In so doing, he was levelling an insult at God's creative activity at the beginning of creation.
This insult prompted an earlier rebuke from John of this blogspot and John,only a few days ago, had cause to remind us of Gordon Cheng's insult to the Lord.
As I recall, John had previously observed the need for the koala to have rear-opening pouch to protect the pouch and possible infant inside from bark, spiders and other insects falling into the pouch while the mother koala crawled about trees. Such a requirement is not similarly required for kangaroos which have a forward-opening pouch.
Further testament to Gordon Cheng's ignorance of the subject is contained in a worthy article by scientist, Dr David Catchpoole, in the latest Creation magazine (this writer is a subscriber).
I quote part of what Dr Catchpoole said in his article:
"And now the discovery of a most amazing feature of the koala's pouch makes it even harder for evolutionists. While kangaroo mothers lick their pouch clean in preparation for a new joey, it's physically impossible for koala mothers, with their rear-opening pouch, to do that. But it turns out that prior to the birth of a koala, a remarkable self-cleansing mechanism kicks in. The crusty 'wads of brown stuff' evident in the non-breeding season disappear as the 'pouch becomes a completely different place', according to Professor Elizabeth Deane of Macquarie University, Australia.¹
'It becomes glistening, pristine and almost translucent. You can go in and the back of it is almost see-through and you can see droplets of clear material on the pouch,' she said. The secret to the pouch becoming squeaky-clean is in these clear droplets oozing into the pouch - the liquid contains powerful proteins that kill microbes."²
Gordo, stop insulting God!
Neil Moore
1. Salleh, A., Koala pouch may have its own bug buster. ABC Science Online,
2. Deane's team of researchers is analysing koala pouch secretions prior to birth to identify which of the proteins are responsible for the antimicrobial action. Bobek, G., and Deane, E., Possible antimicrobial compounds from the pouch of the koala, Phascolarctos cinereus, Letters in Peptide Science 8 (3-5): 133-137, 2001.
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10 comments:
Here's some very friendly advice to Gordon: Faulty design should never be an option when we think about God. Remember, he is all those omni words. It's best to consider the Fall or a reason that is yet to be determined.
Can anyone point me to where he made this amazing claim?
Jase,
What our dear deluded and spiritually deceived brother in Christ, Gordon, said was
that the Design Argument doesn’t work because “the universe [contains] decaying rats, bubonic plague, gall bladders and koalas whose pouches are at exactly the right angle for their baby koalas to fall out and bop themselves on the head.”
I believe you can find his atheist-inspired comment on the Anglican Forums on the thread called "Making peace with evolution". Don't ask me where but it has to have been written prior to February 2007.
Thanks Neil for news of recent research on koalas.
This is just another lesson for everyone to remember what Moses said to Israel when they were cornered by the advancing army of Pharoah with the Red Sea before them. When we are confused by an apparent difficulty that is too much for us then it is for us to entrust the matter to the Lord and then wait on the Lord.
Sam
Gordon's comment reminds me of some of the unwise ideas put forward in the early modern 'natural theology' movement (ref earlier my posts on the book "Before Darwin"). These believers saw in the 'perfection' of nature evidence of God's hand. However, they led themselves to a trap in that they failed to factor in the Fall. I don't think we are able to comprehend the colossal rent in the fabric of the creation the Fall made: my suspicion is that we implicitly treat it like a minor hiccup, like a slip of manners, instead of the profound rejection of God and his love, and our desire to know (that is, experience) 'not-God', which it was.
The early natural theologians tended to follow Aristotle, not the Bible, in significant cases, and when detractors put up alternatives, akin to Gordon's silly claim, it seemed to be unanswerable. Notwithstanding, they had the right principle, that the world demands an explanation, and nothing in the world provides that. Paul, I think, aligns with this in Romans 1.
However, we do not live in an aristotelean world, we live in this one, and the depth of the improbability of life from materialist sources is where 'natural' theology lies. Materialism runs into brick walls, and materialists demonstrate their lack of knowledge when they make claims such as Gordon's. Other silly claims made in the past include that the eye is 'wired' backwards, that the spine and knee joints are inefficient, that we are full of vestigial organs (the count decreases as knowledge grows), etc. Materialists gleefully point to these as counter evidence for creation by God, with theologians of Gordon's ilk unable to get them to the gospel because they seem to not understand that the Fall was a time-space event with real effects.
And perhaps here is the problem. If Christians like Cheng have to put the creation into a non-world, to make it harmonise with their uncritical stance towards materialism, then they might also have put the Fall into the same place, making it a weak piece of story telling, rather than the great undoing of God's very good against which he saves us. If the Fall is relegated to 'story' then the gospel will soon follow, for which the history of liberalism is testimony.
Grr, too many browser windows open, and I hit the wrong one with a post to another blog, twice!!
Eric, the whole reason why these pre-Darwin design theorists failed to factor in the Fall is that they had already compromised on the age of the Earth, as Moore does.
If this deadly error is accepted, there is no option but to put millions of years of death, cancer, carnivory, infections, gout, extinctions before Adam. And this includes undoubted human fossils.
Thus they couldn't use the Fall as an explanation. So they had to assume that all these things were part of God's "very good" creation, and reinterpret clear teachings that death is the "wages of sin" and "the last enemy".
Gordon and Moorites in general are deluded if they think that their compromise won't affect the Gospel. But their methods didn't work on Darwin, who couldn't reconcile the good God of the Bible with one who would create a germ as a deadly parasite, and call it "very good" although it killed his daughter (see Annie’s death and the problem of evil.
Moore and Gordo remind me of a quote by Londo Mollari on Babylon 5: In the Beginning: Ah, arrogance and stupidity all in the same package. How efficient of you.
Brother Gordon reminds me of the evolutionist who met God. EvoMan said he could create that which we have today, with t-i-m-e and chance, as opposed to Godly intellect and creative ability.
God said-go ahead so EvoMan confidently scraped up a handful of dirt and said give me x billion years and from this will come all sorts of critters. God simply said-make your own dirt.
EvoMan talks of God's bad design while unable to design and make even a bacteria! Has it ever dawned on EvoMan they and we know nothing, in comparison to God, who spoke it all into being in 6 short days? Obviously not because if they gained even an inkling of the unlimited power of Almighty God, shown in His creative ability(as per Romans 1:20),they would be quiet.
How amazing is our God and how pittiful is fallen man who dares to say God is a bad designer.
With great consistency the Church has gone off the rails when people begin reinterpreting Scripture to accommodate their bloated opinion on life.
Neil Moore
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