Living Hope Church of Salem, Oregon produces a monthly newsletter Reflections for its interested members and others. Some of the articles have a wider interest appeal. These selections we will try to reproduce here for our online visitors.

From the Summer, 2008 issue of Reflections

Editorial

Did God Goof Up?

Why is the Humpback Whale so bumpy?

Have you ever seen pictures of humpback whales, and wondered why they look so lumpy? In times past, it was sometimes taught in school that this was just one of those “accidents of nature” and that the big bumps, especially on the leading edges of the whale’s flippers, would surely reduce the efficiency of this huge sea mammal’s swim. This came in really handy as an example against God’s having any wisdom and involvement in creating it. What a joke!

Recently, however, it was discovered that those bumps actually illustrate an “elegant design characteristic”. NOW they’re even imitating it for the advancement of technology! -- So what is it that these bumps DO?

In a wind-tunnel experiment, scientists at Harvard University found that the bumps not only didn’t hinder the whale—they gave it much greater maneuverability in attack angle and momentum when feeding! The whale can perform tight rolls and loops, and climb faster through the water without “stalling” like an airplane—all because of his bumps! Now, the scientists are studying the application of what they learned – “This confirmation has led to some amazing breakthroughs in aerodynamic and aeronautic engineering. In more than a hundred years of research and design, no one had seriously considered that adding ‘bumps’ to the leading edge of an aircraft or hydrofoil wing … could provide an advantage, such as in avoidance of dangerous stalls. But it does.”

Once again, when scientists really get into a study of some part of God’s Creation—even something thought to be a “defect” or an example for the argument favoring the Theory of Evolution, it has turned out just the opposite.

“It is now recognized and appreciated as a manifestation of creative genius, of a Mind that soars far above the brilliance of the best aircraft and naval engineers, even of Harvard researchers.”

— Quotes and information from Connections magazine, page 4, “Humpback Whale Fins: Fresh Evidence for Design” by Hugh Ross, Ph.D.

——Jackie McGuire      


From the March/April, 2008 issue of Reflections

Editorial

Going Batty

By Jackie McGuire

Did you know that the bat occurs suddenly in the fossil record, with no "pre-bat" ancestors? Where did the bat come from, with its long, webbed "fingers" making up the wings, and the strange configuration of its legs? (Its knees and toes face backwards!) Another feature is the distinctive shape of the bat's skull, formed so it channels sound to the ears for its sonar (echo location). Question is, why does the fossil bat look just the same as the modern animals? Didn't it evolve like the rest of the animals? Oops—the others didn't, either! What? But we were taught in school....

Why do you suppose evolutionists get so upset when someone dares to point out that they don't really have any proof that all these animals and plants evolved over hundreds of billions of years? —Indeed, that there have only been about 18 billion years since the Big Bang and about 3.9 billion years since life began on Earth? Many highly respected scientists have changed their minds and now believe in "Intelligent Design." There's a list of 100 or more who have signed their names to it, in defiance of much censorship, bullying and name-calling by Darwinists—and you might have noticed, when someone resorts to ridicule, he does so because he doesn't have anything real to present!

Darwin was a careful researcher, but in his day, the tools were simply not available to study the details. They had no way to know what was in a cell. "...much of the empirical evidence that was formerly believed to support the neo-Darwinian mechanism of chance mutation coupled with natural selection has melted away like snow on a spring morning, through better observation and more careful analysis." (Richard Milton) They draw nice illustrations, but the evidence isn't really there. The supposed "sequence" of evolution from Eohippus to the horse has been quietly dragged off to the basement, along with Archaeopteryx—yet the charts and illustrations are still displayed in textbooks and museums, and children are told about the "fact" of evolution. There is more evidence for Intelligent Design than there is for evolution these days, supported by mathematics, biology, astronomy, physics.... Our children should have a chance to hear both sides.


From the February, 2008 issue of Reflections
From the Editor

Seeds

by Jackie McGuire

I've been watching something in my kitchen window all winter. Last fall, as I was cleaning up the yard, I noticed two tiny seedlings in the flowerbed, their first two leaves hardly bigger than pinheads. I knew what they were—some of my geraniums had gone to seed before I got around to clipping off the spent flowers. So I scooped them up with a teaspoon and brought them in, planted in two tiny pots that would fit in the windowsill. They are growing happily, several inches high now, just something to help pass the long dark winter while I can't dig outside!

Okay, big deal! Well, what makes me think about them is the seeds they come from. Have you ever noticed a geranium seed head? On wild geraniums like those that grow in your lawn, they give the plant the name "crane's bill"—a cluster of seeds with a very long sharp "beak" sticking up. But when this "beak" ripens and dries out, you can see its purpose: long strips peel back along it, down to where each one is attached to a pointed seed, and along the strip, white "hairs" pop out. These act something like the white fluff on a dandelion seed! When the seed drops off the stem, it's carried on the wind a little way from the plant, and the heavier pointed end of the seed lands in the dirt. Now comes the fun part. As the moisture in the air changes, the strip sticking up is wound up like a corkscrew, and twists round and round, actually screwing the seed into the ground!

Now, who invented that?

Geraniums aren't the only ones that have interesting seeds, but they are one easy place to start in studying that particular part of God's Creation. Soon, now, other seeds will be planted. Some will be tiny as grains of sand or salt, others long and skinny, some round and shiny, some with barbs and points, all sizes and shapes! Each has within it a certain pattern that will produce a plant hundreds or thousands of times larger than itself (remember the mustard seed?) and have a certain kind of flower or fruit. We can't plant a zinnia and expect watermelon—those genes are very exacting in what they produce. You know them by their fruits!

Hey, come to think of it —. What are our fruits? What kinds of seeds are in your life? Are they being watered and cultivated? What do you like to do? We can share things we've been enjoying by ourselves, and get to know more people, and plant some seeds.


From the January, 2008 issue of Reflections
From the Editor

Safe in the Everlasting Arms

by Jackie McGuire

When I think of the Milky Way, I'm always reminded of the old hymn they sang in the movie, "Next of Kin" in the mountains of Tennessee, "Everlasting Arms." We, on Earth, are in a unique position in the Universe, between the spiral arms in our galaxy. It's a place that is not normal for a star or planet to be! Yet because we are here, we are not only protected from harm, but we have a clear window on the universe, so we can look out in all directions and see God's wonderful Creation! An accident?

Scientists keep looking for more "Earth-like planets" that can support life, yet they never really find any. Why is that? Because there are so many exact, infinitely precise conditions that must be met before we can have life—and one of them is our location!

Recently I read another article about those arms. In "Spiral Galaxies: Too Frayed for Life?", Hugh Ross tells us that spiral galaxies begin to break down and fray at the edges after a certain age. So what? Does this mean anything to us? Well, it seems that these dust clouds and wandering stars fraying off the edges of the outer spiral arms tend to destabilize the orbits of whole planetary systems or even of the individual planets within them. And the shower of radiation from those stars would also make any kind of life impossible. But this is only in "older" galaxies.

But then, he says, in the spiral galaxies young enough to be unfrayed, there are not enough of certain life-essential elements available! The appropriate levels of uranium and thorium only become available within a certain window of time—the age of 9-10 billion years—give or take a few million.

"The way around this substructure challenge is to find a sufficiently aged spiral galaxy with minimal fraying and then locate a just-right (in hundreds of ways) planet in a region least impacted by fraying. Such a location is exactly where Earth finds itself. An amazing coincidence?"

Recently more discoveries have shown how amazing. The fraying process is "intricately complex, affected by multiple galactic parameters." In order for advanced life to exist, the fraying must stay within an acceptable range—the galaxy's magnetic field must be relatively weak, yet strong enough to prevent collapse of the spiral. The disk must be dense enough—but not too dense. Then there's the quantity of gas in the spiral arms, and the differential compression of gas flowing through them—both must be low, yet high enough to sustain the structure.

Now, if we have this, we're still not home free. We have to have the precise location within this perfect galaxy. We have to be near the spot where the co-rotation of the stars (stars rotating around the galaxy's core at the same speed as the spiral arms) and their substructures, is the same. In other words, our planet has to be circling this merry-go-round at the same speed as the nearby stars all the time so we don't drift off into one of the arms! It's at this spot between the arms where these substructures part, leaving a clear space—and that's just where we are! As Hugh Ross says, "The data indicate Someone intended for advanced life to be here."


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