WHY THERE WAS NO OCTOBER 5, 1582
Genesis 1:14
"And God said, Let there be lights in the firmament of the heaven to divide the day from the night; and let them be for signs, and for seasons, and for days, and years."
Did you know that there was no October 5, 1582? There wasn't even an October 6 that year. Why? The story begins with the Earth's orbit. A year is exactly 365 days, 5 hours 48 minutes and 46 seconds longer. This means that every year when the day of your birth arrives, the Earth is not exactly where it was in its orbit on the day you were born. Though the eleven-minute error is small, it does add up over hundreds of years.
The Julian calendar, with its leap day every four years, helped correct this problem to some extent, but not completely. That's because the year is not quite 365 and one-quarter days long. Over the 1,600 years of its existence, the minutes and seconds not reflected in the Julian calendar added up. So in 1582, Pope Gregory XIII announced refinements to the calendar by adding leap years. Moreover, every 400 years, a year ending in "00" received a leap day. This system keeps the calendar accurate to one day every 3,300 years. The old calendar had become inaccurate by ten days over its 1,600 years of use. To correct it, Pope Gregory declared that October 4, 1582, was to be followed by October 15!
The fact that man has always been making fairly accurate calendars reflects his intelligence, given to him from the beginning by an intelligent Creator.
Father, help me use my time in your service and to Your glory. Amen.
"Fixing the Calendar," Discover, 2/00. Painting: Pope Gregory XIII. (PD)
Genesis 1:14
"And God said, Let there be lights in the firmament of the heaven to divide the day from the night; and let them be for signs, and for seasons, and for days, and years."
Did you know that there was no October 5, 1582? There wasn't even an October 6 that year. Why? The story begins with the Earth's orbit. A year is exactly 365 days, 5 hours 48 minutes and 46 seconds longer. This means that every year when the day of your birth arrives, the Earth is not exactly where it was in its orbit on the day you were born. Though the eleven-minute error is small, it does add up over hundreds of years.
The Julian calendar, with its leap day every four years, helped correct this problem to some extent, but not completely. That's because the year is not quite 365 and one-quarter days long. Over the 1,600 years of its existence, the minutes and seconds not reflected in the Julian calendar added up. So in 1582, Pope Gregory XIII announced refinements to the calendar by adding leap years. Moreover, every 400 years, a year ending in "00" received a leap day. This system keeps the calendar accurate to one day every 3,300 years. The old calendar had become inaccurate by ten days over its 1,600 years of use. To correct it, Pope Gregory declared that October 4, 1582, was to be followed by October 15!
The fact that man has always been making fairly accurate calendars reflects his intelligence, given to him from the beginning by an intelligent Creator.
Father, help me use my time in your service and to Your glory. Amen.
"Fixing the Calendar," Discover, 2/00. Painting: Pope Gregory XIII. (PD)
IT PAYS TO HAVE A SECOND OR THIRD JOB
Genesis 1:25
"And God made the beast of the earth after his kind, and cattle after their kind, and every thing that creepeth upon the earth after his kind: and God saw that it was good."
Rove beetles are found in the rain forests of Costa Rica and have three different ways of making a living. Their largest prey are the blow flies that frequent animal dung. The beetles wait on the dung for a blowfly to land, then stalk their prey with the skill of a cat. They can even capture their prey in the air if it tries to escape. But dung doesn't last long in the rain forest, because dung beetles quickly haul it off. So, as a second career, rove beetles also frequent corpses of dead animals. These are blowfly favorites, so rove beetles can make a good living on these, too. But the rain forest has many creatures that clean up after a corpse, so they don't last long on the forest floor either. The rove beetle thus needs a third career.
That third career is carried out on leaves. Flies have little incentive to visit leaves. So the rove beetle has a special strategy to succeed in its third career. First, it positions itself on the leaf so that it looks like an innocent bird dropping. but smells like ripe and rotting fruit. This attracts fruit flies, which will approach the rove beetle unaware until it is snatched for lunch.
While the rove beetle and its way of life are not attractive to us, it is an important part of the cleanup crew in the rain forest. It, too, is part of God's design to make His complex Creation work.
Dear Father, I praise You because everything You do is good. Amen.
"Masters of Deception," Natural History, 11/94, pp.18 23. Photo: Rove beetle. Courtesy of © Entomart.
Genesis 1:25
"And God made the beast of the earth after his kind, and cattle after their kind, and every thing that creepeth upon the earth after his kind: and God saw that it was good."
Rove beetles are found in the rain forests of Costa Rica and have three different ways of making a living. Their largest prey are the blow flies that frequent animal dung. The beetles wait on the dung for a blowfly to land, then stalk their prey with the skill of a cat. They can even capture their prey in the air if it tries to escape. But dung doesn't last long in the rain forest, because dung beetles quickly haul it off. So, as a second career, rove beetles also frequent corpses of dead animals. These are blowfly favorites, so rove beetles can make a good living on these, too. But the rain forest has many creatures that clean up after a corpse, so they don't last long on the forest floor either. The rove beetle thus needs a third career.
That third career is carried out on leaves. Flies have little incentive to visit leaves. So the rove beetle has a special strategy to succeed in its third career. First, it positions itself on the leaf so that it looks like an innocent bird dropping. but smells like ripe and rotting fruit. This attracts fruit flies, which will approach the rove beetle unaware until it is snatched for lunch.
While the rove beetle and its way of life are not attractive to us, it is an important part of the cleanup crew in the rain forest. It, too, is part of God's design to make His complex Creation work.
Dear Father, I praise You because everything You do is good. Amen.
"Masters of Deception," Natural History, 11/94, pp.18 23. Photo: Rove beetle. Courtesy of © Entomart.
ARE WE AS GOOD AS IT GETS?
Proverbs 16:18
"Pride goeth before destruction, and an haughty spirit before a fall."
Are we, as human beings, as good as it gets? According to several influential evolutionary scientists, human beings are as good as it gets, and evolution has stopped for us. Some dispute this, saying that human evolution is still happening, but it's invisible. Although none of this sounds very much like science, such claims have fueled new debate among evolutionists.
These debates are puzzling, considering man's supposed evolutionary history. According to evolution, modern man evolved in a blink of evolutionary history from some ape like creature. As we have pointed out many times, if evolution and its time scales were true, virtually every generation of our ancestors would have had to have evolved improvements over the last generation. Why would evolution have stopped so suddenly? Has modern medicine, which saves even the weak, stopped evolution? Mutations are also decreasing among us, they point out. In the primitive past, women had children throughout their reproductive life. Older women give birth to children with more mutations. But today, women have their children when young, then stop reproducing.
The claim that we are as good as it gets reveals the pride of earthly thinking inherent in evolution. In truth, we can only be as good as we can get through the forgiveness of sins that comes by grace, through faith in Jesus Christ.
Lord, I thank You for forgiveness, and I look forward to the perfection I shall realize in heaven. Amen.
"Are we the best our species will get?" Toronto Star, 12/26/99, p. J7. Photo: Human being at seventh week of pregnancy. (PD)
Proverbs 16:18
"Pride goeth before destruction, and an haughty spirit before a fall."
Are we, as human beings, as good as it gets? According to several influential evolutionary scientists, human beings are as good as it gets, and evolution has stopped for us. Some dispute this, saying that human evolution is still happening, but it's invisible. Although none of this sounds very much like science, such claims have fueled new debate among evolutionists.
These debates are puzzling, considering man's supposed evolutionary history. According to evolution, modern man evolved in a blink of evolutionary history from some ape like creature. As we have pointed out many times, if evolution and its time scales were true, virtually every generation of our ancestors would have had to have evolved improvements over the last generation. Why would evolution have stopped so suddenly? Has modern medicine, which saves even the weak, stopped evolution? Mutations are also decreasing among us, they point out. In the primitive past, women had children throughout their reproductive life. Older women give birth to children with more mutations. But today, women have their children when young, then stop reproducing.
The claim that we are as good as it gets reveals the pride of earthly thinking inherent in evolution. In truth, we can only be as good as we can get through the forgiveness of sins that comes by grace, through faith in Jesus Christ.
Lord, I thank You for forgiveness, and I look forward to the perfection I shall realize in heaven. Amen.
"Are we the best our species will get?" Toronto Star, 12/26/99, p. J7. Photo: Human being at seventh week of pregnancy. (PD)
EVOLUTION OF BATS GETS MONKEYED UP
Psalm 33:6
"By the word of the LORD were the heavens made; and all the host of them by the breath of his mouth."
We have noted many times the different ways in which bats defy evolutionary explanations. For their echolocation systems to evolve, bats had to develop simultaneously the ability to make high pitched sounds, hear those sounds, and figure out what they mean. How did they eat before they evolved these abilities? Then there is the problem of evolving typical mammalian forearms into bat wings without crippling the creature in the process. Even evolutionists admit that the evolution of all these features even once is highly unlikely.
Bats are divided into two sub orders. Smaller bats, like the free tail bats of Mexico, are classified in the sub order of Microchiroptera. Large bats, like the fruit bat, are classified into the sub order of Megachiroptera. The brains of the larger bats have very different visual pathways than those in smaller bats. The visual pathways of the larger bats are more like those of primates! But no evolutionist would dare suggest that they evolved from primates. The second complication is that this means that both small and large bats could not have evolved from a common ancestor. It further means that all the unlikely features of bats had to have evolved at least twice, if evolution were true.
The Bible offers a simple explanation for the design of the bat and the differences between their brains. They were made by God using whatever designs He knew would be best for that creature's way of life, without regard for later, humanly devised classification systems.
Lord, thank You for Your Word that made life and gives life now. Amen.
"Bats: Sophistication in Miniature," Creation, 12/98 2/99, pp. 28 31. Photo: Giant golden crowned fruit bat. Courtesy of LDC, Inc. Foundation. (CC-BY-SA 3.0)
Psalm 33:6
"By the word of the LORD were the heavens made; and all the host of them by the breath of his mouth."
We have noted many times the different ways in which bats defy evolutionary explanations. For their echolocation systems to evolve, bats had to develop simultaneously the ability to make high pitched sounds, hear those sounds, and figure out what they mean. How did they eat before they evolved these abilities? Then there is the problem of evolving typical mammalian forearms into bat wings without crippling the creature in the process. Even evolutionists admit that the evolution of all these features even once is highly unlikely.
Bats are divided into two sub orders. Smaller bats, like the free tail bats of Mexico, are classified in the sub order of Microchiroptera. Large bats, like the fruit bat, are classified into the sub order of Megachiroptera. The brains of the larger bats have very different visual pathways than those in smaller bats. The visual pathways of the larger bats are more like those of primates! But no evolutionist would dare suggest that they evolved from primates. The second complication is that this means that both small and large bats could not have evolved from a common ancestor. It further means that all the unlikely features of bats had to have evolved at least twice, if evolution were true.
The Bible offers a simple explanation for the design of the bat and the differences between their brains. They were made by God using whatever designs He knew would be best for that creature's way of life, without regard for later, humanly devised classification systems.
Lord, thank You for Your Word that made life and gives life now. Amen.
"Bats: Sophistication in Miniature," Creation, 12/98 2/99, pp. 28 31. Photo: Giant golden crowned fruit bat. Courtesy of LDC, Inc. Foundation. (CC-BY-SA 3.0)
GREEK PYRAMIDS
John 7:38
"He that believeth on me, as the scripture hath said, out of his belly shall flow rivers of living water."
When one hears the term "pyramid builders," one usually thinks of the Egyptians, Incas or the Aztecs, whose famous pyramids were built for religious purposes. You may not know that the Greeks also built pyramids. But as we might expect of the Greeks, their pyramids served a practical, everyday purpose.
Thirteen Greek pyramids have been identified; all are about 2,500 years old. The forty-foot-high pyramids are located in the hills around the cities of Theodosia and the Crimea. They are constructed of loose limestone rock, through which the arid wind of the region could blow. As the cooling evening wind blew through the loose arrangement of rock, moisture in the air would condense on the rocks. The condensation would flow to the base of the pyramid where it was collected and piped to the city for use. A study of the clay pipes running from the pyramids led one archaeologist to calculate that each pyramid could produce a surprising 14,000 gallons of water per day!
These ingenious and practical pyramids reflect the truth that man has always been intelligent. Perhaps you didn't even know that water could be condensed from the atmosphere in usable amounts in this way. But the pyramids meant temporary survival in the dry climate. Permanent survival comes only from the living water that Christ gives through the forgiveness of sins. His water gives eternal life.
Lord, help me share the living water You have given me with others. Amen.
"Ancient Greek Pyramids?" Science Frontiers, William Corliss, p. 17. Photo: The best-known Greek pyramid is the Pyramid of Hellinikon. Courtesy of Schuppi. (CC-BY-SA 2.0 and GFDL)
John 7:38
"He that believeth on me, as the scripture hath said, out of his belly shall flow rivers of living water."
When one hears the term "pyramid builders," one usually thinks of the Egyptians, Incas or the Aztecs, whose famous pyramids were built for religious purposes. You may not know that the Greeks also built pyramids. But as we might expect of the Greeks, their pyramids served a practical, everyday purpose.
Thirteen Greek pyramids have been identified; all are about 2,500 years old. The forty-foot-high pyramids are located in the hills around the cities of Theodosia and the Crimea. They are constructed of loose limestone rock, through which the arid wind of the region could blow. As the cooling evening wind blew through the loose arrangement of rock, moisture in the air would condense on the rocks. The condensation would flow to the base of the pyramid where it was collected and piped to the city for use. A study of the clay pipes running from the pyramids led one archaeologist to calculate that each pyramid could produce a surprising 14,000 gallons of water per day!
These ingenious and practical pyramids reflect the truth that man has always been intelligent. Perhaps you didn't even know that water could be condensed from the atmosphere in usable amounts in this way. But the pyramids meant temporary survival in the dry climate. Permanent survival comes only from the living water that Christ gives through the forgiveness of sins. His water gives eternal life.
Lord, help me share the living water You have given me with others. Amen.
"Ancient Greek Pyramids?" Science Frontiers, William Corliss, p. 17. Photo: The best-known Greek pyramid is the Pyramid of Hellinikon. Courtesy of Schuppi. (CC-BY-SA 2.0 and GFDL)
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