“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.

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?

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 System • Geology

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 Biology • Genetics and DNA • Amazing Stories

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 Design • Darwinism • Media • Education

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:  Mammals • Evolution • Dumb Stories

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

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.)

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

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:  Genetics • Evolution

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:  Evolution • The Bible

• 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.
• Octopi:  MSNBC 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.
• Bats:  Science 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.

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:  Mammals • Marine Life • Amazing Stories

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.)

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:  Dinosaurs • Fossils • Dating Methods

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 threat – fear mongering.
• Alberts: to the teaching of science – equivocation.  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 teaching – non-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 biology – subjectivity.  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 origin – straw 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 states – big 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 States – glittering 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 journals – big 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 there – half 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 data – big, 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 evolution – half 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 science – glittering 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:  Evolution • Intelligent Design • Education

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.)

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.

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 DNA • Origin of Life • Early Man

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 Movies • Evolution

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 Methods • Mars

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

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

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 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.”

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.

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:  Mammals • Fossils • Darwinism and Evolutionary Theory.

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 Design • Education

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:  SETI • Dumb Stories

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.)

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. [?]

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 magic wand of millions of years, as if time alone works wonders?  How many cases of miracle words or phrases (arose, emerged, joined, formed, took form) does he use?  How many claims are contradicted by observational evidence? (surfing through Creation-Evolution Headlines archives can be helpful here).
  Younger students might like to draw silly cartoons in the margins, or put on a puppet show, perhaps with Miss Piggy reading selections of this essay with Shakespearean flair, and Kermit interrupting occasionally to ask tough questions.  Maybe Dr. Bunsen Honeydew and Beaker would work as well.  When done having fun, click on the “Discuss this story” link at the end of the Universe Today article and let other readers, many not as precocious as your student, be granted at least a modicum of enlightenment.
Next headline on:  Cosmology • Evolution • Origin of Life • Dumb Stories

These findings suggest that true altruism, far from being a maladaptation, may be the key to our species’ success by providing the social glue that allowed our ancestors to form strong, resilient groups.  It is still crucial for social cohesion in today’s very different world.  “Something like it had to evolve,” [Herbert] Gintis says.   (Emphasis added in all quotes.)

3. TO PLEASE TEACHERS (AND GODS)
Despite our altruism, generosity may not be in our genes.  If true altruism has evolved through competition between groups, as some researchers maintain (see main story), then it is more likely to be the product of cultural evolution.  Genetic evolution works by selecting individuals with traits that are well adapted to their environment, but it has a far weaker grip on traits that benefit the group.  So altruism is more likely to be learned.  After all, every human culture invests considerable effort in instilling children with moral norms that help further cooperation.  Often these are enshrined in powerful religious beliefs and reinforced by promises of salvation and threats of eternal damnation.

Religiousness was tested using self-report of nine items that measured the centrality of religion in their lives.  The twins graded the frequency in which they partook in religious activities such as reading scripture or other religious material and the importance of religious faith in daily life.  They also reported on their mother’s, their father’s, and their own religiousness when they were growing up.  They were also asked to report on the current and past religiousness of their brother.  The factors were divided into subscales— external aspects of religion, like observing religious holidays, that might be the most susceptible to environmental influence and internal aspects, like seeking help through prayer, that might be the most susceptible to heritable influence.  The external items were found to be more environmentally and less genetically influenced during childhood, but more genetically influenced in adulthood.  The internal scale showed a similar pattern, but the genetic influences seemed to be slightly larger in childhood compared to the external scale and so more consistent across the two ages.  “Like other personality traits, adult religiousness is heritable, and though changes in religiousness occur during development, it is fairly stable,” the authors conclude.

Gintis gets Stupid Evolution Quote of the Week for his sound bite, “something like it [altruism] had to evolve.”  To understand how just how absurd and self-refuting these claims are, turn the tables on the researchers.  Let’s perform a statistical study on evolutionists about their Darwinishness.  What social, genetic and family influences contributed to the centrality of Darwinism in their lives?  We could break the factors into external aspects of Darwinishness, like observing Darwin Day and telling just-so stories at evolutionary conferences, that might be susceptible to environmental influence, and internal aspects, like seeking help through meditating on The Origin of Species that might be the most susceptible to heritable influence.  Checkmate.
    Apart from the highly questionable statistical validity of any study based on self-reporting by human children, who are far too complex and manipulatable to provide any sound conclusions, and the contradictory and fallacious ideas built on game theory (see 02/10/2004, 09/17/2003 and 09/05/2003 entries), these articles represent the epitome of evolution as religion – a worldview reducing everything in the universe to its philosophical assumptions.  What these researchers are claiming is appalling.  Pastors, churchgoers, missionaries, teachers and anyone with a genuine faith in God based on sound doctrine and evidence should rise up in horror over this kind of nonsense and oppose it vigorously: first, because it is false; second, because it is illogical; third, because it is elitist, and most of all, because it is dangerous.  If our deepest beliefs and desires, our most merciful actions, our most fervent prayers and our highest moral values are all evolutionary artifacts of mutations acting on genes, resulting in social glue that evolves in unpredictable ways, and if people really started believing and acting on these assumptions, not even an evolutionist would want to live in the kind of society that would result.
    Not angry yet?  See also the next entry on ethics: how Darwinism is influencing the law.
Next headline on:  Darwinism and Evolutionary Theory • Politics and Ethics • Dumb Stories

It would be very exciting to find active volcanos on Mars, and would raise new questions about the age of the planet: how could a smaller planet than Earth remain hot today?  The halitosis from the media about finding life comes from the Chef Charlie cookbook.  Recipe for life: heat rocks in a warm little pond till mud broth forms, sprinkle with meteorites, then store in a cave and wait a few million years.  When methane is emitted, it’s done.  Season with balderdash on a website.  Serves a million suckers.
Next headline on:  Mars • Origin of Life

“It may follow from demonstrably false dichotomies, such as ‘nature versus nurture,’ taking misleading hold in the public mind,” he [Jones] said.  “It may also follow from a variety of misunderstandings about how genes, environments and evolutionary processes interact with implications for behavior.  And it certainly has something to do with fears about what the political implications – for racism, sexism, genetic determinism and other evils – might be, based on the use or misuse of biological information.”   (Emphasis added in all quotes.)

Such an approach might enhance understanding why some penalties are more effective than others, how people make choices in areas such as environmental protection and retirement savings, and what the underlying causes of aggression are and how they help explain why young men are sometimes willing – even in the face of the severest penalties – to kill in reaction to threats to their status.

In the article, Jones and Goldsmith explore how an understanding of current behavioral biology research could improve the effectiveness of laws by – among other things – identifying behavior patterns that would be useful to understand when developing laws; revealing conflicts that exist between innate human behavior and public policy written to regulate that behavior; improving the cost-benefit analyses that are often used in developing laws; exposing unwarranted assumptions; assessing the effectiveness of legal strategies; and outlining deep patterns [i.e., biological patterns from evolutionary history] in the legal architecture.

Be afraid – be very afraid – when the Darwin Party writes the law.  Why?  Because they are biological determinists, moral relativists and elitists.  They do not believe that morals or responsibility exist except as phantom artifacts of mutations and natural selection acting over millions of years.  Jones and Goldsmith spout enough placating words to sound harmless, as if they have the best of intentions to merely prevent social evils (please define evil in evolutionary terms) like racism and sexism.  They just want to help the law be more effective, right?  But look down the road if consistent Darwinian theory were to be applied to the very areas they listed:

• Effective penalties:  effective for whom?  The communists were experts in the development of “effective” penalties.  If the penal code becomes oriented for effectiveness instead of justice, be very, very afraid, because effectiveness becomes defined in terms of the goals of the ones in power, rather in terms of intrinsic right or wrong, justice, and mercy.  Such terms are undefined in the Darwin Dictionary.  Brainwashing and psychology can be very “effective.”  And what is a penalty, if not a deserved punishment for a sin?  It becomes a tool in the hands of a Pavlov, a force an elitist wields to elicit the response he wants from the human dog.  One of the scariest parts of the novel 1984 by George Orwell was when the inquisitor was able to get Winston, under torture, to lie about how many fingers he was holding up: and not just to lie, but to believe the lie.  Truth became whatever the powermonger wanted it to be.  By contrast, American law and English common law were built on the assumptions of natural rights from our Creator, and the existence of truth and absolute moral standards derived from the Judeo-Christian scriptures.
• Environmental protection:  It is undeniable that evolutionary biologists, who are 100% Democrats (see 12/02/2004 entry), tend to view man as the villain in the ecology.  People will get the shaft in evolutionary law if the Elite Oligarchy, based on input from the Darwin Party soothsayers, determines that a certain gnat needs protection.
• Retirement savings:  Here, the Darwinists view human vagaries between the desire for immediate gratification vs. long term planning as evolutionary artifacts of ape in our ancestry.  Since people are unwitting subjects of the evolutionary forces of the jungle, they cannot be expected to make sound choices on their own; they need the Elitists to help them.  And you thought that evolutionary theory had nothing to do with the current debate over Social Security.
• Causes of aggression:  Carl Sagan used to talk about human tendencies toward aggression and territoriality as stemming from the “reptilian” part of our brain, another throwback to Haeckel’s recapitulation theory (see 03/08/2005 entry).  Darwinists cannot fathom a concept such as righteous anger or an axis of evil because these moral judgments are disallowed from “biological thinking” by definition.  Aggression is just a biological observation with no moral overtones, no different than a dog barking or a lizard hissing when threatened.  Humans are incapable of having moral motivations for aggression or for resistance to aggression, because such categories do not exist.  What happens in this line of reasoning?  It’s all about power, not about right and wrong.  The Darwinian Soothsayers tell the Elitist Oligarchy how mysterious Charlie Forces can help them win in the international pecking order, and what drugs to give the aggressive inmate to calm him down so that he is easier to control.  Being in control – that is the new righteousness.  It separates the elitists from the pawns.
• Murder:  To a Darwinist, young men full of testosterone and ape in their brains are incapable of thinking rationally or make responsible choices.  So on the one hand, we cannot penalize them when they do what their biology makes them do (see 03/08/2005 entry again), and on the other hand, for the convenience of society, it might become necessary to sedate troublemakers to keep them compliant. 

Owen Jones looks like a gentleman in his suit and tie, a calm and erudite man of peace, but his ideas are deadly and fallacious: fallacious, because if he just looked in the mirror he would see biology so complex just in his eyes that defy evolutionary explanation; deadly, because it is the utter absence of moral categories that makes “Evolutionary Analysis in Law” a prospect more fearful than communist psychopolitics.  Such beliefs feed right into an elitist mindset.

If Jones were right that we were just evolutionary products from an animal past, we would have to live with that eventuality and make the best of it.  But he isn’t right and he could not be right.  For proof he isn’t right, look at nearly five years of reporting from of the scientific literature right here in these pages – there is hardly any category of evidence, from fossils to genes, that does not challenge evolutionary theory at every level.  And he could not be right, because his arguments are self-refuting.  If mind and intellect are products of mutations acting on molecules, then truth and values have no ultimate validity.  It is therefore disingenuous for Jones to use words with moral connotations (like evil, false, misleading, misuse, improve, effective) or even to make truth claims about what exists.  He cannot escape the Judeo-Christian assumptions that we live in a rational universe, and that as souls possessing the divine image, we can make use of universal laws of logic to discuss issues on an intellectual and moral level.  Even evolutionists act as if truth matters and has eternal validity, external to our transient biology; otherwise, they could not even claim evolution is true.
    Does a creation basis rule out all behavioral study and consideration of human biological influences when devising law?  Of course not; if God created man as an eternal soul inhabiting an animal-like body, coexisting with other animals in the same world, it is to be expected that we will share certain behavioral attributes with animals, such as fight vs. flight responses (notice how adrenaline kicks in), imitation, fear, mob psychology, authority and submission, sexual and food desires, and other behaviors influenced by hormones and other biological factors.  Evolutionary reductionism focuses on the biology but ignores the reality of the soul, which is able to make a man or woman subjugate the biological urges and contemplate truth, good, beauty, purpose and destiny.  Humans are unique among physical inhabitants of earth: we communicate in language, we think abstract thoughts, we exercise true altruism (see 03/16/2005 entry), we use logic, and we contemplate our place in the grand scheme of things.  These distinctively human activities are all mediated through and modulated by our bodily faculties.
    Creation-based law can and should take biological influences under consideration; Solomon, for example, remarked that no one despises a thief who steals bread because he is hungry.  But only humans make laws, and most laws presuppose that the moral categories of right and wrong are self-existent, not biologically determined.  “We hold these truths to be self-evident,” the American founders wrote, “that all men are created equal, and that they are endowed by their Creator with certain inalienable rights; that among these are life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness.”  And to the protection of these rights they pledged their biology, their retirement savings, and (something evolutionists cannot fathom) their sacred honor.

Jones and Goldsmith would probably denounce, in the most vociferous terms, any association with Nazi and Stalinist ideologies or the nightmare scenarios of 1984.  But where is any essential difference in foundational concepts?  The worst mass murderers of the 20th century believed that the law needed to be informed not by absolute standards of right and wrong, but by evolutionary thinking.  These modern intellectuals, looking innocent in their academic gowns, might want to distance themselves from the atrocities committed under those regimes, but since the evolutionary assumptions are the same, they must be held accountable to what new horrors would follow from application of their misguided counsel.
    The law needs evolution like a shopping mall needs a terrorist.  Before the bloodbaths of communism and Nazism stained the 20th century as the worst mass-murder period in history, Christian scholar J. Gresham Machen warned of the deadly fallout of bad ideas, and advised thinking men of their priorities: “What is today a matter of academic speculation begins tomorrow to move armies and pull down empires,” he said.  “In that second stage, it has gone too far to be combatted; the time to stop it was when it was still a matter of impassionate debate” (Christianity and Culture, 1912, italics added).

To make an effective impassioned debate against evolutionary lawyers, one must be informed and skilled in strategic argumentation.  Sadly, many well-meaning creationists enter the fray naked and unarmed in both knowledge and tactics.  Evolutionists dismiss religious based arguments out of hand; such approaches put them into patronizing mode.  They need to be knocked off their paper ivory towers.  Challenge them, instead, with the scientific fallacies evolutionary theory and the logical fallacies of evolutionary philosophy: i.e., don’t let them make truth claims or give advice inconsistent with their own assumptions, or let them get away with borrowing Judeo-Christian values and terms.  Challenge also their attempts to exempt themselves from the consequences of their own worldview.  They are not allowed to act as intellectuals detached from the rest of the pawns of evolutionary forces.  Such tactics trip them up in their own nets, turn their bluffing arguments into hot air, and make them fall on their own sword.  Learn the art and science of intellectual engagement: master the Baloney Detector and keep up to date on the news right here.

If you want to take part in the most impassioned debate of our time – if you want a cause worth fighting for – now, before the armies march, before the empires are pulled down, is the time for all good men to come to the aid of their worldview.  Let Creation-Evolution Headlines be part of your daily basic training, and help recruit others.
Next headline on:  Politics and Ethics • Darwinism and Evolutionary Theory

In a recent issue of PNAS, El-Samad et al. showed that the mechanism used in Escherichia coli to combat heat shock is just what a well trained control engineer would design, given the signals and the functions available.
    Living cells defend themselves from a vast array of environmental insults.  One such environmental stress is exposure to temperatures significantly above the range in which an organism normally lives.  Heat unfolds proteins by introducing thermal energy that is sufficient to overcome the noncovalent molecular interactions that maintain their tertiary structures.  Evidently, this threat has been ubiquitous throughout the evolution of most life forms.  Organisms respond with a highly conserved response that involves the induced expression of heat shock proteins.  These proteins include molecular chaperones that ordinarily help to fold newly synthesized proteins and in this context help to refold denatured proteins.  They also include proteases [enzymes that disassemble damaged proteins] and, in eukaryotes, a proteolytic multiprotein complex called the proteasome, which serve to degrade denatured proteins that are otherwise harmful or even lethal to the cell.  Sufficient production of chaperones and proteases can rescue the cell from death by repairing or ridding the cell of damaged proteins.

The analysis in El-Samad et al. is important not just because it captures the behavior of the system, but because it decomposes the mechanism into intuitively comprehensible parts.  If the heat shock mechanism can be described and understood in terms of engineering control principles, it will surely be informative to apply these principles to a broad array of cellular regulatory mechanisms and thereby reveal the control architecture under which they operate.

...the physiologically relevant functions of the majority of proteins encoded in most genomes are either poorly understood or not understood at all.  One can imagine that, by combining these data with measurements of response profiles, it may be possible to deduce the presence of modular control features, such as feedforward or feedback paths, and the kind of control function that the system uses.  It may even be possible to examine the response characteristics of a given system, for example, a rapid and sustained output, as seen here, or an oscillation, and to draw inferences about the conditions under which a mechanism is built to function.  This, in turn, could help in deducing what other signals are participating in the system behavior.

Reader, please understand the significance of this commentary.  Not only did El-Samad et al. demonstrate that the design approach works, but these commentators praised it as the best way to understand biology (notice their title).  That implies all of biology, not just the heat shock response in bacteria, would be better served with the design approach.  This is a powerful affirmation of intelligent design theory from scientists outside the I.D. camp.
    Sure, they referred to evolution a couple of times, but the statements were incidental and worthless.  Reverse engineering needs Darwinism like teenagers need a pack of cigarettes.  Evolutionary theory contributes nothing to this approach; it is just a habit, full of poison and hot air.  Design theory breaks out of the habit and provides a fresh new beginning.  These commentators started their piece with a long paragraph about how engineers design models of aircraft autopilot systems; then they drew clear, unambiguous parallels to biological systems.  If we need to become design engineers to understand biology, then attributing the origin of the systems to chance, undirected processes is foolish.  Darwinistas, your revolution has failed.  Get out of the way, or get with the program.  We don’t need your tall tales and unworkable utopian dreams any more.  The future of biology belongs to the engineers who appreciate good design when they see it.
    It’s amazing to ponder that a cell is programmed to deal with heat shock better than a well-trained civil defense system can deal with a regional heat wave.  How does a cell, without eyes and brains, manage to recruit thousands of highly-specialized workers to help their brethren in need?  (Did you notice some of the rescuers are called chaperones?  Evidently, the same nurses who bring newborn proteins into the world also know how to treat heat stroke.)  And to think this is just one of many such systems working simultaneously in the cell to respond to a host of contingencies is truly staggering.
    Notice also how the commentators described the heat shock response system as “just what a well trained control engineer would design.”  Wonder Who that could be?  Tinkerbell?  Not with her method of designing (see 03/11/2005 commentary).  No matter; leaders in the I.D. movement emphasize that it is not necessary to identify the Designer to detect design.  But they also teach that good science requires following the evidence wherever it leads.
Next headline on:  Intelligent Design • Cell Biology

Oldest Fossils Aren’t   03/11/2005
A new analysis of the world’s oldest claimed fossil rock, a banded deposit off the coast of Greenland said to be 3.8 billion years old, probably contains no signature of life, reports Stephen Moorbath (Oxford) in Nature.¹  He has visited the Akilia site twice where rocks were purported to contain graphite of biological origin.  He couldn’t find it. 

This persuasive discovery seems an almost inevitable, yet highly problematic, consequence to the increasing scientific doubts about the original claim.  We may well ask what exactly was the material originally analysed and reported?  What was the apatite grain with supposed graphite inclusions that figured on the covers of learned and popular journals soon after the discovery?  These questions must surely be answered and, if necessary, lessons learned for the more effective checking and duplication of spectacular scientific claims from the outset.
    To my regret, the ancient Greenland rocks have not yet produced any compelling evidence for the existence of life by 3.8 billion years ago.   (Emphasis added in all quotes.)

This admission does nothing to help the Darwinists.  Even trusting the shaky dating methods for the sake of argument, it adds to the problem that life appeared suddenly in a profusion of forms.  Moorbath has just robbed his fellow Darwinists of half their allotted practice time for bacteria to hone their engineering skills.  Those bacteria must have had to race extra fast to invent all the molecular machines needed for the higher organisms that followed.  To add to the Darwinists’ woes, the microbiologists are finding evidence of sophistication in the most “primitive” forms of life (see next entry).  A cartoon of a man’s head in a vice comes to mind.
    Did you catch the line that a claim was made without sufficient evidence, yet was featured on the covers of “learned and popular journals”?  Could that be happening today?  Has anyone learned the lesson?
Next headline on:  Fossils • Geology

Sadly, Gitai assumes evolution in various places, but not with evidence: only with inference, in spite of the evidence.  For example, “If systems are similar due to convergent evolution, they can point us toward nature’s optimal solution to a problem, whereas, if they differ due to divergent evolution, they can identify the basic rules that have remained intact.”  Those are pretty big ifs.  What if they are both due to intelligent design?  He would never think of asking the right questions, even though he has no answers.  “The evolutionary relationships between actin, MreB, and ParM remain unclear, as they are similarly divergent from each other,” he drones in one place, and “The interrelatedness of these spiraled structures remains unclear,” in another.
    The rest of his references of evolution only assume it.  He has convergent evolution (read: simultaneous miracles) happening all over the place.  He personifies nature in the previous quote: “nature’s optimal solution to a problem.”  Now that we know who the Darwin Party’s goddess is – Tinkerbell (see 03/08/2005 commentary) – we wish him luck getting optimal solutions from her.  Tinkerbell’s technique is to zap organisms with mutations using her magic wand.  But she flitters about from place to place with no goal in mind, only hoping that the bullets she fires into the machinery will make things run better.  You know the game is rigged when two separate organisms arrive at the same optimal solution.  Calling it convergent evolution will not fool the perceptive viewers of this magic kingdom; they know somebody is behind the scenes controlling the show.
    For this reason, we have to give this story both the Amazing and Dumb awards.  Amazing for the bacteria, Dumb for the human.
Next headline on:  Cell Biology • Intelligent Design • Evolution • Amazing Stories (scientific content) • Dumb Stories (evolutionary interpretation)

We deserve it, but we’re not getting it.  All the rhetoric about water indicating life and methane indicating life is giving NASA a bad name, at least among logically-minded people.  Water is to life what iron is to a city.  Cities need iron, but the element does not imply the other.  Life is characterized by functional information – specified complexity – not the basic elements of which it is composed.  Neither does finding earth-life in extreme environments imply it originated there by evolution, and astrobiologists know this.  The public deserves an honest agency.
Next headline on:  Mars • Origin of Life

Traditionally, anthropologists thought that modern hunter-gatherer tribes like the Mlabri descended through the ages unchanged.  But an analysis of the tribe led by Mark Stoneking of the Max Plank Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology in Leipzig, Germany, indicates that these communities are more complex than previously imagined.   (Emphasis added in all quotes.)

Stoneking can’t stay away from the E word, even though the evidence is against it: “hunter-gatherers have changed and evolved, particularly in response to interactions with agricultural groups,” he equivocates.  All evolution would have to involve change, by definition; but not all change is evolution, in the Darwinian sense.  Charlie did not intend to teach that humans were evolving downward into more primitive forms.  If that were the trend, we would all be bacteria in a few hundred million years.
    Creationists predict that humans will always be found to be innately intelligent and capable, yet often degenerate because of sin.  People started smart and fell backward because of sin, but have always been fully human, made in the image of God.  Evolutionists believe humans are at the end of a long progression toward increasing complexity and intelligence, so they would expect some to be further behind in social evolution.  Whose prediction fit these observations?
    The politically-correct view of tribal peoples is that they should be left alone; they are noble savages, in touch with their environment.  But if evolution is falsified, the picture changes.  Biblical creationists especially see them as descendants of advanced civilizations who once knew how to build ships and cities, mine metals and make musical instruments.  If so, it is not merciful to leave them in their lost and degenerate state.  Scientists, of all people, should mourn the foolish mythologies and needless diseases that enslave many of these people.  They should want to help them learn to think scientifically, to test claims by experiment.
    This does not imply that civilization is better in every way, or that some civilized nations have inherent superiority over those who choose to live in a simpler manner.  But Christian missionaries know that natives are often eager to get modern medicines, for example, and learn more productive ways to find water and food.  And for tribes lost in pagan darkness, fear and superstition, the message of a loving and forgiving Creator God is often the most hopeful, joyful, liberating thing they have ever heard.  Watch the Ee-taow! films and see.
Next headline on:  Early Man

Since this chemistry is irreversible, we can say that products are being made and deposited on the surface.  If the chemistry on Titan has gone on in steady-state over the age of the solar system, then we would predict that a layer of ethane 300 to 600 meters thick should be deposited on the surface.  That would make it the biggest hydrocarbon reservoir on any of the solid bodies in the solar system.   (Emphasis added in all quotes.)

Sorry, astrobiologists, you lost the prediction (see 01/15/2005 commentary).  You cannot keep multiplying ad hoc assumptions to keep your falsified tale alive.
    Notice that Lunine did not even consider the possibility that Titan is young.  The belief that these objects are billions of years old is sacrosanct, because the Darwin Party thought police will not tolerate thefts of the time they need to evolve molecules into men.
Next headline on:  Dating Methods • Solar System

Plants Produce Jigsaw Puzzles   03/11/2005
The cells on a leaf interlock one another, like pieces of a jigsaw puzzle.  In a manner similar to jigsaw puzzles, which can be lifted by the hand even though composed of individually-weak pieces, this gives the leaf structural strength.  How does this come about?  In the current issue of Cell,¹ Jeffrey Settleman (Harvard) explains the work of Fu et al. that reveals an “elaborate mechanism” of controls and feedback systems.  Plants possess multiple proteins that interact: one can cause one wall of a cell to pinch in, while another bulges it out.  These “molecular switches” antagonize each other in delicate ways to produce the interlocking effect, as explained in a press release from UC Riverside:

These proteins tell one part of a cell to grow outward while telling its neighbor to recede or indent itself in a finely tuned biological dance.  The results are structures that, despite their delicate appearance and slenderness, provide the strength necessary to allow the plant to grow and thrive.
    The findings point out that these distinct signals play a critical role in the development of leaf cell walls and leaf structures in a controlled and ordered way and that genetically over expressing one or the other leads to cells lacking the interlocking jigsaw puzzle appearance.   (Emphasis added in all quotes.)

Things don’t just happen.  The intricate patterns in nature are controlled by elaborate mechanisms and programs.  Think of how weak a cell of cytoplasm is; how does it gain the strength to stand up against gravity, hold out its leaves, and grow?  Here is another example where multiple players work in a coordinated way for a purposeful result.  Why, then, do Darwin Party propagandists make outlandish claims that there is not a shred of evidence for creation?  If they cannot explicate in detail the “numerous, successive, slight modifications” that could achieve this kind of engineering by chance, they’ve got monstrous puzzles of their own.
Next headline on:  Plants, Botany • Amazing Stories

Mad Science: Stanford to Create Rat with Human Brain    03/10/2005
Those who thought stem cell research was about helping people afflicted with disease may become alarmed over Stanford’s latest experiment, reported by the UK News Telegraph: the creation of a lab rat with all human brain cells.  The article quotes Wesley Smith of Centre for Bioethics and Culture warning, “biotechnology is becoming dangerously close to raging out of control,” and writing, “Scientists are engaging in increasingly macabre experiments that threaten to mutate nature and the human condition.”
    Actor Michael J. Fox uses a mouse puppet to encourage popular support for Stanford stem cell research.  Irving Weissman, the leader of the research team, promised that he would “monitor the experiment closely and destroy them at the slightest suggestion of human-like brain patterns.”  The stem cells for the experiment are to be taken from aborted human fetuses. 

The article quotes William Cheshire, a neurology professor at the Mayo Clinic and a Christian activist, preaching, “We must be careful not to violate the integrity of humanity or of animal life.  Research projects that create human-animal chimeras risk disturbing fragile ecosystems, endanger health and affront species integrity”  But such sermons are likely to fall on deaf ears in the modern biotech lab, which long ago jettisoned the Judeo-Christian foundation for ethics, and now views protestors as a mere nuisance (see 02/11/2005 entry).
    Since there is no ban on this kind of research, and since the Darwinists view all life as clumps of cells, which are in turn clumps of chemicals, there is no stopping their tinkering with human life in the same manner as they would mix reagents in a test tube.  The thought of a human-mouse mixture will undoubtedly be fodder for jokes and cartoons in some quarters, but it is deadly serious.  We are well on the way into a Darwinian brave new world, treating human flesh as a commodity, with eager labs racing to outdo each other, well funded from government and taxpayer largesse (see 02/18/2005 entry).  Proponents tantalize onlookers with promises of miracle cures, but what horrors this uncontrolled, values-free enterprise will produce can only be imagined.
Next headline on:  Politics and Ethics

The evolutionist’s impossibility can be the creationist’s certainty, and vice versa.  Things creationists consider impossible (such as the origin of life by chance – see online book) are routinely assumed by evolutionists.  The surprise effect can help distinguish the validity of the two worldviews.  Why are evolutionists so often surprised by what they find?  Judeo-Christian creationists see this as congruent with the statement In the beginning, God created the heavens and the Earth.
Next headline on:  Cosmology.

This is the kind of amazing scientific fact that can inspire a youngster to take an interest in science.  Cavitation can produce such violence in water that it can rip apart steel propellers and erode through solid concrete in dam channels, such as happened at Glen Canyon Dam in 1983 (see videos at Open Video Project).  Cavitation may have been one of several effects in a worldwide flood that could have made mincemeat of solid rock with no trouble at all (see CRS article).
Next headline on:  Physics • Amazing Stories

As well as providing another possible mechanism for initiating immunity by dendritic cells, the gap-junction-mediated cross-presentation described by Neijssen et al. offers an interesting method of efficiently limiting the spread of replicating virus.  The authors show that not only will a cell expressing viral proteins be killed by T cells, but so will its closest neighbours – because they present viral peptides obtained through gap junctions.  Extending the destruction to adjacent cells may provide a ‘fire-break’ around an infection, ensuring that if low levels of virus have spread to surrounding cells, but have yet to produce sufficient protein to allow recognition, such cells will still be eliminated.   (Emphasis added in all quotes.)

Neither article attempts to explain how such a clever protective technique could have evolved.
Next headline on:  The Cell • Health   Amazing Stories

• The superior temporal cortex, which contains association areas that integrate information from several sensory modalities, matured last. Furthermore, the maturation of the cortex also appeared to follow the evolutionary sequence in which these regions were created.
• In mammals, the inferior temporal cortex, along with parts of the STG, posterior parietal cortex, and prefrontal cortex, are high-order association areas, which are also most recent evolutionarily.  Our observation of these areas appearing to mature later may suggest that the cortical development follows the evolutionary sequence to some degree.
• Similarly, gender differences in brain maturation could not be explored, because there are only six males and seven females in the sample.  However, our findings uncover key information on the maturational sequence of early brain development and its relation to functional and evolutionary milestones.
• Phylogenetically, some of the oldest cortical regions lie on the inferior brain surface in the medial aspect of the temporal lobe... The maturation process in the vicinity of these areas appeared to have started early (ontogenetically) already by the age of 4 years...  (Bullets added.)

Under recapitulation, adults of inferior races are like children of superior races.  But neoteny reverses the argument.  In the context of neoteny, it is “good”—that is, advanced or superior—to retain the traits of childhood, to develop more slowly.  Thus, superior groups retain their childlike characters as adults, while inferior groups pass through the higher phase of childhood and then degenerate toward apishness.  Now consider the conventional prejudice of white scientists: whites are superior, blacks inferior.  Under recapitulation, black adults should be like white children.  But under neoteny, white adults should be like black children.

This is scandalous.  If the Supreme Court was snookered by baloney offered up by the pseudoscientific APA in making its decision, then every family member of every victim murdered by juveniles, every suffering witness to Columbine High School’s mass murder spree, should point an angry, accusing finger at Ernst Haeckel, and Pope Charlie who encouraged him, and all the current charlatans who still invoke Haeckel’s phony “biogenetic law” of recapitulation, and accuse them all of co-conspiracy to divert attention from the Constitution and onto pseudoscience.  (Read the 03/04/2005 entry and commentary also.)
    No other society has deemed teenagers as incapable of morally responsible behavior; on the contrary, good societies have stressed the importance of moral training early in life, and the need to correct misbehavior from childhood.  MRI scans have nothing to say about the moral character of minors, much less so whether the development of their frontal lobes is recapping some presumed animal ancestry.  Read Gould’s steaming indictment of recapitulation theory and its promoter, the fraud Ernst Haeckel, who practically worshipped the ground Father Charlie walked on.  Folks, you have just seen Darwinian mythology sway the highest court in the land on a matter of life and death.  What are you going to do about it?
Next headline on:  Darwinism and Evolutionary Theory • Politics and Ethics

The nervous system processes sensory information and controls behavior by performing an enormous number of computations.  These computations occur both within cells and between cells, but it is intercellular information processing, involving complex neural networks, that provides the nervous system with its remarkable functional capacity.  The principal cells involved in information processing are neurons, of which there are hundreds, if not thousands of individual cell types based on morphology, location, connectivity and chemistry.  In addition to neurons, the other major kind of cell in the nervous system is the glia, which play critical support roles, but which are increasingly seen to function in some aspects of information processing. [See 06/17/2003, 03/27/2001 and 01/29/2001 entries.]
    To provide some idea of the magnitude of the information processing capacity of the human brain, its 10¹¹ neurons make, on average, about 1000 connections or synapses, at which communication occurs with other neurons.  The range of synapses per cell is very large; the Purkinje cells of the cerebellum may receive 100,000 contacts from input cells.  Overall the human brain may contain between 10¹⁴ and 10¹⁵ synaptic connections.²
    The diverse chemical substances that carry information between neurons are called neurotransmitters.  Otto Loewi discovered the first neurotransmitter in 1926 when he demonstrated that acetylcholine carried a chemical signal from the vagus nerve to the heart that slowed the cardiac rhythm.  Since that time, more than one hundred substances and a far larger number of receptors have been implicated in synaptic transmission.... Because of the remarkably diverse effects of neurotransmitter-mediated signaling at the receptor and post-receptor levels, the number of neurotransmitters, as large as it is, vastly understates the complexity of signaling in the brain.   (Emphasis added in all quotes.)

The subtlety and complexity of the brain’s outputs, along with its ability to change in response to new information, is supported by a rich set of mechanisms for cell-cell communication involving at an anatomical level, intricate but plastic [i.e., adaptable] local connections, larger scale neural circuits and overlying global regulatory systems; and at the chemical level, a large number of neurotransmitters with highly diverse mechanisms for decoding their informational content.

This article was so good until we hit the E word, we were going to really praise it to the hilt.  Forget his stupid last sentence for a moment and think of all that complexity working for you right now.  Think of all those connections – 100,000 per cell in some cases, all connected to neighboring cells not in a haphazard manner, but with purpose.  The proof is that it works: here you are, seeing, reading and thinking, while all this unfathomable amount of information processing going on inside that little 3-pound jelly-like mass in your skull.  Hyman seems almost beside himself describing the wonder of it, as he rightly should feel.  How on earth can he say this arrived by mindless, purposeless processes of evolution?  There is no way in a million universes that level of information could arise by chance, even from an ape-like ancestor (see 12/30/2004 entry), let alone from a primordial soup (see online book).
    “Evolution was a tinkerer,” he claims, thus personifying the favorite little Darwin Party goddess and proving that not even an evolutionist can be a consistent atheist.  Now we know who their ding-a-ling goddess is.  She gets the gong for her hopelessly inadequate impersonation of an intelligent designer.  It’s Tinker Bell.
Next headline on:  Human Body • Evolution • Amazing Stories

Both these articles gave ID a respectful forum.  Neither of them quoted a Darwinist able to answer the scientific questions.  The ABC article explained Behe’s claim about the complexity of the bacterial flagellum and molecular machines being inexplicable by Darwinian mutation and natural selection.  The wimpy counterargument was, merely, “Darwinists, who still comprise the large majority of scientists, say Professor Behe and others are simply appropriating what is yet unknown to conclude that it must be created by a higher intelligence.”  This is a tacit admission that they have no answer.
    Instead, the Darwinists show obstinacy and unwillingness to think.  Maestro’s statement, “We aren’t going to convince them and they aren’t going to convince us,” conveys a spirit of cold war, not negotiation.  The statement is not symmetric.  It’s not that the I.D. scientists are equally dogmatic; they are the ones willing to debate, and trying to get these issues out on the table for consideration.  It’s the Darwin Party that has no scientific response to the design arguments and refuses to consider them on a priori philosophical grounds.
    Some churchmen in 17th century Europe refused to look through Galileo’s telescope for fear it would jeopardize their views.  Now, the roles are reversed.  Some naturalistic scientists are figuratively refusing to look through Behe’s microscope at the irreducible complexity of molecular machines.  To avoid looking like modern dogmatists, the Darwinists need to debate and show their explanatory muscle.  They either need to provide detailed mechanisms by which specified complexity could arise – and did arise – by natural means, or else concede that they are beholden to a philosophical preference.  Only unequivocal success at the former approach will permit them any claim to privilege in academic circles.
Next headline on:  Evolution • Intelligent Design

How good are psychiatrists at determining human responsibility?  They can monitor brain waves, and attach electrodes to parts of a brain to see what parts light up when a person is stimulated in various ways.  Character, however, cannot be measured by lab instruments.
    Darwin Party scientists, who are materialists by definition, perceive every biological function as an interaction of molecules acted on by natural selection.  There is no spirit, no soul, no truly intangible entity called character; these are just artifacts of chemistry.  Such reductionism leads to some serious ramifications, as seen here.  These scientists have made a very subjective judgment that the chemistry in a teenage brain has not sufficiently progressed to make them accountable for their behavior.  But here they become morally confused, because they invoke the word culpable, thus making a value judgment: “These developmental differences make them less culpable....”  What on earth is culpability, if not responsibility – a measurement of character, guilt or innocence?  How can anyone make a judgment that this or that chemical reaction is “deserving of the ultimate punishment”?  Apparently the Supreme Court did not catch this inconsistency and ask the “scientific experts” to define their terms.  They allowed them to wander outside their worldview and sneak in Judeo-Christian moral concepts.
    It is one thing to say that the mind can be affected by the brain, and that behavior can be influenced, sometimes overwhelmingly, by chemistry.  It is another to say the mind is chemistry.  The materialistic Darwin Party biologists and psychologists, who are nearly 100% Democrats (see 12/02/2004 entry), have achieved a coup over the Supreme Court by fooling them into thinking the debate revolved around “science.”  They dressed up their reductionist, materialist philosophy in scientific garb to give it an undeserved authority.
    Naturalism cannot judge character.  The Darwinists think lying evolved (see 04/26/2004 entry), culture evolved (06/28/2004), and the mind evolved (06/16/2004); but to believe this, they must use their own intangible minds as if they were capable of true, objective logic and reliable perception of the world – thoughts that cannot be reduced to interactions of atoms and molecules.  To convince others, they must resort to bluffing and extrapolating meager lab results based on their preconceived philosophical notions.  Their position is unsound scientifically, logically, philosophically and politically (see “The Evolution of Folly, or Vice Versa?” (10/14/2002).  Some of these false prophets even teach that rape evolved (07/17/2003) and that suicide terrorism is an evolutionary artifact (see 04/02/2004 entry).  Rather than express outrage at such views, Science prints them with commendations from peers!  What kind of society will this bring – one in which criminal behavior is rewarded as survival of the fittest?
    Regardless of your position on the death penalty, you should be outraged at the way this Supreme Court decision was argued and what it implies.  If you are an adult, you were once 16 or 17 years old; how would you feel if someone told you that you were utterly incapable of responsible or logical behavior till you were 25?  If you are in age group 16-25, how do you feel about these Darwinist eggheads deciding you have no sense, and cannot be held responsible for your actions?  You can be an honor student at high school, you can attend the university and get a PhD, you can vote and drive and marry and write and perform community service and serve on a battlefield and do a million other things that require skill, intelligence, planning, logic, choice and determination.  But if you murder someone, well, you couldn’t help yourself, because your frontal lobe was not yet fully developed.
    Because of this ruling, young criminals may become emboldened to commit murder, knowing that, if caught, they might win an all-expense paid living with free cafeteria and gym.  Anyone thinking the battle over evolution only affects the biology classroom had better wake up.  It affects all of society, including the actions of those gang members walking down your street.  This is another reason why the Darwin Party, the pseudoscientific propaganda arm of the Democratic Party and of radical liberals worldwide, must be defeated.
Next headline on:  Politics and Ethics • Darwinism and Evolutionary Theory

Most planetary scientists are very honest with their data and glad to find new puzzles to solve.  But born and bred on billions of years, they just cannot seem to shake out of the world-picture they have grown to feel comfortable with, that of slow, gradual processes over vast ages, even when the data points are poking them in the back.  Some of them would not dare to think of shrinking the timeline of the solar system for fear of incurring the wrath of the Darwin Party (that needs the time; see the story of Lord Kelvin).
    But what if these bodies are really young after all?  Can’t we at least expand our minds and consider the possibility?  It sure would fit the observations better.  Planetary scientists glibly toss around the Ma (mega-annum, million years) like this example in the Kerr’s article: “All in all, large parts of Enceladus have suffered ‘fairly energetic events fairly recently,’ perhaps less than 100 million years ago” – as if they knew that, or as if 100 million years is “recent”.  100 million years is a long, long, long time; all the major mountain ranges on Earth are said to be far younger in their scheme, for comparison.  Yet 100 million years is only 1/50 of the timeline taught without hint of controversy in all the textbooks.
    If these phenomena look young, so be it; don’t force-fit the observations into a predetermined timeline where the data points are all clustered near the recent end.  A million here, a few million there, and pretty soon you’re talking real funny.
Next headline on:  Solar System • Dating Methods

Any evolutionists thinking they have an “Aha!” case of a missing-link fossil to discredit creationists have a slippery object to try to hang onto.  If brain size does not correlate with intelligence, then a century and a half of human-evolution storytelling goes down the drain.  Fine measurements of skull capacity were a staple of human phylogenetic studies; some, like Paul Broca (now considered a racist), made a career out of it.  It should have been obvious that even modern human “small people” like Tom Thumb could be smarter than local fatheads.  And didn’t we learn that birds, with much smaller brains, outwit chimpanzees? (see 02/01/2005 entry).
    If hobbitkind were degenerate modern humankind, there is no evolution story to tell.  But if they evolved smart brains independently, in parallel with other upwardly-mobile hominids, then human evolution has been falsified twice (see 12/30/2004 entry).  Take your pick, Darwin Party.  If indeed “this goes to the heart of our understanding of human evolution,” it whacks it with a sharp stone tool.
Next headline on:  Early Man • Evolution

This article was found via World Net Daily.  Take a moment to read the position of a leading Middle East archaeologist with years of hands-on research in the field.  Doesn’t the stance of the revisionists sound familiar?  “They will demolish any facts that don’t suit their theories,” Dever said.  Sounds like the Darwin Party’s approach to truth and handling of evidence.
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...A flood of email ensued.  Many were supportive; some asked questions.  Several negative and hostile emails were openly critical of my assertion that American schools should teach evolution in science classrooms to “leave no child behind”.  In addition to rejecting evolution for religious reasons, several people claimed that there was not sufficient evidence, that scientists could not all agree, or that evolution is “only a theory” which they equate with an unfounded idea.   (Emphasis added in all quotes.)

Visual Aid: Chance or Design?    03/01/2005
A TV commercial for the Honda Accord has been circulating around the net as a popular download (see Steel City’s Finest).  It shows the parts of a car, without human intervention, interacting in strange ways like a Rube Goldberg device, resulting in a finished car rolling off the ramp.  Garrison Keillor adds the punch line, “Isn’t it nice when things just work?”

If you teach science or Sunday School, this could be a great visual aid to stimulate thinking about intelligent design.  It is fun to watch and quite amazing to think about how the production team had to spend $6 million and perform 606 takes to get it right.  Applying William Dembski’s explanatory filter, how could you rigorously conclude that the sequence was designed, and not the result of chance?  Contrast this scene with the familiar analogy of a tornado in a junkyard producing a 747, popularized by the late Fred Hoyle.  What’s the difference?  Put even a micro-tornado on the Honda set and the whole sequence would fail.  That’s irreducible complexity – a picture is worth a thousand words.  Life is like that.
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Presumably the hydrothermal activity was there from the beginning of the oceans themselves.  You’ve got basically a stable environment, you’ve got chemical energy available, and you’ve got all the building blocks necessary.  So it seems inconceivable to me that it would not have been a viable place for life to emerge.  But [the origin of life] is a great mystery.  It’s the greatest detective story out there.   (Emphasis added in all quotes.)

Just because we’ve never seen cryogenic [very cold temperature] life on this planet doesn’t mean it can’t exist.  Look for life on Titan.  Look for life in the upper atmosphere of Jupiter, in the upper atmosphere of Venus.  We shouldn’t rule out any environment.
    If life is as tenacious and adaptable as it seems to be here on Earth, there’s no reason why it couldn’t exist in some of these other places.

Translation of Cameron’s sermon: if you love science but doubt chemical evolution, you are a dunderhead.  What is his definition of science?  Chemical evolution, astrobiology, environmentalism, global warming and stem cell research.  With clever association, he claims “science” gave us semiconductors and astrobiology, so we should embrace both.  Sorry, we’ll have ours a la carte.
    Chemical evolution is a reactionary science in more ways than one.  That is what is going backward (see 01/28/2005 entry).  Those who love science should toss astrobiology overboard and see if it can survive in the extreme environment of scientific scrutiny.  Just show us some amazing marine organisms, Jimmy, with all their designed complexity that defies evolution.
Next headline on:  Movies & Media • Marine Life • Origin of Life • Dumb Stories.

“We all want to believe in something,” says Yuk Yung, a planetary geologist from the California Institute of Technology, Pasadena.  “Even as scientists we’re not completely objective, especially about something we’ve worked on for ten years.  There’s enormous pressure to deliver, and under this pressure you can easily believe things that are unbelievable.”   (Emphasis added in all quotes.)

The discovery of martian methane last year excited scientists, who said that there were two likely sources of the gas: active geological processes beneath the planet’s surface or a population of methane-generating microbes.  Because Mars was long thought to be a dead planet, devoid of both life and geothermal activity, either prospect came as a revelation.

Have scientists become midwives of myth?  Are they being pressured to deliver cute little astrobiological packages?  Is that what the Mars Express program is all about?  We don’t want scientists to give birth to speculation.  We want them to observe the facts, and report them with honesty and integrity.  If Mars is burping gas, fine; that’s interesting enough, and doesn’t require a baby.
    Actually, it would be very interesting.  Notice that the article said that “Mars was long thought to be a dead planet.”  Why?  Because according the Law of the Medes and the Persians, which cannot be altered, the solar system is 4.5 billion years old.  This dogma has led naturalistic geologists to conclude that Mars, with a much smaller volume than Earth, should have long ago cooled down, and therefore could no longer sustain volcanic activity.  If it indeed has volcanos active now, more things are going to erupt than natural gas and embalming fluid.
Next headline on:  Mars • Geology • Dating Methods

Beginning of article

Keep those cards and letters going, but make sure they are informed.  Edna has set herself up as an educator, but needs some education herself.  She is a naive positivist.  Her arguments, mostly irrelevant and misdirected, are sitting ducks for easy potshots.  No need to be negative or hostile (although these allegations may be unfounded, spewed from someone unaccustomed to being challenged); the facts will do just fine.  No need to argue on “religious reasons” (although this allegation may be unfounded, spewed from someone who equates any critique of evolution with religion); the scientific arguments will do just fine.  No need to impugn her character.  She is probably a nice person and deserves respect.  Her pro-Darwin arguments, though, are fair game.
    Like we commented before, her sermon preaches to the choir in one regard: we believe students should be taught evolution – all of it, not just the filtered propaganda (see 02/11/2005 commentary for complete outline of proposed curriculum).
    Edna writes as if she got her education on Darwinian evolution from watching the Discovery channel and reading a high school science textbook.  She would be much better informed if she read Creation-Evolution Headlines.  Here we go:

Evolution is supported by evidence.^a  There are several thousand peer-reviewed scientific journals where the evidence is presented in article after article.^b  Natural history museums house large collections of fossils that document the history of life.^c  Geologists^d and astronomers^e have a massive amount of observational evidence of the long-term change in physical systems: stars, galaxies, planets, interstellar dust, asteroids, etc.  Biologists observe and document the patterns of the evolution of life:^f for example, the fossil record,^g DNA,^h and the observation of evolution in action such as the adaptive evolution of antibiotic-resistant strains of bacteriaⁱ that now pose a serious threat to human health.  Selective breeding in agriculture generated our crops and domestic animals over thousands of years; agriculture is evolution in action.^j

1. Evidence: what can be observed, tested, repeated, and reproduced by others.  Evolution (in the Darwinian sense of the common ancestry of all organisms from a one-celled form, and ultimately from chemicals and particles) is none of the above.  According to Darwinists, it took a unique path on the Earth, so that even if scientists perform some lab experiment that seems to demonstrate a change, it may not have any relevance to what happened in prehistory.
2. Journals: We report on journal articles on evolution right here all the time.  The more they talk about evolution, the more they speak in glittering generalities (example) that merely assume evolution rather than prove it (example).  The more they discuss the technical details of life, they less they talk about evolution.  Ask her to show one article that really presents actual scientific evidence that humans had bacteria ancestors rather than merely assumes it in spite of the evidence (example)  Once the assumption of evolution is discarded, the thousands of articles she generalizes about – the ones that explore the complexity of life (example) and discuss deep-seated problems with evolutionary explanations (example) – could more easily be adduced in favor of creation, not evolution.
3. Museums: Natural history museums show plenty of biodiversity and extinction, but not evolution.  Colin Patterson, former director of the British museum, one of the greatest in the world, once wrote that his museum would be glad to show transitional forms if they had them, but he could not think of a single example that made a watertight argument.  In fact, many old examples, like the horse series, have been modified or discarded as evidence.
4. Geologists talk about earth history, not life.  The age of the earth is a separate question from biological evolution.  Not all change is evolutionary change.  Mountains erode, seas rise and fall, and glaciers advance and retreat; does it logically follow that bacteria evolve into humans?
5. Astronomers talk about stars, galaxies and planets; what does that have to do with evolution?  DeVore seems to equate change with evolution, an equivocation that does nothing to make her point.
6. Biologists observe and document the present, not the past.  Many of the first and greatest biologists, like Leeuwenhoek, John Ray, Pasteur and others were creationists and often theologians.
7. Fossils: apparently DeVore actually believes the fossil record supports evolution.  Has she not heard of the Cambrian explosion, and the “trade secret” of paleontology, the existence of systematic gaps between major kinds?  Abrupt appearance, stasis and extinction is the pattern.  This is evidence against evolution, not for it.
8. DNA: for her to use DNA as an evidence for evolution is almost comical.  Codes, languages, translation, error-checking and extreme complexity by chance?  Come on.
9. Antibiotic resistance: in each case, these involve loss of information or else horizontal change, not an increase in complexity, information or function.  Some bacteria and viruses form “quasi-species” networks that can share and adapt and reconstruct their networks in changing environments; this implies all the information was already present.  Microevolution is not the issue.  Even young-earth creationists accept “horizontal” change.  Unless Darwinists can demonstrate new complex information arising through an undirected, purposeless process, they have no case.  Even antibiotic-resistant bacteria tend to fail outside the hospital, or else they revert to the wild type (see film Icons of Evolution for lab demonstration).
10. Agriculture: a silly claim that wins Stupid Evolution Quote of the Week – “agriculture is evolution in action.”  Selective breeding is intelligent design, not evolution.  We need to keep pushing this point till the Darwin Party gets it.  Unlike natural selection, humans direct the changes according to a predetermined goal.  Even a purebred cow is still a cow, not a whale, and possesses a net loss of genetic information from the wild type.  The more removed from the wild type, the less our highly-specialized breeds would be able to survive without our specialized care and feeding, and without the corral fences or homes to keep out the predators.  That’s why it’s cruel to abandon your pet cat or dog in the woods.

Having fun?  Let’s do some more.  DeVore delves into the “nature of science” line of reasoning:

Certainly, there are continuing debates among scientists about the particulars of cosmic, planetary, and biological evolution.  The nature of science requires continual questioning of ideas, evidence and theories.  Theoretical scientists consider what we know, and pose new ideas and models to explain the natural world.  New models and ideas generate new scientific tests of theory: observational experiments at Earth and space-based observatories, high-energy collisions of particle physics, deep-sea dives at the plate boundaries, and lab experiments in molecular biology to cite a few.  Science is based upon observational and experimental evidence.  Concepts that don’t match observations are altered or tossed out.  It’s an iterative cycle.

That would be a great quote, if she believed it.  Questioning is good, so can we question evolution?  Models are good, so if the models fail, can we discard evolution?  Testing is good, so if evolution doesn’t match observational and experimental evidence, can we toss it out?  If the iterative cycle continues to create problems for evolutionary theory, is it time for a paradigm shift?  If you want to see the hypocrisy of the Darwin Party in action, show them all the evidence that falsifies evolution (hundreds of examples in the Darwinism chain links, right here) and see if they are open to consider ousting King Charlie from his throne.  What you will get is a tirade against religion, particularly Christianity.  DeVore is a naive positivist; she thinks science leads to inevitable progress.  Sad.
    Unbelievably, she uses Kepler, Newton and Einstein as examples to support naturalistic science.  None of these were biologists, and the first two were staunch Christians and creationists; even Einstein did not believe God plays dice with the universe.  Both Newton and Kepler (and many other great scientists) believed scientific inquiry enhanced their worship of the God of Scripture (example from Joule), and in no way felt that the observational evidence pointed to an undirected, evolutionary universe; on the contrary: to them, the heavens declared the glory of God (example from von Braun).
    Next, DeVore discusses the nature of theories in science.  Critics of evolution should probably abandon the tack that “evolution is only a theory,” not because it is totally off-base, but because it generates a knee-jerk reaction by the Darwin Party.  It’s like pulling the string on a baby doll, making it say, “Well, gravity is only a theory, too,”  as if gravity and evolution are in the same category (an example of association).  Theories are good things in science; the point is, evolution hardly even qualifies as a hypothesis or hunch, let alone the exalted title of theory (see 06/12/2003 entry).  It was Charlie’s little “path of inquiry” that led to the Great Society for Storytellers (see 12/22/2003 commentary), when it was no longer necessary to prove your case in science, but just come up with a plausible suggestion or hypothesis (see 01/15/2004 commentary), however untestable.
    DeVore does injustice to Kepler to compare his laws of planetary motion, which work impeccably in getting our spacecraft to orbit other planets, with Darwin’s impotent hypothesis, wrongly called the “law” of natural selection (see 02/16/2005 entry), a tautology utterly incapable of creating the complex adaptations found everywhere in biology.
    In short, Edna DeVore has published a pathetic defense of evolution.  Calling all Baloney Detectors: warm up your sharpened wits and teach her a little more about it.  Be nice; the facts don’t require vituperative verbosity.  But all that is required for balderdash to triumph is for clear thinkers to write nothing.
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