🏛️ Apologetics Fact

For the final week of our series on whales, we will take a look at the evolutionary timeline. The Baleen whale would have had to develop the baleen (all ancestors have teeth), expandable blubber, a new sensory organ (for detecting water pressure on the lower jaw), a split jaw, vibrissae along the chin for feeling food, a countercurrent arrangement of blood vessels in the tongue (which stops them from freezing when taking in water), and a non standard nerve packing to protect the new sensory organ, all in relative proximity to each other. If any of these factors is not in place, the whole system breaks down. In addition, the general evolution of whales requires the following modifications: a blowhole (with nerves and muscles for it), changes to the eye for it to work underwater, the ability to drink seawater, flippers, a new skeletal structure, the ability to birth and nurse under water, the fluke and all required muscles, internal reproductive organs (including built in cooling), and blubber. This is where the theory really starts to fall apart. The fossil record allows for a 10 million year gap for all of these modifications to take place, which seems reasonable at first...until you do the math. Whales have a small population size, a long generation length, and low offspring rates, all of which contribute to low mutation rates. This means less opportunities for mutation. A study in the Journal of Genetics done by Cornell mathematicians (in an attempt to refute Behe, a prominent creationist) concluded that for a species like the whale, a single trait that requires just two mutations to happen simultaneously can take over 200 million years. The whale has multiple complex modifications, meaning that 10 million years (and the whole evolutionary argument) is "whalefully" inadequate.

🗣️ Quote

"People almost invariably arrive at their beliefs not on the basis of proof but on the basis of what they find attractive." — Blaise Pascal

🏅 Person: Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn (1918-2008)

Raised a Christian, Solzhenitsyn became disenchanted with his faith and embraced Marxism, enlisting in the Red Army in WWII. While in the army, Solzhenitsyn was arrested and sentenced to 8 years in the Gulag. During his time there, he slowly converted back to Christianity. After being released, he worked on and released the fictitious "One Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich", which gained wide acclaim as the first book to provide a glimpse into the gulag labor camps to the wider world. Afterwards, he secretly continued working on "The Gulag Archipelago", an account of his experiences in the gulags. Upon publication in 1973, the book became a sensation, shocking the world with its graphic descriptions of the horrifying and de-humanizing conditions in the labor camps. Solzhenitsyn, who already had been under scrutiny from the Soviet Union, particularly after accepting the Nobel Prize in literature in 1970, fled the Soviet Union and took refuge in the West. He was eventually allowed back into Russia in the 1990s, where he lived until he died in 2008. "The Gulag Archipelago" remains arguably the single most impactful book on the consequences of fully realized Marxist/Leninist ideology, showing the stark reality of communism's endgame.

📕 Book: Death in the Long Grass

Peter Hathaway Capstick's classic work of hunting stories is a masterpiece of tension and narrow escapes. Capstick left his career as a Wall Street stockbroker at the age of 30 and quickly became a successful professional hunter in Africa through the 70s and 80s. His true stories of hunting dangerous game in the African bush combine interesting observations about the history of hunting, the lighthearted humor found in everyday occurrences, and the white-knuckle terror of facing some of the most deadly animals on the planet in close quarters. His writing style is easy to follow and will delight any reader, hunter and non-hunter alike.