This month marks the 8th Anniversary
of Creation-Evolution Headlines. This would be a great time to send
us a line if you discovered the site in the last year or so. It can be pro
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Write here with your brief comment.
Watch for the Recycle logo to find gems from the back issues!
How the Evolution Story Became Like Jellyfish 09/30/2008
Sept 30, 2008 How the [blank] got its [blank] is the template for
story titles imitating Rudyard Kiplings Just-So Stories: i.e., How the Camel
Got His Hump and How the Leopard Got His Spots. Kipling wrote these as silly
stories to entertain children, not to be taken seriously by scientists.
Knowing that creationists often criticize Darwinian explanations as Just-So Stories,
was Amber Dance being sarcastic or whimsical when she titled her article on
How the jellyfish got its sting? Apparently the latter (or neither)
because she dove into the genre forthwith: From a bacterium, surprisingly.
The article discussed apparent evidence for widespread lateral gene
transfer among multicellular animals. In particular, a French team supposed
jellyfish got the toxin in their stinging cells from bacterial genes. Comparing
genomes, they deduced that the same gene jumped between cnidarians (jellyfish, corals, and
anemones), sponges, worms and fungi. The team lead said, horizontal gene
transfer is often neglected, and could sometimes be more important than we thought.
If true, this scrambles attempts to understand common descent.
Its understandable that other evolutionists didnt want to take that plunge.
There are other explanations for the incongruencies they see in the tree,
agrees Casey Dunn, an evolutionary biologist who studies phylogenetic problems at
Brown University in Providence, Rhode Island.
The Stuff Happens Law thus becomes the null hypothesis, unless one wants to fill
the explanation with imagination of statistical unlikelihoods.1
Another alternative is to give up on evolution and explore alternatives.
Any chance of that happening?
For instance, the gene could be vertically transferred from a
distant progenitor, before being lost from some organisms. Or, it may
be possible that more than one animal independently evolved the gene; such
sequence conversion is not unheard of, Dunn says. At the end of the day,
it will probably take far more data to paint a conclusive picture of whats
Rabet responds that since the PGA synthase gene is approximately
1000 bases long, it is statistically unlikely to be the product of
multiple distinct genes converging on the same sequence.
And if the gene was lost from all but the cnidarians and a
few other animals, it must have disappeared from all related organisms.
Its possible, but we need to imagine a lot of lost
genes, he says.
Using phylogenetic analysis, Rabet and his colleagues found that the cnidarian gene fits well into the bacterial family tree. They also showed that the gene turns on in at least one jellyfish, Clytia hemisphaerica. The same gene pops up in certain sponges, worms and fungi, suggesting it jumped between species more than once, the scientists say. It is not yet clear how the transfer might have occurred, or why this particular gene would be so well-travelled....
The answer seems as slippery as the jellyfish they were studying. But the
stinger-gene of evolution shows up everywhere, even when it has to hop around
who knows how.
Scientists are finding that horizontal gene transfer, once thought to be the domain of single-celled critters, is not uncommon in the animal world, says Syvanen. Horizontal gene transfer with the animals is going to turn out to be more widespread than anybody believes now. When that realization comes down, it will definitely change the way people think about evolution.
1. See online
book for a calculation that the probability of getting one gene
is one in 10236.
With the new Stupid Evolution Quote of the Week cartoon, we welcome Brett
Miller to our website talent pool. His drawing of Emperor Charlies New
Clothes removes all need for comment (click image for larger version).
Watch for his occasional eye-catching graphics in days to come.
Thanks, Brett! Your cartoon made our day.
Did This Dino Have Bird Breath? 09/29/2008
See more of Bretts work at EvidentCreation.com.
Next headline on:
Sept 29, 2008 Birds are the only vertebrates with a unique one-way, flow-through
breathing system that includes hollow bones. Their unique respiratory system
is part of the set of features that allows flying with its need for rapid metabolism.
Science news outlets are clucking wildly about another putative missing link between
dinosaurs and birds: Meat-eating dinosaur from Argentina had bird-like breathing system,
announced PhysOrg, for instance.
Does the evidence fly?
The original paper in PLoS ONE is much more subdued.1
Paul Sereno and team found an allosaur-like dinosaur with more hollow bones than usual, which they interpreted to be
associated with air sacs. Air sacs are a feature of the avian lung system, but not the only
feature; nor is this the first dinosaur fossil with pneumatized (hollow, air-filled) bone. The big
sauropods like Diplodocus had them. Opinions differ on what function
they served in the dinosaurs: thermal regulation, weight reduction, balance and other
functions are possibilities unrelated to respiration.
Serenos team has been examining this fossil for 12 years.
In short, they found more of hollow bones than usual in this dinosaur, some
in the thoracic region. Using this evidence as a launching pad for speculation, they devised a
four-stage hypothesis on how the avian lung might have evolved. They did not
claim that this dinosaur had a bird-like breathing system, despite the headlines.
The following excerpts from the paper give a feel for the conservative tone of the authors about their find:
After the fossil was described with its typical taxonomic details, the paper primarily
contained a good deal of speculation on the origin of the avian lung system, with
no firm conclusions. The authors discussed problems with all existing theories.
The most optimistic claim they could make was stated as follows: In sum, although we may never be able to sort out the most important factors behind the origin and evolution of the unique avian pulmonary system, discoveries such as Aerosteon provide clues that help to constrain the timing and circumstances when many of the fundamental features of avian respiration arose. Such a statement merely assumes that avian respiration
arose by evolution somehow. The wide range of opinions
within the evolutionist community undermines the confident claims in the popular press.
It also shows that non-evolutionary explanations for the unique system that enables
birds to soar gracefully in the air were completely ignored.
- Evidence from the fossil record for the origin and evolution of this system is extremely limited, because lungs do not fossilize and because the bellow-like air sacs in living birds only rarely penetrate (pneumatize) skeletal bone and thus leave a record of their presence.
- Principal findings: We describe a new predatory dinosaur from Upper Cretaceous rocks in Argentina, Aerosteon riocoloradensis gen. et sp. nov., that exhibits extreme pneumatization of skeletal bone, including pneumatic hollowing of the furcula and ilium. In living birds, these two bones are pneumatized by diverticulae of air sacs (clavicular, abdominal) that are involved in pulmonary ventilation. We also describe several pneumatized gastralia (stomach ribs), which suggest that diverticulae of the air sac system were present in surface tissues of the thorax.
- The advent of avian unidirectional lung ventilation is not possible to pinpoint, as osteological correlates have yet to be identified for uni- or bidirectional lung ventilation.
- The origin and evolution of avian air sacs may have been driven by one or more of the following three factors: flow-through lung ventilation, locomotory balance, and/or thermal regulation.
- As a result of an extraordinary level of pneumatization, as well as the excellent state of preservation of much of the axial column and girdles, Aerosteon helps to constrain hypotheses for the evolution of avian-style respiration.
- The capacity of the cervical air sacs to invade centra to form invaginated pleurocoels may have evolved independently in sauropodomorphs (sauropods) and basal theropods and appears to have been lost several times within theropods.
- The osteological or logical correlates needed to support some of these inferences have been poorly articulated, which may explain the wide range of opinions on when intrathoracic air sacs like those in birds first evolved and how these relate to ventilatory patterns.
- Based on the osteological correlates we have assembled (Table 4), we would argue, first, that until we can show evidence of the presence of at least one avian ventilatory air sac (besides the non-ventilatory cervical air sac), it is problematic to infer the presence of flow-through ventilation or a rigid, dorsally-attached lung. Second, we know of no osteological correlates in the gastral cuirass that would justify the inference of abdominal air sacs. Potential kinesis of the gastral cuirass and an accessory role in aspiration breathing potentially characterizes many amniotes besides nonavian dinosaurs. The absence of gastralia in crown birds or in any extant bipeds also hinders functional inferences. And third, it is not well established that abdominal air sacs were either first to evolve or are functionally critical to unidirectional ventilation.
- Avian lung ventilation is driven by muscles that expand and contract thoracic volume by deforming the ribcage and rocking a large bony sternum. Basal maniraptorans have many of the features associated with this ventilatory mechanism including a large ossified sternum, ossified sternal ribs, uncinate processes a deepened coracoid that contacts the sternum along a synovial hinge joint. By contrast Aerosteon and the abelisaurid Majungasaurus lack these features. Does that mean that maniraptorans had evolved unidirectional lung ventilation? Or does it indicate only that the maniraptoran ribcage functioned in aspiration breathing more like that in avians? We do not know of any osteological correlates that are specifically tied to uni- or bidirectional lung ventilation (Table 4), which may explain the range of opinion as to how and when avian unidirectional lung ventilation first evolved.
- The factors driving the origin and evolution of the functional capacity of avian air sacs and lung ventilation remain poorly known and tested.
For problems with bird lung evolution theories, see an article on
CMI that reviewed Michael
Dentons use of the topic to argue against Darwinism in his classic book,
Evolution: A Theory in Crisis. A diagram of the bird respiratory system
is shown in the article. Carl Wieland on
(PDF file) also critiqued an earlier claim (2005) that hollow bones
in some dinosaurs revealed an evolutionary link to the avian lung.
1. Sereno et al, Evidence for Avian Intrathoracic Air Sacs in
a New Predatory Dinosaur from Argentina,
of Science ONE, 09/30/2008, 3(9): e3303 doi:10.1371/journal.pone.0003303.
The bluffing about evolution in
many science news reports is shameful. Search on Aerosteon and you will
find examples, like this one on InTheNews.co.uk:
Dinosaurs: Breathed like birds.
A carnivorous dinosaur with a bird-like breathing system has provided
more evidence of the connection between the two groups of animals
separated by millions of years. The whole article is fluff.
Palaeontologists are now satisfied Aerosteon provides the
evidence needed to seal the connection with birds, it ends.
One cannot bluff about fluff.
Tip: The rest of the story on Tiktaalik the fish-a-pod, on
Evolution News: a
retroactive confession of ignorance.
Geographic must have panicked at our expose, so they cranked out a propaganda
piece immediately announcing, New Birdlike Dinosaur Found in Argentina.
They even put imaginary feathers on it: The new dinosaur probably had feathers,
but did not actually fly, they said (cf. 06/13/2007).
OK, so we went hunting for feathers in the original paper.
The fossil evidence
for intrathoracic air sacs now closely overlaps that for feathers, which had evolved
in coelurosaurian theropods most likely for heat retention. That was the only
mention of feathers. This appeal to imaginary feathers was
followed by more storytelling in lieu of empirical evidence:
Air sacs may have initially been employed as an antagonist to feathers in
theropod thermoregulation. Although this hypothesis has been criticized for
lack of empirical evidence in living birds, air sacs have been implicated
in avian heat transfer and/or evaporative heat loss, and Aerosteon and many
other theropods had a body weight more than an order of magnitude greater than
that for any living bird. A thermoregulatory role for the early evolution
of air sacs in nonavian dinosaurs should not be ruled out without further evidence
from nonvolant ratites.
Can you believe that? They invented imaginary feathers out of thin air for this big heavy
meat-eater to compensate for imaginary air sacs that they presume existed near
its hollow bones. So now their evolutionary magic produced two imaginary thermoregulatory
systems competing with each other what, for survival of the coolest?
For the fun of it, lets grant them air sacs and even imagine with them a
respiratory system that had some birdlike features; after all, any two vertebrates,
like mice and camels, or frogs and penguins,
are bound to have similarities as well as differences, depending on what you decide
to focus on for the moment. Paul Sereno told National
Geographic that the beast didnt fly (obviously, unless you can imagine wings
on a T. rex), so NG concluded, even though this species was birdlike
[sic], feathers and air sacs didnt necessarily evolve for flight.
So their point is... ? All the hype about feathers was supposed to reinforce the
idea that birds evolved from dinosaurs. They were practically ready to name this
thing Tweety Rex, and now they seem
to be telling us this beast evolved air sacs for a completely
different function, about which no one is sure, and it was an evolutionary dead end anyway.
Even NGs accompanying
show didnt show feathers. The only suggestion of a birdlike respiratory
system was in slide 2, where colored regions represent the imaginary air sacs in the thorax.
But excuse me, Mr. Scientist sir, did any of that soft air-sac material fossilize?
Evidence from the fossil record for the origin and evolution of this system is
extremely limited, because lungs do not fossilize and because the bellow-like air sacs
in living birds only rarely penetrate (pneumatize) skeletal bone and thus leave
a record of their presence. Are you telling me there was no direct evidence
for the air sacs in this dinosaur? Some of its postcranial bones show pneumatic hollowing
that can be linked to intrathoracic air sacs that are directly involved in lung
ventilation. They can be, you say, but how strong is the inference?
We do not know of any osteological correlates [fossil evidence] that are specifically tied to uni- or
bidirectional lung ventilation (Table 4), which may explain the range of opinion as
to how and when avian unidirectional lung ventilation first evolved.
But isnt a unidirectional lung ventilation system the primary distinguishing feature in birds?
Are you telling the court that this is all inference, not evidence?
The tale gets more speculative and implausible with each lawyers question.
Darwins defense attorneys are sweating in their seats.
NG quoted a colleague admitting, It shows that evolution is not a chalk linethere
are many dead ends. Being interpreted, this means evolutionists
can always concoct a story for any possible combination of data. (Chalk
is erasable, you know.) We think a scientist who wants to feather his monster
should produce the feathers in the fossil, not draw feathery dragons on the chalkboard
and tell the press that it probably had feathers. Chalk lines are
supposed to be snapped to a level that has been carefully measured. So hes
right; evolution is not a chalk line; its a crooked crack in the wall of a theory
that is about to collapse. Dont build to it.
We brought you extended quotes to illustrate the difference between
original sources and the news media hype. The lesson: always check out the original data.
The authors with the bones in their hand usually know better than to make any outlandish
claims to their colleagues. In front of reporters, though, they lose restraint.
Reporters go ape to praise Darwin. For example,
that perennial Darwin billboard, shouted Extra! Extra!
Bus-sized Dinosaur Breathed Like Birds.
A huge carnivorous dinosaur that lived about 85 million years ago had a breathing
system much like that of todays birds, a new analysis of fossils reveals,
reinforcing the evolutionary link between dinos and modern birds.
That, in turn, got passed around to all the major news outlets as gospel truth.
This is bad breath, not bird breath. The sound of flapping dino-feathers is only
the pompons made of synthetic material manufactured for the Darwin Party cheerleaders.
Next headline on:
Darwinists Root for Obama 09/28/2008
Sept 28, 2008 Ministers in churches are not allowed to promote political
candidates, even though they do not take government money.1
Scientists, who often do take federal money in the form of grants, openly take positions
on the presidential candidates they feel will further their interests. Is this proper?
Both Nature and Science this week did extensive reporting
on the presidential and vice-presidential candidates. While the magazines and
the organizations behind them do not receive tax money directly, they act as the leading
voices of scientists who are largely supported by grants, and thus they stand to profit
directly from the level of funding a President supports. Natures
editorial bluntly stated, The most worrying thing about a McCain presidency
is not so much a President McCain as a Vice-President Palin. Their
concern was over her opposition to embryonic stem-cell research, and the claim that
She is a creationist
(but see Evolution
News). In fact, Nature went out of its way to point out the differences
between Obama and McCain on the issue of intelligent design, quoting Obamas
answer with apparent satisfaction:
I believe in evolution, and I support the strong consensus of the
scientific community that evolution is scientifically validated. I do not
believe it is helpful to our students to cloud discussions of science with
non-scientific theories like intelligent design that are not subject to
This was contrasted with McCains stance quoted in absentia that I believe in evolution.
But I also believe, when I hike the Grand Canyon and see it at sunset, that the hand of God is there also.
Nature also voiced a strong partisan stance in its lead editorial:
McCain has courageously bucked his partys more parochial viewpoints
in the past, as when he fought for a cap-and-trade system long before it was politically popular.
But his selection of Palin as a running mate suggests a new-found willingness to
pander to his partys far-right wing.
Now proudly published a list of Nobel prize winners who support Obama and
noted his strong commitment to science funding, while pointing out McCains
apparent lack of specificity about spending for science. Other subtle biases
could be found, such as Natures diagram of seven smiling science advisers
for Obama, compared to five frowning science advisers for McCain.
quoted an anonymous academic lobbyist without providing a comeback: Obama has thousands
of advisers, and McCain has two guys and a dog. This begs
the question that more is better. Even if the numbers were true, two wise advisers might be preferable to
a thousand self-serving lobbyists. No such slurs were
applied to Obama, who instead was praised for his promises to double science funding.
McCain only got some faint praise for indications he might end the Bush
Administrations war on science. No mention was made that
taxpayers foot the bill and might have an opinion about how their money is spent. In
fact, the word tax was nowhere to be found in Jeffrey Merviss report in Science
that began, When it comes to soliciting scientific advice, Barack Obama
welcomes a cast of thousands, whereas John McCain plays it close to the vest.
Perhaps the most blatant insertion of anti-religious philosophy into presidential politics
was a book review in Nature by Jerry Coyne (U Chicago). Nature
had invited several scientists to recommend books on science for the candidates to read.
Here was Coynes recommendation:
There is a crisis in scientific literacy in the United States: only 25% of
Americans accept our evolution from ape-like ancestors, yet 74% believe in
angels. Republicans make it worse by proposing that creationism should be
taught alongside evolution in public-school science classes. Anyone aspiring to
be president should have a basic acquaintance with evolution and with the masses
of evidence that its not just a theory, but a fact. Charles Darwins On the
Origin of Species comes to mind, but it is outdated and written in turgid
Victorian prose that is uncongenial to modern readers. Future US leaders should
read a short, popular work that lays out the evidence for evolution and dispels
the spectres of creationism and intelligent design without dwelling on
religion. Sadly, no book fills this niche. My attempt, Why Evolution is True
(Viking, 2009), will be published only after the election. Until then, I
suggest Richard Dawkinss brilliant exposition of natural selection. If a
presidential candidate doesnt accept evolution after reading this book, there
is no hope.
In the same series, Kevin Padian (UC Berkeley) recommended a book that compared George Bushs
science policies to those of Stalins favored scientist, the charlatan
Trofim Lysenko. Speaking of McCain, Padian said, His record on some
science issues has been good, but his recent opinions, from energy to
creationism in schools, have been drifting towards those of Bush. This
seems to imply he thinks McCains opinions are drifting towards those of Stalin.
Lysenko had promoted pseudoscientific farming policies that resulted in
famines that killed millions of people in Russia and China. Padian failed to
mention that Lysenkos policies stemmed not from religion, but from his Lamarckian views of evolution
(which Stalin felt were concordant with communist philosophy).
It appears that
scientific societies have no qualms about voicing their views on presidential politics.
Their views tend to be overtly pro-liberal, pro-Democrat, anti-conservative, and
anti-Republican. Its noteworthy that they do not hesitate to apply the
label far right to Republicans, but never apply the opposite phrase
far left to Democrats.
Many pastors, though, especially conservatives, seem to feel it is somehow illegal to
mention the name of a candidate from the pulpit. They fear it violates some supposed
principle of separation of church and state, though in the Bill of Rights, the Establishment Clause
is a restriction on government, not on churches. America had a long history
of political speech in the pulpit till in 1954, then-Senator Lyndon Johnson (a liberal Democrat)
snuck in a gag order in an IRS bill that forbade endorsement of political candidates
by ministers in church services (see Traditional Values Coalition article posted on
Conservatives have criticized this IRS rule as a wanton act of government intimidation against ministers who
are guaranteed the rights of free speech, freedom of religion, and freedom of assembly in the Constitution.
What will happen to pastors today who attempted to defy that order remains to be seen
Times article). The Alliance
Defense Fund, a legal organization devoted to defending the religious liberties of Americans
(example), had declared
September 28 Pulpit Freedom Sunday to encourage pastors to defy the gag order and
speak out on the positions of the candidates on moral issues.
At least 33 pastors took up the challenge. The ADF describes this as not getting the pulpit
into government, but getting the government out of the pulpit. A senior legal
counsel for ADF explained, No one should be able to use the government [e.g., the IRS] to
intimidate pastors into giving up their constitutional rights.2
reported the story after church Sunday, ending with a quote by Barry Lynn (Americans United
for Separation of Church and State) that you cannot turn your church or charity
into a political action committee. No one thought to ask if that rule
applies to scientific institutions like the AAAS (publisher of Science)
also a tax-exempt, non-profit organization. A document on the
AAAS website says
the organization does not engage in lobbying or political activities. But then, neither
do most churches.
If the AAAS can print lengthy editorials mentioning candidates by name, when they
clearly stand to benefit from policies of candidates they prefer, should that freedom
be denied pastors and church leaders, who tend to have strongly held convictions about the moral values
that elected officials can influence? Barry Lynn seemed to be implying that voicing an opinion
from the pulpit on a candidates moral values is indistinguishable from turning the
church into a political action committee. The question then becomes, should
there also be separation of science and state? When a tax-exempt scientific
society urges political involvement, has it turned into a political action committee?
While pondering that question, look what Science did last week. It printed an editorial
by former Congressman John Edward Porter, once chairman of the House Appropriations committee
responsible for funding all federal health programs. Like a fired-up preacher, Porter
wrote with fervor to scientists in the AAAS
congregation about the failures of the current administration and the need to learn
the positions of candidates on science. Porter even recommended scientists run for office.
If all you do is vote, he said, youre definitely not doing enough. Get off your
chair, do something outside your comfort zone, and make a difference for science.
All of us must be creative about what we can do to make a difference for the things
we believe in. Now is the time.
1. Tax exemption is not taking federal money; it is an application of the free exercise
clause of the First Amendment to the Constitution. Freedom from being forced to
pay money is a very different thing than receiving money. On matters of property,
health, safety and secular matters, churches do abide by applicable laws and tax policies.
2. It should be noted that churchgoers have the freedom to change churches if
they dont like what a minister says; in fact, one of the presidential candidates
has been roundly criticized on that point for not leaving a church whose pastor openly ridiculed a certain
former president and his candidate spouse. To many pastors, the fact that there were
no tax consequences for that church illustrates a biased application of the IRS gag order.
Interesting that Coyne ridicules the majority of
Americans who believe in angels, while he believes in spectres.* Too bad he
didnt get his little sermon book published in time for the election. Anything
he writes has a high probability of backfiring. Who wants to bet that Why
Evolution is True will showcase examples of microevolution, which is not controversial
even among young-earth creationists, but will then extrapolate
microevolution recklessly into molecules-to-man macroevolution? Dont hold your breath
that Coyne will deal honestly with Darwins enigmas, like molecular machines, the origin of life, the
fine-tuning of the universe, complex specified information in DNA, and the Cambrian Explosion.
Codes within codes: alternative gene splicing may be common, from
We hope several things are evident from
this story: the lack of objectivity among scientific institutions; their far-leftist leanings
(they adore Obama, who is the most
liberal member of the Senate); their obstinate refusal to distinguish between intelligent
design and creationism despite years of clarification by ID advocates; their
illogical conflation of scientific literacy with acceptance of Darwinism; their
identification of Darwinism and atheism with their political persuasion;
their ability to lie with impunity in print about what ID leaders advocate in education;
and the level of vitriol they can display toward religion. They might barely tolerate
a theistic evolutionist who prostrates himself before the Shrine of Darwin, but
will explode in wrath against any member of the meaningless class labeled
People of Faith who dares to suggest that a Designer (no matter how
vaguely characterized) might interact with the world in any way.
This is the way of the People of Froth (09/26/2005
commentary). Add to that their
pattern of refusing to publish opinions from the conservative or pro-ID side, and
one has grounds to question their objectivity. Isnt objectivity a core
value of science? Where is it? Is this how scientists and their institutions ought to behave?
Observe. They exercise their political advocacy with the help of your tax money,
but would forbid that freedom to ministers.
Next headline on:
Politics and Ethics
Religion and Theology
*Coyne cant get out of logic jail by accusing us of
reifying his figure of speech. He may not be calling creationism
and intelligent design actual spectres (demonic spirits), but what are they if not concepts?
Concepts and angels are not made of particles. He cant assume matter in motion created
everything, then turn around and judge concepts that require reference to matters
of truth, knowledge, morality and logic. These realms are not reduceable to particles.
Our Spectre Inspector, therefore, still finds Coyne guilty as charged: a hypocrite floudering in mid-air
without a leg to stand on.
Fastest Squirt Gun in the Fungi 09/26/2008
Sept 26, 2008 A paper on PLoS One described the highest-speed flights
in all nature: the spore discharge mechanisms in certain fungi. A dozen scientists
in Ohio worked to capture the action on ultra-high-speed cameras. It took
250,000 frames per second to reveal how fast the projectiles accelerate. The answer:
from 20,000 to 180,000 g (where g = the acceleration of gravity). One species
launches its projectiles at almost 2 million meters per second squared winning
the title of fastest recorded flights in nature.
In their introduction, they discussed the variety of ways that fungi
disperse their spores. Their language sounds downright military:
Mechanisms include a catapult energized by surface
tension that launches mushroom spores, the explosive eversion of a pressurized
membrane in the artillery fungus, and the discharge of squirt guns
pressurized by osmosis. Well, maybe squirt guns are for kids
playground battles, but army engineers might learn a few things from these
lowly fungi. Thats why the authors said the study of spore-discharge mechanisms has implications for
biomimetics (the imitation of nature). Who else would want to imitate this?
The four species of fungi studied
live on cow manure. They need to launch their spores out far enough onto
the grass so that cows will eat them and spread them around. Each species has
variations on the mechanism, but basically, the spores are ejected in a mass (either
in a fluid or solid), within a sporangium, or capsule. The sporangium usually
separates during flight.. This trick, reminiscent of a spacecraft ejecting its
cover after achieving orbit, allows the spores to minimize viscous drag on the
ascent, then disperse on descent and landing.
How are such superlative accelerations achieved? The answer
lies not only in the structure of the catapults, but in the viscosity of the specific
sugars and ions in the spore capsules. The liquids allow the build-up of
4.4 atmospheres of turgor pressure. As the pressurized squirt gun
undergoes a controlled and rapid rupture, almost none of the energy
is lost to friction. The supremely fast movements represent a
a series of remarkable feats of natural engineering, they said.
Engineers might be curious how these feats were designed.
Their answer was, simply, they have evolved. The authors stated
this twice: A variety of spore discharge processes have evolved among the fungi,
and, Squirt gun mechanisms are responsible for launching spores at the
highest speeds and are most common in the Ascomycota, including lichenized species,
but have also evolved among the Zygomycota.
1. Yafetto et al, The Fastest Flights in Nature: High-Speed Spore Discharge Mechanisms among Fungi,
Public Library of Science ONE,
3(9): e3237 doi:10.1371/journal.pone.0003237.
It evolved because it evolved this is the
theory of evolution in a nutshell (see 05/25/2005).
This is sufficient to explain the origin of any feat of natural engineering.
It evolved. Darwin sure simplified biology, didnt he? Scientists
used to have to produce explanations the hard way, with logic and evidence.
Now, a simple two-word answer suffices for everything in the world that used to
inspire awe, wonder, curiosity and motivation.
Trees Communicate with Aspirin 09/25/2008
Next headline on:
Sept 25, 2008 Trees talk to each other in a chemical language
but till now, no one realized they sound an alarm with aspirin.
Trees emit a vaporous form of aspirin when under stress, reported
Daily, that talks on the ecological network. This was an unexpected finding.
Scientists at the National Center for Atmospheric Research theorized
that the methyl salicylate vapor, one of hundreds of volatile organic compounds
(VOC) emitted by plants, is a distress signal. It may put the plant or tree
into a kind of high-alert mode, stimulating immune responses, and it may also
signal neighboring plants to be on guard against a climactic or invasive threat.
Scientists knew that methyl salicylate was produced by plants, but
did not realize till now that plants emit significant quantities of it into the atmosphere,
and use it for signaling. The team detected the aspirin
when studying VOCs in a California walnut grove.
These findings show tangible proof that plant-to-plant
communication occurs on the ecosystem level, a co-author of the study
said. It appears that plants have the ability to communicate through
If farmers can learn to read the chemical
signals in vapors emitted by plants, they may gain a new way to quickly gauge
the health of their crops before damage becomes visible.
The article did not mention evolution.
Here is another amazing fact, right under biologists noses, that was
unknown till now. If an observable, measurable phenomenon in the present can
escape detection for so long, how can biologists speak so glibly about factors
in mythical worlds millions of years ago? How could a communication
network among brainless plants evolve? This was discovered by good
old-fashioned field work. Taxpayers donated funds for the research.
Darwin donated nothing.
Making Earths the Natural Way 09/24/2008
Next headline on:
Sept 24, 2008 Creating a solar system is as easy as spinning a dust cloud
around a star. Before long, rocky orbs will emerge from the dust as platforms
on which life can evolve. Is it that simple? We know now that planets
surround a number of other stars perhaps most of them. Textbooks and artwork
make the process seem as natural as add dust and stir, but real world planetary
scientists have some challenges to work out.
To add a little optimism, Space.com
published a report that makes planet formation sound simple. Solar systems
under construction was the cheerful title of an article about observations of
three stars where planets might be forming. Trouble is, The researchers
did not actually see any planets. They inferred their presence from properties
of the dust disks. Gaps in the dust where planets might exist were determined
indirectly, and they used planet-formation models to project the presence of
alien worlds. Unfortunately this begs the
question whether the planets, if there are any, actually formed from the dust,
because the model was made to simulate planet formation, not planet destruction.
- Light shields: EurekAlert
reported earlier this month problems with oxygen. Ratios of oxygen isotopes in a
meteorite are very different from those in all other solar system bodies, including
the Earth, moon and Mars. A leading theory that UV photoshielding would yield
the anomalous ratios was tested and found to be wrong. Did a nearby supernova
seed the early nebula with the isotopes? Thats too unlikely and ad hoc an explanation
for most scientists. One other theory is being tested, but the article was
titled, Theory of the suns role in formation of the solar system questioned.
Daily provided more detail. One researcher for the Genesis mission, that
collected samples of the solar wind, commented, You can see the ratios of
the isotopes brought back by Genesis, but that doesnt tell you how they came about.
The isotope ratios themselves dont tell you why they were different in the
early universe than they are today, so theres lots more science to do in the laboratory.
- Comet upsets:
Magazine reported on the surprise discovery that comets are not the pristine
objects from the fringes of the solar system as was long thought
Observations from this sample are changing our previous thinking and expectations
about how the solar system formed, a Stardust mission researcher said.
Models now have to worry about how material can migrate radially across the disk.
This really complicates our simple view of the early solar system, said
another. The apparent mixing of material near and far from the sun is
causing a revision of theories of the history of the solar system.
Daily agreed. Chemical clues from a comets halo are challenging
common views about the history and evolution of the solar system and showing it
may be more mixed-up than previously thought, the subtitle read.
A Stardust team member explained, They were originally hoping to find the
raw material that pre-dated the solar system. However, we found many crystalline
objects that resemble flash-heated particles found in meteorites from asteroids.
Such heating was supposed to be impossible beyond the frost line. a
theoretical radius beyond which volatiles in the early solar system would have
frozen into comets, never to heat up again till tugged toward the sun long after their formation.
- Demolition derby: Watching planets form would take a long time,
but watching them get destroyed is quick and easy.
and Science Daily
reported the collision of two Earth-like planets around a sunlike binary star 300
light-years away (an apocalyptic ending for any life there). Benjamin Zuckerman
of UCLA said, Astronomers have never seen anything like this before.
Apparently, major catastrophic collisions can take place in a fully mature planetary
Picture of the Day posted the artwork of the proposed collision.
(Actually, the collision was inferred from dust, not witnessed.)
OK, so planets destroy each other, but does this observation provide
any evidence for how they form? Not exactly; the article mentioned theories
that our moon formed from a collision, and that the dinosaurs went extinct because
of a collision. They surmised that the planets that they think collided were in the final
stages of its dust disks evolution. But there seemed to be more surprise
than confirmation of theory. For one, they were surprised planets could form
at all around a binary star. For another, they were surprised to see a collision
in such a mature system: How do planetary orbits become destabilized in such
an old, mature system, and could such a collision happen in our own solar system?
asked one. The observations here seem to relate more directly to planetary destruction
models, not planetary formation models.
- Shooting gallery: Last month,
reported on computer simulations at Northwestern University. Results showed that our solar system
is pretty special to have ended up with nice, stable rocky planets in nearly circular orbits
inside the habitable zone. Even assuming
that planets can coalesce from a dust disk, most of the time wild things happen:
the star eats up the planets, the large bodies fling the small bodies out of the system,
and the remaining ones end up with elongated orbits that would prohibit life. Out of a hundred runs on
very powerful computers, none of the systems ended up like ours except under Goldilocks
conditions ones that were just right. The senior author of the report
commented on what they learned: We ... know that the solar system is special
and understand at some level what makes it special.
What we see in the above examples are destructive
processes, not creative ones. The creative ones exist only in the minds of
the scientists and in their contrived models. It may make someone feel good
to imagine worlds forming naturally. It may conform with their world view:
an evolving universe, full of evolving stars, with evolving planets, on which
life emerges and evolves. Everything happens naturally (whatever that
ambiguous word means). If it feels good, call it a belief. Science,
however, demands we stick with observations that are measurable and repeatable.
Thomas Kuhn would look at the number of anomalies in current models and predict
a paradigm shift. Sidney Harris would look at the number of miracles inserted
into the models and draw a
Survival of the Nubbiest: evolutionists criticize another evolutionists Just-So Story,
There are numerous problems with solar system formation theories we
have addressed before (e.g., 03/21/2006,
This time, notice primarily that there is no way to distinguish between whether we are
seeing planets forming out of dust disks, or pre-existing planets grinding down
into dust disks. The latter would seem to comport better with well-known processes
of thermodynamics and probability. Dust particles lack the gravitational mass
to accrete and grow. It is much more plausible that disks erode into
dust rather than self-assemble into planets.
Simplistic models need not apply. Chondrules,
comets, and coincidences that make life possible must be explained with
observation, measurement and repeatable experiments. A model is not evidence.
One cannot assume what needs to be proved. Let the scientific empiricist
show his evidence; until then, we must classify planet formation theory what it is
thus far: a belief, not a science.
Next headline on:
Designed for Health 09/24/2008
Sept 24, 2008 Recent science reports on physiology and health contain
suggestions of intelligent design as well as challenges to evolutionary theory.
Of the four reports, only the last mentioned evolution. The authors did not
explain, however, how evolution produced the adaptation: they only assumed that
since the unique adaptations that are especially evident in
the lens cells they studied, they must have evolved that way: e.g., Specifically,
we suggest that this low permeability may be an evolutionary
adaptation that allows AQP0 to promote intimate cell adhesion by
forming mechanically stable junctions. Again, Thus,
low permeability may represent an evolutionary adaptation that
allows AQP0 to play a dual role in water transport and cellular
- Amazingly elegant, amazingly precise and very complicated kidneys:
Scientists studying the effects of hypertension on kidneys have found that ATP acts
not only as an energy source but an extracellular messenger. Its involved in
helping arterioles constrict to the right size in the glomeruli where the filtering
of blood plasma takes place. According to
Daily, one team member who is trying to figure out how this all fits
together was struck by the amazingly elegant, amazingly precise and very complicated
- Bee nice: The thought of a bee sting makes us shiver, but
honeybee venom contains a molecule scientists can use to study hypertension.
Daily reported that a molecule called terpianin can restrict the flow of
potassium ions out of a particular membrane channel. This may allow medicines
to adjust the level of salt reabsorption by kidney cells, and thus treat
high blood pressure.
- Got stem cells? Scientists have found a source of multipotent
stem cells right on the cell walls of blood vessels.
Daily reported that these adult stem cells apparently have the unlimited
potential to differentiate into human tissues such as bone, cartilage and muscle.
Advances in regenerative medicine are within sight with this discovery. One researcher
described what may be soon be possible: These cells can be extracted easily and painlessly
from convenient sources such as fat tissue, dental pulp, umbilical cord and
placental tissue, then grown in culture to large numbers and, possibly, re-injected
into the patient to heal a broken bone, a failing joint or an injured muscle.
The ingredients have been right inside you all along.
- Clear eyes: Every tissue has evolved unique adaptations that allow it to
perform specialized functions. began a paper in PNAS.1
Such adaptations are especially evident in the lens of the mammalian eye, where many of the usual
cellular metabolic pathways have been sacrificed to achieve one
overriding goal: transparency. The paper explained that one of the
aquaporins (membrane water channels, 12/20/2001,
04/18/2002) in lens cells acts slower than others in its family.
That slow flow in aquaporin AQP0, though, has a function: We hypothesize
that the structural features leading to low permeability may have
evolved in part to allow AQP0 to form junctions that both conduct
water and contribute to the organizational structure of the fiber cell
tissue and microcirculation within it, as required to maintain transparency
of the lens.
Moreover, the authors pointed out that two particular amino acid
substitutions are conserved [i.e., unevolved] throughout most of
vertebrate evolution. Birds have just one of the amino acid substitutions,
but they are higher up the presumed evolutionary tree than frogs. This means the other
substitution would have had to revert backward if evolution had occurred.
Furthermore, the authors did not consider the possibility that the slight sequence difference
in birds might provide a functional adaptation for their aquaporins to support vision while flying.
1. Jensen, Dror, Xu, Borhani, Arkin, Eastwood, and Shaw,
Dynamic control of slow water transport by aquaporin 0: Implications for hydration
and junction stability in the eye lens,
Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences
USA, published online before print September 11, 2008, doi: 10.1073/pnas.0802401105.
The references to evolution in the PNAS paper
are useless. As is so typical, the Darwinspeak provides only an aftermarket narrative
gloss on the scientific content so as to preserve the philosophy of naturalism.
Evolution doesnt perform any function in the body of scientific knowledge.
Its like a tumor. Human brains and science will be much healthier after
undergoing a radical Darwinectomy.*
End of the Neanderthal Myth? 09/23/2008
Next headline on:
*CEH radiation therapy, with its gentle non-invasive beams of truth, is known
to be a relatively painless and effective alternative treatment for shrinking Darwin tumors,
provided the patient continues exposure on a regular basis.
A reader wrote in: Id already had my radical Darwinectomy years ago.
But I can personally vouch for the ongoing medicinal benefits of regular doses of CEH
radiation therapy to help purge any residual evolutionary cancer. And its
great for the heart, too (Proverbs 17:22). a PhD biologist in Australia
who was a former atheist.
Sept 23, 2008 A grim Neanderthal face stares out from the cover
of the October 2008 National
Geographic Magazine. Coinciding with the cover story is a TV special,
Code, about the Neanderthal genome. Both are replete with artwork from the magazines army of
illustrators charged with putting flesh on bones and bringing lost prehistories to life. The magazines cover title
emphasizes a certain word: The Other Humans: Neanderthals Revealed.
That word other is the center of a long-standing belief that appears to have
collapsed. Were they really distinct from modern humans? What do we mean
cave stories about Neanderthals have been legion. The conventional wisdom for over
a century (though less so recently) has been that Neanderthals were stocky, brutish and
intellectually inferior beings who were supplanted by the leaner, smarter modern
humans moving into their space. Neanderthals had brawn; moderns had brain.
Who hasnt seen artwork of fur-clad grunter-hunters chasing after mammoths
in the ice age? Though National Geographic entertained some of the latest controversies
about Neanderthals, they chose a bad time to label them as
other. A commentary in PNAS today has essentially removed
the last argument for calling them different.1 The title is
right to the point: Separating us from them: Neanderthal and
modern human behavior.
Pat Shipman (anthropologist, Penn State) began her commentary with a tone
of remorse, as if ready to confess to a kind of paleontological racism:
Neanderthals have always been treated like the poor relation
in the human family. From the recognition of the first
partial skeleton from Feldhofer, Germany, in 1856, Neanderthals made scientists
uneasy. Initially they were viewed as too physically apelike to fit into
Homo sapiens and too brutishly primitive to have been capable of modern
human behavior. Now, new information on Neanderthal adaptations has
come from Gibraltar, an island where an adult Neanderthal cranium and
pieces of a Neanderthal childs skull were found previously. As reported in
this issue of PNAS, evidence from Vanguard and Gorhams caves indicates that
Neanderthals used unexpectedly modern and complex subsistence strategies.
Most anthropologists had already brought Neanderthals well within the human circle
Erik Trinkaus, for instance, believes that Neanderthals and modern humans interbred
Most accepted them as good hunters, dexterous, social, artistic and successful in just
about every way no poor relation to modern humans. It has been known for
a long time that their skull capacity was, on average, larger than ours. Still,
many anthropologists just couldnt give up the notion that they were well,
maybe not stupid, but not as sophisticated as moderns in terms of social
behaviors, creativity, and living strategies.
Shipman challenged that last argument for classifying Neanderthals as other.
Evidence from the Gibraltar caves shows that they possessed all four complex behaviors thought
characteristic of modern humans: (1) broad use of land resources, (2) sea fishing
and hunting, (3) use of small scale resources, and (4) scheduling resource use by
the seasons. This revelation came with some emotion. That modern human subsistence
behaviors would show up among archaic humans like Neanderthals, even
as late as ~28,000 B.P., she remarked, is startling. What does it mean?
Basically, it means the anthropologists have been wrong about our brethren all along.
It undermines the notion that Neanderthals were the losers in competition with
more modern, more sophisticated Homo sapiens sapiens. Notice her last question:
Paleoanthropologists currently debate whether any set of attributes of material
culture can distinguish between modern and archaic human behavior. In
particular, McBrearty and Brooks challenge the paradigm that there was
an abrupt human revolution ~40,000
years ago in Europe that marked the invasion of modern humans and the onset
of modern behavior (but see ref. 16 for another view).
In Gibraltar, Neanderthals and modern humans apparently shared similar or
identical modern subsistence practices
at ~28,000, yet Neanderthals were clearly outside of the range of morphological
and genetic variability of modern
humans.2 If behavior did not separate us
(modern humans) from them (Neanderthals), what did?
In addition, she asked, if Neanderthals and modern humans lived and worked side by
side at Gibraltar with the same subsistence strategies, why did they go extinct?
Shipman ended by saying, Answers to these questions are likely
to be elusive. Her only hope was that more research into
carefully chosen, meticulously excavated, and thoughtfully analyzed sites may be
one way to begin to find them.
1. Pat Shipman, Separating us from them: Neanderthal and modern human behavior,
Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences
USA, published September 22, 2008, doi:10.1073/pnas.0807931105.
2. This claim needs to be understood in context. For one thing, if Neanderthals
were indeed capable of interbreeding with modern humans, they were fully human. Also, the NG article
quotes Ed Green commenting on the Neanderthal genome, We know that the human
and chimpanzee sequences are 98.7 percent the same,3 and Neanderthals are much closer
to us than chimps, so the reality is that for most of the sequence, theres no
difference between Neanderthals and [modern] humans. The differences
amount to half a percent but even then, how representative are our samples of
Neanderthal DNA? How well do we know the genetic diversity among the entire Neanderthal population?
Statistical claims like these are bound to be overturned by more data.
3. It is unfortunate that NG did not challenge Greens reiteration of
the false yet often-assumed statistic that only 1.3% separates
human and chimpanzee DNA (see 06/29/2007,
CMI #1 and
The answers arent elusive at all. Its
only evolutionary blinders that obscure the obvious to those who refuse to see.
Creationists arent surprised. They feel vindicated
Leaves Dont Fall; Theyre Pushed 09/22/2008
The whole human evolution story is a farce. Think about this, for starters: now that we know
Neanderthals were the mental equivalents of modern humans, evolutionists would have us believe
that these people lived among and hunted all the big mammals for over 100,000 years
ten times all recorded human history and in all that time never learned to
ride a horse (11/09/2007,
08/16/2008) or plant a farm or build a city.
Is that even remotely credible? Even when modern humans showed up 30,000 years
ago it supposedly took them 22,000 years to figure it out. Does that match anything
you know about our curious, inventive species? In the Darwin paleofantasyland scenario
some lucky mutation must have just switched on abstract language
(02/21/2008), architecture and agriculture
out of nowhere (02/22/2008),
because archaeology shows these abilities full blown from the start.
Who can believe the evolutionary tales any longer? Look how goofy they can
get (see 05/29/2008,
The next day after Shipmans commentary,
Geographic News tried to do damage control. Their article repeated the same
fictional plot line, this time with feeling: Neanderthals and modern humans are distinct species that split
from a common ancestor several hundred thousand years ago. This was followed
by Test your Neanderthal knowledge with our online quiz, which being interpreted,
means, Lets make sure your indoctrination level is safe before we reveal the
next admission. This was followed by an astonishing backtrack:
Why modern humans thrived and Neanderthals ultimately failed has long been a
topic of scientific intrigue, and previous research had suggested that the
ability to exploit marine resources was one of the defining characteristics for
the success of modern humans.
Emphasize that word intrigue (def: to accomplish or force by crafty
plotting or underhand machinations).
Pay attention: this quote is a complete admission of ignorance. It could be this factor,
it could be that factor, it could be Lady Luck (cf.
03/18/2008). What kind of scientific
explanation is that? Attributing events to chance is no better than appealing to the
Stuff Happens Law (see 09/15/2008 commentary). A cartoon
on EvidentCreation (2nd cartoon)
illustrates the principle. Ignorance is not science, even if you use the methods
of science to explore the extent of your ignorance. What does the word science
mean? Knowledge. The know-nothings (02/22/2008)
have no claim on science, white lab coats notwithstanding (cf. 05/06/2008).
The Darwin diviners (07/26/2008 commentary)
only surpass the Babylonians in the sophistication of their ignorance.
But the new research may eliminate sophisticated foraging
skills from the list of potential advantages unique to humans.
I dont think that the success of one or the other had
to do with subsistence, with the way they hunted or fed, Finlayson said.
There may be other factors coming into this, or it may just
have been a question of luck.
The BBC News
tried to rescue a bad situation in their report with a quote from Chris Stringer [Natural
History Museum, London]: So there
still is an element of superiority, [Where!?] but it is a much
more finely balanced one now [What!?] This is yet another difference that had been
proposed between Neanderthals and moderns which now disappears.
Thats falsification, folks! Where is that finely-balanced superiority they just talked about?
It just disappeared, along with their credibility. Again, no remorse, and
no repentance for their entrenched fossil racism.
quoted Clive Finlayson of the Gibraltar Museum as a spoiler:
Deep down there is this idea that modern humans are cognitively superior
and therefore able to outcompete Neanderthals. I suppose weve thrown
a bit of a spanner in the works by showing that Neanderthals were doing exactly
the same thing. Of course, he wasnt surprised, he said.
Hes been arguing for many years that Neanderthals were as intelligent as modern
humans with similar behaviors. OK, so how exactly are the Darwinians
supposed to run that flag up the pole? Big help he is. This is the same guy who
told NG the modern humans won out by chance not by natural selection.
This abandons any grounds for making human evolution a theory based on laws of nature;
it reduces to the Stuff Happens Law.
The rest of National Geographics
too-little-too-late article resorts to the usual evolutionist misdirection
tactic of handing out promissory notes for evolutionary futureware:
To resolve the issue, Marean recommends a systematic comparison of
Neanderthal and human seafood collection at sites with similar availability.
Veddyyy inteddesting, yah, foor shoor. Do you get angry at admissions like this? You should.
Think how much damage has been done by the Neanderthal myth.
For over a century, school children have been indoctrinated into a vision that
Neanderthals were some kind of pre-modern, human-but-not-quite product of evolution
that the superior moderns (like us and the Europeans) knocked out of the race.
Countless posters, artist reconstructions, museum dummies and TV specials have told and re-told
this myth for decades. National Geographic Magazine has been one of the worst repeat
offenders. Where is their shame? Any sign of remorse? None whatsoever.
They still portray their organization as a beacon of scientific knowledge, leading us into a
glorious future of understanding our origins.
Were Neanderthals [exploiting seafood] like we expect they
would if they were modern? And if they werent, then the
question is: Why? he said.
We could be getting into something interesting there, for sure.
Neanderthal Man was one of the last in the famous parade
of hominids leading to the ultimate product, us. The iconic evolutionary march of progress to Thoroughly Modern Man (and Millie) has
been the subject of countless cartoons.
But its not funny. This has been bad science. It has been perpetrated with an
agenda to make evolutionary philosophy appear scientific. Now, after all that propaganda,
they ask, if behavior did not separate us from them, what did?
The answer is obvious. Nothing!
Imagine the myths that could have been spun
with the bones of living humans from differing parts of the world. Put a Watusi
skeleton next to an Eskimo in the Museum of Man, and just imagine the yarns you could spin.
That is basically what has happened here. Extreme members of the same species
have been put side by side, and a fictional fable has been foisted on the unsuspecting
for over a century. Long ago it was noted that you could give a shave and a suit
to a Neanderthal Man, have him walk down a New York sidewalk, and nobody would notice,
even without the shave.
Its not science that led culture down this primrose path. It was
the Darwinians those usurping materialists who have a psychological need to
force every bit of evidence into a moyboy
scheme of progress from particles to
people via mindless, undirected, purposeless natural processes of evolution.
They are a blight on science. Real scientists, who find cures for disease and
peer into the workings of the cell,
and explore space and seek to understand the laws of physics and chemistry that bring us technological
advances God bless them all owe nothing to these pretenders. Like parasites, the Darwinians sap the resources
of their host and use it for their own advantage. And did you notice?
These are the same people who most vehemently breathe fire against the scientists who actually
have the resources to explain the origin of life and human history (the creationists).
Let this fact melt into the folds of your cerebrum: the Darwinians were wrong again for 150 years!
just like they have been wrong about the origin of life, the fossil record, and the genetic code.
What major discovery did not hit them like a complete surprise? (the DNA code, the
complexity of the cell, Mendels laws, the Cambrian explosion, living fossils, convergent
evolution everywhere, to name
a few examples). What prediction did they make that has not been falsified?
(e.g., molecular phylogeny, ease of self-assembly of molecules into a cell, unlimited genetic
variation, evolution of the horse, life on Mars, and much more read the back issues).
Their scientific theory is all vaporware and futureware. Their scientific method is just-so storytelling
Their list of scientific accomplishments is a list of failures and deflated hype a growing
midden of discarded ideas, piling up and stinking to high heaven. Their scientific legacy
is a ghastly record of intolerance, arrogance, destructive doctrines and crimes against humanity.
How can real scientists stand being associated with these incorrigible miscreants?
(miscreant, n., adj.: depraved, behaving badly, scoundrel, reprobate.)
What have they done for you lately, you true scientists out there? They are
destroying your good reputation.
Take Darwin and evolution and the Victorian myth of progress out of the
19th century, and what might have happened? Creationists would have looked at
the robust skeletons dug up from the field of Christian hymnwriter Joachim Neander (see
10/26/2001), and interpreted them as fully
human without a blink. Creationist historians would have fit them into Biblical history
after Babel, looking into the Table of Nations for clues. Creationist geneticists
would have recognized the propensity for exaggeration of features with inbreeding of
family groups. Creationist anatomists (like
Jack Cuozzo) would theorize
that the skeletons represented long-lived humans, just like the Bible said existed
around the time of the Flood. Creationist geologists would have not been misled by myths
about humans evolving from apes over millions of years, and so would have felt no pressure to
fit these humans into a long, stretched-out timeline. Creationist anthropologists
would not have called it startling to find them using the same hunting and subsistence
strategies as other tribes at Gibraltar. Who would have been more correct?
Who would have felt more comfortable with the evidence?
The fate of the evolutionist is to be constantly startled
by facts that dont fit their plot line.
Stop calling our ancient dead forebears Neanderthals they were people. Stop the
us vs them racist rhetoric; they were our brothers. This final collapse of the evolutionary
Neanderthal Myth should arouse a call for accountability. Americans are all up
in arms right now about high-profile managers of money funds who mismanaged affairs
terribly, causing major economic catastrophes,
yet profited by their misdeeds to the tune of tens of millions of dollars in salaries and pensions.
The evolutionists should pay for what they have done. Its time to defrock
them of their white lab coats, charge them with impersonating a scientist
and send them packing. Dont let them say
that science is marching on and correcting itself. This was a painful, totally unnecessary, 150-year
detour. Dont let them say more research will figure it out.
They cannot be trusted any more. Dont let them say this is just how
science works. Science is supposed to be a search for the truth.
Dont let them say this was just an academic correction. It seduced the
minds of millions of school children. It destroyed peoples faith.
It was all lies, lies, lies! Citizens who love science should get really
angry right about now.
Channel that righteous anger into constructive action
like cleaning house at the Science Academy. One effective method is to cut
off the flow of money for evolutionary research and other oxymorons.
Next headline on:
Sept 22, 2008 Rocks may fall (thus the need for warning signs on highways), but leaves
are pushed off of trees by a genetic program. The process, called abscission,
has been mysterious for a long time. A team from the University of Missouri
has mapped out, for the first time, the abscission pathway in one plant.
Being this is the first day of fall, it would be worthwhile to think about the
processes behind autumns colorful cascade of leaves.
The opening paragraph in PNAS1 shows
why leaf fall doesnt just happen. Look at just a few of the processes
Abscission is a physiological process that involves the programmed
separation of entire organs, such as leaves, petals,
flowers, and fruit. Abscission allows plants to discard nonfunctional
or infected organs, and promotes dispersion of progeny. At
the cellular level, abscission is the hydrolysis of the middle
lamella of an anatomically specialized cell layer, the abscission
zone (AZ), by cell wall-modifying and hydrolyzing enzymes.
Thus, abscission requires both the formation of the AZ early in
the development of a plant organ and the subsequent activation
of the cell separation response.
Gene knockout experiments showed that proteins missing from a signalling cascade formed
plants deficient in abscission ability. A growing paradigm in signal
transduction pathways, they explained, features
receptor modules that perceive signals and modules such as
MAPK cascades that relay and amplify this information to
downstream effectors. Because little is known about this signalling
process, they studied it in the common lab plant Arabidopsis (a European/Asian
herb also called thale cress).
A press release about the study posted on
PhysOrg was titled,
When leaves fall, more is occurring than a change of weather.
That can be illustrated by the researchers ending paragraph. It shows
they uncovered the workings of only a small part of a very complex process:
Multiple gene products, including potential signaling ligands,
membrane receptors, protein kinase cascades, regulators of
hormone responses, and transcription factors have been implicated
in the regulation of abscission in plants. We have
demonstrated, by several different lines of evidence, that there
is a signaling cascade (Fig. 5B), from putative ligand (IDA) to
receptors (HAE HSL2) to cytoplasmic effectors (MKK4,
MKK5, MPK3, and MPK6), which function together to control
cell separation during abscission. Additional gene products are
also likely to play important roles in abscission and the relationships
between them and the signaling pathway outlined here
remain to be determined. However, based on the genetic interactions
between IDA, HAE, HSL2, MKK4, and MKK5, it seems
that this core signaling cascade is an important regulator of floral
All this for something we take for granted this time of year: colorful leaves
drifting by the window.
1. Cho, Larue, Chevalier, Wang, Jinn, Zhang, and Walker, Regulation of floral organ abscission
in Arabidopsis thaliana,
Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences
USA, published online before print September 22, 2008, doi: 10.1073/pnas.0805539105.
Galileo dies (09/21/2003 the spacecraft,
not the scientist), leaving behind a legacy of puzzling discoveries at Jupiter. Back on Earth,
idolatry re-invades the land of Israel, from 09/26/2003.
The autumn leaves drift by my window,
The autumn leaves of red and gold;
I dream of genes and MAPK modules,
Of signal pathways yet scarcely told.
When evolutionists continue to proclaim glib
generalities about how plants evolved this
and animals evolved that, its essential to look in detail at some of the structures
and processes theyre talking about. Even something as common as
leaf fall is not simple. The plant has to sense the time of year.
It has to signal the nucleus to translate genes and produce the right proteins
in the right quantities. These form a cascade of signals, with feedback
loops, that instigate changes in cell adhesion. The right cells have to
start separating in the right order. Simultaneously, the photosynthetic
organs have to shut down. The changes in pigments have to be expressed to
provide plant protection (10/27/2007).
The stems have to weaken so the leaves will drop only when the plant has enough
resources for the coming winter. These are just a few considerations behind
the programmed, coordinated, environmentally-responsive
genetic program devoted just to this one operation.
The PhysOrg article tried to explain why leaves fall.
Aged leaves, for example, may be shed to facilitate the recycling of nutrients,
ripening fruits dropped to promote seed dispersal and infected or diseased floral
organs discarded to prevent the spread of disease. Whoa... thats
teleology-talk. Stop right there
on that first suggestion. How could a tree plan its own recycling program?
After the leaves have dropped, the nutrients are gone. Theyre lying on the ground.
it doesnt make
any sense to say that the plant facilitated a recycling program, nor that it was
trying to promote its own seed dispersal, or trying to prevent the spread of disease.
The plant is a brainless machine
programmed with these functions. If you dont believe computers can
emerge and program themselves, then plants cannot do such things, either. Such
subtle personification fallacies are
ubiquitous in evolutionary literature. Plants do these things because they
were programmed to do them.
Many questions remain. How does the whole plant know to change
color all at once? Since abscission also relates to fruit and seed dispersal,
how does the abscission program know when the seed ripening program has completed?
How do the stems on maple seeds loosen at precisely the time when the seeds,
that work like marvelous propellers in the wind, are ready to fly? Lets
teach our kids to see beyond the surface properties of nature into its marvelous
secrets. This is good inoculation against dogmas that would have them
believe complex programmed operations just happen.
Suggested visual resources: Journey of Life and
Wonders of Gods Creation from
Video, and Incredible Creatures that Defy Evolution from
Films. Or, take a walk in the woods for a 360-degree, surround-sound demonstration.
Next headline on:
Questioning Earths Privileges 09/20/2008
Sept 20, 2008 Two articles this week downplayed considerations that would
make the Earth seem like a special place in the universe. Both have ties
Are life-friendly stars limited to a narrow band in the
galaxy called the Galactic Habitable Zone (GHZ)? NASA-supported
Magazine cast doubt on the idea. Citing a study by a doctoral student at the University
of Washington, the article claims stars can migrate in the galactic disk and end up at
radial distances very far from where they formed. If that is true, it must
not be a requirement for a star to be in the GHZ to obtain the heavy elements
necessary for rocky planets and life.
The article does not mention the work of Guillermo Gonzalez (a former U of
Washington assistant professor) who proposed the GHZ, but references
at the end of the article point to a 2001 entry on
Magazine that entertained his GHZ hypothesis as a very, very interesting idea.
Since then, many remember, Gonzalez was expelled from Iowa State
(05/22/2007, bullet 5),
for his involvement with the intelligent design movement in particular, his
co-authorship of an ID book The Privileged Planet (06/24/2004)
and appearance in a
documentary of the same name.
Gonzalez never suggested that the radial extent of the GHZ was well constrained.
In Privileged Planet, he used it as just one of many cosmic coincidences
that suggest the universe is designed to permit scientific discovery.
On a related subject, Edna DeVore asked on
How rare is the Earth? She didnt answer the question.
Instead, as co-investigator for the upcoming
mission that will search for earth-like planets, she encouraged citizens to write NASA an
email that will be placed on the spacecraft. Anyone can submit a 500-word
statement about the search for planets like Earth DeVore (who is also
Director of Education and Outreach for the SETI Institute) did not mention anything about
Johannes Kepler, for whom the mission is named.
Though interested in the possibility of other inhabited worlds, Kepler was a strong
Protestant Christian who would most likely have stood with Gonzalez arguing that
our world was intelligently designed.
This new NASA propaganda article is a weak response
to the GHZ hypothesis. For one thing, it is a half-truth
as a counter-argument. The abundance of heavy elements only applied to the outer edge
of the GHZ. The inner edge may have plenty of heavy elements, but it has other
problems radiation, collisions and no clear view of the cosmos. In addition,
the article did nothing to constrain the locales where a star could get its heavy
elements. Presumably there is still a GHZ outside of which stars could not
gather enough heavy elements for rocky planets.
Liberals Less Skittish than Conservatives, Study Claims 09/19/2008
Even if one were to grant that stars can migrate radially, it does
not eliminate or reduce the argument for intelligent design of the Earth.
Assume for the moment the evolutionists timeline and origin stories.
One has to ask why our planets location just happens to be at
a prime location between the spiral arms for an unobstructed view of the distant
universe just in time for the rise of modern science to take advantage of the
The GHZ argument is not a clincher by itself. It is one of a number of
independent evidences that collectively point to the reasonableness of the design
explanation. Watch the film
to see how the combined evidence makes a compelling case that even materialists
like Paul Davies and Robert Jastrow could not ignore.
DeVore needs to watch it, too. She parroted the
typical Copernican myth: Its been about four centuries since Copernicus,
Kepler and Galileo began to displace the Earth from the center of the universe, she
claimed. Less than one hundred years ago, we discovered that the sun was
not near the center either, and that the Milky Way galaxy was just one of billions
of galaxies and that the universe has no center. Not only is this a
misrepresentation of the views of three great Christian theists, it is a distortion
of the Copernican revolution. Watch the film and you will learn why.
Next headline on:
Stars and Galaxies
Sept 19, 2008 A study by scientists at University of Nebraska claims that
conservatives are more easily startled than liberals, reported
Geographic News. The results, partly funded by the National Science Foundation
and published in Science,1
referenced a 2006 paper from Evolution and Human Behavior that had
claimed feelings of disgust and fear of disease have been suggested
to be related to political attitudes.
were disputed by other scientists quoted in the NG article, who thought the results could be
interpreted various ways. The reactions could have been due to different causes,
they said, than the researchers assumed. See also
summary that was published Sept 22.
1. Oxley et al, Political Attitudes Vary with Physiological Traits,
19 September 2008: Vol. 321. no. 5896, pp. 1667-1670, DOI: 10.1126/science.1157627.
Makes perfect sense. Conservatives are more
likely to be alert, sober, clothed and in their right minds. Thats why
the liberal participants were cool and loose with scientists wasting their tax money
on dumb projects.
Good read: Mollie Hemingway on the
Street Journal argues that the ostensibly pro-science atheists act and think
more irrationally than the Christians they ridicule as scientifically illiterate.
Next headline on:
Politics and Ethics
Ant What it Used to Be 09/18/2008
Sept 18, 2008 A new species of subterranean ant discovered in Brazil is so
weird, biologists have classified it as the sole representative of a new subfamily.
The alien creature has been whimsically named Martialis heureka: the ant from Mars.
An article about it in Nature News
said, It adds a new branch to the ant family tree which split off from the
others extremely early in the familys evolution. Trouble is,
it doesnt look anything like a wasp, from which ants supposedly evolved
(see picture on
This has thrown ideas of ant evolution into a bit of a quandary.
Christian Rabeling, the discoverer, found that this ant did not fit into the
existing taxonomy. Scientists are calling this a
relict species of a sister family they have named Martialis. The original
paper in PNAS says, On the basis of morphological and phylogenetic
evidence we suggest that these specialized subterranean predators are
the sole surviving representatives of a highly divergent lineage that
arose near the dawn of ant diversification and have
persisted in ecologically stable environments like tropical soils over
great spans of time. That makes it essentially a living fossil.
Like the duck-billed platypus is to mammals, explained Nature News,
its clearly a cousin to other ants, yet a weird and ancestral version
that took its own evolutionary direction early on. This must be what
the title of the paper means when it says the discovery sheds light on
early ant evolution.
A look inside the paper, though, reveals a few problems with the
confident assertions about evolution:
A robust phylogeny is indispensable for elucidating
the evolutionary origin of ants and for exploring the selective
forces that have produced their extraordinary specializations.
Previously published studies, however, led to contradicting views
of early ant evolution, in part because of high levels of morphological
convergence, the secondary loss of characters, and a lack
of informative paleontological data. As a result, numerous
taxa have been proposed as the most basal lineage.
Recent attempts to find a robust phylogeny have now been dealt another challenge
with the discovery of M. heureka. Their phylogenetic tree shows it on
its own branch, all by itself. Another problem is revealed deep in the paper:
Second, the basal ant lineages seem to have
originated in a relatively short period, potentially making
the unambiguous resolution of their relationships quite difficult
and sensitive to methodological error. The only suggestion of light
being shed on ant evolution by this discovery is that it turns their attention away
from the idea ants evolved from wasps. What they expected, and what they
found, were pointing in opposite ways:
Our phylogenetic analyses, combined with the inferred biology
of M. heureka, suggest that the most basal extant ant lineages are
cryptic, hypogaeic foragers, rather than wasp-like, epigaeic foragers
(Fig. 3). This finding is congruent with recent molecular
studies, which previously suggested the Leptanillinae,
another subfamily of subterranean predators, to be sister lineage
to all extant ants. This result has puzzled ant systematists for two
reasons. First, Wilson et al.s classic study of the
Mesozoic amber ant Sphecomyrma postulated that the ancestral
ant was a large-eyed, wasp-like, ground forager, creating a strong
expectation that the most basal extant ant lineages would also be
epigaeic foragers, presumably similar to Sphecomyrma. Second,
the Leptanillinae [blind
foragers in Africa] share common morphological and
behavioral characteristics with the Amblyoponinae,
implying the monophyly of this group. In contrast, our
results and recent molecular systematic studies suggest
that blind, subterranean, specialized predators, like Martialis, the
Leptanillinae, and some poneroids, evolved early during ant
diversification. We hypothesize, that once these hypogaeic predators
adapted to their specialized subterranean environment,
their morphology and biology changed little over evolutionary time
because their hypogaeic habitat has likely been ecologically
stable and provided a refuge from competition with other, more
recently evolved, ants.
It is important to note that no definitive
statement about the morphology and life history of the ancestral,
Mesozoic ant can be derived from our current knowledge about
the surviving basalmost ant lineages, because the relative probabilities
of evolutionary transitions between epigaeic and hypogaeic
habits are uncertain.
They explained that the supposition that ants evolved from wasps relies on
ambiguous data subject to alternative hypotheses. One other problem with
their suggestion that ants evolved from wasps is that Martialis would make
the ant hypogaeic [underground] foraging evolve three times. Thats why
they are suggesting the basal ant was already a hypogaeic forager.
The exact nature of the ancestral ant remains uncertain, though,
given that the propensity for repeated evolution of a hypogaeic lifestyle
may be higher than for reevolution of an epigaeic lifestyle.
no clear light seems to have been shed on ant evolution by this discovery.
It was a complete surprise. What other surprises lie in store?
This discovery hints at a wealth of species, possibly of
great evolutionary importance, still hidden in the soils of the
Stefan Cover, a curatorial assistant at Harvards Museum of
Comparative Zoology, had a more humble view. In the Nature News article, he
said that Martialis jars us out
of going with our familiar conceptions... This is a lesson
that we could probably import into studies of other groups.
1. Rabeling, Brown and Verhaugh, Newly discovered sister lineage sheds light on early ant evolution,
Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences
USA, published online before print September 15, 2008, doi: 10.1073/pnas.0806187105.
We can suggest some other studies of other groups
where evolutionists could import this lesson: how about the Monera, Protista,
Fungi, Plantae and Animalia? (the five
kingdoms of taxonomy).
In 2002, planetary scientists were wringing their hands over Io, wondering where this
moon gets the heat for its super-hot lavas (09/27/2002).
Any better explanations in the six years since? Nope; and now
they have Enceladus to worry about (08/04/2007, bullet 3).
The discoverers put their weird little ant in a jar, but maybe
the scientists need to be put in one, because Martialis jars us out
of going with our familiar conceptions, Cover said. While theyre
safely in a jar out of harms way (unable to harm us, that is), lets hunt
for more rainforest species with great evolutionary importance. Jarring
evolutionists is fun. Every new discovery jars them into realizing their
neat little schemes are wrong. Theyre like blind hypogaeic foragers, digging around
in their own dirt, thinking every new surprise is shedding light on evolution.
That phrase Shed[ding] light on evolution
yields thousands of hits on Google. Weve examined dozens of those claims
right here. Can you remember one that has turned up a single photon?
The truth is they are walking in a darkness of their own making.
The light they need to see is the flashing red stop light next to the
Wrong Way sign they missed back in 1859.
Next headline on:
Is Dinosaur Diversity an Artifact of Headline-Hunting? 09/17/2008
Sept 17, 2008 Many dinosaurs classed as different species are actually the
same animal with different names, a publication of the Royal Society announced.
Read two news reports on this, however, and you
will get two different opinions about how serious the problem is.
Rex Dalton in Nature News
sounded the alarm: One hundred and thirty-five years of questionable judgments,
some driven by a lust for headlines, have left dinosaur nomenclature in disarray,
according to two new studies. His article, In search of Thingummyjigosaurus,
claims that nearly half the names given to dinosaurs have errors.
The high error rate is not just a problem for fossil hunters;
it is a warning that scientists should take extra precautions when identifying new species
as they assess modern biodiversity, too, says [Michael] Benton.
Benton [U of Bristol], author of one of the studies, said It is a bit scary
to think that there are
so many misnamed species. 16% of dinosaur names are duplicates, the study
found, and another 32% have other classification problems.
News downplayed the seriousness of the problems. It says most of the errors
were made by self-promoting headline seekers in the early years of dinosaur hunting;
My research suggests were getting better at naming things; were
being more critical; were using better material, Benton told the BBC.
Another source of error has been the fragmentary nature of the evidence. Paleontologists often have to
classify a fossil based on just a hip or leg bone or vertebra. In spite of
these difficulties, modern practice is now very good, the BBC claimed.
Still, the BBC acknowledged that the ramifications of bad classification
can be serious. Theres no point somebody such as myself doing
big statistical analyses of numbers of dinosaur species through time or
indeed any other fossil group if you cant be confident that they
really are genuinely different, Benton told the BBC. Accuracy is important
for all biodiversity studies. People have also been looking at our
current knowledge of mammals and insects and other animal groups and asking the
simple question: are the species totals and lists we use for important conclusions
including to give political advice about endangered species are they correct?
Benton asked. Theres been a big debate about vast extinctions
among amphibians. We have to know what the species are first, before we can
talk about that.
This is the inverse of a long-lost cartoon.
A museum curator in Mexico shows a patron the skull of Montezuma. Another smaller
skull nearby prompts a question about whose it was. That, the curator
announces confidently, is the skull of Montezuma as a little boy.
There was a case of classifying two individuals as one man. This is a case
of classifying like objects as different species. Think of the fun they could
have with dogs and cats.
The Prevolution of Evolution: Life Marches In 09/17/2008
Classification is a human game. Classification can have impact
on human psyches and politics. Remember that when you see a Thingummyjigosaurus in the museum,
it might just be a Artifactofnomenclaturasaurus by another name. But make no
mistake. That Bullfrogus headlineus in the path of construction
is an endangered species. Quick, pass a law!
Next headline on:
Politics and Ethics
Sept 17, 2008 Theres a new word preceding the E word evolution.
Two Harvard scientists have made up a new word, prevolution, to describe a supposed
stage before replication when natural selection was helping evolution evolve.
What does prevolution act on? Simple, silly: prelife.
Martin Nowak and Hisashi Ohtsuki titled their paper in PNAS,
Prevolutionary dynamics and the origin of evolution.1
By defining life in terms of evolution, they set the stage for a continuous process
of evolution from chemicals to man, with information just appearing along the way.
Their abstract makes it all sound very straightforward.
Life is that which replicates and evolves. The origin of life is also the
origin of evolution. A fundamental question is when do chemical
kinetics become evolutionary dynamics? Here, we formulate a
general mathematical theory for the origin of evolution. All known
life on earth is based on biological polymers, which act as information
carriers and catalysts. Therefore, any theory for the origin
of life must address the emergence of such a system. We describe
prelife as an alphabet of active monomers that form random
polymers. Prelife is a generative system that can produce information.
Prevolutionary dynamics have selection and mutation, but
no replication. Life marches in with the ability of replication:
Polymers act as templates for their own reproduction. Prelife is a
scaffold that builds life. Yet, there is competition between life and
prelife. There is a phase transition: If the effective replication rate
exceeds a critical value, then life outcompetes prelife. Replication
is not a prerequisite for selection, but instead, there can be
selection for replication. Mutation leads to an error threshold
between life and prelife.
So life just marches in like the saints. It builds scaffolds. It
crystallizes like ice out of water. Whats the problem? Their
mathematics show it must be so.
It remains to be seen whether other scientists who have sweated over
the origin of life will buy their definitions and descriptions. A look inside
their paper shows the usual math and graphs. Mathematical derivations, however,
often rely on initial conditions that are assumed. What are they assuming?
Heres where the word crops up:
Is the scheme rigged to achieve the result? Traditionally, one thinks of natural selection as choosing
between different replicators, they said; indeed, replication has usually
been understood as a prerequisite for natural selection. Nowak and Ohtsuki
offer a different approach. In the present theory, however, we encounter
natural selection before replication. How? Because they envision
information carriers competing for resources in the chemical soup.
By inventing a concept of prelife, they can have natural selection occurring
within prelife and between life and prelife. In this way,
natural selection is not a consequence of replication, but instead natural
selection leads to replication. This inverted scenario requires some
- We assume, for simplicity, that all sequences grow in one direction.
- At first, we assume that the active monomers are in a steady state.
- For supersymmetric prelife, we assume that a0 = a1 = alpha/2,
and ai = a for all other i.
- Let us now assume that some sequences can act as a templates for replication.
- Fig. 3 shows the competition between life (replication) and
prelife. We assume a random prelife landscape where the ai
values are taken from a uniform distribution between 0 and 1.
All sequences of length n = 6 have the ability to replicate.
- All fundamental equations of evolutionary and ecological
dynamics assume replication, but here, we have
explored the dynamical properties of a system before replication
and the emergence of replication.
First of all, what do they mean by information?
They defined prelife as an alphabet of active monomers that form random
polymers. No information so far. But then they said,
Prelife is a generative system that can produce information.
Lets follow their use of that word (information) in the paper.
The paper began by admitting that Evolution needs a generative system that can produce unlimited
information. Evolution needs populations of information carriers.
But did they ever define what they mean by information? It appears they
include too much in their picture: we
can define a prebiotic chemistry that can produce any binary
string and thereby generate, in principle, unlimited information
and diversity, they said. We call such a system prelife and the associated
dynamics prevolution (Fig. 1). It is doubtful that most theorists would
consider the set of all possible random strings as information. By lowering
the standard of information, they have helped themselves to information carriers
that can compete on a stage of prevolution of prelife.
How plausible is this? It appears they have indiscriminately
considered any polymer that outcompetes the others (by being more
abundant) to be a contender leading to life. What if, however, the leading
polymer even if it can replicate tends toward clumps that precipitate
on the seafloor, till all available resources are used up? It would seem that
one cannot assume that all sequences of building blocks are equally pregnant with
life possibilities. Abundant replicators can lead to a dead end.
At some point the leading polymer in the race for life has to contain functional
information. The set of polymers capable of acting as templates of
their own replication, furthermore, seems much smaller than the set of all polymers.
Their model is highly theoretical. They made no claims what
the polymers are made of. Are the molecules made of RNA, DNA, PNA, or TNA? Are they
one-handed? Math notwithstanding, models must at some point come to grips
with real chemicals in a real solvent in a real environment. It is to be
expected that real molecules will be much more intransigent than hypothetical ones.
Their conclusion makes it clear that their scheme works only on a chalkboard:
We have proposed a mathematical theory for studying the
origin of evolution. Our aim was to formulate the simplest
possible population dynamics that can produce information and
complexity. We began with a binary soup where activated
monomers form random polymers (binary strings) of any length
(Fig. 1). Selection emerges in prelife, if some sequences grow
faster than others (Fig. 2). Replication marks the transition from
prelife to life, from prevolution to evolution. Prelife allows a
continuous origin of life. There is also competition between life
and prelife. Life is selected over prelife only if the replication
rate is greater than a certain threshold (Fig. 3). Mutation during
replication leads to an error threshold between life and prelife.
Life can emerge only if the mutation rate is less than a critical
value that is proportional to the inverse of the sequence length
(Fig. 4). All fundamental equations of evolutionary and ecological
dynamics assume replication, but here, we have
explored the dynamical properties of a system before replication
and the emergence of replication.
1. Martin A. Nowak and Hisashi Ohtsuki, Prevolutionary dynamics and the origin of evolution.
Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences,
Published online before print September 12, 2008, doi: 10.1073/pnas.0806714105.
Have you ever in your life come across a more bold,
bald collection of highfalutin nonsense than this? You cant just make
up words and assume what needs to be proved in an argument. You cant just
help yourself to concepts foreign to your worldview and manipulate them mathematically
to guarantee the outcome you want. If we were to follow their example, we could
prove anything. Lets demonstrate the evolution of gnomes, for example.
Short-Term Flings at Saturns Rings 09/16/2008
PreGnome Dynamics and the Origin of Garden Gnomes
You get the idea. When you werent looking, they snuck in design concepts
like information, competition, error, scaffolds, templates and information carriers.
Well, of course! With a hole that big in the intransigent walls of chemistry,
no wonder life just marches in (09/04/2008).
Gnomes are beings that inhabit gardens and hide under toadstools. Here, we formulate
a general mathematical theory for the origin of gnome. All known gnomes are
made of terracotta and are found in gardens. Therefore, any theory for the
origin of gnomes must address the emergence of such a system. We describe
pregnome as an alphabet of terracotta ostracons that form random shapes.
Pregnome is a generative system that can produce gnome parts. Pregnome
dynamics have selection and mutation, but no replication. Gnomeness marches
in with the ability of replication; Ostracons act as templates for their own
replication. Pregnomeness is a scaffold that builds gnomes.
The flaws in this exercise are legion. They envisioned polymers
as simple as binary digits (1's and 0's) that somehow can be activated and
join up into chains. They claimed that any random string of binary digits carries
information. They claimed that life is
merely something that replicates and evolves. Well, fire does that.
It replicates rapidly. It evolves, too. Feed it some different elements and it
will turn all kinds of colors. It adapts to the environment. According
to their definition, it must be alive. In this land of made-up words, we can call
an oil spill prefire. They considered anything that outnumbers something else as
having been selected without any consideration of whether it can do
anything, like breathe or eat or move or write sonnets. According to their
definition, natural selection selects bubbles in soapy water, and favors ice over dew on your
windshield when the temperature drops.
Here is your tax money at work. This paper was partially
funded by the National Institutes of Health and the National Science Foundation.
Japanese people will be honored to know that funding also came from the Japan Society
for the Promotion of Science. Those interested in the interaction between
science and religion will also get a warm feeling in their hearts to learn that this bit
of secularist, materialist, mechanistic propaganda was supported by the John
Templeton Foundation. We hope the atheists at Nature will give the Foundation a pass
this time (08/28/2008).
Next headline on:
Origin of Life
Sept 16, 2008 The Saturn system is assumed to be 4.5 billion years old like
the rest of the solar system.
What mean the delicate dances of ring particles that have been observed by Cassini
lately? One would think moons and particles had pretty much settled into a
stable old age by now, but no: some things change on a daily basis, and Cassinis
cameras are catching the action. The question is, how long can this go on?
Is the dance marathon at Saturn setting new records?
Cassini press release shows gouges in the narrow F-ring that scientists say
are evidence of a collision. And just a couple of days earlier, another
press release published pictures of delicate ring arcs among two of Saturns
small moons, Anthe and Methone.
This is further evidence that most of the planets small, inner moons
orbit within partial or complete rings, the article says. Are they exceptions
to a rule of stability and senescence? No again; The intricate relationships
between these ring arcs and the moons are just one of many such mechanisms that
exist in the Saturn system.
Update 09/18/2008: Another
Cassini press release
shows the G-ring arc rounding the ansa. The article describes
the destructive processes at work: Micrometeoroids collide with the
large particles, releasing smaller, dust-sized particles that brighten the arc.
The plasma in the giant planets magnetic field sweeps through this
arc continually, dragging out the fine particles and creating the G ring.
Notice how rarely the scientists ever address the
age question. It seems hard to believe that interactions this delicate and
dynamic could persist for billions of years. Before spacecraft got there,
scientists expected things to be simple and stable and old. Things like
ring arcs, thousands of ringlets, ring spokes and ring collisions caught them by
complete surprise. Why are they silent on the question about whether such
phenomena could last that long? As with biological evolution, the answers
are worded as vague promissory notes: Understanding these interactions and
learning about their origins can help us to make sense of what we are seeing in
the Cassini images. They need help, all right, especially with sense.
Teachers: check out the list of images from 09/21/2006
you can collect to teach students the difference between accidental resemblances and
real designs. This exercise could also help many adults improve their discernment.
Next headline on:
Looking for Laws to Make Darwinism Scientific 09/15/2008
Sept 15, 2008 Science needs natural laws. Darwinian laws that have
been put forward by evolutionists contain so many exceptions and complexities,
they seem to have a bad case of physics envy.
If evolutionary biology struggles with discovering natural laws, surely something as physical
as geology should do better, right? Not so fast; in Science last week,4
Susan L. Brantley (Penn State) struggled with the complexities of determining the lifetime of
something right under our feet: the soil. Soil is obviously important to humans for
economic reasons. It also is easily available for study. But you would be
surprised how many complicating factors there are when trying to calculate how fast
it forms, how long it lasts, and how fast it erodes. Her opening paragraph only
suggested the complexity of it all:
- Coping with Copes Rule: Evolution tends to make animals
larger over time except when it makes them smaller. In Science,1
Kaustuv Roy lamented the perils of this principle that animals evolve toward largeness,
known as Copes rule. It has some examples but plenty of exceptions.
If Copes rule were a law of nature, wouldnt we find lots
of giants? Instead, most species tend to be small to intermediate in
size, with few in the smallest and largest size classes.
- Bergmanns suggestion: Maybe Copes rule is offset by
a competing principle. This happens sometimes in physics when two forces
compete with each other. Bergmanns rule says that animals grow larger
in colder climates. Polar bears grow larger than black bears, for instance.
Again, this is too simplistic, Roy argues:
Translating these rules into predictions about trajectories
of size evolution is not straightforward. If bigger really is
better, then we should have a world full of giants, yet most species are small.
Clearly there are costs to getting bigger, which prevent a runaway Copes rule.
Such costs involve complex interactions among a multitude of factors including
development time, population size, and patterns of resource use. In addition,
the temperature-size rule [Bergmanns rule] suggests that the external environment,
which changes in a complex and nonlinear manner over geologic time, is
also important in driving size evolution. So, not surprisingly,
simple process-based models of size evolution (such as one based on energetics)
have not been widely accepted.
As if that werent complex enough, There is also the problem of scaling
up from observations at the population level to macroevolutionary trends in size,
he said. It is unclear whether models built on samples from a few generations
(living or extinct) will hold up across geographically separated populations
and macroevolutionary time. The uncertainty about these rules
of body size evolution make it difficult to quantify the apparent influence humans
are having on large animals today.
- Extinction rules or rules going extinct? Three Turkish scientists
brought up problems with measuring extinctions. There are no agreed-on measures
of how great an extinction event was. Writing in PNAS,2
they said that even since Cuvier proposed multiple catastrophes, and on through the
time of Lyell to the present, it has remained controversial as to how completely
and how fast those disappearances occurred, they said. Interpretations
about the nature and origin of these fluctuations in the progression of life have long been
bedeviled by uncertainties as to what constitutes a mass extinction
and which mass extinction is greater or lesser than any other.
The fact that these authors proposed a quantitative scale highlights the fact that
no one had done it successfully before. Heres how they ended their discussion:
Great extinctions are generally less catastrophic than widely
thought: they are generally Lyellian, only exceptionally Cuvierian.
When they are Cuvierian, as the end-Cretaceous extinction so
obviously was, and as the present one so alarmingly is, they stand
out among the other, more mundane, Lyellian ones. It is not
profitable to study extinctions in isolation, among few taxa, in few
sections and in limited time frames. They are simply parts of one
continuous evolution of the entire earth system and must be studied as such.
And yet, aside from the admitted uncertainties and
complexities of defining an extinction event and measuring its magnitude, can there
really be natural laws governing events as random and unpredictable as catastrophes?
- Know your limits: Evolutionists from UK and UC (University of
California at Santa Cruz) pulled some reins on how much can be generalized from
in vitro evolution models. Some scientists, for instance, study
populations of E. coli in a Petri dish and watch what happens when bacteriophages
invade. Can the results be generalized into laws of co-evolution?
Writing in Nature,3 the team began
by asking, Given the difficulty of testing evolutionary and ecological theory
in situ, in vitro model systems are attractive alternatives;
however, can we appraise whether an experimental result is particular to
the in vitro model, and, if so, characterize the systems likely to behave
differently and understand why?
They optimistically proposed
a mathematical model that was concordant with one experimental result. So far, so
good, but can that be extended to other experiments? They provided several
cases where outcomes could be very different depending on the host, the parasite,
the resources, and the genetics of the system. Their explanation for different
results in different conditions seemed convincing, but their ending paragraph seemed to
suggest that a model for one experiment cannot easily be extrapolated to others
without auxiliary hypotheses. These seems to make it difficult to establish any
laws of co-evolution:
Given the above explanation, it is perhaps not surprising in retrospect that
what is found for T7–E. coli interactions need not be true for
other biologically viable modes of host-parasite co-evolution. These results
show how appropriately framed mathematical models aligned with experimental
analysis can obviate the need to presume typicality of one model within a class.
- Contingency vs Law: It would seem that contingency is the opposite
of natural law. Attributing events to chance is about as explanatorily useful
as saying Stuff happens. Thats about all that a team from
the American Museum of Natural History was able to say, though, about the evolution of dinosaurs.
Writing in Science, they found that the famous evolutionary radiation
of the dinosaurs did not follow any rule of size trends, superiority, character
evolution or morphological disparity. The results strongly suggest
that historical contingency, rather than prolonged competition or general
superiority, was the primary factor in the rise of dinosaurs.
Stuff just happened. Such a premise flies in the face of many a textbook and
The paper was summarized by
PhysOrg, which titled its
article, Luck gave dinosaurs their edge. Team member Steve Brusatte
was quoted saying, For a long time it was thought that there was something
special about dinosaurs that helped them become more successful during the Triassic,
the first 30 million years of their history, but this isnt true.
In the AMNH press release,
team member Michael Benton said, Many people like to think that evolution is progressive:
mammals are better than dinosaurs because they came later.... So it may be hard for us to
accept that dinosaurs achieved their dominant position on earth largely by chance,
just as mammals did when the dinosaurs were later wiped out by a meteorite strike.
Maybe the new phrase for Darwin should be Survival of the luckiest.
But, then, if fitness cannot be correlated with evolutionary success, what becomes of any
Darwinian claim to having established a new law of nature? What is natural
selection selecting? What is survival of the fittest judging as fit?
- Lucky information: This list concludes with a reminder that
David Deamer said this about the origin of the DNA code:
I think genetic information more or less came out of nowhere by chance
assemblages of short polymers. (See the 09/10/2008 entry.)
Soils constitute the topmost layer of the regolith, the blanket of loose rock material
that covers Earths surface. An open system such as soil or regolith
is sustainable, or in steady state, only when components such as rock particles
are removed at the same rate they are replenished. However,
soils are defined not only by rock particles but also by minerals, nutrients,
organic matter, biota, and water. These entities--each characterized by
lifetimes in regolith that vary from hundreds of millions of years to
minutes--are often studied by scientists from different disciplines.
If soils are to be maintained in a sustainable manner, scientists must develop models
that cross these time scales to predict the effects of human impact.
Sure enough, each one of these ingredients of soil can increase or decrease at vastly
different rates. Attempts to date a sample soil in Puerto Rico by cosmogenic
nuclides has underscored the problem: how typical is it? A scientist needs to
know the input rate, the erosion rate, the penetration depth and many other things
which turn out to vary by several orders of magnitude in different soils. In
Africa, for instance, the technique doesnt work. And that is only one
factor. If you study a soil based on its nitrogen input-output rate, or its
water retention, or its minerals you can get vastly different results.
When scientists within a discipline study soils, they generally focus on
one of these time scales while ignoring faster and slower processes, she said.
Can a scientist assume a sample is in a steady state? Whether any ecosystem
reaches steady state, she said, is controversial: If it is possible, steady
state is a complex function of the extent and frequency of disturbances such as
fires and insect infestations. What other factors enter the equation?
It appears that defining natural laws of soil evolution that will fit any meaningful
set of diverse soils is unattainable. For example, present-day and
long-term denudation rates for catchments or soils have been shown to be equal
across time scales in some cases, as required for sustainable soils, she said,
but added, In other cases, the long-term and present-day denudation rates do
not agree, perhaps because of variations in ecosystems, climate, glacial effects,
extreme events, or human impact. How, then, can humans predict what will
happen? Its kind of like debates about global warming:
Just as we use global climate models today to project future climate change,
we will eventually be able to use global soil models to project future soil change,
she ended optimistically.
1. Kaustuv Roy, Dynamics of Body Size Evolution,
12 September 2008: Vol. 321. no. 5895, pp. 1451-1452, DOI: 10.1126/science.1163097.
2. Sengor et al, A scale of greatness and causal classification of mass
extinctions: Implications for mechanisms,
Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences
USA, published online before print September 8, 2008, doi: 10.1073/pnas.0805482105.
3. Forde et al, Understanding the limits to generalizability of experimental evolutionary models,
455, 220-223 (11 September 2008) | doi:10.1038/nature07152.
4. Susan L. Brantley, Geology: Understanding Soil Time,
12 September 2008: Vol. 321. no. 5895, pp. 1454-1455, DOI: 10.1126/science.1161132.
In science it is fairly rare to reduce a phenomenon to
simple, neat laws. Physics has arguably been the best example you can
write the physical laws of the universe in equations on a sheet of paper
but even there, complications and difficulties arise (see 06/30/2008,
for instance). Maybe youve seen one of those science toys that pits
gravity against magnetism: a pendulum wobbles chaotically as it tries to fall but
hits magnetic repulsive forces. The laws of gravity and electromagnetism
are easily expressed mathematically, but it would be a huge challenge to predict
the path of the pendulum. How much more so when dealing with all the complex
factors involved in ecology and evolution? Dont use the comeback,
Darwinists, of the Law of Natural Selection. Go re-read the entry
on Fitness for Dummies from 10/29/2002.
Anglican Official Says Church Should Apologize to Darwin 09/14/2008
One feels a bit of pity for the
evolutionary biologist doing his or her best to capture natures exigencies
in models, equations and natural laws. It seems a hopeless task.
Valiantly they continue on, but the above examples highlight the quandary.
One may never know all the factors that come to bear on a problem, or their
relative influences, or their rates of action, or their interactions and feedbacks.
Yet the NCSE and other pro-Darwin groups constantly parade the supposed priority
of evolutionary theory over design or creation on the basis of its explanatory
power with reference to natural laws. OK: show us the laws. Can they
name any one evolutionary law or rule that is not plagued by exceptions, controversy
and counter-claims? And when they have to admit that most evolution occurs without
any apparent reason
the Stuff Happens Law does that qualify as science? Honk if you find
this defense convincing:
Why the Stuff Happens Law is Scientific
Impressed? Darwins laws of nature are about as helpful to the
understanding of nature as the Stuff Happens Law. Your science might be
healthier with a bit of Coles Law (i.e., thinly sliced cabbage).
- It is reductive: all events can be reduced to this law.
- It makes predictions: Stuff will happen.
- It is universal: Stuff always happens.
- It is normative, not just descriptive: Given matter in motion, stuff must happen.
- It is falsifiable: If nothing happens, the law has been disproved.
- It is practical: If something happens, you know you will find stuff around.
- Corollaries can be derived from it: e.g., Stuff happens at the worst possible
time, Bad stuff happens to good people, Murphys Law, etc.
Next headline on:
Sept 14, 2008 The Church of England official feels the Church should apologize to Charles Darwin
for having been too slow to accept his ideas in the 19th century. The
statement, to be posted on a website promoting Darwins views, reads:
Charles Darwin: 200 years from your birth, the Church of England owes you an
apology for misunderstanding you and, by getting our first reaction
wrong, encouraging others to misunderstand you still. We try to practise
the old virtues of faith seeking understanding and hope that
makes some amends.
According to The
Telegraph, the statement was written by Malcolm Brown, the churchs
director of mission and public affairs. He believes the church repeated
the mistakes of the Catholic church in their treatment of
Browns statement also considers anti-evolutionary
fervour an indictment on the church. Regis Nicoll on
exclaimed, An apology to a dead man by a dead church about a theory that is
dead wrong. Astounding! Lord Ickenham, someone who has
had an ongoing struggle with the Anglican Communion his entire adult life, and to
whom the current, obvious, and slow-motion destruction of the entire historical
Anglican Church brings no joy, wrote some thoughts on what is going on in
a blog post at Uncommon
Meanwhile, the Royal Society is up in arms over finding out its
education director, Professor Michael Reiss, allegedly suggested that creationism could be
discussed in science classes if students bring up the subject, reported
The interview that started the ruckus can also be found at
Guardian, where he labeled creationism (including intelligent design)
a non-scientific way of seeing the world.
Even though he overtly denied that creationism had scientific merit, apparently
his policy on politely reasoning with students instead of ridiculing them was too mild for some.
Next day, the BBC
News reported that Reiss stepped down from his position as director of education
under pressure from the Royal Society despite the fact
that he felt his opinion had been misinterpreted. What he meant, the article said, is
that his experience had led him to believe it was more effective to include
discussion about creationism alongside scientific theories such as the Big Bang
and evolution rather than simply giving the impression that such children
The Royal Society itself believes that if a student brings
up the subject, the teacher should be free to explain why evolution is a
sound scientific theory and why creationism is not, in any way, scientific,
so their reaction appeared hypocritical to some.
The BBC quoted a professor of science and society at Imperial College who feels the
Royal Society diminished itself by pressuring Reiss to step down. This
individual was arguing that we should engage with and address public misconceptions
about science something that the Royal Society should applaud.
An even sterner editorial on First
Post said the Royal Society has become the Rotten Society. Robert Matthews
accused the Royal Societys intemperate purge of an Anglican society (who is
no creationist) as a madrassa-like intolerance. Fundamentalism is
spreading across science, he said, with zealots ready to attack anyone
who dares question the accepted teaching be it the unquestionable importance
of animal experiments or the unimpeachable evidence for dramatic global warming.
The most detailed account of the controversy was published by
Reisss critics seem to admit that he was well qualified for the job and never
advocated teaching creationism in science class. The Royal Society was initially
supportive but then pressured him out when an angry letter from three Nobel laureates
called for his resignation. Even atheist Richard Dawkins,
who believes his religious ties disqualified Reiss from a leadership position, lamented
the action, saying to call for his resignation on those grounds comes a little
too close to a witch-hunt for my squeamish taste.
Creationism survives in England despite the hostility of
evolutionists in the scientific societies. In fact, Reiss said in the audio
recording for The
Guardian that the number of creationists coming into UK science classrooms
is on the rise. Julian Joyce published an article in the
entitled, Who are the British creationists? The article centered on
the Genesis Expo, a creationist museum in Portsmouth, but also mentioned the row over
Michael Reisss statement and the Anglican Church apology.
Oh, puke. Such obsequious prostrations to
the Bearded Buddha like Browns apology only encourage the proliferation of dogmatism
like that of the Rotten Society wigheads. If you have
connections to the UK Anglican church this is reason enough to get out. We must
point out that the apology is the opinion of one church official, not
necessarily all of them, and does not necessarily represent the views of the rank and
file in the dying, diminishing UK churches.
Many Anglican churches around the world operate independently of the British hierarchy.
Still, where is the outcry from other leaders and from the membership?
The silence is deafening. Its a default acquiescence to Browns views.
Turing Test Stands: Your Brain Outperforms Computers 09/14/2008
The Royal Society, founded largely by Puritans, has devolved into an arm of
the modern Darwinist totalitarianism, in which even mentioning the C word creationist
is grounds for expulsion. Reiss is no creationist but had the audacity to
suggest it might be good policy to sentence teachers to less than the usual punishment
for crimethink. He apparently failed to remember the policy: creationists are not
even worth the expenditure of their contempt (05/12/2008,
bullet 5). Arent you proud of the leaders of science these days. If
their intolerance can even make Dawkins squeamish (hinting that he still feels a debt somewhere
to Christian virtues like fairness), you know things are rotten. Its
time to clean house and send in the reformers. How about Sarah Palin?
How did it come to this? Answer: amnesia and ingrown reinforcement of lies.
Theyve got their history all wrong. Galileo was not a
victim of faith vs science (see biography)
and especially not Darwin. In Victorian England, the Anglicans jumped onto the Darwin bandwagon
wholeheartedly. In fact, they had jumped onto the evolutionary bandwagon when
Robert Chambers published his evolutionary myth Vestiges of the Natural History of Creation
in 1845. Darwin biographer Janet Browne noted the remarkable flexibility
of the Anglican church when faced with evolutionary issues by pointing to
Anglican theologian Charles Kingsley, who endorsed Darwins theory within the
pages of The Origin itself (Charles Darwin:
The Power of Place, p. 96; see more on Kingsley at
In addition, the Archbishop of Canterbury was defending writers like
Darwin who were attacking the foundations of church doctrine.
After Darwins death, the Church of England welcomed his body into
Westminster Abbey. Except for a few conservative theologians like Bishop
Samuel Wilberforce, the main Anglican critics of Darwins theory were the scientists,
like Sedgwick and Owen, who understood the danger of attributing Gods hand to
blind, undirected process of chance (see article at
And theyve got their science all wrong. Darwin subverted
science by dismantling the requirements of evidence and opening the door to storytellers
(12/22/2003 commentary) and empowering his fellow
secularists to usurp the Academy and expel any opportunity for scientific criticism
of his views (05/12/2008).
And theyve got their
theology all wrong. Darwin could not have employed reason, nor argued for the
truth of propositions and the values of honest investigation, without plagiarizing
Christian theological presuppositions that give meaning to these concepts.
Had he been consistent with his own presuppositions, he
would have grunted nonsense to get meaningless sex at the mercy of his animal past.
If the Anglicans really had faith seeking understanding, they would rewrite
the statement as follows: Charles Darwin: 200 years from your birth, the
Church of England owes you and the world an apology for accepting your views uncritically and
failing to foresee the damage that accrued to our church, culture, society, politics,
law, education, philosophy, theology and general well-being of the millions of individuals
your damnable doctrines relegated to the category of the unfit. Though too late to help the
148 million people killed by state-sponsored democide under regimes inspired by your
false and pretentious claims (11/30/2005),
we try to practice the old virtues of speaking the truth in love
and so hope that by raising awareness of the deadly power of lies we can make some amends.
Leaders of other churches without hobbles and blinders on might do well to
make this their official proclamation before the scientific societies parade their
Emperor Charles in new clothes next year (02/11/2008).
Next headline on:
Bible and Theology
Sept 14, 2008 What is the speed of thought? Computer speeds are measured
in megahertz and gigahertz, but thats only part of the story. The ability
to compute an answer to a problem depends on the programming, too. How does the
brain compare with our best computers? A scientist from UC San Francisco and
one from the Salk Institute teamed up to address that question in
Current Biology.1 Our goal here,
they wrote, is to compare the capabilities and speeds of the brain with those
of modern-day computers.
To start with, the brain has over three times as many synapses per
microliter (a billion) as a modern computer chip with 300,000,000 transistors per
microliter. Brains also have wires (neurons) that are 10 times shorter, on
average, as those on computer chips. They explained the main difference (at
least as far as structure is concerned):
The difference between brains and computers arises not so much in the size of the
elementary computer elements as in their numbers: where a modern microprocessor
chip has 109 transistors, the human brain contains
about 1014 [100 trillion] synapses (and a brain uses
about as much power as a microprocessor). A state of-the-art microprocessor
could have close to 30 km of total wire connecting its transistors, where the brain
has 3 to 4 x 105 km of wire (most of which is axons).
The brains total wire, then, is about the same as the mean distance from
the earth to the moon (a little less than 4 × 105 km).
Clearly, although the sizes of the basic computer elements are not so different
between brains and computers, what is vastly (a million fold) different is the
number of elements.
Now to processing speed. If a pulse in a neuron is assumed to represent an
instruction, the brain wins again: 1011 (100 billion)
instructions per second, a hundredfold more than that of a computer with multiple
cores. (The computer catches up in gigahertz processing speed what the
brain exceeds in numbers of synapses.)
So far, theyve only been talking components. Major
differences between the brain and a computer appear when the architecture is
considered. Computers use a von Neumann architecture, in which the central
processing unit (CPU) is segregated from the memory. This forces computer CPUs into
a one-instruction-at-a-time straitjacket. Each instruction requires calls to
memory, and each component has to keep in sync with the master clock.
The brain, by contrast, is the master of flexible multiprocessing. They explain:
Neural circuits have no need for a central clock to keep actions
exactly synchronized because any neural circuit in the brain has its own instructions
embedded in the circuit itself: whenever it is presented with information,
the circuit knows just what to do with it. Because the brain is not
bound by the Von Neumann architecture, exactly what a particular neural circuit
computes can be modified on the fly without reference to other circuits (as when
we shift our focus of attention from one thing to another) and can also
remember things for a lifetime (how to ride a bicycle).
Another major difference is that the brain is massively parallel and computers
are not. Look at a shape like a star. The computer has to examine each
pixel and calculate its relationship to the neighboring pixels (or to standard
shapes) before figuring out what it is; a little girl can see it all at once and
know what it is instantly. Humans can handle enormous quantities of data
all at once.
Nagarajan and Stevens admit that computer designers have been making
enormous improvements. Parallel processing is all the rage these days. In time,
they may catch up with the brain; but for now, The problem with emulating
the brains massive parallelism, however, is that we are not even close
to being able to use the increased hardware power efficiently, they said.
This is not to disparage computers. They are better at some
things. They can perform repetitive
tasks with high reliability, for instance, while brains, working probabilistically,
get distracted, bored, or make errors.. This is good, though, for another reason:
The four times out of five that information about a nerve impulse arriving at a
synapse is not relayed on to the target cell by a synapse could be viewed as
errors, but in fact synapses are designed this way. Neural circuits
are highly redundant, with the same information arriving simultaneously
at many synapses on different neurons so that, on average, neural
components are predictable, in the same sense that a fair coin is predictable:
you never know on a given flip whether heads or tails will turn up, but you can
be sure that there will be very close to 500 heads out of a thousand flips.
An added benefit of this redundancy is high fault tolerance. We dont
have to worry when one neuron goes bad. One bad transistor in a computer,
though, can be catastrophic. You can lose neurons as you age and still
function at a high level. Heres another design
feature in your head: Because of another brain design principle,
the fact that neurons with the same function are located close to one another
in the brain (this is called the doctrine of localization of function), the
brain is much more tolerant to random death of neurons than it is to
focal injury (such as a bullet wound or a stroke).
Theyre not done yet. Neurons can alter the strength of
their signals without a hardware upgrade. They can do this by changing the
probability of transmission through a particular neuron on the fly. And heres
another big brain bonus: scalability:
There is a final big difference between the designs of computers and brains
considered here. Every time the performance of a computer circuit is improved,
major design changes are necessary. Even modest alterations, like modifying
the thickness of the wires on the computer chip, mean the computing components on
the chip must be rearranged (a very difficult process). For evolution to work,
however, neural circuits must have what is called a scalable architecture.
This means that the computing performance can be improved by simply increasing the
number of components and enlarging the circuit in accordance with the original design.
Brain circuits generally have scalable architectures so that, for example, we are
not even aware of the usual two to three fold differences in the size of brain areas
from one brain to the next.
That fleeting reference to evolution seemed out of place amidst all the talk of
In conclusion, they calculated the speed of thought. Unfortunately,
as discussed above, comparing computers to brains is like comparing apples to oranges
(or Macintoshes to geniuses). One way to compare them is to have them run the same
benchmark test. Heres one: identify faces. The human brain shines
here. We can outperform computers at face recognition by an order of magnitude
with higher accuracy. But remember thats with a brain that is
also doing many other things simultaneously. Giving a special-purpose computer
the same task is cheating. Realistically, One of the most difficult
things for a computer to do is to extract objects from a visual scene, but we do
this so rapidly and effortlessly that we are not even aware that it is hard.
Another benchmark is the famous Turing test: the thinking test.
If a questioner could not tell the difference between a human answer and a
computers answer, the computer passes: it becomes indistinguishable from a
thinking person. The authors refer here to a
Turing test the computer has so far not been able to beat: the CAPTCHA operation.
Youve probably logged into secure websites where the computer presented you
with a distorted word on a scrambled background that you had to identify and retype.
Why do site designers do that to you? Because they know that computers have a terrible
time getting the answer right. The ease with which CAPTCHAs can be
developed exposes obvious gaps between capabilities of computers and the brain.
Speaking of CAPTCHA (which stands for Completely Automated Public
Turing test to tell Computers and Humans Apart), Science had a triumphant-sounding
paper about computer scientists who have figured out how to harness the collective
power of millions of human brains. Since we humans are so good at CAPTCHA,
the team decided to re-CAPTCHA some of our spare resources.
Humans are performing about 100 million CAPTCHA operations a day anyway, so why
not take advantage of all that processing power?
Its kind of like how SETI@home uses idle cycles from millions of computers.
By adding a second word needing recognition to each CAPTCHA site, reCAPTCHA takes just
a few fractions of a second of your time to help digitize books! How?
There are massive projects underway to digitize libraries. These efforts employ optical
character recognition (OCR) to convert photocopied pages to computer-coded characters,
so they can enjoy all the benefits of search engines and cross-references.
Unfortunately, OCR often has trouble recognizing words. These unknown words are
farmed out to reCAPTCHA sites for humans to interpret. A clever cross-checking
mechanism makes sure the answer is not bogus. The human-deciphered answer is
correct over 99% of the time, compared to OCRs success rate of 80% or so.
Its almost funny how these designers speak of the brain with its wasted
human processing power being put to good use. But they really do have
human benefit in mind. We hope that reCAPTCHA continues to have a
positive impact on modern society by helping to digitize human knowledge,
they said in conclusion.
And so, in conclusion, we return to Nagarajan and Stevens who, in their conclusion,
speculated on whether computers will ever catch up with the human brain.
Progress in computer design has certainly been impressive (Moores Law and all),
but we believe the problem is not computer power and ability to program
parallel machines, but rather our nearly total ignorance about what computations
are actually carried out by the brain,
they said. The last word: Our view is that computers will never
equal our best abilities until we can understand the brain's design principles
and the mathematical operations employed by neural circuits well enough to build
machines that incorporate them.
1. Naveen Nagarajan and Charles F. Stevens, How does the speed of thought
compare for brains and digital computers?,
Biology, Vol 18, R756-R758, 09 September 2008.
2. von Ahn, Maurer, McMillen, Abraham and Blum, reCAPTCHA: Human-Based
Character Recognition via Web Security Measures,
12 September 2008: Vol. 321. no. 5895, pp. 1465-1468, DOI: 10.1126/science.1160379.
Now wasnt that an absolutely satisfying,
fascinating, thrilling journey into your head, and a classic look at
intelligent design science at work? Dont show this to Eugenie Scott
or shes likely to have a cerebral hemorrhage. How many mutations did
Star Death Amazing but Puzzling 09/13/2008
Wow! Scientists admit it: the brain is
built on design principles. It is a massively parallel, robust, fault-tolerant
machine that has kept the Turing Test challenge intact throughout decades of rapid,
phenomenal computer design. Its design can be compared with computers that we
design and it is far superior. How on earth can anyone believe for a millisecond
that this wonder just happened? And consider: they didnt tell the half of it.
The scientists vastly oversimplified things. Your brain is handling millions of subconscious
operations at the same time you are thinking about this article, or identifying a
face or a CAPTCHA word. Give a supercomputer all that simultaneous work and it would melt down.
A computer has to be plugged in or recharged, but you can wander the globe.
Your computer takes several minutes to boot up, but you can be awake and aware instantly.
It has to be protected from liquids, but you can dive into a pool with your
CPU not shorting out. And it runs on potatoes! (a favorite
quip of A. E. Wilder-Smith, our Scientist of the Month).
Think! If design principles are required to understand the brains
operation, of what purpose or value (or credibility) is evolutionary theory? While youre at
it, think about the conundrum of a brain thinking about itselfor a brain
thinking about the conundrum of a brain thinking about itself. If some day a computer
can fool a judge into thinking it is human, will that computer really
be self-aware? Will it experience love, worship, beauty, or truth?
Robots in Star Trek probe these questions, but the fact is, we design computers,
and computers dont design us (except in science fiction).
Get real. Think. If design principles were active in our creation, then there was
a Designer who employed those principles. This includes the hardware and the
software. You would not be able to consciously think about
anything without an embedded BiOS (Bible Input-Output System) that the Designer built in, which gives you the
preconditions for intelligibility of the world. Everyone has it. You couldnt
run the thinking application without it. But just as
a good computer can be tricked into running malware (malicious software), a created
being can be tricked into thinking its brain is a product of evolution.
That is necessarily false. The brain could not even run that malware without the
When youre infected with this deep-seated, entrenched virus,
or any of the other malware that information terrorists inserted into the global shipment,
the only solution is to recognize that fact, then wipe, reinstall, and
patch. Fortunately, outstanding technical support is just a call away
and its free, straight from the Designer himself. Operations
Manuals are also freely available by request (see
and Bible Gateway, or that
book in your hotel room drawer).
Got cycles? Think, then thank. Worship.
CAPTCHA the thrill of the Psalmist who exclaimed,
I will praise Thee, for I am fearfully and wonderfully made.
Wonderful are Your works, and my soul knows it very well
139:14, italics added).
Next headline on:
Sept 13, 2008 Twinkle, twinkle, little stBOOM! The explosions of some dying
stars are so powerful yet so rapid, mere measurements seem inadequate to describe them.
Two death-star events were reported in recent articles. Despite the bravado of textbook
orthodoxy, the articles both mentioned that astronomers really dont understand
whats going on all that well.
Eta Carina is one of the most intriguing stars in the southern sky.
Its twin-lobed, bloated bubble blown out by the eruption of 1843 has given it
the name the Homunculus Nebula (see dazzling photograph on
Astronomy Picture of the Day
for June 17). The 1843 bubble, and another estimated to be a thousand years
old, have been well known. Astronomers
recently detected, however, a newer, more powerful eruption that is catching up to the bubble.
Geographic News reported that this material is moving outward at 1.5 million
miles per hour. It is so energetic it borders on the power of a supernova
the explosion that usually ends a large stars life. Is this a supernova
imposter? Team lead Nathan Smith (UC Berkeley) commented, It means,
essentially, that we still dont fully understand what is going on
in the deep interiors of massive stars shortly before they die.
If you think that boom was big, wait till you hear about the latest
gamma-ray burst that was seen March 19. Gamma-ray bursts are the most powerful
explosions in the universe. They were only discovered in the late 1960s.
said this one, numbered GRB 080319B, was aimed directly at earth. Good thing it was 7.5
billion light-years away. Its jets were blasting material our direction
at 99.99995 percent the speed of light, the article claims. Within 15 seconds of detection by
the orbiting Swift satellite, it had become bright enough to be seen with the naked
eye even from that astronomical distance. Thats powerful.
Red dwarf stars, like soldiers, slowly fade away. Larger
stars shed their outer envelopes fairly calmly before retiring as white dwarfs.
Supernovas explode, growing to maximum brightness over a few days or weeks, and then
dimming for months as they form neutron stars, pulsars or black holes.
Gamma-ray bursts are the flashbulbs of the cosmos.
Most appear for 10 seconds or less. Some can flash as brief as a few thousandths of
a second. Thats why it took so long to discover them; you have to be
looking at the right place at the right time. Moreover, astronomers did not
realize anything could be so energetic.
Do astronomers understand these colossal explosions? They
certainly have models. National
Geographic explained, though, that As a stars core collapses, it creates
a black hole or neutron star that, through processes not fully understood,
drive powerful gas jets outward. When the jets impact gas previously
ejected in earlier explosions, they heat the gas, which astronomers detect as
afterglows. Some astronomers still find it so hard to believe that explosions
this bright can be seen from billions of light-years away. They have argued that
they must be nearby objects. Its almost unfathomable that any process could produce so
much energy so quickly.
The narrow beams of the burst are emitted from the poles of the
spinning star or black hole. Astronomers believe an ultra-fast component of the
beam from GRB 080319B beam was just 0.4 degree across. Because this rare jackpot burst was
aimed right along our line of sight, it is providing astronomers with new data
and more questions as they seek to understand these astonishing explosions.
Data on scientific objects is always incomplete.
The explanations about them, therefore, are also necessarily incomplete.
If star death, which can be observed in a flash, is poorly understood, how about
star birth which, because theory says it takes millions of years, cannot be
observed from start to finish?
Find a handy-dandy list of Darwinist talking points against intelligent design in
entry, Is Intelligent Design the New Cussword? If you find
this one depressing, read the prior 09/02/2005
entry, How Proteins Build Teeth Like Glass on a Mattress.
Astronomers piece together stages of star birth
from actual stars presumed to be at different stages. The charts and
explanations sound convincing. One must ask, though, whether this approach
assumes what needs to be proved. Deciding that stars evolve, and then putting
them into an evolutionary sequence, is circular reasoning. We can see stars
age. We can see them die. But we can only theorize from laws of gravity,
diffusion, viscosity, nuclear physics, quantum mechanics and other principles what
a gas cloud would do, given millions of years.
Stars are not irreducibly complex structures like those in biology.
They do not contain information. It seems reasonable to trust models of star
birth from well-known laws that have been amply confirmed in the lab.
There are many examples in the history of science, though, when plausible models
turned out to be wrong. Usually, the real world proves more complex than
the models. If we struggle with modeling processes that can be observed in
a flash, we should at least retain a certain level of humility about scientific models
of unobservable processes, and hold them in a tentative way.
Next headline on:
Sea: the Light 09/13/2008
Sept 13, 2008 Some of the most abundant unicellular organisms in the ocean
are diatoms. Physicists are eagerly studying the optics of their pill-box-like
shells, because they can manipulate light in surprising ways. Imitation of
diatom light tricks may lead to biosynthetic devices like improved drug delivery
systems and solar cells, an article on the BBC
The intricate designs of their silica shell walls are not
just geometrically pleasing (03/19/2002) and
strong (02/19/2003) and artistically awesome
Scientists have found that they strongly diffract light. Their optical
qualities may work to spread the light evenly throughout the cell bodies of these
organisms whose light-harvesting chloroplasts depend on light. Maybe this
accounts for the particular patterns on species of diatoms that come in all
shapes and sizes and inhabit almost every body of water on the planet.
The article speculated about the evolution of diatoms. Why have
diatoms evolved these nanostructures? reporter Elisabeth Mitchell asked.
The even diffusion of light seemed to offer a satisfactory explanation for her.
She added one line, though, that wins Stupid Evolution Quote of the Week:
Nature started to evolve complex colour and light manipulating systems during
the Cambrian explosion about 500 million years ago.
Moving right along, Current Biology1 mentioned another
creature with a remarkable ability to respond to light in this case, moonlight.
The creature is the Palolo worm of the South Pacific. Foster and Roenneberg were talking
about lunar effects on biological behavior when they said,
One well known example will suffice to illustrate lunar related rhythms in the animal world. The Palolo worm (Eunice viridis) is found on several coral islands near to Samoa and the Fiji Islands. The palolos reproduce by swarming during the last quarter of the moon in October and November. The terminal parts of their bodies drop off and float over the surface of the water, releasing sperm and eggs. The natives of the Samoan Islands have known this for centuries and predict the date and time of day when the emergence occurs so that they can be ready to catch the worms for food. Studies have attempted to determine whether it is the direct effect of lunar illuminance which stimulates swarming. This seems unlikely because cloudy or clear whether [sic] conditions have no effect on the spawning date. Furthermore, the Palolo worm lives at depths of 3-5 metres within coral rocks, where moonlight would not easily penetrate. Studies in an allied species of polychaete worm have demonstrated that moon-related rhythms in behaviour continue in isolation from any environmental influence. Collectively the data suggest that the Palolo worm and other polychaete worms have an endogenous circa-lunar timer.
In other words, these sea worms dont need to see the moon to know when its up.
They can tell when it is just
the right hour of the right month of the right time of the year to come up and spawn.
As for what kind of accurate lunar calendar it uses, and how it arose, they didnt say.
Another paper by Wilcockson and Zhang in Current Biology2 discussed sea
creatures that adjust their biological rhythms to the tides: crustacea, annelids, molluscs,
fish and even a few insects. As to how that kind of timekeeping evolved in
such a diverse array of creatures, they could only speculate, Moreover, marine
animals pre-date their terrestrial relatives and the question arises as to
whether circadian clocks could have originally evolved from tidal oscillators?
Speaking of the moon, do we exhibit lunar rhythms?
Foster and Roenneberg denied that the moon affects human behavior.
They discounted all the urban legends about human lunacy and said, there is no
convincing evidence that the moon can affect the biology of our own species....
the moon appears to have no effect upon our physiology. As evidence, they provided
a table of studies that disprove all alleged effects of the moon on human behavior
and biology, despite the ongoing strong beliefs of many people to the contrary.
If an individual expects certain behaviours to occur with the full moon,
they said, then selective recall and/or selective perception will reinforce this view.
Humans are strongly responsive, though, to the 24-hour day as any jet-lagged
businessman can attest. How that evolved, they could only speculate.
1. Foster and Roenneberg, Human Responses to the Geophysical Daily, Annual and Lunar Cycles,
Volume 18, Issue 17, 9 September 2008, Pages R784-R794, doi:10.1016/j.cub.2008.07.003.
2. Wilcockson and Zhang, Circatidal Clocks,
Biology, Volume 18, Issue 17, 9 September 2008, Pages R753-R755, doi:10.1016/j.cub.2008.06.041.
Human biology can be affected by the moon by
intelligent design. Didnt Foster and Roenneberg realize that the Jews
were commanded to the blow the rams horn each new moon? Doesnt the sight
of a full moon generate design and purpose to sit by the lake on a date?
Isnt the phenomenon of a lunar or solar eclipse a cause for intelligent
humans to purposefully go outside and view the awesome sight? Only when
thinking of humans as biological robots can a scientist say there is no influence.
A mind with choice can do what genes alone cannot.
Animals Got Rhythm; Scientists Dont 09/12/2008
Human minds can also investigate nature and appreciate the
design in creatures that exhibit optical perfection and accurate timekeeping.
One might notice that diatoms and worms are among the simplest of organisms
(but see 10/01/2004),
lacking the brain power to plan, design and execute the systems embedded within
them. It is sad that some observers believe in implausible miracles.
There are plausible miracles, you see. One that is implausible is that
optical perfection sprung into existence in a Cambrian explosion.
Next headline on:
Sept 12, 2008 Heres a biological puzzle with plenty of room for young
researchers to solve: the workings of biological rhythms. All animals respond to rhythms
in periods of hours, days, weeks, months, and years, but as George E. Bentley (UC Berkeley) wrote in
Current Biology,1 how they do it is only
partially understood. Sometimes the questions are simple and the
answers are complicated, he ended his article.
And complicated it is. Heres just a portion of the caption to one of his
diagrams called Proposed novel pathways of photoperiodic timing in birds
and mammals to glaze your eyeballs:
(A) A diagrammatic representation of the proposed novel pathway for photoperiodic timing in birds. (1) The light signal enters the brain via the skull and is detected by extra-retinal, deep brain photoreceptors (2), the exact identity and location of which are not yet known. Long day lengths induce TSH and Dio2 expression (3) in the pars tuberalis (red) and mediobasal hypothalamus, respectively, thereby causing a local increase in T3. This increase in T3 is conveyed via an unknown pathway to promote the release of gonadotropin-releasing hormone (GnRH) from neurons (4) in the pre-optic area. GnRH then induces the release of gonadotropins luteinizing hormone (LH) and follicle-stimulating hormone (FSH) from the pituitary gland into the bloodstream to cause gonadal activation (5). Note the lack of involvement of melatonin in this proposed pathway, even though the pineal gland in birds is light-sensitive in its own right.
(There will be no quiz.) That was just the bird part. A different complex
system exists in mammals. But the complexity does not end there.
Animals, with their widely differing gestation periods, exhibit many variations
on the theme. Some respond to melatonin and thyroid hormones in different
ways, at different rates, and from different parts of the brain. There appears
to be no unifying mechanism. From hamster to elephant, animals have not told evolutionists
what rules or natural law govern their rhythms (see footnote 3 for two attempts).
Bentley commented, However exciting and potentially important these recent
findings might be from the perspectives of ecology, physiology and evolution,
its obvious that they do not provide us with the full picture.
For example, how is this common mechanism tweaked so as to cause short-day breeding
in some species and long-day breeding in others? He did not explain
who or what does the tweaking.
Bentleys article was one of several in a special issue of
Current Biology devoted to the phenomenon of animal and plant rhythms.
In an Editorial in the same issue,2 Albert Goldbeter
(U of Brussels) began, The development and harmonious functioning of an
organism depend on the exquisite coordination of myriad intertwined biological processes.
Just one of those is biological timing. Animals need to know when to eat,
when to sleep, when to hibernate, when to reproduce, and much more.
The period of biological rhythms spans more than ten orders of magnitude, from a fraction of a second up
to tens of years, he added. These rhythms are tightly coupled to
regulatory processes in the cell and the animal as a whole.
Only now are
scientists beginning to understand the multiple feedback loops and regulatory
processes that begin at the molecular level and extend up to the visible behavior
of a whole population. This is a field ripe for systems biology a new
approach to biology that keeps the big picture in mind. Goldbeter explained:
Because rhythmic behavior cannot be ascribed to a single gene or enzyme,
and rather constitutes a systemic property originating from regulatory interactions
between coupled elements in a metabolic or genetic network, cellular rhythms
represent a prototypic field of research in systems biology. For
instance, the big-picture look has revealed a phenomenon called the limit cycle.
This concept is a central figure in the study of biological rhythms, he said.
How do limit cycles work?
Models help unraveling the dynamics of cellular rhythms and show that sustained
oscillatory behavior often corresponds, in the concentration space, to the evolution
toward a closed curve known as a limit cycle.
Cycling once around this trajectory takes exactly one
period. The closed trajectory is generally unique in a given set of conditions,
and is particularly stable as it can be reached regardless of initial conditions.
His use of evolution here (one of only two mentions in the two papers) does
not refer to Darwinian evolution, but to the unfolding of the limit cycle as a
consequence of multiple inputs. The only other mention of evolution, by Bentley, was
only a passing reference and that in the most general terms (see quote in
paragraph 2, above). Other papers in the series mentioned evolution only in
passing; only two tried to discuss it in some detail, with questionable
In his final paragraph, Goldbeter described the pervasive and intertwined
nature of biological rhythms with an analogy. Again, dont cram for a quiz.
The ubiquity and physiological significance of biological rhythms can be illustrated by one last example, which shows how rhythms are often nested in a manner reminiscent of Russian dolls. In the process of reproduction, several rhythms play key roles at different stages and with markedly distinct periods. Fertilization of an egg triggers a train of Ca2+ [doubly ionized calcium] spikes that are essential for successful initiation of development. Prior to these Ca2+ oscillations of a period of the order of minutes, ovulation requires appropriate levels of LH and FSH established through pulsatile signaling by GnRH with a period close to one hour (the response of pituitary cells to GnRH also involves high-frequency Ca2+ oscillations). The ovulation cycle is itself periodic, and takes the form of the menstrual cycle in the human female. Capping these various periodicities, in many animal species reproductive activity varies according to an annual rhythm controlled by the photoperiod, through modulation of the circadian secretion of melatonin. In a final manifestation of the ticking of the biological clock, ovulation stops at menopause. At the very core of life, the reproductive process highlights the deeply rooted links between rhythms and time in biological systems.
1. George E. Bentley, Biological Timing: Sheep, Dr. Seuss, and Mechanistic Ancestry,
Volume 18, Issue 17, 9 September 2008, Pages R736-R738.
2. Guest editorial by Albert Goldbeter, Biological rhythms: Clocks for all times,
Biology, Vol 18, R751-R753, 09 September 2008.
3. A quick word search on evolution in the other six papers in the
series found only two discussing it in some detail. One European teams analysis, however, did not
explain how these complex systems actually originated by mutation and natural selection.
They provided only a just-so story on how the different mechanisms in different groups of
animals might have been related ancestrally. Their language glossed
over the origin of a multitude of complex systems with phrases like the evolution of and
the development of sprinkled with doubt-words like probably,
likely, may have and our interpretation. They also spoke of
the flow of information and repeatedly mentioned function without
explaining those design-theoretic concepts in Darwinian terms. Overall, it
was clear they were assuming evolution rather than demonstrating it; they assumed
that natural selection was capable of providing whatever structure that the
evolutionary pressures were demanding.
Here is their complete citation (reiterated with diagram in their Figure 4);
it can be considered representative of the other 5 papers in the series that mentioned
evolution (most of them with just a passing reference that was not germane to their subject matter,
and some with contrary evidence and damaging admissions).
The unusual direction of information flow described here probably reflects an ancestral mechanism preceding the evolution of a separation between the hypothalamus and pituitary and the development of a local portal blood system linking the tissues. In ancestral vertebrates (Figure 4, left), it is likely that photoreceptor expression in multiple sites in the central nervous system (CNS) served discrete principal functions: control of vision (lateral eyes), circadian rhythms (pineal structures), and photoperiodism (deep brain and pituitary). In mammals (Figure 4, right), photoreceptor loss has led to the lateral eyes assuming all light-sensing functions, with pineal melatonin secretion becoming a humoral relay for photoperiodic information to pituitary and deep-brain sites. Additionally, distinct regions of the ancestral brain have become specialized for different functions, notably the hypothalamus for integration of environmental cues and the pituitary for hormone production. Our interpretation is that photoperiodic control has been assumed by TSH expression at the PT-brain interface, allowing information encoded in the melatonin signal to reach hypothalamic sites. Birds may be viewed as an intermediate scenario in which compartmentalization of endocrine control into sites of integration (hypothalamus) and output (pituitary) has occurred, but extraretinal photoreceptor sites persist. The highly derived state of the photoperiod-transduction pathway in mammals may well reveal the constraints imposed by their nocturnal ancestry.
Hanon et al, Ancestral TSH Mechanism Signals Summer in a Photoperiodic Mammal,
Biology, Volume 18, Issue 15, 5 August 2008, Pages 1147-1152.
The other paper that discussed evolution in detail arguably only spun just-so stories uneasily
in the face of contrary evidence:
A re-evaluation of the role of the TTFL [transcriptional/translational feedback loops]
in eukaryotes is underway. Can the cyanobacterial clock system [a complex
clock in the simplest of unicellular organisms] tell us anything about clocks in eukaryotes?
Eukaryotic circadian genes have no detectable homology to kaiABC sequences,
so if there is an evolutionary relationship between the bacterial and eukaryotic systems,
it is so diverged as to be genetically invisible. But what about the possibility
of convergence to a fundamentally similar biochemical mechanism? It might seem implausible that clocks of independent origin would converge upon an essentially similar core PTO [post-translational
oscillator] made more robust by an overlying TTFL. However, the
advantages that accrue to the cyanobacterial system by having
a post-translational mechanism at its core are also relevant to eukaryotic clocks.
For example, individual mammalian fibroblasts express cell-autonomous, self-sustained
circadian oscillations of gene expression that are largely unperturbed by cell division
in a fashion reminiscent of cyanobacteria. Could the necessity for
imperturbability, even when buffeted by the massive intracellular changes provoked by cell division,
provide an evolutionary driving force for circadian clock mechanisms to converge
on a relatively similar core mechanism? The results from cyanobacteria,
combined with recent results from eukaryotic systems that do not easily fit into
the original TTFL formulation, embolden such speculations.
Foster and Roenneberg, Human Responses to the Geophysical Daily, Annual and Lunar Cycles,
Biology, Vol 18, R816-R825, 09 September 2008.
Clocks within clocks within clocks wouldnt
William Paley be astonished. Pay no mind to those
Darwinian storytellers in the footnotes; they are assuming 99% of what they need
to prove, and still scrambling to come up with plots that thinking people would not laugh at.
Naturalism and 9/11 09/11/2008
Next headline on:
Sept 11, 2008 Its been seven years since the horrific terrorist attacks
in America woke up everyone to the reality of evil. Secular, naturalistic
evolutionists must of necessity explain evil as an artifact of pointless, aimless,
purposeless acts of nature. Did the September day that changed the world change the
aims or rhetoric of the scientists and educators who are determined to keep all
mention of God out of our schools and scientific institutions?
It appears that the naturalistic evolutionists have not changed since 9/11.
In most cases when they talk about morality, (1) every moral condition is to be explained by
amoral natural processes, including terrorism; (2) they presuppose values that are difficult to account for
in Darwinian terms, and (3) morality notwithstanding, they preach that creation and
intelligent design are to be sternly opposed as if they are evil.
- Whats the point? Hanna Kokko (U of Helsinki) was interviewed
in Current Biology.1 After using an example
of how short-sighted evolution can be to ridicule intelligent design
and the intelligence of the designer, she was asked, arent
there bigger problems in the world? So, turning to profundity, she
quoted Bertrand Russell on the value of pure research. She then preached on the value
of thinking long-term (which is ironic, considering she had just described how
short-sighted evolution can be). We ought to consider our long-term impact on the environment,
she said. That prompted a follow-up question that seemed out of
place in an exclusively pro-Darwin magazine:
But scientists surely arent saints themselves are they?
Kokko did not explain how the long-term interests of people can be reconciled with
the needs of the environment, or how the morality-tinged words saint, honesty, wicked and selfish entered
into the Darwinian vocabulary except with this short anecdote, hinting that she is
aware of the conundrum:
No, we fly
too much but at least there is a certain honesty about it: we tend to admit that.
Were a bit as selfish as the others, but at least we get some
wicked pleasure out of saying it aloud. We ought to complain when
society hasnt established sensible rules that serve the long-term
interests of people.
My cousins recently looked at the proofs of a popular
Finnish book on evolution that Ive coauthored. I was perhaps expecting
them to comment on my claims that evolution has something to do with our troubled
relationship with the environment, or challenge my views on how we can live humanely
despite being products of natural selection. But what they
asked me was far simpler. They were simply baffled about where I got all
this information; who told me all these cool stories?
Safely off the hook, Kokko went on to praise the value of science
education, and to admire the younger generation of Finnish students, who show a far
greater acceptance of evolution than older ones and are also more
environmentally aware. So we never got to hear how she reconciles
moral and theological values with the short-sighted blindness of natural selection.
Would she have grounds for calling the terrorist attacks evil?
- Superstition for better fitness:
Scientist published an interesting twist on evolution: Darwins theory of
natural selection helps explain why people believe nonsense. Avoiding black
cats and ladders and rubbing a rabbits foot are no longer moral failings,
but rather adaptive strategies sustained by evolutionary forces. Interestingly,
the article refers to the work of the aforementioned Hanna Kokko, who, with
colleague Kevin Foster of Harvard, sought to determine exactly when
such potentially false connections pay off. Superstition can
be good for you, in other words.
As if to pre-empt creationist ridicule for this idea, the article continued,
Rather than author just-so stories for every possible superstition
from lucky rabbits feet to Mayan numerology Foster and Kokko
worked with mathematical language and a simple definition for superstition
that includes animals and even bacteria. The definition was not given
by New Scientist, but the mathematical rule boils down to this: As long as
the cost of believing a superstition is less than the cost of missing a real
association, superstitious beliefs will be favoured. (They admitted,
later in the article, that this rule does not always hold.)
Their rule seems to rely on a philosophical assumption, however.
Real associations can only be alleged if one presupposes the correspondence
theory of truth the confidence that our sensory perceptions correspond to external
reality. Some theologians have argued that this presupposition cannot be
derived from naturalism. It requires reference to eternal truth, which in
turn requires an eternal Truth-giver, or God.
Surprisingly, New Scientist
gave the last word to a critic of the Foster-Kokko hypothesis. One can almost
hear philosophers and theologians smirking in the background:
However, Wolfgang Forstmeier, an evolutionary biologist at the Max Planck
Institute of Ornithology in Starnberg, Germany, argues that by linking cause
and effect often falsely science is a simply dogmatic form of superstition.
But then,our background philosophers and theologians ask, isnt Forstmeier
begging the question? How does he define ignorance without presupposing the
correspondence theory of truth? And how is contradicting oneself viewed as bad,
if natural selection can produce superstitious beliefs and call it fitness?
In the end, this article did not address the origin of evil, either let alone
grounds for labeling something like 9/11 as evil. Could not superstition be
judged a means of attaining fitness from the terrorists point of view?
You have to find the trade off between being superstitious and
being ignorant, he says. By ignoring building evidence that contradicts
their long-held ideas, quite a lot of scientists tend to be ignorant quite
often, he says.
- Those evil creationists: Scientific
American seems to be able to smell evil even if they cant define it.
Its those creationists trying to get their views in the science classrooms.
Suspects included VP nominee Sarah Palin
News #1 and #2),
Louisiana governor Bobby Jindal, and the
Discovery Institute. Their crime: using buzzwords, rhetorical shifts, faulty
reasoning (They have this idea that its a zero-sum game, so anything
you can do to knock evolution down actually promotes creationism without having to
say the word), and retooled approaches to sneak creationism into the classroom
(but see Evolution
The article failed to explain, though, why any of this is bad in Darwins universe. After all,
evolution is the linchpin of modern biology, explaining everything from
antibiotic resistance in bacteria to the progression of species found in the
fossil record, the article said. If evolution explains everything, surely it could explain the
fitness of the majority of the human population that wants creationism to get a
fair hearing. On what moral grounds, then, or by what force of natural selection,
could the NCSE resist these efforts? Robert Crowther responded to this article for
- Teaching points: As stated in the update to yesterdays entry
(09/10/2008), a consortium of scientific societies
is planning a big public forum to promote evolution. A key goal of the meeting
is to explain why intelligent design is not science. Needless to say, no
advocates of ID were invited on the panel. This seems a continuation of the pro-Darwin
strategy immediately after 9/11. PBS aired a series on Evolution with
no explanation for moral evil, and no opportunity for opposing views to get a hearing
For those who want to hear both
sides, a stimulating online debate is in progress.
Views.com seeks to air the best arguments of verified experts on both sides
of controversial issues. This months debate is Does intelligent
design have merit? Visitors can not only read the views of senior fellows
of the Discovery Institute (cf.
News) going up against the NCSE and Americans United, but can
vote on who is winning and submit their responses something Casey Luskin
News is rallying readers to do.
1. Q & A: Hanna Kokko, Current
Biology, Volume 18, Issue 17, 9 September 2008, Pages R726-R727, doi:10.1016/j.cub.2008.06.042.
Once you unmask the naturalists quandary
that nothing he or she says can make any judgments about truth or morality,
its over. If we hit the buzzer every time they borrowed Judeo-Christian
concepts and words, they would not be able to get an edge in wordwise, or vice versa.
Remembering 9/11: Revisit our hymn tribute the day of the 9/11 attacks in 2001, the day after the
09/10/2001 entry. Remember how Nature
(09/19/2001) and NASA (09/14/2001)
suddenly got religion in the face of evil for a brief period? Do you remember the bad
timing of PBS that tried to air its Evolution series just a week later?
the Sept 2001 page for other stories that emerged from
the news about the attack.
Next headline on:
Politics and Ethics
Bible and Theology
Are You Too Dumb to Understand Evolution? 09/10/2008
Sept 10, 2008 Astrobiologist David Deamer believes that life can spontaneously
emerge without design, but he thinks lay people are too uneducated to understand how
this is possible, so he gives them the watered-down version of Darwins natural
selection instead, which he knows is inadequate to explain the complexity of life.
Thats what he seemed to be telling reporter Susan Mazur
in an interview for the Scoop
(New Zealand). Is the lay public really too dense for the deeper knowledge of how evolution
Suzan Mazur: Change of subject. Why does NASA promote natural selection
as the only mechanism of evolution in its literature for example, in
Astrobiology Primer, whose editor is a priest, and on television in the program
Origins of Life?
Susan Mazur has written about the Altenberg 16 before
asking some of its participants hard questions about why the Darwinian establishment tapeworm
continues to feed unenlightened information to the public at public expense
about how evolution works. She responded to Deamers rationalization by
suggesting that the public would accept evolution more if the science was where
it should be. Thats when Deamer revealed another reason for keeping
the truth from the public:
David Deamer: NASA is speaking to the general public. Theyre
just trying to keep it simple and explain evolution to people who may not
know much about it.
Suzan Mazur: But there are other mechanisms contributing to evolution.
The public is not being told about this. Not informing the public is
not really serving the public.
David Deamer: The Astrobiology Primer and the Origins of Life
program are intended for a lay audience. Biologists agree that life
started simple and became more complex through a natural process, and at
the most general level we call that process evolution.
If I were teaching an advanced class in evolutionary biology to a
college level audience, they would have enough preparation to deal with
the other aspects that go into the evolutionary process beyond Darwins
initial explanation. It takes a lot of background to understand the
details that contribute to the evolutionary process.
For instance, the Altenberg 16 you have written about are professional
biologists who are trying to go beyond the simplistic explanations that involve
nothing more than natural selection. They are bringing to the table
ideas that require considerable knowledge to understand their argument.
I certainly wouldnt want to state that natural selection is
the only process driving evolution, but if I am going to explain what that
means my audience needs to have enough information to understand the questions
that are being raised.
David Deamer: I get the point. Unfortunately, creationists have
politicized the science so much that the very fact of evolution is being questioned.
Mazur responded that some scientific societies have a kind of fundamentalism of their
own. They are unnecessarily conservative, stick together, protect their
foundation grants instead of recognizing the validity of alternative mechanisms and
advancing the science. To her, scientific fundamentalism feeds
the creationist perspective.
Perhaps this is why scientists tend to fall back on the bedrock of
Darwins basic concepts when they speak in a public forum.
No one denies the factual basis of evolution, but we are still learning
how evolution takes place, particularly in animal and plant populations in ecosystems.
I have debated creationists and intelligent design people in public forums,
and my impression is that they are not looking for scientific truth.
Instead they are working to advance their political aim, which is to get
Christian fundamentalism taught in public schools as an alternative to evolution.
Deamer seemed exasperated. No matter what we do, the
creationists are going to focus on things we dont know and forget about all the
things we do know. To him, the creationist threat appears to justify
giving the lay public a watered-down version of evolutionary theory that not even
he believes himself.
Mazur persisted. She pointed to independent researchers whose papers
get rejected simply because they take an unorthodox approach. Deamer denied this.
He pointed to the views of Gunther Wachtershauser, whose views on the origin of life
were outside the mainstream, but were given serious consideration by the insiders.
He mentioned the unconventional views of Stephen Jay Gould (punctuated equilibria)
and E. O. Wilson (sociobiology). He did not mention, however, that all these
ideas assume naturalism.
The interview moved on to other topics, but at one point Mazur asked
Deamer about the origin of the gene. I think genetic information more or
less came out of nowhere by chance assemblages of short polymers, he said.
He dodged a question about Darwins falsifiability test. Darwin had said
that if any organ had been found that could not have been formed by successive slight
modifications, his theory would absolutely break down. Deamer said he didnt
know enough about what Darwin meant by that to make a knowledgeable comment.
Speaking of knowing, a search on the words know or
knowledge provides few examples of things Deamer thinks he knows.
The strongest claim was in response to Mazurs question whether astrobiology
has yielded any knowledge in the 10 years since it began.
Yes, absolutely. Astrobiology has put life on the Earth into a larger context
of our solar system and our galaxy. The origin of life on Earth is likely
to be a universal process, and thats why we are so excited by the discovery that
Mars once had shallow seas. Perhaps in the next decade we
will have clear evidence that life began there as well, by the same process of
self-assembly that we discussed earlier.
A context does not refer to a specific scientific fact, however, and most
of the findings he mentioned refer to geology, not the origin of life, which is his
specialty. Scrutinizing his answer for things he knows requires bypassing the likely and
perhaps statements. What remains are claims about earth history that
are largely theory-laden with evolutionary assumptions. As for his specialty,
the self-assembly of molecules prior to life, he pointed to soap bubbles as
an example, but admitted that his examples of self-assembly are downhill energetically.
Life, by contrast, uses energy to produce complexity. If self-assembly
is a spontaneous, energetically downhill process, I would define self-organization
as a step up from self-assembly in which more complex structures, including
living organisms, use energy to organize themselves into functional aggregates.
Did he have any examples of this occurring in nature? No;
thats when Mazur changed the subject and asked him that question about how evolution is
communicated to the lay public.
It also has given us a vast amount of information about the history
of life on the Earth. We now know that oceans were present well over
four billion years ago, and there is evidence for life in the isotopic record
that goes back about 3.8 billion years ago.
announced two public programs to be aired next month in Houston at a large scientific conference
on how to teach evolution in plain language. There will be a teacher forum and public
forum. For the free public forum, A panel of experts will give a non-technical
presentation on the latest geological evidence for evolution, the finding of missing
links, the importance of understanding evolution to modern societies, the nature of
science, and why intelligent design should not be considered science.
The Geological Society of America is one of five societies hosting the event.
No critics of Darwins natural selection or of evolutionary theory will be on
the panel (see GSA
announcement). Teachers will be given free copies of the NAS booklet
Science, Evolution, and Creationism without any rebuttals, such as those published by
the Discovery Institute (see Evolution
These one-sided presentations run counter to public sentiments.
News republished a 2006 Zogby Poll that showed 69% or respondents agreeing with
the statement, Biology teachers should teach Darwins theory of evolution,
but also the scientific evidence against it. Only 21% felt that
only Darwins theory should be taught. But even if they got their way,
that minority would be promoting a distorted view of evolution (Darwins natural selection)
according to David Deamer and Susan Mazur.
Come on, David, we can handle it. Give us
your best shot. Many readers of Creation-Evolution Headlines are
highly educated and can take the advanced-wizard version of evolutionary theory
instead of the watered-down Astrobiology Primer and other NASA propaganda.
While youre at it, show us some experiments of self-organization better than
soap bubbles. We stopped playing with those as kids. We cant
remember any of them generating information out of nowhere by chance, either.
Flightlessness Evolved Four Times 09/10/2008
Do creationists really just harp on what evolutionists dont know,
and ignore what they do know? You be the judge. Read eight years of
articles with the leading evolutionary biologists speaking their own words in their
own journals, and ask them, like Colin Patterson, did (see
ARN) Can you
tell me anything about evolution, any one thing that is true? In 2008
you will still get the same answer he got: silence. Oh, you may get some
and bandwagon arguments that all scientists believe
it. You may get appeals to what we
might find out in the far distant future if they keep getting their funding. But for
things they can point to that they know are true about evolution, they know less than nothing, because
things they thought they knew turned out to be wrong. Need some
proof? Revisit these entries: 09/05/2008,
and those are just from the past month.
Some day when the Darwin house of cards collapses, and the books
are opened, interviews like this are going to sound shameful and despicable.
The wizards who peep and mutter behind closed doors and deceive the public with
half-truths and big lies are not going to
have any recourse, because it will require integrity to be a scientist.
For those who excuse their misdeeds on the grounds that their opponents have a
political agenda, well, guess what: that criticism cuts both ways.
Who butters your bread, D.D.? Who you gonna vote for? Why are so many
of your colleagues liberal Democrats? Why are they so adamant about keeping
DODO in the schools? (Darwin-Only, Darwin-Only). Is that not an agenda?
The myth of the
bias-free, politically-neutral scientist in the white lab coat went out with
World War I. Lets focus, shall we, on who makes the better case
based on logic and the evidence. That person doesnt need to misrepresent his
case for the lay public.
Next headline on:
Origin of Life
Sept 10, 2008 An article on
Daily claims that the famous flightless birds African ostriches,
Australian cassowaries and emus, New Zealand kiwis and South American rheas
are unrelated. There was no flightless common ancestor. They lost their
ability to fly independently, scientists say, because of parallel evolution.
This would also mean that emus are more closely related to flying birds
than they are to ostriches even though they resemble ostriches.
A conventional evolutionary idea is a casualty of this view. Previously,
the article explains, the ratites [including emus] were used as a textbook
example of vicariance, a term that describes the geographical division of a single
species, resulting in two or more very similar sub-groups that can then undergo
further evolutionary change and eventually become very distinct from one another.
This flightless ancestor was thought to inhabit an ancient continent named
Gondwana (see 09/08/2008), which split into
Africa, South America, Australia and New Zealand. Its descendants evolved
into their characteristic forms, the textbooks said.
The new genetic analysis (part of the NSF Assembling the
Tree of Life Project) suggested to evolutionists that flying
birds flew to the new continents after the breakup of Gondwana, and lost their
flying abilities independently. That raises new questions, the article
said: For example, why did these birds evolve into such similar organisms
in such different environments? They did not even think to ask
such a thing before now. But nobody would have asked that question
without the type of data weve collected, which raises the question
in the first place.
Flightlessness is a loss of function
a downward trend that is easier to explain than flight, a gain of function.
Even so, notice how evolutionary theory and geological speculation about millions
of years led scientists down a primrose path to folly. It was not the data
that led to the textbook evolutionary view: it was the absence of data.
Enjoy the Wednesday funnies at
Todays episode: The God Gene, by John Cleese: a hilarious look at
One needs to ask
of what value evolutionary theory was in the first place. Why does one need
to even continue thinking Darwinly after so many upsets? The remarkable
similarity of emus and ostriches (despite their genes) might lead an independent
thinker (not drunk on Dar-wine) to propose that they were independently created.
If science is supposed to follow the evidence, why not at least consider the possibility?
Next headline on:
Comet Conundrums Resist Bluffing 09/09/2008
Sept 9, 2008 Scientists may claim they are learning about the origin of the
solar system, but the fine print shows them scratching their heads. This is
apparent in a couple of discoveries about comets this week.
Daily article is entitled, Comets Throw Light On Solar Systems Beginnings.
Scientists at the UKs national synchrotron lab in Oxfordshire had a chance to
examine particles from Comet Wild-2 returned from the Stardust spacecraft.
The unsuspecting reader would expect to see confirmation of a theory revealed in the
body of the article, but the opposite is found:
Dr John Bridges, from the Space Research Centre, explains the results, Comets
are starting to look a lot more complicated than the old dusty iceball idea.
For one thing Wild-2 contains material, like chromium oxides, from the hot inner
Solar System so how did that material get mixed in with a comet which has
spent most of its life beyond Neptune? It suggests that there has been
major mixing of material from inner and outer parts of the Solar System in
its earliest stages.
X-ray signatures of iron oxides in the particles also suggested to the scientists
that there could have been small trickles of water that deposited these minerals.
The scientists suggested that impacts melting the ice on the comet might have produced
these signatures, but no explanation was given how the comet got its mixture of
cold and hot ingredients from vastly different parts of the solar system.
If light is being thrown on the solar systems beginnings, it hasnt been
reflected back yet.
Daily article trumpets, Astronomers Discover Missing Link For Origin Of Comets.
What U of British Columbia scientist Brett Gladman found was a highly inclined object
orbiting the sun at 35 AU with high eccentricity. Its inclination (104°) is
beyond perpendicular to the plane of the planets, so its orbit is classified as retrograde.
Gladman and his team tied this object in with theories about objects that formed in
the theoretical Oort cloud as opposed to those that formed in the plane of the solar
system. This discovery may finally show how they transition from the
Oort Cloud to become objects like Halleys Comet, he said. The article
ended with his team trying to nail down the orbit to higher degrees of precision.
It is not clear how such measurements lead to the ending sentence: They will
then begin unravelling the archaeological information trapped in the orbit of
this highly exceptional member of the trans-Neptunian population.
Good grief, you cant do archaeology on orbits.
What are they looking for, a clay tablet? Pottery? Archaeology is a
science of intelligent design. These people want to steal ID concepts for
secular, materialistic theories impossible to confirm by observation. It seems that evolutionary
bravado has infected all branches of science these days. The people of fluff
like to swagger and bluff, but connecting lab stuff
to historical huff is tough and as science, we rebuff, is not good enough.
The observations without the stuffing will suffice.
Three examples from Sept.2004 on how intelligent design is good for science:
09/22/2004 and robust
engineering in the cell, 09/16/2004
on how tRNA was discovered by thinking along design principles, and how
Paley appears vindicated by the discovery of gears in a biological clock,
Next headline on:
Modeling Just-So Stories for Earth History 09/08/2008
Sept 8, 2008 Models are only simulations of reality. In science,
they have a long history of simplifying complex physical phenomena in an attempt to
understand them. Many times, empirical evidence can correct a model.
The model then becomes a more accurate simulation, and can even provide additional
insights and make predictions. Can modeling work for the unobservable,
A story posted on Space.com
has a title like a Kipling fictional story: Why Early Earth Did Not Freeze.
Reporter Aaron L. Gronstal for Astrobiology Magazine addressed a well-known puzzle
in climate history: how the early earth prevented a deep freeze. According
to stellar evolution theory, stars like our sun begin with much lower luminosity.
Four billion years ago, the sun would not have had enough energy to keep Earths
oceans from freezing. Yet evolutionists and geologists believe that the earth
had liquid oceans at least as early as 3.7 billion years ago. This is the
faint young sun paradox. Geophysicists and climate historians
have proposed more greenhouse effect or meteor bombardments to warm
the earth, but without convincing success. Most doubt that there could have
been enough carbon dioxide, methane or ammonia to provide a space blanket.
Gronstal reported models by German scientists that reduce the amount
of carbon dioxide required to heat the earth. The model showed that
a partial pressure of only 2.9 millibars of CO2 would have been needed
during the late Archaean and early Proterozoic periods in order to bring the
surface temperature of the Earth above freezing, the article said.
This result, although contrary to previous studies, agrees with
current geological data. The paradox thus disappears.
Whether this claim will have ripple effects on assumptions about
the impact of carbon dioxide remains to be seen. Will it renew fears about
global warming? What does it mean to other geological periods when life
was present? And a question for philosophers of science: what was driving
the model the physics, or the assumptions of stellar and geological
Another geology news story is shaking up the world so to
Geographic News claimed that continents get pushed, not sucked, into place.
This new idea, contrary to accepted theory, rearranges ideas about a
theoretical supercontinent named Pangaea that split up 200 million years ago on
the evolutionary timeline. This provocative new theory pictures
the continents moving back-and-forth like an accordion, instead of by the
suction of deep ocean basins. Maybe a superplume of magma in the mantle is
the driving force.
Yet the article includes doubts that geologists know any of this,
because like the climate story above, it is based on models:
This accordionlike action, dubbed the Wilson Cycle, has been recognized for
more than 40 years, but the forces responsible for it are unknown.
Murphy agreed that his model is speculative. Applying the model
forward, he said it makes Earths future a lot more fun to study
even though he could never know the outcome, because a new supercontinent wouldnt
form for 75 million years.
Moreover, if current models thought to be responsible for
these movements were applied to a 500-million-year-old Earth, they would not
produce Pangaea in the right configuration.
Why this reversal happened is unclear, and thats
disconcerting, [J. Brendan] Murphy said, because even though Pangaea is the best
studied of the supercontinents, something happened that we dont
National Geographic quoted Murphy explaining where continental
motion fits into grand schemes of evolution. Most people believe
that for at least the last two and a half billion years, the Earths
history has been dominated by the amalgamation, breakup, and reforming
of supercontinents, he said. It really is an underpinning of
the evolution of the planet.
The new ideas were reported also in a short article in
called Pangaea Conundrum.
With the faint-young-sun story, we have another case of a contradiction
that should have falsified a belief being circumvented by tweaking a simulation.
And with the Pangaea story, we have geologists playing games on the job.
Resurrecting Stalins Ghost 09/07/2008
This is like what the evolutionary biologists do with their in silico
organisms (imaginary life-forms that can evolve in ways real organisms never
could). Climate is very complex and difficult to model, even for todays weather.
Can these scientists really know what carbon dioxide did to the earth 3.9 billion
years ago, without going back there in a time machine? How many other
factors (clouds, outgassing, feedback mechanisms) could have swamped the effects
of carbon dioxide? (for instance, see this article on
that explores possible effects of giant ocean eddies that might have a profound
influence on marine life and on the earths climate). How justifiable is it to run present observed continental
motions back recklessly for billions of years into the past? The observation-to-assumption
ratio is so small it is like homeopathic medicine one molecule of data in
a swimming pool of speculation.
Models that cannot be checked with empirical data
become playgrounds for storytellers. Never are these astro-geo-biologists
content to follow the evidence and say, Well, I guess the earth couldnt
be as old as that. No way; they have their timeline, with its mythical
Late Heavy Bombardment, First Oxygenation Event (after the mythical Origin of
Life), mythical supercontinents Pangaea, Rodinia and Gondwana (which sound like
characters in an earth religion), and all the subsequent Darwinian fables that
ride on top. When a contradiction
threatens the Grand Myth, they can always invent simulations that can be
tweaked and forced sufficiently to match their hard-core, unalterable
beliefs about billions of years and evolution. Models become their
carts before the observational horse. Who needs a horse? They have
horseless carriages, driven by the gas of imagination, polluting the atmosphere
Whether this is Model A or Model T, we dont know.
Even a broken flivver can be pushed if it wont go on its own and the
horse is going in the other direction.
Next headline on:
Sept 7, 2008 Most people feel there are certain historical figures off limits
for praise. Hitler and Stalin are probably two of the most infamous.
Believe it or not, a new Russian textbook is trying to portray Stalin in a more
positive light. The UK
reported that the textbook portrays the tyrants mass murders as
Millions were shot, exiled, starved and imprisoned during
Stalins reign of terror, especially during the Great Terror
of the 1930s. In addition, Stalin carefully controlled a cult of
personality that deceived the masses into thinking of him as a great
savior of Russia. It took years of De-Stalinization under successive
premiers to uncover the extent of the terror Stalin had inflicted on the nation.
Apparently the current Russian prime minister Vladimir Putin wants
to portray Stalin in a more positive light. The textbook he approved
stresses Stalins extensive library and rationalizes his purges as
understandable given the historical situation. Critics, naturally, are
up in arms over this attempt to whitewash what they consider one of the most
evil dictators in history.
entry contained a recounting in Nature of the rivalry between honorable geneticist Dmitri Vavilov and
Stalins choice for scientist, the charlatan Trofim Lysenko, which resulted in Vavilovs
murder and the starvation of millions of Russians in the Ukraine. This week
in Nature,1 two Russian scientists wrote in to
comment. The Vavilov affair was just one of many atrocities committed by
the Stalin regime. The two correspondents sounded ready to fight any tinge of whitewash or
To call Stalins agricultural collectivization policy a consolidation
of land and labour is an awful understatement: an estimated 10 million
productive peasants and their families were exiled or imprisoned from 1929–1933.
Stalin was hardly desperate to feed thousands of citizens dying of
starvation when these were the same people he starved and murdered while
sending Russian grain abroad.
The correspondents also took issue with Natures apparent moral equivalence
of Stalin with science policy in Western democracies. Saying that even
now, politics continues to trump good science should not be taken as
equating murderous dictators with democratic governments.
1. Victor Fet and Michael D. Golubovsky, Vavilovs vision for
genetics was among Stalins many victims,
455, 27 (4 September 2008) | doi:10.1038/455027a.
Stalins regime was so unspeakably horrible,
we must never let generations forget. It makes no sense to focus entirely on Hitlers
six million victims when Stalin murdered at least 20 million, machine-gunned whole
towns, forced people into miserable lives of hard labor, starved millions in the
Ukraine to death, incarcerated millions more in
the Gulag, destroyed churches and murdered tens of thousands of clergymen, and
purged rivals almost at random with a coolness and disdain that is fearful to
Butterfly Wings Xeroxed 09/06/2008
While inflicting this unspeakable harm, Stalin lavished wealth on himself and basked
in the worship of masses of peasants duped by his propaganda into thinking he was saving
their mother country. Throughout his career he was actively involved, through
the Comintern and propaganda, in spreading communism in the West and East.
Had not a stroke cut him down in 1953, he could have toppled many other
governments and instigated a nuclear war against Europe and America.
We remind readers that Stalin was a diehard Darwinist.
Upon finding and reading Darwins Origin of Species in seminary, Stalin became an atheist,
reversed his career plans for the Russian Orthodox Church, and entered politics,
where, through intrigue and crafted relationships, he took the legacy of the
intensely radical, murderous Vladimir Lenin (another atheist Darwinist)
into his own hands.
Every dictator accomplishes some good things and has
some nice moments. But in light of these atrocities, is that useful or
necessary to review? Saddam Hussein could look pretty handsome and polite in meetings
with foreign dignitaries. So what? His overall reputation for evil swamped
any good traits. Stalin achieved some impressive modernization and industrialization
of the Soviet Union. He repulsed Hitlers advances (though late and poorly
planned, with horrendous human cost). He collected art and left some impressive buildings.
When such things were done on the backs and graves of millions of his
countrymen, it hardly deserves listing them, especially when a free government under
beneficent leaders might have achieved the same or better without such horrible human cost.
Theres no rationalization for evil.
The only one exceeding Stalin in pure evil was Chairman Mao in
China, Stalins ally, who murdered up to 77 million through state-sponsored terror
(11/30/2005). But after awhile the body count begins to sound academic.
The ideas that resulted in the worst genocides in modern history in all of
human history came from the poisoned well of Darwin, who led people to
think of mankind adrift in a chance universe without God. In Darwins meaningless
universe, the individual as a creation of God faded away like a dream.
In its place came The State. Is anyone surprised that Marx, Lenin and
Stalin, all Darwin-lovers, began a genre of cold-blooded despots the likes of which history
had never seen? The despots of Cambodia,
Cuba, Rwanda, Vietnam, and North Korea (which remains one of the scariest and
most brutal governments in the world) all admired Hitler and Stalin as role models.
With American universities still infiltrated with Marxist-Darwinists,
with prominent Darwinists pushing atheism in the name of science (08/28/2008),
and with Nature insinuating that there is moral equivalence between Stalinist
Russia and President Bushs policies on science funding, maybe you get a sense of why
services like Creation-Evolution Headlines play a vital role in our
times to remind us that bad ideas have consequences real consequences,
where it hurts.
Next headline on:
Politics and Ethics
Bible and Theology
Sept 6, 2008 If you cant build it, copy it. Scientists have had
a hard time reconstructing the photonic crystals that make butterfly wings shimmer
with light (01/29/2003), so they made, in effect, a carbon copy.
PhysOrg described how
scientists at Penn State made impressions of the regularly-spaced geometric shapes
from a butterfly wing and transferred it to glass, leaving a
positive mold that looks the same as the butterfly wing from the top.
Maybe instead of biomimetics this could be dubbed biomimeographics.
What do they want to do with their replicated photonic crystal?
They have their eyes on semiconductor devices, infrared sensors, solar energy
concentrators and other things no one has thought of yet. What they know is
that the structural color reflected by these crystals will be pure and
intense. Thats bound to be useful or just pretty.
True science seeks to understand a natural phenomenon
with observation, equations and experiments, with an eye toward improving human life.
Its not necessary to tell a story about how the butterfly invented a technology
that human intelligence can photocopy but not yet engineer.
Comet inventory comes up short (09/03/2003)
and other cometary woes (09/12/2003).
Next headline on:
How Not to Prove Positive Selection 09/05/2008
Sept 5, 2008 Erase all that evidence for positive natural selection in the
genes youve read about. Its all misleading confusion based on
certain poorly conceived statistical methods, argues Austin L. Hughes,
an evolutionary biologist at the University of South Carolina. Writing a commentary
in PNAS,1 he accused, Thousands of papers are published every year claiming
evidence of adaptive evolution on the basis of computational analyses alone, with no
evidence whatsoever regarding the phenotypic effects of allegedly adaptive mutations.
Why would Hughes make such a damning statement among colleagues of
the National Academy of Sciences, who are overwhelmingly pro-evolution?
The reason: he wanted to praise a new study that does it right. In the same
issue of PNAS,2 a study by Yokoyama is solidly grounded in biology,
Hughes said. Instead of presenting more of the same evidence of
positive selection without tying it to adaptation at the phenotypical level,
this paper related changes in visual pigment genes to actual benefits for
More on that later. Whats interesting about evolutionary
claims in perspective is that Hughes presented this paper as if it were a rarity,
a first step in the right direction after decades of error.
Sequences of DNA provide documentary evidence of the evolutionary
past undreamed of by pioneers such as Darwin and Wallace, but their potential as sources
of evolutionary information is still far from being realized, he began.
A major hindrance to progress has been confusion regarding the role of positive
(Darwinian) selection, i.e., natural selection favoring adaptive mutations.
Thats when he criticized the methods in thousands of papers that
rely on certain poorly conceived statistical methods that fail to show
how the genetic changes relate to adaptive benefits to the organism in its
Hughes described how the typical paper uses an unwarranted
generalization from one classic case in which
relative frequencies of synonymous and nonsynonymous mutations3
seemed to be related to selectional pressure. Since then, evolutionists have
recklessly applied instances of dN > dS as
evidence of positive selection. This assumption is demonstrably false,
Hughes argued, because due to the stochastic nature of mutations, such inequalities
are just as likely to occur by chance, without any adaptive value.
Yet, despite their shaky foundations, numerous publications have used these
methods as the basis for claims of positive selection at the molecular level.
In fact, using the Yokoyama et al paper to test the codon-based methods and
Bayesian methods so often used in the literature, Hughes found them to be
100% off-target. The mutations putatively showing positive selection,
in other words, bore no relation to the ones Yokoyama et al found to be adaptive.
These results support the theoretical prediction that, because of the faulty
logic in their underlying assumptions, codon-based focus mainly on statistical
artifacts rather than true cases of positive selection. Has he
just falsified thousands of papers ... published each year?
Hughes is not done with his bombshell barrage yet. Next, he criticized
Neo-Darwinism itself at least some widely-held assumptions about its record
in the genes:
Contrary to a widespread impression, natural selection does not
leave any unambiguous signature on the genome, certainly not one that is
still detectable after tens or hundreds of millions of years. To biologists schooled
in Neo-Darwinian thought processes, it is virtually axiomatic that any adaptive
change must have been fixed as a result of natural selection. But it is important
to remember that reality can be more complicated than simplistic textbook scenarios.
Adaptive change can occur by simple genetic drift, for instance. Hughes suggests
that some of the genomic changes for visual pigments occurred by this method. But then,
how is an evolutionary biologist to find genetic evidence for positive selection at all?
Hughes is merciless in his conclusion:
In recent years the literature of evolutionary
biology has been glutted with extravagant claims of positive selection
on the basis of computational analyses alone, including both codon-based methods
and other questionable methods such as the McDonald-Kreitman test.
This vast outpouring of pseudo-Darwinian hype has been genuinely
harmful to the credibility of evolutionary biology as a science. It is to be
hoped that the work of Yokoyama et al.
will help put an end to these distressing tendencies. By incorporating
experimental evidence regarding the phenotypic effects of reconstructed evolutionary
changes, this study sets a new standard for studies of adaptive evolution
at the molecular level. In addition, by providing evidence that non-Darwinian
and Darwinian processes are likely to be involved in the evolution of adaptive
phenotypes, it points the way toward a new, more realistic appreciation of the
Since Hughes put such a high value on the paper by Yokoyama et al,2
treating it as if it were the guiding light among thousands of papers lacking credibility, it bears
taking a closer look. The authors started immediately with assumptions based on
evolution that they admitted are difficult to prove:
Vertebrate ancestors appeared in a uniform, shallow water environment,
but modern species flourish in highly variable niches. A
striking array of phenotypes exhibited by contemporary animals is
assumed to have evolved by accumulating a series of selectively
advantageous mutations. However, the experimental test of such
adaptive events at the molecular level is remarkably difficult.
The authors referred to the evolution of visual pigments as
the deepest body of knowledge linking differences in
specific genes to differences in ecology and to the evolution of
species. This makes their subject matter the best case available
for testing evolution with molecular methods. They extracted rhodopsins
from 5 deep-sea fish and compared them to 35 types of animals. As Hughes had indicated, they showed
that the standard codon-based, statistical inferences to positive selection are
misleading. This was a major emphasis in their paper. In fact, four of
their five major conclusions related to how traditional methods of assessing positive
selection can be misleading.
Then, using mutagenesis experiments,
they purported to show that adaptive sensitivity to particular wavelengths of light in
specific environments evolved on at least 18 separate occasions.
These highly environment-specific adaptations seem to have occurred largely by
amino acid replacements at 12 sites, and most of those at the
remaining 191 (~94%) sites have undergone neutral evolution.
In other words, evidence for genetic drift (neutral changes) swamped evidence for
positive selection by 94%. But even then, they started by assuming that the
ancestral rhodopsin, which they engineered using
evolutionary assumptions and mutagenesis, started with a maximal sensitivity to 500 nm light.
ancestral rhodopsin is not available for study. The ancestral rhodopsin on
which their conclusions depend, therefore, was manufactured by them in the lab, based
on their assumptions of evolutionary ancestry, millions of years, and the positions
of animals in a phylogenetic tree, assuming the rhodopsins had diversified
by natural selection. The reasoning seems circular.
Even so, genetic drift was far more evident than positive selection. And,
to fit the data, they had to conclude that genotypes appeared and reappeared multiple
times without any particular trend. They said, To complicate the matter
further, evolutionary changes are not always unidirectional and ancestral phenotypes
may reappear during evolution.
Since no clear evolutionary pattern became evident without evolutionary
assumptions,4 therefore, it is difficult to see how this
paper could be judged any more objective than the thousands of papers Hughes criticized.
1. Austin L. Hughes, The origin of adaptive phenotypes, (Commentary,
Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences,
published September 3, 2008, doi:10.1073/pnas.0807440105.
2. Yokoyama, Tada, Zhang and Britt, Elucidation of phenotypic adaptations: Molecular analyses of dim-light vision proteins in vertebrates,
Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences,
published September 3, 2008, doi:10.1073/pnas.0802426105.
3. Nonsynonymous mutations in a gene change the amino acid in the
resulting protein. Synonymous mutations do not, because some some of the
64 possible DNA codons have synonyms that code for the same amino acid (there
are only 20 amino acids in most proteins).
4. E.g, notice the evolutionary assumptions in this excerpt from the paper:
The ancestors of bony fish most
likely used rhodopsins with [lambdamax-s (maximum sensitivity wavelength)] of ~500 nm (Fig. 1).
What types of light environment did these ancestors have? The origin of many
early vertebrate ancestors is controversial [i.e., the Cambrian explosion], but that of bony fish
ancestors is clear [referring to a 1988 text on Vertebrate Paleontology and
Evolution]. The fossil records from late Cambrian and
early Ordovician, ~500 Mya, show that the ancestors of bony fish
lived in shallow, near-shore marine environments (30–32). Therefore,
pigment a must have functioned as a surface rhodopsin and its
lambda-max would be consistent with that role. Interpolating from the
ancestral and contemporary rhodopsins, it is most likely that
pigments b–d and f–h (lambdamax ~ 501–502 nm) were also surface
rhodopsins, pigment i (496 nm) was an intermediate rhodopsin, and
pigments e, j, and k (480–485 nm) were deep-sea rhodopsins (Fig.
1). From their predicted lambdamax-s, it is also likely that pigments q, r, s,
and v were intermediate rhodospins [sic] and pigment u was a deep-sea
rhodopsin (Fig. 1).... Based on the four types of dim-light vision, vertebrates show
six different evolutionary paths (Fig. 1).... Later, they
gave a Lamarckian description: When moving into new dim-light environments, vertebrate
ancestors adjusted their dim-light vision by modifying their rhodopsins.
Wow. The damage to evolutionist credibility from
these two papers can hardly be overstated. Hughes just wiped away stacks
and stacks of papers that Ken Miller and Eugenie Scott might have piled up in a
courtroom to demonstrate the overwhelming evidence for evolution, then he held up
a very weak paper as the best example yet. We looked into that paper and
found nothing but evolutionary assumptions buttressing evolutionary assumptions.
See the Friday funnies on The Onion.
Consider how weak their best evidence is. They were talking
about animals that already had eyes, retinas, optic nerves, brains and all the
other organs and functions that support vision. The only parameter
that they studied was the wavelengths of light to which particular rhodopsin
molecules are maximally sensitive, between 482 and 505 billionths of a meter.
But as we know from many phenomena in biology, compensating mechanisms are often
at work. It would be impossible to prove that a fish with a rhodopsin most
sensitive to 489 nm would be any better evolved than one with a rhodopsin most sensitive
to 502 nm, because the ganglion cells or optic nerve might compensate for the slight
shift in sensitivity. All we observe is that living fishes today
are marvelously adapted to their particular ecological niches.
Were only talking about virtually indistinguishable
shades of green light, folks! Are you impressed with the creative power of
natural selection? Are you impressed with scientists ability to
demonstrate evolution at the molecular level? During the hundreds of millions
of years in which animals supposedly evolved from trilobites to philosophers,
the best evolutionists can show are slight changes to sensitivity to green light in just
12 positions in one protein molecule out of the thousands of exquisitely-adapted
enzymes essential for vision. Even then, the evolution demonstrated
is predominantly from mutational drift, with no particular functional trend, and the changes
(we are told) appeared, disappeared, and reappeared 18 times. At the most
optimistic, the changes theyre talking about are microevolutionary.
Even staunch young-earth creationists would have no difficulty believing that
changes this small might occur in a few thousand years.
evolutionists have produced as evidence for natural selection (after the purge of papers
by Hughes) is sufficient to distinguish between creation vs evolution models. Should
evolution be the only view sanctified in the schools? Hughes was right on
when he said that the vast outpouring of pseudo-Darwinian hype has been genuinely
harmful to the credibility of evolutionary biology as a science.
He did nothing to repair the damage, and by pointing to an insipid paper as the
best example yet after decades of hype, he actually made it worse.
This effectively undermines everything the evolutionists have told
us about divining evolutionary history in the genes (e.g.,
04/30/2005). Where else could we
see it? In the fossil record? Ha! (07/21/2003),
Undoubtedly the Darwin Party will spin this situation in their favor,
by making it an illustration of the progress of triumphalist materialist secularist
science. For 8 years now, CEH has been exposing the charades behind
the curtain where Charles the Extravagant, the Wizard of Flaws, and his loyal munchkins
dupe people into thinking that evidence for evolution is overwhelming.
This is a prime example. Now you know. Get the word out!
Expose the charlatan! We need to get out of this mythical fantasyland
and back to the real world! The Kansas School Board is counting on you!
Youre off to shame the Wizard, the Blunderful Wizard of Flaws
Youll find he is a Wimp of a Wiz if ever a Wiz there was
If ever, oh ever, a Wimp there was the Wizard of Flaws is one because
Because, because, because, because, because
Because of the blunderful spins he does
Youre off to shame the wizard, the Blunderful Wizard of Flaws.
Use your brain. Take courage. Have a heart. And bark, Toto, bark!
Next headline on:
Darwinism and Evolutionary Theory
Spore Game: Evolution or ID? 09/04/2008
Sept 4, 2008 Spore is a highly-anticipated computer game that just came out.
Evolutionists are claiming it as a model of how life evolves but intelligent-design
advocates are calling it an ID game, pure and simple. Whos right?
Carl Zimmer, a science writer, is among those counting Spore points
for Darwin. His blog entry from
Magazine leads to an article on the
York Times sporting a large depiction of Tiktaalik, the alleged fish
(04/06/2006). In Gaming Evolves, Zimmer gets evolutionary
biologists to comment on the game. The reviews are positive but mixed.
They enjoy the game, but Dr. Richard Prum commented, The mechanism is severely
messed up. Presumably it does not accurately depict the neo-Darwinian
mechanism of natural selection acting on random mutations. The game only touches on some of the big
questions of evolutionary biology, Prum continued: What is the origin of complexity? And
how contingent is evolution on happenstance? Nevertheless, he feels that if it helps
players ask these questions, that would be great.
Spore was written by Will Wright, author of the popular game
SimCity and its spin-offs. Wright was motivated by the work of evolutionary
biologists and prior simulations like Avida
and Evarium. In Spore, he wanted to
give players an experience of life and the universe across billions of years,
from microscopic creatures to interstellar civilizations. So he invented
a virtual landscape that allows players to create organisms that mate and evolve
and deal with the unexpected. The question remains: is this evolution or
The game avoids the problem of the origin of life by starting with
spores from outer space. Then, players exercise choice and direction
over what happens:
The game begins with a meteorite crashing into a planet, sowing its oceans with
life and organic matter. Players control a simple creature that gobbles up
bits of debris. They can choose to eat other creatures or eat vegetation or both.
As the creature eats and grows, it gains DNA points, which the player can use to
add parts like tails for swimming or spikes for defense. Once the creature
has gotten big and complex enough, it is ready for the transition to land.
In other words, players dont need to sit and wait for millions of years with
hands off; the game puts control in their hands in time-lapse. Is that
evolution? Furthermore, it is doubtful if Wright would take kindly to hear
his software attributed to chance and necessity. Nevertheless, he feels that
the balance between cooperation and competition designed into the game is what
drives the emergence of complexity in the wild.
On land, the creatures can grow legs, wings and other new parts.
And it is at this point that some of Spores features really shine.
Mr. Wrights team has written software that can rapidly transform creatures
in an infinite number of ways, as players add parts and alter their size, shape and position.
Meanwhile, over at the SETI Institute, Frank and Jill and
the other alien-hunters are going nuts playing Spore games during work hours,
building Mr. Alien Potato-Head and other imaginary creatures.
Seth Shostak, director, is even joining in the fun. He wrote for
that its not only fun, it could inspire young people to become scientists
(hopefully SETI members). When youre young, its the
inspiration that counts the emotional appeal, he said
Some evolutionists, though, have noticed the chinks in the claim
the game represents evolution. They might be worried the design
flaws (so to speak) could be exploited by members
of the intelligent design community. They seem eager to state up front,
therefore, that Spore is not quite like real evolution. Zimmer explained on page 3,
Even as scientists praise Spore, they voice concerns about how the game
does not match evolution. In the real world, new traits evolve as
mutations arise and spread gradually through entire populations.
Winning Spores DNA points does not work even as a remote metaphor.
This seems to imply that Spore does not have value in convincing non-believers in
evolution, but only in reinforcing the convictions of those who already have
no problem with evolution.
I do hope that it doesnt confuse people as to what evolution is all about,
said Charles Ofria, a computer scientist at Michigan State University and a creator of Avida.
Spore may also mislead players with the way it is set up
as a one-dimensional march of progress from single-cell life to intelligence.
Evolution is more like a tree than a line, with species branching in millions of
directions. Sometimes species become more complex, and sometimes they
become less so. And sometimes they do not change at all.
Theres no progressive arrow that dominates nature, Dr. Prum said.
These caveats notwithstanding, Dr. [Thomas] Near [Yale] hopes that Spore
prompts people to think about the evolutionary process. This may
be totally off about how evolution works, but Id much rather be
dealing with a student who says, O.K., I have no problem with evolution;
I think about it the same way I think about gravity.
If it does that, itll be great.
Another scientist who liked Spore in spite of its faults was Neil
Shubin, discoverer of Tiktaalik
and author of Your Inner Fish
He didnt mind its differences with nature. Its only a game, he reminded everyone.
It is not identical to nature, but it is a world that evolves, that changes
and where the players are part of those processes. Shubin was especially
pleased with the Tiktaalik that he and Wright designed in Spore, if
one will pardon the expression. But if players can design body parts and direct
what happens, is it really a world that evolves?
Seth Shostak revealed that the games creator
has frequently visited the SETI Institute, and says he drew inspiration for
the new game from its various research programs. Will Wright had a
curious metaphor for his game. He called it
manure to seed future scientists.
Since future scientists are presumably human beings
and not plants, it is disgusting to spread manure on them. Will Wright may
be a clever inventor like Wilbur Wright, but in the unforgiving air of critical
analysis of evolution, his invention wont fly. Adding a lot of hot air
underneath violates the rules.
TIP: A website to bookmark and pass around: ApologeticsDVDs.com.
Its no wonder evolutionists love this game. They live
in Fantasyland, where Tinker Bell helps them wish upon a star, and all their
Darwinian dreams come true. They love digital organisms, not real ones.
They flourish in a playground where imagination is king. They dont want
students to learn about evolution; they want them to have an
experience of it. They want their minds to soar off into millions
of mythical years where miracles happen, given enough time. If they really
wanted a real-world simulation of evolution, they would turn the computer off and shake it for
a million years.
The perceptive onlooker sees intelligent design all over the place
It took ID to build the hardware. It took ID to write the software.
It takes ID for the players to guide the outcomes according to their own purposes
and plans. And all the complex organs wings, lungs and legs that
Spore conjures up on demand are conveniently pre-designed in software modules.
To really simulate Darwins scenario, how about we take the players hands
off the controls and throw in a few random mutations in the code from time to time.
The awarding of DNA points to fake organisms unmasks the
hype that somehow Spore represents evolution. In nature, who rewards anyone?
Survival is not a reward. The last man standing is not necessarily going to
be rewarded with wings. Its the origin of innovative function that is
Wright designed an evolutionary algorithm to solve the problem, but it presupposes a purpose
and direction that nature cannot provide. As William Dembski
proved in No Free Lunch, no evolutionary algorithm, when stripped of
auxiliary information, is superior to blind
search. The giving of awards to help evolution represents the insertion of
auxiliary information into the system a form of cheating. With deft
analogies and rigorous mathematical reasoning, Dembski reduces all evolutionary
algorithms to blind search, and then shows mathematically that getting complex
specified information at the complexity level of life by blind search is less probable
than the universal probability bound of one chance in 10-150 i.e., it will never happen.
Evolutionists deceive themselves into thinking this game has
anything to do with evolutionary theory. Then they deceive players and students
quite literally by enticing them to think about the evolutionary process
with a game that is literally saturated with intelligent-design requirements. Chalk this up
as another example of the useful lie
tactic with which evolutionary manure is spread on the unsuspecting
If youre a vegetable (e.g., a couch potato), you might enjoy
Future sentient scientists, however, need nutritious food, exercise, sound reasoning,
ethics and a valid education about the real world not manure.
Next headline on:
Fully Gecko 40 Million Years Earlier? 09/03/2008
Sept 3, 2008 Amber, or fossilized tree sap, usually contains remnants of insect
parts. One piece, mined in the jungles of Myanmar, contained the foot of a gecko
alleged to be 100 million years old. Thats 40 million years older than
the previously claimed oldest gecko fossil. This critter may have skittered under the
feet of dinosaurs. Maybe it even hitched a ride by walking on the underside of a Diplodocus.
Examination of the foot pads shows the same lamellae that give modern
geckos their ability to walk across ceilings. To
this could only mean one thing: that geckos were definitely in Asia by 100
million years ago, and had already evolved their bizarre foot structure at that time.
The discoverers from Oregon State and the London Natural History Museum
estimate the juvenile specimen could have grown to about a foot long as an adult,
comparable to living species.
Speaking of the Spiderman abilities of the gecko, the article stated that
Research programs around the world have tried to mimic this bizarre adhesive
capability, with limited success. How did this inimitable ability
arise? Its not known exactly how old this group of animals is,
and when they evolved their adhesive toe pads.
But does this fossil really provide evidence that evolution produced a gecko, with
its innovative adhesive feet? Certainly not directly. The specimen was
100% gecko and it appeared 40 million years earlier than evolutionists thought,
according to their own timeline.
Its not clear, therefore, how or why this fossil is shedding additional
light on the evolution and history of these ancient lizards that scampered
among the feet of giant dinosaurs then and still are common in tropical or
sub-tropical regions all over the world.
If you are tired of the evolutionists tiptoe
dance around falsification with the falsetto jingle that the latest discovery is
shedding more light on evolution, then lets all shout in basso profundo,
Let there be light! The light is shining, but it is shining
everywhere except on evolution.
Cellular Machines Work Like Cameras, Winches and Turboprops 09/03/2008
Fossil after fossil has proven older and less evolved than any honest
evolutionist would have predicted. Nowhere do we find them evolving into
something else. All their equipment is there from the start. At first
appearance, this gecko was all gecko, just like the first bat was all bat
the first frog was all frog (05/28/2008),
the first bombardier beetle was already armed and dangerous (09/23/2007),
the first horseshoe crab was all horseshoe crab (01/28/2008),
the first platypus was all platypus (11/27/2007),
the first penguin was all penguin (06/26/2007),
the first jellyfish was all jellyfish (11/02/2007,
the first crustacean was all crustacean (10/04/2007),
and the first comb jelly was all comb jelly (04/03/2007),
and on and on anon etc. and so forth. In each case, the evolutionary paleontologist
declares that the fossil is shedding light on evolution.
Lets follow the light, then. If trends keep up, every
kind of animal will trace its ancestry to the Cambrian or before. They will
all be seen to burst onto the scene, fully formed, without ancestors.
The light shed on evolution will show it to have been essentially instantaneous.
In the asymptotic limit, evolution under the lights will be seen clearly.
It will come into sharp focus. It will read: CREATION.
Next headline on:
Sept 3, 2008 The discovery that cells are filled with molecular motors is one of the major
achievements of late 20th-century molecular biology. Biochemists routinely
use the word motor when describing cellular processes, because, in fact,
machines made of protein actually do use energy to perform work. Now we have
a new hybrid science biophysics that analyzes the kinetics of
tiny machines that work just like human-sized ones, but at scales a billion times
The diversity of forms these motors take, and the efficiency of
their operations, is really quite astonishing. Here are just a few recent
examples from the literature.
Of the articles cited above, only Bergs discussed evolution. He compared
the flagellum to the simpler, needle-shaped Type III Secretory System (TTSS;
see 04/17/2007, bullet 11,
Some argue that the flagellar rotary motor evolved from the needle structure,
but it was probably the other way around, since flagellated bacteria existed
long before their eukaryotic targets, he said. This puts the more-complex
machine first opposite what evolutionary theory would predict.
Perhaps they evolved from a common ancestor, he continued. But
then he asked, What was the rotary motor doing before the helical propeller was invented,
if indeed that was the order of events? Serving as a secretory apparatus that
acquired the ability to spin? Packaging polynucleic acids into virus heads?
Food for thought.
- Camera Iris: One of the many gate motors in the cell membrane
acts like a camera iris. Biochemists in Scotland studied a mechanically sensitive
channel named MscS in the E. coli bacterium. At 3.45 angstrom resolution
(a third of a billionth of a meter), they found that the protein coils in this
channel, which opens in response to mechanical energy, twist in a way that opens
and closes like the iris of your eye. The motion breaks a vapor lock, they
said; This motion is akin to the opening of camera iris. The side chains
move apart in a manner reminiscent of the plates of a mechanical camera iris.
In conclusion of their paper in Science,1 they said:
The opening and closing of channels is central to biology, yet is
still poorly understood at a molecular level. The use of mutants with
modified gating kinetics may prove a widely applicable approach to crystallize
different channel conformations. By combining functional data with an open
structure of the MscS channel, we have described the transitions between closed
and open forms that involve tilting and separation of the transmembrane helices
reminiscent of a camera iris.
- Winch: Like men pulling together, cell motors can team up to pull
cargo along. The two primary transport motor types, dynein and kinesin,
actually walk step-by-step on filaments. Like African women with
baskets on their heads, these machines attach to vesicles and other cargo and carry
them to their destinations. Scientists are finding that more often than not
they work in teams.
This is an active area of research with many questions. William
Hancock (Penn State) reviewed what is known in a Dispatch in Current Biology.2
He asked some of the questions: how many motors need to be turned on or off to trigger directional
switching? And what sorts of regulation and cooperative interactions underlie
the complex oscillations of chromosomes seen during metaphase? As if
individual motors were not complex enough, he said, While understanding the characteristics of the individual motors
involved in these processes is important, there is clearly another level of complexity
that needs to be considered when developing realistic physical models of these processes.
- Flagellum motorboat: Observers of the evolution controversy will
immediately recognize the bacterial flagellum as the mascot of the intelligent
design movement (02/10/2003,
Evolutionists are just as astonished with this outboard motor,
present in one of the simplest forms of life, but continue to believe
it evolved somehow. An example is Dr. Flagellum himself, Howard Berg of Harvard
This man who knows the most about the physics of the flagellum published a handy-dandy Q&A article
about the flagellum in the Aug. 26 issue of Current Biology.3
Some quick facts from his Quick Guide: It is remarkably small rotary
electric motor with a drive shaft, rotor, stator, bushings, universal joint, mounting plate
and switch complex. It runs on proton motive force or sodium ions that come
through the cell membrane through specialized channels. It responds to chemical
gradients with higher rotation. At high loads, eight or more force-generating
elements are active, each generating the same torque. Some 20 protein
parts make up the motor base, but many additional parts are involved during its
construction. The motor is built from the inside out with parts added in a
There are a number of checks and balances in this process, the most dramatic
of which involves an antibody-like factor that blocks expression of late genes,
which encode the filament protein FliC, the Mot proteins A and B, and the various
components of the chemotaxis pathway. When motor assembly reaches the level
of the hook, this factor is pumped out of the cell by the flagellar transport
apparatus, relieving suppression of late-gene transcription. At about
the same time, the export apparatus switches from transport of
components of the rod and hook to the hook-associated proteins and filament.
Ingenious mechanisms are involved in supplying raw material at the
base of the motor, in rod and hook-length control, and in pumping hook and filament
subunits through a 2 nm pore along the motor axis. In Escherichia coli
and Salmonella, the energy required for this export is supplied by
an electrochemical proton gradient (protonmotive force).
Remarkably, the filament grows at its distal end.
(Links to animations of this process can be found in the
Berg continues: the motor can turn both directions, and stop in a millionth of a
rotation. It usually reverses direction once per second. This allows
the organism to alter direction quickly. The viscosity
the bacterium feels in water is similar to what you would feel swimming in
molasses. The propeller has variable pitch. Rotation is likely driven
by conformational changes of protein parts between the 26 units comprising the ring.
The flagellum usually spins at 100Hz (6,000 RPM), but can go 300Hz (18,000).
Flagella with sodium-ion drive can go five times faster (~100,000 RPM).
Berg did a little calculation of how much force the motor generates.
If ramped up to our scale, he said, it would be about 5 horsepower per pound
Thats roughly the power per pound generated by a turboprop airplane engine.
Unlike the airplane engine, though, the flagellum doesnt get hot:
the motor is water-cooled and thermal diffusion is very efficient over small
distances, so its temperature remains very close to ambient.
Asked if the flagellar motor is good for anything, Berg remarked,
If you are a bacterium, a great deal: a lot of energy is expended in
building such a machine so that a cell can find essential nutrients.
For humans, very little so far, except to illustrate how extraordinary
nanotechnology can be.
1. Wang, Black, Edwards, Miller, Morrison, Bartlett, Dong, Naismith and Booth,
The Structure of an Open Form of an E. coli Mechanosensitive Channel at 3.45 Angstrom Resolution,
29 August 2008: Vol. 321. no. 5893, pp. 1179-1183, DOI: 10.1126/science.1159262.
2. William O. Hancock, Intracellular Transport: Kinesins Working Together,
Volume 18, Issue 16, 26 August 2008, Pages R715-R717, doi:10.1016/j.cub.2008.07.068.
3. Howard Berg, Quick guide: Bacterial flagellar motor,
Volume 18, Issue 16, 26 August 2008, Pages R689-R691, doi:10.1016/j.cub.2008.07.015.
Food for thought, indeed. OK, so chew on it.
Howard Berg wants us to think that the complete rotary engine existed for some
other function before it was co-opted by the bacterium as an outboard motor.
Thats like believing a water-cooled, precision-assembled, variable-pitch,
reversible, switch-controlled, highly efficient 5HP/lb airplane turboprop engine
composed of 40 essential parts just emerged
from nowhere until an airplane chassis emerged that used it to fly.
We thought about it. We chewed on it. We ruminated on it. We masticated it. We munched,
crunched, chomped, chawed and gnawed it to pulp. Bleagh. So we spit it
out and had some SOLID* food for thought instead.
The world depends on a tiny machine. What is it? See the
*Smart Ones Like Intelligent Design.
Next headline on:
Amazonia Supported a Cosmopolitan Civilization 09/02/2008
Sept 2, 2008 Todays naked, spear-hunting tribes in the jungles of
the Amazon live in the shadow of a complex society that once thrived there.
By increasing their scope from the single site to the wider region, archaeologists
from Florida and Brazil have discovered a cosmopolitan culture that left large
earthworks and evidence of complex urban societies. Their work was published
Charles C. Mann, commenting on the paper in the same issue of
Science,2 describes some of the dozens of earthworks or
geoglyphs that have come to light:
Shaped like circles, diamonds, hexagons, and interlocking rectangles, the geoglyphs
are 100 to 350 meters in diameter and outlined by trenches 1 to 7 meters deep.
Many are approached by broad earthen avenues, some of them 50 meters wide and up
to a kilometer long. The geoglyphs are as important as the Nazca lines,
Ranzi says, referring to the famed, mysterious figures outlined in stone on the
Peruvian coast. But even though the Acre geoglyphs had been observed 20 years
before, nobody still knew anything about them.
Archaeologists had focused on the impressive structures of the Inca, such
as Machu Picchu, but for most of the 20th century, had believed the Amazonian rain forest was too
harsh, and the soil too poor, to allow for sophisticated societies. That belief has been eroded by
the emerging evidence of widespread transformation of the environment for urban
culture. Mann continues:
The new findings show that the region was a cosmopolitan crossroads
between the societies of the eastern Amazon and the Andes, of whom the most famous
were the Inka, says Susanna Hecht, a geographer at the University of California,
Los Angeles: You have every language group in lowland South America represented
there. She adds, It was a major cultural center--and its
incredible that this is just coming out.
The early Amazonians had extensive agriculture, growing crops on large raised mounds
of soil. Tens or hundreds of thousands of people must have been involved in
sustaining their systems. They built canals straight as an arrow for up to
7 km. They built causeways to adjust to annual floods.
One researcher said that early evidence shows a few key forest
islands in control of a vast network of communication and interaction covering
550 square kilometers: as large as many early states.
The function of some structures is not clear, but the implications
are: till now, archaeologists had missed a major complex society that existed
from about 1000 BC to the time of the conquistadors.
The immediate response is that they were symbolic places, says [Peter]
Stahl [Binghamton University], But thats the old archaeological canard: If you cant
figure out the function of something, you say it was for ritual.
In a related news article,3 Mann discussed the work of Heckenberger et al that
shows evidence of urban planning in the western Amazon basin. They found
garden cities with well-planned
road networks covering 30,000 square kilometers (an area the size of Belgium)
dating from about 1250 AD. Rather than avoid wetlands, the early city planners
built roads and causeways over them, that were amazingly straight.
People could walk between the hamlets in just 15 minutes. There may have been 50,000 people
enjoying the network of medium-sized garden cities.
The late arrival and ubiquity of the geoglyphs may indicate that
some type of cultural movement swept over earlier social arrangements.
But whatever was there, these societies have been completely forgotten,
says anthropologist Guillermo Rioja, director of sustainable development and
indigenous peoples for the Pando. Its only been 400 years since they vanished.
Why does nobody here know anything about them? They were living here for
such a long time, and nobody knows who they were.
Rioja added a comment that says more about educated archaeologists than their
supposed primitive subjects: The idea is that the tribes in the
lowlands were living like animals in the wild, Rioja says.
When you tell them that there were great, important civilizations here
in the western Amazon, they dont believe it. But its true.
Two weeks earlier in Science,4
Asif A. Ghazanfar was reviewing a book by Daniel Lord Smail called On Deep History
and the Brain. Smails book tries to bridge a gap between prehistory
and recorded history, via neuroscience and evolutionary biology. In his review,
Ghazanfar summarized the evolutionary perspective that replaced Genesis:
In essence, prehistory refers to the thousands of years before
civilization, when history supposedly did not move. Historians came to
such an idea through a mixture of ignorance and practicality.
Into the 19th century, European historians turned to the Book of Genesis;
later scholars, forced to reckon with deep geological time and evolution
by natural selection, were more creative. The spirit of
their arguments for ignoring deep history is reflected in a sentence
Smail quotes from the historian Mott Green: At some point a leap took place,
a mutation, an explosion of creative power--the discovery of mind,
or the birth of self-consciousness--interposing a barrier between us
and our previous brute, merely biological existence.
Smail and Ghazanfar reject this notion that evolution switched from Darwinian to
Lamarckian modes at the dawn of civilization. Smails thesis
is that human history is like Huttons geology: a seamless process of
directionless change: humanitys
deep history has no particular beginning and is driving toward no particular end.
The neurophysiological changes and new brain-body states have their roots
in our primate and other vertebrate ancestors. When we make faces, for
instance, others pick up on the emotional meaning of our expressions, and social
hierarchies emerge. None of this means evolution is heading somewhere,
according to Smail:
These have deep phylogenetic roots. Although the neural responses may
not have changed much across time, the means by, and contexts in,
which dominance and submission are felt and exploited by people
in a society are culturally specific. More generally (and without our being
aware of it), emotional and physiological ups and downs are exploited in different
ways in different cultures--for pleasure, for inflicting harm, etc.--through
different associations. Smail dubs the varying forms of culturally specific
instruments that drive brain-body responses psychotropic mechanisms.
These include mood-altering practices, behaviors and institutions generated
by human culture, foods like coffee and chocolate, our interactions with others
through social hierarchies or religions, and self-stimulation through
novels or roller coasters. Importantly, the exploitation of brain-body
states by cultures is not intentional nor does it have a goal.
Maybe this could be called the Starbucks theory of human evolution. Key to
Smails thesis is a belief in deep time and Darwins unguided,
purposeless sequence of random changes that, without purpose, led us from vertebrate
quadruped to upright city planner. But how could he have any empirical evidence
for this? By definition, it is pre-history, which is equivalent
On Deep History and the Brain is a small book with big ideas:
that human history is linked in deep time by the physiological mechanisms
that we share with our vertebrate ancestors and that the historical
progress and acceleration we detect are in fact
directionless series of ongoing culturally specific experiments with
1. Heckenberger, Russell et al, Pre-Columbian Urbanism, Anthropogenic Landscapes, and the Future of the Amazon,
29 August 2008: Vol. 321. no. 5893, pp. 1214-1217, DOI: 10.1126/science.1159769.
2. Charles C. Mann, Archaeology: Ancient Earthmovers of the Amazon,
29 August 2008: Vol. 321. no. 5893, pp. 1148-1152, DOI: 10.1126/science.321.5893.1148.
3. Charles C. Mann, The Western Amazons Garden Cities,
29 August 2008: Vol. 321. no. 5893, p. 1151, DOI: 10.1126/science.321.5893.1151.
4. Asif F. Ghazanfar, Cultural Evolution: Briding the Gap,
15 August 2008: Vol. 321. no. 5891, p. 914, DOI: 10.1126/science.1162481.
Ask yourself if these findings fit a creation view
of history better than an evolutionary view. Evolutionists would have us believe
that modern humans, indistinguishable from us in brain capacity, stature and probably
language, have been inhabiting our small globe for 100,000 years maybe even 300,000
years. Yet in that vast stretch of time, multiple times the length of all recorded history,
not one of them learned to ride a horse,
build a city or use symbolic communication till some unknown mutation(s), without
purpose or goal, switched on
these capabilities full-blown, only a few thousand years ago. Furthermore,
evolutionists would expect primitive, stone-age cultures to be on the way up toward
European measures of intellectual fitness. At least, thats how Darwins
followers understood things in Victorian England and on the Continent (ideas now
considered very incontinent).
Vice Presidential Candidates: You Have a Choice 09/01/2008
Creationists, on the other hand, believe humans were created from the
beginning with intelligence, abstract reasoning, aesthetics and language. Adams kids were
already skilled at herding and farming, had a conscience, and an innate sense of
their obligation to God. The next generation was already working metals
making musical instruments. After the Flood, it wasnt long before the
rising population was building a tower to reach heaven.
Wherever humans have gone, they have managed to work the environment
to their advantage. Some environments only permitted a subsistence economy,
but no real empirical evidence suggests humans were stuck on hunting and gathering
for tens of thousands of years.
Here in the New World, long before Columbus lay claim to it in the
name of a European king and queen, urban civilization on an advanced scale had
existed. Before the ancient Greeks had learned to stop fighting themselves long enough
to invent the polis, people were taming Amazonia with large earthworks, building canals
and causeways and farms that could sustain tens of thousands of people.
They were communicating long distances with other cultures.
In the post-Babel account, the confusion of languages forced people
to segregate and disperse. People began exploring the globe.
They took their knowledge
of technology and culture with them, adapting it to their particular tastes and
environments. They took with them their innate mental abilities.
This all happened not so very long ago. Consider that when European mountain
men encountered Native Americans, many took squaws as wives and had
children. Why had not there been some Darwinian adaptive radiation and
origin of species among populations over the epochs since they became geographically
isolated? Why were they able to communicate with symbolic sign language
quickly, and learn one anothers languages and ways?
Why indeed. Its because there is only one race
the human race whose history is short, and has been recorded by ancestors
skilled at abstract reasoning and language from the beginning. Eons of
grunting prehistory between different mythical species of humans
exist only in the imaginations of Darwinists.
The emigrants who arrived in todays Brazil before 1000 BC
rose to the challenge of their new home and figured out what to do.
We see evidence of their solutions. Before long they were building urban
centers, cooperating on building projects, inventing techniques to tame the
land for their use, and communicating across many miles. It all
fits human nature as we know it.
The head-hunting cannibals encountered by
19th- and 20th-century Darwinists were not slower-evolvers outdistanced by
proud Europeans. It appears more likely they are degenerate relics of once
advanced societies. The knowledge of the true God had become corrupted over
the generations. Power-hungry kings and shamans learned how to exploit myth
and superstition to keep people under control, such as the grotesque human sacrifice and ethnic
cleansing extolled among the Inca (07/10/2007).
Even so, a deep inner sense of the Almighty One, above all the invented gods,
remained. Missionaries have encountered this on many occasions (read Eternity in
Their Hearts by Don Richardson). Intelligent, capable humans with a fallen spiritual
nature: this is what the Bible predicts, and this is what we find.
The sense of surprise among the archaeologists at this new evidence
is instructive (see also last
months surprise discovery about a Sahara society). Evolutionists maintain their mythology in spite of the
evidence. Every objective measure shows that mankind has always been Homo sapiens sapiens
throughout its short tenure on this planet. They dont believe it, but its true.
Next headline on:
Bible and Theology
Sept 1, 2008 When it comes to feelings about creation vs evolution between the
American vice-presidential candidates, voters will have a clear choice.
Reporters are digging for information on the surprise Republican nominee,
Alaska governor Sarah
in Genesis collected statements from the press about her position on the
teaching of evolution in public schools. She indicated support for teaching
both sides if the debate comes up in class, but not mandating the teaching of
intelligent design. As for her personal position, she stated clearly,
I believe we have a creator. AIG did not consider any of these
strong indicators of a Biblical creationist position, but at least one that
tolerates openness in the public debate. Massimo Pigliucci though, commenting
on this at Live Science,
considered Palins stance on science education worrisome.
He asserted that creationism is simply not even in the ballpark of the best
ideas ever produced by humanity. (Presumably, he considers evolution
as a top contender.)
The situation is very different on the Democratic side.
According to Bill Sammon at
News, Joe Biden gave reporters an earful when asked about creationism.
Biden ... used unusually strong language to ridicule those who believe
in creationism or intelligent design, Sammon said. Biden exclaimed,
I refuse to believe the majority of people believe this malarkey!
If Biden wants to attract votes, it doesnt seem politic
to alienate the majority of people. Diplomacy does not seem to be his strong point.
A hot-headed vituperant responded to Sammons
article with this gem of reasoning:
I also use strong language to ridicule the creationist idiots who still
believe in intelligent design MAGIC in the 21st century. Nobody is more
uneducated, gullible, and just plain stupid than the creationists.
Heres a suggestion on how to respond to this kind of pronouncement when you
encounter a self-made philosopher. Use the J. P. Moreland approach. Listen
patiently while the vituperant blows his credibility, then look him or her in the eye,
and calmly but firmly ask, Excuse me sir/madam, do you have an argument?
After a short pause for the quizzical look, continue, because Im waiting
for one. If you have a point to make, make it.
Get the vituperant on the defensive to make a rational argument
based on evidence. (This assumes you have been setting a good example.)
If the combatant takes the challenge and states a proposition, good. That can be
debated, using evidence and logic. Dont put up, though, with
Stand up to it. Demand respectful, rational dialogue, and maybe you will
win mutual respect. If he or she storms off muttering, then well,
youve won something else: the whole shootin match.
Next headline on:
Politics and Ethics
Scientist of the Month
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|Guide to Evolution
I totally enjoy the polemic and passionate style of CEH... simply refreshes the
heart whith its wonderful venting of righteous anger against all the BS were
flooded with on a daily basis. The baloney detector
is just unbelievably great. Thank you so much for your continued effort,
keep up the good work.
(an embedded Linux hacker in Switzerland)
I love to read about science and intelligent design,
I love your articles.... I will be reading your articles for the rest of my life.
(an IT engineer and 3D animator in South Africa)
I discovered your site about a year ago and found it to be very informative,
but about two months back I decided to go back to the 2001 entries and read through the
headlines of each month.(I cheat, I have my computer read it to me while Im
working and jot down references to look at later) What a treasure house of information! ...
One thing that I didn't expect when I first encountered your web site was that it would
get me to think about my relationship with God, but surprisingly there have been many
occasions where you've either quoted scripture or given glory to God where my eyes
have been opened to an issue in my life or my spirit has been lifted up to see the
awesomeness of God....
One last thing, as Ive been reading through the website, and visiting the
links its fascinating to read how history of the creation-evolution debate has
unfolded over the past eight years, and how you have been very balanced and thoughtful
in your analysis, with no embarrassing predictions, or pronouncements or unwarranted
statements, but a very straightforward and sometimes humorous analysis of the news
relating to origins and the Word of God.
(a database engineer in New York)
I discovered your site several months ago.... I found your articles very
informative and well written, so I subscribed to the RSS feed. I just want to
thank you for making these articles available and to encourage you to keep up the good work!
(a software engineer in Texas)
Your piece on Turing Test Stands (09/14/2008)
was so enlightening. Thanks so much. And your piece on Cosmology
at the Outer Limits (06/30/2008) was
another marvel of revelation. But most of all your footnotes at
the end are the most awe-inspiring. I refer to Come to the light
and Psalm 139 and many others. Thanks so much for keeping us grounded in the
TRUTH amidst the sea of scientific discoveries and controversy. Its so
heartwarming and soul saving to read the accounts of the inspired writers testifying
to the Master of the Universe. Thanks again.
(a retired electrical engineer in Mississippi)
I teach a college level course on the issue of evolution and creation.
I am very grateful for your well-reasoned reports and analyses of the issues that
confront us each day. In light of all the animosity that evolutionists
express toward Intelligent Design or Creationism, it is good to see that we on
the other side can maintain our civility even while correcting and informing a
hostile audience. Keep up the good work and do not compromise your high
standards. I rely on you for alerting me to whatever happens to be the news
of the day.
(a faculty member at a Bible college in Missouri)
Congratulations on reaching 8 years of absolute success with crev.info....
Your knowledge and grasp of the issues are indeed matched by your character and desire for truth,
and it shows on every web page you write.... I hope your work extends to the ends of the world,
and is appreciated by all who read it.
(a computer programmer from Southern California)
Your website is one of the best, especially for news.... Keep up the great work.
(a science writer in Texas)
I appreciate the work youve been doing with the
Creation-Evolution Headlines website.
(an aerospace engineer for NASA)
I appreciate your site tremendously.... I refer many people to your content
frequently, both personally and via my little blog....
Thanks again for one of the most valuable websites anywhere.
(a retired biology teacher in New Jersey, whose blog features beautiful plant
and insect photographs)
you [sic] will never get scientific respect if you insist upon using tower [sic]
of babel [sic] type myth as true science, you [sic] can attack darwinians [sic] as
long as you wish , [sic] but unless you talk evidence not [sic] nonsense no true
scientist will hear you, pls. [sic] refer to (biblicalunitarians)for [sic] truth,may
[sic] god [sic] help you to see the truth.
(a scientist in the UK, who backed off the rhetoric when challenged, and then
read the 09/05/2008 article and said it was wonderful
and made him very happy. Later he wrote, i am very proud to tell you that i
read ALL previous CEH subjects, i hereby re-confirm that CEH is very much needed
in our time of deceit and (fact free fantasy!!!!), this is not an complement [sic],
it is solid fact)
I dont remember exactly when I started reading your site but it was probably
in the last year. Its now a staple for me. I appreciate the depth
of background you bring to a wide variety of subject areas.
(a software development team leader in Texas)
I want to express my appreciation for what you are doing. I came across
your website almost a year ago.... your blog [sic; news service] is one that I regularly
read. When it comes to beneficial anti-evolutionist material, your blog
has been the most helpful for me.
(a Bible scholar and professor in Michigan)
I enjoyed reading your site. I completely disagree with you on just
about every point, but you do an excellent job of organizing information.
(a software engineer in Virginia. His criticisms led to an engaging dialogue.
He left off at one point, saying, You have given me much to think about.)
I have learned so much since discovering your site about 3 years ago.
I am a homeschooling mother of five and my children and I are just in wonder over
some the discoveries in science that have been explored on creation-evolution headlines.
The baloney detector will become a part of my curriculum during the next school year.
EVERYONE I know needs to be well versed on the types of deceptive practices used by
those opposed to truth, whether it be in science, politics, or whatever the subject.
(a homeschooling mom in Mississippi)
Just wanted to say how much I love your website. You present the truth
in a very direct, comprehensive manner, while peeling away the layers of propaganda
disguised as 'evidence' for the theory of evolution.
(a health care worker in Canada)
Ive been reading you daily for about a year now. Im extremely
impressed with how many sources you keep tabs on and I rely on you to keep my finger
on the pulse of the controversy now.
(a web application programmer in Maryland)
I would like to express my appreciation for your work exposing the Darwinist
assumptions and speculation masquerading as science.... When I discovered your site
through a link... I knew that I had struck gold! ....Your site has helped me to
understand how the Darwinists use propaganda techniques to confuse the public.
I never would have had so much insight otherwise... I check your site almost daily to
keep informed of new developments.
(a lumber mill employee in Florida)
I have been reading your website for about the past year or so.
You are [an] excellent resource. Your information and analysis is spot on, up to
date and accurate. Keep up the good work.
(an accountant in Illinois)
This website redefines debunking. Thanks for wading through the obfuscation
that passes for evolution science to expose the sartorial deficiencies of
Emperor Charles and his minions. Simply the best site of its kind, an
amazing resource. Keep up the great work!
(an engineer in Michigan)
I have been a fan of your daily news items for about two years, when a friend pointed
me to it. I now visit every day (or almost every day)... A quick kudo: You are
amazing, incredible, thorough, indispensable, and I could list another ten
superlatives. Again, I just dont know how you manage to comb so widely, in so many
technical journals, to come up with all this great news from science info.
(a PhD professor of scientific rhetoric in Florida and author of two books, who added that he was
awe-struck by this site)
Like your site especially the style of your comments.... Keep up the good work.
(a retired engineer and amateur astronomer in Maryland)
I really enjoy your website, the first I visit every day. I have a quote by Mark Twain which seems to me to describe the Darwinian philosophy of science perfectly.
There is something fascinating about science. One gets such wholesale returns of conjecture out of such a trifling investment of fact.
Working as I do in the Environmental field (I am a geologist doing groundwater contamination project management for a state agency) I see that kind of science a lot.
Keep up the good work!!
(a hydrogeologist in Alabama)
I visit your website regularly and I commend you on your work. I applaud your effort to pull actual science from the mass of propaganda for Evolution you report on (at least on those rare occasions when there actually is any science in the propaganda). I also must say that I'm amazed at your capacity to continually plow through the propaganda day after day and provide cutting and amusing commentary.... I can only hope that youthful surfers will stop by your website for a fair and interesting critique of the dogma they have to imbibe in school.
(a technical writer living in Jerusalem)
I have enjoyed your site for several years now. Thanks for all the hard work you obviously put into this. I appreciate your insights, especially the biological oriented ones in which I'm far behind the nomenclature curve. It would be impossible for me to understand what's going on without some interpretation. Thanks again.
(a manufacturing engineer in Vermont)
Love your site and your enormous amount of intellectualism and candor
regarding the evolution debate. Yours is one site I look forward to on
a daily basis. Thank you for being a voice for the rest of us.
(a graphic designer in Wisconsin)
For sound, thoughtful commentary on creation-evolution hot topics go to
(Access Research Network
Your website is simply the best (and Id dare say one of the most important) web sites on the entire WWW.
(an IT specialist at an Alabama university)
Ive been reading the articles on this website for over a year, and
Im guilty of not showing any appreciation. You provide a great service.
Its one of the most informative and up-to-date resources on creation available
anywhere. Thank you so much. Please keep up the great work.
(a senior research scientist in Georgia)
Just a note to thank you for your site. I am a regular visitor and I use your site
to rebut evolutionary "just so" stories often seen in our local media.
I know what you do is a lot of work but you make a difference and are appreciated.
(a veterinarian in Minnesota)
This is one of the best sites I have ever visited. Thanks.
I have passed it on to several others... I am a retired grandmother.
I have been studying the creation/evolution question for about 50 yrs....
Thanks for the info and enjoyable site.
(a retiree in Florida)
It is refreshing to know that there are valuable resources such as Creation-Evolution
Headlines that can keep us updated on the latest scientific news that affect our view of
the world, and more importantly to help us decipher through the rhetoric so carelessly
disseminated by evolutionary scientists. I find it Intellectually Satisfying
to know that I dont have to park my brain at the door to be a believer
or at the very least, to not believe in Macroevolution.
(a loan specialist in California)
I have greatly benefitted from your efforts. I very much look forward
to your latest posts.
(an attorney in California)
I must say your website provides an invaluable arsenal in this war for souls
that is being fought. Your commentaries move me to laughter or sadness.
I have been viewing your information for about 6 months and find it one of the best
on the web. It is certainly effective against the nonsense published on
Talkorigins.org. It great to see work that glorifies God and His creation.
(a commercial manager in Australia)
Visiting daily your site and really do love it.
(a retiree from Finland who studied math and computer science)
I am agnostic but I can never deny that organic life (except human) is doing a wonderful
job at functioning at optimum capacity. Thank you for this ... site!
(an evolutionary theorist from Australia)
During the year I have looked at your site, I have gone through your archives and
found them to be very helpful and informative. I am so impressed that I forward link
to members of my congregation who I believe are interested in a higher level discussion
of creationist issues than they will find at [a leading origins website].
(a minister in Virginia)
I attended a public school in KS where evolution was taught. I have
rejected evolution but have not always known the answers to some of the
questions.... A friend told me about your site
and I like it, I have it on my favorites, and I check it every day.
(an auto technician in Missouri)
Thanks for a great site! It has brilliant insights into the world of
science and of the evolutionary dogma. One of the best sites I know of on
(a programmer in Iceland)
The site you run creation-evolution headlines is
extremely useful to me. I get so tired of what passes
for science Darwinism in particular and I find your
site a refreshing antidote to the usual junk.... it is clear that your thinking and logic
and willingness to look at the evidence for what the
evidence says is much greater than what I read in what
are now called science journals.
Please keep up the good work. I appreciate what you
are doing more than I can communicate in this e-mail.
(a teacher in California)
Although we are often in disagreement, I have the greatest respect and admiration for your writing.
(an octogenarian agnostic in Palm Springs)
your website is absolutely superb and unique. No other site out
there provides an informed & insightful running critique of the current
goings-on in the scientific establishment. Thanks for keeping us informed.
(a mechanical designer in Indiana)
I have been a fan of your site for some time now. I enjoy reading the No Spin of what
is being discussed.... keep up the good work, the world needs to be shown just how little the scientist
[sic] do know in regards to origins.
(a network engineer in South Carolina)
I am a young man and it is encouraging to find a scientific journal on the side of creationism and intelligent design....
Thank you for your very encouraging website.
(a web designer and author in Maryland)
GREAT site. Your ability to expose the clothesless emperor in clear language is indispensable to
us non-science types who have a hard time seeing through the jargon and the hype. Your tireless efforts
result in encouragement and are a great service to the faith community. Please keep it up!
(a medical writer in Connecticut)
I really love your site and check it everyday. I also recommend it to everyone I can, because there is
no better website for current information about ID.
(a product designer in Utah)
Your site is a fantastic resource. By far, it is the most current, relevant and most frequently
updated site keeping track of science news from a creationist perspective. One by one, articles
challenging currently-held aspects of evolution do not amount to much. But when browsing the archives,
its apparent youve caught bucketfulls of science articles and news items that devastate
evolution. The links and references are wonderful tools for storming the gates of evolutionary paradise
and ripping down their strongholds. The commentary is the icing on the cake. Thanks for all your
hard work, and by all means, keep it up!
(a business student in Kentucky)
Thanks for your awesome work; it stimulates my mind and encourages my faith.
(a family physician in Texas)
I wanted to personally thank you for your outstanding website. I am intensely interested in any
science news having to do with creation, especially regarding astronomy. Thanks again for your GREAT
(an amateur astronomer in San Diego)
What an absolutely brilliant website you have. Its hard to express how uplifting it is for me
to stumble across something of such high quality.
(a pharmacologist in Michigan)
I want to make a brief commendation in passing of the outstanding job you did in rebutting the
thinking on the article: Evolution of Electrical Engineering
... What a rebuttal to end all rebuttals, unanswerable,
inspiring, and so noteworthy that was. Thanks for the effort and research you put into it.
I wish this answer could be posted in every church, synagogue, secondary school, and college/university...,
and needless to say scientific laboratories.
(a reader in Florida)
You provide a great service with your thorough coverage of news stories relating to the creation-evolution controversy.
(an elder of a Christian church in Salt Lake City)
I really enjoy your website and have made it my home page so I can check on your latest articles.
I am amazed at the diversity of topics you address. I tell everyone I can about your site and encourage them to
check it frequently.
(a business owner in Salt Lake City)
Ive been a regular reader of CEH for about nine month now, and I look forward to each new posting.... I enjoy the information CEH gleans from current events in science and hope you keep the service going.
(a mechanical engineer in Utah)
It took six years of constant study of evolution to overcome the indoctrination found in public schools of my youth. I now rely on your site; it helps me to see the work of God where I could not see it before and to find miracles where there was only mystery. Your site is a daily devotional that I go to once a day and recommend to everyone. I am still susceptible to the wiles of fake science and I need the fellowship of your site; such information is rarely found in a church.
Now my eyes see the stars God made and the life He designed and I feel the rumblings of joy as promised. When I feel down or worried my solution is to praise God the Creator Of All That Is, and my concerns drain away while peace and joy fill the void. This is something I could not do when I did not know (know: a clear and accurate perception of truth) God as Creator. I could go on and on about the difference knowing our Creator has made, but I believe you understand.
I tell everyone that gives me an opening about your site. God is working through you. Please dont stop telling us how to see the lies or leading us in celebrating the truth. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you.
(a renowned artist in Wyoming)
I discovered your site a few months ago and it has become essential reading via RSS to
(a cartographer and GIS analyst in New Zealand)
I love your site, and frequently visit to read both explanations of news reports,
and your humor about Bonny Saint Charlie.
(a nuclear safety engineer in Washington)
Your site is wonderful.
(a senior staff scientist, retired, from Arizona)
Ive told many people about your site. Its a tremendous service to
science news junkies not to mention students of both Christianity and
(a meteorology research scientist in Alabama)
...let me thank you for your Creation-Evolution Headlines. Ive been an avid reader of it since I first discovered your website about five years ago. May I also express my admiration for the speed with which your articles appearoften within 24 hours of a particular news announcement or journal article being published.
(a plant physiologist and prominent creation writer in Australia)
How do you guys do it--reviewing so much relevant material every day and writing incisive,
(a retired high school biology teacher in New Jersey)
Your site is one of the best out there! I really love reading your articles on creation evolution
headlines and visit this section almost daily.
(a webmaster in the Netherlands)
Keep it up! Ive been hitting your site daily (or more...).
I sure hope you get a mountain of encouraging email, you deserve it.
(a small business owner in Oregon)
Great work! May your tribe increase!!!
(a former Marxist, now ID speaker in Brazil)
You are the best. Thank you....
The work you do is very important.
Please dont ever give up. God bless the whole team.
(an engineer and computer consultant in Virginia)
I really appreciate your work in this topic, so you should never stop doing what you do,
cause you have a lot of readers out there, even in small countries in Europe, like Slovenia
is... I use crev.info for all my signatures on Internet forums etc., it really is fantastic site,
the best site! You see, we(your pleased readers) exist all over the world, so you must be
doing great work! Well i hope you have understand my bad english.
(a biology student in Slovenia)
Thanks for your time, effort, expertise, and humor. As a public school biology teacher I
peruse your site constantly for new information that will challenge evolutionary belief and share much
of what I learn with my students. Your site is pounding a huge dent in evolutions supposed
solid exterior. Keep it up.
(a biology teacher in the eastern USA)
Several years ago, I became aware of your Creation-Evolution Headlines web site.
For several years now, it has been one of my favorite internet sites. I many times check your
website first, before going on to check the secular news and other creation web sites.
I continue to be impressed with your writing and research skills, your humor,
and your technical and scientific knowledge and understanding. Your ability to cut through
the inconsequentials and zero in on the principle issues is one of the characteristics that
is a valuable asset....
I commend you for the completeness and thoroughness with which you provide
coverage of the issues. You obviously spend a great deal of time on this work.
It is apparent in ever so many ways.
Also, your background topics of logic and propaganda techniques have been useful
as classroom aides, helping others to learn to use their baloney detectors.
Through the years, I have directed many to your site. For their sake and mine,
I hope you will be able to continue providing this very important, very much needed, educational,
humorous, thought provoking work.
(an engineer in Missouri)
I am so glad I found your site. I love reading short blurbs about recent discoveries, etc,
and your commentary often highlights that the discovery can be interpreted in two differing ways,
and usually with the pro-God/Design viewpoint making more sense. Its such a refreshing difference
from the usual media spin. Often youll have a story up along with comment before the masses
even know about the story yet.
(a system administrator in Texas, who calls CEH the UnSpin Zone)
You are indeed the Rush Limbaugh Truth Detector of science falsely so-called.
Keep up the excellent work.
(a safety director in Michigan)
I know of no better way to stay
informed with current scientific research than to read your site everyday, which in turn has helped me understand
many of the concepts not in my area (particle physics) and which I hear about in school or in the media.
Also, I just love the commentaries and the baloney detecting!!
(a grad student in particle physics)
I thank you for your ministry. May God bless you! You are doing great job effectively
exposing pagan lie of evolution. Among all known to me creation ministries [well-known organizations listed]
Creationsafaris stands unique thanks to qualitative survey and analysis of scientific publications and news.
I became permanent reader ever since discovered your site half a year ago. Moreover your ministry is
effective tool for intensive and deep education for cristians.
(a webmaster in Ukraine, seeking permission to translate CEH articles into Russian to reach
countries across the former Soviet Union)
The scholarship of the editors is unquestionable. The objectivity of the editors is
admirable in face of all the unfounded claims of evolutionists and Darwinists. The amount
of new data available each day on the site is phenomenal (I cant wait to see the next new
article each time I log on). Most importantly, the TRUTH is always and forever the primary
goal of the people who run this website. Thank you so very much for 6 years of consistent
dedication to the TRUTH.
(11 months earlier): I just completed reading each entry from each month. I found your site about
6 months ago and as soon as I understood the format, I just started at the very first entry
and started reading.... Your work has blessed my education and determination to bold in
showing the unscientific nature of evolution in general and Darwinism in particular.
(a medical doctor in Oklahoma)
Thanks for the showing courage in marching against a popular unproven unscientific belief system.
I dont think I missed 1 article in the past couple of years.
(a manufacturing engineer in Australia)
I do not know and cannot imagine how much time you must spend to read, research and
compile your analysis of current findings in almost every area of science. But I do know
I thank you for it.
(a practice administrator in Maryland)
Since finding your insightful comments some 18 or more months ago, Ive
visited your site daily.... You
so very adeptly and adroitly undress the emperor daily; so much so one
wonders if he might not soon catch cold and fall ill off his throne! ....
To you I wish much continued success and many more years of fun and
frolicking undoing the damage taxpayers are forced to fund through
unending story spinning by ideologically biased scientists.
(an investment advisor in Missouri)
I really like your articles. You do a fabulous job of cutting through
the double-talk and exposing the real issues. Thank you for your hard
work and diligence.
(an engineer in Texas)
I love your site. Found it about maybe
two years ago and I read it every day. I love the closing comments in
green. You have a real knack for exposing the toothless claims of the
evolutionists. Your comments are very helpful for many us who dont know
enough to respond to their claims. Thanks for your good work and keep it
(a missionary in Japan)
I just thought Id write and
tell you how much I appreciate your headline list and commentary. Its
inspired a lot of thought and consideration. I check your listings every day!
(a computer programmer in Tulsa)
Just wanted to thank you for your creation/evolution news ... an outstanding educational
(director of a consulting company in Australia)
Your insights ... been some of the most helpful not surprising considering the caliber of
your most-excellent website! Im serious, ..., your website has to be the
best creation website out there....
(a biologist and science writer in southern California)
I first learned of your web site on March 29.... Your site has far exceeded my expectations and is
consulted daily for the latest. I join with other readers in praising your time and energy spent to educate,
illuminate, expose errors.... The links are a great help in understanding the news items.
The archival structure is marvelous.... Your site brings back dignity to Science conducted as it
should be. Best regards for your continuing work and influence. Lives are being changed and
sustained every day.
(a manufacturing quality engineer in Mississippi)
I wrote you over three years ago letting you know how much I enjoyed your Creation-Evolution headlines,
as well as your Creation Safaris site. I stated then that I read your headlines and commentary every day,
and that is still true! My interest in many sites has come and gone over the years, but your site is
still at the top of my list! I am so thankful that you take the time to read and analyze some of the
scientific journals out there; which I dont have the time to read myself. Your commentary is very,
very much appreciated.
(a hike leader and nature-lover in Ontario, Canada)
...just wanted to say how much I admire your site and your writing.
Youre very insightful and have quite a broad range of knowledge.
Anyway, just wanted to say that I am a big fan!
(a PhD biochemist at a major university)
I love your site and syndicate your content on my church website....
The stories you highlight show the irrelevancy
of evolutionary theory and that evolutionists have perpetual foot and
mouth disease; doing a great job of discrediting themselves. Keep up
the good work.
(a database administrator and CEH junkie in California)
I cant tell you how much I enjoy your article reviews on your
websiteits a HUGE asset!
(a lawyer in Washington)
Really, really, really a fantastic site. Your wit makes a razor appear dull!...
A million thanks for your site.
(a small business owner in Oregon and father of children who love your site too.)
Thank God for ... Creation
Evolution Headlines. This site is right at the cutting edge in the debate
over bio-origins and is crucial in working to undermine the
deceived mindset of naturalism. The arguments presented are unassailable
(all articles having first been thoroughly baloney detected) and the
narrative always lands just on the right side of the laymans comprehension
limits... Very highly recommended to all, especially, of course, to those who
have never thought to question the fact of evolution.
(a business owner in Somerset, UK)
I continue to note the difference between the dismal derogations of the
darwinite devotees, opposed to the openness and humor of rigorous, follow-the-evidence
scientists on the Truth side. Keep up the great work.
(a math/science teacher with M.A. in anthropology)
Your material is clearly among the best I have ever read on evolution problems!
I hope a book is in the works!
(a biology prof in Ohio)
I have enjoyed reading the sardonic apologetics on the Creation/Evolution Headlines section
of your web site. Keep up the good work!
(an IT business owner in California)
Your commentaries ... are always delightful.
(president of a Canadian creation group)
Im pleased to see... your amazing work on the Headlines.
(secretary of a creation society in the UK)
We appreciate all you do at crev.info.
(a publisher of creation and ID materials)
I was grateful for creationsafaris.com for help with baloney detecting. I had read about
the fish-o-pod and wanted to see what you thought. Your comments were helpful and encouraged me
that my own baloney detecting skill are improving. I also enjoyed reading your reaction
to the article on evolution teachers doing battle with students.... I will ask my girls to read your
comments on the proper way to question their teachers.
(a home-schooling mom)
I just want to express how dissapointed [sic] I am in your website. Instead of being objective, the
website is entirely one sided, favoring creationism over evolution, as if the two are contradictory....
Did man and simien [sic] evovlve [sic] at random from a common ancestor? Or did God guide this evolution?
I dont know. But all things, including the laws of nature, originate from God....
To deny evolution is to deny Gods creation. To embrace evolution is to not only embrace his creation,
but to better appreciate it.
(a student in Saginaw, Michigan)
I immensely enjoy reading the Creation-Evolution Headlines. The way you use words
exposes the bankruptcy of the evolutionary worldview.
(a student at Northern Michigan U)
...standing O for crev.info.
(a database programmer in California)
Just wanted to say that I am thrilled to have found your website! Although I
regularly visit numerous creation/evolution sites, Ive found that many of them do
not stay current with relative information. I love the almost daily updates to
your headlines section. Ive since made it my browser home page, and have
recommended it to several of my friends. Absolutely great site!
(a network engineer in Florida)
After I heard about Creation-Evolution Headlines,
it soon became my favorite Evolution resource site on the web. I visit several times a
day cause I cant wait for the next update. Thats pathetic, I know ...
but not nearly as pathetic as Evolution, something you make completely obvious with your snappy,
intelligent commentary on scientific current events. It should be a textbook for science
classrooms around the country. You rock!
(an editor in Tennessee)
One of the highlights of my day is checking your latest CreationSafaris creation-evolution news listing!
Thanks so much for your great work -- and your wonderful humor.
(a pastor in Virginia)
Thanks!!! Your material is absolutely awesome. Ill be using it in our Adult Sunday School class.
(a pastor in Wisconsin)
Love your site & read it daily.
(a family physician in Texas)
I set it [crev.info] up as my homepage. That way I am less likely to miss some really interesting events....
I really appreciate what you are doing with Creation-Evolution Headlines. I
tell everybody I think might be interested, to check it out.
(a systems analyst in Tennessee)
I would like to thank you for your service from which I stand to benefit a lot.
(a Swiss astrophysicist)
I enjoy very much reading your materials.
(a law professor in Portugal)
Thanks for your time and thanks for all the work on the site.
It has been a valuable resource for me.
(a medical student in Kansas)
Creation-Evolution Headlines is a terrific resource. The articles are
always current and the commentary is right on the mark.
(a molecular biologist in Illinois)
Creation-Evolution Headlines is my favorite
anti-evolution website. With almost giddy anticipation, I check
it several times a week for the latest postings. May God bless you and
empower you to keep up this FANTASTIC work!
(a financial analyst in New York)
I read your pages on a daily basis and I would like to let you know
that your hard work has been a great help in increasing my knowledge
and growing in my faith. Besides the huge variety of scientific
disciplines covered, I also enormously enjoy your great sense of humor
and your creativity in wording your thoughts, which make reading your
website even more enjoyable.
(a software developer in Illinois)
THANK YOU for all the work you do to make this wonderful resource! After
being regular readers for a long time, this year weve incorporated your
site into our home education for our four teenagers. The Baloney Detector
is part of their Logic and Reasoning Skills course, and the Daily Headlines
and Scientists of the Month features are a big part of our curriculum for an
elective called Science Discovery Past and Present. What a wonderful
goldmine for equipping future leaders and researchers with the tools of
(a home school teacher in California)
What can I say I LOVE YOU!
I READ YOU ALMOST EVERY DAY I copy and send out to various folks.
I love your sense of humor, including your politics and of course your faith.
I appreciate and use your knowledge What can I say THANK YOU
THANK YOU THANK YOU SO MUCH.
(a biology major, former evolutionist, now father of college students)
I came across your site while browsing through creation & science links. I love the work you do!
(an attorney in Florida)
Love your commentary and up to date reporting. Best site for evolution/design info.
(a graphic designer in Oregon)
I am an ardent reader of your site. I applaud your efforts and pass on
your website to all I talk to. I have recently given your web site info
to all my grandchildren to have them present it to their science
teachers.... Your Supporter and fan..God bless you all...
(a health services manager in Florida)
Why your readership keeps doubling: I came across your website at a time when I was just getting to know what creation science is all about. A friend of mine was telling me about what he had been finding out. I was highly skeptical and sought to read as many pro/con articles as I could find and vowed to be open-minded toward his seemingly crazy claims. At first I had no idea of the magnitude of research and information thats been going on. Now, Im simply overwhelmed by the sophistication and availability of scientific research and information on what I now know to be the truth about creation.
Your website was one of dozens that I found in my search. Now, there are only a handful of sites I check every day. Yours is at the top of my list... I find your news page to be the most insightful and well-written of the creation news blogs out there. The quick wit, baloney detector, in-depth scientific knowledge you bring to the table and the superb writing style on your site has kept me interested in the day-to-day happenings of what is clearly a growing movement. Your site ... has given me a place to point them toward to find out more and realize that theyve been missing a huge volume of information when it comes to the creation-evolution issue.
Another thing I really like about this site is the links to articles in science journals and news references. That helps me get a better picture of what youre talking about.... Keep it up and I promise to send as many people as will listen to this website and others.
(an Air Force Academy graduate stationed in New Mexico)
Im a small town newspaper editor in southwest Wyoming. Were pretty
isolated, and finding your site was a great as finding a gold mine. I read
it daily, and if theres nothing new, I re-read everything. I follow links.
I read the Scientist of the Month. Its the best site Ive run across. Our
local school board is all Darwinist and determined to remain that way.
(a newspaper editor in Wyoming)
have been reading your page for about 2 years or so....
I read it every day. I ...am well educated, with a BA in Applied Physics
from Harvard and an MBA in Finance from Wharton.
(a reader in Delaware)
I came across your website by accident about 4 months ago and look at it every day....
About 8 months ago I was reading a letter to the editor of the Seattle Times that was written
by a staunch anti-Creationist and it sparked my interest enough to research the
topic and within a week I was yelling, my whole lifes education has been a lie!!!
Ive put more study into Biblical Creation in the last 8 months than any other topic in my life.
Past that, through resources like your website...Ive been able to convince my father (professional mathematician and amateur geologist), my best friend (mechanical engineer and fellow USAF Academy Grad/Creation Science nutcase), my pastor (he was the hardest to crack), and many others to realize the Truth of Creation.... Resources like your website help the rest of us at the grassroots level drum up interest in the subject. And regardless of what the major media says: Creationism is spreading like wildfire, so please keep your website going to help fan the flames.
(an Air Force Academy graduate and officer)
I love your site! I **really** enjoy reading it for several specific reasons: 1.It uses the latest (as in this month!) research as a launch pad for opinion; for years I have searched for this from a creation science viewpoint, and now, Ive found it. 2. You have balanced fun with this topic. This is hugely valuable! Smug Christianity is ugly, and I dont perceive that attitude in your comments. 3. I enjoy the expansive breadth of scientific news that you cover. 4. I am not a trained scientist but I know evolutionary bologna/(boloney) when I see it; you help me to see it. I really appreciate this.
(a computer technology salesman in Virginia)
I love your site. Thats why I was more than happy to
mention it in the local paper.... I mentioned your site as the place
where..... Every Darwin-cheering news article is
reviewed on that site from an ID perspective. Then
the huge holes of the evolution theory are exposed,
and the bad science is shredded to bits, using real
(a project manager in New Jersey)
Ive been reading your site almost daily for about three years. I have
never been more convinced of the truthfulness of Scripture and the faithfulness of God.
(a system administrator and homeschooling father in Colorado)
I use the internet a lot to catch up on news back
home and also to read up on the creation-evolution controversy, one of my favourite topics.
Your site is always my first port of call for the latest news and views and I really appreciate
the work you put into keeping it up to date and all the helpful links you provide. You are a
beacon of light for anyone who wants to hear frank, honest conclusions instead of the usual diluted
garbage we are spoon-fed by the media.... Keep up the good work and know that youre changing lives.
(a teacher in Spain)
I am grateful to you for your site and look forward to reading new
stories.... I particularly value it for being up to date with what is going on.
(from the Isle of Wight, UK)
[Creation-Evolution Headlines] is the place to go for late-breaking
news [on origins]; it has the most information and the quickest turnaround.
Its incredible I dont know how you do it.
I cant believe all the articles you find. God bless you!
(a radio producer in Riverside, CA)
Just thought I let you know how much I enjoy
reading your Headlines section. I really appreciate
how you are keeping your ear to the ground in so
many different areas. It seems that there is almost
no scientific discipline that has been unaffected
by Darwins Folly.
(a programmer in aerospace from Gardena, CA)
I enjoy reading the comments on news articles on your site very much. It is incredible
how much refuse is being published in several scientific fields regarding evolution.
It is good to notice that the efforts of true scientists have an increasing influence at schools,
but also in the media.... May God bless your efforts and open the eyes of the blinded evolutionists
and the general public that are being deceived by pseudo-scientists.... I enjoy the site very much
and I highly respect the work you and the team are doing to spread the truth.
(an ebusiness manager in the Netherlands)
I discovered your site through a link at certain website...
It has greatly helped me being updated with the latest development in science and with
critical comments from you. I also love your baloney detector
and in fact have translated some part of the baloney detector into our language (Indonesian).
I plan to translate them all for my friends so as to empower them.
(a staff member of a bilateral agency in West Timor, Indonesia)
...absolutely brilliant and inspiring.
(a documentary film producer, remarking on the
I found your site several months ago and within weeks
had gone through your entire archives.... I check in several times a day for further
information and am always excited to read the new
articles. Your insight into the difference between
what is actually known versus what is reported has
given me the confidence to stand up for what I
believe. I always felt there was more to the story,
and your articles have given me the tools to read
through the hype....
You are an invaluable help and I commend your efforts.
Keep up the great work.
(a sound technician in Alberta)
I discovered your site (through a link from a blog) a few weeks ago and I cant stop reading it....
I also enjoy your insightful and humorous commentary at the end of each story. If the evolutionists
blindness wasnt so sad, I would laugh harder.
I have a masters degree in mechanical engineering from a leading University. When I read the descriptions, see the pictures, and watch the movies of the inner workings of the cell, Im absolutely amazed.... Thanks for bringing these amazing stories daily. Keep up the good work.
(an engineer in Virginia)
I stumbled across your site several months ago and have
been reading it practically daily. I enjoy the inter-links
to previous material as well as the links to the quoted
research. Ive been in head-to-head debate with a
materialist for over a year now. Evolution is just one of
those debates. Your site is among others that have been a
real help in expanding my understanding.
(a software engineer in Pennsylvania)
I was in the April 28, 2005 issue of Nature [see 04/27/2005
story] regarding the rise of intelligent design in the universities. It was through your website
that I began my journey out of the crisis of faith which was mentioned in that article. It was an honor to see you all highlighting the article in Nature. Thank you for all you have done!
(Salvador Cordova, George Mason University)
I shudder to think of the many ways in which you mislead readers, encouraging them to build a faith based on misunderstanding and ignorance. Why dont you allow people to have a faith that is grounded in a fuller understanding of the world?...
Your website is a sham.
(a co-author of the paper reviewed in the 12/03/2003
entry who did not appreciate the unflattering commentary. This led to a cordial
interchange, but he could not divorce his reasoning from the science vs. faith dichotomy,
and resulted in an impasse over definitions but, at least, a more mutually respectful dialogue.
He never did explain how his paper supported Darwinian macroevolution. He just claimed
evolution is a fact.)
I absolutely love creation-evolution news. As a Finnish university student very
interested in science, I frequent your site to find out about all the new science
stuff thats been happening you have such a knack for finding all this
information! I have been able to stump evolutionists with knowledge gleaned from
your site many times.
(a student in Finland)
I love your site and read it almost every day. I use it for my science class and
5th grade Sunday School class. I also challenge Middle Schoolers and High Schoolers to
get on the site to check out articles against the baloney they are taught in school.
(a teacher in Los Gatos, CA)
I have spent quite a few hours at Creation Evolution Headlines in the past week
or so going over every article in the archives. I thank you for such an informative
and enjoyable site. I will be visiting often and will share this link with others.
[Later] I am back to May 2004 in the archives. I figured I should be farther
back, but there is a ton of information to digest.
(a computer game designer in Colorado)
The IDEA Center also highly recommends visiting Creation-Evolution Headlines...
the most expansive and clearly written origins news website on the internet!
(endorsement on Intelligent Design and Evolution
Check out this site: www.creationsafaris.com.
This is a fantastic resource for the whole family.... a fantastic reference library with summaries,
commentaries and great links that are added to
dailyarchives go back five years.
(a reader who found us in Georgia)
I just wanted to drop you a note telling you that at www.BornAgainRadio.com,
Ive added a link to your excellent Creation-Evolution news site.
(a radio announcer)
I cannot understand
why anyone would invest so much time and effort to a website of sophistry and casuistry.
Why twist Christian apology into an illogic pretzel to placate your intellect?
Isnt it easier to admit that your faith has no basis -- hence, faith.
It would be extricate [sic] yourself from intellectual dishonesty -- and
from bearing false witness.
Sincerely, Rev. [name withheld] (an ex-Catholic, apostate Christian Natural/Scientific pantheist)
Just wanted to let you folks know that we are consistent readers and truly appreciate
the job you are doing. God bless you all this coming New Year.
(from two prominent creation researchers/writers in Oregon)
Thanks so much for your site! It is brain candy!
(a reader in North Carolina)
I Love your site probably a little too much. I enjoy the commentary
and the links to the original articles.
(a civil engineer in New York)
Ive had your Creation/Evolution Headlines site on my favourites list for
18 months now, and I can truthfully say that its one of the best on the Internet,
and I check in several times a week. The constant stream of new information on
such a variety of science issues should impress anyone, but the rigorous and
humourous way that every thought is taken captive is inspiring. Im pleased
that some Christians, and indeed, some webmasters, are devoting themselves to
producing real content that leaves the reader in a better state than when they found him.
(a community safety manager in England)
I really appreciate the effort that you are making to provide the public with
information about the problems with the General Theory of Evolution. It gives me
ammunition when I discuss evolution in my classroom. I am tired of the evolutionary
dogma. I wish that more people would stand up against such ridiculous beliefs.
(a science teacher in Alabama)
If you choose to hold an opinion that flies in the face of every piece of evidence
collected so far, you cannot be suprised [sic] when people dismiss your views.
(a former Christian software distributor, location not disclosed)
...the Creation Headlines is the best. Visiting your site...
is a standard part of my startup procedures every morning.
(a retired Air Force Chaplain)
I LOVE your site and respect the time and work you put into it. I read
the latest just about EVERY night before bed and send selection[s] out to others and
tell others about it. I thank you very much and keep up the good work (and
(a USF grad in biology)
Answering your invitation for thoughts on your site is not difficult because
of the excellent commentary I find. Because of the breadth and depth of erudition
apparent in the commentaries, I hope Im not being presumptuous in suspecting
the existence of contributions from a Truth Underground comprised of
dissident college faculty, teachers, scientists, and engineers. If thats
not the case, then it is surely a potential only waiting to be realized. Regardless,
I remain in awe of the care taken in decomposing the evolutionary cant that bombards
us from the specialist as well as popular press.
(a mathematician/physicist in Arizona)
Im from Quebec, Canada. I have studied in pure sciences and after in actuarial mathematics.
Im visiting this site 3-4 times in a week. Im learning a lot and this site gives me the opportunity to realize that this is a good time to be a creationist!
(a French Canadian reader)
I LOVE your Creation Safari site, and the Baloney Detector material.
(a reader in the Air Force)
You have a unique position in the Origins community.
Congratulations on the best current affairs news source on the origins net.
You may be able to write fast but your logic is fun to work through.
(a pediatrician in California)
Visit your site almost daily and find it very informative, educational and inspiring.
(a reader in western Canada)
I wish to thank you for the information you extend every day on your site.
It is truly a blessing!
(a reader in North Carolina)
I really appreciate your efforts in posting to this website. I find
it an incredibly useful way to keep up with recent research (I also check science
news daily) and also to research particular topics.
(an IT consultant from Brisbane, Australia)
I would just like to say very good job with the work done here,
very comprehensive. I check your site every day. Its great
to see real science directly on the front lines, toe to toe with the
pseudoscience that's mindlessly spewed from the prestigious
(a biology student in Illinois)
Ive been checking in for a long time but thought Id leave you a
note, this time. Your writing on these complex topics is insightful,
informative with just the right amount of humor. I appreciate the hard
work that goes into monitoring the research from so many sources and then
writing intelligently about them.
(an investment banker in California)
Keep up the great work. You are giving a whole army of Christians
plenty of ammunition to come out of the closet (everyone else has).
Most of us are not scientists, but most of the people we talk to are not
scientists either, just ordinary people who have been fed baloney
for years and years.
(a reader in Arizona)
Keep up the outstanding work!
You guys really ARE making a difference!
(a reader in Texas)
I wholeheartedly agree with you when you say that science is not
hostile towards religion. It is the dogmatically religious that are
unwaveringly hostile towards any kind of science which threatens their
dearly-held precepts. Science (real, open-minded science) is not
interested in theological navel-gazing.
Note: Please supply your name and location when writing in. Anonymous attacks
only make one look foolish and cowardly, and will not normally be printed.
This one was shown to display a bad example.
I appreciate reading your site every day. It is a great way to keep
up on not just the new research being done, but to also keep abreast of the
evolving debate about evolution (Pun intended).... I find it an incredibly useful
way to keep up with recent research (I also check science news daily) and also
to research particular topics.
(an IT consultant in Brisbane, Australia)
I love your website.
(a student at a state university who used CEH when
writing for the campus newsletter)
....when you claim great uncertainty for issues that are fairly
well resolved you damage your already questionable credibility.
Im sure your audience loves your ranting, but if you know as much
about biochemistry, geology, astronomy, and the other fields you
skewer, as you do about ornithology, you are spreading heat, not
(a professor of ornithology at a state university, responding to
the 09/10/2002 headline)
I wanted to let you know I appreciate your headline news style of
exposing the follies of evolutionism.... Your style gives us constant,
up-to-date reminders that over and over again, the Bible creation account
is vindicated and the evolutionary fables are refuted.
(a reader, location unknown)
You have a knack of extracting the gist of a technical paper,
and digesting it into understandable terms.
(a nuclear physicist from Lawrence Livermore Labs who worked
on the Manhattan Project)
After spending MORE time than I really had available going thru
your MANY references I want to let you know how much I appreciate
the effort you have put forth.
The information is properly documented, and coming from
recognized scientific sources is doubly valuable. Your
explanatory comments and sidebar quotations also add GREATLY
to your overall effectiveness as they 1) provide an immediate
interpretive starting point and 2) maintaining the readers
(a reader in Michigan)
I am a huge fan of the site, and check daily for updates.
(reader location and occupation unknown)
I just wanted to take a minute to personally thank-you and let
you know that you guys are providing an invaluable service!
We check your Web site weekly (if not daily) to make sure we have
the latest information in the creation/evolution controversy.
Please know that your diligence and perseverance to teach the
Truth have not gone unnoticed. Keep up the great work!
(a PhD scientist involved in origins research)
You've got a very useful and informative Web site going.
The many readers who visit your site regularly realize that it
requires considerable effort to maintain the quality level and
to keep the reviews current.... I hope you can continue your
excellent Web pages. I have recommended them highly to others.
(a reader, location and occupation unknown)
As an apprentice apologist, I can always find an article
that will spark a spirited debate. Keep em
coming! The Truth will prevail.
(a reader, location and occupation unknown)
Thanks for your web page and work. I try to drop by
at least once a week and read what you have. Im a
Christian that is interested in science (Im a mechanical
engineer) and I find you topics interesting and helpful.
I enjoy your lessons and insights on Baloney Detection.
(a year later):
I read your site 2 to 3 times a week; which Ive probably done for a couple
of years. I enjoy it for the interesting content, the logical arguments, what I can
learn about biology/science, and your pointed commentary.
(a production designer in Kentucky)
I look up CREV headlines every day. It is a wonderful
source of information and encouragement to me.... Your gift of
discerning the fallacies in evolutionists interpretation of
scientific evidence is very helpful and educational for me.
Please keep it up. Your website is the best I know of.
(a Presbyterian minister in New South Wales, Australia)
Ive written to you before, but just wanted to say again
how much I appreciate your site and all the work you put into it.
I check it almost every day and often share the contents
(and web address) with lists on which I participate.
I dont know how you do all that you do, but I am grateful
for your energy and knowledge.
(a prominent creationist author)
I am new to your site, but I love it! Thanks for updating
it with such cool information.
(a home schooler)
I love your site.... Visit every day hoping for another of your
brilliant demolitions of the foolish just-so stories of those
who think themselves wise.
(a reader from Southern California)
I visit your site daily for the latest news from science journals and other media,
and enjoy your commentary immensely. I consider your web site to be the
most valuable, timely and relevant creation-oriented site on the internet.
(a reader from Ontario, Canada)
Keep up the good work! I thoroughly enjoy your site.
(a reader in Texas)
Thanks for keeping this fantastic web site going. It is very
informative and up-to-date with current news including incisive
(a reader in North Carolina)
Great site! For all the Baloney Detector is impressive and a
great tool in debunking wishful thinking theories.
(a reader in the Netherlands)
Just wanted to let you know, your work is having quite an impact.
For example, major postings on your site are being circulated among the
Intelligent Design members....
(a PhD organic chemist)
opening a can of worms ... I love to click all the related links and
read your comments and the links to other websites, but this usually makes me late
for something else. But its ALWAYS well worth it!!
(a leader of a creation group)
I am a regular visitor to your website ... I am impressed
by the range of scientific disciplines your articles address.
I appreciate your insightful dissection of the often unwarranted conclusions
evolutionists infer from the data... Being a medical
doctor, I particularly relish the technical detail you frequently include in
the discussion living systems and processes. Your website continually
reinforces my conviction that if an unbiased observer seeks a reason for the
existence of life then Intelligent Design will be the unavoidable
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A church member asked me what I thought was the best creation web site.
I told him CreationSafaris.com.
(a PhD geologist)
I love your site... I check it every day for interesting
information. It was hard at first to believe in Genesis fully, but
now I feel more confident about the mistakes of humankind and that all
their reasoning amounts to nothing in light of a living God.
(a college grad)
Thank you so much for the interesting science links and comments
on your creation evolution headlines page ... it is very
(a reader from Scottsdale, AZ)
visit your site almost every day, and really enjoy it. Great job!!!
(I also recommend it to many, many students.)
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I like what I seevery
much. I really appreciate a decent, calm and scholarly approach to the
whole issue... Thanks ... for this fabulous
It is refreshing to read your comments. You have a knack to get to the heart of
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Love your website. It has well thought out structure and will help many
through these complex issues. I especially love the
I believe this is one of the best sites on the Internet.
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us on TruthCast.com.)
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as well as your faith.
(a mountain man in Alaska).
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headlines and your commentary and find it to be A++++, superb, a 10, a homerun
I run out of superlatives to describe it! ... You can be sure I will
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to use in my speaking engagements. Ill also do my part to help publicize
your site among college students. Keep up the good work. Your
material is appreciated and used.
(a college campus minister)
Featured Creation Scientist for September
A. E. Wilder-Smith
1915 - 1995
The Intelligent Design Movement is big news today, but did you know much of the
scientific reasoning behind it came from a European organic chemist?
William Dembski, author of several key books in the ID movement, credits Dr. A. E.
Wilder-Smith for the inspiration to make the study of origins his lifes work.
Dean Kenyon, the evolutionary origin of life researcher turned creationist, called
Dr. Wilder-Smith one of the two or three most important scientists in his life.
Much of the literature coming out of the modern intelligent design movement contains
echoes of powerful arguments made by A. E. Wilder-Smith decades ago.
In his books and tapes, Arthur Edward Wilder-Smith stressed the importance of
information in biology, stressing that the materialists formula for
the life, energy + matter + time, was deficient because it left out the
factor information. He convincingly argued that the information in DNA,
in its translation, had to follow a language convention which presupposed
an agreement between parties needing to communicate with one another. For example,
he explained how SOS is a meaningless sequence of letters unless there has been a
convention (a coming together agreement, in advance) that it is a signal
for distress. Similarly, the DNA triplet codon for alanine, GCC, looks and smells nothing
like alanine, by itself. Unless both the translation mechanism (the ribosome)
and the DNA code both have a convention that GCC means alanine, it means nothing at
all. This, he explained, was prima facie evidence of intelligent design.
He also argued effectively against Thomas Huxleys old monkey-typewriter analogy,
the claim that a million monkeys typing on a million typewriters
would eventually produce Psalm 23 by chance, given enough time. Wilder-Smith pointed
out a fatal flaw that
undermined the whole argument. By showing that since the chemical
reactions that would have led to life in a primordial soup are reversible,
that fact rendered the analogy useless in the monkeys case, if the
letters fell off the page as soon as they were typed, no meaningful sequence would
ever be produced. Huxley, therefore, had cheated by claiming that the letters
typed would remain on the page. The laws of chemistry do not permit that sort
of stability in chemical evolution scenarios.
With points like this, he argued that creation was scientific and naturalistic
evolution was unscientific.
As a highly qualified organic chemist, A. E. Wilder-Smith was uniquely
positioned to critique so-called chemical evolution. This
kindly gentleman was merciless in his attacks on Miller, Oparin, Fox and other
evolutionists who claimed to be making progress explaining lifes origin by
chance and necessity. His effectiveness stemmed not from vituperative ability
or rhetoric, but rather because of his intimate acquaintance with the facts of
chemistry from calm, rational dismantling of the philosophical and
scientific assumptions underlying his opponents errors: i.e., from scientific
arguments that could not be denied by any knowledgeable chemist. Dr. Wilder-Smith
was one of the first to emphasize the necessity
for one-handed molecules to hold genetic information (see online book),
and to apply the laws of thermodynamics and equilibrium to discussions of the origin of life.
A. E. Wilder-Smith was one of few scientists in the world to have three
earned doctorates. He obtained his first Ph.D. in physical organic chemistry at
Reading University, England in 1941. A research scientist during the war, he
subsequently became a fellow of the University of London, and then director of
research for a Swiss pharmaceutical company. After becoming a full professor
at the University of Geneva, he earned a second doctorate in pharmacology there, and
later, a third in pharmacological sciences at
ETH, a senior university in Zurich, Switzerland. In addition, he was a Fellow
of the Royal Society of Chemistry and a NATO three-star general!
Dr. Wilder-Smith was not only an expert on chemotherapy, pharmacology, organic chemistry
and biochemistry, but
a gifted teacher and popular public speaker. He did not shy away from entering
the lions den of the evolutionary establishment. At a time when communism was
strong and evolutionary science reigned with unchallenged bravado,
he was like a Daniel with seemingly divine power to shut his opponents mouths. Once, in a manner
reminiscent of Paul turning the Pharisees and Sadducees against each other (see
he got the better of a hostile audience of Finnish and Russian students by referring to a word that
meant one thing in Finnish and another in Russian.  The Finns, who despised the Russians,
were incensed to hear him claiming this word had the Russian meaning, but the Russians agreed
with him. As they
were shouting at one another, the English jumped in and argued that the word was a
meaningless syllable. Thus the professor made his point effectively: without a
language convention, a sequence of letters carries no information. Dr. Wilder-Smith
confronted communists with scientific arguments that undermined their political philosophy.
God only knows how much his work contributed to the eventual demise of communism, but it
certainly affected numerous individual communists.
A. E. Wilder-Smith is also probably responsible
for Richard Dawkins refusing to debate creationists any more. In 1986,
Wilder-Smith and Edgar Andrews debated the two leading evolutionists in
Britain, Richard Dawkins and John Maynard Smith, at Oxford a lions den
with the two strongest Darwinian lions in Europe. Yet even there, over a third
perhaps half of the
staunchly pro-evolution audience voted that the creation side had won the debate.
The vote count became a contentious
issue and subject of a cover-up and published lie by the AAAS
The evolutionists apparently were embarrassed that the creationists made such a strong
showing. For whatever reason, Dawkins no longer will debate creationists.
Reports from those in attendance say that, contrary to the ground rules of the debate,
the Dawkins and Maynard Smith repeatedly attacked religion, while
the creationists used only scientific arguments. Dawkins himself had to be
reprimanded by the moderator for attacking Wilder-Smith about his religious views.
At the end of the debate, Dawkins implored the audience not to give any votes to the creationists lest it be a
blot on the escutcheon of ancient University of Oxford (an odd
remark, considering Oxford was founded by Christians). After the debate there was a complete cover-up
by the University and the media. Normally, Oxford Union debates are big news,
given prominent publicity in the press, radio and television. This one, however,
which should have rivaled the historic 1860 Huxley-Wilberforce debate in importance,
and indeed was even titled The Huxley Memorial Debate,
was silently dropped from the radar screen. In his memoirs, Dr. Wilder-Smith
wrote, No records of my having held the lecture as part of the Oxford Union
Debate could be found in any library. No part of the official media breathed
a word about it. So total is the current censorship on any effective criticism
of New-Darwinian science and on any genuine alternative.
A sought-after public speaker, Dr. A. E. Wilder-Smith shared his insights with tens of
thousands throughout America and Europe. His rapport with audiences made them
feel at home with even difficult scientific concepts as he would occasionally glance
into their faces to see whether they got it and, if not, would ask who
needed a term or concept explained before he went on. With charming simplicity
he could be found discussing comfortably everything from black holes to one-handed
molecules, or Shannon information theory, time dilation, DNA transcription, AIDS,
criminal psychology, history, natural theology, natural selection or why God allows suffering.
He was no mere talking head. A devoted husband and father of five children, a devout
born-again Christian, and an unquestionably capable scientist, he left no chinks in
his armor. To the consternation of his scientific colleagues, here was a
young-earth creationist they could not pigeonhole as an ignoramus. He could
not only hold his own among the best of them, he could make his opponents turn tail
and run for cover.
Wilder-Smith authored over 70 scientific publications and more than 30 books, some of which
have been published in 17 languages and are still in print. Many of todays
leading creationists consider him a major influence in their own intellectual development
and call him a pioneer in anti-evolution arguments.
Dr. A. E. Wilder-Smith appeared prominently in an award-winning creation film series called
Origins: How the World Came to Be.
Still available from ChristianAnswers.net,
this series keeps his wit and wisdom alive. Its a good way to become acquainted
with the man and his message. In one episode, he holds up a living plant and a dead
stick to the energy of the sun and asks the viewer what is the difference.
If energy is all that is necessary to produce life, why does one
grow, and the other decay? Clearly, the energy must be directed through programmed
instructions and conversion mechanisms to harness the energy for growth.
Such pithy illustrations using familiar objects are a good teachers art.
In another taped lecture (The Seven Main Postulates
of Evolution), he holds up a sardine can. Could life evolve from this can? he
asks. After all, it has all the ingredients necessary for life, because they were
once alive. Its an open system, too: we can heat it or cool it any way we
wish. Everyone knows that nothing will happen. If new life could originate
from the can, he points out, the food processing industry would be in turmoil, because
no one would be able to predict what new life-forms would be found in our food.
He drives the point home by asking what would happen if the genetic program
for E. coli bacteria were inserted into the can: an explosion of life would result.
Clearly, matter and energy are insufficient to produce life under the best of conditions;
the essential ingredient is information, in the form of the genetic instructions and
processing apparatus to utilize the matter and energy to carry out the program.
The time you are taking reading this short biography of a great creation
scientist might be better spent listening to Dr. Wilder-Smith himself.
Fortunately, friends have made a website in his honor:
WilderSmith.org, with information about his
books, tapes, videos and articles. So after reading this, go browsing and learn
more; download some audio files and listen.
To know A. E. Wilder-Smith from his legacy of literature and lectures is to love him, not
only as a great scientist and thinker, but as a winsome Christian man of integrity.
He had the look of a kindly grandfather. His disarming personal appearance belied
the sharp intellect inside. His soft-spoken and unhurried speech, seasoned with
wry humor, had a way of getting right to the heart of important issues and conveying
difficult concepts in terms accessible to everyone. A masterful teacher, he
won the Golden Apple award three years in a row at the University of
Illinois Medical Center for the best course of lectures. The last one was
inscribed, He made us not only better scientists, but better men.
Despite his busy schedule, A. E. Wilder-Smith loved classical music and enjoyed
hiking in the Swiss alps. The music of Haydns Creation reminded him
of Gods creativity described in Genesis. Of his outdoor experiences he said,
In Gods beautiful nature, with the colorfully blossoming mountain meadows
in front of you and the gigantic snow-capped ten thousand footers behind them, the
murmuring brooks beside you and the ringing of the cow-bells around you, hearts
automatically begin to admire Gods creation and wisdom and cannot but praise
the intelligence behind such manifold beauty.
testimonials by scientists in
the biography of A. E. Wilder-Smith by
his wife Beate, entitled Fulfilled Journey: The Wilder-Smith Memoirs.
To find his books, enter "A E Wilder-Smith" in quotes in a book search on
Amazon.com. Inquire for audio tapes from
Chapel Tapes, P.O. Box 8000, Costa Mesa, CA 92628, 800-272-WORD.
If you are enjoying this series, you can
learn more about great Christians in science by reading
our online book-in-progress:
The Worlds Greatest
Creation Scientists from Y1K to Y2K.
A Concise Guide|
You can observe a lot by just watching.
First Law of Scientific Progress
The advance of science can be measured by the rate at which exceptions to previously held laws accumulate.
1. Exceptions always outnumber rules.
2. There are always exceptions to established exceptions.
3. By the time one masters the exceptions, no one recalls the rules to which they apply.
Nature will tell you a direct lie if she can.
So will Darwinists.
Science is true. Dont be misled by facts.
Finagles 2nd Law
No matter what the anticipated result, there
will always be someone eager to (a) misinterpret it, (b) fake it, or (c)
believe it happened according to his own pet theory.
3. Draw your curves, then plot your data.
4. In case of doubt, make it sound convincing.
6. Do not believe in miracles rely on them.
Murphys Law of Research
Enough research will tend to support your theory.
If the facts do not conform to the theory, they must be disposed of.
1. The bigger the theory, the better.
2. The experiments may be considered a success if no more than 50%
of the observed measurements must be discarded to obtain a correspondence
with the theory.
The number of different hypotheses erected to explain a given biological phenomenon
is inversely proportional to the available knowledge.
All great discoveries are made by mistake.
The greater the funding, the longer it takes to make the mistake.
The solution to a problem changes the nature of the problem.
Peters Law of Evolution
Competence always contains the seed of incompetence.
An expert is a person who avoids the small errors while sweeping on to the grand fallacy.
Repetition does not establish validity.
What really matters is the name you succeed in imposing on the facts not the facts themselves.
For every action, there is an equal and opposite criticism.
Thumbs Second Postulate
An easily-understood, workable falsehood is more useful than a complex, incomprehensible truth.
There is nothing so small that it cant be blown out of proportion
Hawkins Theory of Progress
Progress does not consist in replacing a theory that is
wrong with one that is right. It consists in replacing a theory that is wrong with one that is
more subtly wrong.
The best theory is not ipso facto a good theory.
Error is often more earnest than truth.
Advice from Paul|
Guard what was committed to your trust, avoiding the profane and idle
babblings and contradictions of what is falsely called knowledge by
professing it some have strayed concerning the faith.
I Timothy 6:20-21
Song of the True Scientist
O Lord, how manifold are Your works! In wisdom You have made
them all. The earth is full of Your possessions . . . . May the glory of the Lord endure forever. May the
Lord rejoice in His works . . . . I will sing to the Lord s long as I live; I will sing praise to my God while I have my
being. May my meditation be sweet to Him; I will be glad in the Lord. May sinners be
consumed from the earth, and the wicked be no more. Bless the Lord, O my soul! Praise the Lord!
from Psalm 104
Through the creatures Thou hast made
Show the brightness of Thy glory.
Be eternal truth displayed
In their substance transitory.
Till green earth and ocean hoary,
Massy rock and tender blade,
Tell the same unending story:
We are truth in form arrayed.
Teach me thus Thy works to read,
That my faith, new strength accruing
May from world to world proceed,
Wisdoms fruitful search pursuing
Till, thy truth my mind imbuing,
I proclaim the eternal Creed
Oft the glorious theme renewing,
God our Lord is God indeed.
James Clerk Maxwell
One of the greatest physicists
of all time (a creationist).
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