Science Updates on the Third Day

Science updates related to the Third Creation Day:

March 16, 2020 Earlier Than Expected Brain Evolution: Based on research conducted on the lamprey eel's brain, the cortex region of the brain is now thought to have originated more than 500 million years ago, 200 million years earlier than previous estimates.  "These findings are crucial to our understanding of how the brain evolved and how it has been designed through evolution." - Sten Grillner, Karolinska Institutet, Sweden

AOJ Take on this article: designed through evolution is a key phrase.  Although the mechanism of design might be evolution, the Designer is God, the Father Almighty, Creator of heaven and earth, of all things visible and invisible. The sudden emergence of the complexity of the brain cortex is a hallmark of the intentional work of a Designer.

March 23, 2020 Fossil of Ancestor of All Animals: At least 555 million years ago, during the Ediacaran Period, tiny, rice-grain sized bilateral animals, named Ikaria, burrowed through oxygen-rich sand on the ocean floor.   These creatures are reportedly un-related to the other Ediacaran creatures such as the Dickinsonia, which is considered an evolutionary dead end. "Burrows of Ikaria occur lower than anything else. It's the oldest fossil we get with this type of complexity." - Mary Droser, UC Riverside

AOJ Take on this article: The sudden appearance of complex, though tiny, animals with no known evolutionary ancestor demonstrates the handiwork of the Creator.  Based on the early emergence of the brain cortex, they might have been kind of smart, too.  These ancient creatures can be thought of as parallels to those created on the Fifth Creation Day which began after the demise of the dinosaurs. These ones were created by God near the beginning of the Third Creation Day.  These are not the modern creatures God would later create, but rather part of the Third Day ecosystem.

Science Updates on the Fourth Day

Much of my writing time has been taking up working on an extensive catechism. However, there have been a number of exciting scientific discoveries that are worth taking note of, so here they are:

Day 4 of Creation

for days...

God revealed that on the Fourth Day of Creation the sun and moon began to serve as signs for marking time in way that would be good for human beings and the plants and animals that they would depend on: And let them be for signs and for seasons, and for days and years... and God saw that it was good. Genesis 1:14b, 18b

Ages of Joy posits that the 4th day events unfolded between about 100 million years ago and when the asteroid wiped out the dinosaurs 66 million years ago.  If you would prefer to think in terms of ages instead of millions and billions of years, this time corresponds to the Late Cretaceous, the Fourth Age of Creation.

At the time when the Earth formed, one rotation of the earth only took about 6 hours!  That's fast.  Because of the tidal forces acting between the Earth's oceans and the large Moon, the rate of rotation of the Earth has been gradually slowing.  Now scientists have accurately measured the length of days in the Late Cretaceous with great precision for the first time as reported in Ancient shell shows days were half-hour shorter 70 million years ago.  By 70 million years ago, or most of the way through the Late Cretaceous, the length of an Earth day had finally slowed down to 23.5 hours, or approximately the length of a modern day.  The earth rotated about 372 times per year, which if divided up into 12 parts works out to every part being exactly 31 days long.  Since then, God has fine-tuned the length of each day even further, but the Bible testifies to God's creative work over the course of geologic history, and this scientific discovery bears witness to that fact.


And there was evening and there was morning, the fourth day. Genesis 1:19

Sixty-six million years ago, an astroid wiped out 75% of all species on Earth, including the dinosaurs and marine reptiles, and many other kinds of animals.  New research now blames it all that astroid!  The event marks the Evening of the Fourth Day and the beginning of a night of distress followed by a morning of bright joy.  So how long did this night last?  Scientists document the Antarctic marine life recovery following the dinosaurs' extinction detailing life at a point 320,000 years after the extinction and noting that it took 1 million years for the oceans to fully recover.  However, over this period time, God began refilling the oceans with new kinds of fish and the skies with a myriad of bird species - just like the Bible describes.