Big Bang Produced Heavy-Metal Music 04/30/2001
The inflationary big bang cosmology has been confirmed by experiment,
according to reports circulating in the news media today.
New results reported from BOOMERANG
balloon that flew over the South Pole in 2000, the new Degree
Angular Scale Interferometer (DASI) at the South Pole station, and a
Texas-launched balloon called the
MAXIMA
project,
seem to confirm the presence of harmonic spikes in the cosmic background
radiation (CBR) consistent with inflation theory. The
BBC
News has a picture and more on the “music of creation” analogy.
What are the data here? They’re
talking about measuring differences as small as 100 millionths of a
degree! These data are said to be “consistent” with the
inflationary big bang scenario, but no doubt others will claim it fits
their pet theory better. What these stories fail to tell you is
that inflation
is an ad hoc speculation invented to save the big bang from the
flatness and horizon problems, that the original inflation model was
jettisoned long ago in favor of a metaphysical version (chaotic inflation)
incapable of verification even in principle, that so-called
“dark energy” is another ad hoc speculation to fit the big
bang to recent unexpected observations, and that it is bad
science to place so much interpretation on such miniscule data that
could have a different cause.
The gullible media seem to welcome whatever pronouncements come from the
cosmological soothsayers and distribute it unchallenged to the peasants.
What we need are some unflappable reporters willing to ask the hard questions:
How can you be so sure based on such small measurements? How do you
know there is not a different explanation? How do we know you are
not claiming success so that you can get more NSF funding? Read
our December 21 story for a more accurate
feel of what really goes on behind the cosmological curtain.
Next headline on: Cosmology.
Film 04/29/2001: Discovery
Media Productions has just released a documentary entitled The
Exodus Revealed: Search for the Red Sea Crossing. Refuting the belief that
the Exodus story lacks archaeological evidence, the film finds clues in Egypt, Palestine,
Arabia and the Gulf of Aqaba to substantiate the Biblical epic story. Beautifully photographed and masterfully edited,
and set to original music, the 80-minute film includes new and rare footage from Egypt, Saudi Arabia and even from underneath the Red
Sea, where the Discovery crew used a robotic camera to search for wreckage from Pharoah’s army. The video can be purchased from
Questar video (ignore the sales blurb about the Shroud of Turin; this film has nothing to do with that).
At the premiere ceremony in Los Angeles, another
film was previewed, Unlocking the Mystery of Life. This film will be a definitive
treatment of the Intelligent Design movement and its basis in the complexity of life as
evidence of design. Featuring award-quality computer animation of DNA and cellular
processes, it includes interviews with Phillip Johnson, Michael Behe and others.
The film is scheduled to be released in September to coincide with an upcoming eight-part, $15 million PBS
series on evolution, but funds are still needed to complete the film. Dr. Phillip
Johnson was present at the preview to encourage the nearly 500 attendees to support the
film project; interested parties can write Discovery Media at P.O. Box 703, Murrieta, CA 92564. (Note:
Discovery Media is the successor to old
Moody Institute of Science,
with the same production crew, high standards and experience.)
Next headline on: Movies. •
Next headline on: Bible.
Next headline on: The Cell and Biochemistry.
Book 04/28/2001: Dr. Walter Brown has published the 7th edition of
In the Beginning, Compelling Evidence for Creation
and the Flood, one of the most thoroughly
documented general creation books. It combines overviews of 137 categories of evidence
that refute evolution and support creation and a worldwide flood (backed up by hundreds of
footnotes and references), and in-depth studies of
the flood mechanism and related aftereffects, such as frozen mammoths, the fossil
record and other worldwide mysteries. The majority of the book is easy reading for the layman, but contains
enough technical detail to engage a PhD. Also, unusual for any book on origins,
Dr. Brown makes predictions for his theories so they can be falsified.
New to this edition are detailed theories on the origin of comets and
meteoroids, and many updates to the previous edition. Answers to 28 common questions
are included. The book is filled with numerous color illustrations and charts. The
entire book can be read online and downloaded from the link above; any portion can be
reproduced for teaching and classroom use.
Dr. Brown has a PhD from MIT and was a professor for the Air Force before entering
creation research full time. He has had a standing offer since 1990 for a
written debate with
a qualified evolutionist on the scientific arguments for creation vs. evolution.
Has Darwin’s Warm Little Pond Dried Up? 04/27/2001
NASA’s Astrobiology
Institute posted a story by David Pacchioli of Penn State University
on why he is not ready to give up on Darwin’s suggestion that life
might have originated in some warm little pond with the right mix of
chemicals. Beginning with the Miller-Urey experiment, he reviews
the history of origin-of-life theories and the major difficulties they have
run up against. He suggests some ways out, such as the RNA-world
hypothesis, ways to concentrate methane around deep-sea vents, and ways
to overcome the poisonous effects of oxygen.
This article is written with wry humor as
it splashes the cold water of reality on the premature euphoria of Harold
Urey and his Star Trek disciples. You have to feel pity for the
evolutionists and their undying faith in the primordial soup.
That warm little pond dried up long ago, and gets
drier with time. To use another metaphor, abiogenesis is the
Achilles heel of evolution, and it has been hit repeatedly by cannonballs
since the optimistic 1950s (not that the rest of
Achilles was any healthier). Follow the chain links for more
reasons why, despite their hope, Darwinists cannot revive poor Achilles
to conquer their most formidable challenge: the origin of life.
Next headline on: Origin of Life. •
Next headline on: Darwinism.
Earth-like Planets May Be Rare 04/26/2001
Scientists at the
University
of Colorado estimate that earth-like planets may be rare;
90% of stars may have nothing but small rocky remnants orbiting them.
They base this conclusion
on observations that most stars form in unfriendly environments similar to
the Orion Nebula, where ultraviolet light blasts away the dust disks
around sun-like stars in short order, faster than an accreting planet
could form. Farther from the star the dust grains might coalesce,
but gas giants and comets would be precluded, making the origin of
oceans unlikely. As corroboration, the scientists also point out
that extrasolar planet hunters find Jupiter-size planets around only
5% of stars surveyed. For a summary of the paper published in
Science, see this summary in New
Scientist. The next day,
the Hubble
Space Telescope also published images of planetary disks being blasted
by UV winds, and
Scientific American
(04/27/2001) claimed astronomers are seeing the first evidence of planetary
birth in the Orion Nebula, but the only observational evidence is an inference
of larger dust grains – hardly like watching a planet form.
The body of the news summary deflated the optimistic title;
if any planets did survive the ultraviolet “blowtorch,” they
would not be like earth.
This story, even though it does seem to rely
on quite a bit of speculation, underscores the many “lucky accidents” that make
life possible (the Anthropic Principle).
Next headline on: Stars. •
Next headline on: Solar System.
Chinese Dinosaur Had Downy Feathers – Maybe 04/25/2001
A fossil on loan from China shows a small duck-sized creature, presumably
a type of Dromeosaur,
apparently covered in fuzzy material that evolutionists are claiming
look like downy feathers. The fossil, now on display
at the New York Museum of Natural History, is claimed to be the clearest
specimen yet to show feathers evolved before flight, perhaps as
insulation. See photos in:
ABC
News and BBC News
for photos and summaries of the find reported in
Nature.
As the news media proclaim a missing link has been found, Carl Wieland of
Answers in
Genesis has filed a preliminary creationist response to this discovery.
Science News April 28 reported anomalies on the fossil; according
to Larry D. Martin of the Univ. of Kansas, in many places the filaments
seem to extend all the way to the bone, leaving no room for muscle, skin,
or other tissue. In addition, he said, “I don’t know of
any animal with feathers or such long hair on its thighs like that.
This is funny stuff.”
We’ve learned to sit back and wait for all the facts to come in
on these claims of feathered dinosaurs. The
evolutionists
themselves don’t agree on what the impressions are
or what they mean.
Structurally, feathers are complex structures very different from scales,
and emerge from different parts of the skin. What’s more,
according to the evolutionary dating scheme, this specimen is later than
the time birds were supposed to have already evolved. And even if
some sort of fuzzy coating is confirmed, it doesn’t begin to address
the major internal changes required to transform a cold-blooded reptile
into a warm-blooded bird.
Next headline on: Birds. •
Next headline on: Dinosaurs. •
Next headline on: Fossils.
Monogamy Is an Evolutionary Strategy of Deception by Females 04/25/2001
According to the BBC
News, monogamy evolved from women deceiving males about when
they are fertile. By appearing to be ready for sex any time, they
make males hang around longer than they normally would, according
to scientists from Sweden and the Netherlands.
This article illustrates the very
worst of evolutionary just-so storytelling, that abandons any
moral basis for behavior and portrays us as pawns of prehistoric,
impersonal evolutionary forces. Here’s a conundrum: ask
these scientists if their theories are also the pawns of
prehistoric, impersonal evolutionary forces. Then how do
they know they are true?
Next dumb story.
Chloroplast Packs Information Into Tiny Genome 04/25/2001
Henry Gee, writing for Nature,
asserts that chloroplasts were inducted as slaves into bacteria and
became the first plants. The chloroplasts contain nucleus-like
structures called nucleomorphs with very short genomes. These
genomes have the densest arrangement known of genetic information, even
overlapping genes and using both halves of the double helix for coding.
Abstract: Nature 26 April 2001.
The article begins with “Once upon
a time” and spins an evolutionary fairy tale. Nothing in
the data proves the evolutionary story for how chloroplasts originated,
or that these and other organelles with their own genomes were not designed
from the start to do what they do. It also begs the question of how
a chloroplast originated in the first place. What can be claimed
scientifically is that complex specified information never arrives by
random processes.
Next headline on: The Cell and Biochemistry.
Our Humanness: Gene Sequence, Gene Activity, or Something More? 04/24/2001
Both Nature and
Scientific American
summarized today the flavor of discussions from the Human Genome Meeting
that just concluded in Edinburgh; apparently, it is not the sequence of
our genes, but the amount of activity in the way they are expressed,
that makes us human. Gene sequences between humans and chimpanzees
differ by as little as 1.3%. Something else is clearly involved
in making us what we are. A German scientist found that although
the sequences of genes in apes and people are similar, their expression
in the brain is poles apart. The genomes of all mammals are so similar
that “it’s hard to understand how they can produce such different
animals, says Sue Povey, who works on human gene mapping at University
College London in England. What drives similar genes to have
such divergent degrees of expression, if it is not DNA? No one knows.
On April 27, ABC
News posted a story about the relation of the
genome to the “proteome,” the protein library,
with some illustrations of how proteins work.
We are seeing a major paradigm shift in
the works. For years we have assumed that differences in the genetic
code (genotype) account for the differences in body plan (phenotype) and
behavior. Apparently, things are not so simple. There is no
correlation between size of the genome and complexity of the organism,
as explained in a recent ICR
News Commentary: a single-celled Paramecium, for instance, has
twice the DNA of a human. We are likely
to see a whirlwind of new theories to explain the connection between
our DNA and ourselves. Don’t expect to find a soul encoded
in A, C, G, or T.
Next headline on: Human Body. •
Next headline on: The Cell and Biochemistry.
Update on Eros 04/23/2001: see more about
the thick dust layer on the asteroid.
Next headline on: Dating methods.
Synthetic “Life” Created in Lab 04/23/2001
At least, that is the claim made by the title of a news article from the
journal Science.
Actually, what two teams of scientists did was trick existing Transfer-RNA
machinery to insert non-natural amino acids into proteins.
The title of the article is totally
inappropriate. It’s like claiming that by inserting a new
piece of metal onto a car on a working assembly line, you have
created a new car. This news story actually underscores
the tremendous complexity of life: “About half of all aaRSs carry out
an editing function that double-checks to make sure the proper amino acid
is linked to the right tRNA. If the editor finds a mistake, it clips
off the incorrect amino acid, giving the tRNA a new chance to load the
right one. So Schimmel and his colleagues simply mutated the
editing portion of one aaRS, a change that allowed it to load
unnatural amino acids onto tRNAs, which were then readily incorporated
in proteins.” So they broke something to make it do
what they wanted. This is like tranquilizing the watchdog so you
can sneak something into the house. Did you notice the amazing fact
that cells can edit out the mistakes on the assembly line? Wow!
Next headline on: The Cell and Biochemistry.
Women Are Evolving Today 04/23/2001
Imperial
College scientists who studied 2,710 sets of Australian twins claim women are
evolving by natural selection to have children at younger ages.
They found that social and religious factors have a significant effect
on fitness (the ability of an organism to reproduce itself because it is
well adapted to its environment), but even factoring out those influences,
they found changes in the timing of the first period, the first childbirth
and the onset of menopause. Dr. Ian Owens of Imperial College said,
“This is a really unexpected finding.” but he cautioned against
the possibility of using the data for a eugenic program for selective
human breeding.
Notice how the evolutionist distances
himself from the dark history of eugenics and Social Darwinism.
But aside from that, it must be pointed out that humans are too complex to
analyze as Darwinian guinea pigs.
According to the Harvard Law, “Under
the most stringent controls of temperature, pressure and humidity, the
organism does what it darn well pleases.”
Are we to conclude from these data that working-class women
or Catholics are more fit than college-educated women because
they start having children earlier?
How can they factor out influences as subjective as religion and society?
How do they measure this nebulous quantity evolutionists call
“fitness”? Fitness is whatever you make it to be:
it can be having more children, or having fewer;
it can be postponing childbirth, or starting it earlier.
It can be monogamy or polygamy.
“Fitness” is a convenient black box
evolutionists use to house any unknown that produces the desired result:
i.e., that evolution has been demonstrated.
In actuality, their own definition of fitness (ability
to reproduce because of adaptation) is a tautology.
Who is able to reproduce? Those who are well adapted.
Who are well adapted? Well, obviously, those who reproduce.
For an enlightening expose of this evolutionary shell game, from
quotations by evolutionists themselves, read
The Biotic Message
by Walter ReMine.
Next headline on: Human Body. •
Next headline on: Darwinism.
Evidence Grows for Black Sea Flood 04/21/2001
The National
Geographic May 2001 issue has arrived, with a photo report by Titanic discoverer Robert D. Ballard
on his latest research project: searching for evidence to test Ryan and Pitman’s theory that a
catastrophic dam-breach flood occurred at the Black Sea 7500 years ago. Ryan and Pitman in
their book Noah’s Flood (1998) postulated that this event gave rise to legends about the
Noachian Deluge (on the National Geographic website link above,
you can vote whether you think
the Biblical story is true or not).
Ballard has found an ancient shoreline and numerous artifacts including
shipwrecks, but not all of them date from the presumed flood period.
Nevertheless, the ship hulls are remarkably preserved in the poisonous
oxygen-free water at the bottom.
Research continues; in 2002, Ballard will attempt
to excavate some of the wrecks.
While the work is interesting, and a catastrophic flood in the area may have indeed occurred, linking this
local event to the Biblical flood is philosophy, not science. It comes from materialist researchers who do not
believe in miracles or in a God who would or could judge the entire world with water like He said He did.
Sediments and fossils around the world bear testimony to the truth of the Genesis account. Ryan and
Pitman reject the evidence and try to make the Bible account sound like an exaggeration of a large but local
natural event, having nothing to do with sin and judgment. It’s not the evidence at issue, it’s the
interpretation. You can’t get a local flood out of Genesis 6-9; and remember, Jesus believed it
was global (Matt. 24:37-39): do you trust His testimony, or are you going to also demythologize Him into a
sadly misinformed mere man?
See also our November 5 headline on this story.
Next headline on: Bible. •
Next headline on: Geology.
Conferences 04/20/2001: The HUGO Human Genome
Meeting 2001, a conference
of scientists and ethicists discussing the implications of the Human
Genome Project, is underway in Edinburgh,
Scotland. A multidisciplinary symposium by the Royal Society on
The Astrochemistry
of Life has been scheduled for August 1-2 in Birmingham.
Papers on prebiotic chemistry
appear
intimidating to the unitiated, because of all the equations and
technical terms (they couldn’t be wrong if they are this smart,
could they?) But when you learn the art of Baloney
Detecting, you see the flaws between the bluffing lines. In the
first place, the theories are filled with doubt words: maybe, might,
could, perhaps. In the second place, astrobiologists are trying to
reverse-engineer existing life back to an illogical premise: that
information-rich organisms originated from zero information.
No amount of intellectual hand-waving can overcome a bad premise.
Eye Neurons See Their Way to the Brain 04/20/2001
Through a series of clever experiments on frogs and fruit flies, researchers at the
University of Utah
have identified some of the genes responsible for the development of
eyes and their nerve connections to the brain. Without the genes,
the neurons seem to get lost and go in circles, but with the gene, the
neurons “see” their way to the proper connection point in the brain.
How do microscopic neurons know where to drive their growing tips to the
proper destination? Imagine hundreds of computer cables in a tangled
mass moving unerringly to the right socket so that a computer network comes
to life, and you get an idea of the complexity involved in a lowly
tadpole’s optic nerve. The genes provide detailed instructions
to the growing neuron tip to guide it through the maze of chemical
signals. See also our March 8 story
on this subject.
Next headline on: The Cell and Biochemistry.
Cloning News 04/19/2001: According to the
BBC
News, the U.K. has become the first country to ban human cloning,
beating out the United States and the rest of the world. The BBC News
also posted this
page
of questions and answers about the issue.
Next headline on: Politics.
Web Feature 04/18/2001: NASA-JPL celebrates Earth Day with a clickable
map of famous places around the earth as seen from space. See:
www.jpl.nasa.gov/earthday.
The view of our home planet as seen from high above is
food for thought for anyone, regardless of nationality, race or creed.
Think of what wonders lie below! But also, what sin and depravity.
Jeremiah might be prompted to cry out,
O
earth, earth, earth, hear the word of the Lord!
In the last days of this planet,
an angel will fly in the midst of heaven with a message for the inhabitants
of earth: Fear God, and give glory to Him, for the hour of His
judgment has come; and worship Him who made heaven and earth and the sea
and the fountains of waters
(Revelation
14:7). The ultimate Earth Day will come when the Lord returns to
destroy
those who destroy the earth.
Biological Motor Caught on Film 04/18/2001
The Japanese have succeeded in capturing images of ATP Synthase, the
world’s tiniest motor, according to
Nature
Science Update. This incredibly
small proton motor rotates at thousands of
RPM and cranks out ATP molecules, the energy currency for all living
things. Your body has uncounted trillions of these motors spinning
right now, providing
the energy for every heartbeat, muscle contraction and chemical process.
The Japanese images of the motors show unprecedented detail and, for
the first time, actually show the little motor turning.
“We couldn’t ever build a motor that small - but nature has,”
remarks one scientist. On April 24,
Science reported on this story with a picture of how they photographed one of
nature’s most “splendid machines.”
Notice how the article shows no hesitancy
in calling the molecular assemblage a motor. How are
motors made? By throwing parts together at random and hoping they
work as a unit?
Incomprehensible how anyone can believe that, yet that is the current
naturalistic myth. On the contrary! ATP synthase
is one of the exquisite marvels of life, essential to all living things,
wonderfully complex and DESIGNED for a purpose. Biochemistry is
making Darwinism increasingly untenable. ATP synthase is just one more
fantastic example of irreducible
complexity to use in making the case for creation.
You’ve got to see this
incredible animation
of ATP synthase in action! German scientists have made a
computer-generated model of how it works. Watch the model rotate in slo-mo
and snap the ATP molecules together. Look at all the precise parts
functioning like a finely-crafted machine, then realize these motors
spin at about 6000 RPM!. Click on “Rotary ATP Synthase” and
watch if your browser supports MOV format, or download it and play it
with QuickTime. (Warning; the 6mb file takes over 30 minutes to
download at 56kb.) Many more illustrations of ATP synthase are
provided at this site and others indicated in our main story above.
Next headline on: The Cell and Biochemistry. •
Next headline on: Human Body. •
Next amazing story.
Article 04/17/2001: Tom Bethell, writing for the American
Spectator an article entitled “The Road to Nowhere” (reproduced on the
Discovery
Institute website, claims “The genome isn’t a code, and
we can”t read it.” He reports how the human genome is far more
complex than earlier claimed, because the old one-gene one-protein hypothesis
appears to be incorrect; a gene can code for several tens of proteins.
This means the difference between man and apes
cannot be simply correlated to the difference in gene count, for instance.
The article contains statements by Dr. David Baltimore, James Watson and
other prominent DNA scientists to the effect that it may be many decades
before we understand how the human genome works and what it says;
predictions that our computers could crack the code appear overly
optimistic.
Class Warfare Erupts On Planet of the Apes 04/17/2001
The lumpers vs. the splitters: that’s the classification battle going on between
paleoanthropologists over Meave Leakey’s latest ape-man candidate,
Kenyanthropus. According to
Science News this
week, the lumpers don’t like creating a new species or genus every
time a new bone turns up, as is the habit of the splitters.
Follow the chain
links here for the whole comic saga over our alleged ancestors.
Next headline on: Early Man.
Article 04/17/2001: Mark Hartwig,in an article for Boundless
entitled “Was
Darwin Right After All?” republished on the
Discovery Institute website,
answers the claim that the Human Genome Project proves Darwinism.
Next headline on: Darwinism.
Stem Cell Research: The NIH has
blocked
further funding for embryonic stem cell research indefinitely.
Media Often Gets the Science Wrong 04/17/2001
A new book by Murray, Schwartz and Lichter,
It
Ain’t Necessarily So: How the Media
Make and Unmake the Scientific Picture of Reality, has just been
announced. “Have the cows gone mad? Are the ice caps
melting? Is a woman raped every nine seconds? If you answered
yes to all of these questions, it means you’ve been listening to the
media. If you answered no, you’ve been listening
to the experts.”
Read the blurb and be wise. Their “shocking expose” that
“the sources we so faithfully trust may not be so reliable after all”
should not be news to readers of these pages.
(The book’s title is an ironic twist on Gershwin’s line from
Porgy and Bess, “Whatever you’re liable to read in the
Bible just ain’t necessarily so.”)
The warnings about bad science in the media apply especially to reports
about evolution, where extrapolation, authority, big lies, half truths,
bandwagon, visualization, loaded words and outright fraud are commonplace.
Also watch out for the increasing attention given to psychic phenomena,
UFO abductions, conspiracy theories (e.g., Apollo program was a hoax), and
the obsession that nature programs have with all things nasty like snakes,
spiders, sharks and natural disasters. The media often gives a very
unbalanced, if not twisted, view of the world. Turn off the TV, step
outside, and escape to reality.
Next headline on: Politics. •
Next headline on: Movies.
Article 04/16/2001: Phillip Johnson writing for
Access
Research Network gives a progress report on his Wedge Strategy for
defeating the naturalistic philosophy stranglehold on science.
Cell News 04/16/2001: Two articles from the Journal of
Cell Biology on wonders in the cell, summarized in EurekAlert:
(1) A story about control mechanisms involved
in cell
division, and (2) A story about how
yeast
cells are able to keep their nuclei in the center. There is also
(3) this story summarized in
Science
Now describing how plants can sense the cold and adjust their
processes to keep from freezing. And on April 18, (4)
EurekAlert
published a summary of a study that explores how white blood cells are
able to find their way to infected areas.
Next headline on: Plants. •
Next headline on: The Cell and Biochemistry.
Astrobiologists Explore Alien World Under the Sea 04/16/2001
Convinced that deep-sea vents hold clues to the evolution of life,
NASA
astrobiologists are studying the alien communities of bizarre
life-forms around deep-sea vents. The bacteria that support
a community of creatures around
these hot geysers erupting from the sea floor use chemical energy
from the hot water instead of sunlight. “Astrobiologists are
increasingly convinced that life on Earth itself might have started in
the sulfurous cauldron around hydrothermal vents. Vent environments
minimize oxygen and radiation, which can damage primitive molecules.
Indeed, many of the primordial molecules needed to jump-start life
could have formed in the subsurface from the interaction of rock and
circulating hot water driven by hydrothermal systems. If this idea
proves true, then as Van Dover gazes through the submarine’s camera at
the vents on the floor of the Indian Ocean, she may be seeing both a
portrait of life’s genesis in Earth’s distant past – and a
glimpse of alien life yet to be discovered.” Here is
another
related story on life around deep sea vents.
It is a logical fallacy to assume that
just because complex creatures (including bacteria) are highly adapted
to live around these black smokers that they evolved there from
nonliving chemicals. You can read a bit of desperation
between the lines of this story. Astrobiologists know that
oxygen and UV radiation are deadly to
origin-of-life scenarios. Since oxygen was most likely present
in the early earth, and the reducing atmosphere envisioned by Miller
and Urey in the 1950s was not, evolutionists are scrambling to find
other environments for the origin of life that are even more
improbable, such as
deep sea vents and meteorites. So much for the primordial soup.
Next headline on: Origin of Life.
Common Ancestor of Plant Carbon-Fixing Found? 04/16/2001
A report published in the Proceedings
of the National Academy of Sciences claims that a protein similar to
the one that fixes carbon from CO2 has been found in green sulfur
bacteria. The protein appears to perform some other functions in the
bacterium as well.
More evolutionary storytelling here.
A bacterium may be small, but it is not primitive. To claim that this
miniature factory evolved into higher plants is like claiming a Palm
Pilot evolved into an Internet Server.
Next headline on: Plants.
Owls Excel at Math 04/13/2001
Owls have surround sound, according to Scientific
American. “Researchers knew that the owl’s
aural sensitivity allowed it to create a two-dimensional map of
auditory space. But they may have underestimated the
computing capabilities of the neurons that generate this map,
according to findings reported today in the journal Science.
Whereas most neurons are thought to add incoming signals together
to come up with the appropriate neural response, the owl’s
auditory map neurons appear to multiply.
“Birdbrain” appears to be
a compliment, the more we learn. Who taught the owl how to
multiply? Your brain also does complex math without your
conscious thought: see our January story.
Next headline on: Birds.
Essay 04/15/2001: Marvin Olasky in
World
Magazine writes “Which is less likely: life after death, or life
after the Big Bang?” He
compares the believers’ faith in an improbable Resurrection with
the evolutionists’ faith in the far more improbable naturalistic
origin of the universe and life.
L.A. Times Throws Doubt on the Exodus 04/13/2001
At the culmination of the holiest season for Christians and Jews,
the Los
Angeles Times front page printed a story entitled “Doubting the
Story of Exodus.” It alleges that virtually no scholar today
believes that the Jews were ever enslaved in Egypt, crossed the Red Sea,
wandered through the wilderness or conquered Palestine under Joshua.
It interviews liberal Jews today who teach it not as history, but as
a story of liberation theology for the oppressed of all ages.
The timing of this story shows the
insensitivity of the L.A. Times, one of the most secular papers in the
world, to the religious beliefs of millions of people. But aside
from that, it is a case of selective reporting and bandwagon arguments.
It is similar to media attention given to the Jesus Seminar that doubts
everything in the Gospels. The
archaeological
evidence for both Old and New Testaments is rich and powerful;
over and over it is the skeptics and self-appointed “scholars”
who have been proved wrong by the archaeologist’s spade.
Regarding the Exodus itself, just this month (April 28),
Discovery Media Productions
is premiering its new documentary The Exodus Revealed: The Red Sea
Crossing which will exhibit archaeological evidence that the
Exodus story as presented in the Bible is not just moralizing legend or myth,
but historical fact.
Next headline on: Bible.
Discovery Channel Remakes Jesus In Its Own Computer Image 04/13/2001
The Discovery Channel aired its new documentary
Jesus,
The Complete Story on Easter Sunday, in contrast to the documentary
also aired by Coral Ridge Ministries (see below). It basically
denies everything Christians believe about Jesus Christ, his birth, life,
motives, death and resurrection. It presents a new twist on the
long-discredited swoon theory, claiming Jesus faked his death in a plot
with Judas.
The Discovery Channel, champion of other
computer fantasies like Walking With Dinosaurs, shows its true colors
with this in-your-face Easter-time slap at Christians.
Skeptics’ theories have come and gone for centuries;
there is really nothing new under the sun. The Discovery Channel
replaces genuine scholarship with invented conspiracy theories and
speculations that don’t explain the apostles, the church, the martyrs,
the New Testament or the empty tomb.
Take your pick of documentaries: Discovery’s
speculative hit piece or the one described below.
Next headline on: Movies.
Easter Announcement 04/12/2001: The documentary on Christ’s
life, death and resurrection, Who Is This Jesus? produced by Coral
Ridge Ministries with Dr. D. James Kennedy and many other scholars, aired
Easter weekend on national TV. Check
whoisthisjesus.tv for reruns or
availability on video.
Early Man Survives Cosmic Arcade 04/12/2001
Early humans survived not because of superior genes or fitness, but luck -
surviving asteroid impacts - according to a story in the
BBC
News. A U.K. anthropologist and an asteroid researcher claim
that impacts during the past 5 million years are to blame for most hominid
lines dying out. The line from Africa escaped a direct hit and
continued to evolve and populate the globe. “The reason that Homo
sapiens has survived in spite of these global disasters has little to do
with the traditional explanations given by Neo-Darwinists,” Dr.
Benny Peiser told BBC News Online, along with Michael Paine of the
Planetary Society.
This claim is based on computer simulation and
inference and questionable dating methods, not evidence. While it is
interesting to note that these two scientists take issue with traditional
Darwinism, only evolutionists are allowed to speak to the “science”
of human origins.
When the storytelling game is enforced by the naturalism police,
evolutionists have total freedom to weave their tales unfettered by
disturbing questions like Were you there?
Next headline on: Early Man. •
Next headline on: Darwinism.
Robotic Insect Inspired by Real Thing 04/11/2001
Just when you thought houseflies were a bad enough nuisance, comes the
revelation that the government could one day spy on you with flying robots,
according to a story in the
BBC
News. Makers of flying robots are getting ideas
from insects, which are far better at maneuvering. Insects beat
their wings in a figure-eight pattern that allows them to hover and dart
quickly, whereas today’s crude robots have trouble flying indoors
without crashing into walls.
Who gave the lowly gnat the ability to dart
around so nimbly, and Who put the avionics into such a small package?
Think about that the next time you watch a tiny flying insect. But
if you ever see a big, clumsy strange-looking thing fly into your window,
better hurry and get a BIG flyswatter.
Next headline on: Bugs and Crawlers.
Big Splat Takes On Big Bang 04/11/2001
Science Now
discusses an alternative to the Big Bang cosmology that outdoes its
rival – at least for strangeness. Paul Steinhardt and his
Princeton colleagues unveiled the new model at the Space Telescope
Science Institute last week. Dubbed the ekpyrotic
model, or the Big Splat, this model comes out of string theory. It
hypothesizes two flat 4-dimensional membranes in a 5-dimensional space
that splatted together to form our universe.
The advantages of this hypothesis over
the reigning inflationary Big Bang include, supposedly, less trouble with the
perplexing flatness and horizon problems. (For an animated java-applet
demonstration of multidimensionality, see
Astronomy
Picture of the Day for April 18.)
Thus to get around one ad hoc scenario,
you concoct an even stranger ad hoc scenario. Even though its
supporters claim gravity waves
might support the Big Splat someday, there is no way this
model can really be tested without someone else claiming the evidence
supports something totally different. This is precisely one of
the main complaints about the inflationary Big Bang.
For those needing a primer on Big Bang problems, the
flatness problem means that our universe appears to have a
finely-tuned balance between its density and outward acceleration.
The horizon problem means that the universe appears uniform in
all directions even though portions never were in contact (so as to
homogenize). The Big Bang predicts neither flatness nor isotropy;
these are just two of many problems with the model. Inflation
was Alan Guth’s magic wand that supposedly fixed these problems,
but has been critized as being ad hoc and untestable. Is the
Big Splat any better?
Next headline on: Cosmology.
Article 04/10/2001:
Answers in Genesis
has a story about a teacher who is offering a popular community college course
that refutes evolution. It lists some of the lessons learned about this
program that have made it successful.
Next headline on: Schools.
Tick Talk Rocks the Clock 04/09/2001
A fossil tick encased in amber has been found in New Jersey that doubles
the fossil time record for ticks, according to
Science
Now. The prior record was 42 million years; this one is dated
at 90 million years old, and yet it looks essentially modern.
“It’s astounding to me that there's so little change,” says
Daniel Sonenshine of Old Dominion Univeristy in Norfolk, Virginia.
The article quips, “And that’s despite a massive change in
available hosts some 65 million years ago, when the dinosaurs and other
vertebrates went extinct.”
Click
here for BBC News update and picture, May 2; did this tick suck on dinosaur
blood?
Where have we heard this refrain before, that a fossilized critter shows
no evolution? Why, just two weeks ago with
salamanders, and in December with
ants. If nothing has happened
in 90 million years, then either evolution is wrong, or the dating method
is wrong, or both. Just how “astounding” does the evidence
have to get before evolutionists recognize that something is seriously
wrong with their story?
Next headline on: Fossils. •
Next headline on: Bugs and Crawlers. •
Next headline on: Dating methods.
2001: A Mars Odyssey Premieres 04/06/2001
Saturday morning, Floridians were treated to
flawless
launch of the
2001 Mars
Odyssey spacecraft (watch these
cool
videos!). “Goal One” of the
Mars program is to detect whether
life ever arose
on the red planet. Opinion is still out on
whether
water ever flowed on the surface;
the
Odyssey spacecraft is equipped to
infer the
presence of subsurface water..
Missions of exploration are exciting and
have always produced bountiful harvests of new knowledge. The problem
with the current Mars program philosophy is that it blatantly promulgates
the myth that water means life. Water is a necessary condition for
life, but it is not sufficient. Much more is required, i.e.,
complex specified
information (CSI). CSI is not inherent in the
rocks and sands of Mars. Nevertheless we applaud the successful
launch and anticipate the data that will undoubtedly reinforce
Pasteur’s principle of biogenesis:
only life begets life.
Next headline on: Mars. •
Next headline on: Solar System.
Meteorite Disappoints Evolutionists 04/06/2001:
CNN.Com
Space News reports that the Tagish Lake meteorite that fell in
British Columbia in January 2000 failed to turn up any evidence of organic
molecules important to life, to the disappointment of exobiologists.
Update 08/24/2001: A report in
Scientific American
concurs that no amino acids were found.
Hope Diminishes for Panspermia 04/06/2001
According to Science
Magazine, Dr. Jay Melosh of the University of Arizona has put the
quash on hopes that interstellar rocks could be the transport for seeds
of life (panspermia). According to his calculations, you would have
to wait a trillion years for a chance that a rocky missile from another star
would hit the earth. Astrobiologists have already regarded the
origin of life on earth as “so incredibly unlikely that some scientists
have wondered about an alternative.” Now that panspermia seems
unlikely as well (regardless of the fact that it just pushes the problem
of the origin of life to another location), “Origin of life researchers
may have to settle for the least implausible of improbable events.”
In another story on
Space.Com,
Melosh maintains some optimism, however.
A naturalistic theory for the origin of life fails
on every front. It can’t evolve here, it can’t evolve
out there, if it evolved out there it couldn’t get here, and it
wouldn’t explain how it got there. Only
willing
ignorance can explain rejection of evidence for creation that is
staring them in the face.
Next headline on: Origin of Life.
Asteroid Eros Resurrects Old Moon-Dust Theory 04/05/2001
According to a news release from
Cornell
University, the surprising find of dust ponds in the bottoms of
craters on the tiny asteroid Eros, recently studied at high resolution
by the NEAR Shoemaker spacecraft,
has caused scientists to revisit an old theory. Cosmologist Thomas Gold
debated in 1955 before the first lunar missions that dust can settle in
lunar craters by levitation from static electricity.
He explained, “If you added a layer 1 micron
[0.001 millimeters] thick in the time since the Pyramids were built
[about 5,000 years ago], you could get a layer 1 kilometer in
depth over a billion years.” Continuing, he says “The features
on Eros are so similar to those on the moon, that dust levitation has now
to be reconsidered for all large lunar features, and major conclusions
of lunar research now have to be reconsidered.”
Update 04/23/2001: See this
updated
report summarized in SciNews. Astronomers claim the features
are due to impacts, but mysteries remain. Dr. Joseph Veverka of
Cornell says, “We do know there is a substantial amount of regolith
from erosion and impacts that is covering blocks [boulders] and craters
possibly to a depth of several meters. So it could be that many
smaller craters do exist but they're buried under the regolith . . .
A thick covering of fine dust that prevents us from seeing what lies
beneath might also be part of the answer to why the asteroid has little
color variation. It is possible that parts of Eros are covered in
regolith as deep as a 10-story building.”
If this is true, it seems to cast grave doubt on the possibility that
either the moon or the asteroid Eros are anywhere near their assumed
multi-billion year ages. Gold says, “The amount of material
that is missing from the craters on the side of the moon visible from
Earth, if distributed all over that area, would make a layer between
one and two kilometers deep. You either have to say that this
material vanished from the moon, which is not likely, or that it had
migrated downhill just as it would have done on Earth for different
reasons.” But that would seem to make the dust layers in
the craters multiple kilometers deep, which they apparently are not.
This would make a good research project for a geologist not
beholden to assumed long ages.
Next heading on: Dating methods. •
Next headline on: Geology.
Tiny Fly Hears You Coming 04/05/2001
A fly can match a human’s acute sense of directional hearing, but with
much smaller equipment, according to a paper in Nature summarized in
Scientific American.
Researchers used an ingenious treadmill (see the animated illustration) to
measure the fly’s ability to
determine the direction of sound within 2 degrees. While humans can also
achieve this, their ears are several inches apart. By measuring the
time delay between left and right ears, up to 10 microseconds, humans can
calculate the direction of sound to a high degree of precision.
The fly, however, does the calculation with a much smaller head and brain,
and with a left-right time delay of only 50 nanoseconds, a thousand times
smaller.
One can be sure that the fly did not choose
to design this amazing equipment on its own, nor did that blind, deaf and
dumb goddess named Natural Selection, with her toolbox of broken parts
(mutations).
Next headline on: Bugs and Crawlers. •
Next amazing story.
Did Comets Deliver Seeds of Life? 04/05/2001
The BBC
News reports about a UC Berkeley team that simulated a comet collision
with earth. Not only did some amino acids survive, some were fused into
peptide chains. “At very low angles, we think that some water ice
from the comet would remain intact as a liquid puddle concentrated with organic molecules, ideal for the development of life,” Jennifer Blank said.
“This impact scenario provides the three ingredients believed necessary
for life: liquid water, organic material and energy.”
Meanwhile, a group of scientists met yesterday in
San Diego
to argue whether organic molecules could survive the rigors of space
en route to earth. Most agreed it is possible, but there is
much to learn.
See the response to our April
4 headline on proteins. Getting building blocks of life like amino
acids is no big deal.
Life is far more than its building blocks: it is a bewildering system of
precisely functioning parts, coded for in a massive library of complex
specified information stored in DNA. If amino acids are comparable
to scattered letters of a Scrabble game, a functioning cell is like the
Encyclopedia Britannica.
Next headline on: Comets. •
Next headline on: Solar System.
Next dumb story.
Faith in Life on Mars Produces Strange Bedfellows 04/04/2001
Two stories about life on Mars appeared in today’s news, from radically
opposed camps. NASA, according to a story in
Space.Com,
is working hard to prevent back contamination of Earth by possible Martian microbes
when the first sample return mission takes place around 2011. On the other extreme, the
Face on Mars believers have announced a news
conference tomorrow to claim NASA has covered up evidence of artificial structures
on the red planet.
While nobody knows whether anything alive will turn up
on Mars someday (which is extremely unlikely because of the environment and
previous observations both from space and the surface), both these camps base their
conclusions on the belief that life is so easy to evolve, it must be ubiquitous.
See next story for some of the hard facts of life. Both camps need to study our
Baloney Detector.
Next headline on: Mars. •
Next headline on: Solar System.
Protein Sequencing Makes Winning Lottery Look Easy 04/04/2001
In the world of protein molecules, it is possible for two totally different
proteins to perform the same function, much like you can open a jar
with your hand or with a wrench. But while discussing this fact,
Nature
Science Update today makes some surprising admissions about the
improbability of getting a usable protein by chance. In an article
about bioengineering, author John Whitfield states: “If you wanted to
make a working protein, but didn’t know where to start, how many rolls
of the biochemical dice would it take to get lucky? One hundred
billion, say Anthony Keefe and Jack Szostak, of the Massachusetts
General Hospital in Boston, who’ve tried it to hunt out proteins to do
a predetermined job from a vast number of random genes.
“These sort of odds make buying a lottery ticket seem like a
sound investment. They suggest, says Ronald Breaker, a molecular
biologist at Yale University, New Haven, Connecticut, that you’d have
to strain a sizeable quantity of primordial soup before you found
something that evolution could get its teeth into.”
And yet it happened! This is the degree
of faith in chance that an evolutionist must have. The author goes
on to discuss how humans can select a workable protein by artificial selection
(a form on intelligent design), but implies that
somehow, somewhere, against all odds, it must have happened by chance
at the origin of life. (Notice also how he
personifies evolution as if
it had teeth.)
The problem is far worse for evolution than Whitfield portrays.
Getting even one protein that is usable for life’s intricate functions is
astronomically improbable, but you would need hundreds of them, all matching,
to get a complete cell complex enough to replicate all its parts!
This is a minimum requirement for a naturalistic origin of life.
The reader is referred to Evolution: Possible or
Impossible? by James F. Coppedge, available at this site.
Next headline on: The Cell and Biochemistry. •
Next headline on: Origin of Life.
Hubble Telescope Captures Speeding Supernova 04/03/2001
The Hubble
Space Telescope caught a distant supernova that appears brighter than
expected. Some cosmologists are seeing evidence for an anti-gravity
force in the universe that is accelerating the Big-Bang expansion of the
universe. See the photo at
Astronomy
Picture of the Day.
Ever get the impression that cosmologists are
totally baffled and haven’t a clue what is going on out there? At any
rate, the old “oscillating universe” model appears to be long dead,
and along with it, any hopes for an infinitely-old universe.
Next headline on: Cosmology. •
Next headline on: Physics. •
Next headline on: Stars.
Darwin’s “Abominable Mystery” Solved? 04/03/2001
Charles Darwin called the origin of
flowering
plants an
“abominable
mystery” since they
appear
suddenly in the fossil record without ancestors
(as do most
categories of organisms. Now a
Stanford University
team claims they have found oleanane, a compound unique to flowering
plants, in Permian rocks estimated at 120 million years older than the
debut
of flowering plants. On April 18,
NASA
Science printed an article on this topic, with pictures of fossils and
the structure of oleanane.
Even if one were to accept their highly
questionable dates for the rocks, they found neither evolution nor a solution
to Darwin’s abominable mystery. In fact, it makes the mystery
worse for the evolutionist. Here are found gigantopterids, plants
already having modern-looking seeds, leaves and stems, and the ability
to manufacture oleanane, with no ancestors. No transitional forms appear
in between; all the other flowering plants still make their abrupt
appearance in the fossil record. Where is the evolution?
Christian nature lovers have no abominable mystery when it comes to the
origin of flowering plants. They know that on the third day,
God
created plants bearing seed after their kind, and
saw that it was good.
Next headline on: Plants. •
Next headline on: Darwinism.
Article 04/02/2001: Answers
in Genesis has reprinted a letter to the editor of the Birmingham News by creationist Dr.
Jonathan Sarfati responding to evolutionist Dr. Scott Brande. Alabama evolutionists
have been in an uproar since the State Board of Education in 1996 ordered a disclaimer be added to
biology textbooks stating that evolution has never been observed and should be considered a
controversial theory.
Next headline on: Schools.
Novel Protein With Non-Natural Amino Acid Created 04/02/2001
A research team at
University
of Buffalo has constructed a protein containing a non-natural
amino acid. All living things use only 20 of the possible amino
acids, but Dr. Suga’s team “evolved” an RNA enzyme able to
attach a non-natural amino acid to a protein. He claims this
supports the “RNA-World” theory of the origin of life.
Dr. Suga says, “Using an in vitro
version of Darwinian natural evolution, we have evolved this RNA
catalyst, which provides evidence for support that RNA may well have
served as the evolutionary vehicle necessary for the development of
present-day, DNA-protein-based life forms.” This is not
Darwinian natural evolution: if it were, he would have had to put
all the naturally occurring molecules in the test tube (including
the detrimental ones) in
infinitesimally small concentrations, with a 50-50 mix of left- and
right-handed forms, and wait hopelessly for millions of years for
nothing to happen. What the team committed was not “Darwinian
natural evolution,” but investigator interference, followed by a
lot of bluffing about evolution.
Next headline on: Origin of Life.
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