COMMON SENSE DICTATES.......

 For ever since the world was created, people have seen the earth and sky. 

Through everything God made, they can clearly see His invisible qualities—His eternal power and divine nature. So they have no excuse for not knowing God. Romans 1:2- NLT 

"If living things—things that we manifestly did not design ourselves—bear the hallmarks of design, 

if they exhibit a signature that would lead us to recognize intelligent activity in any other realm of experience, 

then perhaps it is time to rehabilitate this lost way of knowing and to rekindle our wonder in the intelligibility and design of nature that first inspired the scientific revolution. " 

Stephen Meyer

What do tRNAs tell us?

For in Him all things were created: things in heaven and on earth, visible and invisible... Colossians 1:16 NIV

"What is it about the simplest living things that needs to be explained? For example, all self-reproducing (‘living’) cells have a set of very complex chemical units called tRNAs (‘transfer RNAs’). There must be at least one unique tRNA for each of the ~20 amino acids that make up proteins.

These tRNAs are essential for the manufacture of all proteins since the cell’s machinery uses them to interpret, from the DNA code, which amino acid is to be used at each position of a protein.

But these are just a small component of the genetic equipment needed! Dr. Truman researched the biochemical source of tRNAs and noted that their manufacture was coded for on DNA and they must be extracted by special proteins.

But these proteins could only exist if functional tRNAs were already available to help decode instructions for their manufacture.

He concluded that tRNAs and proteins could never arise by any natural (evolutionary) process."

CMI

DESIGN by Definition

For by Him were all things created, that are in heaven, and that are in earth, visible and invisible... Colossians 1:16

"The essential nature of design can be defined as  the generation of organized functional systems. Central to this process must be the active coordination of independent variables, these being principally the form and materials of each component part, and the relationship of components. Coordination is required at all levels of design—whether of individual elements, systems of parts, or the integration of whole systems.

Natural selection theory, however, must assume coordinated improvements as already given. This is illustrated here with particular reference to the classic vertebrate eye sequence. 

At each stage this can be shown to fail Darwin’s own test of full functional gradualism, the basic premise of evolution." 

CMI

DESIGN or Lady Luck?

 Even every one that is called by My name: 

for I have created him for My glory, 

I have formed him;

 yea, I have made him. 

Isaiah 43:7

"Humans have long been drawn to tessellated patterns: “repeated pattern of geometric, discrete elements bound by a joint material.” A brick wall bound by mortar is a simple example; tiles and mosaics are more sophisticated. Artists have incorporated tiles into their creations.

In their paper, “Tiled material systems: Exploring biodiversity and multifunctionality of a universal and structural motif,” Jana Ciecierska-Holmes et al. asked why functional needs of organisms would result in repeating patterns that humans find beautiful.

"Humans are drawn to patterns and hierarchies in nature, mimicking them particularly in decoration and architecture. Natural patterns, however, are never purely esthetic and, since evolution works on a variety of factors simultaneously, natural structural systems are intrinsically multifunctional. In order to understand the roles that structural patterns play in biology (and therefore their potential capabilities and utilization in design, architecture and engineering),

we need to catalog and encapsulate the diversity of examples and the materials involved. Here, we provide a first classification of biological “tilings,” tessellated natural architectures that involve the repeated pattern of geometric, discrete elements bound by a joint material. By examining 100 examples across the Tree of Life, we reveal this natural structural motif is unexpectedly prevalent: we cover a huge taxonomic diversity, eight orders of magnitude in size scale, and myriad morphologies and functions ranging from optics to armor, allowing us to construct a hierarchical system of eight variables to classify form, function, and materiality in biological tilings."

From their investigation of these 100 examples, they created a database “as a multidisciplinary meeting point (e.g. for biologists, designers, engineers, architects)” that could be used “exploring selective pressures and trade-offs and a launchpad for future research and collaborative, cross-disciplinary, bioinspired projects.” 

Q: How does their project impinge on questions of Darwinism vs. design? 

Q: Is there any conceivable “selective pressure” for tiled patterns?

Q: And wouldn’t consideration of trade-offs presuppose the foresight to choose the best set of options?

From well-known examples, we can evaluate potential functional benefits of tessellation that — for whatever reason — we humans find attractive. Beehive hexagons (made by bees but external to their bodies) are stackable, using the least amount of beeswax and the greatest area. Some butterfly scales produce optical effects for mimicry or mate attraction. The overlapping scales on armadillos and some reptiles and arthropods maintain mobility for the animal while shielding the interior. The possible functions of biological tiles are listed in the database:

Structural support

Shielding

Surface interaction (adhesion, grip)

Sensing

Separation (regulating inside/outside flux)

Mobility (e.g., armored animals that roll)

Optic (e.g., structural color)

It should be noted that function and beauty are not mutually exclusive. Human architectural projects, including concert halls, bridges, and art galleries often exhibit both.
A functional advantage does not confer upon an organism the desire or power to innovate a solution providing the advantage. Darwinian innovations, remember, are based on chance variations, not foresight. In his new book False Messiah, Neil Thomas discusses at length how Darwin’s chance-based theory deified “Mother Nature” as Lady Luck with imagined causal powers to engineer any advantageous variation."
David Coppedge

A finely tuned biological dance

"Little by little, piece by piece, man’s knowledge of the internal workings of plants is growing—akin to the putting together of a large jigsaw puzzle. And speaking of jigsaw puzzles, plants actually manufacture their own—in the leaves. All pavement cells in the leaf epidermis “grow into interlocking patterns resembling jigsaw puzzle pieces.”
Researchers have now identified some of the molecular processesregulating cell growth so as to form the jigsaw pattern “in a controlled and ordered way”. A group of enzymes known as GTPases (guanosine triphosphatases) play a key role in “a complicated and coordinated series” of chemical interactions. 
Controlled, ordered, complicated, coordinated. While there’s still much more to learn about how construction of the jigsaw pattern can be coordinated in such an orderly manner, what is already known about the phenomenon has been described as “a finely tuned biological dance”.

In simple terms, these proteins tell one part of a cell to grow outward to form a ‘lobe’ while correspondingly telling the neighboring cell at that point to recede or indent itself so as to form a ‘neck’ that interlocks perfectly.

This is not the only time that scientists have referred to the workings of plants in such terms. For instance, when they discovered roots grow in rhythmic pulses, one researcher said, “Everything’s coordinated. It’s like a dance,” with the “entire complicated ballet” repeating every three minutes.

Of course, such finely-tuned, coordinated ‘dances’ don’t fit the no-Designer-was-necessary evolutionary storyline so often paraded today. 

Rather, a very different ‘big picture’ emerges, for those with eyes to see. 

Orderliness, where every piece of the puzzle fits in perfect and strengthening juxtaposition with its neighbors, cannot arise by itself from disorder, but only by design. 

And contrary to atheistic scoffing, recognizing God as Creator gives

more impetus and motivation for undertaking scientific research, not less. 

Q: For who would not want to explore and admire the intricacies performed by the Hand of the Master Designer? 

As the Psalmist wrote, “Great are the works of the LORD, studied by all who delight in them” (Psalm 111:2)." 

CMI

GRAVITY: The DESIGNERS tool

 He existed before anything else,

and He holds all creation together.

Colossians 1:17 NLT

"At COSM this week, author Louisa Gilder spoke about her book The Age of Entanglement (2009), about the bizarre quantum mechanics phenomenon where two particles become linked, such that they share the same quantum state. But it gets a lot weirder, because the distance between the two particles doesn’t affect their entangled behavior.

Under entanglement, measuring a property of one particle determines

the outcome of the measurement on the other particle. It’s been proposed that the correlation between entangled particles happens instantaneously — certainly faster than the speed of light. Einstein famously called this “spooky action at a distance.” This non-distance-related relationship is called “non-locality.”

Initially, many scientists felt that non-locality or “action at a distance” was too spooky to be correct. They proposed that there were “hidden local variables” that cause particles to behave in the same manner. So quantum entanglement wasn’t actually a thing.
This idea of hidden local variables was famously tested in 1972 in the Freedman–Clauser experiment, conducted at Berkeley, which proved that there was no pre-determined, local-variable-governed behavior in quantum particles. 

Quantum entanglement is real.

But again, it gets weirder. Measuring the state of one particle in an entangled pair destroys the entanglement. All of this has implications for materialism.
First, quantum mechanics shows that the old materialistic conception of a universe composed of billiard-ball-like particles bumping around is wrong. The famous wave-particle duality of matter/energy refutes

that model, but certainly so does quantum entanglement, where particles separated by vast distances behave in the same manner through what appears to be an instantaneous link.
Second, quantum entanglement shows that materialistic, mechanistic causation is not enough and you need to be open to other deeper, layers of reality and causality. These implications are precisely why materialistic scientists initially opposed the reality of entanglement and believed (wrongly) there were alternative “hidden local variable” explanations.

Q: Does this point to unseen dimensions or deeper realities, even immaterial ones?
Louisa Gilder remarked that “The world is so much more mysterious than what we just see.”
Gilder closed by quoting the famous mathematician and physicist

John von Neumann who said, “If people do not believe that mathematics is simple, it’s only because they do not understand how complicated life is.”

Yet also mysteriously, the behavior of nature is elegantly described by mathematics — by what was famously called by the Nobel Prize winning theoretical physicist and mathematician Eugene Wigner, “The Unreasonable Effectiveness of Mathematics.” As he put it: “the enormous usefulness of mathematics in the natural sciences is something bordering on the mysterious and … there is no rational explanation for it “

Q: If these points don’t reveal design in nature, what does?"

Casey Luskin

Latrobe Valley

And it came to pass after seven days,

that the waters of the flood were upon the earth.

Genesis 7:10

"South-East Australia’s Latrobe Valley has some extremely thick deposits of brown coal which are mined to fuel several huge power

stations.

The coal seams occur within thick layers of clay, sand and basaltic lava, which together form a 2,300-foot sequence of rocks, known as the Latrobe Valley Coal Measures.
Latrobe Valley coal consists of a mass of very fine plant debris containing partly-decomposed plant remains. It is clear that a great quantity of plant material accumulated in the past to produce such huge deposits of coal.
Q: How would such a great amount of vegetation collect together in one place?
A: It is consistent with the devastation of Noah’s Flood, which would have uprooted the entire pre-Flood biosphere and buried it with huge quantities of sand and mud. Large broken tree trunks are found randomly distributed through the coal in many different orientations.

If ever there was a geological phenomenon that should remind us of Noah’s Flood, it is coal. 

Coal points to a global catastrophe, because 

--huge quantities of vegetation have been uprooted, 

--transported, 

--and buried by water under great volumes of sediment all over the world. 

Coal is a stark memorial to the Flood of Noah." 

CMI

Evidence for Fountains of the great deep?

 In the six hundredth year of Noah's life,

 in the second month,

 the seventeenth day of the month,

the same day were all the fountains 

of the great deep broken up,

and the windows of heaven were opened.

Genesis 7:11

"Two recent articles in Nature Geoscience may provide important validations of the global Flood. Did researchers find evidence of the “fountains of the great deep” that started the deluge?
Timothy Paulsen, from the University of Wisconsin Oshkosh, and co-authors from Michigan Technological University and ETH Zurich,

found evidence of a spike in volcanic activity and a rapid release of massive amounts of carbon dioxide just prior to the deposition of Cambrian rock layers.

Cambrian rocks are considered by many creation geologists to represent the first extensive Flood deposits. Cambrian sediments are the bottom-most layer in the Sauk megasequence and contain fossils of the so-called Cambrian Explosion—the first sediments with prolific numbers of hard-shelled organisms.

Paulsen and his colleagues conducted trace element analysis on zircon crystals from Antarctica and compared them to previous studies of global magmatism. 

They determined there is evidence of a massive outpouring of carbon dioxide and associated volcanic activity just before the deposition of the Sauk megasequence in a system called the Ediacaran. The Ediacaran is what secularists call the latest Precambrian or Neoproterozoic.

In another paper in the same issue of Nature Geoscience, Sascha Brune, and co-authors report:

“CO₂ behaves as an incompatible element and is readily transported to shallow crustal levels during melt migration. Although a certain fraction is released to the atmosphere during volcanic eruptions, recent studies indicate that much higher CO₂ release occurs due to circulation of hydrothermal fluids and degassing along normal faults without eruptive volcanism.”

These scientists claim that spikes in CO₂ are associated with continental rifting that produces normal faults and conduits for hydrothermal minerals like copper.

In North America, there is ample evidence of pre-Sauk volcanism and rifting down the middle of the continent—the Midcontinent Rift. Here, the pre-Sauk produced a tremendous outpouring of basaltic lava that split open central North America. 

This north-south fracture extends over 1,800 miles across what is now Lake Superior all the way to Kansas, and produced nearly 500,000 cubic miles of lava.

The Midcontinent Rift contains far more than lava flows—over 11

billion pounds of copper were mined from the Rift in Michigan’s Upper Peninsula alone. Tremendous volumes of superheated groundwater (~430ºF, or 220ºC) followed the eruption of lava and placed the huge copper deposits within the flows.

So, whether by increased volcanic activity or increased hydrothermal activity, there appears to be significant evidence of a spike in global volcanic action and associated rifting prior to the deposition of the Sauk megasequence. 

Could this be evidence of the breaking up of the “fountains of the great deep” mentioned in Genesis 7:11?" 

ICR

The Difference between Evolutionists & Creationists

 He hath made every thing beautiful in His time.....

Ecclesiastes 3:11 

"Evolutionists find order in chaos, fire and destruction. 

Creationists find it in Mind: the omniscient, omnipotent mind of a good Creator who loves to make beauty and display His glory to creatures He made in His image." 

CEH