Blessed is the man who makes the Lord his trust, and does not respect the proud, nor such as turn aside to lies.  Many, O Lord my God, are your wonderful works which You have done; and Your thoughts toward us cannot be recounted to You in order; If I would declare and speak of them, they are more than can be numbered.
— King David of Israel, c. 1050 BC (Psalm 40:4-5)

None of these five papers mention evolution once, nor make any attempt to explain how the motors of life could have arisen by an unguided process of chance or natural law.  Murata’s paper says “Eukaryotic V-ATPases contain 13 different polypeptides.”  Since getting just one usable polypeptide (protein) is astronomically improbable (see online book), it is utterly out of the question to assume that the complete set of these specialized functional molecules could have arisen by chance.  Even getting a few of them would be useless; all of them have to be in the same place, at the same time, in the same arrangement, together simultaneously for the system to work.  ATP synthase is a classic example of an irreducibly complex system that defies evolutionary explanation.  Since even the simplest organisms depend on these motors for life, and since Charlie’s magic wand of natural selection cannot be used at this stage (see online book), we have here a convincing case for intelligent design.  Similarly, since the actin/myosin operation is essential for cell division (e.g., replication, an essential prerequisite for natural selection), evolutionists have only chance as an explanation for the origin of these exquisite molecular machines.  To any thinking person, that would be absurd.  The Kansas school board (see 04/29/2005 entry) should hold up the pictures of ATP synthase from these papers and challenge the Darwinists to explain how such complex systems at the beginning of life could ever have arisen by chance.
Next headline on:  Cell Biology • Intelligent Design • Amazing Stories

What if the pieces of this huge puzzle don’t fit the picture Darwin drew on the box?  The very term “long branch attraction” comes from evolutionary assumptions.  When the organism should be on a certain branch in their a priori evolutionary mindset but the software puts it farther up, they can just assume it “evolved much faster” than its relatives.  But what if it did not evolve significantly at all?  What if animals are not related by common descent from a single cell?  It could be a complete exercise in futility.
    Science needs freedom to explore many possible avenues, some of which may become dead ends.  At what point do they give up and go the other direction?  What if complete representative genomes from all 28 animal phyla still don’t match expectations and produce “troubling” results for Charlie?  If a driver cannot read the dead-end sign, he might drive the wrong way forever.  Evolutionists know how to translate any warning sign into Darwinese.  It allows them to ignore No Trespassing signs and wander endlessly in storyland.
    This article illustrates how phylogenomics is like a perpetual metaphysical research programme.  Every parameter is tweakable except the notion of Darwinian common ancestry.  Notice the evolutionary assumptions embedded in their phrase, “a tendency for all methods of tree reconstruction to group the long-branch species together regardless of their true relationship.”  Phylogeny is the art of forcing uncooperative data into the “true relationship” received from Pope Charlie’s scriptures (see 02/13/2004 commentary).  And you thought only religious people operated under dogma.
Next headline on:  Darwinism and Evolutionary Theory • Genetics and DNA

Last week more than 100 people opposed to making ID part of the science curriculum held a meeting in a liberal church here to test a new rallying cry: A high-quality science education means more jobs and a stronger economy.  By attracting business, civic, and religious leaders, supporters hope to erode ID’s traditional base and stave off changes that they believe will make Kansas an undesirable location for high-tech companies, academics, and other knowledge-based workers.   (Emphasis added in all quotes.)

My strategy at this point is the same as it was in 1999: notify the national and local media about what’s going on and portray them in the harshest light possible, as political opportunists, evangelical activists, ignoramuses, breakers of rules, unprincipled bullies, etc.
There may no way to head off another science standards debacle, but we can sure make them look like asses as they do what they do.

It is really quite amusing to see the paranoia of the Darwin Party hacks.  You know they are on the wrong side of history when they have to resort to fear mongering, faulty analogies, non-sequiturs and straw man arguments.  We offer them a secret weapon that is sure to demolish ID in one fell swoop like a nuclear bomb, without all the guerrilla warfare.  It is called scientific evidence.  Show the world evidence that undirected natural processes could indeed build the most efficient molecular machines and programmed guidance and control mechanisms known to man.  Build a better irreducibly complex mousetrap without appeal to design, and the worldview will beat a path to your door.
Next headline on:  Evolution • Intelligent Design • Education

Who needs the primer, the readers or the authors?  This is nothing more than another “check’s in the mail” whitewash like the one on 04/15/2004 and many others.  Articles like this should make the peasants who have suffered under the Darwin monarchy angry enough to revolt.  Here we have tolerated the intellectual revolutionaries who swept into the scientific institutions in the 1860s, promising a new age of enlightenment, and while tolerating a few extremists along the way (Hitler, Stalin, Mao, Pol Pot--see 04/22/2004 entry), we kept thinking that at least the new leaders had science on their side, that they were making policy based on reality and scientific evidence.  But when the evidence is always nothing more than promises of future discoveries, how much longer do we give them till calling time out?  We can’t, because they built future promises into the very definition of science.  In essence, we handed the Darwinists a blank check to run Big Science with no accountability, with no obligation to produce the goods (see 12/22/2003 commentary and footnote*).
    Notice how Charlie and his disciples have gotten away with this ruse for 126 years, since they say much of what we “know” (sic) has come from research over the last two decades.  What were the Darwinists doing in the 1900s, 1920s, 1940s and 1960s about this central issue?  We were told that natural selection was the be-all and end-all of evolution: it was the thing that made Charlie a world-wide celebrity, because while many freethinkers had desired to justify an evolutionary worldview, his predecessors like Erasmus and Kingsley and Lamarck failed to produce a plausible mechanism.  Natural selection, with a little sexual selection where needed, was supposed to be the skeleton key that unlocked all the natural history of life.  Darwin wrote a book about the origin of species by natural selection, but now, these two scientists admit that, if anything, natural selection is only incidental to the process of speciation.  Look carefully at this paper for any hint of something big that they know natural selection has done.  The evidence is vague and inconclusive.  On the contrary, the unknowns outnumber the knowns.  Look at the questions in their ending quote: these are big issues.  Even their proudest examples of natural selection in action leave key questions unanswered: was selection caused by the environment?  Can speciation be allopatric, sympatric or both?  What effects are caused by natural selection, and what by sexual selection?  In short, the whole story of natural selection and speciation is futureware, issues that “will require future investigation.”  After all this time, how many of you are willing to believe their promise that answers are “within reach” and that they are now “closing the gap”?  When put on trial, they can’t make a case strong enough to convince a jury (see 04/15/2003 commentary).
    Most shameful of all is that this Darwinist hand-waving explanation about natural selection and speciation fails utterly to explain the biggest problem: the origin of complex functional systems.  The only examples they provide are about fruit fly mutations, finch beak size, stickleback fish spines (see 04/15/2004 entry) and plant polyploidy.  Fruit flies are organisms possessing extreme technology in materials, flight hardware and software, and networking (re-read the 12/08/2003 entry and marvel); they utterly defy a Darwinian explanation (see 05/18/2004 entry).  Evolutionary stories about finch beaks are quibbles over trivial details.  Finches already had beaks, eyes, wings, ears, sexual organs, feathers, hollow bones, avian lungs and feathers before the story of their beak evolution was told; evolutionists grasp at wind when trying to explain how the complex interacting structures evolved (see 08/20/2003 entry).  In plants, the origin of just one sugar in the cell wall defies evolutionary explanation (see 10/26/2001 entry), let alone how trees figured out how to pump water 367 feet into the sky (see 06/26/2003 entry).  Are monkeyflower studies filling in these gaps?  Read the 11/13/2003 entry and see if you are impressed.  Plant speciation is a postmodern synthesis, not a a scientific theory (see 08/19/2003 entry).
    So the very thing that made Darwin famous is still a “mystery of mysteries” after 146 years.  When the Darwinists are pushed to the wall with this kind of rebuttal, they retreat into their “rules of science” castle* that disallows design explanations by fiat.  It’s time to storm the castle and throw the usurpers out.
Next headline on:  Darwinism and Evolutionary Theory
*For an engaging account of how Darwin and Huxley succeeded in changing the rules of science away from empiricism and toward “hypothetico-deductive” methods (i.e., storytelling based on one’s assumptions), and how the science vs. religion false dichotomy was fostered, read this lecture by John Hedley Brooke given at the University of Oxford in 2001.

The Darwinian explanatory edifice is being dismantled before the eyes of the watching world, one crumbling mud brick at a time.
Next headline on:  Darwinism and Evolutionary Theory

If a breeding population of a species of bird this large and colorful could escape detection for almost 60 years right in America’s back yard, how can scientists be sure that other large animals are truly extinct?  Remember the video of a mammoth-size elephant found in Thailand a few years ago?  It’s good to have this woodpecker back, but it raises interesting questions about what other assumed-extinct species may just be hiding behind a tree somewhere.  Every once in awhile one shows up alive and well, some thought extinct since the age of dinosaurs: the Wollemi pine, the tuatara, the coelacanth, and others.  Keep your eyes open.  Maybe a brontosaurus will come strolling down Sunset Boulevard.  Sightings of stranger creatures have been reported there.
Next headline on:  Birds

Scientists tend to tune out when they hear the words ‘intelligent design’.  The concept, which endeavours to show God’s hand shaping the course of evolution, is being promoted in parts of Europe and, more significantly, has recently become popular among Christian fundamentalists who want religion taught in US secondary schools.  To most researchers it sounds like politics rather than science, and like someone else’s problem.

Scientists would do better to offer some constructive thoughts of their own.  For religious scientists, this may involve taking the time to talk to students about how they personally reconcile their beliefs with their research.  Secular researchers should talk to others in order to understand how faiths have come to terms with science.  All scientists whose classes are faced with such concerns should familiarize themselves with some basic arguments as to why evolution, cosmology and geology are not competing with religion.  When they walk into the lecture hall, they should be prepared to talk about what science can and cannot do, and how it fits in with different religious beliefs.

Indeed, it is not the job of a science teacher to meddle with the way their students are brought up or to attack their core personal beliefs.  Rather, the goal should be to point to options other than intelligent design for reconciling science and belief.
    Even if they manage to sway just a few students, researchers in the United States can have a disproportionate effect on the national debate over science in the classroom.  Students often return to their home communities and become teachers, doctors and engineers.  It is as local community leaders that those students will become invaluable allies when more conservative religious groups try to halt the teaching of scientific theories in schools.

This should be read as a victory for the ID movement, akin to Sennacherib’s boast that he had Hezekiah locked up in Jerusalem like a bird in a cage when in fact his army had been decimated.  It’s a victory because ID is finally getting beyond the stage where the scientific establishment can just ignore it, and more importantly, because it demonstrates that the opposition has no answers.  Like Sennacherib, the Kingdom of Charlie boasts great things, but falls flat before the power of design arguments.  Retreating, it has to change its strategy.  Rather than addressing the evidence and facing the issues squarely, it resorts to propaganda tactics and empty boasts.
    Noticeably absent from either of these two articles was any enlightened response to the claims of ID that Darwinian evolution is woefully inadequate to explain the complexity of life and the explosion of complex body plans in the fossil record.  All they could say was the bluffing statement worthy of Stupid Evolution Quote of the Week, “Scientists know that natural selection can explain the awe-inspiring complexities of organisms, and should be prepared to explain how.”  But did they explain how?  No!  In fact, in the same issue (see footnote 3 above), another paper on Darwin’s Tree of Life admitted in the first sentence, “Despite the comforting certainty of textbooks and 150 years of argument, the true relationships of the major groups (phyla) of animals remain contentious.”
    The opposition to ID is running scared.  They have no answers, and they know it, so they just try to pigeonhole design arguments as “religion vs science” by using the loaded words Christian fundamentalists, faith, belief, pseudoscience, alchemy, religious right etc.  They are scared because they don’t want to debate and tell us all those good reasons why natural selection can explain the awe-inspiring complexities of organisms.  They are scared because they see that Darwinism is on the way out due to its own inherent failings, and they are afraid of ID the Future.
    Like Hezekiah’s army facing formidable odds, the ID leaders do not need power in numbers.  They need power in evidence: to have a case that matches what the observations show, and to present it forthrightly and persistently.  The power of the ID movement is not in the personalities of its leaders, but in the strength of the arguments.  When given the opportunity to hear both sides, most people who have not previously been brainwashed find ID arguments convincing and reasonable.  Too bad that does not include Bruce Alberts, Mr. Molecular Machine himself, who should know better (see 01/09/2002 entry).
Next headline on:  Intelligent Design • Darwinism and Evolutionary Theory

This sounds remarkably like the illustration made in the film Unlocking the Mystery of Life as an argument for intelligent design.  It’s not just the molecular machines themselves that are irreducibly complex; the ways they are constructed – the assembly instructions and developmental processes – are themselves irreducibly complex.  Like Jonathan Wells quips, “what you have is irreducible complexity all the way down.”  Undoubtedly the journal didn’t mean to make a case for intelligent design, but it sure didn’t make a case for naturalism; neither the authors of the paper nor the synopsis mentioned evolution once.
Next headline on:  Genetics and DNA • Intelligent Design

The press release could not resist holding up the primordial soup can again: “Scientists believe that Titan’s atmosphere may be a laboratory for studying the organic chemistry that preceded life and provided the building blocks for life on Earth.”  Read the 04/22 entry again.  Get past the chemicals, and talk about the information.
Next headline on:  Solar System

Hubble is a great American success story that deserves far more press coverage than the usual daily retinue of crime stories and celebrity trials.  HST has brought us not only knowledge and science, but art.  Take this occasion to tour the Hubble Site and feast your eyes on things Galileo could not have dreamt of.  Congratulations to all the Hubble team: the universe will never be the same in our eyes thanks to this wonderful true story of intelligent design.
    PS: News@Nature reported the possibility that some stars may have planets made of diamond.  Tell that to your kid after she sings Twinkle Twinkle Little Star, and see if you can get a big-eyed Wow.
Next headline on:  Stars and Astronomy • Amazing Stories

If this dream ever comes true, be thankful for those little germs.  The lot of them often gets a bad rap from the few that went delinquent.  Notice how the scientists didn’t build nano-scale hydrogen factories from scratch.  They had to harness the skill of molecular machines in bacteria to get this promising result.
Next headline on:  Cell Biology • Amazing Stories

The fossils didn’t come with dates on them, and since amphibian phylogeny is a mess anyway (see 09/13/2004 entry, for example), we’ll just leave that part out and pause to wonder again at the richness of extinct biodiversity compared with that of today.
Next headline on:  Fossils • Terrestrial Zoology

Give them a universe filled with organic soup.  Concentrate it and stir it and feed it lots of energy.  It won’t help.  Life will not crawl out.  To convince yourself once and for all, read our online book that climaxes in chapter 7 with the calculation for getting just one simple, usable protein molecule by chance under ideal conditions, even with incredibly generous concessions to make it easier for chance to succeed.  This is not just one contrived calculation by one individual: the same conclusion has been reached repeatedly, independently, by numerous scientists, including Fred Hoyle and even Carl Sagan.  Those who continue to believe it realize that it is hopeless to expect a primitive cell by chance alone, so they jump to the next fallacy by inserting natural selection where it doesn’t belong: i.e., before a complex, self-replicating system existed (see ch. 5).
    Everyone in the field knows how improbable it is to get a protein, RNA or DNA molecule by chance, yet they continue to hope against hope that simple molecules might have gotten organized into self-replicating machines if just the ingredients were present.  Phillip Johnson once pointed out how the believers in chemical evolution always focus on getting the right chemicals, but have no idea about where the information came from.  Without recognizing the vital necessity of information in the origin of life, this meager attempt to breathe hydrogen gas into the Miller myth is too little, too late.  Materialists need to get off their chemical soup diet and learn to handle the meat of information theory.
Next headline on:  Origin of Life • Dumb Stories

Yesterday’s meeting focused on the economic consequences of downplaying evolution in school curriculums.  “Most industries today want workers with analytical skills,” says microbiologist Charles Decedue, executive director of the Higuchi Biosciences Center at the University of Kansas (KU), which is dedicated to the development and transfer of bioscience technologies.  “ID does not foster analytical thinking because its arguments are faith-based.”  Leonard Krishtalka, an evolutionary biologist who directs the Biodiversity Institute at KU, predicts that ID instruction would also turn away potential investors. (Emphasis added in all quotes.)

This is turning into a contest to watch.  The most amazing thing about the Darwinist response is that it is a red herring strategy.  They want to scare the public into thinking anything other than 100% pure Darwin might hurt the economy.  That is really funny.  Apparently, they don’t want to touch the scientific case for ID with a ten foot strand of DNA.  This has all the earmarks of a desperate ploy by special interests who know they have a weak case.  Analytical skills?  Take this bacterial flagellum and analyze it.  “Faith-based” arguments?  No devotee is as incorrigible as a 33rd-degree Charlie worshiper (see 11/14/2004 entry about Priest Dawkins).  Covington should argue that Darwinists are bad for the economy, because they believe evolution made us liars (see 11/23/2004 and 11/19/2004 entries) and criminals (see 03/04/2005 entry).  If it’s embryonic stem cell research they have in mind that’s going to make Wichita the new boom town, do Kansans really want to gain the whole bandwagon and lose their own soul? (See 02/08/2005 entry.)  Kansas will do just fine economically without obligatory naturalism, just like Britain did after Faraday and Maxwell, both creationists.  Nobody on the board is proposing downplaying evolution, anyway – read the standards.  If anything, students will get more than before, this time fair and balanced.
    Why should a Darwinist be disturbed that someone wants to pray over an important decision?  The Darwin Party keeps telling everyone that evolution is not a threat to one’s religious beliefs.  They stress how many evolutionists believe in God, and that belief in God is no issue at all, because “science” has nothing to say about faith.  This is the two-platoon strategy at work (see 01/14/2002 commentary).  Out of one mouth they try to soft-pedal any threats of Darwinian philosophy to religion, and out of the other mouth they scream and holler if someone prays about an important decision affecting the teaching of science.  Make up your mind, Darwinists: if the destruction of religion is what you believe in, at least everyone will know where you stand.  We’d also like a count on how many of you are Democrats (see 12/02/2004 entry).
    Irigonegaray is grandstanding about the money.  $5,000 is nothing in a state budget, and is only fair, considering that some of the witnesses must be flown in from across the country.  The Board would have made the same amount available to him, as if he needed it with all the pro-Darwinian establishment on his side.  Who is he to play the martyr?  Stop the false piety; it doesn’t matter if you spend twice as much.  Let’s see you bring in some big brains who can tell us how life evolved out of a chemical soup, or how molecular machines learned ballet (see 04/13/2005 entry), without resorting to just-so stories or defining your opposition out of the game.  Have them tell us why Darwinism is such a sacred belief that it cannot be critically examined by anyone except those initiated into the rituals of the Temple of Charlie, whose survivors turn into lobotomized robots quacking “evolution is a fact, like gravity.”
    Sorry, but our memory banks don’t recall any instance of pro-Darwin advocates in Kansas being nice.  They tell jokes about Kansas being the Land of Oz, threaten that universities will not accept Kansas grads, or spread fear about loss of revenues for research.  They make it sound like the scientific revolution began with Darwin, when in fact, science had a long creationist history that continues to the present (see online book).  The opponents of the evolution-only position of the NCSE want some long-overdue fairness in the presentation of an admittedly controversial subject (see 11/30/2004 entry).  Science is supposed to flourish with evidence, logic and critical thinking.  How can any Darwinist, in the name of science, continue to support indoctrination into an all-encompassing belief system that is so poorly supported by actual evidence? (See 12/30/2004 and 11/29/2004 entries, and over 500 chain links on “Darwinism and Evolutionary Theory” over the last five years).  John Calvert has gone out of his way to invite a fair and balanced presentation by both sides in this important debate.  Larry Caldwell has presented a rational, limited case in California for a long time to permit criticisms of Darwinism, well known in the scientific community, to be heard by students.  How does the opposition respond?  With stereotypes, epithets, outrage, underhanded tactics, refusal to talk, blame, allegations, lies, distortions and sidestepping.  Don’t just listen to the words in the upcoming hearings.  Watch which side acts with decency.
    We can only hope that the Darwinites will take Burch’s advice to get serious.  We’ve been wanting them to get serious for a long time (see 04/06/2005, 02/10/2005, 11/29/2004, 11/23/2004, 08/12/2004, 02/25/2004, 09/26/2003, 05/08/2003, 03/21/2003, 01/16/2003, 02/24/2003, 11/07/2002, 10/25/2002, 04/08/2002, 01/29/2002, 11/15/2001, 10/16/2001 and 08/29/2001 entries for samples).  In fact, Mr. Calvert, why not hand out to everyone at the hearing a compilation of all the Dumb awards in these pages?  After they’ve all had a good laugh, they will probably be thinking: should we really be teaching this stuff to our kids?  The Darwinites, during this expose, will probably be secretly praying in the background.  The Kansas school board could be very lenient and tolerant of the losers.  They could give the Darwinites free rein in the theater class (see 11/29/2004 entry).
Next headline on:  Education • Darwinism and Evolutionary Theory • Intelligent Design

Ichthyosaurs were a remarkable group of swimming animals.  Motani knows a lot about them, but he doesn’t know much about their evolution.  Despite his bluffing assertions about phylogeny, there is not a single point he makes that is without controversy or problems.  Even accepting the evolution-biased geological dates, he has to admit that the “basal” (earliest, presumably most primitive) ichthyosaurs already had five digits in functional flippers and gave birth to live young.  No subsequent evolution could be anywhere near as dramatic as having a full-fledged ichthyosaur appear in the fossil record without ancestors.
    They are not clearly related to any other group of vertebrates, yet in many respects are like reptiles in fish costumes.  The similarities in body shape between some ichthyosaurs and tunas or dolphins is uncanny.  Streamlined body design requires not just a skeleton, but the musculature and skin to deal with fast swimming.  Every other body system – digestive, circulatory, endocrine, nervous, sensory, excretory, reproductive, and immune – must also adjust when there are changes in morphology.  How many lucky mutations had to converge in just one species of ichthyosaur to get this all right, let alone in a tuna (bony fish) or dolphin (mammal)?  Since the last common ancestor of these three groups could not have possessed that genetic information, the Darwinist is forced to believe that these three distant groups illustrate an amazing example of convergent evolution, whatever that means.  But even accepting that cop-out explanation, Motani admits that the phylogenetic position of the fish-shaped ichthyosaurs is controversial.  They seem to appear fully streamlined out of nowhere.
    Consider also how remarkable it is to have numerous examples of fossils containing live embryos.  Marine creatures do not normally fossilize while carrying young.  A marine animal is either eaten or else dies of old age, not while giving birth.  For the embryos to be preserved, some even possibly in the process of exiting the birth canal, there had to be a sudden catastrophe that captured and smothered these large, strong creatures in mud before they could even appear startled.
    There is nothing in this story to suggest these creatures evolved from something else.  Diversity is not evolution.  Motani did not demonstrate any clear sequence of characters morphing into others, or new functional capabilities arising de novo; nor did he explain how mutations and natural selection could produce an interrelated suite of complex structures like an ichthyosaur.  He did not show how they originated in one location and spread around the globe.  On the contrary, they burst on the scene all over the world, from Canada to Europe to China, in a geological blink of an eye, without precursors.  The only thing of any certainty about evolution in this paper was his determination to force-fit every piece of data into a Darwinian belief system.  (Notice how these fossils were used as props for Darwin’s theory, even though 146 years later, scientists are still struggling to understand their evolution.)  There is much in this story, however, that fits the framework of creation and a worldwide flood.  Along with most other living things, these marvelously designed animals were carrying out their everyday life and bearing their young, when the flood came and destroyed them all.
Next headline on:  Marine Biology • Fossils • Dinosaurs • Darwinism

If that process is so efficient, why aren’t the craters overflowing with dust after 4.5 billion years?  The dust is found coating only the bottoms of some of the craters.  Explore the pictures on NASA Photojournal and see for yourself.  Calculations like this are always based on assumptions and limited data, but it seems harder to imagine so little ponding after billions of years.  Explaining the dust away seems to require more ad hoc elements in the story.  Maybe Eros just hasn’t been drifting out there all that long.
Next headline on:  Solar System • Dating Methods

What kind of engineering and programming must a tiny butterfly brain possess to engage in navigation, orienteering, and long distance flight?  The most delicate of small creatures shows capabilities that would stump robotics experts.  Help your kids appreciate not just the beauty but the technical abilities of these beautifully-decorated small wonders.
Next headline on:  Terrestrial Zoology • Amazing Stories

How the Muslims could have wreaked this havoc without an international outrage and condemnation is beyond belief; this site is one of the most sacred to Jews and of great interest to Christians around the world.  The discoveries made here by this rescue effort are all consistent with the Biblical record of the Temples of Solomon and Herod.  They hint at the tremendous potential for archaeological research if more of the Mount could be excavated.
    Not all religious moral traditions are equivalent.  Notice which religion values knowledge, preservation, carefulness, scientific research and historical accuracy, and which denies facts of history and shows utter disregard for the sensibilities of others.  These Muslims knew full well what feelings the Jews have for the Temple Mount, yet engaged in illegal clandestine construction and dumped priceless artifacts into the ditch under cover of night; and if anyone didn’t like it, they could fall back on threats of intifada.
    If there are so many good Muslims, as we are told, where were their voices to condemn the actions of their brethren?  Instead, Muslims in Jerusalem threaten violence for trespassing on their holy site, yet forbid Jews and Christians access to sites just as sacred to them.  The article equates Muslim denial of the Jewish Temple to Holocaust denial, yet they get away with it with very little protest from the outside world.  Let the reader understand.
Update 05/20/2005:  In the next few weeks after this story was announced, Muslims worldwide rioted, killing 17 people, over an unsubstantiated report in Newsweek that American guards had intimidated Muslim prisoners by flushing pages of the Quran down the toilet.  Newsweek later retracted the story and apologized, but the damage was done, largely by leftist newspapers that repeated the story without checking the facts.  Few reporters remembered that Palestinians in Bethlehem had torn out pages of the Bible and used it for toilet paper when they occupied the Church of the Nativity a few years ago.  No Christians rioted then; they just came in to weep and clean up the mess after the Palestinians left.
    If Big Science wants to resurrect its supposed reputation for logic and honesty, it should stop opposing Christians and Jews, and go after the religious zealots that make hate, lies and irrationality a way of life and death.  See also the 05/19/2005 story.
Next headline on:  Bible • Politics and Ethics

The science reporters all seem to be jumping on the spin that this might represent a transitional form, and ignoring the remarkable fact that this animal was buried and fossilized within minutes or seconds of laying eggs.  The missing-link angle depends on interpretation of positions of the eggs relative to the pelvis and oviducts.  Notice how the paper said unless sequential egg formation and shelling was very rapid – a reference to how quickly this mother dinosaur was buried.  Could the rapid fossilization of this dinosaur been contemporaneous with a worldwide event that entombed a T. rex in Montana (see 03/24/2005 entry), leaving blood vessels intact?  If so, both these specimens were living much more recently than tens of millions of years ago.
    There are many, many things different between dinosaurs and birds.  Finding structural similarities in oviducts begs the question of how egg-laying and all its prerequisite equipment evolved in the first place.  The ability to encase an embryo in a calcified incubator of the right size and shape, keep it at the right temperature for the right time, and provide instructions to the hatchling on how and when to break out, is what we want explained in the Darwinist storybook.  Even that story would beg the question of everything else that would have to be pre-existent for egg laying to work: the structure of the mother’s skeleton, the egg laying machinery, the developmental process, the mineralization and nutrient requirements, and the incredibly complex story of embryonic development.  Saying it evolved doesn’t make it so.
    MSNBC News uttered another one of those ridiculous evolutionary lines that is self-contradicting, because it implies purpose on the part of the blind mechanism of natural selection, the very thing King Charles ordered expunged from biological explanations.  Any questions on why the final sentence below deserves Stupid Evolution Quote of the Week?  This is cartoon material:

“The evolution of one egg at a time happened very early, before birds could fly, and then the evolution of only one oviduct happened later,” he said [Matt Carrano, curator of dinosaurs at the National Museum of Natural History in Washington].
    “That might be related to the origin of flight,” he said, explaining that maybe birds wanted to lighten their body and so developed one oviduct.

Next headline on:  Dinosaurs • Birds • Fossils

If Toumaï really does belong on the human branch of the evolutionary tree, its discovery calls into question certain assumptions about our prehistory.
    The fossils were found some 2,500km (1,500 miles) west of the African Great Rift Valley – traditionally seen as humankind’s ancestral home due to the wealth of hominid fossils that have been discovered there.
    The discovery of S. tchadensis implies early hominids ranged far wider from East Africa, and far earlier, than previously thought.
    It also suggests that hominids evolved quickly when they set off on their own evolutionary path.   (Emphasis added in all quotes.)

Have we forgotten?  Brunet wants to be top dog in the paleoanthropology olympics, so he found his own contestant in his own turf.  He dug up a gorilla skull that was badly deformed, gave it a mythical date, and fashioned it according to his own beliefs (see 03/28/2003 caution by Tim White).  So Brunet got his prize – the cover of Nature – which says absolutely nothing about the validity of his claim that his specimen lived millions of years ago, but more about the gullibility of Darwinist-controlled journals.  Now the other teams are angry that he scored and are out to topple him in this king of the hill game by disqualifying his contestant.
    This is all so silly.  Evolutionists want us to be surprised at the suggestion that Chad Gorilla could have wandered so far from the Great Rift Valley in millions of years.  Have we forgotten them telling us a few weeks ago that a chipmunk-size armadillo made it from Africa to North America? (see 04/01/2005).  They talk about adaptive radiations and migrations all the time, but need to keep their hominids imprisoned in isolated areas for millions of years to keep their tall tale from falling apart.  Evolutionists toss these millions of years around like flippant remarks, seemingly oblivious to how long even ten thousand years represents.  All of known human history, including all the plant and animal breeding humans have done, fits into a span that is one one-hundredth of just one million years.  They want us to refrain from laughing when they spout absurdities like “It also suggests that hominids evolved quickly when they set off on their own evolutionary path.”
    Once you understand the inherent foolishness of these long timelines and the stretch-and-squish manner in which they treat rates of evolution (see 12/14/2004 entry), you will not be swayed by these occasional announcements.  Once you understand that the facts are not the issue, but rather the obsessive-compulsive Darwinian need to force human ancestry into an evolutionary timeline, you will instead find these announcements quite amusing.
Next headline on:  Early Man • Fossils

Have you seen a worse case recently of the pot calling the kettle black?  The agenda is already politicized to the far left.  When you are at the south pole, everything appears north.  Horowitz is somewhere in the midwest latitudes calling for balance at the equator.  To those at the extreme south pole, his views appear radically northern.  That’s only because they fail to see their own extreme position.
    Gene Edward Veith in World Magazine wrote about a shocking example of hypocrisy at the University of Colorado, where all the faculty rose up to defend leftist pro-terrorist radical Ward Churchill’s academic freedom, but were dead silent when award-winning professor Dr. Phil Mitchell was fired for quoting black critics of affirmative action.
    The fact that Nature would slant this news item against Horowitz and give best press to his opponents shows that the establishment science enterprise, along with its positions on evolution, global warming, and stem cell research, is all tied in with leftist politics.  The Democratic Party is probably too conservative for most of them.  Any time the leading science journals have something to say about politics or ethics, it is usually predictably leftist.  Anything that threatens the left-wing totalitarian hold on academia, where you thought academic freedom was the highest virtue, is anathema to them, because, from their extreme position, balance appears far right.  Don’t ignore how evolutionism is tied in with this mess.  Even Charlie described his politics as “liberal or radical.”
    Our hearts bleed for the professors who might have to spend time going over “extraneous stuff” for a change, if the Academic Bill of Rights succeeds.  Everybody knows that in any totalitarian regime, the most efficient use of time is to teach only the party propaganda.
Next headline on:  Darwinism and Evolutionary Theory • Politics and Ethics • Education

Someone should put an animation of these machines to the Blue Danube Waltz.  It would be quite a show.  Darwinists could be allowed to buy tickets as long as they do their smoking outside.
Next headline on:  Cell Biology • Amazing Stories

“The vermin have become our role models” sounds like something a cynical talk show host might say.  But in the context of this story, it’s an interesting insight into design right under our feet.  Who would have thought that lowly and despised critters scurrying about in our yards (and, to our disgust sometimes, our homes) are providing scientists with a sense of awe over their engineered capabilities?
    We humans are justly proud of our Mars rovers that struggle about at two inches per second and manage to avoid obstacles, but just imagine: if we could mount cameras and radio transmitters on cockroaches and release a batch out there, you can bet every nook and cranny on the whole planet would be explored in short order.
    Scientists are justified to envy “nature’s solutions” and try to imitate them (although “nature” is not a person).  How scientists can stand in awe of the robotics capabilities of a cockroach or rat, and then turn around and say these technologies came about by the accumulation of accidents, is illogical in the extreme.  Let’s learn the true lesson of biomimetics: the world has a Designer with vastly superior engineering skills than ours.  Logic would continue that if He knows this much about rapid locomotion control, He must also have a lot of other things to teach us.
Next headline on:  Terrestrial Zoology • Amazing Stories

As a young astronomer, Guillermo Gonzalez was struck by the beauty of a total eclipse he saw in India.  This became the subject of an article called “Wonderful Eclipses” that grew into a thesis that Earth was a special place, a “Privileged Planet” that resulted in a book and film with that phrase as the title.  Gonzalez and Jay Richards found that solar eclipses were just the tip of the iceberg of a class of phenomena that illustrated an uncanny relationship between the factors that make Earth habitable and the factors that make Earth an ideal platform for scientific discovery.  Order this beautiful and thought-provoking film – once you watch it, you will be loaning it to everyone you know.
    Next time a total solar eclipse comes within a thousand miles of your home – or even farther – by all means go see it.  It’s an indescribable event that affects the entire 360° field of view, the weather, the animals, the people and the economy.  The sight of a circular black dot, blacker than midnight, surrounded by streamers of the glowing pewter-white corona will leave you breathless.  You’ll understand what makes people travel around the world to experience even a few seconds or minutes of totality.  Pictures can’t do justice to the phenomenon.
    Total solar eclipses are not just coincidental light shows; they have proven extremely important in the history of astrophysics, and have enabled archaeologists to pinpoint dates of kingdoms thousands of years ago with high accuracy.  Gonzalez discusses these matters in detail in his book.  Isn’t it a provocative thought to consider that the only platform in our solar system capable of a perfectly-matched total eclipse (due to the size-distance relationship of three bodies, the sun, the Earth and our large moon) also has sentient beings able to appreciate it?
Next headline on:  Solar System • Amazing Stories

For this to evolve, the neck muscles had to adapt to fast controlled motion while the brain simultaneously found a way to interpret the motion.  Additional structural support might be needed to keep the eyes from popping out.  Does the brain tune out the jerky part of the motion and stitch together a seamless set of still images?  Perhaps so.  It would be interesting to project on a screen how the smart bird brain (see 02/01/2005) interprets its visual input.  This story illustrates how even the simplest everyday phenomena in the living world around us have a purpose.  Investigating such things with careful observation and analysis often reveals an amazing set of parts working together harmoniously for the big picture.
Next headline on:  Birds • Amazing Stories

Kennedy could enlighten all of us by explaining how molecular machines, DNA transcription and replication with all its error-correcting mechanisms, and the human brain arose from mindless, undirected process of chance and natural law.  He could further explain how refusing to hear honest questions about Darwinian evolution exemplifies a conviction that substitutes faith in experiment for reliance on inherited dogma.
    What science needs today is not another Enlightenment, an era that produced a mixed bag of atheists and forgotten skeptics as well as deeply spiritually-minded scientists.  It needs to go back further in time to what made enlightenment possible, to the period where brave men challenged establishment dogma at the risk of their lives.  It needs a Reformation.
Next headline on:  Darwinism and Evolutionary Theory • Intelligent Design

Consider it nothing short of the cosmic quest for all time: Understanding the origin, evolution, distribution, and fate of life on Earth and in the Universe.
    That’s a tall order . . . but within the sights of experts gathering here this week to take part in the 2005 Biennial Meeting of the NASA Astrobiology Institute.   (Emphasis added in all quotes.)

What a fabulous opportunity to think about the boundaries of what that life might be like,” Tarter said.  “The planets are there.  We can’t deny that anymore.  It’s really setting the backdrop and driving forward everybody’s thinking.  So it just gets more exciting to think about how nature might have generalized biology and geology,” she said.

Astrobiology is like futureware on back order.  None of the actual data returned by MER or Cassini, and none of the exoplanets so far detected, provide any hint that life exists, or has existed, or is even possible at any of these places.  Remember the realistic lab tests of amino acid survival in a Martian environment? (See 01/28/2005 entry.)  The poor molecules were destroyed within hours.  We have seen nothing but rocks, ice and gas so far, but these scientific charlatans are already claiming to be experts about the origin, evolution, distribution and fate of the universe.
    Learn the lesson of Greenwater, a ghost town in Death Valley.  In 1904, this desert hideout mushroomed into a boom town with nearly two thousand people, a bank, post office, saloon (but no church), a lively newspaper (the Death Valley Chuck-Walla), and exuberant enthusiasm – all fueled by rumors that there wuz oodles o' copper in them thar hills.  Famous investment advisors like Charles Schwab promoted the site as one of the richest digs on the globe, and speculators jumped on the bandwagon, spending fortunes on stock with nothing behind it except promises.  The boom began to go bust when miners actually began digging in the hills and came back with only pitiful amounts of low-grade ore.  Most townspeople had left by 1908; the last mine gave up hope in 1911.  Today, literally nothing remains of the town: only the rocks, sand, lizards and desert bushes that endured the harsh environment before a lot of foolish people arrived with dollar signs in their eyes, eyes that soon got blasted with the hot winds of reality.  Must have been quite a counseling job for the last barkeep.
    There’s nothing wrong with looking.  It’s good to have prospectors out there with their burros and pickaxes.  Maybe one will find that rare rich vein of ore.  In the meantime, though, better watch where you invest your philosophical assets when the salespeople come to town selling stock in eternal wisdom with nothing in hand but irrelevant details and empty promises.  Isn’t it ironic that creationists tend to be the agnostics, and the emotional evangelists are the scientists – or, more precisely, the evolutionists wearing science costumes.
Next headline on:  Origin of Life • SETI

Too early for any conclusions.  The measurements are very difficult to make.  The consequences of any change, if confirmed, could be cosmic.  That might be a reason it couldn’t have changed: we wouldn’t be here wondering if it could.
Next headline on:  Physics • Cosmology

But Stevenson does wonder how Titan could still be flooding its surface with cryolavas this late in its life.  No impact craters have been seen on any cryovolcanic features, implying that they are relatively young.  Yet, notes Stevenson, billions of years of volcanic activity would have extracted the interior’s reservoir of ammonia.  Without that antifreeze, cryolavas could not flow.   (Emphasis added in all quotes.)

This is just one of the conundrums about Titan if it is 4.5 billion years old as assumed by conventional wisdom.  The atmosphere is another problem.  It seems ad hoc to get the ammonia out to melt the ice, then plunge it back inside to reuse it later.  How many times could that cycle repeat?  Long enough to save face for scientists billions of years in the future when Titan was explored by humans?
Next headline on:  Dating Methods • Solar System • Geology

• Ponder this one in the bath.  Chances are you’ve just scrubbed your back with a choice example of one of evolution’s greatest inventions.  Or at least, a good plastic copy.  Sponges are a key example of multicellular life, an innovation that transformed living things from solitary cells into fantastically complex bodies.  It was such a great move, it evolved at least 16 different times. Animals, land plants, fungi and algae all joined in. (Claire Ainsworth)
• They appeared in an evolutionary blink and changed the rules of life forever.... eyes...probably evolved from light-sensitive pits. (Graham Lawton)
• Just a few million years later, eyes were commonplace and animals were more active, bristling with defensive armour.  This burst of evolutionary innovation is what we now know as the Cambrian explosion. (Graham Lawton)
• Brains are often seen as a crowning achievement of evolution – bestowing the ultimate human traits such as language, intelligence and consciousness.  But before all that, the evolution of brains did something just as striking: it lifted life beyond vegetation. (Helen Phillips)
• The next evolutionary step, which probably happened in flatworms in the Cambrian, was to add some sort of control system to give the movements more purpose.  This sort of primitive brain is simply a bit of extra wiring that helps organise the networks. (Helen Phillips)
• As far as humans are concerned, language has got to be the ultimate evolutionary innovation.  It is central to most of what makes us special, from consciousness, empathy and mental time travel to symbolism, spirituality and morality.  Language may be a defining factor of our species, but just how important is it in the evolutionary scheme of things? (Kate Douglas)
• ....genetic studies suggest that the light-harvesting apparatus evolved from a protein with the job of transferring energy between molecules.  Photosynthesis had arrived. (Alison George)
• In those early days, oxygen was poisonous to life.  But it built up in the atmosphere until some microbes evolved mechanisms to tolerate it, and eventually hit on ways to use it as an energy source.  That was a pretty important discovery too: using oxygen to burn carbohydrates for energy is 18 times as efficient as doing it without oxygen. (Alison George)
• Important as sex is, however, biologists are still arguing over how it evolved – and why it hasn’t un-evolved.  That’s because, on the face of it, sex looks like a losing strategy. (Clare Wilson)
• Could evolution have brought the Grim Reaper into being?  Yes, indeed.  Not in all his guises, of course – living things have always died because of mishaps such as starvation or injury.  But there’s another sort of death in which cells – and perhaps, controversially, even whole organisms – choose annihilation because of the benefits it brings to some greater whole.  In other words, death is an evolutionary strategy. (Bob Holmes)
• But now that people routinely survive well past reproductive age, we suffer the invention evolution never meant us to find: death by old age. (Bob Holmes)
• The name is synonymous with stealing, cheating and stealthy evil.  But the age-old battle between parasites and their hosts is one of the most powerful driving forces in evolution.  Without its plunderers and freeloaders, life would simply not be the same. (Ana Gosline)
• Large numbers of individuals living together in harmony, achieving a better life by dividing their workload and sharing the fruits of their labours.  We call this blissful state utopia, and have been striving to achieve it for at least as long as recorded history.  Alas, our efforts so far have been in vain.  Evolution, however, has made a rather better job of it. (Kate Douglas)
• Symbiosis has triggered seismic shifts in evolution, and evolution in turn continually spawns new symbiotic relationships. (Rachel Nowak)
• In a sense, language is the last word in biological evolution.  That’s because this particular evolutionary innovation allows those who possess it to move beyond the realms of the purely biological. (Kate Douglas)  

Picture yourself stopping by a red wagon that’s promoting the Cult of Tinkerbell (03/11/2005).  You decide to stop and join us listeners for a moment and watch the silly devotees, all wearing conical hats and pink tassled slippers (04/01/2005) doing their best to win us over.  Moving right along, after we’ve sufficiently yucked it up over these groaners, we can only hope that Kate is right: that this is the last word on evolution, and now we can move beyond the realms of the purely bi-illogical.
Next headline on:  Darwinism and Evolutionary Theory • Dumb Stories

Give them some motivation by taking them hiking in beautiful places, like on Creation Safaris (picture).  Ever wonder why you don’t find many fat people on mountain trails?  Or bored ones?
Next headline on:  Health

The editorial says that the “conventional wisdom” stemming from the Nuremberg trials, “which condemned the heinous crimes of high-ranking Nazis, but did not enquire into the behaviour of less notorious individuals, including rank-and-file scientists,” was politically correct for the time.  It allowed Germany to rebuild its infrastructure and justified the allies supporting West Germany to restrain the advance of communism.
    This report raises many new questions for historians.  If there were more than a few rotten apples, how could so many take part?  How much did they know?  How much was their involvement influenced by acceptance of Social Darwinism and eugenics?  What are the analogues to our modern era, so that similar ethical atrocities do not take place on our watch? (see 03/10/2005 and 02/08/2005 entries as food for thought).  Could the cry, “Never again!” be drowned in the rumble of a new evil empire?  New Scientist reported recently about a set of radical proposals from the UK parliament’s committee on science and technology.  It is advocating baby sex selection, human reproductive cloning, human-animal chimeras and other “controversial” activities – this by the same country that stood courageously against Hitler 60 years ago.  What if there is no Nuremberg trial this time?  What if, this time around, the voices crying for the rights of the weak and helpless are successfully quenched?  What if today’s scientists again imagine themselves living under an immortal regime for the long term?
    Some Nazi war criminals never felt guilty for what they did.  They said that the only reason they were condemned was because their country lost the war.  The judges at Nuremberg argued that there was a higher law that they should have obeyed.  Yet do we not still have a “materialistic, Social Darwinist, dehumanized form of biology” taught in universities around the world?  If no one in this international Darwinist reich believes in a higher law any more, God save us.^*
Next headline on:  Politics and Ethics
^*And God save the North Koreans, where even today the same materialistic, Social Darwinist, dehumanized forms of science are murdering thousands in ways that might make Hitler and Stalin cringe (see editorial by Lt. Col. Gordon Cucullu, author of Separated at Birth: How North Korea Became the Evil Twin).

“It seems that in a couple of cases these early galaxies are nearly as massive as galaxies we see around us today, which is a bit surprising when the theory is that galaxies start small and grow by colliding and merging with other galaxies,” said Dr. Mark Lacy (Spitzer Science Center).
    “The real puzzle is that these galaxies seem to be already quite old when the Universe was only about 5 per cent of its current age,” commented Professor Richard Ellis of Caltech.  “This means star formation must have started very early in the history of the Universe – earlier than previously believed.”   (Emphasis added in all quotes.)

This is another sob session in a long lament.  The farther back they look in time, and the farther out they look in space, the more mature structure they see – contrary to evolutionary expectations.  For examples, see 03/10/2005, 01/08/2002, 03/03/2003, 12/16/2002, 07/08/2004, 01/23/2004 and 01/04/2004 entries and work back through the “cosmology” chain links.  It’s uncanny how similar this looks to the Cambrian Explosion in biology: the abrupt appearance of structure without precursors.  Observations from multiple telescopes, by multiple teams, seem to be converging on the conclusion that the universe was already well developed at an early age.  If this trend keeps up, they might soon find mature galaxies on the fourth day.
Next headline on:  Astronomy • Cosmology

Dr. Sue Savage-Rumbaugh, lead scientist, said the four-month project studying bonobos [pygmy chimps] will be funded by a $125,000 grant from the Richmond, Va.-based Campaign for Forgiveness Research....
    Savage-Rumbaugh said many people believe forgiveness is a concept which only applies to humans.  The research center’s hypothesis is that it is not a process of species, and that like other social behaviors, “forgiveness is a set of patterned interactions that can be imparted to a group by how its newest members are treated,” according to a news release.   (Emphasis added in all quotes.)

To an evolutionist, “patterned interactions” among individuals of a species are an emergent property of patterned interactions of molecules.  Since Ms. Savage-Rumbaugh appears to be operating with a naturalistic paradigm, forgiveness, to her, has its roots ultimately in hydrogen.  She could save a lot of money by looking for forgiveness among bacteria in a petri dish; it’s only a pattern of interactions, anyway, with no moral connotations.  Since morals have no absolute existence in the Darwinian mind (see “Morality without religion?” by Dave Miller on Apologetics Press), forgiveness is only a game that populations of organisms play (see 02/10/2004 entry).  No moral laws have been violated when a fungus or an elk or a pigeon have played the part of defector and other individuals punish it, or reward it with a behavior called “forgiveness” when it changes its strategy and decides to cooperate.
    You cannot objectify forgiveness without destroying it any more than you can quantify love in equations, or put the soul in a test tube.  This is the bitter end of naturalistic reductionism.  It destroys everything it touches: design, altruism, romance, self-sacrifice, morals, and now forgiveness.  Nothing is real any more.  There are only shadows and dreams emerging like phantoms from chemical vapors.  This means there is nothing really worth fighting for, worth dying for, worth living for.  Like detached robots, evolutionary biologists observe what happens when the organism is poked and prodded.  They take notes and then write them up in journals.  But then those very publications and any interpretations drawn from them are also phantoms of matter in motion, so why even read them?  There is nothing left but to keep the pleasurable neurotransmitters flowing.  Then the world at least feels good, till the terrorist or dictator comes with a different game and his own rules.
    If this is not the kind of world you want to live in, you had better help these researchers find forgiveness, because they need it.  Tell them they are looking in the wrong place.  It’s not in the bonobo cage.  It’s freely available everywhere outside the naturalistic cage in which they have imprisoned themselves, and they’ll never find it without the key.  That key is jealously guarded by the demons of pride and selfishness.  Defeat them, and the key to forgiveness is as near as the heart.  The key is repentance.*
Next headline on:  Evolutionary Theory • Dumb Stories
^*Repentance is not mere cooperation, or playing along with the game – but truly recognizing one’s sin and forsaking it: see Prov. 28:13.  The sin of many naturalistic scientists is an old one: idolatry – i.e., trusting in falsehoods, whether false premises, false hopes, or one’s own abilities (Prov. 3:5-6).  The cure hasn’t evolved.  Repentance still requires forsaking idols, whether internal or external.  Bad example: 2 Kings 17.  Good example: I Thess. 1.

And yet he says, “Chemotaxis evolved so that cells can locate nutrients....”  Who would have imagined, indeed.  But then, when entering the high-performance world of microtechnology, imagination is what keeps the evolutionary story lubricated.  Alcohol helps, too (see 08/12/2004 entry); some evolutionists seem to have converged on that form of chemotaxis after watching Unlocking the Mystery of Life.
Next headline on:  Cell Biology • Intelligent Design

1. Paul Butler is co-discoverer of two thirds of known extrasolar planets.  He has found that most have eccentric orbits, meaning that earthlike planets in such systems would likely be destroyed or ejected.  “I think with the data at hand,” he said, “we can say that our solar system is rare.  Eccentricity dominates.”
2. Scott Tremaine (Princeton) and Peter Goldreich (Caltech), both astrophysicists, have calculated that large planets like Jupiter can migrate inward and outward in planetary systems.  Many of the observed extrasolar planets are Jupiter-class objects found in Mercury-range orbits.  Earth-like planets would have little hope of survival in such systems.
3. Fritz Benedict (U of Texas) noted that many host stars emit huge flares that would quickly sterilize Earth-like planets.  He remarked,“The older I get, the less likely it seems to me there’d be a bunch of places like our solar system.” 
4. Margaret Turnbull (Carnegie Inst. of Washington) felt that more observations will be needed to consider our solar system special.  But she noted that close-in planets would most likely be tidally locked to the star, turning one side into a dry desert and the other into a freezing wasteland.  Liquid water on the surface of such a world would be impossible.

This is why observational science is necessary and important; it keeps speculation in check.  Poor Dr. Tyson (would-be heir apparent to Carl Sagan--see 09/29/2004 entry) must rue the fact that the stubborn data are, so far, contrary to his master’s fresco of our Earth as “an ordinary planet around a humdrum star, lost in a galaxy, tucked away in a forgotten corner of the universe in which there are far more galaxies than people.”  The search is in its early stages, but the data so far appear statistically significant.
    This story provides additional support for the “Privileged Planet” hypothesis (see 06/24/2004 and 08/01/2004 entries, book at PrivilegedPlanet.com and film at Illustra Media).  Back in the early 1980s when Carl Sagan’s Cosmos series was the biggest thing on PBS, inspiring a cult following, most scientists accepted as an article of faith that Earth-like planets were common in the universe.  Five scientists is a small sample of the set of all astronomers, but that all of them on this panel, each professionally involved in the search for extrasolar planets, would be forced by the data to conclude “there’s no place like home,” is also statistically significant.
Next headline on:  Solar system

Research suggests that the capacity for human laughter preceded the capacity for speech during evolution of the brain [see next entry].  Indeed, neural circuits for laughter exist in very ancient regions of the brain, and ancestral forms of play and laughter existed in other animals eons before we humans came along with our hahahas and verbal repartee.   (Emphasis added in all quotes.)

Many still believe that emotional feelings, from joy to grief, are special capacities of the human brain, but as Darwin taught, it just ain’t so....
We find ourselves at the tall-tale end of an intellectual era when the animal mind was deemed nonexistent or impenetrable.  Gentle Darwin was prescient when he coaxed us to see our own emotional nature as continuous with that of our fellow animals....
Although our emotional systems are neither uniquely nor intelligently designed, it is a blessing that we can finally understand their affective nature....

With polka-dotted conical hats and pink tassled slippers like these, need the Darwinists wonder why the rest of us give them strange looks?  (See 04/01/2005 entry).  Notice how their Great Leader, dear Charlie the Gentle, is treated like a god by the cult of Darwin.  Whatever he said is so, and whatever he said ain’t so, ain’t so.  It’s surprising they don’t give chapter and verse each time.  If you are having trouble catching the irony of their explanation, read the next entry, and also the one from 12/30/2004.  Given this background, notice how it is totally outside the box for them to even consider that maybe human joy and animal play both had a common Designer instead of a common ancestor.  Since evolution is the starting presupposition, even things as fun as “fun” have to be retrofitted into the randomness machine (and destroyed in the process).  To those sad sacks in the Darwin camp, we say chill out, lighten up, and get a Life.  Joy has no naturalistic explanation.  If it did, it wouldn’t be joy.  You can’t get joy out of molecules: it had to come from a sufficient cause – intelligence.  So listen to John: in the beginning was the Word.  Laughter is a gift, and the Giver wants your joy to be full.  Start out by noticing how silly your bearded buddha looks as an idol.  To think people actually believed this mere mortal knew how all life originated – ha!  It makes you laugh so hard, you want to cry.
Next headline on:  Darwinism and Evolutionary Theory • Dumb Stories

As far as understanding how our brains evolved, more questions remain than have been answered.  One problem is that we don’t really know enough about how our brains differ from those of other mammals and primates, although work by Zilles and others is helping here.  We also know very little about how the areas of our brain are physically linked up, and we need to understand that before we can see how we differ from our nearest relatives.  And as far as identifying the gene changes that were selected during evolution, although we have several candidates, we don’t know how or if these gene variants affect our cognitive abilities.  It is one thing, concludes Dunbar, to identify genetic or anatomic differences between human and ape brains, but quite another to know what they mean in terms of actual cognitive processes.

We want our money back.  We were promised some insights, and all we got were excuses.  Pay up, Darwin Party, or we are going to the ID show across the street, where all the crowds are gathered.
Next headline on:  Human Body • Early Man • Evolution

The joke was on them, because they got baloney all over their faces with this line: “Finding water on different regions on Mars has implications for understanding ... the possible existence of past life...”  By linking to an evolution-assuming site, they showed themselves to be either unaware or unconcerned about the many and major problems with abiogenesis (see 02/06/2005 entry and work backward on Origin of Life chain links).  They also failed to see the irony in the fact that their staged picture showed intelligent design.  The biggest fool is the one who fools himself.
Next headline on:  Mars • Origin of Life

A master of adroit sarcasm (Jonathan Witt on the EvolutionNews blog calls it “delicious”), David Berlinski is not the stereotypical undereducated foggy-faith emotional religious right anti-Darwinist, and neither is William Dembski, whom he defends.  That must make it awfully hard for the Darwin Party to pigeonhole them into the group they wish to patronize, marginalize and euthanize.  How disconcerting for the doctor when the patient diagnoses him as being in a PVS, and the judges are listening.  No wonder he wants to change the subject to something more congenial, like following a balloon.  He should count his blessings.  Anti-Darwinists believe altruism is real, not virtual (see 03/16/2005 entry), and apply survival of the fittest only to ideas, not individuals.
Next headline on:  Intelligent Design • Darwinism and Evolutionary Theory

Science reporters can be such toadies.  They accept whatever a Darwin Party priest croaks like it is the message of the gods, and just dish it out sans jargon for the masses but with all the baloney left in.  Why don’t they ever grill the priesthood with hard questions like they do with politicians?  A skeleton was found in Colorado of an extinct small mammal.  That’s it.  The rest of the tale about 150 million years and convergent evolution is all made up.  Suppose students turned this trick on their teachers.  How did all three of you come up with nearly identical term papers, she asks?  Your explanation: convergent Googlution.  Good luck on your report card.
    The Darwin Party gets away with this trick because nobody calls them on the carpet for it and calls it what it is: baloney.  What do you mean, these teeth “weren’t supposed to appear” for another 100 million years?  Has Tinkerbell forgotten her script?  (See 03/11/2005 commentary.)  Did you count how many zaps from her mutation wand were required for the first open-root teeth to be functional?  Gnaw.  You can bet it took a lot – not just for the tooth shape, but for the enamel, the root, the fit to the jaw, and the software to use them.  How many Fruitafossors had to die of starvation before they got it right?  Where are all the transitional forms?  Can “specialized abilities” just “evolve” without that being equivalent to a miracle?  If you can’t begin to explain the tooth, the whole tooth, and nothing but the tooth by evolution, then don’t expect us to believe this particular set of miracles happened three times by convergent evolution, whatever that is.  The rest of us are sick and tired of this charade and can’t take it any more.  Join the Society for Pulling Back the Curtain from the Wizards of Ostentation.
Next headline on:  Fossils • Mammals • Evolution

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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