* Baraminology Author in Studio: Real Science Radio interviews Dr. Roger Sanders of Bryan College. What's baraminology? It's a furtherance of Adam's first task, which was to name the animals, into a classification of living things within the framework of the created kinds as described in Genesis. The anti-creationist National Center for Science Education begrudgingly states, in an article by Alan Gishlick, that creationist researchers including Dr. Sanders, "practice a form of systematics, called 'baraminology', and for creationist science it is surprisingly rigorous and internally consistent." RSR is happy to accept that compliment on behalf of creationists and reminds our audience of Bob's debate with the NCSE president Eugenie Scott that you can watch on DVD or listen to right here on Real Science Radio at KGOV.com. Also briefly discussed was biogeography which studies the dispersion of animals around the world, where Darwinists are beginning to more readily agree with creationists about the transport of countless animals far distances across ocean currents on floating log mats (with the biblical creationists alone acknowledging that this occurred after the global flood, all within less than the past 5,000 years). Update: In 2012 for financial reasons Bryan College closed their Center for Origins Research.
* Is there a Genetic Bottleneck in Land Animals? Because a global flood destroyed almost all land animals and birds only thousands of years ago, Bob asked Dr. Sanders if marine animals have been shown to have greater genetic diversity than bird and land animals. Dr. Sanders recalled that a study done on land and marine turtles showed greater genetic diversity among sea turtles. Evolutionists believe that sea turtles evolved from land-dwelling creatures, so if evolution were true, genetically we would expect to see the opposite of what we expect to see from the perspective of a recent global flood. This Turtle Topic reminds RSR of one of our recurring themes, that the fossil records documents stasis rather than evolution, as in this quote from Bob Strauss on turtle evolution: "the basic turtle body plan arose very early in the history of life (during the late Triassic period), and has persisted pretty much unchanged down to the present day... Paleontologists still haven't identified the EXACT family of prehistoric reptiles that spawned modern turtles and tortoises, but they do know one thing: it wasn't the placodonts." [RSR capitalized the letters of "exact" to call attention to this common style of the misleading use of words by evolutionists.]
* Research Project and Genetic Diversity Prediction between Clean and Unclean Animals: Biblically speaking, the difference between "clean" and "unclean" animals is that the clean animals were acceptable by God for sacrifice, and so God instructed Noah to bring seven pairs of clean animals on the ark. As a result, even though some of these clean animals would have been offered up as sacrifices, a creationist prediction of Real Science Radio is that there may be greater genetic diversity among today's descendants of the clean land animals as compared to unclean land animals.
* As Few as 1,000 Pairs of Animals on the Ark: In 2013, Real Science Radio hosts Bob Enyart and Fred Williams discussed a wonderful article about the significant research project underway at Answers in Genesis (and other creation research centers) to identify the created kinds among land animals so that we can learn more about our Creator God, the creatures He made, and about how much work it would have been for Noah's family to clean up after all those critters! Of course, per God's criteria reported by Moses in Genesis, no bacteria, insects, plants, nor fish had to be brought onto the ark. So roughly speaking, by generally counting "kinds", and usually not "species", current research indicates that there could have been as few as 2,000 animals on the ark.
* Adam's First Task: "Out of the ground the LORD God formed every beast of the field and every bird of the air, and brought them to Adam to see what he would call them. And whatever Adam called each living creature, that was its name. So Adam gave names to all cattle, to the birds of the air, and to every beast of the field..." Genesis 2:19-20
[Post-show Note: Why would God's Word say that He brought the animals to Adam "to see what he would call them" if the future is exhaustively foreknown? If this topic interests you, check out the recent debate, Is the Future Settled or Open? between Bob Enyart and Dr. Larry Bray.]
* Carl Linnaeus, John Ray, and Classification: The fathers of biology and modern biological classification were creationists. The distinctions that enable the classification of living things appears itself to be powerful evidence for creation. For the groupings of biological organisms by body design distinguishes them from other groups by a discernible discontinuity. If evolution had actually happened, it happened not in discrete and enormous steps of differentiation, but by producing a seamless continuum of organisms. And just as the fossil record is missing the mountains intermediary stages that should dominate it's catalogs, so too living creatures should display widespread continuity.
* Two Classification Quotes from Creation.com: On molecular biology, "Many hoped that molecular genetics would confirm evolution. It did not. It confirms taxonomic distances between organisms, but not the postulated phylogenetic sequences. It confirmed Linnaeus, not Darwin." And about John Ray and Carl Linnaeus: "John Ray was a committed Christian and brilliant biologist of the seventeenth century—credited with defining the term ‘species’ as a group of organisms that can interbreed to form fertile offspring. Carl Linnaeus (Latin form of his Swedish name, von Linné) was responsible for founding taxonomy in the 18th century, the classification of all living things into a hierarchy, with genus and species names at the bottom. Initially, they both erred in their belief that species were fixed, that none had been lost since creation and that new species could not arise. Later in their lives, both Ray and Linnaeus made observations that caused them to modify their position to one that allowed speciation by a combination of degenerative changes and/or cross-breeding." Evolutionists exploit the creationists' initial erroneous view of fixity, a view influenced by the classical (destructive) bias toward immutability from Plato and through Augustine and Calvin. Yet if absolutely immutability were true then Isaiah 63:8 would be false, where God says, "I became your Savior" (Isa. 63:8), and He also couldn't become our Creator, nor could God the Son become eternally embodied. See also kgov.com/attributes.
* Notes from Dr. Sanders Presentation at the Rocky Mountain Creation Fellowship:
- Whereas today's 10,000 species of grasses were preserved from before the flood, all 175 species of horses descended from one pair in the last 4,500 years since the global flood.
- This year the Journal of Evolutionary Biology published an article by Dr. Todd Wood who is the director of the Center for Origins Research at Bryan College where Dr. Sanders works.
- The modern system classifying living things has prefaced the traditional categories with "domain," so that there is Domain, Kingdom, Phylum, Class, Order, Family, Genus, Species.
- The mainstream placing of species into the classification system has located perhaps 60% of the created kinds at the level of "Family," including for example the cat family.
- Evolutionists place the other created kinds either above or below that level, with for example the water fowl created kind classified higher (class or order) and the created kind hominid Australopithecus lower, at the species level.
- Apparently, dandelions can become trees on islands.
- Scientists have genetically modified a small plant of just few inches in height, to repress a single gene, and it has now become a wooded tree.
- Dogs and foxes have the same genes on different chromosomes, which probably occurred during the rapid diversification in the early post-flood period.
- By determining created kinds, and then listing the animals mentioned in Genesis and Job (like horses, camels, wolves, donkeys, etc.), the rate of diversification shortly after the Flood can be estimated.
- And from Dr. Sanders' paper on a quick method for developing a cognitum system, "biologists can… identify and systematize cognita quickly… because God created organisms to be perceived by humans who were created to recognize and sort easily by 'gestalt.'" Darwin had a similar hunch only without attributing the scientist's ability to God, writing, "Hence, in determining whether a form should be ranked as a species or a variety, the opinion of naturalists having sound judgment and wide experience seems the only guide to follow. We must, however, in many cases, decide by a majority of naturalists, for few well-marked and well-known varieties can be named which have not been ranked as species by at least some competent judges."
* Post-show Notes: Neither the medieval world nor the church ever taught that the Earth was flat or had four corners. These Bible verses imply a spherical Earth: Job 26:10; Proverbs 8:27; Ecclesiastes 1:6; Psalm 19:6; Isaiah 40:22. And the phrase, "the four corners of the earth," is a Jewish idiom that means the entirety of the earth just as the same Hebrew words mean the entirety of a nation when used in that context, as in Ezekiel 7:2: "the four corners of the land [of Israel]."
Today’s Resource: You'll just love the science DVDs, books, and written, audio and video debates offered by Real Science Radio! So have you browsed through our Science Department in the KGOV Store? Check out Bob most highly-recommended astronomy DVD, What You Aren't Being Told About Astronomy! And see Walt Brown’s great hardcover book, In the Beginning! You’ll also love Dr. Guillermo Gonzalez’ Privileged Planet (clip), and Illustra Media’s Unlocking the Mystery of Life (clip)! You can consider our BEL Science Pack; Bob Enyart’s Age of the Earth Debate; Bob's debate about Junk DNA with the infamous anti-creationist Dr. Eugenie Scott. And if you have young kids or grand kids, you owe it to them and to yourself to give them as a gift the SUPERB kids' radio programming on audio CD, Jonathan Park: The Adventure Begins! And Bob strongly recommends that you subscribe to CMI’s great Creation magazine and if you're up to reading more technical scientific articles, you'll also want to subscribe to CRSQ! And to order any of our BEL science products by phone, just call us at 1-800-8Enyart (836-9278).
* Special Editions of Real Science Radio:
- RSR's famous List of Not-So-Old Things
- Bob's debate with Christian Darwinist British author James Hannam
- PZ Myers blogs against Real Science Radio so we hit back with the PZ Trochlea Challenge
- Waiting for Darwin's Other Shoe: Science mag cover: Darwin Was Wrong on the Tree of Life
- Microbiologist in Studio: Creation Research Society Quarterly editor on new genetic findings
- Caterpillar Kills Atheism: describe how a bug could evolve to liquefy itself and then build itself into a flying creature
- And see the RSR Offer of $2,000 to get 16 letters of the alphabet in their correct places; $500 paid in 1998; $1,500 in 2010...