A philosopher [i.e., scientist] should be a man willing to listen to every suggestion but determined to judge for himself.  He should not be biased by appearances, have no favourite hypothesis, be of no school and in doctrine have no master.  He should not be a respecter of persons, but of things.  Truth should be his primary object.  If to these qualities be added industry, he may indeed hope to walk within the veil of the temple of nature.
— Michael Faraday, cited by John Meurig Thomas, Michael Faraday and the Royal Institution, Institute of Physics Publishing (1991), p. 121.

Cassini to Rewrite Textbooks on Saturn    06/30/2004
Hundreds of scientists and engineers are waiting with eager anticipation for SOI: Saturn Orbit Insertion, as the schoolbus-sized Cassini spacecraft races for its closest approach to the ringed planet tonight.  Just before closest approach, Cassini will fire its main engine for 96 minutes to slow down the spacecraft and allow Saturn to capture it in orbit (see guide to SOI and diagram on the Cassini website).
    Right after the burn, for about 75 minutes, Cassini will be flying high over the rings at close range.  The instruments will gather as many measurements and pictures as it can, because it will never again be this close to the rings or to Saturn.  Scientists do not predict that the high-resolution cameras will be able to resolve individual ring particles from this range – the best resolution will be about 50 meters per pixel, and most particles are much smaller than 10 – but it may detect wakes, waves and streams that will provide clues to the dynamic evolution of ring particles over time.  There should be good sample images of all three main rings, C, B, and A, as well as the narrow F ring.  After downloading its data during the night, Cassini will point to Titan for its first of 45 encounters.
    Saturn has already provided Cassini’s instruments with a puzzle: the rotation rate appears to be slowing down.  According to Cassini’s radio and plasma wave detectors, Saturn is rotating about 1% slower than when Voyager made measurements in 1981.  (This is determined by timing radio pulses in the planet’s magnetic field, which is presumed to originate from deep within the fluid planet’s interior.)  Jupiter’s rotation rate has been rock solid for 50 years of measurements, so why Saturn should show this change is without explanation at this time.  The principal investigator for the radio and plasma wave instrument suspects it has something to do with the fact that Saturn’s polar and magnetic field axes are almost perfectly aligned, to within 0.2 degree – a characteristic unique to Saturn.  All other planets with magnetic fields show an offset of 10 degrees or more.  It is that offset that generates the magnetic dynamo, according to favored models; these models, however, cannot account for a field on an axisymmetric body.  How Saturn can have a magnetic field with a negligible offset is a major puzzle Cassini scientists hope to solve.
Update  Stupendous success!  The orbit insertion burn occurred flawlessly.  Cassini followed its trajectory exactly as predicted, and then turned to capture the data and images.  Relieved scientists and engineers expressed their enthusiasm at the performance of the spacecraft.  Now the four-year adventure begins.  Some of the first science results will be posted in the July issue as soon as available.

We hope to be able to bring you findings and analyses that the media will miss or misinterpret.  For instance, the media will always interpret phenomena in terms of the Sacred Parameter A, the “age of the solar system” (4.5 billion years), a figure invariably assumed without question, even when apparently young phenomena are being observed.
    Of special interest will be the rings, not only because of their beauty, but because of their apparent youth.  Most ring scientists believe that the rings had to form relatively recently.  Even if 100 million years were allowed, that would only be 1/50 of the Sacred Parameter.  To hold onto A, they have to invoke ad hoc theories of a comet wandering into the Roche Limit of Saturn and disrupting.  Even so, the forces of plasma drag, sputtering, micrometeorite bombardment, light pressure and collisions would dissipate the rings in short order.  Will embedded moons be found to feed new material into the rings?  Stay tuned.
    Also, we will provide balance to the claims about Titan having “prebiotic chemistry” that might be like the “building blocks of life” or like the “early earth in deep freeze.”  One scientist was even heard suggesting that Titan’s atmosphere may be a natural laboratory for the Miller Experiment (see 05/02/2003 headline).  Such statements assume evolution in spite of the evidence.  Also, it will be interesting to see if long-age believers can rescue Titan’s atmosphere from the evidence it is depleting rapidly (see 10/16/2003 headline).
    Cassini is poised to make major contributions to our understanding of the solar system and its age.  For now, enjoy the ride; it will be high adventure tonight at Saturn!
Next headline on: Solar System. • Next headline on: Physics.

To think that these cute, innocent, vulnerable human beings, with all their emotions and capabilities, are subject to the most brutal executions is heart-rending.  Would not a being able to smile be capable of feeling pain?  This technology may be a powerful method to reduce abortions if we can just get people to watch.  A plain picture is worth a thousand loaded words.
Next headline on: Human Body. • Next headline on: Politics and Ethics.

Put this one in the basket of quasi-erudite papers that will be laughed at some day when the Darwinian idol collapses.  Despite the equations, it is a collage of elitist, ivory-tower, pseudoscientific speculation with a sprinkling of magic to hold it all together.  Somehow, somewhere, random mutations appeared on cue to provide symbolic memory, reentrant signaling, a mechanism for categorizing behavior and a strong link between the cortical and limbic systems to allow an ape to express approval to its baby.  Maybe a lucky cosmic ray hit Bonzo and the lights went on.  He mated and learned to shriek disapproval at his offspring.  Simultaneously, the kid got hit with another cosmic ray and understood what disapproval meant.  And so a few million years later, Shakespeare emerged.
    Darwinism will fall as soon as enough bright students, armed with baloney detectors, overcome the fear of big words, abstruse-looking equations and the prestige of big-name journals.  This Darwin-saturated hypothesis is utterly foolish on the face of it.  Its only reason for existence is that Darwinians need something to explain their own brains and desires.  They have sold their souls to Charlie, and since all of reality must fit within his unguided, naturalistic world, they need some explanation – no matter how foolish – for the evolution of everything: even ethics, morals and taste in music.  Like Richard Lewontin candidly admitted, “It is not that the methods and institutions of science somehow compel us to accept a material explanation of the phenomenal world, but, on the contrary, that we are forced by our a priori adherence to material causes to create an apparatus of investigation and a set of concepts that produce material explanations, no matter how counter-intuitive, no matter how mystifying to the uninitiated.”  Don’t ever submit to the initiation rites of the Temple of Darwin, because they cause brain damage.
    Since Darwin Party PhDs usually have skill with language and math, they are especially dangerous, because they have perfected the art of couching balderdash in nearly impenetrable jargon that serves to intimidate science reporters and other dupes.  Let’s remember a basic math lesson: equations are only as good as their assumptions and variables.  Suppose we write: “Let a be natural selection and a' be population genetics.  Now let b represent Marxist economic policy, and b' represent the degree of collectivization, and c the hominization rate.  Then letting the population p remain constant for one Milankovitch cycle t, we suggest that the expression
ab^c - (a'b - cab')^-ekt / p
yields a stable economy over the lifetime of a hominid species.”  That was all just made up out of thin air.  Does this confabulation of irrelevancies deserve more respect when dressed up in math symbols?  Then why should anyone give a spit when these authors write nonsense like this:

A simple model of cultural transmission that can be applied to assessor hominids ancestors [sic] can illuminate [sic] previous ideas better [sic].  Let us define the probability that an individual without capacity of imitation acquires [sic] behavior i as h_iB_i, where h_i is the probability that an individual discovers the behavior i, and B_i is the probability that the behavior will be included in his repertoire.  If the individual already knows an alternative (behavior j) to behavior i, the probability that behavior i will be included in his repertoire will be equal to h_iB_ij, where B_ij is the probability that he chooses i instead of alternative behavior j.  However, if the individual also has the imitation capacity and there are cultural models in the population, the probability of his including i in his repertoire will be h*_i B_ij, where h*_i is the probability that an individual learns either by individual learning or by imitation behavior i, and equals h*_i = h_i + (1 - h_i)a, where a represents the efficacy of the process of imitation, and (1 - h_i)a measures the net effect of this process.  Therefore, an increase in the imitation capacity is expressed as an increase in the value of a.

No amount of skill at manipulating math symbols can rescue bad assumptions.  The whole premise of this simplistic hypothesis (that an accidental ability to express favor/disfavor helped hominids evolve culture, ethics and language, resulting eventually in the Bush-Kerry campaign) is that complex, coordinated skills like the capacity for categorizing and symbolic memory “emerged” from random mutation and natural selection.  When, oh when, will we ever get some Darwinist to prove this instead of assuming it?  The null hypothesis of intelligent design should always be favored before yielding an ounce of credence to such a product of cosmic improbabilities.  A corollary of this premise is that all intangibles, including ethics, arts and language, are mere artifacts of biological determinism.  That is not science: that’s philosophy.
    And now, the bottom line.  Why should we care about what a couple of pseudo-intellectual, ivory-tower professors in Spain write in a technical journal only pointy-headed members of a geek subculture would care to read?  You need look no further than their last sentences: “we have proposed that conceptual classification of behavior in terms of positive/negative (good/bad) involves, according to its natural origin, a feeling of duty toward those positive behaviors, and this behavioral categorization and the feeling of “must” are the developmental roots of the ethical capacity....”  They have just used their weird-science fable to preach moral relativism.  Dressed in pseudoscientific garb, it appears more authoritative than sending a nihilist dressed in a red devil costume into the college classroom hissing, “Do what you want!  There is no God!”
    It wouldn’t matter if these pseudo-intellectuals only spouted their philosophy to other members of the Darwin Party, but they have the audacity to call this science.  (Note that this paper was edited by the anticreationist Francisco Ayala of UC Irvine.)  And they have the power, with all the usurped authority and dignity of science, to stand in college classrooms and declare that God is dead, that Darwinism has displaced religion, and that since morals and ethics evolve like everything else in the universe, any sense of right, duty, principle, honor and integrity your parents taught you are just downstream artifacts of mutations that caused some ape in your past to suddenly be able to express “approval” to its offspring.  Don’t tell this to the Marines.  If duty, honor, country are as arbitrary and meaningless as the Darwin Party would have us believe, then terrorists and mass murdering dictators are not doing anything inherently evil, and we have no duty to stop them.
    Connect the dots.  Darwinism has its primordial-slimy fingers all over politics, foreign policy, and what you should teach your kid.
Next headline on: Early Man. • Next headline on: Darwinism. • Next dumb story

Since this is a work in progress, any judgments on tentative interpretations would be premature.  It’s good to discern, however, attempts to force uncooperative data into preconceived notions about time scales and evolutionary theories.  That fault is endemic in the biological sciences.
Next headline on: Stars and Astronomy. • Next headline on: Dating Methods.

We hate to have to award these clever inventors the Stupid Evolution Quote of the Week prize, but listen to what they said.  They just called themselves blind, deaf and dumb.  Here they used intelligence, ingenuity, know-how, knowledge, and supervision to design a working enzyme, then said it was equivalent to “convergent evolution,” a blind, purposeless process that has none of those things.  Their work has nothing to do with evolution, convergent, divergent, invergent, subvergent or otherwise.  It was an exercise in reverse engineering.  By emphasizing the specificity of contact points in a simple enzyme that leads to efficient catalysis, their work underscores the necessity of rational design.  How come Charlie keeps getting credit for intelligent design work?  Unfair.
Next headline on: The Cell. • Next headline on: Darwinism and Evolutionary Theory. • Next dumb story.

It’s a talent Majerus hopes to put to good use in defending the reputation of Kettlewell and the peppered moth in a road show, which he aims to take around Britain--and possibly the United States--later this year.  He is motivated by growing concern over attacks on Kettlewell’s character, most notably writer Judith Hooper’s scathing account of the men behind the peppered moth story in her 2002 book Of Moths and Men: The Untold Story of Science and the Peppered Moth, which helped fuel an anti-evolutionist campaign to remove Biston from school textbooks.  “A lot of [the campaign] is pointed at the peppered moth as being the example that Darwinism is debunked,” says Majerus, who wants to make a public stand against teaching creationism and “intelligent design” in biology classes.  “To have people believe the biology of the planet is controlled by a Creator, I think that’s dangerous.”

Darwinists, for your own good, give it up.  Peppered moths are not going to help you.  Yes, it was funny when Coyne described hearing the truth about Kettlewell’s experiments was like finding out that Santa Claus was really his dad.  Yes, it was damaging to learn that Kettlewell’s coworkers glued peppered moths to the trunks of trees for some of the famous photographs.  It was Far Side comic book material to find out this most famous example of evolution was based on flawed experiments.  All that aside, even if all the experiments had been done perfectly by scientific saints, and even if bird predation actually did shift the populations of moths according to the rise and fall of industrial soot on tree trunks, so what?  What does it prove?  Both varieties of moths already existed.  Both are members of one species, Biston betularia.  The only change was in relative numbers of pre-existing dark and light moths.  Kettlewell’s blunders are amusing in hindsight, but they have little to do with the real issue: Nothing evolved.  No new structures, organs or abilities emerged.  No genetic information was added.  Evolutionists need far better evidence than this to convince high schoolers that humans have bacteria ancestors.
    More significant is what this episode reveals about the lack of solid evidence for Darwinian evolution.  For decades, evolutionists pointed to Kettlewell’s moths as one of the best, if not the best, examples of natural selection ever found.  One 60s high school biology text called it “one of the best examples of the impact on a species of a change in the environment,” and “a classic example of evolution in action” (Otto and Towle, Modern Biology 1969, pp. 193-194); “Industrial melanism is a demonstration of the importance of natural selection in the process of evolution.”  Despite the recent uproar over Kettlewell, the spiel goes on.  The same spin doctoring, and the same photos, can still be found in today’s high school textbooks, along with other debunked examples like Haeckel’s embryos (see 07/25/2003 and 10/30/2003 headlines).  Not only is it past time for Darwinists to clean up their act, it is incumbent upon them to find better evidence than shifting populations of existing subspecies if they expect anyone to become convinced that natural selection can produce giraffes from slime.
    Advice to the Darwin Party: let the peppered myth have a solemn funeral, admit you made a big mistake, document the lessons learned, and move on to real empirical evidence.  Prove your theory, don’t expect people to just believe it.  Find an animal developing a new organ, like a wing or an eye.  Enumerate all the links in an actual chain of evolution from one organism lacking a complex structure to another having it, including the genetic and developmental pathways and the mutations involved.  Without resorting to just-so stories, provide an example of complex specified information or irreducible complexity arising purely from a purely naturalistic Darwinian mechanism.  Peppered moths are not up to the challenge.  While it is admirable that Majerus is attempting to accumulate definitive data on the little insects and their behaviors, and prove once and for all whether or not birds eat more of them on contrasting backgrounds, peppered moths are a dead issue to evolution.  Like the Sioux proverb advises, the best strategy when riding a dead horse is to dismount.
    Now to an even more serious aspect of this story.  Majerus correctly connects the dots; he knows that the peppered moth tale symbolizes a battle over the soul of science.  Why do the Darwinists cling so tenaciously to any minuscule piece of evidence, no matter how inconsequential, that might be used to bolster the idea that natural selection can account for all of biology?  Why the initial confident rejoicing over Kettlewell, and the anguish over his downfall?  Listen to what Majerus said: “To have people believe the biology of the planet is controlled by a Creator, I think that’s dangerous.”
    Phillip Johnson hit the nail on the head.  He has written repeatedly that the problem in the creation-evolution issue is not over evidence, but rather that evolutionists are committed to a materialist philosophy before the evidence has a chance to speak.  Science, to them, is no longer a search for the truth, a commitment to follow the evidence wherever it leads; it is a naturalistic philosophy that cannot stomach the thought of a Creator.  The issue is not whether this or that flimsy just-so story really supports Darwin’s theory or not.  It is that it must support it, because the alternative, that there really is a God who made the world and the things in it, is philosophically repugnant to them.  Their atheism demands a philosophy of science that can describe an unbroken chain of natural causes in a closed system.  To suggest otherwise is “dangerous” to them because it threatens their chosen world view.
    Thus it is necessary to go to great lengths to prove Kettlewell right.  It is necessary to go on the road and oppose the dangerous creationists.  It is necessary to keep the peppered moths in the textbooks and prevent the students from hearing the problems with the moth myth.  It is necessary to “make a public stand against teaching creationism and ‘intelligent design’ in biology classes.”  The end justifies the means, because to have people believe that the biology of the planet is controlled by a Creator is “dangerous.”
    Is it, really? It would seem that what is dangerous to science is dishonesty, cover-up, lack of scientific rigor, just-so storytelling, extrapolation, and obscurantism.  Is belief that the world is controlled by a Creator detrimental to scientific investigation?  Let’s ask Bacon, Kepler, Newton, Boyle, Maxwell, Pasteur, Carver, von Braun and a few other minor players in the history of science for their opinions.
Next headline on: Insects, Crawlers, etc.. • Next headline on: Darwinism and Evolutionary Theory.

So far, Earth is the only planet we know that has the privilege of bearing life that searches for signs of other intelligence – whether in the form of other technological beings transmitting evidence of their existence or through patterns indicating underlying design.  It may be some time, however, before we can accurately judge whether our blue dot is – as planets go – commonplace, unique or somewhere in between.   (Emphasis added.)

It’s refreshing to see a dispassionate, balanced treatment of a book so outside the Darwinian mainstream.  The credentials of the authors cannot be denied, but that has not stopped some reviewers from unleashing venom at anyone daring to publish a science book without the Darwin Party imprimatur guaranteeing absolute and unconditional naturalism (see what Science did to theistic evolutionist Simon Conway Morris, for instance, in the 12/07/2003 headline).  Whether more scientists are beginning to acknowledge the merits of ID arguments or not, it’s too early to tell.  (It should be noted that most anthropic arguments have come from secular scientists without any Christian or creationist proclivities whatsoever, such as Brandon Carter, Paul Dirac, and Stephen Hawking.)
    Gonzalez and Richards build a convincing case for design, but they tend to accept uncritically current scientific models as facts.  Too much trust in today’s conventional wisdom can render books obsolete when paradigm shifts occur.  Also, when some props of “accepted scientific theory” eventually get kicked out from under an argument, it can appear to undermine the whole thesis and diminish the authors’ credibility.  Much is made, for instance, of plate tectonics, stellar evolution, galactic evolution, nucleosynthesis and planetary evolution.  Solid as these theories appear to the establishment today, there have been indications of doubt that could lead to overhaul later (see, for instance, the 04/02/2004, 03/05/2004, 11/25/2003, and 11/04/2003 headlines on geology, and 01/23/2004, 01/01/2004, 10/05/2003, 09/03/2003, and 06/18/2003 headlines on astronomy).  Also, the authors rely without qualification on age estimates that are built on unverifiable assumptions about the unobservable past.
    Nonetheless, Gonzalez and Richards’ collection of evidences may contribute to a worldview shift of major proportions that could already be underway: a reversal of the Copernican Principle.  Richards has argued from history, and Gonzalez from science, that Sagan’s extrapolation of the Copernican Principle (i.e., that the earth has no privileged status) is unwarranted.  In the first place, ancients never believed the earth was the center of the cosmos.  In the second place, the more we study the heavens and the earth, the more we see conditions favorable to our existence that cannot be all due to chance.  That cosmologists are again willing to discuss these things (see 02/28/2004 headline) hints at a sea change just 23 years after Sagan’s Cosmos symbolized the triumph of secularism over theism.
    Christians should not entertain any illusions that such trends will fill their churches with new seekers.  For instance, Peter Ward, co-author of Rare Earth, knows all these things yet remains a staunch, hostile, anti-Christian atheist.  Evidence of design is not enough to save a soul, but it removes a major stumbling block to faith.  That is, however, an important – often indispensable – prerequisite.
Next headline on: Cosmology. • Next headline on: Intelligent Design. • Next headline on: SETI.

• Jump 50 times your body length.  That would be like a man jumping 300 feet (the world record is 29 feet, 4.5 inches).
• Walk upside down on smooth surfaces, with 170 people hanging on.  Spiders do this with microscopic hairs that create atomic attraction forces.  Geckos have this ability, too (see 08/27/2002 headline), but spiders are not related to geckos.  One scientist remarked, “From a biological point of view, that was pretty astonishing.”
• Weave webs out of material like flexible steel, with seven different kinds of thickness and adhesive strength.
• Create beautiful works of art.  Some garden spiders incorporate spirals and crosses into their wagon-wheel shaped webs.

Spiders deserve more respect than we give them.  We usually can’t step on them fast enough.  OK, so you don’t want them in the house.  At least live and let live outside, where they do you a lot of good (if you also despise flies).  And once in awhile, from a safe distance, take a good, long look at that miniature package of superpowers.  Nature is usually more entertaining and thought-provoking than a blockbuster movie.  That’s a good thing for a kid to learn.
Next headline on: Bugs and Crawlers . • Next headline on: Movies. • Next amazing story.

Personifying a phenomenon with an analogy does not explain its origin.  Neither game theory nor market theory provide adequate explanations in Darwinian terms for these interesting behaviors.  Fish are not capable of rational thought and market strategy.  If not designed, this behavior must be reducible to genetic and developmental factors.  If the predators always took advantage of the cleaners, there would be none left, and the phenomenon would disappear.  But the present is not the key to the past.  “Obviously, cleaning symbiosis has survival value for both types of species involved,” elaborated Gary Parker, a former evolutionist, in What Is Creation Science? (Master Books, p. 37).  “But does survival value explain the origin of this special relationship?” he asked.  “Of course not.  It makes sense to talk about survival only after a trait or relationship is already in existence.”
    In additional articles by Gary Parker, who used to teach evolution as fact, the conundrum posed by cleaning symbioses is acknowledged by Darwinians to be a problem for their theory.  Parker tells how Garrett Hardin, an evolutionist, once presented some startling questions in a Scientific American publication entitled, “Nature’s Challenges to Evolutionary Theory.”  He asked, “Is the evolutionary framework wrong?”  Taking note of the implication of design in such biological phenomena, he further suggested, “Was Paley right?”  Then, with a preconflict management strategy of his own, he proposed a fair deal that could provide a win-win situation for both sides.  He said, “Think about it.”
Next headline on: Fish and Ocean Creatures. • Next headline on: Darwinism and Evolutionary Theory.

The origin of homochirality [one-handedness] has intrigued scientists ever since the biological importance of L-amino acids and D-sugars was first recognized.  Although a theoretical basis for the evolution of high optical activity [purity of one hand rotates polarized light, thus optical activity] from a minute initial imbalance of enantiomers [each hand is an enantiomer of the other hand] was suggested more than half a century ago, experimental proof of such a concept eluded scientists until a remarkable [sic] report by Soai and co-workers in 1995.  The Soai reaction offered the first, and to date the only, example of an asymmetric autocatalytic reaction employing a catalyst with a very low enantiomeric excess and ultimately yielding the catalyst with a very high enantiomeric excess catalyst as product.  While the Soai reaction serves as a mechanistic model [sic] for the evolution [sic] of homochirality, the dialkylzinc chemistry involved in the reaction is unlikely to have been of importance in an aqueous prebiotic environment.  Therefore speculation has continued concerning the types of transformations that might have been directly responsible for the development [sic] of high optical activity in biological systems.  The area of amino acid catalysis may hold significant clues to the evolution of prebiotic [sic] chemistry.

We report herein a proline-mediated reaction exhibiting an accelerating reaction rate and an amplified, temporally increasing enantiomeric excess of the product.  Thus, catalysis with amino acids is implicated in an autoinductive, selectivity-enhancing process, providing the first general chemical strategy for the evolution of biological homochirality from a purely organic origin.

The experimental observation of an unexpectedly high, accelerating reaction rate and an amplified, temporally increasing enantiomeric excess of product in the proline-mediated aminoxylation of aldehydes is consistent with a mechanistic model for a selectivity-enhancing autoinductive process as given in Schemes 1-3.  This represents the first example of a purely organic reaction exhibiting characteristics that are key to a chemical rationalization of the evolution [sic] of biological homochirality.

Since evolutionists tend to take an inch and boast a mile, we need to bring out the tape measure to keep speculation in check.  In short, under very controlled, hypothetical conditions, one unique amino acid seemed to undergo chemical amplification of one hand.  Does this explain the 100% purity of biological proteins?  You decide.

1. Only one amino acid was tested, and a unique one at that—proline.
2. They did not state the value of their best enantiomeric excess.
3. It is unrealistic to minimize the damaging effects of cross reactions.  Nature would not exclude products that would destroy any “progress.”
4. It is also unrealistic to depend on open systems.  All real systems, both open and closed, are subject to the laws of thermodynamics.  All real systems, in time, tend toward equilibrium.
5. The reaction required specialized ingredients and conditions.  For a feeling of this, the following paragraph from their paper is included—not that you need to understand it, but just for a look at the special care they had to take with ingredients and lab conditions.  Ask yourself how much of these special conditions tailored to proline could be generalized to the set of all amino acids, including those with polar and hydrophilic side chains.

   The key to the effectiveness of this system lies in the fact that the reaction product 3 is multifunctional; it is both an aldehyde and an amine.  Scheme 2 suggests that proline 4 may attack the carbonyl group of the reaction product 3 to form the new catalyst 5.  This reaction is virtually irreversible on the reaction timescale, since product racemization was not observed.  This species 5 is a special amine bearing an alpha-oxygen atom with lone pairs of electrons.  The alpha effect describes the unexpectedly high activity of such a nitrogen nucleophile, thought to be due in part to stabilization of the transition state by the lone pair on the oxygen alpha to the nucleophilic atom.  Thus 5 may be a highly efficient competitor to proline for nucleophilic attack on propionaldehyde, forming a new enamine, 6.  This enamine may be competent to attack PhNO, forming a transition state such as 7 by interaction with the carboxylic acid proton as a Brønsted acid cocatalyst.  This leads to the formation of product 3 and regeneration of the improved catalyst 5.

6. The authors make no attempt to describe a plausible environment in which such specialized conditions would exist on a prebiotic earth.
7. Any relaxation of the special conditions, and the enantiomeric excess reverses to equilibrium.
8. The hypothesis is glued together with wiggle words like might, could, may, perhaps, and clues.
9. Proteins require 100% pure one-handed amino acids.  Close enough is not good enough; the enantiomeric excess has to be 100%.  The addition of one wrong-handed link in a protein can destroy its function.
10. What about sugars?  Even if a mechanism were found to amplify one amino acid, the sugars in nucleic acids are 100% right-handed.  No plausible naturalistic mechanism for creating nucleotides has been found, let alone purifying them to all one hand.
11. Natural selection cannot be invoked unless a system can replicate itself with high fidelity.
12. Remember, chemicals have no desire to evolve.  They are subject to the laws of mass action, thermodynamics, valency, and all the vagaries of their environment.  In a naturalistic world, with no chemist to care, the chemicals are no “better off” in one state or another.  To merely assume chemicals evolved into a living organism is an argument a posteriori based on naturalistic presuppositions.  Without a plausible demonstration of the entire sequence, it is illogical to assume, “We’re here, therefore it happened” (without a designer).

These are just a few of the problems with this story.  What’s more revealing in the paper than the bombast and hype are the damaging admissions.  They admit this has been a problem for over a hundred years, and that only a theoretical approach was suggested half a century ago.  Then, not until 1995 was there any experimental evidence for slight excess of one hand, but even then, the Soai reaction invoked unrealistic conditions for abiogenesis.  So now these authors claim theirs is the first experimental model to show any hope, subject to all the caveats listed above.  Are you impressed?
    Origin of life by the inch is a cinch; by the yard it’s hard (especially to get a yard full of trees, eventually).  We should go the extra mile for someone out of mercy, but not yield the extra inch for illogical and unsupportable claims.  Unwarranted extrapolation is undeserving of mercy.  Chemical evolution must be prosecuted to the full extent of the natural law.
Next headline on: Physics and Chemistry. • Next headline on: Origin of Life.

Sometimes we have to provide enough detail to prove we are not making this stuff up.  If we just summarized this story with an opinion like Evolutionists base their belief in macroevolution on oscillatory changes within one species, someone might question that conclusion.  But here it is, mostly in their own words.  You just read it yourself.  We just highlighted their model organism for evolutionary studies, the one they are proud of and excited about.  They are calling all evolutionists to jump on the bandwagon because of the fantastic evidence it provides that humans came from amoebas.  And the evidence is?  They have demonstrated that some fish lost a few spines and armor plates, and got them right back again when they interbred with their marine relatives.  No speciation occurred.  Most of the evolution was due not to a genetic change, but a change in the expression of a gene.  The genes for loss always mutated the same way in widely-distributed populations.  This is not what neo-Darwinism hoped for.  Random mutation was supposed to provide the raw material for novelty and innovation, not the same mutation over and over in the same gene.  Despite all the hoopla, no novel, innovative feature emerged from all this so-called evolution.
    Surely if there were better evidence for evolution than this, it would be showcased by Science magazine.  The hype in the opening paragraphs attracted our attention, because it seemed that now, finally, we were going to get some solid evidence for real evolutionary change.  But look how trivial the results; all the populations are not only still fish, but three-spine stickleback fish.  They are all still interfertile, indicating no speciation occurred.  How is this story much different from what we already know about blind cave fish?  They are adapted to the darkness, because eyes are not of much use in the dark.  Similarly, the lake sticklebacks might be adapted to their habitat (if their just-so story holds up that armor and spines are less helpful when there are more places to hide).  On the other hand, the difference might only be a non-adaptive effect of lower concentrations of calcium, as in nutrient deficiency diseases in humans.  “Whatever the cause,” pre-existing information was either lost or unexpressed in both cases.  No new structure or function was gained.  How can this possibly be of any good news to someone who wants to explain the whole of biology by evolution?
    The article is enthusiastic about how “powerful” selection must have been, yet sprinkled with wiggle words expressing doubt: probably, maybe, might etc.  As usual, the ignorance is profound and more funding is needed, so that the evolutionary storytelling fest can go on and on and on.  But the actual evidence should make it clear that this evolutionary tale makes no more sense than claiming that a new human species is emerging from a population of scurvy sailors deprived of vitamin C.  It doesn’t take much to get an evolutionist excited.  To a prisoner, even the breeze-blown dust dancing on the floor is entertainment.  Maybe it will evolve into a tornado, and from there, a 747 can’t be far behind.
Next headline on: Fish and Ocean Creatures. • Next headline on: Darwinism and Evolutionary Theory.

Comet Surface Wild and Crazy    06/18/2004
“Completely unexpected,” was the reaction of Donald Brownlee, principal investigator of the Stardust mission, to the photos revealed by the spacecraft that flew into the tail of Comet Wild-2 last January (see 01/02/2004 headline), reports a University of Washington press release.  The comet mission is the cover story in the June 18 issue of Science, with four scientific papers and two reviews.  Photos and information have also been released at the Jet Propulsion Laboratory Stardust website.
    Scientists expected to find a dirty, fluffy snowball of loose material, but found instead a surface unlike anything else in the solar system.  Deep flat-floored pits, craters with steep walls and pinnacles more than three hundred feet high indicate that the comet material is rigid and cohesive enough, despite the low gravity, to hold together under impacts.  Planetary scientists thought that most comets were like rubble piles loosely held together by gravity, easily torn apart by gravitational perturbations.  Maybe some are, but the sharp edges, angular shapes and steep cliffs on Wild-2 make it look brittle and very unlike an asteroid, and different than the previously-visited comets Halley and Borrelly.  Perhaps there is more variety among comets than expected.
    The comet jets on Wild-2 (pronounced vilt-2), also unexpectedly, emerge at high velocity from numerous places around the roughly circular body, rather than being sublimated off the outer surface volatiles.  Some of them appear to be collimated like the jets from a fire hose, suggesting that they emerge from pits deep in the interior.  Stardust was hit with two wallops as high-velocity dust particles from particularly strong jets pummeled its shields at hundreds of kilometers per hour on the way through the dust tail.  The spacecraft succeeded admirably, despite the hazards, in taking pictures and collecting dust particles in its aerogel collector for return to earth.
    Delighted, but perplexed, describes the mood of scientists over the mission so far.  “New in situ observations of a comet are demonstrating once again how little we understand about these dark and mysterious planetesimals,” remarked Harold Weaver in Science.¹  Brownlee et al.² claim that the surface reveals a “juxtaposition of features that are young and old” on an object thought to be a primordial relic of the formation of the solar system.  Hinting that these findings are putting theories in turmoil, an editorial in the same issue³ hopes that the return of the particles in January 2006 will “clear up any nightmares about the origin of the solar system and the dynamics of comets.”

Everyone should be thrilled at the success of this mission of discovery, but it does point out a lesson about scientists.  Since scientists know so little about things they can observe, and since they often find contradictions to their expectations, why should we trust any confident-sounding pronouncements about things they can’t observe?  When they talk about this comet having formed billions of years ago, how can they possibly know that?
    Brownlee’s paper says, “Pinnacles were not anticipated land forms on primitive bodies, and their origin on Wild 2 is a mystery.”  He thinks the jets, pinnacles and impact craters are young, but the rest of the comet is old, only because current theories require the solar system to be 4.6 billion years old, and comets had to form near the beginning.  But then how does he keep the comet from dissipating away completely long ago?  (See 03/27/2003 headline.)  He tells an ad hoc story to get the theory to fit the observations.  He claims Wild-2 may have repeatedly come inside Jupiter’s orbit and back out again.  But then how did the comet escape complete break-up by a collision in the planetary shooting gallery, or avoid getting ejected out of the solar system entirely, during one of those excursions?
    The nightmares may not go away entirely in January 2006.  If history is any guide, the comet dust samples will answer some questions but raise many others.  For a sweet dream, however, imagine yourself standing on the surface of the three-mile wide comet.  The gravity is so low, you could jump and launch yourself into orbit.  Cool.
Next headline on: Solar System. • Next headline on: Dating Methods.

The old Darwinian/Malthusian picture of a dog-eat-dog world, nature red in tooth and claw, each species fighting over limited resources for survival of the fittest, just took a beating with this story.  This complex web of beneficial interactions looks mighty friendly.  You can almost picture the scouts exploring the new territory, the carpenters following behind to build the town and string the telegraph lines and railroad tracks, the sheriff and firefighters setting up headquarters and the settlers moving in to form a thriving, interactive, responsive community — all in the silent world of plants.  Where Darwinists used to see selfish, harmful microorganisms trying to steal from the land plants, they now see pioneers, providers and protectors.
    So how does evolutionary theory deal with these new realizations?  There are only three references to evolution in this paper:

1. Once upon a time: “Four hundred million years ago [sic], ’when the first plants colonized land, mycorrhizal fungi were there,’ helping newcomers survive in a harsh, dry landscape, [John] Klironomos explains.  Since then, the support system has grown, says Katarzyna Turnau, an ecologist at Jagiellonian University in Krakow, Poland.  ‘Mycorrhizae [gave] the plants the ability to use different areas and to explore new niches,’ making possible the incredible diversity of modern flora.”
       This statement has no explanatory power; it merely assumes evolution.  It fails to answer how the mycorrhizae survived in sterile dirt without the sugars that land plants provide.  It assumes that resources are sufficient to create diversity, which begs the question of how that might occur.
2. Fictitious force:  One ecologist who studied the relationships between orchids and truffles remarked that the truffles “appear to be evolution drivers.”  Sorry, truffles don’t qualify for a driver’s license.
3. Job prospecting:  Klironomos says in conclusion, “when it comes to ecology and evolutionary biology, the [mycorrhizal] field is cracking wide open.”  I.e., here is an opening for unemployed storytellers (see 12/22/2003 headline).

In short, evolutionary theory adds nothing to these findings.  On the contrary; evolutionists appear surprised by them, because they ran counter to their expectations.  In light of the sophistication of the observed underground pipeline, its many specialized functions, and its many beneficial effects, it appears instead that the mycorrhizal field is cracking wide open for the intelligent design movement.
Next headline on: Plants. • Next amazing story.

Let’s get this straight.  Barrett just admitted that Marcus “doesn’t show us exactly how a tiny number of genes builds such a complex brain, only that they can” – i.e., Marcus bluffed his way around a problem by making a bald, unsupported claim.  Barrett lets him off the hook for this by saying we have a long way to go before anyone understands brain development.  But in the very next sentence, he praises Marcus for making a “sophisticated exposition” of the case that “plain old natural processes” are sufficient to “account for the brain’s complexity.”  I.e., nature built a brain, how we don’t know, but my friend Marcus said so.
    Can evolutionists solve their problems by appealing to “compressed files” and modular genetic algorithms?  No; they make them worse.  In the history of computers, modular programming was a quantum leap in intelligent design over the older “spaghetti code.”  File compression was a quantum leap in intelligent design over uncompressed code.  Any junior high kid can write a text file on a computer, but if she can write software that can compress or decompress it, she’s a prodigy.
    One module may suffice to build 60 legs on a centipede, but more is going on, because those legs don’t all grow at the same spot.  Something tells these legs where to form, and coordinates their movements.  The point is, it displays even more intelligent design to use modular programming and compression, to say nothing of “ingenious devices” like “gradients and switches that allow its operations to be context-sensitive, feedback loops, and self-generated ‘test patterns’ that allow the system to tune itself.”  The layers of complexity in the brain have only increased with ongoing discoveries.  These complexities cannot be dismissed by hand-waving appeals to natural selection.  Why Science would print a simplistic explanation from an anthropologist who accuses others of engaging in simple-minded debates is another issue.
    The analogies to computers are irrelevant to evolution.  Computers were built by intelligent design, and the intelligence came from minds that beg the question of their origin.  Barrett and Marcus cannot appeal to intelligent design in computers to establish a naturalistic origin of a much more “fantastically complex, yet fantastically well-coordinated” mind.  They leave us only with a glittering generality, a just-so story, in essence claiming that natural selection acting on developmental processes solely directed at evolving survivable reproducing organisms just happened to produce, serendipitously, entities able to create and execute Rachmaninoff piano concertos and build spacecraft and navigate them to Saturn.  For us to believe that, they are going to have to provide better reasons than mere bluffing.
Next headline on: Genes and DNA. • Next headline on: Darwin and Evolutionary Theory. • Next headline on: Human Body.

Since this is a work in progress, it is premature to draw conclusions; it’s a time to enjoy the postcards from this vicarious adventure.
Next headline on: Mars.

“The AI software examined millions of potential antenna designs before settling on a final one,” said project lead Jason Lohn, a scientist at NASA’s Ames Research Center, located in California’s Silicon Valley.  “Through a process patterned after Darwin’s ‘survival of the fittest,’ the strongest designs survive and the less capable do not.”
    The software started with random [sic] antenna designs [sic] and through the evolutionary process [sic], refined [sic] them.  The computer system took about 10 hours to complete the initial antenna design process.  “We told the computer program what performance the antenna should have, and the computer simulated evolution [sic], keeping the best antenna designs that approached what we asked for.  Eventually, it zeroed in on something that met the desired specifications for the mission,” Lohn said.   (Emphasis added in all quotes.)

“The software also may invent designs that no human designer would ever think of,” Lohn asserted.  In addition, the software also can plan [sic] devices that are smaller, lighter, consume less power, are stronger and more robust among many other things – characteristics that spaceflight requires, according to Lohn.

Here is a teachable moment.  This story is full of logical flaws; can your kid find them?  Giving Charlie credit for this accomplishment is like giving bin Laden credit for winning the war on terrorism.  Charlie is the problem, not the solution; the success of this project was due not to evolution, but to intelligent design.
    Mr. Lohn and the author of this press release don’t even have a high school C student understanding of evolutionary theory.  Natural selection has no purpose, goal or direction.  There are no requirements.  This antenna project had requirements: “We told the computer program what performance the antenna should have,” the designer said.  The result “met the desired specifications for the mission.”  And this project employed algorithms, which are also hallmarks of intelligent guidance.  So forget the references to an evolutionary process; this was an exercise in artificial selection, not natural selection.  Artificial selection is a manifestation of intelligent design.  Phillip Johnson explained the contrast:

Plant and animal breeders employ intelligence and specialized knowledge to select breeding stock and to protect their charges from natural dangers.  The point of Darwin’s theory, however, was to establish that purposeless natural processes can substitute for intelligent design.  That he made that point by citing the accomplishments of intelligent designers proves only that the receptive audience for his theory was highly uncritical.
    Artificial selection is not basically the same sort of thing as natural selection, but rather is something fundamentally different.  Human breeders produce variations among sheep or pigeons for purposes absent in nature, including sheer delight in seeing how much variation can be achieved.  If the breeders were interested only in having animals capable of surviving in the wild, the extremes of variation would not exist.  When domestic animals return to the wild state, the most highly specialized breeds quickly perish and the survivors revert to the original wild type.  Natural selection is a conservative force that prevents the appearance of the extremes of variation that human breeders like to encourage.
(Darwin on Trial, pp. 17-18).

Johnson’s legal and logical expertise is brought to bear skillfully in his chapter on Natural Selection.  He examines the charge that natural selection is a tautology, a vacuous phrase that conveys no information.  In the case of the antenna, Jason Lohn defined “fitness” with words like strong and robust (see “Fitness for Dummies,” 10/29/2002 headline), but those are human-centric evaluations; does the antenna care whether it is strong or robust?  Real biologists understand that fitness has nothing to do with muscles or speed or anything else that we humans value.  It is only a mechanical measure of success in passing on genes.  Whenever natural selection is described in terms of success at reproduction, however, it reduces to a tautology, which by definition has no explanatory value: an organism is successful because it succeeds; a fit individual is fitter than the unfit; those who leave the most offspring leave the most offspring.  Phillip Johnson deals with the evolutionists’ comebacks to this charge, and demonstrates that, “in practice natural selection continues to be employed in its tautological formulation.”  He provides examples from leading evolutionists.
    So here were two glaring logical flaws in this story: fitness was defined in terms of value to human engineers, and intelligently-supervised results were ascribed to undirected processes.  It takes intelligence to design software that can sift through an enormous number of possibilities and detect the ones that best match the specifications.  Specification is a hallmark of intelligent design.  This story was not “patterned after Darwin’s survival of the fittest” the fact that it was patterned at all shows that it was designed.
    Not only is it illogical, it is plagiaristic to attribute what these engineers accomplished to Darwinian evolution.  The Intelligent Design Movement should get the credit.  If this were the only case, evolutionists might take offense at holding up this article as a bad example, but as we have shown in these pages, prominent evolutionists publishing in reputable journals frequently make this same logical error (see 12/30/2002, 12/13/2001, 12/19/2002, and 08/26/2003 headlines, for instance).  If evolutionists don’t understand their own theory, then the intelligent design scientists are going to have to continue to teach them all about it.
    Now ABC News got into the act.  They claim British scientists are using evolutionary theory to build fitter racing cars.  *Sigh*
Next headline on: Darwinism and Evolutionary Theory. • Next headline on: Intelligent Design. • Next dumb story.

“Contemporary earthworms are adapting to a soil environment largely constructed by their ancestors.”
First proposed in the 1980s by Richard Lewontin, niche construction was at first largely ignored.  Now, these authors feel it is “a fact of life.”  It is not just man that adapts himself, as Theodosius Dobzhansky used to claim.  All organisms modify the environment that selects their traits; this is a ubiquitous process, and can no longer be disputed.
    It seems intuitively obvious.  Why the controversy, then?  Perhaps because niche construction “changes the evolutionary dynamic” and can actually put the brakes on natural selection:

Niche construction can create new equilibria, affect the stability of others, generate unusual phenomena, such as momentum effects (where populations continue to evolve [sic] in the same direction after selection has stopped or reversed) and inertia effects (a delayed evolutionary response to selection), as well as opposite and catastrophic responses to selection.

Such realizations might raise a host of new questions.  Nevertheless, the authors are optimistic, and suggest some fruitful lines of research.  A number of evolutionists are jumping on this bandwagon.  This “alternative panorama” may prove to be a “fleeting fad”; but if not, David Hull’s ominous prophecy may be fulfilled: “the result should be a massive reorientation of evolutionary theory.”

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¹Kevin N. Laland, John Odling-Smee, and Marcus W. Feldman, “Causing a commotion: Niche construction: do the changes that organisms make to their habitats transform evolution and influence natural selection?” Nature 429, 609 (10 June 2004); doi:10.1038/429609a.

To be fair before discussing this “spat” among evolutionists, it must be clarified that the parties on both sides are committed naturalists who affirm that unguided, unplanned, purposeless natural processes created humpback whales and hippo sunscreen out of bacteria.  All the combatants would have risen up in holy horror at Roseville to protest the insertion of any doubts about evolution into the biology curriculum.  That being understood, think about this controversy.  What damage does niche construction do to evolutionary theory?  Why would Dawkins call the reasoning “pernicious”?  What do the ongoing intramural battles tell us about the “fact” of evolution?
    Each of these internal controversies – whether lamarckism, punctuated equilibria, group selection or niche construction – has questioned the core belief of Darwinists, that Charlie’s mechanism, a simple process so intuitively obvious it elevated bacteria-to-man evolution to the status of accepted truth, is perfectly capable of explaining everything.  Remember, it was the discovery of a plausible mechanism of evolution that made Charlie famous.  Apparently, quite a few evolutionists do not consider it all that plausible.  The fundamentalist Darwinists insist Charlie’s original dogma must be kept sacrosanct (see 05/31/2004 headline).  Yet ever since Darwin, heretical views have threatened the integrity of the myth.  Lamarckism is pretty much dead, falsified by experiment (even though Darwin himself became more Lamarckian in his old age—see February 2004 bio of Kelvin).  The radical view called punctuated equilibria arose because the fossil record, with its systematic gaps, did not support Darwinian gradualism.  Group selection was a sect that cast doubt on Darwin’s orthodoxy of individual selection.  We could add to the list the heresies of sympatric speciation and neo-Gaia.  Now, the cult of niche construction tends to complicate Dawkins’ life by telling him that the vectors of natural selection and the environment interact in complex ways, often opposing each other (see 03/17/2003 headline).
    Whichever you think is the best storytelling plot, let’s ask some serious questions about this article and its relevance to the heated arguments occurring at school board meetings all around America, both in big cities and small towns, about the teaching of evolution.  Do you feel that any of the Darwin Party storytellers has a real, defensible, comprehensive account of how bacteria evolved into humans?  If so, why is it controversial to other evolutionists?  Why are the controversies heated enough for them to call each other names and question each others’ motives?  Has any of them provided a detailed account, with all the transitions that would be required, to explain the emergence of a single complex organ?  (See 08/20/2003 headline.)  Have the newly-acquired genomes of dozens of different organisms fulfilled what Darwinists predicted?  (See 06/09/2004 and 01/02/2003 headlines.)  Has the fossil record filled in the gaps that Darwin himself acknowledged were a major problem for his theory?  (See 06/02/2004 headline.)  Is there any reason why the eyes and ears of high school students should be shielded from these controversies and failings of Darwin’s theory?  Do these controversies have anything to do with Christianity or any other religion?  If not, why is the mantra “separation of church and state” invoked to subvert proposals for honest discussion about problems with evolutionary theory?  Can you think of any other reason, other than a sincere desire to educate students honestly, that the ACLU, the National Center for Science Education, and other Darwinist front groups are so adamant that no scientific criticisms of Darwinism are permissible in the schools?  If you engaged in these mental exercises, you just committed the very crime the Darwin-only side is trying to prevent.  You utilized critical thinking skills.
Next headline on: Schools. • Next headline on: Darwinism and Evolutionary Theory.

Worm Genes Show Non-Evolutionary Pattern    06/09/2004
Biologists at New York University compared genes of roundworms to look for evidence of evolutionary ancestry.  What they found was not what they expected.  They found more genetic variation between outwardly-similar worms than between mice and men.  Their results were published online in PNAS June 7.¹
    The roundworm Caenorhabditis elegans is a model lab organism for genetic studies.  Kiontke et al. compared it with 7 other worms of the same genus and four other related species.  They first devised a family tree of the worms, based on commonly-accepted phylogenetic techniques.  Despite the fact that only subtle morphological differences exist between most of the species, they found major differences in intron counts (with intron loss apparently much more frequent than intron gain).  They also deduced that a specialized form of hermaphroditism (ability to self-fertilize) evolved separately in two species, C. elegans and C. briggsae, by convergent evolution.  Summarizing all the differences they found, they stated with obvious surprise that “despite the lack of marked morphological diversity, more genetic disparity is present within this one genus than has occurred within all vertebrates.”
    The amount of genetic diversity between these worms is all the more surprising considering the impact one change can sometimes have.  In another paper published in PNAS the same day,² a team of scientists studied a genetic disease called progeria that makes children die of old age at 13.  The disease is caused by a single point mutation in one spot, the lamin A gene, that is important in maintaining the structure of the nucleus.
    Why the worms show so much genetic diversity despite little outward visible difference was puzzling to the biologists.  They postulated it might be due to stabilizing selection (influences that, despite genetic changes, produce results analogous to treading water or running in place).  Alternatively, “developmental constraints may limit the ‘evolvability’ of Caenorhabditis,” they suggested.  Or maybe the worms’ molecular clock ticks at much higher rates than in higher organisms, although they dispute the idea.
    They leave it as an unsolved puzzle how similar-looking worms could show more genetic diversity than vertebrates (including mice, rats, hamsters, zebrafish and humans).  “It had been noted previously that the genetic distance between humans and chimpanzees seemed too small to account for their substantial organismal differences.  However,” they observe, “the situation is strikingly reversed in Caenorhabditis.”

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¹Kiontke et al., “Caenorhabditis phylogeny predicts convergence of hermaphroditism and extensive intron loss,” Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences USA, 10.1073/pnas.0403094101, published online before print June 7, 2004.
²Goldman et al., “Accumulation of mutant lamin A causes progressive changes in nuclear architecture in Hutchinson-Gilford progeria syndrome,” Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences USA, 10.1073/pnas.0402943101, published online before print June 7, 2004.

Molecular phylogenetics is not providing the evidence of common ancestry for which evolutionists had hoped.  Since it looks like an exercise in futility, can we move on to better things now? (see yesterday’s headline, for instance.)
Next headline on: Genes and DNA. • Next headline on: Darwinism and Evolutionary Theory.

How Many Neurons Does It Take to See a Picture?   06/08/2004
Israeli scientists publishing in Current Biology¹ attempted to determine how many neurons participate in the representation of a single image.  At least a million was their conservative answer: probably more like 30 or 300 million or more.  They made careful measurements of neural activity when subjects were shown a face or a house.  In the brain, there are about 60,000 neurons per cubic millimeter, each joined to hundreds of neighboring neurons in complex ways.

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¹Levy, Hassan and Malach, “One Picture Is Worth At Least a Million Neurons,” Current Biology, Vol 14, 996-1001, 8 June 2004.

Remember that their answer was a minimum; they seemed overly cautious to err on the conservative side.  And this was for simple, stationary images.  Undoubtedly many more neurons are firing constantly in our usually complex, moving field of view.  Each eye has about 120 megapixel resolution (see 07/13/2001 headline), and complex image processing takes place in the eye before the neurons receive the data (see 05/22/2003 headline).
Next headline on: Human Body. • Next amazing story.

Weeds to Your Health   06/08/2004
Why traverse the rain forests for miracle drugs, EurekAlert asks, when the weeds we yank out of our gardens may hold promise for curing a host of common health woes.  John Richard Stepp (University of Florida) claims that fast-growing, herbaceous field plants are more likely to hold useful substances than those deep in jungles.  Indigenous Americans tended to gather more medicinal plants from the fields than the forests.  Though weeds constitute only 3% of plant species, they make up a third of the plants used in pharmaceuticals, he discovered.
    Stepp also worked among indigenous peoples and found they had considerable knowledge about their native plants.  In Chiapas, he found that “Mayan residents use weeds for all sorts of day-to-day illnesses, such as common colds, upset stomachs, skin rashes, and aches and sprains.”  He talked with 4- and 5-year old Mayan children who could name 100 local plants.  “An American kid might be able to name 100 Pokemon characters, but if you ask him the names of three plants, he would probably have a real hard time,” he remarked.
    Stepp and other botanists feel there is a veritable living pharmacy right outside the door and along trailsides.  This overlooked treasury is readily available, costs nothing, and is often more effective than synthetic drugs.  But heed their caution: “Americans may be able to get similar benefits from weeds as do people in developing countries, although he warns that people shouldn’t experiment on their own.”

How many native plants in your neighborhood can you name, and how many do you know how to use?  Teaching your children about local native plants is much more profitable than letting them waste time watching Pokemon or whatever the latest fad on TV.  For today’s jaded youth, it’s a pretty cool discovery that it’s possible to reach down and pick a wild plant to eat, use another as a natural sunscreen or insect repellant, and find one to make soap or rope.  You must exercise great caution, however, since there are poisons and irritants to avoid (remember the joke about poison ivy?  It’s an “all-natural herb that does wonders to your skin.”)  Find a knowledgeable teacher, preferably part Indian guide and part PhD botanist, and use a reliable book on wild plants.  Be extra wary of mushrooms, since even experts can confuse edible ones with poisonous look-alikes.  But you never know; learning how to use wild plants could save your life some day.  Camps, recreation centers and parks should incorporate plant lore into their activities.
    The study of native plants also provides an opportunity for research labs to apply good scientific method, employing carefully controlled experiments, to make discoveries for the benefit of mankind – like science used to be done.  It requires no Darwinian storytelling, either, weed reckon.
Next headline on: Plants. • Next headline on: Health.

DNA Folds With Molecular Velcro   06/07/2004
Many have heard how the inventor of Velcro got the idea from plant seeds that stick to clothing, but now Carlos Bustamente and team of Howard Hughes Medical Institute have found a velcro-like principle operating at a scale millions of times smaller.  Small proteins called condensins are involved in the elaborate folding that DNA undergoes as it is wrapped into chromosomes.  The team developed an ingenious method of gently pulling on DNA strands compacted with condensin.  Bustamente relates, “when we began to pull it apart carefully, we saw it extend in a sawtooth pattern of force, like the click-click-click of Velcro unzipping.”  When they relaxed the force, it collapsed back, then repeated the same pattern when pulled apart again.  “That perfect reproducibility strongly suggested to Bustamante and his colleagues that they were seeing a condensed structure with a well defined organization,” the press release explains.  Surprisingly, this reversible reaction did not require the expenditure of ATP.

This is just one of the clever design features in the cell that allows over six feet of fragile DNA to be folded and compacted into a nucleus a few millionths of an inch wide.  For a simplified view of how this all works, see the PBS “Journey Into DNA,” available in Flash format or as a web page.  (The condensin comes into play in the frames where DNA forms tight loops.)  Even more amazing is that this tight packing still allows the translation machinery to find the right gene, gain access, and do its work.  For a glimpse of this additional complexity, see the 06/13/2002 and 03/08/2002 headlines.
Next headline on: The Cell and Biochemistry. • Next headline on: Genes and DNA. • Next amazing story.

The Evolution of Infidelity   06/07/2004
The BBC News placed a sultry photo of a likely-undressed man and woman about to kiss alongside the headline of a story, “Genes may be to blame for infidelity.”  They report on the speculation by Tim Spector (Twin Research Unit, St. Thomas Hospital) that “if one of a pair of twins had a history of infidelity, the chances her sister would also stray were about 55%” instead of the estimated 23% of women who supposedly are not faithful (how this statistic was ascertained was not disclosed).

He stressed that genes alone did not determine whether somebody was likely to be unfaithful – much was down to social factors.
    But he said it made good sense in evolutionary terms to get a good mix of genes – and for women to chose a better option if one came along.
    However, he stopped short of concluding that there is an infidelity gene.     He said: “There is unlikely to be a single gene for anything like this.  But there are likely to be genes that participate in it, a number of genes working together, it might be things like risk taking or those associated with personality.”   (Emphasis added.)

A social psychologist is quoted denying that the behavior is genetically based, but more likely based on imitation of the parent.

Notice the moral schizophrenia in this story even if you accept the premise.  Alongside the strictly naturalistic explanation for immorality are the words infidelity and unfaithfulness, and the word good, all words loaded with moral connotations.  But if unfaithfulness evolved as a sexual selection strategy, if it “makes good sense in evolutionary terms,” who is to call it unfaithful?  It is certainly faithful to the only one who matters in Darwin’s universe: me, myself, I.  So yes, selfishness makes perfect sense in a selfish universe, because selfishness is the highest good.
    Do you see, dear reader, how destructive evolutionary thinking can be in the most intimate matters of the heart?  This article essentially encourages the cheater, saying, “You can’t help it; you are doing just what your genes lead you to do.  In fact, what you are doing makes perfect evolutionary sense and is actually a good thing for #1.” 

Notice that fellow evolutionists rarely condemn this kind of nonsense.  If they disagree with it, they usually just replace one evolutionary just-so story with another.  None dare call it immoral, even when it involves crime (see 07/18/2003 headline about the evolution of rape).  Michael Ruse once rationalized the genocide in Nazi Germany in evolutionary terms, refusing to call it evil, but instead claiming that such societies are usually “unstable.”  That means that, conceivably, if it were stable, it would make perfect evolutionary sense.  Democracy, on the contrary, is not stable either; “eternal vigilance is the price of liberty.”  So is the Bill of Rights doomed to failure, because it counters the evolutionary pressure of natural selection?  Is that why so many Darwinians in elite universities are Marxists?  Let’s conduct a survey of how many evolutionists cheat on their spouses, to make sure they are not just promoting Darwinism as a pseudoscientific rationalization for their behavior.

    So, Mr. Spector, you’ve told us a nice little story about how cheating makes perfect evolutionary sense.  Now tell us about the evolution of broken homes, devastated children and heartbroken spouses.  This evolutionary tale is not just dumb, it’s evil.  Maybe that’s why the British pronounce it evil-you-tion.
Next headline on: Genes and DNA. • Next headline on: Darwinism and Evolutionary Theory. • Next headline on: Politics and Ethics. • Next dumb story.

Darwinists Continue to Stifle Opposition    06/04/2004
Sacramento ABC News reported that the Roseville school district voted 3 to 2 against the “Quality Science Education Policy” after months of debate.  The policy would have provided supplementary materials critical of Darwinian evolution.  Even a compromise position considered Tuesday night was rejected.  The proposal had been submitted by a parent who felt students should know about scientific objections to evolution.
    World Net Daily reported that NPR, at the last minute before airing an episode of Science Friday about evolution teaching, canceled an appearance of a teacher critical of evolution.  The guest, Roger DeHart, had been a respected biology teacher for 27 years before being reassigned by his Burlington, Washington high school for the controversy caused by providing his students scientific criticisms of Darwinism from secular journals.  DeHart was told he would not be on the program just hours before it aired.  As a result, the pro-evolution teacher was free to present his views on the NPR program without opposition, even though Discovery Institute claims he misrepresented their position.  The Discovery Institute has issued press releases accusing NPR of misinformation and censorship, and has documented a pattern of factual errors in their reporting about the teaching of evolution.

The campaign of obfuscation, marginalization, and misrepresentation continues.  Although the ACLU was not mentioned in the Roseville news report, we have seen in the recent Los Angeles County Seal controversy that merely the threat of a lawsuit has been sufficient to stifle fair and honest debate on the real issues.  The only way the Darwin Party can survive is to prevent their critics from getting a hearing, because their critics have an unfair advantage, as Lee Strobel says: they have the truth on their side.
    Better not tell students about Creation-Evolution Headlines.  It might destroy their childlike faith in Father Charlie.
Next headline on: Darwin and Evolutionary Theory. • Next headline on: Education.

Gene Regulation: When Nonsense Makes Perfect Sense   06/03/2004
Nature June 3¹ reports on another use for “junk DNA.”  A portion of previously-considered “nonsense” genetic code, which does not produce a protein as does a gene, nevertheless has an important role: it regulates the expression of the neighboring gene.  This opens a whole new realm of function for portions of our genetic material that were thought to be useless leftovers of evolution: it’s a new kind of gene that regulates other genes (see the Reuters summary on MSNBC News).
    Molecular biologists have been intrigued by the fact that the DNA translation machinery seems busier than required to produce proteins: “Why is there such a heavy traffic of RNA polymerases, the enzymes that copy DNA into RNA, and the production of large quantities of apparently non-coding and non-functional RNAs?” the reporters say.  The new work by Martens et al. reported in the same issue shows that “RNA polymerases are evidently doing more than we thought.”  The resulting “nonsense” RNAs produced by reading non-coding segments act as regulators, controlling the amount of protein that is expressed by the true genes by a process of “transcriptional interference.”  What was considered nonsense, therefore, actually makes perfect sense on a higher level:

Taken together, these studies highlight the importance of intergenic transcription in regulating gene activity, even in the relatively densely packed genome of yeast.  It seems that RNA polymerases are not only required for the production of particular RNA species, but by travelling along DNA they can also control the occupancy of regulatory sites by transcription factors.  Widespread transcription of intergenic sequences has also been described in the human genome.  Surprisingly, many of these non-coding transcripts seem to be regulated in a manner that is intimately connected to the transcription of protein-coding genes.  So the high proportion of non-coding regions in the genomes of higher organisms is probably not due to the accumulation of nonsense DNA, but rather represents the evolution of ever more complicated gene-regulatory systems.   (Emphasis added in all quotes.)

EurekAlert puts this finding into perspective:

If so, the findings would carry an important message for the post-human genome era-namely, that researchers’ attempts to turn the masses of data churned out by the Human Genome Project into an understanding of what actually happens in the human body may be even more complex than they anticipated.  One of the main challenges for that effort is to figure out how and when genes are turned on and off during normal development and disease.  Rather than look only at how genes are regulated by proteins, they would have to turn their attention to a new, and possibly more-difficult-to-detect form of control.  And given that junk DNA [sic] makes up 95 percent of chromosomes, the mechanism could be fairly common.

The article gives the bottom line to one of the researchers, Fred Winston of Harvard Medical School: “Every time we thought we understood everything going on here, we have been wrong.  There are additional layers of complexity.”

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¹Sabine Schmitt and Renato Paro, “Gene regulation: A reason for reading nonsense,” Nature 429, 510 - 511 (03 June 2004); doi:10.1038/429510a.

You are witnessing the collapse of an evolutionary myth, the myth of “junk DNA” and “nonsense” genetic code.  We have been chronicling the demise of this mischaracterization for years (see 05/10/2004 headline and work your way back).  No less than Nobel laureate David Baltimore and co-discoverer of DNA structure James Watson propounded this myth (see 08/24/2004 headline).  Though scientists have not yet found a function for all the non-gene segments, every time they look deeper into the genetic code, they see less nonsense and more design.  Evolutionists used to call the vast expanses of non-gene-coding DNA the “gene desert” and supposed it to be the accumulated junk from our evolutionary past.  (As we have pointed out before, this assumption effectively shut down scientific research on these “uninteresting” regions for a long time; an intelligent design approach would have, instead, inquired about their functions – see 10/16/2003 headline).  The “Central Dogma” was that only genes were important, they coded for proteins, and that was that.  Now, the non-gene segments appear to have a coded function of their own, producing RNA molecules that have a key role to play in an even more complex choreography of functional parts working together in a sophisticated ballet.  How then, can they say this “represents the evolution of ever more complicated gene-regulatory systems”?  I didn’t see any evolution here; did you?
    Their ending sentence thus qualifies them as winners of Stupid Evolution Quote of the Week, i.e., a claim in support of evolution, based on findings that point to the opposite conclusion.
Next headline on: Genes and DNA. • Next headline on: Intelligent Design.

Neural Darwinism: The Evolution of Truth   06/03/2004
Can evolutionary theory build a bottom-up explanation of higher cognitive functions?  David Papineau (King’s College) doubts it.  In his review of The Physiology of Truth: Neuroscience and Human Knowledge by Jean-Pierre Changeux (transl. Malcolm DeBevoise, Belknap Press: 2004), published in the June 3 issue of Nature,¹ he gives the author high marks, but concedes that this neurophysiologist with outstanding credentials falls into the usual trap:

Can neurophysiology cast any light on the human condition?  Books that set themselves this ambition, and there are plenty, are invariably disappointing.  The problem is not that we lack information at the neuronal level – a great deal is known about cell receptors, neurotransmitters, re-entrant connections and so on.  Rather, the difficulty lies in relating this microscopic knowledge to higher human faculties such as thought, emotion and consciousness.
    To get round this, popular-science books by the likes of Francis Crick, Joseph LeDoux or Antonio Damasio typically have the following trajectory.  We start with a few chapters on the neuronal nitty-gritty.  But then the gears surreptitiously change, and we switch to speculation about the mind’s higher powers.  However, any serious theorizing at this level tends to be ‘boxological’, rather than physiological — we are given flowcharts connecting posited brain modules, but there is no bottom-up, cell-level account of how these modules might work.
    Perhaps this is unsurprising, given the kind of evidence that is currently available about the large-scale operations of the mind.  In recent years, functional-imaging data have been added to findings from studies of brain lesions.  But even these new data are at too gross a scale: it is like trying to figure out how a computer works by noting when different bits get hot and what goes wrong when certain parts are broken.  With luck, this might give us some idea of where certain operations are located, but it is not going to tell us about the mechanisms that make them possible.   (Emphasis added in all quotes.)

So is the mind Freud’s black box?  Cognitive psychologists seem to be in the same boat as the evolutionists Michael Behe described in Darwin’s Black Box.  They can watch the inputs and outputs, but have no idea how to get from one to the other; they end up with vague, handwaving, “boxological” explanations.  That does not prevent Changeux from proposing a “neural darwinism,” a tentative mechanism based on “selective favouring of some spontaneously formed synaptic connections over others during development.”  Papineau is unconvinced this makes any progress. 

Changeux has plenty to say about neural darwinism [sic], and touches on functionalism [the belief no molecular mechanisms can explain higher cognitive functions] in passing, but he doesn’t quite spell out the connection between them.  Still, his book presents a more satisfying picture of the brain than most of its competitors in this crowded market.  On standard accounts, it can simply seem frustrating that we never get any bottom-up explanations of higher cognitive functions.  If the structure of the brain is laid down by a definite genetic plan, then why can’t we find out about the underlying mechanisms? Changeux’s book fails to identify any such mechanisms too, but at least he gives us some insight into why the search for them may be doomed to permanent frustration.

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David Papineau, “Mind the gap,” Nature Nature 429, 505 - 506 (03 June 2004); doi:10.1038/429505a.

If truth evolves, it isn’t the truth.  As usual, Darwinists want to explain everything, even the intangibles, in terms of unguided materialistic processes.  But in the area of the mind, have they even begun?  Papineau says no, despite the crowded market of contenders; they all reveal it to be an exercise in “permanent frustration.”  The result is simplistic just-so stories, as unsatisfying as “presto, Changeux.”
    We know the mind influences the body, and the body influences the mind, but neither can be reduced to the other.  Consider what a conundrum it must be to a materialist to realize that though our individual brains are composed of quadrillions of neurons, which all join together in unique ways during development – making each of us one-of-a-kind in the universe – we still can hold conversations and understand quite a bit about each other.  Scientists can peer review each other’s papers and judge the merits of their arguments.  That indicates that the capacities for relationships and logical thinking were designed into us from the beginning.  It also points to an intangible nature expressed through, but not reducible to, our bodies.  We also have a sense of self, a conscience, and a hunger for ultimate meaning.  None of these can be reduced to molecules.
    The Bible teaches that we are more than matter in motion.  To a dichotomist, we have a body and soul.  To a trichotomist, we have a body, soul and spirit.  Either way, we are not just a body.  According to the Bible, the spirit of Jesus Christ existed eternally from the beginning (John 1).  He inhabited a physical body for a time, but His spirit remained alive while his body was dead (I Peter 3:18-22), and then returned into His body during His resurrection.  This means our soul and/or spirit can endure apart from the atoms and molecules of our bodies.  Even if the whole world melted in a nuclear holocaust, our natures would live on (II Peter 3:8-13).  What a profound thought: we’re going to live somewhere forever.  It makes good sense, therefore, to learn how to live.  We will all be doing it, one place or the other, for a long time.
Suggested reading: Ecclesiastes 12, I John 5.
Next headline on: Human Body. • Next headline on: Darwinism and Evolutionary Theory. • Next headline on: The Bible.

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Do you have questions about God, eternity, and Jesus Christ?  Check out the new DVD (next headline).  It has reasonable answers to important questions, no matter where you are on your spiritual journey, such as:

I question whether or not God exists.

I believe spiritual truth is relative, and decided by each person.

I believe in God, but I’m not sure about Jesus.

Don’t all religious lead to the same place?

Can anyone know whether the Bible is true?

What happens after I die?
These are only entry points into a wealth of interesting answers to 50 questions on facts and faith, science and philosophy, religion and Jesus Christ.  If you can’t get the DVD, Bibles are cheap and plentiful; there might even be one in your hotel room drawer.  If you like true-life stories, check out the amazing turnaround of Lee Strobel, a former hard-core atheist.  You owe it to yourself to become informed rather than trusting intuition, tradition, or fate.  Make it your own systematic research project, like Strobel did.  Is anything you are doing right now more important than getting trustworthy answers to these questions?

Movie  Jesus: Fact or Fiction?    06/02/2004
At a large rally at Biola University June 1, the Jesus Film Project, in collaboration with the university, announced a new DVD entitled Jesus: Fact or Fiction?.  Each household at the rally received a free copy.  Half of the DVD contains the full length Jesus film, a project that has been translated into more languages (857) and seen by more viewers (5.7 billion) than any other movie.  The other half is a “Journey” of faith, exploring frequently-asked questions about Christianity, God, science, the Bible, and philosophy, answered by 18 scholars, including Ravi Zacharias, Craig Hazen, Paul Maier, and others.  It includes answers to scientific questions about evolution and design by William Dembski, Lee Strobel and more.  Also embedded are true-life stories of Christians from a variety of walks of life explaining their own journeys of faith.  Speakers at the event, a kick-off for a summer lecture series, included Craig Hazen, Frank Pastore, John Mark Reynolds, Lee Strobel, J.P. Moreland and others.

This is a nicely-packaged, interactive, well-designed, low-key and attractive tool for discussing the important questions about God, origins, faith, the problem of pain, forgiveness, and eternity in a non-threatening way.  The answers to questions are excellent.  A better line-up of credible scholars could hardly be gathered.  The interactive layout keeps you wanting to find out more.  Watch it and you will be ordering dozens, if not hundreds, to hand out to neighbors, friends and work associates.
Next headline on: The Bible. • Next headline on: Movies.

Dead Sea Drying Up    06/02/2004
The Dead Sea water level is dropping 3.3 feet per year and may be gone in 50 years, reports World Net Daily.  Israel and Jordan are working on ways to save the world’s lowest-elevation lake, a landmark of Biblical fame.

California has a dry lake, Owens Lake, that became a huge source of toxic pollution when the water was diverted.  Wind now blows toxic dust over large areas of the west.  A similar thing could happen with the Dead Sea unless the governments succeed in limiting their diversion of waters from the Jordan River valley.  This will be a hard call in a thirsty land.  It would be a shame to lose this remarkable body of water.  For more on the geology of the Dead Sea area, see 05/03/2004 headline.
Next headline on: Geology. • Next headline on: The Bible.

North Star Is Rapidly Changing    06/02/2004
The North Star (Polaris) has brightened by 150% since Ptolemy observed it 2000 years ago, says the American Astronomical Society (see report on Science Now).  If the differences from those in ancient times are real, “these changes are 100 times larger than predicted by current theories of stellar evolution.”  Polaris is also a pulsating Cepheid variable, but its pulses have been erratic lately.  One astronomer surmises, “Polaris may be experiencing a rare and rapidly changing period in its evolution.”

Finding the North Star is a required skill for any northern-hemisphere camper.  It is also a conversation starter on how much science can know about processes that supposedly take billions of years.
Next headline on: Stars.

Cambrian Explosion?  Just Add Calcium to Seawater    06/02/2004
Science Now reports a new “recipe for shell evolution” that may shed light on one of paleontology’s biggest puzzles, the Cambrian explosion:

About 530 million years ago [sic], Earth experienced a renaissance of animal evolution [sic], as the ancestors [sic] of all modern-day creatures began to experiment [sic] with skeletons and shells.  Scientists have long puzzled over what prompted the sudden explosion of diversity in the Early Cambrian period.  Now, geochemists have found the first direct evidence that a surge in calcium in the oceans may have played a role [sic].   (Emphasis added in all quotes.)

By examining trapped seawater residues from samples of Proterozoic and early Cambrian rocks, a trio of geochemists found three times as much calcium in the later, Cambrian rocks.  To Katie Greene, author of the news item, the timing of the rise in calcium with possible tectonic activity and the Cambrian explosion “seem to support the idea [sic] that early life began innovating [sic] with shells and skeletons to deal with [sic] a potentially [sic] toxic rise in calcium in the oceans.”  So is the Cambrian explosion solved?  Tempting, but not conclusive:

The idea [sic] that the chemistry of seawater may have had an impact [sic] on the evolution of life [sic] is exciting [sic], says Robert Goldstein, a geologist at the University of Kansas in Lawrence.  It looks like calcium in the ocean may have been an important player [sic], he says, although more work is needed to show whether it is a cause or effect of the explosion of life [sic].  Other environmental changes may also have been important.

The three geochemists, publishing in the June issue of Geology¹, think that this rise in seawater calcium concentration “may have spurred [sic] evolutionary changes in marine biota.”

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¹Brennan, Lowenstein and Horita, “Seawater chemistry and the advent of biocalcification,” Geology Vol. 32, No. 6, pp. 473–476, doi: 10.1130/G20251.1.

Mark Twain said it so well, “There is something fascinating about science.  One gets such wholesale returns of conjecture out of such a trifling investment of fact.”  A better example could hardly be found.  In the Cambrian explosion, all the major phyla, including arthropods, vertebrates, molluscs, clams and everything else, supposedly “emerged” onto the scene in a geological blink of an eye.  These creatures “invented” compound eyes and geometrical shells and joints and numerous complex organs and structures, to say nothing of the DNA and cellular information to code for these things, without leaving a trace of ancestors in the fossil record.  And they expect us to believe all this phenomenal “innovation” occurred because some deep sea vents spewed out toxic amounts of calcium?  Get a life.
    Scientists can be very good at taking measurements and operating high-tech lab equipment.  These skills do not necessarily correlate with objectivity or good sense.  Anyone who holds scientists in awe because of some supposed aura of wisdom that surrounds them should look no further than what happened here.  The most prestigious geological journal in the world, and the most prestigious American scientific organization, have just printed utter balderdash.  Look at the opening paragraph by Brenner et al. and ask yourself is there is one shred of meaningful explanation for an observed phenomenon, the abrupt appearance of all the major body plans, a fact that effectively falsifies evolution:

One of the most dramatic and confounding events in evolutionary [sic] and geologic history was the sudden onset of biomineralization in the Early Cambrian during the ’Cambrian explosion” (Knoll and Carroll, 1999 ; Conway-Morris, 2000 ) (Fig. 1).  Explanations [sic] for this event include (1) a response to increased predation (Stanley, 1976 ), (2) detoxification (Simkiss, 1977 , 1989) due to increased seawater [Ca²⁺] (Kempe and Kazmierczak, 1994 ), and (3) increased atmospheric oxygen concentration (Cloud, 1976 ).  Here we present new data—38 analyses of evaporated seawater in fluid inclusions from terminal Proterozoic (ca. 544 Ma, 24 analyses) and Early Cambrian (Toyonian, ca. 515 Ma, 14 analyses) marine halites—to help answer [sic] this unresolved issue in Earth’s history.  These analyses indicate that the major ion composition of seawater changed between 544 Ma and 515 Ma [sic], highlighted by a large increase in [Ca²⁺].  This increase in the seawater [Ca²⁺] may [sic] have created a chemical environment favorable [sic] for the initial development [sic] of calcium carbonate and calcium phosphate hard parts, which have dominated marine biota ever since.

What an absolute groaner.  They admit up front that the Cambrian explosion was dramatic, confounding, and unresolved (to a Darwinist).  Of course, it is exactly what a creationist would have predicted.  But instead of repenting of their sin of unbelief and their wanton disregard of the preponderance of the evidence, they present a fantastical tale, without any semblance of a scientific cause-and-effect explanation, expecting us to swallow the myth that adding calcium to seawater is enough to generate trilobite eyes and conch shells and thousands of other exquisitely-engineered functional structures.  This is equivalent to claiming that an influx of iron meteorites explains tanks and submarines.  Why should anyone take a Darwinist seriously who trusts in such fairy tales?  It is their prior commitment to naturalism, not the evidence, that forces them to such absurdities.
    Notice also the ever-present personification fallacy that so characterizes Darwinian explanations for things: Science Now says,

Why evolve shells?  The most obvious [sic] reason would be to avoid being eaten.”  Another idea, which might [sic] explain [sic] why hard parts first appeared in the Early Cambrian, is that rising levels of atmospheric oxygen enabled [sic] animals to build more complicated bodies [sic].  And other scientists suggested in the 1970s that marine creatures may have started building [sic] shells to purge their bodies of a sudden pulse of calcium in the environment in the Early Cambrian.  But direct evidence of a change in ocean chemistry was lacking.

These Darwinists envision the ancestors of these animals (which happen to be missing from the precambrian) as little pioneers deciding how to use the natural resources in a new environment.   (It should be easy to demonstrate; just put some bacteria into an aquarium, and triple the calcium or oxygen, or put in some predators, and see what they come up with.)  Look for other examples in the quotes above: calcium is a player, creatures began to experiment, animals had a renaissance, etc. etc.  This amounts to a kind of naturalistic vitalism or pantheism.  The whole world’s a stage, and all the organisms merely players.  To keep the play going, and the Darwin Party stage hands gainfully employed, Goldstein adds the standard fine print to the contract, “more work is needed.”
    Unless the Darwin Party has the intellectual honesty to face up to the evidence, the silly melodrama will never end.  Students, gently but persistently hold up the evidence of the Cambrian explosion before your teachers or professors and ask them to explain it.  Don’t accept a just-so story or mere suggestion.  Don’t let them change the subject.  Sometimes, but not always, the preponderance of evidence leads to repentance.
Next headline on: Fossils. • Next headline on: Darwinian Evolution. • Next headline on: Geology. • Next dumb story.

Modern Cavemen Found    06/01/2004
National Geographic News has a remarkable true story about some families that lived underground in the darkness and dampness of a cave for nearly two years in recent times.  And now, the rest of the story: they were Jews hiding out from the Nazis.

This incredible story of survival in the midst of danger points out that living in a cave does not necessarily mean someone is primitive.  Anyone would choose to be a caveman if the motivation were strong enough.  Maybe they would even pass the time by creating artwork on the walls.
Next headline on: Early Man. • Next headline on: Politics and Ethics.

Academic Freedom Applied Unequally    06/01/2004
In the June ICR Impact article, Dr. Jerry Bergman tells a tale of two professors.  One, a philosophy professor, has full academic freedom to dismantle the religious faith of his students (one of his converts was Michael Shermer, now editor of Skeptic Magazine).  The other, a Christian anatomy professor, was forbidden by the courts to even allude to anything of his beliefs, even with disclaimers, lest it “engender anxiety” in his students.

Anybody who thinks universities stand for academic freedom, or who thinks people of faith are the biased ones, or who has a naive interpretation of “separation of church and state,” should read this shocking article.  It describes viewpoint discrimination contrary to the law, and shows how one religious position (atheism) is given preferential treatment while another (Christian faith) is suppressed to extreme and absurd lengths.
    This article should be required reading for pastors and youth ministers.  Thomas Jefferson, the supposed author of the doctrine of “separation of church and state,” would be appalled; this condition of tyranny would be cause enough to start another American revolution.  Any skeptic reading this should similarly be appalled that atheism, to survive, has to be shielded from other viewpoints in what used to be the “open marketplace of ideas.”
Students: Is this the situation on your campus?  Write in if you have a story to tell.
Next headline on: Education. • Next headline on: Politics and Ethics.