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Where on earth did you get your brain? Viewers ask some tough questions about
radiodating, and we respond to viewer questions in an extended play version of
the mailbag - this is Genesis week!
[music]
And a welcome to this episode of Genesis Week, the weekly program of creationary
commentary on news, views and events pertaining to the origins controversy.
Proudly brought to you by the supporters of CORE Ottawa, Citizens for Origins
Research and Education, and now carried on the Christianima network - Christian
cinema at its finest! And thank you to you, our financial supporters who make
this all possible. Excellence in pirate broadcasting, set up this week in my
sister's basement behind the hot water tank, we continue to broadcast the
information the anti-creationists don't want you to see or here, and giving glory
to our Creator while doing it. Remember if you get lost in cyberspace, just punch in
wazooloo.com - that's me, or genesisweek.com and you will find us -
and you can also subscribe to our youtube channel to keep up to date and
get extras like CrEvo rants and special interviews with our guests. I'm your host,
Ian Juby.
As we have said here before on Genesis Week, God did not say "Be ye
transformed by the REMOVAL of your mind," but rather we believe God gave
YOU a brain for a reason, and He expects you to use it! So it's interesting that our
first news stories of this week center around the brain.
Hawrylycz and 66 other researchers from the Allen Institute for Brain Science
reported the results of a study of the publically accessible, Allen Human Brain
Atlas this past week in Nature magazine. They concluded that the human brain was
really, really complicated.
Yes, I know, you probably think that is a bit of a "no brainer," but bear with me
here, as this study provided quite a bit of fascinating insight into both the
construction of the brain, and the origins debate - which ironically, a prerequisite to
participating in the debate is that you must have a brain! It's interesting to note
that the research was virtually devoid of any mention of evolution - one brief
sentence, which just goes to show that, contrary to what is often claimed,
evolution is not required to carry out good science.
The quick low down on the Nature report is that human brains show very little
variation among each other, showing that differences among people probably has
more to do with programming or wiring within the brain, not brain structure. The
study certainly ends the myths that we only use 10% of our brains, or that left
handed and right handed people have different structures of the brain. A major
part of the study was examining how genetics are involved in the construction
of the brain, and they determined that a whopping 84% of all of our genes were
expressed or turned on somewhere in the brain!
Their press release was entitled:
Blueprint, huh? Complexity huh? Let's make an analogy. We build a computer
which is so powerful that it is self-aware, and has the capability of building other
computers just like itself, and even repairing itself. We're going to
affectionately call this computer HAL. HAL begins to learn how to read the blueprints
on how to build HAL, which are stored on HAL's hard drive. All of the systems just
function without his understanding of how they work, but he wants to try to
read the blueprints and understand the interaction between the blueprints and his
system.
You can just imagine how complicated, how massive HAL would have to be in
order to be self aware, self-reproducing and repairing, and to have enough
intelligence to read blueprints on how to build himself. HAL of course, is so
incredibly complicated, that even he struggles to read the blueprints. HAL
struggles to understand how HAL himself works, and how the blueprints are used to
repair himself and build others! After spending years and years, pouring
over the blueprints and examining himself and other computers, HAL comes to an
incredible realization: he finally realizes how he came into existence: HAL
concludes he had no creator - that the blueprints had no designer, no engineer.
HAL concludes that he was the result of natural processes such as wind, water,
erosion, lightning, etc... Water just eroded minerals out of rocks like silicone, which
just happened to mix in the right mixtures on a microscopic level with gallium and
arsenic, etc... to make his microchips. Random lightning strikes helped fuse the
semiconductors together, the first self-replicating computer just happened
to form in an area rich in copper and rubber trees so that lots of wires just
formed naturally, and were accidentally incorporated into the first computer.
You see where I am going with this: the story is utterly preposterous - I mean,
even skynet had a intelligent designer, and ironically tried to kill its creator!
Now, in my "Atheists have higher IQ's?" rant, I asked Dave the atheist a
provocative question. Let me ask you the same provocative question:
Do you think your brain was intelligently designed?
If you said "yes," then congratulations on winning the rational thinking award. If you
said "no," then you win the honorary C.S. Lewis award! C.S. Lewis was a former,
stubborn atheist who set out to refute Christianity once and for all - and wound
up becoming a born again Christian. One of his major stumbling blocks turned out
to be what we just described here. As he wrote in "God in the dock," if there is no
Creator, then
If someone told you that HAL, our computer, had no designer, and no
creator, you undoubtedly would draw one of only a few possible conclusions about
this person: Either a) this person is on serious drugs, or b) this person should be
on some serious drugs, c) this person is incredibly ignorant and really needs to be
educated, or d) this person has ulterior motives for saying such irrational things.
So why then is it suddenly irrational to suggest that the human brain was
designed? Hmmm?
But of course, this is precisely what Ferris Jabr over at Scientific American
was arguing - that our brains evolved. In fact, he was adamant in his article that we
can't even understand our brains unless we take into account how they evolved!
He even entitled his article "Why We Need to Study the Brain’s Evolution in Order to
Understand the Modern Mind" Waitaminit - this is like HAL saying he
cannot understand how he works until he understands how his microchips formed
without a Creator. He launches off the wrong premise, because he did have a
creator, and natural processes cannot form microchips, how far do you think
HAL will get in his understanding?
The idea that a larger brain means you are more intelligent is an old evolutionary
leftover simply because we are assumed to have evolved from apes, which are
dumb, and have smaller brains than we do.
In Ferris' blog article, he reiterates this suggestion:
Well let's take that and run with it for a second, shall we? I have here a
reconstruction of the skull of a Neanderthal man - our human ancestor
who is oft depicted as a dumb cave dweller. After all, we modern humans are
smarter than our ancient ancestors - right? Again - that is an evolutionary
assumption. Now, I am a member of Mensa, the
international High-IQ society. In order to be a member of Mensa, you have to have
an IQ in the top 2% of the population - in other words, you have to be a certifiable
genius. You are watching this program, clearly you have a higher intelligence than
average, I think you should apply to Mensa to take the test. I'm not trying to
show off here, I'm making a point: Let us compare the size of Neanderthal's brain
case to mine. If brain size is an indicator of intelligence, and I have a genius level
IQ, then Neanderthal was a freakin' super genius who clearly had an IQ well off of
our modern day IQ charts! So if the evolutionary assumption is true that a
bigger brain means you're smarter, then ironically people less intelligent than
Neanderthal man are looking back at Neanderthal's remains and saying "look at
that! We are becoming less intelligent! That's evolution!" - no offense intended.
I'm also ignoring the enormous amount of paleontological and archaeological
evidence that the Neanderthals were completely intelligent human beings.
Newton talked about how everything had a "first cause." Well the first cause of
intelligence and reason must be intelligent and reasonable. That Creator God says to
you "'Come now, let us reason together,' says the Lord. 'Though your sins be as
scarlet, they shall be as white as snow; though they are red like crimson, they
shall be as wool.'" God first warned Adam and Eve that if they disobeyed, they must
die. This is not at all unreasonable - if you were the Creator, and you created a being
with the so many frightening capabilities human beings have, it would not be
unreasonable to tell them that if they rebel against you and disobey, that they
would have to die. The problem is, He loves us all very much, and sadly, we
have ALL sinned against Him. He does not want to judge you, but He can't let
rebellion go unpunished either. So that is why He took it upon Himself to sacrifice
His only son in your place - Jesus lived in a human form on this earth, and though
He never sinned, He died the death you and I deserve, to restore our relationship
to God the Father, if we turn from our sin and live our lives for Christ. It is very
much like starting over - Jesus called it being born again, and it is just a matter of
believing that He was the son of God, and died for you, and asking Him to give you
His promise of the Holy Spirit - which was a seal that you belong to God.
Ron from Texas wrote a very lengthy and excellent email containing a wheelbarrow
load of questions. Obviously I can't address them all at once, however, he
wrote in part:
And Rob S. also wrote in from....well, somewhere:
Thanks for writing in these excellent questions guys. For those of you who
tune in regularly, you'll remember Aaron from Ottawa wrote in asking me to
respond about how I address the appearance of being a conspiracy theorist
- interestingly, this all ties in with Rob & Ron's questions. I go into much more
detail about the radiodating methods and their failures in CrEvo Rant #100: Dating
methods, as well as CrEvo Rant #101: Carbon 14 dating. However, I will give a
very brief synopsis here. For Ron's sake, I will say it for the record:
Radiometric dating methods are inherently flawed because of the
assumptions - namely, that evolution trumps the facts. Carbon 14 dating might
be close, but it too has untestable assumptions built into it. To obtain an age
of a rock, a geologist will first of all identify the ages of rock layers above and
below the one in question - the ages come from the underlying assumption of
evolution and an earth billions of years old. If the rock beneath it is carboniferous
for example, he will then ASSUME that the rock on top must be YOUNGER. After
applying radiodating to the sample rock, if the age lines up with what he expects, the
age is accepted. If he obtains an age that is unexpected, it is assumed to be the
wrong age, and so it is thrown in the garbage. This is what geologists are
taught to do! So as you can see, the underlying evolutionary assumptions
trump the facts. A classic example of all this in action is the case study of skull
1470, which caused dozens and dozens of different radiodates to be arrived at until
they finally got the one they were looking for! And the age they were looking for
was based on evolutionary assumptions - so of course the dates line up with
evolution! It's circular reasoning! I cover this in detail in part 21 of Complete
Creation. With respect to Rob's question, while it is
true that a global flood around 4,300 years ago would totally throw everything
amock when it comes to radiodating, radiodating is pretty much exclusive to
lavas anyway. It was lavas that were brought back from the moon, and the
same radiodating methods used on lava flows here on earth were applied to them.
But yet when even Isochron dating methods are used to test MODERN lava
flows of which we KNOW the age, they invariably come back with ages in the
millions to billions of years. If we KNOW the methods don't work here, why trust
them on the moon where we don't know if they are working or not?
[funny music]
Funny, fast and furious! Ian's CrEvo Rants cover a multitude of topics in an
easy to understand, comical way. Complicated subject that normally make
your brain hurt, hurt a lot less when Ian explains them...
while wearing his anti-government mind reading equipment. Have questions about
Carbon 14 dating? Natural selection, thermodynamics, or...
what on earth is he doing there?
Three volumes of rants on DVD, take your pick for $15 each plus S&H or order all
three as a package and save yourself ten bucks! Order on line today at Ian's
bookstore.
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wahoo! Mail for me?
[beeping sounds]
I forget - are you supposed to cut the blue wire, or the red wire?
Or I could just pull the detonator.
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[swoosh]
If you recall in our premiere show a couple of weeks back, I read an email
from Aaron in Ottawa. Aaron had been introduced to me through a common
friend, Ian M. also in Ottawa. In his original email to me, Ian had laid out some
of the questions or critiques that Aaron had presented, one of which I would like
to address - now these are Ian's words, not Aaron's, but I really wanted to
address the remark because it so eloquently spelled out an issue:
In large part, I have to agree that that was the case! I am grateful that Genesis Week
ran on YouTube before moving to broadcast because there were several
lessons I had to learn. Please also notice that even Aaron, who may still describe
himself as of evolutionary persuasion, was not the only one to write to me and
complain about the anti-creationists. I am very careful to use that term because
such people are very different from evolutionists - who are the people I am
attempting to appeal to and challenge on this show. In contrast, the
anti-creationists are not reasonable people - they are irrational, emotional and
cling to evolution religiously. This is not about truth with them, this is about
propping up their religion of evolution and believing it no matter what. As even many
evolutionists have noted, the quality of the anti-creationist arguments...well, there
is no quality of the anti-creationist arguments - it is usually irrational and
with an Intelligence Quotient containing a negative integer. The problem was, it
seemed the anti-creationists were the only people I was hearing from, and they
often presented their arguments publically with great authority, and they
sounded really convincing to some people! So I wound up dealing with these
arguments which had an intelligence quotient containing a negative integer,
but because I was arguing evolution with an irrational person, it sadly wound up
conveying the message that I thought anyone who believed evolution was not
rational, and had an intelligence quotient containing a negative integer.
This saddens me because this is the farthest thing from my mind - it is not at
all what I believe. The vast majority of evolutionists that I know are good, honest
people who want to know the truth. They are interested in science because they are
intellectuals, and they believe evolution because the theory has the appearance of
being intellectual. They were taught it as fact in school, why would they question
it? In fact I had multiple evolutionists
complain to me about the anti-creationists, specifically saying what
Ian and Aaron implied - that these anti-creationists did NOT represent the
evolutionists. That in fact, by even addressing anti-creationists I was, in
effect, participating in straw-man arguments because I was addressing
anti-creationist arguments which did not accurately represent the evolutionary
community.
So with the recommendations of some pastor friends of mine on the east coast -
Thank you Rob and David, I took a number of steps to counter this problem. I
put my YouTube channel comments on moderation, banned several abusive
YouTubers, or added certain emails to my spam blocker list. Any comments that
were simply insulting or abusive, or had no quality content or purpose, or
detracted from quality discussion were deleted. That dealt with probably 90% of
the problems right there. I also emphasized that the bar was now raised
for quality of comments and questions, and for the show itself. This is a quality
show, providing quality information, I expect quality responses.
As a result, I have already noticed a FLOOD of quality questions and
comments coming in - to the point where it is just simply not possible to cover
them all! I will try and address as many as I can, but we only have so much time on
the show!
I had a ton of comments relating to my claim a couple of shows back that
evolution includes abiogenesis. Many objected, to which I can only point you to
the many evolutionary sources I mentioned in CrEvo Rant #80:
Abiogenesis and Evolution. Some critics cried "foul" saying that although I know
that abiogenesis and evolution are not one and the same, I include them
together. Well wait a minute now - Natural selection and evolution are not one and
the same, yet you would include them together and say they are intrinsically
connected. So just what is it that is upsetting some of you so much that you
are so desperate to try and separate evolution from the origin of life? Hmmm?
Ptango101 and I had a discussion in the comments section of YouTube, in which
he pointed out that if evolution is a supernatural process, then so is creation
- to which I agreed. In fact, I specifically stated that in the premiere show.
Ptango101 then replied:
Thank you for writing in! I do not fault Ptango for saying this, as this is really
what is presented and taught in our schools. The reality is the exact opposite
though. A developing fetus has nothing to do with evolution, and babies are actually
more "complex" than adults, as they have not yet accumulated the lifetime of
mutations we all gather thoughout time. I also cited multiple cases of De-evolution
in last week's show, which is what we see consistently throughout nature: Even we
humans are deteriorating genetically, and at a remarkable rate. Not only does this
show we are DE-evolving, the opposite of upwards, onwards evolution, it also
shows that life could not have been around for millions of years, because our
DNA is deteriorating so rapidly! I discuss this in detail in CrEvo Rant #78:
the boat that don't float.The whole reason I brought up the supernatural aspect of
creation and evolution was to point out how the scientific tool of Intelligent design
- which even five year olds use every day, can be used to determine which faith fits
the facts better - creation, or evolution. It clearly points to an intelligent designer - a
creator. We are taught that the fossil record
shows a sequence of evolution. Even leaving out the powerful evidence of
people living at the same time as dinosaurs, this teaching of a fossil
sequence is also patently false - even evolutionist David Raup from the Chicago
Field museum has mentioned this in writing. For example, you'll find plants
from the carboniferous up with the dinosaurs, as well as clams and allegedly
ancient fishes. You'll find reversed geological sequences where allegedly
older rock layers are on top of younger ones - there are hundreds of these in
North America alone, of which I have had the privilege of studying 8 of them so far.
You'll find stasis in the fossil record - not change over time. You'll find extinction in
the fossil record, which is a LOSS of species, a LOSS of genetic variation and
information - which is the exact opposite of upwards, onwards evolution.
I realize I'm saying a lot here, and it will take time to go into detail on each of
these points, but I will discuss them in more detail if you continue to tune in to
the show! The point being, the evidence we actually observe is the opposite of
upwards, onwards evolution, yet fits in just fine with the creation account.
It always amazes me how quickly the word "liar" comes out when people write to me.
I might remind such viewers that falsely accusing someone of lying is in itself a
lie...which means you're a liar. May I suggest this is extremely presumptuous
on your part to presume that I am lying - you did not think that perhaps I was just
plain wrong for example, or that I had perhaps made a mistake. Or perhaps we
simply have a difference of opinion or interpretation, nor did you ever seem to
consider that YOU might be the one who made a mistake! You simply assumed I
was lying, and hurled such accusations publically. One classic example was from
YouTuber complexadaptive, who wrote in about the Angus Reid poll I mentioned in
the premiere episode of Genesis Week:
I don't know what report you were reading, because both polls are available
for free download on the internet here, and here. Please note in the preamble of
the 2007 poll, Angus Reid wrote:
And let's take a look at a screen capture of page 3, which shows the breakdown of
results, province by province, which you said was not even in the report, and says
- oh look! 58%, 28% and 14%! Gee, that's ...what I said.
In the 2008 poll, Angus Reid wrote in the preamble:
The underlining was theirs.
Gee, I'm pretty sure that's what I said. Thanks for writing in anyway.
YouTuber slothape wrote in:
Apparently anyone who disagrees with slothape is a liar. While I acknowledge
that there are lots of fossils interpreted to be intermediate, it's an interpretation -
subject to opinion, and the opinions change even among the evolutionists!
And the bottom line is, even if there were hundreds, there should be LOTS more
from the hundreds of millions of years of evolution! So my statement is true and
accurate, even assuming your blanket statement were correct. There's
disagreement even among the evolutionists over what fossils are
intermediate, and with good reason. In other cases, like the coelacanth and
Pikaia - both are claimed to be examples of intermediates or ancestors of humans -
yet both still around today, unchanged. Intermediate fossils, like Tiktaalik, get
tossed out of the tree of intermediates all the time by new discoveries such as the
fossil footprints in Poland. So much for ALL of the fishapod intermediates!
There's much more to this subject but I will simply leave it aside for now because I
deal with these alleged "intermediate fossils" all the time on this show.
Well that's it for this week's show, I'm your host Ian Juby saying thank you for
watching, please join us again next Genesis Week. You can send us your
comments and questions in a number of ways, and let us remember the words of
our creator, the Lord Jesus Christ who said "I am the way, the truth and the life,
no man comes to the Father but through me." See you next week.
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