These papers give you a sense of the complex math and engineering required to fly a machine for a long distance with enough fuel (but not too much) to get there, when there are trade-offs between weight and efficiency.  How did a little birdbrain figure this out?  The paper uses the typical evolutionary lingo that nature selected the right parameters.  Presumably, millions of unlucky birds had to drop into the ocean before they got it right.
Next headline on: Birds. • Next amazing story.

This glorified high school science project is listed in the category evolution but proves nothing.  They start with mice and end with mice; so what?  Some mice are jumpier than others and bite more; so what?  Some people act that way, too.  Let’s correlate that with NCI (net coffee intake).  All this paper does is observe adaptation, not evolution.  Jared Diamond, who has written vitriolic anti-creationist rhetoric in popular science magazines, is doing his part to shore up the evidence for evolution in a scientific journal, but accomplishes nothing here.  Microevolution does not reinforce Darwinian evolution from amoeba to man.  Even so, this paper is riddled with doubt about what their observations prove.
Next headline on: Mammals. • Next headline on: Darwinism.

Creation-Evolution Headlines is a proud partner of Creation Safaris.  After reading the news on this computer screen, get up, stretch, and go take a vigorous walk.  The Creator has made us an integrated whole–body, mind, and spirit–with each part influencing the others.  Don’t neglect any of your well-designed systems.
Follow the chain links on Health for similar stories, especially a study from the British Journal of Sports Medicine on March 27.  Even the sights and sounds of nature can have a calming effect, as we reported May 8 and March 23.  Go to the Creation Safaris Photo Gallery and try it out.
Next headline on: Health.

This paper should not have passed peer review; if it were a creationist theory it would have been laughed off the stage.  These scientists are imposing their sexual fancies and thinking on dumb little fish.  Aren’t fish color blind, anyway?  What does an orange belly have to do with fitness?  If this is a law of science, why aren’t all species getting gaudier all the time, both male and female?  If gold is the magic color, why haven’t all fish evolved into goldfish?  The paper is full of wiggle room and doubt.  For example:

• ....empirical studies addressing social and sexual selection in females are either scarce or completely lacking in most major taxa.
• In most other taxa, including fish, female ornaments are almost unstudied and the evolutionary reasons for female beauty largely unknown.
• This scenario does not explain the evolution of color characteristics whose expression may vary among reproductive females.
• The only extant study conducted in such a system on convict cichlids (Cichlasoma nigrofasciatum) revealed no male preference for females with more bright ventral coloration.
• Why are male two-spotted gobies so sensitive to female belly coloration?  One possibility is that belly coloration acts as an amplifier of female fecundity.  To a human observer [emphasis added], the orange belly of an ornamented female is a highly conspicuous trait, with a high contrast to the fish body and to the habitat background.  By adding color to an already round belly filled with mature eggs, females may facilitate male evaluation of fecundity [emphasis added].  But why are not all mature females equally colorful?  If the amplifying trait is costly to develop, it may at the same time be informative of female quality....It remains to be demonstrated which aspects of quality, if any, might be signaled through bright carotenoid-based coloration in female two-spotted gobies.
• It remains to be demonstrated what benefits males may gain from being choosy.
• Studies of relationships between ornamentation, parasites and immune parameters in females are very few and should be encouraged.
• The demonstrated male preference for female coloration does not preclude a function of female ornamentation in contest competition among females.
• We suggest that more attention should be directed at the largely unstudied phenomenon of female “beauty” in fish and other animals.

So after 150 years of Darwinism, nobody has studied female sexual selection, the data are contradictory, it could be this or it could be that, and we can’t possibly know what the little fishies are thinking, so let’s impose our human likes and dislikes on the fish (what does “beauty” mean to a fish, for crying out loud?).  You are watching evolutionary research in action.  This is how evolution gains an appearance of scientific respectability; Darwinists publish wishy-washy papers like this and can claim the literature is full of evidence for evolution.  A thousand buckets of sand do not give you a solid foundation.
Next headline on: Fish. • Next headline on: Darwinism. • Next dumb story.

These recent advances are the beginning of a quest to tease out the critical properties of our solar system (and its subsystems) that give it the curious character of being only marginally chaotic or marginally stable on time spans comparable with its current age.  It is but a part of the quest to understand what processes of formation (and perhaps initial conditions) led to this remarkable system in nature and how common such systems are in our galaxy and the universe.

The old Newtonian mechanists used to assume the heavens were as reliable as clockwork, and bragged on their ability to predict almost anything from mathematical laws of physics.  Now we know that initial conditions and perturbations can have dramatic effects, making it all but impossible to predict future motions.  (This also explains why the old urban legend about running the solar system orbits backward to find Joshua’s long day is not possible.) 
Our solar system is carefully balanced set of coincidences.  A little chaos is OK, but a lot of chaos could have ruled out life.  Notice how these scientists are awestruck at our “remarkable system in nature.”
Next headline on: Solar System.

Dr. Luke was a historian of the first rank; the accuracy of his writings have been repeatedly confirmed by archaeology.  He was a traveling companion of Paul and died probably much earlier than 150 A.D.  Can this method really tell that much?  Couldn’t a Syrian be born in Greece or somewhere else?  As interesting as the dating of relics might be, we are beyond honoring relics.  It is far more important to listen to Luke’s message than analyze his bones, even if they were his (which this scientific paper cannot establish).  Brother Luke is in heaven, with a clear view of the risen and ascended Christ, of whom he wrote under inspiration of the Holy Spirit after doing diligent research from eyewitness accounts.
Next headline on: Bible.

This is a priori reasoning.  Evolutionists are convinced life did evolve from chemicals, so they are on this slow, painstaking project to piece together evidence to show how it evolved.  There is a HUGE difference between amino acids and life, however; so huge it could never be bridged by natural processes acting under the laws of science we already know.  To get an idea of what evolutionists are up against, check out these animations of ATP synthase, a molecular motor used in all living things (these are simplified animations that do not show all the parts involved).  These motors are made up of thousands of amino acids, all left-handed, that are arranged into a precise sequence and work together as a 6000rpm motor, cranking out ATP molecules (used in all life processes), at over 90% efficiency.  Unless all these complex parts exist together simultaneously, the motor will not work at all.  This is one of many such molecular machines in the cell that must be present to have life.  Yet here we have researchers looking for little individual amino acids, thinking that if they find some they are getting closer to understanding the origin of life.  Amino acids are no closer to life than a child’s alphabet blocks are to an encyclopedia.
Next headline on: Origin of Life.

Big deal.  I had a horse once that figured out how to unlatch the barn door with her lips.
Next dumb story.

This article is a must read.  Allen does an admirable job of summarizing the thinking of the early twentieth century eugenics movement that led to the forced sterilization of 60,000 “defectives” whom the scientific and political elitists had decided were not worthy of having children.  What Allen does not stress enough, however, is the Darwinist connection to eugenics.  He does admit that “Eugenicists were to be the ‘managers’ of the human germ plasm, in the progressive spirit, and would take control of human evolution.”  It was Darwinism that reduced humans to genes, and made them helpless expressions of heredity, with no responsibility.  Many of the early eugenics advocates, like Haeckel, were staunch Darwinists and racists.  They had an air of scientific respectability by appearing concerned about human suffering and economic prosperity, but their true motives were to be masters of human evolution, create a super-race, and exalt themselves as superior to those they viewed as defectives in the gene pool.  It’s haunting to see how even elite scientists of the day deceived themselves by picking samples that proved their biases. 
Could it happen again?  It’s happening already.  Cloning, stem-cell research, and abortion are essentially eugenics programs justified often in Darwinian terms.  The Human Genome Project has a reductionist side, giving scientists incentive to explain all human failings in terms of bad genes.  National Geographic TV recently had a special on how in the future we might design super-athletes and other “beautiful” people, or ideal warriors on the battlefield.  Taking control of our own future evolution is a dominant theme among Darwinists.  It was repeated in the recent PBS series Evolution.  While positive eugenics (improving people) sounds noble, there is the dark, negative side of the coin: preventing “defectives” from being born in the first place.  In many cases, abortion is eugenics in action: deciding that a baby with Down’s syndrome or some other genetic abnormality has no right to be born.  Stem cell research treats the human genome as property to be manipulated.
Will we learn from history?  It could get worse than the last time.  With the new genetic tools at our disposal, guided only by Darwinian ethics, there bodes a grim future for anyone society may deem undesirable.  Only the Christian ethic of human dignity and compassion for the weak can protect us from potentially catastrophic abuses of human rights ahead.
Next headline on: Politics.

Yet another small wonder on which life depends is thus discovered.  The world seems too complex a combination of fortuitous factors, producing a life-giving environment, to have been an accident.
Next headline on: Physics. • Next amazing story.

thinks the two viruses could have shared a common ancestor, because key parts of individual proteins resemble each other in both species.  This has allowed the viruses to produce similar structures even as their DNA diverged.  “The evidence makes it hard to imagine they didn’t come from some common ancestor,” agrees Roger Hendrix, a biologist at the University of Pittsburgh.  The results, he says, support a growing body of evidence pointing to a billion-year-old family resemblance between bacterial viruses and human viruses—implying that viruses may be more closely related to one another than previously thought.

Evolutionists like to blow smoke when the evidence contradicts Darwinism.  Here is a superficial resemblance between two bugs, but their DNA code is “very different.”  Unless they can explain how the DNA went from one form to the other while preserving outward similarities, the “growing body of evidence” actually contradicts the theory they had common ancestors.  What will it take to convince evolutionists to give up?  No matter what shows up under the microscope, it is metamorphosed into evidence for evolution.  Darwinists are like Talibans being bombed to oblivion yet claiming victory.
Next headline on: Darwinism.

This new find fills a significant gap in the fossil record, helping scientists complete the picture of how land animals evolved to sea creatures . . . . “The fossil record for whales is more complete than for sea cows, but every day the fossil record is getting better,” said [discoverer Daryl] Domning.  “Major gaps are becoming minor gaps, and minor gaps are evaporating” . . . . The findings should go a long way toward settling the debate between creationism and evolution, said Domning.  Creationists claim there is no evidence of macro-evolution– intermediate forms of animals demonstrating the evolution from one kind of animal to another.  “We’re finding more and more dramatic evidence by the day that major changes have occurred in both appearance and adaptation,” said Domning.  “It’s no longer a matter of theory.  We have actual bones in hand representing all phases of the evolution, from land animal to sea animal, in different groups of animals.”

We should be accustomed to National Geographic’s bluffing by now.  This is the rag that gave us Piltdown Chicken, remember?  Domning found a hippo-like creature; no flippers, able to walk around on land or in ponds; what does that prove?  We have sea lions; we have otters; we have beaver; we have dogs that like to swim– that are all having a jolly time just being what they are.  Let’s play the Darwin game and arrange them into an family tree.  While we’re at it, let’s do the same with the wrenches in the garage. 
This evolutionist is stretching an inch into a mile to prop up evolution, and NG does a disservice by exaggerating the recent whale fossil, which is fragmentary and disputed by evolutionists themselves.  If that record is bad, and the sea cow lineage is worse (as claimed here), does this new fossil justify calling it “dramatic” evidence to prove evolution and refute the claims of creationists?  Look at the evidence, not the words, and you see no such thing.
Evolutionists are dismayed by the rise of creationism.  They are stepping on themselves to dig up transitional forms to fill the voids that they know are there, and to span the wide gaps with flimsy bridges made of questionable bones, glued together with bluffing and just-so stories.  They won’t hold up.
Next headline on: Fossils. • Next headline on: Mammals.

Mars storytellers can’t resist the old tale, with assumptions stacked like cards, that since Mars had volcanoes, it might have had water; if Mars had water, it might have had hydrothermal vents; if Mars had hydrothermal vents, it might have had life:

More, there may be hydrothermally active sites in the basin/aquifer similar to hydrothermally active sites on Earth now known to harbor life, Dohm said.  These potential aqueous environments are prime candidates for hydrologic, mineralogic and "exobiologic" exploration, Dohm and his colleagues emphasize.

Is this the only way they can lobby for more Mars missions?
Next headline on: Mars.

Someone should tell them it won’t work.  We already reported that the DNA clock is unreliable, and molecular phylogenies don’t match evolutionary trees made the old way (by looking at the animals and fossils and guessing their family history).  This is an exercise in futility, trying to force fit data into preconceived theories of common ancestry.  This story contains numerous interesting admissions, such as:

The idea that the South American group shares a common ancestry with the African group has been controversial for years.  Scientists have indeed suggested that caviomorph rodents in South America had multiple origins....
Recent discoveries in molecular evolutionary biology are changing significantly the traditional ideas about mammalian evolution....
That finding [regarding ape and gorilla evolution] sent the entire paleontological community in a tailspin because it was so counter to what they had been proposing....
How many fossils have anything to do with a direct ancestry of the lineages we see living today?  And how do we fit those fossils to the genetic evolutionary tree?....
This work will help reconstruct more accurately the tree of life, which is a really important goal for the future....

It should be evident that the evolutionists are living in a fantasy world of storytelling and wishful thinking, not scientific evidence.
Next headline on: Darwinism and Evolutionary Theory.

Nobel Prize in Chemistry Goes to One-Handed Experts  10/10/2001
As reported in Nature Science Update, the experts are not one-handed, but the subjects of their study are.  Sharpless, Noyori and Knowles have helped the pharmaceutical industry immensely by devising ways to sort lefties out of mixed populations of chiral molecules, since the body can only use one-handed versions of many medicines.  By developing chiral catalysts, they have made it much easier to mass produce quantities of only one hand.

So again we see that intelligence can sort the two with Nobel-level expertise, but who was there at the origin of life to produce only left-handed proteins?  Left- and right-handed forms are chemically equivalent but can have drastically different effects on life, while proteins composed of both hands are useless.  This is the mystery of the left-handed proteins, which in evolutionary circles remains unsolved.  Getting the first protein all one-handed, without the aid of natural selection, is immensely improbable, so much as so as to rule out a naturalistic origin of life on that basis alone.
Next headline on: The Cell and Biochemistry.

The intelligence of these brilliant scientists is no match for the intelligence built into the simplest yeast cell.  The cell cycle is a wonderfully complicated system of feedbacks and checks and triggers and switches.  Leland Hartwell, one of the recipients, discovered that there are checkpoints that tell the cell whether to proceed with the operation or not, or to self destruct if damage has occurred.  The operations are all controlled by proteins, some of which are turned on and off by other proteins.  It is only when something goes dreadfully wrong in the system that we get cancer or other diseases; for trillions of times in our lifetimes, the systems work perfectly.  In a world cursed because of sin, it’s amazing that cell operations still work as well as they do.
If we could see a cell the size of a building in operation, we would be utterly amazed.  It would be a huge factory run by robots, sending cargo down subway tunnels, producing tools on automated assembly lines, sending instructions from the master library, and for the grand finale, on cue, replicating itself!  Can you think of any human invention that even approaches this level of technology?  The author of the Epistle to the Hebrews said that Christ is worthy of more honor than Moses, just as the builder of the house has more honor than the house (Heb 3:3).  Similarly, who deserves man’s highest prize more, the scientists, composed of cells, who look at and try to understand the cell, or the Maker of the cell?
Next headline on: The Cell and Biochemistry.

The bacterial enzyme hydrogenase is a complex and precise structure.  It is composed of a chain of amino acids (all left-handed), that coils into a helical shape and then, due to precise placement of side chains on the amino acids, folds (with the help of other enzymes) into a complex three-dimensional structure.  The presence of iron and nickel atoms at precise locations creates the “active site” that allows the hydrogenase to extract hydrogen from acids.  The fact that molecular engineers have to apply a lot of intelligence to reverse engineer this molecule means the original is elegantly designed.  How can evolutionists believe this and a thousand other precision tools in the cell are the handiwork of blind, mindless, undirected forces?
Next amazing story.

The article is mostly bluff, with a lot of positive-sounding claims about evolution being evident in the genes and proteins, when in fact we have been reporting frequently that it is not, and that the molecular evidence does not match the paleontological evidence (click here for an example).  On October 1, for instance, we relayed a story about how the DNA clock method for dating evolutionary changes was found unreliable.  The same applies to any alleged protein clock, since proteins are encoded by genes.  One cannot draw relationships between diverse animals without first believing evolution to be true, so it becomes a case of question-begging to get the data to fit preconceived notions.  If you read this article with that in mind, you can find circular reasoning, extrapolation, and faith in evolution all built up on very little actual evidence.  Phanerozoic, by the way, is Greek, not Latin; more bluffing?
Next headline on: Darwinism.