NewsWatch

Reptile Footprints Advance Flood Explanation

ReligionNews.com, 12/4/18, “Reptile Footprints Advance Flood Explanation” [Excerpts]: Salamander-like footprints preserved in sandstone have long fascinated Grand Canyon hikers and rafters. Insights from a new study of the track patterns intensify an old trackway mystery. But Noah’s Flood can help solve this mystery. 

It boils down to this: How could a four-footed track maker leave so many details of its foot if it was walking on windblown sand dunes? Footprints in dry sand leave shapeless divots that might not last a single day, let alone long enough to turn to stone. Wet sand grains, however, can hold together well enough to record details like toes.

Why does this matter? Uniformitarian geologists accept that all the rock layers exposed in Grand Canyon share watery origins—except the Coconino sandstone that preserves the reptilian tracks. Anyone who admits that the Coconino sand dunes were actually deposited by fast-flowing water opens the possibility for watery origins for all the Grand Canyon layers. 

And that would leave Noah’s Flood very much afloat. These detailed reptile tracks clearly refute a wind-deposited Coconino sandstone.

(https://goo.gl/PzLjg7)

Why Would God Make Monsters?

ICR.org, 11/30/18, “Why Would God Make Monsters?” [Excerpts]: After one of my dinosaur presentations in the Dallas area, a mother told me a question her son had asked. She didn’t know the answer. If God is good and Genesis creation is true, then why did He create monstrous dinosaurs? After all, look at tyrannosaur teeth. What kind of good God would make monsters like that? 

It took me a few seconds to find the flaw in the question. It was worded to sound like only one option exists—that God made monsters. But what if God didn’t make monsters? In other words, the question has a logical error. It leaves out an option.

If God didn’t make monsters—in this case, monstrous dinosaurs—then where did they come from? Since the first chapter of Genesis says that God created “the beast of the earth…and everything that creeps on the earth according to its kind,” then He certainly created dinosaurs. 

The same chapter says, “Then God saw everything that He had made, and indeed it was very good.” Since monsters are bad, He didn’t make them! Genesis:1:30And to every beast of the earth, and to every fowl of the air, and to every thing that creepeth upon the earth, wherein there is life, I have given every green herb for meat: and it was so.
See All... says the original animals ate plant matter, not each other. In the beginning, even T. rex used its teeth to tear into fruits and veggies.

So, the option the boy’s question leaves out is that God made dinosaurs originally “very good” but that something turned them into monsters after creation.

The Bible says that God cursed creation because of Adam and Eve’s sin. By the time God sent the Flood, both animals and humans behaved like monsters. God would no longer endure their extreme violence. The global Flood buried billions of creatures, including dinosaurs. God did not make monsters. The sin of mankind did.

(https://goo.gl/cxRQAj)

Discrimination Against Christians In Egypt

MorningStarNews.org, 12/3/18, “Discrimination against Christians in Egypt Reflects Deeper Issues” [Excerpts]: An effort to do away with the religious designation on ID cards in Egypt reflects the enormity of the discrimination Christians face in a country regarded as a leader of Middle Eastern Islam, rights advocates said.

ID cards are required for almost every aspect of public life in Egypt, and a Christian designation can cause problems for the approximately 10 percent of the population at police stops, checkpoints, hospitals and workplaces. Christianity, Islam and Judaism are the only three religion options...

“Whenever there is a situation that requires showing your ID…you would be categorized right away,” Sherif Azer, head of policy for the Egyptian Commission for Rights and Freedoms [said.]

A bill calling for the elimination of the religious designation on ID cards quickly died in committee on Nov. 14, Azer said.

As in previous efforts to end the designation, Azer said, the main reason the bill died was that doing away with the religious designation could allow a Christian man to marry a Muslim woman. That is illegal in Egypt, as children follow the religion of the father.

(https://goo.gl/329BKq