Grand Canyon Controversy

Well, I was looking for some interesting news on the web when I found this one.
Hope you like it...

" Creationists believe that the Grand Canyon was eroded rapidly when the waters of Noah’s flood drained off of North America. Historically, evolutionary geologists have believed that the Colorado River carved the Grand Canyon gradually over millions of years. But the evidence for rapid erosion is so compelling that some secular geologists are accepting the rapid erosion of the Grand Canyon, as we reported in our October 2000 Evolution in the News column titled “Grand Canyon Breakthrough.” This change in geological interpretation was on the cover of the September 30, 2000, issue of Science News, which showed a picture of the Grand Canyon, with the bold caption, “Erosion, Vast and Fast.” According to the story’s subtitle, “Carving this beloved hole in the ground may not have been such a long-term project.”

Our column of three years ago pointed out that creationists have led the way, doing important research showing that the traditional interpretation of millions of years is inconsistent with geologic observations. At this month’s meeting we will be showing a video of Dr. Steve Austin’s reporting on work that the Park Service asked him do.
Despite the continually increasing evidence for rapid erosion of the Grand Canyon, park rangers still tell the millions-of-years myth as if it were scientific fact. But that isn’t good enough for evolutionists. They want to censor any evidence that is contrary to their cherished myth. This became evident last month when evolutionists tried to get Grand Canyon: Another View banned from the Grand Canyon bookstore.

Last month, the heads of seven national geological organizations sent a letter to Joseph Alston, superintendent of Grand Canyon National Park, expressing concern that visitors might see the sale of the book as an endorsement of a religious idea by the park and urging him to remove it from park shelves.

"The National Park Service should be extremely careful about giving the impression that it approves of the anti-science movement known as young Earth creationism or endorses the advancement of religious tenets as science," the geologists wrote. "The book aggressively attacks modern science and broadly accepted interpretations of the geologic history of the Grand Canyon. As such, any implied approval or endorsement by the NPS for the book and others like it undermines efforts to educate the public about the scientific understanding of Grand Canyon geology." 1

The book does not “aggressively attack modern science.” It promotes modern science by exposing the flaws in an old, out-dated, incorrect theory. This is part of the “self-correcting nature of science” that evolutionists love to talk about. The book does not “undermine efforts to educate the public.” It undermines efforts to brainwash the public. The book does this by presenting relevant facts that evolutionists want to keep secret. This is why they are doing everything they can to make sure you can’t buy the book.

Public Employees for Environmental Responsibility, a nonprofit advocacy group, believes the creationist book does not belong in a shop on government property.
"The park's mission is to promote science. I don't see anything in their charter that they are supposed to provide a forum for debate," PEER Executive Director Jeff Ruch said. "It is a public place. People can have debates. The problem is when the government takes a side in the debate." 2

Despite what they say, they really do want the government to take a side in the debate. They want evolution, and evolution only, espoused by park rangers. They don’t want any indication that there might be some question about what the rangers say.

Evolutionists are trying hard to censor science in the Grand Canyon book store, but don’t despair.
The park ordered dozens more books last week."

By DWJ
S.A.E. website

About New Age and Atheism...

Just think about this…

"The theory of evolution requires that we put our faith in it"
(Origin of Species by Charles Darwin-edition 1971)

"We are convinced that the battle for the minds of young students should be won in the classrooms of schools and universities, by teachers who understand their role as facilitators of our new faith."
(Battle Waged for Mind of Mankind. John Dunphy "A religion for a New Age" The Humanist. January-February 1983. P. 26)

Copyright © 2008 - The Editor

Wallace's Fans Gear Up for a Darwinian Struggle

By Tom Wright

MAKASSAR, Indonesia -- In January, Stanford University is conducting a $60,000-a-head journey around the world by private jet to commemorate the 150th anniversary of the publication of Charles Darwin's "On the Origin of Species." Taking in the Galapagos Islands and other sites of Mr. Darwin's research, the trip is one of several big events planned world-wide to honor him as the father of evolutionary theory.

But a vocal group of revisionists -- including a British cockroach expert, a former BBC journalist and a human-rights lawyer -- say the spotlight should be on another man: Alfred Russel Wallace.

Alfred Russel Wallace

Mr. Wallace, a naturalist who spent many years collecting bird and insect specimens in the jungles of Indonesia, was famed in the Victorian era as the co-discoverer with Mr. Darwin of evolution by natural selection. But his reputation languished in the mid-20th century as scholars focused their attention on Mr. Darwin. More recently, several books have attempted to resuscitate Mr. Wallace's name, and most mainstream scientists now regard him as the co-founder of modern evolutionary theory.

Hardcore Wallace backers say that isn't good enough. In a new book, "The Darwin Conspiracy: Origins of a Scientific Crime," Roy Davies, a former producer of science programs for the BBC, accuses Mr. Darwin of stealing ideas about evolution from Mr. Wallace -- who was corresponding with him from Indonesia -- and passing them off as his own. "Once you change the focus from Darwin to Wallace, you start to realize what a genius Wallace was," Mr. Davies says.

Charles Darwin

David Hallmark, a British lawyer who has retraced Mr. Wallace's travels in Southeast Asia, wants to prove Mr. Darwin was an academic cheat. He has hired a specialist in plagiarism software -- the kind used to catch deceitful college students -- to compare Mr. Darwin's and Mr. Wallace's extensive published papers and letters. He plans to submit the findings to a European plagiarism conference early in 2009.

Mr. Hallmark, like many of Mr. Wallace's most ardent supporters, revels in provoking angry reactions from the mainstream scientific community, where Mr. Darwin is revered. Mr. Hallmark was the keynote speaker at a conference this month on Mr. Wallace in Indonesia, which has embraced the naturalist as one of its own and is trying to promote him in advance of next year's Darwin celebrations.

"There's a suspicion of plagiarism, and a more detailed examination will prove it," Mr. Hallmark, who's fond of wearing colorful bow ties and long waistcoats, told the audience of scientists. "I'm very glad Darwin never came to visit [Indonesia]. I hope you would have turned him away," he said, eliciting enthusiastic applause from Indonesian participants, but frowns among some Western scientists.Golden Square Books Ltd.

Roy Davies, a former producer of science programs for the British Broadcasting Corp., says Charles Darwin stole ideas from a contemporary.

Chris Austin, head of the science school at Charles Darwin University in the city of Darwin, Australia, disputed Mr. Hallmark's allegations of plagiarism. But he acknowledged the strong pro-Wallace sentiment in the room. "Perhaps I was very foolish to come," he joked.

Indeed. Mr. Davies's British publisher has even suggested that Darwin -- the Australian city -- change its name to some derivation of Mr. Wallace's. The city, named by a former shipmate of Mr. Darwin's on his renowned exploration vessel, the HMS Beagle, rejected the idea.

The Darwinian academic establishment -- which has produced a huge amount of scholarship on their man over the past 50 years -- is not amused by the Wallacites' antics.

The charges of plagiarism are "trumped up," bristles James Moore, a professor at Britain's Open University and a Darwin biographer. He notes that Mr. Wallace himself, who later dedicated his own book, "The Malay Archipelago," to Mr. Darwin, did not think he had been plagiarized. "Why was he apparently oblivious to what his defenders today seek to defend him from?" Mr. Moore asks.

Peter Raby of Cambridge University, a Wallace biographer, says the academic community has treated his subject unjustly as a footnote to Mr. Darwin's career. But he also believes it is unlikely that Mr. Wallace gave Mr. Darwin sufficient clues to help him complete his evolutionary cogitating.

Early Correspondence

Martin Humby

David Hallmark, lawyer and champion of Alfred Russel Wallace, has hired an antiplagiarism specialist to compare Wallace's and Darwin's work.

The long-running dispute over who influenced whom dates back to the mid-1850s, when Mr. Wallace began corresponding with Mr. Darwin. In 1858, Mr. Wallace wrote a crucial letter from the Indonesian island of Ternate to Mr. Darwin in England, outlining his theory of evolution. Mr. Wallace concluded that environmental stress explained why species evolved over time and some died out -- a shocking suggestion to a Victorian society that believed God-designed Nature was immutable.

Most scientists believe this was essentially the same theory that Mr. Darwin had been ruminating on for 20 years but never got around to publishing as he continued to collect evidence. Mr. Wallace's letter prodded Mr. Darwin to rush out his famous book the following year -- in part to avoid being scooped by Mr. Wallace.

Mr. Darwin panicked on receiving the Wallace letter, writing privately that his life's work was "smashed." A couple of his distinguished friends -- geologist Charles Lyell and botanist Joseph Hooker -- came to the rescue, quickly organizing a joint presentation to the Linnean Society of London on July 1, 1858, of an unpublished letter and a manuscript by Mr. Darwin on natural selection together with Mr. Wallace's letter from Ternate. Mr. Darwin, keen to establish scientific priority, referred to the incident as "a delicate situation."

Even some mainstream scientists argue that more scholarly work needs to be done to clear Mr. Darwin's name. George Beccaloni, a curator at London's Natural History Museum and founder of the A.R. Wallace Memorial Fund who specializes in studying cockroaches, says it's unclear exactly what role Mr. Wallace's letters from Indonesia -- and perhaps other correspondence and published writings -- played in shaping Mr. Darwin's theories.

"The question hasn't been resolved about whether Darwin had the idea many years before Wallace, or whether it was Wallace's letter and ideas that provided the missing pieces of the puzzle," says Mr. Beccaloni.

Grave Needing Tending

Mr. Beccaloni got interested in Mr. Wallace during a camping holiday a decade ago in Dorset, where Mr. Wallace is buried in a churchyard under a seven-foot-tall fossilized tree trunk. Mr. Beccaloni was dismayed to see the grave was overgrown with weeds, while Mr. Darwin is buried next to Isaac Newton and other eminent British scientists at London's Westminster Abbey.

The museum curator set up his memorial fund to restore the grave and put up historical plaques on houses linked to Mr. Wallace. The foundation is now trying to bring together thousands of Mr. Wallace's letters and papers in an online database to facilitate further study of Mr. Wallace's role in formulating evolutionary theory.

Mr. Beccaloni -- who styles himself as "Wallace's Rottweiler," an insiders' allusion to Thomas Huxley, the British biologist who was called "Darwin's Bulldog" for defending natural selection against Christian opposition -- co-edited a major new book on Mr. Wallace this year to raise his hero's profile ahead of the expected rash of Darwin-related commemorative events in 2009. Alongside the Stanford University trip, a modern replica of the Beagle will carry an international crew of scientists, students and teachers to retrace Mr. Darwin's global peregrinations between 1831-1836. There's even a major film slated for 2009, "Creation," starring Paul Bettany and Jennifer Connelly about Mr. Darwin's struggles with his ultrareligious wife.

Mr. Beccaloni acknowledges there is no hard evidence that Mr. Darwin engaged in plagiarism. But his call for deeper study of the issue has ruffled feathers at the Natural History Museum, which plans to open its $120 million Darwin Center expansion to the public next year.

"Colleagues have been a bit critical that I'm trying to champion Wallace because they think one should maintain the status quo," Mr. Beccaloni says. "There's a personality cult among scientists about Darwin."

Copyright 2008 Dow Jones & Company, Inc. All Rights Reserved, WSJ

The Cruelty of Nature

Gerald Wheeler
Assistant Book Editor
Southern Publishing Association,
Nashville, Tennessee

Origins 2(1):32-41 (1975).

Many who look at the suffering in nature find it difficult to believe that an intelligent designer is the creator of life. Some reflections on this conclusion are presented below.

---

1. The sea wasp, a small, fragile jellyfish of the South Pacific, can kill a human being within seconds after draping its tentacles over his body.
2. The female lobster may carry 97,000 developing embryos on her abdomen. Only 1 out of 5000 will survive long enough to reproduce.
3. The desert locust undergoes a population explosion. The resultant overcrowding triggers the development of wings which enable it to mass migrate. Streaming out of the desert, the insects devastate the plant life in their path, plunging an impoverished nation into a famine.
4. Each year medical researchers frantically race to produce a vaccine for the latest strain of the flu virus. Perhaps before they succeed a new form will have mutated into existence.
Many Christians think of nature as beneficial and beautiful. But as we are all too aware, it has its ugly, cruel, and dangerous side. Mankind dies from accidentally eating toxic plants, suffers the ravages of epidemics, and struggles to protect his food crops from disease and plant and animal pests. The Christian — particularly the Christian scientist — has to explain such things within the context of his world model, his Christian conceptual framework.
The conservative Christian believes that God created the universe and its basic life forms. According to Scripture, when God originally made life, He considered it "good" (Genesis 1:25). Did God judge the goodness of His creation by a different standard, or has something happened to it in the meantime?
Christians have grappled with the problem of evil in nature in various ways. Some have suggested that God established evil to emphasize and favorably contrast with His goodness. Others have seen nature's harshness as a divine punishment on fallen man. Thus, for example, William Kirby wrote in one of the famous Bridgewater Treatises on natural theology that God created fleas, lice, and intestinal parasites after the fall of Adam and Eve to torment sinners (1).
The existence of evil in a nature created by a good God has always been a real problem to Christianity. An incident in the life of Charles Darwin illustrates the kind of struggle it puts people through. He once wrote to his botanist friend Dr. Asa Gray about his declining religious faith (2):

I am bewildered. I had no intention to write atheistically. But I own that I cannot see so plainly as others do, and as I should wish to do, evidence of design and beneficence on all sides of us. There seems to me too much misery in the world. I cannot persuade myself that a beneficient and omnipotent God would have designedly created the Ichneumonidae with the express intention of their feeding within the living bodies of caterpillars, or that a cat should play with mice.

Darwin found one solution to his dilemma by concluding that living things were evolving to higher levels through the operation of simple laws of matter and energy. The apparent cruelty and suffering was just an unfortunate result of organisms adjusting to their environments. In the 1844 draft of what eventually became The Origin of Species, he concluded (3):

It is derogatory that the Creator of countless Universes should have made by individual acts of His will the myriads of creeping parasites and worms, which since the earliest dawn of life have swarmed over the land and in the depths of the ocean.

By adopting the concept of evolution, he thought (4):

We cease to be astonished that a group of animals should have been formed to lay their eggs in the bowels and flesh of other sensitive beings; that some animals should live by and even delight in cruelty; that animals should be led away by false instincts; that annually there should be an incalculable waste of the pollen, eggs, and immature beings....

The problem is real — we cannot ignore it without reaping the consequences. But the Scriptural model does have an explanation of the evil in nature.
The Bible indicates that the perfect state God established on earth did not last long. When the first man and woman disobeyed their Creator's simple prohibition against sampling the fruit growing on the tree of the knowledge of good and evil, they rejected God and alienated themselves from Him. He had placed them in a perfect world, but they had demonstrated that they were no longer spiritually and psychologically capable of handling such. They needed a place more suitable for their fallen, weakened characters. After God led them to admit their changed condition by asking where they were — thus forcing them to admit why they were hiding — He revealed the kind of earth they would from then on have to cope with (Genesis 3:14-19). "Cursed is the ground because of you," He declared to Adam, "in toil you shall eat of it all the days of your life; thorns and thistles it shall bring forth to you; and you shall eat the plants of the field" (Genesis 3:17, 18).
Adam and Eve now faced a world quite different from the one they had known until then. Growing food would be more difficult. Fruit had grown bountifully about them in the Garden of Eden (Genesis 1:29; 2:9, 16). But now they would have to depend more on the harder-to-cultivate field plants (Genesis 3:18). The phrase "In the sweat of your face you shall eat bread" suggests what Adam would have to contend with as he grew food. Apparently plants needed attention from men even in paradise. God had put Adam "in the garden of Eden to till and keep it" (Genesis 2:15). Now vegetation would get out of hand much more quickly and on a larger scale. Weeds are nothing more than plants that compete strongly against cultivated ones.
After Cain murdered his brother Abel, he found it still more difficult to raise crops. God told him, "When you till the ground, it shall no longer yield to you its strength" (Genesis 4:12).
In the beginning God created a balanced nature with every organism completing its strand of the intricate web of life. But after man's fall, new forces started to tatter that web. Environmental conditions deteriorated. Reflecting man's declining moral and religious life, chaos also crept into the physical world. Another crisis marred the earth's ecology when, because of man's actions, God sent a global catastrophe to devastate the earth's biosphere (5). The geological disaster of the flood upset the whole balance of nature. The world around us today is reconstructed from the pieces and debris surviving the flood. We may never fully know its impact on living things and their ecological relationships.
With the passage of time the effects of the fall have accumulated. The physical world had so altered by the time of the early Christian church that the apostle Paul, anticipating Christ's return, wrote that "creation itself will be set free from its bondage to decay and obtain the glorious liberty of the children of God. We know that the whole creation has been groaning in travail together until now" (Romans 8:21, 22). Employing the symbol of childbirth, Paul tells of a world seeking and needing restoration.
Scripture recognizes the existence of evil and suffering in nature, but at first glance it almost seems as if God Himself is responsible for it. Genesis 3 relates several curses God placed on the serpent, on Eve, and on nature. In Genesis 4:11 God curses the ground because of Cain's crime. Since the Bible declares that God set a curse on the physical world, does that make Him responsible for the poisonous stings of scorpions, bacterial infections, and the reign of tooth and claw?
Before jumping to any conclusions, however, we must see how Scripture defines a divine curse.
After Cain killed his brother, God called down evil on the first murderer. In response, Cain complained, "My punishment is greater than I can bear. Behold, thou has driven me this day away from the ground; and from thy face I shall be hidden" (Genesis 4:13, 14). That God had withdrawn Himself and left Cain to take care of more of his own affairs upset him. He realized that the soil would no longer produce as well for him as it had done before his crime. Cain knew that God would cease to as actively insure good crops. A fundamental premise of the Biblical world model is that nature does not operate independently of God. Nature is under His direction (Nehemiah 9:6) and, left to itself, would break down and perish.
We see in the book of Job an illustration of what happens when God lessens or removes His active protection and control. God asked Satan what he thought of Job's loyalty and character (Job 1:8). Satan discredited the patriarch's allegiance, charging that Job worshipped and obeyed God only to insure His protection and material support (verses 9, 10). To prove his allegation, Satan urged God to remove His protection and then see how Job would act. God did so, permitting Satan to attack him.
The book of Job clearly demonstrates the source of Job's difficulties. It shows what results when God withholds His control of events on our planet. Order breaks down, and Satan does everything he can to push things to chaos.
The authors of the Bible understood and feared lest God in any way lessen or abdicate His rulership, whether in the spiritual or physical realm. "Your iniquities have made a separation between you and your God," Isaiah announced, "and your sins have hid his face from you so that he does not hear" (Isaiah 59:2). All Scriptural models of nature must take into account the historical reality of the fall and the consequences of sin. Sin is a state of alienation from God. Man, when he fell spiritually, cut himself off from God. To keep from immediately destroying a race now by nature antagonistic to Him, God stepped back. No longer did He participate as directly in events on earth. And each time He placed a curse on our planet, He loosened His divine reins on nature a little more. And as humanity persisted in their rebellion, their behavior forced Him to let nature increasingly break down.
When Israel prepared to enter Canaan, God set before them the choice of a curse or a blessing (Deuteronomy 11:26-29). If they would follow His leading, He would insure them ample rain for their crops and pastures. But if they worshipped nonexistent gods, the land would receive no rain (see verses 13-17). The two rainy seasons of Palestine would no longer continue. God had made them happen. If the Hebrews chose the curse, He would not always cause the rains to occur. Their actions prevented Him from blessing nature as much as He would like.
The Hebrews often reminded themselves that if they did not reject God, He would not be forced to spurn them. If they thwarted God so He could not be their Protector and Sustainer, they would find themselves not at the mercy of a God of order, but in the power of Satan, the originator of chaos, ruin, and decay. Many times the Hebrews feared that God would separate Himself from them — or even that He actually had. "How long wilt thou hide thy face from me?" David pleaded in Psalm 13:1. "O Lord, why dost thou cast me off?" (Psalm 88:14) (6). Through the prophet Isaiah, God told Israel that because of their behavior, "When you spread forth your hands, I will hide my eyes from you; even though you make many prayers, I will not listen; your hands are full of blood" (Isaiah 1:15).
Because of man's rebellion God has had to limit His guidance of the natural world. And Satan, as we have seen in the case of Job, immediately steps in to fill the vacuum. Here we come to the core of any Scriptural model which attempts to explain imperfection in a world created perfect. The Bible documents a universal conflict between good and evil. Satan has questioned God's right to rule the universe and seeks to usurp His place. Instead of quelling Satan's rebellion through force, God has decided to vindicate His right to authority and power by letting Satan demonstrate on a limited scale the consequences of his rule. The earth has become the arena where Satan reveals his inability to govern. Satan not only seeks to control humanity, but also the earth's life forms and physical forces (7).
Christ, in His parable comparing the gospel's impact on individual minds, explained the existence of the unconverted in the church through the symbolism of tares or weeds growing among wheat. When asked where the tares came from, He said, "An enemy has done this" (Matthew 13:28). Perhaps here we can find an analogy or symbol for the origin of poisonous plants and animals and the carnage and decay we find throughout nature. God has to let the universe witness and be convinced of Satan's true character. The best way to reveal another person's motives and nature is to permit him to expose himself. It is a painful process for both God and man, but it is the only way God can forever immunize the universe against the principle of sin. Satan must condemn himself, and does so as much by the way he abuses and distorts nature as what he does with human lives.
The devil was once an especially honored angel (see Isaiah 14:12-15). He has intelligence and experimental knowledge far beyond that of human science. As man's increasing rejection of God forced Him to withdraw His protection over nature, Satan has turned the earth into a laboratory of destruction. He is systematically trying to destroy God's creation (8).
The overwhelming majority of scientists would be aghast if someone suggested they consider the role Satan plays in nature. As a fundamental tenet of modern science they rule out of their study and theories anything relating to the supernatural. Instead their whole approach to nature involves explaining everything in it on the basis of physically demonstrable forces. But the Christian who centers his world view around a Biblical model considers such an approach as incomplete and inadequate. He also regards the distinction between the natural and supernatural as in many ways artificial. He believes that the scientist is leaving out of his world view other forces which also influence nature. In the case of Satan one can keep an eye out in the laboratory or field for destructive or degenerative forces. Although science cannot treat supernatural powers as it does other forces, it can include them in its paradigms and mental constructs just as it does other unverifiable assumptions. The Christian scientist should operate on the assumption that God and Satan are as much a part of total reality as any physical, chemical, or biological law.
To study nature without taking into account the impact Satan has on it is like examining ecology while ignoring man's influence because he has a highly developed conscious intelligence and the rest of life apparently does not. Yet man has always played a major role in fashioning the balance of nature we see today. The Scripturally oriented Christian believes that we should also recognize Satan's twisting and reweaving of the fabric of life. To understand reality, we must take into account everything in it — including nature, man, God, and Satan.
Few would deny the existence of evil. Through Scripture we discover Satan as its source. The very nature of evil is to distort and corrupt. As God has withdrawn His protection and control over nature, Satan has set out to destroy. That God's decreasing guidance would lead to nature's breaking down on its own was not enough for him. The vast knowledge and intelligence which he retained even after his expulsion from heaven he has — according to the Biblical model — turned against God's physical creation.
As God lifted His sustaining hand from the natural world, a number of things started happening. How Satan has attacked nature, what processes he used, we have no exact way of knowing. As with so many other things, Scripture does not supply details. But we can draw some conclusions from the apparent results, and we can develop analogies from how man affects or manipulates nature. Though it would horrify most scientists to hear it said, we are moving from the known to the unknown in a manner similar to the way one uses some more widely accepted explanations of nature.
First, from Genesis 3:18 we know that God specifically said thorns and thistles would appear. Thorns are modified stems in which the growth process has gone awry. The apical meristem usually functions only briefly, after which it either sloughs off or matures into tough, thick-walled cells. Drought conditions will stimulate some plants into developing thorns. In this case God may have more directly caused thorns and thistles to arise since He mentioned them beforehand. But more likely they followed the pattern of Satan's other interference with nature (9). If the latter is the case, Satan would have quickly learned which factors would alter a terminal bud into a thorn instead of a regular stem. Then he would see to it that as many plants as possible with the tendency toward modified stems passed the trait on. He would make sure that thorns became a part of the plant's genetic makeup. Spines — modified leaves — would follow a similar pattern.
Delving into biochemistry, Satan could discover how to transform a harmless substance into a poisonous one. A change of 2 out of the 574 units of the protein part of hemoglobin results in sickle-cell anemia.
Factors from different parts of the same organism will interact to produce a deadly combination. The tobacco plant forms nicotine when chemicals manufactured in the leaves and roots act upon each other. A tobacco plant grafted onto a tomato root has no nicotine. Just as man can breed living things to enhance or eliminate a particular physical characteristic — including toxicity — so can a highly intelligent being like Satan. He has a whole world of life-forms at his disposal to experiment on, plus the assistance of the other fallen angels (10). Consider another analogy. Man has bred chickens with greatly increased egg-laying ability. Here is an accomplishment differing only in magnitude from what I believe Satan could have done to the reproductive rates of countless other organisms.
Sometimes an organism will become dangerous by simply getting out of its normal habitat. Bacteria of the gastro-intestinal tract are very specific where they live. If they stay there, they do not harm the host. But if they accidentally get into another area they may cause malabsorption, interfere with fat absorption, or even synthesize proteins or other metabolic products which cause diarrhea (11).
Genetic material has an inherent, though limited, ability to mutate. As God lessened His control on nature after the entrance of sin, DNA and other genetic material apparently became more unstable. Satan, in his search for destructive agents, could take advantage of the fact. This seems particularly illustrated in the development of disease organisms.
A perfect world would have no pathogenic organisms. Bacteria, for example, would play only beneficial roles in the ecology of a paradise. Even Eden had refuse. Flower petals and discarded fruit parts would litter the ground unless something broke them down into useful organic matter. Bacteria would have done the job then as they still do now. Cattle cannot digest the cellulose of grass without the help of microorganisms. In addition, bacteria fix nitrogen in legumes. Other varieties aid in digestion and secrete vitamins as the B complex group. Escherichia coli produces vitamin K. Bifido-bacterium bifidus protects breast-fed infants against the dysentery bacillus and other intestinal pathogens. Bacteria mutate and reproduce rapidly. Satan could take advantage of such capacity by selecting strains that secreted toxic substances.
The same situation would happen to protozoa and fungi. At first they were solely beneficial, helping to decompose organic matter. The protozoa inhabiting the intestinal tract of termites break down the tough fibers of cellulose. But under Satan's intervention, such organisms probably began to prey on living things. Fungi turned from their necessary task of decomposing dead plant parts to parasitizing live tissues. Insects that originally consumed dead organic matter have also gotten out of hand.
Parasitism is a graphic illustration of nature's degeneration. Both plants and animals now attack other living organisms. Some animals discarded everything but their digestive and reproductive powers. Tapeworms are little more than digestive and sex organs. Sacculina, a parasite of crabs, has no digestive system of its own. Yet its larval form is still a free-swimming nauplius, the first developmental stage of a crustacean after it leaves the egg. Instead of maturing into a normal barnacle, it becomes only a mass of filaments spreading through the crab's tissues.
Just as the reign of sin produced thorns and toxins in plants, animals developed their deadly changes. The bee's stinger, for example, is a modified ovipositor. In bees and wasps the ovipositor no longer aids in laying eggs, but has been greatly altered into a weapon. Some animals began secreting deadly substances. The venom of poisonous fish apparently derived from a secretion produced by the glands which coat most fish with a protective slime. The spines that deliver it are modified fin rays.
After man's fall animals began to prey on each other. Those with the right digestive systems, teeth, and claws could kill and devour other animals — provided their behavior changed in that direction. Being a carnivore is as much psychological as it is physiological. Parrots are mostly vegetarians even though they have the beaks and claws of a carnivore. The kea parrots of New Zealand ordinarily grub up roots. But a dwindling food supply will goad them into attacking sheep. The parrots rip open their backs and feed on the kidney fat.
Man can breed animals for particular behavioral traits — for example, Tennessee walking horses and sheepherding dogs. In nature the forces of evil selected destructive behavioral patterns just as man has selectively developed dogs with savage dispositions.
Space does not permit discussion of sin's other channel of impact on nature — fallen man (12) — but we can see that Scripture contains an adequate model to explain our present world. God did not create the evil and suffering we find in nature. The Bible clearly indicates its true source. Scripture gives the Christian scientist a foundation from which to begin his exploration of how the forces of evil reshaped a world created perfect.

FOOTNOTES

1. William Kirby, 1835, On the power, wisdom, and goodness of God as manifested in the creation of animals, and in their history, habits, and instincts. London, pp. 7-9.
2. Charles Darwin, 1958, The autobiography of Charles Darwin and selected letters. Dover Publications, New York, p. 249.
3. Charles Darwin, 1963, The essay of 1844. In Darwin for today: the essence of his works. The Viking Press, New York, p. 222.
4. Ibid.
5. "Now the earth was corrupt in God's sight, and the earth was filled with violence. And God saw the earth, and behold, it was corrupt; for all flesh had corrupted their way upon the earth. And God said to Noah, 'I have determined to make an end of all flesh; for the earth is filled with violence through them; behold, I will destroy them with the earth'" (Genesis 6:11-13). One wonders what biological implications the phrase "all flesh had corrupted their way upon the earth" might have.
6. See similar laments and appeals in Job 13:24; Psalms 10:1; 22:1; 27:8, 9; 30:7; 43:2; 44:9, 24; 89:46; Lamentations 5:20.
7. Satan's use of physical forces we see illustrated in the book of Job where he employed "fire" from the sky and a great wind against Job's possessions and family (Job 1:16, 19). Ellen G. White alludes to his manipulation of natural phenomena (see Ellen G. White, 1950, The great controversy between Christ and Satan. Pacific Press Publishing Association, Mountain View, California, pp. 589, 590).
8. Ellen G. White writes, "He (Satan) has studied the secrets of the laboratories of nature, and he uses all his power to control the elements as far as God allows" (Ibid., p. 589).
9. Mrs. White comments that "He (God) never made a thorn, a thistle, or a tare. These are Satan's work, the result of degeneration, introduced by him among the precious things ..." (Ellen G. White, 1948, Testimonies for the church, vol. 6. Pacific Press Publishing Association, Mountain View, California, p. 186).
10. For a recent non-technical discussion of how man is learning to modify or develop new types of plants on the genetic and molecular level, see Arthur W. Galston, 1974, Bios: molding new plants. Natural History 83(9):94-96.
11. Gerald T. Keusch, 1974, Ecology of the intestinal tract. Natural History 83(9):70-77.
12. The author explores this theme and God's role in counteracting disruptive forces in nature in a forthcoming book, Who Put the Worm in the Apple? Southern Publishing Association, Nashville, Tennessee.

© 1975 All contents copyright, Geoscience Research Institute. All rights reserved.

Imaginary Mechanisms of Evolution 2

Genesis and Genomics

L. James Gibson

Origins 24(2):47-49 (1997).

EDITORIAL

In a book published in 1994,1 molecular biologist Periannan Senepathy proposed that life was polyphyletic — having many separate lineages with independent origins. Unfortunately, the book contained many errors and strange ideas, and was soundly rejected by the scientific community. However, the issue raised by Senepathy is of considerable interest to creationists: how many independent lineages are there, and how can we distinguish them? Recent advances in molecular genetics may help provide an answer by adding a new potential criterion for identifying independent lineages.
Several creationists have published attempts to develop criteria for identifying lineages with separate origins. For example, Marsh2 proposed two principal criteria for identifying "Genesis kinds" or "baramins": physiological compatibility (ability to hybridize) and morphological similarity. Two organisms must belong to the same "Genesis kind" if they are able to produce a fertilized egg, or if they can each interbreed with a third species.3 If fertilization is not possible, the two organisms may still belong to the same "Genesis kind" if they are sufficiently similar morphologically.
Lester and Bohlin4 discussed this issue further, taking into account the enormous increase in understanding of genetic systems that had taken place since Marsh's book was written. They proposed several criteria for identifying independent lineages, which they termed "prototypes." Their criteria for identifying a "prototype" include: morphology, embryology, chromosome morphology, structural genes, and regulatory mechanisms. They especially emphasized regulatory genetic mechanisms, including developmental processes, as important in distinguishing "prototypes."
This issue of Origins includes a brief review of a book by Walter ReMine.5 The book contains a chapter entitled "Discontinuity Systematics", in which the problem of identifying separate lineages is discussed. ReMine describes three criteria for identifying separate "baramins": ability to interbreed, experimental demonstrations of morphological overlap, and clear-cut phylogeny. By "clear-cut" phylogeny, ReMine apparently means demonstrable morphological overlap of living and fossil forms. These criteria are similar to Marsh's criteria, but developed in greater detail.
Other creationists have studied this problem, but this sample probably includes the major criteria so far proposed for identification of lineages having independent origins.
I now return to Senepathy's book, in which he proposed two criteria for identifying lineages with independent origins: the presence of unique genes, and unique developmental programs. Although Senepathy is not a creationist, his idea seems worth pursuing.
Until recently, scientists have lacked the techniques to test for unique genes or developmental programs, but this situation is changing. Scientists now have the ability to sequence entire genomes, and have successfully sequenced genomes of several unicellular species, including representatives from each of the three identified major groupings of organisms: the Eubacteria, Archaea, and Eucarya.6 Results indicate that there is considerable difference in these genomes, despite the potential for cross-species gene exchange.7
A new field is being born — comparative genomics. We can expect to see rapid advances in comparative genomics as new genomes are sequenced, especially among unicellular organisms. Progress among multicellular organisms will be slower, due to their much-larger genomes. Analysis will also be increasingly complex, due to putative gene duplications, effects of movable elements, and possible horizontal transfers. But it appears that the current procedure for estimating phylogenies by comparing gene sequences may be replaced eventually by a new procedure that compares suites of genes.8
It may be decades before we can evaluate the usefulness of comparative genomics for identifying independent lineages. But at least the idea can be tested. A means for confidently identifying separate "baramins" may yet be developed.



ENDNOTES

1. Senepathy P. 1994. The independent birth of organisms. Madison, WI: Genome Press.
2. Marsh FL. 1947. Evolution, creation and science. 2nd ed. Washington, DC: Review and Herald Publishing Assn.
3. See: Scherer S. 1993. Typen des Lebens. Studium Integrale Biologie. Berlin: Pascal Verlag. Reviewed in Origins 23(2):106-109.
4. Lester LP, Bohlin RG. 1984. The natural limits to biological change. Grand Rapids, MI: Zondervan.
5. ReMine WJ. 1993. The biotic message. St Paul, MN: St Paul Science.
6.
1. Eubacteria, e.g., Kunst F, et al. 1997. The complete genome sequence of the Gram-positive bacterium Bacillus subtilis. Nature 390:249-256.
2. Archaea, e.g., Bult CJ, et al. 1996. Complete genome sequence of the methanogenic Archaeon, Methanococcus jannaschii. Science 273:1058-1073.
3. Eucarya: Mewes HW, et al. 1997. Overview of the yeast genome. Nature 387:7-65.
7. E.g.,
1. Heinemann JA. 1991. Genetics of gene transfer between species. Trends in Genetics 7:181-185;
2. Delwich CF, Palmer JD. 1996. Rampant horizontal transfer and duplication of rubisco genes in eubacteria and plastids. Molecular Biology and Evolution 13:873-882.
8. Olsen GJ, Woese CR. 1997. Archaeal genomics: an overview. Cell 89:991-994.

© 1997

All contents copyright Geoscience Research Institute. All rights reserved.

Thank You

Science Against God?

Ariel A. Roth

Origins 1(2):52-55 (1974). — editorial

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Many scientists sincerely feel that there is a serious conflict between scientific methodology involving ideas of natural cause and effect, repeatability and predictability, and the concept of a God who can overrule in nature and thus negate these ideas. This conflict is considered so serious that at times the statement is made that a scientist cannot pursue serious study in his discipline while believing in a God who can interfere with the course of nature. It is felt that the consistency and predictability of science disappear in the presence of an unpredictable God. This, no doubt, is part of the reason why some scientists reject the concept of God, while others define Him as an impersonal organizing force or entity. We would like to propose that this apparent conflict has a reasonable solution.
Let us suppose, as we believe, that God established the laws of nature by which science analyzes and operates. Does this necessitate a conflict between God and science? It would seem not. The conflict seems a little more probable when one considers miracles, such as those described in the Bible, where it appears that God interferes with the normal course of nature. These do not exclude scientific analysis as long as some of the laws we understand are still operating. To state it differently: even when something we do not fully comprehend takes place, the event should be amenable to some scientific analysis, as long as one of the laws of nature is still in operation and provided the tools of science are sufficiently adequate.
In addition to this, some philosophers, including Alfred North Whitehead (1950, pp. 8-19), have pointed out that science developed in the Western world in part because of the Judeo-Christian concept of a rational and reasonable God. Science did not develop, or developed very poorly, in other civilizations, because the concepts of capricious gods precluded the development of science. The very stable civilizations, such as those of India and China, certainly provided the environment for intellectual pursuits; nevertheless science advanced in the Western world, probably because of the idea of a rational God in conjunction with the disciplined concepts of the Judeo-Christian tradition. Emphasizing this, Whitehead (1950, p. 19) states: "My explanation is that the faith in the possibility of science, generated antecedently to the development of modern scientific theory, is an unconscious derivative from medieval theology." Thus one can conclude that there is a conflict between science and a capricious God, but there is good agreement between science and a God who is the author of the laws of science. The two kinds of gods must not be confused.
Another accusation leveled by some scientists against those believing in a God who is active in the affairs of nature is that whenever one runs into an unsolved problem, he only has to invoke the power of God to answer the problem. However, that a God can act at a level beyond man's understanding does not seem to be a sound reason to reject Him. Also, the same type of criticism can be leveled at a non-theistic scientific approach which relies on time to answer improbable events. This is implied in the statement by the noted physiologist George Wald (1954): "Given so much time, the 'impossible' becomes possible, the possible probable, and the probable virtually certain. One has only to wait: time itself performs the miracles."
A problem has developed in modern evolutionary theory due to reliance on time for improbable events. Given enough time, anything could happen; hence no matter what has been interpreted as the past history for life, it could have occurred. And since anything could have occurred, there is no way to show that it did not. In particular, evolution has models for advancing, for regressing, for jumping gaps, for annihilation, etc. For all types of data there is a model to explain it. The problem has been well stated by two evolutionary biologists, Birch and Ehrlich (1967): "Our theory of evolution has become . . . one which cannot be refuted by any possible observations. Any conceivable observation can be fitted into it. It is thus 'outside of empirical science' but not necessarily false. No one can think of ways in which to test it."
Reliance on time for improbable events has also run into some difficulty when quantitatively evaluated. For instance, Eden (1967), in the book Mathematical Challenges to the Neo-Darwinian Interpretation of Evolution, has calculated that in 5 billion years (an assumed age of the Earth) one would expect to get only 2 genes in the right order in the common bacterium Escherichia coli if the organism were spread over the surface of the earth in a layer 2 centimeters thick. This does not include time for evolving the genes, a much more complex process, or for putting other genes in order; and one also wonders where there would be enough space for several hundred thousand other organisms which would also be evolving. This study and a number of others (Hull 1960; Eden 1967; Schützenberger 1967; Salisbury 1969 and 1971, etc.) strongly indicate that the amount of time that the geological time scale allows is totally inadequate for the improbable events required by modern evolutionary theory.
It would seem that the concept of arriving at truth through science in combination with a rational God is most reasonable. This is preferable to relegating all questions to a capricious and unpredictable God, since there appears to be a conflict between that type of a God and the degree of orderliness one sees in nature. This also seems preferable to trying to answer all questions through a scientific process which excludes God. Not only does this appear arbitrary, but as pointed out above, the godless system is quite inadequate to explain many questions, especially those of origins. One could argue that since God can be used to answer all questions, to employ Him weakens one's objectivity. But objectivity points to a God and the argument loses further significance in view of the type of God described in the Bible, a reasonable and rational God who is usually predictable, yet who is powerful enough to answer the problems which science by itself cannot answer. This appears to be the best approach to truth.

REFERENCES

• Birch, L. C. and Ehrlich, P. R. 1967. Evolutionary history and population biology. Nature 214:349-352.
• Eden, Murray. 1967. Inadequacies of neo-Darwinian evolution as a scientific theory. In Paul S. Moorhead and Martin M. Kaplan, eds. Mathematical challenges to the neo-Darwinian interpretation of evolution, pp. 5-12. The Wistar Institute Symposium Monograph Number 5.
• Hull, D. E. 1960. Thermodynamics and kinetics of spontaneous generation. Nature 186:693-694.
• Salisbury, Frank B. 1969. Natural selection and the complexity of the gene. Nature 224:342-343.
• Salisbury, Frank B. 1971. Doubts about the modern synthetic theory of evolution. The American Biology Teacher 33:335-338.
• Schützenberger, Marcel P. 1967. Algorithms and the neo-Darwinian theory of evolution. In Paul S. Moorhead and Martin M. Kaplan, eds. Mathematical challenges to the neo-Darwinian interpretation of evolution, pp. 73-75. The Wistar Institute Symposium Monograph Number 5.
• Wald, George. 1954. The origin of life. Scientific American 191 (August):44-53.
• Whitehead, A. N. 1950. Science and the modern world. Macmillan and Co., London.

© 1974 All contents copyright Geoscience Research Institute. All rights reserved.

God's Creation

The Ginkgo Petrified Forest

Harold G. Coffin
Geoscience Research Institute

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Along the western edge of the Columbia River Plateau, next to the Cascade Mountains, a unique state park has been created. The Ginkgo Petrified Forest State Park, located in the State of Washington, is found in a panorama of hills and plains gashed by dry canyons and watercourses. The dark basalt that underlies the whole area shows up starkly in the cliffs along the many abandoned water channels. Although the water that rushed through long ago is mostly gone now, the story told by the remains is a fantastic one that speaks of major flooding and erosion by broken glacial dams and swollen rivers draining from the margins of the continental glacier.
Before we describe the Park in greater detail, an explanation of the name is needed. Ginkgo is an unusual type of tree, sometimes called the Maidenhair tree. Its leaves, which resemble a partly opened Chinese folding fan, are completely diagnostic.
Fossil Ginkgo leaves have been found in several places in the world; the wood itself is rare. Many different species and varieties lived in the past, but only one representative still remains — truly a living fossil! Since botanists discovered live Ginkgo trees in China, the trees have been planted in many parts of the world. Because petrified wood of the Ginkgo tree has been found near the area of the State Park, it seemed appropriate to name the Park after this tree. Some pieces of cut-and-polished Ginkgo wood can be seen in the Park museum. But the country around the Park is a treasure house of petrified wood. Collectors have been combing the hills for many years, and wood is still being found in the gulleys and gulches of these barren slopes.
The Park encompasses several hundred acres where no collecting is permitted. Its annex several miles west of the main park area has walking trails along the hillside to a number of petrified trees buried in the basalt but showing no appearance of being burned. How can this be? No one knows for sure; perhaps the explanation is that the trees were submerged in water. The basalt cooled so rapidly that the wood did not burn.
The most remarkable feature of this Park, however, is the great variety of trees and plants represented. Nowhere else in the world are so many kinds of petrified wood found in so small an area. An examination of the approximately 200 species reveals another unusual fact: these trees and plants are not those expected from one climatic zone. They range all the way from tropical jungle trees to trees found today in the northern plains of Canada and Alaska. Some of the tropical trees are teak, breadfruit, cinnamon, and gum. Others more common to temperate zones and cold climates are redwood, fir, cottonwood, and spruce. Note these interesting plants: Chinese walnut, magnolia, madrona, sassafras, mahogany, yew, and witch hazel. Further, this great variety of plants is not all found growing in one part of the world today, but is scattered on different continents.
The explanation presented in the Park museum is that these trees grew in a broad altitudinal range. According to the present interpretation, the trees from high mountains, those from intermediate hills, and those from tropical lowlands all were washed together into low swamps and lakes by streams and rivers. Thus trees of great variety were mixed together in the basalt beds of Ginkgo Petrified Forest State Park.
The region now varies in elevation from about 1000 feet to 3000 feet above sea level. A number of miles to the west, the Cascade Mountains rise several thousand feet higher. Presently the area experiences cold winters and hot summers. Rainfall is light. The number of indigenous tree species is somewhat limited. If all these many kinds of fossil trees lived together originally in this area, the range in elevation must previously have been much greater than it is now, and the lower areas must have experienced tropical growing conditions.
This interpretation is not entirely satisfactory. There is no place in the world today where so great a variety of tree species grows in such close proximity. The length and diameter of the petrified logs would require more than small streams to move such trees down to the lowlands. Several streams currently flow from the Cascade Mountains into the Columbia. Two of them, the Yakima and the Wenatchee, are of moderate size, but are not able to transport large trees many miles. Especially in the upper reaches, the streams are too small to float such trees. There are no evidences in the basalt beds of large ancient river courses, nor are there extensive deposits of sedimentary material which should accompany a broad river. Petrified driftwood is often found; occasionally an upright petrified tree is seen. These are interpreted as having floated in a lake until they sank to the bottom and were eventually buried by lava.
The great variety of trees from widely varying climatic conditions buried in ash, cinders, and basalt is strongly suggestive of catastrophic conditions as described in the book of Genesis in the Bible. Apparently trees from extensive geographical and climatic areas floated together and were trapped and buried by the volcanic materials. The absence of burning of the wood might indicate rapid cooling by water. The volcanic material is often in the form of pillow basalts which are understood to be produced when volcanic matter flows under water.
Although much has yet to be learned about this amazing petrified forest, a flood interpretation appears to be as scientifically reasonable as that now portrayed by the museum. In these dry coulees and semi-deserts of eastern Washington, a glimpse of the preflood forests and the dynamic processes that buried them has been exposed. It tells a story more of catastrophism than of uniformity.

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© 1974 All contents copyright Geoscience Research Institute. All rights reserved.

Examining Radiohalos

R. H. Brown, H. G. Coffin, L. J. Gibson, A. A. Roth, and C. L. Webster

Geoscience Research Institute

Origins 15(1):32-38 (1988).

LITERATURE REVIEW

CREATION'S TINY MYSTERY. 1988. R. V. Gentry. 2nd ed. Earth Science Associates, Knoxville,Tennessee.

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This book is an account of Robert Gentry's efforts to defend creation, particularly his model of creation. The author has spent many years studying and promoting pleochroic halos [microscopic rings in rocks formed by radioactive decay in the center of the ring] as evidence of instantaneous creation. His hard work and commitment are commendable.
The first edition of Creation's Tiny Mystery was published in 1986. The second edition (1988) is essentially the same as the first, but contains additional material concerning exchanges between the author and various individuals who have challenged his interpretation of the data he has collected. The book is published in paperback and contains eleven color plates of radiohalos. For the purpose of discussion, it can be divided into three parts.
The first four chapters of the book are an autobiographic account of how Gentry became involved in the investigation of radiohalos, together with a description of the kind of data he found. The remaining eleven chapters are largely reports of reactions of various individuals to Gentry's interpretation of his data. The last third of the book is an appendix containing a collection from Gentry's published papers and some correspondence relating to his discoveries. After a brief commentary on each of these sections, this review will evaluate Gentry's conclusions in some detail.
The first four chapters, together with the color plates of radiohalos, are the most interesting and useful part of the book. The way in which radiohalos are formed is explained, and the author's view of their significance is outlined. Anyone interested in radiohalos — and in Gentry's views — would benefit from reading these chapters.
The remaining eleven chapters are largely a record of Gentry's efforts to promote his views, along with his concern over their nonacceptance. Several chapters are devoted to the 1981 Arkansas evolution/creation trial, at which Gentry testified in support of creationism. This material is largely of historical interest. Gentry claims that his creationistic beliefs have resulted in discrimination against him; but the reader may be unable to tell whether this discrimination has been due to his philosophical beliefs or to his methods of promoting them. An example is seen in his challenge to the National Academy of Sciences that is reproduced on pp. 196-198, 322-324 of Creation's Tiny Mystery. The president of the Academy is to be commended for his restrained response.
The appendix contains copies of several of Gentry's published papers which present the technical details of his investigation of radiohalos. Most of these papers are in readily available sources, but it will be helpful to some readers to have them so conveniently accessible. The appendix also contains records of some of Gentry's exchanges with various individuals who have questioned his conclusions.
It is regrettable that the author did not expend more effort in organizing and presenting the evidence and the basis for his interpretation of that evidence. Those who are interested in the validity of Gentry's interpretations will find material of substance primarily in the first four chapters, the radiohalo catalogue, and the copies of his published papers. The remainder of the book is more polemic than many readers would wish, and contributes little to an understanding of Gentry's creation model. His model of earth history is partially described, especially on pp. 184-185 and 280-281. He proposes at least three "singularities" (short periods of time in which God supernaturally intervened in natural processes). These are the ex nihilo creation of Earth and the Milky Way galaxy, the fall of man, and the Noachian flood. Between these singularities, Gentry believes, natural laws continued in operation as they do today. During these singularities, the operations of natural law were superseded. In particular, the rates of radioactive decay for uranium and some other kinds of atoms were accelerated; however, the poloniurn decay rates were not altered.
Gentry's conclusions seem to be based on two propositions which he believes are supported by the evidence from radiohalos The first of these is his belief that rocks containing halos, especially granites, are rocks that were directly created by God, presumably during the Genesis creation week. Gentry's second proposition is that poloniurn radiohalos were created in the rocks as evidence that the rocks did not form naturally, but were created. The basis for the first proposition seems to be that when granite is melted and then allowed to cool, it does not reform with the same crystal structure, but instead cools to form rhyolite. This suggests to Gentry that granite cannot form naturally, but must be the result of supernatural activity. Both propositions will be evaluated in the succeeding paragraphs of this review.
Before proceeding, it should be pointed out that belief in ex nihilo creation, the fall of man, and the Noachian flood does not rest on the acceptance or rejection of the thesis presented. If Gentry is wrong in his understanding of the evidence, the validity of biblical creationism is not in jeopardy. Biblical creationism is supported by many other kinds of evidence.
The key to understanding the technical aspects of many problems is the dividing of that problem into as many known parts as possible, thereby isolating the unknown parts for further study. Such a division of the "mystery" of the poloniurn pleochroic halos results in several known aspects and very few unknown aspects.
The basic "tiny mystery" of the halos is as follows:

There exists in the biotite (mica) of some granites and some pegmatites certain pleochroic halos identified as arising from the radioactive decay of three polonium isotopes. The specific isotopes of polonium are Po-210, Po-214 and Po-218. Gentry's observations have suggested that these halos are independent of other radioactive elements, i.e., are not derived from the systematic radioactive decay of U-238. The "mystery" is: If these poloniurn halos are independent of U-238, how did they get into the mica within solid granite when the polonium half-lives may be only 138 days, 3 minutes or 164 millionths of a second?! (Poloniurn halos are also found in the hydrothermal mineral fluorite, although less frequently than in mica.)

Seven principal questions need to be answered in attempting to understand this "mystery":

1. How are the halos formed?
2. How are the halos identified as poloniurn halos?
3. Where are the halos found?
4. How did the halos get into the micas or fluorite?
5. Where did these halos form?
6. Are there other halos present in the micas in addition to those produced by polonium?
7. If the initial independence from a uranium-source assumption is incorrect, what happens to the "mystery"?

On the question of halo formation, Gentry and other scientists are in agreement. Pleochroic halos are the result of crystal lattice damage due to the impact of alpha particles from radioactive decay occurring at the center of the halo.
Halo identification is achieved through the measurement of the halo diameter. The size of the halo and the half-life of the isotope producing it are related. Assuming that the half-life of the parent isotope has remained constant throughout the formation of the halo, the initial energy of the alpha particles that produced the halos can be determined, and hence the parent radioactive isotope identified. In making this identification, Gentry assumes, as do other scientists, a constancy of radioactive decay rate for polonium. However, Gentry also wants to invoke periods of time that "... may have been accompanied by an increased, nonuniform radioactive decay rate" (p. 134). If there were periods of nonuniform decay rates, identification of any pleochroic halo from its ring diameter would be questionable at best! All available data indicate that halo ring diameter increases with increase in decay rate. Either the rates remain constant or they do not. Evidence from other sources (1) suggests that the decay rates have remained constant for all radioactive isotopes. Several problems arise when one attempts to invoke increased decay rates while at the same time keeping the halo diameters constant! Such inconsistency cannot be considered as a satisfactory argument.
Questions 3 and 4 are the areas in which there is some of the most open contention between Gentry and other scientists, creationists and non-creationists alike. Throughout Creation's Tiny Mystery, Gentry claims that primordial poloniurn halos are found only in Precambrian granites, pegmatites and possibly some flood rocks. Moreover, Gentry claims that these polonium halos are the "fingerprints of the Creator" and can therefore have no other origin. On the other hand, Gentry recognizes that the polonium halos in coalified wood are of secondary origin, i.e., due to transport into the wood of polonium derived from uranium, rather than arising by instantaneous fiat creation.
A careful examination of some of the geologic settings where polonium halos are found reveals that at least some of the minerals containing the poloniurn halos are not found in primordial Precambrian granites (2,3,4). More will be said about the geologic setting later.
Irrefutable laboratory evidence as to the geochemical processes involved in polonium halo formation is lacking. However, a systematic study of the geologic and geochemical data strongly suggests one or more transport models for the emplacement of polonium halos in biotite, fluorite and other minerals. The polonium or polonium precursors, in the form of aqueous solutions, are transported into the minerals along crystal lattice planes, cracks and conduits. Gentry's "spectacle halo" (p. 218, Plate 9-B) is an excellent example for solution transport along conduits.
One of the best papers addressing transport mechanisms for poloniurn halos is that of Meier and Hecker (5). They suggest that polonium halos are associated with uranium deposits either by hydrothermal processes or supergene (downward enrichment) processes. Without invoking unknown processes, Meier and Hecker — and others — can account for the polonium isotopic pattern and abundances as well as the geochemical and geologic setting in which the polonium halos are found.
The question as to when the pleochroic halos formed in the rocks — or more basic yet, when did the rocks that contain the pleochroic halos form? — evokes open confrontation between the position that Gentry adopts and the views held by the majority of the scientific community. In Creation's Tiny Mystery, Gentry repeatedly states (pp. 25, 36, 65, 66, 98, 117, 153, 184) that the Precambrian granites represent the primordial creation rocks. Part of the reason for this statement is the presence of pleochroic halos found in them. However, Wakefield (6) and Wilkerson (7) challenge this interpretation, pointing out that the localities where the pleochroic halos are found represent secondary rocks, specifically dikes of granite and even calcite veins that intrude older rocks; hence, they are at least secondary in origin. Wise (8), who has reviewed the literature on the localities where pleochroic halos have been reported, indicates that a majority (15 out of 22) appear to come from veins or dikes (pegmatites), and hence represent secondary and not primary rocks.
Without entering into the argument as to the absolute age of the rocks (either primary or secondary), it would be safe to state that the majority of halo-containing minerals are younger than the host rock and therefore do not represent primordial material.
The presence of non-polonium pleochroic halos found near polonium halos in biotite, fluorite or other minerals weakens Gentry's case even further. This is especially true when Gentry must invoke a nonuniform increased radioactive decay rate to account for the presence of U-238, Th-232 and Sm-146 halos, while leaving untouched the polonium decay rates! Gentry must invoke a nonuniform rate increase for some of the halos, because at present the half-lives of these other halo-producing isotopes are on the order of hundreds of millions to thousands of millions of years!
If Gentry's independence assumption (polonium halos formed from polonium which was not produced by the radioactive parent U-238) is found to be incorrect, or even found to be strongly questionable, his whole contention that pleochroic halos are evidence of ex nihilo creation becomes suspect. The fact that the polonium isotopes involved in halo formation in the rocks are only those which are daughter products of systematic uranium and thorium decay forces one to suspect immediately that they are derived from uranium rather than a special creation. There are 19 other polonium isotopes, not derived from uranium and thorium, and literally hundreds of independent, non-polonium halo-producing isotopes that could give stronger evidence for instantaneous creation of the granite or other rocks.
No review would be complete without addressing Gentry's challenge to evolution. In Creation's Tiny Mystery, the author states that he will consider his thesis ("evidence for creation", p. 72) essentially falsified if a single hand-sized specimen of granite is synthesized in the laboratory (pp. 65, 72, 98, 117,120, 123, 128, 129ff, 183, 191, 194). Probably the author derived this challenge from his belief that the pleochroic halos found in granite represent "God's fingerprints" and thus instantaneous creation. There are several problems with this falsification-of-creation test.

1. The ability to synthesize granite in the laboratory may have little to do with creation. The argument is basically a non sequitur. Whether we can or cannot synthesize certain rocks or minerals in the laboratory seems to reflect mainly the sophistication of our laboratory procedures. One could likewise say that the synthesis of a one-kilogram (2.2 pound) diamond would disprove creation. But such an argument would not be taken seriously.
2. We can now synthesize many substances that could not be produced artificially in the past. This fact should evoke caution regarding risking belief in creation on whether or not a hand-sized specimen of granite can be synthesized. In the past we were unable to synthesize diamonds or opals, but we can now. Over a century ago, some individuals believed that organic compounds could only be created by God, but many thousands of them have been synthesized since then! In addition, all the basic minerals found in granite have already been synthesized in the laboratory (9,10,11,12). It seems risky to pose a challenge to evolution on the basis of whether or not a hand-sized piece of granite is synthesized, since none of us can predict the future developments of science.
3. It appears that in a number of instances, granite has formed as the result of natural processes. This seems to be the case when granite penetrates (in the form of veins or dikes) older rocks, some of which contain fossils. Obviously the granite was formed after the intruded rocks. Granite filling cracks in fossil-bearing rocks suggests a natural formation of granite rather than evidence for creation. Even more convincing for a naturalistic origin of granite is the discovery within granite of shells of a number of fossil species of brachiopods (13). One could hardly argue that God would place fossils in granite He was creating.

Creation's Tiny Mystery represents an interesting approach at a synthesis of science and the Bible; however, the argumentation presented has some serious problems. These include:

1. The inconsistent use of radioactive disintegration rates;
2. The fact that polonium halos appear to be derived from uranium;
3. The evidence for the origin of polonium halos by aqueous transport; and
4. The fact that polonium halos are found in secondary rocks.

Because of these and other problems, readers of Creation's Tiny Mystery should be cautious in accepting its argumentation and claims of evidence for ex nihilo creation.

REFERENCES

1. Naudet, R. 1974. Les reacteurs naturels d'OKLO Bilan des etudes au ler mai 1974, B.I.S.T Commissariat a I'Energie Atomique No. 193, June 1974, pp. 7-45.
2. Wakefield, J. R. 1988. Gentry's tiny mystery — unsupported by geology. Creation/Evolution XXII (Vol. 8, No. 1), pp. 13-33.
3. Wakefield, J. R. 1988. The geology of Gentry's "tiny mystery". Journal of Geological Education 36:161-175.
4. Wise, K. P. In press. Gentry's mystery considered: theological and scientific concerns. Creation Research Society Quarterly
5. Meier, H. and W. Hecker. 1976. Radioactive halos as possible indicators for geochemical processes in magmatites. Geochemical Journal 10:185-195.
6. See references 2 and 3 above.
7. Wilkerson, G. (1988 manuscript submitted for publication.) Poloniurn radio-haloes do not prove fiat creation.
8. See reference 4 above.
9. Winkler, H. G. F and H. von Platen. 1958. Experimentelle Gesteinsmetamorphose — II. Bildung von anatektischen granitischen Schmelzen bei der Metamorphose von NaCl — führenden kalkfreien Tonen. Geochimica et Cosmochimica Acta 15:91-112.
10. Jahns, R. H. and C. W. Burnham. 1958. Experimental studies of pegmatite genesis: melting and crystallization of granite and pegmatite. U.S. Geological Survey Bulletin 69:1592-1593.
11. Mustart, D. A. 1969. Hydrothermal synthesis of large single crystals of albite and potassium feldspar. EOS, Transactions of the American Geophysical Union 50:675.
12. Swanson, S. E., J. A. Whitney and W. C. Luth. 1972. Growth of large quartz and feldspar crystals from synthetic granitic liquids. EOS, Transactions of the American Geophysical Union 53:1127.
13. Malakhova, N. R and L. N. Ovchinnikov. 1970. A find of fossils in granite of the central Urals. USSR Academy of Sciences, Doklady, Earth Science Section 188:33-35.

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