'Water on Mars therefore life' hype-AGAIN!!!

Another load of mind numbing taxpayer funded propaganda about water on Mars was being puffed across the media yesterday. Read one account of it here.

 

>>The water that may once have flowed freely on the surface of Mars is likely to have been pure enough for humans to drink, Nasa scientists have revealed.

Samples of rocks heated to nearly 1100C revealed clay minerals which indicate that water once flowed freely in the ancient stream bed from which they were taken.

The revelations are the clearest indicator yet that life could once have existed on Mars, as flowing water is likely to have created conditions ideal for microbial life.

John Grotzinger, a lead scientist on the £1.7 billion Curiosity rover, said: “We have found a habitable environment that is so benign and supportive of life, that probably if this water was around and you had been there, you would have been able to drink it”.

As well as clay, the heated rocks revealed elements of sulphur, nitrogen, hydrogen, oxygen, phosphorus

and carbon – all key chemicals for sustaining life as we know it.

Michael Meyer, a lead scientist on Nasa's Mars Exploration Program, said: “A fundamental question for this mission is whether Mars could have supported a habitable environment… From what we know now, the answer is yes.”<<

 

Yawn. Repeat a lie often enough with sufficient authority and confidence and they will believe it. However big.

We have known for decades that there was probably water once on Mars and might even be some frozen water there now.  We have known for even longer that water plus carbon dioxide, ammonia, sulphur, phosphorus etc do not demonstrate the slightest capacity to give rise to life spontaneously.  

This is typical evolutionist drip, drip, drip propaganda to persuade us that life emerges spontaneously in the presence of liquid water. The only evidence for that is the axiomatic materialist assumption that creation cannot be considered as a possibility, leaving spontaneous abiogenesis the only alternative, therefore  axiomatically true given the assumption of atheistic materialism.

Despite the evidence, the materialist community MUST have their life from non life. And as they know it can't have happened on earth, they are trying to shift the problem elsewhere and turn speculation into fact by constant repetition. Its a well tried strategy from Uncle Charley onwards with his 'I have no difficulty in imagining...could have...might have...may have...must have...DID! Go on, prove it couldn't have happened!' . They know that plant and animal species breed true within narrow cyclical genomic limits and don't turn into different species either today or during recorded human history. This is the opposite of what Darwinism requires, but evolution is axiomatically true and foundational to secular materialist philosophy. It can't be questioned. So when facts don't fit the conclusion, rather than change the conclusion to fit the facts they re-locate the evidence in the distant past, where it can't be directly investigated or falsified. They then insist that sceptics either prove a negative in an area of time located beyond the possibility of direct investigation, or capitulate and agree with their speculation.

However, regarding the emergence of life from non life (an issue Darwin studiously avoided apart from an aside in a letter to Huxley in which he said something about a 'warm little pond with phosphates and electricity'), given what we know from directly observed and repeatable science about the specified complexity of the processes that go into making a living cell, I think we can confidently assert that particular negative has been satisfactorily proved. I repeat, the only possible grounds we have for assuming that the first living thing emerged spontaneously from water and solutes is the prior axiomatic rejection of a Designer and Creator.

The smallest living cell contains, amongst much else, hundreds of proteins working perfectly together in concert. Science's attempts to demonstrate even one strand of small protein arising without fully functioning DNA and cellular machinery have lead to complete dead ends, and very early on in the process. Of course we hear nothing about the multiple road blocks and terminally insoluble problems for undesigned origin of life hypotheses. The 'We found water on Mars, therefore we assume there was life there in the past, therefore spontaneous emergence of life is a FACT!' hype is repeated continually as if it was anything more than propaganda and bluster. Perhaps the most remarkable thing in all this reportage is that no sceptical voice is ever heard in the mainstream media.

The mathematics show that even if we were to assume an abundant supply of suitable laevo amino acids (which is impossible without previously existing and highly complex biological structures to produce them) and assume they would form peptide bonds spontaneously and efficiently (which we know they don't) the chances of ever producing a single strand of correctly structured protein would be so astronomically small as to be effectively zero. And that's even if we allow billions of years. And even if it did arise, what will that single strand of, say, collagen do in a sea of junk molecules produced by the same random process before it breaks down entropically? Then there's the rest of the cell to consider. And BTW what would this putative self assembled first life form eat? There aren't any plants yet.

The actual science shows that life could not have emerged spontaneously under any imaginable conditions. Yet it must have done, or else we would have a Creator. But if we had a Creator, then we would also have a Lawgiver and a Judge. And so we would need a Saviour. And we would have to humble ourselves and repent of our sins, including our economic and sexual sins, sins of pride, and our culpable unbelief in The One whom God has sent. As the Apostle Paul said to the pagan philosophers in Athens (Acts chapter 17)

 'The times of ignorance, God overlooked, but He now commands all men everywhere to repent.'

John's Gospel (chapter 1 verses 1-3) informs us that Christ was in the beginning with God and all things were made through Him. It also informs us (chapter 3 verse 18-19) that although the light came into the world, men preferred darkness to light because their deeds were evil, so they refused to come to the light.

Christ is the light of the world. There is bags more evidence for His miraculous life and resurrection than there is for the emergence of life spontaneously.

 

Dumb BBC presenter, child abuse and antibiotic resistance

A main story (and rightly so) on yesterday's news was the growing problem of antibiotic resistance. The difficulty is that there is not a stream of new antibiotics becoming available, while due to excessive use of these sometimes life saving drugs pathogenic bacteria are becoming adapted to them through natural selection. Incidentally, this does not support molecules to man evolution at all. Antibiotics are derived from naturally occuring microbes and have always been around. Antibiotic resistant bacteria were found in the frozen guts of people buried in permafrost before penicillin was discovered. And MRSA is still a bacterium of the same species as non resistant staph aureus. Relatively minor gene shuffling is not a mechanism that could turn microbes into men however much time you allow. But that isn't what I'm posting about today.

James Naughtie, senior BBC presenter on the Today programme, introduced the story on yesterday's Today morning news programme. Twice he mentioned that 'we are becoming resistant' or 'our bodies are getting used to' the antibiotics so they didn't work any more.

This is a schoolboy error, which the medical officer corrected as soon as she finally appeared. Of course it is the populations of microbes that become resistant, due to swapping DNA with previously resistent bacilli via conjugation (in which packets of DNA called plasmids are exchanged) or simply as susceptible germs are killed and previously resistant ones replace them. All quite uncontroversial as long as we stick to the facts that can be observed. And I support the chief medical officer's assertion that growing antibiotic resistance is a major threat calling for a serious international response involving governments and the medical and pharmaceutical industries. And we need to look at agriculture as well where antibiotics (wrongly in my view) are used a growth promoters and to allow excessively heavy stock densities.

But the reason I bother to post this, which might seem petty or nit picking, is that Naughtie (who on this performance knows hardly any science, and wasn't even corrected by one of the BBC Today team between repetitions of the basic error) has in the past been EXTREMELY dismissive and contemptuous of intelligent design advocates. In particular, when interviewing a spokesman for the popular and successful Immanuel school in Gateshead, which dared to allow Darwin to be taught critically insted of as dogma, he accused them of 'teaching creationism' (which Dawkins compared at that time to child abuse). The spokesman specifically denied that creationism was taught. Standard evolutionary theory was taught. Its just that it was allowed to be questioned too, as if it was an actual scientific theory that could potentially be falsified instead of the compulsory official religion. BLASPHEMY!!! However, Naughtie repeated the same false accusation, to the same spokesman, a few months later. Either he had forgotten that he had been corrected earlier, or he had an agenda. I recall both occasions clearly, there was real anger, and contempt, in his voice. As if he had a grasp of scientific facts that establish Darwinism beyond question, and as if it was wicked to question ANY scientific theory, let alone one which lacks a repeatable experimental basis or any direct observations as is the case with evolutionism.

Jim Naughtie is a senior BBC news man and therefore a key opinion leader since it is quite evident that his organisation chooses which news stories will (and most importantly WILL NOT) be covered and what spin will be put on them. And he is SO IGNORANT of basic biology on a key matter affecting public health that he has no idea how antibiotics work or what antibiotic resistance is. Yet he speaks for an organisation that considers itself a champion of science and scourge of the 'ignorant, fanatical, pseudoscience' of Intelligent Design.

Not many years ago, the BBC gave extensive and friendly coverage to the maverick scientist Andrew Wakefield when he was in a minority of one against the establishment over MMR vacination which he alleged to cause autism and bowel disease He was wrong, and as it turned out had undisclosed financial interests in pushing the story. 4 children died in the measles epidemic which followed and was arguably partly caused by the BBC's reporting. In my opinion the BBC's coverage of Wakefield constitutes a major scandal calling for an investigation (although of course the parents who chose to go against medical advice and deny their children teh protection of MMR have some responsibility). The BBC has never apologised for giving such a powerful platform to Wakefield's extremely controversial and dangerous views. But the BBC never, ever gives intelligent design advocates a chance to put their case.

Anyway, at least on this occasion the Chief Medical Officer thankfully had her wits about her and corrected Naughtie's ignorance. It doesn't always happen.

The BBC is an effectively taxpayer funded (by a compulsory licence fee) and privileged organisation with a near monopoly on broadcast news-and how that news is spun. The BBC allowed Richard Dawkins to get away with calling parents and teachers who question Darwin 'tantamount to child abuse(rs)' without criticism. Meanwhile, as was also reported yesterday, the BBC also sheltered Britain's most prolific child sex abuser, Sir Jimmy Saville, for almost half a century.

Dumb Britain and the Vicky Pryce jury-a symptom of a society that has lost its way.

A major UK news story today concerns the trial of Vicky Pryce, ex wife of disgraced MP Chris Huhne, who had to resign and faces prison after pleading guilty to perverting the course of justice to avoid facing his responsibilities.

The Judge, Mr Justice Sweeney, dismissed the jury basically because they were so dim they couldn’t follow simple instructions or, apparently, understand plain English.

A sample of the questions they put to the judge are as follows.

Jury- Can you define what is reasonable doubt?

Mr Justice Sweeney said: "A reasonable doubt is a doubt which is reasonable. These are ordinary English words that the law doesn't allow me to help you with beyond the written directions that I have already given."

Jury- Can a juror come to a verdict based on a reason that was not presented in court and has no facts or evidence to support it either from the prosecution or defence?

"The answer to that question is firmly no," said the judge. "That is because it would be completely contrary to the directions I have given you for anyone to return a verdict except a true verdict according to the evidence."

I think that people in my country are generally getting stupider, to the extent that jury trials are possibly not such a great idea any more, ending as they so often do with someone who was obviously guilty on the evidence being acquitted. Whether this relates to hard working professional and self employed people doing their best to avoid court service so those on benefits, in government jobs or retired (who don’t lose money by taking time off for weeks) end up doing disproportionately more, I don’t know. But I have my suspicions.

 On the radio discussion about this today, examples were given of jurors saying things like ‘I’ll change my vote if we can get this over faster’, ‘Oh dear, we’ll ruin his life if we find him guilty, and ‘He has such a nice face I’m sure he can’t have done it.’

One could offer many opinions as to why people are getting less logical and more emotional. A lot is probably down to overdosing on junk TV and getting their ideas about God from stand up comics and trashy literature like The Da Vinci Code instead of the words of Jesus, but I think the fact itself is hardly debateable. When opinion polls suggest that the Labour politicians who crippled this country’s economy, sold off our gold reserves at the bottom of the market, took us into a costly, pointless and illegal war in Iraq, ran up a £100,000,000,000 debt and created a housing and transport crisis by bringing in 3 million immigrants (given we have 3 million unemployed) being put back in power in 2015 without any apology or change of direction, I don’t think anyone can put up much of a case for sanity and sound judgment as national traits. Not that the Tories are much better: they were once, but have had to dumb policies down to meet the electorate's expectations of free money, regulations for everything and other goodies for ever.

But what this splendidly daft question ‘Can a juror come to a verdict based on a reason that was not presented in court and has no facts or evidence to support it either from the prosecution or defence?’ made me think of was of course evolutionism, i.e. the Darwin Mythos.

Anyone who, like me, has carefully read Darwin’s ‘Origin of Species’ will be struck by the author’s frequent use of phrases like ‘I have no difficulty in imagining...may we not believe?...I can hardly doubt...it would be rash to assume that this may not have happened...could have...may have...might have...MUST have!...’ and by the plethora of excuses for absent evidence. There is a whole chapter devoted to the reasons why the admitted absence of the numerous intermediate fossils the theory required doesn’t really matter. Darwin also wrote ‘I have nothing to say about origins.’ (meaning in this context how life began). Dead right there mate. Darwin uses all kinds of confabulation, invention, non sequitur and bluster to get round the stone cold science facts that life only comes from life and that variation is demonstrably limited within the species envelope.

Origin of Species should be studied by all politicians and criminal defence lawyers as a masterpiece of evasion, obfuscation and sophistry. It is a masterpiece in presenting a case without relevant evidence, of imagination leaping over logic and triumphing over common sense, philosophy trumping fact. The verdict that we evolved by natural selection acting on chance mutations from a common ancestor that jumped up from a muddy puddle struck by lightning, and before that from an explosion which  turned nothing into everything, including perfectly balanced cosmological constants (any one of which would abolish life if it was slightly different) depends on prior philosophical conviction, not evidence that has been presented. And if it all seems vanishingly improbable, as it does, then just imagine zillions of universes and it must have happened in one of them. Never mind why.

Well, I don’t expect to find sound political or criminal judgment in a nation which accepts such a flight of fancy and is willing to sell its Christian inheritance with all its inestimable benefits and historical basis for it.

The cookie of western civilisation is indeed crumbling, and we’ve seen nothing yet. When men and women who have enjoyed the benefits of Christianity reject it, they lose the hard won accumulated wisdom of centuries that they took for granted as welling up from their natural state but which actually derived from a Judaeo Christian heritage.

Lots of people have had a good laugh about this particularly dumb jury. Another news item today was about how other European countries such as Holland were laughing at us for getting into such a panicked state about the horse meat in cheap processed meat meals recently. These things individually don’t perhaps count for much, but like individual spots of rust on a bridge or a skyscraper they indicate that structural integrity is threatened by a failure of maintenance. Final collapse may still be some time off, but it approaches.

Darwinianism is foundational to secularism, which is replacing Christianity in my country. Secularism will fail as a foundation for a succesful society, it is intellectually weak and depends on too many false assumptions about human nature. We already see this in hundreds of little incidents like those cited above. Islam waits to fill the cultural and societal void left by the abandonment of Christianity. Then we’ll see about ‘ignorance and intolerance’.

 

More evidence that 'junk DNA' is anything but junk.

New genetic research has discovered cancer producing genes on non coding DNA, which as the abstract in the link below says, ‘used to be called junk DNA’. They are now apparently calling it ‘dark matter’ DNA. The link takes us to some extraordinary scientific work which seems to suggest that cancer researchers will now be taking a far greater interest in the large majority of human DNA that does not code for proteins.

http://www.dana-farber.org/Newsroom/News-Releases/researchers-discover-new-mutations-driving-malignant-melanoma.aspx

Cancer producing mutations have not previously been found in this region of the genome, but it now seems they are very important, and that they were always there but not being looked for.

Is this an example of evolutionary assumptions (i.e. the assumption that non-coding ('junk') DNA was irrelevant except as a reminder of our suposed evolutionary past) holding back medical progress?

This case of terminal metastatic melanoma cancer

shows what mutations do in the REAL world.

In the Darwinian fantasy world, mutations are believed to have 

made you and I from a starting point of dirty water and sparks.

 

According to evolutionary dogma, DNA that does not code for protein was junk left over from our evolutionary past. But it is now increasingly clear (as I posted recently about the ENCODE project's findings) that this DNA (some 99% of the whole) contains the assembly instructions that regulate the production and distribution of the proteins. Proteins are no use unless they are located correctly in relation to other structures. Think about it, the raw ingredients for a house or a car will just sit there in a heap unless there are assembly instructions and of course a disciplined team. DNA codes for proteins like collagen, but how is collagen made into, for example, the tendons that move your fingers as you type? Where else would these assembly instructions be other than in the DNA that doesn't code for proteins? Its not junk, its the operating system!

Of course, the repeatable evidence about random DNA mutations is that they cause cancer (as in this study where deadly melanoma cancer is caused by random DNA copying errors fouling up sophisticated intracellular systems that have hallmarks of design) and other harms. By contrast, in evolutionary belief they must create new meaningful structures for natural selection to act on. As Darwin wrote in Origin of Species "without the variations, natural selection has nothing to work on."

We now know that the variations can only result from mutations. Mutations cause cancer. How long will it be before this fact is acknowledged to falsify molecules to man evolution by destroying its only possible creative mechanism?

This discovery of cancer causing genes in ‘junk DNA’ may lead to many more researchers looking in this area, providing further evidence that non protein coding DNA is not junk but essential. No doubt excuses will be made and the Dawkinists will just ignore this or shift to a different emphasis.

Apart from anything else, this and the recent discovery that nearly all non protein coding DNA is transcribed, therefore active, scuppers the alleged similarity between our DNA and chimps etc since to get the oft quoted figure of 98% similar (or whatever it is this week) they only measure the protein coding sections which is a minority of DNA and does not include the vital assembly instructions in the non-coding DNA. It looks as if we are on the brink of a paradigm shift in our understanding of how living things are assembled, and its going to show that we are even more 'fearfully and wonderfully made '(Psalm 139) than was previously thought. Even less excuse for rejecting our Creator.

I have previously mentioned that the radically pro-Darwin BBC is very quick to pick up any story they can use to bolster evolution, such as the pathetic example recently about our fingers and toes getting wrinkly when immersed in water. I bet they don't pick up this far more significant story which seems to provide further hard evidence that 'junk' DNA is anything but. As intelligent design theory predicted.

Quentin Tarantino, slavery and the Bible

Tarantino, slavery and the Bible

I don’t usually do film reviews here and the blog remains mainly focussed on Darwinism and its pernicious effects. But having just seen Quentin Tarantino’s western movie ‘Django Unchained’ at the cinema thought I’d assemble some thoughts the film provoked. Anyhow, there was a little bit of Darwinism in it, with a particularly evil slave owner asserting that black and white humans belonged to 2 different species.

Firstly, it goes without saying that the film, like all of Tarantino’s, is full of gratuitous extreme bloody violence and foul language. I wonder if when QT goes into a Starbucks he screams at the waiter

                    ‘I *******want a ******* Latte, you ********ing *****er!!’

This review is not about that, or the film’s frequent and controversial use of what has come to be called ‘the ‘n’ word’, or Tarantino as an artist or person, beyond saying that I am not an admirer.   IMHO the Coen brothers’ recent remake of the classic film ‘True Grit’ was a very much better western without as I recall any swearing, and I appreciated that.

What truly shocked me in the film was the portrayal of the brutal reality of pre-civil war slavery in the USA. I won’t throw in any plot spoilers beyond saying that we see an escaped slave in what was probably the best acted role in the film cowering in absolute terror and begging for mercy before being killed in the most appalling manner possible. There are several other scenes of brutal torture, and it is about one of them in particular that I feel moved to write.

A terrified young female plantation slave has been tied to a tree and is about to be brutally whipped by an ugly, smiling, fat white man. We know from flashbacks that he is a merciless sadist who enjoys inflicting pain, also that he is a convicted criminal who has the death sentence, as I recall for cattle theft.

This vile man has a bull whip in one hand and a copy of the Bible in the other as he prepares to whip the terrified slave, whose ‘crime’ was to have broken some eggs. Not only does he have a copy of the Bible in his left hand but also has three pages which we can safely assume are torn from the book sewn to his clothes, and he quotes from the book of Genesis as he prepares to inflict torture ‘And I shall put the fear of thee on all the earth’ .

Even for a Tarantino ‘set ‘em up and shoot ‘em up’ pantomime, this is laying it on a bit thick. He’s not hinting but shouting. We are clearly expected to get the message ‘The Bible supports slavery. It also supports severe brutality, disproportionate punishment, racial prejudice, and that it’s OK to be a cattle thief, torturer and murderer too as long as you quote scripture. And by the way the entire episode of the transatlantic slave trade, cotton plantations etc can ALL be laid to the blame of the Christian religion.’ Fairly standard Christopher Hitchens stuff.

This is the baggage that comes with the simple taunt

‘The Bible supports slavery!’ (...and so therefore the Christian religion is evil and I don’t have to listen or respond to ANY of your arguments!)

I hear this taunt absolutely all the time. No doubt this film will emotionally reinforce that ‘argument’ if it can be called that.

One has in fairness to assume that any thoughtful and educated person watching ‘Django Unchained’ knows what this director is like and that ‘...it’s only a film’, and that films have no obligation to be fair, balanced or true. But nevertheless people do absorb things from film and other theatre and I think this scene in particular amounts to unfair and misleading anti-Christian propaganda and deserves a critical response. Certainly anyone who gets any ideas about the role of the Bible and Christianity in the transatlantic slave trade from Quentin Tarantino, and some will, should at least get some balance by watching the William Wilberforce biopic ‘Amazing Grace’ which depicts how Evangelical Christians fought for that wicked trade’s abolition. 

There is a case to answer. Yes, I know that Moses permitted slavery. Yes I am aware that there is a verse in the Old Testament Exodus 21:20 that says if a man beats his slave he is not to be punished if he does not beat him to death. He IS to be punished if the slave dies immediately. This is disagreeable to read, and subject to abuse by the cruel, but it’s not the whole story. It is quote mining of the highest order to build a critique of the Christian approach to slave owning, let alone Christianity per se, on that passage alone.

Even in Moses, there is a lot about slave welfare, for example a compulsory weekly rest day and the release of slaves after a period of time, and making sure they do not leave without goods. The full account of the Old Testament rules concerning slavery is quite nuanced. There is a passage concerning the matter of slaves who had served their agreed term and were free to go, but who loved their master and wanted to remain as slaves in his household.

There is slavery and slavery. All forms of human captivity that have existed were not as extreme as the worst of the American example (which of course a terrible civil war was fought largely to abolish) and even that was not the worst slavery the world has seen in modern history. People in ancient, and not so ancient, times sometimes voluntarily sold themselves into slavery, more of a bonded labourer or serf, as there was no social security. It could be a better option for them than begging or starving.

And what about the appalling slavery under Communist and Nazi secularist governments of the last century? Less than 150 miles from where I live, on the Channel Island of Alderney, there is a mass grave containing the bodies of hundreds of Nazi slaves who were worked to death there building Hitler’s sea defences. This happened during my parent's lifetime. Moses’ rules concerning slavery were not the worst the world has known, and certainly gave no justification for the evils of people kidnapping and brutal transatlantic slavery.

Although Christians hold Moses to be a great prophet, we follow Jesus. When some people who were trying to catch him out (how times change!?!) asked Jesus about divorce, which Moses permitted, he replied (Mathew 19:8) that ‘Moses permitted you to divorce because of the hardness of your hearts, but this was never God’s intention.’ It is reasonable to assume he would have said something similar about slavery. People who misused the Old Testament to justify people kidnapping were wrong to do so, but there is absolutely no way anyone could even pretend to make such a case from the teaching of Jesus. People kidnapping is specifically forbidden in the New Testament.

Slavery is not directly opposed in the New Testament, which is all about gaining freedom from the greater slavery of sin. "Whoever commits sin is a slave of sin" (John 8:34, Romans 6:16, 2 Peter 2:19). It was from that greater slavery that Christ came to free us.

It is ridiculous to say that ‘Paul supported slavery’ because he accepted the existing political reality of it under pagan Roman rule. He was certainly not in favour of it, and encouraged slaves to get their freedom if they could (1 Corinthians 7:21, although the translation and meaning is somewhat disputed according to an interesting bible study on slavery here http://www.bible-researcher.com/slavery.html). Preaching the free gift of eternal life through faith in the risen Christ was Paul's God-given job, not starting a doomed political movement against Roman rule. Twenty first century liberals might as well take him to task for not suggesting some improvements to agriculture and sewage, or inventing vaccination. Surely, taken with the words of Jesus ‘Render unto Caesar the things that are Caesar’s and to God the things that are God’s’ this is not a particularly difficult point to comprehend? In the long run, rich man or slave, we are all dead-and will account to God for the life that we have lived.

All this is by way of briefly explaining why the hurling of abuse about slavery against the Christian faith is as childish and ignorant as most of the other anti-Christian slogans that come out of the Christopher Hitchens/Richard Dawkins slime pit.

And its not over. There is a huge amount of slavery in the world today. Marriage in many parts of the world is a form of slavery for women, not to mention the women and girls who are trafficked for sex (something against which Christians actively campaign). Many of the cheap goods we buy in the west are produced in appalling conditions amounting to slavery (again, the Fair Trade movement is heavily supported by the churches). Much of our agricultural produce is grown, picked and packed by workers engaged for one day at a time, whose lives are like those of slaves but without the shelter or job security. Guardian Journalist Felicity Lawrence wrote about some of these people in her book ‘Not on the Label: What really goes into the food on your plate.’

If Britain profited from the African slave trade in past years before Evangelical Christians like Wilberforce saw it ended, today we also profit from goods and food produced by effectively outsourced slavery. This is a sin which grievously offends God according to the New Testament (James chapter 5:1-6).

In summary, yes the transatlantic slave trade was evil and there can be no apology for it. The Christians who supported it at the time (not all did) were wrong, and so were all the non-Christians who supported it too, and there were many of them. Christians should have known better, non Christians of course can choose whatever morality suits them, and they do. A lot of people who were not even nominal Christians were involved as prime malefactors, such as the African tribal chiefs who sold their own peole and captives from rival tribes, and the Arab slave traders who acted as middlemen. The English and American slave traders, the plantation owners, their shareholders and merchants, and arguably (although they may have sinned in ignorance) all those who purchased cheap goods produced without a fair wage being paid to the labourers were all to some extent responsible.  Is it all so different today?

It cannot be denied that some Old Testament verses were misused by those who justified slavery. Against this is  the fact that Christians were prominent in the abolition of the transatlantic slave trade, and the fact that however evil that trade was, worse forms of slavery have happened subsequently under men like Hitler, Mao, Stalin and Pol Pot who rejected the Bible.

So, if anyone wants to use the ‘The Bible supports slavery, therefore Christianity is false’ argument, I will say this. Please, do a little bit of thinking before you allow such simplistic and weak reasoning to shape your response to Jesus of Christ, the Son of God, who offers you forgiveness of sins and the free gift of eternal life.

As Peter Hitchens wrote in his book ‘The Rage against God’  

‘It is possible to go to heaven from a torture chamber, and equally possible to go to hell from a palace.’ 

He wrote that shortly before the death of the atheist slave owner Korean ruler Kim Jong Il and was probably thinking about him and his victims.

‘Django Unchained’ made me think again about the evils of slavery and how the Bible can be misused. Jesus said that we should judge ourselves before we think of judging others and treat others as we wish to be treated outselves. We should always assume we might be the one who is in the wrong. I try to.

 

 

 

 

 

 

Mutations cause...evolution?

 

 

The latest anti smoking poster campaign includes graphic images of cancerous growths like this one. The accompanying caption reads

 

'Every 15 cigarettes you smoke causes a mutation that may cause lung cancer'.

 

This is interesting. True science does indeed establish that smoking is the main cause of lung cancer, and that all kinds of cancer are due to mutations.

 

However, we don't hear so much about the 'random mutations' that supposedly cause the progressive and beneficial variations that are preserved by natural selection in the course of molecules to man evolution.

 

Why would that be? Would it be anything to do with the observable, repeatable, peer-reviewed, stone cold, indisputable, in your face FACT that mutations degrade and destroy, whereas in the Darwin mythos they are required to create, improve and build up?

 

As Charles Darwin wrote in Origin of Species,

 

" Without variations, natural selection has nothing to work on."

 

Very true. But we now know that variations are either due to differential expression or shuffling of pre-existing genetic material (a cyclical process that may preserve a species though tough times, as in peppered moths or Darwin's finches, but creates nothing new), or random mutations.

 

Random mutations. Like the ones which the latest anti smoking campaign admit cause destruction and death. As the Intelligent design hypothesis predicts.

 

 

More pathetic evolution propaganda

A story repeated on BBC radio and in this morning’s newspapers concerns the fact that when we are too long in the bath our fingers and toes get a bit wrinkly. This, of course, is more evidence for evolution. It might have helped our ancestors pick things up and so people with this characteristic might have had an evolutionary advantage. The research was published by the pro-Darwin Royal Society, the same organisation in which  the Reverend Professor Michael Reiss was bullied out of his job in science education in a zero tolerance witch hunt a few years back. Although a convinced Darwinist, his crime was to suggest that students who questioned Darwin should be treated respectfully and asked to explain why they thought so rather than simply silenced and humiliated. That of course would never do.

The BBC, always eager to promote this sort of story, discuss it here. A Google on (evolution + wrinkly + fingers) will bring up many more reports. Obviously someone has done their job effectively at placing this story all round the news media, as if it proved anything.

If this evolutionary assertion were true, in Darwinian terms it would imply (A) that there were once two populations of humans, one of which had a genetic tendency to get wrinkly fingers and soles when immersed in water, and another which did not, and (B) the survival advantage this inheritable feature gave was so great as to force the elimination by natural selection of those who did not have it.

This speculation, and that's all it is, seems extremely far fetched. But even if it were true, how on earth is this sort of temporary minor change in skin texture, probably just due to swelling caused by water absorbtion,  supposed to explain the development of people from pond life?

It is this sort of pathetic nonsense that always makes me say, contrary to the plea that follows nearly all published research in whatever sphere. ‘LESS research ought to be done.’ The vast majority of research of this kind is of course done to provide employment for researchers.

This story and the ridiculous level of publicity given to it on today's news follows the typical pattern established by Darwin in 1857. Make a banal, everyday observation about something in nature, then say that ‘Evolution could have done it’ and then call this evidence for evolution. It is this sort of stuff that they are referring to when they say that ‘There are mountains of evidence for evolution!’

Mountains of something certainly, but not evidence. I would say that the prominence given to this ridiculous hype while ignoring the serious arguments about information and irreducible complexity coming from the Intelligent Design movement, plus recent discoveries about non-coding DNA (dismissed by evolutionists as junk but now increasingly being shown to have a vital role, as predicted by Creationism and Intelligent Design) is evidence of systematic self deception.

An evolutionist in Scientific American recently wrote "Creationists begin with answers and work to prove that those answers are right. This is antithetical to the scientific process."

Pot calling the kettle black or what?  Remove the log from your own eye and then you will see clearly to remove the speck from your neighbour's eye. Perhaps wrinkly fingers would also help when scraping the bottom of a barrel.