Ken Ham's Blog, page 410

The Warning Continues (Part Two)

WSU Homeschool Curriculum Part Two: Adaptation and “Beneficial” Mutations

(Thanks to AiG researcher Steve Golden for his diligent research in assembling this information.)

Recently, I posted the first part of a series of blog posts (part three later this week) reviewing the online evolutionary biology curriculum Washington State University (WSU) has created for homeschool families (http://sbs.wsu.edu/evolutionary/index.html). I believe it’s important to sound a warning to homeschool families about curricula that teach evolutionary beliefs as though they are fact. This curriculum is not only freely available, but it also uses interactive online games to teach children evolutionary ideas. In this part of the review, I want to address the curriculum writers’ treatment of adaptation and mutations.

WSU’s evolutionary indoctrination curriculum for children begins dealing with adaptations in the preschool–Kindergarten level (calling it “variation”) and gets progressively more in-depth at each grade level group. Remember, we see genetic variation exhibited in animals all over the world—but such variation is generally associated with redistribution of information and new combinations of previously existing information as well as a loss of genetic information. There is no new information gain in the genes within a population. For example, if the weather grows cold, a population of dogs with genetic information only for short hair will not produce offspring with long hair. Dogs with the genetic information for long hair must be introduced into the population and must breed with the short-haired dogs if the long-haired trait is to appear. Without that, the short-haired dogs will likely not survive as well in the cold and the population may become extinct given enough time. (For more on this, read Roger Patterson’s article on natural selection.)

But the curriculum eases students into the idea of upward evolution (implying information gain) by first defining adaptation as “ways living things can change themselves or their behavior to meet the needs of a changing environment.” Using examples such as animals hibernating in the winter or people wearing different kinds of clothing in different weather (grades 1–3), the curriculum writers set out to show that everyone and everything can adapt. And who would disagree with this? Of course, humans can handle varying types of weather and, of course, bears hibernate. None of those examples demonstrates a gain in new genetic material.  The analogies they use are not correct—but unsuspecting students most likely would not see that.

The lesson for the first through third grade level closes by saying, “If the climate in an area changes to become gradually more humid and warm, this may cause the growth of new and different plants, which in turn may encourage animals to eat differently. Also, the animals may, over time, develop thinner fur or less fatty bodies” (emphasis theirs). Basically, for the evolutionist, it all comes down to time. Given enough time, states the WSU curriculum, these animals will simply develop new genetic material—even though that’s not how genetics works! Remember, a mutation—even one somewhat advantageous in a specific situation—represents a loss, not a gain of genetic information.  Students are being indoctrinated in a false view as teachers manipulate them to think in a particular way—yet the students do not understand that this curriculum wants them to believe in evolution, so they are being manipulated to believe something that is false.

In grades 4–5, students learn about the many species of fox. The “Extensions” section poses the question, “What do you think might happen to Arctic foxes if Arctic habitats were to get warmer, have less snow and ice, and have longer summers?” The answer is not provided, but based on the prior definition of adaptation, we can guess what answer is expected—something like: the Arctic foxes will change to meet the needs of their new environment. In other words, students are expected to infer that the foxes will adapt to the warmer environment by gaining new genetic information not already present in their population in order to meet their environmental challenges.  And this implies that such changes over millions of years lead to evolution of one kind to another.

The adaptation lesson for grades 6–8 continues teaching similar material, but to make matters worse, the writers direct students to an interactive game on the Discovery Channel’s website. The game, called “The Survival Game,” asks students to select a very diverse population of creatures (because, as Darwin tells students, “diversity can ensure survival against even the harshest elements”) and then attempt to keep them alive for one million years.

In the course of the game, students are given two chances to introduce “beneficial” mutations into the population to help them cope with the elements, predators, and foraging. What’s the problem? As Dr. Georgia Purdom of our staff explains, while very rarely there are mutations that have “beneficial outcomes in restricted environments,” we have no evidence of truly beneficial mutations (for more, see Dr. Purdom’s article). And yet, students are clearly being taught in this game that mutations can in fact be extremely beneficial to a population, ensuring its long-term survival.

From God’s Word, we know that all the variations among animal kinds we see today have developed within the original kinds of animals that left Noah’s Ark after the Flood. Animals do change over time—often a very short time—through a reshuffling of the various options available in their genetic material. Even when mutations occur and add to the variability, they do not increase the genetic information so as to provide the raw material to produce new kinds of animals as evolutionists claim. And even when mutations provide an advantage within a specific setting, a population in which there has been a loss of genetic material will ultimately have fewer “options” for variation available to meet future challenges. Thus, even if a mutation becomes prominent in a population and provides a short-term advantage, there is an overall loss of information. And in no case does any mutation provide the information to become—to evolve into—a new kind of organism. Dogs in a population may very in hair length, but they never become non-dogs! It therefore is not the gain of new genetic information over time that helps animals survive.

Teaching students otherwise is simply indoctrinating them into a false view. Dr. Elizabeth Mitchell, a medical doctor who authors our News to Note column each week, has fifteen years’ homeschooling experience from kindergarten through high school. She warns of the subtle danger inherent in this process. “Like heating the proverbial frog slowly in a pot, using observable phenomena like adaptation, variation, speciation, and mutation to support the idea that upward evolution is the process that gave us the animals we see today is a subtle way to misinterpret facts in barely perceptible increments until children are indoctrinated to accept scientifically unverifiable, experimentally insupportable, biblically contradictory concepts as fact.”

As the biblical creation movement continues to make a significant impact on the church and culture, it is interesting to note the increasing number of books and curricula from secularists that attempt to indoctrinate children in evolution and millions of years and against the Bible’s true account of origins.

Thanks for stopping by and thanks for praying.

Ken

Creation Apologetics in the Philippines

It was thrilling to receive this email from one of the pastors, Jan, who attended AiG’s International Training Seminar (ITS) week of apologetics study earlier in the year. He writes the following from the Philippines:

I thank the Lord every time I remember our week-long training in Kentucky. For sure, it was one of the best weeks of my life.

Before I even got my US visa for our ITS week, God had already planted the desire in my heart to share whatever I will learn from our friends in AiG. By God’s grace, that desire will become a reality, for tomorrow and Friday, I am given the opportunity to conduct a Creation Science and Christian Apologetics Seminar in my church, Doane Baptist Church. The time will be from 5:30 PM- 8:00 PM. The crowd will include 200 Bible school students from Doane Baptist Seminary, Campus Bible Fellowship leaders (campus evangelism teams), church outreaches, our church deacons and trustees and church organizational officers (young people, married couples, singles, laymen). The sessions are open for all, so I am sure a lot more are coming from other churches.

I will be presenting powerpoints on Understanding the Times, Evolutionary Images Around Us and Learning How to Defend Your Faith. I will also share a short testimony on how the Lord has supernaturally planned out circumstances so that I am able to attend ITS and I will also share a little info about the Creation Museum and the upcoming Ark Encounter.

With this, I would need your prayers. Please uphold my health, voice, and thoughts in your prayers. It is my hope that our brethren here will respond in faithfulness to God’s infallible Word and be more involved in reaching the lost world.

I am also given the privilege to speak in Doane Baptist Seminary’s Bible Conference in the last week of July. The school gave me 4 sessions of an hour each. Would you kindly pray for me as I prepare towards that? May the Spirit give me wisdom.

Thank you so much for your help. It is greatly appreciated as we advance together the kingdom of our King. God bless you all superiorly. For Christ and His kingdom, Pastor Jan.

We praise the Lord for the doors He has opened up for AiG to spread the message of biblical authority and the gospel around the world.

Olympics Update

The AiG London Olympics ministry has reached 97 team members that will travel with Dr. David Crandall and our AiG Worldwide Team to London. We praise the Lord that so many people will reach out to the many who come to the Olympics. 150,000 booklets, in eight languages, are printed and have arrived in England—along with several thousand AiG pins that will be traded and used as a witnessing tool.

Our team leaves New York City on August 2 and will be met by our “Grace2London” English partners in London.  Our total team size will be well over 150 people. Please pray that God will bless this team with many opportunities to share their faith and distribute our Olympics witnessing booklet titled Big Ben-Time.

I am traveling to England at the same time to speak at a conference and then at some churches in England and Northern Ireland. Also, I will spend some time speaking to our Olympics witnessing team. You can find out more about my UK itinerary at this link.

Thanks for stopping by and thanks for praying,

Ken

More Ballplayers at the Museum

Many professional sports teams come through Cincinnati each year—either to play the Cincinnati Reds in baseball or the Cincinnati Bengals in football. While in town, players on these visiting team sometimes take an opportunity during a free part of their day to tour our Creation Museum. We recently had a few players from the Milwaukee Brewers visit at the suggestion of their bullpen catcher, Marcus Hanel.

In this photo, you can see me on the far left and Mark Looy of our staff on the far right with the following people (from right to left): pitcher Tim Dillard, Jonathan Lucroy (one of the best catchers in baseball), Marcus Hanel, Travis Ishikawa, a first baseman and outfielder, and on the left near me are Tim Dillard’s parents from Mississippi—father Steve played in the major leagues as well. Son Tim is one of the funniest people you will ever come across. He can do imitations of well-known sports announcers. If you go to YouTube and search his name, you’ll see how he can do some excellent imitations.

Milwaukee Brewers

We certainly do meet lots of interesting people at the Creation Museum.

Thanks for stopping by and thanks for praying,

Ken

The Death of Darwinism

The past few days Answers in Genesis staff and a team of volunteers have been distributing over $50,000 worth of DVDs, books, and magazines to thousands of government school teachers and administrators at the National Education Association annual conference in Washington, DC. One of the AiG staff members who has been manning the booth at this conference sent me the following:

The theme for this year’s outreach at the annual NEA conference is “The Death of Darwinism.” The NEA (National Education Association) is the nation’s largest labor union in America, with over 3 million members, and which primarily represents public school teachers. It is one of the most liberal organizations in America today, promoting homosexual behavior, abortion, etc. It is a tremendous blessing from the Lord that AiG has been able to donate tens of thousands of dollars’ worth of creation and gospel materials for the past 16 years to the “NEA Creation Science Educators’ Caucus” to be freely distributed to thousands of school teachers.

The NEA outreach we have has been fertile ground for “creation evangelism.” For the first ten years or so, we were demolishing the evolutionary ideas taught as fact in many public schools. And for the last few years, we have been strongly promoting the gospel message with 20-foot banners exalting Jesus Christ as the Creator and Redeemer.

This year’s banner, “The Death of Darwinism,” has a two-fold message: First, life only comes from life, also known as the law of biogenesis. True operational science (as famously demonstrated by Louis Pasteur in the 1800’s) has shown that life never comes from non-life. Secondly, the origin of life is actually the Lord Jesus Christ. The Bible proclaims Jesus Christ as the eternal life from whom all things have been created. “All things came into being through Him, and apart from Him nothing came into being that has come into being. In Him was life…” (John 1:3–4).

Darwinian evolution requires life to have spontaneously generated from inorganic matter millions of years ago. Observational science has disproven this outdated notion of spontaneous generation even in the minds of evolutionists, yet Darwinists dream that it must have happened at least once millions of years ago. That’s not science; that’s blind faith.

Christians have the true history of the universe, as found in the Bible. Our faith is based upon the Word of God and cannot be shaken by the vain imaginations of Darwinists. The Bible clearly proclaims that Jesus Christ (eternal life in 1 John 1:2) is the Creator of the universe, from whom all life comes and true science, such as the law of biogenesis, confirms this.

Donors to a special NEA fund have been pleased to support this outreach for many years. If you would like to see this special creation evangelism ministry continue, please consider designating your donation to AiG to the special “NEA fund.” Thank you.

Starting this weekend, 3,000 copies of the evangelistic Check This Out DVD will be given away to mostly unbelieving school teachers and administrators (along with thousands of other DVDs, books, and magazines). Praise the Lord, we are also able to encourage and strengthen the few Christian teachers who are NEA delegates. Please pray for the teachers this week, that the Lord would open their hearts and minds to the truths of God’s Word (especially the gospel message) and that our staff and volunteers will be sharing with them one on one. Check out the Creation Science Educators Caucus blog, which has been updated multiple times daily.

Thanks for stopping by and thanks for praying,

Ken

A Great Body of Work

Today my friend and colleague Dr. David Menton is celebrating his birthday. He is one of the most brilliant scientists I have ever known, and it has been a great privilege to have spoken alongside him at dozens of AiG conferences. He loves science—did you know that he was one of the editors of the prestigious Stedman’s Medical Dictionary and that his PhD in biology is from an Ivy League school? But most of all, he loves God’s Word.

Most of his excellent seminar talks have been put on video. Last year, AiG worked with the AFA Home School Channel to produce a series of creationist videos featuring Dr. Menton called Body of Evidence. To watch a large section of one of the videos he produced (it runs about 30 minutes), titled The Hearing Ear, go to this link.

Dr.Menton had an integral part in designing two of the latest, high-tech exhibits in our Creation Museum: one on homology and the other on “Lucy,” the so-called ape-woman. Here is a photo of Dr. Menton, exhibit designer Doug Henderson, and me in front of the ape vs. human homology exhibit on the day we opened this high-tech display that uses laser technology:

Here is a photo of his Lucy exhibit—using holographic technology—that opened a few weeks ago:

My brother Steve just gave Dr. Menton a gift: a book about the great reformer, Martin Luther. My guess is that he is spending a part of his birthday today reading the book. Even though he is in his 70s, he still loves to learn.

Happy birthday, Dr. Menton! He has had some health challenges recently, as has his wife Debbie, but we rejoice that he is still ministering here at AiG and the Creation Museum, not only through his striking exhibits but also through reaching thousands of young people and adults each year at his workshops and talks at the museum.

Thanks for stopping by and thanks for praying,

Ken

Warning

(Thanks to AiG researcher Steve Golden for gathering the information for this blog)

Washington State University Homeschool Curriculum Part 1: Teaching Debunked “Transitional Forms”

Washington State University (WSU), using funding from the National Science Foundation, has produced an evolutionary biology curriculum targeted at homeschool families. The curriculum, called Lessons in Evolutionary Biology, is available for free online and includes lessons and activities for pre-school through twelfth grade.

I’m writing these reviews as a warning to homeschooling families—the material in this curriculum not only teaches false evolutionary beliefs (including beliefs that many secularists have thrown out!), but it also attacks biblical creation directly. And the curriculum utilizes activities and even a colorful board game to teach the idea of evolution—capturing the attention and minds of children without ever questioning the assumptions these ideas operate on. Even if you are not a homeschooling family, it is important to know how to refute outdated evolutionary ideas as detailed in this blog.

WSU’s curriculum examines “Fossils and Extinction” in grades 1–3. Students are shown pictures to compare and contrast—for example, an Archaeopteryx fossil and a chicken, or a dinosaur fossil and a lizard. They are then asked to compare how these fossils are similar to the live creature in the other picture. In a middle school lesson, Archaeopteryx (alongside Tiktaalik) is even identified as an alleged “transitional form.”

Archaeopteryx is claimed by some evolutionists to be evidence that supports the belief that dinosaurs evolved into birds. They reason that since it has teeth, digits (i.e., “fingers”) on its wings, and a long tail, it is a “winged dinosaur.” But fossil evidence that appeared in a National Geographic article this year says otherwise. According to an examination of the fossilized feathers, Archaeopteryx feathers were no different from modern bird feathers, meaning that, in an evolutionary model, Archaeopteryx would have evolved much earlier than it should have! But these results are exactly what biblical creationists expect—God created birds to reproduce after their kinds. He did not create dinosaurs that evolved into birds. (For more on Archaeopteryx feathers, read Dr. Elizabeth Mitchell’s News to Note column from earlier this year .)

The curriculum claims in the lesson “Fossil Evidence for Evolution – Part 2” that Tiktaalik is an “intermediate form” and “an example of an ancient type of ‘fish’ that developed adaptations to the oxygen-poor shallow-water habitats of its time.” What was that adaptation, according to evolutionists? Tiktaalik supposedly learned to “walk” on land on its fins, thus “proving” that fish eventually grew legs and began walking.

Dr. David Menton, a speaker at Answers in Genesis with a PhD in biology from Brown U., notes that there are indeed fish that can breathe air and “slither” on their bellies on land (see Tiktaalik and the Fishy Story of Walking Fish). But they are not walking! And in 2010, Tiktaalik as a supposed “transitional form” was debunked when evolutionists discovered fossilized footprints that they dated 9 million years older than Tiktaalik. Dr. Menton concludes, “Whatever else we might say about Tiktaalik, it is a fish.”

WSU’s curriculum has an entire lesson (geared for grades 6–8) devoted to the idea of “horse evolution”—which has basically been thrown out, even by many secularists. (I blogged about the horse evolution series a few months ago; you can read more about it here.) In 1979, Dr. David Raup, then Curator of Geology at the Field Museum of Chicago, admitted that supposed “evidences” of evolutionary ideas, such as the “horse evolution” series, are no longer viable:

Well, we are now about 120 years after Darwin, and knowledge of the fossil record has been greatly expanded. . . . Ironically, we have even fewer examples of evolutionary transition than we had in Darwin’s time. By this I mean that some of the classic cases of Darwinian change in the fossil record, such as the evolution of the horse in North America, have had to be discarded or modified as a result of more detailed information—what appeared to be a nice simple progression when relatively few data were available now appears to be much more complex and much less gradualistic. (“Conflicts Between Darwin and Paleontology,” Field Museum of Natural History Bulletin 50, no. 1 : 25.)

And yet, science curricula are still teaching this debunked idea. The WSU curriculum presents a series of pictures of each of the alleged “transitional forms” of the horse, claiming that each form is millions of years old.

What’s more, the curriculum writers then attack biblical creationists who dispute horse evolution, as though there are no evolutionists who disagree:

Creationism utterly fails to explain the sequence of known horse fossils from the last 50 million years. That is, without invoking the “God Created Everything To Look Just Like Evolution Happened” Theory. . . . Creationists are thus forced into illogical, unjustified attacks of fossil dating methods, or irrelevant and usually flat-out wrong proclamations about a supposed “lack” of “transitional forms”. (chem.tufts.edu/science/evolution/HorseEvolution.htm)

But as biblical creationists, we do not have to operate on evolutionary assumptions for all these fossils to make sense. There are no “transitional forms” because God created animals to reproduce after their kinds. The many varieties of horses, fish, and birds all speak to the creativity and glory of the Creator God, not to the idea that the dinosaur kind transitioned into the bird kind. As parents, we must be aware of what we are teaching our children, and we must examine thoroughly any teaching materials we are using to ensure that the next generation is being grounded in the authority of God’s Word and not in man’s fallible ideas.

Thanks for stopping by and thanks for praying,

Ken

Creation Museum Billboards in New York Times Magazine Sunday

The Creation Museum’s current billboard campaign (across the USA) has been reported in many news outlets around the country. This weekend, there will be a mention of the museum campaign in the New York Times Magazine. The writer has a little sarcastic dig at us, but at least the billboards are being noticed!

To remind you, here are a few of the 20 different billboards:

This is what will appear in the New York Times Magazine, which will be sent with this coming Sunday’s NYT paper—on page 11:

WHY THE DINOSAURS ROAMED

Animatronic dinosaurs roam the Creation Museum’s Garden of Eden exhibit, and a new billboard campaign brings the prehistoric reptiles front and center ‘‘to teach the true history of the world, according to the Bible.’’ If only Mark Twain could visit. Man, he deadpanned in the satirical 1903 essay ‘‘Was the World Made for Man?’’ needed reptiles ‘‘not to eat, but to develop himself from.’’

The total circulation (print and digital subscriptions) of the New York Times Sunday newspaper is 2,003,247. The daily paper average is 1,586,757.

If you see one of our billboards, please let us know, and if you are able to, please post a photo with the location of one of these spectacular billboards on our Creation Museum Facebook page.

Thanks for stopping by and thanks for praying,

Ken

A Tale of Two Museums

This is exciting. Each year, and traveling over 1,500 miles round trip, Grace Church in Eden Prairie (near Minneapolis), Minnesota, brings its freshman class to our Creation Museum where they learn to defend the Genesis account and also to think correctly about science (e.g., the difference between observational science and historical science). Then the teachers and pastors take them to the Field Museum in Chicago on the way home. This is the report they sent me about their visit to these two very different museums. This report will encourage you, and I also pray it will stimulate other churches and Christian schools to consider doing something similar. The leaders of this group have also developed a study guide to be used by the students to help them as they go through the secular, evolution-filled Chicago Field Museum. Here is the report:

We are writing to tell you of our Freshman Foundations trip to both the Creation Museum and the Chicago Field Museum on June 11 – 15. It was an impactful trip for our students and one that has shaped their worldview and strengthened their faith. Thank you for taking the time to meet with us twice while we visited the Creation Museum. It was helpful to get your insights and it meant a lot to us and the students – especially after hearing you speak at our church in April! …

Speaking to our group at the Creation Museum.

We desired to create a basis by which these students could understand and articulate the need for a Biblical worldview. It is for this reason that we started our trip by spending a day at the Creation Museum. Our students left with a very important understanding that if you neglect to use God’s authoritative Word as the source of truth, then you are left with human reasoning and that will cause you tomiss the mark completely. This lesson proved to be invaluable for what we would experience later on the trip. Our students were equipped, challenged and encouraged by our time at the Creation Museum.

Going to the Field Museum two days after the Creation Museum was quite a contrast. This year, we decided to try a guided tour through the “Evolving Planet” with groups of 10 – 15 students which proved to be helpful. This tour was led by one of our teachers, Shyla Allard, and the students filled out their booklet (you have a copy) with questions about the exhibit as they went. They were also asked to record in their booklets instances of observational science and historical science found thrughout the exhibit. The booklet and guided tour helped to contrast the conflicting worldviews, provided scientific information that supports the Biblical worldview and encouraged students to think critically about what they observe. The goal was to help them to stand firm in what they know to be truth from God’s Word.

Students used our booklet to contrast the exhibit with their Biblical worldview.

There were several “ah ha” moments for the students as they studied the claims in the “Evolving Planet.” Here are some of the highlights.

The exhibit begins by laying the foundation of billions and millions of years. One of the first placards also claims that life (organic compounds) may have come from extraterrestrial sources. Many students noted believing in that idea takes a lot more faith than believing the Bible.

One of the favorite stops in the “Evolving Planet” was the video and display on radio isotope dating of rocks. The students learned about the evolutionary assumptions made (using historical science) when scientists date rocks. Students were also struck by the extremely large ranges of dates given for the rocks on display with some of the ranges being billions of years. Someone noted they would never be allowed to be that imprecise on one of their math tests.

You don't see many of these t-shirts in the "Evolving Planet" exhibit.

There were many points in the exhibit where our students could see the effects of a worldwide global flood. This was especially true in the many fossil displays and in a video on “how to make a fossil.” Students were especially amused by a sign that read, “Scientists aren’t sure what trigged a mass extinction that killed almost all animal life on earth,” knowing that we have a record of what happened and why in the Bible.”

Here we are at the "How to Make a Fossil" station. Two words come to mind – Global Flood.

The largest area of the Evolving Planet exhibit is the dinosaur fossil display. We read out loud the Job 40 description of the behemoth at the Sauropod display and noted that even the Field Museum exhibit admitted these dinosaurs seemed uniquely engineered for size (contrary to random chance).

Reading Job 40:15-24

The most striking contrast between the Creation Museum and the Field Museum was the Lucy exhibit. In the Field Museum’s human evolution display, students were able to get a poignant example of how worldview and historical evidence can shape the evidence.

The students were most struck by how, in the Field Museum, Lucy was made to stand upright and her face, hands and feet were made to look very human. They could easily see the creative license taken since the hands and feet were not found among the bones and so little of the scull exists as well. They appreciated seeing the Creation Museum Lucy exhibit first to help them understand how to look critically at the evidence and interpret it from a Biblical standpoint.

Looking critically at the Field Museum Lucy.

Despite a very long and exhausting day at the Field Museum, the most rewarding part of the day for the leaders was the evening debrief. After dinner, the group took time to review what they learned and share the answers they recorded in their booklets. What they shared clearly indicated the depth of their understanding and how the Spirit of God was at work among them. Although we expected a short debrief so they could quickly adjourn to their pool and social time in the hotel, the hands kept going up to share their thoughts on what they’d learned. Some students even stayed after the debrief to continue to ask questions.

Students at the debrief session

There was no doubt these freshman students were impacted by this trip and they are better equipped to defend the authority of God’s Word. For this, we praise the Lord and give Him all the glory! Pastor Jason Barthelemy Senior High Pastor Grace Church, Eden Prairie (http://www.atgrace.com/)

The Freshman Foundations Class 2012 from Grace Church at the Creation Museum

What a blessing to receive this report. This is just another example of how the Creation Museum and AiG ministry are impacting this generation of young people to be able to contend for the faith.

Thanks for stopping by and thanks for praying.

Ken

Wow!

I couldn’t help but say “Wow!” when I read about the “Wow!” signal as reported on a Fox News article yesterday. The report stated the following:

If there’s something you’d like to say to aliens, now’s your chance. The Wow! signal, a mysterious radio transmission detected in 1977 that may or may not have come from extraterrestrials, is finally getting a response from humanity. Anyone can contribute his or her two cents — or 140 characters, to be exact — to the cosmic reply via Twitter.

All tweets composed between 8 p.m. EDT Friday (June 29) and 3 a.m. EDT Saturday (June 30) tagged with the hashtag #ChasingUFOs will be rolled into a single message, according to the National Geographic Channel, which is timing the Twitter event to coincide with the premiere of the channel’s new series, “Chasing UFOs.” Then on Aug. 15, exactly 35 years after the Wow! signal was detected, humanity’s crowdsourced message will be beamed into space in the direction from which the perplexing signal originated.

Now look at the scan of the original computer printout from 1977 showing the supposed evidence of aliens in outer space:

Image from the Ohio State University Radio Observatory and the North American AstroPhysical Observatory (NAAPO).

I must admit, when I saw this, I said, “Wow!” myself. But my “Wow!” was for a different reason. Let me put it this way:

Wow! Certain people look at these few numbers and letters, and they see it as evidence of an alien intelligence. However, those same people would look at the most complicated information system and language system on earth—the DNA molecules—and they immediately think of how it arose by chance! These people look at a few letters and numbers and think of an alien intelligence, yet they look at the Bible with its detailed record of origins and scoff at any suggestion of an intelligence behind the Bible! These people would rather believe in unseen aliens because of a few letters and numbers, but they refuse to believe in a Creator God when it is obvious from what is observed in life and the universe that there is a Creator. They would rather believe in aliens and scoff at a Creator God when the laws of logic, laws of nature, and uniformity of nature cry out there is a God!

I could only think of this verse: “The fool has said in his heart, ‘There is no God.’ They are corrupt, They have done abominable works, There is none who does good” (Psalm 14:1; emphasis added).

Read more from the Fox News article at this link.

Thanks for stopping by and thanks for praying,

Ken

Using the Bible and AiG to “Bring Him Back”!

This is a touching testimony from a mother who realized she was losing her son to the world. Praise the Lord for the way He is using AiG resources in this family to “bring him back.”

I just wanted to thank you for this wonderful ministry! It has been a huge blessing for my family. I am a mother of two and married to a non-Christian, so the weight of teaching my kids the truth of the Bible falls on me, but AiG has made my load lighter with all your great resources! I recently bought some dinosaur books/DVDs from AiG as my 7 yr old son is very interested in dinosaurs, but I don’t like the secular books the library has. He is so excited about them and I have peace of mind knowing that he is learning the truth. I also read “Already Gone” and it really opened my eyes that, even though I homeschool and we go to church every Sunday, the responsibility of my son knowing and believing the Bible is mine and no one else’s. I have realized that I have been negligent in the area of my son’s Biblical foundation and the authority of scripture. Through talks, I found out that he was already falling away and am using the Bible and your resources to bring him back. Thank you!

– L., Texas

Road Trips

Ellen Bauer of Iowa has traveled to the Creation Museum 20 times in five years! She’s probably logged well more than 20,000 miles, back and forth. But that’s not all—on six of the occasions, she has brought a busload of visitors with her! Ellen will spend many months promoting her bus tours to the Creation Museum, and as a result, she often finds passengers from many states who will join her. Ellen estimates that she has brought 250 people here from Iowa and neighboring states.

She told us that even before the modern creation movement started in the 1960s, her father, a Lutheran pastor, had trained her in biblical apologetics, and thus she could argue against evolution before there were the many resources like the books and tapes—and creationist museums—we have today.

Here is a photo of the group she brought recently for a two-day visit, and yes, she thought they needed two full days to take in everything the museum has to offer.

Ellen has been here so many times that she knows one day is just not enough time to take in the entire museum experience. Feedback from people like Ellen has prompted us to institute a new ticket policy: each ticket is good for two days at the museum (two consecutive days).

How about following Ellen’s example and bringing a group from your church? Group discounts will make it more affordable.

Ellen, thank you!

Also, my friend Eric Mock, a pastor and a VP at the Slavic Gospel Association ministry, is bringing a group to the Creation Museum from the Chicago area—about a five-hour drive away. See the brochure below of what his trip entails—if you live near Chicago, please consider coming with Eric. Eric, by the way, was instrumental in helping translate my Foundations videos into Russian, and at a very high quality—see this blog post.

Thanks for stopping by and thanks for praying,

Ken