Savant Syndrome

Posted by Jim on Jul 31, 2009
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I recently spent some fascinating time watching videos of people with savant syndrome. Generally, this is a condition whereby a person is very handicapped in many areas, but excels beyond the norm in another.
Stephen is called the living camera. He didn’t speak until he was 5 but at age 11 he drew a perfect aerial layout of the city of London after only seeing it one time. In this video, he was given a 45 minutes helicopter ride over Rome, a city he had never seen. Then he was given 3 days and 5 yards of paper to draw what he saw. When he finished, it was nearly perfect. Every building had the correct number of windows, all the pillars were there. The coliseum was almost like a photograph. His sister said he could have given it more detail if he had had more time!
Alonzo Clemons of Boulder, Colorado suffered a blow to the head as a child. This resulted in severe brain damage. He has no ability to read, write, or calculate and has difficulty talking. However, in a few minutes, he can sculpt any animal out of clay or wax, simply by seeing it one time in a picture. The form is all in his head.
Derek is blind and severely brain damaged, unable to do simple tasks like butter bread. However, at the piano, he can play any song he ever heard, and remember it too. This includes classical, popular, even TV commercial tunes.
The most famous savant is Kim Peek because he was the model for the movie Rain Man. He was born with severe brain damage. His 80+ year old father bathes and dresses him, and takes him to the public library each day where Kim reads books, fast, one page with one eye, and the other page with the other eye and remembers 98% of what he reads. He knows every city in the US, postal codes, area codes, zip codes, radio stations, all the presidents, their wives, all the Nassau accomplishments, etc. It’s hard to stump him on a history question. Give him any date in the last 2000 years and he will immediately tell you what day of the week it was on.
Daniel Tammet is unique. He has seemingly no handicaps though he had a very reclusive childhood. After a massage seizure as a child, Daniel was able to do amazing calculations in his head. Given the math problem 37 times itself 4 times, he gave the answer within a few seconds. Then he was given 13 divided by 97 and he worked it to 37 decimal places but said he could do it to 100!  He impressed an audience by reciting the first 22,500 decimals places for pi, taking over 5 hours and making no mistakes! Daniel sees each number as a shape, up to 10,000. So he says he is just matching the shapes to find the answer. He also knows 9 languages and, for the video, learned to converse in the difficult language of Icelandic in one week!
What does all this teach us besides the feeling of envy? The brain is much more powerful than we realize. These 100 savants in the world remind us of what Adam was like, and what we will be like in a glorified body. The savant declares that the brain is divinely designed, marred by the fall, but still able to declare God’s amazing power. (pictures available at evidenceofdesign.com)

More on Dating Methods

Posted by Jim on Jul 24, 2009
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Evolution demands an old earth and evolutionists routinely speak of billions of years as proven of modern dating methods. The truth is, no reliable dating method can account for billions of years for the existence of the earth of universe. Many of these methods are based on uniformitarian thinking, which means that catastrophes that would give the appearance of age have not existed. However, using this same logic, many dating methods indicate the universe, and this earth, are quite young. Previously we discussed how Radiocarbon dating works and why it indicates a young earth. Here are a few more.
Meteoritic dust. It is an accepted fact that 14 million tons of meteoritic dust falls to the earth each year. At this rate, if the earth were 5 billion years old, we would have 182 feet of this dust covering the earth. In fact, the amount of meteoritic dust we do have indicates the earth is only a few thousand years old.
Erosion. We know that 27.5 billion tons of sediment is being transported to the ocean every year. The total mass of sediments in the ocean is about 820 million billion tons. If this rate has continued constant, the earth could not be billions of years old. In fact, top soil erosion in the past would erode more quickly and, of course, a world wide flood described in the Bible would give appearance of age the earth didn’t have. Delta formations at the end of rivers like the Mississippi also indicate this process hasn’t been going on for millions of years at all.
Magnetic field of the earth. Over the past 170 years the strength of the earth’s magnetic field has been carefully measured. It has been decaying at a steady rate of a half-life every 1400 years. This means that 7000 years ago, it would be 32 times stronger. The outer reasonable limit would be 10,000 years, based on present decay rate.
Moon dust. The first fear in putting a man on the moon was that, since the moon had accumulated space dust for billions of years, the space craft would disappear in a cloud of dust. In fact, we know that only a fraction of an inch was found, consistent with the amount we would expect from a recent creation.
Decay of Niagara Falls. The present rate of recession of the Horseshoe Falls on the Niagara River is easy to measure. Based on this rate, and knowing where it began indicates it has only been eroding for a few thousand years.
Sun Shrinkage. The sun is shrinking at a rate of 0.1% per century or about 5 feet an hour. At this rate, if the sun is a few million years old, it would have been so large then, the heat would have destroyed all life on earth.
These and scores of other dating methods indicate the earth cannot possibly be as old as evolutions say. Therefore, insufficient time is available for evolutionary accidents to take place at all.

The American Alligator

Posted by Jim on Jul 17, 2009
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The last time I was in central Florida, I was surprised by the number of alligators that lived in the ponds and bogs that are everywhere. I was told they migrate from one to another, and children do not fear swimming in a water hole where an alligator resides, that is, on the other end of the pond, of course.
Alligators and crocodiles are often confused. In the US, if you spot one, unless you are in the southern tip of Florida, it is surely an alligator. The main difference is the bony ridge in front of the eyes on a crocodile, not found on the alligator.  The alligator is the one that looks like he’s smiling all the time. That is only appearance however.
The female alligator lays her eyes in private, on high ground away from others. Once a place is selected, she works at clearing an area 8 to 10 feet across. Then she gathers vegetation and begins piling it onto the spot. Layer after layer is bought in, and then she hollows out a place in the middle for her eggs. It takes her 3 days to make this nest but now it is ready. She lays 20-70 three-inch eggs in the center of this pile, then covers them completely. During the next 9-10 weeks, she will keep this vegetation moist, for the heat of decomposition of the dead plants keeps the eggs between 80 and 100 degrees, perfect for the baby’s development.
Each egg contains really two concentric shells. The outer hard shell will crack as the baby alligator grows. But the inner shell will flex and will need to be broken. A caruncle or egg-tooth has developed on the snout of the alligator, perfect for breaking through this shell. In short order, out of the 3 inch egg emerges an 8 inch alligator baby!
The baby immediately heads for the water and, since it already has several teeth, it is able to hunt and feed itself. However, it stays close to mother for the first two years of life, enjoying her protection.
With so many eggs hatching, it might seem surprising that alligators don’t take over the southern states. But in truth they have many enemies, so many, in fact, that perhaps only 1 alligator in 100 lives to be three years old.
If they do survive, by the time the male is 20 he is about 16 feet long, and the female about 10 feet long. They might live over 50 years if enemies don’t get them.
The hatching of alligator babies is another marvel of creation. While evolutions somehow try to relate eggs and hatching to similar skills in birds, there is obviously little other resemblance! Instead, why not admit the Creator had a perfect plan and used it for both.

The Carbon 14 Dating Method

Posted by Jim on Jul 10, 2009
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If you have paid any attention to earth dating methods, you have surely heard of carbon 14 dating, also called radiocarbon dating. It is a method of dating any object that was once alive for, if alive, it ingested carbon 14 during its life. Let me explain.
Normally carbon has an atomic weight of 12. If more than this, it is radioactive and tends to decay, losing particles until it becomes stable carbon 12. Carbon 14 is formed largely in the atmosphere when radiation from space strikes nitrogen 14 atoms in the atmosphere, making them into radioactive carbon 14. This carbon 14 then combines with oxygen to make radioactive carbon dioxide. About 21 pounds of carbon 14 are formed in the atmosphere each year.
You and I and all plants and animals alive are constantly taking in this carbon 14 while we are alive. But once something dies, it stops taking in radioactive carbon 14 and the present supply deteriorates. We know that the rate at which carbon 14 decays to become carbon 12 is half every 5730 years. So, for example, if something that was once alive now contains half as much carbon 14 as living things do today, we can assume that it is 5730 years old, right?
It’s not that simple. First, this assumes that when this thing was alive, the amount of radioactive carbon was the same as it is today. In fact, we don’t know what was the quantity of carbon 14 in the specimen when it died. We can only conjecture. Second, a catastrophe like the flood would have buried all vegetation, leaving a small quantity of carbon 12 compared with carbon 14. This would give the appearance of age as well. Third, this method assumes that the rate at which carbon 14 has formed in the atmosphere has always been constant. In fact, we know that the percent of carbon 14 to carbon 12 in the atmosphere is actually increasing at a steady rate. This would give an ancient specimen the appearance of age it didn’t have. Other problems also exist. To be truthful, only specimens younger than 3500 years can be dated accurately with this method.
But, for the sake of argument, let’s assume as many scientists do, that carbon 14 dating is accurate as stated. Since the half-life is only 5730 years, then by the 7th half-life, or 45,840 years, only 0.8% of the original carbon 14 would be left. Beyond this, it is immeasurably small. Therefore, this would mean to evolutionists that most of the samples of once living material tested would not have any evidence of carbon 14 present because most would be too old to measure, right?
The fact is, every substance once living still shows the presence of carbon 14 in it. This includes cave writing paint, bones, coal, you name it. This is a major problem to evolutionists! Why? Because for random accidents to account for the complexity of life we see today, huge amounts of time are required. In truth, carbon 14 dating supports the young earth hypothesis taught by Creationists.

The Octopus

Posted by Jim on Jul 03, 2009
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When you think of an octopus, you probably think of its 8 legs with suction cups on each one. But this usual sea creature is much more than that. Octopuses (or octopi) belong to the subspecies of mollusts called the cephalopods, meaning head to foot. This is because the octopus’ feet are attached to its head. The name ‘octopus’ means 8 feet because, even if the octopus loses one tentacle, it will grow another in a short time.
Octopuses live in all oceans. This salt water creature tends to be small in warm tropical waters and larger in colder waters. Largest one ever caught was 600 pounds, the tentacles spanning 33 feet! But usually they range from 50 to 90 pounds. Most only live to be 1 or 2 years old but some big ones live to be 4.
Each tentacle of an octopus contains a double row of 120 suckers each ranging in size from a pinhead to 2 ½ inches in diameter. With them he can not only grab his prey, but also taste it. The combined grip of these 8 arms exceeds 2000 pounds!
The octopus has no bones. The only hard part is the beak. Because of this, a 60 pound octopus can actually work its way through a 2 inch hole to escape.
The octopus produces a poison in its saliva. It is spit this into a wound inflicted by the beak. This is lethal to crabs, lobsters, and eels but only burns the skin of people. Lunch is then passed by the tentacles to the mouth to be ingested.
The octopus has three ways of defense against enemies. First, the octopus has three layers of skin containing a total of 2 million sacs of red, yellow, and blue coloring. An adult octopus can swell selected sacs 60 times their original size making it appear to change color. With this method of camouflage, the octopus can match its surroundings by mixing the colors, even matching stripes and polka dots!
The second defense is its ability to produce a black ink. When its worst enemy, the moray eel, comes to attack, the octopus will squirt just the right amount of this ink into the water to feign the size and shape of its body. This ink also temporarily stuns the eel’s ability to smell. While the eel is attacking the ink, the octopus is departing another direction. Its third defense is a jet propulsion system. By shooting water through a funnel shaped opening, the animals is propelled backwards quickly.
It is difficult to imagine how an animal like this could evolve such an offensive and defensive set of mechanisms. How could it develop the ability to protect itself by changing color and match its surroundings so perfectly? How would it develop black ink to fool enemies, or the sac where water is stored for the purpose of quick jet propulsion escape? Is not this another marvelous example of God’s creative power?