Creation Headlines is a regular feature on our weekly online broadcast Creation Conversations (check out our YouTube channel here). Some of the recent headline stories are included here for your enjoyment.
The Evolution of Kissing
An evolutionary vestigial action – or unique human characteristic?
The evolution of kissing has been suggested by researchers to have evolved from sucking parasites off each other. A paper in the Journal of Evolutionary Anthropology has looked at the various theories for the evolution of the human kiss. Is it a left-over of chewing up food and transferring it to another individual without teeth, or as this study suggests, is it a way to clear one’s mouth of debris and parasites collected after grooming one another? – A practice that’s apparently observed in chimpanzees.
Researchers in this attempt at serious scientific research, conclude kissing is a “vestigial action” – that humans no longer need for hygienic purposes, but have retained as an evolutionary hangover. The kiss as a sign of affection between people of various relationships – is seen on many occasions throughout the Bible including numerous examples in the first book Genesis. The earliest known evidence of kissing in humans outside of the Bible comes from Mesopotamian art which suggests that it is a very early behaviour of humans.
We suggest that an evolution-based worldview will always struggle to explain actions such as kissing or laughing because they are unique human characteristics reflecting unique inter-personal emotions built into us by our creator. We also recommend that next time you want to be affectionate with your special person that you do NOT suggest you spot a parasite on them that you would like to remove or you might just cop something else in the kisser.
Claims – Plate Tectonics Gave Rise to Life
A thimble-full of evidence
A Livescience News report asks “did plate tectonics give rise to life”? The report refers to new groundbreaking research on Zircons which are very hardy minerals that don’t melt at mantle temperatures. Trouble is, that the total number of these that we have, measures less than a thimble full.
Nevertheless, these Zircons apparently indicate that the earth had water in the very early stages of its existence (sounds very Biblical). But the researchers speculate, [and speculation is a major component of this research], that if there was early water, there may have been early tectonics – and therefore tectonics and cycling of nutrients may have been an important factor in the appearance of life.
But Christians need not fear that this thimble-full of sand mixed with a good dose of wishful thinking, has done away with the need for a Creator. As one skeptical professor of geoscience Mark Harrison (formerly of UCLA) has noted: “The evidence is pretty minimal” and he worries that scientists are over-confident in their claims. He said the last thing we need is a new form of groupthink based on, literally, a thimble-full of sand grains,”
It’s great to hear a scientist acknowledging group think, but let us now extend that criticism to the whole idea that life can spontaneously arise – in the first place.
Evolution Stuck in the Mud
Humans and Gorillas together on a mudflat walk
Now to Kenya, where scientists have discovered footprints of humans and gorillas together in rocks they believe to be 1.5million years old. Well, they do say that one is a footprint of human-like Homo erectus, and the other is a footprint of gorilla-like Paranthropus boisei – but let’s not split hairs. What we are intrigued to know, is how does one distinguish between the human-like footprints of Homo erectus and Homo sapiens – or between the two types of gorillas?
What the evidence actually shows us is that humans and gorillas have always walked around in the same period of time, and this is supported by the fact that other footprints found in the study site included wart-hogs, antelopes and horses. An interesting find, but from an evolutionary point of view – nothing to see here folks.
Forgetting is an Evolutionary Advantage
Don’t forget, or Do forget?
And finally, an article reported in The Conversation – that really is worth forgetting. Psychologists have suggested that the art of forgetting is an evolutionary advantage. If you didn’t forget things and replace it with new information you might just overload your brain or get yourself in a spot of bother. The report cites an example of early humans who regularly visit a waterhole only to one day chance upon a bear down there.
You need to forget that going to the waterhole is a good idea and replace it with a memory of danger -or you might just be eaten by that bear next visit. Trouble is, you need to remember that the bear is dangerous in the first place – or you will soon become extinct, because the bear certainly hasn’t forgotten that you are yummy.
But seriously, despite great research on what drives memories, whenever scientists try to add evolutionary story-telling to the origins of complex features, they are denigrating the master designer who put them there in the first place. One might say these researchers are forgetting their place in creation. And the Bible says in Romans 1 that they are deliberately forgetting the Creator.
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Creation Research News 18 December 2024