TASC

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How do living creatures change and adapt to new and changing environments? That is a question that has been debated by creationists and evolutionists for well over a century. When it comes to the large-scale changes like moving from molecule to man, the two camps hold to irreconcilable positions/answers to that basic question. Special creation and macroevolution (be it the Darwinian version or the “theistic” version) always have been, and continue to be, mutually exclusive. Either God created the original “created kinds” (or baramins) and one never “evolves” into another, or all of life has descended from an initial life-form as a result of major transformations driven by environmental/selective pressure, that is to say “natural selection” acting on random mutations.

That being said, for decades now, creationists and evolutionists alike have agreed on the validity of microevolution, the idea that small-scale changes (within a Biblical “created kind”) can occur naturally via the same process of “natural selection” acting on random mutations. Thus, up until recent times, most creationists would not question the mechanism that theoretically drove the change postulated by neo-Darwinism, just the unlimited extent of the change that was claimed by evolutionists. That is now beginning to change with the introduction of a brand new theory of biological design called “continuous environmental tracking” (CET) that has been proposed by scientists at the Institute for Creation Research (ICR). In contrast to the existing evolutionary paradigm of random mutations and natural selection, CET is engineering-based and non- random/non-mystical in nature. It holds much promise in providing design-based explanations for how creatures change and adapt to their environments. Before examining this new theory in detail, let’s first review and evaluate the old theory about “how creatures change/adapt” that has dominated the scientific literature for nearly a century.

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Charles Darwin and evolutionist Robert Weidersheim obviously did not have access to the vast knowledge base of biology that we enjoy today. The list of “vestigial or useless” organs has shrunken steadily over time as scientific knowledge increases. Organs such as adrenal glands and pituitary glands may have seemed to be without function to the early evolutionary proponents, but both organs are now known to be critical for the maintenance of life. The lowly appendix may have been easily placed in the same vestigial category, but current knowledge shows that the appendix does indeed have beneficial function.

“All I have to do is dre-e-e-eam, dream dream dream…” This song by the Everly Brothers in 1958 is probably the foundation of how modern society considers the phenomenon of dreams. Rodgers and Hammerstein popularized the concept of dreams coming true in their movie South Pacific, asking, “If you don’t have a dream, then how do you expect to have a dream to come true?” Disney movies constantly push the concept of wishes and dreams coming true if you believe hard enough. Dreams in the sense of these examples are basically a desire as to how things would come to be in reality. They are based on desires of the heart or mind. Visions while sleeping is another form of dreams that can affect our reality in ways we may or may not notice.

For centuries great thinkers have wrestled to understand the relationship between the physical human brain and the nonphysical mind—specifically how consciousness, thoughts, and feelings interact with the material of the brain itself. This paper is a review of a new framework known as informational realism (IR) that brings together ideas from information technology to help explain how we are as humans: our minds and our very understanding of reality as created by an omniscient god. This framework of IR is presented in the final chapter written by Dr. William Dembski in a recent book, Minding the Brain.

Exactly one hundred years ago last month was the date of the infamous “Scopes Monkey Trial.” To this date the public impression is that Bible-believing Christians, in general, and creationists, in particular, were shown to be unscientific, foolish buffoons at the trial. This interpretation of the trial was indubitably impressed on the public with the intentionally biased movie Inherit the Wind released some thirty-five years later in 1960 that was based on a fictional play by the same title written in 1955.