New video selector above. Click on the left side to move left right to move right and middle to select a video to watch. Have a go see if you can the two new videos:
Fossils Fact and Fiction - Dr Marc Surtees
Famous Medical Breakthroughs -Dr Markus Schichtel
David Attenborough admits it is very much an open question if natural selection can explain the diversity of life. He is very clear it did not evolve over 3,000 years (but then so are creationist).
In the survey, 51 per cent of those questioned agreed with the statement that “evolution alone is not enough to explain the complex structures of some living things, so the intervention of a designer is needed at key stages”
A further 40 per cent disagreed, while the rest said they did not know.
Poll reveals public doubts over Charles Darwin’s theory of evolution
The New Scientist has a stunning article called Darwin Was Wrong! It is well worth reading the whole article. Human programmers use modules of code that can be reused in unrelated projects. The observation that all creatures have large parts of DNA in common does not rule out a creator because code reuse is what intelligent human programmes strive for. A good piece of code can be reused in many situations with little change. However if DNA is a code written by a creator we would expect him to reuse code wherever it is needed and not according to a strict hierarchy as common descent would imply. However rather than admit that this common code shows creative genius the New Scientist thinks it is the work of unintelligent viruses:
Last year, for example, a team at the University of Texas at Arlington found a peculiar chunk of DNA in the genomes of eight animals - the mouse, rat, bushbaby, little brown bat, tenrec, opossum, anole lizard and African clawed frog - but not in 25 others, including humans, elephants, chickens and fish. This patchy distribution suggests that the sequence must have entered each genome independently by horizontal transfer (Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, vol 105, p 17023).
In fact, by some reckonings, 40 to 50 per cent of the human genome consists of DNA imported horizontally by viruses, some of which has taken on vital biological functions (New Scientist, 27 August 2008, p 38).
For much of the past 150 years, biology has largely concerned itself with filling in the details of the tree. “For a long time the holy grail was to build a tree of life,” says Eric Bapteste, an evolutionary biologist at the Pierre and Marie Curie University in Paris, France. A few years ago it looked as though the grail was within reach. But today the project lies in tatters, torn to pieces by an onslaught of negative evidence. Many biologists now argue that the tree concept is obsolete and needs to be discarded. “We have no evidence at all that the tree of life is a reality,” says Bapteste. That bombshell has even persuaded some that our fundamental view of biology needs to change.
Edinburgh Creation Group speaker Marc Surtees has been invited to take part in a public discussion/debate in the National Library of Scotland about teaching creation in schools. At ECG we have pitched our talks at an undergraduate level of understanding. Creation covers both religious and scientific topics. We believe that teachers should be free to presents the scientific evidence for and against evolution in biology and that the biblical account of creation should be understood by pupils studying R.E. Marc will be joined by Alex McLellan from Reason Why?
The format will be 5 minute introductions from each panellist, followed by a chaired panel discussion, i.e. where you respond to each other, and then audience discussion - points/questions etc. It is open to the public - and free to attend.
We very much want a balanced and lively discussion and hope that you will be able to participate. Any questions about the event, just let me know.
This term we are not printing glossy flyers for the creation group meetings as we will be producing individual photocopied flyers for each meeting. However if you would like a printed flyer with the whole series you can download and print the following PDFs. We encourage you to print multiple copies to give to people who may be interested in our talks and website. To print from Acrobat set the page scaling to none and in the advanced options (bottom left) check the print as image option.
http://edinburghcreationgroup.org/pdf/ECG09-duplex.pdf
http://edinburghcreationgroup.org/pdf/ECG09-inside.pdf
http://edinburghcreationgroup.org/pdf/ECG09-outside.pdf
Details of our Spring series are now online
The latest video from Dr Arthur Jones Is Atheism Scientific? is now online.
This week scientists have ‘discovered’ what Arthur Jones says the indisputable evidence has shown for fifty years: that inherited traits are not solely determined by DNA. Arthur Jones pointed this out in his Edinburgh Creation Group talk Fish Fossils and Evolution six months ago (please go to time 53min 37sec for argument).
Though Darwinists deny it, this fits incredibly well with the Creationist theory of distinct created kinds which have the in built (rather than acquired) ability to adapt to their environment. In built adaptability is certainly consistent with the Intelligent Design hypothesis. However it seems that Evolutionists are working hard to come up with the theory of artificially Intelligent Evolution to counter really Intelligent Design.
One thing seems certain the Dawkins’ argument of a Blind Watch Maker can at last be laid to rest.