The Antediluvian Adventures of Noah's Boys: 1. Escape from Mother Earth

Over the past 60 years, I have increasingly become annoyed to see Protestant worship services become shallow and tepid, and I think a big reason for this is that the hymnals have been taken out of their racks.   Don’t get me wrong.   I actually like the worship songs, mostly—unless they strike me as whiny, or as Christian “jingles”, or they are used as 7/11 songs: seven verses sung eleven times.   And the choir directors, musicians, and singers are fine people, and earnest Christians.   I don’t expect every music director to be as outstanding as Tobin Davis of Shadow Mountain Community Church (El Cajon, CA).   I can be well satisfied with moderately good selection of music, moderately well played.   But I think the music of the worship service is very important.   As Halley’s Handbook says it, there are two purposes for Christian worship services: expositional Bible teaching and congregational singing.   All that is required for congregational singing is a pianist (or orga

The astonishing discovery of flexible soft tissues in the fossilized bones of a 68-million-year-old Tyrannosaurus rex 1 has been upsetting for those committed to the “old earth” model of Darwinian evolution.   Under ordinary conditions, the body of any dead animal will predictably decay very rapidly, with microbes destroying any soft tissue left by insect scavengers within a matter of weeks.   If the carcass is rapidly buried by sediment, a requirement for fossilization, it would be protected from scavengers.  Furthermore, any rapid drying of the sediment could inhibit microbial growth and slow down degradation of the soft tissue.   However, how likely would it be for delicate blood vessels to remain intact, or tiny red blood cells?   Would collagen remain flexible, even stretchy, for 70 million years?   Dr. Mary Schweitzer published a follow-up study of her initial findings in 2007. 2   Amazingly, she found soft tissue in fossils was not rare: nearly half of their b

It sure looked dead to me.   We had offered to feed our son’s bearded dragon while he and his family were away, but when we came in that morning, the lizard was upside down in its cage, its stiff legs outstretched from its final agony.   I sighed, and called in my wife.   She agreed: it was obviously dead, and probably dried out. I hesitated to call our son.   The children would be heartbroken, and even more, it was our granddaughter’s birthday.   After giving the bad news, I figured I would dig a hole, bury the body, and take the empty cage away so that the children would have no shocking reminder of the tragedy when they returned.   When I called, I gravely informed my son that I had something to tell him.   Unfortunately, he immediately put on our granddaughter to wish her a happy birthday.  Though my mood was somber, I cheerily wished her well, and heard how she was doing.  Afterward, I asked to talk again with her father.   Surprisingly, our son was not fluste