Dolphins Without iPhones

Scientists have observed bottlenose dolphins wrapping pieces of sponge around their noses to prevent abrasions.  For being animals they are remarkable problem solvers, but according to this Wikipedia article, “nowhere as “intelligent” as human.”

Why the enormous gap?  I am always impressed when I read about the smarter things animals do.  But this impression always comes from grading on a curve, the animal curve.  In reality their brightest is still millions of lumens dimmer than our dullest.

I went searching Google with the words “how smart are humans”.  I was hoping to find someone, somewhere who could observe what I do … that dolphins never stop you on the street for a picture taken with you to email to the calves back home.  Instead I found countless articles on how surprisingly smart animals are.  Many are surprisingly smart.  At least on the curve.

This experience tonight added to the mystery I have been pondering since my last post, which seems like a very long time ago.  Since my last post I have finished reading a book by a former atheist in addition to reading several more articles and posts on atheistic sites/blogs.  How can truth be so obvious, so plain to me yet so un-obvious, so obscured to so many others?

I think there are two answers to this mystery, but before I get to that, let me once again point out how to level the playing field with an atheist.  To level the field, all you have to do is point to an atheist’s own skepticism of reason and science.  If they have little or no skepticism in reason and science, then they have faith in reason and science.

That only levels the playing field.  That is all you can do.  Cast doubt on their beliefs, certainly… or bear witness to yours, indeed… but bring them full circle into the kingdom of God? It is impossible for me and it is impossible for you.

Back to the two answers to the mystery of the truths that seem like they should be obvious:

1.  I came across this over the weekend in I Corinthians 1.  An oft-repeated theme in the Bible is that God hides the discernment of truth from those who are perishing.

2. Many choose, as in, on purpose, to obscure truth.  They do this out of fear, according to Jesus’ conversation with Nicodemus in John 3.

It’s that simple.  It is an honor to be called by God to bear witness to the truth, but only God can un-hide it in the mind of a sinner.

Alicia Chole considered herself a realist, a reasonable atheist,  right up to the day the “stuff and fluff of fairy tales knocked loud and clear and then stood there offending all {her} senses”.

Feel free to comment.  Dolphins too, I’d love to hear your thoughts.

…and then the evolutionist said, “I just did something unnatural!”

Let me see if I have this right:

Beneficial DNA mutation happens naturally but we’ve neither observed in nature nor successfully forced a single instance in a lab.

…and…

The speed of light is an all-time universal constant yet primordial goo grows up and discovers he can slow it down to 38 miles-per-hour.

My Genes Ride The Short Bus

Compared to my dad’s DNA, my genes are the ones with the hockey helmets.  Mom might claim her genes are superior to Dad’s.  If that is true then it is possible my DNA, even as a hybrid of the two, is still better than Dad’s material alone.  But if you could model the best of my mom’s DNA and the best of my dad’s DNA and come up with the ideal hybrid of Mom and Dad, the likelihood is that I’m physically worse than that.  The potential for a downgrade is great.

The Theory of Evolution has an obstacle in DNA replication.  About every 10,000 times a strand is copied, an error is produced.  While I’d personally like to achieve that kind of accuracy in my typing, when you consider that the human body has between 10 and 100 trillion cells with all but the red blood cells containing DNA, the potential for flaws is nearly guaranteed.

We’re talking about errors, not improvements.  In theory a replication error could result in an improvement in the strand, and that is how evolution is supposed to work. However the vast majority of what we actually observe, and indeed the overall trend, better supports a theory of devolution rather than evolution.

In fact not a single beneficial mutation has ever been documented.  For all of the complex species that exist there should be billions of beneficial mutations that have already occurred, and thousands occurring that are observable now.  Instead what we find is that our very DNA is devolving into chaos.

Forget That Chimp Hogwash

You know that 130-year-old belief that we’d eventually find a skeleton halfway between us and our ape ancestors?  You know, the “missing link”?  Yeah, well… that’s bogus.  Now we know the truth.  No, really.  Boy weren’t we suckers… bet my face is just red with embarrassment.  How could we be so gullible?

I remember back in May driving into work and listening to the news as a Fox News reporter excitedly announced the remarkable discovery, finally, of the missing link.  I know, that’s shocking.  Let me break this down for you:

Though it was May 2009, the discovery of the missing link means that … well … brace yourself…  apparently we hadn’t found one yet.  Sure, there were all those other missing links that excited reporters had announced throughout the years since Darwin, but we know those had all been later disproved and associated with an over-zealous, unscientific desire to knock Genesis.

In May 2009, however, finally–the missing link turned out to be an ancient lemur!  Who knew that we apes and humans were all related to our brothers, the lemurs?  Surprise though, turns out that story was over-hyped too, as Fox News criticized the media frenzy over the unconvincing fossil.  Funny how I first heard the story presented by a frenzied Fox News Radio reporter, but maybe they’re not related.

In case you didn’t catch the latest ancestor-of-the-month this past Thursday (October 1, 2009) science introduced Ardipithecus ramidus to the world, replacing Lucy as the oldest “human” skeleton, and oh by the way… see footnote(1)*

(1).*(Parenthetical fine-print footnote: we’re no longer looking for a “missing link” or any relationship between chimpanzees, apes, and humans.  I know we have been teaching schoolchildren this for years … our bad.)

Now we finally know the truth!  Our ancestors actually came from these artist renderings and this CT-scanned-virtual-60-piece-reassembled-scaled-and-composited-roadkill–fossil-skull.  Glad we got that cleared up!