God is not in charge…?

“God is not in
charge, we are” says test tube baby pioneer,
Robert Edwards, according to a report in T2 Supplement, The
Times, 24 July 2003, p.6. In an interview with Anjana Ahuja
of the The Times (London, UK) Edwards explained his
motive for fighting the Establishment 25 years ago to develop in
vitro fertilisation. He said, “I wanted to find out exactly
who was in charge, whether it was God Himself or whether it was
scientists in the laboratory. It was us.” Edwards is now 77
but believes he will live to see a cloned human baby before he
dies.

John’s
comment: If the God of the Bible had stated that Man
could never fertilise an ova in a test tube, Edwards would be
right. However, by fertilising ova in a test tube Edwards has not
proved that scientists have taken over God’s power. Human
beings are made in the image of God and have great creative
powers. However, God holds humans accountable for what we do with
our creative abilities. Edwards and those like him should learn
from Genesis 11 when human beings defied God and put their faith
in their own technology. God affirmed that “now nothing
will be restrained from them, which they have imagined to
do” (Genesis 11:6) but He then came down and judged them.
Most of the human race lost their brilliant technology when they
were scattered over the earth and it has taken thousands of years
to regain it, none of which negates the fact that Edwards, you
and I will stand before the Creator God to give account of our
sins. Edwards will then find his opinion is irrelevant.

Patagonian plant
fossils reveal ancient biodiversity, as reported in
Science, vol.300, p122, 4 April, 2003. The rich
biodiversity of tropical South American rainforests is believed
to be a recent occurrence in evolutionary terms. A team of
scientists led by Peter Wilf, Department of Geosciences,
Pennsylvania State University, has unearthed evidence of
“extraordinary plant diversity” in rocks from Laguna
del Hunco in Northwestern Chubut Province, Patagonia, Argentina.
At 47 degrees South, it is a long way from the tropics. The
fossils are believed to be 52 million years old. Having found 102
leaf species including dicots, monocots, ginkophytes, cycads and
ferns, the team concluded: “warm, equitable climates
reached middle latitudes of both hemispheres. Adjusted for sample
size, the observed richness exceeds that of any other Eocene leaf
flora, supporting an ancient history of plant diversity in warm
areas of South America.”

John’s
comment: These fossils fit the Biblical history of the
world very well. In the beginning there was a world-wide mild
climate and the earth was watered by a mist. This is an ideal
environment for lush plant growth. Following Noah’s flood,
the climate became much harsher with extremes of seasons at
higher latitudes, resulting in less abundant plant growth. As for
biodiversity, it has been decreasing all this time, i.e. many
plants have become extinct, but no new ones have been observed to
appear.

Frogs use elastic
power to boost jumps, according to New
Scientist, 12 July, 2003, p21. Scientists have puzzled over
the ability of frogs to leap long and high because their muscles
don’t seem to be powerful enough. American scientists
recently filmed frogs jumping and calculated the energy required
to leap, and decided the frogs must store energy by stretching a
tendon-like component in the leg muscles. When the tendon is
released it recoils like a stretched piece of elastic and gives
the frog an extra boost.

John’s
comment: When boys use elastic materials to make
slingshots with extra boost, that is considered a deliberate (if
somewhat misused) creation. When frogs are found to have elastic
boosted muscles, that is considered to be a random chance
occurrence. Is there a problem with logic somewhere?

Baffled molecular
biologists, according to a report in Nature,
vol. 423 p91, 1 May 2003 and ScienceNOW, 2 May 2003
(http://www.sciencenow.org). In recent years numerous
pieces of DNA have been found that do not code for proteins. Many
pieces are shortened versions of known functional genes, so
biologists named them “pseudogenes” and have written
them off as “genetic train wrecks”, the result of
functional genes being knocked around in the hurly-burly of
evolution. There are an estimated 20,000 of these and
evolutionists have wondered why they have not been discarded over
time if they are so useless. An experiment that went wrong at the
University of California, San Diego, indicates
“pseudogenes” actually have an important function.
When attempting to produce a genetically modified mouse Shinji
Hirotsune and colleagues knocked out a pseudogene instead of a
“real” gene. The mutant mice had numerous birth
defects and shortened life-span. Further investigation showed
that the pseudogene information is used to make RNA, a working
copy of genetic information, that is then used to make protein.
The pseudogene RNA did not make protein but seemed to protect
‘real’ RNA from being damaged. The scientists believe
this shows they have found another way that cells regulate
genes.

John’s
comment: This is another example of how evolutionary
theory is a hindrance, rather than help, to the advancement of
science. A creationist would assume since there are so many non
protein-coding genes they must have a purpose, and should be
investigated. We predict that most apparently non-coding DNA bits
will turn out to be functional despite the degeneration that has
occurred since the Fall of Man and Noah’s flood, which will
have damaged some of our original DNA.