Flight is difficult to achieve, hardly the type of thing that one would expect to develop from chance.  Successful flight requires great attention to detail of structure, propulsion, aerodynamic surfaces, structural dynamics, and stability and control.  In 2003 we will reach only the 100th anniversary of flight by humankind.  Do we really think we are so smart and so advanced that we cannot reflect upon and give credit to the Intelligent Designer of earliest flight?
– Malcolm A. Cutchins, aerospace engineer, On the Seventh Day: Forty scientists and academics explain why they believe in God, ed. John F. Ashton (Master Books, 2002) p. 84.

In addition, Peter Ward, a UW professor of biology and Earth and space sciences, believes the conditions spurred the development [sic] of an unusual breathing system in some dinosaurs, a group called Saurischian dinosaurs that includes the gigantic brontosaurus.  Rather than having a diaphragm to force air in and out of lungs, the Saurischians had lungs attached to a series of thin-walled air sacs that appear to have functioned something like bellows to move air through the body.
    Ward, working with UW biologist Raymond Huey and UW radiologist Kevin Conley, believes that breathing system, still found in today’s birds, made the Saurischian dinosaurs better equipped than mammals to survive the harsh conditions in which oxygen content of air at the Earth’s surface was only about half of today’s 21 percent.
    “The literature always said that the reason birds had sacs was so they could breathe when they fly.  But I don’t know of any brontosaurus that could fly,” Ward said.  “However, when we considered that birds fly at altitudes where oxygen is significantly lower, we finally put it all together with the fact [sic] that the oxygen level at the surface was [sic] only 10 percent to 11 percent at the time the dinosaurs evolved.” [sic]   (Emphasis added.)

If you took all the best evidence that evolutionists could muster for their theory that humans evolved from bacteria and filtered it through the rigorous demands of science (i.e., that the evidence must be observable, testable and repeatable), would anything be left?  Look at this magical, mystical tale.  They have no way of knowing what oxygen levels were back when.  They have no way of knowing what caused the extinctions, or of dating them back there in unobservable zillions of past years.  The only thing that is observable is that we have mammals and birds alive today, and dinosaur bones in the rocks.  From this, they weave a fantastical story that low oxygen levels somehow created exquisitely-designed lungs that allow birds to soar above the mountains.  Thank goodness there were not flying brontosaurs.
    Did you catch the miracle word in the story?  birds arose from dinosaurs.  This is like the words emerged and formed.  How this miracle happened is never stated.  Who did the miracle is left unstated also.  Who raised the birds?  Who formed the lungs?  Who caused the new information to emerge against the downward pressures of entropy?  Just believe.  Apparently the birds thought up all this technology themselves without help.
    It is a foolish supposition to presume that stress breeds technology.  Maybe it is an anthropomorphism.  We know that it happens in human societies (necessity is the mother of invention, after all), but invention requires intelligent design.  If you want to talk about repeatable science, do some laboratory work.  There, you will discover that every bird, mammal or lizard subjected to stress doesn’t evolve new technology.  It dies.
Next headline on: Darwinism and evolutionary theory. • Next headline on: Dinosaurs. • Next headline on: Birds. • Next dumb story.

Ahem, we’re waiting.  We see a story, based on a lot of suppositions, but we were expecting an earth-shaking announcement that evidence for the evolution of life has been found.  We have been waiting in line for a long time.  Thank you for the sidewalk entertainment, but please: cough up the evidence promised, or we want our money back.  We might even sue you for bait and switch.
    New Scientist was a little more fair in their reporting, using words like suggest, think and believe in stating the opinions of the researchers.  They also gave another scientist a chance to lob a soft-petal criticism: “It’s an intriguing idea, but it will certainly be contentious,” said David Archer of U. of Chicago.  He points out the limited nature of the paper, noting that plankton’s ability to regulate carbon has been known for a long time.  “What’s new here is the idea that having calcium carbonate deposition in the deep sea makes the system more stable than it would be with only shallow water deposition,” he claims.  Funny that no one sees this as a mark of design or plan.
Next headline on: Geology. • Next headline on: Darwinism and Evolutionary Theory.

This story is so weak as to be hilarious.  Here it is touted as a “million year record of evolution, but for all that assumed time, what happened?  Slight changes to tiny surface areas on teeth within one species.  Is this all evolutionists can come up with?  If the lifetime of a mammalian species is supposed to be 1.5 million years (pray tell, how is this calibrated?), then there should have been considerably more evolution in this little mammal than adding one or two molar triangles.  It would not be surprising if more variation in teeth were found between living voles than that identified from these fossil deposits.  Where is the evolution?  An unbiased evaluator of this story would expect much, much more evidence than tiny changes in tooth shape.
    This story only makes evolutionary sense to one who is already a dogmatic evolutionist.  The method of dating the deposits is not given.  The story rests not only on that evolutionary assumption, but on another controversial story about climate changes being driven by Milankovich cycles (slight changes in Earth’s orbit).  Barnosky assumes that more molar triangles are better for hot, arid environments.  Has he done his homework and calculated the fitness benefit?  Has he asked the modern voles if they are better off than their deprived ancestors?
    Science reporters seem to think this meager evidence gives a scientist credibility as a soothsayer.  Notice this “expert” testimony, with its political overtones, that is nowhere challenged by the reporter: “It’s likely that speciation takes place over a longer time interval than extinction.  So, climate changes like the global warming we are seeing today are probably happening too fast to cause anything but extinction.”  Better get the students to write their Congresspersons.
    This is a prime example of how evolutionary storytelling consists of tiny gopher-tooth size particles of observable data held together with ample supplies of philosophical mud.  Surely evolutionists can do better than this if they expect the world to accept their molecules-to-man philosophy as being empirically based.
Next headline on: Mammals. • Next headline on: Fossils. • Next headline on: Darwinism and Evolutionary Theory.

Discovery’s documents make for good reading and are self explanatory.  It is inexcusable for textbook writers to continue to propagate fallacious notions, such as the myth that human embryos have gill slits or that Haeckel’s embryos demonstrate evolutionary ancestry.  Just setting the record straight would go a long way toward bringing creation-evolution confrontations between parents, educators and politicians into the sphere of rational discussion.  It wastes a lot of time having to undo the miseducation and misinformation implanted in people’s heads from their high school biology classes.  If adults of high schoolers, supporters of the NCSE and ACLU, and school board members really understood how much of their faith in Darwinian evolution was built on false and irrelevant claims, they would probably act more rationally at school board meetings.
Next headline on: Schools.

What does this have to do with evolution?  EurekAlert, an arm of the National Science Foundation (NSF), feels compelled to throw in an evolutionary mythoid built on futureware.  These scientists found already existing advanced technology in extinct creatures.  No gradual chain of transitions leading up to an animal that could fly, home in on a target, maneuver and dive has been found.  National Geographic dreams that pterosaurs “were the first of only three vertebrates to evolve [sic] flight.  Birds, close cousins [sic] of pterodactyls, are believed to have evolved [sic] from theropod dinosaurs about 150 million years [sic] ago.  Bats are mammals thought to have evolved [sic] from shrew-like creatures about 50 million years [sic] ago.” (Emphasis added.)  It’s time scientists and their toady reporters stop mentally placing these spectacularly designed animals into imaginary evolutionary trees, and just admire their awesome capabilities.  The discovery “could revise views of how vision, flight, and the brain itself evolve,” all right, if and only if “revise” means “overthrow.”
Next headline on: Dinosaurs.

Hmmm...Adam and Eve ate a lot of fruit...hmmm...Adam and Eve did a lot of sunbathing...Hmmm...
Next headline on: Health

Paul Knauth used de Ronde’s estimated age for the pods [3.5 billion years] to calculate the salinity of the ancient ocean.  He now believes that he was wrong.  “Quite a few people - including me - have been burned by this,” says Knauth, who works at Arizona State University in Tempe.  Other researchers have drawn similar conclusions about the sea’s depth, temperature and chemical makeup.

Brasier may be emphatic primarily because chemical evolutionists have been pushed into a corner with fewer and fewer options, since the heyday of Miller and Urey in the 1950s.  With the old primordial soup myth pretty much defunct, and panspermia too far fetched for most scientists, deep sea vents provided promising incubators for life, some believed.  No way are they going to let anyone take these venues away, too.
    It must be admitted that a young date for some vents does not rule out old dates for others.  But it is noteworthy that scientists can disagree by many orders of magnitude on the age of an object.  Old ages are not intuitively obvious from surface characteristics, unless old ages are a priori the default preference in one’s intuition.  Does anyone want to gamble on the validity of the newer guess of 100,000 years?  We observe active deep sea vents today, and apparent remnants of old vents with no dates on them.  It is reasonable to measure growth rates of existing vents, but there is a logical fallacy called extrapolation.  Some geologists seem to forget this.
    NSU does not provide detail about Knauth’s admission that the old date led to incorrect conclusions about the salinity of the ocean.  Presumably this means that if the vents were sources of salt, and if they were 3.5 billion years old, the oceans would have been impossibly salty by now.  If so, this provides implicit corroboration of work by creation scientists (see, for instance, Humphreys and Austin cited by Sarfati) that demonstrates the salinity of the oceans puts an upper limit on their age.  Deep sea springs, incidentally, were mentioned in the Bible long before modern oceanographers discovered them (see Austin article).
Next headline on: Origin of Life. • Next headline on: Dating Methods.

Biotherapy: Pour in the Happy, Hungry Maggots    10/24/2003
If you are not the squeamish type, you might get a Halloween chill out of a National Geographic News story about maggot medicine.  Maggots are coming back into vogue as doctor’s assistants.  They eat away gangrene and compete with bacteria, leaving wounds clean and free of infection.  John Church, a proponent, says there is an art to it.  “You must have a happy, hungry maggot or you will get no results,” he cautions.  “The environment on the wound must be what they would naturally seek out in nature.”
    Dr. Edgar Maeyens deprecates himself as just the assistant to the real surgeons – the maggots: “I’m just a supporting actor here,” he says.  “The maggots are marvelous.”  They love scavenging dead tissue.  They dive right into the dirty work and leave a clean scene in just 72 hours or less.  There’s truth to the old battlefield remedy after all.  For patients with severe infections, untreatable because of antibiotic-resistant bacteria, maggots provide a promising alternative procedure (if the patient can stand that tingly sensation).

Add this to the column, “Things considered pests, vermin, nasty and ugly today might have originally had beneficial purposes.”  (See also March 14 headline).  Other examples of biotherapeutic agents being studied include leeches and bees.
Next headline on: Health. • Next headline on: Bugs and Crawlers. • Next amazing story.

Cosmology: Greater Wall Discovered    10/24/2003
A Great Wall of galaxy clusters, 80% bigger than the one found by Geller and Huchra in 1989, has been uncovered by the Sloan Digital Sky Survey, reports Nature Science Update.  Back then, the first Great Wall was considered a challenge for big bang theorists, because of the so-called “lumpiness problem” – how could a smooth beginning lead to such large-scale structure?  Since then, they have concluded the observations were within the constraints of the theory.
  This new structure is 1.3 billion light-years long, 600 million light-years longer than the earlier one.  Cosmologists are cautiously optimistic that the new, bigger Sloan Great Wall will not sound the death knell for their theories, even though “its size comes as a surprise to astrophysicists.”

The theory must survive at all costs.  No observation may be considered valid unless it has been first confirmed by theory.
Next headline on: Cosmology.

In mammals, XDH interconverts with an oxidase form [xanthine oxidase (XO)], which, like AOX, uses dioxygen as the final electron acceptor.  Interconversion is caused by dislocation of the active-site loop, a stretch of several consecutive amino acid residues (Gln 423-Lys 433, in bovine XDH) that surrounds the FAD cofactor.  AOX and XDH can easily be aligned along their entire lengths.  This, jointly with the fact that Xdh is ubiquitous in the tree of life, whereas Ao is circumscribed to, but pervasive through multicellular eukaryotes, indicates that Ao evolved from a eukaryotic copy of Xdh some time before the origin of multicellularity.

Whenever we see a title hinting that positive Darwinian selection for a new function has been demonstrated, we get excited, because maybe now this theory that has taken over the world will finally exhibit some empirical evidence.  But what have we here?  All they have shown are three enzymes that look similar, but operate on different substrates.  Two of them operate on the same substrate but have slightly different structures.  To make their story work, they have to invoke the miracle of convergent evolution acting on two separate gene duplications.
    One would think it would be a better Darwinian story to see all three of these enzymes arranged in a clear line of descent, but here is what happened, according to their story.  (1) Bacteria already possessed an advanced, complex, molecular machine (XDH), a key enzyme in the catabolism of purines, and the gene that codes for it (Xdh), possessing more than 1330 nucleotide letters.  (No ancestor of this advanced, multipart machine² is proposed.)  (2) The Xdh gene duplicated, and then rapid positive selection turned it into an aldehyde oxidase, AOX.  AOX lived on in the invertebrates.  (3) A protochordate lost AOX, and evolved into vertebrates.  (4) Sometime before the evolution of ray-finned fishes, Xdh duplicated again, and the second paralog evolved into AOX' by convergent evolution, and lives on in all the vertebrates and mammals.  (5) Once the new function was found, the rapid evolution of both paralogs ceased, perhaps because of the constraints of “purifying selection.”
    If this is the best the evolutionists can come up with, it appears weak indeed.  How many billions of similar episodes of positive selection must have had to occur, simultaneously, for a bacterium to evolve into a fish?  If positive selection is so necessary for so many things, should it not be abundantly obvious everywhere?  Yet they admit that it must be rare:

The chances for a paralog to evolve a new function are small when compared with the fraction of duplicates that become silenced by degenerative mutations.  If duplications eventually become a significant molecular source for evolutionary novelty, it is because they occur at a very high rate: on average, one per gene per 100 million years, estimated from eukaryote genomic surveys, which is comparable to the rate of mutation per nucleotide site in nuclear genomes of vertebrates.

(Emphasis added in all quotes.)  So they admit right in the introduction that only one duplication per gene can be expected each 100 million years, and that degenerative mutations are more likely to silence them.  Is this really a high rate?  No, compared to what is needed, and even then, unless it survives all the error-correcting mechanisms in the cell and finds a way to get propagated in the gametes and spread throughout the population, it’s the end of the line – gotta wait another 100 million for your lucky lottery ticket.  They also admit that of any changes in function that do occur in the paralogous copy, they are more likely to be due to subfunctionalization than neofunctionalization:

Theoretical results suggest that subfunctionalization should be a more common outcome of duplication than neofunctionalization under plausible conditions, specifically when subfunctionalizing mutations greatly outnumber neofunctionalizing mutations and the selective advantage of the neofunctional alleles is small.  However, little is known about the relative importance of each evolutionary outcome from real data.

Review question, class: how much is known from real data about the evolutionary outcomes of gene duplications?
    Another problem.  Even after a gene duplication, finding a new function by positive Darwinian selection is hard to differentiate from the “Dykhuizen-Hartl effect model,” which theorizes that “functional divergence occurs by random fixation of neutral mutations under relaxed purifying selection owing to reduced functional constraints of redundant genes.  These fixed mutations can be complementary loss-of-subfunction mutations or mutations that later induce a change in gene function when the environment or the genetic background is altered.”
    If your eyes have not yet glazed over from all this evolutionary mumbo-jumbo, it basically admits that (1) Theoretical evidence for positive Darwinian selection, the thing that made Charlie famous and turns bacteria into blue whales (given enough time), is hard to discern from other factors, and (2) We don’t have any good examples from real data except maybe for this AOX story.
    One would think evolutionists would be in crisis mode.  They need trillions of examples of positive Darwinian selection, and all they came up with in this paper is one, and it looks pretty weak.  To make the story work, they need two duplications, a loss, and convergence, which is like winning two lottery tickets in a row.
    Try to look at the data objectively, and all one can say is that (1) all organisms have (and use) an enzyme for purine catalysis, (2) invertebrates have (and use) an enzyme for aldehyde oxidation; (3) vertebrates have (and use) a different enzyme for aldehyde oxidation; (4) these three enzymes contain extensive structural and sequence similarities.  Does this prove common ancestry?  You probably have a large flat-headed screwdriver in your garage, and a large Phillips screwdriver as well.  These share extensive sequence similarities, but act on different substrates.  Really gifted craftsmen usually have extensive sets of very similar tools, all of which were skillfully designed.
   All of us have probably heard Perry Mason cases that appeared open and shut at first glance, only to have a surprise ending opposite what was assumed.  Solomon said, “The first to present his case appears just, until another comes and examines him”  The authors of this paper are like lawyers arguing that the defendants, (all living things), are guilty of evolving by positive Darwinian selection.  They have amassed circumstantial evidence on one scenario, involving two or three facts that might be related, but have called no eyewitnesses.  (Prov. 18:17).  They spent all their time presenting technical details on one putative example of positive selection.  The defense attorney tried a different tactic.  He brought out a slide projector.  He showed picture after picture of living things: a peacock, a water strider, a sponge, a bat, a dolphin, a conch shell, a monarch butterfly, a dog, a frog, a froghopper, a giant redwood, a gymnast, and much, much more.  After about a thousand slides, he remarked, “The prosecutors have explained their scenario, based on a hunch about a slight possibility of a hypothesis that two molecules in these organisms might, just might, have presumably arisen by an unguided, purposeless, process called Darwinian selection.  Do you feel his mechanism was plausible enough, and sufficiently productive, to lead to all these?”
Next headline on: Darwinism and Evolutionary Theory. • Next headline on: Genes and DNA.

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² “Ao and Xdh encode two large (generally, ~1,330 codons), structurally complex oxidoreductases (AOX and XDH, respectively) of the xanthine oxidase family of molybdo-flavoenzymes.  AOX and XDH are homodimers with a molecular mass of ~290 kDa, with each monomer acting independently in catalysis.  Each monomer comprises three consecutive domains linked by short interdomains: one ~20-kDa N-terminal domain that contains two distinct iron sulfur redox centers (2FeS), an ~40-kDa flavin adenine dinucleotide (FAD)-binding domain, and an ~85-kDa C-terminal molybdo-pterin (Mo-pt)-binding domain, also containing the substrate binding sites.  XDH has long been recognized as the key enzyme in the catabolism of purines, oxidizing hypoxanthine into xanthine, and xanthine into uric acid.”

• Maxwell:  John Maddox gives a favorable review to Basil Mahon’s new book, The Man Who Changed Everything: The Life of James Clerk Maxwell (Wiley, 2003).  Maddox agrees the 19th-century physicist was “Outstanding in his field,” and that his work was at the foundation of the modern world, but mentions nothing of Maxwell’s Christian faith.

  Read our online biography of Maxwell, one of the greatest scientists in history, a born-again Christian and creationist.

• Von Braun:  Kristie Macrakis reviews John Cornwell’s book Hitler’s Scientists: Science, War and the Devil’s Pact (Viking, 2003).  In passing, she takes a brief swipe at Wernher von Braun: “His [Cornwell’s] lively account is also a damning indictment: many scientists come across as depraved, amoral nerds who were willing to serve any regime if they got paid for it.  Cornwell unearthed a quotation from Wernher von Braun, designer of the German V-2 ‘flying bomb’ who went on to direct NASA’s Apollo programme, illustrating that ‘he did not care if he worked for Uncle Joe or Uncle Sam: “All I really wanted was an uncle who was rich”.’”

  Context can make all the difference.  We are not given the entire quote here, or anything of where, when, to whom, and under what circumstances it was said.  How many of us have uttered hallway talk, half-jokingly, that if lifted and put into a different context, would be damning?  Both authors assume the worst.  Macrakis unfairly makes a snap judgment that this one quote implies von Braun was a “depraved, amoral nerd” only interested in money.  One reality of the situation is that von Braun’s team needed money, not for selfish indulgence, but for hardware to pursue the dream of space flight; that is why he went to the German army in the first place, because his rocket club had no resources for such an audacious dream.  Was this statement said early on, while von Braun was a “merry heathen” in his youth, before the atrocities of Hitler and Stalin became known?  Was it said under duress to SS officers who suspected von Braun had secret allegiances to the US?  Was von Braun impersonating the feelings of others, as a sarcastic remark?  Was it said at all?  How do we know the statement was not attributed to him by an enemy?  We are not told.  There are many ways quotations can be twisted or distorted to imply the exact opposite of their meanings or the true intentions of a person, or even if accurate, can represent early opinions later repudiated.  Read our biography and see if this dismissive characterization bears any resemblance to the historical record.  If von Braun were less than a man of integrity, would not the fruits of devious motives have surfaced during the subsequent 30 years?  If you wouldn’t want your entire life represented by one sentence lifted out of context, then reserve judgment till you hear the rest of the story.

• Theistic Evolution:  Richard Lenski reviews Simon Conway Morris’s new book, Life's Solution: Inevitable Humans in a Lonely Universe (Cambridge, 2003).  Morris opposes the views of Stephen Jay Gould on the contingent nature of evolution, and proposes instead that humans were inevitable.  Lenski fails to see the difference, when they both agree contingent circumstances led to making Earth habitable.

  Atheistic evolutionists can tolerate theistic evolutionists, as long as God is a nebulous, distant personage uninvolved in the operation of the world.  What’s the difference?

• Evolution By Niche Construction:  Laurnet Keller reviews a book by Smee, Laland and Feldman, Niche Construction: The Neglected Process in Evolution (Princeton, 2003).  This sect of Darwinists downplays natural selection, preferring another mechanism instead:

  All living creatures, through both their metabolism and their behaviour, actively change and control the world in which they live.  Organisms choose habitats and resources; they construct nests, holes, burrows, webs or pupal cases; and they modify the chemical environment in which they live.  These alterations, which occur at scales ranging from the extremely local to the global, inevitably modify some of the selection pressures acting on the organisms.  And it is precisely this – the effects of an organism on its own environment – that the authors believe to be the important component that has been neglected by the conventional theory of evolution.

  Keller thinks they go overboard: “But it is unfortunate that the authors attempt to oversell the significance of niche construction.  By advocating a grand, extended evolutionary theory, they distract readers from the more important message of the book, which is that the influence of organisms on their environment can have far-reaching consequences.”

  Poor Charlie is getting hit from all sides, while his fans keep trying to rescue his reputation.  (See Oct. 14 headline.)  Niche construction sounds like either Gaia or a convoluted form of circular reasoning.  Organisms evolve their niches, so that their niches can evolve them.

• Mountain Building:  Simon Lamb and Paul Davis have a novel new theory of how the Andes rose to such heights: the climate did it.  In the same issue, Nicola Jones considers this surprising hypothesis.  The idea is that long periods of drought reduced the amount of sedimentary deposits that help lubricate the plate boundary.  This made the mountains jerk upward higher than others along the Pacific Rim.  Science Now examines it with the cautious opinion of a Cornell geologist: “it’s hard to get accurate chronologies for climate and mountain uplift and the correlations may not hold up as more data come in.”

  JSS is fair game in any phenomenon you cannot repeat.

• Human Kindness:  Ernst Fehr and Urs Fischbacher have a Review Article entitled, “The Nature of Human Altruism.”  They admit at the outset, “Some of the most fundamental questions concerning our evolutionary origins, our social relations, and the organization of society are centred around issues of altruism and selfishness.  Experimental evidence indicates that human altruism is a powerful force and is unique in the animal world.”
      Since evolutionists haven’t been able to find the gene for altruism or a Darwinian mechanism that would make human self-sacrifice evolve, they conclude more work must be done: “Current gene-based evolutionary theories cannot explain important patterns of human altruism, pointing towards the importance of both theories of cultural evolution as well as gene-culture co-evolution.”

  Why are they so surprised that “Human societies represent a huge anomaly in the animal world”?  Why the head-scratching that altruism is exhibited by people from hunter-gatherers to nation-states?  Why the puzzlement over the observation that total strangers will often quickly become friends?  “If we randomly pick two human strangers from a modern society,” they say, “and give them the chance to engage in repeated anonymous exchanges in a laboratory experiment, there is a high probability that reciprocally altruistic behaviour will emerge spontaneously.”  Only an evolutionist would be surprised by this, because all they see, ultimately, are chemical reactions.  What they are missing is: it’s all about soul.

• Advanced Tree-Building:  A team from Howard Hughes Medical Institute believes they have found the skeleton key to molecular phylogeny, and even Nature editor Henry Gee (“Evolution, Ending Incongruence”) is impressed.  In their paper, “Genome-scale approaches to resolving incongruence in molecular phylogenies”, they found that by concatenating 20 or so orthologous genes at random from six species of yeast, the conflicting phylogenetic trees converged onto one neat consensus tree, with 100% bootstrap confidence.  They feel this approach, now that we are getting more genome-wide data sets, will overcome some or all of the conflicts molecular phylogenists have been puzzling over for years.

  We’ll take a wait-and-see on this claim.  First of all, they only examined six related species of yeast from the same genus.  It’s likely even within a creationist model that these all diverged from an original yeast kind, so a clear relationship would be expected.  But they admit in several places that single-gene comparisons lead to radically different trees.  Furthermore, they have no clear explanation for why this would be so, or why the concatenated data set would eliminate the conflicts.  Better take a close look at the software they used, with its evolutionary-based algorithms like “maximum likelihood” (likely to whom?), “maximum parsimony” (who’s paying the bill?) and “majority rule consensus” (did the majority usurp power by underhanded means?).

• Human Genome:  The Human Genome Project has fully analyzed human chromosome 6.  This chromosome, 166,880,988 base pairs long, comprises 6% of the entire genome.  They identified 1557 genes and 667 so-called pseudogenes.  Chromosome 6 has many genes involved in the immune system and transfer-RNA construction, and “genes directly implicated in cancer, schizophrenia, autoimmunity and many other diseases.”

Next headline on: Human Body. • Next headline on: Genes and DNA. • Next headline on: Politics, Ethics, History. • Next headline on: Geology. • Next headline on: Darwinism.

There is so much more to learn about genes, proteins, and the processes that translate and regulate them.  So far, the more we know, the less plausible evolution appears.  Consider what must be true for scanning to occur.  Both the DNA and the ribosome have to understand the coding convention; i.e., which codon means stop, which codon means take-off, and which codon means landing.  There needs to be a clutch mechanism in the ribosome that can disengage the growing peptide chain and stop the influx of loaded transfer RNAs.  There needs to be processive scanning; the ribosome needs to be constantly reading and understanding the message, even when not translating it.  There needs to be a reliable way to re-engage the translation machinery at exactly the right nucleotide, and there needs to be a way to join the translated frames into a seamless product.
    All kinds of possibilities come to mind at what this might mean.  Undoubtedly this is linked to the way the code is spliced in the nucleus.  Perhaps all the shuffling of introns and exons by the spliceosome has the purpose of altering either the message itself, or the way the messenger RNA will be read by the ribosome, or both (see Sep. 3 headline).  The cell apparently has multiple methods of “recoding” a gene on the fly.  Maybe these embedded scan codes can trigger different outputs that head toward different exit doors and are treated differently by post-translational machines.  There might be regulators that can respond to feedback from within the cell, telling the ribosome “we don’t need that subroutine right now; skip over it and continue on the next one.”  If so, the big picture of gene translation is far more complex than at first realized (which was already far more complex than Darwin could have imagined).
    Man-made guidance and control software has to be able to handle contingencies.  The elegance of software is its ability to branch from one routine to another, depending on the input or the environment.  It appears that the cell is a master of routines.  It can rapidly generate the tools and machines it needs to survive, depending on changes in temperature, salinity, acidity, and a host of other dynamic situations.  In the rare instances when errors occur, there are numerous built-in error-correction routines and processes ready to handle them.
    At first, it appeared the ribosome was a simple, sequential-access mechanism like an old-fashioned tape recorder.  The “bag of tricks” that scientists are now exploring reveals a more sophisticated set of pre-programmed, random-access, dynamic routines, with feedback loops, error correction and repair mechanisms that make a modern DVD player look archaic.  Here’s where an intelligent design approach would be better for science.  Evolutionists have a habit of looking at newly-discovered phenomena as cobbled parts from previously thrown-together junk from our evolutionary past, not master-planned, but just “good enough” to get by.  This puts them in an embarrassing position when the reasons become known.  From an ID perspective, a biochemist could assume at the outset there must be a cause for each effect, like translational bypassing, that was programmed for a purpose.  Which scientist, do you think, would be more likely to get the right answer first?
Next headline on: The Cell. • Next headline on: Intelligent Design. • Next amazing story.

• A second New York Times full-page ad documents the fact that both winners were aware of Damadian’s discovery, and got their ideas from his 1971 paper.
• The company issued a position paper on the controversy, and formed a “Friends of Raymond Damadian Committee” that is paying all costs for the ads.
• A series of TV interviews with Dr. Damadian has been made available on Newsday.Com.  In five short video clips, Dr. Damadian calmly and matter-of-factly explains the controversy, the background of MRI discovery, and what could be done to correct the injustice of the Nobel decision.

The analysis carried out on Conus venom peptides suggests that a majority of the estimated ~50,000 peptides are encoded by only ~12 conotoxin gene superfamilies.  These superfamilies have undergone rapid amplification and divergence, accompanying the parallel radiation and diversification of Conus species at a macroevolutionary [sic] level. ... Each major Conus peptide gene superfamily comprises thousands of genes, encoding different peptides.  This leads to the remarkable functional diversity seen among the ~50,000 different peptides.

It is fair to say that the snails likely have evolved a greater diversity of ion channel-targeted pharmacological agents than even the largest of pharmaceutical companies (this diverse array includes peptides that are being developed for use as human pharmaceuticals).  These venom peptides have allowed different cone snail species to specialize on at least five different phyla of prey and defend themselves against a spectrum of predators that might be even more diverse.

These scientists did yeoman’s work with PCR and other lab techniques, but that does not qualify them as just-so storytellers.  Watch them launch into Storybook Land (emphasis added):

The role of Gla [gamma-carboxyglutamate] suggested above provides an attractive general mechanism for folding small polypeptides, perhaps even including the primordial [sic] proteins.  Based on structural work on signal recognition particle peptides, it was recently suggested that the first proteins evolved [sic] as membranes formed [sic], when RNA still dominated biochemistry [sic].  Specifically, the first functional polypeptide-like chains in incipient [sic] life forms were created [sic] to deal [sic] with a membrane surrounding the catalytic/informational [sic] RNA.  If this view is correct, then the possibility is raised that gamma-carboxyglutamate, with its capacity both for interacting with membranes and directing folding may have been present in the earliest functional polypeptides [sic], which were presumably much smaller than present-day proteins.  Once a Ca²⁺-free cytosol evolved [sic], however, a doubly negatively charged amino acid might become a liability [sic] for intracellular protein function, and in most taxa at the present time, gamma-carboxyglutamate is probably largely a relict amino acid in a few secreted proteins.  This modification remains prominent only in those present-day phylogenetic systems [sic] where more specialized uses have evolved [sic] (such as mammalian blood clotting and Conus venom peptides).

Notice how many wiggle words and evolutionary assumptions are embedded in this one paragraph.  They even twist the C word into evolutionary meaning: “life forms were created...” (in their worldview, the creator is time and chance).
    All such talk is pure speculation, not science.  They found no ancestry, no phylogeny, and no transitions.  They connected dots miles apart with inference.  Blood clotting, for example, is a tremendously complex system: so much so, that Michael Behe used it as a prime example of irreducible complexity in his book Darwin’s Black Box.  Chaperones are another hugely complex system (see May 5 headline).  With a wave of the hand, they just assume chaperones came along and took over the protein-folding job at some point in deep time.  They beg the question that the RNA World Scenario has any validity (see 07/11/2002 headline).  So cone shells use gamma-carboxyglutamate for venom peptides, and mammals use it for blood clotting.  Does that indicate a relationship?  Only if evolutionary JSS is in your blood.  (But evolutionary JSS cannot prevent theoretical hemophilia; the facts have a way of leaking out without stopping.)  Evolutionary JSS is the mystical, magical, extrasensory perception (also known as imagination), that visualizes miracles in the foggy past: “...the first proteins evolved as membranes formed [a synonym for their favorite miracle word emerged], when RNA still dominated biochemistry....”  This sentence demonstrates that evolutionism is a form of idolatry.  Evolutionists have deities, too; they are just slower and dumber.
    Evolutionists and creationists have the same facts available for study.  Neither could give a complete, satisfactory, authoritative explanation for why there are so many cone snail species, and so many varieties of venom peptides and the genes that code for them, because no human observer was there when they came into existence.  500 species does not seem excessive in view of the vastness of the sea, and the variety of habitats and niches available to them.  It is not beyond probability that extensive “horizontal” variation has generated much of the variety from a smaller set of original forms.  Even so, no one has observed a cone snail evolving into vertebrate or any other kind of animal.  All the ingredients in the cone snail – the venom ducts, the PDI enzymes, the endoplasmic reticulum, the geometric elegance of the shells, the developmental pathways, the gene superfamilies – are complex entities.  The parts all work, and they all work together.  Cone snails are successful in their habitats because they have what they need, and they need what they have.  That’s really all that science can say about it.  If evolutionists could just get off their hobby horse of connecting distant dots, both camps could agree.  They could both look at cone snails, and remark with astonishment, “Well, what do you know.”
Next headline on: Ocean Life. • Next headline on: Darwinism and Evolutionary Theory.

This debate is a propaganda magnet in school boards across the country.  It is generating vociferous arguments, often with more heat than light.  It is essential to be informed on the issues.  Cooper praises the Minnesota Commissioner of Education for pointing out that, in the standards, “nowhere does this language mention intelligent design or creationism.  Instead, it simply states the idea that children should understand that there is diversity of opinions and beliefs.”  Even if it mentioned either concept, the standards would remain constitutional, as long as scientific evidences alone, not religious arguments, are presented.
    The usual suspects trot out their favorite canard that this is all about “separation of church and state,” one of the most flexible smokescreens in US political debate.  Intelligent design is a scientific approach that is already commonly used in archaeology, forensics, cryptography and SETI.  Evolution is just as religious as any creation myth because it is not subject to observation or falsification.  Let students hear all the scientific evidence, and no parent, school board, Congressman or scientist will have anything to fear except the downfall of pet dogmas.
    For a timely look at this controversy, be sure to see the film Icons of Evolution.  The DVD version has a helpful section of questions and answers on the legal ramifications of “teaching the controversy” in the science class.  (Basically, there are none.  It’s already constitutional and encouraged by Congress.)
Next headline on: Schools. • Next headline on: Politics.

The headline claims to have found that sexuality (i.e. homosexuality or heterosexuality) is hardwired.  But when you actually look at the science all they found is that male and female mice’s brains are different.  One would think that this shocking “discovery” that males and females are physically different (not just in the most obvious ways) would lead to the opposite conclusion.  However, the implication here is that the brains of homosexuals are different from their straight counterparts in the same way as between the sexes.  However this is not what the study found at all, and the very real possibility is that it might well be the exact opposite.  Scientists have been earnestly trying to find some genetic justification for accepting homosexuality as natural, but to claim to have found this link when the facts couldn’t be further from the truth sounds pretty desperate.  In addition, I’m not sure finding some inherent difference would change the moral question any more than discovering why some people have an increased “natural” tendency toward violence, pedophilia, or cannibalism.  There was another story in the past that made a similar claim, but all they found was that lesbian women weren’t as easy to startle...hardly scientific proof of a genetic difference.

Good detection work.  (For a different interpretation, see World Net Daily’s report on this story.)  Whenever you hear an outrageous claim made in the name of science, hack away at the interpretation with an intellectual machete and get to the data (if any), buried in the midst of the thorny thicket of bluffing words, non-sequiturs and other fallacies.  Look at the raw data with a critical eye, then draw your own logical conclusion.

Homo erectus Was Fully Human    10/20/2003
Sometimes a scientific quest leads to adventure.  The cover story of Science News¹ for the week of Oct. 18 tells the seafaring tale of Robert G. Bednarik, who set out to prove that Asian populations of Homo erectus were the first sailors.  The reason?  Stone tools dated at 800,000 years (too old for Homo sapiens, but within the assumed age of H. erectus) have been found on Indonesian islands that presumably had no land bridges during the last million years.  He finds the usual explanation for this a stretch (emphasis added in all quotes):

If hardy teams of H. erectus reached Flores [an island off Bali] by sea, their mode of transportation remains unknown.  Some scientists suspect that small numbers of Stone Age folk accidentally [sic!] drifted as far as Flores after climbing onto thick mats of vegetation that sometimes form near the Southeast Asian coast.
    That speculation doesn’t float, contends Bednarik.  Only a craft propelled by its occupants could negotiate the treacherous straits separating one Indonesian island from the next.

What a great story on courage to challenge the mainstream.  Both sides are still corrupted by the fallacious dating of alleged human ancestors, but at least Bednarik got out there and did some real experiments, even to the point of putting his life in danger.  Talk is cheap because the supply exceeds the demand.  Science is supposed to be about observation and experimentation, not mere talk.  It’s easy to spin a tall tale about floating on a mat of vegetation, but go try it sometime in 16-foot waves!
    Courage notwithstanding, Bednarik is enough of an evolutionist to spin his own just-so story to explain away the evidence:

He suspects that genetic and cultural evolution played out slowly [sic] among human ancestors over the past 2 million years [sic].  Groups that moved across Africa and Asia interbred to some extent and passed cultural innovations back and forth.  In this continental melting pot, a hazy biological boundary separated H. erectus from H. sapiens.  About 1 million years ago [sic], Stone Age Asians probably [sic] congregated near coasts, and their fishing rafts were eventually adapted for sea travel.  Remains of these shore inhabitants would have [sic] since become submerged and so are unavailable to archaeologists.

The story goes on, but at least Bednarik’s version flies in the face of the “out of Africa” myth popular among mainstream evolutionists.
  But think about it: if these individuals could speak in verbal language, with symbolic thoughts, and build boats and sail them, they were not primitive – they were human beings.  Only an evolutionary mindset puts these individuals into an ancestral lineage with apes:

Some scientists, however, don’t think any part of Bednarik’s theory holds water.  Stone Age folk 800,000 years ago didn’t make long-range plans, talk to one another, or form cultural groups, so they couldn’t have organized efforts to build rafts and row to islands, contends archaeologist Iain Davidson of the University of New England in Australia.

And why not?  Because they were too stupid, too unevolved, to have been capable of such technology.  That is an assumption, a belief: not a proof.  Where, Dr. Davidson, is your empirical evidence?  Bednarik at least has artwork and tools found on remote islands.  Implements can be relatively primitive without being sub-human.  To this day, naked Indians in the Amazon jungles subsist in grass huts with blow-gun darts, yet they are fully human, with language, culture and all the capabilities for abstract conceptual understanding.  If stones were the only thing available to make tools, you would have made stone tools, too.  Some people like the simple life.
    Once again, the actual fossils in the assumed ape-man ancestry fit either of two categories: clearly ape or clearly human.  It happened with Neanderthal and now it is happening with Homo erectus.
    Do you need a degree to impact the world of science?  It can help, but look at this example of an outsider.  Sometimes college credentials only steer otherwise bright minds into the mainstream.  It takes independence, critical thinking and courage to fight the current.  Those skills are not necessarily taught in the university.  Sometimes they are untaught!  As long as you do exemplary work that cannot be refuted, you can shake up the world of ivory tower eggheads.  Now if we can just get them to admit their dating methods also don’t float, we’ll be making real progress.  Meanwhile, shake hands with Brother Erectus.
Next headline on: Early Man.

If it works, this will be wonderful news for many who suffer from these diseases.  The mechanism of the cure points out the specificity of the genetic code.  When the stop code is correctly located, the ribosome knows when the protein ends, and all is well.  If a premature stop code has been inserted in the gene by a mutation, protein construction is aborted, and the incomplete polypeptide is destined for destruction.  The new drug has a way to latch onto the stop code and prevent it from being interpreted as such.  It’s like putting a cover over a stop sign, or commenting out an extraneous EXIT directive in a computer script.
    Notice how damaging single mutations like this can be (see Oct. 1 headline on pleiotropic effects).  Sufferers of these genetic diseases are not surviving as the fittest.  They are not evolving into something more complex.  Complex life is sustainable only because a sophisticated factory of machines work against equilibrium to produce interacting, functional networks (see Sep. 29 headline).
    Throughout the uncountable zillions of copies of genes made daily throughout the living world, most mistakes are caught and corrected.  Occasionally, one slips through.  The results can be devastating.  Why mistakes are allowed to exist is a question for philosophers and theologians, but it is exciting to see that scientists, discerning the inner workings of the genetic code, are finding ways to bypass the errors and provide new hope for millions affected by them.
    Actually, every human is suffering under the mutational load accumulated through thousands of years of inheritance.  It is very probable that the first humans were much more fit (i.e., possessing error-free genomes).  Only presumption believes evolution is improving our fitness.  The evidence indicates we are devolving, because many harmful mutations are known, but there are no unequivocal examples of helpful mutations.
    By exercising good design science, we can apply our intelligence to help repair what errors our genetic mechanisms occasionally let slip, but we should be not proud: compared to the built-in manufacturing and proofreading processes in the cell, our techniques amount to little more than sticking a finger in a dike.
Next headline on: Genes and DNA. • Next headline on: Health.

Titan’s Oceans and Other Saturnian Mysteries Await Cassini’s Probing Eyes    10/16/2003
Exclusive  Planetary scientists gathered at JPL for a quarterly meeting continued their planning for the upcoming arrival of Project Cassini/Huygens at Saturn.  Thursday morning’s session included a pre-press announcement that lakes may have been discovered on Titan.  Steven J. Ostro displayed data collected from the Arecibo radio telescope, published later in the day in Science¹.  Radar echoes from the surface of the distant atmosphere-shrouded moon give strong evidence of specular reflection at certain longitudes which could only come from very smooth surfaces, similar to the glint of sunlight, reflected off the oceans at visible wavelengths, seen from Earth orbit by Shuttle astronauts.
    If the interpretation fits, Titan may be the only other body in our solar system with a liquid surface.  Water, of course, would be frozen solid; instead, Titan may have lakes or oceans of liquid methane, ethane or nitrogen some 10 to 200 km wide.  (See also, in the same issue of Science², Ralph Lorenz' commentary on the Arecibo findings.)
    Cassini’s ride-along partner, the Huygens Probe, will separate from the Cassini orbiter next year for a parachuted descent to Titan’s surface on January 14, 2005.  Jean-Pierre Lebreton, project scientist for Huygens, expressed excitement that the probe may land with a splash.

Earth-based instruments have done just about all they can do at this point to determine the nature of Titan’s mysterious surface.  It is one of the most bizarre locales in the solar system.  No other moon has a substantial atmosphere.  Titan has 10 times the nitrogen density of Earth, and 1.5 times the atmospheric pressure.  The Huygens probe will descend for over an hour through the atmosphere and then measure the surface with multiple instruments for about 30 minutes.  It is prepared to survive in solid or liquid.  The Cassini orbiter will supplement the adventurous Huygens mission by making over 44 near encounters with Titan, mapping the entire globe with visible, infrared, and radar instruments.
    Titan poses a severe challenge to scientists who believe it formed 4.6 billion years ago.  As discussed before here (see 01/17/2003 headline), its thick atmosphere should have long ago eroded away and collapsed.  Also, as reported this year (see April 25 headline), the thick deposits of hydrocarbons that should have accumulated for billions of years appear to be missing.  To maintain the long ages, planetary scientists have to hypothesize either that the atmosphere formed recently, or that there is a mechanism for recycling the methane “space blanket” that sustains the atmosphere.  Others suggest that outgassing replenishes the atmosphere and subduction removes the precipitated deposits.  It would be exceptional, however, if this small moon, so cold and far from the sun, had any such mechanisms; would these not also suggest the moon could not be as old as claimed?
    Titan is not the only Saturnian indicator of youth.  The rings, also, are considered young (geologically speaking) by all planetary scientists.  The Saturn system, in fact, is filled with puzzles.  Just before the dawn of the “approach science” phase, which begins in January, anticipation is growing at what might be discovered.  This reporter took the opportunity to chat with several Cassini scientists and ask them what they consider to be the biggest mysteries at Saturn.  They readily responded as if enjoying the question.  Saturn’s high winds, its magnetic field, the detail in the rings, the fresh-looking surface of Enceladus, and Titan’s atmosphere were quickly listed.  How do the ring spokes form?  Are they clouds of fine dust caused by impacting meteoroids?  If so, this is another evidence the rings are being eroded rapidly.  Are there embedded moons that can resupply the ring material?
    Saturn’s magnetic field is a puzzle.  Why is the magnetic field aligned with the rotational axis?  A German scientist working with the magnetometer team readily admitted that Saturn does not fit the convection-dynamo theory.  He said that the models prove there must be some deviation between the two axes for the dynamo model to work.  He also admitted that most of the magnetic fields in the solar system are still very puzzling, such as those at Ganymede (which should have none), Mercury (which should have none), Uranus (which is highly inclined and off center), and Neptune (ditto).
    An investigator working with the ultraviolet spectrometer, when asked if he wanted to make any predictions, wisely responded that we are going to Saturn in exploratory mode: i.e., we are just going to see what is there.  On that everyone can agree; nothing helps a model like data.  (Too bad evolutionary biologists have different rules, including Finagle’s).
    Like early explorers, Cassini is going to bring us unprecedented observations.  How appropriate on the 200th anniversary of Lewis and Clark to be exploring new terra incognita.  A whole generation has grown up since Pioneer 11 saw Saturn briefly in 1979, and the Voyagers in 1980 and 1981.  They passed through this wilderness, but Cassini is setting up camp and building a fort.  The nominal mission lasts into 2008, but an extended mission is likely.  The flood of new and better data is sure to astound scientists for years.  If history is any guide, the number of puzzles solved will be surpassed by new ones.  So good luck, Cassini!  All of us back on Earth are vicariously on board with you for the ride of a lifetime.
    Any news of interest will be reported here on Creation-Evolution Headlines as soon as available.
Next headline on: Solar System. • Next headline on: Dating Methods. • Next headline on: Physics. • Next headline on: Geology.

Approximately 25% of the genome consists of gene-poor regions greater than 500 kb [kilobases], termed gene deserts.  These segments have been minimally explored, and their functional significance remains elusive.  One category of functional sequences postulated to lie in gene deserts is gene regulatory elements that have the ability to modulate gene expression over very long distances.

The demonstration that several of the enhancers characterized in this study reside in gene deserts highlights that these regions can indeed serve as reservoirs for sequence elements containing important functions.  Moreover, our observations have implications for studies aiming to decipher the regulatory architecture of the human genome, as well as those exploring the functional impact of sequence variation.  The size of genomic regions believed to be functionally linked to a particular gene may need to be expanded to take into account the possibility of essential regulatory sequences acting over near-megabase distances.

A man walked into a desert at high noon, saw nothing but sand, and concluded, “There’s no life here.”  Was he being a good scientist?  Notice how geneticists have focused their gaze primarily on genes, and considered these gene-poor deserts uninteresting.  There may be much more than meets the eye.  At night, a desert can come alive with owls, coyotes, beetles, and moths; by day, a snake or lizard might be just over the next dune.  It would seem a scientist who believes in intelligent design would be more motivated to ask, Wonder what that region is there for?, while an evolutionist might conclude, That’s just leftover junk from our animal past.  A Nobel prize winning biologist recently said as much (see Aug. 24 headline).
Next headline on: Genes and DNA. • Next headline on: Intelligent Design.

Our baloney alert just went off.  This was a complex process using an already-available complex enzyme.  It has nothing whatever to do with the origin of life.  What are “primitive information-carrying molecules,” for crying out loud?  Information is not information if there is no function.  “To be or not to be” is not information if there is not a human who understands “that is the question.”
    All we get from evolutionists are wiggle words.  Here they use both suggest and might in one sentence.  Suggest to whom?  Only to one already a believer in evolution.  In science, one cannot use hunch words indefinitely without proof.  A hypothesis is OK if it leads to a demonstration of fact.  If not, it is nothing more than a pure guess that must be judged wrong until proved right.  Evolutionists should not be allowed to pretend chemical evolution is scientific when it is merely a collection of maybe, might, perhaps, suggested, inferred hunches beset by a host of intractable problems.
Next headline on: Origin of Life. • Next dumb story.

Finding a new organism is always exciting, but right away, the evolutionists run from Adventureland to Fantasyland via Mr. Toad’s Wild Ride, tell their Mad Hatter tale, and lead the news media in the chorus, It’s a small, small Darwinian world.  To impress the tourists, they pull out their bag of story-building tricks, like Bayesian inference (which being translated, means “Darwin in, garbage out”), heuristic maximum parsimony, bootstrapping, likelihood models, molecular clocks, phylograms and such.  They run their bells-and-whistles software programs like Modeltest and MrBayes, all built on evolutionary assumptions.  Then they pour this contaminated mixture with the frog into the blender, mix well, and hand you a green evolutionary story to swallow.
    Let us all understand that all they found was a living frog.  It sits on the lab counter, doing just fine, and isn’t evolving from or to anything else.  Their story has a number of problems, which Hedges (though he accepts it) is kind enough to point out (emphasis added):

• What we don’t know about biodiversity:  “This discovery also draws attention to our incomplete knowledge of biological diversity, even at the higher taxonomic levels.”
• Differences between the geological clock and the molecular clock: “If it diverged from the Seychellean frogs (sooglossids) as early as molecular clocks indicate, 130 million years ago, continental breakup would not directly explain its origin – India did not split from the Seychelles until 65 million years later.” 
• Land bridges to the rescue: “But why does the current biota reflect such isolation while the late Mesozoic fossils of India indicate past land connections ('biotic bridges')?  Perhaps those bridges were more like chains of islands that allowed some – but not all – groups to disperse, as occurred in the past history of plant and animal interchange between North and South America.”  Did these bridges have turnstiles to allow some organisms to pass, but not others?  Sounds pretty ad hoc.  Were the frogs strong enough to leap from island to island?
• Madagascar doesn’t fit the story: “Nonetheless, it is unclear why India’s Mesozoic partner Madagascar lacks some major groups of vertebrates, such as caecilians and representatives of the new frog family, when evolutionary analyses indicate that they should have been there in the past.”

So they can partially explain the frog’s evolution if and only if they are allowed to tweak the molecular clock, get continents to break apart on cue, get selective land bridges to appear, and get more funding to fill in the blanks.  Don’t trust any storyteller who feeds you the line that this family of frogs took a 130 million year ride.  Hedges concludes, “Clearly, there is a need for more fossil collections and investigation of living faunas, and for refined molecular clocks, to better understand how continental drift influenced India’s biota” – if at all.
    In short, nothing in the data that supports the story; the story is just colorful wrapping paper around the data.  Frogs, however, have a way of hopping out of their wrappings.  This is a good time to read our frog joke.
Next headline on: Fossils.

A key question in the evolution of biological complexity is, how have integrated biological systems evolved?  Darwinists proposed natural selection as the driving force of evolution. However, the striking similarities between biological and nonbiological complexities have led to the argument that a set of universal (or ahistorical) rules account for the formation of all complexities.  The yeast protein interaction network is an example of a complex biological system and contributes to the complexity at the cellular level. By analyzing the growth pattern and reconstructing the evolutionary path of the yeast protein interaction network, we can address whether or not network growth is contingent on evolutionary history, which is the key disagreement between the Darwinian view and the universality view.   (Emphasis added in all quotes, and embedded references deleted.)

The key disagreement between the Darwinian view and the universality view on the evolution of biological complexity is the role of historical contingency.  Undoubtedly, efforts to search for universal rules benefit our understanding on biological complexity.  However, by using the yeast protein interaction network as an example, we observed a correlation between network evolution and the universal tree of life.  This observation strongly argues that network evolution is not ahistorical, but is, in essence, a string of historical events.

Poor Charlie is having a hard time.  He’s becoming the new Rodney Dangerfield.  The evolutionists think they have something better now: universal self-organizing principles – things just spontaneously self-organize into complex systems.  Take aim, all creationist hunters: there’s a sittin’ duck fer ya.
Next headline on: Darwinism and Evolutionary Theory.

But others believe Mendel and Darwin were on different intellectual tracks.  “Once Gregor Mendel is placed back into the intellectual landscape that he would himself recognize, it’s clear that he would always seen The Origin of Species [sic] as a challenge to his own worldview.  For his part, Darwin was also being guided by long-since outdated forms of scientific thought.  His lifelong commitment to theories of blending heredity would always have precluded his taking Mendel’s results seriously.  Seldom can two important scientific thinkers have written at such hopelessly crossed purposes,” says science historian John Waller in a recent book, Fabulous Science.   (Emphasis added.)

The Darwinian Revolution was well on its way before Mendel’s seminal paper on dominant and recessive traits in garden peas was “discovered” by neo-Darwinists, even though the monk of Brno had sent copies to leading scientists of his day.  Mendel believed his experimental work argued for the persistence of traits.  Being Catholic, he almost certainly opposed the Darwinian belief that all organisms had descended with modification from simpler ancestors.
    Whether blending or non-blending inheritance, either paradigm spelled trouble for Darwinism.  As stated above, blending of new traits would have diluted them to oblivion in short order.  But Mendelian persistence of traits is descent without modification.  It would take the neo-Darwinists a major rethinking in the 1930s to incorporate Mendel’s laws into evolutionary theory.  The result?  Mutations are the source of genetic variation.  That’s right, folks: shoot bullets at the car and it might evolve into a Porsche.  That story lasted for awhile, but now it seems to be falling out of favor.  The new tall tale is that gene duplication provides the raw material.  Or maybe self-organizing networks.  Give ’em time; they’ll think of something to scale the brick wall Mendel erected in their path.
Next headline on: Genes and DNA. • Next headline on: Darwinism and Evolutionary Theory.

More than 60 of the world’s leading science academies have called for a UN ban on the reproductive cloning of humans, to prevent the exploitation of vulnerable people.  But they also urged that any such ban should not extend to cloning human tissue for the treatment of diseases.