Falklands Harvest

Mark 13

1And as he went out of the temple, one of his disciples saith unto him, Master, see what manner of stones and what buildings are here!

2And Jesus answering said unto him, Seest thou these great buildings? there shall not be left one stone upon another, that shall not be thrown down.

3And as he sat upon the mount of Olives over against the temple, Peter and James and John and Andrew asked him privately,

4Tell us, when shall these things be? and what shall be the sign when all these things shall be fulfilled?

5And Jesus answering them began to say, Take heed lest any man deceive you:

6For many shall come in my name, saying, I am Christ; and shall deceive many.

7And when ye shall hear of wars and rumours of wars, be ye not troubled: for such things must needs be; but the end shall not be yet.

8For nation shall rise against nation, and kingdom against kingdom: and there shall be earthquakes in divers places, and there shall be famines and troubles: these are the beginnings of sorrows.

9But take heed to yourselves: for they shall deliver you up to councils; and in the synagogues ye shall be beaten: and ye shall be brought before rulers and kings for my sake, for a testimony against them.

10And the gospel must first be published among all nations.

11But when they shall lead you, and deliver you up, take no thought beforehand what ye shall speak, neither do ye premeditate: but whatsoever shall be given you in that hour, that speak ye: for it is not ye that speak, but the Holy Ghost.

12Now the brother shall betray the brother to death, and the father the son; and children shall rise up against their parents, and shall cause them to be put to death.

13And ye shall be hated of all men for my name's sake: but he that shall endure unto the end, the same shall be saved.

14But when ye shall see the abomination of desolation, spoken of by Daniel the prophet, standing where it ought not, (let him that readeth understand,) then let them that be in Judaea flee to the mountains:

15And let him that is on the housetop not go down into the house, neither enter therein, to take any thing out of his house:

16And let him that is in the field not turn back again for to take up his garment.

17But woe to them that are with child, and to them that give suck in those days!

18And pray ye that your flight be not in the winter.

19For in those days shall be affliction, such as was not from the beginning of the creation which God created unto this time, neither shall be.

20And except that the Lord had shortened those days, no flesh should be saved: but for the elect's sake, whom he hath chosen, he hath shortened the days.

21And then if any man shall say to you, Lo, here is Christ; or, lo, he is there; believe him not:

22For false Christs and false prophets shall rise, and shall shew signs and wonders, to seduce, if it were possible, even the elect.

23But take ye heed: behold, I have foretold you all things.

24But in those days, after that tribulation, the sun shall be darkened, and the moon shall not give her light,

25And the stars of heaven shall fall, and the powers that are in heaven shall be shaken.

26And then shall they see the Son of man coming in the clouds with great power and glory.

27And then shall he send his angels, and shall gather together his elect from the four winds, from the uttermost part of the earth to the uttermost part of heaven.

28Now learn a parable of the fig tree; When her branch is yet tender, and putteth forth leaves, ye know that summer is near:

29So ye in like manner, when ye shall see these things come to pass, know that it is nigh, even at the doors.

30Verily I say unto you, that this generation shall not pass, till all these things be done.

31Heaven and earth shall pass away: but my words shall not pass away.

32But of that day and that hour knoweth no man, no, not the angels which are in heaven, neither the Son, but the Father.

33Take ye heed, watch and pray: for ye know not when the time is.

34For the Son of Man is as a man taking a far journey, who left his house, and gave authority to his servants, and to every man his work, and commanded the porter to watch.

35Watch ye therefore: for ye know not when the master of the house cometh, at even, or at midnight, or at the cockcrowing, or in the morning:

36Lest coming suddenly he find you sleeping.

37And what I say unto you I say unto all, Watch.

Jeremiah 17

1The sin of Judah is written with a pen of iron, and with the point of a diamond: it is graven upon the table of their heart, and upon the horns of your altars;

2Whilst their children remember their altars and their groves by the green trees upon the high hills.

3O my mountain in the field, I will give thy substance and all thy treasures to the spoil, and thy high places for sin, throughout all thy borders.

4And thou, even thyself, shalt discontinue from thine heritage that I gave thee; and I will cause thee to serve thine enemies in the land which thou knowest not: for ye have kindled a fire in mine anger, which shall burn for ever.

5Thus saith the LORD; Cursed be the man that trusteth in man, and maketh flesh his arm, and whose heart departeth from the LORD.

6For he shall be like the heath in the desert, and shall not see when good cometh; but shall inhabit the parched places in the wilderness, in a salt land and not inhabited.

7Blessed is the man that trusteth in the LORD, and whose hope the LORD is.

8For he shall be as a tree planted by the waters, and that spreadeth out her roots by the river, and shall not see when heat cometh, but her leaf shall be green; and shall not be careful in the year of drought, neither shall cease from yielding fruit.

9The heart is deceitful above all things, and desperately wicked: who can know it?

10I the LORD search the heart, I try the reins, even to give every man according to his ways, and according to the fruit of his doings.

11As the partridge sitteth on eggs, and hatcheth them not; so he that getteth riches, and not by right, shall leave them in the midst of his days, and at his end shall be a fool.

12A glorious high throne from the beginning is the place of our sanctuary.

13O LORD, the hope of Israel, all that forsake thee shall be ashamed, and they that depart from me shall be written in the earth, because they have forsaken the LORD, the fountain of living waters.

14Heal me, O LORD, and I shall be healed; save me, and I shall be saved: for thou art my praise.

15Behold, they say unto me, Where is the word of the LORD? let it come now.

16As for me, I have not hastened from being a pastor to follow thee: neither have I desired the woeful day; thou knowest: that which came out of my lips was right before thee.

17Be not a terror unto me: thou art my hope in the day of evil.

18Let them be confounded that persecute me, but let not me be confounded: let them be dismayed, but let not me be dismayed: bring upon them the day of evil, and destroy them with double destruction.

19Thus said the LORD unto me; Go and stand in the gate of the children of the people, whereby the kings of Judah come in, and by the which they go out, and in all the gates of Jerusalem;

20And say unto them, Hear ye the word of the LORD, ye kings of Judah, and all Judah, and all the inhabitants of Jerusalem, that enter in by these gates:

21Thus saith the LORD; Take heed to yourselves, and bear no burden on the sabbath day, nor bring it in by the gates of Jerusalem;

22Neither carry forth a burden out of your houses on the sabbath day, neither do ye any work, but hallow ye the sabbath day, as I commanded your fathers.

23But they obeyed not, neither inclined their ear, but made their neck stiff, that they might not hear, nor receive instruction.

24And it shall come to pass, if ye diligently hearken unto me, saith the LORD, to bring in no burden through the gates of this city on the sabbath day, but hallow the sabbath day, to do no work therein;

25Then shall there enter into the gates of this city kings and princes sitting upon the throne of David, riding in chariots and on horses, they, and their princes, the men of Judah, and the inhabitants of Jerusalem: and this city shall remain for ever.

26And they shall come from the cities of Judah, and from the places about Jerusalem, and from the land of Benjamin, and from the plain, and from the mountains, and from the south, bringing burnt offerings, and sacrifices, and meat offerings, and incense, and bringing sacrifices of praise, unto the house of the LORD.

27But if ye will not hearken unto me to hallow the sabbath day, and not to bear a burden, even entering in at the gates of Jerusalem on the sabbath day; then will I kindle a fire in the gates thereof, and it shall devour the palaces of Jerusalem, and it shall not be quenched.

Darwin fossil hyper-hype
by Don Batten

Published: 23 May 2009(GMT+10)
Franzen et al., (Ref. 8)

The well-preserved fossil of Darwinius masillae,the subject of an orchestrated media campaign of hype. The length, with the tail, is about 90 cm (3 feet).

The orchestrated multimedia blitz over this fossil is almost unbelievable. The paleontologists even got Michael Bloomberg, Mayor of New York, to officiate at the public “launch” of Ida (the cute nickname for the fossil), when it was unveiled—like a new sculpture by a famous artist—to the assembled journalists.
Within days of the publication of the science journal paper, they have announced a book (The Link), a special website (The Link) devoted to the story and a feature-length documentary by Atlantic Productions (The Link). Sir David Attenborough wrote and narrated a special version for the BBC.1
They scheduled all these for broadcast/release within days of the publication of the paper. And it is all aimed at laymen; the general public.
Attenborough said, “This little creature is going to show us our connection with the rest of all mammals. The link they would have said until now is missing … it is no longer missing.”2 But note his careful wording. The layman, including most reporters, hears “they have found the link between humans and apes”, but Attenborough meant a possible link between primates and the rest of the animal kingdom. This duplicitous approach seems to be rather deliberate, and not just with Attenborough. The repeated emphasis on “The Link”, in all the marketing hoopla, reinforces this. This is the same sort of deceitful debating tactic as saying evolution means change, change occurs in organisms (example of loss of eyes in a cave fish, for example), therefore evolution (molecules to mankind) is a fact—see Don’t fall for the bait and switch.
And just to cap it off, in this “year of Darwin”, they named the creature after the atheists’ hero, Charles Darwin: Darwinius masillae. (One wonders what Charles Darwin would say now, if only he could (cf. Luke 16:26–31).) As Richard Dawkins said, Darwin enabled him to be an “intellectually fulfilled atheist”. That is the reason for all the hoopla over Darwin, which seems to be at fever pitch in this “Year of Darwin”.
The claim that Darwinius ‘could finally confirm Charles Darwin’s theory of evolution’ tacitly admits that it has not yet been confirmed
I don’t think I have ever seen such blatantly over-stated claims on a fossil find, and I have seen a few, including one by a major co-author of this paper: Philip Gingerich’s claims for Pakicetus back in 1983. Gingerich had a couple of scraps of a skull of a mammal from Pakistan and claimed it as the evolutionary precursor of whales. He embellished the story with an artist’s drawing of what Pakicetus (“whale from Pakistan”) looked like, with legs becoming flippers, a tail fluke developing and the imaginary creature diving for fish. Cute. Gingerich claimed it was “perfectly intermediate, a missing link between earlier land mammals and later, full-fledged whales”. With such a strong, confident claim from the fossil expert, who could doubt that evolution was true? Seven years later, other paleontologists published a paper describing the rest of Pakicetus and the now almost complete fossil showed that Gingerich’s imagination had really run away with him and the animal was not the missing link he thought it was. See: Not at all like a whale.
Apparently many paleontologists appreciate this sort of over-the-top, publicity-seeking behaviour in support of evolutionary story-telling, because they recently elected Gingerich the president of the American Paleontological Association.
Gingerich likened finding Ida to the discovery of the Rosetta Stone in archaeology (which finally enabled the deciphering of Egyptian hieroglyphics)! His collaborators on this paper are willingly joining in the hyping. In a televised meet-the-press, co-author Dr Jørn Hurum said, “It’s really, really hard to pinpoint exactly who gave rise to humans at that point, but this is as good as it gets, really.” According to ScienceNews, Hurum said, “This is the first link to all humans … truly a fossil that links world heritage.”2 And, “It is the scientific equivalent of the Holy Grail. This fossil will probably be the one that will be pictured in all textbooks for the next 100 years.”3
Hurum has a reputation in his own right in Scandinavia for frequent appearances on television and radio to promote his views of evolution and paleontology.4 At the press conference with the researchers, a journalist asked about the appropriateness of all the hype over a supposedly scientific discovery and Hurum told The New York Times, “Any pop band is doing the same. We have to start thinking the same way in science.”
Hurum also likened the find to discovering the “lost ark of archaeology”5 while co-author Jens Franzen hailed it as “the eighth wonder of the world.”3 Wow!
The claims
An article in the New York Daily News summarized the claims as follows [numbering added]:3
“… the long-sought missing link between humans and apes.
“… the fossil of the lemur-like creature dubbed Ida shows it had opposable thumbs like humans and fingernails instead of claws.
“… hind legs offer evidence of evolutionary changes that led to primates standing upright—a breakthrough that could finally confirm Charles Darwin’s theory of evolution.”
Comments:
To be fair, the paleontologists did not actually say it was a link between humans and apes, but it is understandable that journalists might interpret what they said in this way.6 They were claiming that Ida might shed some light on what might have been the connection between mankind’s supposed evolutionary ancestry, as a primate, and non-primates. Dr Jens Franzen said at the press conference at the celebratory “launch” in New York, “We are not dealing with our grand-grand-grandmother, but perhaps with our grand-grand-grandaunt.” Note that Franzen here admits that the creature is not an ancestor of humans, so Ida is not a link between humans and anything, not even with the hypothetical precursors of primates in general.
Lemurs have opposable thumbs (hallux) and fingernails instead of claws too, but almost no-one has considered them to have anything to do with man’s ancestry. Furthermore, like other primates, but not humans, they have them on their feet, which is good for grabbing onto branches, but makes walking upright rather difficult.
Note the careful wording. The authors imagined some hint of characteristics that might be relevant to walking upright tens of millions of evolutionary years later. I could find nothing in the published paper that substantiated this conjecture.7 And note that this “could finally confirm Charles Darwin’s theory of evolution.” This tacitly admits that it has not yet been confirmed, contrary to many other hyped-up fossil finds that have been paraded as “proof” of evolution (the story of human evolution has been a very adaptable, ever-changing story—see Anthropology and apemen Q&A).
What did they find?
The scientific paper8 does not contain any hint of the over-the-top statements (above) that we have been hearing in the media blitz. The paper describes an exceptionally well preserved fossil of a lemur-like creature (95% complete), which is unusual for primate fossils.
The authors of the paper did not find the fossil; Dr Jørn Hurum convinced the University of Oslo to purchase the main part from private collectors (it cost a million dollars!). That means that the taphonomy (the exact location/situation) of the fossil is not known with certainty, although it apparently came from the Messel Pit in Germany, which has been well-studied. When collected in 1983, the collectors split it into two pieces and sold them separately. The lesser half ended up at a private museum in Wyoming, USA, and had been studied by Jens Janzen (a co-author of this current paper) in the early 1990s. He recognized that there had been some doctoring of it to make it look as complete as possible. The researchers brought the two parts together for study. They used X-radiography to distinguish the real fossil from doctored parts.
With such a complete fossil, the detailed description took a large part of the paper. The fossil has a basic body pattern and toe and finger nails like lemurs, but lacks two features that are peculiar to lemurs: a toilet claw on a toe and grooming teeth (a row of fused teeth), both used for grooming, so it is not “just a lemur”.
There is nothing in the paper that substantiates the outlandish statements made to the lay public. The only relevant section includes a table and discussion that claims that the creature has more similarities to the Primate suborder Haplorrhini (which includes tarsiers, monkeys, apes and humans) than the other suborder, Strepsirrhini (which includes lemurs, lorises, etc.). However, the authors classified Darwinius as belonging to the Strepsirrhini and said they are not advocating otherwise. Strange. Maybe they said this to get it through the referees, because a proposal to shift the group that includes Darwinius (Infraorder Adapiformes) from one suborder of the primates to the other would certainly have been controversial, as well as very difficult to justify. With the public media fest orchestrated, a delay in the publication of the paper would have been embarrassing. Nevertheless, the claim that Ida is at all relevant to the evolutionary story of human origins depends on the authors establishing what they expressly disavowed in their paper.
Furthermore, there are absolutely no other fossils connecting Darwinius, or its kin, to humans or even to any of the claimed evolutionary ancestors of man. There is a gap of some 40 million evolutionary years!
Drawing: Bogdan Bocianowski. See Ref. 8.
Reconstruction of what Darwinius masillae could have looked like. Commissioned by the paleontologists, it does not support the media hype about its relevance to human evolution; it is so similar to creatures living today.
Looking at the fossil and the artist’s reconstruction, it strikes me as absolutely unremarkable in appearance. If you saw this creature in the jungle, you would think “lemur” or similar. It should be of concern to evolutionists that something they say is 47 million years old is so similar to modern primates like lemurs.
Evolutionist skeptics of the hype
Interestingly, a number of evolutionists are criticizing the over-hyping of this fossil. Ann Gibbons, in a commentary on ScienceNow9 gave air to some criticism:
“‘It’s an extraordinarily complete, wonderful specimen, but it’s not telling us too much that we didn’t know before,’ says paleoanthropologist Elwyn Simons of Duke University in Durham, North Carolina.
“‘This is the first link to all humans,’ said Hurum at the press conference.“Many paleontologists are unconvinced. They point out that Hurum and Gingerich’s analysis compared 30 traits in the new fossil with primitive and higher primates when standard practice is to analyze 200 to 400 traits and to include anthropoids from Egypt and the newer fossils of Eosimias from Asia, both of which were missing from the analysis in the paper. ‘There is no phylogenetic analysis to support the claims, and the data is cherry-picked,’ says paleontologist Richard Kay, also of Duke University. Callum Ross, a paleontologist at the University of Chicago in Illinois agrees: ‘Their claim that this specimen should be classified as haplorhine is unsupportable in light of modern methods of classification.’”
[Note added: Brian Switek, science writer, in The Times online 26 May criticized the hyping of Ida. Following mention of other hyped discoveries (a mammoth and a marine reptile), he wrote, “Frozen mammoths and giant marine reptiles are fascinating, but they do not strike at the heart of the evolution/creationism culture war in the way that a potential human ancestor does. This is why I wish more care had been taken in promoting Ida. ... Likening Ida to the Holy Grail and the Lost Ark only compounds the problem; creationists will undoubtedly argue that these metaphors reveal that evolution is a religion with its own holy relics.” This shows that the concern from evolutionists over the hyping of Ida does not necessarily stem from concern for truthfulness, but from the realization that this will backfire in the “culture war”, which is really the war against the God of the Bible.]
Preservation in shale?
The fossil is embedded in shale. The Messel shale has yielded many other interesting and very well-preserved fossils. The shale is supposed to have formed in a lake bed created by volcanic activity. This lake bed, “filled with water, which seemingly, one way or another, accumulated gases that poisoned the animals individually, episodically, or periodically [refs]. The result is a diverse fauna of exceptionally preserved insects, fishes, amphibians, reptiles, birds and mammals [refs].”8 [my emphasis]. It stretches the imagination to think what gas could have killed such a wide range of creatures in repeated episodes. ScienceNews reported,
“The scientists believe she was overcome by carbon dioxide gas whilst drinking from the Messel lake: the still waters of the lake were often covered by a low lying blanket of the gas as a result of the volcanic forces that formed the lake and which were still active. Hampered by her broken wrist, Ida slipped into unconsciousness, was washed into the lake, and sunk to the bottom, where the unique conditions preserved her for 47 million years.”2
This is much ado about almost nothing other than a nicely preserved fossil for which they had paid a lot of money.
There is a mixture of fossils of terrestrial and aquatic creatures. Did carbon dioxide gas kill fish as well? It would have to be a prolonged period of carbon dioxide blanketing to de-oxygenate the water for the fish to be killed. And such fish would bloat and float, which is not conducive to being buried and preserved/fossilized.
Also, how could the creatures then get preserved with such detail, with the slow accumulation of sediment in the lake, as per the deep-time evolutionary approach to the geology? Even the soft body outline of Ida is preserved, and remnants of her last meal (fruit and leaves).
Wikipedia commons
A fossil from the Messel oil shale of a bat that is very similar to today’s microbats.
This could be yet another example of catastrophic burial associated with Noah’s Flood. Recent studies have shown how fine-grained rocks like shale can form very quickly, contrary to long-standing evolutionary notions. See: Mud experiments overturn long held geological beliefs.
Stasis
Many other interesting and well-preserved fossils have been found in the Messel bed. Some of the best preserved are clearly recognizable, such as a bat, which is clearly a bat—a microbat that probably had echolocation. Fish found include bowfin, perch, gar and eel. Reptiles include crocodiles, alligators, turtles and a snake. And there are quite a few birds and mammals. Considering the supposed 47 million years of time, the similarity of so many of these creatures to today’s survivors speaks of stasis—creatures reproducing “after their kind”, not evolution.
Summary
Sadly, the gullible will be further convinced with all the bravado that evolution explains our origins and they therefore have no need for a Creator. But this is much ado about almost nothing other than a nicely preserved fossil for which they had paid a lot of money. And in the Year of Darwin, evolutionists, and especially atheists, are keen to milk it for what it is worth to push evolution to the public. If this is the best they have, Bible-believing creationists have nothing to fear.

Source:http://creation.com/darwin-fossil-ida-hype

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