...genius provides only darkness if it works from a false premise.... The remarkable thing about Darwin’s theory was that a pair of principles as dull and unthinking as random mutation and natural selection might actually be supposed to account for our mental life, our language capacity, and all of the other manifestations of intelligence.
– Dr. John W. Oller, linguist, The Seventh Day, (Master Books, 2002) pp. 48, 53.

What an amazing thing a living, transparent lens is.  Did you ever think about this process, that a sophisticated molecular machine had to be produced from the DNA library that could chop up DNA into fragments, so that they could be removed and not obstruct the light path?  Undoubtedly this is not the only enzyme involved in the cleanup job.  Each fibre cell needs organelles and DNA during development, but they must be cleared away at the right time, and in the right order before the lens is deployed into operation, or else the user is denied the wonder of sight.  This is just one tiny aspect of dozens of complex systems that all must work for vision to work.
    Think of an eagle, detecting from high in the air a fish below the water, and using its visual sensors to accurately gauge its approach velocity, pitch, yaw and roll in order for it to capture food for the young in the nest, whose eyes are just opening to the world.  Muscles, nerves, specialized tissues, detectors, software, image processing, cleanup, maintenance, lubrication and systems integration are just a few subsystems that must be accurately designed and coordinated in this, just one of many such complex sensory organs in the body.
    Evolution is a fake fur that gives warm fuzzies to people who think in glittering generalities.  Those who put on lab coats and examine the details and try to fit them into an evolutionary history get cold shudders.

*A National Library of Medicine paper describes one of these crystallin proteins: “alpha-Crystallin is a major lens protein, comprising up to 40% of total lens proteins, where its structural function is to assist in maintaining the proper refractive index in the lens.  In addition to its structural role, it has been shown to function in a chaperone-like manner.  The chaperone-like function of alpha-crystallin will help prevent the formation of large light-scattering aggregates and possibly cataract. ... Reconstructed images of alpha B-crystallin obtained with cryo-electron microscopy support the concept that alpha B-crystallin is an extremely dynamic molecule and demonstrated that it has a hollow interior.  Interestingly, we present evidence that native alpha-crystallin is significantly more thermally stable than either alpha A- or alpha B-crystallin alone.  In fact, our experiments suggest that a 3:1 ratio of alpha A to alpha B subunit composition in an alpha-crystallin molecule is optimal in terms of thermal stability.  This fascinating result explains the stoichiometric ratios of alpha A- and alpha B-crystallin subunits in the mammalian lens.” (Emphasis added.)

Next headline on: Human Body. • Next amazing story.

People suffering from Parkinson’s disease deserve all the efforts that science and medicine can provide, but it crosses the ethical line to take the life of one to help another.  A pro-abortion advocate might argue that it’s better to use fetal tissue than let it go into the garbage; after all, people are going to have abortions anyway.  But we have seen that this creates a black market for fetal body parts, and gives abortionists a veneer of charitable advertising to their clients; they can claim to a worried mother that her baby’s tissues are going to help someone with a debilitating disease.
    Whether experimentation with embryonic stem cells or fetal cells, there has to be a better way to help Parkinson’s patients than cannibalism: i.e., devouring the flesh of one to nourish another.  It is a tragic commentary on our times that we are even asking the question.  Maybe that will be the next taboo our society will openly debate: the rights of cannibals to practice their lifestyle, as long as they do it in private, or for a good cause, or with mutual consent.  (Don’t laugh; with the kinds of nuts we see today, nothing is shocking any more.  It’s becoming hard to find any subject outrageous enough to be understood as satire.)
    You could almost predict the voices that would rise up in support of cannibalism:

2010: The Future of Cannibal Rights
First it will be something kinky on Jerry Springer that college students find amusing, then the practitioners will be seen as victims, who cannot help the way they were born.  Some scientific journal will report a potential health benefit, and a psychology journal will conclude that it is harmless, and actually has positive social effects in some populations.  Someone will find a gene for cannibalistic propensities.
    The ACLU will support a test case of cannibalism for medicinal use; defense attorneys will argue that it is no different in principle from using fetal tissues or embryonic stem cells for medical treatment.  Cannibal Rights groups will arise, with marches on Washington; these will be reported compassionately by the media, making people sympathetic for this new class of the oppressed; the “religious right, ” by contrast, will be the bad guys.  A ranting protestor, who will be labeled a fundamentalist Christian, will be shown delivering hate speech to a mild, nicely-dressed cannibal.  Commentators will complain that the members of the religious right always want to shove their values down other people’s throats (but some will try to respond that they want to prevent other material from going down their throats).
    The Discovery Channel will sanitize the history of cannibal societies, portraying them as healthier and better adjusted than stressed-out, obese Americans; after all, it was Christian missionaries, whose exaggerated and biased reports gave cannibals an undeserved negative reputation.  Celebrities, gradually at first, will become more open about their private cannibalism, from I don’t see anything particularly wrong with it, to I tried it once when I was young, to Only a bigot would try to stop someone from doing what he or she feels is best for their own health.  Actors will out each other.  Cable companies will offer the Cannibal News Network, late nights at first, then prime time.  This will be followed by Cannibal History, Cannibal Gourmet and Cannibal Planet.
    Slogans like “Eat the one you love” and “You are what you eat” will be seen on backpacks and locker doors of public school children, who will have attended required presentations by visiting cannibals brought in to describe their lifestyle under the banner of diversity and sensitivity.  Nose bones will become chic on campus.  Pretending to gnaw on another’s arm will be funny at first, then a sign of affection.  Laws will by then have incrementally reduced penalties for cannibalism except in the most violent cases.  Readers of best-sellers will be shocked at first, then amused, at great historical figures that were alleged to have had cannibalistic tendencies.
      Cannibals will take on a new label, “Sweet,” to overcome any lingering prejudice about cannibalism.  Sweet Rock will become the hottest trend in music.  Some over-zealous right-winger who can’t take it any more will bomb a Sweet Barbecue, and this will become a cause celebre for the Sweet Rights movement.  There will be no end of replays on TV of the shocking incident (the cameras will avoid, however, scenes of looters picking up on all the newly-distributed body parts).  In response to this deplorable act, harsh new laws will be enacted against those who protest or obstruct Sweet events.  Conservative politicians will get nowhere unless they express moderation on the Sweet Rights controversy and support cannibal privacy laws.  It will be considered marginally tolerable for a conservative to say, “Well, though I disapprove of the practice myself, I’m not one to judge what someone does in the privacy of their own home.”  Liberal politicians and celebrities, on the other hand, will be grand marshals at the Sweet Pride Parades.
    The U.N., with a strong contingent of representatives from cannibal countries, will have been harshly criticizing America for years on this issue.  Europeans will wag their heads at how intolerant the Americans are, and some will refuse to do business with the U.S. until it grants full civil rights to the Sweet People.  Finally, the Supreme Court will find a right to cannibalism in the Constitution, and it will become a hate crime to speak out against it.
    Supermarkets of the future will be amply stocked with “Sweet” products, attractively packaged, USDA-approved, and microwave-ready.  Public service announcements will encourage partakers not to use black market products, which might contain disease, but only to purchase through legitimate approved sources, including flesh farms where genetically-modified (GM) brainless bodies are grown under sanitary conditions, and clinics where volunteers can submit their bodies for consumption.  The benefits of clean cannibalism will be advertised: recycling, less need for valuable cemetery land, and healthy spare organs for those on waiting lists.  Consumers will feel a little better if they see labels certifying that the contents contain no leftovers from Christian executions in totalitarian countries.  Though everyone thinks bigoted reactionaries are deplorable and deserve condemnation, capital punishment is still taboo among civilized societies.

Beware of sweet-talking advocates who insist that cannibals should have the right to do whatever they want with your own body.
Next headline on: Health. • Next headline on: Politics and Ethics.

OK, we have to lighten up this grim discussion with a cannibal joke.  In a New Guinea cannibal deli, a tourist was intrigued by the menu.  It read, “Special today: fresh brains!  Janitor brain, $1/lb, taxi driver brain, $2/lb, lawyer brain, $3/lb, criminal brain, $5/lb, grad student brain, $7/lb, PhD brain, $10/lb, evolutionist brain, $50/lb.”  Puzzled, the tourist asked, “Why are you charging $10/lb for a PhD brain, but five times as much for an evolutionist brain?”  The cook responded, “Do you realize how many of those rascals we have to round up to get a pound of brain?”
    We trust our dear evolutionist readers can take a joke; you can insert your favorite target into the punch line and tell it your way.  Just be sure to read today’s other headline. 

Stephen Hawking has made much of quantum gravity theories, and some cosmologists have suggested that the “quantum foam” nature of spacetime led to a fluctuation that gave birth to our universe.  Hugh Ross has made a big deal out of extra cosmic dimensions.  We’ll have to see whether these findings produce cosmic deflation of these ideas.
Next headline on: Cosmology. • Next headline on: Physics.

The BBC is just using this rare planetary position to push its fake-reality series on human evolution.  Neanderthals neither wrote nor dated any records of their observations.  They were probably too smart, with their larger average brains, to require such primitive written records.
Next headline on: Mars.

We are told that therapeutic cloning is a safe, effective operation on embryos: “Here they extract cells from early human embryos, which can be selected or treated to ensure they are healthy.”  Yet researchers found it “totally shocking” that their pig clones died suddenly.  The article states, “Researchers have already genetically engineered partly humanized pig cells and then cloned them to make whole pigs, whose organs might avoid rejection by human recipients.  ‘It may raise concerns,’ says [Jerry] Yang,” who watched his pigs collapse and expire.
    Some scientists attempt dangerous and unethical experiments just because they can, and often just because they want to be first.  Undoubtedly many are motivated by a sincere desire to alleviate human suffering.  But is it justifiable to kill a pre-birth human so that an post-birth human can live longer?  Most scientists are repulsed by human cloning at this time, but that could change.  Does anyone trust their ability to police themselves?  Science, as well as democracy, may need separation of powers and consent of the governed.
Next headline on: Politics and Ethics. • Next headline on: Genes and DNA.

1. Information First:  This is another term for the RNA World view, because RNA could have the ability to store genetic information as well as catalyze chemical reactions.
2. Metabolism First:  “This idea, in contrast to the RNA world‘s “information first” thesis, posits that a chaotic soup of small, random molecules led to chance metabolic reactions that evolved into modern cellular life”
3. Membrane First:  This is Freeman Dyson’s “garbage bag” hypothesis.  Cameron describes it, “Dyson, a physicist at the Institute for Advanced Studies in Princeton, N.J., believes that primordial soup was filled with membranes (garbage bags) that contained random chemicals not nearly as complex as RNA or DNA.  These chemicals began catalyzing reactions in each other, some of which eventually caused the cell-like garbage bags to divide and thus evolve.”

The time has come for Eugenie Scott and her NCSE friends to rise up and picket this amusement park in protest.  If religion has no place in science, then fairy tales must also be banned.  The time has also come for the ACLU lawyers to sue the park for misrepresentation.  As any lawyer worth his salt knows, terms must be defined carefully to avoid equivocation and obfuscation.  The readers are being taken for a ride in fantasyland.
    Where does one begin with such an article?  First, remove all the silly theme-park metaphors, because theme parks do not evolve, they are the products of intelligent design.  Nature has no desire nor power to design theme parks, test tube size or not.
    Then remove all the references to test-tube evolution, because it is not evolution, it is intelligent design again.  Artificial selection is not evolution.  It is the application of the breeder’s intention, design, purpose, planning, supervision and guiding intelligence to achieve a desired result.  How on earth can this be “re-evolving evolution,” when he is removing products that would otherwise degenerate or be destroyed by harmful cross-reactions, and giving them an unnatural new lease on life?  It’s the same fundamental fallacy the computer evolutionists make with their imaginary digital organisms in silico.  Foul!  No guidance, no purpose, no goal, no direction, no supervision, no sympathy, no cheerleading is permissible in Darwinland.  That’s why Bartel’s statement “What we don’t design, we evolve,” should make the judges hit the gong.  (Try your hand at parsing this one: “‘Really, we end up selecting for the survival of the best molecules, and then propagating those survivors’ - Darwinian natural selection.”)
    The three competing scenarios each falsify the other two, and point out why chemical evolution is such a farce.  Without a membrane, the lucky molecules are going to just drift away, as Deamer pointed out.  Without metabolism, there is no energy with which to convey or replicate genetic instructions.  But without genetic instructions (information), there will be no replication, and no natural selection.  Three strikes is supposed to put them out, but paying no attention to the umpire, who seems to be out to lunch, they gleefully run a victory lap around the bases in their scientific lab coats.
    The laboratory work is all a smokescreen.  It obscures the fact this is not science, but only materialistic philosophers playing games with chemicals.  Science is supposed to be about observation, about proving things.  Since the origin of life is a one-time occurrence not subject to observation, evolutionists could not prove it even if certain interesting reactions occur.  Even if they created life in a test tube (the impossible dream), that would not prove it happened in that manner in the past.
    At today’s NASA briefing about the shuttle disaster, investigator Scott Hubbard of Ames Research Center pointed out part of the problem that led to the failure of Columbia.  Based on past successes, the mood among the shuttle operations team had shifted to prove to me it won’t work instead of prove to me it will work.  Because they had become overconfident, they slacked off, and expected engineers to raise alarms if they could not prove everything was go, rather than making sure it was.  It was an accident waiting to happen.  Similarly, evolutionists have become lazy scientists.  They expect us to just accept their tales if we cannot prove that it won’t work, rather than their having to prove it will work.
    This is the old debate fallacy of shifting the burden of proof.  In his new book Darwin’s Proof (Brazos, 2003), Cornelius Hunter stresses the point.  It is not the job of a critic to disprove evolution; it is the job of an evolutionist to prove it.  When naturalistic philosophy became wedded to science, evolutionists got lazy.  They worked on the premise that any remotely-plausible just-so story is permissible, as long as it is naturalistic.  They expected non-evolutionists to disprove them, but it’s an impossible task; it amounts to having to prove a universal negative.  How can you disprove a fairy tale?  After all, it just might be true, in dreamland, that lucky molecules would just come together start evolving.  How could anyone prove them wrong?  But it should not be a critic’s job to prove them wrong.  It should be an evolutionist’s job to prove it right.
    It is not enough to prove just one tiny piece of the story right, either.  The whole story must work, and in the right sequence, and be demonstrated without investigator interference.  For instance, suppose I make up a story about the origin of music:

The Meatball Scenario for the Origin of Music
On top of spaghetti, all covered with cheese, I lost my poor meatball when somebody sneezed.  It rolled off the table and onto the floor; the last time I saw it, it rolled out the door.  Then it rolled down the street, up over a mountain, down to the ocean and off the dock, and was swallowed by a fish.  After crossing the Atlantic, the fish was caught in Portugal, and was fed to a cat, who then jumped onto a piano and spontaneously played a John Cage “chance music” composition.  From these humble beginnings, music was on its way to Bach, Beethoven and Brahms.

This story is not so implausible; why, think of all the millions of people sneezing every second.  Think of all the millions of meatballs being made in homes around the country, and all the fish in the sea and all the people that have cats.  The ingredients of the scenario are all natural and all readily available; given enough time, it could happen.
    Suppose no one saw the entire sequence of events, but individuals have seen small parts of it: a cat on a piano, a man sneezing at dinner, and a species of fish capable of crossing the Atlantic.  I make a big deal of this.  You respond by pointing out difficulties in the story, but I waltz around them by invoking ad hoc conditions: the meatball made it over the mountain, because a strong wind came at just the right moment.  I publish a scientific paper examining a gravy spot on the floor that I have found.  Someone else publishes a photograph of a fisherman on a dock in Portugal.  Have we established the meatball theory for the origin of music?
    Suppose also I insisted that you prove my story wrong.  You would be justified in insisting I prove the story right.  No less should we insist that chemical evolutionists prove their tale, rather than bluff us into agreeing that this or that portion of the tale might be plausible, therefore it is up to a critic to prove it could not happen.  The origin-of-music tall tale is much more plausible than believing that information organized itself, encased itself in a membrane, and directed energy precisely where needed to produce life, and that’s where we came from.
    The article lists only three alternative hypotheses for the origin of life, all naturalistic.  The fourth one that is never listed is intelligent design.  Yet that is the only explanation that fits our common experience.  Whenever we find an information-rich system, whether a symphony, or a book, or computer software, we know that an intelligence caused it.  We may not know the designer, or anything else about him or her, but we can justifiably infer based on the specified complexity of the parts that it was not the result of chance and natural law.  The reasoning is exactly the same when observing the information-rich systems in a living cell.  Since intelligent design passes the test of uniform experience, it is an inference to the best explanation – and therefore deserves to be the default explanation.
    If you ever find a theme park created by chance, don’t ride the roller coaster, because it’s only an illusion created by stacks of garbage bags.
Next headline on: Intelligent Design. • Next headline on: Origin of Life. • Next dumb story.

Watson went on to describe research that had determined that the bacterium B. subtilis has only about 250 genes essential to life.  He said that in 1965 he had thought of a bacterial cell as a little machine and tried to figure out how many essential parts there were.  He had guessed there would be about a thousand parts, or genes.  The astounding fact that a bacterium can have as few as 250 necessary genes made sense, he thought, because “life had to get started.  To put together a thousand, you needed God, but with no God, you can say at some time it had to be simple.”

    “I think it’s that we’re not using this knowledge,” said Watson.  He pointed out that the gene for fragile X, which causes the most common form of inherited mental retardation (one in 265 women carries the gene), is known, but no one is being screened for it.  “To me, the ethical thing is we’re being held back.”
    Baltimore: “Who’s holding that back?  Why is it being held back?  Is it because of commercial interest?”
    “I think people are afraid to attack the Right to Life lobby, that’s all,” Watson responded.  “Screening is bad.  Screening is Hitler.”
    But, countered Baltimore, genetic screening “is an opportunity for each individual to decide on for himself or herself.”
    Watson’s response was that he finds it troubling that our society is indifferent to continued genetic disease.  “There is a conflict between truth by revelation and truth by observation and experiment.  I think the big fight eventually in our country is not going to be between Republicans and Democrats, but between those who think secularly and those who think in a fundamentalist way.”
    The audience applauded.  “You know which side Caltech is on,” said Baltimore.

“.... Do you think,” he asked, “that’s a proof that all of that excess DNA really is junk, sort of a parasitic DNA that only cares about itself?”
    “It’s more like 95 percent,” answered Watson.  “As in the other species, it looks like there’s about 5 percent that’s conserved—1 percent are amino-acid-specifying, and the other 4 percent are useful in regulating when, where, and to what extent individual genes function.”  All human genetic variation resides in that 5 percent, he said.... “While many human attributes won’t have genetic causes, we shall probably be surprised by the extent that they do.”

“You and I and all of our fellow scientists have to spend much more time with the public and do it over and over.  We’re finding out what human beings are, and most people don’t think like us.”  He would like to see scientists run for Congress and become part of the government.  “You’ve got to get in there.  The Christian Right—they’re in there.  And we’re not.”

“That’s why biology really is becoming so relevant.  We have laws based on the fact that we’re equal.  And we’re probably not going to be.”
    “So it is a big issue, having law that reflects the standards of genetics,” commented Baltimore.
    Watson: “And no easy solution.”

They are an awful lot, are they not.
    This conversation is very enlightening, and a good example of why the public should fear scientists who think they know what is good for us.  It demonstrates that highly intelligent people, which Watson and Baltimore certainly are, are unfit to be our rulers, because they are just as filled with illogic, prejudice, and shortsighted planning as the rest of us.  These two are undoubtedly polite and respectable gentlemen in person, and certainly entitled to their opinions, but look at their opinions: filled with the us-vs.-them mentality, the either-or fallacy, loaded words, oversimplification, the straw man tactic, and suggestions that, if not clarified, could be dangerous—as bad as Hitler, or worse—despite Watson’s brush-off of the fears people have.  Let’s think about some of the things they said, first the scientific claims, then the ethical ones.

• Minimal Life:  Watson’s comment about 250 genes not needing a God was emphasized in a sidebar in the magazine.  Good grief.  So 1000 genes would need a Creator, but 250 would not?  What kind of silly conclusion is that?  There is so much information in even 250 genes, it would never come together by chance in trillions of universes.
      Watson cannot point to any self-sufficient living organism simpler than this bacterium needing 250 genes as a minimum.  As we pointed out in the Aug. 13 headline, even evolutionists believe that these minimal cells are stripped down versions of complex organisms, not evolutionary missing links.  His comment goes to show that scientists can be very skilled and intelligent in their specialties but utterly illogical in other respects.
      Watson admitted that the human brain and immune system are much more complicated than previously thought.  The one who helped discover coded language at the core of life should be aware of the tremendous complexity of even a minimal living cell.  He misrepresents reality to imply there is a sequence from simple life to complex life, so that no God is required.  A scientist should build his opinion on observed facts.
• Junk DNA:  Both Watson and Baltimore equate unknown function to no function.  We reported May 23 that so-called “junk DNA” is turning out to be a treasure mine of functional information.  The term “junk DNA” was coined by an evolutionist whose biased nomenclature stymied scientific progress by implying the repetitive sequences were useless.  Baltimore commits the personification fallacy by calling this genetic information “parasitic DNA that only cares about itself.”  Both men also appear bound to the now-questionable Central Dogma, that DNA is the master control of genetics.  Many investigators now suspect that epigenetic factors may be just as important, if not more so, in determining inheritance.
• Right to Life lobby:  Here Watson indulges in the either-or, us-vs-them tactic of making bogeymen out of those who have legitimate concerns about screening for genetic diseases.  Both Watson and Baltimore portray themselves as benefactors, wanting to cure cancer and help the suffering by using scientific knowledge from genetics, while the Right-to-Life obscurantists scream “Hitler!” and stand in the way of progress, as though more interested in foisting their fundamentalist beliefs on people than helping mankind.  But who is Watson to lecture us on ethics?
      Watson vastly oversimplifies the controversy.  Christians, the religious right, the Right-to-Life lobby, the fundamentalists, or whatever label you want to put on them, do not constitute the only people deeply concerned about genetic screening.  There are very serious questions to ask before granting scientists the ethical reins of society.  Of course, any compassionate person would not want to deny a person with a debilitating genetic disease the hope of a cure, but we must define our terms.  Is depression a disease?  Is criminal behavior a disease?  Is an IQ under 100 a disease?  Should an individual be allowed physician-assisted suicide if he or she has a genetic disease?  Should a couple be permitted to abort an unborn baby diagnosed with a genetic disease?  Should the state sterilize disease-tainted individuals to prevent their corrupting the human gene pool (eugenics)?  How do we define quality of life?  Who decides if a person is fit to live, or is a “defective”?  Are mentally retarded people fit to live?  The elderly?  Criminals?  Should we take human evolution into our own hands?  Should we breed a fitter race, such as stronger swimmers and weight lifters for the Olympics?  Should the government breed worker bees, warriors, intellectuals and rulers for preselected roles in a utopian society, and if so, would a warrior have any rights to change his role and become an intellectual?  Should we breed chimeras, just because we can?  Should couples be given the right to select the sex of their children?  Is it right to do wrong to have a chance to do good?  Should an individual be put to death so that another can live?  Should we grow brainless adults to harvest their organs for those needing them?  What is the difference between that and growing clones or stem cells for the same purpose?  When does genetic research cease to be compassionate medicine, crossing the line into playing God?
      These are just a few of the serious questions that must be faced, and scientists are definitely not the only ones to answer them.  In fact, as ethics author and lecturer Dennis Prager has emphasized, experts should be the last ones to make the decisions, because they are too close to their special interests.  Scientists can provide valuable information to the policy makers, yes, but woe to the society that lets them make the ethical decisions.  Scientists often fail to see the big picture, to understand history, and to foresee the implications of their views.  Watson implies that we should screen people for a gene that causes mental retardation, but then what?  Should these people be allowed to marry, or should they be forcibly sterilized against their will or knowledge, as actually happened to 20,000 victims in the United States during the eugenics fad?  Where would Watson draw the line on Hitler’s experiments, some of which were well-intentioned on sincerely held scientific beliefs?  We cannot forget history to see how ugly an unrestrained science can become.
• Truth by revelation vs. truth by observation: This makes sense, when you don’t think about it.  Watson’s comment presupposes that both religion and science claim to provide exhaustive knowledge.  If God had told us all about DNA and retrotransposons, I suppose it would make sense to believe the Expert, but the Bible is a condensed book.  There is a lot it does not talk about, and God gave man the freedom and intellect to search out many things.  Conversely, science is incapable of investigating some very large and important domains: history, aesthetics, ethics, values, morals and ultimate destiny among them.  Neither source of information is exclusive nor exhaustive.  Watson commits the either-or fallacy by implying that no person who believes in divine revelation could ever be a scientist (see our online book for a refutation), and that science is a path to ultimate truth.  He wrongly presupposes that scientists can be objective and neutral regarding everything.
  
• Fundamentalists and proselytizing:  Watson tolerates religious people who don’t want all people to follow their beliefs.  Presumably, such believers don’t take their beliefs too seriously.  Watson, however, is quite fundamentalist about his scientism.  He thinks scientists need to run for Congress and impose their beliefs on the rest of us: such as, how to think secularly, and the belief that we are not created equal, in fact, we were not created at all.
      Watson badly misinterprets the Declaration of Independence clause that we are all “created equal,” hinting that biology says we probably are not.  The Founding Fathers had eyes.  They knew people differed radically in size, shape, physical and even intellectual capacities.  The point was that they are endowed by their Creator with certain inalienable rights; i.e., all people have equal worth, and each individual must be treated by the government without partiality.  To claim otherwise is an invitation to tyranny, and science can make no such claim.  A tyranny of scientists could be the worst of all.

David Hume was not always right, but aptly observed that at least some humans, even some scientists, are fueled by their passions, not by reason.
Next headline on: Genes and DNA. • Next headline on: Politics and Ethics.

Nature, of course, is more interested in the evolutionary story of the wipeout of most of life millions of years ago.  Any similarities to a religious “myth” dating back just a few thousand years are incidental in their sophisticated, “scientific” opinion.  It makes a nice sideline for the occasional religious reader, perhaps.
    There are two kinds of people who get interested in natural explanations for Biblical miracles: (1) those who deny the Bible, and believe that naturalistic events became entwined in ethnic legends, as here; (2) those who believe the Bible, and think that a natural explanation will make the story more palatable to the public.  Though well intentioned, these interpretations tend to diminish the sovereignty of God, and often play loose with the Biblical record.  Undoubtedly, God could steer natural events to accomplish His purposes, and a miracle would involve natural phenomena.  But in this case, the flood was not restricted to the Black Sea area, and it was not due to a belch of swamp gas.  According to Genesis, God brought it about supernaturally by His definitive act, as judgment on a world that was “filled with violence,” in which “the wickedness of man was great in the earth, and that every intent of the thoughts of his heart was only evil continually” (Gen 6).  Sound familiar?  Get ready.
Next headline on: Geology. • Next headline on: The Bible.

He also has a helpful way of organizing the conceptual analysis of the design argument, separating the argument to adaptive complexity from the move to a designing mind.  Ruse clearly explains how Darwinian evolution blocked that second move, by providing the answer to the question of biological purpose: “Natural selection produces artifact-like features, not by chance but because if they were not artifact-like they would not work and serve their possessors’ needs.”  The language of intentional design now serves only as a handy metaphor.

We have learned much in the two centuries since Bridgewater, and Ruse shows that natural theology is no longer viable.  However, he does not disparage the impulse that led to it.  There is indeed awe to be found in biological adaptations, which might be expressed in a new “theology of nature” that “appreciates the complex, adaptive glory of the living world, rejoices in it, and trembles before it.”  He quotes Mayr, who once told him, “People forget that it is possible to be intensely religious in the entire absence of theological belief.”

Ruse quickly dismisses the recent attempt to resurrect Paley’s argument by Intelligent Design creationists such as Phillip Johnson, Michael Behe, and William Dembski; they warrant only a brief discussion in the final chapter.  Ruse reviews and extends some of the many arguments that have been given against Behe’s “irreducible complexity,” Dembski’s explanatory filter, and appeals to the purported problems of “complex specified information” and the no-free-lunch theorem.  Behe’s view, he concludes, is “pure and simple fantasy”; Dembski is “just plain wrong”; and their Intelligent Design movement is already regarded, even by theologians, as an “embarrassment.”

The comebacks are never heard in Science, because the microphones point in only one direction.  Johnson, Dembski, and Behe have a lot to say in rebuttal (read their books), but the Darwin Party’s tactic, as here, is to brush them off quickly, as if to say, “Don’t read their works; you don’t need to, because our Goliath already did it for you.”  It’s the argument from authority in a journal that is supposed to be about open-minded investigation of the facts.
    Pennock should have been highly suspect at Ruse for stooping to ridicule like calling Behe’s work “pure and simple fantasy” or sidestepping issues and using glittering generalities such as summing up Dembski’s long and detailed arguments as “just plain wrong,” or appealing to people’s herd instinct by saying that their work is “already regarded, even by theologians [My, O my] as an embarrassment.“  Is such blather to be respected as the honorable and recondite analysis by Darwinism’s greatest living philosopher?  Suppose Dembski did that, and instead of writing two detailed, mathematical tomes, sent Science a short postcard saying, “Y'know, Ruse is just plain wrong.  His ideas are pure and simple fantasy.  Everybody thinks they are an embarrassment.”  And suppose Science printed it?  That’s about how fair these Darwin Party journals are when it comes to seriously analyzing the important issues in philosophy of science today.  Ruse and Pennock don’t want readers of Science to think.  They just want them to swallow the opinions of The Authorities.  Ruse said ID is fantasy.  End of story.
    You have to know their opinions are weak when a schoolboy could see right through them.  Take a look at the monumental conclusion about the argument from design that Pennock feels Ruse has deftly dealt a death blow: “Natural selection produces artifact-like features, not by chance but because if they were not artifact-like they would not work and serve their possessors’ needs.”  Are you impressed?  So this is the best Ruse can come up with (assuming Pennock, an admirer, accurately encapsulates the argument).  This is no answer at all.  It’s the same cop-out the Anthropic Principle argument uses to fail to explain design: “Well, silly, if it weren’t that way, we wouldn’t be here worrying about the question.”  Good grief.  Ruse and his disciples have not explained the design of an eye, an ear, a wing, or anything else.  They just say if it were not well adapted, it wouldn’t be there.  Newton and Maxwell would be embarrassed by such shallow reasoning.
    Whenever evolutionists really attempt to explain design in detail, they give up in utter frustration (see yesterday’s headline).  Natural selection is impotent to explain the origin of any complex structure except without copious additions of imagination and faith, and yesterday’s story essentially said so.  Science is supposed to rest on evidence.  OK, evolutionists, put up or shut up.  And if you have your own mind, read Behe’s and Johnson’s and Dembski’s books, instead of leaning on the one-sided opinions of the Darwin Party.  Another challenge: name one instance of complex specified information, anywhere, that is the product of unintelligent, unguided, undirected natural law or chance, or combination of the two, including natural selection (The Rule: it must be supported by observational evidence, not just-so storytelling).
    Another example of the shallowness of their thinking is this idea you can be in awe of nature’s designs without being religious.  To be consistent, they would have to believe that awe evolved like everything else.  What survival value does awe have?  Why are we moved by the good, the true, and the beautiful?  Natural selection cannot provide answers to these questions: they point to a conscience, and an innate knowledge of purpose and morality and order that no naturalistic philosophy can expunge.  That’s why Pennock and Rose propose an alternative “theology of nature” so that their God-shaped vacuum has something to bow down to, and tremble before.  When a man’s awe becomes detached from the Creator, it attaches instead to the creation, fulfilling the Apostle Paul’s prediction, “professing themselves to be wise, they became fools.... they worshipped and served the creature, more than the Creator, who is blessed forever” (Romans 1:20-25).
Next headline on: Intelligent Design. • Next headline on: Darwinism.

When Mars Exploration Rover Spirit arrives in Gusev Crater in January, it will also look for evidence that surface water once was abundant at that location.  There are still apparent river channels and stream beds to explain, and possible evidence of shorelines.  The lack of carbonates is disappointing to a wet Mars scenario, but not conclusive.  Wet or dry, though, Mars is a terra incognita just becoming known to us, as was the far west in the days of Lewis and Clark.  These are great days of discovery.
    NASA’s recipe for life, however (dirt + water), doesn’t work.  We tried it, and all we got was mud.
Next headline on: Mars.

Many of the properties that characterize living organisms are also exhibited by individual cells.  These include communication, homeostasis, spatial and temporal organization, reproduction, and adaptation to external stimuli.  Biological explanations of these complex phenomena are often based on the logical and informational processes that underpin the mechanisms involved....
    Most experimental investigations of cells, however, do not readily yield such explanations, because they usually put greater emphasis on molecular and biochemical descriptions of phenomena.  To explain logical and informational processes on a cellular level, therefore, we need to devise new ways to obtain and analyse data, particularly those generated by genomic and post-genomic studies.
    An important part of the search for such explanations is the identification, characterization and classification of the logical and informational modules that operate in cells.  For example, the types of modules that may be involved in the dynamics of intracellular communication include feedback loops, switches, timers, oscillators and amplifiers.  Many of these could be similar in formal structure to those already studied in the development of machine theory, computing and electronic circuitry.

A useful analogy of what is being proposed is the analysis of an electronic circuit.  Once the detailed operations of different types of electronic components have been identified, it is possible to gain insight into what an electronic circuit can do simply by knowing what components are present and how they are connected, even if their precise dynamic behaviour has not been determined.  The various logical and informational modules implicated in a biological phenomenon of interest have to be integrated in order to generate a better understanding of how cells work.

The success of this general approach depends on there being a limited set of biochemical activities and molecular interactions that together can solve the myriad logical and informational problems found in biological systems.  If there is only a restricted set of processes that are efficient and stable in operation and which have been exploited by evolution [sic], then there should be only a limited set of possible solutions to real biological problems.  Of course, if nature shows no such restraint [sic], then we must go back to the drawing-board if we are ever to understand its complexity.

Two things stand out from this article: (1) The cell only makes sense when approached in terms of information and logic, and (2) An information-theoretic approach generates productive research.
    The intelligent design (ID) community has been stressing these points for some time, but here the same thing is being stated in Nature, the most prestigious science journal in the world.  We have no inside clue on the beliefs of Paul Nurse, his feelings about ID and the origin of life, but this could have been written by Paul Nelson, a leader in the ID movement – except for that one fly-in-the-ointment personification fallacy line about the efficient processes that have been “exploited by evolution.”  That line is so out of character with the rest of the article, one wonders whether Nurse had to insert it to get it past the censors.  It adds nothing.  It looks like an obligatory pinch of incense to Emperor Darwin.
    The thrust of the article is that information is the key to understanding and the key to research.  Opponents of ID falsely criticize that a design-theoretic approach brings science to a screeching halt.  “God did it, and that settles it!”  Nature has just printed this refutation, showing that the opposite is true.  Everybody knows that “feedback loops, switches, timers, oscillators and amplifiers” are the products of intelligent design.  When we see similar functions in biological systems to those we understand in electronic circuits, doesn’t it make sense to study them from a design perspective?  Wouldn’t that provide the scientists with a fruitful enterprise?  Yes – unless cells turn out to be even more complex, too information-rich for our analogies with man-made circuits.  Then, the only sensible approach would be to look for deeper design, not chance!
    ID is going to save biology from implosion.  Poor Charles Atlas Darwin just can’t hold up the world any more.  If you are a scientist worried about ID, fear not.  ID will liberate science from a suffocating 19th-century ideology that didn’t know about information and logic modules at the fundamental unit of life.  You can publish your scientific papers in a secular style without needing to say the G word.  Everything will remain the same, except for some blessed subtractions: the removal of useless, foolish references to chance and Mother Nature, the tinkerer.  Instead of having to tow the line of the Darwin Party, you can look at life in a new way, and it will make sense.  As Paul Nelson stated in Unlocking the Mystery of Life, science becomes this enormous puzzle-solving expedition, in which you can expect to find rationality and beauty right at the heart of things.  It will be the beginning of another golden age of scientific discovery.
Next headline on: The Cell. • Next headline on: Intelligent Design.

A central goal of evolutionary biology is to explain the origin of complex organs – the ribosomal machinery that translates the genetic code, the immune system that accurately distinguishes self from non-self, eyes that can resolve precise images, and so on.  Although we understand [sic] in broad outline how such extraordinary systems can evolve by natural selection, we know very little about the actual steps involved, and can hardly begin to answer general questions about the evolution of complexity.  For example, how much time is required for some particular structure to evolve?

Complex systems – systems whose function requires many interdependent parts are vanishingly unlikely to arise purely by chance.  Darwin’s explanation of their origin is that natural selection establishes a series of variants, each of which increases fitness.  This is an efficient way of sifting through an enormous number of possibilities, provided there is a sequence of ever-increasing fitness that leads to the desired feature.  To use Sewall Wright’s metaphor, there must be a path uphill on the ‘adaptive landscape.’
    The crucial issue, then, is to know [sic] what variants are available – what can be reached from where – and what is the fitness of these variants.  Is there a route by which fitness can keep increasing?  Population genetics is not much help here.  Given the geometry defined by mutation and recombination, and given the fitnesses, we can work out how a population will change, simply by following the proportion of different types through time.  But understanding [sic] how complex features evolve requires plausible models for the geometry of the adaptive landscape, which population genetics by itself does not provide.

Artificial Life models such as Lenski et al.’s are perhaps interesting in themselves, but as biologists we are concerned here with the question of what Artificial Life can tell us about real organisms.  The difficulty in answering this is that much work in this field is rather isolated from traditional evolutionary biology.

In population genetics and evolutionary game theory, we design models to study the success and failure of a predefined set of traits or strategies in the struggle for life.  But what are the possible traits?  And how well do they succeed in particular environments with particular competitors?  These questions are ignored in traditional models – they come in as parameters to be provided by developmental biology and ecology.  For understanding the evolution of complex traits this is not satisfactory, because these parameters are themselves shaped by evolution [sic].  Evolutionary processes constantly shift the targets of evolutionary optimization [sic], create spatial patterns, turn competitors into mutualists and create new levels of selection.  Artificial Life models of such phenomena ... promise to be useful for developing the concepts and techniques to deal with that challenge, but only if they are combined with the insights from almost a century of population genetics.

If you have sifted these statements for any evidence for evolution, or realistic explanations for the evolution of any single complex system, you have undoubtedly found all chaff and no grain.  It’s all emptiness and futility, wishful thinking, models that are too complex to relate to the real world, leaning on broken reeds, trusting in others’ work that never gets delivered, and vaporware on back order.  Yet this is the theory that is so obviously a fact that anything else is pseudoscience that must be shielded from students?  This is the greatest idea anyone ever had, so intuitively obvious that it has taken over the world as the encapsulation of all that is certain about nature?  This is the theory that should no longer be called a theory, but a fact like gravity?
    We hasten to make clear that Barton and Zuidema are evolutionists, and did not write this article to in any way claim that they doubt Darwinian evolution.  But that is what makes their admissions so damaging.  If Henry Morris had said this, no one would pay attention, because he (presumably) has an axe to grind and an ulterior motive.  But these guys just gave away the store.  They admitted that after all these years, the Darwinists are no nearer to explaining the origin of an eye, or dolphin sonar, or butterfly wings, or immune systems, than Charlie himself was in 1859.
    Notice how they look yearningly, hopefully to the computer programmers to provide some relief to the befuddled population geneticists (with their crude models built partly on the personification fallacy of game theory), but then turn right around and criticize the programmers for not being realistic, and ignoring the “insights from almost a century of population genetics.”  It’s like a cartoon character in quicksand calling another guy in the same quicksand for help.  Does anyone see anything solid that any evolutionist is standing on, that should give Eugenie Scott of the NCSE confidence in the righteousness of her crusade to keep evolution the sole contender in the public schools?  The arrogance of the Darwin Party, given admissions like this one, is astounding.
    Barton and Zuidema claim that biologists understand evolution in broad terms, just not in the details.  But they cannot even begin to point to any plausible series of steps on the fitness landscape that would allow a mindless organism to climb uphill to an adaptive peak – to evolve an eye, or a brain, an immune system, or any other complex feature, when every step in the imaginary sequence (for which there is no fossil evidence) would have had to provide enough survival value to make it triumph over all competitors, such that every organism without the lucky trait would have died out (this is called the “cost of selection”).  They admit these complex systems are extraordinary.  They admit they are irreducibly complex (in their words, “systems whose function requires many interdependent parts”).  They admit that the probability of getting any complex system by chance is vanishingly small.  They admit Darwin’s explanation, to be efficient at sifting through the enormous possibilities, is provisional on the requirement for a sequence of plausible intermediates, each one needing to increase the fitness of the organism (but how efficient can that be when there is slippage on the treadmill due to indirect genetic effects?).
    They are utterly clueless how long it would be expected to take for the “slight, successive modifications” to add up to a complex system.  And yet complex systems are the rule in biology, not the exception!  (See today’s headline on sponges for an interesting example.)  They claim they understand the broad outline of how such “extraordinary systems could evolve by natural selection,” then two phrases later, they admit “we can hardly begin to answer general questions about the evolution of complexity.”  About face!  (Speaking about faces, they are pretty complex systems, too.)
    We joke about car engines held together with bubble gum, rubber bands and popsicle sticks.  Darwinism is like a shiny sports car advertised to the world as the hottest thing since religion went out of style.  Just don’t lift up the hood.
Next headline on: Darwinism and Evolutionary Theory.

“Mobile magma plumes force us to reassess some of our most basic assumptions about the way the mantle operates,” says John Tarduno, professor of earth and environmental sciences at the University.  “We’ve relied on them for a long time as unwavering markers, but now we’ll have to redefine our understanding of global geography.”

Pretty strong words.  Wonder what other basic assumptions involving global understanding that they have relied on for a long time are due for reassessment.  If anything comes up that calls evolution into question, it will most likely be shot down and declared unconstitutional.
Next headline on: Geology.

No mention of evolution in the article: thank God.  For other articles on biomimetics, see the brittlestar with superior glass lenses (studied by the same scientist at Bell Labs who led this research on the sponge), spider silk, the ideal material, gecko tape and other stories under the category “Amazing”.  Then read the next headline – for a big letdown.
Next headline on: Ocean Dwellers. • Next amazing story.

We have a suggestion.  Evolutionists should run their articles by English teachers, logic professors and ethicists before printing them.  Unfortunately, after all the instances of propaganda, illogic and hypocrisy were red-lined, very little of substance would remain.
    Most look back at Martin Luther as a brave, lonely man who did the right thing when he refused to recant the beliefs of his conscience, saying, “Here I stand; I can do no other.  God help me.”  What followed was a Reformation that many historians, even some Catholics, admit was justified more or less, because the church, that lowly, persecuted band of disciples of Jesus who had started as humble seekers after righteousness, peace and joy in the Holy Spirit, had grown into a corrupt institution, wedded to tradition and political power.  It had drifted so far from its roots that it was deeply involved in evil practices diametrically opposite the teachings of Jesus, things like extortion (through the sale of indulgences and confiscation of property), invention of unbiblical doctrines, and even sexual promiscuity among priests.  But the Reformation was not won in a day, not by a long shot.  A Catholic counter-reformation followed and both sides engaged in everything from intellectual debate to warfare.  Unquestionably, there were excesses and atrocities on both sides.  But the motivation to reform what had become corrupt is generally seen as a good thing.  Luther’s 95 theses are a classic of logical and ethical argument against illogic and corruption.  Of course Martin Luther did not act alone.  He is representative of many reformers (Grosseteste, Jan Hus, Wycliffe, and many more) who saw a problem and tried to fix it.  Some paid with their lives.  Because Luther got the right help at the right time, he just became the most successful at effecting lasting change.
    Neither side won a complete victory.  There are still Catholics and Protestants today, often engaging in combat both civil and militant.  Though some strong voices seek harmony at the expense of doctrine, it would be impossible to maintain the integrity of the Reformation through compromise.  Maybe that is what is happening in the sciences.  The parallels are striking.  Science, once the common man’s quest for truth, has become Big Science, supported by politicians, with millions of dollars of funding at stake.  Evolution has become the state religion.  Thomas Huxley took the sign of the Darwin Fish and envisioned, In this sign conquer, and wedded evolutionary philosophy to “political” science.  This unholy alliance produced the corruption we see today, where any convoluted just-so story gets published and praised, as long as it has the Darwin imprimatur.  There have been calls for reformation within and without the church of Darwin for a long time, and every time, the Darwinist apologists resort to the same tactics to crush it, as seen in these papers.  (Theistic evolution is not a satisfying compromise, because it usually sacrifices theism on the altar of Darwinism, and fails to explain why God would have any more involvement than the Deistic god, if evolution is so effective.  As a result, theistic evolutionists usually get hammered by both sides.)  Maybe what is going to result, instead of one side winning, is a huge schism: the science of the Darwin Party and the science of the Design Party, the latter being the Reformers who want to take science back to its original empirical roots, and the former mounting a protracted Counter-Reformation and a Thirty Years War.
    One could hope against hope that somewhere, somehow, cool heads would prevail and look honestly at the data to see which side fits the facts better.  That would be as idealistic as a Protestant wishing a Catholic would calmly sit with him and see what the Bible really teaches.  The Catholic would only rarely be won over by that approach, because to a Catholic, the Bible is no longer the authority: the Church and tradition have equal authority.  So both sides will argue past each other unless they can first agree on where the authority lies.  Similarly, the Darwinists will never be content to simply look at the raw data and see whether it shows evidence of design, because they have re-written the definition of science such that facts no longer matter of themselves.  The facts must be interpreted through the filter of naturalistic tradition and submit to the authority of Big Science.  The modern-day casuists win by default, because science is naturalism by definition.  Anyone who disagrees simply does not understand the nature of “science”.  He is an outsider, who cannot show the official imprimatur, and therefore is rejected out of hand as a dangerous heretic.
    Because “The Church” was the only authority that could take seemingly contradictory Biblical passages and interpret them properly, it was necessary to keep the Bible out of the hands of commoners, and forbid the distribution of bootleg copies of the Scriptures in the common tongue (one effective method in Spain was to burn bootleggers at the stake as public entertainment).  Similarly, only members of the Darwin Party can rightly interpret the transition from fish to tetrapod and other puzzles, even when the data are missing or uncooperative, and only party members are authorized to teach “the nature of science” to initiates.  Bootleggers are denounced as dangerous heretics, committed to the flames of public diatribes.  Design scientists are excommunicated from the officially sanctioned journals; unable to publish, they perish.
    It’s instructive to read Gropp’s article with these parallels in mind.  The missing ingredient in his counter-reformation manifesto is the very thing most people assume is the essence of science: observed evidence.  His whole argument hinges on politics, strategy, and who has the authority to dictate what arguments students get to hear.  Since he picks on Phillip Johnson, maybe that is the parallel to Luther, although like Luther, Johnson had many predecessors, some more qualified and outspoken.  And since Luther had some political allies who gave him aid and comfort, the counter-reformation must have a political arm to combat him.  Gropp singles out Rick Santorum as giving aid and comfort to the enemy; he says, “Many evolution activists believe that Sen. Santorum’s advocacy of ID and various state and local ID initiatives across the country are proof that citizens [read, political action committees] and scientists must work together to defend the teaching of evolution in the public schools.”  Thus, Grobb praises efforts of the NCSE to form a coalition with political clout.
    Here is where it is important to be familiar with Phillip Johnson’s theme, discussed at length in The Right Questions, that the one who formulates the questions often wins the debate.  Evolutionary casuists are very good at stating the controversy in terms where they cannot lose.  They portray this as a contest between science and pseudoscience (notice how the Party in Power gets to define what “pseudoscience” is.)  It’s all about defending the teaching of evolution (appealing to people’s Alamo emotions), which are under “attack” by these religiously-motivated radicals who don’t understand “science.”  All kinds of emotional appeals are used to rally the activists to the crusade: the enemy is “well funded and well organized” (you can cut the hypocrisy with a knife), and we need a “strategy” to counter this dangerous “threat” to “science.”  Buzzwords abound: creation must always be appended with ism, so that it sounds like a cult, while evolution is equated with science; big lies abound, like the one that ID wants to remove evolution from the science classroom when, in fact, they want to teach more about it (including the contrary evidence); red herrings abound, such that the claim this issue is about “separation of church and state” (with the presupposition that I.D. theory is inherently religious, but Darwinism is not); non-sequiturs abound, such as associating the amount of evolution taught with the quality of science teaching.  In this smoke-filled battleground, activists on both sides often jump into the fray, oblivious to the issue of whether anyone is asking the right questions.
    Is there a Diogenes here?  Few are the evolutionists who show any desire to critically examine whether Darwinian theory can stand up to the observed facts of nature.  Do living things show evidence of design, or do they not?  Is time and chance sufficient to produce a human being, or is it not?  Can our universe be explained in naturalistic terms only, or is information required?  Such questions are foreign to their mindset.  Instead, the approach is, there must be a way to stuff this uncooperative data into naturalism, which I already know in my heart is true.  Similarly, the anticreationist literature is silent about these questions.  They either pass it off as a done deal; Big Science already looked at Luther’s writings and condemned them as heretical – end of story.  When asked if a particular thing appears designed, they look at generalities, including evil and suffering in the world, and scoff, “Well, a Designer wouldn’t have done it that way.”  But that is a religious argument, not a scientific one, as Cornelius Hunter deftly demonstrated in his book Darwin’s God, and expounds further in his new sequel Darwin’s Proof (Brazos Press, 2003 – highly recommended).
    Just as the Catholic church portrayed itself as the one and only universal apostolic vicar of Christ, the Darwin Church portrays itself as the one and only universal vicar of science.  It is a religious war.  It’s about holding onto power.  If it were not, they would welcome debate on the new ideas of intelligent design, and the challenges that new discoveries about life are posing to the Darwinian explanation.  Gropp’s article would be an invitation to debate the evidence, not “Activists Organize to Combat” heresy.
    That a counter-reformation has begun may be a good sign that the Church of Darwin can no longer merely assume its domination over science.  True, Darwinist Tetzels (science writers in the news media) are still gleefully strolling about, selling indulgences (just-so stories) with reckless abandon, but the priests in back rooms of the Vatican (NCSE) are anxiously plotting their next moves, alarmed at the number of common-tongue ID books and videos being distributed to the student peasants, despite the best efforts of the Inquisition.  (As surely as Gutenberg’s press lubricated the rapid dissemination of information damaging to the Church, the Web does today.)
    Fearing an uprising, the Darwin Party seems bent on a strategy that will fail as surely as the efforts to stop the Reformation.  Only the Church is authorized to interpret the Scriptures backfired when enough literate peasants could read the source documents, and could see the contradictions for themselves.  Only the Darwin Party is authorized to interpret the observed facts of nature will fail, when enough literate citizens are liberated from the Darwin-only rule in the science classroom, and can see the evidence for themselves – all the evidence, not just the preselected props for Darwinism (finch beaks, peppered moths), but the Cambrian explosion, the complexity of the earliest life, the laws of thermodynamics, information theory, design detection, the honorable history of design science, and much more.
    Creation-Evolution Headlines is your source for the data in the common tongue (and some reports smuggled out of the Jesuits’ strategy sessions).  Read it and pass it on.

---

Note: This commentary is no more a criticism of science than the Reformation was a criticism of the teachings of Jesus.  It is rather a criticism of the naturalistic philosophers who have arrogated unto themselves the right to be the sole interpreters of natural phenomena, the definers of terms, and the censors of the curriculum.  It should be obvious from three years of reporting here that we love science and true scientists.
    Similarly, this commentary is not a criticism of individual Catholics, many of whom are sincere and good people who accept what they are taught, including many involved in Catholic charities who sacrificially care for the poor and needy.  The comparison is about ideas put forth by the leadership.  Not all union members are as liberal as their union bosses, for instance, nor do all seniors agree with political positions of the AARP.  The official stated positions of Protestant Reformers and Catholics are the basis for comparing Big Science with those who would reform it.  There are many individual scientists who do not tow the Darwin Party line.
Next headline on: Darwinism. • Next headline on: Intelligent Design. • Next headline on: Schools. • Next headline on: Politics.

Nevertheless, our results evoke a surprising “PostModern” synthesis of processes and personalities, adding to a growing literature implying that the origins of animal species can be as dynamic and rich (reticulate) as those for plants.

That’s dynamic and rich, all right.  Scientists hate postmodernists, because postmodernists deny that anybody (including scientists) is right.  Everybody has their own truth, that is true for them, whether it be scientism, Hinduisim, animism, Christianity, Judaism, Islam, or Raelianism.  All are equally valid and equally pointless.  To a postmodernist, everyone is a victim of some oppressed minority, and we must be tolerant of everyone’s point of view, including evolutionists and creationists.  Because such thinking undermines the privileged place scientists like to feel they have, and puts evolutionism into fantasyland along with everyone else, most scientists hate postmodernism.
    So evolutionists should choke at this paper’s last line, even if it was meant as an overture for peace.  The warring parties (allopatric vs. sympatric speciationists) are not going to like the terms of the peace treaty, which might be stated: Don’t feel bad, nobody is wrong, and nobody is right.  Each of you is right in his own way.  It doesn’t really matter who is right, as long as we all get along and be tolerant.  Look, we can piece together lines from both stories to produce an even better story.  So like the players in Alice in Wonderland, everybody wins, and everyone gets a prize.
    Even more telling is their admission that the story of animal origins is no less “dynamic and rich (reticulate)” – (read: fluctuating and high in fat) – as the evolutionary origin story of plants. 

Reticulate, n.: 1. resembling a net; esp.: having veins, fibers, or lines crossing; 2. of, relating to, or constituting evolutionary change dependent on genetic recombination involving diverse interbreeding populations.

So both animals and plants no longer have an evolutionary tree, but a network of crossing lines.  What else is left?  We have already seen how bacteria and archaea are already complex and networked with HGT (see Aug. 11 headline).  So for every group of organisms on earth, it appears tree is in the eye of the beholder:

I think that I shall never see
The data fit a Darwin tree;
Trees are made by God, not we,
But only fools see phylogeny.

(Sincere apologies to Joyce Kilmer; we like his poem much better.)  So good news; you don’t have to read the rest of the boring paper.  They just took it all away in the last sentence.  Just be tolerant and say, Hey, whatever grooves you, man, like, it’s cool.
Next headline on: Plants. • Next headline on: Darwinism and Evolutionary Theory. • Next dumb story.

Complexity from Simplicity: A New Kind of Science?   08/18/2003
In this week’s issue, Science News takes a critical look at Stephen Wolfram, the alleged genius who wrote A New Kind of Science.  That book has generated quite a stir among scientists, and has amassed a loyal fan club.  Wolfram, author of the popular software Mathematica, got a PhD from Caltech at age 20.  Though critics cannot dismiss him as a crackpot, many dislike his self-promotional style, and others deny the validity of his claims that “I have discovered vastly more than I ever thought possible, and in fact what I have now done touches almost every existing area of science, and quite a bit besides.”
    His theory of self-organization, similar to fractal theory, revolves around the properties of cellular automata, which are simple programs that generate complex output.  A small rule in an algorithm can have unexpected effects far exceeding what could have been predicted.  “Wolfram has spun off a lot of exhilarating ideas about where this new approach can lead,” reports Science News.  “For example, rather than needing Darwinian evolution to explain the complexity of living creatures.”

Passing fad, or “the closest thing to Newton in 350 years”?  We agree with Ray Kurzweil that “Wolfram seriously overstated the complexity that simple programs produce.  On the topic of living organisms, for instance, Kurzweil asserts that unless factors beyond simple rules are invoked, one can’t explain ‘insects or humans or Chopin preludes.’”
Next headline on: Intelligent Design. • Next headline on: Darwinism and Evolutionary Theory.

The incredible part of this story is not the beetle, but the scientists, who have no stomach churning over the dating of these fossils.  That such delicate, ephemeral characteristics could survive without any modification for so long should cause one to question the obvious.  50 million years is a long time; so long, in fact, that the earth supposedly went through multiple upheavals, mountains were built, canyons eroded, whales evolved from land animals, and most species underwent major changes, according to the evolutionary story (even though these beetles look thoroughly modern.)  Humans were allegedly 45 million years or more in the future when these beetles were supposedly buried.
    We only know of about 7000 years of recorded history, history that was observed by humans who kept records.  If 7000 years were a foot, 50 million years would be 1.3 miles.  How can anyone be so dogmatic about unobserved history?  Why not question the dates?  The answer, of course, is that the theory of evolution depends on them.  Evolutionary geology and biology are locked in a deadly embrace that could well drown them both together.
Next headline on: Bugs. • Next headline on: Fossils.

• Newton Not a Newtonian:  If by Newtonian we mean someone who pictured the universe in mechanistic clockwork, then “He (Newton) of all people was no Newtonian.”  This from a review by Patricia Fara of a new book Isaac Newton by James Glieck (Pantheon, 2003), published in Science Aug 15.

  Like most people, Newton was a complex person.  His Principia reads like impeccable logic; why, then, the “apparently arcane obsessions” with “alchemy, Solomon’s temple, early Christian heresies” and other diversions?  Gleick feels they fed directly into his cosmological theories.  He probably does not have the last word on Newton.  From Newton’s own pen, however, it is clear he saw the universe as the grand masterwork of the Biblical God.
  Next headline on: Intelligent Design.

• Sweeping On to the Grand Fallacy:  It takes chutzpah to describe 3 billion years of prehistory lacking human observers.  Guy M. Narbonne respects Andrew H. Knoll’s charge into the unknown in his review of the latter’s book Life on a Young Planet (Princeton, 2003), in the Aug. 15 issue of Science.  Knoll’s confidence of modern evolutionary biology having superseded Genesis is seen in his whimsical “naturalist’s Generations of Abraham: bacteria begat protozoans, protozoans begat invertebrates, invertebrates begat fishes, and the like.”
      To subscribe to this genealogy, one must face Darwin’s Dilemma, the Cambrian explosion.  Knoll, “not afraid to wade into the major controversies, nor ... afraid to use words like ‘maybe’ and ‘perhaps’ where the evidence is not yet conclusive,” dives right in.  His view: “the survival of diverse eukaryotic lineages imply that ‘snowball Earth’ had a discontinuous ice cover with numerous marine refugia,” such that this and other “intervals of rapid environmental change caused temporary breakdowns of the established ecosystems with their harsh competition for resources and thereby permitted the new experiments of life [sic] that ultimately led to our modern world.”

  Since when are scientists congratulated for their imaginative use of creative bluffing?  There is no evidence for any of the story, and no way to observe it, either.  You can’t dismiss Darwin’s Dilemma by waving your arms and saying catastrophes happened so fast, they didn’t leave any fossil evidence.  What kind of weird-science philosophy makes environmental stress the Good Witch of the Gaps?  Good grief.
  Next headline on: Darwinism (and next item, below). • Next dumb story (and next item, below).

• Squeezing Data Points Into the Theory:  Some Washington University biologists writing in Science Aug. 15, studied iguanas and found a surprise: four taxa “exhibit substantially different patterns of evolution.”  To normalize the discrepancies, they postulate an “inverse relationship between timing of diversification and morphological disparity within subclades,” which “may be a general feature that transcends the historically contingent properties of different evolutionary radiations.”  Translated, this means that all the change happens rapidly when species split into different groups, then they remain relatively unchanged for long periods.

  Ad hoc speculation is rife within evolutionary theory.  No data can possibly falsify it.  Welcome to the tolerant, diverse, inclusive Darwin Party where all data are welcome, as long as they agree to fit in.

• Fatty Acids, Fatty Theories:  To get fatty acid synthesis to fit into the evolutionary tree of Mycobacterium tuberculosis, Irish biologists invoke lateral gene transfer, adaptive evolution, and gene duplication.  Their paper in the Proceedings of the National Academy indicates they were surprised that “of the eight gene families examined, five of the phylogenies reconstructed suggest that the actinobacteria have a closer relationship with the alpha-proteobacteria than expected.  This is either due to an ancient transfer of genes or deep paralogy and subsequent retention of the genes in unrelated lineages” i.e., unrelated bacteria came up with the same genes in parallel.
      In conclusion, they say, “Fatty acid biosynthesis is likely a very ancient pathway.... It might seem likely that in a similar way to translation or replication, a mechanism of carrying out this function would have been invented [sic] early in evolution and the contemporary operation of this pathway would have remained largely unchanged.”  But they find significant changes, anomalies, and bottlenecks; of one key enzyme, they say “it is most unusual to think that it was invented [sic] late in evolution,” so maybe there has been significant turnover and replacement of genes with similar functions.  Of another gene, they visualize duplication followed by positive selection, concluding, “This is likely to be a kind of ‘tweaking’ of the mechanism of fatty acid synthesis, perhaps for improved functioning after major alterations of the pathway.”

  We just want readers to see that hand-waving and pantheism is alive and well in scientific journals.  Registered members of the Darwin Party get free passes to fantasyland.
  Next headline on: Origin of Life (also next story).