More Amber news

 Ancient amber-encased pinecone contains sprouting seeds

Sprouting seeds have been observed in a pinecone that's been encased in amber for roughly 40 million years. Precocious germination is extremely rare in pinecones and researchers were surprised to see it on a fossilized specimen, as stated in Historical Biology.

 Full Story: KOIN-TV (Portland, Ore.) (11/16) 

Here is more news about the origin of Harvard and Yale and why they were founded:

 September 10, 1718: Founded in 1701 by Congregationalists who feared Harvard was straying from its Calvinist roots, The Collegiate School at New Haven, Connecticut, changes its name to Yale.

I want to add this one:

February 8, 1693: The College of William and Mary is founded in Williamsburg, Virginia. Originally intended to educate Anglican clergymen, it is America's second-oldest higher education institution (Harvard is the oldest).

Harvard founding

 September 8, 1636: Massachusetts Puritans found Harvard College, America's first higher education institution, a mere six years after arriving from England. Two years after its founding, the college was named after John Harvard, a learned English Protestant minister who had emmigrated to America and who helped to found the institution. On his deathbed Harvard bequeathed half his estate and his entire library (400 volumes!) to the fledgling college.

Harvard was founded in the image of Oxford in England to train pastors for early churches:

And today

The New York Times   (8/26, Goldberg ) reports that Harvard University’s organization of chaplains “has elected as its next president an atheist named Greg Epstein, who takes on the job this week.” Epstein, 44, “author of the book ‘Good Without God,’ is a seemingly unusual choice for the role.” He will “coordinate the activities of more than 40 university chaplains, who lead the Christian, Jewish, Hindu, Buddhist and other religious communities on campus.” Yet many Harvard students “-- some raised in families of faith, others never quite certain how to label their religious identities – attest to the influence that Epstein has had on their spiritual lives.” Said Epstein, “There is a rising group of people who no longer identify with any religious tradition but still experience a real need for conversation and support around what it means to be a good human and live an ethical life.”

PRINCETON

 October 27, 1746: Scottish Presbyterian pastor and theologian William Tennant obtains a charter for the College of New Jersey, which is now Princeton. He had founded the school in 1726 as a seminary to train his sons and others for ministry. Presidents of the college later included Aaron Burr, Jonathan Edwards, and Reverend John Witherspoon, who led the school to national prominence (see issue 77: Jonathan Edwards).

CRYSTALS GROW FAST

 Pegmatite crystals grow at fast pace, study says

Pegmatite crystals can grow within days or hours -- much more quickly than previously thought, say Rice University scientists who studied crystals from a pegmatite mine in Southern California and created a formula for converting chemical evaluations into growth estimates. "While we didn't expect it to be that fast, we couldn't come up with a reason why it wasn't plausible," says Patrick Phelps, an author of the study published in Nature Communications.

 Full Story: United Press International (10/7)

 There goes another idea about the earth being millions of years old!

SCIENTISTS HAVE PROBLEMS

Here are a couple of stories from the internet that show the problems scientists have with their assumptions of an old earth. They have trouble even with what should be obvious.

Stone circle in Scotland not nearly as old as archaeologists thought

Archaeologists in Scotland have acknowledged that a stone circle they identified as 3,500 to 4,500 years old earlier this month is actually a replica of ancient circles and was built by a farmer in the 1990s. "It shows the human side of the job a little bit," said Neil Ackerman, an archaeologist with the Aberdeenshire Council, about the misidentification.

LiveScience (1/21) 

   

This story is so obvious that the fossil can not be millions of years old. Soft tissue could last maybe a few hundred years but not a hundred million. Why can't they see what is right in front of them?

Well-preserved hagfish fossil dates back 100M years

A well-preserved fossil of a hagfish that lived 100 million years ago has been found in Lebanon with soft tissue present, according to findings published online in Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences. The find offers evidence that hagfish had their slime-producing defense mechanism back then, and it also helps scientists better figure out where the creature fits in among fish.

LiveScience (1/21) 

   

RESEARCHERS CAN'T BELIEVE IN THE FLOOD

Here is the latest evidence of a world-wide flood, but the researchers have to interpret from their very old age perspective.

Giant sea creatures that filled Earth's oceans for ages began dying off in vast numbers approximately 2.6 million years ago, and researchers say supernovas may have played a role. Stellar radiation from a string of nearby star explosions would have drastically affected the animals, likely triggering the Pliocene marine megafauna extinction along with climate changes at the time, according to findings accepted for publication in Astrobiology.

LiveScience (12/12) 

130 MILLION YEARS OR MAYBE A LOT LESS

This news came across the wires today:
Blubber, skin preserved in 180M-year-old ichthyosaur fossil

Researchers have found blubber and skin preserved inside the fossil of an ichthyosaur that dates back about 180 million years. The findings, published in Nature, suggest that the marine reptile was warm-blooded and offer hints about its camouflage pattern.

There is no way blubber and skin can be preserved more that a few thousand years at best, I would be ashamed to publish such a story!

VANILLA SUPPORTS EVIDENCE OF EARLY MANKIND

Another archaeological find supporting the creation model of early mankind:
 Evidence of early vanilla use found in Bronze Age Israeli jugs

Vanilla was in use in Israel about 3,600 years ago, much earlier than previously thought, according to findings presented at the American Schools of Oriental Research annual meeting. Archaeologists detected traces in Bronze Age jugs found at the Megiddo dig site.

Science News (11/19) 

MORE EVIDENCE OF EARLY MANKIND

Here is a news article that shows early man was smarter than ape men:
Dots carved in Azerbaijani stone expose ancient game's global movement

A collection of dots carved into stone in an approximately 4,000-year-old rock-shelter in Azerbaijan is an example of a game called 58 holes, or Hounds and Jackals, previously believed to only have been played in the Near East during the Bronze Age, according to findings presented at the American Schools of Oriental Research annual meeting. "Bronze Age herders in that region must have had contacts with the Near Eastern world," said Walter Crist, the archaeologist who made the discovery.

Science News (11/16) 

EVIDENCE OF PRE-FLOOD HUMANS IN AFRICA

The creation model says that the world was a tropical forest place with daily dew supplying the moisture to the plants. After the flood and after the world was divided we have today's continents with the Sahara desert in Africa. I am not surprised at this news release except it has the dates really wrong:
Rainy, green Arabia may have greeted hominids at least 300K years ago

Stone tools and animal fossils found in Saudi Arabia that date back between 300,000 and 500,000 years ago hint that hominids traveled through what is now a desert when it was green and rainy. Marks found on the fossils suggest the animals may have been butchered, and a chemical study of animal teeth shows evidence of a grassier environment, according to findings published online in Nature Ecology & Evolution.

Science News (11/1) 

Of course the creation model has no eating of animals before the flood so this evidence could be after the flood and before the Sahara dried up. At least it is interesting for me to speculate on the evidence. I can make up stories just like the evolutionists can.

Dating of fossils

This news story tells the problem of evolutionary dating of fossils:

The 120-million-year-old fossil of a bird that lived among the dinosaurs has been found in China, and paleontologists were surprised to find well-preserved fossilized lungs within its chest cavity, according to findings presented at the Society of Vertebrate Paleontology's annual meeting. The fossil of Archaeorhynchus spathula also includes preserved feathers.

LiveScience (10/19) 

It is obvious that a creation dating of this fossil is much more adequate. A fossil with lungs and feathers is obviously only a few thousand years old, not millions of years.

Ancient writing before the Flood

This was my email exchange today with Lester Verigan:

Thank you so much for your comments.  God’s timing is always perfect.  I have had my jude3ministries.org website up and running for some time, but I am now seeking to launch the public speaking part of it.  Obviously, CRS, AIG, ICR, and the other big groups cannot possibly reach every church or youth group that can benefit from the creationist message.  That’s the niche I would like to fill.  My degrees are in Psychology and Human Relations/Counseling, so (except for some courses in Experimental Psychology during my Masters program), I am not trained as a research scientist.  My knowledge of the creation-evolution controversy has been gained through over 40 years of personal reading and study.  Your comments have encouraged me to not be intimidated by the “experts”, but to trust the Lord to use me.  Thank you, again.

Sent from Mail for Windows 10

From: car926@aol.com
Sent: Thursday, September 27, 2018 7:01 PM
To: lcpav1213@gmail.com
Subject: Fwd: CRS Quarterly Article

Lester,

I can't tell you how much I appreciate your article on the Tablet model in the CRS Quarterly. I just now got around to reading it. The tablet concept is new to me just this last year after reading Henry Morris book Biblical Creationism.

I think you made very cogent arguments for the concept and the reply by Anderson was lame. I am a rocket scientist and not a bible historian. I am teaching Bible studies and have taught Sunday School all of my life.

Your arguments make great sense and I applaud your efforts.

Thanks,

Charles

Charles A. Rodenberger, PhD, PE

Professor Emeritus, Aerospace Engineering

It is time I returned to posting to this blog. The current news on attempts to teach the truth in science education are in this news report today:

Arizona Parents, Teachers Blast Proposed Science Standards.

The Arizona Republic  (9/24) reports that teachers and parents “on Monday rallied outside an Arizona Board of Education meeting, and then took turns during the meeting blasting a proposal to remove references to evolution and climate change from state science standards.” They also expressed “outrage” over a separate proposal by state Superintendent of Public Instruction Diane Douglas “to replace all the education standards for K-12 district and charter schools with a set developed by a private college in Michigan with ties to Education Secretary Betsy DeVos.” Douglas “addressed the science standards controversy during the discussion of the revisions,” saying that the “focus of the draft science standards is not to introduce intelligent design,” but “rather to clearly define the strengths and weaknesses of evolution theory.” The state “board is expected to vote on the science standards at next month’s meeting,” but it is “unclear if or when it may vote on Douglas’ proposal to replace all Arizona standards” with the so-called “Hillsdale standards.”

It is almost impossible to present the theory of creation science in public schools today. But I am glad someone is trying. I appreciate DeVos working on the problem. Good luck and God bless.

A LINK FROM A FRIEND

http://www.gty.org/resources/sermons/GTY148/straight-answers-about-creation#top
 This was sent to me from a reader of my column in the Livestock Weekly. It is pure theology explaining why you have to believe the Bible story and not Charles Darwin. It has some information about Darwin that I had never read.

INSECTS AND EVOLUTIONISTS

http://www.insectman.us/articles/karls/bwah-hah.htm
I was looking for information on carbon dating of amber and found this site. Everything you ever wanted to know about insects and how they were created.

PRAYER FEEDBACK

When we eat at a restaurant we always ask our server if they have any prayer requests to add to the blessing of the meal. This year at the Western Writers of America conference in Cheyenne, WY we had an unusual response to our request. You notice on the upper photo of one side of our bill it says Paid with a smiley face. And I hope that you can read the note Skye wrote on the back of the bill. You never know when you will help someone when you pray for your meal and add the server to the prayer. The next day another server was abrupt in saying she didn't want our prayers. But we keep trying.

More C14 news

Interesting post from Univ of Wisconsin
I found this post an interesting history of Libby's assumptions as to the constancy of C14 in the atmosphere.

DATING USING ICE CORES

In the past I have been challenged about the young earth age by reports of talks by scientists who date using ice cores in the arctic and antarctic. The http://creationrevolution.com/the-lost-squadron-2/ site recently posted the story of the Lost Squadron. I shared it on my Facebook page. This is the story of a flight of two B-17s and four P-58s that had to crash land in Greenland during WWII. The pilots were rescued but the planes were left. In 1980 an aircraft dealer had the idea to recover them. He thought he could sweep the snow off, fuel them and fly them away. What he found was that the planes were buried deep in the snow and the glacier had moved them three miles from where they started.
I didn't read that anyone drilled a core and tried to date the layers to the time they knew had passed in this event. But it is obvious that ice depths are recent events and the ice that has formed since Noah's Flood could be what we see today. The dating methods need to be challenged when they say that they represent millions of years when only a few have really gone by.

SLOW GOING ON C14

We have just returned from a trip to Olathe, KS to celebrate my step-son's birthday. We flew up on Friday the 13th and returned today on AA. When we landed at KC on the 13th we were held on board until police officers boarded and removed a woman passenger. As we walked by there were several police and firemen in the passageway. Never could find out what that was all about.
I am still working on C14 trying to look at the data and having problems with the format to download the data. I have requested help from ICR and am waiting for answers. The NASA site has peculiar formats for their data that I haven't seen before.