There is little evidence that books were actually destroyed, a point reinforced by Gingerich’s estimate that the original print run of De revolutionibus was between 400 and 500 books, of which 277 survived to appear in his Census.  And outside Italy, few copies show Church-mandated corrections, even in Catholic countries.

Dr. Gingerich has done a great service to history to bring these corrections of the urban legend to our attention.  A case can surely be made that the opponents of 16th-century scientific advance were not the Lutherans or the Catholics, but the Aristotelians.  Incidentally, the urban legend that Luther called Copernicus a fool is doubtful.  Whatever Luther said or meant was not recorded till years afterward and could have been mistaken in meaning; see an analysis by Donald Kobe on Leadership U.
    Whether De Revolutionibus should have led to our modern Copernican principle is another question.  Up till recently, astronomers extrapolated Copernicus’ model to the ultimate, claiming the earth holds no special place in the cosmic scheme of things.  This view is challenged by a new book that could be just as revolutionary as De Revolutionibus itself: The Privileged Planet by Gonzalez and Richards (see website).  We’ll have to see what marginal notes this one gets on chat rooms around the web, or whether the Church of Darwin succeeds in marginalizing the book.
Next headline on:  Solar System • Astronomy • Cosmology • Politics, Ethics and History

You can’t infer the social evolution of humans from teeth.  Modern humans reach puberty before 15, so why shouldn’t there be variation in tooth maturation rates between varieties of humans?  This study is way too much interpretation on way too little data.  A “fruitful line of research” is code for “a new storytelling plot.”
    Evolutionists grasp at any hint that Neanderthals were a different species than us.  It’s a kind of historical racism.  Harrub and Thompson point out in a thick new book, The Truth About Human Origins (Apologetics Press 2004), p. 133, that at four fossil sites, Neanderthals and modern humans are found buried together.  The only way to build a Darwinian story out of that is to claim that modern humans buried their pet missing links with them.
Next headline on:  Early Man • Dumb Ideas

Interesting that the Italians can connect the dots between Darwin and Marx, but American scientists pretend evolution is religiously neutral.  Also notice that Science treats Darwinism and evolution as synonymous.  Some evolutionists try to wriggle out of that connection and claim that Darwinism only refers to one discredited mechanism of evolution.  Is Darwinism really the hegemony of the Left?  We need a research project to see how many hard line Darwinists are also leftists.  Bets are the correlation would be high.  Most editorials that touch on politics in the elitist science journals usually show a distinctly anti-conservative, liberal-left slant.  Even this article didn’t hesitate to label the anti-evolutionists “far-right” but avoided attributing the label “far-left” to the Darwin Party.  It is instructive to note that Charlie and his fallen angels were all radical leftists of their day.  Just a coincidence, presumably.  Also coincidental that Marxists idolized Charlie and closed churches, turning them into museums of atheism.
    Science puts the usual spin on the controversy.  Creationism is linked with religion on the one hand, but in the same sentence the writer claims the “influential” Roman Catholic church has “no objections” to Darwinism.  Well, which way is it?  Michelangelo was Roman Catholic, and depicted God creating man instantly ex nihilo, not by millions of years of time and slime.  Another spin is claiming that “leading scientists” [read: Big-Science elitists] are leading the protest.  The reader is presumably left to deduce that all scientists accept evolution but only a few “far right” religiously-based politicians are against it.  The power of the Darwin Party is still formidable.  Sadly, the Italian government didn’t have the guts to stand up to their onslaught.  It not only caved in, but even gave them more than they had before: a Darwin-Party committee to oversee the teaching of evolution.  Anyone want to bet they will recommend “teaching the controversy”?
    The news item says, “The government’s rationale, according to an education ministry official, was that students under 14 are far too young to be confronted with such complex material.”  Scientist-protestors countered that physics and mathematics are also difficult, but that doesn’t stop us from teaching those subjects.  Well, then, why do they use that same rationale, that teaching the controversy about Darwin is too complex and difficult for young minds?  A mind that can learn about gravity can just as easily comprehend the fact that Darwinism has major scientific problems.  Italy’s motherly-protection excuse is weak.  We suggest the opposite approach.  Tell the Marxist-Darwinist-Leftists that Italian children are too precocious and perceptive to be fed a diet of evolutionary just-so stories.
    Maybe you thought Marxism went out of style when the Berlin wall fell.  As long as Darwinism is the hegemony of the Left, the Marxists are waiting in the antechamber.  Lest we forget, we should remember what Stalin, the would-be priest who became an atheist after reading Darwin’s abominable volume, did to the “creationists” of his day.  Read this account and you will see why the Italians have good cause for alarm.  It should be required reading during Anti-Evolution Week.
Next headline on:  Darwinism and Evolutionary Theory • Education • Politics and Ethics

The physical world poses many basic challenges, such as gravity, viscosity and pressure gradients, to all living creatures, which in turn have evolved an astonishing array of solutions.  Many of these, such as paddles, valves and hydrostats, are so widespread that we rarely notice them.  Others perform so well that we marvel at their superiority to human-made devices.

In Vogel’s world, plants and animals receive equal treatment in the context of the physical problems they encounter.  In that sense, the comparative method he uses is based on problems of physics, not evolutionary relationships: tubes are treated as tubes, regardless of what kind of organism they serve.  Regrettably, this perspective leaves little room to explore key problems in evolution.  Vogel mentions only in passing various debates on topics such as constraints, adaptation and the mechanisms by which organisms can or cannot alter in response to changes in their environment.  Of particular note, he sidesteps the issue of optimization and the extent to which natural selection drives organisms towards supposedly better ways to overcome the challenges posed by their particular environments.

Ha!  This is funny.  Please, Mr. Vogel, can’t you give Charlie just a little credit? I’m afraid the creationists and ID people are going to latch onto this book.  Can’t you tell us just a little bitty just-so story about how these masterful engineering feats evolved, so that we can use it in the public schools?
Vogel, in essence, replied, Natural selection?  I have no need of that hypothesis.
    Congratulations to Dan Lieberman for a well-deserved Stupid Evolution Quote of the Week.
Next headline on:  Intelligent Design • Mammals • Terrestrial Zoology • Plants • Amazing Facts (see also next entry) • Darwinism and Evolutionary Theory • Dumb Ideas

Now you know.  All that and no transitional forms, either.
Next headline on:  Mammals

The object is too indistinct to draw any conclusions.  Tantalizing as these images are when they appear from time to time, we should always take a default position that they are not Ark-eological till proven otherwise.  Embarrassing retractions have been made before by overzealous explorers; a different box-shaped object in the 1990s looked very different up close.  It is certainly worth checking out claims like this, but it is also highly unlikely a wood ship would survive thousands of years of weathering and landslides even under the best of conditions.  Only extraordinary evidence will be able to substantiate the extraordinary claim.  Better to understate the potential than have to backtrack later.
    Yet a long string of alleged sightings keeps the explorers motivated.  There are many reasons why the search is extremely difficult.  The ice pack only melts for short periods in dry years, the mountain is extremely difficult to climb, and it has long been in a dangerous political zone near the Turkish-Russian-Iranian border.  Armed gunmen roaming the slopes add to the hazard, and many otherwise hopeful searches in past years have waited in vain for permits from capricious local officials, only to be denied at the last minute.  Best wishes to the explorers, but till they bring back unquestionable evidence that would convince skeptics, definitive proof Noah’s Ark has survived on Mt. Ararat is, so far, lacking.  Whether the Ark existed and the Flood occurred are separate inquiries that, while they would be enhanced by this evidence, do not require it.
Next headline on:  Bible and Theology

Doyle’s team uses statistical tools from a field known as “information theory” to measure the complexity of different species’ communication systems and thus learn how much information individual animals can transfer between each other.  This allows the scientists to draw inferences about the intelligence of the communicating species, which in turn gives F_i researchers a better understanding of intelligence as an evolutionary adaptation.

Like most evolutionary articles, this evolutionary article merely assumes evolution.  It takes for granted that life and intelligence will evolve, given enough time.  As such, it provides nothing new in the rhetoric of Darwinism.  But it does remind us that communication of information is a hallmark of intelligence.  Animals possess intelligence and communicate information to one another in many ways, but only humans lie (see next entry).  If we know empirically that information is a telltale sign of intelligence, how can it be honest to assert that human intelligence had a non-intelligent source, ultimately from hydrogen?
Next headline on:  SETI • Intelligent Design

Interesting that they do not mention mimicry, which seems to be a form of deceit: “don’t eat me--I’m a stick!”  But mimicry is not really lying.  The animal can’t help the way it was born.  Anyway, in terms of vocalizations or behavioral traits, it is striking that animals don’t lie to each other like humans do, except in The Far Side comic strips.
    So here again, another phenomenon is found that seems counterintuitive to evolutionary expectations, and Darwinians are left employing just-so stories to explain it.  How many exceptions to the rule are required before the rules must be changed?
    With glittering generalities, evolutionists exercise their fertile imaginations to dream of monkey screeches evolving into Shakespearean soliloquies.  Prove it, we say.  Interestingly, though human beings can be shown to all have a single genetic ancestor (like Adam), their languages cannot.  Dr. Joseph Kickasola, a linguist at Regent University, has shown that all the thousands of human languages and dialects can be reduced to 17 families, but no further.  Could this fact be an echo of Babel?
    The cynic says, “Everybody lies, but it doesn’t matter, because nobody listens.”  What if enough people stop listening to Darwinian just-so stories?  After all, it is a form of deceit to pretend to have an answer when you don’t.  It would be more honest for a naturalistic researcher to say, “I don’t know why humans are liars but animals are not.”  Maybe this and maybe that doesn’t cut it in science.  This is an area where science is limited, but there are other sources of information, such as history and eyewitnesses.
    The One who cannot lie told us about a father of lies, the devil, who was a liar from the beginning, and that it is not surprising that his followers would follow in his ways.  He also commanded us not to bear false witness, and warned that all liars shall have their part in the lake of fire.  If you don’t like to hear such things, don’t ignore the credibility of the source of that information.  Don’t lie to yourself.
    Postscript: Science Now reported a week ago that John Maynard Smith, co-author of the book Animal Signals and one who “revolutionized the way biologists think about behavioral evolution” died on April 19.  This is the fate to which we all are racing.  Are you ready?  Choose carefully whose words you trust.  At the end of your life, it will not matter how entertaining the just-so stories you told or believed.  But you can know the Truth, and the truth can set you free.
Next headline on:  Darwinism and Evolutionary Theory • Early Man

Their model is little more than a thought experiment.  It imagines “pseudochemical species (or modules) that are aggregates of distinct chemical species that share similar chemistry and metabolic dynamics.”  What they try to do is theorize how simple a cell can be to exist and model it in a computer, not in the real world.  It’s kind of like designing a minimal airplane that could fly around the world without refueling, assuming there is constant temperature and no wind.  When the actual Voyager flew, it involved many engineering and physiological challenges that required even more intelligent design than a simple, heavier airplane.  These authors do not attempt to imagine that their theoretical cell would actually be viable.  It’s only a theoretical organism, a little better fleshed out than the fake computer organisms of Adami and Lenski.
    The authors do not imply that such an entity was a precursor to complex life.  For one thing, their model required pre-existing nucleotides and other ingredients not easy to come by in an organic soup, and assumed unrealistic constant temperature and pH conditions: in essence, they imagined a little garden of Eden for these theoretical cells, not a primitive hostile environment of crashing waves, hot vents, ice ages or meteor impacts.  For another, “This observation reminds us of one of the important challenges for comparative genomics,” they mention in their conclusion: “nonorthologous gene displacements (same function being performed by unrelated or very distantly related nonorthologous proteins).”  While this observation encourages them that “A conserved core of functions with a single, ubiquitous solution certainly exists” (theoretically, in the computer), the fact is that real life has a non-overlapping universal set of 80 genes, and the three kingdoms utilize very different proteins for some similar functions.  This is undoubtedly a reflection of their different habitats and environments.  Are we expected to believe that each of the three kingdoms evolved their own quasi-miraculous solutions to functional requirements independently, on repeated occasions, without brains?
    While the authors consider it “certainly possible” that someone might get the number down below 12 essential genes, they think their set of 11 functions is a rock-bottom minimum.  It won’t help origin-of-life researchers anyway.  Forget getting 12, or 80, or 256 genes: getting just one is out of the question (see our online book).  On Saturday, Dr. Kurt Durston at the Biola ID conference presented his calculations on the information content of a cell.  He said that a minimal cell needs 75,000 bits of information, and showed mathematically that evolutionary selection could not proceed in jumps greater than 90 bits.  Even if it required only one tenth of that, 7500 bits, it’s just not going to happen by chance, even with natural selection’s help.  We agree with the authors: “The basic design rules relating the regulation of cellular function to genomic structure is of broad interest.”
Next headline on:  Cell Biology • Origin of Life • Genetics and DNA

The narrator declares that “we humans have sinned terribly against [the] laws of natural selection,” by coddling the genetically impaired and, even worse, by allowing them to reproduce, duplicating their defects in a new legion of offspring.  “We have not only sustained unworthy life,” he decries, “we have allowed it to multiply.”
    The title of the 1937 film is Victims of the Past, a reference to the idea in the disgraced genetic field of eugenics that illness, disability and delinquency were passed without deviation, gene by gene, from one generation to the next.  The film was a piece of Nazi propaganda, required showing in German theaters in support of the nation’s program for the compulsory sterilization of the “genetically unfit” to choke off undesirable human traits - and undesirable human beings.

Darwinists hate it when outsiders try to link evolutionary theory with the holocaust.  Their response is usually two-fold: (1) science, and evolutionary theory in particular, has nothing to do with how it is used (after all, benign nuclear physics led to the atomic bomb), and (2) Christians have been guilty of atrocities, too: why, passages in the Bible could be, and were, used to justify anti-Semitism, slavery, and genocide.  Go read Ollove’s entire article.  Then, come back and let’s examine these rebuttals in turn.
    First, can Darwin be exonerated from what others did with his theories?  After all, Charlie was unquestionably a pleasant chap who wouldn’t hurt a fly (he would study it for evidence of natural selection).  He had many friends and admirers.  He loved nature and was basically a kind-hearted gentleman.  It can probably be affirmed without contradiction that he would have been shocked and horrified at what Hitler did.  Nevertheless, look at his ideas and their logical consequences.  He set forth a worldview of competition, struggle, and survival of the fittest; a world that filtered out the “unfit” by ruthless, undirected processes.  No matter how much he tried to restrict the discussion to scientific terminology, others knew exactly what his ideas meant and where they would lead.  Reviewers from day one applied his views to the human race and to politics.  The horrors that could follow from his views was precisely one of the arguments leveled at Darwin by critics in 1859 and 1860.  Darwin’s admirers, on the other hand, immediately used The Origin of Species to attack Christianity and promote liberal socialism.  Haeckel practically worshipped Darwin (and Darwin thought highly of Haeckel in return); Haeckel returned to Germany to promote Darwinism and eugenics, fueling the very fires that culminated in Nazism.
    Janet Browne and other historians have pointed out how Charles Darwin’s views fit neatly into the 19th century political climate of British imperialism.  Herbert Spencer (originator of the term “survival of the fittest”) told Andrew Carnegie that his cutthroat capitalism was a normal and natural outworking of the laws of nature.  Karl Marx felt that Darwinism provided the scientific justification for his communist views.  Whether Nazism, communism, or laissez-faire capitalism, each view that promoted ruthless competition and survival of the fittest used The Origin of Species as a scientific justification.
    Second, is Christianity just as guilty?  Let Joseph Goebbels himself frame the debate.  Ollove quotes him as stating in 1938, “Our starting point is not the individual, and we do not subscribe to the view that one should feed the hungry, give drink to the thirsty, or clothe the naked.  Our objectives are entirely different: We must have a healthy people in order to prevail in the world.”  Now, pray tell, who taught that we should feed the hungry, give drink to the thirsty, and clothe the naked?  Who treated each individual as precious in the sight of God?  Who healed the infirm, sought out the poor and needy, and lifted up those who were humble?  The lines could hardly be drawn more boldly than Goebbels drew them: Jesus valued the individual; Hitler, the eugenicists, and ultimately the Darwinians, valued the race.
    Speaking of race, the Bible has the antidote to the false concept that some races are superior to others.  Creation teaches that we are all descended from Adam, a principle reinforced in the New Testament by Paul and Jesus.  There are no races; there is only the human race.  Answers in Genesis is one creationist organization that has recently promoted this Bible doctrine as the cure for racism.  The Bible also denies that some individuals are less fit to live.  The weak, the sick, the lame, the blind, the poor were often the ones to whom Jesus showed the most compassion.
    It cannot be denied that Europeans did some ugly things in the name of Christ (including persecuting other Christians who believed people should follow the teachings of Jesus).  But these actions were opposite both the letter and the spirit of the Bible.  What about, then, the Old Testament commands to exterminate the Canaanites?  We must remember that the rights of life and death belong to God alone.  He who gives life has the sovereignty and authority to destroy it, as He did in the flood, and as He will do at Armageddon.  God takes full responsibility for His judgment.  In some cases, he delegated His judgment to humans.  But Moses and Joshua and the prophets had direct revelation from God on these matters (a luxury not afforded us today, nor to the medieval popes).  These were specific orders from God, to God’s chosen people, at specific times for His specific purposes, and are never mentioned in the Bible as normative for individuals or kings; in fact, the opposite is taught in both Old and New Testaments –care for the alien and sojourner, orphan and widow, and mercy toward all who are weak or afflicted.  Would Hitler or Mao have taught “love your enemies”?  Jesus said that the two greatest commandments were to love God with all your heart and to love your neighbor as yourself.  These are commandments to individuals, not to “the race.”
    The Bible’s position on individual human dignity does not rule out all killing.  God has instituted government to protect the rights of individuals, by means including police protection and national defense.  War can be just.  It can prevent further killing, or destroy those who are about to kill, as in the war against terrorism.  This is a far cry from genocide.  Neither does the Bible rationalize keeping the fit in their weakness, as if it is their fate.  The Biblical values of health, healing, cleanliness and industry should promote medical research into finding cures for genetic diseases and improving health – for individuals, because each person bears the image of God.  Even the benevolent competition of athletic games is spoken of favorably in the New Testament.  Individuals are encouraged to do their best.  This is a far cry from eugenics.
    Crusading popes corrupted the teachings of Jesus, but the eugenicists and the Nazis carried the teachings of Darwin to their logical applications.  Could figures be accurately known, the body count of those killed in the name of Christ to those killed in the name of Darwinism would differ by orders of magnitude.  In the 20th century alone, some 100 million deaths can be traced to communism and Nazism, regimes that banned Bibles and closed churches but exalted Darwinism, promoting survival of the fittest as the governing principle of society.  Most Darwinians are “nicer” these days (e.g., not overtly racist) but their core beliefs have not changed.  Some already support euthanasia and infanticide in the name of natural selection.  Many have no qualms about the ongoing holocaust of abortion.  As we approach difficult 21st-century ethical questions about genetic engineering and cloning and other cutting-edge technologies, respect for the individual must be the pole star in our deliberations (for example, see this Breakpoint commentary by Amy Michelle DeBaerts).
    Given that racism is a perpetual fire in the human heart, from ancient times to the present, which book – the Bible or the Origin of Species – is like water on the flames, and which is like gasoline?  Let history be the judge.  We must never forget.
Next headline on:  Media • Darwinism and Evolutionary Theory • Politics and Ethics • Bible and Theology

This latest attempt was probably in response to the revelation that the dinosaur extinction was 300,000 years after the assumed date of the Yucatan impact (see 09/25/2003 entry).
    Evolutionists raise their stories up the flagpole to see if anyone salutes.  Usually, instead, the only salute is 21 guns shooting it down.  Meanwhile, popular news reports, like this story at MSNBC, get excited any time a science story has the word “sex” in it.
    This tale, like others, fails to explain why most of the extinction was among marine organisms.  According to the BBC article, a critic said, “More than 50% of all species that lived prior to the mass extinction were wiped out.  In fact, the dinosaurs were not among the most numerous of the casualties - the worst hit organisms were those in the oceans.”  What about them?  And what about the marine reptiles?  Why was the extinction selective for some reptiles and not others?  Why isn’t the Bible’s explanation ever considered, when it doesn’t have these problems?
Next headline on:  Dinosaurs • Dumb Ideas

Homology is one of those words that embeds Darwinian assumptions into the terminology.  The Darwin Party’s word games go like this:

Homologous structures are similarities that Darwinians believe are related by common ancestry.

Analogous structures are similarities that Darwinians believe are not related by common ancestry.  In some unspecified way, they arrived at the same pattern by “convergent evolution.”
Thus, by waving either hand, the Darwin show can go on.  But when both hands are waving, they might collide.  Thebein’s hand-waving term “convergent evolution” has just collided with the hand-waving Darwinian concept of homology.  Now what?  Nature has thrown the Darwinians a curve; a complex structure that “common sense” says could not have evolved twice independently.  This is where the Darwinians go to Plan C:

Homologous-convergent structures prove Nature is tricky.
Since, to a Darwinian, Nature is a personified goddess tinkering with her creations, she has free will and even a sense of humor, in addition to “innovative power.”  By employing fast-talking equivocation with the science security guards, the Darwinians avoid having their science badges disqualified.  They can remain and enjoy the melodrama, chuckling at the dirty trick “Nature” played on the systematists.  They never catch on that the joke’s on them.
Next headline on:  Plants • Darwinism and Evolutionary Theory • Dumb Ideas

Tall trees use considerable quantities of water.  For example, a 45-m redwood uses about 600 kg of water each day, a figure that increases substantially with height and size.  It seems surprising, therefore, that the redwoods live in a climate with an annual dry season of 3-4 months.  Offsetting such an apparent drawback, however, is the oceanic influence on local climate, which means that dry-season fog occurs for up to two weeks at a time: fog reduces transpiration, a benefit in the dry season.  Moreover, tall trees actually increase the interception and capture of fog coming in off the sea, to the tune of 34% of the annual incidence of precipitation; in their absence, the precipitation input from fog is halved.

Here is a good example of science as it should be done.  Excellent field work, and no storytelling about evolution.  As remarkable as today’s giant trees are, there were probably even bigger ones in the past.  Yellowstone in Wyoming and Florissant Fossil Beds in Colorado have fossilized Sequoia stumps, and redwood fossils have been found even near the Arctic circle (see 03/22/2002 entry).  Conditions in the past may have been even more conducive to their rapid growth.
    Like Ian, we should all look woodward and marvel at the trees.  Look at a tall tree nearby, whether an oak, a pine, or whatever is prominent in your neck of the woods.  Imagine if it were the only tree on earth.  Would it not be an international tourist attraction?  People would travel the world over to look at this natural marvel.  They would wonder how it could pump water from under the ground all the way up to the highest leaves.  They would admire its beauty.  It would seem almost a miracle.  The fact that trees are so plentiful should not blind us to the reality that trees indeed are some of the most elegant, handsome, remarkable, and complex entities in all of creation.  Why not take the family on a hike or picnic under the shady trees, and use it as a teachable moment?
Enjoy this gallery of the natural water pumps that enrich our world: by a lake (foxtail pine), in a canyon (cottonwood), outdoor pews (sequoia), blooms in fog (dogwood), giant’s foot (sequoia), forest blanket (lodgepole pine), Yosemite valley (pine, oak), Tehipite valley (pine, oak), redwood saddle (sequoia), mountain majesty (pine), waterfall curtain (cottonwood), giant and dwarves (sequoia).
Next headline on:  Plants • Amazing Facts

Gene (appropriately named), a genetic determinist, and a Gene E. with words, seems to believe he is thinking outside the box, but he has only rearranged the furniture.  The box is naturalism.  It was naturalism before, and it is naturalism now.  The couch of nature and the sofa of nurture have just been rearranged on both sides of the end table of genetics.  Now, the biologists and social scientists can both pour their coffee from the same pot as they discuss their common bond of naturalistic philosophy.
    Actually, his essay is a veiled attempt to woo the social and behavioral naturalists to the “nature” side of the debate, where he thinks the truth lies.  Robinson provided three examples of genes affecting behavior modulated by environmental cues.  He thereby gently chides the social scientists for their insistence that the human psyche is too complex to be described genetically.  And he hints at the possibility that naturalistic biologists can become the benevolent philosopher-kings for the public: he began, “The public is leery of attributing behavioral influence to DNA rather than to the environment and free will; worries abound over the ethical implications of biological determinism.”  He ended, “we [that is, the naturalistic biologists and the naturalistic behavioral scientists] can all focus on ... the challenging ethical concerns related to the study of genes and behavior.”  Presumably, this means that the enlightened biologists can inform ethical policy if not control it.  In this box, soul and spirit and free will are all outlawed.  Biological determinism is the law.  Naturalists are like the Russian prison guards who believe in freedom of choice: “You have two choices: Gulag and torture, or Siberia and torture.”  (The worst torture comes from guards who sincerely believe they are trying to help you.)  Robinson doesn’t even seem to realize he is in prison himself.  How can his thoughts on behavior, genetics and ethics have any validity if they are ultimately just artifacts of gene expression?
    A thoughtful jury listening to this advocate might well ask, has Robinson proved that human behavior and ethics are traceable to genetic expression?  Three examples with rodents and flies seem a little insufficient to explain Bach, Locke or Jacques Cousteau, or eine kleine Einstein either.  So altering a gene can affect a mouse’s foraging behavior.  Fine.  Take away a man’s food, and the environmental cues will probably stimulate his genes, too, in a way that will urge him to go foraging for something to eat.  Let’s have Gene identify every environmental cue that modulated the expression of every gene in Einstein’s brain while he described general relativity, then he may have a case.  Let’s have him describe genetically the self-evident truths that all men are created equal, and are endowed by their Creator with certain inalienable rights, that among these are life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness.  Without that, he has nothing but philosophical belief based on the fallacy of reductionism.
    Certainly nature and nurture can influence behavior.  Nobody, not even a Methodist, would deny that.  All humans have a human nature, and “mannishness” as Francis Schaeffer termed it, that manifests itself across all cultures and times.  Undoubtedly much of it is genetically determined, shaped by our physical characteristics, and influenced by our environment.  Social experiments can often predict behavioral outcomes.  To reduce everything to genes, however, is not warranted by such observations.  Though we may react similarly to similar stimuli, how does DNA explain Paul?  The human spirit is perhaps the best example in the world of irreducible complexity.
    Robinson’s view is also dangerous.*  One wonders what “challenging ethical concerns” he had in mind, if he believes behavior is ultimately reducible to particles in motion.  According to this view, it should be possible to describe natural laws of behavior.  If so, why not apply these, like the Russians did, to psychopolitics?  Politicians could employ the natural laws to control the populace.  Advertisers could employ the natural laws to separate people from their money.  Torturers could employ the natural laws to extract confessions.  Dictators could raise an army of obedient supermen, like the clones in Star Wars II, to conquer the universe.  One only has to know the rules, and the human pawns would fall in line.  The question then becomes, who gets the power, and ultimately, what forces are governing the behavior of the ones in power?
Tremendous opportunities, indeed.

---

*This is not to disparage Mr. Robinson – only his ideas.  After all, Charlie was a pretty nice guy in person.  He loved animals and children and acted politely.  But his ideas were used to rationalize genocide, racism, eugenics, and other dark deeds on scientific grounds, that they were logical outworkings of competition and survival of the fittest (Herbert Spencer’s phrase that Darwin embraced in preference to his own term, natural selection).  Ideas have consequences.  Charlie may have been a gentleman, but others knew exactly where his ideas would lead from the day they were published, and some took his ball and ran with it (see 09/22/2002 entry).  If we are going to learn from history, we cannot ignore what biological determinism means to ethics, religion, law, politics, the arts, and culture.  “Worries abound over the ethical implications of biological determinism” – because some of us have a memory, and read history books.  Just the other day, the History Channel showed a clip of Hitler giving one of his impassioned speeches, in which he challenged the Germans to prove themselves the fittest because natural selection was the law of nature.  See also “The Science of Evil” by Michael Ollove posted 4/22 on the Baltimore Sun about how believers in eugenics based their nefarious schemes on the “law” of natural selection.
Next headline on:  Genetics and DNA • Politics and Ethics

Although the Cambrian explosion is of singular importance to our understanding of the history of life, it continues to defy explanation.  This defiance stems, in part, from our inability to distinguish between two competing hypotheses: whether the Cambrian explosion reflects the rapid appearance of fossils with animals having a deep but cryptic precambrian history, or whether it reflects the true sudden appearance and diversification of animals in the Cambrian.  Because each hypothesis makes a specific prediction of when animals arose in time, one way to distinguish between these two hypotheses is to date animal diversifications by using a molecular clock.  A number of previous clock studies (reviewed in refs. 3 and 4) have suggested that the last common ancestor of bilaterians (LCB) lived well over one billion years ago (5, 6), whereas others suggest that LCB arose ~900 million years ago (Ma) (e.g., refs. 7-10), and still others are more consistent with an origination closer to the Cambrian (11-13).  These deep estimates for the origin of LCB raise the question of how hundreds of millions of years of bilaterian evolution can escape detection, given that LCB and its near relatives should have had the capability of leaving both body and trace fossils.

Because molecular clocks have several inherent problems, including how the clock is calibrated, how molecular substitution rates are estimated, and how heterogeneity in these rates is detected and corrected, as well as an inherent statistical bias for overestimating dates, a much more recent date for LCB may not yet be refuted.  Of crucial importance for clock accuracy is the calibration of the clock itself, which requires not only accurate paleontological estimates but also rate homogeneity between the calibrated and uncalibrated taxa.  When estimating the origination date for LCB, virtually all analyses use the vertebrate fossil record to calibrate the clock and ask when vertebrates diverged from dipterans.  However, genome-wide sequence comparisons have shown that the average sequence identity of nuclear protein-coding genes between dipterans is lower than that of bony fish, even though the dipteran divergence time, estimated at 235 Ma (19), is only about half as long as the divergence of bony fish at 450 Ma (20).

Oh what a tangled web we weave, when at first we practice being deceived.  It would appear that an unbiased observer might pronounce Darwinism falsified at this revelation.  If it takes multiple tweaks by orders of magnitude to get a model to work, is there not something fundamentally wrong with the presuppositions?  Tweaks of this magnitude resemble the desperate attempts to keep the Ptolemaic model of planetary orbits from crumbling under the barrage of improved observations.
    Evolutionists have known for years that the molecular clock is broken (see 05/31/2002, 03/26/2002 and 10/01/2001 entries, for instance).  Why even give it the time of day?  It amounts to no more than Skinner’s constant: that quantity which when added to, subtracted from, multiplied or divided by the answer you got, gives you the answer you should have gotten.  It’s time to take away this useless widget from the Darwin Party’s playpen and get them to face the data squarely: every animal phylum (and some extinct ones) appears in the Cambrian, without ancestors, even though many precambrian strata have ideal conditions for fossilization.  Think on these things.
    Getting Darwinism to work with the Cambrian explosion is like getting both ends of a seesaw to be up at the same time.  If you give the last common ancestor more time to evolve, you have to explain why no fossils were recorded for hundreds of millions of years.  If you shorten the time for the last common ancestor to evolve, you have to explain how multiple distinct body plans arose almost simultaneously.  The phylogenetic chart in Peterson’s paper is typical; the actual fossils of the phyla are contemporaneous; the relationships back in deep time are inferred.  If one looks at the evidence without the funky kaleidoscopic Darwin Party glasses on, it does not look like evolution.  It looks like creation.
Next headline on:  Fossils • Genetics and DNA • Darwinism and Evolutionary Theory

Thus multiple levels of correction and calibration are involved in this mind-boggling ability of little birdbrains to use natural cues to migrate vast distances unerringly, day and night, north and south, east and west.  Congratulations to creative and diligent scientists who risk jail to find out these amazing feats in the animal kingdom for us to enjoy and ponder.
Next headline on:  Birds • Amazing Facts

We don’t know what it means, either, but if scientists can still be completely baffled by observable things, how can we trust evolutionists’ chutzpah about unobservable things that they claim happened billions of years ago?
Next headline on:  Solar System

This could lead to a new paradigm about infectious agents.  Since many are not pathogenic, maybe there are interactions between our cells and the environment that are not all bad.  Maybe instead of looking at every germ as an enemy, we should envision some of the microbes as engaging in “free trade” across our borders.  The problem then becomes regulating the commerce and preventing intrusion by terrorists.
    Microbes in the environment may be signalling our own bodies with information needed to adapt to changing conditions.  They might be providing a service, therefore, unless overwhelming us in swarms; the job of T-cells may be to regulate their numbers.  Pathogens may be formerly harmless agents gone bad or out of control.
    At this point, such thoughts are mostly hypothetical.  Certainly, harmful pathogens are to be avoided like the plague.  But we were created to be able to live outdoors in contact with our environment much of the time.  Cleanliness is still next to godliness, but disinfecting everything and using antibacterial soaps may be going too far.  Unless your kid has known allergies or genetic risk factors, let him or her enjoy pets and explore the wilderness – under your watchful eye.  Protect, but do not overprotect.
Next headline on:  Health • Human Body

One of the central mysteries of evolutionary biology has been the relationship between microevolution and macroevolution.  How can an understanding of the evolutionary mechanisms that act in populations today explain the types of variation that distinguish higher taxonomic groups, such as genera, families or even phyla?  Can an understanding of population-level processes explain major evolutionary events such as the Cambrian explosion – the period around 550 million years ago when complex animal life took off?  Perhaps so.  Shapiro et al. might have discovered a smoking gun – a real example of a type of macroevolutionary change that is produced by genetic differences between populations.

We need a new category for stories like this.  Is there a word for gaining an inch and conceding a mile, gaining one small hill but losing the war, spending one’s life savings on a slot machine and winning a dime?  That’s the spirit of this story; it’s a Pyrrhic victory.  Shubin and Dahn talk like they will soon be proud winners of millions of dollars from Nigeria, if they can just round up a little more money.
    Notice the big picture.  Here we are, 145 years after Darwin started a revolution in biology that took over the intellectual world, and they admit right up front that Darwin’s own lament, “Our ignorance of the laws of variation is profound,” is still a “persistent problem” today.  Even after we have sequenced the genomes of dozens of organisms and scoured the world for fossils, and garnered data beyond Charlie’s wildest dreams, evolutionary biologists are still singing the same blues.  Then, after all their hype about what this stickleback tale might mean, they admit that “One of the central mysteries of evolutionary biology has been the relationship between microevolution and macroevolution.”  Do you understand what they are telling us?
    Since Charlie wrote his “abominable volume” in 1859, we have been told that macroevolution is a scientific fact, yet were provided only microevolutionary observations and macroevolutionary tales, with no scientific connection between them.  Evolutionists only assume the two are connected somehow.  What if there is no connection?  What if variation has limits, and the higher taxonomic groups have always been distinct and separate?  He mentions the Cambrian explosion (see next headline), which would lead an unbiased observer to conclude that all the major animal body plans appeared abruptly on the earth without ancestors.  Small variations within groups have undoubtedly occurred since then, but Shubin and Dahn’s incriminating admissions indicate that Darwinians have failed to demonstrate macroevolutionary change, and thus failed to demonstrate common ancestry of all living things.
    Notice how tiny their evidence is.  They’re only talking about stickleback fish, for crying out loud, and for crying even louder, they’re talking about a loss of genetic information, and for screaming hysterically, they are talking about one gene that is identical between two populations, that if mutated, causes death!  How on earth can an evolutionist find any hope in that?  Picture a little boy at a waterfall, who has been convinced by a trickster that water flows upward.  At the base of any waterfall there are droplets that bounce and splash up temporarily.  The boy becomes fixated on those splashes, hoping against hope that his observations will, in time, demonstrate the truth of the theory he has been led to believe.  All the while, the big picture demonstrates the exact opposite.
    Stories like this lead some non-evolutionists to ponder a future day when the culture will look back at 2004, incredulous that intelligent people could believe such things, and will laugh at the flimsy arguments used to support them.  Like Søren Lovtrup wrote in Darwinism: Refutation of a Myth: “Micromutations do occur, but the theory that these alone can account for evolutionary change is either falsified, or else it is an unfalsifiable, hence metaphysical theory.  I suppose that nobody will deny that it is a great misfortune if an entire branch of science becomes addicted to a false theory.  But this is what has happened in biology: ... I believe that one day the Darwinian myth will be ranked the greatest deceit in the history of science.  When this happens many people will pose the question: How did this ever happen?”  (Source: IDEA Club.  Browse their large collection of quotations on Darwinism.)
Next headline on:  Fish and Marine Biology. • Darwinism and Evolutionary Theory • Genetics and DNA • Dumb Ideas

This study was not motivated by a desire to know the truth about the unseen past, but to preserve evolutionary theory from one of its most damaging counter-evidences: the Cambrian explosion.
    As Matson explains, “The traditional view of the Cambrian explosion is that life underwent an extraordinary, rapid diversification that resulted in the nearly simultaneous appearance of the ancestors for most major types of animals.”  Simultaneous appearance is not evolution.  Rapid diversification is not Darwinian gradualism.  No wonder the Darwin Party reacts to the Cambrian fossil evidence in either of two ways: (1) sweep the problem under the rug, or (2) stretch out the explosion into slow motion.  Problem is, an explosion is hard to hide, and a slow-motion explosion is still an explosion.
    Lieberman relies on evolutionary assumptions to validate his evolutionary assumptions.  (This, students, is called circular reasoning.)  Lieberman assumes evolution occurred, and then uses that belief to teach us about how it occurred in spite of a critical piece of evidence that says it did not occur.  Matson says, “Although the cause of the Cambrian radiation is unknown, many scientists suspect that the breakup of a southern supercontinent called Pannotia could have isolated populations and created new ecological niches that spurred rapid evolution.”  Translated, this means that Darwin Party storytellers have a favorite plot that goes like this: the probability of a frog turning into a prince is low, but if you isolate groups of frogs, it happens faster.  Giving the miracle a name like adaptive radiation does not make it empirical science (see 12/03/2003 entry).
    You can draw any curve through two data points if the error bars are big enough.  The error bars for adaptive radiation and for continental breakup and drift are huge.  Lieberman merely assumed that rapid evolution would occur if he could get the “primitive” trilobite ancestors geographically isolated.  By working with a Darwin Party co-conspirator to tweak the continental breakup dates, he got the continents to slow down by 500% to give his miracle more time.  This is how the Darwinians can keep their story going despite any contrary evidence.  No matter what, the show must go on.
Next headline on:  Fossils • Geology • Darwinism and Evolutionary Theory

He put “Darwinistic” in quotes, because it was not really Darwinistic, it was Designistic.  The scientists played the role of designer by carefully selecting the results and directing the outcome.  This paper, like others before it, gives two false impressions: (1) that Darwinism achieved the high specificity of proteins in the past, and (2) that Darwinian theory is a boon to science in the present.  This is nothing but name-dropping.  Charlie had nothing to do with it.
    If this were Darwinism, there would be no “directed evolution” (an oxymoron), because there would be no direction.  Here, the scientists had a goal: they wanted enantioselective enzymes.  Their “mutation and selection” process was results-driven by artificial selection, a form of intelligent design.  Yet Reetz illogically claims, without any evidence or support (only belief), “Enzymes are products of evolution, and might therefore be expected to function with high enantioselectivity only with natural substrates under physiological conditions.”  Then, in the very next breath, he falsifies this evolutionary prediction: “However, it is well known that this is not the case, because a surprisingly large number of unnatural compounds are converted with high enantioselectivity, even in organic solvents.”  So does this convert him to ID theory?  No, he just waltzes into the problem at hand: “Nevertheless, the problem of substrate specificity persists.  In such cases several approaches to enhance enzyme stereoselectivity have been described, including site-specific mutagenesis based on theoretical considerations...” la te da, blah blah, and so on, and so forth, so we’ll design an enzyme with a creative method and give Charlie the glory.
    The difference between this method and the traditional bottom-up approach Reetz calls “rational design” can be compared to the difference between engineering and management.  The engineer knows the physical laws and properties of the widget he is designing, and organizes the parts specifically toward the solution.  The manager just says, “Build me a widget that flies.”  An upper manager might devise a contest between engineers to see who can come up with the best design.  All the manager cares about is the results: will it fly?  He weeds out the losers and rewards the winners.  The winner gets more resources to refine the design until an optimal design is produced.  Even if the engineer uses trial and error and chance, given enough trials a working prototype will emerge as long as intelligence is directing the process toward a goal.  In a similar way, these researchers did not need to know all the details of the structure of the enzyme they wanted to create; they just mutated ingredients and selected the few that worked, then iterated the process until the best design was filtered out of the pile.  They managed the process rather than engineering it.  Only Dilbert would nominate his manager for a Darwin award.
    Another thing.  The “surprising” discovery Reetz made also argues against Darwinism.  His team found that a remote amino acid, far from the active site, was essential to the function.  He was so surprised by this he called it a paradigm-shifting finding: “This observation leads to a change in paradigm, because all previous attempts to influence enantioselectivity of an enzyme by using site-specific mutagenesis had focused on amino acid substitutions near the active center.  Such protein engineering was designed to “carve” an appropriate chiral pocket at the active center, in line with Fischer’s “lock-and-key” hypothesis or modified versions such as Koshland’s induced fit.  Later, he adds, “... our studies show that the long-standing dogma regarding the necessity of amino acid substitutions exclusively at the active site to influence enantioselectivity no longer holds.”  What this means is that an enzyme is designed all the way through, not just at the active site.  The “lock and key” fit of an enzyme to its substrate is amazing enough, but to think that distant amino acids actually affect the workings of the molecular machine calls into question the belief that proteins can be mutated at will, as long as they are far from the active site.  This underscores the improbability of getting all the amino acids in the right order, as described in our online book, Evolution: Possible or Impossible?
    Let’s give credit where credit is due.  This experiment is all about design.  Calling this “Darwinistic” is like calling Boeing a manufacturer of tornados in junkyards.
Next headline on:  Darwinism and Evolutionary Theory • Intelligent Design

It’s too early to draw conclusions.  The science papers will follow in about a year or two.  For now, let’s enjoy this rare Opportunity to share in the Spirit of discovery.
    Geologists looking for vast ages in the data cannot resist weaving their tales already, though.  Jeffrey Moore takes a little data and stretches it into millions of years: “The data from the Thermal Emission Spectrometer also hint that the sulphates formed before much of the present-day surface of the ancient southern highlands was carved out.  The specular haematite deposits at Terra Meridiani probably formed at a temperature of about 100 °C, converted from goethite.  This conversion temperature implies that the blueberries on the lake beds of Terra Meridiani were once buried to a depth of more than a kilometre [was he there?]  There they might have lain for aeons, before the rock layers above were eroded away, revealing a field of blueberries that are too large to be transported or destroyed by the wind.  The blueberry fields may have existed on the martian surface for millions of years.”  Then again, they may have not.  Hop into your time machine and get us some observations.
Next headline on:  Mars • Geology

It can date objects, that is, provided you are willing to extrapolate known rates by three orders of magnitude into the unseen past.  They never tell you the assumptions that go into these methods.  The error limits give a false sense of accuracy.  How come no one ever calls these claims on the carpet for committing the fallacy of extrapolation?  Here’s why: the figures agree with their evolutionary assumptions.
    Gauging how fast a hydration layer will form in a quartz crack and then extrapolating that measurement back to a million years, without knowing all possible geological, atmospheric and other physical conditions that might affect the rate, is unwarranted.  Take three curves a mile long: an exponential, a logarithmic, and a damped oscillator.  If all you could measure were a few millimeters, and if you didn’t know all sources of possible error, it would be a fallacy to claim you had established a linear relationship.  Any good mathematical physics teacher would give you an F for assuming such a thing.
    What’s more interesting about this article is what Ericson admits about the other dating methods: “Other dating methods are poor performers for this period or have questionable accuracy, and the most familiar dating methods are not effective at all.  Radiocarbon dating is good for dating organic material up to around 50,000 years old, and potassium argon dating is good for dating mineral samples that are between 100,000 and 4.3 billion years old.”  Interesting.  On what grounds can processes in the unseen past be judged “poor performers?”  Because they don’t give the “desired” results.
    Evolutionists get away with extrapolation because they need the deep time the dating methods claim to provide, and the dating methods depend on evolutionary theory to decide if their methods are “poor performers” or not.  Dating methods and evolutionary theory are like two trapeze artists clinging to each other, each one thinking the other guy is attached to the bar.
Next headline on:  Dating Methods

How false and dumb do news stories have to get before people can’t take it any more and make their voices heard?  As seen in the Associated Press story about the textbook warning labels, the usual lies and misrepresentations from the Darwin Party have now been superseded by actual mind control.  Students must not develop critical thinking skills.  Open minds must be closed.  The thought police will now tell them what they must believe.  But CNN has the audacity to assert that opening the door to alternatives to evolution restricts teachers’ rights.
    Judge Cooper based his decision not on the facts, nor on what the label actually said, but on (1) the assumed motive of the school board, and (2) the assumed effect on students.  As for (1), the judge felt he could read between the lines and discern the motives of the school board: “Aha!  I know what you’re trying to do.  You say you want students to keep an open mind, but what you really want to do is push the Biblical teaching of creationism!  Well, we’re not content to keep you off first base; we’re going to bend the rules so you can’t have a turn at bat!”  The danger of this legal approach should be self-evident.  If the thought police can now arrest you for what they think you might do, instead of for what you have done, then the Bill of Rights is out the window.
    Some will retort that school board members are elected representatives of the state and speak for the government.  So what?  Does that trump their rights?  Does that make them slaves to the Darwin Party?  Government is of the people and by the people.  Are not school board members allowed to think, debate issues and make decisions?  If the voters don’t like their decisions, they can vote them out of office.  Why does the Darwin Party use the end run tactic of going to the courts to get their way?  One would think that scientists were interested in debating evidence, if “most scientists” believe “evidence shows” bacteria evolved into humans.  OK, may we talk about that evidence?  “No!  We’re going to find a judge who will outlaw criticism of our view!”
    As for (2) the presumed effect on students – the fear that they might actually develop critical thinking skills and consider alternatives instead of swallowing the dogma that evolution is a fact – it is inconceivable that any science teacher worth his or her salt should fear open-mindedness.  Most science teachers want students to think and not just parrot answers.  Most science teachers would love it if their students actually understood something, and could discuss it intelligently, instead of just believing the textbook or the teacher’s word.  Even pro-evolution teachers should realize that discussion and debate about evolution is healthy.  The warning labels could be a great teachable moment for both sides.  What is there to fear?  That a student might think for a change?  Come on, Darwin Party apologists; you are making yourselves look like thought police.  If the only way you can get students to believe your view is to prevent students from even knowing there might be alternatives, then your view is not worth learning.
    The Associated Press repeated a common lie about the 1987 Supreme Court decision, that creationism could not be taught along with evolution.  The decision only outlawed state laws that mandate equal time.  It specifically allowed for any scientific theory of origins to be taught in the science classroom, including creation or intelligent design, as long as it was not required to be given equal time.
    It is a strange thing, yet all too common, to see the very people who preach free thought oppose it, and the ones who want to question everything shut off debate.  Then they rant and rave over rumors, which turn out to be false, that their opponents might restrict free thought.  There’s a word for this: hypocrisy.
Next headline on:  Education • Darwinism and Evolutionary Theory • Dumb Ideas

In ancient times, without refrigeration, some fermentation was unavoidable; still, sober-minded people knew the dangers of undiluted wine and condemned drunkenness (see Proverbs 23:29-35).  Today, with refrigeration, pasteurization, and so many safe options available to us, why take unnecessary risks?  At least don’t claim you do it for your health.  It’s a preference, and not a wise one.  Some things, while legal, may not be wise; they can take over (see I Cor. 6:12).  Keep your head.  The good book commends sober-mindedness.  You’ll need that to read these pages.
Next headline on:  Health

• Astrobiology Magazine pictured a contemplative chimpanzee pondering its origins, and began, “The Darwinian picture of the first fish venturing out of a muddy pond to become a lizard, has always had a certain simplistic appeal, but recent findings suggest this transitional puzzle has new fossil evidence.  A 365-million year old humerus bone hints at a fish that tried to prop itself up underwater, long before its offspring could have appeared as eventual amphibians.”  Charles Darwin, in pictures and quotes, is featured in the story, along with an illustration of limbs reverting back to fins in the evolution of whales.
• MSNBC News carried the story with the title, “How did fins evolve into feet?  Fossils document gradual change in the bones of ancient fish”.  The first paragraph is even more daring, connecting the story to us humans: “There is something fishy going on in your arms and legs – and it’s a good thing.  With the discovery of the world’s oldest known arm bone, scientists conclude that many of the physical features we associate with life on land, including the bone structures and muscles necessary for walking and doing pushups, have their evolutionary roots in fish.”
• New Scientist claimed that this “Primitive fossil arm performed push-ups” and “has revealed important insights into how animals colonised the land.”
• National Geographic gave Shubin’s team uncontested coverage, even though among the positive affirmations, they quoted one of the researchers as “unable to discern whether the humerus belongs to Hynerpeton, Densignathus, or an entirely new tetrapod species.”
• BBC News reported the story in slightly more tentative language, “Fossil may be earliest arm bone,” though offering no alternative to an evolutionary interpretation.  When they wrote, “It suggests the earliest limbed animals were fish navigating shallow rivers, but its place in the evolutionary tree is the subject of some controversy,” the controversy they speak of is not whether evolution from fins to feet occurred, but where this particular fossil fits in the scheme: they end with another scientist mentioning that this bone “isn’t like any of the later humeri that you encounter in the later Carboniferous.”
• Nature Science Update claimed “Strong-arm tactics drove creatures from the pond,” and stated, “The discovery of an ancient arm bone has helped scientists understand what happened as water-dwelling creatures evolved into land animals.”  The end of the article admits that “Details are sketchy, however.  We do not know, for example, how developed these creatures became underwater before crawling ashore, but the new find should add to the current picture.”

If this article doesn’t make you mad, you have been hoodwinked as a victim of bad high school science teaching.  These reporters have taken an inch of data and stretched it into a light-year in both directions, fitting it into an all-encompassing myth of their own making, without considering alternative explanations or even coming close to supporting their case.  No muscles were found, no dates were stamped on the bones, no creatures were seen doing push-ups, and no transition from fins to feet was observed.  In fact, this bone brings as many puzzles into the evolutionary tale as “insights” (oh, how they love to claim that such and such a discovery “may provide insight into evolution”).  Where is any science reporter wise and bold enough to stand up and call this kind of grandstanding unjustifiable, misleading and worthless?
    Darwinists have commandeered the news media by installing gutless lackeys as reporters who dare not question the fanciful interpretations of the Darwin Party.  As a result, they can weave their tall tales with reckless abandon.  If this were a court of law, the opposing attorney would cry “Objection!”, and demand proof.  If a politician made a claim on such flimsy evidence, the reporters would hammer him with hard-hitting follow-up questions and turn his reputation into a laughingstock.  If it were a logic class, the teacher would use it as an illustration of a of logical fallacy of extrapolation while the students would respond to the claimed evidence by rolling their eyes and rotating their fingers around their ears.  But no; the Darwin Party is a totalitarian regime, suppressing freedom of the press, freedom of speech and freedom of thought.  Only the official party line can be debated.  That’s why Creation-Evolution Headlines, the alternative media, exists.  Spread the word.
    For a more detailed response to prior claims by Clack and Shubin, be sure to read our 08/09/2003 entry.  You won’t get it in the mainstream media.
Next headline on:  Marine Biology • Darwinism and Evolutionary Theory • Dumb Ideas

The retinae were anatomically well-developed and showed no obvious deficits.  To the contrary, the researchers found an unusually high proportion of 10% cones among the photoreceptors.  Surface-dwelling nocturnal rodents like rat and mouse have only 1 - 3% cones, which is not surprising as cones do not operate in moonlight or starlight.  Even most diurnal mammals have no more than 5 - 20% cones.  Why should the mole-rats, living in constant darkness, invest so highly in the cones that only work in daylight?  The dominant majority of photoreceptors in all nocturnal and most diurnal mammals are the rods, which are used for vision at low light levels (night vision).  Here the mole-rats are less well equipped.  Their rod density is only one quarter of that of, for example, mice.  Why are the mole-rats so sparing with their light-sensitive rods?

In summary, the photoreceptors of African mole-rats show stark deviations from the common mammalian pattern.  But none of these peculiarities fit the concept of a general regression of the retina in adaptation to a lightless living environment.  Evolutionary biology would predict that obsolete structures are removed because they are metabolically too expensive.  Hence these photoreceptor features should be interpreted as specializations for particular visual needs. 

So another evolutionary assumption has been falsified by observations.  Nice work.  Since Charlie is taking a stoning as a false prophet, how about giving the intelligent design community a shot at making and testing hypotheses?
Next headline on:  Mammals • Darwinism and Evolutionary Theory

These surprising data are too preliminary for anyone to understand them satisfactorily.  They rely on techniques involving some guesswork and statistics, such as comparing similar sequences and identifying unique species out of billions of base pairs.  Still, the results so far appear to contradict evolutionary assumptions.  In a strictly Darwinian world, the fittest survive and the weak go extinct.  Yet in the oceans, where the generation rates are the fastest and the opportunities for competition over resources are plenteous, there is a superabundance of biodiversity.  Why would organisms “strive to protect nature’s investment in the old, anaerobic biological machinery,” if photosynthesis is superior?  Can the impersonal strive?  What is machinery, if not made by intelligent design?  And if horizontal gene transfer has been the rule, or neutral evolution widespread, “scrambling”' the genomes of these organisms, how could any phylogenetic tree be constructed?  How could a scientist have any confidence that a phylogenetic tree even reflects natural history at all?  Falkowski and de Vargas would not be asking the questions if they knew how “evolutionary processes” (how’s that for an oxymoron) could “maintain such high microbial biodiversity,” or why such “extreme redundancy” should exist in a “nutrient-impoverished” environment, where Malthus and Darwin would have expected only the fittest to survive.  They see no clear “Darwinian selection through vertical inheritance” jumping out of the published data.  An outside observer might claim Darwin’s predictions have been falsified.
    This is not to assert that creationists have a ready answer to explain why there would be so many rhodopsin-like photoreceptors, or why a dinoflagellate would have a genome comparable in size to a human.  We have already seen that the genome is only part of a more complex picture of gene regulation and development (e.g., see 05/23/2003 entry).  A creationist could argue the truism that each organism, by its very persistence, possesses what it needs to survive, and that this fits a creation paradigm as well as (if not better than) an evolutionary one.  Overall, however, the emerging picture of oceanic biodiversity does not appear to represent what an evolutionist would expect.  The basal life forms, prokarya and bacteria, already possess complex machinery and a diversity of functions beyond what seems needed for mere survival.  Superabundance of genetic information points to a commensurate cause: a superabundance of intelligent design.
Next headline on:  Genetics and DNA • Marine Biology

Get the magazine just for the artwork: a forlorn-looking Darwin and his pet fish sinking into an ooze of Campbell’s primordial soup.  (The articles are entertaining and enlightening, too.)  These articles could backfire if they make readers complacent, causing them to think the demise of Darwinism is already a done deal.  Right now, the Darwin Party is still a totalitarian regime giving little indication of relinquishing the power it usurped in Huxley’s era (see 01/15/2004 entry).  For the prophecies to come true, remember what Doc said in Back to the Future III: “Your future hasn’t been written yet ... Your future is what you make it.  So make it a good one!”
Next headline on:  Darwinism and Evolutionary Theory • Intelligent Design

Models of this kind are easy to construct and boringly monotonic.  Furthermore, they cannot explain the widely accepted factor-of-two ratio for current Earth heat output to current radiogenic heat production.  Our planet was more eventful than these simple models allow.  Whereas Earth scientists have no desire to repeal the first law of thermodynamics, they are willing to challenge almost everything else.  Recently, major disagreements have emerged in attempts to understand the energy budget of Earth’s core, and there are still many uncertainties over how to incorporate the effects of plates, water, melting and layering into our picture of mantle circulation.

Standard evolutionary models have difficulty explaining how the inner core has existed for more than the past billion years or so, yet Earth’s magnetic field has existed throughout most of geological time.  There is no direct evidence on the age of the inner core, and the dynamo may operate without an inner core.  Still, it would be surprising if it were a recent feature of Earth’s structure.  This is one of several reasons why some scientists wonder whether there is an additional energy source in the core.

It is an unfortunate feature of simple models of convection that they can mimic many of the characteristics of plate tectonics, but cannot explain some essential features of plates.  The danger of these simple pictures is that they may not provide an adequate predictive framework for how plate tectonics evolves through geological time.  Some models suggest possible solutions, but the lack of agreement between these various approaches means that we are not close to a final resolution.

It seems likely that we will not understand the origin of Earth’s magnetic field until we know how the mantle controls heat flow in the core.  But we cannot understand the mantle side until we have a better understanding of plate tectonics.  This may in turn depend on understanding Earth’s water cycle.  Could it be that magnetism, like life, depends on water?

This article may come as a shock to those who took high school physical science and were accustomed to boring, confident-sounding textbook drawings and films about the earth and how things work.  (Geologists working the surface of the earth have their own problems, too: see 10/09/2003 entry).  Notice how little is known.  The origin of the earth’s magnetic field, vital to life as we know it and dropping in strength rapidly, has them still at square one.  Plate tectonics, after 50 years the dominant paradigm, is still poorly understood (especially in terms of operation over long ages).  The size, chemical makeup and viscosity of the core and mantle are matters of conjecture by armchair scientists trying to get their models to work.  And if you were told the earth’s heat comes from radioactive decay, thus rendering Lord Kelvin’s upper limit on the age of the earth obsolete, were you aware that estimates are off by a factor of two?
    Stevenson jokingly teeters on the edge of “repealing the first law of thermodynamics,” which he knows, of course, would be absurd.  But there is another boundary no secular geologist would dare cross, even if they are willing to challenge everything else, and that is the assumed old age of the earth.  Even if there is no way to explain the rapidly-depleting magnetic field, even if plates cannot be kept moving that long, and even if there is more heat coming out of the crust than known sources permit, that is one parameter not open to question, because it would not allow enough time for Darwinian evolution from molecules to man.  And if evolution did not occur, the alternative is unthinkable.  (Also, no geologist would risk the scorn, ridicule and ostracism associated with being labeled a young-earther.)
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So another evolutionary principle has been debunked by evolutionists.  Wonderful.  Keep up the good work.
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These guys are dead serious.  They look at suicide terrorism as just another behavior that evolved by natural selection.  They think they are doing us a favor by helping us “understand” how this phenomenon evolved, presumably so we can deal with it in a compassionate and understanding way.  So how would this view influence foreign policy?  If it is evolved behavior, isn’t it also an evolved behavior to fight back?  Neither side can claim to be right; we’re back to the law of the jungle.  Neither can these evolutionary psychologists exempt their behavior from natural selection.  Writing papers in Science, therefore, has no ultimate meaning.
    We bring these examples to your attention to show how utterly wacko certain university professors have become under the influence of Dar-wine.  Don’t blame the bomber, or the one who sent him, when he blows up dozens or hundreds of innocent people in a bus or building.  Personal responsibility is a myth.  Evil does not exist.  The teachings of the Quran and Islamic leaders are only incidental and should not be criticized; the bomber is only doing what Charlie said natural law made him do.
    Somebody send this story to Dennis Prager.  It should make for a lively discussion on his radio talk show.
Next headline on:  Darwinism and Evolutionary Theory • Dumb Ideas

This effort to use religion to endorse evolution is part of a larger public-relations strategy devised by the NCSE to defuse skepticism of neo-Darwinism.  On its own website, the group advises inviting ministers to testify in favor of evolution before school boards, and it has created a Sunday-school curriculum to promote evolution in the churches.  The NCSE even has a “Faith Network Director” who claims that “Darwin’s theory of evolution... has, for those open to the possibilities, expanded our notions of God.”

This is funny, but it would be even more entertaining if the ACLU took on the NCSE.  Don’t hold your breath.  For those two bosom-buddy groups, it’s not about science or logic.  It’s war: Worldview War I.
See also this month’s quote at top right of this page.
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Well, very nice.  I’m sure father and son and buddy had fun out there in the desert and learned a lot.  This is certainly better empirical research than the typical Darwin Party fare, weaving tales out of pure imagination.  Too bad it’s irrelevant.
    Like the study on peppered mice (see 04/18/2003 entry), this research really doesn’t do much to help prop up Charlie.  Creationists freely admit that existing traits can be emphasized by predation or diet, including finch beaks and fur color.  Even Answers in Genesis has no problem with natural selection at this level.  This paper does nothing to explain how the lucky lizard got horns in the first place, or a head, or running legs, or breathing lungs, circulating blood, seeing eyes, hearing ears, sexual organs, or factories of molecular machines in every cell of its body.
    Researchers who think these kinds of microevolutionary studies support Darwinism commit the fallacy of extrapolation.  They think that if they just add up a large number of little stories about microevolution, they will all add up to macroevolution, and prove that humans had bacteria ancestors.  But like a pendulum on a clock, a lot of little movements do not necessarily add up to vast distances.
    Furthermore, this admirable field work, which must have required a lot of time and effort, raises as many questions as it attempts to answer: why aren’t all the horns long enough on all the lizards by now to prevent all shrike attacks?  Have they connected the acquired characteristics to the gametes and to developmental pathways, to prevent accusations of Lamarckism?  Are the genes for horns subject to pleiotropy or balancing selection?  Do the longer horns cause disadvantages to the lizards?  What other defense mechanisms are at work, like camouflage, better eyesight, faster legs or bad taste?  Perhaps you can think of more.
   The point is, there is just some circumstantial evidence here, with plenty of wiggle room for just-so storytelling, and the relationship, which is probably valid, does nothing to explain the origin of the lizard and the origin of the bird.  The mere sorting of existing information is not what Charlie set out to explain.  The big just-so story is still that.  Swabbing the deck doesn’t make the ship float.
    Science Now contains a Freudian slip that reveals the bad storytelling habit of Darwinians: “Any armchair Darwinist could tell you the lizards’ horns probably evolved to protect it from predators.”  Telling a story with your arms on the recliner was supposed to go out with Aristotle.  Get out there and prove it.
Next headline on:  Terrestrial Zoology • Darwinism and Evolutionary Theory