Recently, I wrote a post about how you can make a simple argument for intelligent design based on junk DNA.  Step 1: find out what Darwinian naturalists claim about junk DNA. Step 2: find out what design proponents claim about junk DNA. Step 3: compare those predictions with scientific discoveries about junk DNA over the past decades. Today we’ll do it with the fossil record.

I’m going to use an amazing article from Günter Bechly (who recently passed away) from over at Evolution News. Günter used to write an article about fossils every Friday (he called it “Fossil Friday”).

Here’s an  article, where he gave a nice overview of why Christians should care about the fossil record.

He writes:

This Fossil Friday I want to address the common request to provide an expanded written form of my lectures on discontinuities in the fossil record (e.g., on YouTube) together with references to mainstream scientific papers that back up these arguments against neo-Darwinism. Since the sudden appearance of trilobites in the Cambrian Explosion is one of the best known examples for discontinuities in the fossil record, I chose the early trilobite Wanneria sp. from the Lower Cambrian of Canada as today’s featured fossil. So let’s jump right in.

Then he talks about the predictions of Darwinists and design proponents:

Every theory makes certain predictions and these predictions have to be tested with empirical evidence. Charles Darwin’s theory of evolution necessarily predicts a gradual development of life. Therefore he insisted on gradualism, against the advice of his good friend Thomas Huxley. Darwin quoted in his magnum opus The Origin of Species (Darwin 1859) not less that six times the Latin dictum “natura non facit saltus”, nature does not make jumps, because he wanted to present a fully naturalistic explanation for the history of life on our planet, knowing perfectly well that saltations would have tacitly implied miracle-like intelligent interventions. The prediction of gradualism is not accidental and not a dispensable side issue in Darwinism. This was made clear by Richard Dawkins, arguably the most ardent modern popularizer of Darwinism, in his bestselling book The Greatest Show on Earth (Dawkins 2009), where he explicitly clarified that “Evolution not only is a gradual process as a matter of fact; it has to be gradual if it is to do any explanatory work.” In another book titled Climbing Mount Improbable (Dawkins 1996) he explained the reasons with a beautiful metaphor: Imagine the task to reach the top of a steep and tall cliff from the sea shore. It would be an improbable (or rather impossible) miracle to achieve this task with a single big jump. However, if there was a gentle slope on the backside of the cliff, you could easily and effortlessly climb the mountain with a lot of small successive steps. This is the way evolution must operate according to Darwin and Dawkins: not by sudden miraculous jumps, but many small steps, that are each not unlikely to happen accidentally without intelligent intervention, and which accumulate over long periods of time to add up to big biological differences.

Engineers don’t check in code gradually, one letter at a time. We check in a bunch of related changes to different files that implement some feature. Some days, I have a lot of meetings. Some days, I spend time doing code reviews or making diagrams or writing documentation. And some days, I get to write code all day. So, if you look at my Github history, you’ll see that some days I have 35 commits, and other days none. That’s consistent with having a “designer”. The complexity increases in “jumps”, with each jump containing changes to several files, and the changes add some new feature. But that’s not available to Dawkins and Darwin, they don’t like engineers, or sudden jumps in complexity.

Günter lists out a bunch of biological “jumps”, where God pulled an all-nighter, with pizza and Mountain Dew, and checked in a whole bunch of new code all at once.

Here are a few from his list of about 15 of them:

• The Origin of Life (3.8 bya)
• The Origin of Photosynthesis (3.8 bya)
• The Cambrian Explosion (537-508 mya)
• The Carboniferous Insect Explosion (325-314/307 mya)
• The Early Triassic Marine Reptile Radiation (248-240 mya)
• The Mid Triassic Gliding / Flying Reptile Radiation (230-210 mya)
• Upper Triassic Dinosaur Explosion (234-232 mya)
• The Abominable Mystery of the Origin of Flowering Plants (130-115 mya)
• The Paleogene Big Bang of Modern Birds (65-55 mya)

Günter has the details of each of these, but if you have listened to our recent episode about the origin of life with Dr. Fazala Rana, then you already know about the first one. The point is that the fossil record has a whole bunch of “big bangs”, where God checked in a whole bunch of new code in a very short period of time. This is strictly forbidden in Darwinian theory, but the fossil record doesn’t care about theories.

Günter concludes:

The gradualistic core predictions of any unguided evolutionary mechanisms such as neo-Darwinism are strongly contradicted by the empirical evidence. The cumulative conflicting evidence from molecular biology, genetics, population genetics, and the discontinuous fossil record can no longer be explained away as anomalies or as artifacts such as under-sampling of an incomplete fossil record. The total evidence is better explained with pulses of infusion of new information from outside of the system (top-down), rather than with a purely mechanistic stepwise bottom-up process. The only known cause in the universe that is able to produce significant amounts of new complex specified information is the activity of an intelligent conscious agent, so that intelligent design theory qualifies as superior alternative to unguided Darwinian evolution in an inference to the best explanation (abductive reasoning) among competing hypotheses. This is not an argument from ignorance (i.e., God of the gaps) as is often incorrectly claimed by critics, but is based on empirical data and our positive knowledge about the regular causal structure of the universe and the type of causes that exclusively are known to produce certain effects.

And I found a nice lecture that he gave on the topic:

The article was tough for me to understand, but I think I got the big picture of what he was saying. The video was much easier to understand. I blogged on this topic so that I can find it again if I get questions about what evidence there is for a designer. I sure hope that we are making more scientists like him for Team Design, because his post was quality work.

We did a podcast with Gunter recently, and it was popular on YouTube.

Recently, we’ve been hearing a lot from UK voices, including the Prime Minister, about how the secular leftist government of the UK allows free speech, just as much as in America. The UK doesn’t have a first amendment, or anything equivalent. Let’s take a look at a very recent case and see what you can expect from the secular left if you act like a Christian in public.

Here’s the story from The Stream:

A U.K. court earlier today convicted a pro-life clinical scientist of violating a “buffer zone” outside an abortion facility in a trial that has triggered threats of trade reprisals from the Trump administration over “freedom of expression” in Britain.

Dr. Livia Tossici-Bolt, a devout Catholic, was found guilty on two counts of breaching a Public Spaces Protection Order (PSPO) or “buffer zone” outside the British Pregnancy Advisory Service (BPAS) abortion facility in Bournemouth in March 2023.

The 64-year grandmother from Italy, who lives in Britain, was holding a sign that read: “Here to talk, if you want.” The Alliance Defending Freedom (ADF), which is defending Tossici-Bolt, said that several women approached her to converse about issues they were dealing with.

Tossici-Bolt was sentenced Friday to a conditional discharge and ordered to pay prosecution costs of £20,000 in full by May 31. According to the order, she will face prison time if she is convicted of any future offenses in the next two years.

You can see the sign that she was holding up in the image. Does that look scary or threatening to you? In Tennessee, you can hold up a sign like that, and you can have a conversation, and you won’t be arrested by multiple armed policemen. But not so in the fascist UK. The secular left is very sensitive about speech that offends them. And they’re willing to use force to stamp it out.

The bad thing about this case is that ADF argued for her, and they lost, which is unusual for the ADF. It shows you how far the UK has gone down the road of secular left fascism.

Here is her reaction to the verdict:

In response to the verdict Friday, Tossici-Bolt said, “This is a dark day for Great Britain. I was not protesting and did not harass or obstruct anyone. All I did was offer consensual conversation in a public place, as is my basic right, and yet the court found me guilty.

“Freedom of expression is in a state of crisis in the U.K. What has happened to this country? The U.S. State Department was right to be concerned by this case as it has serious implications for the entire Western world.”

This sort of thing happens a lot in the UK:

Pro-lifers were expecting Tossici-Bolt to be found guilty after they became aware that the judge in her case had already found pro-life advocate Adam Smith-Connor guilty last October for silently praying outside the same abortion clinic in November 2022.

[…]Judge Orla Austin found him guilty of breaching the buffer zone and sentenced him to a conditional discharge after ordering him to pay prosecution costs of £9,000 (about $11,700).

In her decision, Austin reasoned that Smith-Connor’s prayer amounted to “disapproval of abortion” because at one point his head was seen slightly bowed and his hands were clasped.

[…]In Tossici-Bolt’s case, Austin said, “I conclude that she lacks insight into the fact that her presence could have a detrimental impact upon women attending the clinic, their associates, the staff, and members of the public.”

I’m giving you all of these facts, so you can really understands what happens when people elect the secular left to run the government. A lot of people in the UK don’t know the history of Stalin, Mao, and other secular leftists in history. But they are finding out now.

By the way, the Stream article notes that the leader of the Conservative Party of the UK had no problem with this verdict, and opposed the United States for disapproving of it.

You might remember a previous story that I blogged about, in which another pro-life Christian was arrested just for praying outside of an abortion clinic.

Here’s that story, reported by the Daily Wire:

Isabel Vaughan-Spruce, a 45-year-old charity volunteer, was arrested and charged on four counts after she told police she “might” be silently praying near the U.K.’s leading provider of NHS-funded abortion services BPAS Robert Clinic in Kings Norton, Birmingham, according to local media.

[…]Police arrested Vaughan-Spruce on December 6 and subsequently charged her on December 15 with four counts of failing to comply with a Public Space Protection Order in so-called censorship zones, which authorities introduced to criminalize individuals appearing to be “engaging in any act of approval or disapproval or attempted act of approval or disapproval.”

Just a few days ago, there was an EXCELLENT article that appeared in the UK Telegraph, written by Allison Pearson. (archived here)

She wrote about another free speech case:

If the name Lucy Connolly rings a bell it’s because she was one of the 1,500-plus people arrested in connection with the social unrest which followed the July 29 Southport massacre of three little girls at a Taylor Swift-themed dance class. In fact, that’s not strictly accurate. Mrs Connolly, then aged 41 – she turned 42 in prison in January – played no part in the rioting, but a tweet she posted on the day when Elsie Dot Stancombe, Bebe King and Alice da Silva Aguiar were murdered by Axel Rudakubana was enough to get her arrested eight days later, and charged under Section 19 of the Public Order Act 1986, with publishing material intending to stir up racial hatred.

The secular left in the UK has made a commitment to “multiculturalism”. And they don’t mean giving work permits to brown-skinned software engineers who speak perfect English, like America did with me. They mean letting in men of Middle Eastern origin, who have very different views of stabbing and raping than most Americans have. And if any UK citizen expresses disapproval of the stabbing or the raping, then the UK police is right there to put them in prison. In fact, that’s what they think their job is.

It’s very important for American tourists to understand that the UK is no longer a free, Western country. They’ve gone fascist. They have two-tier policing. You need to stay out of there.

(Image source: Alliance Defending Freedom UK)

Before we start, here are two articles explaining why men are supposedly not marrying. First one from a pastor. Second one from a sociologist. And this is, I think, the majority view: men are to blame for the decline of marriage, because men are stupid, weak, lazy and lacking ambition. Feminist women are great. Marriage laws are fair. Family courts are impartial. But is that all true?

Now, if you ask an actual man whether these are his reasons for not marrying, he will have a different list:

• women initiate the majority of divorces
• young women are increasingly politically leftist
• men can easily be fired for false accusations at work
• men are sentenced far more severely than women are sentenced, for the same crimes
• the Sexual Revolution encourages women to be promiscuous with the men who they find the most physically attractive
• family courts are biased against men, punishing men with alimony, child support, loss of custody, loss of visitation
• majority of student loan debt is held by women
• concerns about the moral impact of the books, music, TV shows and movies that are popular with young women

And so on.

I think if good Christian men had to pick just one factor that is deterring them from marriage, it would be no-fault divorce.

On this blog, I’ve covered several cases of the “nightmare scenario” facing men in divorce. One of those cases is the case of Rob Hoogland, which occurred in Canada.

There’s some new news about his case, reported in the London Daily:

A Canadian man, involved in a legal battle over his right to object to hormone treatment for his teenage trans child, has reportedly been jailed and denied bail for violating a gag order banning him from discussing the story.

Robert Hoogland was denied bail by the Vancouver Supreme Court on Friday and will remain in the North Fraser remand prison, according to news website the Post Millennial. He was arrested this week for contempt of court, due to his continued violation of an order restricting his speech regarding his transgender child.

I also reported on the case of an Apple senior software engineer named Ted Hudacko.

Here’s a report about him from City Journal:

Shortly after returning from a trip to New York with their two sons, Hudacko’s wife, Christine, told him that she wanted a divorce—and that their oldest son identified as transgender. During divorce proceedings, the presiding judge, Joni Hiramoto… stripped him of all custody of his trans-identified son. Hudacko was concerned about administering experimental drugs and preferred to wait and see if his son’s gender issues might resolve on their own, as usually happens in such cases. To the California judge, this confirmed his unfitness as a father.

I also reported on the case of a father from Texas named Jeff Younger, whose ex-wife wants to trans their kid.

And there a recent report about the status of his case in the New York Post:

A California judge dealt a devastating blow to a Texas father in his years-long fight to stop his ex-wife from allowing their pre-teen son, who identifies as a girl named “Luna,” to receive gender-affirming care.

Father of two Jeff Younger, 59, announced on X that he “lost all parental rights” over his twin sons after Los Angeles Superior Court Judge Mark Juhas granted his estranged pediatrician ex-wife Anne Georgulas the authority to “castrate” his 12-year-old son James.

I blogged on all of these cases, but it’s doubtful that pastors and pro-marriage sociologists have heard of any of them. They just want men to use their strength and finances to make women happy, and they don’t care about the actual risks and costs that men are facing.

But there’s been another case in the news just in the past week, reported in The Federalist:

After raising concerns about his then-13-year-old son taking puberty blockers and starting on a path to irreversible, experimental, and life-long medical interventions to “transition” into a girl, the Colorado government stripped father Robert Cameron of all rights to protect his child.

Colorado was able to do that because the child’s mother and Cameron’s ex-wife, Nancy Drake, used Colorado’s “affirmation only” legal structure to wage a war against Cameron through the courts. Drake, who joined forces with an activist therapist, has been able to use government force to push the now-14-year-old boy into the transition interventions which, if pursued in full, have the power to sterilize, reduce brain development, and cause bone density issues, among a host of other gruesome effects.

“My child is more important to me than whatever the court system may do to me. If my child needs to be saved, it’s my job as a parent to save him, and he needs to be saved right now. He needs to be saved from predation and manipulation,” Cameron told The Federalist. “I haven’t slept well in forever because I’m afraid for my child. I also see the adults preying on this child’s innocence. This all falls under the sexualization of children that we are engaging in as a society. That’s absolutely appalling. And I’m not even talking about the medical experiments we’re doing on children.”

[…]Cameron’s primary goal is to have his son be able to wait until he is 18 to make the decision, but Drake, who appears to have trigger-happy, extraordinarily litigious lawyers behind her, need the transition to start now, no questions asked — literally.

Drake, an academic in a left-wing community in Colorado with whom Cameron shares joint custody, successfully got the state of Colorado to block Cameron’s oversight over their son’s medical treatment or even speak to him about transgenderism…

[…]Drake did not respond to The Federalist’s request for comment, but within minutes of the request being sent, she threatened Cameron with calling Child Protective Services if he spoke to the media, claiming doing so means that he “intended [their son] to be harmed” and that it is “proof of child abuse.”

[…]Some weeks ago, Drake also attempted to stop Cameron’s ability to speak to pretty much anyone by requesting a gag order on top of the others already issued that would encompass “friends … anyone in our social circle … activists, and … the media,” claiming it puts their children (their son is one of two twins, the other, a girl) in “physical, medical, and psychological danger,” according to an email sent to the case arbitrator reviewed by The Federalist.

Drake threatened Cameron’s ability to have parenting time with their children at all.

Now, in every case I presented, I blame the MAN 100% for the problems he is facing. Why? Because people don’t change after you marry them. These women were terrible secular leftists before marriage, and these foolish men all chose to marry them anyway. Maybe because men tend to value youth and beauty above character. Men are responsible for marrying badly. And I have the same view when women marry badly. It’s the women’s fault.

My point is that good men who are not yet married look at these cases, and it causes them to want to decline to participate in dating and marriage. They don’t like the fact that these social workers, therapists, lawyers, judges, etc. have this VERY LOW VIEW of fatherly authority and leadership. They don’t want to be judged in a system run by man-haters. This is especially true for men who are well-educated and high earners. They don’t want to be ruined.

So, what should we think about pastors, sociologists, and feminist Christians in general, when they try to blame the decline of marriage on men? Well, an excellent question to ask them is “what reasons do conservative men who are well-educated, and financially successful have for declining the offer of “feminist” marriage?” If their answer is to blame and shame men some more, just understand that you are dealing with someone who is not interested in solving the underlying problem.

When I ask questions like this to social conservatives, even the ones who claim to be against divorce, they cannot bring themselves to take seriously the dangers of marriage for men. Instead, they try to make it seem that a man taking these risks is “brave” and “strong”. When I ask them if they shoe was on the other foot, and it was women who were facing these same risks, should she marry? And they say “Of course not. That’s unfair!”

Why is there this double standard? Could it be because even in the Christian church, there is a double standard that asserts that Christianity is really about making women happy, no matter what, and that men are expendable for this purpose? I’m not saying that the Bible teaches this. But I’ve found this view of Christianity to be extremely popular, and not just among egalitarians, but among complementarians, too. Especially the ones who redefine “male headship” to mean “servant leadership”. That really turns men off of marriage, because it makes them think that Christianity is being run by the ex-wives in these stories, and there is no support for male leadership at all.