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Capabilities of birds of flight that rival our best
computers, Tiktaalik and time travel, and fish to
land animal evolution is busted again. 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. Excellence in pirate broadcasting, we
believe God gave you an intelligently designed
brain for a reason. Congratulations to last week's
winners of the Genesis and Aliens DVD: Vincent in
Utah, Alan and his home Bible study group in
Dunedin, New Zealand, Oren Otter - again! In
Colorado (see? that's what happens when you're a
faithful viewer!) and because Oren got in the top
three again, I threw in an extra DVD to the fourth
person sending in the right answer, the Snow family
in Indiana. Thanks to all who played.
Aired on the Miracle Channel in Canada, the Walk
Television in the US, satellites all around the
globe, and of course, the Christianima network on
YouTube, we continue to bring you the information
the anticreationists don't want you to see or hear,
and giving glory to our Creator while we do it.
Remember - get lost in cyberspace? You can find us
at wazooloo.com (that's me) or genesis week.com
(that's the show) and you can also subscribe to our
YouTube channel while you're there so you can get
extras like CrEvo rants and full interviews with
our guests - I'm your host, Ian Juby.
You've all seen birds in migration, in particular
the iconic and venerable Canadian Goose. For my
Amereecan friends, I apologize for my fellow
Canadians as they travel to your southern states in
migration for the winter,
delivering....er...."presents" from the sky upon
you. I disagree with the opinions expressed upon
you by my migrating avian friends.
Nevertheless the Canada Goose and many other birds
tend to fly in a "V" formation. Presumably this is
to conserve energy, though previously evolutionary
scholars have thought that birds were simply too
bird-brained to be able to take advantage of the
air disturbances caused by the bird in front of
them. As it turns out, yes it's true - even the
Canada goose is as lazy as it possibly can be.
A fantastic study came out in nature describing the
flights of birds in the typical V formation.
Portugal, et al., worked with the Zoo Vienna in
Austria, a Zoo which is raising young of the
near-extinct Ibis. The Zoo would hatch these birds
and give them human foster parents. They then would
put the bird's foster parent into a microlight, and
the foster parent would call out the birds to get
them to fly. They would carry out some practice
flights like this before actually taking the birds
on a migratory flight to Spain.
Portugal et. al. took 14 of these juvenile Ibises
and mounted a small, super lightweight GPS
receiver, a datalogger, as well as a bunch of
accelerometers on the birds. During the training
flights of the birds, the flight paths, position of
each bird, and the flapping motions were all
recorded. Once the birds came back to the zoo, the
data was downloaded and the discoveries commenced.
When an aircraft flies through the air, it
effectively pushes down on the air. The air sweeps
around the tip of the wings in vortices. This is
the reason that many modern aircraft have the now
prominent winglets, where it looks like the tip of
the wing is bent upwards, and sometimes a winglet
below the wing. This is to keep the air from going
around the wingtip and filling in the vacuum on the
top of the wing, thus reducing lift. By simply
adding a small winglet, the engineers greatly
reduce the loss of lift at the wingtips.
However, the wingtips also produce powerful
vortices. When a large commercial aircraft lifts
some 140,000 to almost a million pounds into the
air, these vortices are powerful, spinning air
masses that can flip smaller planes if they happen
to stray into them. And the vortices can last quite
a while - this is one of the reasons why aircraft
departing airports space themselves out by two
minutes between take offs. This allows the wake
turbulence, which is like two tornados,
to disipate.
Obviously birds do not produce such large vortices,
but on the grand scale of bird to bird, these
wingtip vortices most certainly do affect the birds
in behind the first. As the bird is flying, it
produces these twin vortices which are like
miniature tornados, one off of each wingtip. But,
the bird is also flapping its wings at the same
time, so if you can picture it, the vortices move
up and down in a wave, following the flapping
of the wings.
What Portugal et. al. discovered was that there's
more to a bird brain than originally thought: the
birds keep track of where these invisible vortices
are in the air, and flap and fly to make maximum
use of these vortices in helping them fly!
If the bird flies directly behind another, then its
wingtips will be caught in the downdraft of the
wingtip vortices, and thus the bird actually loses
lift and has to work harder to fly. If the bird is
slightly higher or slightly lower, then the
vortices are going directly sideways, and are of no
benefit to the trailing bird.
However, if the bird flies behind and to the right
or left, in just the right spot, then the bird's
wingtip will catch the updraft of the wingtip
vortice, thus giving the bird's wing extra lift and
reducing its energy consumption.
Here's the catch, and the surprise finding of the
study: If you'll recall, the wingtip vortices move
up and down in a wave, because of the flapping of
the bird's wing. It was discovered that the
trailing bird could keep track of where this
vortice was in space, and flap its wings in
synchronization with the wave of the vortice!
Now, let's analyze this for a minute: It took very
powerful computers to model the wingtip vortices in
space. GPS Satellites all around the globe, and a
very complex microcomputer on each bird to map and
log all movements. It took several humans and their
intelligently designed brains, using all of this
complex equipment, JUST to figure out what the
birds were doing! In the meantime, this bird brain
which is only slightly larger than a ping-pong
ball, processes the vision of the bird, its
heartbeat, oxygen levels, breathing, excreting
waste, the flapping motion which is controlling the
bird in 3D space, it's other body movements like
moving its head around, all while also keeping
track of the invisible vortices in the air around
it, and flapping in time with those vortices in
order to maximize lift and minimize energy
expenditure. All of those GPS satellites, the
computers involved, the energy consumption of the
brains of the researchers, the battery packs
powering each on-board computer on the birds, it
all adds up to tens of thousands of watts of power,
compared to the incredibly energy-efficient bird
brain.
But of course, as we all know, though that brain
looks designed, we must continually remind
ourselves that it evolved, one small step
at a time.
On that note of never questioning evolution,
February 12th fast approaches - the birthday of
Darwin. As such, the Question Evolution Project has
of course declared February 12 the annual "Question
Evolution Day," and we too want to encourage you to
step out and ask some questions of evolution. After
all, I think you would all agree, that is good
science to question everything, is it not? So why
then should evolution be exempt from questioning?
What's that? Oh, because evolution is a proven
fact, and questioning it is like
questioning gravity?
No - gravity is observable, repeatable,
predictable. Evolution is none of these things, and
is therefore, not scientific and most certainly
SHOULD be questioned. What evolution has been
observed? In what way is it repeatable? What has
evolution successfully predicted? If you haven't
asked these questions, then you should, because I
think you'll be surprised by the answers!
So head on over to the Question Evolution Day
webpage and plan out your day of celebration.
Speaking of failed evolutionary predictions,
Tiktaalik has made headlines again. If you'll
recall, conventional evolutionary theory has fish
growing legs and walking up on to land to become
tetrapods - four footed land creatures. We are
shown the impressive line of fossils which
allegedly demonstrate this gradual progression
through time. However, for the longest time there
was a gap in the middle of the sequence. The
evolutionary theorists placed this gap at around
the 375 million year mark. So a team of researchers
headed to Ellesmere Island in the Canadian High
Arctic, to look at rocks they considered 375
million years old, and found a gen-you-whine
missing link - Tiktaalik, which in their minds fit
the bill (and that horrible empty spot on the
chart) of an intermediate animal between
fish and tetrapods.
Tiktaalik was heralded as not only proof of
evolution, given its own website and a book
entitled "Your inner fish," it was heralded as
evolution making and fulfilling a scientific
PREDICTION - one of the most powerful proofs for
a scientific theory.
Of course, this was all for nought when a couple of
years later, fossil footprints from fully formed
tetrapod feet showed up in Poland, found in rocks
dated by the evolutionists as 395 million years
old! Whoops! This also doesn't acknowledge the
fossil footprints found in Grand Canyon by
geologist John Mackay and published some 20 years
ago - footprints in rocks dated by the
evolutionists as 115 MILLION YEARS before
Tiktaalik. These were clear tetrapod footprints,
complete with toes.
But not letting facts interfere with a good theory,
Shubin and team published more facts on the
Tiktaalik fossil after finding its hips and a
couple of other small chunks of leg bones. As if
the Polish footprints never existed, all the press
(and Neil Shubin himself) went hog wild with the
glory of Tiktaalik, once again declaring it to be
the ancestor of the tetrapods:
Now hold on a minute: if Tiktaalik was supposed to
be the first fish to walk up onto land, and was in
the process of DEVELOPING LEGS and feet, then what
are these fossil footprints, from a LAND WALKING
TETRAPOD doing in rocks in Poland that the
evolutionists themselves have dated as being older
than Tiktaalik by 20 MILLION YEARS??? What about
the fossil tetrapod footprints of Grand Canyon,
dated by the evolutionists as 115 million years
BEFORE Tiktaalik? You cannot be your
grandfather's father.
There can only be one explanation: Tiktaalik did
not just figure out how to grow legs over the next
20 million years, Tiktaalik also figured out time
travel. Thus after growing fully formed legs, feet
with toes, etc... he then went back in time and
roamed around Poland for a while, leaving
footprints which became fossils, he then went even
further back in time another 115 million years and
roamed the beaches of Arizona, leaving footprints
which now became fossil footprints in Grand Canyon.
- and that's how you get fossil footprints 135
million years before feet evolved.
The other alternative being that tetrapods were
created as tetrapods right from the beginning.
Tiktaalik is just another weird, created creature,
and when you take into account the ridiculous
variety of fish we have today - tiktaalik isn't
even that unusual. We have fish today that walk on
land, like the mudskipper. No one is pointing to
them as some evolutionary intermediate - why not?
David Coppedge put it so well on Creation Evolution
Headlines, that I'm just gonna quote him here:
Interestingly, not a week after Shubin's paper came
out, a second paper came out in PLoS Biology by
Woltering et. al. They took a look at Hox genes
between fish and mice. Hox genes are genes which
control the sequence of using other genes to build
components of a body in the correct place and
sequence. In this case, they looked at Hoxa and
Hoxd genes to see if there was any similarity
between the two - after all, ultimately mice were
supposed to have evolved from the fishes.
What did they find? The same thing we find every
day pinky: it didn't work. The genes that make the
limbs of the mouse and the fins of the fish can be
similar, but the genes controlling those genes are
the opposite: the Hox genes that control the making
of the fins of the fish control the making of the
upper legs on the mouse, instead of making the
digits on the mouse feet like they expected.
And so we see what we have seen in so many other
cases of alleged "homology" - similarities between
organisms, such as the arms. This is used as an
argument for evolution, when in fact these
similarities can be just as easily explained by a
common designer (GOD), not a common ancestor. And
as we saw here again, when one digs deeper, we find
out that the limbs themselves may be homologous
between the organisms, but the genes that MAKE the
limbs are not. Homolgy is best explained by a
common designer, not a common ancestor
and evolution.
This is another blow to the alleged fish to land
animal evolution.
A tablet from Mesopotamia is causing a stir, as it
contains reference to what appears to be Noah's
ark, and specific instructions on how to build it.
Estimated to be 4,000 years old, the cuniform
tablet recounts God's alleged instructions to Noah
to build the ark out of rope with wooden ribs and
coated in bitumen, all about 2/3s of the size of a
soccer field in area - and the design was that the
ark was round. It also detailed that the animals
were to enter into the ark two by two.
Of course, the skeptics are all over this tablet,
as if this somehow discredits the Biblical account
of Noah and the ark. The ship as described in this
tablet clearly wasn't seaworthy, and it's older
than the Biblical account! So the Bible must have
just been a copied version of this story, right?
We've heard, and dispelled this nonsense before.
Just because one newspaper reports a story before
another one does not mean one newspaper copied the
other. In fact, we find HUNDREDS of accounts of the
great flood, the ark, and all too often a man with
a name that sounds an awful lot like "Noah" in
cultures all around the world. Almost all of those
stories are clearly a distorted representation - as
is this tablet. The epic of Gilgamesh described the
ark as a cube! Such design would be incredibly
unstable, unseaworthy. Well, actually it might
float just fine, but the continual flipping over in
all directions would kill everybody on board. Other
legends and myths describe the floating vessel as a
canoe, or even a giant turtle. The reasons for this
are a fascinating study, but one thing can be said:
These are all clearly mythologies. The Biblical
account on the other hand, is the only record that
stacks up and is reasonable. In fact, multiple
times models have been built according to the
specifications of the Biblical account, and tested
in professional wave tanks. The design was
astonishingly stable, able to right itself from
extreme rolling, but it would naturally point into
the waves. The Biblical account is written as
history - not mythology, and it's obvious in
the writing.
Contrary to taking away from the authenticity of
the Biblical account of the flood, this tablet only
adds to the already overwhelming evidence of that
flood. It's just another account of a past event
that affected the WHOLE WORLD, seeing as how the
WHOLE WORLD has record, legend or mythology
of that event.
Stick around - we'll back with the mailbag in
just a minute.
The Complete Creation video series is just that -
an exhaustive look at the science, philosophy and
theology behind the creation/evolution debate. In
this 12 DVD series, Ian Juby starts off with a 1
hour presentation for the children in God's little
creation. He then follows up with almost 11 hours
of lecturing for the adults as he walks you through
the debate starting at its surprising history, and
examining the evidence from biology, geology,
physics, paleontology and archaeology. Chances are,
any question you have about the creation/evolution
debate is answered in this video series. With open
captions for the hearing impaired, the series is
both entertaining and educational, there are also
free resources, such as question and answer and
proctor sheets for homeschoolers. You can now get
the entire set as an instant digital download, or
on DVD. Visit Ian's bookstore today.
[scary, dramatic music]
Wahoo! Mail for me?
[scary, dramatic music]
Dom Luna wrote in on YouTube:
Sarcasm duly noted, but you have not thought this
through. Let's put ourselves in the shoes of a
Creator for the moment, and take a walk with me.
As a robotics engineer, I can build robots. I can
make a whole world of robots. I can give them
emotions, artificial intelligence, free will. I am
the creator. If I build such a robot, it does not
make me evil nor good - I am just a Creator. I made
a robot. In like fashion, if I dismantle that
robot, in a sense kill it, that also does not make
me evil nor good - it's my robot, I built it. I OWN
it. I can do whatever I want with it. It's
just a robot.
However, in stark contrast, if one of my robots
goes and kills another of my robots - hey - that's
MY robot he killed! I own it. Not him, I do. That
is where moral objectivity comes from: I, the
Creator, say what is right and what is wrong. The
rules I give to my robots do not apply to me
because of our roles. I am the creator - I make the
rules, not the robot. What does he know? And what
right does he have to say it's okay to go and take
the life of one of my other robots? He has
absolutely no place to do so!
In like fashion, I say our Creator has put into our
hearts what is right and wrong. Dom Luna, what is
your foundation for what is right and wrong? If I
ask you if it is wrong to *** someone, and you
say yes, then on what grounds do you base your
response? Is it because of the laws of the land?
The Nazi's made it perfectly LEGAL to kill the
Jews. So what is your foundation for what is right
and wrong? I would contend that you have none. So
your attempts to criticize the Creator are
irrational, even illogical, because you are using
His morals that He gave to you, to criticize Him,
when those morals simply do not apply to Him
because of His role. You are the creation - just a
created being. Nothing more. He can take your life
like that, and be completely guilt free. He will
have done no wrong whatsoever.
Now coming back to my robots - I make an entire
world of them. My robots then rebel against me. I
am certainly justified in destroying MY robots - I
own them. While it does not make me evil nor good
to destroy them, I certainly am justified in
destroying them because of their rebellion against
me. I build them up, I tear them down.
However, in our case, the Creator actually CARES
about His Creation. He cares about YOU. And that's
the dilema: In order for you to have free will, He
has to let you have FREE WILL, including the choice
to hate Him, despise Him, believe and spread all
kinds of lies about Him. But as the creator of a
world of robots, how long do you think I would put
up with it if one of my robots did that to me?
Especially if that robot is turning my other robots
against me? Hmmm? Am I not just and righteous to do
what I want with that robot? And yet if I patiently
put up with him, hoping that that robot, which I
built with super intelligence and the capability to
learn, will only turn from his ways and learn the
truth, is that not loving on my part to patiently
endure it? And yet I would be completely just and
justified to exact punishment on that
robot as well.
And so you are in the hands of a Creator God who
has already shown incredible mercy to you. Every
single one of us has rebelled against the Creator.
Me included. People think that I just came to God
and Jesus all lovey-dovey and stuff and 'Oh, He's
just so beautiful" - uh, no. I was incredibly angry
at Jesus and God - much like you are now. But you
see I got desperate - I was quite suicidal at the
time and I turned to God out of nothing more than
desperation. I started reading the Bible and
started at the gospels. I was so angry at the words
of Jesus that I literally flung my Bible against
the wall. Repeatedly. I would go over in a rage,
pick it up and fling it against the wall again.
But, I was desperate. So after cooling down, I
would go back over, pick it up again and start
reading where I left off. And after struggling
through it all over many months, and realizing the
truths buried in there, and that I had embraced
lies for many years of my life. Lies against Jesus
and God that I believed, I was shocked to find out
He loved and cared for me. I'm going to pray that
you come to that point of desperation, and also
pray that you too will find those truths, and be
just as shocked as I was.
Well I gotta call that a wrap, I'm your host, Ian
Juby, saying ta ta for now, and I hope you'll join
me again next Genesis Week. Remember, you can send
in your comments, questions, hate mail and the maps
to your buried pirate treasure to us in a number
of ways:
Remember those words of warning from our Creator,
the Lord Jesus Christ who said "I am the way the
truth and the life - no man comes to the Father
except through me!" We'll see you on the flip side.
We are a viewer supported program and need your
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[music]