List of mammals of Uruguay

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State-run school systems teach evolution as fact. How to survive in a secular school. Today on Creation Magazine LIVE! Welcome to Creation Magazine LIVE! my name is Calvin Smith and I'm Richard Fangrad and our topic this week is evolution and education; how to survive in a secular system. We have to do a show on this, that's pretty bad. You know I think today's discerning Christians have kind of got it figured out. The state-run school systems, public media in the Western world, they're teaching secular humanism predominately. That's what they're doing and because of this many people think that we should be out there battering at this education system or maybe petitioning politicians or the media and this type of stuff. But you know these top down attempts and this has all been tried of course in the USA for example, many times. They're far less effective in the long run, I mean the great British revivals for example in the past. You know, this was caused by people, just one-on-one person to person contact, the Holy Spirit guiding people to preach the gospel, you know talking to people one-on-one. And of course that eventually reached the Parliament's of the most powerful nations on earth. But you are not going to impose this kind of system from people top-down. A grassroots kind of thing. It's not what Christ taught that's for sure. So how do we deal with the the present situation where parents of students, student's ourselves etc in the school system, how do we deal with that? We get asked this question quite a bit. What can we do for our students? How how do we prevent them from being ripped out of the Christian thinking and so on. For example Helen G wrote; "Three years ago when my daughter was studying sixth form biology I knew she would get a big dose of evolution but I had no scientific information only faith in God's Word to counter this." "The Christian bookshop had virtually nothing on the subject. I ended up getting one boring technical book which sat on the shelf. Somehow I heard about you..." She's talking about us, about Creation Ministries International... "...and have found your books and magazine very helpful. My daughter is now doing a second-year Science degree and is confident that the world is God's creation and can see the flaws in the thinking of her tutors who push evolution. Her friend, also doing second-year science at University, was sure that evolution was correct but after reading Stones and Bones..." That's a little booklet of ours, not a very thick book... "...she has changed her thinking and now sees it as a theory with flaws." Isn't that great! That's amazing. Now you can see a couple of things here right? Resources were discovered which were critical to get correct information used to counteract the evolutionary thinking that this young lady had been exposed to. Notice also the local Christian bookshop didn't have any. No and that is fairly typical I'd say of Christian bookshops in North America anyway. You don't see books on apologetics me know rarely you'll see one maybe Josh McDowell or Ravi Zacharias or something... Certainly not biblical creation books... And also see how this spreads. Isn't it exciting to consider that she got this for her daughter and then oh the resource is there and then the other girl saw it, one little booklet. We don't know how... This is changing people's lives, their ideas. So we want to get people linking and feeding. There's an article on our website called "Linking and feeding" by Dr Carl Weiland that you can look up any it gets the whole philosophy of CMI out there to people to understand why we do what we do. Right, you can have a look at that article, a great little article. creation.com/link, a really simple link there, just type that in and away you go and just learn more about... basically that's our ministry philosophy. We want to link to people and feed them with information. And they link back to us in a certain way and so on and we can feed them with information. Especially through the magazine. The magazine is the key. Creation Magazine LIVE!. Creation magazine is a key resource to get truth into your home. Sign up for that. Students need to learn how to discern facts from evidence that's been derived from those facts. That's a key to understanding the whole issue. Facts don't speak for themselves. They are always spoken about by someone, and then of course that someone has a bias. So once you realize the vast majority of your teachers have a bias toward materialism or else are forced to teach under materialistic paradigm, even if they're a Christian you are kind of half way there. Once you understand. Here are some facts, they always get interpreted, in a public school system they always get interpreted according to evolution, so then we have resources that can take the same facts and show them interpreted according to what God's Word says. You're kind of set free from...The first step in avoiding a trap is knowing that it's there right? Exactly. And so we've seen many quotes from atheists and skeptics of course that will say yes, you teach evolution and you are going to make atheists out of people. OK, we'll dig into more of this when we get back. If you were able to choose the planet you lived on which one would it be? Well I would definitely choose Earth because it's so well-suited for life. Whether you're considering the Earth's distance from the Sun or its gravity, axial tilt or magnetic field one conclusion is inescapable. Earth is finely tuned for life. Many see this as evidence for a designer but others don't. If earth wasn't finally tuned they say, we wouldn't even exist so it doesn't indicate a designer. But is that a satisfactory answer? Imagine you were dragged before a trained firing squad and they all fired, and all missed. If I asked you why you're not dead and you answered "Well if I did die I wouldn't be here to tell you", do you think I'd be satisfied with that explanation? In the same way atheists can't give a satisfactory answer for earth being so finely tuned for life. To find out more from Creation Ministries International visit our website Creation.com. Welcome back to Creation Magazine LIVE! if you just tuned in were talking this week about the secular education system and how to maintain your Christian faith in a secular education system. We need to do this. One of the keys to surviving at University is don't fall for the bait-and-switch. Not discerning sloppy language leads to sloppy thinking and of course too many Christians have done this over the years. They're just not discerning what's being told to them. Right. Listen carefully to these words here. We observe variation, mutation and natural selection in living things. Evolutionists call this evolution and this is why they claim that evolution is true. Now we see how the environment affects the survival of these different animals and we see new species arising as a result of these processes. These phenomena are observed and documented scientifically. There's some words that we use there. Bompa Baa! Okay but wait a sec. This sounds like it supports evolution, what you just said... Yeah, using words like mutation and variation, national selection and... But everything you just said creationists actually agree with. Because of the observations that we make. So it's kind of couched in an evolutionary sounding flavor but these facts, in fact these sorts of changes that we observe they happen very quickly. Speciation can occur within a few generations. We just did a couple of shows on that a couple weeks ago. But dogs remain dogs, frogs remain frogs, horses remain horses, we never observe fish changing into frogs or lizards into birds, things like that. And that's consistent with the biblical account of a recent creation. If you want to believe that that's happened in the past, we respect your faith, but we haven't observed it scientifically so don't call it science! Don't call it science. God created different kinds of animals at the beginning and these different kinds were capable of adapting to different environments. This isn't a challenge to the creationist model. And so it becomes a semantic issue. We want to use words carefully. Creationists prefer not to call this kind of variation, you know changes within a kind, evolution. Changes within a kind, not even micro evolution, some people say well is that micro evolution or macro evolution we don't even like the word micro evolution...Because we don't believe in any evolution... ...because that's a confusing term as well. We call these changes adaptation. Animals adapt to changing environments and that's a good word, that's what they're doing. It doesn't really matter what word you use as long as it's clear. That's the important thing, to know what you're talking about. Creationist reserve the word evolution for something entirely different from what we see today. Evolution is that 'molecules to man', 'particles to people' or from 'goo to you via the zoo', that's what we call evolution. And that's what evolutionists call the general theory of evolution by the way so... Now we we've heard this idea that single celled animals changed by mutation and natural selection into reptiles, birds, mammals and people etc over millions of years and that's what creationists call evolution and they distinguish it from adaptation. Adaptation is not evolution. Evolutionists call this evolution too. They call adaptation evolution as well. Hence the confusion. And this is why there is so much confusion in this area. Yes there's equivocation. They call natural selection and adaptation evolution, and they call the general theory, from hydrogen gas at the Big Bang to people, they call that evolution. So that if you prove this, it's like you are proving this. Right, yeah, and you have that equivocation going on there. If small random changes produce new genetic information for these amazing changes in animals then millions of such genetic errors would be needed over millions of generations, that is why evolutionists need the billions of years in order for their ideas to be plausible. However these sorts of changes have never been observed. And science is based on observation! So variation and natural selection don't produce new genetic information, they only rearrange or remove existing information. So these mutations destroy some of the existing information. So furthermore the fossils are not consistent with the idea of evolution. These innumerable transitional forms that would be expected to be found, they are missing from the evidence as well. Ya they're gone. So really think about what we're observing and how those things are being phrased... In the secular education system. This molecules to man concept of evolution is just a hypothetical philosophy really. A version of history without observational scientific support. The observational scientific support beautifully fits with the Bible. This concept of evolution is used to justify the assertion that living things, the living world, can be explained without God. It's contrary to the teaching of what the Bible says. It looks scientific but as we've seen its not. It is a bit of a trick being played by using sloppy language. That's right, and sloppy language leads to sloppy thinking as we mentioned before. We will be back with more. Richard Fangrad and Calvin Smith also host a fast-paced and informal internet based video program called Genesis Unleashed. These faith building teaching videos feature responses to news articles, summaries of articles on creation.com, interviews and answers to some of the most asked questions about the creation/evolution issue and the most attacked book of the Bible: Genesis. Visit creation.com's media center to view or subscribe to the latest video content. Welcome back to Creation Magazine LIVE!, we're talking this week about how to survive as a Christian in the secular education system. We've talked about a lot of things already and we'll continue adding some detail to that. Here's a question we get alot; "How do I do my assignment on evolution?" Right. They've given me this thing, how did evolution happen etc. So you are studying at a secular institution, you've received this assignment, and what should you do? Should you refuse to do it? Should you just argue the case for creation and try to prove that evolution doesn't work? We've heard from parents and students that have taken that approach and they fail. Get an 'F' and that's the end of that so...So maybe that's not the best approach. Don't panic, all you need to do is, here, we will make a list. Number one, understand the thinking of secular science. Understand how they're interpreting the data. Number two, how to research the topic. And number three, how to write the assignment. Once you know these things you can do an assignment without compromising your creationist views or your Christian integrity and your assignment will be one which can actually advance the creationist cause and maybe shed some light in a dark place as well as being a good quality piece of writing. Be a good writer. You need to understand the secular scientific mindset. Understand that lecturers in a secular institution will not be pleased if you quote creationist literature and argue in your assignments for creationist explanations etc, I mean less creationism is part of the topic. That's because the whole point of secular science is to find a naturalistic explanation for everything. So as soon as you talk about anything that has a supernatural component they're going to reject it basically. One day things might change but not at the moment. So if you are going to succeed in a sense you are going to have to write according to their secular mindset. That doesn't mean you say you are agreeing with him you are just playing their game within their rules, because you've gone to this place, their teaching you and they're asking you if you understand what there's teaching. And in your assignments you need to demonstrate that you understood the evolutionary theory or whatever process or thing they're talking about. It doesn't mean you agree with it. That's not to say that you can't use creationist arguments or biblical concepts but you have to be wise in how you do that. So you need to understand the secular explanations. You need to understand the theory of evolution, you need to understand the mechanisms that they believe in etc, again you're not buying into them, but you need to understand them so that you can do your... you put it in the proper framework. So how do you answer your assignment? Firstly you do your research, read widely about the particular problem that you've been given to do your assignment on. You're not only looking at what scientists are saying but trying to understand why they're saying it. That's a key as well. Your textbook is a good place to start obviously, that's why you bought it. But you'll need to read more broadly, that's because your text books will present the information as if evolution has solved the problem and gloss over the difficulties. That's often what text books do. You are going to find a lot of stuff on the web of course. You are going to likely find your topic discussed on the web by both creationists and evolutionists, that may be a good place to get some more information. And just read a couple of articles, kind of get ourself understanding the key issues etc and then you can move forward with arguments for and against. But once you have some understanding of the topic then you should search the premier scientific journals, Science and Nature or their web sites if you have access there. Try their advance search engine with different keywords. Abstracts and summaries are usually available although the papers themselves can only be accessed if you have a subscription and that's often costly. Cite those articles obviously, use references in your assignment, you want to do...be a good researcher. And in your research it's important to recognize the difference between the observed facts and the stories that were invented to explain the facts within their evolutionary framework. Now if you can discern that then as you write your article then you can then also convey that. Not in a totally antagonistic way, but you can start revealing that. And then discerning people that read that paper, that's where you are really going to be able to start undermining the evolutionary story. Because you are going to say well actually, this is what was made, these are the facts, and then you reveal that there's been a story created behind that. Yeah, and obviously you want to visit creation.com, read creationist literature on the topic. It's going to help you distinguish between evidence and storytelling. We take the facts and we remove the evolutionary spin, that's what you're going to find on creation.com and that's going to help you round out your topic a little more fully as well. If you can keep that in mind, what have they actually observed. Between what they're describing you're well on your way to understanding this issue. We'll be right back... It's often claimed that evolution is simply change over time and since change over time can be seen everywhere then evolution is obviously true. But highly qualified creation scientists say there is much more to it than that. For evolution to have turned particles into people, simple change over time is not enough. A special kind of change is needed, that is naturally-occurring change that adds new genetic instructions. No one has seen this special kind of change happen. Darwin's finches, peppered moths and adapting bacteria are all examples of naturally occurring change. But not one of them shows the addition of new genetic instructions. Not one of them writes any brand new genetic code specifying how to make some new complex feature such as feathers for lizards for example. And since codes and programs cannot write themselves there must have been a designer for all living things. To find out more from Creation Ministries International visit our website creation.com. Well our subject today is evolution in education, how to survive in a secular system. And we've been discussing how to write an assignment within a secular system. After you've researched your topic, you're ready to start writing, put on the all the information together, make sure that you're clear on on the question that's that's been assigned to you and that you're actually answering it. First, describe the problem that the assignment has given you. One that the scientists have likely been trying to solve. Then you could describe the many problems that a naturalistic explanation has to address, that's one of the things you could do. Imagine that you've been asked to explain how single-celled organisms evolved into multi-cellulared ones. That would be a good question. That's a good question if that's your evolution assignment. You would explain the changes that would need to occur for a collection of single cells to come together by natural processes to form a reproducing multicellulared organism. Many problems there. creation.com can summarize some of those. For example, different cells would need to specialize into different functions, they are not all the same cell, they'd need to specialize, they would have to specialize in a certain order, in certain places, in order to form a reproducing cell or creature. They would have to specialize at specific times. There would need to be some complimentary changes in different cells occurring at the same time, so you get things working together and those are some of the problems that you could highlight in your assignment. And by making them clear you're not attacking, you're just saying hey, here's some big problems. Now it would be good to quote from books and papers on the topic as you set out the problems so you're not the only one that's pointing out these problems. Use some of the jargon that they use. Simply discuss the problem in a measured, matter of fact way, making it clear what criteria would have to be met for a successful explanation. Next you need to outline some of the theories that people have put forward to try to explain how this could have happened. And then discuss the advantages and problems with each one of these theories and of course if you want to know about the problems go to creation.com and we'll have pointed them out to you because there are massive problems. Especially try to use the criticisms that other secular scientists have leveled at each other of these theories. You can cite their publications and explain the criticisms etc. Now I just want to interject with something. If you've been following along with us here and your like us. You're just a rabid creationist but right now everything we've said is driving you crazy because you're sitting there going no! We just want to attack evolution and I'm not going write a paper on evolution! Then why would you be going to a secular institution and paying them ten thousand dollars or whatever it is a year to get educated? Because you're wasting your time and money. If you want to get a PhD in science and you are going to go through the system you're going to have to go through the system. That's just the way it is. So we know people that have written things like "How did evolution happen? It didn't!" and hand in their paper. Zero! You're wasting your time...Good luck progressing in education. ...no influence in that system at all because now you're just... anyway... just wanted to interject that. Getting back to the assignment then if if any scientists have proposed different theories of how to overcome these problems, the evolutionary assignment that you've been given, you can talk about the advantages and disadvantages of those as well. You could also mention some of the problems that creationists have pointed out but being careful to avoid religious or creationist jargon. If you can leave that out, just point out the good science that's been done by creationists to point out the problems with naturalistic evolution. Whether it's wise to cite creationist literature directly, we'll have to leave that up to you. Just just be discerning in that area there. If you're not confident about how they would respond to it the best answer is probably don't cite it. Now don't think you're being timid or compromising by not arguing the creationist view as because you've presented some difficulties for the philosophical framework of naturalism. That's great. In fact you can criticize the existing theories quite severely providing that it's warranted and conclude that all of these theories proposed to date have significant shortcomings in satisfactorily solving these problems And just in doing that, that can cause a lot of doubt about the theory of evolution and these supposed theories that people think are just, we've got it all figured out. Well you've shown that there is big problems there. Your result will be a quality paper. If you use those basic steps, and obviously we're not being exhaustive here, you need to do other things as well. But you will have shown that you've read widely you understand the problem you've cited authors, you've got your references there, you've discussed outstanding issues, you've looked at contradictory issues, you've made it clear that the naturalistic worldview does not have a solution. Like a journalist you can produce a powerful assignment that's devastating to the naturalistic worldview without appearing to take different sides. We'll have more on this when we come back in just a minute. What are the theological consequences of adding millions of years to Genesis? How does it impact doctrine such as the Gospel, sin, the atonement. Refuting Compromise is the most powerful biblical and scientific defense of a straight forward view of Genesis. Loaded with scientific support for a recent creation in six real days, it demolishes all attempts to twist the biblical text in order to insert millions of years, bringing clarity into an area usually mired in confusion. Must reading for Bible College students and anyone involved in church leadership or teaching. Get your copy at Creation.com. Welcome back. We've been talking about the secular education system and how to survive as a Christian. Do good assignments and that kind of thing. Now one of the books that we carry, it's the most popular creationist book of all time, is "Refuting Evolution" by Dr Jonathan Sarfati from our US office, a chess champion, the guy's a genius, anyway... You can get this book at 30% off, go to creation.com, you can order it online there. When you checkout use the coupon code CMLRE, Refuting Evolution. This book has a lot of great science against evolution, so it's something that you could use if you've been challenged to do an evolutionary assignment. It's a great book, "Refuting Evolution", the most popular creation book of all time. Lots of sources, resources in there, cited etc. Now we get a lot of feedback from from people in various ways and here was a positive feedback from somebody looking for information, just kind of like what we discussed here today. Just another example. SH from Australia wrote this to us; Good afternoon. My granddaughter has just begun a biomedical course at the Queensland University. Evolution is included as one of her subjects of course. Could you please put me onto a good article suitable to her course that would outline the facts true and false about evolution. As a Christian I reassured her she has nothing to fear as evolution is real, mutations happen within a species. What I understand has not been proven is transmutation from one species to another. Many thanks for your assistance. Sincerely, S. H. Now, you probably noticed a couple of things in there if you are a discerning creationist. You know this lady doesn't believe in evolution but some of the things she said in there might be a little confusing. That's why it's important to know the types of arguments that you use and things like. But anyway, Dr Tas Walker from our office actually responded. There's a couple things that he went through. The first thing again that he mentioned to her is the key to realize that everything is presented at University, is presented within a secular, atheistic worldview. Don't be shocked when they start teaching your kids evolution. There's articles that deal with that and we can put the links up on the screen here. The evolution trains a-comin' sorry a-goin' the wrong direction, that's huge. Time- no friend of evolution. Speedy species surprise. There is speciation, there is what she called transmutation there. These are all good articles for your what was specifically mentioned here in her thing right? Dealing with natural selection and mutations and stuff like that, how we'd explain that biblically. For a good big picture treatment of the issue Tas says see 'Where do we come from? Created or evolved? And you can click the link on the screen to to see that as well if you're watching us online. And again so he just really went through and said look, everything is going to be presented through this atheistic, naturalistic, evolutionary frame work...And he gave some basic articles there, just basic stuff to get a handle on some of these issues. And to discern between the facts again and the interpretation of facts, we're always hammering this point home. You know just reading, just having a young person read through five or six of these articles it's like a boost to their immune system. Because what happens is they often just bombarded with one... and they're like, wow, is there all this evidence for evolution? Not understanding that, sometimes people say, the facts for evolution are just overwhelming. But if you understand that all there is an overwhelming amount of facts, and they can be interpreted...you could also say with the same breath, the facts for creation is overwhelming. Because it's the same facts... Yes, it's the same fatcs... the same amount and then you don't feel like, oh wow, the other teams winning. I've got just as many facts supporting my worldview...Exactly it is just that in secular education they're going to spin it to that evolutionary worldview, and that's what you've got to separate. Facts from the spin. Look at a free copy of Creation magazine at creation.com/free-mag. Its a great magazine, if you like it, subscribe at creation.com and we will see you next week...