Yeast and Appendix

I ran across two interesting articles recently that support creation.

The first is from Institute for Creation Research about brewer's yeast that is supposedly 45 million years old. This is the opening paragraph.

Stumptown Brewery in Guerneville, California, brews its beer according to a unique formula. Although standard ingredients such as malt and hops are used, the yeast that is added is supposedly 45 million years old.¹ The yeast was found in the digestive tract of a bee encased in amber. How could yeast cells survive and still be able to make beer after such a long time?

Seriously. . . How can anything be alive and functional after 45 million years? Hundreds or thousands is amazing enough.

The next article was a secular article about the appendix from Yahoo News.

The body's appendix has long been thought of as nothing more than a worthless evolutionary artifact, good for nothing save a potentially lethal case of inflammation.

Now researchers suggest the appendix is a lot more than a useless remnant. Not only was it recently proposed to actually possess a critical function, but scientists now find it appears in nature a lot more often than before thought.

No less than Charles Darwin first suggested that the appendix was a vestigial organ from an ancestor that ate leaves, theorizing that it was the evolutionary remains of a larger structure, called a cecum, which once was used by now-extinct predecessors for digesting food.



Parker and his colleagues recently suggested that the appendix still served as a vital safehouse where good bacteria could lie in wait until they were needed to repopulate the gut after a nasty case of diarrhea. Past studies had also found the appendix can help make, direct, and train white blood cells.

Yet non of this functionality point these people to a Designer. It is sad really.


"We're not saying that Darwin's idea of evolution is wrong - that would be absurd, as we're using his ideas on evolution to do this work," Parker told LiveScience. "It's just that Darwin simply didn't have the information we have now."

God has left evidence all around us of his handiwork. He is truly amazing in so many ways.

Critter Corner v. 7 Chick Report

Well, we have had a big last couple of days! Sunday evening I noticed that one of the eggs had hatched. Two more were jostling around. Since then we have been watching eggs and chicks a lot. Out of 7 eggs we have 6 chicks with the last one hatching yesterday evening. (We will leave the last egg in the incubator just to be sure, but there are no sounds coming from it so we are assuming it was not fertilized.)

Here is a picture of them with their names and the order in which they were hatch.

We have been really praising God for 6. We have been praying this whole time for at least one to hatch despite our less than perfect incubating and egg turning skills. The egg itself is an amazing creation.

The kids are especially proud of the ones that they named. This is my daughter with Majesty. (She wanted it to be princess, but I reminded her that we can't tell if they are male or female.)
Notice the Keepers t-shirt. If you are looking for a Christian scouting-type organization, Keepers of the Faith is a good one.

This is my son with Chickpea. He was going to be Chickpeeper, but ended up with the easier to say Chickpea.

It is a good thing we are having two weeks vacation. I think we would be having a hard time concentrating on school with all the excitement. It has been a great learning experience. We get to keep them at least until Sunday. Then they will be going to live on the farm where they came from.

Homeschool Happenings v. 4 (The Last Day of the 1st Six Weeks)

It seems that six weeks have gone by quickly. We have made good progress in many areas especially reading. The kids really enjoy Texas geography. The only thing that we have been slackers in is quilting. (I think that is because it is such a steep learning curve for me.) This past week we have been reviewing our elements (arsenic, iron, calcium, chromium, and potassium), our big fat lies (earth is millions of years old, church is a place, you need to be like everyone else, people get to decide what is true, and religion needs to stay private), our traits of the wise (discipline, industrious, prudent, humble, and justice) and the Panhandle Plains region of Texas. They are supposed to tell Dad this weekend what they remember as a sort of "final".

Now we will have two weeks off. As a reward to ourselves we are planning to go swimming in one of the area lakes and going to Arlington Gem and Mineral Show. We are also hopeful that at least few of the chicks will hatch. The two weeks gives me time to plan the next 6 weeks and to edit our video yearbook for last year.

The World's Biggest Mushroom

OK. . . Maybe that is an exaggeration. It is certainly the biggest one that I have ever seen. My kids and I took the liberty of pulling it out of a neighbors yard. It turned out to be two that had grown together. It was very hard to pull up because there was grass growing through it. Anyway, the picture is on a dinner plate for scale.

College

Though my kids are quite a few years from college, I still find discussions on the topic interesting. Randy Alcorn has a post today about choosing a college that is worth the read. Here is the part that I want to emphasize.

When our daughters were considering a college, we told them, "Judge everything you hear by the Word of God, like the Bereans in Acts 17:11." There will be disagreements with faculty and students, of course, but that's healthy as long as people are appealing to a common authority, God's Word. But when they aren't, that's where the trouble begins. I would far rather send my kids—or go myself—to a school that has certain doctrines I don't embrace but that believes God's Word, than to one I cannot trust.

There is a Christian college (which will remain nameless) that some years ago was a great place to be challenged in the Word and meet God-fearing people who took the Bible seriously. I recently had a conversation with one of their alums. She said that the focus has all got to "academics" (what the world calls smart like evolution) and sports and things to make the college as "normal" as popular so that more students would be attracted.

It kind of reminded me of many congregations' mentalities of we need to be attractive to the masses by dumbing down the Bible and standing for virtually nothing. It seems to me that this method creates a bunch of weak Christians or short-lived Christians.

So I completely agree with Mr. Alcorn. If a school is professing Christianity, they darn well better be willing to stand on the Bible to make their arguments not just in science, but in economics, business, etc.

The Neighbor

In a comment on a previous post, a reader pointed me to this article that compares the local government school to a "neighbor". It makes some really good points. I encourage you to read the whole thing. Here is a quote to wet your whistle.

Now, time you used to spend together in the evening is spent alone. Your children's free time is taken up working on projects your neighbor has asked them to do. Even your weekends are interrupted by games and parties your neighbor has planned for them without consulting you. To make matters worse, your neighbor has begun to ask you to chip in for the expenses he has had as a result of your children's visits.

This is one of the things I enjoy about homeschooling. When school is done, its done. And we can work school around our activities, parties, etc. instead of working those things around school/homework.

5 Words

One Mom has given me 5 words to write about.

Church- I spend more time then the average "lay-person" thinking and reading about church. One book that I read recently about it is So You Don't Want to Go to Church Any More by Wayne Jacobsen. This book gave me a lot to think about. One of the main themes is: Do we put more emphasis on going to church than being the body of Christ? Another aspect of the book is community. Several years ago, I did a study (by that I mean read and thought about the entire New Testament and much of the Old) to further understand why the early Christians got together. That study lead me to believe that the main reason was fellowship (forming friendships around the cause of Christ). Community is something almost non-existent in many congregations. Worship (demonstrating your love and devotion to a deity) is something that our daily lives are to be about much more than singing in a large assembly.

Texas- Secretly, I have never liked Texas too much. If I had my way, I would live in Oregon. That being said. . . There are some advantages to living here. Such as family (see word 5) and freedom (as in little homeschool regulations and concealed carry) and we are at a church where I am able to serve in many ways. The Dallas/For Worth area is good for homeschooling as it has great libraries, many museums, zoos and wildlife parks. There are homeschool groups and enrichment classes galore. Texas is a very vast and diverse state. My kids and I are taking a whole year on Texas geography. There are not too many states that have prairies, deserts, forests, mountains, and coastal areas.

Education- My main principle regarding education is this: Education is the domain of parents not the government. I think that if the government is going to have schools they should be public like the library is public. And parents should be "allowed" to participate as much as they want including sitting in on classes. I believe that education is never world view neutral. Parents should be able to recognize the lies that surround our kids and counteract them with the truth.

Landscape- I assume OneMom gave me this one because I used to be a landscape architect (in training, that means degree but not licensed). Basically landscape architects do the construction drawings (blueprints) for everything outside of the building. This can include sidewalks, plants, drainage, irrigation, fences, berms, etc. The father of landscape architecture is Frederick Law Olmsted who is the designer of Central Park in New York.


Family- My extended family can be described as concentrated. From my grandparents down they are concentrated geographically living withing a 200 mile (approx.) radius of Abilene, TX with many of them living there. The are concentrated vocationally. Every female from my grandmother down (except me) is or was a public school teacher. They all also went to the same college (except me, one uncle, and my mom's husband,and my husband). My in-laws on the other hand are far-flung. They live in TN, FL, GA, TX and maybe another state that I am not remembering. They are professors, computer people, counselors, farmers, nurses, etc. Those who went to college went all over the nation. The grandmother (who passed away recently) was very smart but lived in a time and place where girls only needed an eighth grade education. Her grandson, on the other hand, has several degrees. My nuclear family is great (though maybe a little heavy on the animal side). We have fun going on adventures together and learning new things. We are especially glad to be on a journey with God together.