:10-17 ESV)

"You shall not put the LORD your God to the test, as you tested him at Massah. You shall diligently keep the commandments of the LORD your God, and his testimonies and his statutes, which he has commanded you. And you shall do what is right and good in the sight of the LORD, that it may go well with you, and that you may go in and take possession of the good land that the LORD swore to give to your fathers by thrusting out all your enemies from before you, as the LORD has promised. (Deuteronomy 6:16-19 ESV)

Many people try to prove God by making demands from God. They said, "If God is real, why doesn't He do this or that? Why is there war, injustice, etc..." God can only be proven by what He had promised. You cannot prove God by creating a god out of your own imagination.