Conference Reports: 11^th Annual CRS Conference Review

2022 CRS Conference Abstracts

July 22-23, 2022 - Lynchburg, VA

On July 22-23, the Creation Research Society held its eleventh conference on the campus of Liberty University, Lynchburg, Virginia. There were nearly 190 registered, plus CRS staff. This was the largest CRS conference to date. Great fellowship was enjoyed by all attendees, especially during the opening reception on the evening of July 21. Professor Andy McIntosh delivered the Henry M. Morris Memorial Lecture the evening of July 22. His talk was entitled, The Legacy of Henry M. Morris in Uncertain Days . This presentation was open to the public and was received very well.

In addition, there were four separate workshops or field trips on Thursday, July 21. An astronomy workshop led by Danny Faulkner, a biology/genetics workshop by Rob Carter, an education workshop by Mike Riddle. and a geology field trip to several local sites led by Marcus Ross.

The opening plenary session was given by CRS Board member Robert Carter on Friday morning, July 22. The title of his talk was A Revised, 4D Baramin Concept. Saturday's plenary session was co-authored by Ying Liu and Robert Carter, entitled, Multiyear Changes in the Genome of SARS-CoV-2 Reveal a Trend of Degeneration .

The primary purpose of the meeting is to provide a venue where people can present preliminary research and gain valuable input from their peers. We hope that some of the research presented at these meetings will eventually be published in the Creation Research Society Quarterly as full papers. Since these are works in progress, no attempt was made to record them. However, below are the abstracts from the 2022 meeting as submitted. Any typographic or grammar mistakes are the responsibility of the authors.

The Geology Workshop group went on a geology field trip, exploring the Precambrian-to-Cambrian metamorphic rocks of the Lynchburg, Virginia area. Over 30 participants joined the trip, which included visiting a local greenstone/metabasalt quarry for mineral collecting. The Biology Workshop group discussed topics that ranged far and wide, covering topics like population modeling, problems in baraminology, genetic entropy, the meaning of "information" in biology, and the ethical issues involved in stem cell and cloning research, specifically as this relates to the use of fetal cells derived from abortion.

The Education Workshop group discussed why the Church is losing the education wars and how to fight back with well-prepared, engaging, and informative presentations that ensure students are equipped to defend their faith.

Next year, the CRS will not host the annual conference in support of the International Conference on Creationism to be held at Cedarville University in Ohio ( https://www.internationalconferenceoncreationism.com/ ).

All meetings were well-attended. Following the plenary talks, Friday's and Saturday's conference sessions featured twenty-four, 30-minute presentations followed by question-and-answer periods and breaks that allowed time for networking and encouraged the free flow of ideas among fellow creation scientists.

ABSTRACTS

John Baumgardner

Language Falsifies Philosophical Naturalism

Philosophical naturalism is predicated on the claim that no nonmaterial realities exist. Hence, a single substantive counterexample of this foundational truth claim means the collapse of that framework. A category of reality which plays a huge role in the world around us is that of linguistic entities. Formal language, which involves the assignment of abstract meaning to a set of arbitrary symbols to form a vocabulary, together with a set of rules by which elements from the vocabulary may be joined together to form more complex meaning structures, encompasses not only human languages but also machine languages, mathematics, and the genetic specifications found in the DNA of living organisms. Formal language in its ultimate essence is nothing more than encoded meaning. Because meaning is abstract and non-material, so is formal language in all its diverse manifestations. The reality of the non-material linguistic realm within our daily experience is readily illustrated using a smartphone. Erasing the machine language software from a smartphone causes all its smart capabilities to vanish, even though its physical mass does not change by even a single atom. Similarly, living systems are unthinkable apart from the non-material linguistic specifications on which they rely. Indeed, all our thoughts and communications with others are manifestations of non-material formal language. Thus, the claim that non-material realities do not exist is obvious nonsense. There is hence no reason to allow philosophical materialists to continue to operate without challenge in our academic and other institutions of influence.

James L. Brenneman

Proper Bible Interpretation Must Constrain Creationist Models: Illustrated by Interpretations of Genesis 7:11

 

Creationists are confident that their scientific models are correct because they begin with the simple sense of Scripture: for example, interpretations of "day" (Gen. 1) and "was" (1:2). Yet as models develop, that simple intent of the Text may be lost, as the likely sense is exchanged for possible or even barely plausible meanings. This paper exposes faulty translation methodologies and illustrates the need for grammatical-historical interpretation with examples from the vocabulary of the Flood (Gen. 7:11; 8:2): 1) Broken Up does not mean rupture of the crust; 2) Fountains of the Great Deep cannot mean geysers or volcanoes; 3) Tehom carries no sense of depth or downward dimension; and so 4) The Flood was the ocean overflowing the land, not underground water shooting to the sky. Creationist models will become more accurate as our science and observation of natural reality is informed from the perspective of what is indeed the most probable intended sense of God's declarations about origins.

David Boyd

Analysis of Natural Selection Conceptual Inventory Question Responses among Freshman and Upper-class Biology and Premed Students at a Christian University

Natural Selection represents a relatively easy-to-understand concept that many people misrepresent. Since natural selection is considered by naturalistic scientists to be a major component of evolution, scientists from a biblical perspective should be able to understand natural selection and represent it accurately. I have used a Conceptual Inventory developed by secular educators when assessing student comprehension of Natural Selection in Freshman and Upper-level biology courses to determine student understanding. These questions uncover common student misconceptions and allow professors to appropriately instruct students and assess progress through their courses.

Stuart Burgess

Why the ankle joint is a masterpiece of engineering: And a rebuttal of Nathan Lents' bad design arguments

This paper will describe the ingenious design features of the human ankle joint. The paper will also give a rebuttal of the 'bad design' arguments of Nathan Lents that are given in his book 'Human errors'. The ankle joint is a complex joint that performs diverse functions, including joint movements, strength, flexibility and balance. According to Nathan Lents, the ankle joint contains mostly pointless bones. However the paper will show that each bone has specific functions that lead to an extreme level of optimal design. The ankle contains an ingenious integrated triple-arched structure comprising a medial longitudinal arch, a lateral longitudinal arch and a transverse arch. These arches enable five main functions to be performed: flexion, pronation, strength, flexibility and balance. Scientific results from the field of biomechanics research will be used to expose the errors of Nathan Lents. The research was carried out at Clare Hall College, Cambridge University in 2021 during a prestigious Visiting Research Fellowship. A related paper was published by the author in the Journal of biomimetics and bioinspiration (UK Institute of Physics): A review of linkage mechanisms in animal joints and related bioinspired designs.

Robert Carter

A Revised, 4D Baramin Concept

God clearly designed life to change and adapt over time. He preplanned this using direct (i.e., created diversity) and indirect (e.g., mutation and random recombination) means. What is not clear, however, is the nature of the created kinds/baramins. In the past, creationists have pointed out that the 'creationist lawn' is a false concept and that reality is closer to a 'creationist forest', with discrete trunks (kinds) replete with many branches (species). Here, I present a revised, 4D baramin concept that amplifies and improves on older ideas. Baramins can be grouped into four categories, depending on the initial number of individuals, the degree of separation between any initial subpopulations, and the amount of created diversity within each baramin. This allows some baramins to be species rich, some to be species poor (even monotypic), some with the ability to adapt to radical new environments, and some to be pigeonholed into restrictive niches. A proper understanding of the baramin concept allows us to explain the appearance and disappearance of species over time, the lack of major transitions in the fossil record and the reason why so many 'species' can interbreed today.

Eugene Chaffin

Accelerated Decay, Supernovae, and Uranium

 

We discuss the abundance of uranium and lead in stars, in the light of Chaffin's (2017) suggestion that the arrival at earth of the initial blast from a supernova may be accompanied by a change in the hypothetical "acceleron" field. This was suggested to lead to an episode of accelerated decay, or a drastic decrease in nuclear half-life of some nuclei. It is well known that the uranium series transforms U-238 into Pb-206. Examples are given of stars with high uranium abundance but very little lead abundance. This could correspond to a location where accelerated decay was not as severe as on earth. Other examples are given of a nonexistent uranium concentration but a finite lead concentration. This would correspond to a location where accelerated decay was predominate. Disturbing factors such as the inheritance of material from a companion star are mentioned.

Boaz Baeksung Choi

What Happened at the Tower of Babel? (Linguistic Evidences for the Historicity of the Tower of Babel Account)

Since the Linguistic Society of Paris banned discussion of the origin of language in their 1866 meeting, only seven years after the publication of Darwin's On the Origin of Species in 1859, there has been little significant scholarship addressing the origin of language, and virtually none that treats the Genesis account of the Tower of Babel incident as authentic historical record. It is into this vacuum that the Linguistic Energy Theory is proposed by the author. Linguistic pattern analysis is key to this theory on the origin of language which combines the Genesis record with concepts borrowed from Einstein's Theory of Relativity. According to the Linguistic Energy Theory, language is/has literal and figurative energy, which can be traced by analyzing linguistic patterns created by linguistic energy. According to this research, at Babel the original proto-language was catastrophically confounded, but in ways that are more systematic than previously thought. Since the triggering of the confounding of the proto-language at Babel, human language has been changing further and obscuring the proto-language. Most significantly, exceptional common denominators among languages which reflect linguistic distances, synchronic and diachronic, and the extraordinary and never-reported symmetry between these common-denominators are supporting evidences for the claim. Furthermore, the reliability of the biblical text reporting on the Tower of Babel incident as history is affirmed if not validated by this research. Tremendous insights into the character of God as well as pragmatic helps in foreign language acquisition are among the tangible fruits of this research.

Salvador Cordova

Joseph Deweese

John Sanford

Henry Wittler

The Protein Orchard (Rather Than a Universal Tree) is Unwittingly Adopted in Modern Bioinformatics

Using modern bioinformatic and experimental data, the discontinuity between major protein forms can be demonstrated to be sufficiently acute such that their origin is more reasonably explained by special creation rather than a gradual process of random mutation and selection. One method of demonstrating the discontinuity is by simply comparing and contrasting the sequences, form, function, and processing of select proteins such as topoisomerases, helicases, transmembrane proteins, collagen, zinc finger proteins, and insulin receptors. Not only do 3D folds demarcate discontinuities, but so also the primary structure, post-translational modifications, post-translational processing, and signal peptide sequences. Though not as forcefully, the protein orchard model can also be somewhat gleaned from databases such as UniProt, CDD, SPARCLE, C-DART and the use of PSSM, etc. The presence of an orchard rather than a universal tree is underscored by the fact these databases can classify members into distinct protein families via objective statistical measures, and they show that each major family cannot phylogenetically resolve to a universal common ancestral biopolymer. Promiscuous domains are a further complication for a universal tree but fit well with the protein orchard model. The protein orchard model may have some bearing on the organismal orchard models and discontinuity systematics in general, but nevertheless, the observable protein orchard pattern in the bioinformatic databases points forcefully in favor of special creation rather than a process of gradual evolution.

Matthew Cserhati

Mitochondrial baraminology of Annelida

Phylum Annelida is made up of 22,000 species of worms, classified as bristle worms (Polychaeta), collared worms (Clitellata) and leeches. Due to their long, segmented, cylindrical body plans, annelids are most likely to be an apobaramin. The mitochondrial DNA of eighty-three annelids from the NCBI database were analyzed to assess baraminic relationships. The mitochondrial whole genome sequences were aligned, and the gene order similarity was compared between species using the ODL algorithm. The results for the gene order similarity comparison shows three clusters, of which two are statistically significant. Gene order clustering was excellent with a Hopkins clustering value of 0.907. The mtDNA sequence similarity-based clustering shows six statistically significant clusters . Hopkins clustering was very good at 0.856. The six groups discovered by the sequence similarity analysis are: 1. Chaetopterus, Cirriformia, Cryptonome, Eurythoe, Eusyllis, Magelona, Myrianida, Owenia, Pharyngocirrus, Ramisyllis, Spirobranchis, Timarete, Typosyllis, and Urechis. 2. Alitta, Hediste, Namalycastis, Neanthes, Nereis, Paraleonnates, Perinereis, Platynereis, Tylorrhynchus. 3. Amynthas, Duplodicodrilus, Metaphire, Perionyx. 4. Aphrodita, Aporrectodea, Clymenella, Drawida, Erpobdella, Goniada, Lumbricus, Marphysa, Orbinia, Pista, Pontoscolex, Terebellides, Zeylanicobdella. 5. Hirudo, Poecilobdella, Whitmania. 6. Escarpia, Galathealinum, Lamellibrachia, Manayunkia, Oasisia, Ozobranchus, Paraescarpia, Placobdella, Ridgeia, Riftia, Sclerolinum, Seepiophila, Siboglinum, Tevnia. The gene order analysis results indicate that mitochondrial gene order is general even at high taxonomic levels. This analysis broke down the Annelida apobaramin into three smaller apobaramins. However, the mtDNA sequence similarity analysis breaks down the apobaramins derived in the previous step into smaller groups. This indicates that gene order similarity analysis may be good only for initial baraminic estimates, more fine-detailed analysis may be achieved by mtDNA sequence similarity analysis.

Leo (Jake) Hebert, III

Scaling Laws in Biology: Evidence for Engineering Optimization?

Allometry is the study of the manner in which biological variables scale with body size. For example, very massive organisms like elephants or dinosaurs need thick legs to support their great body weight, whereas smaller creatures do not. Observable biological characteristics are often proportional to the organism's mass raised to some power, often a simple multiple of 1/4. As a well-known example, agricultural scientist Max Kleiber observed that for birds and many mammals, basal metabolic rate is proportional to body mass raised to the 3/4 power. This result was surprising, as biologists, based on simple geometrical reasoning, were expecting an exponent of 2/3, rather than 3/4. In 1997 physicist Geoffrey West and biologists Brian Enquist and James Brown published a theoretical explanation for Kleiber's Law. Among other things, the WEB explanation assumes that biological systems are designed to minimize the amount of energy needed to function. Although the WEB theory and its extensions have been subject to some controversy, they successfully predict the scaling exponents for 16 variables of the mammalian circulatory system, including blood volume, heart rate, blood pressure, aorta radius, and the numbers and densities of capillaries. They also successfully predict the scaling exponents for 17 characteristics of plant vascular systems. Despite the obvious design implications of their own theory, WEB attributed this remarkable result to natural selection rather than a Creator. Here we discuss WEB theory as evidence for Creation and as an example of the successful application of engineering principles to the understanding of biological systems.

Mark Horstemeyer

When the Holy Spirit's Expression is Couched in Terms of Thermodynamics, a Complete Mathematical Description of the Godhead is Realizable

 

This two-part presentation first describes the Holy Spirit's part of the Godhead manifestations in the space-time-matter continuum as expressions of thermodynamics and then uses thermodynamics to provide a mathematical description of God's omnipotence, omnipresence, and omniscience. The Laws of Thermodynamics are expressed in different energy forms (Chemical, Optical, Magnetic, Electrical, Thermal, Mechanical, Acoustic, and Nuclear) giving rise to an acronym COMETMAN. The bible shows that when the Holy Spirit moved in the Old Testament and New Testament that the manifestations expressed themselves in all of the COMETMAN forms in one place or another. Because this comprehensive description of the energy, the rate of energy change over time is power and when power is integrated over all space and time, we arrive at omnipotence. By employing the General Theory of Relativity, we can arrive at another integral form of omnipresence. And finally, when we integrate knowledge in terms of information and wisdom, we can arrive at another integral of omniscience. When the triple integral is developed we find a mathematical trinity of omnipresence, omnipotence, and omniscience

Mark Horstemeyer

Tate Fonville

Andy McIntosh

Stuart Burgess

A Trinitarian Design Methodology was used by the Creator when Engineering the Universe

We present the trinitarian design methodology that the Creator employed when designing the universe based from Romans 1:20 (Amp) "For ever since the creation of the world His invisible attributes, His eternal power and divine nature, have been clearly seen, being understood through His workmanship [all His creation, the wonderful things that He has made]…" Since God's nature is Trinitarian, He engineered the universe after His own nature. We discuss the optimization of the cosmos by using a standard engineering multi-objective design optimization methodology. This entails a multiscale analysis wherein different objectives, constraints, and variables are defined at each particular length scale and are typically different from each other. When considering this framework, trinities arise within each length scale thus revealing the nature of the Godhead. For example, the largest length scale is the cosmos, which comprises the following trinity: astrosphere, geosphere, and biosphere. Each of these second length scale entities are also broken down into further trinities: astrosphere = stars, planets, and satellites; geosphere = core, mantle, and crust; biosphere = vegetation, animals, and mankind. And so on. For each of the different length scales, we discuss the objectives, constraints, and variables. We also discuss this systems design optimization approach in the context of macro-evolutions weakness in explaining the universe and its lack of application of systems engineering.

Marshall C. Jordan

How old is Y-chromosome Adam? Mutation rates give the answer

Y chromosome variant data reveals that all men have descended from a common male ancestor who lived in the recent past. Y-chromosome Adam is thought by Evolutionists to have lived 250,000 years ago while Creationists believe this is Noah who lived 4500 years ago. Because mutations are defined by the ancestral allele, the older timescale produces many more apparent mutations in the data. However, recent pedigree-based mutation rate measurements indicate that the number of mutations found on Y chromosomes today could have accumulated over just 4500 years. As more pedigree-based mutation rates are measured, the age of our most recent common ancestor is resolving in favor of the Creationist view. To provide independent confirmation of the Biblical timescale, mutations defined by this timescale were counted on the Y chromosomes of three large databases and lineage specific mutation rates were computed for 15 haplogroups. While relative rates between haplogroups are the same, the rates differ between databases, which may be an artifact of inadequate depth of coverage or differing quality scores between the databases. Lineages of the A and B haplogroups have significantly higher rates than other haplogroups. The list of haplogroup specific mutation rates from these databases will serve as a corrective for Y chromosome phylogenies based on the evolutionary timescale as more pedigree mutation rates are published. Once again, the historic record of Genesis and the recent antiquity of Noah provides a clear explanation for human genetic data.

Marshall C. Jordan

Tracing Neanderthal descent from Noah using ancient DNA

Recent publication of the Y chromosome sequences of 3 Neanderthals and 2 Denisovans allow these post-Flood sequences to be placed in phylogenetic trees descending from Noah. The ancient sequences were obtained from the European Nucleotide Archive and combined with modern sequences from three large Y chromosome databases. Phylogenetic trees were constructed with online software. Based on a timescale of 4500 years since the Flood, the branch points in the trees show Denisovans and Neanderthals descending from men of the A haplogroups after it split from the B haplogroups about 4100 years ago. The pattern of distribution of the ancient sequences among A haplogroups differed between the three databases, possibly due to differences in depth of coverage and quality scores of the called genotypes. Denisovans always clustered together, whereas the Neanderthals clustered with one other A haplogroup. Risk of artifactual base calls due to decay of the ancient DNA was countered by running the phylogenetic trees using only transversion mutations. Contrary to the Evolutionary notion that Neanderthals and Denisovans are only distantly related to modern humans, they appear to have descended from men of the A haplogroup in the lineage of Ham. They were contemporaries with men of the patriarchal age. The fact that A haplogroup men are mostly found in sub-Saharan Africa today, whereas Neanderthal and Denisovan remains are found in Europe and Asia suggests that the separation of Neanderthals and Denisovans from modern lineages occurred soon after the Flood, close in time to the Babel event age. The fact that A haplogroup men are mostly found in sub-Saharan Africa today, whereas Neanderthal and Denisovan remains are found in Europe and Asia suggests that the separation of Neanderthals and Denisovans from modern lineages occurred soon after the Flood, close in time to the Babel event.

Eric Katzaman

John Baumgardner

Modeling the Process of Rapid Geomagnetic Reversal During the Genesis Flood

Remnant magnetization in the Earth's igneous rocks document that the Earth's magnetic field reversed its polarity many times during the Genesis Flood. Previous creationist research has argued that strong convective buoyancy within the Earth's liquid outer core during the Flood can cause the expulsion of magnetic flux outward from the core into the overlying mantle which produces rapid reversals of the Earth's surface dipolar magnetic field. This talk reports preliminary numerical results of modeling of this dynamic process in 3D spherical geometry which includes the strong turbulence that develops in these circumstances.

Nayeon Lee

Material Design Found in Ironclad Beetles' Exoskeleton'

An experimental study on the southwestern ironclad beetle (Zopherus haldemani) revealed that a remarkable composite design in the exoskeleton led to high damage tolerance. Structural observations revealed nanoarrays on the surface, which function as an antibacterial structure to prevent infection by mechanically hindering bacterial attachments. Structural and nanomechanical tests analyzed multilayered structures where each layer performed a distinct function. In detail, the innermost layer, the epidermis, contains attachment sites for muscle and soft tissue that connect the exoskeleton to the beetle. The next layer, the endocuticle, contained 8-10 GPa of moduli. Nanoindentation testing further reiterated that the various fibrous layer orientations resulted in elastic moduli changing throughout the endocuticle's cross-section. Additionally, this exoskeleton prevented delamination within the composite materials by overlapping approximately 5-19% of each fibrous stack with neighboring layers, which was never reported in manufactured composite design. In the next layer, the exocuticle exhibited the greatest Young's moduli (~15 GPa), which could provide the bulk of the mechanical strength for the exoskeleton. The epicuticle, the outmost layer, with reduced Young's moduli of 2.2-3.2 GPa, exhibited nanopatterns with a polygon shape (2-3 µm in diameter) on the surface. Inspired from this nanotexture, nanopatterns were reproduced on pure titanium (Ti) using hydrothermal etching techniques. The results showed that the nano-patterned structure effectively reduced the adherence of methicillin-resistant Staphylococcus aureus to the surface. This study demonstrated the sophisticated engineering design of the beetle's exoskeleton and showed an example of bio-inspired design material.

Tim Lewis

John Baumgardner

FEA Analysis of Tsunami Generation During the Genesis Flood

Within the framework of catastrophic plate tectonics, large tsunamis are a plausible mechanism for producing fossil-bearing sediments of the Flood rock record. The focus of this research is to model the behavior of an overriding slab in response to a rapidly subducting plate with the aim of understanding in more detail the tsunami generation process. Key to this process is the locking and unlocking of the overriding and subducting slabs. The unlocking results in the rapid rise of the sea bottom and generation of a tsunami. Several key questions arise in this context that the model seeks to answer. How rapidly can the deformed overriding slab relax mechanically from its deformed shape? What sort of the stresses occur to keep the slabs locked together? How much deformational heating arises when the overriding slab is repetitively loaded? What is the coefficient of friction that allows the plates to be locked sufficiently long to produce large tsunamis? To address these questions in a quantitative manner, we apply the finite element analysis code Ansys. Preliminary results show response the time is short enough (~15 min for 10 km of deflection of the overriding plate). Additionally, stresses look reasonable for the large deflections that are involved.

Ying Liu

Robert Carter

Multiyear Changes in the Genome of SARS-CoV-2 Reveal a Trend of Degeneration

Evolution of SARS-CoV-2, the cause of COVID-19, has been carefully recorded with unprecedented details. We mined the sequence data and relevant literature to study trends in SARS-CoV-2 evolution. We found several characteristics that may apply to evolution of zoonotic viruses and beyond. There was initially a directionless drift followed by sudden emergence of multiple dominant variants. The alpha, delta, and omicron variants swept over the globe in succession. Surprisingly, the latter variants did not originate as a subtype of former ones, but as completely new variants originating from the same root. There was no progression in any direction. Although the viral genome was relatively large (29.9 kilobase), there were only a limited number of adaptive mutations shared by multiple variants. These positively selected mutations involved receptor-binding and immune evasion. Some mutations synergized with each other or mitigated the harmful effect of other mutations. There were more purifying selections than adaptive mutations. However, most mutations went unselected. A driving force of passive viral evolution is the host APOBEC enzyme which deaminates viral cytosine into uracil. Accumulation of mutations in SARS-CoV-2 included deletions which were sometimes positively selected. Newer variants demonstrated enhanced ability to replicate in the airway epithelium and reduced ability to replicate in the lungs, which caused milder symptoms but facilitated transmission. Finally, we used epidemiological data in the commonwealth of Virginia to demonstrate attenuation of the virus even during the early phases of the pandemic. In summary, SARS-CoV-2 displays to the world the nature of molecular evolution: non-linearity, adaptation with degeneration.

Andy McIntosh

Intelligence, Information and Thermodynamics

Even in open systems the principles of thermodynamics with energy coming across the boundary, the energy is of no benefit unless there are raised free energy devices able to capture, store and / or use such free energy. We then explore the connection between information and thermodynamics, and noting that functional coded information (software) is neither matter nor energy, it is evident that such codes sit on a substrate which is itself subject to the laws of thermodynamics. We go on to consider living systems, where the functional complexity of these systems is heavily dependent on the material environment in which such a system is operating, and indeed obeys all the same chemical and physical laws that any man-made machines obey. What then are the laws that coded information in living systems must obey? Can one quantify the organisational structure of these information procedures which use the matter and energy of the hardware in any real system? A major implication is that coded non-material information in living systems constrains the energy and matter which it uses, and when the biochemical system dies, the information system is lost as the free energy devices cease to operate. Matter and energy cannot on its own evolve coded information. Just as there are laws of thermodynamics, we show there are parallel principles governing coded information. John 1:1 states "In the beginning was the Word" - Intelligence before matter and energy.

Nathan Mogk

Oceanfront Property in Arizona: Flood Terminal Boundary at the top of Neogene basin fills

Recent studies have shed new light on the relationship between some of the last deposited sediments in Southern Arizona basins and major tectonic events which occurred at the end of the Genesis Flood. This allows specific Flood terminal boundary formations to be determined accurately for the Higley ("ancestral Salt River deposits", eastern Phoenix area), Tucson (Swan-Craycroft gravels), and associated basins. Final Flood deposition of unconsolidated gravels, sand, and silt is transitional between the catastrophism associated with earlier Flood phases, and modern, low energy depositional events. The determined boundary is consistent with similar findings in the Verde Valley and a new water flow model of the drainage of Floodwaters from the upstream basins through three major water gaps. This study also confirms that metamorphic core complexes were formed during the Flood, and can be upgraded as a Flood boundary criterion.

 

Nathan Mogk

The High Mountains Under the Heavens

One of the hardest problems in Flood geology is the assignment of pre-Cambrian rocks and events to periods in Biblical Earth history. Arizona's Transition Zone provides an ideal laboratory to study this question owing to numerous and varied pre-Cambrian crustal blocks separated by several major linear high strain zones that are well exposed at the surface. In this presentation I report on field investigations into the Black Canyon Creek Group, Mazatzal Group, and Apache Group rocks and their relationships to each other and the crustal blocks that host them. I discuss four different possible mechanisms for pre-Cambrian radiometric change and formulate six working hypothetical frameworks for understanding the timing and scope of pre-Flood geological events. Finally, I discuss potential new criteria for distinguishing Creation week, Antediluvian, and early Flood rocks.

Evan A. Navarro

John Baumgardner

Proposed Mechanism for Megasequence Formation

The proposed mechanism for megasequence formation involves an episode of ocean floor cooling that drops the global sea level by 100 m or more. This sudden drop in sea level, combined with ongoing and frequent large tsunamis generated by the locking and slip of plates in subduction zones, bevels the previously deposited continental sediment sequence to form a global-scale erosional unconformity. This unconformity marks the termination of the previous megasequence and the beginning of the next one, as the sea level begins to rise again as a consequence of ongoing rapid seafloor spreading. The presentation will highlight numerical results that affirm this mechanism using the Mabbul code that models the erosion, suspension, transport and deposition of sediment in the context of the Genesis Flood on a rotating sphere. This work is intended to bolster faith in the One who by His mighty power and infinite wisdom created all things but later brought a devastating judgment on fallen humans whose every intent of the thoughts of their hearts was only evil continually, as well as on the earth they inhabited.

Michael J. Oard

Did the Floods on Mars Occur during the Genesis Flood?

Planetary scientists were greatly surprised to discover floods on Mars. And these were no ordinary floods, but at least one was 10- 100 times the discharge of the Lake Missoula flood. Two main flood features occur on Mars: (1) valley networks that are generally 50- 350 m deep, 0.5-6 km wide, and up to 4000 km long and (2) outflow channels that are much wider. Planetary scientists have come to the surprising conclusion t that they were carved by catastrophic discharges of water. Mars valley networks have unique features; they occur predominantly in the southern highlands, have a patchy distribution, immature profiles, often start full size, and follow the topographic slope. Outflow channels initiate from underground in chaos regions or grabens, start full size, and have few tributaries. Planetary scientists have suggested that impacts and volcanism could supply the water for flooding, but each large impact is separated by tens of millions of years and therefore becomes insignificant. Based on many indications of youth and a secular crater dating system that comes up with anomalous results, a biblical model has more explanatory power. I provide an objective relative dating system that shows that the large impacts blasted Mars at about the same general time as the Genesis Flood. This verifies the Day 4 cratering hypothesis, and indicates impacts were either the mechanism of the Flood or contributed to catastrophic plate tectonics.

Savannah Robins

John Baumgardner

Modeling the Laramide Tectonics of Western North America during the Genesis Flood

Western North America is characterized by several distinctive tectonic features, including the Rocky Mountains, the Colorado Plateau, and the Rio Grande Rift. Many of these features have been associated by secular scientists with the Laramide Orogeny, a time of catastrophic volcanism, mountain building, and widespread tectonic activity correlating with the flat-slab subduction of the Farallon Plate beneath North America. However, the geodynamic models in previous scientific studies (e.g., Liu and Currie, 2019) assume noneclogitized subducting crust over several million years in order to sustain low-angle subduction. Previous geodynamic models of the Laramide orogeny also do not include crustal elastic behavior, which precludes correlation of model results with existing topographic features. In this study, we present preliminary results for an updated 2D version of the geodynamics code Terra that treats the Lagrangian aspects of the problem using particles. Results show that Terra is functionally comparable with other peer-reviewed, state-of-the-art geodynamic modeling codes such as SOPALE. We expect soon to incorporate elastic crustal behavior to model crustal deformation with that important realism. As we believe this period of flat-slab subduction and deformation occurred during the Biblical Flood, we will compare Laramide subduction models on both long and short timescales. The capability of Terra to model mantle and crustal dynamics simultaneously has far-reaching implications for future studies of the Genesis Flood, especially pertaining to the global episode of rapid mountain uplift at the end of the cataclysm.

Marcus R. Ross

Todd C. Wood

Evaluating Hypotheses of Hominin Baraminology

Statistical baraminology utilizes data matrices of physical characters among taxa and evaluates them using computational methods that can identify both continuities and discontinuities (e.g., distance correlation, multidimensional scaling, fuzzy analysis, etc.). Thus, statistical baraminology serves as a means of producing hypotheses of relationships among organisms, and these techniques have been applied to scores of living and extinct groups. Since the first application of statistical baraminology to hominin fossils (Wood 2010), numerous additional studies have been conducted, and the methods have been both challenged and defended. Recognizing that the outputs of statistical baraminology are hypotheses of relationships involving the number of groups and their composition, one way to test the hypotheses of a broad but unified humanity is to evaluate several classes of evidence that reveal the cognitive capabilities of various hominins. If humanlike intelligence and behavior comport with the members assigned to the human cluster, then our conclusions on the matter become stronger. Characteristic human attributes include: 1) Construction of tools 2) Controlled use of fire 3) Linguistic capabilities, recognized through the proxy of seafaring 4) Interbreeding among different species within Homo 5) Care for sick and/or injured 6) Burial and/or funerary practices A survey of these evidences indicates broad agreement with many species clustered together within proposed human holobaramins based on statistical baraminology. These include, minimally, H. sapiens, H. neanderthalensis, Desinovans, H. heidelbergensis, H. antecessor, H. erectus/ergaster, and H. naledi. We also include H. floresiensis, which thus far has not clustered with other humans in statistical studies.

Denver Seely

Geosynchronous Moon Disruption-modeling an equatorially aligned geomagnetic dipole with and without the Moon

Paleomagnetic observations indicate the orientation of the geomagnetic pole was located near the equator prior to, or shortly following the onset of the flood. Two solutions have been proposed: True Polar wander such that both the rotation axis and the co-aligned magnetic pole were oriented at the pre-flood crustal location of the equator, and Apparent Polar Wander (APW) such that only the magnetic pole was aligned near the pre-flood equator. This paper examines the APW for two cases: 1) the Earth by itself with equatorial aligned dipole, and 2) An Earth with Moon in geosynchronous orbit (semi-major axis ~6.6RE) with colinear dipole fields aligned with the equator. An analytical method from previous work is employed which models the shielding magnetic field of the magnetopause as a paraboloid of revolution and the magnetic field of the Earth and Moon primary fields modeled as magnetic dipoles. The system is modeled at equinox. For case 1, a magnetic dipole oriented with the equator will sweep the cusp of the magnetosphere into alignment with the solar wind every rotation period, establishing magnetic reconnection to the solar magnetic field, plasma particles from the sun are able to efficiently stream into the magnetosphere reaching Earth. This behavior contrasts with the magnetic shielding effect against encroachment of the solar wind provided by the modern rotation polar field alignment. For case 2, the combined magnetosphere of Earth and Moon would greatly reduce incident radiation from Solar Energetic Particles (SEP) and Galactic Cosmic Rays (GCR) in the sub-Lunar hemisphere.

Denver Seely

Stronger preflood geomagnetic radiation shielding may account for lack of rain and rainbows

 

Genesis describes a period prior to the formation of man when "the LORD God had not caused it to rain upon the earth" with a mistbased water cycle. The Rainbow was given by the LORD as a sign after the flood such that when "the bow shall be seen in the cloud", He would remember his covenant that "the waters shall no more become a flood to destroy all flesh." We considered the interpretation that no Rainbow forming water cycle existed from creation to the flood. We examined the role of geomagnetic field strength in altering the rain producing cloud cycle through the following steps: 1) An increased geomagnetic field strength decreases the flux of Solar Energetic Particles (SEP) and Galactic Cosmic Rays (GCR) penetrating into the troposphere. 2) GCRs and SEPs play a significant role in tropospheric ionization, which is a dominant factor driving both cloud condensation nuclei (CCN) formation (~30nm diameter) and post nucleation water drop growth rate (up to 15μm diameter), combining to determine the maximum condensation rate. 3) The supersaturation limit of water vapor in air increases with decreasing condensation rate. 4) An increased water vapor supersaturation limit decreases the temperature lapse-rate of water vapor saturated air. 5) A lower temperature lapse-rate decreases the convective instability required to drive cloud convection. 6) Rainbows require convective growth of droplets to diameters between 1mm and 6mm. By reducing mid-tropospheric condensation rates, increased preflood geomagnetic shielding may have forced a mist-based cycle to accommodate daily solar induced evaporation.

FIGURE CAPTIONS

Figure 1. Some of the nearly 190 attendees at the CRS conference.

Figure 2. The Astronomy Workshop personnel visited the Liberty University Observatory and will propose to Liberty University a plan to make the observatory a location for creation-science research. Danny Faulkner helped the Liberty University technicians garner the photo of the Ring Nebula.

Figure 3. The Astronomy Workshop personnel along with the Liberty University Observatory team.

Figure 4. Dr. Andy McIntosh, who holds an emeritus chair in thermodynamics at the University of Leeds in Great Britain, gave the Henry Morris Lecture on Friday night.

Figure 5. Liberty University School of Engineering Research Professor Emeritus Dr. John Baumgardner, who spoke on how "Language Falsifies Philosophical Naturalism," also mentored four different younger creation scientists who gave presentations at the conference.