Index
1. DINOSAUR EXPERT
2. BABY PROTECTION PROTEIN FOUND
3. HOBBITS FEATURE
4. GIFT VOUCHERS NOW AVAILABLE
5. ALBERTA DEBATE
6. THE NEW POPE
7. NOW IS THE TIME
8. 8. “IS ALLAH THE CREATOR”
9. RADICAL PLANET RINGS BAFFLE SPACE SCIENTISTS
10. BELIEVE IT OR NOT
11. NOTABLE QUOTABLE
12. VENOMOUS MAMMAL FOSSIL
13. CONQUERING THE SLIPPERY SLOPE

1. DINOSAUR EXPERT Alan Feduccia has just published a study of "dinosaur
feathers." He says they are really just frayed bits of collagen. A report can be found at: http://www.unc.edu/news/archives/oct05/feducci100705.htm

2. BABY PROTECTION PROTEIN FOUND, as reported in Nature, vol. 436, p444, 28 July 2005. During pregnancy a mother’s immune system must not react to “foreign” proteins which the unborn foetus makes from genes it inherited from its father. A team of scientists led by Indira Guleria of Harvard Medical School have now shown that decreased levels of a protein named PDL1 in the placenta increases the risk of foetal rejection. PDL1 protein is known to be found in high levels in the human placenta during normal pregnancy.

ED. COM. This study reminds us that a developing foetus is a separate
individual to the mother, even though it relies on her for nourishment and protection. Therefore, the “choice” claimed by the pro-abortion lobby is not just about one person’s life. All human beings at all stages of life are unique individuals, created in the image of God, and should not be disposed of as unwanted tissue. It also means that a single cell that simply divides to reproduce (evolving into separate sexes that must have complex protein countermeasures to prevent the mother destroying the developing baby), is impossible (Ref. pregnancy, foetus, abortion)

3. HOBBITS FEATURE in an article on H. floresiensis from news@nature which
details evidence of nine H. floresiensis individuals found at Liang Bua
throughout 2004. ’The two jaw bones found are virtually identical even though their owners lived 3,000 years apart. "You can't have a colony of microcephalics going through time," says Brown. "That's crazy." The new bones also turned up features that are not found in modern humans. In particular, both of the jaws unearthed lack a chin structure; chins are a distinguishing feature of H. sapiens. The researchers also found arm bones from two individuals. "They are spectacularly long," says Brown, adding that the limb proportions are reminiscent not of H. sapiens but of Lucy, the 3.2-million-year-old Australopithecus afarensis found in Ethiopia in 1974’

ED.COM. Did you note the comment about their arms in today's report? The hobbits never were small humans. At best they were some kind of chimp. There are many theories that disagree with everything the Bible says about man being made in God's image – but the facts only support the differences you would expect that would result from man being created by God, distinct and unrelated to the chimps or any other creature.

4. GIFT VOUCHERS NOW AVAILABLE from our webshop. Give one to a friend. See http://www.creationresearch.net click WEBSHOP, then GIFT VOUCHERS.

5. ALBERTA DEBATE with Dr Dennis Lameroux (Theistic Evolution) teamed with
Dr Michael Caldwell (Atheist) vs John Mackay (Creation Research) at the
University in Calgary went reasonably well, despite massive tech problems with Uni projection equipment and mikes. The opposition's best shot at examples of evolution was the experiment where teeth have been successfully grown in chickens - so therefore birds must have once had teeth but they lost them. The crowd soon got John's reply about degenerate loss not helping evolution at all. Next best shots were the New Zealand flightless Kiwi which is becoming extinct, and the general order or pattern in the fossil record as shown in the textbook version of the Geology column. Intermediate fossils of snakes didn’t get mentioned despite Dr Caldwell's fame as an expert on fossil snakes and how they have lost legs, which as you may suspect may not have got their side too far.

The Theistic evolutionist, Dr Lameroux, stuck mostly to the science vs Genesis line: ie Genesis can't be relied on, so Science is the answer. He undoubtedly confuddled the issue with repeated claims about his being a conservative evangelical Christian who kept telling the crowd that the Bible's account of creation wasn’t to be trusted as it represented ancient science. His only offered evidence was that his problem was the Hebrew word "Raqia" in Genesis 1 which he claims meant they believed in a solid dome as the sky like the ancient Babylonians. Bible Scholar Dr Zodhiates in his Lexigetical Aids to the Old Testament says that this view about raqia has been promoted by liberals and does not represent the Genesis text at all. The auditorium held over 300 for the evening, and many seeking questions continued long after the debate.

6. THE NEW POPE Benedict XVI has said (24 April 05), "We are not some casual and meaningless product of evolution." This did not please the
atheist-minded scientists in our society, who maintain with vehemence that
we are as Richard Dawkins asserts: "The universe we observe has precisely
the properties we should expect if there is, at bottom, no design, no purpose, no evil and no good, nothing but blind pitiless indifference" ... But before you get too excited, only this week The Times of London, October 05, 2005 (Ruth Gledhill, Religion Correspondent) reports the catholic church has warned people they should not expect the Bible to be trustworthy “ The hierarchy of the Roman Catholic Church has published a teaching document instructing the faithful that some parts of the Bible are not actually true. The Catholic bishops of England, Wales and Scotland are warning their five million worshippers, as well as any others drawn to the study of scripture, that they should not expect "total accuracy" from the Bible.

"We should not expect to find in Scripture full scientific accuracy or complete historical precision," they say in The Gift of Scripture. The document is timely, coming as it does amid the rise of the religious Right, in particular in the US. Some Christians want a literal interpretation of the story of creation, as told in Genesis, taught alongside Darwin’s theory of evolution in schools, believing "intelligent design" to be an equally plausible theory of how the world began. But the first 11 chapters of Genesis, in which two different and at times conflicting stories of creation are told, are among those that this country’s Catholic bishops insist cannot
be "historical". At most, they say, they may contain "historical traces".

The document shows how far the Catholic Church has come since the 17th
century, when Galileo was condemned as a heretic for flouting a near-universal belief in the divine inspiration of the Bible by advocating the Copernican view of the solar system. Only a century ago, Pope Pius X condemned Modernist Catholic scholars who adapted historical-critical methods of analysing ancient literature to the Bible.”

ED.COM. The biggest flaw in such catholic theology, whether it be in dealing with Galileo or evolution is also seen in many Protestant churches. Church leaders read (and teach) the scriptures only in the light of whatever the current popular most acceptable view of the world is. Usually the one they bowed the knee to in order to get their Ph.D. In all these areas those of us who are teachers must remember the New Testament injunction that Teachers will be judged ( BY THE CREATOR) more strictly ( James 3:1). For our own errors and for the errors we teach others to believe.

7. NOW IS THE TIME to ask for John Mackay or Vance Nelson to do ministry in
your area during 2006. Contact info@creationresearch.net for details.

8. “IS ALLAH THE CREATOR” has been one of our best attended meetings over
the past 2 years, which shows people’s concern about Islam at present. We did remind them Christ is the Creator, not Allah. Don’t miss the AUDIO CD by John Mackay ‘Is Allah the Creator God of Abraham and Moses, a study on the Trinity in the first five books of the Old Testament. Available from www.creationresearch.net click webshop click PRODUCTS the CD

9. RADICAL PLANET RINGS BAFFLE SPACE SCIENTISTS, according to an article in ScienceNOW, 6 Sep 2005. Scientists analysing images and information
gathered from the Cassini space craft currently exploring Saturn are having a difficult time interpreting results. One ring, the D ring, has become 10 times dimmer and moved 200 km closer to the planet over the last 25 years. “That’s radical,” commented Carolyn Porco of the Space Science Institute, Boulder, Colorado, who compared the Cassini images with those taken by the Voyager space probe in 1980. It could mean the D ring is “young and short lived.” Other “equally baffling” results are temperature differences between night side and day side of ring particles, irrespective of their size. They are 15 degrees warmer on their day sides, indicating they all rotate slowly, otherwise they would heat evenly. Linda Spilker of the Jet
Propulsion Laboratory, (JPL) Pasadena, California commented: “We always
thought that mutual collision would lead to a wide variety of rotation rates.” The F ring, described by ScienceNOW as “thin, braided and kinky” provides the “weirdest of all” results. It is actually a single tightly wound spiral – a unique structure believed to be caused by gravitational disturbances of a small moonlet criss-crossing the ring. However, the F ring has many moonlets and large boulders and a small satellite is unlikely to survive crossing this many times. Dennis Matson, also of JPL commented: “The Complexity of the rings is just dumbfounding.”

ED. COM. All these finding wouldn’t be so baffling if the scientists were not trying to explain their finding in terms of billions of years. Genesis describes a universe that is is “young and short lived” but scientists and laypeople alike go on ignoring the evidence because they don’t want to be confronted with the fact that we live on the brink of eternity. The God who brought the universe quickly into existence, can bring it to an end equally quickly. (Ref. astronomy, solar-system, time)

10. BELIEVE IT OR NOT A UK Christian charity is sending a film about the
Christmas story to every primary school in Britain after hearing of a young boy who asked his teacher why Mary and Joseph had named their baby after a swear word. The Breakout Trust raised £200,000 to make the 30-minute animated film, It’s a Boy. Steve Legg, head of the charity, said: "There are over 12 million children in the UK and only 756,000 of them go to church regularly. That leaves a staggering number who are probably not receiving basic Christian teaching."

11. NOTABLE QUOTABLE “Punctuated equilibrium is the kind of evolution you
have when you don't actually have any evolution!” John Mackay Alberta Debate
October 2005

12. VENOMOUS MAMMAL FOSSIL reported in Nature, vol. 435, p1091, 23 June and Science News 25 Jun2005. Palaeontologists Richard Fox and Craig Scott have found fossilised teeth of an extinct mouse-size creature named “Bisonalveus
browni.” The teeth have a groove running down one side, similar in shape to that on the fangs of venomous snakes. Venomous snakes have glands at the base of their teeth. When the snake bites down on its prey venom is squeezed from the gland and runs down the groove. Venomous mammals are very rare. The only living mammals that inject venom via grooves in their teeth are Solenodons – rat-sized animals that live in Haiti and Cuba. The short tailed shrew of North America has poisonous saliva but does not have a groove in its teeth. According to Science News, “the dearth of venomous mammals has posed an enigma for evolutionary biologists.”

ED. COM. As this animal is extinct there is no way of knowing whether it really had venom or what it ate. Venomous animals, especially snakes, are often used by sceptics to challenge Genesis, which states that all animals, including snakes and mammals originally ate plants in a good world. Venomous snakes seem so well designed to kill other animals they argue. However, many snake venoms are similar to digestive enzymes – proteins used to help break down food. As snakes swallow their food whole, without chewing it, having a system that injects digestive enzymes into the food helps the snake break down and absorb its food more quickly. When the world degenerated after the Fall of Man and Noah’s flood, snakes started eating other animals. Now the enzymes in their saliva not only helped digest their
prey, but helped kill it as well.. Some snake venom does contain chemicals that paralyse prey, rather than digestive enzymes, so we predict that research of these nerve toxins will find they had/have some other function as well. (Ref. venom, predators, digestion)

13. CONQUERING THE SLIPPERY SLOPE, described in Nature, vol. 437, p733, 29 Sep 2005. Many small insects can walk on water because of the surface
tension of the water, but the same surface tension creates a problem for very small insects when they walk to the edge of the water and want to get off ! At the edge, the surface of the water slopes up. This is called the meniscus, and can be seen around the edge of the water surface of a glass of water. For a millimetre sized insect it forms a huge slippery slope they cannot walk up. David Hu and John Bush of the Massachusetts institute of Technology worked out how small insects and larvae are able to escape from the water. By bending their bodies and not moving their legs they are able to deform the water surface so that capillary action propels them up the slope. Hu and Bush write: “The ability to climb menisci is a skill
exploited by water walking insects as they seek land in order to lay eggs or avoid predators; moreover it was a necessary adaptation for their ancestors as they evolved from terrestrials to live exclusively on the water surface.”

ED. COM. The ability to walk on water requires special design features that can only be simulated by creative intelligence (see Creation Research e-mail updates, 12 Nov 2003). The study described above shows that walking off water also requires clever design. Unless the first insect to walk on water was also programmed with the ability to move its body in the right way to get off the water, we agree that it is hard to see how water walking insects could have “evolved from terrestrials to live exclusively on the water surface.” It makes far more sense to believe that water walking insects were pre-programmed to make the correct body movements for both walking on the water as well as changing there movements when they arrived
at the water’s edge. (Ref. locomotion, design, insects)

DONATIONS TO HELP CREATION RESEARCH WORLDWIDE can be sent to the following addresses or use our secure Web site: www.creationresearch.net and click DONATIONS.
AUSTRALIA: P.O. Box 260 Capalaba Qld 4157

IF YOU no longer wish to receive our updates please reply with REMOVE EN in
the subject. To assist us please include your name as well as e-mail address
(and organisation name, if any).