Craig Apelt

HONEY I’M HOME

Romans 1:20 – “For since the creation of the world His invisible attributes, His eternal power and divine nature, have been clearly seen, being understood through what has been made…”

Women really are better at getting directions!

The honey bee is one incredible character. Bee hives are inhabited by thousands upon thousands of bees. And with, the exception of a few drones, every one of them is a female.

I was first introduced to the world of honey bees by an old friend of mine. I met him while I was in the Navy and stationed in San Diego. He remained in San Diego and dabbled in all sorts of things. One of them was raising honey bees.

On one of my visits Jeff told me that he wanted to show me something astounding. He took me to the site of his honey bee hives. It was located in the foothills of the Rockies and situated on a canyon. He pointed across the canyon and said “See those flowering bushes across the canyon? Those are sage and make some of the sweetest honey. But that’s not the amazing thing, Craig. How the bees navigate is something that is almost too much to imagine.”

He told me that bees use the sun to navigate and do it so precisely that if he were to move the hive a few feet the bees would return and never find it. They would return to the exact spot they left….. within literally a foot or two…. And they would die.

Bees navigate using the sun as their “compass”.

Bees use the ultraviolet light of the sun so they can navigate even on cloudy days.

Bees are little mathematicians and use angles to the sun, both vertical and horizontal, to determine location.

Bees compensate for the sun’s movement across the sky during the day.

Bees compensate for the height of the sun as the seasons roll on.

Bees are able to “update” the position of the sun as they spend hours in the dark hive. When they come out of the hive they already know how far the sun has moved and compensate accordingly.

I have a frontal cortex that is light years beyond the brain of a bee.

A bee’s brain is 20,000 times less massive than mine.

But if you and I were making a trip to a neighboring town for the first time you wouldn’t want to go with me unless I had a GPS. Relying on me to get us home without the aid of advanced technology would be the dance of the doomed.

I’d make the wrong turn coming out of McDonald’s!

You’d want a bee on the dashboard. You’d want a bee…… not me!

Furthermore, the bee wouldn’t wait around “acquiring satellites”. She’d be on her way immediately. (And women say men don’t bother to get directions)

The lack of a precise navigational tool is a death warrant to a bee.

Every single one of these preposterous abilities are a part of the “bee brain”. She is certainly no “pea brain”.

They all must function in unison.

The complexity of this system defies explanation by a slow, cumbersome series of minute mutations and selections. Ask your evolutionist friend to map out how this process “evolved”. I’m betting you won’t hear from them.

But you’ll hear from me again.

The next thing I want to talk about is how these very same bees are some of the world’s best “guidance counselors”.

PORKY PIG EXPLAINS EVOLUTION

Pigs are pretty smart animals. Maybe smarter than evolutionists.

I’d like to talk about a point that may help simplify the difference between a creationist and an evolutionist.

A creationist thinks that birds have wings so they can fly.

An evolutionist thinks that birds fly because they have wings.

An evolutionist’s stance is that everything occurs through natural means. There is no possibility of supernatural intervention. Therefore, everything occurs out of nothing. Also, everything progresses in a totally random manner to arrive at the universe we see today as well as the organisms that inhabit it.

The point I am about to make holds true for the evolution of every organism, every organ, every cell, and every organic process.

But let’s use the example of a reptile evolving into a bird.

The reptile has to start with a minute, random mutation. Let’s say its two front legs start to mutate into things that start to look like flappers. The legs would start to change for no apparent reason and after thousands of random mutations that for some reason keep going in the same direction the animal now hops around like its on crutches.

At the same time the respiratory system is slowly and mindlessly changing into that of the avian lung, replacing a lung that worked perfectly well before and still functions perfectly well in the reptiles we see today. And how a lung half way between that of a reptile and that of a bird even functions at all is anybody’s guess. Evolutionists haven’t even bothered to guess.

At the same time the animal is slowly and mindlessly developing feathers.

The same holds true for becoming warm blooded.

Each one of these tiny steps has to have an advantage to the animal in the real world in which it lives. And if it does, that animal is superior to the one before it and should increase in numbers. Every one of those intermediates must be superior in evolutionary status to the one preceding it as well as to the reptile from which it started. The intermediates are superior to the organism from which they started.

Intermediates should be the norm. There should not be “end points” like the end points of branches on a tree that the evolutionists point to. You don’t arrive at birds and suddenly there is an “ah ha” moment. “Ah ha, the work is finally done!”

The world should be a mishmash of stuff that is just evolving…. Into what who knows!

And then this random thing takes off into the air in perfect flight!!

And gosh darn if they don’t fly beautifully!!!

Thanks intermediates. I guess we don’t need you anymore because we have arrived. Never mind that the intermediates were superior to the reptiles that managed to somehow hang around.

That’s the evolutionists’ stance. That’s what you have to believe when you are confronted with a giant, random accident.

Now here is the creationists’ stance.

God wanted animals to fill the sky. He made them perfectly to do just that.

And gosh don’t they fly beautifully!!

He also made reptiles and that’s why they are here today and not replaced by a superior evolutionary product.

And that’s why there is not a mishmash of random mutation going hither and yon in either the real world or the fossil record.

God did not make intermediates because He didn’t need them. And low and behold they are nowhere to be found.

And there is no “tree” with reptiles, mammals, birds, fish, and amphibians at the tips of those imaginary branches that also don’t exist.

There are simply reptiles, mammals, birds, fish, and amphibians.

In the immortal words of Porky Pig. “Abbeddeabeddeabbedea….. that’s all folks!”

What’s in your backyard?

UP A RIVER WITHOUT A PADDLE

Psalm 139:13, 14 “For thou didst form my inward parts; Thou didst weave me in my mother’s womb. I will give thanks to Thee, for I am fearfully and wonderfully made; Wonderful are Thy works, and my soul knows it very well.”

When I’m at my cottage in the summer I like to take my boat down the Channel to “Ed’s Channel Stop”. Ed always has a great assortment of ice cream that tastes so good on a hot summer afternoon.

The trip is easy. I get in my boat, start the engine, steer the craft under the bridge and into the narrow channel, follow the channel to Ed’s, pull up to his dock, enter the Channel Stop and go about my business of getting ice cream.

Simple….right?

But let’s take that trip again and make it random. Let’s take that trip where there is no intelligence guiding the steps.

First I have to find myself in a vehicle that is going to do the job. Okay, so I’m sitting a boat. I float aimlessly away from the dock. I float aimlessly because my boat doesn’t have any means of propulsion.

A motor appears on the back of the boat. It starts up. Now I no longer float aimlessly. Now I move aimlessly at a much faster pace. The motor swings back and forth and so do I.

A steering device appears. Now I can control the boat as it moves all around the lake. But there is no knowledge of where Ed’s Channel Stop is so I keep passing the channel. I get a great view of the lake. I just don’t get any ice cream.

Somehow I learn that Ed’s is up the channel and I make a conscious choice to steer into the channel. And I motor on down the channel…… right on past Ed’s place because I have no idea what Ed’s place looks like.

Somehow I learn to recognize Ed’s place, pull over, and dock. I get out and enter The Channel Stop and am rewarded with a two scoop chocolate almond and cherry vanilla cone.

Without intelligent input this seemingly easy trip becomes a lot more complex. If any one of those steps is missing I miss out on my ice cream.

Having any one of the steps missing leads to a failed excursion. That is what is called “irreducible complexity”.

So let’s take another trip. This is the trip of sexual reproduction. This is another trip of irreducible complexity.

Each cell in our body is a combination of 23 pairs of chromosomes. We get half of those chromosomes from our mother and half from our father.

We need to start our trip with the correct cell. When (almost) every cell in your body reproduces itself it reproduces all 23 pairs of chromosomes. So there are 46 pairs of chromosomes. Then the cell splits in two, each cell having the necessary 23 pairs. That’s called “mitosis” and is an incredible wonder.

But that “boat” won’t float because combining two of those cells (which is what happens in sexual reproduction) would give us 46 pairs. We need a different boat. We need a boat with 23 single chromosomes. That is the miracle of a process called “meiosis”. Somehow our sex cells “know” not to double their chromosomes, so when they split to form sperm and eggs they only have 23 single chromosomes.

A sperm cell is deposited in the uterus. It would float around like my motor-less boat except that another miracle has occurred. It HAS a motor. It’s the one cell in our body that has a motor that we call flagella…… which in itself is more complex than the hospital complex in which this baby is going to be delivered.

Now it motors aimlessly around the uterus. But it doesn’t because another miracle has occurred. Somehow the sperm “knows” to swim up the channel we call the fallopian tube because that is where the egg is hanging out.

It goes up the fallopian tube and motors right on past the egg. But it doesn’t because yet another miracle occurs. It “recognizes” the egg and millions of sperm swarm the egg membrane in hopes of being the lucky guy that gets in.

But here is where the analogy breaks down. Ed wants all the business he can get. So when I enter he keeps the door open. The more customers the better.

No so for the egg. 23 chromosomes in the sperm and 23 in the egg make the necessary 46. One more sperm getting through will foul the “ice cream” and the cell will die.

But wouldn’t you know it, another lucky miracle is in place. When the first sperm cell enters the egg the “door” is shut. The membrane is immediately rendered impenetrable to any more sperm. How does it happen? Well the egg cell just “knows”.

Any one of these steps that is not present and you have no birth of an organism. And each one is so complex as to shatter the imagination.

Evolutionists will try to tell you that as each of these steps evolves the “save” button is pressed and you start from that point the next time. Not so. Without a live birth no incremental adaptation gets saved at all. You start over from scratch. You don’t press the “save” button. You press the “delete” button.

You are not here because of some random process.

Scripture says that you are fearfully and wonderfully made.

You most certainly are!

HIDE AND GO SEEK

Acts 26:25-27 “But Paul said, “I am not out of my mind, most excellent Festus, but I utter words of sober truth. For the king knows about these matters, and I speak to him with confidence, since I am persuaded that none of these things escape his notice; for this has not been done in a corner. King Agrippa, do you believe the prophets? I know that you do.”

When I was a kid I spent a lot of time at our cottage in Michigan. There were a bazillion kids there and we all liked to play hide and go seek at night.

Some of the players were hide and go seek “artistes”. They knew that the secret to the game was stealth and the ability to remain undetected. Rich was one of those guys. He would always come dressed in black and even had a hood that covered his blond hair. Rich was seldom “It” because he was hardly ever discovered.

Then there was Billy. If you were “It” you wanted Billy in the game because he was your out. If you got anywhere near Billy he would get unnerved, jump from his hiding place, and race through the open to a new spot. 1, 2, 3 on Billy! Needless to say Billy spent a lot of time being “It”.

I had a discussion with an evolutionist the other day. He was trying to expand my feeble mind by explaining one of the current theories on how the eye developed. Apparently there was an aquatic animal of some sort that spent most of it’s time on the ocean bottom. It had not yet developed an “eye”, but “merely” had a mass of “photosensitive cells” located on it’s dorsum.

Okay, time for an aside. A photosensitive cell would be mindbogglingly complex in the first place. It would be somewhere far beyond the space shuttle in complexity.

It brings to mind a routine by one of my favorite stand up comedians, Steve Martin. He called it “How to become a millionaire”. He said, “First…. get a million dollars. Then don’t pay any taxes. When the IRS comes calling, simply say….. “I forgot!”.

So here is how an eye evolves. First….. get a mass of “photosensitive cells”. LOL

Of yeah…. and those cells must have somehow communicated through a nervous system to a developed musculature or some other method of locomotion, allowing it to “flipper away”. That’s another quantum leap assumption. But hey, evolutionists quantum leap all the time and no one seems to notice….. least of all them.

I’m not kidding you. This is the theory.

But wait. It gets worse.

So this thing sits on the bottom. When a predator circles above it and cuts off the sunlight (Lot’s of that on the ocean floor. Perhaps he meant that this all took place in the shallows or in a pond)… but back to the theory. When the predator circles above it cuts off the sunlight and the photosensitive cells are triggered. They fire off an impulse that somehow travels to the mode of locomotion and the “thing” flippers out of harms way.

Okay, so here are some questions.

It would be likely that the predator would have been more advanced than the “thing”. Wouldn’t it already have eyes?

Well maybe eyes developed a number of different times. You know….. those incredibly complex organs just pop up like weeds in a corn field. So then how exactly did the predator get eyes?

But even if it didn’t have eyes it still had to detect prey in some manner. Maybe it had sonar. Maybe it could detect movement in the water. Maybe it could hear.

The “thing” on the ocean floor is sitting there undetected. The predator obviously doesn’t know it’s there or it would no longer be there. It would be in the predator’s belly.

And what does the “thing” do? Does it sit tight and remain undetected like Rich always did? No! It “flippers” or “jets” away to a new and better hiding place causing all sorts of disturbance in the process.

Well it probably doesn’t actually make it to the new hiding place because…

1, 2, 3 on the thing on the bottom!

1, 2, 3 on “Billyfish”.

And Billyfish becomes a fish dinner. By the way, Billyfish dinners are always served with their “photosensitive cells” “sunny side up”.

Dead men don’t tell lies. And dead Billyfish don’t live to reproduce bad “adaptations”.

Don’t be intimidated by the evolutionist crowd. Just because they have degrees doesn’t mean they have the truth. And it sure doesn’t appear that they have much in the way of critical thinking skills.

What’s in your pond?

SUPERMAN VS. SUPERBUG

Superman vs. Batman is in the theaters right now. The story of Superman actually originated in my home town of Cleveland, Ohio.

So let’s talk about origins…… Superman’s as well as ours.

Long, long ago and far, far away Jor-el and Lara lived on the distant planet Krypton with their young son Kal-el. As fate would have it their planet was doomed and in imminent danger of total destruction. Not wanting their young son to perish the loving parents strapped Kal-el in a rocket and shot him into space hoping that he would survive hundreds of light years of space travel and land safely on a planet that was hospitable to his carbon based body. All of those stars he passed during his interstellar trip must have been lucky stars because he managed to crash land on the perfect home….. earth, where he commenced his career of leaping tall buildings in a single bound. Never mind that he would have been tens of thousands of years old when he landed and how did he get x-ray vision anyway. We allow those elements of artistic license in fiction. Without them science fiction, more than any other type of fiction, would be dull.

Now I want to tell you the story about Superbug.

STREPTOCOCCUS

Long, long ago and far, far away on a distant planet lived a family of bacteria, Sal Monella, E. (Eunice) Coli and their young son Strep. As fate would have it their planet was doomed and their civilization was facing extinction. Not wanting carbon based life to be lost Eunice and Sal strapped Strep in a rocket and shot him into space hoping that he would survive hundreds of light years of space travel and land safely on a planet that was hospitable to his carbon based body. All of those stars he passed during his interstellar trip must have been lucky stars because he managed to crash land on the perfect home….. earth, where he commenced his career of sitting on a barren planet. Superbug didn’t start evolving for a few billion years because he had to wait for the invention of the phone booth in which he actually did most of his changing. (Sorry, I just have to have some fun with this). Never mind the problem of thousands of years of interstellar space travel and the insurmountable odds of landing on the one planet that would support life….and how did those bacteria get out of that craft in the first place? And that’s just the start of a string of events that is so unimaginable as to make any science fiction writer envious. But we overlook how ludicrous this story is because its just fiction….. right?

Hmmmmmm…… well….. not exactly!

Francis Crick was the co-discoverer of DNA. He was an atheist and believed that life could only form through natural means that he could witness through his 5 senses. He also was convinced that DNA forming on earth was impossible.

His solution?

Long, long ago and far, far away on a distant planet the inhabitants were facing the impending doom of their planet. In an effort to save humanity or “alienity” or whatever you would call it, they shot bacteria into space in rockets in hopes that it would land someplace nice and evolve into the most complex beings in the known universe.

True to form, if evolutionists have an unsolvable problem they just kick the can somewhere else….. preferably somewhere invisible so their story cannot be corroborated. Never mind how DNA formed on that distant planet. They just thank those same lucky stars that they don’t actually have to answer that question. And in the process their “science” becomes untestable. How convenient. Just like intermediates and feathers on dinosaurs the more untestable the hypothesis the more evolutionists like it.

I’d prefer to say that the above story itself is fantasy. But that would not be true. Francis Crick did in fact posit this theory. Evolutionists even have a name for Crick’s theory.

They call it “Panspermia”. I can just picture those evolutionists stroking their chins and saying, “Hmmmmm, sounds reasonable!”

They call it Panspermia. I call it circling the wagons.

When a titan of scientific study like Francis Crick resorts to this kind of “solution” for the vast problems of the evolution of life through natural causes I’d say their camp is doing rather poorly.

Those of us who don’t buy into the evolutionists’ amusing stories understand that the story of Superman is fiction. But a word to the wise…… if you go to the theater to see Superman vs. Batman with a friend who believes in evolution, try to remain very quiet so as not to disturb their concentration. You will go to be amused. However, they may think they are watching a documentary.

The real missing link

What’s in your backyard?

HORSEFEATHERS

Have you ever seen a horse with feathers? Of course not! I haven’t either. How about fishfeathers? No? How about frog feathers?……. Nope. How about snake or turtle feathers? Yeah…… I haven’t either. I know! How about bat or bumble bee feathers? Hmmmmmm… I don’t think so.

But evolutionists tell us that dinosaurs had feathers. They say that even T-Rex had them. They come to that conclusion by looking at fossils…… hard rock!

Of course their vision is “improved” by the insistence that reptiles evolved into birds. Necessity is the mother of invention and it sure would help evolutionists if they could put some feathers on T-Rex and the gang. Evolutionists start with an endpoint they accept as fact. Then they work backwards and fill in the huge and numerous gaps with quantum leaps of supposition.

You know what I mean….like the drawing of the thing crawling out of the mud and developing legs, and then choosing to use only two of them, and starting to become erect, and picking up a club, and then picking up a stethoscope. They call that science. I call that imaginative artwork.

Of course the reptile they choose to be their feathery poster boy is extinct and unavailable for comment. Of yeah, he’s unavailable for legitimate investigation as well. So let’s ask the very people who live and die with evolution THE basic question that evolution requires. What was the evolutionary advantage of feathers to a dinosaur?

In the vicious and brutal battlefield of the Jurassic era would you prefer the protective armor of scales and plates or would you opt to give those up and step into the arena in…… feathers? Humans can design their own protection. That’s why Alexander the Great’s army, the Roman Legions, the knights of old and current day swat teams have opted for plates and chain mail over feathers. And reptiles as well would have “naturally selected” to keep their scales and plates rather than trade them in for plumage.

Another function of feathers is to provide insulation. Birds are warm blooded and produce heat that is trapped under the feathers. But reptiles are cold blooded. No heat and no advantage.

Feathers are a big advantage over scales for flight. I must admit if I was a stegosaurus I would have cringed at the sight of a flying T-Rex. But T-Rex’s feathers didn’t get him off the ground. So while feathers help geese fly, this is another big goose egg for reptile feathers.

Feathers are also used to attract mates. However, the first feathered reptile would have been an oddity and a creature to be avoided in the dating game. Ooops, that’s actually a reproductive disadvantage.

But here’s the even bigger question in this conundrum of the advantage of feathers over scales and plates. If reptiles had feathers 600 million years ago because they were such an advantage, then where are those feathers today? 600 million years of further evolution should have perfected that advantage and reptiles’ feathers should be more astounding than bird’s feathers. As I said, T-Rex and the boys are conveniently missing and unavailable for comment. But after 600 million years of the “fine tuning” work of evolution there are plenty of reptiles that are available. I see turtles, alligators, iguanas, snakes, crocodiles, geckos, komodo dragons, and others. What I don’t see are feathers.

Evolutionists point to fossils and say, “See the feathers!”.

Yeah, I see feathers. I see horsefeathers.

What’s in your backyard?

TWEENERS

“And God made the beast of the earth after his kind, and cattle after their kind, and every thing that creepeth upon the earth after his kind: and God saw that it was good.” Genesis 1:25

One of Stephen King’s novels featured people called “Tweeners”. Tweeners were folks who went back and forth between two worlds or dimensions, not solely belonging to one or the other.

Evolutionists have sought to explain the origin of different classes of animals by the gradual progression of “tweeners” between one group to the next. Evolutionists call these tweeners “intermediates”.

For example, evolutionists tell us that birds evolved from reptiles. Birds differ from reptiles in a number of important ways. Birds have wings. Birds have a lighter, hollowed-out and reinforced skeletal system that decreases their weight and allows them to fly. Birds have feathers, which are a marvelously complex structure in their own right. Birds could not fly with nearly as much agility without them. Birds have an entirely different respiratory system featuring the “avian” lung. And birds are warm blooded while reptiles are cold blooded.

All of these major changes have to occur virtually simultaneously and completely intact or nothing, for lack of a better term, “gets off the ground”. And evolutionists say they occur through random mutation and natural selection.

That requires an enormous number of miniscule changes and an unimaginable number of intermediates. And each tiny mutation was a random mutation. That means it occurred….. well….. randomly. There was absolutely nothing that caused each mutation to miraculously move in the correct direction to produce the majestic creatures that soar so easily above us.

And remember, as unimaginable as it is to have just one of these systems develop in this manner, they all had to come into being simultaneously. Then one day, after what must have been millions of mindless tweaks and an incalculable number of intermediates, one of these creatures flapped its new found wings -complete with its new found bone structure, with its new found respiratory system, with its new found feathers, with its new found warm bloodedness – and surprised even itself by lifting off the ground and into the sky.

Darwin admitted that complex structures would have untold numbers of intermediates and should be found in the fossil record. Unfortunately for Darwin they were not found in the fossil record. He blamed this total lack of intermediates on the paucity of fossils recovered at his time. One hundred and fifty years later we have an extensive fossil record….. but still no intermediates.

But I have a bigger problem with this whole picture. Evolution should not be static and complete. It should be dynamic and alive. After all, evolutionists claim that evolution is occurring around us all the time. And in a very limited sense they are correct. However, the same amazing creative force that supposedly turned reptiles into birds in the first place should be functioning in all its glory today. Forget the fossil record. (It’s pretty forgettable anyway.) Those intermediates should be flourishing everywhere today. Our hillsides and valleys and woods and backyards should be teeming with them.

I’ve been all around the world and have never seen a single one. But perhaps I am missing something.

So help me out……

What’s in your backyard?

God created every creature in its kind. Yes, evolution occurs within the canine, feline, equine, porcine, and pachyderm families. But that is its limit.

God didn’t create “tweeners”. And evolutionists can’t find them.