One might expect that there would be a healthy debate in intellectual circles over whether the appearance of design in biology is real or illusory.... The reason that debate does not occur is that the intellectual culture of our time enforces a distinction between belief and knowledge, and between faith and reason, which makes it virtually impossible to ask the right questions.
— Phillip E. Johnson, The Right Questions: Truth, Meaning & Public Debate (InterVarsity, 2002), p. 40.

But Clark says none of these phenomena are “alive” because none of them have the embedded instructions of a genetic code.  We know there are no instructions, because there has not been any mutation over the years.  They follow the rules of physics rather than embedded instructions, and so they behave the same every time.  Mutation, says Clark, is the key to understanding whether or not something has embedded instructions.

Clark’s definition hits closer to the heart of life’s distinctive property: the ability to use and process information.  Gerald Joyce tried to incorporate Darwinism into the very definition of life, but Clark points out a problem: “How could you tell if something has undergone Darwinian evolution?  The time scales involved are enormous – scientists would need a complete understanding of an organism’s fossil history before being able to declare that the object is, indeed, alive.”  And as we have shown repeatedly, that history is non-existent, both in the fossil record and the genes.
    Instead of an evolutionary definition of life, Clark has proposed one that essentially presupposes intelligent design.  Genetic instructions – information – are key I.D. concepts.  It doesn’t matter whether the information is encoded in DNA or some other molecule; the ability to process information is universal in living things, and qualifies as a defining characteristic.  There is no natural process that can produce coded instructions that are understood and carried out by another process according to a language convention.  And yet this is exactly what occurs in human societies, and in living cells.  Instructions imply intelligence.
    Would this definition mean robots are alive?  According to Clark’s other two criteria, not unless they use energy and reproduce.  That’s a long way off, so we’ll leave that question to some future philosopher/engineer.  (Even so, it would require a lot of intelligence to produce a robot capable of reproduction.)  Then how about Chris Adami’s digital organisms?  They have instructions and reproduce, but they do not process energy and are therefore not alive (but they too are products of intelligent design).  How about viruses?  Again, they are incapable of utilizing energy without help from a host.  The definition looks solid.  So we concur with the inclusion of instructions in the definition of life; this is a positive step, fitting well with intelligent design concepts and life as we know it.  Combine Clark’s idea with Schrodinger’s inclusion of entropy due to the Second Law of Thermodynamics, and you have a definition of life that essentially excludes naturalism, because natural processes inexorably proceed toward equilibrium, which by definition, is the complete lack of instructions (i.e., specification).  Follow the instructions back far enough, and you always find intelligence.
    (Now, for a refresher on the degree of information found in even the most “primitive” life on earth, read our December 17 headline about molecular motors.)
Next headline on: Origin of Life. • Next headline on: Genes and DNA. • Next headline on: Intelligent Design.

These findings reveal a surprising plasticity of GroEL/S, which can be exploited to aid folding of recombinant proteins.  Our studies also reveal a conflict between specialization and generalization of chaperonins as increased GFP folding comes at the expense of the ability of GroEL/S to fold its natural substrates.

What does this paper have to do with evolution, really?  So what if a cell has generalists and specialists?  So does an Olympic team: there are champion discus-throwers, who only are good at that one event, and decathletes.  Does that mean that the discus thrower evolved from the decathlon champ?  Similarly, in a factory you might have a general drill press and a very specialized drill for particular needs.  Only an evolutionist’s imagination connects the two by common ancestry.  In their experiment in “directed evolution” (an oxymoron, since evolution is supposed to be directionless – what they did was only good old-fashioned artificial selection, or optimization, which implies intelligent design), they turned a decathlete into a discus thrower.  But then he could no longer compete in the pole vault or run the 1500.  Their evidence says nothing about common ancestry.  Here they coached a team of skilled athletes, but then imagine them morphing into each other by a blind, purposeless process of evolution.  How about a little applause, instead, for their champion performances?
    The evolutionary talk in this kind of scientific paper is worthless.  It adds nothing to the report, and is pure smoke-blowing, neither describing how these chaperones evolved or how they could evolve.  O, for peer-reviewers like Sergeant Friday who would strip out the interpretive fluff, and insist, “Just the facts, ma’am.”
Next headline on: The Cell. • Next headline on: Darwinism and Evolutionary Theory.

This is a vital issue for our time.  Like abortion, it engages arguments from science, politics, health and ethics.  It’s one to watch in 2003.
Next headline on: Politics and Ethics. • Next headline on: Health.

This has two very interesting consequences.  Firstly, since over 50% of the local small craters are fall-back ejecta from this single event, the surface age of the Athabasca valley is wrong.  Surface ages are based on counting craters and assuming they are the product of the slow random accumulation of individual impacts from space.  If a whole bunch arrive in a single event, then the assumptions are wrong and the surface [is] even younger than we believed previously.
    Another consequence is that the crater and all its secondaries are so fresh looking and unweathered, even when the crater ejecta is fine dusty material, that they must be very young.  Alfred raised a laugh among the scientific audience by noted [sic] that he had checked the photos from the Viking mission some 25 years ago to be sure it hadn’t occurred since then!

You can tell the order of events by looking at craters (e.g., if one overlaps another), but you can’t tell when they occurred without making assumptions.  Here we find two assumptions that were wrong.  Yet the second article makes glib assertions about a 3.7 billion year old epoch and a set of craters 500 million years old “or so.”  That “or so” phrase is big enough to accommodate Skinner’s Constant.*
*Skinner’s Constant: that quantity which, when added to, subtracted from, multiplied or divided by the number you got, gives you the number you should have gotten.
Next headline on: Dating Methods. • Next headline on: Solar System.

Not too much should be gleaned from this report, since there are many assumptions and sources of error, but it seems consistent with the view that human population was wiped out at the time of the Flood and recovered slowly during the Ice Age that followed, as populations migrated from Babel out of the Fertile Crescent and into Europe and Asia.  At least Bible historians would not have a problem with this thesis (except for their evolution-assumed date of 40,000 years ago), but it would seem evolutionists have a puzzle on why a bottleneck would affect the entire human population.
Next headline on: Early Man. • Next headline on: Genes and DNA.

New Ediacara Fossils Exacerbate Cambrian Explosion   12/23/2002
More fossils of the Ediacara biota, assumed to be the earliest multicellular animal fossils, have been found in Newfoundland 2 km lower than earlier discoveries.  Narbonne and Gehling of Queen’s University, Ontario, were surprised by the “unexpectedly large size and complexity“ of the fossils (some up to nearly 2 meters long), which imply “animals appeared very soon after the meltdown of the ‘snowball’ glaciers.”  (Here they are referring to the “snowball earth” hypothesis of a worldwide glaciation, “the most severe ice age Earth has ever known” assumed to have occurred before life arose.)  The fossil find is published in the January issue of Geology and is summarized on EurekAlert.
    In another paper in the same issue of Geology, British geologist Derek Martin shows that soft tissue can fossilize easily under the right conditions.  His team got eggs to mineralize in three weeks under conditions of anoxia and lowered pH.  The summary on EurekAlert mentions that recently, “fossilized eggs and embryos have been discovered in Precambrian deposits, which may help to shed light on early animal evolution.”  Martin’s experiments “reinforce the opinion that the fossils are eggs and embryos of animals, rather than algal cells, which the fossil material was originally described as.”

No kidding this sheds light on early animal evolution.  It sheds the light of truth that there was no early animal evolution; animals were already there, fully formed, up to two meters long, and able to lay eggs.  Do you realize how complex an animal has to be to lay eggs?  For a long time, paleontologists thought that the round objects in Precambrian strata were “simple” algal cells (as if cells able to perform photosynthesis are simple), but if Martin is correct, they are complex animal embryos.  He also shows that the old excuse that Precambrian fossils are missing because soft parts do not fossilize well is false.  They can fossilize – quickly and easily.  Deep within the earliest Cambrian layers are complex animals up to two meters long, even lower in the strata than the Ediacara fossils similar to those in the Burgess Shale that dazzled Gould.  This cannot but be disheartening news for those looking for evidence of evolution in the earliest rocks.  The Cambrian explosion reveals a sudden profusion of complex life forms from the very beginning.  The sound of the explosion can no longer be muffled by evolutionary insulation.
Next headline on: Geology • Next headline on: Fossils

The Universe is not as bouncy as some think, say two physicists.  If a Big Crunch follows the Big Bang, it may get stuck that way for ever.
    A fluid of black holes would bung up space.  There would be nothing to drive another Big Bang, and nowhere else to go.  The Universe would be, you might say, stuffed.

Whether Kelvin’s heat death or these guys’ big crunch, the inexorable nature of the second law of thermodynamics dictates that the universe must end not in a bang, but a whimper.  The universe cannot be infinitely old.  Lord Kelvin said, “We have the sober scientific certainty that the heavens and earth shall ‘wax old as doth a garment’ ... Dark indeed would be the prospects of the human race if unilluminated by that light which reveals a ‘new heavens and a new earth’”.
Next headline on: Cosmology.

“Out of the same facts of anatomy and development men of equal ability and repute have brought the most opposite conclusions,” he wrote.  “To take for instance the question of the ancestry of the Chordata, the problem on which I was myself engaged, even if we neglect fanciful suggestions, there remain two wholly incompatible views as to the lines of Vertebrate descent, each well supported and upheld by many.  From the same facts opposite conclusions are drawn.  Facts of the same kind will take us no further.  The issue turns not on the facts but on the assumptions.”  He then proceeded to burn his boats in spectacular fashion: “Surely we can do better than this.  Need we waste more effort in these vain and sophistical disputes?”

Thomas Hunt Morgan was also leaving old-fashioned evolutionary biology for experimental science, abandoning various worms for the fruitfly, on whose narrow and bristly shoulders rests a century of work on comparative developmental biology.  The work on the genome of Ciona [the sea squirt] can thus trace its lineage to Bateson and Morgan and the very foundations of genetics. ... Welcome back, little squirt.

More vaporware.  He does not say it does, or provide any evidence it will.  In fact, it already contains a conundrum: these sea squirts apparently contain a complex mechanism for synthesizing cellulose – something only plants do – yet they are not plants!  Gee puzzles, “Sea squirts have some interesting physiological quirks, the most bizarre of which is the manufacture of cellulose for their distinctive outer coverings, or ‘tunics’.  Some of the enzymes involved in cellulose metabolism are undoubtedly home-grown, but the report of a cellulose synthase gene, previously found in plants, is unique for animals and might have been an import from nitrogen-fixing bacteria.”  Now we’re really in trouble; we can’t tell if this is a case of convergent evolution (i.e., multiple miracles), or lateral gene transfer.  If the latter, how do we know the whole picture of the evolutionary tree of life isn’t tangled up with cross-limbs?  Or that there is a tree at all?
    What is more interesting in the Bateson quote is that it reveals in hindsight that for 120 years evolutionists have assumed there is a family tree for vertebrates with no evidence to support it (else why is Gee looking to the sea squirt genome for hope?).  The evidence was so lacking even back then that these two prominent biologists abandoned evolutionary theorizing in frustration, and went back to the lab to do real empirical scientific work.  We think that would be good advice for today’s evolutionary biologists, since comparative genomics is still failing to provide clear evidence for common descent.  Often, the trees inferred from the genes differ markedly from those deduced from outward form.  If one cannot trust morphology and phenotype, what does this do to the other historic attempts to build family trees on outward appearance?
    Gee thinks much good came from the historic debate: “But we owe the existence of genetics, genomics and, arguably, a large part of molecular biology to the frustration of two young men unable to coax the secrets of evolution from creatures such as Ciona intestinalis.”  But these advances came out of their abandonment of evolutionary speculating!  Nor have genetics, genomics and molecular biology since been the unequivocal boon to evolutionary theory that Gee implies.  Is there a lesson here?  Abandoning worthless speculation is good for science.  Let Bateson’s lesson echo from history: “Need we waste more effort in these vain and sophistical disputes?”
Next headline on: Darwinism and Evolutionary Theory. • Next headline on: Genes and DNA.

There are a mighty lot of mights in this tale.  These rocks might be the right age, if evolution were true.  Assuming that, the sulfide inclusions might have survived subduction into the mantle where they might have been ejected by volcanoes and discovered by diamond miners.  Methane might have been produced by bacteria, if the sulfate levels in the oceans might have been low enough.  Then there might have been enough methane produced to get the earth warm enough to keep from freezing.  This story is beginning to look like a house of cards in a breeze, but then there’s the earthquake: “an oxygen-free atmosphere, flooded by UV light.”  That, folks, means death to any living thing exposed to it.  How can evolutionists continue to hope against hope?  When does hope become false hope, and cross over the line into fantasy?
Next headline on: Geology.

The process of adaptation occurs on two timescales.  In the short term, natural selection merely sorts the variation already present in a population, whereas in the longer term genotypes quite different from any that were initially present evolve through the cumulation of new mutations.  The first process is described by the mathematical theory of population genetics.  However, this theory begins by defining a fixed set of genotypes and cannot provide a satisfactory analysis of the second process because it does not permit any genuinely new type to arise.  The evolutionary outcome of selection acting on novel variation arising over long periods is therefore difficult to predict.

This is another worthless computer trick, built on the fallacy of analogy, vastly oversimplifying the real living world.  As we have seen before, they salt the mixture with external information that would not have been present in the real world, and worse, they define fitness in terms of survival, which makes it a tautology.  Despite their bluffing title, “Macroevolution simulated with autonomously replicating computer programs,” they did no such thing.
    This is old news, so far.  What we always find more interesting are the candid admissions of the lack of evidence for real evolution.  The issue in the debate over creation vs evolution is not about microevolution – population dynamics that affect pre-existing traits like finch size and shape or peppered moth coloration – because that is observed and not controversial.  It’s about large-scale change.  What most people think of upon hearing the word evolution is macroevolution.  This is what Darwin claimed it meant: a process of natural selection able to change the first primitive cell to humans (or any other complex life-form), with all the varieties of organisms in between.  These authors fail utterly to demonstrate macroevolution.  They fail to provide a connection between the short timescale process (microevolution) and the long timescale process (macroevolution); they fail to describe any example of a beneficial mutation; they fail to show how mutations could accumulate to build a new complex organ or function; they fail to define fitness in non-tautological terms; and they fail to translate their simplistic computer simulation to the real world.  They rely on the discredited founder effect, and their simulation actually shows devolution, not evolution: the genome size decreased, and the number of instructions executed by the survivors decreased also.  As usual, they merely assume evolution, not prove it.  But in their introduction, quoted above, they reveal the embarrassing fact that real macroevolution cannot be predicted (therefore is not scientific), and that only microevolution has any evidence to back it up (which is not really evolution in the Darwinian sense).
    Most readers of Nature and other journals probably do not have time to read the body of most articles, but undoubtedly scan the titles.  We have shown here and before that many time what the title gives the body takes away.  Are readers getting the impression that evolutionary theory is supported by mounds of evidence, just from looking over hot-air titles?  Based on our experience reporting evolution stories, we propose a new Murphyism: evidence in a scientific paper is inversely proportional to the amount of bluffing in the title.
Next headline on: Darwinism and Evolutionary Theory. • Next dumb story.

Jesus Christ said to would-be disciples, who wanted instant gratification of being with a popular leader, “For which of you, intending to build a tower, does not sit down first and count the cost, whether he has enough to finish it— lest, after he has laid the foundation, and is not able to finish, all who see it begin to mock him, saying, ‘This man began to build and was not able to finish.’  Or what king, going to make war against another king, does not sit down first and consider whether he is able with ten thousand to meet him who comes against him with twenty thousand? ” (Luke 14:28-31).  The Bible repeatedly warns men (and women) to count the cost of their choices.  Evolutionists would say that risk-taking and aggressive behavior are just traits that enable males to hunt or find a mate, so there is nothing “immoral” about them.  We’d like to see an evolutionist professor explain to his son why he cannot let his passions run wild, if wildness is what evolution has produced.  Creationists who believe the Bible understand, to the contrary, that irrational and antisocial behaviors are abnormalities in the world: they are the result of sin and rebellion against the Creator.  It takes faith (obedience) and then self-control to overcome these innate tendencies.  (Interestingly, this is the second “politically incorrect” report this month that indicates that male-female differences are innate, not imposed; see also the Dec. 11 headline.)
   It is also a Biblical principle that leadership and protectorship are roles God designed for men.  This implies confidence and some impulsiveness; combine that with short-term thinking and selfish appetites corrupted by sin, and you have the makings of a criminal.  That’s why parents, especially fathers, need to discipline their sons and teach them to think about the consequences of their actions: “Foolishness is bound up in the heart of a child; the rod of correction will drive it far from him” (Proverbs 22:15).
    We need to be reminded, of course, that there are always exceptions to broad-brush generalizations; there are risk-taking girls and sensible boys.  Some boys need to learn to take more risks and overcome their fears.  Some girls live like there’s no tomorrow.  Most of the great religious leaders of history have been strong, virile men; nevertheless, the overall trend is clear.  These studies show that women, in general, have a better innate sense for discerning consequences of their actions than their male counterparts; men need remedial training in this area.  This pours cold water on the husband’s rationalization that “church is for women and children; I’m a man, and I can stand on my own two feet without that crutch.”  No; you’re an impulsive sinner, and you don’t look far enough down the road you’re on.
    Risk-taking under control can be a good and powerful thing, stimulating a man to become an entrepreneur and create jobs, or to be proactive in protecting his family, or to explore a new environment.  It must be harnessed by reason and self-control.  Most of all, men – and women – need to look beyond this life to eternity: “For what shall it profit a man, if he gain the whole world [immediate gratification], and lose his own soul [consequences]?” (Matthew 16:26).
Next headline on: Health. • Next headline on: Bible.

Trust in science could also be diminished by people who exploit scientific uncertainty for political ends, such as by casting doubt on the evidence for global warming or evolution.  A few ‘sceptics’ appearing on TV can confuse a public that expects monolithic truth from science.  All that scientists can do is explain that scientific ‘truth’ keeps changing in the light of new evidence, and provide the bigger picture.

Let’s get this straight.  Scientists are objective, neutral, unbiased, truthful, disinterested, honest, and always wear a white lab coat.  They do not have political agenda (but of course, doubters in the evidence for global warming or evolution always do).  Is something wrong with this picture?
    Consider first of all the whole idea that truth and honesty are values.  Where did those “evolve” from?  No civilized person would despise the ideal of the dispassionate, disinterested truth-seeker in the science lab, but this ideal presupposes a certain value system and world view.  Why, it almost sounds like altruism, but we have had evolutionists telling us for years that altruism is only an illusion, because natural selection, by definition, must ultimately promote self-interest.  So altruism is really only a game played blindly by a population to pass along the genes of the fittest.  Nature appears to believe this, publishing these ideas frequently rather than the words of a Prophet who might say something antiquated like, “Greater love hath no man, than one lay down his life for his friends.”  This op-ed piece is cheating.  It is borrowing Christian values without believing in Christ, and hiding its own embarrassing values of self-interest under the rug, while preaching against the sin of self-interest.  Isn’t this spin-doctoring of the worst kind?  A Catholic priest preaching holiness while molesting boys is not altogether different.
    Consider also the claim “scientific ‘truth’ keeps changing in the light of new evidence.”  Truth is put in quotes because it isn’t truth if it keeps changing.  If it changes, what is true today could be false tomorrow.  So will they reject evolution if given new evidence that falsifies it?  No way.  They put ‘sceptics’ [British spelling] in quotes also, because a real skeptic is skeptical about everything except evolution.  The intelligent design movement has been trying to get scientists back to following the evidence wherever it leads, but keep running into stiff walls of opposition by those who will refuse to look at the evidence while accusing the doubters of having a “religious agenda.”  We have shown for over two years that evolutionary storytellers continually spin-doctor every evidence, no matter how contradictory, into their unfalsifiable tale, ignore it altogether, argue from silence, or even present known frauds to keep their story from collapsing.  Even this very issue of Nature calls this past summer’s discovery of the Toumai skull a “triumph” even though, as we and others reported, it throws the whole field of paleoanthropology into confusion and controversy.  What is an agenda (in the bad sense) if not a headstrong movement, unstoppable by evidence or reason?  Is this how to keep the public trust?
    Science began as private work done by amateurs who believed in God and sought to understand His wisdom expressed in His creations.  Within that tradition, most of what Nature publishes, when not stepping out of bounds beyond empirical, observational, repeatable experimentation, is good and honorable.  But science is supposed to be, at its heart, a search for truth, not a political party or special interest group.  Today, science is an institution alongside organized religion, politics, and the stock market.  Perhaps the only way to understand this editorial in Darwinian terms is to see the scientific establishment as an utterly selfish institution that can only keep its memes evolving via game theory.  How about a nice game of charades: pretend to uphold traditional values while espousing Darwinism, a “universal acid” that eats through all traditional beliefs, (in the words of Daniel Dennett, one of today’s champion defenders of evolution).  Pretend to espouse Christian values while undermining the very altruism and truthfulness taught and exemplified by Jesus Christ.  It’s not about trust; it’s about winning the game.
Next headline on: Politics and Ethics. • Next headline on: Intelligent Design.

Whenever you see scientists perform magic tricks, always learn how the trick is done.  The trick is to sneak information in while the viewer is distracted by the action and jargon.  They admit this proves nothing about how life originated, because there is no fossil evidence; it only is a story about how it might have, assuming you believe in chemical evolution and have ruled out a Creator from the start.  So did they create life in a test tube or any such thing?  Not any more than crippling a robot and claiming you have created civilization.  They worked down from an already-existing complex enzyme:

In the current study, Reader and Joyce first created a three-base enzyme (A, U, G) and then performed chemical manipulations to convert all the A to D (diaminopurine, a modified form of A) and biochemical manipulations to remove all the G.  They were left with an enzyme based on a two-letter code (D and U).
    Reader and Joyce insist that their study does not prove life started this way.  It does, however, demonstrate that it is possible to have a genetic system of molecules capable of undergoing Darwinian evolution with only two distinct subunits.

If you took some parts off a working robot, it might still work, in a crippled manner.  Would you therefore have demonstrated that the machine could make itself from nothing, or that it could, over time, make itself into something better?  These molecules would never have done by themselves would Reader and Joyce made them do.  All this paper demonstrates is the power of intelligent design to make things happen according to a predetermined goal.  Any other inference is wishful thinking, but watch the newspapers latch onto the wishful thinking more than the facts.
Next headline on: Origin of Life. • Next headline on: Genes and DNA.

Could viruses have had a beneficial function in the original creation?  Could they have introduced needed genetic material for organisms entering a strange environment?  Viruses are genetic transfer tools; they are not evil in themselves, but just do what they are programmed to do.  In this cursed world, the robots have turned on us.  Food for thought, at least.
Next headline on: Health.

The details are still actively sought, but the overall process goes like this.  One or more of the chemical transitions in the catalytic center causes a specific small movement of neighboring parts of the protein, and this small movement is mechanically amplified into a much larger movement of the core motor domain relative to the “tail.”  Some of the chemical transitions also dramatically change the affinity of the head for the track.  Conversely, binding of the head to the track alters the rates of some specific chemical transitions.  Glossing over all of the uncertain bits, the net result (see Fig. 2) is that the head swivels its way along the track while ATP is hydrolyzed (i.e., in the entertaining but anatomically bizarre terminology of this field, the passive tail is pulled along by a wagging head).

In addition to processivity, other experimentally accessible parameters of a motor include its maximum velocity (~800 nm/s for kinesin; 5-50,000 nm/s for other motors), maximum force (~6 pN for kinesin; step size X force is limited by the energy of ATP hydrolysis, ~100 pN/nm per molecule, roughly 25 kT), maximum rate of ATP hydrolysis (~20/s per head for kinesin; 0.5-100/s for other motors), and affinity for tracks.

Murray only refers to evolution once in his commentary, and that in a purely speculative manner, borrowing the language of intelligent design: “Evidently transport is more expensive than massively redundant manufacturing capability.  Is that why cells evolved so many different kinds of motors (~100 in a typical cell), so that each may be tuned for performance in a small number of highly specialized tasks?  Whatever the reason, biological motors are numerous and diverse.  The few features that motors have in common therefore attract attention from biologists fascinated by these remarkable machines.”  We doubt evolutionists could take much comfort from a statement like that.  Did you catch the subtle personification and teleonomy in his wording?  Yes, once upon a time, the molecules held council, and decided that they needed to evolve not just one highly complex device, but lots of them, so that each may be tuned for highly specialized tasks.  So they rolled dice for awhile, and soon a city was born, its passengers and cargo zipping down automated railway systems at 800 mph in peace and prosperity.
Next headline on: The Cell. • Next headline on: Intelligent Design. • Next amazing story.

In biology, we see a Cambrian Explosion of all the major phyla of animals, fully formed and adapted to their environment, replete with eyes, nervous systems, circulatory systems, articulated limbs and many other complex organs, without precursors.  In cosmology there is a similar phenomenon: fully-formed galaxies with spiral arms as far back as we can see.  Are these two observational facts related?
Next headline on: Cosmology.

Gene duplication has been a major mechanism for increasing genomic complexity and variation during evolution.  The evolutionary history of duplicated genes has been poorly studied along the vertebrate lineage.  Here, we attempt to study that history by analyzing the expression of two members of the Snail family, Snail and Slug [genes], in representatives of the major vertebrate groups.  We find a surprising degree of variability in a subset of the expression sites for both genes in different species.  Although some of the changes can be explained by neofunctionalization or subfunctionalization, others imply reciprocal changes in the expression of the two genes and the reappearance of expression in sites lost earlier in evolution.  Because these changes do not fit easily into current models, we need to invoke additional mechanisms acting on enhancer elements to distribute expression domains and functions of duplicated genes unequally during evolution.

• We have extended these observations to cartilaginous and bony fishes, reptiles, and turtles, and found a much higher degree of variability in domains of expression for this gene pair than expected.
• The present analysis of Snail/Slug duplicated genes during vertebrate evolution reveals a much higher degree of plasticity and complexity than expected and highlights the risk of using expression or function as phylogenetic characters when studying the evolution of gene families.

In this case, we would need to invoke extremely unlikely events as the reversal of degenerative mutations or de novo creation of tissue-specific regulatory elements to account for the reappearance of these expression domains after their loss at earlier stages in evolution.  Although such events may occur over short time-scales, it has such a low probability in our situation that it could be described as an evolutionary reversal, in the sense prohibited by Dollo’s law on the irreversibility of evolutionary changes.  A possibility we cannot formally rule out is that ancestors of all of the species analyzed retained expression of both genes in pnc and tail bud, and that independent enhancer loss by mutation occurred in each lineage.  In this case, the distribution of expression patterns we observe would not reflect common descent, but random variation.  Once more, this is an extremely unlikely scenario, where in all ancestors both duplicated genes were necessarily expressed at all sites simultaneously.

The paper is replete with photos of comparative embryos reminiscent of Haeckel’s drawings, but these ones are original and not faked — and they don’t look anywhere near as similar as Haeckel’s.  How many times have we seen Darwinists trying to cram the data into a belief in evolution, when it doesn’t fit?  They put an optimistic spin into their conclusion, that their data do not “conflict” with the current model, “but extend the range of mechanisms that can act on enhancer elements during evolution to distribute expression domains and functions of duplicated genes unequally.”  So much for Occam’s Razor.  Don’t expect a straightforward evolutionary tree to jump out of the genetic information, but there is always a way to make it fit with plenty of creative imagination.
    This paper is reminiscent of the carnival game where the kid hits a peg with a hammer, only to have another peg pop up somewhere else.  When he hits that, a third pops up, ad infinitum.  An astute kid will realize what’s going on and change his assumptions.  A worldview-challenged kid will think “I’ll figure it out some day; maybe a bigger hammer will help.”
Next headline on: Darwinism and Evolutionary Theory. • Next headline on: Genes and DNA.

We’ve all seen the commercials.  A line of figures walking from left to right, first a shambling ape on all fours; the second, semi-erect with a vague glimmer of intelligence, and perhaps holding a hand-axe; further along, a tall, proud man, carrying a spear and wearing furs; and finally, a user of the latest car or washing machine.  The caption will speak of advancement and progression, something like “Evolution - the Next Step”.

These advertisements reflect the popular view of evolution as a progressive force that drives an inexorable improvement.  But in reality, evolution is based largely on natural selection, a handy term for the interaction between the environment, mutation and superabundance.  Natural selection has neither memory nor foresight; it works only in the here and now.  It is not a force, an entity separate from the materials on which it acts.  Still less can it be personified.

Although one might like to blame the advertising industry for this misrepresentation, a successful copywriter will only hold a mirror up to the zeitgeist, and popular wisdom sees evolution as progressive and directed.  So why, almost a century and a half after Darwin, do we still so readily accept this view of evolution as progressive?

An obvious reason is that the progressive view resonates far more strongly with our own vanity and inclinations than with the more abstract and austere concept of evolution by mindless selection.  In less enlightened times, progressive evolution was used to justify racism and Nazism.  We like to think that we have risen above such things, but the copywriters know better - when we see the canonical parade of evolving humans, we identify with and aspire to be the one at the top.

Perhaps a more subtle explanation is that the progressive view is lodged in the minds of senior advocates of darwinian evolution by natural selection.  As the late J. Z. Young wrote: “We shall expect to find in mammals even more devices for correcting the possible effects of external change than are found in other groups ... culminating in man with his astonishing perception of the ‘World’ around him and his powers of altering the whole fabric of the surface of large parts of the earth to suit his needs.”  Perhaps there is a nature philosopher in us all.

Gee is correct to criticize this false ideal of progressive evolution, and to point out the fallacy of personification seen so often in evolutionary rhetoric.  This editorial could almost have been written by a preacher, as a rebuke against the Darwinian materialists who are inconsistent with their own assumptions, or against the pride and vanity of the sinful human heart.  The difference is that Henry Gee still believes it.  He believes that all the wonders of the living world came from a mindless, directionless, purposeless, opportunistic process of natural selection – yet he sees in his own psyche a glimmer of that same pride of place.  But why would natural selection evolve pride, if it is not progressive?  And if an impersonal natural process cannot be progressive by definition, why is there a progression from simple to complex, from mindless matter to minds that care about what matters?
    Sometimes evolutionists are the best critics of their own world view.  There’s only one who put nature philosophy and progressive evolution into a more pointed, succinct form: “You shall be as gods....”
Next headline on: Movies. • Next headline on: Darwinism and Evolutionary Theory.

Wow, that sounds like a lot of energy.  We need a physicist to explain why this would not boil the water and burn the primordial soup.  Maybe it would also mix up the radioactive clocks, yielding dates vastly in error.  At any rate, evolutionary explanations for the presence of these (relatively) short-lived isotopes in meteorites is not without problems, such as hand-waving, ad-hoc mechanisms, lack of observations, non-repeatability, contradictions, assumptions, etc. (i.e., the usual).
Next headline on: Solar System. • Next headline on: Dating Methods.

This was billed as a lecture about the robotic exploration of Mars, but Dr. Naderi spent over half the time spouting the materialistic hydrogen-to-man Just-So Story of astrobiology.  The silent, receptive audience, like sheep, just took it in.  No one asked a single question about it during the Q&A period.  Californians need to catch up with Ohio.
Next dumb story.

If ideology influences observation, are we immune in 2002?  Is the reigning materialistic philosophy of our day dictating what scientists see in the cell, the cosmos, and the fossil record?  Gosse deserves a better reputation than the buffoon he has been portrayed as by some, as this book review shows.  Still, his mistake was unnecessary.  The Bible does not teach fixity of species; it teaches fixity of kinds, which could be much broader than species.  There is variation, but there are limits; there is mutation, but not transmutation.  With this idea, the Bible and observations agree.  Gosse was an unfortunate dupe of poor definitions of terms that led to a fallacious assumption.  The circle can be squared, if it is a square to begin with, but you can’t get blood out of a turnip.  The Darwinists are in a worse position, trying to squeeze information and design and adaptation out of chance.  Notwithstanding his one faux pas, Philip Gosse stands as another clear example that fervent Christian faith and belief in special creation can be strong motivators to do good science.  For many more and better examples, see our online book-in-progress, The World’s Greatest Creation Scientists from Y1K to Y2K.
Next headline on: Bible.

Nature is quick to insert buzzwords that focus on religion, calling him a “life-long Seventh Day Adventist” in the first sentence, and echoing the plaintiff’s charge that it was rejected for “religious content.”  They also are quick to mention Gentry has only a Master’s degree (his doctoral work was forfeited when he chose to work on radiohaloes, because Georgia Tech felt the implications for the age of the earth might embarrass the school; Gentry subsequently received an honorary doctorate.)  The editorial also fails to mention the high acclaim and peer recognition his work on radiohaloes received (to say nothing of the fact his work cast serious doubt on accepted views of the age of the earth).  Then they end with an offhand reference to other “flaky” ideas the website receives (guilt by association).  No bias here; why, wouldn’t Nature use the same tactics against atheists and materialists?
    Gentry’s theory surely cannot be considered any more “flaky” than what passes for accepted cosmology these days.  In terms of strategy, we feel it unfortunate this is reported as a legal quarrel.  Regardless of the merits of Gentry’s theory, it makes him look like a complaining victim.  One would prefer the free exchange of ideas focuses on his evidence and mathematical analysis, but then again, what can a nonconformist do to get a hearing in the current materialist-dominated scientific establishment?
Next headline on: Cosmology.

No they wouldn’t.  They would be death traps.
Next headline on: Origin of Life. • Next dumb story.

These stories speak for themselves.  How did these creatures achieve better design engineering, instrumentation, feedback, throughput, maintenance, and performance by a process of undirected, purposeless natural selection?
Next headline on: Mammals. • Next headline on: Fish. • Next headline on: Bugs. • Next amazing story.

Are we at the leading edge of a sea change in science education?  Darwinism has long had no contenders, and has been free to indoctrinate students and ridicule opposition with reckless abandon.  This change in the framework is very mild.  It does not bring religion into the classroom (but just watch for the outcry from the usual opponents, like the ACLU).  It keeps science secular.  It does not open the floodgates for pseudoscientific theories to invade the science education.  If you read the language, it is sensible and restrained.  The difference is, students will now have the chance to be exposed to arguments against Darwinism (such as those regularly shown here on Creation-Evolution Headlines from scientific sources themselves) rather than being force-fed a steady diet of evolutionary assumptions and selective evidence.  Once again, Ohio students will be allowed to see science the way it should be seen, as an open-ended search for truth about the natural world, invoking causes that can be checked by experiment.  The Just-So Story method of explaining the world with recourse only to natural causes has to go.  Now, one’s story must be backed up by evidence, and open to criticism by opposing evidence.  Darwinists may not like that, but it’s fair; it is the way the science game is supposed to be played.
    Also important is that teachers are now mandated to provide scientific critiques of evolutionary theory, and students will be tested on it.  As far as the e-word being included more clearly in the standards, great.  Believers in creation or intelligent design do not want evolution to be removed from the curriculum; a student cannot understand the 19th or 20th century without it.  They just want it taught accurately and fairly, not sanitized of the problems.  As Phillip Johnson has said, we want schools to teach more evolution than they will let us.  We agree that the phrase “change through time“ is a misleading equivocation that doesn’t get to the heart of the controversy.  Get the controversy out in the open, and let the students examine all the evidence, for and against.
    One observer feels the turning point in Ohio was the debate with Jonathan Wells and Stephen Meyer defending “teach the controversy” and Ken Miller and Lawrence Krause opposing it.  With this unanimous vote, Ohio did exactly as Stephen Meyer had recommended: don’t mandate teaching intelligent design, but just allow for criticisms of Darwinism to be heard, and extricate naturalistic philosophy from the definition of science.  It’s a small step, but it puts the Darwin Party on a level playing field, where they cannot merely call the shots, but must get back to producing scientific evidence.  The timing of the two films Icons of Evolution and Unlocking the Mystery of Life may have also been instrumental in swaying the board.  Ohio is a populous state and not part of the Bible Belt.  Other states may take their cue from Ohio, and textbook writers are sure to be watching.  This was a significant vote.
    Still, it is a sad commentary on America that a little over 100 years after McGuffey Readers, which contained overt references to Biblical and Christian morals, were widely used in public schools, now school boards must hear months of debate on why students should be allowed to hear even mild criticisms of establishment atheism that wants its myth unassailable that amoral hydrogen, left to itself, becomes people.  (How far have we strayed?  Wishing someone a Merry Christmas is becoming viewed as a hate crime in some schools.  WorldNetDaily reported today about a California teacher who was ordered not to use the C-word.)  Maybe this vote in Ohio is the little cloud like a man’s hand after years of drought.  It won’t be — unless parents and students and open-minded scientists keep pressing the issue.
In the meantime, we wish you a ... whatever.
Next headline on: Education. • Next headline on: Intelligent Design.

We have the perfect solution: Creation Safaris.  Getting kids and adults out into the natural world has many healthy benefits.  When God created people, he didn’t put them in a city sliced up by rectangular streets and alleys and hemmed in by concrete and steel buildings; he put them in a garden, surrounded by color and beauty.  The garden was large and unstructured, providing a wide variety of stimuli to challenge them physically and mentally.  Cities came later, when morally corrupted people needed to build high walls to keep themselves protected from each other.  While cities today are more associations of goods and services for convenience and the economy, they often deprive us of those basic stimuli that keep our minds and bodies at their peak.  We have anecdotal experience that inner-city teens, who might be kings of their turf in town, become subdued and humbled when taken to the forest on a campout.  Maybe that would be good rehabilitation.
    Early American youth were commonly taught hunting and exploring skills.  Theodore Roosevelt was a strong advocate of challenging youth, both boys and girls, with physical activity in the great outdoors.  One of his favorite games he played with his kids was to have them all walk a straight path through the woods and overcome any obstacle along the way.  That’s a much better preparation for life than watching television.  If you are a parent or leader of youth, consider alternatives to the usual urban recreation (bowling, concerts, shows, etc.), and instead, take them out hiking or camping.  Outdoor recreation in wild areas provides a 360-degree, surround-sound theater of teachable moments.  It’s healthful, and more than that, it’s a partial return to our roots as created beings in a world of wonders designed by an all-wise Creator.  Sure, it’s not the Garden of Eden any more (because of sin), but wouldn’t it be healthier to get young people’s focus off of technopop and celebrity idolatry?  To turn off the junk music CD, and learn to identify a bird song?  To put away the video game and learn how to track an animal?  To stop munching junk food and pick a wild berry?  To quit staring mindlessly at the TV set and, instead, go climb a rock?  Escape to reality: go take a hike.
Next headline on: Health.

What this means, obviously, is that the girl monkey should cook and watch the baby while the boys cruise the town and play ball.  Of course not, but it’s surprising to see a woman researcher come to a conclusion that is not politically correct these days.  Despite common-sense observation that boys and girls are different, feminists and postmodernists have been trying to convince us that gender roles are mere societal norms imposed on children by those in power.  But James Dobson has noted that if you take toy guns away from a boy, he will chew his peanut butter sandwich into the shape of a gun to play with.  This study makes some headway in dismantling the myth that gender differences are social conventions rather than innate characteristics, but that is not the point.  Alexander makes this a case for evolution – she finds monkey business in our ancestry.
    Let’s grant that male vervet monkeys like to play with balls and cars, and that perhaps “the motion capabilities of the object could be related to the navigating abilities that are useful for hunting, locating food or finding a mate.”  Let us also accept that the female preferences involve object color, “relating to their roles as nurturers. ... A preference for red or pink - the color of the doll and pot - has been proposed to elicit female behaviors toward infants that enhance infant survival, such as contact.”  Assume all this is true; does it prove anything about evolution?  Why would not a Creator or Designer put male-female differences and preferences in monkeys as well as people?  Evolutionists cannot explain how these preferences originated, nor can they use this observation to argue that humans and monkeys have a common ancestor.  If the roles were reversed in monkeys, they would undoubtedly have a naturalistic just-so story available to explain that as well.  It is only the presumption of evolution, not the experimental facts, that make this story have anything to do with evolution.
    Evolutionary ideas that put monkey in our ancestry destroy all authority for morals.  Tell a little boy that he is just an evolved monkey and he will act like one.  Try to get him to stop and behave like a civilized young man, and he will ask that simple, childish question that stumps the consistent evolutionist: Why?
Next dumb story.

Seem to have and might only make sense with evolutionary assumptions.  They can’t know how old these microbes are, and the adaptability of a life-form to an extreme environment does not have anything to say about its origin, or whether extremophiles will be found on Mars.  The Mars water issue has been a ping-pong game between believers and doubters for quite awhile, so this latest salvo is probably not the last word.  Believers point to the river channels, but climatologists can’t see how the ancient Mars atmosphere would have been different enough to permit surface water to remain for long.  If Mars could not sustain liquid water for long periods, believers are going to have increasing trouble expecting they will find life there.  At least we don’t have to worry about tripod machines coming to blast us with heat rays, like our grandparents did.
Next headline on: Mars.

We expect aliens to be a whole lot smarter than us. Not only will they possess the wisdom of the ages, but they will travel at warp speed, have the ability to transform (or destroy) entire planets, and their civilizations will span across galaxies. Until we find alien life, however, we can only guess at how many intelligent civilizations may be out there.

For amusement, read this fairy tale about meteor impacts that generate complexity, matador pirouettes that daintily tiptoe around the bull of the Cambrian Explosion, and population statistics built on one data point.  Do they realize how stupid this all will sound in 20 years?
Next headline on: Origin of Life. • Next dumb story.

This work is interesting and significant, but many important cautions are in order before jumping to conclusions.  The data sets are so large that it is certainly possible to find patterns according to one’s preconceptions, and overlook the problems.  Also, not every human or mouse was sequenced – just a very small subset of representatives.  Finally, there is a great deal we still do not understand about genes, proteins, gene expression and lateral gene transfer.  More and more developmental biologists are suspecting that epigenetic factors are as important, or even more so, than the DNA code in determining phenotype.  There is much to learn before claiming anything about evolutionary phylogeny in the genes; in our May 31 headline, a reporter said that preliminary analysis of the mouse genome was complicating the work of evolutionary biologists, and three days earlier, we reported that the mammal family tree was a conflicting tangle. In the Washington Post (quoted on Access Research Network Dec. 4), Justin Gillis observes that the so-called “junk DNA” contains essential information, and might multiply the actual amount of genetic information stored in the DNA code.
    There are other possibilities than common ancestry for similarities.  Consider, for instance, the phenomenon of pseudogenes.  The assumption of “junk DNA” is embedded in the very term, but some biochemists are beginning to doubt that these are just leftover remnants of once-active true genes (see this analysis by Pierre Jerlstrom for other possible explanations).  Remember how glia cells in the brain were once presumed to be nothing more than scaffolding for the more important neurons?  Now their reputation is on the rise as they show evidence of actually controlling brain activity by regulating the blood flow to the neurons.  Similarly, pseudogenes might be found to function as either backup copies of genes, or regulators of gene expression, or something else we cannot yet imagine.  Some evolutionists, like Ken Miller, have argued confidently that finding the same “junk” pseudogenes in two different organisms proves they had a common ancestor, because the “mistakes” were introduced before their lineages diverged; i.e., a Creator would not make the same mistake twice.  But other explanations are possible, even if pseudogenes eventually prove to have no function.  There is much to learn about lateral gene transfer and transposition, for instance.  Not all mutations in pseudogenes appear to be random; two different organisms might gain the same mutation in a pseudogene by the same retrovirus or other process, apart from any common ancestry.
    For Biblical creationists, here’s a possibility that takes into account the large span of time between creation and the Flood, and the fact there would have been a genetic bottleneck during the Flood year.  Much degradation of the human gene pool could have occurred during the antediluvian centuries or millennia.  Out of all the population, mutations and all, only two lineages of land animals and humans survived the cataclysm.  What if a mouse bit Noah’s mother, for instance, and a virus in the bloodstream did the same retrotransposition on an orthologous gene that it did on the mouse?  Every human and mouse coming off the ark could have inherited the same genetic signature on that particular pseudogene.  The point is to show that there are other possible explanations for mice and men having the same alleged “mistakes” in their genetic code; it is surely premature for evolutionists to claim this as evidence for common ancestry, when (1) so much remains to be learned, and (2) evolutionists themselves are struggling their own surprises, which are legion.  Many secondary assumptions (like neutral evolution, convergent evolution, and rate heterogeneity) have to be imposed on the data to get their evolutionary story to work.  We reported scientists admitting July 25 that building evolutionary trees from the genes is a mathematically impossible task.
    A common straw-man argument against creation is that God would have made every species unique, and not used the same DNA, proteins, or limb structure in very different animals.  But this is a negative theological argument, not an evidence for evolution.  To claim this is to assume knowledge of what God would do.  (For a detailed treatment of this theme, see the recent book Darwin’s God by Cornelius Hunter).  Why not use the same genetic code, the same limb structure, and the same proteins for creatures that inhabit the same planet and eat the same food?  How do we know a Designer did not create the basic plans, organs, biochemistry and structure of animals and then delegate some of the fine details of outward shape and color to teams of angels? (not that we advocate this idea, but just to demonstrate various non-evolutionary possibilities).  There is enough similarity and enough diversity in the living world to both support and confuse any theory.  While unity of life is clearly apparent in a general sense, the large and systematic gaps between phyla argue against common ancestry.  Walter Remine, in his book The Biotic Message, argues that the Creator made life enough alike and enough different to send a message, to refute any possibility of naturalistic explanation.  Too much diversity, and people might conclude polytheism; too much unity, and people might conclude evolution.  There is enough of both to keep the creation-evolution controversy alive for the foreseeable future, but surely the complexity of life and the second law of thermodynamics will continue to speak loud and clear that “it didn’t just happen.”
    So what does this human-mouse genome comparison mean?  Not much.  Evolutionists looking for evidence in the genes only have the tips of a few branches, and are inferring the rest of the tree based on the assumption of common ancestry.  The same data can be fit into in a picture of nested hierarchies of distinct kinds of organisms originating from a common Designer.  Follow the chain links on Darwinism to find many recent examples of molecular evidence that contradict evolutionary expectations.  When you look at a mouse, and a mouse looks at you, any kinship is only in the eye of the beholder.
Next headline on: Human Body. • Next headline on: Mammals. • Next headline on: Genes and DNA. • Next headline on: Darwinism and Evolutionary Theory.

Let’s get this straight.  There is a great mystery, they admit, and “The scientists said the story of the planet’s first billion years was still largely unknown, with little information available on a period that saw the formation of the moon and the first traces of life, such as bacteria in the ocean.”  So even though knowledge of early earth history is largely indiscernible, they can boldly pronounce the dates of rocks up to four significant figures?  Doesn’t any reporter out there have a little skepticism on how scientists know these things?  Doesn’t it seem a little incongruous to say, “We have almost no knowledge of this era, and it is a huge mystery, but this rock is 3.825 billion years old when life was evolving.”  If they weren’t there to see it evolving, how do they “know” it evolved at all?  They probably used radioactive dating on these rocks, but did they tell the reporters the error bars and the assumptions used?  We have only been measuring radioactive decay for 100 years.  Represent that time span by the width of a dime, and 3.825 billion years would be stack of dimes 30 miles high.  Doesn’t it seem a little presumptuous to pontificate with certainty about things even a few dime-widths before, let alone the first ten feet?
    In one of the episodes of Cosmos back in the 1980s, Carl Sagan described the history of the universe compressed into a calendar year, and pointed with professorial authority at the Big Bang on January 1, the birth of galaxies and the Milky Way and our solar system at such and such dates further along the year, then ended with his clincher: to show how insignificant man was, he described how all of human history would fit into the last ten seconds of December 31.  Undoubtedly many viewers were impressed with this astonishing “fact,” but we would like to see more people ask the logical follow-up questions:  Dr. Sagan, if all recorded history fits into that tiny square at the end, how can you speak with any confidence about anything prior, when there were no observers?  Isn’t that a little brash?  Is it possible that different assumptions could lead to vastly different conclusions?  How can anyone know these things?  Are you willing to tell the public you could be wrong about the whole cosmic calendar analogy?
    Rocks do not come with dates stamped on them.  Question authority (when the authority is questionable).
Next headline on: Dating Methods. • Next headline on: Geology.