Category Archives: Evolution

BBC News

Frog evolution linked to dinosaur asteroid strike BBC News The huge diversity of frogs we see today is mainly a consequence of the asteroid strike that killed off the dinosaurs, a study suggests. A new analysis shows that frog populations exploded after the extinction event 66 million years ago. It would ... Dinosaur extinction set the stage for frog evolutionDaily News & Analysis Asteroid Strike Caused Frog EvolutionChronicle Day Frog Evolution Connected To Dinosaurs Asteroid StrikePc-Tablet Media UC Berkeley -International Business Times UK all 21 news articles »

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Frog evolution linked to dinosaur asteroid strike - BBC News

ISTANBUL, TURKEY

A dispute in Turkey over the removal of the theory of evolution from schools is set to escalate further.

Turkeys main teachers' union, Egitim Sen announced it is turning to the courts.

Excluding the theory of evolution from the curriculum and obliging all schools to have a prayer room and water closet (for ablution) destroys the principle of secularism and the scientific principles of education, said Egitim Sen chair Mehmet Balik, We will open a lawsuit against these regulations and take these implementations to court.

The education ministry argues there is no religious or political agenda behind the reform rather that evolution is simply too complicated and controversial . The decision to end the teaching of evolution was made by a state official rather than a politician.

But senior members of the ruling AK Parry government, which has Islamist roots, for some time have had evolution in their sights.

Scientifically, the theory of evolution is already an archaic and disproven theory, said deputy Prime Minister Numan Kurtulmus in January, There is no such rule that this theory must be taught.

Longtime pressure against evolution

The teaching of evolution has long been under pressure in Turkish schools. Teachers and academics in the past few years have complained the importance of evolution was being reduced, while religious interpretations such as creationism and intelligent design were being enhanced in text books.

Egitim Sen has repeatedly spoken out that its members face pressure from fellow teachers and school heads of religious persuasion, as well as some parents not to teach evolution.

In the high schools evolution was already taught very badly, it was already being increasingly taught as hypothesis rather than a theory, if it was mentioned at all, declares Professor Kerem Cankocak, one of Turkeys top physicists of Istanbul Technical University.

So the complete removal of evolution was expected. Already I see many students who don't know or refuse to accept it. But this latest change is part of a wider plan, natural sciences, philosophy, social sciences all cut back in the new curriculum. They (government) want a generation who don't think, Cankocak said.

Expanding religious education

Critics of the new reforms point out they come as the government under President Recep Tayyip Erdogan has markedly expanded the role of religion in education. There has been a dramatic expansion of Islamic schools, called Imam Hatip. The schools initially set up to train Imams, devote more than a quarter of education to religious studies.

In 2002 when Erdogan, an Imam Hatip graduate, came to power, 65,000 children attended the schools, now nearly a million attend. In the past couple of years state secular schools have started to be converted into Imam Hatips, in many cases with parents being given little notice or opportunity to move their child to another school.

Turkeys predominantly Kurdish southeast region, which is the center of a power struggle between the ruling AK Party and the staunchly secular pro Kurdish HDP, has witnessed some of the most far reaching education changes.

In normal state schools, that are designated as 'project schools' have many religious classes, claims Saliha Zorlu, co head of Egitim Sen Diyarbakir branch.

Islamist trend?

There is an ongoing intervention to make society more conservative, and the government knows that they can succeed in making the changes deeper and longer term by using the field of education. Weve seen even in the kindergarten classes that girls were asked to cover their head, Zorlu said.

Erdogan and his government strongly reject the charge of any religious agenda and insist the secular state is safe in their hands, they reject their party being labeled religious, preferring the word conservative. They argue the reforms are more about pluralism and that education should reflect and meet the demands of Turkeys largely conservative society. But critics point to Erdogan's rhetoric of raising young people to embrace national and moral values, a demand he repeated only last week. Critics claim a moral generation is code for Islamist.

But the controversy about evolution, religion and education far predates Erdogan and his ruling AK, After a 1980 military coup the generals introduced a terrible education system, they introduced religion to fight against communism, many of the consequences of today started there, points out Professor Cankocak. During that period the army, which often likes to present itself as guardian of the secular state, introduced compulsory religious classes and creationism into the curriculum.

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Dispute About Teaching Evolution in Turkish Schools Escalates - Voice of America

As of the Fourth of July, 2017, President Trump will have been a Twitter user for nearly 12 percent of his life, joining in 2009 at the age of 62 and continuing on to this very day. For 1out of every 9days hes been alive, Trump has been on Twitter.

The net effect of this is that we have a reasonably good record of the past eight years of Trumps life, a period spanning most of President Barack Obamas two terms and intoTrumps own. Its a public record unlike that of any other president, its safe to say, and its one that can show us how Donald Trump the businessman evolved into Donald Trump, the aggressively confrontational politician.

Consider the Fourth of July. Our tool Trumphop retweets old Trump tweets on the same day and time as they were originally sent. We noticed, as the Fourth approached, that Trumps tweets related to the holiday have had a noticeably different tone in recent years than in years past.

Below, Trumps Fourth of July-related tweets from each year and a sample of the other issues he chose to highlight on the anniversary of our nations independence.

The first three years of Trumps Independence Day tweets were straightforward. The 2009 iteration included a clumsy signature, but this was while Twitter was still young and people did such things.

By 2011, Trump was already engaged in politics, having considered and then skipped a run for the presidency. This was after he challenged Obama to present a birth certificate to prove that he was born in the United States which Obama did shortly before roasting Trump at the White House Correspondents Association dinner. Yet that didnt come through inTrumps July 4 tweet.

It did the next year, when Trump decided to make a birth certificate joke.

This is the new era of Trump, recognizing and reveling in the feedback that his more outrageous Twitter behavior could provide.

As the holiday approached, Trump weighed in on the presidential election, having endorsed Republican Mitt Romney during the primary.

While not on the Fourth itself, this tweet is worth a mention: the politically motivated I predicted it tweet.

In 2013, Trump spent the Fourth celebrating a legal victory.

He also retweeted a vulgar response to the settlement.

Original tweet.

He fought back with someone who was critical of him. (That original tweet included the same vulgarity as the one above.)

He also, for some reason, decided to focus on his attitudes about sharks.

He didnt tweet anything about the holiday itself.

He did in 2014.

By 2015, he was officially a candidate for the presidency. In keeping with that, he tweeted a fairly anodyne celebration of the day, tacking on his campaign slogan.

He couldnt resist, though, digging into the political moment.

Praise for his candidacy earned a retweet.

Macys, which ended its business relationship with Trump afterhe made negative comments about immigrants from Mexico at his campaign launch, earned Trumps ire.

As did his critic Romney.

By this point last year, Trump had earned enough delegates to clinch the nomination at the Republican National Convention, a few weeks after the Fourth.

He celebrated the holiday with a professionally designed image and video.

He then quickly reverted to his campaign persona, disparaging rivalHillary Clinton and Obama as fools and the former as guilty.

He also spent part of the day rebutting the controversy of the moment. On July 2 precisely one year before he stirred up controversy by plucking an animation from theInternet that showed him wrestling with CNN Trump tweeted an image his team had found online picturingClinton over a pile of dollar bills, with Most Corrupt Candidate printed over a six-pointed star. The image, quickly altered to replace the star with a circle, was widely criticized for being tacitly anti-Semitic.

So at 9:42 a.m. on Independence Day, candidate Trump defended his previous tweet by disparaging the media.

Its a far cry from the simple message he offered in 2009. But, since then, Trumps public persona is similarly a far cry from what it was then.

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The evolution of Donald Trump, as seen in his Fourth of July tweets - Washington Post

Pittsburgh Post-Gazette

Tony Norman: From Yorktown to Wrestlemania: the de-evolution of the presidency Pittsburgh Post-Gazette The encroachment of fake news and fake history into every nook and cranny of American life is something most of us, unfortunately, take for granted these days. This week, our nation, with all of its constitutional principles, high-minded aspirations ...

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Tony Norman: From Yorktown to Wrestlemania: the de-evolution of the presidency - Pittsburgh Post-Gazette

A legal challenge to Turkey's nixing evolution? National Center for Science Education The decision to remove evolution from Turkey's national curriculum is going to be challenged in court, according to the Hurriyet Daily News (July 2, 2017). As NCSE previously reported, a revision of the national curriculum, in which a unit entitled ... and more »

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A legal challenge to Turkey's nixing evolution? - National Center for Science Education

The rise of Thai football on the international stage in the past few years has also attracted the attention of the video game industry.

The Thai League and Thailand national team may be included in the popular football video game Pro Evolution Soccer if discussions between all parties go well, according to FA Thailand Deputy General Secretary Patit Suphaphongs.

According to the Thai edition of Goal, Konami, the company that makes Pro Evolution Soccer, FA Thailand and Plan-B Media, FA Thailand's official rights manager, had an initial meeting to seek opportunity on Tuesday.

"Both of us need this. Konami knows that the South East Asia market has been growing, only second to China, which is number one. So it's obviously a rapidly growing market here.

"We know this too, and know that this will spread Thai football to gamers. Video games are also an excellent tool to introduce players, teams and the Thai League itself to the world.

"So we're discussing the possibilities of working together, both on mobile and console platforms. We will help them be familiar with the Thailand market, and take note of their goals.

"After this we will move on to licensing. We believe our contents can support the game as well. They also have their terms and condition details about licensing. So it's still in the discussion stage here," explained Suphaphongs.

However, South East Asian fans eager to play as their favourite Thai club need to waitlonger, as the plan is for the Thai teams to be included in the 2020 edition of the game.

"We are looking for the opportunity to integrate Thai clubs and competitions to the future PES, on both mobile and console platforms. We are aiming for the Pro Evolution Soccer edition that will come out in two years' time, as the 2018 edition is already completed while the 2019 edition is nearing completion.

A screenshot from Pro Evolution Soccer 2018

"The mobile edition can be developed faster due to its rapidly-updating nature, but for consoles it is likely to take more time.

"Another option that we have is for Konami to develop an entirely new game, specifically for the Thai League," Suphaphongs said.

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Thailand league and national team may be included in Pro Evolution Soccer - Goal.com

Can Christians Believe in Evolution? (Part 1) PERSONAL FROM DAVID C. PACK, PUBLISHER/EDITOR-IN-CHIEF July 1, 2017

Did God create all life on Earth according to the Genesis account or did it gradually evolve? Millions of professing Christians have been told science supports evolution, not Creation. They declare, I believe in God and the Bible, I just think evolution was how He created man. They believe God directed the gradual development of all plant and animal life. This is referred to as directed evolution, or theistic evolution.

This introduces great questions: Can a Christian accept evolution? Is this compatible with the Bibleand following Jesus Christ? What does the New Testament say? What did the apostles teach? What did Christ say? This two-part Personal answers all these questions and more.

My five-part The World to Come series titled Does God Exist?Many Absolute Proofs! forms the foundation for this Personal. It explores the latest science to prove that God exists and that evolution is factually impossible.

This two-part Personal is different. Its purpose is to examine whether the Bible permits Christians to believe in directed evolution. We will look at verses most never consider. I will prove absolutelywith overwhelming evidencethat belief in evolution is not compatible with Christianity.

Theistic evolutionists believe God created the universe and all life, but that biological evolution is a natural process within that creation. They believe the God of the Bible did not form man directly, but rather created matter and then guided the long process of evolution. A quote summarizes this thinking: theistic evolution contends that abiogenesis (the spontaneous formation of life from chemicals) and evolution (amoeba to man through eons) have occurred, but a creator was instrumental in forming the initial matter and laws, and more or less guided the whole process (The Creation-Evolution Controversy). This idea purports that science and the fossil record prove evolutionbut, since life is too complicated to have happened by itself, God must be behind the process. Evolution was simply His tool to develop single-celled organisms into complex ones and eventually into human life.

On the surface, theistic evolution sounds scientifically plausible. One might reason, God is infinitely powerful. Why couldnt He use evolution if He wanted? Of course He could. But the correct question is, did He? And does He permit you to believe something other than what He said He did?

Before examining a broad array of plain scriptures from Christ and His apostles that confirm Genesis, setup is required. We begin by asking: How did evolution become acceptable within Christianity?

This began in the system of modern education. For 120 years after Darwins theory, until the late 1970s, belief in Creation was not accompanied by automatic ridicule. Today, even insinuating that a Supreme Being had any part in designing the universe, and life within it, is usually met with scorn!

People are now thoroughly indoctrinated with evolution from an early age. The official policy of the National Science Teachers Association is, There is no longer a debate among scientists about whether evolution has and is occurring. No wonder evolution is assumed by the masses today. When I was in school, it was still the theory of evolutionalways! Now it is considered factwhen it has always been fiction.

The apostle Paul warned Gods servants not to get caught up in phony science, which could threaten their eternal lives. Christians are to be laying up in store for themselves a good foundation against the time to come, that they may lay hold on eternal life (I Tim. 6:19). Following this verse, Paul charged Timothy to keep that which is committed to your trust, avoiding profane and vain babblings, and oppositions of science falsely so called: which some professing have erred concerning the faith (vs. 20-21).

Be careful what you profess. Many unlearned ministers have caved to junk science, which is popular but false. They teach that God endorses evolution. False science can make you err concerning the faith. Do not let it threaten your eternal life!

My series proving God exists demonstrates who stands on true science and on science falsely so called.

Confusion spread by evolutionists has led many to believe that the early chapters of Genesis, including the Creation account, do not describe real people and real events. Lets ask: Is Genesis just a collection of helpful stories that mostly never happened? Are names and places described mostly myth and superstition? Atheists and agnostics, but also growing numbers of professing Christians, think so. Seven days of Creation and a literal Adam and Eve are just too hard to believe. Sadly, much of the confusion is because many have been taught that since man is 6,000 years old, so are the Earth and universewhen in fact these are billions of years old.

The question becomes: Is Gods Word written in such a way that it permits followers of Jesus Christ to accept Him while rejecting the Genesis Creation account? A sequence of versesfrom the Old and New Testamentssets the table with enormously powerful understanding you cannot avoid.

Lets see how God says the whole Bible must be accepted or rejected as is.

Jesus commanded (in two gospels), Man shall not live by bread alone, but by every word that proceeds out of the mouth of God (Matt. 4:4; Luke 4:4). Some know this much but do not know He was quoting Moses, whom God first inspired to say, man does not live by bread only, but by every word that proceeds out of the mouth of the Lord does man live (Deut. 8:3).

Realize that Jesus opened His ministry quotingand validatingMoses, who wrote the Genesis account. Did God inspire Moses to record what God knew was at least partially false?

King David brings more weight to this, as he describes a Bible that was at the time mostly what Moses had written: The words of the Lord are pure words: as silverpurified seven times (Psa. 12:6). King Solomon warned, Every word of God is pureadd you not to His words, lest He reprove you, and you be found a liar (Prov. 30:5-6). Every word means every wordOld Testament or Newincluding Genesis. God never lies, but He says any who alter His Word DO. Come to grips with your Bible!

Paul declared, All scripture is given by inspiration of God (II Tim. 3:16). It is an all or nothing propositionthere is no middle ground. Either you believe every word, or you might as well throw out the entire Bible! The apostle John wrote, Your word is truth (John 17:17). The prophet Daniel referred to the scripture of truth (Dan. 10:21).

So then, just on this basis, if the Bible comes to you with its AuthorGOD!purporting that all of it is true, and you assert (or defer to men who assert) that some parts of it are not true, you are calling God a LIAR! In fact, you will soon learn that God would be the worst kind of liar, having told a blizzard of lies about things that never happened and Bible figures who never existed, while emphatically stating that all of it is true.

Do not carelessly dismiss this! Because if you say some of Gods words are untrue, He says you are a liar.

Here is another passage. The Psalms record, Your word is true from the beginning: and every one of Your righteous judgments endures forever (119:160). The Hebrew is more correctly translated the beginning of Your word is true. This is powerful because the Bible begins with the Creation account in Genesis, which means beginnings. Anyone who disbelieves the first book of the Bible must also throw out this passage. Atheists reject the entire Bible, but it is another matter for those professing to believe it to reject Genesisand now we have seen parts of Deuteronomy, Psalms and Proverbs in the Old Testament, as well as Matthew, Luke and II Timothy in the New.

Next, lets at least state for the record: The word evolution, or any similar term, is not found in the Bible. Of course, most know this. What most never ask is why? If God used evolution to create man and every other living thing, why not just say He did? Why write an Instruction Book purporting to be about truth and then so unnecessarily embed all through it an enormous lie? Why do this? Why not just tell people how you made mankind? If evolution is true, why make mankind wait almost 6,000 years until one scientistCharles Darwincould solve a mystery that never needed to exist?

Those who dismiss Adam and Eve and other Genesis accounts are unaware that Jesus Christ repeatedly spoke of this first book of the Biblethat He validated the authenticity of Genesis. While modern scholars lampoon anyone ignorant enough to believe Genesis, Jesus constantly quoted it. Why would He underscoremany timesand have the apostles underscorewhat are falsehoods? Why would He put Himselfand His authority as Godin a position where one person could eventually undermine everything He ever said? This is what atheists do to Gods Wordnot what God would do to Himself. But most never consider this. They never consider that Christ would have participated in His own loss of credibilityand thus the loss of millions of people who would not follow Him as a result.

All you have read so far is just the barest opening salvo! There is much more than these baseline elements. You will see that many words in the Bible must contain Gods outright falsehoods for evolution to be true.

The New Testament Church is built upon the foundation of the apostles and prophets, Jesus Christ Himself being the chief cornerstone (Eph. 2:20). In construction, cornerstones are laid first. Christ came before the prophets. In fact, it was He who inspired the many Old Testament prophets to foretell His First Coming. Thus, the teachings in Gods Church come from apostles and prophets. The New Testament points to the Old Testament much more than most realize. Paul alone quoted the Old Testament hundreds of times, most often from the prophets. In Romans alone, it was quoted 57 times! I Corinthians quotes the Old Testament 21 times and II Corinthians 10 more. While this probably comes as a surprise, it should not since the New Testament Church is built on the apostles and prophets!

Here is a related pointand it is big. Moses is the greatest prophet in the Bible other than Christnot Isaiah, Jeremiah, Ezekiel, Samuel, Daniel, David or any other prophet. While his books are called The Law, Moses was a prophet. Deuteronomy 34 states, There arose not a prophet since in Israel like unto Moses, whom the Lord knew face to face (vs. 10).

I repeat: Moses is the Bibles greatest prophet. And his five books, starting with Genesis, are part of the New Testament Churchs foundation.

We are now ready to examine the New Testament record. As we do, ask if Jesus and the apostles were just ignorantor if they deliberately blurred truth to make certain points. We begin with Jesus speaking to the leaders who would crucify Him three days later: That upon you may come all the righteous blood shed upon the earth, from the blood of righteous Abel [the son of Adam and Eve] to the blood of Zechariah son of Barachias, whom you slew between the temple and the altar (Matt. 23:35). Luke repeats Christs words: From the blood of Abel unto the blood of Zacharias, which perished between the altar and the temple (Luke 11:51).

Keep it simple. If there was Abel, there was Adam and Eve. No one doubts the prophet Zechariah was real. He wrote the next-to-last book of the Old Testament! Therefore, do not doubt Abeland Adam and Eve, his parentsbecause God-rejecting atheists who concocted evolution say you should!

The apostle JudeJesus own brotherconfirmed the existence of Adam, Cain (Abels brother), and Enoch. Lets read: Enoch also, the seventh from Adam, prophesiedsaying, Behold, the Lord comes with ten thousands of His saints (Jude 1:14). Of the wicked he said, Woe unto them! For they have gone in the way of Cain and ran greedily after the error of Balaam for reward, and perished in the gainsaying of Korah (vs. 11). There can be no way of Cain without Cain himself. And there can be no Cain without his parentsAdam and Eve. And of course there can be no Cain to kill Abel if they were all fictitious. Jude validated Cain and Adam!

The book of Hebrews also speaks of Cain and Abel: By faith Abel offered unto God a more excellent sacrifice than Cain, by which he obtained witness that he was righteous, God testifying of his gifts: and by it he being dead yet speaks (11:4). And, To Jesus the mediator of the new covenant, and to the blood of sprinkling, that speaks better things than that of Abel (12:24). Is all of thispeople and eventsfictional? No Cain, no Abel, no faith, no sacrifice, no witness of righteous example? The apostle Paul thought and spoke as though all these were real.

John also speaks of Cain and Abel: we should love one another. Not as Cain, who was of that wicked one [the devil], and slew his brother [Abel]. And why slew he him? Because his own works were evil, and his brothers righteous (I John 3:11-12). Is all of this fictional? No Cain, no Abel, no murder, no evil, no righteous example, maybe no Satan? The apostle John also thought and spoke as though all these were real.

In several places, Paul referred to both Adam and Eve: Nevertheless death reigned from Adam to Moses, even over them that had not sinned after the similitude of Adams transgression [but if Adam never lived he could not have sinned], who is the figure of Him that was to come [Christ] (Rom. 5:14). Further, As in Adam all die, even so in Christ shall all be made alive (I Cor. 15:22).

Think. How could you be subject to death because of sin committed by a fictitious person? You could not. Note this straightforward passage: Adam was first formed, then Eve. And Adam was not deceived, but the woman being deceived was in the transgression (I Tim. 2:13-14).

Formed means to mould, shape or fabricate: form (Strongs Hebrew and Greek Dictionaries). This shows God createdformedAdam, then Eve, the first human beings. It does not say God created an environment where they would gradually evolve to a higher state over millions of years. Also, it would be deceptive to describe one party as deceived and the other as not when neither person ever lived.

Are you seeing the problems here?

Now another passage from Paul: I fear, lest by any means, as the serpent beguiled Eve through his subtlety, so your minds should be corrupted from the simplicity that is in Christ (II Cor. 11:3). Did Paul warn first-century Christians through a made-up story? How can one avoid being deceived like Eve if there was no Eve? If Eve never existed, Paul used deceit to warn against deceit! By this logic, relax because there may be no Satan eitherand thus Paul wasted his time cautioning in another passage, Lest Satan should get an advantage of us: for we are not ignorant of his devices (II Cor. 2:11). The existence of the devil and Eve stand or fall together.

Paul knew there was a Garden of Edenand a literal Eveand a literal devil present to deceive her. He was not stretching the truth to prove a point. He referenced real people and real events! The prophet Ezekiel confirms Paul. Speaking of Satan, he recorded, You have been in Eden the garden of God (Ezek. 28:13). But not if there was no Garden of Eden. No Garden? Again, maybe no devil! One more reason it was the devil who concocted evolution.

A great parallel exists between Christ and Adam. It introduces Gods Master Purposeand validates Creation.

Paul declared: And so it is written, The first man Adam was made a living soul [did Paul lie, or was he just ignorant of what Darwin would learn?]; the last Adam [Christ] was made a quickening spirit. Howbeit that was not first which is spiritual [Christ], but that which is natural [Adam]; and afterward [at a resurrection] that which is spiritual. The first man [the original Adam] is of the earth, earthy: the second man is the Lord from heavenas we have borne the image of the earthy [made of flesh like Adam], we shall also bear the image of the heavenly [composed of spirit like Christ at a resurrection] (I Cor. 15:45-47, 49).

Pauls inspired statement begins referencing Genesis 2:7, And so it is written Do not miss this powerful New Testament verification of the Creation account! The apostle Paul knew Adam was made by Godthat this event did happen.

Now get this! Jesus Christ is the second Adamthis is impossible without a first Adam.

Something related that most miss. Jesus referred to Satan when indicting the Pharisees: You are of your father the devil, and the lusts of your father you will do. He was a murderer from the beginning (John 8:44). Jesus calling Satanthe serpenta murderer from the beginning speaks of his deceiving Eve into eating from the tree of the knowledge of good and evil. God told the first humans not to do this or they would die. They ateand eventually died. Satan effectively murdered them. He was also the wicked one who inspired Cain to kill Abel. So he was a murderer from the beginning.

Jesus was not confused or in doubt as to what happened.

All that has been discussed carries deeper implications beyond whether evolution is true. Jesus is referred to as the second Adam. In the Garden, Adam was given a chance to live Gods Way. Yet he rejected it. As a result, mans only hope became the central purpose of Christs First Comingessential to Gods plan of salvation for mankind. It is more crucial than most could ever imagine that we understand the events of Creation. They are fundamental to the entire Plan of God! (To learn Gods ultimate purpose for you, I urge you to read my free book The Awesome Potential of Man.)

Many today enjoy studying their genealogy. The fun is often going back as far as you can. Lineage is also important to God. This is why numerous extensive genealogies appear throughout the Old Testament. Most do not dismiss them as analogy, myth or metaphor. This pattern of genealogy continues in the New Testament in Jesus lineage. Luke and Matthew paint a powerful picture, together revealing how Jesus line traces all the way back to Adam!

First comes Mary in Luke. Consider taking time to read it all. But first pick up with, Jesus Himself began to be about 30 years of age, being (as was supposed) the son of Joseph, the son [it should say son in law] of Eli, which was the son of Matthat, which was the son of LeviMelchiJanna JosephMattathiasAmosNaumNathan, which was the son of David[it goes on to include Abraham, Isaac and Jacob, and eventually all the way back to] Shem, which was the son of NoahLamechMethuselahEnochJaredSeth, which was the son of Adam, which was the son of God (Luke 3:23-38).

Now Matthews record: Abraham begat Isaac; and Isaac begat Jacob; and Jacob begat Judas and his brethren (1:2), and this eventually comes to another Jacob [who] begat Joseph the husband of Mary, of whom was born Jesus, who is called Christ. So all the generations from Abraham to David are fourteen generations; and from David until the carrying away into Babylon are fourteen generations; and fromBabylon to Christ are fourteen generationsJoseph, you son of David, fear not to take unto you Mary your wife (vs. 16-17, 20).

Why can we believe Joseph descended from Davidhere called Davids sonbut not that David descended from Adam?

Jesusand giants of Scriptureincluding Abraham, Isaac, Jacob, David, Noah, Enoch and many, many othersare all described as descended from Adam. Christs genealogy is false if there was no Adam. All these men had to be either grossly deceivedor they knew better and misrepresented the truth. Worse, God installed these long lists into His Word as though they were true. Even the apostle Paul claimed his descent was from Jacobs son Benjamin. When Darwin comes up in the resurrection of the dead, he will learn the true origin of his species.

Incidentally, Luke calls Adam the son of God. Are all other sons of God literal but not Adam? Jesus is a literal son, all Christians are, Job called angels the sons of God. Perhaps you see yourself as a son of God. Are all these literalbut not Adam?

Think. If Adam did not live, then neither did his son Seth. If Seth never lived, neither did his third-great-grandson Enochand neither did Enochs great-grandson Noah, and so on with Abraham, Isaac, Jacob and David. And maybe then Christ never livedas millions claim!

My own genealogy appears to also trace to David, through both Nathan and Solomon, and thus to Adam. Should I doubt this? If Adam is fictional, why does the Bible record anyone descending from him? Atheists do not care about this matter, but Christians should.

No honest mind thinks God inspired Luke 3 to be recorded because it is merely interesting. Christ, as the God of the Old Testament, personally created Adam! If we are to believe the critics, Christ was terribly confusedHe did not realize He formed a fictional character, not a real person. Yet the implications of Christs lineage to Adam are extremely important. To legally inherit Davids throne, His line must be provable! (Human kings know this.) If it is not provable, can we trust anything in the Bible? (I also urge you to read an important booklet, Bible Authority...Can It Be Proven?)

You must decide at what point the Word of God is just not true. If any part is false, which is what the devil and some ministers want you to believe, then you need not obey it. Satans ultimate goal is to get people to reject the Bible as having authority over their lives. He knows that undermining biblical accounts and biblical figures destroys faith.

Part 1 has by itself proven the Bible leaves no room to believe evolution. But you have only heard half the case. Part 2 will continue with more plain verses proving Christians are not permitted to believe evolution. In the meantime, watch my five-part World to Come series proving God exists at worldtocome.org.

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Can Christians Believe in Evolution? (Part 1) - The Real Truth

Hoffmann 76 was the last downtown service station standing when its owners decided it was time to shift gears.

So successful was the repair and maintenance aspect of Jeff and Rick Hoffmanns business, they often couldnt find enough space to queue the cars to which they wereattending.

In 2005, the brothers sold their property at Fifth and G streets, moving to new digs at 2613Second St. where Hoffmann Automotive was born.

The business legacy began in the 1970s when Davis High graduates Jeff and Rick worked at what once was known as Ray Moss Union.

I was working nights, my wife was at the university days and we never really saw each other, recalls Jeff, who with wife Susan was expecting the birth of son Jason.

Then in 1979, Jeff had an opportunity to buy the place from Ray, explains Rick, who had served six years in the National Guard and hadnt worked at Moss when his brother did.

No escrow, nothing like that, Jeff says. I just wrote Ray a check at the dinner table and it was done. It was a different time.

That was 1979. The Union 76 folks had a mandate called Minuteman Service.

(Union) was really, really big on customer service, customer focus and we believed it, too, Rick says.

We knew how to treat people, or we thought we did: Treat them the way youd want to be treated, Jeff explains. I didnt know (anything) about being in business for myself. I just knew I liked cars and I had the opportunity to buy this gas station.

Rick concurs: We just did (business) the common-sense way. We were nice to people, we did things other places didnt do.

Remember getting your oil checked, windows washed, tire pressure topped off? Long time ago, but

To this day, that lets-get-it-right approach remains evident at Hoffmann Automotive.

Nine employees, including Jeffs wife and son Jason, are on staff.

The elements that 26-year-old Jeff Hoffmann embraced when he took over as one of the youngest 76 dealers in America are stillin place.

Its pretty simple, Rick adds.

Oh, and about that policy of being nice to customers?

Rick Hoffmann met his wife Diane the gas station

She kept coming in kept dropping hints and dropping hints. She kept trying to ask me out, but I was oblivious to all this, he remembers.

We had a rule: we were nice to everybody and waited on customers, right? We kept work and play separate.

Finally, Diane had to ask Mr. Nice Guy out.

hoffman old W

Bob Isaacs aims to get a hole-in-one in this June 1979 photo to promote a Kiwanis golf tournament. Jeff Hoffmann shows off the tires to be given to the best golfer. Enterprise file photo

hoffman aerialW

An aerial photo shows the site of the Hoffmanns Union 76 station at Fifth and G streets in downtown Davis. Courtesy photo

HoffmannNewW

Rick Hoffmann, left, and his brother Jeff have owned Hoffmann Automotive since 1979. They moved their business from Fifth and G streets where they owned a Union 76 station for 26 years to 2613 Second St. in 2005. Sue Cockrell/Enterprise photo

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Centennial: The evolution of friendly, efficient Hoffmann Automotive - Davis Enterprise

Evolution is usually very slow, a process of change that takes thousands or millions of years to see.

But for influenza, evolution is fast and deadly. Flu viruses change rapidly to escape the bodys defences. Every few years, new variants of flu emerge and cause epidemics around the world.

Controlling the spread of flu means dealing with this ongoing evolution. Each year, experts from the World Health Organization (WHO) must make their best guess about how the virus will change in order to choose which flu strains to include in the annual vaccine.

This work is difficult and uncertain, and mistakes have real consequences. Worldwide, flu infects several million people each year and causes hundreds of thousands of deaths. In years when predictions miss the mark and the flu shot is very different from circulating strains, more people are vulnerable to infection.

In the past several years, advances in genome sequencing have begun to shed light on the beginnings of viral evolution, deep within individual infections. We wondered whether, for flu, this information might give us an early glimpse of future global evolutionary trends.

What could a single persons flu infection tell us about how the virus changes across the world? As it turns out, a surprising amount.

Looking deep inside an infection

Every step in flus evolution begins with a mistake. As viruses copy themselves within an infected person, they sometimes mutate, creating small changes to their genetic blueprint.

Most mutations are harmful to the virus because they break the machinery it needs to function. But every so often, a mutant virus survives, and even thrives. Viruses play a constant game of cat-and-mouse with the human immune system. Sometimes, a mutant virus may be just different enough to escape the bodys notice.

A mutant virus with this kind of advantage can multiply quickly and come to dominate the infection. Eventually, it may even spread from person to person, and from there, start spreading around the world.

Recently, its become easier to track how viruses change within the human body. The same advances that have made it cheap and easy to sequence human genomes are changing how we study viruses. For the cost of sequencing a single human genome, we can sequence thousands of viruses from throughout an infection to track new mutations as they arise.

These mutations can show us how the virus reacts to challenging environments within the human body. For HIV, where infections often last years or even decades, evolution can be substantial, even within a single person. In particular, viruses often evolve drug resistance in response to antiviral treatment.

Tracking flu evolution in four long infections

We recently tracked viral evolution in four cancer patients who had flu infections lasting several months. Most flu infections last about a week, which limits the amount of change that can occur. But in patients with weak immune systems, infections can last a long time, with severe effects.

How did flu change within these long infections? By sequencing viruses from different times during the infection and comparing their genomes, we were able to identify new mutations and track their fates.

Each subplot represents one site in the virus where mutations can occur. Mutant viruses are shown in orange, and their frequencies rise and fall over time. Xue et al. eLife 2017;6:e26875, CC BY

Evolution acted in a matter of weeks. One clear example was resistance to Tamiflu. The patients we studied were taking the drug to control their infections. But, as in prior studies, viruses carrying drug-resistance mutations eventually emerged. These mutations might partly explain why the infections lasted so long.

Drug-resistance mutations werent the only evolutionary changes we saw. Half a dozen mutant viruses, all just slightly different from one another, would sometimes compete simultaneously in a single person.

These competing viruses made evolution a complicated affair. A mutation that started spreading one week would sometimes go extinct the next. Presumably, it was outcompeted by an even better mutation.

In some cases, we found the exact same mutations in viruses from different patients in our study, even though we could tell that the patients did not infect each other. Wed only very rarely expect such similarities to happen due to chance. The viruses may have hit on similar adaptations in response to evolutionary challenges. Some of these mutations may have helped the virus avoid the immune system, echoing other studies.

Whats more, many mutations within these patients matched mutations that later spread around the world. In the spikes of flus outer coat, which help the virus enter host cells, the mutation N225D emerged in three of the four patients in our study. By 2015, about eight years after our patients were infected, most flu viruses around the world carried the exact same change.

For us, this was unexpected. Evolution is full of trade-offs, and some mutations that help flu adapt within people may slow its transmission from person to person. We also didnt know whether evolution in such unusually long flu infections would match patterns of change around the world.

But in our study, flu evolution in individual people showed striking similarities to evolution around the globe. We could see hints of some global evolutionary trends within just a few individuals.

As technologies continue to improve, its becoming easier to look deep inside flu infections, like we did. WHO labs sequence flu strains from thousands of people every year to monitor flu evolution. Researchers are sequencing more and more strains in ways that let us catch mutations as they first arise within individual people.

Each of these thousands of infections is like a separate evolutionary experiment. By comparing mutations that appear in different infections, we may get a sense of evolutionary possibilities and constraints.

Somewhere down the line, this kind of information may help forecast flus evolution. For now, at least, its uncovering some of the dynamic processes of evolution that take place within each of us.

Katherine Xue, Doctoral Student in Genome Sciences, University of Washington and Jesse Bloom, Associate Member, Fred Hutchinson Cancer Research Center and Affiliate Associate Professor of Genome Sciences and Microbiology, University of Washington

This article was originally published on The Conversation. Read the original article.

Evolution is usually very slow, a process of change that takes thousands or millions of years to see.

But for influenza, evolution is fast and deadly. Flu viruses change rapidly to escape the bodys defences. Every few years, new variants of flu emerge and cause epidemics around the world.

Controlling the spread of flu means dealing with this ongoing evolution. Each year, experts from the World Health Organization (WHO) must make their best guess about how the virus will change in order to choose which flu strains to include in the annual vaccine.

This work is difficult and uncertain, and mistakes have real consequences. Worldwide, flu infects several million people each year and causes hundreds of thousands of deaths. In years when predictions miss the mark and the flu shot is very different from circulating strains, more people are vulnerable to infection.

In the past several years, advances in genome sequencing have begun to shed light on the beginnings of viral evolution, deep within individual infections. We wondered whether, for flu, this information might give us an early glimpse of future global evolutionary trends.

What could a single persons flu infection tell us about how the virus changes across the world? As it turns out, a surprising amount.

Looking deep inside an infection

Every step in flus evolution begins with a mistake. As viruses copy themselves within an infected person, they sometimes mutate, creating small changes to their genetic blueprint.

Most mutations are harmful to the virus because they break the machinery it needs to function. But every so often, a mutant virus survives, and even thrives. Viruses play a constant game of cat-and-mouse with the human immune system. Sometimes, a mutant virus may be just different enough to escape the bodys notice.

A mutant virus with this kind of advantage can multiply quickly and come to dominate the infection. Eventually, it may even spread from person to person, and from there, start spreading around the world.

Recently, its become easier to track how viruses change within the human body. The same advances that have made it cheap and easy to sequence human genomes are changing how we study viruses. For the cost of sequencing a single human genome, we can sequence thousands of viruses from throughout an infection to track new mutations as they arise.

These mutations can show us how the virus reacts to challenging environments within the human body. For HIV, where infections often last years or even decades, evolution can be substantial, even within a single person. In particular, viruses often evolve drug resistance in response to antiviral treatment.

Tracking flu evolution in four long infections

We recently tracked viral evolution in four cancer patients who had flu infections lasting several months. Most flu infections last about a week, which limits the amount of change that can occur. But in patients with weak immune systems, infections can last a long time, with severe effects.

How did flu change within these long infections? By sequencing viruses from different times during the infection and comparing their genomes, we were able to identify new mutations and track their fates.

Each subplot represents one site in the virus where mutations can occur. Mutant viruses are shown in orange, and their frequencies rise and fall over time. Xue et al. eLife 2017;6:e26875, CC BY

Evolution acted in a matter of weeks. One clear example was resistance to Tamiflu. The patients we studied were taking the drug to control their infections. But, as in prior studies, viruses carrying drug-resistance mutations eventually emerged. These mutations might partly explain why the infections lasted so long.

Drug-resistance mutations werent the only evolutionary changes we saw. Half a dozen mutant viruses, all just slightly different from one another, would sometimes compete simultaneously in a single person.

These competing viruses made evolution a complicated affair. A mutation that started spreading one week would sometimes go extinct the next. Presumably, it was outcompeted by an even better mutation.

In some cases, we found the exact same mutations in viruses from different patients in our study, even though we could tell that the patients did not infect each other. Wed only very rarely expect such similarities to happen due to chance. The viruses may have hit on similar adaptations in response to evolutionary challenges. Some of these mutations may have helped the virus avoid the immune system, echoing other studies.

Whats more, many mutations within these patients matched mutations that later spread around the world. In the spikes of flus outer coat, which help the virus enter host cells, the mutation N225D emerged in three of the four patients in our study. By 2015, about eight years after our patients were infected, most flu viruses around the world carried the exact same change.

For us, this was unexpected. Evolution is full of trade-offs, and some mutations that help flu adapt within people may slow its transmission from person to person. We also didnt know whether evolution in such unusually long flu infections would match patterns of change around the world.

But in our study, flu evolution in individual people showed striking similarities to evolution around the globe. We could see hints of some global evolutionary trends within just a few individuals.

As technologies continue to improve, its becoming easier to look deep inside flu infections, like we did. WHO labs sequence flu strains from thousands of people every year to monitor flu evolution. Researchers are sequencing more and more strains in ways that let us catch mutations as they first arise within individual people.

Each of these thousands of infections is like a separate evolutionary experiment. By comparing mutations that appear in different infections, we may get a sense of evolutionary possibilities and constraints.

Somewhere down the line, this kind of information may help forecast flus evolution. For now, at least, its uncovering some of the dynamic processes of evolution that take place within each of us.

Katherine Xue, Doctoral Student in Genome Sciences, University of Washington and Jesse Bloom, Associate Member, Fred Hutchinson Cancer Research Center and Affiliate Associate Professor of Genome Sciences and Microbiology, University of Washington

This article was originally published on The Conversation. Read the original article.

Katherine Xue, Jesse Bloom | The Conversation

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How flu changes within human body may hint at evolution of global trends - Business Standard

This article was originally published on The Conversation. Read the original article.

In the US there have been many attempts to expunge evolution from the school curriculm or demand that creationismthe idea that all life was uniquely created by Godis given equal treatment in science textbooks. While all these have failed, the government in Turkey has now banned evolution from its national curriculum.

US creationists want both views to be presented, to let children decide what to believe. Bids to reject this are wrongly characterized as attempts to shut down debate or free speechto promote a scientific, atheistic, secular, ideology over a more moral, ethical, commonsense religious worldview.

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Turkeys decision goes much further. This isnt about claiming equal treatment, its an outright ban. The government justifies it by claiming evolution is difficult to understand and controversial. Any controversy however is one manufactured by ultra-religious communities seeking to undermine science. Many concepts in science are more difficult than evolution, yet they still get taught.

Evolution, creationists argue, is just a theory its not proven and so up for debate. Evolutionary trees (especially for humans) are regularly re-drawn after new fossil discoveries, showing how poor the theory is. After all, if the theory was correct, this wouldnt keep changing. Often, creationists will pose a challenge for science to prove how life started, knowing that there is not yet a firm, accepted theory. Finally, theres the king of all arguments: if we all evolved from monkeys, why are there still monkeys?

These arguments are packed with factual inaccuracies and logical fallacies. Evolution doesnt need an explanation of how life started. It simply describes how life develops and diversifies. Humans did not evolve from monkeyswere great apes. Modern apes, including humans, evolved from now extinct pre-existing ape species. Were related to, not descended from, modern apes.

Creationists fail to understand that evolution itself is not a theory. Evolution happens. Life develops and diversifies, new species come into existence. We can see intermediate life forms right now, such as fish that are transitioning to living on land and land mammals that recently transitioned into aquatic life. The theory of evolution explains how evolution takes place. Charles Darwin and Alfred Russel Wallace first described the mechanism that drives the changenatural selectionin 1858.

Creationists also fail to understand the difference between a theory and a law in science. This is something that even science graduates suffer from, as Ive noted in my own research. Theories explain scientific concepts. They are evidenced and accepted by the scientific community. Theories are the pinnacle of scientific explanation, not just a hunch or a guess. Laws however have a different role, they describe natural phenomena. For example, Newtons laws of gravity do not explain how gravity happens, they describe the effects gravity has on objects. There are laws and theories for gravity. In biology however, there are few laws, so there is no law of evolution. Theories do not, given sufficient proof, become laws. They are not hierarchical.

A third issue is the lack of understanding of the nature of science. Science aims not to find some objective truth, but to elicit an explanation of natural phenomena. All scientific explanations are provisional. When new evidence is found that contradicts what we think we know, we change our explanations, sometimes rejecting theories that were once thought to be correct. Science is always working to try and falsify ideas. The more those ideas pass our tests, the more robust they are and the greater our confidence is that they are correct. Evolution has been tested for nearly 160 years. Its never been falsified. Science only deals with natural phenomena, it doesnt deal with or seek to explain the supernatural.

Banning good science undermines all science, especially considering evolutions place underpinning modern biology, with plenty of evidence to support it. For mainstream scientists, the fact that evolution happens is neither seriously questioned nor controversial. Any controversy in discussions of evolution resides in the role natural selection has in driving diversity and change, or the pace of that change.

This ban on teaching evolution in Turkish schools opens up the possibility that alternative, unscientific ideas may enter science teaching, from those who believe in a flat earth to deniers of gravity.

How do we deal with the apparent schism between religious belief and scientific evidence?

My research and approach has been to distinguish between religion, a belief system, and science, which works on the acceptance of evidence. Beliefs, including but not limited to religious beliefs, are often held irrationally, without evidence, and are resistant to change. Science is rational, based on evidence and is open to change when faced with new evidence. In science, we accept the evidence, rather than choose to believe.

Turkeys move to ban the teaching of evolution contradicts scientific thinking, and tries to turn the scientific method into a belief systemas if it were a religion. It seeks to introduce supernatural explanations for natural phenomena, and to assert that some form of truth or explanation for nature exists beyond nature. The ban is unscientific, undemocratic and should be resisted.

James WilliamsisLecturer in Science Education attheSussex School of Education and Social Work, University of Sussex.

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Erdogan vs. Darwin: Turkey will pay the price for removing evolution ... - Newsweek