This month we will discuss several notable findings in the recent scientific literature that have relevance to the creation issue. The topics were selected by the author and are by no means exhaustive. Background reading for some of the topics is provided in the references.

Fossils

Chitin. Wikipedia < https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chitin > Accessed 2018 Dec 10

The authors speculated that an associated saturated fatty acid layer protected the material from water, enzymes, and other organisms.

Review of Heretic: One Scientist’s Journey from Darwin to Design

by Matti Leisola and Jonathan Witt

Heretic 1 by Matt Leisola and Jonathan Witt is a very accessible up-to-date summary of the concepts, history, discoveries, and predictions of the intelligent design (ID) movement. The book is also the story of a scientist’s (Leisola) intellectual and vocational journey from belief in Darwinism to ID. The authors touch on the works of William Dembski, Michael Behe, Stephen Meyer, Jonathan Wells, A. E. Wilder-Smith, Dean Kenyon, Philip Johnson, James Tour, Richard Sternberg, Michael Denton, Ann Gauger, and many others. If you were only going to read one book on ID, this is it.

Have you ever heard that “All scientists accept evolution as a proven fact” or “real scientists don’t believe in God?” Did you believe it? This article will show just how untrue these statements are. The article does not go into scientific proofs or disproofs of evolution; rather, it focuses on statements from scientists about evolution, creation, and God.

We will be looking at statements from various scientists, including the inventor of the Magnetic Resonance Imaging (MRI) scanner and Nobel Prize winners. The result may surprise you.

Most of the quotes here came from two websites:

1. http://nobelists.net, the site of an online book, titled 50 Nobel Laureates and Other Great Scientists Who Believe in God.

2. http://www.dissentfromdarwin.org, the site of a petition that questions evolution, which is signed by hundreds of PhD scientists and MDs who are professors of medicine.

In their new book, The Grand Design, Stephen Hawking and Leonard Mlodinow defend scientific determinism, which they define as follows:

Given the state of our universe at one time, a complete set of laws fully determines both the future and the past. This would exclude the possibility of miracles or an active role for God. …It is, in fact, the basis of all modern science, and a principle that is important throughout this book. A scientific law is not a scientific law if it holds only when some supernatural being does not intervene (30). 1

They essentially argue that the laws of nature must hold true in all cases without being overridden by divine intervention. Scientific laws must operate without exceptions, except “under a stipulated set of conditions (28).”

A Roman portrait bust believed to be that of Josephus, from Plagnieux, P. 'Les sculptures Romanes' Dossiers d'Archéologie

Josephus (AD 37–c. 100) was a first-century Jewish historian and apologist of priestly and royal ancestry who survived and recorded the destruction of Jerusalem in AD 70. Josephus’s two most important works are The Jewish War (c. 75) and Antiquities of the Jews (c. 94). The Jewish War recounts the Jewish revolt against Rome (66–70). Antiquities of the Jews recounts the history of the world from a Jewish perspective. Josephus fought the Romans in the First Jewish-Roman War of 66–73 as a Jewish military leader in Galilee. He eventually surrendered to the Romans. In 71 AD, he arrived in Rome, becoming a Roman citizen.

His works are significant because of what they reveal about ancient scholarship. For example, he shows that not only primitive tribes had flood legends but also scholars from the most advanced societies. This is significant because advanced societies had written records that would preserve the truth reliably over long periods of time. For primitive tribes, one can imagine their history gradually modifying over many generations, but not so with advanced societies possessing writing.