Biology is based on chemistry, but chemistry cannot make biology.
— Dr. A. E. Wilder-Smith, organic chemist with three earned doctorates (from a lecture).

Our Creation Scientist of the Month is a mystery character.  Read and guess who it is! 

See the update on our Oct. 3 headline for a link to Hubble’s dazzling new photos of an exploding star!

Molecular Motors: Plants Have Sewing Machines   03/31/2003
In a discovery that “represents a previously unreported concept and will stimulate further research,” three German biologists have reported that plants have a molecular motor that acts like a sewing machine.  Schleiff, Jeilic and Soll of Munich studied an unusually large GTP-binding protein named Toc159 that was previously thought to be just a passive receptor on the surface of the chloroplast.  Their analysis shows that “Toc159 acts as a GTP-driven motor in a sewing-machine-like mechanism.”
    They explain that “The translocation of proteins across cellular membranes is a key mechanistic problem for every cell.”  Apparently, Toc159 threads its needle by grabbing a precursor protein (preprotein) of the protein needing to get through the membrane.  Then, Toc159 empowered by GTP actually pushes the cargo through the Toc75 channel, which expands to accommodate the thread-like protein.  Once the cargo is through, Toc159 resumes its position.  “Through multiple rounds of preprotein binding and GTP hydrolysis,” the authors explain, “Toc159 will push the polypeptide across the membrane.”  Thus it works in a rocking fashion, sending the threads of protein through pores in the cloth of the chloroplast membrane, with two conformational changes and two expenditures of GTP to GDP for each cycle.  They suspect other examples of this motor mechanism will be found.
Source: “A GTP-driven motor moves proteins across the outer envelope of chloroplasts,” in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences online preprints, 3/28/03.

So plants have the Singer Model Toc159.  What model do you have?  Stay tuned; cell biologists are continuing to find more molecular machines at work.  They are like a Star Trek crew with flashlights, exploring the factory of an advanced technological civilization, describing what they see in familiar terms.  They’ve already found monorail cars, propellers, motors, fuel cells, electric generators, rheostats, badge readers, shipping and receiving systems, translators, folding equipment, smart bombs, computers, backup tapes, email, and much more.  What will be next, a coffee maker?  With thousands more to examine, you can be sure more molecular machines are at work inside you right now, just waiting to be discovered.
Next headline on: The Cell. • Next headline on: Plants. • Next amazing story.

• Physicists’ notions of the universe could be in trouble.
• “The theoreticians are very worried,” says Richard Lieu of the University of Alabama in Huntsville, a member of one of the teams.  “There could be quite a bit of missing physics to be found.”
• “You don’t see anything of the effect predicted,” agrees Roberto Ragazzoni of the Astrophysical Observatory of Arcetri, Italy.
• “We have to do an awful lot more work,” he [John Barrett of the University of Nottingham, UK] says, to know what we should be looking for.

Those who like to watch TV programs that glibly show the Big Bang, in elegant simplicity, setting everything neatly asail on the calm, cosmic sea ready to evolve into planets and people, need to see the real astronomers biting their fingernails off.  As NSU quips, they’re “Walking the Planck.”
Update 04/03/2003: A sword fight has broken out on the Planck!  The quantum gravity theorists are fighting back, says Science Now.  Although “the news was a jaw-dropper”, writes Adrian Cho, “others aren’t buying it.”  Jack Ng of the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill has argued that the effect is a million billion times smaller than predicted in the paper, “leaving the Hubble images unscathed and quantum gravity alive and kicking?”  What will be the outcome of this exciting duel on the high seas?  No matter who wins, the news media need to “teach the controversy.”
Next headline on: Cosmology.

Congratulations to this team, and to all the hard-working scientists, who are bringing such marvels into our view to enjoy and contemplate.  No kid on monkey bars could outrun the myriads of speedy myosin motors climbing hand-over-hand inside him.  This story should be a reminder that living processes are not chaotic collisions of atoms.  Living things do not submit, like limp rag dolls, to the relentless laws of thermodynamics, as do the molecules in a star or ocean or landslide.  Entropy ultimately wins when the organism dies, but in living cells, genetic instructions build machines that do real work against the flow of entropy, at the cost of enormous expenditures of energy – energy that is captured, channeled, and directed toward function.  Whether a salmon swimming upstream, a gibbon leaping from tree to tree, a whale breaching the surface or a mother cuddling a baby, living things do what they do only because they have an astonishing number of interacting, programmed parts, of which myosin is just one particularly athletic example.
Next headline on: The Cell. • Next amazing story.

There are two questions to be asked in considering whether the fossil constitutes evidence of early hominid species diversity.  First, are the described morphological differences from the A. anamensis to A. afarensis lineage real, or are they merely artifacts of postmortem fossilization processes?  Second, does the putatively new morphology lie outside the expected range of phenotypic variation of this lineage?  Fortunately, the history of vertebrate paleontology provides a largely unappreciated but critically important perspective on the first question. Modern primate skeletal collections help to address the second.

White does not provide a credible family tree for man, or hint that there even is one.  He just debunks the overblown claims of several recent discoveries, like Kenyanthropus and Toumai.  But his photographs are very revealing.  If there can be this much variation between individuals of a single species, how can any claims be made about any putative human ancestor?  The brow ridges, teeth, skull shape or overall proportions could be the work of geological deformation after burial, or natural variation within the kind.  Why not use the same data and conclude that each individual was either completely ape or completely human?
    White points out that other genera of animals have dozens, or hundreds, of species living side by side:

Is there really a great diversity of hominid lineages waiting to be found and recognized in Africa?  Was this diversity like that in extant Anopheles mosquitoes (about 500 species), Old World fruit bats (173 species), cercopithecid monkeys (94 species), or even African soft-furred rats (8 species)?  Or did just a few demographically expansive and cosmopolitan hominid species expand their ranges and invade new habitats during the Pliocene (5.3 to 1.8 million years ago)?

He leaves these questions unanswered.  Maybe the answer is, “none of the above.”  With all these factors capable of producing false impressions, paleoanthropologists can have a field day storytelling about what puzzle pieces fit together into any imaginable picture.  Some scientific restraint is needed.
    Tim White sounds like a city councilman recommending extra cops be deployed to maintain order in the diversity parade.  He concludes, “Confusing true biological species diversity with analytical mistakes, preservational artifacts, diachronic evolution, or normal biological variation grossly distorts our understanding of human evolution.  Past hominid diversity should be established by the canons of modern biology, not by a populist zeal for diversity.”  The city council can allow the zealots to hold their demonstration, but should not vote based on the noisy and outlandish street antics going on outside.
Next headline on: Early Man.

Add this to the finding in January 2001 that the assumed Oort Cloud comet population must be only 10% of previous estimates because of collisions.  As we reported June 2002, comets are still a major puzzle.  Those who believe the solar system is 4.6 billion years old have a burning problem on their hands explaining why comets are still with us.  Like sparklers, they only dazzle for awhile.
Next headline on: Solar System. • Next headline on: Dating Methods.

Despite its Bathonian [161 million year] age, the new cryptobranchid shows extraordinary morphological similarity to its living relatives.  This similarity underscores the stasis within salamander anatomical evolution.  Indeed, extant cryptobranchid salamanders can be regarded as living fossils whose structures have remained little changed for over 160 million years.  Furthermore, the new material from China reveals that the early diversification of salamanders was well underway by the Middle Jurassic; several extant taxa including hynobiids and cryptobranchids had already appeared by that time.  Notably, this ancient pattern of taxonomic diversification does not correlate to any great disparity in anatomical structure.

These kinds of reports are becoming so common that predictions of abrupt appearance and stasis should be the norm, not the exception.  The authors provide no evidence of an ancestral form; both types do not show “any great disparity in anatomical structure,” and were clearly fully operational as salamanders when they were buried.  All they can say is that if evolution had split the two groups apart, it had to have happened before the Middle Jurassic.  That’s like saying if Santa Claus really came, he must have done it before 8:00 p.m., because the presents were already under the tree, completely wrapped.  Amazingly, National Geographic titles their article, “China Ash Yields Salamander Evolution Secrets.”  Read their whole write-up with bewilderment that anyone could spin this story into evidence for evolution.
    Evolution is supposed to be this all-encompassing, all-pervasive force of change, yet look ye here: salamanders, nearly indistinguishable from living ones, with no evolution for 160 million years.  The same could be said for horseshoe crabs, coelacanth fish, ginkgo trees, Wollemi pines, tuatara lizards, and a host of other known living fossils.  Either (1) evolution is a myth, or (2) their dating methods are wrong.  Pick any two.
Next headline on: Fossils.

Just more futureware and hope hype.  “So the approach holds the promise of dissecting the dynamic processes by which genes and genomes evolve.”    Here again there is no answer, just another approach they think might be promising.  As Michael Behe remarked recently “That leaves us with biological features that look designed, but only promissory notes for how they can be explained by unintelligent processes.”  Send your local evolutionist a round TUIT so we don’t have to keep waiting by the mailbox.
Next headline on: Plants. • Next headline on: Darwinism and Evolutionary Theory. • Next headline on: Genes and DNA.

As there is no significant difference between Neanderthals and modern humans in the locations of their muscle and ligamentous attachments, there remains no anatomical argument that precludes modern-human-like movement of the thumb and index finger in Neanderthals.
    The demise of the Neanderthals cannot be attributed to any physical inability to use or manufacture Upper-Palaeolithic-like (Chatelperronian) tools, as the anatomical evidence presented here and the archaeological evidence both indicate that they were capable of manufacturing and handling such implements.

Imagine the anthropologists in Huxley’s day finding out that all the arguments for brutishness of Neanderthals have collapsed.  These individuals were just as smart and handy as we are.  Maybe they lived in hard times, or never developed sophisticated technology due to pagan superstition.  But they were fully human, just as are living “stone-age” tribal peoples.  There is just as much physiological difference between existing groups of Homo sapiens sapiens as between Neanderthal and non-Neanderthal human bones.  It is only evolutionary bias that has classified these our brothers into a different race.  Neanderthals are no longer of any value in evolutionary arguments.  It’s time to drop the label, stop considering them as icons of evolving primates, and start calling them Bob, Sue, Bertha, and Albert – the neighbors.
Next headline on: Early Man.

Interesting reading.  Berlinski is his own man and writes clearly and cogently with wry humor.  The I.D. movement may have its own work to do, although some of the complaints seem as ethereal as arguing that motion is impossible.  Philosophy, it has been said, consists of incomprehensible answers to insoluble problems.  But ask yourself if Darwinians really have anything to crow about these days, or any rightful claim to exclusivity.  As Berlinski says, “I do not believe that Darwinism is a fixed philosophical system.  Like some primordial jelly, the thing is both squishy and constantly in motion.  Terms, claims, and stories multiply unceasingly.”  You will find plenty of examples right here.
Next headline on: Intelligent Design. • Next headline on: Darwinism and Evolutionary Theory.

• Life.  “Life remains the greatest mystery of science.  How did it start? Nobody knows.”  Britt considers astrobiologists the most clueless scientists of all, more even than biologists.
• Sex.  “We don’t know why sex began.  Scientists have long been mystified as to why early life forms switched from asexual reproduction – which avoids all the complications of monogamy, entirely sidesteps partnering, and enjoys the benefits of cloning – to sexual reproduction, with its inherent burden of getting hitched, at least for a time.”
• Other universes.  No way to know if they’re there.
• Dark matter.  Without this stuff, whatever it is, galaxies wouldn’t hold together.
• Dark energy.  “This one makes dark matter seem simple,” moans Britt.  Cosmologists are clueless what dark energy is.

Remember this list when that teacher or educational TV program gives some glib answer about the evolution of life, sex, or the universe.  Every once in awhile, it’s worthwhile to remind our readers that it is not just creationists who are calling naturalistic scientists clueless*.  When investigating the unobservable past, clue requires a Cluegiver.
*This shouldn’t be taken in a derogatory way, because it simply means there are limits to what can be known.  But to persist in going the wrong way when all the clues point the other way is to be willingly clueless.
Next headline on: Cosmology. • Next headline on: Origin of Life. • Next headline on: SETI.

Wonder what Louis Pasteur, the arch-opponent of spontaneous generation, would have thought of his name being used in this way.
Next headline on: Mars. • Next headline on: Origin of Life.

    A critical question is whether Asteroxylon in fact had the capacity to biosynthesize lignin.  If it did, it starts to beg an interesting question: If one of the earliest plants had this capacity, then is it that capacity that allowed plants to colonize the continents?  And that, of course, could have enormous significance, because that was probably one of the many truly defining events in Earth history.
    What we came up with is evidence that really can’t be explained any other way than the fact that this plant, when it lived, had two structural biopolymers in its cell wall.  The differences that you see in the spectra are consistent with a greater amount of lignin being in one region of the cell wall than the other, which is consistent with what we see in modern plants.

We got all excited about this story because it sounded like a big breakthrough, finally, to explain the evolution of plants.  But then we looked and looked and couldn’t find anything about evolution, anywhere, except a bunch of bluffing about what a big step this would be if plants could evolve lignin.  After setting up the big question, they examine this primitive plant and find lignin already there!  So the very earliest land plant already had it; where, O where, is the evolution?  We feel cheated.  The rest of the article just brags about what a wonderful new technique they have now for getting the biological molecules out of the rock.  That’s fine, but we entered this store to buy some evolution and all they offered us was some lab hardware.  We thought bait and switch was against the law.  If you advertise evidence for evolution, you’d better have the goods in stock.
    “Because lignins are very complex natural polymers with many random couplings, the exact chemical structure is not known,” states The Lignin Institute.  And yet the American Chemical Society wants us to believe that this molecule, and the world of land plants that followed, all derive from a single genetic mutation.  Sanity alert!  This requires some radical lignin therapy.  We suggest taking a nice walk in the woods or curling up in the recliner with a copy of Wildflowers of California by Larry and Donna Ulrich (go to Portfolios/Wildflowers for samples).  Ah, relief!
    See also our Oct. 2001 headline about RG-II, a very complex carbohydrate that gives rigidity to cell walls.  It also has no evolutionary precursors.
Next headline on: Plants. • Next headline on: Darwinism and Evolutionary Theory. • Next dumb story.

Human subjects are just too complex to analyze with the scientific method.  We are not lab rabbits.  Nevertheless, it is kind of funny to see psychologists “confirm” what we all know from common sense and experience.  Focusing on hassles makes you grumpy.  Focusing on blessings makes you happy.  Well, duh.  We didn’t need a psychologist to tell us that.  We just needed to pick up our hymnal and recall Johnson Oatman’s lyrics set to Edwin Excell’s cheerful melody:

When upon life’s billows you are tempest tossed,
When you are discouraged, thinking all is lost,
Count your many blessings, name them one by one,
And it will surprise you what the Lord hath done.

Count your blessings, name them one by one,
Count your blessings, see what God hath done!
Count your blessings, name them one by one,
And it will surprise you what the Lord hath done.

Maybe these scientists should go to church and find out what is making all these people so disgustingly happy.  Hint: it isn’t natural selection.
Next headline on: Health.

We’ve reported some pretty dumb evolution stories before, but this one takes the cake.  Nobody knows if anyone is out there, but we’re going to teach them morality.  But look at the morality: we’re going to tell them that based on evolutionary theory, everyone is really selfish and love is an illusion.  It may take 100,000 years to receive their response to whatever interactive game we want them to play (Prisoner’s Dilemma is the evolutionists’ favorite – “in which the temptation to cheat threatens the benefits of cooperating”), but the same could be done with Monopoly, if they don’t mind long waits between moves.
    If anyone you know claims creationists are crackpots but evolution is scientific, hand them this story.  These guys are reminiscent of the new-age group in Independence Day on top of a skyscraper, welcoming the aliens with gushy smiles and open arms, begging to become one with them.  Yes, aliens, our friends, we want to evolve upward to where you are.  Like Jimmy Carter, we want to join a community of galactic civilizations.  We are selfish.  You are selfish.  Everyone is selfish.  Selfishness makes the world go round.  We love you!  Take us!  (Zap!)
Next headline on: SETI. • Next dumb story.

Faithful repair of broken or damaged DNA occurs by homologous recombination.  This process requires a series of enzymes, collectively forming a “recombination machine,” that act on broken DNA.  At least three broad classes of activities—helicases, nucleases, and synapsis proteins—constitute parts of this machine and can be provided either by one complex protein or by several separate proteins.

Why would natural selection maintain interchangeable parts, or keep a specialist trained on a job it normally doesn’t have to do?  These little molecules are incredible.  They’re like paramedics trained on each other’s tasks, so that the CPR operator can do the gauze if the bandage doctor is out of commission at the moment, so that the cell doesn’t bleed to death for lack of technical skill.  Imagine little robots able to find and repair DNA; it’s uncanny.  They know just what to do, and they’re on call 24 x 7.  Amazing.
    In this paper, you can find the words machine or machinery 42 times, repair 17 times, but not one mention of evolution, nor any conjecture on how this complex, redundant, mechanical system emerged.  The logical conclusion is left as an exercise.
Next headline on: The Cell. • Next headline on: Genes and DNA. • Next amazing story.

Differences between molecular trees and morphological trees seem to be the exception rather than the rule.  Molecular comparisons have thrown a monkey wrench into the assumed family trees of most groups (see the recent example with mammals).  This all seems like such a waste of time.  Evolutionists are just playing connect-the-dots games, based on evolutionary assumptions, with way too many dots and way too many assumptions.  But this is what evolutionists like: a good wrestling match, where they can argue with each other endlessly without ever having to know the truth.  Prehistory is unknowable by definition, because it is hidden in the unobservable past: unless, of course, a credible Eyewitness told us what really happened.
Next headline on: Bugs. • Next headline on: Genes and DNA.

• Cells have an exquisite toolkit for dealing with iron.  Three New Zealand scientists writing a Perspective special feature in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences describe a family of proteins called transferrins that clamp around iron and delicately transport this very toxic atom to wherever it’s needed in the cell.  The clamp has a hinge that opens the structure and disgorges the iron when it is safe to do so.  Another protein called hemopexin transports heme by holding it in the center of a four-part structure.
• Another Special Feature in the same issue talks about nitrogenase, which we discussed Sept. 6, 2002.  Two Harvard chemists attack this puzzling molecule with the zeal of Captain Ahab pursuing Moby Dick (this is actually how they end their article), but in spite of the best efforts of scientists for decades, “Few problems in bioinorganic chemistry have proved as challenging and refractory.”  They speak of techniques this molecule uses that are “biologically and chemically unprecedented,” and marvel like Scotty and Captain Kirk aboard an alien ship trying to figure out a novel dilithium crystal reactor.  Hidden inside the inner sanctum of this molecular machine is a secret method for separating nitrogen atoms at room temperature that is the dream of agricultural chemists, because artificial nitrogen fixation (e.g., fertilizer making) is costly and energy intensive.  “The synthetic problem of nitrogenase, nevertheless, remains unsolved,” but they think we’re getting warmer.
• Current Biology for March 18 has a quick guide to a very versatile gene called APC (adenomatous polyposis coli), without which we either die or get colon cancer.  It moves all over the cell, in and out of the nucleus, even riding the intracellular railroad.  APC has many jobs.  It’s a potent tumor suppressor, it regulates gene transcription, and it has a role in “maintaining adherens junctions, and also helps to tether mitotic spindles to the cortex and to orient them in the epithelial plane.  In mammalian cells, APC has been implicated in cell migration.  APC also helps safeguard the fidelity of chromosome segregation in mitotic cells.” 

It is so much more fun to see these things as engineering marvels instead of lucky rolls of the die.  You don’t have to worry so much about how Lady Luck could win against impossible odds.  Instead, you can just enjoy the talent show.
Next headline on: The Cell and Biochemistry. • Next amazing story.

Our analysis includes two species referred to Dicynodon that occur only in Russia and the type species that occurs in southern Africa.  Our results suggest that these three species do not form a clade to the exclusion of all other dicynodonts; the alternative hypothesis of a monophyletic Dicynodon is more weakly supported.  Although preliminary, our analysis challenges the use of Dicynodon for biostratigraphic correlations between Russia and South Africa, and we urge caution in using this taxon to correlate other widely separated basins.  This study also emphasizes that without phylogenetic information, there is no guarantee that named taxa represent biologically real entities, and the uncritical use of named taxa can easily lead to spurious biostratigraphic correlations.

Geologists and paleontologists come up with stories of world-wide extinctions due to meteorite impacts that make for good TV animations, but are they based on “uncritical use” of evidence?  When the uncritical use of evidence leads to contradictions and absurdities, who is heeding the call to be cautious, so as not go build a story on “spurious biostratigraphic correlations”?
    This is not an isolated case; there are dozens of living fossils of creatures long thought extinct that are doing just fine today.  If this poor dicynodont survived the first extinction, how did it get along on its own 115 million years?  Maybe it died of loneliness.  Funny that the story is flexible, but the dates are not.  You can fit any miracle – even resurrection – into a timeline that is not open to challenge.
Next headline on: Fossils. • Next dumb story.

Undoubtedly viewers will be less interested in the misinformation than in seeing how little clothing the actors can get away with.  The facts don’t provide much cover either, considering that “The study of early humans is one of the most hotly contested subjects in science today,” as the BBC admits.  Anyone who has followed the human evolution story for long (follow the chain links on Early Man in these pages) knows that a chimpanzee brawl in the jungle has more rationality and logic to it.  Everything that was taught in schools and textbooks is now wrong, new finds invalidate the old, warring camps question each others’ motives, and nobody even knows how to define a hominid any more.  But none of that matters.  Evolution is less concerned with facts than a good story, especially one that lets naked actors go ape and get physical.  That will help ratings and sell beer.  We’ll worry about the facts later.  The show must go on.
Next headline on: Early Man. • Next headline on: Movies.

• In Fire and Ice (p. 1), Joel Achenbach gives press to doubters of the leading theory that Cretaceous extinctions were caused by a single meteorite impact.  “But let’s stay calm here,” he retorts, knowing that the magazine’s cover story uses the Yucatan meteorite event as a key element in its story (page 30).  Though the majority still favor the single-impact theory, “The lesson here is that science usually doesn’t deal in absolutes,” he reminds us.  “Rather, we search for explanations that, for the moment, seem better than any alternative.  The big-rock theory isn’t doomed to extinction,” he claims (though he just devoted three paragraphs to critics of the theory, and their reasons the single-impact theory cannot be true); “but you can bet that there are still plenty of surprises ahead in our study of the distant past.”
• The cover story on The Rise of Mammals, after you make it past the picture of the naked pregnant lady holding a fossil of the alleged earliest mammal ancestor, reads like a newsreel of the unseen past.  The article has the usual NG artwork of evolutionary timelines and homologous arm bones.  Though never doubting Darwinism for a beat, author Rick Gore admits some controversy (emphasis added):
  1. “Just how closely are the world’s mammals related?  New genetic data propel this complex discussion, turning established beliefs upside down. ... Some of these gene-based superorders are at odds with groupings formed from fossil analyses (pages 14-15) and have sparked scientific debates—but also partnerships” (i.e., we might get some medical spinoffs out of it).
  2. A tiny fossil on page 11 claimed to be 195 million years old has “traits that humans now have. ... That’s much earlier than scientists had believed such key innovations emerged.”
  3. On pages 14-16, a large chart asks, “Is the Truth in the Bones ... or in the Genes?” and shows the disparity between two competing trees of mammalian evolution.  Seven dotted lines show big differences in lineages of elephants, aardvarks, moles and manatees.  “Many paleontologists angrily reject the DNA findings,” says Gore, “arguing that there must be something wrong with the molecular clocks the geneticists use to date their findings.  The geneticists counter that the paleontologists just haven’t found the right fossils yet.”  He quotes Mark Springer saying, “It’s been a complete upheaval.  We’ve come up with a very different family tree for mammals.”
  4. On page 20, the article puzzles over the divergence of placental mammals from marsupials, for which there is very little fossil evidence.  On page 21 it allows a dissenting view that marsupial mammals are just as advanced as placental mammals, if not more so.
  5. On pages 13 and 21, it describes an almost complete reversal from the view that mammals first emerged in the north and migrated south.  Since tri-tipped teeth have been found in the Southern Hemisphere, Gore says, “Some explain the presence of these southern tribosphenic teeth by saying they must have developed independently in both hemispheres.  Others say the innovation was too intricate to have evolved twice and that mammals must have evolved in the south, with subsequent generations moving north.”  Then he quotes Rich Cifelli, “It’s good to remember that the evidence is still slim.  I like to say that anyone who really stands up strongly for either theory is either nuts or thinks too highly of himself.”
  6. On pages 21-22, another controversy is revealed: Tom and Pat Rich think they has found a placental mammal fossil in Australia, but others say that cannot be true: placentals “were not supposed to be anywhere near Australia so long ago. ... If the Riches are right, we have to rethink how placentals travelled from Asia to the Southern Hemisphere.”  After stating several radical possibilities, for which there is no evidence, he quotes Tom Rich: “Most radical ideas are wrong.  It’s wise to be wary of them—especially when they are your own.”
  7. “Even more radical” continues the next paragraph on page 22 is Mark Springer’s theory of the placental family tree based on plate tectonics, “Troubling as it is to many paleontologists...”  Though it seems to fit the geologists’ preferred theory, “The fossil record from Africa for this period is almost blank.  Nevertheless, Emmanual Gheerbrant, a researcher for the National Center for Scientific Research in France, speculates that Africa ‘must have been a laboratory for some very peculiar animals.’” 
  8. Springer’s south-first theory is “Contrary to more than a century of northern chauvinism.”  His genetic studies “redefine relationships among placental mammals” and show that major groups “started to diversify much earlier than the fossil record suggests.”  Geneticists postulate that parts of a cell can be “evolving rapidly without changing what would be left behind in the fossil record.”

Nighty-night, children.  Sleep tight.  Don’t let tonight’s bedtime story scare you.  Don’t dream about Mommy as a hairy ape.  Don’t have any nightmares about the lack of transitional forms, the disparity between the fossil record and the genes, the debates over what caused extinctions, how placental mammals got to Australia, how complex and fully-formed traits appeared earlier than expected, and how you can have a laboratory without lab workers and a lab book.  Don’t fret about how sophisticated, multi-component, coordinated innovations appeared without an inventor.  Not to worry about any complete upheavals disturbing your dreams.  Daddy is right here.  He isn’t nuts.  He doesn’t think too highly of himself.  Everything is under control.  Let’s stay calm here....
Next headline on: Darwinism and Evolutionary Theory. • Next headline on: Mammals. • Next headline on: Genes and DNA. • Next headline on: Dating Methods.

For example, if we were to select the largest individuals in a generation, they would on average also be the most competitive individuals.  These individuals would have a set of genotypes that, under the current social conditions, make individuals large, and selection would therefore produce a genetic change in the population.  However, the progeny of these individuals would find themselves in a more competitive environment, because they all inherited genes from the most competitive individuals in the previous generation.  Thus, this new generation would not be as large as we would have expected based on the size of their parents, because they are experiencing a different social environment.
    As an analogy, we can view body size evolving on a treadmill, where every step forward is accompanied by movement backward due to the associated negative changes in the environment.  The result is that, depending on the speed of the treadmill, the trait either remains where it started or does not move as far as expected [Dickerson (48) referred to this as “slippage” on the treadmill].  When describing his fundamental theorem of natural selection, Fisher (47) recognized this process as the critical reason why populations do not continue to evolve to higher states of fitness (or character values) despite widespread recurrent directional selection.  However, his intuition that these effects would exist and be potentially important had not been previously demonstrated.

Because interactions between individuals are ubiquitous, the opportunity for phenotypic effects of these interactions, and thus IGEs, is considerable. ... Thus, the data presented here from Drosophila are expected to have significant implications for genetic analysis of a variety of traits in a diversity of taxa.  These data suggest that the traditional paradigm, focused exclusively on direct effects of genes, is inadequate.  To develop an accurate picture of genetic architecture that describes how genetic variation leads to phenotypic variation in a population, information on both direct and indirect effects of genes will be required whenever individuals interact.

We hate to be the bearers of bad tidings to evolutionists so often.  It’s getting downright depressing.  Here they had pinned their eternal hopes on the picture of competition driving evolution, and now they find out instead that it puts the brakes on it.  It’s like finding out your ally was a double agent all along.  Now what?  It was tough enough getting evolution to work with enough speed to get a Cambrian explosion, and to get birds from dinosaurs, but now the very selection pressures that are supposed to drive these transformations are seen to be like governors on the engine or brakes applied by the instructor in the passenger seat.  They’ll never get anywhere at this rate.
    We have no reason to believe Jason doubts evolutionary theory, because he published this paper in a very pro-evolutionary, anti-creationist, peer-reviewed journal, and teaches evolution at a state university.  But in the end, he gives no alternative explanation for how this negative effect can be overcome, to allow cells to evolve molecular machines, and plants photosynthesis, and humans bigger brains.  His paper leaves you hanging for the “Yeah, but...” that never comes.  So how does evolution make progress against this “negative covariation”?  “Don’t ask me.  I’m just the inspector to point out the leak, not the plumber to fix it.”
    Let’s try another metaphor to illustrate the problem this paper presents.  The pressure has been increasing on evolutionary theory to drive a more complex race in less time.  Imagine the consternation of the gamblers when they overhear the test report on their prize race car that contains a much-hyped transmission, natural selection, on which they have wagered everything: “Uh oh, the drive gear on this contraption slips and only inches forward, if at all.  But the neutral and reverse gears are working just fine, so at least I can rock back and forth.”
    Maybe it’s time to revive the pre-Darwinian view of Edward Blyth that natural selection is a conservative process.  Instead of generating novel phenotypes and new species, it appears to maintain a dynamic status quo and buffer against major change.  This would fit in with the creationist view that God designed flexibility and adaptability into dynamic systems that were fully operational from the start, not evolving into something better.  When you are on a treadmill, there is a lot of activity, but you get off where you got on. 
    If you are an evolutionist, we’re sorry your theory has been taking such a beating lately (Example 1, Example 2, Example 3, Example 4, Example 5).  Please accept this sympathy card with our sincerest best wishes.
Next headline on: Darwinism and Evolutionary Theory.

This does not mean that we should not be concerned about acid rain and air pollution.  The article mentions the possibility that trees might absorb or emit the compounds depending on the ambient local concentration from other sources, or on the amount of ultraviolet radiation.  What it might mean is that we need to redefine what pollutants are, because according to environmentalist axioms, trees don’t pollute; people do.  Nevertheless, this story is an ironic gotcha against those who mercilessly skewered Ronald Reagan for that remark during his presidency that trees cause air pollution.  It would be fun to hear the gipper comment on this news item in his inimitable style.  Too bad he is too incapacitated to savor the repartee.  Happy St. Patrick’s Day, Mr. President, and to all our readers – oh, and don’t fret about sniffing that fresh pine-scented air this beautiful March afternoon on the threshold of spring.
Next headline on: Politics. • Next headline on: Plants.

It is so amazing to see some of the biggest evidences of intelligent design in the smallest and most “primitive” organisms.  But it is almost as amazing to see intelligent scientists attribute this to idols like Mother Nature, who is supposedly blind, deaf and dumb: “Over a billion years ago, ancient bacteria evolved [sic] the ability to use iron and nickel to make hydrogen from water and then oxidize it as fuel, incorporating these metals into the enzymes now known as hydrogenases,” Alpers imagines nonchalantly.  Thomas Rauchfuss tops that: “over the few billion years that nature has been refining the hydrogenases, she’s come up with a few clever tricks that we’ve only recently figured out.”  Cough!  Choke!  But it gets even worse.  Consistent evolutionists must imagine that hydrogenase machines ultimately evolved from hydrogen itself, and the hydrogen evolved out of nothing.  Is this useful?  Evolutionary storytelling is like the exhaust fumes coming out of the tailpipe after the real engine of science does the work.
    For some fresh air, consider some alternatives from a design perspective.  Dr. Joe Francis, biology professor at The Master’s College, has recently been considering the implications of the fact that many micro-organisms perform vital functions that are absolutely essential to higher organisms.  Hydrogenase is one example.  The bacteria that digest cellulose for herbivores, and the nitrogen-fixing bacteria in plant roots are others.  It is also known that only a small fraction – perhaps 5% or less – of bacteria and viruses are harmful.  (The pathogenicity could be secondary, derived from mutation or recombination or lateral gene transfer, as appears to be the case in some whose genes have been sequenced.)  These micro-organisms give every appearance as having been present from the beginning, with their capabilities already functional, but not just for themselves.  Francis believes we should see the microbial world as a vast support network, originally designed for the good of the entire ecosystem.  Whether from judgment or degeneration, only a small part cause the grief we normally think of when talking about “germs”.  Even biological toxins, in small amounts, can have a beneficial role; many substances in nature act as either promoters or repressors, like gas pedals and brake pedals.  In living cells, also, some enzymes start actions, some stop them.  In this way, a dynamic balance (homeostasis) is maintained and regulated.  This natural regulation could also extend to interactions between organisms.  EurekAlert reported March 17 that scientists at Hebrew University found a fungus that is more effective than chemical pesticides at repressing powdery mildew (another fungus) and mites (an arthropod).  Dr. Francis also illustrated the principle with leaf-cutter ants that farm a fungus inside their nests; he pointed to another fungus outside that keeps it from spreading.
    Evolutionists want us to see a world of selfish organisms all competing for resources and tricking each other into getting what they want.  Is there a better perspective?  “God looked on everything He had made, and behold, it was very good,” says Genesis 1:31.  An initial good creation, followed by sin and judgment, can provide a new paradigm.  Instead of having to weave imaginary tales about how mindless bacteria invented high technology, we can see them as designed to what they do, and do it well, from the very start.  We can see a system of diverse organisms cooperating for the good of the whole in a dynamic interplay of regulatory processes. 
    A parting thought: there are about ten times as many bacteria and microbes in and on your body as your own cells.  Don’t hurry to get out the antibiotics and disinfectants, though; without them, you could not survive.
Next headline on: The Cell. • Next amazing story.

Scientists say this huge genealogical chart will have practical benefits for medicine, agriculture and the environment, as well as providing a basic understanding of life on our planet.  They say it will be as valuable as the chemists’ familiar periodic table of the elements, only much larger and more complex.
    One of the amazing claims of modern biology is that all life on Earth is descended from one common ancestor, a one-celled microbe that appeared some 4 billion years ago.  As ages passed, this tiny organism multiplied, differentiated and evolved into the enormous array of species that have since populated the Earth.

    Anthropologists say humans and chimpanzees shared a common ancestor 5 million to 7 million years ago.  We primates – humans, apes and monkeys – grew up in the family of mammals, which sprouted from the class of vertebrates, a subdivision of the kingdom of animals.  Animals, in turn, are a twig on the great branch of creatures that shelter their DNA inside the nucleus of each of their cells.
    All these creatures, along with the host of one-celled organisms that lack a nucleus, stem from the root of the tree of life, that ancient microbe that is the grandfather of us all.

Well, this is surely a boondoggle, because they’re throwing money down the drain after an impossible task.  Two evolutionists involved in this kind of work said that the number of putative trees that can be constructed from the raw data is almost infinite (for only 55 taxa, the number is 3 x 10⁸⁴ possible trees, more than the number of atoms in the known universe).  They remarked, “One is forced to admit that no future civilization will ever build a computer capable of solving the problem while guaranteeing that the optimal solution has been found.”  So the field is wide open for scientists to converge on a consensus view and claim success, even when no success is justified or justifiable.  Is this taxpayer-funded job security for evolutionists?
    The references to practical applications are irrelevant to the big question, whether a microbe is our granddaddy.  Not even creationists dispute that organisms vary within kinds.  If you can compare genes and find a crook, or see that closely-related plants have a common medicinal drug, fine.  Does that support the “amazing claim” that evolution’s tree of life supersedes the one in Genesis and Revelation?  The spinoffs are a distraction that do not justify the tale.  A pendulum can be used for a clock or a divining rod.  The first is applied science, the second is pseudoscience.  Funding pendula for clocks does not justify funding them for soothsayers.  There are many outstanding geneticists who provide valuable services to medicine, agriculture, criminology, or pure research.  It is a non-sequitur to conclude that funding genetics justifies funding evolutionary storytelling.  Evolutionists have no right to trade on the reputation of legitimate DNA laboratory research.
    Genetic phylogeny is a modern form of divination.  Instead of looking into a liver to predict a nebulous future, evolutionists look into the genes to postdict a nebulous past.  Like diviners, whose tales are vague enough to yield opposite interpretations and provide a safety valve if accused of being false prophets, evolutionists frequently announce unexpected and contradictory results, with baffling puzzles and empty promises.  Like diviners, they are usually ready with an explanation.  Similarly, they cannot be proved wrong, and they wrap themselves in the mystique of a secret art that is inscrutable to the laity.
    Once reporters pull the wool off their eyes and see what these modern day charlatans are up to, and start asking the same hard-hitting questions they would a crystal ball gazer or a Senator proposing a pork-barrel project, science news reporting will enter a new era.  Read Creation-Evolution Headlines and be on the cutting edge.
Next headline on: Genes and DNA. • Next headline on: Darwinism and Evolutionary Theory.

They have carried out a computer-modelling exercise, designing tools to cut tough substances, and find that found that the most efficient tools closely resemble the molars of carnivorous and insectivorous mammals.  They conclude that in many cases developmental and evolutionary factors have not strongly influenced molar shape, and that function is indeed the primary determinant.

We will enjoy this story much more after we sweep away the evolutionary cobwebs.  What did Evans and Sanson find?  Animals have optimally designed teeth.  Function, not developmental or evolutionary factors, determined tooth shape.  Wonderful; evolutionary theory has again been demonstrated to be irrelevant.  Can’t we just leave it there?  Why must we be told that, in spite of these empirical findings, evolution did indeed produce these optimal designs – and not just once, but multiple times?  Does Weil tell us how evolution did this, or provide any evidence?  No; she ends in a bald, dogmatic statement that teeth just evolved.  On top of that, nature evolved it better than the engineers designed it (emphasis added):

Evans and Sanson’s study did not address the significant role of crushing in chewing.  Their modelling therefore did not produce a ‘tribosphenic’ tooth shape, characterized on the lower molars by a low basin behind the high trigonid (Fig. 1d, e) into which the largest cusp of the upper tooth fits.  Tribo-sphenic molars perform both slicing and crushing functions, and were present in the ancestors of all living mammals.  Although Evans and Sanson focused on cutting alone, the superior efficiency of their protoconoid models, and the evident supremacy of function in determining tooth form, may support the arguments of those who believe that tribospheny evolved [sic] two or even three times within early mammals.

Here is the miracle of emergence again.
Next headline on: Mammals. • Next headline on: Intelligent Design.

1. A team of Japanese astronomers found evidence for large-scale structure at redshift z=5.  Introducing the fact that “The formation and evolution of the large-scale clustering of galaxies, as seen in the present-day universe, are central issues in cosmology,” they feel their survey with the Subaru telescope indicates “the high mass of halos hosting z=~5 LAEs [Lyman-alpha emitters] found here will imply that dark halos of a given mass host galaxies of a wide range of stellar mass or a wide range of evolutionary stages.”
2. Geoffrey Burbidge has another galaxy with quasars he believes are associated it, even though they have different redshifts.  (Burbidge, along with Halton Arp and the late Fred Hoyle, form a maverick group of astronomers who do not believe red shifts are reliable distance indicators).

The Japanese team’s large structure at a great distance adds more to the “lumpiness problem” of cosmology.  But if redshifts don’t necessarily prove distance or expansion, as Burbidge et al continue to argue, then all bets are off whether current theories explain the universe; we could be back at square one.  Meanwhile, Nature March 13 continues to push the new buzzphrase “precision cosmology” in its News Feature “Cosmology gets real,” even though author Geoff Brumfiel admits the recent WMAP results leave many questions unanswered.  It’s ironic that he ends with a quip from University of Chicago cosmologist Michael Turner, who says, “We’ve flushed out the basic features of the Universe.  What we need now is a good story.”
Next headline on: Stars. • Next headline on: Cosmology.

Liberals including those in Big Science seem to be stepping all over themselves these days to extol the virtues of Islam and whitewash its ills.  But the same journal Nature does not hesitate to print attacks on those who believe the Genesis creation account, even when they are outstanding scientists and compassionate citizens, the polar opposites of suicide bombers.  For those unfamiliar with this kind of double standard, it is called “tolerance.”  For a little balance, we suggest reading Marvin Olasky’s analysis of media coverage of Islam in last week’s World Magazine (March 8); also read the other reports on the flattering coverage of Buddhism, Hinduism and other world religions given by the media in contrast to their misrepresentations and palpable disdain for conservative Christians.  The whole issue, including the editorials, is revealing.  Also, see the introduction to our online feature World’s Greatest Creation Scientists, where the differences in world view pertinent to science between Islam and Christianity are discussed, as well the record of achievement by European scientists who were, for the most part, informed by Christian Biblical beliefs, and gave us our modern world.
Next headline on: Politics.

Do dead men tell tales?  Perhaps, but living ones can tell whoppers.  NG has these people escaping a volcano and coming from Homo erectus, even though from all appearances, the prints look modern.  Let’s try our own story.  Some kids were playing a dare game and seeing how close they could get to a volcano, darting in and back in a Z pattern, laughing all the way home, where Mom told them to wipe their feet and go do their homework.  A burst of ash covered the prints and hardened them, but a year later they were exposed by erosion.  A scientist happened along and found the tracks.  “These must be from ancient humans,” he exclaimed.  “It appears they were shorter than modern humans, and had just learned to walk upright.”  Later, an artist’s reconstruction of naked ape-like ancestors escaping a volcano appeared in National Geographic.  These kids’ teacher held up the magazine in their school to impress them with the evidence for evolution.
    It should be noted that the Laetoli prints were admitted in National Geographic to be indistinguishable from modern human prints, but their artist drew the “hominids” with ape-like features.  According to their evolutionary dating schemes, the prints were too old have been made by modern humans, in spite of their appearance.
Next headline on: Fossils. • Next headline on: Early Man.

Evolutionists, don’t you realize that strong-arm tactics are going to backfire?  It makes you look like the dictators bringing in the tanks at Tiannenmen Square.  The only way to win in this debate is to present better scientific evidence.  So let’s hear some.*
*Inadmissible: microevolution, circular reasoning and just-so stories, or harangues about how science must by definition be built on naturalistic philosophy.  We mean real observable, repeatable, testable evidence.
Next headline on: Education. • Next headline on: Darwinism. • Next headline on: Intelligent Design.

On what basis does he make this calculation?  Merely on evolutionary assumptions.  You cannot build a statistical case on one measurement.  The article quotes Ian Morrison of Jodrell Bank Observatory, UK, as being more cautious: “There’s a serious possibility that we could be the only advanced civilization in the Galaxy.”  There is also the serious possibility that we are the only life of any kind in the universe, unless God created it.  If He did, He did not reveal anything about it, which is His prerogative.
Next headline on: SETI.

Reality TV Meets Noah’s Ark   03/10/2003
In an effort to attract seasoned gamers and viewers submerged in “kitsch low culture” and “mindless cultural fluff,” Stephen Goddard has an epic idea: put a dozen strangers in a boat with animals and let them try to survive for 40 days and 40 nights.  The Ark sets virtual sail on Easter Sunday, according to the BBC News, and website visitors can vote a volunteer off every fourth day until one is left.  Shipmates get to assume a Biblical role like Jezebel, John the Baptist, Eve, Bathsheba, or Samson.

For anyone who has any respect for the Bible and the holiness of God, this latest dally into pop culture must cause deep groans, even tears.  Promoters think gimmicks like this will popularize theology and make it attractive to jaded, entertainment-intoxicated peasants, but all it is succeeding in doing is making Christians look like the Ship of Fools that Goddard calls his “satirical Christian webzine,” which has already latched onto the Simpsons and produced an Anglican teddy bear.  Why do some Christians feel this urge to jump on every cultural bandwagon in Vanity Fair?  (Usually they’re the last to get on, too.)  When will we understand that people don’t learn the fear of God through circuses, gimmicks, entertainers and trend-hopping, but by contemplation of the truth of God’s Word?
    Anyone attracted to the Bible by a sleazy Arky soap opera is going to be more interested in getting sensual gratification out of reading about Bathsheba and Delilah, not prostrating himself or herself in the presence of the Almighty.  The BBC treats this story like the joke that it is: “The Ark is reality TV meets God online in a flood.  Madness?”  The reason “Bible stories are being pushed to the margins of our culture” is because our culture treats them like cartoons about myths.  The real myth is that evolution has rendered the Bible’s history irrelevant, therefore irreverent.  Unless and until pastors understand that, and bring new Holy Spirit fire into their pulpits to rebuke the idols of our day, Christians will continue to be marginalized by a culture bred on the myth that naturalistic science has no need of the Word of God to explain the universe, earth, man, and destiny.
   “Reality TV” is an oxymoron.  TV addicts wouldn’t know reality if it hit them on the head.  Stop the gimmicks and escape to real reality.  Persuade people that we have a Maker and are accountable to Him.  Apologetics, not entertainment, is the need of the hour;  we need to lift up, not dumb down.  This would be a good time to review Joe Bayly’s classic parable The Gospel Blimp.
Next headline on: The Bible. • Next headline on: Movies and Media. • Next dumb story.

So, what does our history tell us?  Three things.  First, if the claim is that all contemporary evolutionism is merely an excuse to promote moral and societal norms, this is simply false.  Today’s professional evolutionism is no more a secular religion than is industrial chemistry.  Second, there is indeed a thriving area of more popular evolutionism, where evolution is used to underpin claims about the nature of the universe, the meaning of it all for us humans, and the way we should behave.  I am not saying that this area is all bad or that it should be stamped out.  I am all in favor of saving the rainforests.  I am saying that this popular evolutionism—often an alternative to religion—exists.  Third, we who cherish science should be careful to distinguish when we are doing science and when we are extrapolating from it, particularly when we are teaching our students.  If it is science that is to be taught, then teach science and nothing more.  Leave the other discussions for a more appropriate time.

This is a significant concession from a believer who can pack more anti-creation propaganda into a sentence than anyone we have ever seen (see loaded words in our Baloney Detector, where his propaganda-to-word density approaches 0.99).  Though he denies any link between evolutionary theory and morals, he owns up to an accusation Duane Gish and others have been making for years, that evolution is not presented by many of its leading advocates (such as Julian Huxley) as a science, but as a religion.  Ruse even casts Thomas Huxley as Darwin’s apostle Paul, illustrates (with photos) natural history museums as secular cathedrals, and portrays Erasmus Darwin, Huxley, Haeckel and Spencer as secular crusaders.  (In the process, he pictures poor old Charles Darwin as an also-ran.)  Ruse fails to mention any leading evolutionist by name, living or dead, who could be considered a good model of a scientist who kept to the laboratory without using evolution as a springboard for moral messages about democracy, education, religion, or conservation.
    The analogy about industrial chemistry lacks merit, because chemistry deals with observable, repeatable laboratory work.  Ruse also gives a false either-or impression that evolutionists support rain forest preservation and creationists don’t.  We would also question the validity of most of the “serious empirical work, very professional” that Ruse bluffs about (read our pages for many examples).  Also, despite his assertion that “It is silly to claim that a naturalistic story of origins leads straight to sexual freedom and other supposed ills of modern society,” that’s exactly the message many students get.  What else would logically follow from a belief that everything evolves by natural selection, including morals?  And when is the more “appropriate time” to address the moral implications of Darwinism?  In the sociology or political science class?  But if there is no scientific basis for drawing moral judgments from evolutionary theory, how about in religious studies class, or at the 10:30 service of the First Darwinist Church of Atheism?
    So take notice, evolutionist readers.  Better be consistent.  If you believe evolution is not a religion, then you had better stick to observable, repeatable, laboratory science.  That means you have to stop relying on imagination and wishful thinking about how such-and-such a tooth or bone might shed light on evolution.  You can no longer tell just-so stories about the observations (see next headline).  You must stop speculating about morals and politics*, and telling people how they should live.  You can no longer extrapolate beyond what the data indicate.  These commandments come from one of your leading atheologians.  (If the faithful all did what Cardinal Ruse suggests, Darwinism would quickly lose worshippers, because the scientific part is boring.  Maybe they can pep up their worship services with our evolution hymns.)

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*In the same issue of Science, a Paris sociologist makes the astounding claim that suicide terrorism is a concept foreign to Islam; instead, suicide bombers get their inspiration from the Catholic Inquisition.  Why is a science journal giving this revisionist a pulpit?  Call foul.  Cardinal Ruse, excommunicate this heretic.
Next headline on: Darwinism and Evolutionary Theory.

Have evolutionists forgotten the lesson of Nebraska Man?  One cannot spin these kind of yarns from teeth.  Teeth do not come with dates and video recordings of how they got where they are.  It was wishful thinking and evolutionary dogmatism that caused Henry Fairfield Osborn and other evolutionists to construct an imaginary Nebraska ape-man family and ecology out of a pig’s tooth.  Here they are in 2003 again, telling us all about land bridges and migration routes and tree gymnastics, all from a few teeth in Thailand.  The science reporter at the BBC should be embarrassed at his gullibility.  Where is hard-hitting investigative reporting when it comes to what scientists claim?  He should read the book review by John Galloway a few pages up in the