Sermons From Science -- April 2013 科学布道 -- 2013 年 4 月

Sermons From Science -- April 2013科学布道-- 2013年4月 Sermons from Science is now published in both YouTube under the name “Pastor Chui” and also in PowerPoint slides in the website http://ChristCenterGospel.org. The contents of this presentation were taken from Dave Coppedge’s website http://crev.info. May God have all the glory. Let us pray for Dave Coppedge’s fast recovery from cancer surgery. Pastor Chui http://ChristCenterGospel.org ckchui1@yahoo.com 8/31/2014 1

More Reasons to Exercise and Plant a Garden更多运动的原因和种花园 • Three new studies show more benefits to exercise and home-grown food. • The Endocrine Society has compared active and sedentary children in stressful situations. The sedentary children had elevated levels of cortisol, a stress indicator, when put into the same stressful experiences as active children. Even though the interactions are not well understood, the researchers feel “These results suggest exercise promotes mental health by regulating the stress hormone response to stressors.” 8/31/2014 2

More Reasons to Exercise and Plant a Garden更多运动的原因和种花 • The British Journal of Sports Medicine published results of multiple studies that correlated exercise with self-control. The correlation held not only for pre-adolescent children, but for adolescents and young adults. “This is particularly important for children and teens, because well developed higher brain functions are important for academic achievement and other aspect of daily life, say the authors.” 8/31/2014 3

More Reasons to Exercise and Plant a Garden更多运动的原因和种花 • Schools that encourage children to grow “kitchen gardens” at home are getting an A+, according to a press release from Elsevier. Kids who watch their seeds develop at home are more likely to try new foods—healthier foods. The study reported a noticeable improvement in the nutritional level of school lunches from kids who participated. 8/31/2014 4

More Reasons to Exercise and Plant a Garden更多运动的原因和种花 • These studies are healthful and encouraging. The more we can encourage people to get off the sofa and out into the world, to learn more about the value of fresh fruits and vegetables and exercise, the better we will all be – physically, mentally, and to some extent, even morally. 8/31/2014 5

Gloria Deo 愿荣耀归上帝 8/31/2014 6

Arctic Camel Found北极发现有骆驼 • Fossils from a large species of camel living in Canada’s high arctic contain soft tissue. • What’s an iconic desert creature doing in the freezing wastes of the north? The BBC News reported the discovery of 30 fragments of camel leg bones found on Ellesmere Island. Some of them had collagen, even though dated in the evolutionary scheme at 3.5 million years old. Evolutionists date the earliest camels at 45 million years old, but were astonished to find specimens this far north. 8/31/2014 8

Arctic Camel Found北极发现有骆驼 • The ancient camels would have had to cope with long and harsh winters, with temperatures plunging well below freezing. There would have been snow storms and months of perpetual darkness. 8/31/2014 9

Arctic Camel Found北极发现有骆驼 • The camels appear to have been 30% larger than modern camels. The article says they probably had shaggier coats. Their splayed feet, researchers surmise, would have been just as adapted to walk on snow as on sand, and their large eyes just as useful for arctic low-light conditions as for modern desert habitats. • Researchers claimed the collagen shows the fossil camel was a “direct ancestor of modern camels.” Mike Buckley (U of Manchester) said the fragments provide “new insight into the evolution of this animal.” 8/31/2014 10

Arctic Camel Found北极发现有骆驼 • If this is evolution, it’s backwards. The fossil camels were larger and more adaptive to more habitats. Nothing was stated about half-camels. Did they just “appear” on the scene fully evolved? This is another example not of Darwinian progress, but modern impoverishment from a richer, more diverse biosphere in the past. Ignore the millions-of-years dates; they’re plot elements of the Darwinian story, not facts of nature. 8/31/2014 11

Gold, Earthquakes, and Time 黄金，地震和时间 • How long does it take to form veins of gold in the rock? (a) millions of years; (b) less than a second. • If you guessed (b), you overestimated. It might just be a few tenths of a second. So reported Richard A. Lovett in Nature News about a new study in Nature Geoscience on the relationship between heat, pressure, precipitation, and earthquakes. • Scientists have long known that veins of gold are formed by mineral deposition from hot fluids flowing through cracks deep in Earth’s crust. But a study published today in Nature Geoscience has found that the process can occur almost instantaneously — possibly within a few tenths of a second. 8/31/2014 14

Gold, Earthquakes, and Time 黄金，地震和时间 • The process takes place along ‘fault jogs’ — sideways zigzag cracks that connect the main fault lines in rock, says first author Dion Weatherley, a seismologist at the University of Queensland in Brisbane, Australia. • The idea is that hot fluid flashes into vapor in the fault jogs during earthquakes, causing nearly instant precipitation of the fluids within them under rapid depressurization. This is called “flash vaporization.” Small earthquakes appear to be more efficient at gold vein formation than large ones. A slip of merely 130 micrometers in a 90-centimeter fault zone can result in a 50% pressure drop, allowing the rapid precipitation of gold and quartz. 8/31/2014 15

Gold, Earthquakes, and Time 黄金，地震和时间 • The caption in a photo of a gold vein accompanying the article says, “Veins of gold, such as this one trapped in quartz and granite, may deposit when the high-pressure water in which they were dissolved suddenly vaporises during an earthquake.” • Lovett still promoted the idea that large veins of gold might take hundreds of thousands of years to form out of the “tiny” veins hypothesized in the study. 8/31/2014 16

Gold, Earthquakes, and Time 黄金，地震和时间 • That, Weatherley adds, might be one of the reasons that the rocks in gold-bearing quartz deposits are often marbled with a spider web of tiny gold veins. “You [can] have thousands to hundreds of thousands of small earthquakes per year in a single fault system,” he says. “Over the course of hundreds of thousands of years, you have the potential to precipitate very large quantities of gold. Small bits add up.” 8/31/2014 17

Gold, Earthquakes, and Time 黄金，地震和时间 • Nevertheless, it’s still a “flash in the pan” to use Lovett’s clever double metaphor. Given that so many small earthquakes can occur in a few years, it would seem hundreds of thousands of years are not necessary to find gold in them. The authors of the original paper said, “Multiple earthquakes progressively build economic-grade gold deposits.” • See also the 10/15/2006 entry, “Gold Can Form in a Geological Instant.” 8/31/2014 18

Gold, Earthquakes, and Time 黄金，地震和时间 • It takes a lot of findings like this to overcome the programming many students receive in school that everything on earth takes millions of years. Darwin was enamored with the idea of slow and gradual processes accumulating large changes over time. That, however, is a worldview preference, not a fact of nature. 8/31/2014 19

OOLishness: The Imaginary World of Origin-of-Life Studies生命起源想象的世界的研究 • Why aren’t philosophers of science shaming origin-of-life researchers out of the science department? • OOL theories depend on imagination, not empirical evidence, for their broad-brush conclusions. 8/31/2014 22

OOLishness: The Imaginary World of Origin-of-Life Studies生命起源想象的世界的研究 • Astrobiology Magazine promised “New Insights into the Origin of Life” but delivered only imaginary inferences. • Researchers studied living archaea, assuming them to be ancient, then used “could” and “may have” to conclude that DNA came late in the evolution of cells. But then the article mentioned 526 genes essential to life in a simple archaeal cell, and 121 essential proteins the scientists knew nothing about (see online book for the probability of getting even one gene by chance). Added to that, one of the OOL researchers admitted that DNA without all its complex machinery is useless. “DNA by itself is a rock,” he said. “You need all these other systems to make the DNA become a living cell.” He provided zero evidence that those systems could have arisen from a primordial soup. 8/31/2014 23

OOLishness: The Imaginary World of Origin-of-Life Studies生命起源想象的世界的研究 • Another entry in Astrobiology Magazine promised “Evidence that Comets Could Have Seeded Life on Earth” (the word could being the tip-off for imagination). But the reader will not find the word evidence in the body of the article–only talk of a simulation in contrived lab conditions. Even so, the Berkeley team manufactured nine amino acids and a couple of dipeptides at best, not specifying if the amino acids were used by living cells or were one-handed (see online book). Amino acids by themselves are as far from life as individual letters are from a sophisticated book. 8/31/2014 24

OOLishness: The Imaginary World of Origin-of-Life Studies生命起源想象的世界的研究 • A third Astrobiology Magazine article asks, “How Did Primordial Cells Evolve?” (not “did” primordial cells evolve). This article used could 7 times and may have 3 times, with a smattering of other escape words like possible or plausible. The guts of the story, about whether bacteria can switch between walled and unwalled states, was the least of the worries facing the researchers’ imaginary thesis. 8/31/2014 25

OOLishness: The Imaginary World of Origin-of-Life Studies生命起源想象的世界的研究 • Science Daily teased its readers with the headline, “Untangling Life’s Origins,” confessing a tangled mess exists or has existed till now. The untangling operation, though, required postulating a “protein big bang” at the beginning. The researchers, additionally, used bioinformatics (an intelligent design method) to infer how proteins might have evolved. One researcher confessed, “The complexities of the biological functions of molecules are still poorly understood.” Maybe they should focus on understanding function before speculating about origin. 8/31/2014 26

OOLishness: The Imaginary World of Origin-of-Life Studies生命起源想象的世界的研究 • Could is the first word in a Space.com article, “Could Life Have Evolved on Mars Before Earth?” The imagination is sent whirring with such suggestions. As for evidence, all that was proposed was some prior wetness in a certain crater on Mars where the Curiosity rover happens to be digging. No signs of Martian microbes were presented. Speaking of a “tantalizing possibility that life may have evolved on the Red Planet before it took root on Earth,” this article again used its suggestion wand: “New observations by NASA’s Curiosity rover suggest that microbial life could have survived on Mars in the distant past.” 8/31/2014 27

OOLishness: The Imaginary World of Origin-of-Life Studies生命起源想象的世界的研究 • A story on PhysOrg borders on divination with test tubes acting as crystal balls. Many of us remember from chemistry class the mineral “gardens” one can make by pouring certain solutions into a test tube of liquid. The original source article at Chemical and Engineering News now claims that these non-living, abiotic structures “could hold the key to understanding the origins of life on Earth.” An editor of C&EN advocates “using them as “inspiration for origin-of-life research at hydrothermal vents.” Why? Because “Some scientists regard hydrothermal vents as places where life may first have originated on Earth.” Maybe staring at the minerals long enough will bring forth the desired visions. 8/31/2014 28

OOLishness: The Imaginary World of Origin-of-Life Studies生命起源想象的世界的研究 • If you are still dazzled by the “tantalizing possibilities” told in these kinds of articles, you must get over it! Deprogram yourself. Stop being duped. Science is supposed to deal with objective reality—that which can be observed, repeated, and demonstrated. All the “possibility thinking” you see (may have, could have, might have possibly, probably, likely, sheds light, insight) has to be jettisoned. It’s not science till it’s demonstrated. Yet how can one possibly demonstrate the origin of life? OOL divination practitioners need to invoke bizarre, unobserved conditions in some mythical “distant past” where processes that could never happen in today’s world “could have” happened. This is pure wizardry, shamanism, shame. Its fOOLishness built on the foundation of sand that evolution cannot be questioned. Do not be deceived. Be angry that such fluff passes for science these days. 8/31/2014 29

OOLishness: The Imaginary World of Origin-of-Life Studies生命起源想象的世界的研究 • Astrobiology Magazine is one of the most useless, stupid boondoggles in the federal government. It merely regurgitates press releases from other sources with “possibility thinking,” putting out garbage like this day after day with your tax dollars. Don’t forget that NASA’s Astrobiology Institute began in the 1990s with the hype over alleged microorganisms in a Martian meteorite, a claim soundly debunked in the years since. Like other useless federal programs, this one is hard to dismantle, but should have been first on the chopping block with the government as broke as it is. Astrobiology is a sham, with no evidence to validate its existence. Let the astrobiologists turn in their junk badges and go get a real job that can actually do something useful to help their fellow humans, like finding a cure for cancer. 8/31/2014 30

Scientific Organizations Promote Leftist Social Causes科学组织促进左派的社会 • What on earth does a science journal have to do with abortion or gay marriage? Some editors and reporters are actively pushing for social revolution. • In “A Pope for Today,” Nature’s editors hoped that newly-instated Pope Francis would push social causes near and dear to their own Darwin-worshiping leftist hearts. The editors spoke of “the backwards unscientific belief in creationism of many US evangelicals and lawmakers” (undoubtedly including any Darwin doubters in that category), hoping Pope Francis would not be one of those. 8/31/2014 33

Scientific Organizations Promote Leftist Social Causes科学组织促进左派的社会 • “Moreover, recent popes have substantially increased efforts to engage in dialogue with scientists on a host of issues, from embryonic stem-cell research and genetically modified crops to in vitro fertilization, abortion and euthanasia — and in the future will no doubt increasingly do so on advances in neuroscience and genetics, including prenatal screening. Scientists who have taken part in such discussions tell of thought-provoking and constructive debates, with the Church being open to ideas and often changing doctrines as a result. A damaging exception is its long-held opposition to the use of condoms to prevent the spread of HIV, and it can only be hoped that Pope Francis will have a more enlightened approach.” 8/31/2014 34

Scientific Organizations Promote Leftist Social Causes科学组织促进左派的社会 • It is hard to imagine any legitimate philosophy of science that would insert “science” into abortion, euthanasia, or prenatal screening. Such positions presuppose a backdrop of support for eugenics. Embryonic stem cell research cannot evade serious ethical questions, and the editors know it. Why did Nature classify all these things with Darwinism as “enlightened” while “creationism” is called “backward”? (see loaded words). If Nature were being truly scientific, it would seek balance on such hot topics or avoid them altogether as political matters for the domain of ethicists and theologians. 8/31/2014 35

Scientific Organizations Promote Leftist Social Causes科学组织促进左派的社会 • At Live Science, Stephanie Pappas is on a crusade to promote gay marriage. One of her pieces, “How Straight People Paved the Way for Gay Marriage,” tried to blame straight people for the apparent rise in support (depending on polls used) for homosexual “marriage”. An even more egregious advocacy piece she wrote for Live Science is called “5 Scientific Reasons Gay Parents Are Awesome.” There, Pappas tried to promote the idea that homosexuals are better parents than traditional moms and dads. In these articles, Pappas put no fingers in the dikes to distinguish her preferences from those who would use the same arguments to support polygamy and other social experiments. By rubberstamping her advocacy pieces, Live Science has endorsed her crusade. 8/31/2014 36

Scientific Organizations Promote Leftist Social Causes科学组织促进左派的社会 • Without controversy, Pappas has the right to advocate her own views; she could, for instance, start a personal blog. What is troubling is that she attached the honorable name of “science” to her far-left social agenda, pushing a view repudiated by Catholics, evangelicals, Jews, and many non-religious heterosexuals. Never in the history of the world has a civilization promoted homosexual pairing to be a form of “marriage” on par with mother, father and children. Never have societies tried to redefine marriage to include other social experiments. Yet some “scientific” organizations like Nature and Live Science presume to create new social orders based on their self-proclaimed “enlightened” views – views informed by Darwinism and characteristic of other far-left organizations. 8/31/2014 37

Scientific Organizations Promote Leftist Social Causes科学组织促进左派的社会 • Attention! We must view secular science as a special-interest group, NOT a movement that seeks the truth about the natural world. What! Promoting euthanasia in the name of science? Homosexual “marriage” in the name of science? Abortion in the name of science? Wake up, people! We are back to the early 20th century, when progressives who loved Darwin promoted eugenics. Many unspeakable horrors followed. Don’t think our age will not escape the consequences of this kind of thinking. 8/31/2014 38

Scientific Organizations Promote Leftist Social Causes科学组织促进左派的社会 • You will notice that Nature and Live Science act like blind elitists. They are all for “religious” people changing their doctrines. They have no conscience telling them they need to change their own doctrines. Secular science is just as “religious” as anyone; it has an origin story, a purpose story, ideals, and visions. It uses divination and dreams. Its shamans hold sway over their subjects, using all the tools of propaganda. 8/31/2014 39

Scientific Organizations Promote Leftist Social Causes科学组织促进左派的社会 • When secular science organizations stick to observable, repeatable facts about the natural world, that’s fine; when they promote leftist causes, they need to be opposed with the same vigor as one would fight political revolutionaries, because that’s what they are. 8/31/2014 40

Evolution Is Not Just Change or Similarity 进化不只是改变或相似性 • Many scientific findings get labeled with “evolution” even though neo-Darwinism has nothing to do with them. • Reversible evolution: A study on dust mites reported by Science Daily claims evolution can run backwards to previous states – a violation of an evolutionary principle called Dollo’s Law. For one, the supposed phylogenetic analysis began and ended with dust mites, not with one kind of creature turning into another. For another, a violation of Dollo’s Law (“evolution is unidirectional and irreversible”) amounts to a falsification of neo-Darwinism, not a confirmation of it. 8/31/2014 43

Evolution Is Not Just Change or Similarity 进化不只是改变或相似性 • Predictable evolution: An article on PhysOrg and another on Science Daily claim long-term evolution is “surprisingly predictable,” contrary to a key tenet of neo-Darwinism that evolution is aimless and purposeless. The first study involved just a computer model of a particular protein connection, irrelevant to evolution anyway. The second began and ended with E. coli (one species), of doubtful relevance to the issue of Darwinian “origin of species.” 8/31/2014 44

Evolution Is Not Just Change or Similarity 进化不只是改变或相似性 • Gambler evolution: Can studies of living gamblers provide any insight into human evolution? Science Daily thought so (“It’s in the Cards: Human Evolution Influences Gamblers’ Decisions”), but the big question left begging is whether humans’ ability to make “rational decisions” is a product of neo-Darwinism. If they think so, they have refuted their own thesis: the scientists’ own decision to study rationality is undermined by an aimless, purposeless process, leading a critic to question whether their own rationality is rational. 8/31/2014 45

Evolution Is Not Just Change or Similarity 进化不只是改变或相似性 • Swallow evolution: Several science sites, like Nature News, toyed with the idea that swallows are evolving to dodge traffic. This is based on findings that fewer swallows are winding up as roadkill. This again, though, even if the statistics are legitimate, does nothing to confirm neo-Darwinism. It does not find that a mutation has created an innovation. It might just mean that the clumsiest birds have already died. The remainder are all still members of the same species. 8/31/2014 46

Evolution Is Not Just Change or Similarity 进化不只是改变或相似性 • Cicada evolution: An open-access paper on PNAS struggled to understand the evolutionary dynamics of periodic cicadas. Often, those with 13-year cycles coexist with others on 17-year cycles. That fact alone refutes the neo-Darwinian position that fitter species displace others. Moreover, they’re all cicadas, members of the same genus Magicicada. Even strict creationists allow for that amount of variation within created kinds. The ending part of the paper’s Discussion section included a mixture of hubris and humility: “Our results support the idea that life cycle plasticity has been a creative force in the evolution of Magicicada,” they said. “However, the regulatory system of Magicicada life cycles and the mechanism of putative life cycle shift are completely unknown and require future comparative genomic studies of 13– and 17-y periodical cicadas.” What, exactly, was known? 8/31/2014 47

Evolution Is Not Just Change or Similarity 进化不只是改变或相似性 • Survival of the fattest: An article on Science Daily about polar bears appears to be about evolution, but really is just about challenges polar bears face with sea ice changes. Any reporter touting “survival of the fattest,” needless to say, is stretching the idea of “fitness” far astray from what Darwin envisioned. 8/31/2014 48

Evolution Is Not Just Change or Similarity 进化不只是改变或相似性 • From frog to Beatle: Any connection between the little hairs on frog toes and human locks of hair seems a stretch. Nature News, though, claimed that there’s an evolutionary relationship: “Frog feet share human hair origin.” Surely they did not mean to imply that frog hair evolved from Beatle moptops. Because of similarity in the genes for keratin between the distant species, researchers advanced this leap of faith: “The authors say that these proteins must have arisen in an early tetrapod ancestor before diverging to become hair in mammals and toe pads in frogs.” Exactly how a suite of complex proteins “arose” was left unexplained. 8/31/2014 49

Evolution Is Not Just Change or Similarity 进化不只是改变或相似性 • In each of these crazy articles, evolution was assumed, not demonstrated. “Evolution” has become such a flexible term, it means nothing any more. Darwin tried to link progress from molecules to man to a mechanism that produced innovation without a designer, but where is it? These stories are all nonsensical in that context. Whatever is observed, evolved. Whatever exists, emerged. That’s the new rule, no matter how contrary to expectations, no matter how trivial the change, no matter how illogical. Even strong evidence for design is twisted into supposed evidence for evolution. Evolutionists have succeeded in committing the perfect crime, the ultimate scam. It’s time to unmask these charlatans. Send them back to basics. They have completely lost their way as to what science is and what it’s supposed to be. Sadly, their way is leading millions astray. They need a healthy dose of shame. 8/31/2014 50

Sermons From Science -- April 2013 科学布道 -- 2013 年 4 月