Creation-Evolution Headlines
March 2005
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“The geosynclinal theory is one of the great unifying principles in geology.  In many ways its role in geology is similar to that of the theory of evolution, which serves to integrate the many branches of the biological sciences.... Just as the doctrine of evolution is universally accepted among biologists, so also the geosynclinal origin of the major mountain systems is an established principle in geology.”
—Clark and Stearn, in a geology textbook, shortly before the geosynclincal theory was overturned in favor of plate tectonics.  Cited by William Dembski in The Design Revolution (IVP, 2004), p. 207.
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How Well Do We Know Our Moon?   03/31/2005
Leonard David wrote in
Space.Com that Earth’s moon is “still a puzzle” – “luna incognita,” he calls it, hoping for a new corps of discovery to go back.  Surprisingly, the treasure trove of Apollo data has “been sitting around and never properly studied,”  especially since the development of more highly sophisticated analytical techniques.  Carl Pieters (Brown U) has listed some of his questions:
Has the enormous lunar south pole Aitken Basin on the Moon’s farside excavated into the lunar mantle?
What happened in the first few hundred million years to cause the lunar nearside to be so very different from the farside?
What caused the pockets of iron-rich materials in the primitive crust?
What are the deposits near the lunar poles and what other possible resources have we missed?
Even the origin of the moon is an open question, despite the “current consensus” of the impact model.  The article gives space to one maverick who doesn’t believe it: Paul Lowman, a planetary geologist at NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Maryland.  “A lot had to happen very fast.  I have trouble grasping that,” he said.  “You have to do too much geologically in such a short time after the Earth and the Moon formed.  Frankly, I think the origin of the Moon is still an unsolved problem, contrary to what anybody will tell you,” the article quotes Lowman.
    The moon is becoming a popular target again.  The European Space Agency is already there with SMART-1.  Missions from Japan, China, India and the United States are planning to fill in the many gaps in our understanding of our nearest celestial neighbor.
We do science a disfavor when we think we know the answers or let a consensus lull us into complacency.  Question the textbooks; dig through the treasure trove of data, and be willing to think independently.
Next headline on:  Solar SystemGeology
Your Linemen at Work: DNA Search and Rescue Machine Imaged in Action    03/31/2005
DNA is amazing enough, but its automatic error-correction utilities are enough to stagger the imagination.  There are dozens of repair mechanisms to shield our genetic code from damage; one of them was portrayed in Nature1 March 31 (see also analysis by Sheila David in the same issue2) in terms that should inspire awe.
    Imagine a huge encyclopedia written on beads, in strands many miles long.  The words of the book are inscribed in letter beads along the strand.  Now imagine that, tied to the primary strand, is a twin strand with beads representing the “negatives” of the primary beads, such that when the strands are separated, exact copies can be made.  Every once in awhile, the strands are separated by a machine.  Floating beads are attracted to the negative beads, lining up to form exact copies of the book or portions thereof.  This is a simplified view of DNA transcription and replication.  What happens, however, if the wrong bead, or a defective bead, becomes attached to the negative?  For books, that could misspell a word or produce gibberish, but in living organisms, the consequences could be disastrous.
    Now picture little machines that regularly traverse the string of beads.  Because the shapes of the beads differ according to the letters on them, this machine is able to find typos.  Let’s say that a letter “C” is always supposed to pair with a letter “G” on the strand.  The proofreading machine feels every bead, and if it finds that particular mismatch, it ejects the incorrect bead so that another correct one can be fastened on by another machine.  This is a simplified view of “base-excision repair” (BER) that actually takes place in your body, all the time.
    The strands in a cell are, of course, DNA, and the beads are called nucleotides, or bases.  Of the four bases in DNA (C, G, A, and T) cytosine or C is always supposed to pair with guanine, G, and adenine, A, is always supposed to pair with thymine, T.  The enzyme studied by Banerjee et al. in Nature is one of a host of molecular machines called BER glycosylases; this one is called human oxoG glycosylase repair enzyme (hOGG1), and it is specialized for finding a particular type of error: an oxidized G base (guanine).  Oxidation damage can be caused by exposure to ionizing radiation (like sunburn) or free radicals roaming around in the cell nucleus.  The normal G becomes oxoG, making it very slightly out of shape.  There might be one in a million of these on a DNA strand.  While it seems like a minor typo, it can actually cause the translation machinery to insert the wrong amino acid into a protein, with disastrous results, such as colorectal cancer.  This little machine has an important job.3  How does it work?
    The machine latches onto the DNA double helix and works its way down the strand, feeling every base on the way.  As it proceeds, it kinks the DNA strand into a sharp angle.  It is built to ignore the T and A bases, but whenever it feels a C, it knows there is supposed to be a G attached.  The machine has precision contact points for C and G.  When the C engages, the base paired to it is flipped up out of the helix into a slot inside the enzyme that is finely crafted to mate with a pure, clean G.  If all is well, it flips the G back into the DNA helix and moves on.  If the base is an oxoG, however, that base gets flipped into another slot further inside, where powerful forces yank the errant base out of the strand so that other machines can insert the correct one.
    Now this is all wonderful stuff so far, but as with many things in living cells, the true wonder is in the details.  The thermodynamic energy differences between G and oxoG are extremely slight – oxoG contains only one extra atom of oxygen – and yet this machine is able to discriminate between them to high levels of accuracy.  David says, “DNA-repair enzymes amaze us with their ability to search through vast tracts of DNA to find subtle anomalies in the structure.  The human repair enzyme 8-oxoguanine glycosylase (hOGG1) is particularly impressive in this regard because it efficiently removes 8-oxoguanine (oxoG), a damaged guanine (G) base containing an extra oxygen atom, and ignores undamaged bases” (emphasis added in all quotes).  The team led by Anirban Banerjee of Harvard, using a clever new stop-action method of imaging, caught this little enzyme in the act of binding to a bad guanine, helping scientists visualize how the machinery works.
    Some other amazing details are mentioned about this molecular proofreader.  It checks every C-G pair, but slips right past the A-T pairs.  The enzyme, “much like a train that stops only at certain locations,” pauses at each C and, better than any railcar conductor inspecting each ticket, flips up the G to validate it.  Unless it conforms to the slot perfectly – even though G and oxoG differ in their match by only one hydrogen bond – it is ejected like a freeloader in a Pullman car and tossed out into the desert.  David elaborates:
Calculations of differences in free energy indicate that both favourable and unfavourable interactions lead to preferential binding of oxoG over G in the oxoG-recognition pocket, and of G over oxoG in the alternative site.  This structure [the image resolved by the scientific team] captures an intermediate that forms in the process of finding oxoG, and illustrates that the damaged base must pass through a series of ‘gates’, or checkpoints, within the enzyme; only oxoG satisfies the requirements for admission to the damage-specific pocket, where it will be clipped from the DNA.  Other bases (C, A and T) may be rejected outright without extrusion from the helix because hOGG1 scrutinizes both bases in each pair, and only bases opposite a C will be examined more closely.
How many linemen does it take to repair your strands?  The researchers explain, “Only 50,000 molecules of hOGG1 protect the entire 6 x 109 base-pair nuclear genome of a diploid human cell, hence the enzyme must have developed an efficient mechanism for distinguishing oxoG from the four nucleobases in normal DNA.”  50,000 repairmen for 6 billion bases: that’s one repairman for every 120,000 letters, comparable to a skilled proofreader checking every letter of a 20,000 word document for one specific kind of typo.  Then there are all the other proofreaders that look for other kinds of mistakes.4
1Banerjee et al., “Structure of a repair enzyme interrogating undamaged DNA elucidates recognition of damaged DNA,”
Nature 434, 612 - 618 (31 March 2005); doi:10.1038/nature03458.
2Sheila S. David, “Structural biology: DNA search and rescue,” Nature 434, 569 - 570 (31 March 2005); doi:10.1038/434569a.
3See “Life without DNA Repair,” in PNAS, 1997.  It lists 13 BER enzymes including this one.  Studies on mice are described: “mutants show various combinations of defective embryogenesis, tissue-specific dysfunction, hypersensitivity to DNA-damaging agents, premature senescence, genetic instability, and elevated cancer rates.”
4The authors mention another paralogous enzyme, 3-methyladenine DNA glycosylase (AlkA), which is not as “fastidious” as hOGG1, because it “does occasionally excise adenine residues from undamaged DNA.”  But there may be reasons for the differences in fidelity; some may have to work under stressful conditions, and repair as much as they can within constraints of time or other factors.  JBC Online says that AlkA has “a remarkably versatile active site.”  This reminds us that intelligent design does not mean perfection of every detail, but “constrained optimization”: achieving the combination of features that produces a “sweet spot” with best overall performance.  The proof of the pudding for DNA repair is in the performance itself: no one watching a race horse, cormorant (05/24/2004) or champion triathlete in action could argue with the assertion that the suite of repair enzymes in living things appears optimized to achieve an extremely high degree of fidelity under a wide range of conditions and stress factors.
OK, Darwin Party: checkmate.  Natural selection cannot act without accurate replication, yet the protein machinery for the level of accuracy required is itself built by the very genetic code it is designed to protect.  Explain that!  If the Darwinists cannot provide a plausible mechanism whereby nonliving chemicals, by chance, hit upon a means of replicating information-bearing molecules accurately, there would have been no evolution, because any gains would have been drowned in the errors of subsequent generations.
    It would have been challenging enough to explain accurate translation alone in a primordial soup, but now throw in some free radicals and radiation, and any information gained would have quickly been destroyed through accumulation of errors.  So accurate replication and proofreading are required for the origin of life.  How on earth could proofreading enzymes emerge, especially with this degree of fidelity, when they depend on the very information that they are designed to protect?  Think about it.  This is a catch-22 for Darwinists.  No wonder none of the authors of these two articles dared whisper the word evolution.  The gig is up; we might as well not even waste any time arguing about Hobbit man (03/25/2005), peppered mice (04/18/2003) and what IMAX films to show (03/23/2005).  Proofreading codes by chance?  And a complex suite of translation machinery without a designer?  Anyone with a head screwed on is not going to want such nonsense taught in public schools (03/24/2005).
    If we can just sweep away the cobwebs of musty Darwinian thinking out of our minds for a moment, we can begin to enjoy the wonder of these incredible mechanisms.  If the ancients could understand that creation demands a Creator by looking at the sun, or a bird, or a baby, how much more we today with all the revelations about cell biology and molecular machines?  The grand oratorio of creation is being unveiled, a little at a time, into a hallelujah chorus that deserves our most worshipful applause – indeed, a standing ovation.
Next headline on:  Cell BiologyGenetics and DNAAmazing Stories
ID in the News    03/30/2005
PBS aired a segment on the anti-Darwinism controversy in the schools Monday (see
PBS transcript).  Ken Ham and Stephen Meyer presented arguments for criticizing Darwin, while Eugenie Scott and others defended exclusive evolutionary teaching.  The Discovery Institute blog Evolution News analyzed the 14:32 minute segment, complaining that 90 minutes of Meyer’s interview received only 30 seconds of air time.  The segment, narrated by Jeffrey Brown, included some clips from the ID film Unlocking the Mystery of Life.
The media continue to slant this controversy according to the “alt-ctrl-Scopes” macro, Rob Crowther of EvolutionNews writes.  But no one can deny that the debate is getting more and more attention.  Sooner or later, the Darwinists, instead of just assuming their belief that humans had bacteria ancestors, will have to actually come up with some evidence for it.
Next headline on:  Intelligent DesignDarwinismMediaEducation
Migration Theory Overturned: “Mammals Went Crazy” – Or Did Darwinists?   03/29/2005
The discovery of an elephant shrew fossil in Wyoming badlands said to be 54 million years old is causing a stir.  Elephant shrews were thought to be endemic to Africa, the alleged cradle of mammals.  This find hints not only that elephant shrews may have originated in North America instead, but also that “there may have been a great deal more interchange in terms of how animals moved around the world as the continents broke up than previously thought,” according to
EurekAlert.  A press release from U of Florida worries that this “raises questions about the origin of African mammals.”
    The Stupid Evolution Quote of the Week award goes to Jonathan Bloch of the University of Florida, who explained the theory of adaptive radiation in terms appropriate for a juvenile audience: “After the extinction of the dinosaurs 65 million years ago, there was an explosion of diversity,” he said. “Mammals had a huge celebration with all the big predators gone and they just kind of took overThey went crazy, filling all the open ecological niches they couldn’t have exploited while the dinosaurs were still around.”
Apparently Mr. Bloch had not heard that some mammals had dinosaurs for breakfast (see 01/12/2005 entry).  He seems a staunch believer in the “if you build it, they will come” theory of evolution (see 01/28/2005 commentary), yet doesn’t seem alarmed that yet another plank in the evolutionary platform has just been removed.  Crazy is in the eye of the beholder.
Next headline on:  MammalsEvolutionDumb Stories
“Impressive” – the Memory Capabilities of Honeybees   03/29/2005
“Over the past decade, work on the honey bee has provided growing evidence that insects are not simple, reflexive creatures,” begins a paper in PNAS by international scientists.1  “The brains of honey bees are very small, but their ability to learn and memorize tasks is impressive.”  (Emphasis added in all quotes.)
    With clever experiments, they put test bees through their paces.  They found them able to discern between relevant and irrelevant clues when lost, findings that “point to a remarkably robust, and yet plastic, working memory in the honey bee.”  See also the
02/15/2005 entry on honeybee mental mapping capabilities.
1Zhang et al., ”Visual working memory in decision making by honey bees,” Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences USA, 10.1073/pnas.0501440102, published online before print March 28, 2005.
Bee aware: among all their expressions of amazement about the capabilities built into such a tiny insect, the authors made no mention of evolution in their paper.  That may sting the Darwinists but create a real buzz elsewhere, honey.
Next headline on:  Terrestrial Zoology: Insects, etc.Amazing Stories
Missing Link in Star Formation Found?   03/29/2005
According to a press release from the
European Space Agency, a missing link in stellar evolution has been found.  Observation: excited molecular hydrogen in two colliding galaxies.  Conclusion: a star is born:
The scientists noticed that the overlapping region of the two colliding galaxies is very rich in molecular hydrogen, which is in an excited state.
    In particular, the radiation from molecular hydrogen is evenly strong in the northern and southern areas of the overlap region.  Much to the team’s surprise, however, there are too few supernova explosions or regions of intense star formation there to explain the observed molecular hydrogen emission.  So, the excitation of the molecular hydrogen must be the signature of that observationally rare pre-star birth phase in which hydrogen is excited by the mechanical energy produced in the collision and transported by shock waves.  In other words, these results provide the first direct evidence of the missing link between gas collision and the birth of the first stars.  The team estimates that when the gas will collapse to form new stars, during the next million years, the Antennae galaxy will become at least two times brighter in the infrared.
  (Emphasis added in all quotes.)
The observations were made with ESA’s ISO infrared observatory.  Although scientists have assumed that colliding galaxies produce shock waves that lead to rapid star formation, “So far, however, there was no clear picture of what happens in the time between the collision of two galaxies and the birth of the first new stars.”  The observation of molecular hydrogen in an excited state is said to the be signature of this stage.
Excuse me, but are you not assuming what you need to prove?  You said that direct observations of star birth by gas compression are lacking, then assume that gas compression is producing star birth.  That’s called begging the question.
    The point of this commentary is not to dispute whether star formation occurs by gas compression caused by shock waves.  It is to encourage good science.  This press release did a mighty sloppy job of making its case.
    Assume for a moment you are an unbiased, neutral observer listening to an astronomer prove that when hydrogen is compressed by galaxy collisions and supernova explosions, it collapses into compact burning objects called stars.  From your personal experience, you might be tempted to assume that excited gas does no such thing.  Yet Professor Zubenelgenubi insists it happens, so you, unbiased observer that you are, are eager to hear his proof.  He first claims that the observations are scanty, but we see infrared radiation from areas where star birth is occurring.  Are you convinced yet?  He continues:
The astronomers believe that star formation induced by shocks may have played a role in the evolution of proto-galaxies in the first thousand million years of life of our Universe.  Shock waves produced through the collision of proto-galaxies may have triggered the condensation process and speeded-up the birth of the very first stars.  These objects, made up of only hydrogen and helium, would otherwise have taken much longer to form, since light elements such as hydrogen and helium take a long time to cool down and condense into a proto-star.  Shock waves from the first cloud collisions may have been the helping hand.
Your next response to him might be that this makes a nice story, but you were expecting proof that stars form by compression of shocked gas and he seems to be just assuming they do.  Silently you wonder if the Professor has actually been observing anything for a billion years, but uninitiated frosh that you are, you meekly point out that it would seem that shocked gas would dissipate, not compress into compact, dense, shining objects.  He then points to his Exhibit A: “Ah,” he patronizes, “but now vee have zee proof!  Vee have zee missing link!” [drum roll] “excited molecular hydrogen!” [cymbal crash].
    Biological evolutionists are often guilty of assuming evolution to prove evolution.  Every data point is inserted into a pre-existing mental picture of the very thing they need to demonstrate.  Here we see it happening with astronomers, too.  The story is the thing: the big sweeping panorama of big-bang-to-earth evolution is merely assumed, and every little ounce of observation is fit into the story, whether the observation justifies it or not.  As for proto-galaxies, the science we read shows that the very oldest galaxies were already mature (see 03/10/2005, 08/27/2004 and 07/08/2004 entries), so where are the missing links for this cosmological Cambrian explosion?  The story of star formation itself is not without problems (see 03/31/2004 entry) – so much so, that Simon White remarked, “The simple recipes in published models do not reproduce the star formation we see.  Theorists are now having to grow up.”  This ESA press release seems appropriate only for those in kindergarten.
    Maybe shocked hydrogen forms stars, and maybe it doesn’t, but any unbiased truth seeker would surely demand more evidence than this.  Where else would such a physical process occur?  We can observe compressed gas and shock waves in the solar system, such as the bow shock at Jupiter’s magnetic field boundary.  There, the compressed gas just flows around the outsides and doesn’t form compact, dense objects.  In this case, gravity is too small to be a factor, so the comparison may be moot; that’s beside the point.  Read this press release without assuming stellar evolution is true and you would be hard pressed to find a solid reason to find the case convincing.  Don’t ever get swept into the emotional euphoria of any scientist’s bluff.
    Is it not ironic that the only ones obeying the bumper sticker, “Question authority,” are the creationists?
Next headline on:  Stars and Deep Space Astronomy
Descendants Can Overcome Parental Mutations    03/28/2005
Bad genes from both parents may not spell doom in all cases.  Scientists at
Purdue University found that if two parents have bad mutations, the child can sometimes reconstruct the correct gene from the grandparents.  “Our genetic training tells us that’s just not possible,” said Bob Pruitt, co-researcher on the team that ran the experiment repeatedly with the lab plant Arabidopsis.  “This challenges everything we believe.”
    Some unknown mechanism, perhaps using RNA, is storing a template of the correct sequence that the offspring can use to reconstruct the gene, they suspect.  This supplements ordinary Mendelian inheritance with a means of correcting errors.2  About 10% of their experimental offspring were able to inherit the correct gene from the grandparents.  Their work was published in Nature last week.1  See also News@Nature that says this report “flabbergasts” scientists and “overturns textbook genetics.”  The summary on Science Now describes this as “an inheritable cache of RNA that can reverse evolution, undoing mutations and restoring a gene to its former glory” (emphasis added).  One of the researchers said this experiment “suggests the existence of a unique genetic memory system that can be invoked at will” to reverse harmful mutations.  It would seem that the memory would require procedures for comparing the bad gene with the template, excising the bad gene, and inserting the correct one.  Whatever this mechanism is, it has been “under the radar,” says New Scientist, and could exist in animals and even in humans.
1Lolle et al., “Genome-wide non-mendelian inheritance of extra-genomic information in Arabidopsis,” Nature 434, 505 - 509 (24 March 2005); doi:10.1038/nature03380.
2Mendel had it mostly right (see online biography); this new mechanism adds to our knowledge of inheritance. 
Trouble in the Darwin Party camp.  They were counting on those lucky mutations producing all the glory, not mechanisms to undo mutations to restore a gene to its former glory.  This is stasis with a vengeance.  We already knew that many genetic errors are corrected in the nucleus or the cell before reproduction occurs; now, another mechanism has come to light that corrects errors after they have left the station, almost like warranty repair service.
    So tell us please, Darwinians: what lucky mutation led to a system that can correct mutations?  Neo-Darwinism won’t get far if its main source of variation – mutations – is kept in check with genetic homeland security.  “Reverse evolution” is not evolution at all; it’s creation.  It implies there was a creation that was so elegant, it contained even a repair warranty: a mechanism to identify when something has gone wrong, and automatically deploy resources to fix it so that the organism could restore its “former glory.”
Next headline on:  GeneticsEvolution
Easter Essay    03/27/2005
Accompanied by a picture of a cross and a sunset, captioned “The Sun and the Son,” a somber-looking Brian Walden wrote an essay in the
BBC News expressing his reaction to Astronomer Royal Sir Martin Rees’ “chilling” comment that “It will not be humans who witness the demise of the Sun six billion years hence; it will be entities as different from us as we are from bacteria.”  Rees stated that the idea of evolution is well-known, but that the “vast potential for further evolution isn’t yet part of our common culture.”
    Walden delved into the implications of this assumed “scientific” view of our future for morality, ethics, and religion with a note of nostalgia for his simple childhood faith: “This is Easter and I can’t help contrasting the Christian promise of my youth with what science expects to happen.”
This essay had better make every Christian pastor and believer wake up and ponder the deadly effect of evolutionary thinking.  Mr. Walden is caught in a tension between what his conscience says and what the Darwin Party soothsayers are telling him.  He sees the enormous complexity of an unborn baby revealed by the latest sonograms, and he fears the future of bioethics with no foundation for ethics, but he accepts at face value what Rees says about evolution and the future of the sun billions of years from now.  Like a dumb sheep, he fails to question the glittering generalities pronounced by the Babbleonians on the left, the liberals who drove the wedge between science and religion as far back as the 18th century.  While realizing that any kind of consensus between the Christians and the liberals would be an alloy of iron and clay, he yet hungers for some kind of dialogue between them at least.
    This is pathetic.  Walden is badly uninformed, because he grants to secular science an authority and credibility it doesn’t have.  If he would stop naively trusting what scientific sleuthsayers like Rees say the sun is going to do in six billion years, he could begin to regain some confidence in the Son who said, “He who believes in Me has everlasting life.”  Somebody give Walden a rope to climb out of the dark cave of (misnamed) Enlightenment thinking.  Maybe a copy of The Privileged Planet would help, and a bookmark to Creation-Evolution Headlines.
    England made a mistake by welding the church to the government.  Enlightenment liberals rightly despised the corruption that resulted, but went too far in asserting autonomy in matters of science and ethics.  It’s time for England to get rid of its useless state church, and experience a revival from the ground up: from individual believers no longer intimidated by the wormtongues of liberal philosophers (who know neither the past nor future of our sun).  It’s time for them to understand the strength of the Biblical foundation for science and morality.  Armed with new confidence in the unchanging Word of God and its ability to stimulate true science as well as provide solid ground for ethics, individuals must overthrow the Darwinian usurpers before their vile ethics bear any more poisoned fruit.
    Suns and babies do not come from nothing.  Like everything in nature, they have the fingerprint of design: not just impersonal design, but the design of an all-wise, all-powerful, personal Creator.  Walden’s predicament comes from having his authorities inverted.  The sun is subservient to the Son, not the other way around.  There may be nothing new under the sun, but if the Son shall make you free, you shall be free indeed (John 8:36).
Next headline on:  EvolutionThe Bible
Wonders from the Animal World   03/24/2005
Several recent stories prove that animals continue to amaze us with their tricks:
  • Elephants:  The BBC News summarized a report from Nature1 about an elephant in Kenya named Mlaika that could make “convincing truck sounds.”  The elephant lived near a road and apparently learned how to do impressions.  This is the only other case of a terrestrial mammal able to imitate external sounds besides primates (particularly humans).  See also National Geographic News and News@Nature.
  • OctopiMSNBC News reported a study in Science2 that observed two species of octopus able to walk on two feet – er, tentacles.  The behavior is apparently a disguise to fool sharks into thinking it is just a piece of seaweed drifting by.  The octopus uses two tentacles to walk in a stepwise fashion, and the other six to imitate the shape of algae or a coconut shell.  This behavior must be hard-wired into the octopus brain.  See also News@Nature.
  • BatsScience News summarized a report in the March 17 Nature about a species of vampire bat that can not only fly, but run (see also MSNBC News).  On a treadmill, they demonstrated an ability to trot by leaps and bounds.  The researchers thought this species must have re-evolved the ability to run, for some reason.  One scientist was impressed at the versatility of muscle-tendon system that give these bats the ability to both run and fly; he told Science News, “Few human-made machines can act like springs, motors, and brakes.”
  • Playful Animals:  Finally, there was a recent book review about the evolution of play in animals.  Bernd Heinrich, evaluating The Genesis of Animal Play: Testing the Limits by Gordon M. Burkhardt (MIT, 2005) in Nature,3 commented that despite the valiant effort in the book, “Working out why animals play is no easy task.” –
    A kitten batting a ball of yarn, kids on a swing, or an adult wielding a fishing-rod – few would disagree that these behaviours can be described as play.  Yet in the study of animal behaviour, the phenomenon of play is an anomaly.  It is said to be adaptive and yet it involves the expenditure of much energy, often with no apparent pay-off.  When a certain behaviour is found to have obvious pay-offs or functions it is, almost by definition, no longer ‘play’ but is defined by its function, such as foraging, predator avoidance or mating.   (Emphasis added in all quotes.)
    We know so little about play, he confessed, despite centuries of attempts to define it and fathom its functions.  It seems like senseless behavior in a world of survival, yet it is “a genuine behavioural phenomenon.”  In the end, he couldn’t decide whether animals (and humans) play for some unknown evolutionary fitness value, or just for fun.

1Poole et al., “Animal behaviour: Elephants are capable of vocal learning,” Nature 434, 455 - 456 (24 March 2005); doi:10.1038/434455a.
2Huffard et al., “Underwater Bipedal Locomotion by Octopuses in Disguise,” Science, Vol 307, Issue 5717, 1927 , 25 March 2005, [DOI: 10.1126/science.1109616].
3Bernd Heinrich, “Just for fun?” Nature 434, 273 - 274 (17 March 2005); doi:10.1038/434273a.
A game that is fun to play is to challenge Darwinists with an amazing capability of an animal and watch them try to explain it.  Then, while they tie themselves in knots, we can go play frisbee with the dog, tease the cat with a ball of string, or teach the parakeet to say Charlie is gnarly.  Wonder where we can get a recording of that elephant imitating a truck.
Next headline on:  MammalsMarine LifeAmazing Stories
Soft Tissue from Dinosaurs Found: Intact Cells and Blood Vessels    03/24/2005
The news media are abuzz with exciting reports about the discovery of soft tissues recovered from a Tyrannosaurus rex bone; see
CNN, National Geographic, BBC News, MSNBC and News@Nature for examples.  The soft tissue, analyzed from a thighbone unearthed in Montana, was reported by a North Carolina team led by Mary Higby Schweizer and was announced in this week’s issue of Science.1
    The bone contained remnants of blood vessels that were still soft and flexible when separated from the matrix, and even individual cells: “osteocytes with internal cellular contents and intact, supple filipodia that float freely in solution,” the authors say.  Leading dinosaur paleontologist Jack Horner described the bone as “a fantastic specimen.”  The discoverers also found soft tissues in two other tyrannosaurs and one hadrosaur from the Hell Creek, Montana site.  No one seems to be questioning the assumed age of the specimens being 70 million years old, even though the “geochemical and environmental factors” that could have preserved the tissues are “as yet undetermined,” and extend to the molecular level:
Whether preservation is strictly morphological and the result of some kind of unknown geochemical replacement process or whether it extends to the subcellular and molecular levels is uncertain.  However, we have identified protein fragments in extracted bone samples, some of which retain slight antigenicity.  These data indicate that exceptional morphological preservation in some dinosaurian specimens may extend to the cellular level or beyond.
  (Emphasis added in all quotes.)
Erik Stokstad in the same issue of Science2 says that the vessels, still flexible and elastic, are not fossilized.  The announcement of intact cells is leading some scientists to think they may be able to extract DNA from them (although recreating Jurassic Park is out of the question).  Principal investigator Schweitzer said she was shocked at the find.  She didn’t believe it till they repeated the extraction process 17 times.  As a control, they repeated the same process on extant ostrich bones and recovered soft tissues that were “virtually indistinguishable” from those of the dinosaur.
    It is not yet clear whether the original molecules in the tissues and cells were preserved or were replaced by other compounds.  Earlier claims of original tissue in other kinds of multi-million-year fossilized organisms turned out to show replacement.  Schweitzer told the BBC, however, that “It still has places where there are no secondary minerals, and it’s not any more dense than modern bone; it’s bone more than anything.”  As to DNA, Stokstad quotes one expert who said, “the likelihood is probably next to none” that intact DNA could have survived for 68 million years, even if the bone was protected in stable, dry, subzero conditions all that time.  The BBC reporter agrees that “the ‘life molecule’ degrades rapidly over thousand-year timescales, and the chances of a sample surviving from the Cretaceous are not considered seriously.”  Schweizer is seeking funds to do mass spectrometry on the tissues and find out.
1Schweitzer et al., “Soft-Tissue Vessels and Cellular Preservation in Tyrannosaurus rex,” Science, Science, Vol 307, Issue 5717, 1952-1955, 25 March 2005, [DOI: 10.1126/science.1108397].
2Erik Stokstad, “Tyrannosaurus rex Soft Tissue Raises Tantalizing Prospects,” Science Vol 307, Issue 5717, 1852, 25 March 2005, [DOI: 10.1126/science.307.5717.1852b].
This appears to falsify, in one dramatic swoop, the claim that dinosaurs died out 65 million years ago.  Why don’t the scientists admit it?  It’s uncanny how all the reports treat the 70 million figure like an unquestionable fact, despite the clear implications of this discovery.  Notice how the BBC treats the date like dogma:
In the hotly contested field of dino research, the work will be greeted with acclaim and disbelief in equal measure.
    What seems certain is that some fairly remarkable conditions must have existed at the Montana site where the T. rex died, 68 million years ago.
Seems certain to whom?  Not to people with their heads screwed on, who have refused to take the oath of loyalty to the Darwin Party, or signed on to the Committee to Protect the Geologic Column at All Costs.  We’ll have to see if the NCSE censors this paper, preventing teachers from showing it to their students, to protect their sensitive minds from anxiety when they compare it with their textbooks.
  .  Making the excuse that the process of fossilization is not well understood is pitiful, and imagining these Montana sediments escaping millions of years of mountain uplift, erosion and climate change is a big stretch.  Though airtight amber sometimes preserves all the details of an insect, it is incredibly improbable that soft, pliable tissues from a large dinosaur could be preserved in a sedimentary matrix for 10,000 years, let alone 70 million.  Somebody ought to press the point.  The BBC explains why: “Normally when an animal dies, worms and bugs will quickly eat up anything that is soft.  Then, as the remaining bone material gets buried deeper and deeper in the mud, it gets heated, crushed and replaced by minerals, turning it to stone.”  Schweitzer said in the NG coverage that “our theories of how fossils are preserved don’t allow for this [soft-tissue preservation].”  The pathetic response of some scientists, upon hearing this announcement, is that the soft tissue recovery might help them construct better phylogenetic trees.  They seem oblivious to the fact that the data threaten to cut off the long-age limb they are sitting on.
    Here is an opportunity for young-earth creationists to make a strong case.  It’s easier to prove an upper limit than a lower limit: e.g., that under the best of conditions, cells or blood vessels could not be older than a maximum number of years based on lab observations.  No reader could claim by observation that they could last millions of years.  Thus, the young-age position is more conservative, cautious and empirically based.  Someone should also apply carbon dating to the tissues and see if any C-14 is present.  It would be below the detection threshold if the bone is as old as claimed.  Watch the efforts to find out if DNA is still present, which “cannot survive that long” according to Derek Briggs in the News@Nature article.  These are two predictions that can be tested.
    This find is making it easier to believe that dinosaurs actually lived in relatively recent times and were buried quickly by a watery catastrophe just as a Biblical chronology indicates.  Dramatic as this announcement is, it is not the first.  Creationists have followed up on soft-tissue claims for years.  In 1994, Buddy Davis and a team endured danger and hardship recovering hadrosaur bones in Alaska that contained unfossilized tissue; their story is published in The Great Alaskan Dinosaur Adventure.  Then there was the announcement in all the papers 10/15/2002 about mummified dinosaur remains.  Even more remarkable was the BBC News story about mummified soft parts found in a crustacean claimed to be 511 million years old – over seven times older than the dinosaurs on the evolutionary scale (see 07/20/2001 entry).  That such announcements are rare in the secular literature does not mean that the fossils are rare; Jack Horner said in the NG article that other dinosaurs are “probably similarly preserved,” but workers in the field are usually reluctant to damage dinosaur bones to look inside (maybe partly because they don’t expect to find soft tissue after millions of years).  What this story illustrates is how scientists tend to find what they expect to find, look for what they need to find, and ask the questions prompted by their worldview.  It’s instructive to notice who was surprised by today’s announcement.
Next headline on:  DinosaursFossilsDating Methods
NAS President Calls on Scientists to Defend Darwinism    03/24/2005
The man who described a cell as “a factory that contains an elaborate network of interlocking assembly lines, each of which is composed of a set of large protein machines” (see
02/10/2003 entry) now wants his fellow scientists to oppose efforts to attribute this factory to design.  Bruce Alberts, president of the National Academy of Sciences and editor of The Molecular Biology of the Cell, gave fellow Academy members a “call to arms” on evolution, according to USA Today.
    Alarmed over the gains of the intelligent design movement and the “increasing challenges to the teaching of evolution in public schools,” Alberts said in a March 4 letter to colleagues, “I write to you now because of a growing threat to the teaching of science” (emphasis added in all quotes).  He claims, “one of the foundations of modern science is being neglected or banished outright from science classrooms in many parts of the United States.”  His letter was motivated in part by a survey by the National Science Teachers Association, showing that a third of teachers feel pressured to either diminish the teaching of evolution or include alternatives to it.
One bad habit we need to help the media overcome is the practice of putting “ism” on creation but not on evolution, but for USA Today, this was a surprisingly balanced article; it consisted largely of a back-and-forth series of charges and responses from both sides.  Let’s put some of the claims through the Baloney Detector:
  • Alberts: the growing threatfear mongering.
  • Alberts: to the teaching of scienceequivocation.  Science is not at stake; just the religious philosophy of naturalism.
  • Alberts: Teachers are under attack – more fear mongering.
  • Gerry Wheeler (Natl. Science Teachers Assn): I’m hoping it will give teachers the energy to make sure they stand for high-quality science teachingnon-sequitur; evolution has nothing to do with the quality of science teaching.  Good science teachers promote critical thinking, not indoctrination.
  • USA Today: To most scientists, evolution is defined as changes in genes that lead to the development of species.equivocation.  Evolution is much more than change; it is the claim that all of life has common ancestry in one or a few original life forms that came from non-living chemicals.  Bandwagon: do most scientists really feel this way?  Where are the numbers?  Even if this claim is correct, what most scientists think is not the issue, but what position the evidence supports.
  • USA Today: They see it as a fundamental insight in biologysubjectivity.  How a scientist or teacher feels about a belief is irrelevant.  An insight is only a hunch or preference till proved right.
  • USA Today: Creationism is the belief that species have divine originstraw man.  Fixity of species is not what creationists believe.
  • USA Today: Alberts complains that creationists, under the guise of intelligent design, have attempted to push evolution out of textbooks and classrooms in 40 statesbig lie.  No one is trying to push evolution out.  They are trying to add critique of evolutionary theory and give alternatives a chance.
  • Alberts: one of the foundations of modern science is being neglected or banished outright from science classrooms in many parts of the United Statesglittering generalities, big lie and fear mongering.  Again, evolution is not being banished, and if teachers are neglecting it, it is their own problem (perhaps inability to answer the questions perceptive students are asking), not due to laws or pressure.  Alberts is turning parents and students into bogeymen, when they are just acting as good citizens and getting involved in a controversial issue that affects their lives.  Just let Alberts show all the evidence for evolution and explain his statement about the factory of molecular machines, and tell us how it came about by chance.
        The foundations of modern science were laid by Christians and creationists (see online book) long before Charlie and his Musketeers usurped control of the scientific institutions.
  • Stephen Meyer: My first reaction is we’re seeing evidence of some panic among the official spokesmen for science – a fair assessment; why else would opponents of ID resort to fear-mongering and pressure? 
  • Meyer: intelligent design is not creationism but a scientific approach more open-minded than Charles Darwin’s theory of evolution – equivocal and potentially misleading unless terms are defined, which Meyer and other ID leaders have done elsewhere.  “Creationism” has become an unpopular buzzword that ID leaders avoid, but Meyer is right that ID is not concerned with the who or how of creation, but only with design detection.  It is true also that ID is more open-minded, because it does not rule out intelligent causes a priori.
  • USA Today: Biologists retort that any reproducible data validating intelligent design would be welcome in science journalsbig lie.  Why the uproar, then, when an intelligent-design paper passed peer review and was published in a legitimate science journal? (see 12/28/2004 entry and links).  In spite of the bias against overt ID, many papers do publish implicit evidences of exquisite design in living things, with no attempt to give it an evolutionary explanation (see 03/14/2005 and 03/11/2005 entries from many examples in the archives here).
  • Jeffrey Palmer: If there were indeed deep flaws in parts of evolutionary biology, then scientists would be the first to charge in therehalf truth.  We have printed a number of stories about scientific papers by evolutionists pointing out serious flaws with evolutionary theory (try 02/16/2005, 12/30/2004, 11/29/2004 and 08/05/2004 entries, to say nothing of dozens of stories about fossil problems, molecular genetics problems and complexities in life inexplicable by Darwinism or neo-Darwinism).  On the other hand, scientists are usually strangely silent about these problems when called as expert witnesses by courts or school boards.
  • Meyer: There are powerful institutional and systematic conventions in science that keep (intelligent) design from being considered a scientific process – he has evidence of this from his own recent experience and that of double-PhD editor Richard Sternberg (see Sternberg website).
  • Barbara Forrest: Oh, baloney; they aren’t published because they don’t have any scientific databig, big lie and bluffing.
  • Alberts: In his letter, Alberts criticizes Lehigh University biochemist Michael Behe, a leading proponent of intelligent design, as being representative of the “common tactic” of misrepresenting scientists’ comments to cast doubts on evolutionhalf truth; quoting opponents as hostile witnesses is a legitimate debating technique; Alberts is bluffing that Behe misrepresents them; let him provide an example.
  • Behe: Behe calls this “outrageous,” saying he simply points out that even establishment scientists note the complexity of biological structures – a fair response, since there is plenty of documentation right here to support Behe’s assertion.
  • Susan Spath: proponents need to work together more proactively in educating the public about these issues.  The silver lining may be that this is an opportunity to enhance public understanding of scienceglittering generalities and positive spin doctoring.  Nice sentiments, if the pro-Darwinists would follow her advice.  If the public got educated about these issues they would throw the Darwinist rascals out.  We know from experience what the NCSE means: stifle debate, put up a facade, shield student eyes from incriminating evidence, redefine science as naturalistic philosophy, and demonize all opponents.  The last thing they want to do is show students the real scientific evidence, until in graduate school they have passed the temple rituals and sworn allegiance to Pope Charlie. 
Parents, teachers and scientists who are unhappy with the Darwinist arm of the Democratic Party (see 12/02/2004) and how they usurped control over the scientific institutions (see 10/24/2002 entry, and 12/22/2003, 01/15/2004 and 01/05/2004 commentaries) had better understand the tactics of their opposition and be prepared to confront them.  Remember that the goal is more and better science.  Don’t let them portray this debate as trying to “banish” evolutionary teaching.  If anything has been banished, it is criticism of his highness King Charlie the Usurper by the ruling Darwinist elites.  The battle is to allow more evidence to be heard, and help students learn to evaluate all the evidence with critical thinking skills.
    So now you’ve seen the head of the prestigious National Academy of Sciences, a man who knows intimately the complexity of the cell, bluff his way past the opposition as if taking personal charge of a crusade.  It shows that the battle over origins is a major issue in educational policy with important ramifications for all of us.  Concerned citizens need to get informed and involved.  Don’t underestimate the power of the Darwin Party, but if you are well armed with evidence, don’t let them intimidate you, either.
Next headline on:  EvolutionIntelligent DesignEducation
How to Get Something from Nothing: Genetic Code, Syntax Explained?    03/23/2005
Two articles in recent science literature attempt to show that complex entities, like the genetic code and the syntax of human language, are no big deal.  They can emerge from precursors by chance.
    In PNAS recently,1 veteran researcher Harold J. Morowitz (George Mason U) and two colleagues proposed a new theory for the origin of the genetic code.  Today’s code, written in DNA, is composed of triplet nucleotide “words” called codons that match the amino acid “words” in the language of proteins.  Noting some regularities, namely that the first letters of each codon have a strong correlation with the precursor of the amino acid for which it codes, and the second letters determine whether the amino acid is hydrophobic (water-resisting) or hydrophilic (water-attracting), the scientists came up with an idea.  Maybe the amino acid precursors (alpha-keto acids) first attached to pairs of DNA bases (dinucleotides) that were floating around in solution.  From there, (take a breath): “The bases and phosphates of the dinucleotide are proposed to have enhanced the rates of synthetic reactions leading to amino acids in a small-molecule reaction network that preceded the RNA translation apparatus but created an association between amino acids and the first two bases of their codons that was retained when translation emerged later in evolution” (emphasis added in all quotes).
    They point out that their proposal differs substantially from earlier suggestions about the origin of the genetic code: the “stereochemical” hypothesis that chiral molecules attracted one another, the “coevolution” hypothesis that small numbers of amino-acid/nucleotide pairs grew gradually, and Francis Crick’s old suggestion that the code is a “frozen accident.”  This new hypothesis basically creates a set of amino acids linked to pairs of nucleotides: like proline linked to CC, and glycine linked to CA.  It presupposes that the genetic code began in doublet, rather than triplet, form.
    What happened next?  As more amino acids were added to the repertoire, the third nucleotide was needed.  The simplest four amino acids require only one reaction step, they say, but problems arise with the construction of amino acids with more complex side chains – problems left as uncertainties requiring further research.  One hopeful benefit of their model is that it might produce an excess of one hand of the amino acids.  A solution to the homochirality problem (see
online book) might therefore be at hand: “Thus, this model provides a plausible and testable hypothesis for the dominance of L-amino acids, a problem that has challenged prebiotic chemists for decades.”
    All this is a suggestion about the early stages of chemical evolution, before the emergence of macromolecules (proteins and DNA strands).  In conclusion, they explain:
The emergence of translation was obviously associated with expansion to a triplet code and selective pressures that led to codon assignments using the third position that minimize susceptibility to adverse effects of mutation and errors in translation.  Furthermore, translation requires an association of amino acids with their anticodons [i.e., the base-paired RNA “negatives” of codons on the DNA] not with their codons.  There are many ways in which these next steps toward translation might have occurred, and we have not yet examined these possibilities in detail.  One intriguing possibility is that amino acids might be removed from their dinucleotide catalysts by transesterification to the 2’ hydroxyl of an RNA oligonucleotide.  If this oligonucleotide were to recognize the base-pairing surface of the dinucleotide with a complementary sequence, then transesterification would lead to attachment of an amino acid to an RNA containing its anticodon.  This would result in an early version of a charged “tRNA.”  Furthermore, the base following the doublet anticodon would be equivalent to the third position of an anticodon in a triplet code in which there was as yet no information content associated with the third position.   (Emphasis added in all quotes.)
Another something-for-nothing paper on a different subject was proposed in Nature last week.2  Ricard Sole pondered the puzzle of the origin of syntax in language, the so-called “communicative Big Bang” unique to humans.  He was intrigued by a suggestion in a Royal Society paper that “a simple word-object association matrix can provide the basis for syntax almost for free.”  For instance, the words “eat” and “meat” overlap with the meaning “edible organic matter,” even though one is a verb and one is a noun.  If all the linked words are arranged in a matrix, they start forming word networks that may have been the beginnings of syntax.  Add to that the fact that, according to Zipf’s law, the frequency of appearance of a word is proportional to its generality, and a basis for the emergence of syntax can be envisioned: “the possibility that early ‘protolanguage’ might have been ready-made for the development of a full syntax.”  They admit that this is only a “very rough way of associating symbols,” but hope that further studies might find this suggestion useful:
The study also suggests that Zipf’s law could have been a precondition for syntax and symbolic communication.  Once such a condition was met, the basis for the combinatorial explosion characteristic of human language was ready for selection to shape it.  The new theory will be subject to debate, but the remnants of the communicative Big Bang are evidently hiding somewhere inside modern language networks.

1Copley, Smith and Morowitz, “A mechanism for the association of amino acids with their codons and the origin of the genetic code,” Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences USA, published online before print March 11, 2005, doi 10.1073/pnas.0501049102.
2Ricard Sole, “Language: Syntax for free?” Nature Nature 434, 289 (17 March 2005); doi:10.1038/434289a.
We can lump these two theories hypotheses suggestions into the category of MCS proposals (mighta, coulda, shoulda).  William Dembski proved rigorously in No Free Lunch that information must always come from prior information.  He also exposed the tricksters who try to sneak it in the back door to fool people that you can get something for nothing.  Here are two information-rich systems – the genetic code and human language – that pose daunting challenges to the Darwinists.  Both suggestions presented in these papers are fatally flawed, because by sneaking information in surreptitiously, hoping we wouldn’t notice, they violate their own naturalistic requirements.  Both failures strengthen the case for intelligent design.
    Morowitz’ proposal is so easily falsified it is surprising that someone of his reputation couldn’t see through it.  Did you notice that he tried to sneak natural selection before it is allowed? (see online book).  “The emergence of translation...” Hold it right there!  No miracle words allowed.  Emergence is not an explanation.  It is a circular argument that presupposes what he needs to prove, that the genetic code, and its elaborate translation apparatus, is amenable to a naturalistic explanation.  But we digress.  “The emergence of translation was obviously [speak for yourself, buddy] associated with expansion to a triplet code and selective pressures that led to codon assignments...”  Aha!  There it is, in black and white: “selective pressures.”  Foul.  There are no selective pressures without presuming the very thing he needs to explain: an accurate translation and replication process that can preserve carbon-copy descendents that will maintain any gains in functional information.  That disqualifies this proposal at the outset, but there are more problems with it.  He only gets an excess of one hand: not good enough.  It must be 100% pure (see online book).  He only gets pairs of dinucleotides with simple amino acids: such entities contain no value for a code, because there is no syntax.  They are as worthless as scattered Scrabble letters shuffled by chance.  Despite their knowledge of chemistry, Morowitz et al. have offered nothing more than a weak, implausible, partial suggestion that presupposes the very thing they need to prove and is disqualified because, by sneaking in miracle words, it contradicts its own naturalistic presuppositions.
    The second article tries to explain the origin of syntax by chance, this time in the sphere of human language.  Again, it is only the meagerest of suggestions, a flimsy straw tossed to slay Leviathan.  The origin of language has no evolutionary explanation, only just-so stories that replace each other from time to time.  The observations show 17 distinct language groups with no relation to one another, just as would be expected from a Tower of Babel incident; each is complex with grammar, syntax and vocabulary, with no precursors or analogs in the animal kingdom.  The suggestion that Zipf’s law is a “precondition” of syntax assumes what they need to prove.  In short, their word-association game theory is a paltry offering that fails to bridge the gap between “eat meat” and the sophisticated abstract reasoning of human beings.  They missed their day in court; human evolution was already falsified on genetic grounds (see 12/30/2004 entry) and logical grounds (see 02/16/2005 entry).  It was put out of business as just another free-lunch scam (02/18/2005).  Therefore we must reject this latest myth as “too little, too late.”
    Both these stories would never pass peer review if it were not for the Darwinists’ need to bridge the canyon between chance and design, between meaninglessness and meaning.  They get published in hope that they might help prop up the reigning world view.  To them, progress in science is made by proposing partial answers, no matter how implausible, that might be assembled some day into a complete something-from-nothing theory of everything (see helicopter in the canyon analogy, 05/22/2002 commentary).  Without the requirement of naturalistic philosophy, both logic and common experience lead the honest observer out of the dark cave into the light of day.  How does one get a code?  How does a communicative Big Bang happen?  Not from nothing, not by “emergence,” but from prior, superior Information.  Let the Darwin Party name one exception without assuming the philosophy of naturalism.
Next headline on:  Genetics and DNAOrigin of LifeEarly Man
ID in the News 03/23/2005: Josh Funk in the Wichita Eagle gave pretty good press to leaders of the intelligent design movement in Kansas.
Next headline on:  Intelligent Design

Public Not Patronizing Evolution-Based IMAX Films    03/23/2005
Mark Looy at
Answers in Genesis comments on reports that some IMAX movie theaters are dropping evolution-based films because the public is taking offense at them.  Looy denies that “religious fundamentalists” or creation organizations are putting any pressure on the theaters.  He claims this is just an informal grass-roots response by viewers who are becoming increasingly aware of the controversy over evolution.
Update 03/29/2005: Alan Leshner, AAAS president, wrote his colleagues expressing “strong concerns” over this trend, reports EurekAlert.  “The desire not to antagonize audiences and to avoid negative business outcomes is entirely understandable.” he conceded.  “Yet, the suppression of scientifically accurate information as a response to those with differing perspectives is inappropriate and threatens both the integrity of science and the broader public education to which we all are committed.”  He applauded the Forth Worth theater that reversed its decision to withdraw the film “Volcanoes of the Deep Sea.”

What if they threw a Darwin Party and nobody came?  The Darwinists must be running scared if their traditional propaganda markets are drying up.  They can’t force people to buy IMAX tickets, and no amount of big-budget special effects can compensate for distasteful ideas.  Nobody desires the suppression of “scientifically accurate information,” Dr. Leshner; that’s what this controversy is all about.  The public doesn’t like indoctrination into evolutionary just-so stories presented as if they were facts.
    Here’s the solution: make films with debate instead of indoctrination.  People like a good fight.  The creation side typically gives the best evolutionary arguments and then rebuts them.  Darwinists, even if they mention any controversy at all, either dispute other committed evolutionists, or set up straw men or red herrings without really dealing seriously with the main issues.
    Here’s another suggestion for IMAX theater managers.  Want to pack the places out?  Commission IMAX versions of the films Unlocking the Mystery of Life and The Privileged Planet.  Based on the track records of these films, you would probably attract busloads of interested people, who would come back with all their friends.  Even more would come just to find out what the commotion is about as a few Darwinists picket outside, chanting Evolution is a fact, read this place the riot act; ask me how I know it’s true, teacher said design’s taboo.
Next headline on:  Media and MoviesEvolution
Mars Crater-Count Dating Is All Wrong    03/22/2005
Planetary scientists have long relied on crater counts to estimate the ages of surfaces in the solar system.  The more craters, the older the surface, has been the assumption.  Now, according to a report in
New Scientist, the method is flawed, at least on Mars.  Data from the 2001 Mars Odyssey have shown rays around even small craters, showing that much more material has been ejected from impacts than expected.  Consequently, most of the small craters could be secondaries: i.e., fallback from a single larger impact.  “Massive plumes of ejected rock would have rained down to produce, in some cases, millions of secondary craters,” the article states.  This makes them “virtually useless” for dating surfaces, according to Alfred McEwen (U of Arizona).  Another said, “small craters may not be telling you much.”  Another comment: “This really changes things.”
Every dating method requires making certain assumptions.  Here, a pillar assumption has been toppled, and now they don’t know what to think, except that whatever revised date they come up with must fit the Sacred Parameter, the age of the solar system: 4.5 billion years: no questions asked.
Next headline on:  Dating MethodsMars
Echoes of Columbine: Belief in God Brings Bullet    03/21/2005
Grief counselors have been dispatched to Red Lake High School in Minnesota, says
Fox News, after a rampage by a neo-Nazi student left 10 dead and 14 wounded.  In a manner reminiscent of Columbine, according to MSNBC News, 17-year old killer Jeff Weise admired Hitler’s views on racial purity and was deep into goth culture and heavy metal music.  During the killing spree he reportedly asked a student named Ryan if he believed in God, then shot him.
Native Americans are not typically sympathetic to Nazi ideas.  How do you think this troubled young man got his head filled with philosophies of hate?  Let’s role play what happens next (after, of course, the incident is blamed on the availability of guns, which is already underway, or on poverty, even though many from bad backgrounds turn out to be sterling citizens).  You’re a Darwin Party grief counselor assigned to explain this atrocious act to the terrified students and give them advice how to deal with it.  What do you tell them?  Click here to send in your suggestions.
  • Predators and prey have always been part of the scheme of things; while I understand you feel sorry for your classmates, you can take comfort in the fact that you survived among the fittest (or the luckiest).
  • Jeff was just acting out his understanding of natural selection, maybe by hastening it a little too fast.  We each need to come up with our own way of cooperating with the principles of evolution.
  • Jeff couldn’t help himself because his frontal lobe was not fully developed.  It was the last thing to evolve in our ancestry from apes.  (See 03/08/2005 entry.)
  • We need to understand that our prejudices may not be correct.  Violence, for instance, can be a good thing.  It’s the method nature used to produce human beings in the first place.  We need to be willing to accept the distasteful fallout of this creative natural process, because look how much good came from it.
  • You can pray if you feel the need to.  Nobody is listening, but it appears that natural selection has produced warm feelings in the brain when we pretend.
  • Genetic mutations have been known to cause Homo sapiens sapiens to do things that other, less-evolved Homo sapiens sapiens may perceive as evil.
  • This is your brain; this is your brain on evolution, in a undeveloped, less culpable state.
  • All I can say is: I’m sorry.  Tough luck.
Next headline on:  Education
National Geographic Embellishes Human Fossil Data   03/20/2005
Confronting millions of homes around the world is National Geographic’s latest cover: a wide-eyed, fearful looking small human with black skin, flared ape-like nostrils, bloodshot eyes and disheveled hair – all make-believe.  What was found are bones of a small human population that inhabited the island of Flores in Indonesia (see
10/27/2004 entry); the soft parts, skin color, nose shape, lips, hair and all the rest were reconstructed by an artist.  The April 2005 cover was probably in production before the revelation earlier this month that the “hobbit” creature dubbed Homo florensiensis had an apparently advanced brain despite its smaller skull size (see 03/04/2005 entry).
    Inside, the subtitle declares, “Diminutive hominins make a big evolutionary point: Humans aren’t exempt from natural selection” (emphasis added).  The magazine is not claiming these beings were less than fully human, since true Homo sapiens fossils a hundred times older are represented on the evolutionary timeline.  Furthermore, any natural selection acting on this population of humans only reduced their stature, not their complexity or ability to make tools.  Nevertheless, the speculative artwork for which the magazine is famous abounds in this issue: a normal-size naked human white male hunting a naked black hobbit female in a cave, a hobbit male confronting a giant Komodo dragon, and naked specimens of the Dmanisi population of Homo erectus (see 08/01/2002 entry) fighting off hyenas from their prey.
The in-your-face attitude of National Geographic about evolution, with every claim getting sensational coverage more art than science, may be having a backlash (see 11/29/2002 entry); was this the last salvo by outgoing editor Bill Allen?  (See 02/15/2005 entry).  We already knew that National Geographic was playing fast and loose with this H. florensiensis fossil (see 12/01/2004 entry); they are perhaps the worst of all the lying reporters (see 11/29/2004 entry) because of their long track record of storytelling with artwork when the data does not justify it.  A picture is worth a thousand blurs (see visualization in the Baloney Detector).
    National Geographic is slow to mention various important points: (1) Fossils can be distorted by geology (see 03/28/2003 entry), especially these that were found in a delicate state “as fragile as wet blotting paper.”  (2) The questionable dating of early-man specimens (see 02/16/2005 entry, for example) sometimes leads to absurd conclusions (see 02/18/2005 entry).  (3) Variations among living humans (pygmy, Watusi, tall, short, thin, stout, etc.) could be enough to give paleoanthropologists a field day of classifying them into different species and evolutionary lineages if they were only known from skeletons; how much more so the flimsy remains of skeletons from the past, or the variations between Homo erectus (see 03/21/2002), Neanderthal (10/01/2004) and modern humans?  (4) All fossil hominids could fit within the expected range of variation of a single species, according to one researcher (see 01/01/2005 and 05/24/2004 entries).  Remember when Jeff Schwartz called Homo erectus a “mythical” classification?  (5) Most paleoanthropologists base their work on flawed assumptions, warned Leslie Hlusko last year (02/19/2004).  (6) Most of the early man artwork that disgraced earlier NG covers in the 60s and 70s has been debunked, and old assumptions have been replaced by new questions (11/05/2003).  Have they learned anything?  Apparently not much more than how to make even more realistic cartoons; teen voyeurs are sure to get a rush out of the current issue.  How do they know these tribes didn’t wear fashionable dragon-skin robes as they talked philosophy and politics around the campfire?
    Because National Geographic avoids these damaging points, and concentrates on art and storytelling more than data, they cannot be trusted as an impartial source.  They are bent on spinning any skull into a yarn about evolution, even though human evolution has already been falsified (see 12/30/2004 and 11/18/2004 entries).  Although they began asking some good questions about Dmanisi man back in 2002 (see 08/01/2002 entry), they made it look as primitive as possible this time.  And they leapt upon the Hobbit find way too early, long before it has been subjected to critical analysis and peer review.  Black people should be incensed over the racist representation of the smaller-than-normal population of human beings.  It’s time for sensible people to flood NG again with well-written, cogently-argued letters to the editor.  Don’t ask them to censor reports about fossils; insist, rather, that they present all the data, including the parts that undermine their favorite storytelling plots.  Let the new editor Chris Johns know you expect accuracy in media.
Next headline on:  Early Man
Horse Evolution Is Back on the Charts    03/18/2005
The old horse-evolution charts from the 1880s have been revised substantially since 1920 when paleontologists began to realize the story was not so simple.  (Thomas Huxley had used the series of O. C. Marsh as a focal point of his 1876 lecture tour in the United States.)  These charts portrayed small horses with three toes evolving into large horses with one toe.  Jonathan Wells wrote in his 2001 book Icons of Evolution that Darwinists have been more forthcoming about the horse series, in trying to set the record straight, more than with any other alleged proof of evolution.  This is evident in many museums, like the Natural History Museum in Washington, which instead of showing a straight tree of descent, exhibits more of a branching bush pattern, and points out that the old picture was inaccurate (see
03/02/2001 story).  Nevertheless, in Science this week,1 Bruce McFadden (U of Florida), a world export on horse paleontology, entitled his review article, “Fossil Horses—Evidence for Evolution.”
    It’s not that evolutionists ever denied horses descended from a common ancestor; they just revised the path evolution took.  The idea of orthogenesis (straight-line evolution), popular in the late 19th century, has given way to the paradigm that evolution by natural selection takes an undirected, random path.  In addition, the fossil evidence for horses has shown that some of the assumed ancestors and descendents were, instead, contemporaries.
    McFadden wrote the definitive book on horse evolution 13 years ago: Fossil Horses: Systematics, Paleobiology, and Evolution of the Family Equidae (Cambridge Univ. Press, New York, 1992).  Has the picture changed at all since Wells listed it among 10 “icons of evolution” that persist as myths more than proofs?  (See summary of argument on ARN.org.)  Surprisingly, McFadden labeled his revised phylogenetic tree, “Adaptive radiation of a beloved icon” (emphasis added in all quotes), and used the phrase again in his conclusion:
Fossil horses have held the limelight as evidence for evolution for several reasons.  First, the familiar modern Equus is a beloved icon that provides a model for understanding its extinct relatives.  Second, horses are represented by a relatively continuous and widespread 55-My [million-year] evolutionary sequence.  And third, important fossils continue to be discovered and new techniques developed that advance our knowledge of the Family Equidae.  The fossil horse sequence is likely to remain a popular example of a phylogenetic pattern resulting from the evolutionary process.
The evolution of which McFadden speaks is not simple variation – after all, there is a great deal of size and shape variation among modern horses, from Shetlands to Clydesdales – but macroevolution, or “higher level (species, genera, and above) evolutionary patterns that occur on time scales ranging from thousands to millions of years.”  Here, he is convinced, horses remain the definitive case: “The speciation, diversification, adaptations, rates of change, trends, and extinction evidenced by fossil horses exemplify macroevolution.
    To the chart: what picture does McFadden exhibit compared to the old icon?  Like Wells, he debunks orthogenesis:
The sequence from the Eocene “dawn horse” eohippus to modern-day Equus has been depicted in innumerable textbooks and natural history museum exhibits.  In Marsh’s time, horse phylogeny was thought to be linear (orthogenetic), implying a teleological destiny for descendant species to progressively improve, culminating in modern-day Equus.  Since the early 20th century, however, paleontologists have understood that the pattern of horse evolution is a more complex tree with numerous “side branches,” some leading to extinct species and others leading to species closely related to Equus.  This branched family tree (see the figure) is no longer explained in terms of predestined improvements, but rather in terms of random genomic variations, natural selection, and long-term phenotypic changes.”
The figure shows most of the fossils being contemporaries of one another in the upper third of the timeline, with grazers and feeders and browsers “exhibiting a large diversification in body size” scattered among the branches.  Only Hyracotherium and Mesohippus occupy the basal position in the tree.  Yet Wells pointed out that orthogenesis is still implicit in the new charts, regardless of the side branches, if there is a trunk leading from eohippus to Equus.  And he emphasized that both paradigms, straight-line and branching evolution, remain philosophical positions rather than observations.
    To the bones: what new fossils and revised interpretations of old fossils justify McFadden’s assertion that the horse series exemplifies macroevolution?  The complexity of the horse evolution picture becomes apparent when he points out that only one genus, Equus survives, while three dozen genera and several hundred species have gone extinct.2  Furthermore, most of the alleged macroevolution occurred in North America, where horses went extinct but survived in the Old World.  What evidence has come to light since the “branching bush” paradigm replaced the old icon?  While diversity is evident, macroevolution seems a matter of viewpoint:
Although the overall branched pattern of horse phylogeny (see the figure) has remained similar for almost a century, new discoveries and reinterpretation of existing museum fossil horse collections have added to the known diversity of extinct forms.  Recent work reveals that Eocene “hyracothere” horses, previously known as “eohippus” or Hyracotherium, include an early diversification of a half- dozen genera that existed between 55 and 52 Ma [milli-annum, million years] in North America and Europe.  New genera have recently been proposed for the complex middle Miocene radiation, although the validity of these genera is still debated.
The truth is in the teeth, he concludes: “Horse teeth frequently preserve as fossils and are readily identifiable taxonomically.  They serve as objective evidence of the macroevolution of the Equidae.”  Yet his discussion reveals that, although the teeth of these animals display considerable variety, “The tempo of this morphological evolution has sometimes been slow and at other times rapid.”  The final third of the chart shows groups branching out with teeth designed for grazing and others designed for browsing or feeding on both grasses and leaves.  What he terms “explosive adaptive diversification in tooth morphology” appears to have doubtful justification, since most of the species on the chart overlapped in time.
    McFadden mentions nothing else in support of horse evolution, but spends a paragraph debunking an old evolutionary myth: Cope’s Rule.  Cope and other early evolutionists seemed to assume bigger is better: ancestors were small, descendents got larger over time; “this notion is now known to be incorrect,” he says.  In his chart, horses got larger at first, but since 20 ma ago, “In contrast, from 20 Ma until the present, fossil horses were more diverse in their body sizes.  Some clades became larger (like those that gave rise to Equus), others remained relatively static in body size, and others became smaller over time.”  Nevertheless, as stated earlier, he concludes on the positive note that “The fossil horse sequence is likely to remain a popular example of a phylogenetic pattern resulting from the evolutionary process.”  But is a popular example the same thing as an expert’s example?
1Bruce McFadden, “Fossil Horses--Evidence for Evolution,” Science, Vol 307, Issue 5716, 1728-1730 , 18 March 2005, [DOI: 10.1126/science.1105458].
2It must be recalled that identifying species from fossils is highly subjective, since interfertility cannot be established; today’s quarter horses and Belgians might be assigned to different species based on skeletal remains, yet are interfertile.
What’s wrong with this picture?  The horse evolution icon, like Rasputin, has been shot, stabbed and drowned, but is taking his time to get dead.  Here is one of the classic proofs of evolution, explicated by Mr. Horse Evolution himself, and are you convinced?  Saying this is proof of evolution doesn’t make it so.  Better look this gift horse in the mouth.
    Consider some salient points.  (1) Extinction is not evolution.  If a creature abruptly appears in the fossil record, survives for a time, then goes extinct, no evolution has occurred, in the macro sense.  (2) If animals appeared and existed as contemporaries, they cannot be arranged into ancestral relationships.  (3) If they existed on different continents, it becomes a stretch to assume they shared genetic information.  (4) Assigning skeletons to different species is a highly subjective process – and therefore subject to one’s presuppositions.  (5) The dating of these fossils assumes evolution and long ages – a case of circular reasoning.  (5) Variations in teeth adapted for different feeding habits reveal nothing about the origins of teeth.  Teeth are very complex structures (see 03/13/2003 and 06/04/2002 entries).  (6) Terms like “explosive adaptive diversification” assume evolution; they explain nothing about how random mutations could have produced simultaneous morphological changes that all had adaptive value.  (7) Interestingly, McFadden omits any mention of horse toes.  The old picture showed three-toed horses evolving into one-hooved horses of today.  But even that begs the question of whether one toe is better (or more evolved) than three; it almost seems backward.  Duane Gish in Evolution: The Fossils Still Stay No points out that in the evolutionary story of ungulates, the picture is reversed: ungulates supposedly evolved three toes from one.  (8) The basal clade Hyracotherium has doubtful relationship to horses at all.  Its position in the horse tree is merely for evolutionary wish fulfillment, to put something in the blank.  If omitted, most of the rest of the Equidae become contemporaries.  Furthermore, there is a big gap between Hyracotherium and anything preceding it, so where did it evolve from?  (9) McFadden’s analysis only considers size, teeth, and location.  How did the remarkable capabilities of the horse, like catapulting legs (01/02/2003) and damping muscles (12/20/2001)arise by chance?  (10) If you think this story is pathetic, the whole mammal phylogenetic tree is a mess (see 05/28/2002, 12/03/2003 and 03/18/2003 entries).
    In the Peanuts cartoon, Linus once asked Lucy to read him a bedtime story.  Exasperated by his persistent pleas, she blurted out, “A man was born, he lived and he died.”  Linus contemplated, “Makes you wish you could have known the fellow.”  Dry bones in the ground don’t say much.  Evolutionists, unsatisfied with the starkness of the raw data, enjoy the entertainment of weaving fanciful tales in between the bones.
    In short, McFadden seems committed to rescuing his beloved icon from the withering attacks of both creationists and other evolutionists, so that he can announce triumphantly in Science that the rockets’ red glare and bombs bursting in air only serve to give proof through the nighttime of data that the icon is still there.  But enough of storytelling.  Get a horse.  Go for a ride and clear your head of evolutionary confusion.  Horses are wonderful animals, full of grace, humor, expression, strength and majesty.  Learn some incredible things about horses in the new film Incredible Creatures that Defy Evolution III.  Thank God for the horse, one of man’s most capable and faithful companions on earth.
Next headline on:  MammalsFossilsDarwinism and Evolutionary Theory.
Agnosticism Loses: Arkansas Science Must Be Atheistic    03/18/2005
Updated 05/08/2005:  “What I’m trying to do here is not to deal directly with the existence or non-existence of God, but restore to science the agnostic viewpoint that there could be or could not be rather than the dogmatism that actually currently exists... that absolutely precludes the existence of God.”  These were the words of Republican state legislator Mark Martin in Arkansas, who introduced a bill in the legislature to allow for inclusion of intelligent design in public high school science classes: specifically, that “certain features of the universe and of living things are best explained by an intelligent cause and not by an undirected process such as natural selection.”
    Though favored by a 14-6 majority in the Education Committee, the bill was assigned by the Speaker of the House to the Rules Committee, “because he knew he could kill it there,” according to Martin, who contacted us with further details.  Since the Arkansas legislature is 75% Democrat, the outcome was predictable: “After explaining his aims with the legislation,” wrote Laura Kellams in the
Arkansas Democrat Gazette, “no one on the committee made a motion to recommend the bill to the House.”
    Martin’s proposed bill can be read in PDF format at the Arkansas State Legislature website.
Kellams distorted Martin’s words in her article to emphasize any possible religious motivation behind it, even though the bill explicitly stated that intelligent design theory, “Does not claim that science can determine the identity of the intelligent cause, nor does it claim that the intelligent cause must be a divine being or a higher power or an all-powerful force.”  She wrote:
Martin, who is a biomechanical engineer, said he’s not sure about the theory of evolution but that there’s enough scientific evidence to show that there’s “a lot of truth” to it.  “I don’t consider it in conflict with my strict Christian beliefs, or, quite frankly, my belief in the inerrancy of Scripture,” he said.  “I don’t believe that they have to be in conflict. I don’t have the answers to that stuff.”
Martin’s own school-aged daughter is taught at home because he wants her education to be Bible-based, he said.
This selection is a case study in reporter bias. 
  1. In the first place, she took his words out of context, because his uncertainty was about microevolution, not Darwinian macroevolution.  Small-scale variation is what he told her was not in conflict with his Christian beliefs.  She left out his elaboration about robust engineering and optimum design that explained his position more fully.  By omitting this key distinction between micro and macro, she made it seem like he was wishy-washy about evolution in general.
  2. Secondly, she cropped a quote: he said, “I don’t have all the answers to that stuff, and neither do the Darwinists.”  By omitting that last phrase, she portrayed him as uninformed and indecisive. 
  3. Thirdly, she ended her article with the Bible-based home-schooling item, making it appear he said this as part of the interview, when in fact he said it earlier during the campaign when asked why he home schooled his children.  Including this irrelevant detail used the power of suggestion to make it seem Martin was trying to impose his beliefs on students but keep his own children out of the public schools.
  4. Lastly, Kellams omitted the political shenanigans of the Speaker of the House who intentionally doomed the bill in the Rules Committee to avoid giving it a fair hearing.
With these tricks, Kellams perpetuated the media stereotype that opposition to evolution is religiously motivated, and deflected attention from the many and profound vulnerabilities of Darwinism (see our curriculum).
    Our original commentary on this story was very derogatory toward Martin, being based on Kellams’ article, because his religious statements seemed destined to feed the media stereotype, and portrayed him as uninformed about the meaning and intent of intelligent design theory.  As such, it appeared his actions in the legislature would do more harm than good.  Rep. Mark Martin contacted Creation-Evolution Headlines to clarify what he actually said and meant and what had happened to his bill in Committee.  His input changed the picture substantially.  We apologize to Rep. Martin and turn our criticism where it belongs, to the biased reporting in the media.

For a humorous lesson on the fine art of vituperation, read how David Berlinski dealt with a hot-headed critic: see EvolutionNews.org.  The critic blasted him for spouting “misconceptions, deceptions and lies.”  Berlinski is a master of adroitness with words.  Calmly but firmly, he put the loudmouth in his place.  Don’t try this at home unless you are good at it and know what you are talking about.
Next headline on:  Intelligent DesignEducation

Home to E.T.: You Have Mail   03/17/2005
According to
MSNBC News, 138,179 people responded to an offer to beam a message into space.  “Yet another outfit, TalktoAliens.com,” the report continues, “is offering to broadcast your 900-prefix telephone call into space for $3.99 a minute.”
Let’s hope E.T. has his spam filter on.  Hey, Nigeria!  Hey, Star Registry!  Look at all these suckers waiting for your services.
    Why do you suppose so many for this offer?  Evolutionary indoctrination, perhaps?  Some philanthropist should get the address list and offer these poor folk free copies of Gary Bates’ hot new book Alien Intrusion: UFOs and the Evolution Connection.  Throw in the video, too.
Next headline on:  SETIDumb Stories
Baloney Detecting Exercise for Students   03/17/2005
Jeff Barbour’s brief history of everything was published on
Universe Today.  His essay, entitled “Where does intelligent life come from?” paints a short but sweeping panorama from the Big Bang to humans.  Its style is somewhat like watered-down Carl Sagan or gilded Neil deGrasse Tyson (see 09/29/2004 entry).  Here’s a sample about the origin of life:
Although breeder stars formed within a few hundred million years of the Big Bang, life here on Earth took its time.  Our Sun – a third generation star of modest mass – formed some nine-billion years later.  Life-forms developed a little more than one billion years after that.  As this occurred, molecules combined to form organic compounds which – under suitable conditions – joined together as amino acids, proteins, and cells.  During all this one layer of complexity was added to another and creatures became ever more perceptive of the world around them.  Eventually – after more billions of years – vision developed.  And vision – added to an subjective sense of awareness – made it possible for the Universe to look back at itself.   (Emphasis added in all quotes.)
Barbour makes no hint that a Creator might have had anything to do with any stage of this scenario, except for a brief mention in a footnote, surrounded by some strange statements (indicated by [?]):
That life develops from less sophisticated to more sophisticated forms is a question beyond scientific dispute.  Precisely how this process takes place is an issue of deep division in human society.  Astronomers – unlike biologists – are not required to hold any particular theory on this issue. [?]  Whether chance mutation and natural selection drives the process or some unseen “hand” exists to bring such things about is outside the realm of astronomical inquiry.  Astronomers are interested in structures, conditions, and processes in the universe at large.  As life becomes more salient to that discussion, astronomy – in particular exobiology – will have more to say about the matter. [?]  But the very fact that astronomers can allow nature to speak on such issues as a sudden and instantaneous “creation ex nihilo” in the form of a Big Bang shows just how flexible astronomical thinking is in regard to ultimate origins. [?]
High schoolers might be offended by the offhand way Barbour makes them seem dumber than bacteria: “Consider the high school chemistry lab experiments where hydrogen and oxygen gas are combined, heated then explode.  Primitive life forms had to learn to handle this very volatile stuff in a far safer manner – putting phosphorus to task in the conversion of ADP to ATP and back again.”  How said primitive life forms learned how to invent ATP synthase (see 02/23/2005 entry), or any of the other molecular machines in the simplest life forms we know about (see 03/14/2005 and 03/11/2005 entries), he does not explain. 
There’s nothing new or original here that makes this embarrassing litany of shameless bravado worth mentioning, except as an exercise for young Baloney Detectors who had better get armed against stupidity while young, because they’re going to get a lot of it in public school or on TV.  This piece is so lame, so full of deification of Nature and glittering generalities and bluffing, one wonders if Barbour wrote it in mockery of Tyson and the cosmic evolution genre in general.  Since he apparently was dead serious, we might as well have some fun with it.  It should make your Baloney Detector click like a Geiger counter in Chernobyl.  The hard part is trying to figure out which lines would not win Stupid Evolution Quote of the Week.
    Parents, teachers, print out Barbour’s little fairy tale, print out the Baloney Detector, get colored pens and have at it.  How many times does he confidently assert things without evidence?  How many wiggle words are there (maybe, probably, might have, etc.)?  How many times does he personify Nature or lower life forms, empowering them with creative genius just because there is a need?  How many times does he wave the