This episode begins with our narrator, Neil DeGrasse Tyson, asking, “Must we die? Are there beings in the cosmos that live forever? A float down the river of time”… and the credits roll. Now our animators take us to what appears to be papyrus ships moving under a nighttime sky as our narrator tells us, “Our ancestors marked time by the moon and the stars.” What Dr. Tyson will not tell you is that the solar system, including the Earth and our moon, with their respective rotations and orbits around our Sun, were designed so that we could mark time. I thought it might be helpful to note that Dr. Tyson and company continue to avoid referencing the Bible in their purely evolutionary view of history, except when they want to prove it as flawed. We do have alternative historical documents – the Hebrew Scriptures – that tell us:

14 Then God said, “Let there be lights in the firmament of the heavens to divide the day from the night; and let them be for signs and seasons, and for days and years; 15 and let them be for lights in the firmament of the heavens to give light on the earth”; and it was so. 16 Then God made two great lights: the greater light to rule the day, and the lesser light to rule the night. He made the stars also. 17 God set them in the firmament of the heavens to give light on the earth, 18 and to rule over the day and over the night, and to divide the light from the darkness. And God saw that it was good. 19 So the evening and the morning were the fourth day. (Gen. 1:14-19)

It is important to note that before evolutionary theory became sacrosanct in the annals of modern science, many contemporaries of Charles Darwin were not as antagonistic toward the concept of special creation as their modern counterparts would become. The following is a quote from none other than English biologist and comparative anatomist Thomas Henry Huxley (1825-1895). He acquired the nickname “Darwin’s bulldog” for his fierce defense of Darwin’s Theory of Evolution. He actually coined the term “agnostic” and adhered to that worldview himself. Still, he is quoted as saying, “‘Creation,’ in the ordinary sense of the word, is perfectly conceivable. I find no difficulty in conceiving that, at some former period, this universe was not in existence; and that it made its appearance in six days… in consequence of the volition of some pre-existing Being.” [Thomas Huxley (1825-1895), quoted in Leonard Huxley, Life and Letters of Thomas Henry Huxley, Vol. II (1903), p. 429.] We move from animation to real life as Dr. Tyson strolls on what appears to be a very arid landscape. He tells us, “But it was the people who were here about 5,000 years ago that started chopping up time into bite size portions of hours and minutes.” It is always interesting to Bible-believing people that human civilization is traced back to this 5,000-year BC timeframe. This is exactly the timeframe the Word of God indicates as the dawn of human civilization, but you will never hear this from Dr. Tyson or most of his evolutionary colleagues. He continues, “They called this place Uruk, we call this place Iraq. It’s a part of Mesopotamia, the land between the Tigris and Euphrates Rivers. The city was invented here and one of humanity’s greatest battles was won here in the ceaseless battle against time.” Most biblical scholars fix the date of creation to the fourth millennium BC. That would give us an approximate date of six thousand years. This predates the evolutionary timeframe by approximately one thousand years. Not only does Dr. Tyson describe this ancient area of modern Iraq a.k.a. the Cradle of Civilization, correctly, he fails to mention that the Bible also identifies this area as the location of the Garden of Eden.

8 The LORD God planted a garden eastward in Eden, and there He put the man whom He had formed. 9 And out of the ground the LORD God made every tree grow that is pleasant to the sight and good for food. The tree of life was also in the midst of the garden, and the tree of the knowledge of good and evil. 10 Now a river went out of Eden to water the garden, and from there it parted and became four riverheads. 11 The name of the first is Pishon; it is the one which skirts the whole land of Havilah, where there is gold. 12 And the gold of that land is good. Bdellium and the onyx stone are there. 13 The name of the second river is Gihon; it is the one which goes around the whole land of Cush. 14 The name of the third river is Hiddekel (the Tigris); it is the one which goes toward the east of Assyria. The fourth river is the Euphrates. (Gen. 2:8-14)

True to their practice of censoring any alternative views that might lend credence to the biblical record or contradict their billions and billions of years, their audience never hears this, so the brainwashing continues in the Cosmos series unabated. Dr. Tyson continues, “It was here that we learned how to write; death could no longer silence us. And writing gave us the power to reach across the millennia and speak inside the heads of the living.” Now we see our animators reenacting a funeral procession as we are told, “No one had ever spoken across a longer stretch of time’s river than this Akkadian princess, daughter of the first Emperor in history and Priestess of the Moon, and poet, Enheduanna. According to the Dr. Tyson, Enheduanna’s claim to fame is that she signed her work. As we see the animated version of the Priestess of the Moon engraving her name in stone, Dr. Tyson explains, “She’s the first person for whom we can say, we know who she was and what she dreamed.” Now the animators show us her dreams as our narrator tells us, “She dreamt of stepping through the Gate of Wonder. Here’s a thought that Enheduanna sent across 4,000 years to you. It’s from her work entitled, “Lady of the Largest Heart.” Now the animators show us Enheduanna reciting her poem in her native tongue as the translation is given. Inanna, the planet Venus and goddess of love will have a great destiny throughout the entire universe. Dr. Tyson tells us that Uruk was also the place where the epic tale of the hero’s journey was first written down. Before Batman, Luke Skywalker, and Odysseus, there was a man named Gilgamesh, who left home on a quest to vanquish time.” Now the animators show us a likeness of Gilgamesh as Dr. Tyson says, “Gilgamesh was searching for immortality. He looked everywhere, gained complete wisdom, and uncovered what was hidden. He brought back a tale of time before the great flood.” The animators show our hero fighting a supernatural monster as Dr. Tyson tells us, “He built the wall of Uruk which no future king will ever match. Read the story of that man Gilgamesh, a hero born of Uruk, who went through all kinds of sufferings, who crossed the oceans, the broad seas as far as the sunrise, who inspected the edges of the world in search of eternal life.” The animators are now showing our hero battling fiery goliath-like enemies with a large axe and knife in hand. The narration continues, “In his travels, he encountered a wise man named Utnapishtim who told him a story of a flood that destroyed the world, and how one of the gods told him to build an ark for the rest of his family and the animals.” Now the animators actually show the animals going into the ark, two by two, male and female. They even show Utnapishtim sending off a dove to see if the waters had receded. The dove returns with vegetation in its beak.

The Deception Continues

Now Dr. Tyson will reveal the real reason for telling us the story of Gilgamesh. He continues, “The earliest account of the flood legend was written down in Mesopotamia a thousand years before it was retold as the story of Noah in the Old Testament. Here is where we see just one of the many deceptive practices employed by those who place their faith into the Theory of Evolution. Dr. Tyson is purposely making a false comparison with regard to time. He tells us that the Flood Epic of Gilgamesh predates the story of Noah’s flood by a thousand years. This is a willful deception. He is purposely using the date assigned to the writing of the Pentateuch (Torah), the date God revealed the Genesis account to Moses, as the actual date of Noah’s flood. However, the historical date of the flood, as revealed to Moses, took place circa 2,304 BC. According to rabbinical tradition, Moses was born in the month of Adar 1,393 BC. Biblical tradition has Moses receiving the Torah circa 1312 BC by divine inspiration when Moses was 81 years old. The earliest Sumerian Gilgamesh poems date from as early as the Third dynasty of Ur (2100–2000 BC). [Roux, Georges (1966). Ancient Iraq. London, England: Penguin Books, p. xix.] The earliest Akkadian versions of the unified epic are dated to circa 2000–1500 BC. [Roux, G. (1966). Ibid. p. 101.] The “standard” Akkadian version included a long version of the flood story that was edited by Sin-liqe-unninni sometime between 1300 and 1000 BC. [George, Andrew (Trans. & Introduction). (1999). Early Second Millennium BC in Old Babylonian (as cited in Andrew George, Trans. & Introduction 1999) The Epic of Gilgamesh: The Babylonian Epic Poem and Other Texts in Akkadian and Sumerian. Dublin, Ireland: Penguin Press, p. 101.] If these writers and Dr. Tyson were being honest, they would have told you the approximate historical date of the event we call “Noah’s flood” as revealed in the book of Genesis. The date of Noah’s flood predates all known versions of the Epic of Gilgamesh by a minimum of 200-300 years. When compared with the most recent version containing the complete flood narrative, Noah’s flood predates Sin-liqe-unninni’s version of the Epic of Gilgamesh by at least 1,000 years! We have often made the case that the disciples of evolutionary theory use deception, censorship, and brainwashing to indoctrinate the public. They often begin to introduce these concepts to children very early on. Recently, I was watching the Baby Channel with my 10-month-old grandson when we saw babies and toddlers being introduced to dinosaurs. The narrator explained that these creatures roamed the Earth millions of years ago. Evidently, the indoctrination cannot begin early enough for these purveyors of godless materialism. We have seen judges uphold the exclusive teaching of evolutionary dogma in the science classroom. We no longer educate our children with regard to true science in our public schools. This is true concerning all of our secular colleges and universities as well. When one excludes all information critical to the evolutionary theory and uses deceptive tactics to guide unsuspecting students into one specific worldview, one has crossed the line from education into indoctrination. Dr. Tyson has informed us that Moses got his account of Noah’s Flood from pagan sources. However, is that really what happened? We have just documented one of the many frauds that evolutionary adherents have perpetrated on an unsuspecting public. There is more evidence that the Flood Epic of Gilgamesh was born out of the true story of the descendants of Noah and not vice versa. A worldwide catastrophe such as Noah’s flood would be indelibly inscribed on the collective memory of its survivors. The oral tradition relating God’s judgment of the wicked predates the record we find in the Genesis account God gave to Moses centuries later.

5 Then the Lord saw that the wickedness of man was great in the earth, and that every intent of the thoughts of his heart was only evil continually. 6 And the Lord was sorry that He had made man on the earth, and He was grieved in His heart. 7 So the Lord said, “I will destroy man whom I have created from the face of the earth, both man and beast, creeping thing and birds of the air, for I am sorry that I have made them.” 8 But Noah found grace in the eyes of the Lord. (Gen. 6:5-8)

First, the Flood epics all have the characteristics of myth. Dr. Tyson actually refers to Noah’s Flood in these terms. Evolutionists believe that the Word of God is a collection of made up stories. However, when you compare mythology to the Bible, you get a very different impression. Let’s look at this comparison by comparing the general characteristics of mythology to the Word of God.

A comparison of Genesis and Gilgamesh

The God of the Bible Man created in the image of God God is Holy, loving and merciful God created sex for marriage God is Omniscient, Omnipotent and Omnipresent

The Deities of Mythology Deities made in the image of man Deities are capricious and mean-spirited Take sexual advantage of humans Deities are superhuman, but are limited in their powers

Now let us look at a comparison of the particulars between the Gilgamesh Epic and the Word of God. [Lorey, Frank (1997). The Flood of Noah and the Flood of Gilgamesh. Acts & Facts. 26 (3).][Lorey, Frank (1997). The Flood of Noah and the Flood of Gilgamesh. Acts & Facts. 26 (3).]

GILGAMESH
Global
Man’s sins
One city & all mankind
Assembly of “gods”
Utnapishtim
Righteous
In a dream
Yes
Yes
Several stories (6)
Many
One
At least one
Pitch
Square Family & few others
All species of animals
Heavy rain Short (6 days & nights)
Release of birds
Dove, swallow, raven
Mountain — Mt. Nisir
Yes, by Utnapishtim
Yes

[Lorey, Frank (1997). The Flood of Noah and the Flood of Gilgamesh. Acts & Facts. 26 (3).] Dr. Tyson transitions nicely from misrepresenting the timeline in the Bible by telling us that the date God gave the Torah to Moses is the true date of Noah’s flood, when the Bible places the date of Noah’s flood a minimum of 3 centuries before the Gilgamesh flood narrative. Now we hear, “But life itself sends its own stories over billions of years.”

“Every living thing is a masterpiece written by nature & edited by evolution.”

Dr. Tyson is back on his Spaceship of the Imagination with the double helix deoxyribonucleic acid (DNA) strand moving across the screen behind him. He says, “It’s a message that every one of us carries inside inscribed in all the cells of our body in a language all of life can read.” At this time, there is no attempt to tell us who or what inscribed this “language” into every one of our 37.2 trillion cells. Our narrator continues to explain that the DNA code is written in an alphabet consisting of only 4 letters. Each letter is a molecule made of atoms and each word is only three letters long. Now Dr. Tyson tells us, “Every living thing is a masterpiece written by Nature and edited by Evolution.” If you are wondering why I have capitalized Nature and Evolution, it is because Dr. Tyson has already informed us that he believes that the universe created itself. It allegedly began with a miracle of physics 15.8 or so billion years ago. As for Mother Nature, she has long been the female deity associated with evolution. Scientists who are atheists or agnostics have no qualms about invoking her when it suits them. Then Dr. Tyson informs us that this creation without a Creator formed stars, and that eventually these stars evolved into everything else, including all life on earth. As I have noted throughout this series, Dr. Tyson is a self-professed agnostic, but in reality, he is a modern pagan. He and other evolutionists are no different than the ancient pagans who ascribed deity to the rocks or other living creatures. What we see and hear in Dr. Tyson can rightfully be described as the belief system of a devout animist. How else could he ascribe creative powers to stars or in his own words, “…we ourselves are stardust.” [The Cosmos: Sisters of the Sun, episode 8. “Our planet, our society and we ourselves are stardust.”] Just so we understand why I associate Dr. Tyson’s stated beliefs with this particular form of paganism, let’s look at the definition of this term with regard to its meaning and origin: Definition of Animism: What is Animism? Animism is a belief based on the spiritual idea that the universe, and all natural objects within the universe, has souls or spirits. Animists believe that souls or spirits exist, not only in humans, but also in animals, plants, trees, rocks and all natural forces and phenomena such as the rain, sun and moon. The term ‘Animism,’ or animist, is most commonly applied to hunter gatherer groups and tribes. The belief of animism is probably one of the oldest beliefs of man, with its origins probably dating back to the Stone Age. [Animism and Animists (2015). Animism defined. The Indigenous People of the United States. Accessed 3.27.15.] Dr. Tyson continues, “The essential message of life has been copied and recopied for 3 billion years.” When I heard this claim, I remembered that mutations once thought to be able to provide credence to the Theory of Evolution have proved to be a powerful source of evidence against Darwinian evolution. With the discovery of mutations in the 1930’s, many thought that these anomalies could provide the mechanism that could help transform molecules into men. One of the pioneers of genetics, Thomas Hunt Morgan, Ph.D., was an American evolutionary biologist, geneticist, embryologist, and science author who won the Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine in 1933. He won that prestigious prize was awarded for discoveries elucidating the role that the chromosome plays in heredity. It was his work with Drosophila melanogaster (the fruit fly) that brought him fame within the scientific community. For most of his career, Dr. Morgan was a critic of natural selection. In A Critique of the Theory of Evolution (1916), Morgan discussed questions such as, “Does selection play any role in evolution? How can selection produce anything new? Is selection no more than the elimination of the unfit? Is selection a creative force?” We are told later that certain stable mutations within the fruit fly population caused Morgan to change his opinion about natural selection’s ability to provide evolutionary changes. [Wikipedia (2014). Morgan and Evolution. Thomas Hunt Morgan. Accessed 9.4.14.] Today, we understand that just as Darwin’s famous finches remained finches regardless of the shape and size of their beaks, Morgan’s fruit flies remained fruit flies. The truth remains that we have no evidence that one kind of organism can turn into a different kind of organism, regardless of the amount of time allotted for that transformation. Today, many evolutionary biologists are in agreement with Morgan’s earlier conclusions. They understand that natural selection is an insufficient mechanism with regard to alleged evolutionary changes. The evidence we see is much more indicative of the biblical description that all living organisms reproduce “after their own kind.” However, do not hold your breath waiting for the evolutionary faithful to bring that to your attention. [Mazur, Susan (2009). The Altenberg 16: An Expose of the Evolution Industry. Wellington, New Zealand: First Edition, Ltd.] With regard to the subject of mutations, Alex Williams, Research Associate at the Western Australian Herbarium specializing in the taxonomy of grasses, notes: When the Neo-Darwinian Synthesis emerged in the 1930s and 1940s, mutations were said to provide the natural variations that natural selection worked on to produce all new forms of life. However, directly contradicting mutation’s central role in life’s diversity, we have seen growing experimental evidence that mutations destroy life. In medical circles, mutations are universally regarded as deleterious. They are a fundamental cause of aging, cancer,and infectious diseases. Even among evolutionary apologists who search for examples of mutations that are beneficial, the best they can do is to cite damaging mutations that have beneficial side effects (e.g. sickle-cell trait a 32-base-pair deletion in a human chromosome that confers HIV resistance to homozygotes and delays AIDS onset in heterozygotes, CCR5–delta32 mutation, animal melanism, and stickleback pelvic spine suppression). Such results are not at all surprising in the light of the discovery that DNA undergoes up to a million damage and repair events per cell per day. [Williams, Alex (2008). Mutations: evolution’s engine becomes evolution’s end! Journal of Creation 22(2):60–66 August 2008. Accessed 9.1.14.] Evolutionists look to natural selection to weed out unwanted and injurious mutations, but genetics expert Professor John Sanford explains that this is not the case. Natural selection can only weed out mutations that have a significantly harmful effect upon fitness (number of offspring produced). However, such ‘fitness’ is affected by a huge variety of factors, and the vast majority of mutations have too small an effect for natural selection to be able to detect and remove them. [Sanford, J.C. (2005). Genetic Entropy & The Mystery of the Genome, New York, NY: Elim Publishing. Accessed 9.1.14] According to the distinguished virologist and avowed atheist, John Fenner (1914-2010), ‘homo sapiens will become extinct, perhaps within 100 years.’ A lot of other animals will, too.’ He added. ‘It’s an irreversible situation. I think it’s too late. I try not to express that because people are trying to do something, but they keep putting it off.’ [Firth, Niall (2010). Human race ‘will be extinct within 100 years’, claims leading scientist. Daily Mail Online. 18 June 2010. Accessed 9.1.14.]

Get ready for the mother of all “just so” stories…

Now Dr. Tyson is standing on the shoreline as we see some of the waves pooling as they roll up on the beach. He asks, “Where does the message (of life) come from? Nobody knows.” If you think that he really means what he has just said, you would be gravely mistaken. When evolutionary scientists say, “We don’t really know how life began, or who wrote the genetic code” or any number of questions they really do not know the answer to, they are completely disingenuous. As Dr. Tyson stands among those shallow pools, he immediately proves my point by saying, “Perhaps it began in a shallow pool like this. Or somehow, carbon-rich molecules began using energy to make crude copies of themselves. Some varieties were better at copying themselves and left more offspring. The competing molecules became more elaborate. Evolution and life itself was underway,” (emphasis added). I was somewhat stunned by Dr. Tyson’s matter-of-fact demeanor as he speculated about the origin of the first self-replicating molecule. This is a commonly used tactic and it makes these fairytale stories all the more dangerous. Dr. Tyson hypocritically states, “no one knows how life began,” and then he and other evolutionists tell us stories that are completely fabricated. They do so with confidence as if they have real evidence to support what they state. This is really Evolution 101: Soup-to-Cells and our narrator is about to continue the evolutionary deception without skipping a beat. Like Dr. Tyson, the evolutionists at the University of California, Berkley as well as other bastions of evolutionary dogma will openly admit that living things (even ancient organisms like bacteria) are enormously complex. Then they attempt to tell their “just-so” story so that it will seem feasible to the layperson. Here is the way they describe evolution today. However, all this complexity did not leap fully-formed from the primordial soup. Instead, life almost certainly originated (emphasis added) in a series of small steps, each building upon the complexity that evolved previously: There is no mention of the fact that natural selection and/or beneficial mutation cannot provide the new genetic information necessary to elicit the changes proposed by Darwin’s theory. The University of California at Berkley continues: Simple organic molecules, similar to the nucleotide shown below, are the building blocks of life and must have been involved in its origin. Experiments suggest that organic molecules could have been synthesized in the atmosphere of early Earth and rained down into the oceans. RNA and DNA molecules — the genetic material for all life — are just long chains of simple nucleotides. [Berkley.Edu (2014). Evolution 101: How did life originate. Accessed 9.1.14.] It is here that the incredible oversimplification continues as the evolutionists at Berkley tell us the next step in their evolutionary manifesto is the evolution of a self-replicating molecule. Did they share with their students that no one has ever seen anything like this happen in all of human history? Did they mention that those “experiments” they like to reference have been debunked? The Journal of Science contains the following reference to the icon of evolution known as the Miller-Urey experiment. The so-called Miller-Urey experiment simulated the prebiotic atmosphere by mixing molecules they presumed were present on the early Earth: methane, ammonia, hydrogen, and water. They then zapped this soup with an electrical charge to mimic lightning, which in turn produced small amounts of amino acids–the building blocks of proteins, which are critical to all living things. “[That study] had a tremendously important role in making chemists aware that the whole question of origin of life could be approached by lab experiments,” says NASA Specialized Centers of Research and Training’s (NSCORT) Arrhenius. “It became an acceptable field.” Yet today, Arrhenius and many other researchers dismiss the experiment itself because they contend that the early atmosphere looked nothing like the Miller-Urey simulation. Basically, Miller and Urey relied on a “reducing” atmosphere, a condition in which molecules are fat with hydrogen atoms. As Miller showed later, he could not make organics in an “oxidizing” atmosphere. [Cohen, Jon (1995). Novel Center Seeks to Add Spark to Origins of Life. Science, Vol. 270:1925-1926 (as cited in Evolution News and Views. On the Miller-Urey Experiment, Wikipedia Offers a Citation Bluff. Nov. 13, 2012). Accessed 9.1.14.] One only has to look at the mayhem a lightening strike causes when it strikes a living organism to know that this concept is more comic book science fiction than reality. [Cooper, Mary Ann (2014). Lightning Injuries. Medscape. Accessed 3.30.15.] The fact remains that all such experiments, even if they could produce a self-replicating molecule, would be evidence of Intelligent Design or Creationism and nothing more. Another serious problem that the evolutionists at Berkley will not share with their unsuspecting students is called the chirality problem. Jonathan Sarfati, Ph.D. in physical chemistry writes the following with regard to the chirality problem. Many important molecules required for life exist in two forms. These two forms are non-superimposable mirror images of each other, i.e.: they are related like our left and right hands. Hence this property is called chirality, from the Greek word for hand. The two forms are called enantiomers (from the Greek word for opposite) or optical isomers, because they rotate plane-polarized light either to the right or to the left. Nearly all biological polymers must be homochiral (all its component monomers having the same handedness. Another term used is optically pure or 100 % optically active) to function. All amino acids in proteins are ‘left-handed’, while all sugars in DNA and RNA, and in the metabolic pathways, are ‘right-handed’. A 50/50 mixture of left- and right-handed forms is called a racemate or racemic mixture. Racemic poly- peptides could not form the specific shapes required for enzymes, because they would have the side chains sticking out randomly. Also, a wrong-handed amino acid disrupts the stabilizing α-helix in proteins. DNA could not be stabilized in a helix if even a single wrong-handed monomer were present, so it could not form long chains. This means it could not store much information, so it could not support life. [Thiemann, W., ed., (1973). International Symposium on Generation and Amplification of Asymmetry in Chemical Systems, Jülich, Germany, pp 32–33, 1973. (Cited in: Wilder-Smith, A.E., (1981). The Natural Sciences Know Nothing of Evolution, CA: Master Books, CA.] Recently, there has been research concerning the selective crystallization of saturated solutions with an aim at solving the chirality problem. Dr. Sarfati’s response to the current research is highly technical, but his conclusions indicate that we should not be impressed with these new studies. Yet once again, these are unrealistic conditions for prebiotic synthesis. They start off with a saturated solution of phenylalanine, which is at best produced in tiny amounts, with an initial ee from somewhere, then allowed to evaporate undisturbed. Also, there is a problem similar to that of circularly polarized light: that the necessary purity seems to be reached asymptotically as the amount of material decreased. In the first stage, the high chiral excess is in a very small amount of solution after >80% of the material had crystallized, and the solution had ‘a few mg’ out of the initial 500 mg ‘with a 40% ee of the L component, a 70/30 ratio of L to D.’ The next stage wasn’t taking that liquid, but a large amount of solution with the same concentration. It wasn’t stated how a small amount of enriched solution would be naturally decanted into a convenient evaporating pond, but the next stage left a solution of ‘≈100 mg that had a 90% ee in the L enantiomer, a 95/5 ratio of L to D.’ It’s also not clear whether this is the limit, because this is close to the 88% enantiomeric excess of the eutectic composition. Furthermore, it means that the crystals must be slightly enriched in the wrong enantiomer, so any splash of water would dissolve it and mix the enantiomers together, so they are back to square one… Some theorists have proposed that a fluke seeding of a supersaturated solution with a homochiral crystal would crystallize out the same enantiomer. However, the primordial soup, if it existed, would have been extremely dilute and grossly contaminated, as shown by many writers. Also, nothing could be done with the growing homochiral crystal, because it would be immersed in a solution of the remaining wrong enantiomer. Concentrating the solution would crystallize out this wrong enantiomer. Diluting the solution would dissolve the crystal, so the alleged process would have to keep starting from scratch. In conclusion, Dr. Sarfati writes: If we can only ‘speculate’ on the origin of life, why do so many people state that evolution is a ‘fact’? Repeat a rumor often enough and people will swallow it. [Sarfati, Jonathan (1998). Origin of life: the chirality problem. Journal of Creation (formerly TJ) 12(3):263–266. December 1998, updated in 2010. Accessed 9.1.14.]

“Or life could have started in the searing heat of a volcanic vent on the deep sea floor.”

Dr. Tyson is just getting started with his alternative possibilities for the origin of life. On the screen, we see a picture of one of the deep sea vents spewing noxious chemicals into the ocean water as he says, “Or life could have started in the searing heat of a volcanic vent on the deep sea floor.” This is yet another speculation born of evolution’s need to explain the beginning of life without the Creator. It surprised marine biologists to find life thriving close to these vents. It caused a wave of speculation from astrobiologists that have yet to subside. Should Bible-believers be concerned with the ability of life to survive and thrive in seemingly extreme conditions? Spore-forming bacteria are designed to survive the most extreme conditions imaginable. God created life so that it would “be fruitful and multiply.” That phrase appears twice during the creation account in the opening chapter of the book of Genesis and it is repeated seven more times after that. At this point in Dr. Tyson’s speculations concerning the origin of life, it becomes important to restate the following facts. Abiogenesis (the spontaneous appearance of life from inorganic substances) has never been observed. There has never been anything close to the replication of this process in a laboratory. Everything they offer by way of explanation is pure speculation and they know it.

“Or it is possible that life came to earth as a hitchhiker?”

Now we see an asteroid floating through outer space and we hear our narrator say, “Or it is possible that life came to earth as a hitchhiker?” We see a spaceship shoot across the screen as our narrator continues, “Let me tell you a story.” We are once more transported back in time to the land of animation so that Dr. Tyson can continue one of his many evolutionary explanations for the origin of life. He tells us, “The peace of the Egyptian village of Nakhla in Alexandria was shattered on a June morning in 1911. Written in this meteorite was a message from another planet, but 70 years would pass before anyone could read it.” This is common practice when the devotees of Darwin present their conclusions concerning certain discoveries they make. We have been told that the beginning of the universe was “written in the stars.” The genetic code of life was “written in our DNA.” Are their conclusions concerning certain discoveries really written there? Could there be alternate explanations for what they are “reading” in the data? We already know that evolutionists and creationists are looking at the same information. We examine the data from two very different worldviews. For better or worse, those worldviews inform our interpretations. We are back in modern times and we see a simulation of a Mars probe landing as Dr. Tyson tells us, “In 1977, NASA landed 2 Viking spacecrafts on Mars. Carl Sagan took us there on our original journey through the cosmos. We found Martian air was less than 1% as dense as ours and made mostly of carbon dioxide. There were smaller amounts of hydrogen, argon, water vapor and oxygen.” Dr. Tyson continues, “A few years later, when scientists thought to analyze the gases trapped inside the Nakhla meteorite and other members of its class, they found a striking similarity. The vast majority of the meteorites are fragments of asteroids, but the kind that hit Nakhla on earth were from one place.” After a short pause for effect, our narrator says with a dramatic flair, “Mars.”

Welcome to Mars

Now we see a more modern and advanced Mars probe as Dr. Tyson stands in a desert that simulates a Martian landscape and says, “Over a billion years ago, a volcano erupted here.” How does he know this happened ‘over a billion years ago’? He doesn’t. This is an assumption based upon a hypothetical construct called the Big Bang. Deep time is the necessary magic ingredient of evolutionary theory. Without it, how can stars morph into men? Given enough time, anything is possible, right? When I was 5 years old, the universe was only 6 billion years old. However, the changes have been far more dramatic than that. As our telescopes became improved, and as standard values such as the speed of light, (c), were used to measure time, the age size of the universe expanded exponentially. The Goddard Space Flight Center has a page on NASA’s website that chronicles the changes throughout the years with regard to the age and size of the universe. Their estimates are as follows: • In 1919 Age: Infinite Size: 300,000 Light Years • 1929 Age: 2 Billion Years Size: 280 Million Light Years • 1955 Age: 6 Billion Years Size: 4 Billion Light Years • 1965 Age: 10-25 Billion Years Size: 25 Billion Light Years • 1993 Age: 12-20 Billion Years Size: 30 Billion Light Years • 2006 Age: 13.7 Billion Years Size: 94 Billion Light Years For a more detailed explanation of their reasoning with regard to the ever-expanding ages and sizes, you can find that information at the NASA website. [NASA (2014). Age and Size of the Universe Through the Years. Cosmic Times Teacher’s Resources. Goddard Space Flight Center. Accessed 9.3.14.] As we have noted previously, there are serious problems with the assumptions used by evolutionary cosmologists to gauge the age of the universe. Questions concerning the redshift [Rowitt, S. (2014). The Cosmos: The Space Time Odyssey Continues (part 4). The Cosmos from a Creationist Perspective. Creation Studies Institute. Accessed 9.3.14.], the flatness problem, the horizon problem and other seemingly inexplicable phenomena associated with modern evolutionary cosmology persist. So much so that modern cosmologists propose several completely hypothetical constructs such as multiverse theory, dark matter and dark energy to explain problems with the current state of Big Bang cosmology. [Grigg, R. (2011). Discovery Channel program: How the Universe Works: Seems like ‘science’ but really promoting a worldview. Creation Ministries International. Accessed 9.3.14.] Dr. Tyson continues to point to those lava pools noting they eventually became solid rock. Then, hundreds of millions of years later, this area was flooded with water. Long after that flood, an asteroid the size of the Rock of Gibraltar crashed into the Martian surface, blasting out a huge crater. Much of the debris was ejected back out into space where it orbited the Sun until a gravitational tug from its home planet (Mars) diverted one of the boulders into a collision course with Earth. Its arrival shook the little village of Nakhla. Dr. Tyson continues, “Meteorites are the vehicles of a natural interplanetary transit system that sends rocks between planets.” I do not want to throw a monkey wrench into Dr. Tyson’s story, but I do want to share one important fact. No one knows how much time passed between the volcanic production of our Martian rock and the hundreds of millions of years that allegedly passed before water flooded this area of the Marian surface. The concept is rooted in the same uniformitarian principles of geology that evolutionists point to here on our own planet. There is only one very large fly in this ointment. It is the fact that geological changes that shaped much of our own planet were the result of catastrophism, not uniformitarian principles. Was the Grand Canyon the result of millions of years of the Colorado River cutting its way through the surrounding rock? Was it uniformitarian processes, or a little water and a huge allotment of time? Well today, even uniformitarians admit that catastrophic principles were at least partly involved in the forming of the Grand Canyon. There is another serious problem with the evolutionary position that the Colorado River carved out what we today call the Grand Canyon. Don’t take my word for this. A website dedicated to this geologic wonder notes: There’s little doubt that the Colorado River carved the Grand Canyon. But exactly how it did so is still a mystery. Water flows downhill, so when a river encounters rising terrain, it is diverted, always seeking the path of least resistance to reach the sea. [Your Complete Guide to the Grand Canyon Region. The River that Flowed Uphill. Accessed 3.31.15.] So why does the course of the Colorado River cut through the Kaibab and Coconino plateaus almost at their highest point? As the broader Colorado Plateau rose, lifted by the same mountain-building forces that raised the Rocky Mountains, the Colorado River should have gone somewhere else. The best evolutionary geologists have to offer is that it remains a mystery. What is not a mystery is the fact that water in large quantities wields tremendous power. A worldwide cataclysmic flood would have no difficulty producing what we see in the Grand Canyon in a very short timeframe. The research done, as a result of the Mount St. Helen’s eruption in 1980, provided radiometric dating results for rocks known to be only 11 years old. These same rocks yielded dates in excess of 2 million years via the Potassium Argon dating method. In addition to this, the rubidium-strontium and potassium-argon methods, were also used for dating samples from the Grand Canyon and they did not agree. Even one internationally-known researcher on radioisotope dating admitted to Steve Austin that half of the ‘dates’ from whole-rock samples from the Grand Canyon are wrong. Steve Austin, Ph.D. spent 14 years analyzing radioisotopes in samples from rocks known as the Cardenas Basalt deep within the Grand Canyon. This igneous rock is considered to be over one billion years old. [Austin, S., & Snelling, A. (1998). Discordant potassium-argon model and isochron “ages” for Cardenas Basalt (Middle Proterozoic) and associated diabase of Eastern Grand Canyon, Arizona; in: Walsh, R., The Fourth International Conference on Creationism, Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, pp. 35–51, 1998.] “I was able to ‘date’ samples from many different locations using different dating methods based on potassium-argon and rubidium-strontium analyses. The methods gave different ages. How can supposedly ‘infallible’ methods do that? Obviously the assumptions are wrong.” [Austin, S., & Walker, T. (2010). Geologic catastrophe and the young earthTas Walker talks to Steve Austin about his research career in Flood geology. Creation 32(2):28–31April 2010. Accessed 9.3.14.]

“Such a meteorite can safely shelter microscopic cargo.”

Now we realize that the entire story of the Nakhla meteorite shower was told so that Dr. Tyson could introduce us to the idea of Directed Panspermia. Whenever you hear evolutionists name something with vaguely scientific-sounding names, you can be sure that it is done to fool you into believing that the absurd is not only possible, but quite probable. That is why spontaneous generation, a long-debunked theory that life could arise from dead tissue, is renamed abiogenesis. Moreover, when some might balk at using a word that contains the name of the first book of the Bible, other evolutionary proponents have used biopoesis instead. This same technique has been employed for hitchhiking bacteria. As if microorganisms can somehow become microbiologists. Many of the brightest evolutionists, including the co-discoverer of the double helical structure of DNA, Dr. Francis Crick, and British chemist, Leslie Orgel, have ascribed to an extraterrestrial source of life. Their hypothesis, Directed Panspermia, suggests that the seeds of life may have been purposely spread by an advanced extraterrestrial civilization, or can be spread from Earth to other planets by humans. [Crick, F., & Orgel, L. (1973). Directed Panspermia Hypothesis. Panspermia-Theory.com. Accessed 9.3.14.] This so-called Theory of Directed Panspermia (in which it is stated that advanced aliens seeded the universe) has gone through several variations such as Panspermia Theory, Lithopanspermia (interstellar), and Ballistic Panspermia (interplanetary). All of them are based upon the evolutionist’s need to explain away the necessity for a Creator. They would rather embrace ridiculously absurd science fiction fantasy than consider that “In the beginning God created…” (Gen. 1:1). So now, we have wayfaring microbes and Dr. Tyson is rolling along with his series of “just so” stories concerning the origin of life. Dr. Tyson tells us, “We know that some microbes can survive the hostile environment of space.” Now we see what are supposed to be microbes that were pasted on the outer hull of the International Space Station as our narrator tells us that they were stuck there for a year and a half while being exposed to the extreme temperature and radiation of space. Some of them were still alive and kicking when they were brought back to earth.” As he spoke, I remember the ‘mighty tardigrades’ that Dr. Tyson used in a previous episode as evidence that life could survive the rigors of outer space. [Rowitt, S. (2014). The Cosmos: Billions and Billions and Billions, (Part 6). The Cosmos from a Creationist Perspective. Creation Studies Institute. Accessed 9.3.14.] As he wildly exaggerated the results of that experiment, I was certain that he would misrepresent the results of our spaceship-hugging microbes. I was right. A closer look at the experiment showed that the hearty little blue-green cyanobacteria survived 553 days in a near vacuum (emphasis added). I have learned from experience that evolutionists often jump to conclusions when it looks like there might be supporting evidence for their fantastic musings. Case in point: the Search for Extra-Terrestrial Intelligence (SETI) project was the collective name for a number of activities people undertook to search for evidence of intelligent extraterrestrial life. It was the inspiration for the very ambitious 1997 Robert Zemeckis movie, Contact. The movie was based upon a novel by none other than the poster boy for life in outer space, Mr. “billions and billions” himself, Carl Sagan. SETI projects use scientific methods to search for electromagnetic transmissions from civilizations on distant planets. The SETI project dates all the way back to 1960 when Cornell University astronomer, Frank Drake, performed the first modern SETI experiment, named “Project Ozma,” after the Queen of Oz in L. Frank Baum’s fantasy books [Time Magazine (1960). Science Project Ozma. Time, Monday April 18, 1920. Accessed on 12.2.10.]. By 1971, NASA was funding the SETI project that involved Drake and some hefty corporate funding. Project Cyclops incorporated 1,500 satellite dishes, and a price tag of 10 billion USD, to search the heavens for signs of life. The OSU SETI program gained fame on August 15, 1977 when Jerry Ehman, a project volunteer, witnessed a startlingly strong signal received by the telescope. He quickly circled the indication on a printout and scribbled the phrase “Wow!” in the margin. This signal, dubbed “the Wow! Signal,” is considered by some (the evolutionary faithful, of course) to be the most likely candidate for an artificial, extraterrestrial source. No one bothers to admit that in the ensuing years, despite numerous searches in the same location, the signal has never been detected again! Dr. Tyson concludes his presentation of yet another explanation for the origin of life on Earth by telling us about another miracle of evolution. Concerning the discovery of allegedly millions of year-old microbes he notes, “Even more astonishing creatures awakened from their death-like sleep of 8 million years after they were frozen in the Antarctic ice millions of years before our species even existed.” Now we see a wide-eyed and excited Dr. Tyson exclaim, “And they were still alive!” A partially-fossilized and decomposing femur (leg bone) of a T. Rex Dinosaur supposedly 70 million years old has been found. The evidence indicates a date much closer to the biblical date of creation approximately 6-10,000 years ago.

The vessels and contents are similar in all respects to blood vessels recovered from … ostrich bone,” they reported in a paper published Friday in the journal Science. [AP (2005). Scientists recover T. rex soft tissue: 70 million-year-old fossil yields preserved blood vessels. March 4, 2005.Associated Press. Accessed 9 .4.14.]

Today we know that this was not an isolated incident. Subsequent tests on this and other dinosaur remains has confirmed that these specimens are not the result of contamination. As Dr. Tyson touts the survival of 8 million-year-old bacteria, the dinosaur tissue discoveries up to allegedly 199.6 million years old were being validated. Rather than admitting the obvious (that the dinosaur tissue was not millions, but only thousands of years old), these brainwashed researchers propose that a formaldehyde-like chemical must have been involved in these miracles of preservation. [Pappas, S. (2013). Controversial T. Rex Soft Tissue Find Finally Explained. Live Science November 26, 2013. Accessed 9.4.14.] Finally, Dr. Tyson makes his final “just so” story plea. He tells us, “If you could withstand the hardships of space and endure for a millennium, they (these cosmic hitchhikers) could ride the interplanetary transit system for world to world.” Make no mistake about these evolutionary anti-God zealots; they are determined to convince everyone else that their delusional stories of “goo-to-you” are true. If they have to lie, deceive, censor, and brainwash, they will do so with the impunity of men and women whose godless pride has darkened their own understanding. 15 Hear and give ear: Do not be proud, For the Lord has spoken. 16 Give glory to the Lord your God Before He causes darkness, And before your feet stumble On the dark mountains, And while you are looking for light, He turns it into the shadow of death And makes it dense darkness. (Jer. 13:15-16) Dr. Tyson doubles down on hitchhiking microbes. It seems that the writers of the Cosmos series are big fans of what has come to be known as “Ballistic Panspermia.” Dr. Tyson doubles down on this particular variation of evolutionary storytelling by saying, “It’s a good bet that our microbial ancestors spent some time in space.” Now we are reminded that everything we are hearing throughout this entire miniseries is aimed at supporting the Theory of Evolution. If you are you still doubtful about this, we now see a large asteroid speeding through the Earth’s atmosphere on its way to a crash landing as our narrator continues, “Because the Earth is 4 ½ billion years old, for the first half of its lifetime, large asteroids were bombarding the planet every few million years. The most violent impacts vaporized the oceans and even melted the surface rock. Each such collision would have sterilized the planet for thousands of years.” I was reminded of a previous episode and the Halls of Extinction that our narrator had visited on several occasions, even hinting that manmade global warming might land our present generation of humanity in one of those halls. He also made reference to the “Great Dying.” This too is the result of one of those pesky asteroids that continues to wipe out all that came before (well, maybe not everything). We need to remember our alleged evolutionary ancestors; those subterranean-dwelling rodents who survived to evolve opposable thumbs (and eventually became tree-dwelling monkeys) did survive at least one version of the “Great Dying.” [Rowitt, S. (2014). Here comes the mouse-to-ape-to-man “just so” story. The Cosmos: A Spacetime Odyssey (Part 9). The Cosmos from a Creation Studies Institute. Accessed 9.16.14.] “For a few million years, Earth could have been called the planet of the dead.” Yes, one more time Dr. Tyson plays the deep time card in order to hang all of evolutionary history on the framework of billions of years. What evolutionary scientists will not tell you is that these doomsday scenarios have changed over the years. In the late 1970’s, nuclear winter was going to be the next great cataclysm. Then acid rain was going to trigger worldwide famine. Today, global warming is the next disaster facing the human race. Do you think there is a connection between the ozone layer being decimated by an over-abundance of methane back in the far distant past and the possibly planet-killing hole in the ozone layer we were told was caused by the widespread use of aerosol spray cans? Dr. Tyson continues, “We are the descendants of one of the few species that managed to squeak by.” The next scene opens with a rodent-like critter sticking its head out and sniffing the air. Our narrator continues, “You are human and alive at this very moment because they managed to endure [assuming he means the rodent] and bring their DNA through one of the most treacherous periods in the history of human life.” No further information is given at this time concerning our long lost relative. I say long lost because, like everything else in the world of Darwinian evolution, we had no idea about this critter until some scholar told us about it. However, the Great Dying is a relatively new addition to the evolutionary timeline with most of the scholarly articles on this subject appearing after 1990. [Rowitt, S. (2014). Ibid.] You might ask where all these extinction or near-extinction events came from. The answer has more to do with the deep time component of evolutionary storytelling than you might think. Something had to wipe out the antediluvian dinosaurs and it could not have been their inability to adapt to a post-flood Ice Age environment. That would require lending credence to the Genesis account of creation and the history of the ancient world. That view includes a worldwide (rather than a local) flood. This is anathema to those who have embraced a godless evolutionary view of history. I would like to add a word about the difference between empirical science and historical science. Empirical science is the strict use of the scientific method to test hypotheses and record results. If they confirm your hypothesis, others can replicate your results. Historical science relies on observations of evidence from the past and conclusions based upon what we “think” happened. A good way of understanding these two is that empirical is exclusively experimental like the medical laboratory that performs different tests and reports the results to your physician. Historical science is like the Crime Scene Investigation units that practice forensic science. They attempt to piece together evidence observed in order to reconstruct a crime. That is the nature of historical science, but when the evolutionary paradigm drives the interpretation of the data, and they look millions to billions of years into the distant past, their conclusions are not trustworthy. When we look at the details of evolutionary theory, we assume several things to be true that in reality, may or may not be accurate. When you factor in billions of years of time, there are going to be gaps in your timeline that require conclusions to be made. In the Cosmos miniseries, we have already been told about mass extinction events that allegedly wiped out “9 out of every 10 species on the planet.” [Rowitt, S. (2014). Ibid.] Now Dr. Tyson says, “The most violent impacts vaporized the oceans and even melted the surface rock. Each such collision would have sterilized the planet for thousands of years.” If this is true, how can we be certain of what came before? We really cannot, unless we have already bought into the “microbes-to-microbiologists” evolutionary scenario.

More Great Leaps of Evolutionary Faith

Dr. Tyson continues, “But we know from fossils in the rocks that bacteria were evolving on Earth during this formative period. So how could we have survived such a lethal series of blows? Whenever one of these big asteroids hit the Earth, it would blast out a crater launching millions of boulders into space. Many of these rocks carried living bacteria inside. Some of those bugs survived in space while others left behind fried. A few thousand years after each impact, the Earth would have cooled down sufficiently enough to allow water to condense into oceans. The planet would again be habitable. Meanwhile, most of the rocks launched into space would have been orbiting the Sun. Some of them would encounter Earth again meteorites and deliver their precious cargo of life to re-seed the planet. Like Noah’s Ark, what this means is that life did not have to start over again from scratch after each catastrophe. It can pick up where it left off.” Like so many of evolution’s “just so” stories, this one borders on sheer nonsense. Most sources have not yet gotten the memo from Dr. Tyson concerning these extinction events. Most sources agree that close to 99% of life died during these catastrophes, but they did not tell us the “oceans evaporated” and the surface rock surrounding the planet “melted.” And now we are being told that life re-evolved not once or twice, but several times!

Panspermia to the Rescue

The idea that microbes might have landed on earth and began their long and treacherous journey up the evolutionary tree of life is not a new concept. You can trace this back to the 5th century BC philosopher Anaxagoras. [Margaret O’Leary (2008) Anaxagoras and the Origin of Panspermia Theory, Universe publishing Group (as cited in Wikipedia (2014). Accessed 9.9.14.] Others who had a hand in the evolution concept were proposals by Jöns Jacob Berzelius (1834), Hermann E. Richter (1865), Kelvin (1871) and Hermann von Helmholtz (1879). The person who raised the notion of extraterrestrial bacteria (to a respectable level) was chemist Svante Arrhenius. [Arrhenius, S. (1908). Worlds in the Making: The Evolution of the Universe. New York, NY: Harper & Row, (as cited in Wikipedia (2014). History of Panspermia. Accessed 9.9.14.] Later, Sir Fred Hoyle and Chandra Wickramasinghe offered a hypothesis that interstellar dust might be the vehicle for life forms entering the Earth’s atmosphere. Even the guru of modern cosmology, physicist Stephen Hawking has chimed in with his opinion about what future astronauts might encounter by way of alien lifeforms that were the result of panspermia. In a presentation on April 7, 2009, Hawking stated his opinion about what humans may find when venturing into space, such as the possibility of alien life through the theory of panspermia. [Weaver, R. (2009). Ruminations on other worlds: Absent Hawking still shares views on alien life at Origins Symposium. State Press (as cited in Wikipedia (2014). History of Panspermia. Accessed 9.9.14.]

The Failed “Life Encased in a Meteor” Hypothesis

Occasionally, some evolutionary scientists attempt to recreate these events. They know that everything they are telling us is their best guess as to what happened based exclusively on evolutionary dogma. As we have noted with such discoveries as partially-fossilized tissue in dinosaur remains, they refuse to challenge their findings. The Emperor of Evolution is as naked as he was on the day he was born. Sadly, his subjects, the evolutionists, will not allow anyone to point out the shameful condition of the King. In Andersen’s fable, it took a little child to state the obvious, “The Emperor is naked.” Still, the King could not admit that he had been duped as Anderson writes: The Emperor realized that the people were right but could not admit to that. He thought it better to continue the procession under the illusion that anyone who couldn’t see his clothes was either stupid or incompetent. [Anderson, H. C. (1837). Fairy Tales Told for Children. First Collection. Denmark: C. A. Reitzel, Pub., (as cited Rowitt (2012). No C-14 Test for the T. Rex Tissue: The Emperor of Evolution Has No Clothes. Creation Studies Institute, March 2012. Accessed 9.9.14.] With all the hype surrounding the evidence that certain bacteria can survive in the “near” vacuum of space, some experiments were actually performed to see if Directed Panspermia might be possible. A paper by Jonathan Sarfati chronicled their experiments, noting: Scientists at the Centre of Molecular Biophysics in Orleans, France, managed to simulate a meteorite entry by attaching rocks to the heat shield of a returning Russian spacecraft (FOTON M3 capsule) last month. These rocks were smeared with a hardy bacterium called Chroococcidiopsis—supposed to resemble a proposed germ on Mars. The rocks also contained microfossils. After the spacecraft was retrieved, the microfossils survived, but the Chroococcidiopsis was burned black, although their outlines remained. Lead author Frances Westall says: The results are more problematic when applied to panspermia. STONE-6 showed at least two centimetres (0.8 inch) of rock is not sufficient to protect the organisms during [atmospheric] entry.—Frances Westall, Centre of Molecular Biophysics in Orleans ‘The STONE-6 experiment suggests that, if Martian sedimentary meteorites carry traces of past life, these traces could be safely transported to Earth. However, the results are more problematic when applied to panspermia. STONE-6 showed at least two centimetres (0.8 inch) of rock is not sufficient to protect the organisms during [atmospheric] entry.’ [Phys.org (2008). Meteorite experiment deals blow to bugs from space theory, Physorg.com, 25 September 2008.] This experiment also supports our rejection of the life from Mars hype in 1996, in that the atmosphere would likely fry any Martian meteoritic microbes. [Sarfati, J. (1996). Life on Mars? Separating fact from fiction. Creation 19(1):18–20. Accessed 9.9.14.] We also pointed out that life on Mars was more likely to have been blasted off from Earth in the first place, and this experiment indirectly reinforces this, (i.e., the frictional drag is proportional to the atmospheric density [Kinetic energy is given by E = ½mv2, where m is mass and v is velocity. Frictional drag force is given by fdrag = ½CρAv2, where ρ is the air density, A the cross-sectional area, and C is a numerical drag coefficient] and the Martian atmosphere is < 1% as dense as ours). Planets with dense atmospheres are more likely to be sources than destinations for life. Panspermia has now been shown to have a huge flaw. Since panspermia was a common last-ditch attempt to preserve materialism in the face of problems in chemical evolution on Earth, materialism itself has likewise taken yet another huge blow. [Sarfati, J. (2008). Panspermia theory burned to a crisp: bacteria couldn’t survive on meteorite. Creation.com. 10 October 2008(GMT+10). Access 9.4.14.]

When the Solar System Was Young

When you have billions and billions of years to cover, you need stories that seem believable, but that is not what we hear in this miniseries. Case in point is the next statement by our narrator who says, “When the solar system was young, Venus was probably more like Earth.” Why does he preface his statement with billions of years of time? The reason has to do with the evolutionary storyline of the beginning of our solar system. One of evolutionary cosmology’s dirty little secrets has to do with the fact that what we actually observe does not support their storyline. The evolutionary explanation for the formation of our solar system is called the Nebular Hypothesis. According to our friends at Universe Today, the story goes something like this: According to the nebular hypothesis, our Solar System began around 4.6 billion years ago when part of a molecular cloud of interstellar gas, which was filled with particles of ice, dust, rock, and other particles, collapsed. These clouds collapsed from some kind of turbulence that caused it to heat up and eventually turn into a star. Most of the cloud formed the Sun. Other material from the cloud flattened around the Sun forming a planetary disc. The material from the planetary disc, also known as the solar nebula, went to form the planets and other objects in our Solar System. Some of the material forms a solid object, which gets larger as other particles collide with it and stick together. Eventually, the object gets large enough to attract more dust and ice with its gravitational influence. These balls then form the cores of the planets. [Cessna, Abby (2009). How Was the Solar System Formed. Universe Today. August 23, 2009. Accessed 9.16.14.] Problems abound with the Core Accretion hypothesis as noted by astrophysicists Andrew Youdin from UC Berkeley and Frank Shu from National Tsing Hua University who note: The formation of planetesimals is the biggest unsolved problem in the nebular disk model. How 1 cm sized particles coalesce into 1 km planetesimals is a mystery. This mechanism appears to be the key to the question as to why some stars have planets, while others have nothing around them, not even dust belts. [Youdin, Andrew N., & Shu, Frank H., (2002). Planetesimal Formation by Gravitational Instability. Journal of Astrophys.580:494-505, 2002 (as cited in Wikipedia 2014). Nebular hypothesis. Accessed 10.14.14.] When evolutionary astrophysicists speculate on the formation of giant planets, they run into other unsolved problems. Current theories are unable to explain how their cores can form fast enough to accumulate significant amounts of gas from the quickly disappearing protoplanetary disk. [Kokubo, Eiichiro; Ida, Shigeru (2002). Formation of protoplanet systems and diversity of planetary systems. The Astrophysical Journal 581 (1): 666–680 (as cited in Wikipedia2014). Nebular hypothesis. Accessed 10.14.14.] [Inaba, S.; Wetherill, G.W.; Ikoma, M. (2003). Formation of gas giant planets: core accretion models with fragmentation and planetary envelope. Icarus 166 (1): 46–62 (as cited in Wikipedia 2014). Nebular hypothesis. Accessed 10.14.14.] Another problem of giant planet formation is their migration. Some calculations show that interaction with the disk can cause rapid inward migration, which, if not stopped, results in the planet reaching the “central regions still as a sub-Jovian object.” [Cole, George H. A. (2013). Planetary Science: The Science of Planets around Stars, Second Edition, Michael M. Woolfson, p. 190 (as cited in Wikipedia 2014). Nebular hypothesis. Accessed 10.14.14.] A major critique came during the 19th century from Bible-believer James Clerk Maxwell. One cannot fail to note the influence that this genius in the field of mathematical physics had on science. On the centenary of Maxwell’s birthday, Einstein described Maxwell’s work as the “most profound and the most fruitful that physics has experienced since the time of Newton.” [McFall, Patrick (23 April 2006). Brainy young James wasn’t so daft after all. The Sunday Post. maxwellyear2006.org. (as cited in Wikipedia (2015). James Clerk Maxwell accessed 3.31.15.] Maxwell maintained that different rotation between the inner and outer parts of a ring could not allow condensation of material. [George H. A. Cole, George H. A. (2013). Planetary Science: The Science of Planets around Stars, Second Edition, Michael M. Woolfson, p. 190 (as cited in Wikipedia (2014). Problems and Criticism. Nebular Hypothesis. Accessed 9.16.14] As it the case with most of these evolutionary “just so” scenarios, the devil is always in the details. Dr. Tyson begins to ask a series of questions. He has already told us, “When the solar system was young, Venus was probably more like Earth.” This piece of speculation is based on the theories that hope to explain the formation of planets and solar systems. The reason for going back 4.5 billion years is to be able to explain why Venus is nothing like Earth today. Creationists look at the evidence without the evolutionary bias. We don’t need to have all the planets evolving. Venus was never earthlike. In fact, this misconception of evolutionary cosmology is very common, but the facts do not support their conclusions. Our narrator continues with his evolutionary explanation for our solar system by asking, “Does planet Earth contain any traces of planetary voyages made in the distant past? Why is it that some microbes can survive the intense radiation and vacuum of space?” We have already examined the evidence concerning the hitchhiking microbe theory and found that the evidence is far from compelling with regard to a microbe’s ability to survive in deep space for prolonged periods of time. Still, Dr. Tyson doubles down in this noting, “These conditions don’t naturally exist on earth. Maybe those bugs are telling us that their ancestors survived those same conditions in space a few billion years ago.”

More Panspermia Musings

Now Dr. Tyson continues to mislead those who are watching by telling them, “We know that microbes can stow away in rocks and survive the voyages from planet to planet. What about a trip from star to star, an interstellar odyssey? The camera cuts to Dr. Tyson bending down to pick up a dandelion. He tells us, “The dandelion, about 30 million years ago, evolved its own way to send its message through space and time.” He blows on the dandelion and we see the seeds float away. He continues, “Each seedling is a little paratrooper floating on the wind, risking everything for a safe place to land. Updrafts can carry them high up into the air. A dandelion can travel dozens, perhaps hundreds, of kilometers, even crossing mountain ranges. Evolution has shaped it into an exquisite machine. The seed is another kind of ark ensuring the survival of the species riding the currents of the atmosphere to safe harbors. Each seed in its DNA carries a story of character and destiny. The next alien life propagates by retelling its story.” Once again, Dr. Tyson ascribes creative powers to “evolution.” This is a very clear example of denial. When we speak about denial, we are talking about a defense mechanism in psychology that creates a blind spot in a person’s thinking. An alcoholic is incapable of seeing that it is their excessive use of alcohol that is causing their problems. They are incapable of connecting the dots where their drinking is concerned. All the evidence that points to the excessive use of alcohol must be explained away. This is exactly what we see in Dr. Tyson’s analogy. He is using a flower that really does exist and is designed to spread its seeds in keeping with the Creator’s command to “be fruitful and multiply” as an example of interstellar seeds of life being floating throughout the cosmos. It is an analogy without evidence. It is no more than wishful thinking, as so many of the “just so” stories of evolution are. We find ourselves back on the Spaceship of the Imagination moving through outer space as our narrator asks, “Is it possible that life could survive the journey from star to star? The stars are about a million times further apart from each other than the planets. Space is so vast that it would take billions of years for a rock ejected from the Earth to collide with a planet circling another star.” Now that Dr. Tyson has set the stage with the dandelion analogy, he easily admits, “Any stow away microbes would not survive the cosmic radiation for that long. But, there’s a plausible scenario about how life can be spread from one solar system to another.”

More “Just So” Stories of Cosmic Evolution

Once again, the high-tech special effects show us a spiral galaxy while Ravel’s Bolero is playing in the background. Dr. Tyson says, “The stars of our Milky Way are drawn by gravity around their own enormous orbits around its center. Our Sun, for example, takes 225 million years to complete a single orbit. During each revolution around our galaxy, our solar system will pass through 2 or 3 gigantic interstellar clouds each of them many light years across.’ He continues, “Galaxies are world-making machines. Our Milky Way has over 100 of these vast clouds, places where gas and dust condense to form new stars.” We have already noted that several leading astrophysicists have pointed out the serious flaws in both the Nebular and the Core Accretion hypotheses. But we never hear any of these opinions when evolutionists are busy telling us how the universe and all that is therein was created sans a Creator. Dr. Tyson kicks his cosmic musings into high gear as he opines, “In its [our sun’s] travels through the Milky Way, our star is accompanied not only by its planets, but also a trillion distant comets [yes, he said a trillion]. When our solar system passes through an interstellar cloud, the gravity of the massive cloud stirs up the outermost comets. Some comets will be hurled out into the space between the stars. Others will plunge inward falling towards the sun.” The animators show us a comet crashing through some planet’s atmosphere and crashing onto its surface. Dr. Tyson narrates as we see this on the screen, “The high impact of a comet with a rocky planet will launch boulders like rockets into space. If those planets happen to be inhabited, many of those rocks will carry passengers, living microbes. After thousands of years, fragments of the rocks ejected from Earth can fall as meteors into the atmosphere of newborn planets in the interstellar cloud. If the stowaway microbes happen to come into contact with water, they can revive and reproduce. This may be how life came barreling into the barren volcanoes. The sun emerges from the cloud having scattered the seeds of life among the other worlds of newborn stars.” Now Dr. Tyson continues to promote this particular version of Lithopanspermia (interstellar) and Ballistic Panspermia (interplanetary) by claiming that this process would continue as stars would eventually leave their birth clouds to bring light and life to other interstellar clouds where they would continue to spread the seeds of life and so on and so forth.

Evolutionary Propaganda is Insidious

The problem with evolutionary “just so” stories of interstellar seeds of life being spread throughout the universe is that it is all smoke and mirrors. These are stories that sound reasonable until you actually examine the details. There is no evidence to support what the Cosmos series presents with regard to their “just so” story of panspermia. Because the proponents of evolutionary theory are convinced that their naturalistic explanations are possible (not because there is evidence to support it), any other explanation that includes a Creator is abhorrent to them. As I finished this episode, a newsflash noted that Philae, the landing module on the Rosetta mission, had just successfully landed on comet 67P/Churyumov–Gerasimenko. Ten years and a billion Euros later, this remarkable feat is just one more in a long line of space probes looking for signs of life in outer space. As the name implies, the Rosetta mission is an effort to discover the origin of life according to the Lithopanspermia. This makes the comets the Johnny Appleseed of life according to evolutionary cosmologists. Sadly, evolutionists are always looking for life in all the wrong places. This effort will tell us more about the composition of comets, but nothing about the origin of life. Dr. Tyson chimes in using his best ultra-dramatic voice, “Imagine this process (the reseeding of life via interstellar microbes) repeated from world to world while each one brings life to others.” At this time, the animators make it appear that life is busting out all over our galaxy as our narrator continues, “Life would then propagate like a slow chain reaction through the entire galaxy.” The problem with this particular “just so” story is common to all of evolutionary scenarios. There is absolutely no evidence whatsoever that life exists anywhere other than on Earth. Forget the entire galaxy, the search for life within our own solar system has been a dismal failure. What are we left with? Speculation that somewhere below the surface of Jupiter’s icy moons, life is lurking. [The Daily Galaxy (2012). “Is there Life on Europa, Io or Ganymede?” New Mission Set to Jupiter’s Moons. May 03, 2012. Accessed 11.12.14.] “This could be how life came to earth. We do not know for sure. Are there tiny beings out there like us? Do they ask the same questions? Do they share our fears? Do they have heroes or adventurers? If they do exist, where are they? How might they make their presence known?” Now the Ship of the Imagination moves across the TV screen as Dr. Tyson continues his queries, “How did we first announce our presence to the galaxy? It was 1946, the year after the Second World War ended.” Now we see old news clips of the Army engineers working to bounce radio waves off the moon. Tyson says, “Army engineers bounced radio waves off the moon and were able to detect its echo. They called this experiment Project Diana. The first interstellar message (not really interstellar, but it sounds so much better) sent by our species, and eerie tolling bell.” The screen changes to show us an army spokesperson saying, “If one allows the imagination free reign, many possibilities appear.” Some of these include spaceships moving thousands of miles an hour with established communications. Dr. Tyson now begins to review that radio wave experiment called Project Diana where radio waves were pinged off the moon. The rest of these waves passed right by the moon, but the central part hit and bounced back. He continues to tell us, “After a round trip travel time of 2.5 seconds, it hits our planet. It was just the beginning. After WW II, TV stations popped us in the US and all over the world. The Project Diana message and the FM radio, TV and radar signals of the 20th century all move outward at the speed of light. These transmissions make up a vast sphere of radio waves expanding away from the Earth in all directions.” The animators show us an illustration of what these radio waves look like by drawing a series of overlapping concentric circles moving out from the various earthbound sources into outer space. Dr. Tyson likens this to our ancestors etching the flood story of Gilgamesh to this modern version of story telling. Now we get to the real reason we have been looking at this message as our narrator tells us that these signals have been washing over other planets and stars. If any of them are inhabited by alien civilizations with radio telescopes, “They would already know that we’re here.” He continues, “What if the other worlds are sending their stories into space?” Now he explains that we have been listening with radio telescopes for extraterrestrial radio signals for over 70 years without any results. But he claims that our search has been sporadic and limited to only certain parts of the sky. He notes, “For all we know, we might have just missed alien signal, looking in the wrong place at the wrong time.” Dr. Tyson is correct about the vastness of the cosmos and our somewhat limited ability to search such a large area by turning our electronic ears heavenward. What he is not telling you is that billions of dollars have been spent, and continue to be spent, doing just that.

ET Phone Home

All of this talk about radio waves and cosmic messages has a purpose. Dr. Tyson explains, “For all we know, other civilizations even slightly more advanced than ours might have moved on to some other mode of communication, one that we have yet to discover or even imagine.” I would like to know why these fantasy scenarios that masquerade as science never postulate alien life that is less evolved than we are. After all, if there is life out there somewhere, why must it be an advanced civilization, slightly or otherwise? When you pass science fiction off as science, you end up leaving reality behind. How does one even get a scientific discipline called astrobiology when there is zero evidence that there is life anywhere else in the cosmos other than on Earth? It seems that hope springs eternal in the search for ET. Dr. Tyson continues, “Imagine that their messages could be swirling all around us at this very moment, but we lack the means to perceive them. Perhaps other civilizations might have become extinct? What is the life expectancy of a civilization?” I have done some research into the Search for Extra-Terrestrial Intelligence (SETI) project so I realize that there have been billions of dollars spent listening to see if ET will phone back. We have been spending billions of dollars bombarding the heavens with radio signals in hope that ET will return our call. I distinctly remember when the newswires were all atwitter as NASA announced in a public meeting with NASA’s chief and the agency’s top scientists. They said that they expect to find alien life within the next 20 years. [Anthony, S. (2014). We’ll find alien life in the next 20 years with our new, awesome telescopes says NASA. Extreme Tech July 15, 2014. Accessed 7.17.13.] Evidently, that is their story and they are sticking to it. This is nothing new, because they have promoted this non-discovery for most of my adult life. It is getting more and more difficult to take these announcements seriously. You don’t have to take my word for the skepticism that has finally reached all the way to the science writers at none-other than NBC News where it was reported: “Star Trek” lore, humans meet their first aliens in 2063. It turns out that we might not need to wait that long — at least according to some optimistic scientists who claim that we should find evidence of alien life within the next two decades. “I think in the next 20 years we will find out we are not alone in the universe.” Those words, from Kevin Hand, deputy chief scientist for solar system exploration at NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory, made headlines on Monday when he spoke them during a panel discussion. [Wagstaff, K. (2014). Could We Find Alien Life in 20 Years? That’s Up For Debate. NBC News July 17, 2014. Accessed 7.17.14.] He’s not the first one to make predictions of that kind. Russian astronomer Andrei Finkelstein gave the same time frame three years ago, and Seth Shostak, senior astronomer at the SETI Institute, has said we will discover a signal from intelligent life by 2025, only 11 years from now. [Wagstaff, K. (2014).Ibid.] If anyone cares to remember, the Search for Extra-Terrestrial Intelligence (SETI) project was the collective name for a number of activities people undertook to search for intelligent extraterrestrial life. It was the inspiration for the very ambitious 1997 Robert Zemeckis movie Contact. The movie was based upon a novel by none other than the poster-boy for life in outer space, Mr. “billions and billions himself, Carl Sagan. SETI projects use scientific methods to search for electromagnetic transmissions from civilizations on distant planets. The SETI project dates all the back to 1960 when Cornell University astronomer, Frank Drake, performed the first modern SETI experiment, named “Project Ozma,” after the Queen of Oz in L. Frank Baum’s fantasy books, [Time Magazine (1960). Science Project Ozma. Time, Monday April 18, 1920. Accessed on 12.2.10.]. Sometimes it appears that the entire race into space had one goal in mind, to discover extraterrestrial life. It all began very innocently, or so we thought. Search for water, because life (as we know it) requires water and, as every evolutionist knows, the formula for life is just add water and mix for a very long, long time, perhaps for a couple of hundred million years. Well, I guess that was just another oversimplification, or was it? As recently as this past November (2010), Science magazine published an article concerning liquid water found on the surface of Mars. True to form, Sushil Atreya of the University of Michigan, Ann Arbor said, “Liquid water seems plausible, quite reasonable. If so, life might – just might – be holding out a bit beneath the surface of the Martian artic.” [Kerr, R. A. (2010). Liquid Water Found on Mars, But It’s a Hard Road for Life. Science Vol. 330. October 29, 2010: 571.] Please forgive me if I remain somewhat skeptical concerning Dr. Tyson’s gushing optimism with regard to the possibility of extraterrestrial life.

Climate Change Rears its Ugly Head

The animators have taken back to the Akkadian princess, Enheduanna, in Mesopotamia. Dr. Tyson is standing in the desert and tells us these Mesopotamian civilizations were war-like and destroyed one another. He also noted that irrigation caused too much salt to be deposited, causing a severe draught circa 2200 BC. So, famine and anarchy lead to a barbarian invasion. Now he links their draught to others at the same time. He mocks the ancients for blaming their famine on their gods, but he then tells us the culprit was, wait for it…wait for it…abrupt climate change. Now that Dr. Tyson has introduced us to the evils of climate change, he tells us, “3000 years later, the climate would change abruptly for another glorious city. This one was in Central America. The Mayan civilization perished, wiped out by a series of severe droughts over the course of a century.” Cut to a view from outer space with orbiting satellites looking down upon the surface of the Earth. Dr. Tyson tells us, “Today we have one global civilization. There are so many ways for a civilization to die.” Our narrator lists the top five most likely ways our society will end.

1) A super nova only 30 light years way. Thankfully, he tell us this is not likely for any in our neighborhood for at least the next 100 million years.

2) A super volcano every million years or so could cause an Earth-killing volcanic winter.

3) A killer asteroid can hit every million years, give or take a few.

4) Killer bugs, bacteria, and viruses that were the European’s secret weapon against the indigenous Indian population of the Americas. Dr. Tyson reminds us these pesky microbes killed 90% of the Indians.

5) Self-destructive civilization is blamed as are told that economic disaster was due to profit-driven motives. Now we see various forms of pollution, strip mining, garbage dumps, burning oil wells, sludge spilling from an open pipe, and dead birds covered in oil.

I guess the writers saved the worst for last. I am not surprised that they blame capitalism and greed for all misery in category five. I guess Dr. Tyson’s brand of science must also include demonizing free market capitalism. Cut to Dr. Tyson’s spaceship heading towards Earth as he notes, “All economic systems are without built-in mechanisms to protect us.” Is that really true? Is it the systems that are flawed or is it the people who control those systems? Methinks it is the latter. We now see Dr. Tyson walking in the desert noting that we’re ahead of our Mesopotamian ancestors, “Because we understand what’s happening to our world. We’re pumping greenhouse gases into our atmosphere and we are destabilizing our climate says the scientific consensus.” I must admit, I am never impressed when anyone, especially a so-called scientist, invokes scientific consensus in order to bolster support for his or her opinion. What we know about true science, or any truth for that matter, is that it is not decided by majority rule. Dr. Tyson continues, “Our civilization seems to be in the grips of denial or a kind of paralysis. A disconnect between what we know and what we do. We must use human intelligence to preserve life. And now we have arrived at the place where our ancient dreams of immortality and astrophysics merge. Giant elliptical galaxies like Florida, where the oldest stars in the universe are found.” Now we are flying through space to a red dwarf star, older and fainter than our Sun. Red dwarf stars are the most plentiful in the universe. Dr. Tyson uses their alleged trillion-year life spans to speculate what we would do if we had that kind of time between galaxies. Would we travel faster than the speed of light? Maybe create whole new universes. He finishes by saying, “No one, at least nobody on Earth, would know what the immortals would do. But what about us, what is our future? What would the cosmic calendar of the next 14 billion years look like? As this episode of the Cosmos: A Space Time Odyssey comes to a close, I am left pondering how the writers of this series managed to distort the timeline between the Flood of Noah so they could say that the Flood Epic of Gilgamesh predates the story of Noah’s flood by a thousand years. As I have noted, this willful deception uses the date assigned to the writing of the Pentateuch (Torah) by Moses, and substitutes it for the actual date of Noah’s flood. If the writers and Dr. Tyson were being honest, they would have told you the approximate historical date of the event we call “Noah’s flood,” as revealed in the book of Genesis. The date of Noah’s flood predates all the known versions of the Epic of Gilgamesh by a minimum of 200-300 years. When compared with the most recent version containing the complete flood narrative, Noah’s flood predates Sin-liqe-unninni’s version of the Epic of Gilgamesh by at least 1,000 years! This is part of a much bigger deception. The concept that life came from some alien civilization is not science. It is the wishful thinking of a bankrupt paradigm, the musings of men and women who have rejected the Genesis account of creation, not because it is wrong, but because it requires a Creator. Don’t take my word for it. Listen to Henry Lipson, CBE, FRS (1910-1991) a British physicist. He was Professor of Physics, University of Manchester Institute of Science and Technology, and later Professor Emeritus of that same institution.

“I think, however, that we must go further than this and admit that the only acceptable explanation is creation. I know that this is anathema to physicists, as indeed it is to me, but we must not reject a theory that we do not like if the experimental evidence supports it.” [Lipson, H. (1980). A Physicist Looks at Evolution. Physics Bulletin, 31. p. 138.]

It might have been anathema to Professor Lipson, but even Darwin’s bulldog Thomas Henry Huxley, was an honest agnostic who admitted:

“‘Creation,’ in the ordinary sense of the word, is perfectly conceivable. I find no difficulty in conceiving that, at some former period, this universe was not in existence; and that it made its appearance in six days…in consequence of the vocation of some pre-existing Being.” [Thomas Huxley, quoted in *Leonard Huxley, Life and Letters of Thomas Henry Huxley, Vol. II (1903), p. 429.]

I realize the Cosmos series is not really a scientific presentation of the facts. It is evolutionary spin pure and simple. It has been dressed up in scientific garb to give the appearance of the truth, but when the actual conclusions are examined, they lack credibility. It is my hope and prayer that those who examine these presentations will begin to question the entire premise of the hyper-materialism that is being exalted to take the place of the Creator.