Category Archives: Biology

The study of living organisms, divided into many specialized fields that cover their morphology, physiology, anatomy, behavior, origin, and distribution

The Miraculous Monarch Mystery

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Monarch in May

If you’re here for news on the Monarch Adventure Summit, click here. To see how monarchs are a glorious testament to our creator God, keep reading.

For those paying attention, it is clear that God has left pointers to himself in his creation as scripture says:

For since the creation of the world God’s invisible qualities–his eternal power and divine nature–have been clearly seen, being understood from what has been made, so that men are without excuse.
Rom 1.20

When giving tours of the Milwaukee Public Museum, I point out how that’s true regarding the duck-billed platypus. Today we’re going to look at how the miraculous features of the monarch butterfly point back to its divine creator.

Mysteries of the Monarch

There are some 20,000 species of butterflies. Richard Boender, founder of Butterfly World in Fort Lauderdale, Florida, says this about them:

“Every one of these 20,000 species have different color patterns, and everyone of them has different shaped wings. The diversity is just so magnificent. If I was the greatest artist in the world, there is no way I could come up with all of these patterns. It would be absolutely impossible.”[1]

The diversity alone is astounding, a reminder of how much our God appreciates the subtle differences that make us distinct. And many of the miraculous mysteries concerning the monarch are true with regards to the 20,000 species of butterflies in general, but for the purposes of this article, we’re going to focus in on one species: the monarch butterfly.

So there’s the first evidence of God from the diversity and beauty in butterflies. If you don’t understand how beauty itself points to God, see this article where I outline an argument for the existence of God from the existence of beauty in God’s creation. Continue Reading

Question Evolution Day 2021 Questions: The Mimic Octopus

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The Indonesian Mimic Octopus

So here we are at another February 12th, Question Evolution day. Since it’s already late in the day I’ll try to keep this short. But to put things in context, I need to preface my questions for Darwinian evolution believers with a question. Consider the following:

Concerning Purpose

A student is given an assignment to write a 1,000 word essay. The student completes the assignment and turns in the essay. The essay sounds familiar to the teacher so the teacher checks a plagiarism checker and as suspected, the student has plagiarized another work. The teacher confronts the student and says, “Your paper, is almost precisely word for the word the same as this published work. You’re guilty of plagiarism and will get no credit for your paper.”

Continue Reading

Questions for Question Evolution Day 2020

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Well here we are at another February 12th – formerly celebrated as Lincoln’s birthday, now many are trying to get people to think of Darwin’s birthday. While some are celebrating “International Darwin Day”, others are sharing “Question Darwin Day”, an initiative inspired by CMI with ongoing promotions by The Question Evolution Project. Rational Faith is obviously part of the latter group.  So for this year’s Question Evolution Day, our questions will be concerning the frozen frog you see in the picture above. You may think this is just an ordinary frozen frog, but I’m going to warn you up front about this – this is no ordinary frog. As Ray Comfort might say, this is an evolutionist’s nightmare. This is the Alaskan wood frog. And it is able to survive the harsh sometimes 40 degrees below zero winters. How? it digs a burrow and allows itself to freeze. Solid. Like a block of ice – like you see above. Then when spring arrives, and things begin to thaw – it does too. And wakes up. And hops away – like nothing even happened. Continue Reading

More Questions for Question Evolution Day

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Question Evolution Day is February 12

Theoretical physicist and science popularizer Michio Kaku said,

“Science, however, is never conducted as a popularity contest, but instead advances through testable, reproducible, and falsifiable theories.”[1]

Real operational science is testable, reproducible and falsifiable. Which of course excludes Darwinian evolution, since it is neither testable, reproducible nor falsifiable – at least it can’t be falsified to the satisfaction of Darwinists. Nevertheless in the scientific spirit of inquiry it is good to examine what many believe to be the “science” of evolution.  Creation.com and The Question Evolution Project have established February 12 – Darwin’s birthday – as Question Evolution Day. A day to inquire about and question a theory many erroneously think has been established as a “fact” due to the incessant cheerleading by its advocates.[2]

Creation Ministries International has published an excellent article titled “15 Questions for Evolutionists” that covers well many of the unanswered challenges to evolutionary theory. Also for your consideration: a few years back Buzzfeed did a “listicle” featuring creationists asking questions that are either problematic for evolution or supportive of creation. The questions sought to expose a problem with evolutionary theory, but were asked in a manner that made them easy to refute, so I wrote an article to fine tune the questions called “Refining the Questions for Question Evolution day.” It’s in the spirit of these articles that I offer a few more questions (and challenges to evolutionists) for Question Evolution Day. Continue Reading

Testimony of the Golden Gate: Bridges, Body Parts and Intelligent Design

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The Golden Gate Bridge

I enjoy looking for evidences of the Creator imprinted on his creation when I travel. This past summer we had the opportunity of visiting San Francisco where we saw the awe inspiring Golden Gate bridge and I snapped the above picture.  I was also reminded of the Creator – in an indirect way. Obviously God didn’t directly build the bridge – but the bridge is a reminder of the design inherent in His creation. Let me explain. It is abundantly evident that the Golden Gate bridge is intelligently designed. But beyond that, not only is it intelligently designed,  it’s clear it is also irreducibly complex. And irreducible complexity is an undeniable evidence of intelligent design..

Michael Behe introduced the concept of irreducible complexity in his book “Darwin’s Black Box, and defined it this way: Continue Reading

Can you find what you deny exists? Three Guarantees

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Teapot on a cone

I recently read an article by Jonathan Witt –  science writer and co-author of “Heretic: One Scientist’s Journey from Darwin to Design” which describes bioengineer Matti Leisola’s (the other co-author) gradual rejection of Darwinism and embrace of intelligent design. In his article titled “A Father, an Atheist Son, and a Darwin Heretic” Witt describes the attempt of a father to get his son – a scientist and an atheist – to consider the claims of intelligent design by reading Witt’s and Leisola’s book “Heretic.”

The son rejects even reading the book with a number of excuses: Continue Reading

Proteins, Panspermia, Predictions and Pavlov’s Scientists

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Complex Organics Bubble up from Ocean-world Enceladus

Pavlov and his Scientists
 “In the Spring a young man’s fancy lightly turns to thoughts of love” Alfred, Lord Tennyson famously wrote.[1] Likewise the hearts of scientists involved in origin of life studies turn to hopes of finding life somewhere in the universe other than earth. But theirs is not a “lightly turning” – it’s more like a conditioned response – the type of response you get from Pavlov’s dogs. Continue Reading

Detecting Design and Entropy on a Beach

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We had the pleasure in vacationing in Jamaica this past summer. Of course we made it to the beach where I waded in and sat, enjoying the warm waters. As I looked around at the sand and rocks beneath the water I found a rock which  appeared to have the impressions of a leaf embedded in it. With the possibility of having found a fossil I was, of course motivated to look for more. I found another one which appeared to have impressions of some type in it. I made a mental note to find someone knowledgeable about fossils to take a look at these to confirm whether these are what I thought they are.

As I continued to look for rocks in the warm water I came across an item I didn’t expect to find. It was perfectly square, about 1/8″ inch thick, flat on the bottom with beveled edges on top. It was blue with white speckles on top with a shiny coat covering the top, and solid white on the bottom. Continue Reading

Evolutionists: blind to the obvious – UnMasking Mistakes in Memes of Evolution – Part 4

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Fossil trilobites

Like the Pharisees of Jesus day, evolutionists make claims that deny obvious truths, unaware that their claims refute their own position and arguments. Let me pause here to make sure you catch the point:

 Evolutionists are denying obvious truths.

In fact, the truths being denied are so obvious, one typically doesn’t even bother with a defense. If someone denies that birds fly and fish swim, do you bother with a defense, or do you simply tell them to go look at birds and fish? But Jesus took care to answer even foolish accusations, so let us do likewise. Continue Reading

The complex science that explains consciousness: Faith

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Consciousness poses a serious, and in fact insurmountable problem for  materialist scientists – which includes of course materialist evolutionists.[1]  Brain researcher Robert Lawrence Kuhn captures the problem succinctly: “Try as I have for decades, I cannot remotely imagine how physical matter can become mentally aware.”[2] By “mentally aware” he is referring to consciousness, which he defines as:

“Consciousness is what mental activity feels like inside. The private inner experience of sensation, emotion and thought.”[3]
Robert Lawrence Kuhn

Which is probably the easiest way to view consciousness.[4] But this easy to understand concept of consciousness masks a fundamental conundrum: matter is not conscious. If matter is all that exists, and thus people are no more than intricately structured matter, why are we conscious?

The problem is akin to the origin of life for such materialists. The origin of life problem, briefly stated, is  how did non-living matter – an arrangement of molecules – become a living creature? The problem of consciousness is very similar:  How does an arrangement of non-consciousness matter become conscious? For  the record, materialists have no answer to either question.

Before looking further into the problem, we need to be clear on how  insurmountable a problem consciousness is for those who believe there is nothing beyond the material world. Famed former atheist turned theist Anthony Flew highlighted the problem through the means of  a thought experiment: Continue Reading