Fuzzy Words

[I got the idea for this article from This Episode of the Creation Today Show]

Newspapers, magazines and scientific articles are constantly writing about the latest ‘proof’ that Evolution is true. The headlines talk as if the newest discovery discussed in the article has finally put the truth of Evolution beyond all doubt. But when you read the article, will the facts support such strong claims?

First of all, no one besides God will ever be able to prove what happened before people came on the scene and began writing things down. Only those of us who believe the Bible will admit that the first people did write down what they saw and lived through! So it isn’t even possible to claim as absolute truth what the millions of years crowd wants to say.

Have a look at the words the article itself actually uses

It’s amazing how many imagination words you run into in an honest evolutionary article. Think of the kinds of words you might use if you don’t want your mom or dad to find out what really happened. You could say:

• Perhaps
• Might have
• Maybe
• Imagine if
• Possibly
• Could have
• Suggest
• Hypothetically

Get the idea? If you add these kinds of word you can say anything an make it sound attractive. The person listening isn’t going to ask questions like, “Is that even possible?” when you’re just saying, “maybe it happened like this.”

Unfortunately, books and articles written for kids don’t usually write so honestly

I once borrowed a book from the library about “feathered dinosaurs” to write about. I have studied the proper way to do non-fiction research, and the way the book handled the facts was appalling. They state flat out that these animals “lived between 230 million and 65 million years ago; started growing feathers;…” that one “was a fierce hunter; able to fight,” and so on

as if the author had been there and seen these things happen.

If someone wrote that way with so little evidence about a historical person, they would never get published.

But they don’t want kids to get the impression that we don’t really know if dinosaurs lived millions of years ago. They don’t want to admit that we can’t possibly know for sure what an extinct animal ate and how they lived just from their petrified bones. So they write as if what they are saying is a fact that no one could possibly argue with so you won’t either.

I found an article by National Geographic

talking about “The long curious extravagant evolution of feathers“. The author started out by admitting that “a bird wing is vastly more sophisticated than anything composed of sheet metal and rivets”, but then quickly turns to how strongly he believes “a simple switch in the wiring” transformed a reptile’s scales into the intricate interlocking network of feathers.

Feather barbs under the electron microscope

It was rather interesting reading about the constantly changing history of evolutionary thinking about feather evolution. What are the odds the current, confidently stated, ideas about their evolution will eventually meet the same fate? But since they’ve already determined to never admit nature points to a Creator, there will always be some sort of fanciful tale of how they imagine things evolved without God.

Here’s a list of the “Fuzzy Words” I found in the article talking about what is currently believed:

Thorny Devil lizard scales under the electron microscope

• the origin of feathers may have had nothing to do with the origin of flight
• Richard Prum of Yale University and Alan Brush of the University of Connecticut developed the idea that the transition from scales to feathers might have depended on a simple switch in the wiring
• only minor modifications would have been required
• This raised the astonishing possibility
• The origin of feathers could be pushed back further still if the “fuzz” found
• There’s an even more astonishing possibility
• the discovery of the same gene in alligators that is involved in building feathers in birds suggests that perhaps their ancestors did
• So perhaps the question to ask, say some scientists, is not how birds got their feathers, but how alligators lost theirs.
• If feathers did not evolve first for flight, what other advantage could they have provided the creatures that had them? Some paleontologists have argued that feathers could have started out as insulation. Theropods have been found with their forelimbs spread over nests, and they may have been using feathers to shelter their young.
• Another hypothesis has gained strength in recent years:
• The possibility that theropods evolved feathers for some kind of display
• Perhaps the males of the species flashed their handsome tails when courting females. Or perhaps both sexes used their stripes the way zebras use theirs
• Whatever the original purpose of feathers, they were probably around for millions of years before a single lineage of dinosaurs began to use them for flight.
• they may have been too weak for flight
• It’s possible that sexual selection drove the evolution of this extravagant plumage
• the extravagant feathers of Anchiornis may have been a bit of a drag
•  have found a way that Anchiornis could have overcome this problem
• If Sullivan and his colleagues are right, this crucial flight feature evolved long before birds took wing
• It now looks like bird flight was made possible by a whole string of such exaptations
• Perhaps, says Dial, the path the chick takes in development retraces the one its lineage followed in evolution

Whew, that’s a bunch of guesswork and imagination! When you take all these possibilities out of the picture, what are you actually left with?

Not much

Creationists also are careful with their words when doing scientific research. If we don’t have an eye witness statement about an issue we too will point to the facts and present possibilities built on our thinking about them. But, we have a firm foundation to start from, not the shifting sand of popular, godless human reasoning!

But I fear, lest by any means, as the serpent beguiled Eve through his subtilty, so your minds should be corrupted from the simplicity that is in Christ.  II Corinthians 11:3