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Science Docudrama Biases Against Religion   12/31/2007    
On New Year’s Eve, the Discovery HD Theater re-ran the 2005 BBC science docudrama Supervolcano, which dramatizes what might happen to civilization if the volcano under Yellowstone were to unleash its pent-up magma with the fury of prehistoric eruptions.
    At three points at least, the program touched on issues of religion and ultimate meaning.

1. Two victims huddled in a bunker, imprisoned by the rain of volcanic ash, got onto the meaning of it all.  One asked the other if he believed in God.  “God?” the other smirked.  The first responded that he preferred to believe in God’s mercy.  The other man responded sarcastically that he should ask if it was merciful for the 250,000 people who died in the blast.
2. News announcers periodically made matter-of-fact statements about millions of years and evolution.
3. Near the end, one of the characters commented that disasters such as this were not only catastrophic agents of death and destruction, but, ironically, agents of life and progress.  The suggestion was that, under threat from the environment, life re-emerges to diversify and evolve, conquering death with new life.

Notice one thing: in real life, the volcano has not erupted.  The BBC used a fictional disaster story as a pretext to present an atheistic worldview, sanctified by science.  A God who would let hundreds of thousands die, and millions more to suffer, cannot really be merciful, can he?  Therefore he must not exist.  Hello... Earth calling BBC... Yellowstone is peaceful and calm today.  Millions of people visit the grand old Park each year.  Quite a few even worship there in the various outdoor amphitheaters, praising God for the beauty of creation.  Can we keep that point in mind?
    “But it could happen, couldn’t it?  Sure, and a nearby star could go supernova and fry us, a meteor could hit the earth, or the sky could fall.  True, the Yellowstone caldera is rising, and the potential is there for a massive eruption.  Until it does, and even if it does, how can the BBC draw any theological conclusions?  Maybe God in his mercy is preventing the Yellowstone volcano from erupting right now.  Try to prove from science this is not the case.  In Christian theology, God watches over his creation.  Nothing happens without his knowledge and control.  But we know that supervolcanoes have erupted in the past, right?  Clearly so, but who is to conclude those events were outside the sovereignty of God?  These are theological issues, not scientific ones.  Creationists might postulate they were associated with the aftermath of the Flood when there were no cities or people around anyway.
    And who is the BBC to tell us about mercy?  If, as the producers of this show seem to believe, the world is a product of blind evolution and dispassionate natural forces, mercy is a meaningless term.  What happens happens.  Nothing is good or bad.  In fact, evolutionists should see it as a good thing; nothing like a catastrophe to provoke the blossoming of new life (as if that is a good thing, in a world where good and evil are undefined terms).  They cannot comment on the attributes of God without assuming what they need to prove.
    A theological position must be informed by actual events, not imaginary ones.  No one is so blind as to not realize that disasters have ravaged civilization as long as man has existed on this planet.  Tsunamis, volcanoes, earthquakes, plagues and wars have caused untold human suffering.  Voltaire was horrified at the Lisbon earthquake of 1755.  Some of the worst disasters have occurred within our lifetimes.  These do not appear targeted at the wicked, but often sweep away everything and everyone.  Want a really, really bad disaster?  How about a world-wide flood that kills everyone except those on an Ark?
    The problem of pain and suffering is as old as Adam.  The authors of the Bible knew all too well about disasters.  It did not stop them from presenting God as wise, merciful and longsuffering.  Theodicy (squaring God’s love with the reality of evil) is a complex issue, but theologians have wrestled with this problem for thousands of years.  Though “seeing through a glass darkly,” as is the predicament of mortals, most have achieved satisfactory answers sufficient to give them courage and confidence in spite of incomplete understanding.  Those interested in pursuing the issue should study the Christian theodicies from antiquity to modern times.  Read, for instance, C. S. Lewis in The Problem of Pain, or Lee Strobel’s book The Case for Faith (to be adapted for film in early 2008).
    The problem of human suffering is not the domain of atheists.  Only believers in the Judeo-Christian God have any grounds for making an argument for God’s mercy or lack of it.  Atheists and scientific materialists lack the moral categories to make moral judgments.  They lack the categories to even make logical judgments.  It takes a Christian worldview to even begin to argue about anything.  To assume truth and the laws of logic you must first assume the existence of intangible realities and moral qualities that are timeless, universal, and absolute.  This point should be settled at the outset when debating an atheist or evolutionist.  Once settled, it becomes an issue of imperfect humans trying to understand how God’s love and the reality of evil can be harmonized.
    We must avoid, also, the error of mischaracterizing God by focusing on His love to the exclusion of His righteousness.  The God of Scripture is wrathful and angry at sin.  The Creator is also the ultimate Judge of the universe.  If He were to let the Yellowstone volcano loose, what could any man say about it?  Shall the clay say to the potter, what are you doing?  God has already decreed that all men shall die; the only question for each individual is when and how.  Those willing to believe His word and trust Him are promised salvation for their souls, not deliverance from earthly disasters.  Sinners on a planet destined for fire should not expect anything but judgment.  The question becomes not why God sends disaster, but why He hasn’t sent it yet.  Seen in this light, the sunny days are all the more cause for thanksgiving that for another day we have not received what we deserve.  Finally, it’s not like He hasn’t told us the end of the story.  It’s not like he didn’t warn us to be always ready.
    The reason for an entry about a TV re-run is to draw attention to how philosophical and theological biases can pervade visual media, even when the subject matter is about something else.  Supervolcano, like a similar one portraying the aftermath of a comet strike, is entertaining for its special effects and human drama.  The virtue of discernment calls us to be aware of overt or subliminal influences that pretend to give knowledge without warrant.   Teach your family how to identify bias cues.  Point them out and discuss them; overcome evil with good.
    Producers have freedom of speech to present their points of view, even atheistic and materialistic ones.  Their customers have the freedom to sublimate such messages into teachable moments.
Next headline on:  Media • Theology

This interesting paper owed nothing to evolutionary theory.  The paper did not mention evolution at all.  The scientists studied a present-day phenomenon, learned something interesting by observation and experimentation, and produced results that may have practical benefits for people.  That’s the way science should be done.  In 2008, let’s sing a good-bye to Darwin: “Nevermore” by The Raven.
Next headline on:  Birds

1. A nine in time saves stitch:  Centrosomes control the orientation of chromosomes before the split.  They create a spindle of microtubules that line the pairs up at the midplane, then pull them apart.  Within the centrosomes are two motors called centrioles, oriented perpendicular to one another, that look for all the world like turbines.  The blades of the turbine are microtubules with spokes, forming a cylinder that looks like a pie with exactly nine slices.  Why nine, and only nine?
       Wallace Marshall (UC San Francisco) reviewed experiments into the mechanical basis for nine-ness in centrioles, and published a report in Current Biology.¹  Experiments with mutants show that the number is controlled by the length of the spokes that emanate from each slice.  This sets the overall diameter of the centriole, and thus the number of pie slices that will fit in the cylinder.
       “This study provides an interesting geometrical mechanism by which a length can control a number,” Marshall said.  Why was the research worthwhile?  “Understanding centriole assembly is likely to reveal many more engineering-design principles that cells use to build complex structures.”
2. Herding the chromosomes:  When a chromosome pair lines up on the spindle midplane right before splitting up, it contains a structure at the waistband called a centromere.  This belt of protein contains two attachment points, called kinetochores, used by microtubules to pull them into their respective daughter cells.  Our 03/04/2004 entry used the analogy of cowboys lassoing pairs of cattle and pulling them into separate corrals.  The yoke holding each pair of cows together is the centromere, and the kinetochores are like saddle horns the ropes can latch onto.  Opposing cowboys lasso the horns and start pulling in opposite directions.  When all pairs are lined up and accounted for, a foreman named aurora B kinase breaks the yokes, and the cowboys haul in their herds.
       The geometry of the centromere is essential for keeping this process error-free, a team from New York and Moscow reported in Nature last month.²  Once in awhile, two cowboys on the same side lasso the same pair (this is called syntelic attachment).  Unless corrected, one cell would get both chromosomes and the other would get neither; this “non-disjunction” fault could lead to genetic disorders or cancer.  Scientists had previously thought that detaching one rope (microtubule) would make the saddle horn (kinetochore) automatically spring back into position for a rope from the other side.  It’s apparently not as simple as that.  More quality-control mechanisms are involved.  “Achieving chromosome bi-orientation depends on a complex interplay between mechanisms intrinsic to the centromere and those that act externally,” they said.  After cross-attachment fibers are released, and after the lassos are disconnected, there are intrinsic properties of the centromere that come into play.  “Our findings imply that mechanical properties and the shape of the centromere play an important part in the fidelity of chromosome segregation.”  Unless everything works, the operation usually aborts.  Security engineers might call this an example of the principle of defense in depth.
3. Pinch me:  Perhaps you’ve watched movies of dividing cells, and noticed how they pinch off from each other, as if someone tied a string around a soft balloon and pulled it tight.  Since no person is around at the cell level to do this task manually, there must be an automatic molecular mechanism that makes it work.  What forms the “contractile ring” and reels it in?
       An article in Science Daily described work by scientists from Yale, Columbia and Lehigh to figure out what happens.  Cells employ the same molecular motors, actin and myosin, that make muscles work.  Actin filaments with attached myosin motors assemble along the inner cell membrane at the dividing plane, and go through a “search, capture, pull and release” operation.  Being blind, molecules “feel” their way to neighboring molecules by putting out filaments in random directions.  A myosin motor on the neighbor captures the actin filament and pulls on it.  Surprisingly, it lets go after about 20 seconds.  Why?  “The assembly involves many episodes of attractions between pairs of nodes proceeding in parallel,” the article explains.  “Eventually the nodes form into a condensed contractile ring around the equator, ready to pinch the mother into two daughters at a later stage.”
       The repeating rounds of “release and capture” appear essential to the assembly process of the contractile ring, they said.  Like pulling on a purse string, the circle tightens till the cells are pinched off and go their separate ways.
       The scientists figured this out by comparing models with observations in an iterative fashion.  The work was done on “simple” yeast cells.  “Future work will involve testing the concepts learned from fission yeast in other cells to learn if the mechanism is universal,” said Thomas Pollard [Yale].  “Since other cells, including human cells, depend on similar proteins for cytokinesis, it is entirely possible that they use the same strategy.”  An abstract of the work appears on Science Express in advance of publication.  The following week it was published in Science.³
4. Plant protection and bearing walls:  Dividing plant cells have a different problem.  They have cell walls.  What determines the exact point at where the wall between two newly-divided cells will form?  Shrink yourself down to the size of a plant cell in your imagination, and you can see the difficulty.  If you were the foreman of a group of construction workers making a house divide in two, how do you remember where the new wall between them is supposed to go?
       Clive Lloyd and Henrik Buschmann (Department of Cell and Developmental Biology, John Innes Centre, Norwich UK) wrote about this predicament in Current Biology.⁴  What was mysterious is that a structure of microtubules known to form at the dividing plane apparently disassembles right before cell division.  How does the cell “memorize” the position of the plane where the future cell wall will form?  The trick is somewhat like using a chalk line.  The microtubules attract special proteins that adhere to the exact spot, forming a ring around the perimeter.  The microtubule scaffolding, no longer needed, is then dismantled.  After the chromosomes migrate and cell division completes, a plate of cell-wall proteins grows outward toward the chalk ring.  If you can imagine wallboard that grows into position from the center of the room, attracted to the chalk line, you get the idea.  The result is a neat, flat, parallel wall, subdividing the daughter cells into their own rooms.
       Without these memory proteins, the scientists found, cell walls grew at abnormal positions.  Stay tuned, because this doesn’t explain everything about how plants determine the division plane.  It’s just an intriguing start.  “The search now continues for other components of the division ring and insights into the attractive influence they exert over the leading edge of the cytokinetic apparatus,” they said.

The views of cells you got in high school through a light microscope are about as useful for understanding what really goes on as trying to fathom a city from an airplane.  Only now, in our time, are the techniques improving to the point where we can enter the factories and offices at ground level to really begin to understand.
    Our great joy and mission at Creation-Evolution Headlines is to bring these fascinating discoveries, hidden away in abstruse journals, to the public in a timely, understandable way, so that readers can wonder at the amazing design so clearly apparent at the tiniest basis of life – the cell – and realize how utterly bankrupt is the theory of evolution to explain them.
    As is almost always the case, none of these papers dared to speculate about how these incredible mechanisms might have evolved by a blind, purposeless process of chance.  Darwin’s theory was written for a past era when the cell seemed as simple as a blob of jello.  Wave him and his theory good-bye as we fast-forward into the 21st century era of molecular machinery.  Biology of the future is reserved for those who appreciate and understand “engineering-design principles.”
Next headline on:  Cell Biology • Plants • Amazing Facts • Intelligent Design

Comet Woes Lamented   12/27/2007    
Space.com posted an article on “The enduring mysteries of comets.”  The mysteries include:

• Where did earth’s oceans come from?  For a long time, scientists expected comets delivered the water, until measurements showed a discrepancy in the hydrogen/deuterium ratios.  It’s also highly improbable there was enough wet stuff in those assumed delivery vehicles.  No secular scientist knows where the water came from.  Ask how the following answer would score on a high-school science test: “Earth’s oceans are likely a mixture of water from all sorts of places, but the main-belt comets are very likely one of them.”
• Is there a comet reservoir?  The proposed Oort cloud cannot be the source of short-period comets at least.  Another high-school answer to score: “Maybe there are other reservoirs of comets yet to be discovered.”
• Why are they dirty?  Until recently, this was the expectation: “Comets were long thought to be primordial relics, pristine leftovers from the protoplanetary disk that once surrounded the newborn sun.  As such, it was supposed they might hold secrets untouched for billions of years regarding the birth of our solar system.”  Wrong.  Now that we have sampled Halley, Tempel 1 and other comets, we know they have unexpected material like carbonates, silicates and complex molecules that seem to have required high temperatures: “many of them are nearly burned-out hulks, with neither the size, mass, shape nor spin they might have had before entering the solar system.”
• How long can they bake?  How main-belt comets could have survived for billions of years is another mystery.  “Until their discovery, researchers had largely supposed no comets could have lasted that close to the sun without getting baked away after a few centuries or millennia.” 
• Where are the interstellar travelers?  Escaping comets from other stars should be coming into our solar system from all angles.  That’s a deduction from calculations that show 90 to 99% of our solar system’s comets get flung outward, never to return.  None coming in from neighboring stars’ Oort clouds have been detected.

Other mysteries were not cited in the Space.com article, such as why any comets are left after 4.5 billion years.  The solar sparklers have a short lifetime (03/27/2003).  One might ask if a hypothetical reservoir that has never been observed is worthy of scientific respectability.  To what extent is it legitimate in science to rescue a theory from lack of data?
    It’s fun to watch materialists mutter about material matters.  The committee on comet-y objects commits more comedy than comity.
Next headline on:  Solar System • Geology • Physics

The Woessners found that self-described liberals and conservatives report no difference in grades or in the quality of their education.  Yet liberal college students are twice as likely as conservative ones to pursue Ph.D.s  The main reasons, the authors conclude, are differences in values, goals, and preferences.  Liberals placed higher values on creativity; conservatives were more oriented toward raising families and making money.

Surveys and graphs have only limited credibility because of the possibilities of biased sampling and leaving out relevant causes (see Baloney Detector on statistics).  At least Science admitted that liberalism is rampant at the university (see 12/02/2004), and also confessed that liberals (and PhDs) are not necessarily smarter.  (The vulgar translations for the acronyms B.S., M.S. and Ph.D. may be apropos here.)*
    It appears that conservatives are the fittest, working hard to pass on their genes, while liberals are like parasites, advancing primarily by taking over the host (the classroom) and churning out clones to infect other cells.  A university setting is a contrived, unnatural environment where the parasites thrive.  In the open air of true academic freedom, where the parasites would have to compete in the real world, the results might be quite different. 
Next headline on:  Education • Politics and Ethics

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*No offense to those who really apply their years of hard work in study and research to a life of altruistic productivity; blessings upon you.  A PhD can be vital, indeed is a requirement, for productivity in many fields.  We need honest men and women with academic credentials.  But the list of great achievers and intellectual giants who never earned a degree would be long.  The joke just means that earning advanced degrees is no guarantee of credibility, true value to society, or personal quality of life (think Ward Churchill).  On judgment day, academic credentials will count for naught (Jeremiah 9:23-24).

NG claims they acknowledged many of the alternate readings in the footnotes of their published edition.  How many in the public saw those, compared to the millions who watched the TV special?  The fine-print excuse is no excuse.  They dramatized their Judas-hero fictional drama with seductive ads to make people think they were watching a historical documentary instead of a Gnostic sermon.  Remember?  It was presented as big news that could undermine historic Christianity.  As is so often the case, the truth comes out in the back pages later, long after the headlines have done their damage.
    In short, the article reveals that NG abandoned academic integrity in their rush to get a lurid anti-Christian message to the public, as if the late document had some historical credibility.  Hope you weren’t fooled.  Watch instead the 2007 documentary featuring former atheist skeptic Lee Strobel: The Case for Christ.  In this film, Bible scholars explain why the Gnostic gospels are much later than the canonical gospels.  Because of their late dates and roots in Gnostic cults, they cannot be trusted as reliable historical sources.
    The canonical gospels, by contrast, were written within the generation of the events described, by eyewitnesses or companions of eyewitnesses.  John was written by one of the three “inner circle” disciples of Jesus Christ; it contains lengthy discourses by Jesus, and an eyewitness account of Judas’s betrayal.  Mark, a companion of Peter, wrote the shortest, most action-packed account; it is also the earliest gospel, and apparently was used as a source by Matthew and Luke.  Matthew was written by another of the 12 disciples who traveled with Jesus for three years and knew Judas personally.  Luke, written by a companion of Paul, is highly regarded as a reliable account by a careful researcher, who continued his work in the Acts of the Apostles.  Have you read them?  What better time than right now, between the holidays?  They’re right there online, a click away.  Find out why the word gospel means good news.
Next headline on:  Bible and Theology • Media

Your Body Says: Resolve to Exercise   12/26/2007    
Even moderate exercise can prevent health risks, an article in Science Daily says.  Want to keep the waist trim?  Reduce the bad cholesterol and triglycerides, and increase your HDLs?  Want to lower your risk of diabetes, heart attack and stroke?  Then get out and walk.  You don’t have to become a jogger or gym addict.  Studies at Duke University Medical Center showed that thirty minutes of brisk walking a day, six times a week, can reduce the symptoms of metabolic syndrome, “an increasingly frequent condition linked to obesity and a sedentary lifestyle.”
    Your body wants you to make a New Year’s resolution and keep it.  Get a head start today.  The doctor says what we have all known for a long time: “Some exercise is better than none; more exercise is generally better than less, and no exercise can be disastrous.”  Take some fish oil each day, too, so you won’t forget.  An article on PhysOrg suggests that the omega-3 in fish oil can help stave off Alzheimer’s disease.

The best walking is done in a park or out on a nature trail.  If traffic sounds can’t be avoided, put some Dan Gibson nature recordings into your iPod and feel the pleasure of connecting with your created environment as you improve your health and energy.
Next headline on:  Health • Human Body

The historic St. Nicholas of Patara, a Christian altruist, would be appalled at his nemesis being used to support neo-paganism.  Pay attention especially to the last paragraphs in the article.  Atheists cannot deny the case for cosmic design, and their empty hearts yearn for a meaning they have abandoned.
    If atheists think they should evolve their beliefs, then their beliefs are self-refuting.  It becomes possible that their beliefs might evolve toward theism – thus denying the validity of atheism.  Beliefs cannot evolve into Christianity by any means.  That requires choice based on an intelligently-designed Master plan (Romans 10:5-13).  You might find this to be the happier choice (see 12/08/2003).
Next headline on:  Darwin and Evolution • Bible and Theology

That’s nothing.  God can put 10¹⁸ bits in one cubic millimeter of DNA.  If you wrote that amount of information on DVDs, you’d have to stack them more than six times the height of Mt. Everest (08/16/2002).
    Don’t be a pinhead; be sure not to miss the message inscribed in that tiny Bible: “For unto us a child is born, unto us a Son is given, and the government shall be upon His shoulder, and His name shall be called Wonderful Counsellor, the Mighty God, the Everlasting Father, the Prince of Peace” (Isaiah 9:6).
Next headline on:  Bible • Intelligent design • Amazing Facts

What Materialist Science Still Can’t Figure Out   12/21/2007    
Darwin called the origin of flowering plants an “abominable mystery,” but it is not the only one.  The scientific materialism that strives to explain all reality by “natural” causes without resource to a designing intelligence has a long way to go.  Occasionally, major gaps in cosmic evolution and biological evolution become evident in scientific papers and announcements.

1. A bloomin’ mystery:  Darwin was baffled about angiosperms in 1859, and so are today’s biologists – even with genome sequencing, a more complete fossil record and microscopes that are approaching nanometer resolution.  Michael Frohlich and Mark Chase wrote in Nature that “After a dozen years of progress the origin of angiosperms is still a great mystery.”¹  Less than a dozen years ago, they said, even the most basic questions about angiosperm origins were still disputed.  They surveyed a dozen alternative approaches to answering the question, but put any answer in future tense – even after nearly 148 years of searching.
2. Beetle blast from the past:  Modern-looking beetles evolved 110 million years earlier than expected, if we can believe scientists from Imperial College, London (see BBC News).  Evolutionists had thought the proliferation of beetles coincided with the rise of flowering plants 140 million years ago.  Now, they claim beetles have been around for at least 250 million years – maybe 300 million.
       There are some 300,000 species of beetles in the world today.  “The reason for this large number of beetle species has been debated for many years and never resolved,” the article stated (cf. 04/26/2002).  Why did they evolve into so many species far before flowering plants are thought to have appeared?  “We don’t have the answer to that,” said one researcher.
3. Birds and bees:  It’s hard to know whether Tim Clutton-Brock was confirming sexual selection or casting doubt on it.  In a review article in Science,² he gave material for critics and proponents to both claim victory.  “Research on sexual selection shows that the evolution of secondary sexual characters in males and the distribution of sex differences are more complex than was initially suggested but does not undermine our understanding of the evolutionary mechanisms involved,” he began.  “However, the operation of sexual selection in females has still received relatively little attention.”  That seems surprising, considering it is such an easy topic for biologists to have investigated since Darwin’s day.  Darwin himself paid little attention to secondary sexual characteristics in females, he said.
       The article shows how sexual selection can produce counter-intuitive, even opposite, results: “Recent studies show that both intrasexual competition between females and male choice of mating partners are common, leading to strong sexual selection in females and, in extreme cases, to reversals in the usual pattern of sex differences in behavior and morphology.” He concluded that sexual selection remains a “robust framework” that explains much, but “many important questions about the operation of sexual selection in females and the evolution of sex differences have yet to be answered.”  The long and short of it: “There is still much to be done.”
       Last month in Current Biology,³ three scientists at University of Exeter tried to do an experiment to see if attractiveness in males was heritable (Note: the experiments were done on fruit flies, not humans).  It would seem intuitive in a Darwinian sense that attractive males should produce more and fitter offspring.  Did it work?  They reported positive results, but admitted that their results “contrast starkly” with an earlier, similar study.  “For example, a recent hemiclonal investigation found that males with high reproductive success did not produce more attractive sons, which is very different to what we find here,” they said.  It’s hard to know if any significant conclusions could be drawn.  Their ending sentence seems contradictory: “Regardless of the net fitness outcome, however, our finding that sexy fathers sire sexy sons provides much needed evidence for a critical assumption of many models of sexual selection,” they claimed.  But isn’t net fitness outcome what Darwinism is all about?
       Sexual selection is apparently one of those ideas that sounds good in generalities, but bogs down under scientific scrutiny: “our results emphasise the fact that attractiveness is a composite trait that cannot be totally captured by simple measurements of single characters,” they explained.  “That is to say, even if individual traits that are subject to sexual selection are heritable, this need not imply attractiveness in total is heritable and can evolve.”  Perhaps beauty is in the fly of the beholder.
4. Mammal enamel:  Looking at the teeth of mammals gave Zhe-Xi Luo a non-Darwinian view of their evolutionary history.  The scientist at the Carnegie Institution of Natural History said in Nature,⁴ “Classic scenarios of mammalian morphological evolution tend to posit an orderly acquisition of key evolutionary innovations leading to adaptive diversification, but newly discovered fossils show that evolution of such key characters as the middle ear and the tribosphenic teeth is far more labile among Mesozoic mammals.”  Views of progress should be discarded: “Successive diversifications of Mesozoic mammal groups multiplied the opportunities for many dead-end lineages to iteratively evolve developmental homoplasies and convergent ecological specializations, parallel to those in modern mammal groups.”
       Luo mentioned evolutionary convergence a dozen times in his review article.  He spoke of “curious cases of convergent adaptations in extinct Mesozoic mammals” that “represent many separate evolutionary experiments,” but merely stating that something represents convergent evolution begs the question of how complex organs could have originated even once by evolution, let alone multiple times.  At one point Luo asked, “are originations of key mammalian characters singular evolutionary events, or iterative convergences despite their complexity?”
5. Champions are raised, not born:  Are race horse breeders paying high stud fees for nothing?  Nurture may be more important than nature in producing good race horses, reports Science Now.  A team from the University of Edinburgh studied records of 4500 race horse offspring between 1922 to 2003, and found only 10% correlation of champions with their parents.  If genes aren’t correlating with fitness as much the environment (in this case, good trainers), what would this mean to Darwinian theory that expects fitness to ultimately reside in the genes, where they can be passed on?
       One caution about any conclusions drawn from this study is that fitness according to the betting man yelling in the grandstands may not relate to fitness according to the horse.  But then, fitness in evolutionary terms is so vague, it can mean anything (see “Fitness for dummies: is it running in circles?”, 10/29/2002).
6. Tree Network of life:  Lateral gene transfer scrambles any hope of finding a Darwinian tree of common descent in genetic studies, admitted James McInerney and Davide Pisani in Science.⁵  “The role of horizontal gene transfer in evolution has raised fierce debate about the relevance of the Tree of Life,” they said.  Yet the Tree of Life, coming from the single illustration in The Origin of Species, is Darwin’s most-famous icon of evolution.  They concluded with a new paradigm, “When eukaryotes are included in our considerations of evolution, the phylogeny of life seems better represented by a network than a tree, making any core genes-based argument in favor of the Tree of Life essentially irrelevant.”  See also the 02/01/2007 entry.
7. Dark prospects:  Dark energy has been debated for nearly a decade, but Lawrence Krauss (Case Western Reserve University) thinks we may never figure out what it is.  As reported in Physics World, “Even with the many observations planned over the next decade, there is a real chance that we will never understand the true nature of dark energy.”

It therefore seems that we are living in a very special time, namely the only time in the history of the universe that we might actually be able to infer the existence of dark energy itself.  Perhaps, therefore, we should not feel too bad if observations in the coming decades do not allow us to untangle the mystery of the nature and origin of dark energy.  After all, it is often the mysteries themselves that keep scientists going, energizing theorists to continue to speculate about the ultimate nature of reality and motivating observers to seek out new tools to probe it.

This is just a sampling of fundamental questions that have the Darwinists stumped after nearly a century and a half.  It’s clear that their victory speeches are mere bluffing, because the unknowns overpower the knowns, and the knowns are not well known.  How much longer do you want to give the materialistic crowd time to pursue their metaphysical research program?  They‘re like the dog in the manger; can’t eat the hay, but won’t let those with the stomach for it get a bite. 
Next headline on:  Mammals • Genetics • Darwin and Evolution • Cosmology

The landmark finding represents a long-sought ‘missing link’ in the 10m-year [10 million year] journey that saw ancient land mammals evolve into modern cetaceans, a group that includes whales, dolphins and porpoises.”
    Scientists have long known that whales are mammals whose ancient ancestors walked on land, but only in the past 15 years have they unearthed fossils that shed light on the creatures’ dramatic evolutionary history.  The latest discovery, named Indohyus, is the first whale ancestor known to have lived on land.

The evolutionary path of the whale is one of the most extraordinary on record.  In less than 10m years, the whale’s ancestors completely transformed as they shifted from a four-legged life on land to a life in the ocean.
    The first whales, Pakicetidae, emerged around 50m years ago and resembled land mammals rather than the giant marine creatures of today.  These evolved into large, powerful coastal whales, or Ambulocetidae, that had big feet and strong tails.  Later, whales lost their hind limbs and hair and developed powerful tail fins and flippers.

Fred Spoor, an anthropologist at University College London, said the significance of the latest find was comparable to Archaeopteryx, the first fossils to show a clear transition between dinosaurs and birds.  “For years cetaceans were used by creationists to support their views because for a long time the most primitive whales known had bodies that looked like modern whales, so there seemed to be this enormous gap in evolution.  But since the early 1990s, there’s been a rapid succession of fossils from India and Pakistan that beautifully fill that gap,” he said.
    “The tables are turned now because we have fossils that show that dramatic transition step by step.  Cetaceans are almost the only group that has made such a rapid change from a land environment to an aquatic one.  “Unlike sealions and seals, which still spend some time on land, cetaceans are completely committed to the water now, and it had an enormous effect on their physiology.  They had to change everything.”

Thewissen’s group will next study Indohyus further to learn more about its diet and habitat.  One critical change that occurred when whales took to the water involved its sense of balance and orientation.  In land mammals, this is governed by a vestibulary system in the inner ear, but whales had to adapt to moving in three dimensions, driving the evolution of a more complex system.
    “This fossil completes the picture in terms of the whales’ evolution, but what’s next is to look at these other evolutionary adaptations,” said Thewissen.

Phylogenetic analyses of molecular data on extant animals strongly support the notion that hippopotamids are the closest relatives of cetaceans (whales, dolphins and porpoises).  In spite of this, it is unlikely that the two groups are closely related when extant and extinct artiodactyls are analysed, for the simple reason that cetaceans originated about 50 million years (Myr) ago in south Asia, whereas the family Hippopotamidae is only 15 Myr old, and the first hippopotamids to be recorded in Asia are only 6 Myr old.  However, analyses of fossil clades have not resolved the issue of cetacean relations.  Proposed sister groups ranged from the entire artiodactyl order, to the extinct early ungulates mesonychians, to an anthracotheroid clade (which included hippopotamids), to weakly supporting hippopotamids (to the exclusion of anthracotheres.

To investigate the importance of raoellids in cetacean phylogeny, we excluded raoellids from our initial phylogenetic analysis of artiodactyls plus cetaceans.  Our data set differed from previous analyses by the addition of several archaic anthracotheres, and some corrected scores for pakicetid cetaceans.  This analysis found stronger support for hippopotamid–cetacean sister-group relations than the previous analysis, consistent with molecular studies.  However, the base of the artiodactyl cladogram is poorly resolved (see Supplementary Information for details on phylogenetic runs).

In a second cladistic analysis (Fig. 2), we added the raoellids Khirtharia and Indohyus as well as several archaic ungulate groups (condylarths) and found that raoellids and cetaceans are sister groups and that they are the basal node in the Cetacea/Artiodactyla clade, consistent with some previous analyses that used different character sets.  Our analysis is the first to show that raoellids are the sister group to cetaceans, resolving the biogeographic conundrum and closing the temporal gap between cetaceans and their sister.  Relations between most artiodactyl families higher in the tree are poorly resolved, and our data lack implications for the relations between these families.  Our analysis strongly argues that raoellids and cetaceans are more closely related to each other than either is to hippopotamids.

Indohyus was a small, stocky artiodactyl, roughly the size of the raccoon Procyon lotor (Fig. 5).  It was not an adept swimmer; instead it waded in shallow water, with its heavy bones providing ballast to keep its feet anchored.  Indohyus may have fed on land, although a specialized aquatic diet is also possible.

Our working hypothesis for the origin of whales is that raoellid ancestors, although herbivores or omnivores on land, took to fresh water in times of danger.  Aquatic habits were increased in Indohyus (as suggested by osteosclerosis and oxygen isotopes), although it did not necessarily have an aquatic diet (as suggested by carbon isotopes).  Cetaceans originated from an Indohyus-like ancestor and switched to a diet of aquatic prey.  Significant changes in the morphology of the teeth, the oral skeleton and the sense organs made cetaceans different from their ancestors and unique among mammals.

Will evolutionists actually tell lies to push their beliefs?  Yes—you saw it right here.  Fred Spoor told you that Archaeopteryx represents a clear transition between dinosaurs and birds, when he knows full well it appeared too late in his own evolutionary timeline to be a missing link (10/24/2005).  The big lie in the Nature article, and in the popular press, was to portray this fossil discovery as a great victory for evolution, and a step-by-step sequence showing the whole ancestry.  It is no more victory than picking up a spent lottery ticket on the dusty ground and thinking it is a missing link to riches.
    Philosophers of science could have some good banter about the logic of discovery – whether they discovered something true to nature in the data, or imposed their own experiences and preferences on the data.  Clearly, this team decided to pick and choose a few traits from a fossil they preferred over other problematical ones, and from these to weave a whale of a just-so story with which to dupe the public and shoot the creationists.  Well, their shot only hurt as much as a blast of bad breath in the face, that’s all.  You know what to expect from National Geographic, and you got it: “Whales Evolved from Tiny Deerlike Mammals, Study Says.”  The bigger the whopper, the better; have it your way, NG (10/24/2004).  Not to be left behind in the Whopper Olympics, the BBC News trumpeted, “Whale ‘missing link’ discovered.”
    This is the mess of things that Charlie Darwin left in his wake when he allowed the magicians and storytellers into the once noble halls of science (12/22/2003 commentary).  It’s time to clear house and clean up.  Send the whole lot of them back to school to learn some history and philosophy and ethics, and make them sign a commitment to speak the truth, the whole truth and nothing but the truth.  That would solve most of the problems in the contentious creation-evolution debate.
    Bambi to Moby Dick—incredible.  PhD scientists actually believe that?  They want that taught in the schools?  We need a new word that means to laugh and cry at the same time, because this whale of a tale deserves a whopping blubberfest.  Maybe the word howl will do.  Perhaps this is why the humpback whales are howling.
Next headline on:  Marine Biology • Mammals • Fossils • Evolution

Visualize a hockey puck on a frictionless surface infinite in all directions, moving about in various ways.  The concepts of forward, backward and sideways lose all meaning.  The same is true in relativistic Darwinland, where an incoming asteroid can cause extinction but also a boom in emergent innovation (see Fox News).  In the overall scheme of things, does it matter which direction is forward or backward?
    For decades, most Darwinists have taught as fact the myth that eukaryotes are a more complex product that emerged from the fusion of simpler, more primitive microbes.  Progressivism is built into such a notion.  Now, if eukaryotes just appeared suddenly, then became stripped down into the other two kingdoms of microbes, then Darwinian miracles of emergence allow for anything.  Why don’t we extend Penny’s theory and conclude that bacteria are stripped-down humans?  (Sorry; that didn’t come out right.  Some people on the beach, though, do resemble amoebas.)
Exercise:  Read the following sentence aloud:

The Story of Evolution
Evolution explains more complexity, and more simplicity.  It explains why flight arose in some birds, but was lost in others.  With evolution, organs and genomes can become more complicated, or more streamlined.  Eyes emerge through evolution, but eyes are also lost by evolution.  Evolution makes the cheetah fast but the sloth slow.  By evolution, dinosaurs grow to skyscraper size, and hummingbirds grow tiny.  With evolution, peacocks grow more flashy and crows more black, giraffes tall and flatworms flat.  Evolution explains predator and prey, loner and herder, light and dark, high and low, fast and slow, profligacy and stinginess, terrorism and altruism, religion and atheism, virtue and selfishness, psychosis and reason, extinction and fecundity, war and peace.  Evolution explains everything.

Now substitute the meaningless word Gribbleflix for Evolution and read it again.  There you have it: the world’s most successful, all-encompassing theory.  Nothing in biology makes sense except in the light of Gribbleflix.  Don’t let the anti-Gribbleflix people sneak their dogma into the schools.  Gribbleflix is science.  Gribbleflix is a FACT!
Next headline on:  Darwinism and Evolutionary Theory • Cell Biology

Walking Tall: Earth Pushed Hominids Out of Africa   12/19/2007    
Why did humans evolve from stoop-shouldered apemen into tall, proud, big-brained Europeans?  Africa pushed them out.  That seems to be the idea behind a story spreading throughout the popular science media, such as on Science Daily, entitled, “Geologists Say ‘Wall Of Africa’ Allowed Humanity To Emerge.”  The idea is based on circumstantial evidence that, according to evolutionary dating, the African Rift zone was creating mountains and valleys at about the same time hominids were thought by paleoanthropologists to be emerging into manhood.
    According to the Science Daily article, the husband and wife team of Royhan and Nahid Gani claim, “Tectonics [movement of Earth’s crust] was ultimately responsible for the evolution of humankind.”  Why?  Because it dried up the trees and created grasslands.  The apes had to climb down and learn how to walk on two feet, “an energy-efficient way to search larger areas for food in an arid environment.”  The Ganis did not explain why the other mammals didn’t follow the human leader.
    The following quotes by the Ganis were gleaned from reports on Science Daily, and EurekAlert, an PhysOrg, which regurgitated a press release from University of Utah.

• “Because of the crustal movement or tectonism in East Africa, the landscape drastically changed over the last 7 million years,” says Royhan Gani (pronounced rye-hawn Go-knee), a research assistant professor of civil and environmental engineering.  “That landscape controlled climate on a local to regional scale.  That climate change spurred human ancestors to evolve from apes.”
• “Although the Wall of Africa started to form around 30 million years ago, recent studies show most of the uplift occurred between 7 million and 2 million years ago, just about when hominins split off from African apes, developed bipedalism and evolved bigger brains.”
• “Nature built this wall, and then humans could evolve, walk tall and think big,” says Royhan Gani.  “Is there any characteristic feature of the wall that drove human evolution?”
      The answer, he believes, is the variable landscape and vegetation resulting from uplift of the Wall of Africa, which created “a topographic barrier to moisture, mostly from the Indian Ocean” and dried the climate.
• “Clearly, the Wall of Africa grew to be a prominent elevated feature over the last 7 million years, thereby playing a prominent role in East African aridification by wringing moisture out of monsoonal air moving across the region,” the Ganis write.  That period coincides with evolution of human ancestors in the area.
• Royhan Gani says the earliest undisputed evidence of true bipedalism (as opposed to knuckle-dragging by apes) is 4.1 million years ago in Australopithecus anamensis, but some believe the trait existed as early as 6 million to 7 million years ago.
      The Ganis speculate that the shaping of varied landscapes by tectonic forces -- lake basins, valleys, mountains, grasslands, woodlands -- “could also be responsible, at a later stage, for hominins developing a bigger brain as a way to cope with these extremely variable and changing landscapes” in which they had to find food and survive predators.

Of course, these Charlietans had to include a little bit of doubt to let their sponsors know this is an important work in progress, so that the funds will keep flowing.
    The secular science reporters echo this nonsense without any critical thinking.  If we don’t expose the fallacies in these ridiculous ideas for the public, who will?  Even ardent evolutionists should be ashamed of the kind of illogic that went into this claim.  Tectonic forces and climate change make apes walk tall and think big.  Right on, dude.  It’s a shame this didn’t happen back in the Cambrian or Ordovician; we might have had written records for more time telling us how meteor impacts created brickmasons, earthquakes created architects, and tsunamis created surfers.
    Evolutionists should be the first in line to award the Ganis with Stupid Evolution Quote of the Week.  Instead, they give any imposters claiming to be scientists license to say any stupid things they want, as long as they swear allegiance to Darwin (e.g., 07/17/2007).  Alan Boyle listed 30 nominations for Weird Science of 2007 on MSNBC, but not one highlighted the silly claims of Darwinists.  The only one that came close was the story about redhead Neanderthals—but that was not questioning evolution.  Why didn’t the evolutionary claims in our 08/10/2007 entry make his list?  Look back through the “Dumb” entries for 2007 in these pages (e.g., 06/14/2007, 04/20/2007, 03/31/2007).  Any one of them would trounce Boyle’s nominations about radiation-proof underwear and glow-in-the-dark kittens.  Much of the evolutionary silliness would insult the intelligence of children (see 11/22/2007, 07/03/2007).  Remember the dandy display of logic from 10/14/2007?  or from 08/20/2007, or from 04/11/2007?  We should stage a contest for Stupidest Evolution Quote of 2007.
    Evolutionists are the funniest comedians on earth, and they don’t even know it.  That’s what makes them so funny.  Save the SEQOTW quotes up for the day the Darwin idol falls.  We’ll have a merry good time.
Next headline on:  Early Man • Dumb Ideas

1. Knowledge is power of assumption:  Patrick Barry wrote for Science News about “energy-converting mitochondria or sunlight-absorbing chloroplasts, which are known to have evolved from ancient, independent-living bacteria that became incorporated into the cells.”
2. Child’s play:  Since infants prefer Good Samaritans, this trait must have evolved, said Science Daily: “The presence of social evaluation so early in infancy suggests that assessing individuals by the nature of their interactions with others is central to processing the social world, both evolutionarily and developmentally,” the authors of a study proclaimed.
3. Say it is so:  The author of a new book on vertebrate paleontology called Evolution In Action said this: “All creatures alive today are descended from a population of single-celled organisms that lived some billions of years ago.  Since the first animals appeared, millions of species have been born (the majority of which are now extinct), including our own, Homo sapiens.”  This was quoted authoritatively in Current Biology Dec 18, in a book review with the title, “No bones about it.”
4. Scuttle fish:  Cuttlefish signalling can be quite elaborate, involving specialized light-emitting organs that display flashing lights in patterns.  Three scientists writing in Current Biology had an easy answer for where this ability came from: “Coleoid cephalopods, including cuttlefish, have a unique neurally controlled system for generating skin patterns, which evolved primarily for visual defence.”
5. Columbine school:  Scott Hodges and Elena Kramer had a simple explanation for certain structures on columbines (a wildflower group): “What is unique about columbines, compared to their close relatives that have not gone through an adaptive radiation, is that they have evolved nectar spurs.”  The authors used the word evolution 10 times, never once explaining how it acted—only that it did; for instance, “Aquilegia’s flowers are also of particular utility and their features may help us to understand how novel morphological traits evolve....Developmental and genetic studies of these structures will help us understand how novelties evolve.”
6. Evolution as goddess:  Did you know evolution can plan things and discover efficient ways of engineering codes?  A summary of the paper on RNA Polymerase II (see 12/17/2007, next entry) in Science Daily said this: “It would appear that, over the last 500 million years, other ways to produce highly complex organisms have evolved.  Evolution has simply found more efficient ways to use the genes already there.”
7. Fly in the eye:  The following quote is notable for its admission that evidence is lacking for evolution, juxtaposed with certainty that it occurred.  David Weisblat, an expert on leeches at UC Berkeley, explained to Current Biology Dec 4 why leech study is important:

   The most compelling scientific justification for studying leech development is its relevance to understanding the evolution of animal body plans.  A priori, changes in animal body plans – morphology – must come about by changes, over the course of many millions of years, in the developmental processes by which they arise.  We now have a decent understanding of how a very few species, chiefly Drosophila, develop, but the ancestral species from which they evolved are by definition extinct, so we cannot make any retrospective comparisons.  Thinking prospectively, waiting to see significant morphological and underlying genomic/developmental changes is an exciting long-term possibility.  Unfortunately, that will require maintaining both human society and natural populations of the species of interest for the millions of years required for significant evolutionary changes to occur, a dicey proposition at best.

Charlietans, these Darwinists.  On the one hand they exclaim that evolution is the most clearly demonstrated scientific fact on Earth that only a fool (like a creationist) would deny.  Ask them for an example, and this is what you get: bald assertions that say little more than “it evolved because it evolved” or, “the way that it evolved is that it emerged millions of years ago, and after it arose, it evolved.”  If you love science, don’t let them get away with it.  Like Michael Jackson, they’re BAD (bald assertions of dogmatism).
    For more Darwin-assuming groaners, see the 08/24/2007 entry, “Evolution Takes Credit.”
Next headline on:  Darwinism and Evolutionary Theory • Marine Biology • Plants

The biological role of CTD phosphorylation remains to be fully elucidated, but the emerging picture is that the pattern of CTD phosphorylation changes during RNA synthesis, allowing dynamic modification of the DNA template and processing of the nascent RNA transcript.  The studies by Chapman et al.² and by Egloff et al.³ provide both the tools to fully document CTD phosphorylation patterns and the best evidence to date that these patterns constitute a code that intersects, at the most fundamental level, with the regulation of different classes of eukaryotic genes.

The situation just keeps getting worse for the evolutionists.  None of the three papers even mentioned evolution.  Who would dare?
    Apparently, Science Daily dared.  Summarizing these papers, it said, “It would appear that, over the last 500 million years, other ways to produce highly complex organisms have evolved.  Evolution has simply found more efficient ways to use the genes already there.”  You may now utter a long, sarcastic groan.
Next headline on:  Genetics • Amazing Facts

Godless: Is Psychiatry Science or Religion?   12/16/2007    
“Ever since Freud described religious faith as an illusion and a neurosis there has been tension and at times hostility between religion and psychiatry,” reported EurekAlert.  “Psychiatrists are less religious on average than other physicians, according to previously published data from the same survey, and non-psychiatrist physicians who are religious are less willing to refer their patients to psychiatrists.”
    This does not mean psychiatrists are hostile toward the religion of their clients.  In fact, they seem more interested in discussing it with clients than other medical doctors.  Many are also changing from linking religion with mental illness, the study says.  Some are even finding religious behaviors beneficial to clients’ mental health.  Medical doctors, by contrast, are far more likely to be religious themselves and view religion as important to their patients, according to an earlier survey by Brandeis University published on EurekAlert 11/14/2007, “A dose of God may help medicine.”
    The statistics about psychiatrists come from a survey published in the December issue of the American Journal of Psychiatry.  Farr Curlin, MD, associate professor of medicine at the University of Chicago, thinks the gap between religion and psychiatry is narrowing.  “In aggregate,” he said, “although psychiatrists may not agree with the claims of religion, they often witness its powerful effects on patients’ mental health, both for good and for ill.”

Studies like this border on the meaningless.  To lump Scientology, animism and Christianity into one bin called “religion” almost guarantees that any conclusions will be invalid from the start.  It would be like trying to discuss anything meaningful about politics after lumping Democrats, Republicans, communists, fascists and anarchists into one group.
    Psychiatrists are psychologists with medical degrees.  That gives them one leg up from psychologists, a sorry lot within “science” if there ever was one.  The one who needed his head examined was Freud.  He pulled science down a blind alley as much as Mesmer did.  Psychiatry has value only in so far as it diagnoses purely medical conditions that have a physical basis.  When it tries to explain the “psychological” cause of your problems, and prescribe a drug to cover up the consequences of your sinful behavior, save your money and go to a good church.
    The only take-home lesson from this article is the bias of the pseudoscience of psychiatry against religion based on its Freudian roots – and Freud was a Darwin-loving apostate.  Psychiatrists have since evolved from calling religion a mental illness to calling it an evolved behavior that seems to confer some fitness benefits.  In other words, religion is still superstition in their view, but might be more healthy than they supposed.  How come no preachers or theologians were consulted to give their views on this subject?  While psychiatrists call preachers deluded or mentally ill, the preachers can turn around and call the psychiatrists sinners and spiritual counterfeits who proclaim false teachings as science falsely so called.  Whom can you trust?
    Don’t think for a minute it’s the psychiatrists.  Their anti-religious views cannot possibly be true, because they are self-refuting.  If they wish to restrict all behaviors to physical causes, they must include their own beliefs about psychiatry and religion.  This makes the teachings of psychiatry nothing more than chemical reactions in a physical brain.  Who could say their chemical reactions are like yours or mine?  Who could possibly know that their reactions are more valid than anyone else’s, without reference to some external standard of truth that is universal, timeless and certain?  Their belief system dissolves into the sea of irrationality, and is therefore untrustworthy by definition.  Trust the source that alone is universal, timeless and certain: your Creator.  Only He knows the truth about the creatures He made.  Thank Him that he has provided his sentient beings with an operator’s manual for mental and spiritual health.  Learn it, study it, and when you still need help, go to those who make it their life work to rightly apply the word of truth.
Next headline on:  Theology

“If you push an ecosystem too hard, you’ll destroy it,” he said.  “But for the organisms living on Earth at the time, [the environment] pushed them to adapt and fill new niches.  It’s like at the university: I tell my students all the time that if we don’t push you, you don’t evolve.”

Your evolutionary biologists at work.  No further comment necessary. 
Next headline on:  Darwinism • Dumb Ideas

Mudstones make up the majority of the geological record.  However, it is difficult to reconstruct the complex processes of mud deposition in the laboratory, such as the clumping of particles into floccules.  Using flume experiments, we have investigated the bedload transport and deposition of clay floccules and find that this occurs at flow velocities that transport and deposit sand.  Deposition-prone floccules form over a wide range of experimental conditions, which suggests an underlying universal process.  Floccule ripples develop into low-angle foresets and mud beds that appear laminated after postdepositional compaction, but the layers retain signs of floccule ripple bedding that would be detectable in the rock record.  Because mudstones were long thought to record low-energy conditions of offshore and deeper water environments, our results call for reevaluation of published interpretations of ancient mudstone successions and derived paleoceanographic conditions.

• A century ago, Henry Clifton Sorby, one of the pioneers of geology, pointed to the study of muds as one of the most challenging topics in sedimentary geology.  Today, with our knowledge clearly expanded, muddy sediments are still considered highly complex systems that may require as many as 32 variables and parameters for a satisfactory physicochemical characterization.  More research may clarify interdependencies between a number of these parameters and may allow us to consider a smaller number of variables, but the fundamental complexity of muddy sediments is likely to remain.
• Mudstones constitute up to two-thirds of the sedimentary record and are arguably the most poorly understood type of sedimentary rocks.  Mudstone successions contain a wealth of sedimentary features that provide information about depositional conditions and sedimentary history, but presently we lack the information that would allow us to link features observed in the rock record to measurable sets of physical variables in modern environments.
• It appears that irrespective of what drives flocculation in a given experiment, flocculation provides deposition-prone particles without fail over a wide range of experimental conditions.
• Our observations do not support the notion that muds can only be deposited in quiet environments with only intermittent weak currents.  Instead, bedload transport of flocculated mud and deposition occurs at current velocities that would also transport and deposit sand.  Clay beds can accrete from migrating floccule ripples under swiftly moving currents in the 10 cm/s to 26 cm/s velocity range, a range likely to expand as flows with larger sediment concentrations are explored.
• Whereas the clay beds formed in our experiments consist of downcurrent-inclined laminae, they appear to be parallel-laminated once fully compacted (Fig. 4A).  Because floccule ripples are spaced 30 to 40 cm apart, ancient sediments of this origin are likely to appear parallel-laminated (Fig. 4C) as well.
• Detection of ripple-accreted muds in the rock record will require carefully defined, and yet to be developed, criteria.
• In the course of two decades of detailed studies of shales and mudstones, one of us has seen comparable low-amplitude bedforms (Fig. 4D) in shale units that were deposited in a wide variety of environments.... This suggests that mud accretion from migrating floccule ripples probably occurred throughout geologic history.
• Many ancient shale units, once examined carefully, may thus reveal that they accumulated in the manner illustrated here, rather than having largely settled from slow-moving or still suspensions.  This, in turn, will most likely necessitate the reevaluation of the sedimentary history of large portions of the geologic record.

The results call for critical reappraisal of all mudstones previously interpreted as having been continuously deposited under still waters.  Such rocks are widely used to infer past climates, ocean conditions, and orbital variations.

A quick conversion shows 25 cm/sec to be a little shy of a foot per second, or about half a mile per hour – a slow current.  But like they said, the speed could be revised upward when fluids with higher concentrations are tested.  Also, currents could be stronger on the surface than the ocean bottom.  Of more consequence is the fact that nearly a century of assumption has undergirded a geological foundation that is more like quivering mud than rock-solid support.
    A quick look at Grand Canyon layers shows that the following (bottom to top) contain shales and mudstones: the Unkar group, the Bass formation, Hakatai Shale, Dox (the thickest formation of all), the Chuar Group, Bright Angel Shale, Supai Group, and Hermit Formation.  These represent thousands of feet of sediments.  Previously thought to have formed in calm, placid seas, it is now possible to look at these anew as having been deposited under currents of water.  Will Flood geologists now be able to say “I told you so” to their uniformitarian rivals?
    The implications of this announcement should send seismic waves throughout geology and earth science.  Geologists have looked to mudstones for clues about depositional history.  Chemists have looked to mudstones for clues about the chemical history of the earth and its oceans.  Oceanographers have looked to mudstones for clues about plankton cycles and patterns.  Atmospheric scientists have looked to mudstones for clues about climate history.  Biologists have looked to fossils in mudstones for clues to evolutionary history.  Physicists have looked to mudstones for clues about geomagnetic history.  Even planetary scientists have looked to mudstones for clues about the orbital history of the Earth.  All of these have assumed that mudstone left a reliable record of slow, quiet deposition under calm water conditions.  Now what?  If their chosen methodology shepherds them not beside the still waters, it cannot restore their soul.
    It may turn out that geologists can save face with further experimentation, or that they could argue that there are narrow limits under which mudstones can form that are not too far removed from the calm-water paradigm.  Remember, however, that mudstones are very complex, with at least 32 parameters to consider.  That’s the known parameters; what about the unknown ones?  To what extent can geologists infer past conditions by “reading” rocks when they don’t know the language?  And how sure can we be now that future experiments won’t upset the current paradigm again, even more radically?
    There are important lessons here about the philosophy of science: particularly, the fundamental difference between the observational sciences and the historical sciences.  Even experiments as carefully controlled as these cannot prove that the Dox Formation or the Bright Angel Shale were laid down under comparable conditions.  Lab experiments are only simulations.  Many parameters cannot be controlled; others are not even known.  Science can say with some confidence that such-and-such a rock is composed of quartz or montmorillite or limestone in the present.  Describing where it came from and how it got there is a completely different kind of investigation.  Why should geology limit itself to observation of present resources and processes?
    In 1825, Granville Penn, a Bible-believing British geologist, wrote that trying to understand the rock record from field observations alone is like trying to understand the history of Rome by studying scattered ruins of the empire without access to Roman historians like Tacitus.  Geology is a compound work, he argued: “it is both physical and historical, for it seeks the historical truth of a physical fact.”  He explained,

It is evident to reason, that certainty concerning a past fact – such as is, the mode by which all material existences were really first formed, or were really afterwards altered – must be historical certainty: the subject, therefore, is no longer a subject for philosophical or scientific induction, but for historical evidence, it demands a voucher competent to establish its truth.  Now, the voucher that could establish the fact respecting the true mode of first formations, must have been a witness of that mode; but, the only witness of the mode of first formations or creations, was the Creator himself.

(cited in Terry Mortenson, The Great Turning Point [Master Books, 2004], p. 64.)  His point is, that rather than restricting themselves to insufficient evidential resources, geologists should be willing to use the same methods of historical evaluation from the available sources that a historian would use in reconstructing the history of a past civilization.  It would be folly for a historian of Rome to ignore Tacitus, Julius Caesar, Livy or Cicero, even if the sources were dubbed biased or incomplete.  The eyewitness accounts of Rome cannot provide exhaustive information, but they provide anchor points for a basic framework of investigation.  Is it not a superior methodology for a historian to avail himself of both the extant written documents and the monuments?
    Similarly, Penn argued, the works of Moses, though not a geological textbook, provide enough intersection points of geological events with human history with which to begin building a geological system.  Geologists in the 1830s abandoned that methodology – not because the data forced them to, but because they made it their choice to study only the monuments.  Well, you see where it has led.  This is just one example (try some others: 11/30/2007, 11/26/2007, 10/03/2007, 09/19/2007, 03/27/2007, 02/19/2007, 01/12/2007 – and that’s just from this year.  The story about volcanoes in 11/13/2006 was instructive, and remember the puzzle of the ultra-pure sandstones of world-wide distribution from 06/27/2003?).  Reading Geology papers is like reading Darwinian evolution papers: a little bit of data, a lot of storytelling, and frequent announcements that everything you know is wrong.
    Try a change of perspective.  In a parallel world outside the mainstream geological institutions, which followed Lyell, Darwin and Huxley wholesale into materialism in the 19th century, there remains today an active body of creation geologists who still work within the framework of the written historical record.  You would be hard-pressed to notice any difference in scientific rigor in their papers.  Often there is active debate about how certain formations are to be interpreted.  Frequently they find the interpretations of the secular geologists to be untenable in light of the observational evidence.  Many of the creation geologists have PhDs, and some are more experienced in field work than their secular counterparts.  They go out to interesting sites all over America, Australia and the world, investigate them carefully, and interpret the same data – only through the lenses of a different worldview (example: 03/05/2006 commentary).  Sound interesting?  Tired of the often-contradictory secular approach?  Here are two journals where you can test the alternative: the Creation Research Society Quarterly and the Journal of Creation.  Both of these general-science technical journals frequently contain interesting and informative articles on geology and earth history.
Next headline on:  Geology • Dating Methods

Darwin Fish Pokes ID in the Eye   12/13/2007    
Some science news outlets are having an eye-poking battle against intelligent design with the latest eye-popping claim about eye evolution.  It seems to have started in Australia on Science Alert, where some exceptionally-preserved placoderm fossils were found:

The palaeobiologist discovered that unlike all living vertebrate animals – which includes everything from the jawless lamprey fish to humans – placoderms had a different arrangement of muscles and nerves supporting the eyeball – evidence of an “intermediate stage” between the evolution of jawless and jawed vertebrates.
    “The vertebrate eye is the best example of structural perfection – as used by proponents of intelligent design to claim that something so complex couldn’t possibly have evolved,” Dr Young said.

Next to Tinker Bell and Yoda, Popeye is one of the Darwin Party’s favorite characters.  Believing that eyes can just pop into existence with the greatest of ease, they picture Popeye, filled with Darwin spinach, knocking the living daylights out of the ID Brutus, as Olive Oyl (Eugenie Scott) grasps her hands adoringly, saying, “My hero!”
    Problem is, the ID folk aren’t watching the cartoons.  They are grown up.  They live in the real world.  They look ahead.  They watch ID the Future.
Next headline on:  Evolution • Intelligent Design • Dumb Ideas

Walking on two feet, which happened early in human evolution, presents a unique challenge during pregnancy because the center of gravity shifts far in front of the hips, destabilizing the upper body and impairing locomotion.  This is not the case for animals that walk predominantly on four legs such as chimpanzees, or even other bipeds.
    To accommodate this shifted center of gravity, women’s spines have evolved to help offset the additional weight in the abdomen during pregnancy, so that the back muscles are not taxed in counter-balancing the destabilizing effects of the baby’s weight.

When human ancestors first became bipedal, they set the human lineage off on a different evolutionary path from other apes, but in so doing created special challenges for pregnant mothers.  One exciting discovery is that the ability of human females to better carry a baby to term while standing on two feet appears to have evolved at least two million years ago.  The researchers studied two hominin fossils that were approximately two million years old, one of which – presumably a female – displayed three lordosis vertebrae and one of which – presumably a male – displayed fewer.
    Early human women lived very strenuous, active lives, and pregnant females were forced to cope with the discomfort of childbearing while foraging for food and escaping from predators,” [Daniel] Lieberman [Harvard] says.  “This evolution of the lower back helped early woman to remain more mobile during pregnancy, which would have been essential to survival, and appears to have been favored by natural selection.”

Evolutionists need to learn to walk upright.  To walk uprightly is to be a person of integrity, balance, poise and righteousness.  There is no way on earth anyone could ever know the things they are claiming.  They see a wonderfully designed adaptation, and cast these pearls before swindling old Charlie.  Here again we see evolutionary scientists and their lackeys in the press crawling all over the floor, paying homage to the Head Pig.  The original paper’s first words, like those of a baby saying da-da, are “As predicted by Darwin...”  Wise king Solomon said, “Folly is joy to him who is destitute of discernment, but a man of understanding walks uprightly” (Proverbs 15:21).  Stand up, man, woman, and take a stand for uprightness of heart and mind. 
Next headline on:  Early Man • Evolution • Dumb Ideas

“We have discovered that the rings probably were not created just yesterday in cosmic time, and in this scenario, it is not just luck that we are seeing planetary rings now,” said Esposito.  “They probably were always around but continually changing, and they will be around for many billions of years.”

What did Esposito do, invent a perpetual motion machine?  What did he do with gas drag, sputtering, micrometeoroid impacts, collisional spreading and sunlight pressure?  These factors are not going to care whether fluffy clumps of ice can recycle themselves.  Apparently the ringmaster is also a magician; he made these problems just disappear.  When the paper comes out maybe we can find the secret pockets.  For most viewers, distraction is usually an effective method.
    It’s not that this new model lacks evidential support; there does appear to be clumpiness, and mass estimates have been revised upward by Cassini.  But it only accounts for more time for the B-ring, not the other rings which are more tenuous and even younger – including the rings of Jupiter, Uranus and Neptune.  So the problem did not go away with this announcement, despite the celebrating by the science news yahoos who never heard an old age they didn’t like.
    What’s driving this urge for age?  Simple: Charlie needs the time.  That sets the paradigm throughout science.  The ringmasters have been embarrassed for 23 years since Voyager forced them to consider the rings might be young.  When a phenomenon doesn’t cooperate, it must be forced into conformity; second law of thermodynamics be damned.
Next headline on:  Solar System • Dating Methods

What Mean These Bones?   12/12/2007    
Fossils found in unusual conditions and strange locations tell a silent story.  Humans often cannot resist making up their own versions of the plot.  Consider the following discoveries.  Listen to the stories told about them, and ask: what is the probability the stories are true?  How could we ever know?  Who is qualified to be the chief storyteller?

1. Glacier-saurus:  Bones from a six-ton sauropod were found 10 years ago at 13,000' elevation near a glacier in Antarctica.  New interpretations about it were reported by EurekAlert and PhysOrg.  The National Geographic article includes an artist’s interpretation of the ecology when it lived.  What put this monster meat in the freezer?
       The evolutionary story is that this dinosaur, named Glacialisaurus hammeri, lived 190 million years ago.  NG quotes a paleontologist saying that the discovery so far south “was probably due to the fact that major connections between the continents still existed at that time, and because climates were more equitable across latitudes than they are today.”  He added that the bones are “important because they help to establish that primitive sauropodomorph dinosaurs were more broadly distributed than previously thought and that they coexisted with their cousins, the true sauropods.”
2. Armadillo in the sky:  An armor-covered mammal called a glyptodont was found at 14,000 feet in the Andes, reported National Geographic News.  This represents the “oldest glyptodont known from any significant skeletal remains,” said one paleontologist.  How did it get so high in the mountains?  One paleontologist said that when it lived, the mountain wasn’t there.  “For me, the real question is what this tells us about the history of uplift of the Andes mountains and how it impacted this group of animals.”  Some glyptodonts, which look like fat, stiff armadillos, grew to the size of a small car, the article said.
3. Double-decker dino:  Dinosaur bones sitting in a Chicago museum have been re-interpreted as those of a large carnivorous beast rivalling T. rex.  Found in Niger 10 years ago, Carcharodontosaurus iguidensis was one of the largest meat-eaters that ever lived.  “It was part of a ‘very weird ecosystem’ of huge bipedal carnivorous dinosaurs that inhabited the Saharan Cretaceous landscape,” the article claims.  The BBC News story shows it larger than a double-decker bus.
       Why did this beast grow so large?  A paleontologist explained: “The dinosaur seems to have evolved because these shallow seas divided up the land so it led to different groups of dinosaurs in different places.”  Obviously, “that has implications for how life reacts to high temperatures and high sea levels,” he said.  National Geographic News quoted a paleontologist calling this “evolution in action,” even though humans have only observed static, dead bones.  “The study suggests that the newly described species is evidence for rapid evolution after shallow prehistoric seas inundated North Africa.”  That part of the story was certainly not observed.
       Another speculated, “It may be that these giants arose by allopatric speciation, whereby biological populations are physically isolated by a barrier, in this case a seaway, and evolve in reproductive isolation” (see entry on allopatric speciation from 01/15/2003).  She thought that interpretation holds for living species; “However, that hypothesis can’t be tested with ancient fossils!”
4. Underground forest:  A farmer in Michigan was astonished to find something under his land when the Department of Transportation started digging a pond for him in exchange for fill earth.  Lo and behold, a prehistoric forest came to light.  The report on Science Daily quoted a forester saying, “We find a lot of trees lying on the forest floor, but this was the first time I’ve seen so many trees thousands of years old and so well preserved in the soil.”  Well, gosh darn, whaddya know.  “What could bury a whole forest 15 feet underground?  It had to be a single catastrophic, violent event, and it must have happened a long time ago for 15 feet of soil to build up.”
       A professional colleague speculated with him that “the trees were either transported or mowed down by the last glacier to move across the Keweenaw, before Lake Superior covered the peninsula” about 10,000 years ago.  They want to perform radiocarbon dating on the logs, many of which are 20 feet long and 2 feet in diameter.
5. Mammoth targets:  Rocks from space played asteroids against mammoths 35,000 years ago, claims a report on the BBC News.  Tusks from Alaska and Siberia appear to show scars of meteorite debris.  A researcher explained, “We think that there was probably an impact which exploded in the air that sent these particles flying into the animals.”  Bones of bison from the same period show re-growth, indicating that the smaller mammals survived a “calamitous event” that took down their bigger neighbors.  They’re not sure, though; “Maybe, these were tusks from dead animals that were just exposed on the surface, so when this thing blew up in the atmosphere, it would have peppered them.”  The date could range from 13,000 to 35,000 years ago, they said.
       Previously, scientists attributed the extinction of mammoths to humans or climate change.  Can space impacts really explain this?  It can’t hurt, at least (that is, it can’t hurt the theory, even if it hurt the animals):

   For us the difficulty is that we see patterns but we don’t understand what the underlying process is; so it becomes difficult to ascribe causation,” he [Dr. Ian Barnes from Royal Holloway University of London, UK] explained.
       “Just as in a modern crime scene, it’s very difficult to piece all the evidence together and say precisely what was going on; which event led to any particular outcome.”
       But he added: “Certainly, you can’t imagine it helped the animals having a large meteorite hit the Earth’s atmosphere and pellet them with shot.”

6. Polar warming:  A polar bear jaw has been found in the Arctic, reported the BBC News.  The article claims this jawbone is up to 130,000 years old.  That makes the evolution of polar bears 30,000 years older than previously thought.  Why is this good news?  Well, if “further discoveries can show the iconic Arctic beasts have a deeper evolutionary heritage, then the outlook for the animals may be more positive than some believe,” because they would have survived one interglacial period – i.e., global warming.  Hence, “This is telling us that despite the ongoing warming in the Arctic today, maybe we don’t have to be quite so worried about the polar bear.”

The interpretation of these finds is left as an exercise.  That’s a difficult exercise, because fossils don’t come with written documentation.  Science cannot provide definitive answers about one-time, past events.  Paleontologists try to piece together a story from multiple clues, and weave together scenarios that are more or less plausible.  Never forget, however, a point emphasized by philosophers of science: theories are always under-determined by the data.  This means an almost infinite number of theories could be concocted to fit the same set of observations.  It’s especially true for past events that cannot be checked directly.
    So whose interpretation will carry the day?  Aha; now we enter the realm of “political” science.  The reigning Darwin Party wields an iron fist over its totalitarian dictatorship.  Remember: totalitarian means total; it means that it is a crime to even think out of line with the regime.  That is why interpretations outside the Party never get heard.  The paleontologist who claimed he had little data but lots of freedom was putting a positive spin on how much freedom there is inside the Party paradigm.
Next headline on:  Fossils • Dinosaurs • Mammals • Plants

1. Skull size:  A short piece in the “Random Samples” column of Science,¹ “What the Skull Tells,” reported dispassionately on work by an evolutionary psychologist at Edinburgh, Ian Deary, to measure the skulls of historic figures considered to have high IQs.  “Studies have shown that brain, and therefore skull, sizes have modest but significant correlations with IQ,” the article mentioned nonchalantly.
2. Rapid human evolution:  A claim this week by Henry Harpending, evolutionary anthropologist at the University of Utah, that human evolution is accelerating, reverberated throughout the echo chamber of the popular science press (see PhysOrg, National Geographic News, BBC News complete with the iconic human evolution line of progress diagram, Science Daily accompanied by image of a conquering Viking).  One aspect of his claim was that “Human races are evolving away from each other.”  The National Geographic article quotes him as saying, “We’re evolving away from each other.  We’re getting more and more different.”
       Most of the articles mentioned that Harpending and a co-author got into trouble after a previous study claimed that intelligence evolved more in one group than another.  This time, he stressed, the genetic differences between people groups “cannot be used to justify discrimination.  Rights in the Constitution aren’t predicated on utter equality.  People have rights and should have opportunities whatever their group.”
       This may be a hard sell, however, since the Constitution assumed that natural rights come from God.  In the Declaration of Independence (signed by the same group of authors) they had said it was self-evident that all men are equal and endowed by their Creator with inalienable rights.  The signers understood that the equality spoken of was not genetic or physical.  Equality was based on the spiritual and moral values of equality before God, leading to equal opportunity and equality before the law.  Can these rights come from an evolutionary process that is driving human races apart?
       It was not just creationists finding cause for worry in Harpending’s claims.  The article states that the study “generated fears such research will undermine the principle of human equality and justify racism and discrimination.  Other critics question the quality of the science and argue culture plays a bigger role than genetics.”  These fears came from the scientific community.
3. Moral equivalence:  It is common in evolutionary literature to ascribe all moral qualities to blind evolutionary processes.  As one example, an article in Science October 26 considered war as the flipside of altruism.²  Holly Arrow wrote that “altruism flourishes only in the company of outgroup hostility (parochialism), with war as both the engine of this coevolutionary process and its legacy.”    Though Ms. Arrow clearly favored keeping the “sharp end of altruism” (war) in its sheath, would-be tyrants may not apply the law of Darwinism so peacefully.  Within this view, it would seem trivial for a dictator to justify war – as some indeed did – as an altruistic act for the good of the fatherland, consistent with the principles of Darwinism.

We repeat: don’t think for a minute that the evils of Darwinian philosophy were exhausted in the extermination camps, gulags and killing fields of the 20th century.  Evolutionary ethics are like demons that must be locked in the abyss lest they once again unleash death upon the world.  Their ambassadors know the language of diplomacy and talk peace – until they gain enough power to overcome the guardians of the keys.
Next headline on:  Darwinism • Politics and Ethics

The chemical sense of insects has evolved to encode and classify odorants.  Thus, the neural circuits in their olfactory system are likely to implement an efficient method for coding, processing, and classifying chemical information.  Here, we describe a computational method to process molecular representations and classify molecules.  The three-step approach mimics neurocomputational principles observed in olfactory systems.  In the first step, the original stimulus space is sampled by “virtual receptors,” which are chemotopically arranged by a self-organizing map.  In the second step, the signals from the virtual receptors are decorrelated via correlation-based lateral inhibition.  Finally, in the third step, olfactory scent perception is modeled by a machine learning classifier.  We found that signal decorrelation during the second stage significantly increases the accuracy of odorant classification.  Moreover, our results suggest that the proposed signal transform is capable of dimensionality reduction and is more robust against overdetermined representations than principal component scores.  Our olfaction-inspired method was successfully applied to predicting bioactivities of pharmaceutically active compounds with high accuracy.  It represents a way to efficiently connect chemical structure with biological activity space.

If we can pardon the researchers’ logical blunder in thinking that evolution could be expected to produce an efficient method for anything, this is quite a good example of biomimetics in action.  Biomimetics looks for efficient design and tries to imitate it.  This is design science, not evolution.  These scientists saw an effective algorithm in an insect classification system, and by plagiarizing it, achieved a high degree of accuracy.
    Insects, of course, have no noses; their olfactory sense is located on their antennae.  An insect antenna has to be able to map a huge number of chemical signals to the brain.  The way it does it is clever and mind-boggling.  It is well worth revisiting the Laurent article, if you can disregard the foul odor of evolutionary assumptions here and there.
Next headline on:  Terrestrial Zoology • Biomimetics

Will Adult Stem Cells Cure Sickle Cell Anemia?   12/09/2007    
It’s been just weeks since two labs announced success harvesting pluripotent stem cells from skin cells (11/20/2007), and already beneficial applications are in sight.  Science Daily and Live Science reported on initial tests that show the new “induced pluripotent stem cells” offer hope for millions afflicted with sickle-cell anemia.  Though it’s too early to tell if the technique will work on humans, it appears to work in mice.  If these ethically-acceptable cells are able to correct this well-characterized genetic mutation, perhaps miracle treatments for other genetic conditions are waiting in the wings.
    A panel on Fox News reported Saturday that this new stem-cell methodology renders embryonic stem cells obsolete and thus puts the ethical controversy about stem cells behind us.  No one on the panel disagreed.

For an engaging read about the sickle-cell mutation, and how it provides some resistance to malaria, read Michael Behe’s new book, The Edge of Evolution (see description at Access Research Network and Behe’s Amazon blog where he battles his critics.)
    Evolutionists have used malarial resistance via sickle-cell trait as one of their leading examples of natural selection in action.  Dr. Behe does not disagree that it is a prime example of a Darwinian process, but uses it to show that what can be achieved by it is extremely limited.  The evolutionary “arms race” between the malarial parasite and its hosts, he illustrates in detail, does not lead to higher levels of organization.  It is more like trench warfare, in which opposing armies will tolerate huge casualties in order to survive.
Next headline on:  Health • Cell Biology (also next entry) • Genetics • Politics and Ethics

Even though the images are static, our results support the hypothesis that desmosomal cadherins on the cell surface are first clustered into small groups interacting through specific residues in the EC1 domains to form cis homodimers.  The opposing cell membranes are then brought in close proximity to enable the formation of the trans homodimers, which relies on Trp 2 and the hydrophobic pocket together with residues involved in molecular specificity.  Once the initial recognition is established, more molecules are brought to the contact zone, thus compacting the junction.  This compaction process is regularized by building blocks of alternate cis and trans dimers so that the strength of cell-cell contact is homogeneous.  These processes are repeated to extend the junction and finally form the fully mature desmosome.

There’s more going on in your outer layer than you can possibly imagine.  The beauty of biological organization is not just skin deep.  Skin deep is only where it starts.  And realize that the skin tissue itself is the easy part; skin is also filled with sensors, communication channels and other wonders that bear witness to wise planning and intelligent organization.  That’s why these scientists, like many others reporting on real lab work, seemed to have no need or use for evolutionary explanations.
Next headline on:  Human Body • Amazing Facts

For years scientists have wrestled with a puzzling fact: The universe appears to be remarkably suited for life.  Its physical properties are finely tuned to permit our existence.  Stars, planets and the kind of sticky chemistry that produces fish, ferns and folks wouldn’t be possible if some of the cosmic constants were only slightly different.

Realistic SETI researchers don’t expect to have two-way communication with aliens.  They understand that any message detected will have come from a civilization that has either become extinct or has gone on to bigger and better things than to care about an answer from us.  The dream of SETI is to establish the existence of aliens, not, like Jimmy Carter wrote on the Voyager record, to “join a community of galactic civilizations.”
    It was nice of Seth to admit the fine-tuning of the universe.  He can say that and keep his job, but let an ID person say the same thing and he gets expelled, as in the case of G. Gonzalez (see Evolution News #1 and Fox News).
Next headline on:  SETI • Cosmology • Physics

Origin of Life: Food for Queazy Thought   12/06/2007    
New theories of the origin of life seem to come and go like fashion trends.  A biochemist at University of California at Santa Barbara (Helen Hansma) put out a new plot line about biomolecules forming between the protective flakes of mica.  This was all Dave Mosher at Live Science (see reprint on MSNBC) needed to tease the reader’s taste buds:

Soup and pizza couldn’t explain the origins of life, so a researcher built a sandwich of an idea instead.
    The new hypothesis describes how flaky layers of the mineral mica could have created the perfect conditions to jump-start the formation of molecules necessary for life....

“Mica is like a massive sandwich with millions of layers of mineral sheets, which would be the bread,” Hansma said.  “The nooks and crannies between the bread may have jump-started the formation of life’s chemicals and protected them.  It’s like a giant potluck of chemistry.”
    This story was echoed by National Geographic News and

Origin-of-life researchers occasionally raise another plot line up the flagpole to see if anyone salutes.  It’s only a way of distracting the public into thinking progress is being made.  All the old criticisms still apply, and some new ones, also.
    Hansma “cautioned that significant work lies ahead” (job security for storytellers) “before she can make the hypothesis appetizing to other scientists.”  This will take awhile, since many first have to recover from severe indigestion jump-started by the thought of pizza, soup and a giant potluck of chemistry in a mica-bread sandwich.
Next headline on:  Origin of Life • Dumb Ideas

Such dusty disks are where planets are thought to be born.  Dust grains clump together like snowballs to form larger rocks, and then the bigger rocks collide to form the cores of planets.  When rocks revolve around their central star, they act like cosmic vacuum cleaners, picking up all the gas and dust in their path and creating gaps.

Making planets is tricky, and probably takes several stages.  First, tiny interstellar grains must accrete into mountain-sized objects massive enough to decouple from their cocoon of nebula gas.  These objects probably then combine in collisions, growing ever larger, past asteroid-sized planetesimals and lunar-sized embryos, to full-blown planets.  How the first stage of this process, primary accretion, works is a fundamental unsolved problem of planetary science.

The answer could be that some combination of processes, each selecting a different particle size, acts simultaneously or sequentially, possibly in turbulent conditions.  (Of course, the mechanism by which turbulence is maintained remains uncertain.)  Whatever the final answer turns out to be, the results of Johansen and colleagues indicate that future efforts devoted to developing more complex models of the interactions between particles and gas in the protoplanetary nebula will be a good investment.

However, care should be taken in applying these results directly to collisions in protoplanetary disks.  Only a single collision of a weak body with a particle several mm in size at about 10 m/s would be enough to change this body substantially.  The given collisions will therefore not be typical ones.  The consequence of the erosion found in these experiments is not that growth of larger bodies is impossible but that objects of the kind studied cannot grow larger than a few cm without being at least partially compacted.

Further experiments on this are needed but if we speculate that morphologies comparable to our weak dust granule targets would need to be present for aggregates built from indestructible chondrules then growth to larger bodies in a reservoir dominated by sub-mm chondrules is not possible at velocities of a few m/s.  Therefore, if such a distribution of chondrules existed, for all or only certain classes of chondrites, during any phase of protoplanetary evolution, they probably do not grow by mutual collisions.  At some time the chondrules would need to be incorporated into larger objects otherwise, e.g., by being accreted by existing planetesimals.

We have shown you once again a stark contrast between the bluffing that goes on in the news media and the hard realities of experimental science.  Some may find it sufficient to believe that this all works somehow, because clearly planets exist, even around other stars.  But to think that science understands planet formation by natural processes, and that experimental science proves it, is a bad example of glittering generalities.  A step toward true understanding requires some examination of the nitty gritty details behind such claims.
Next headline on:  Solar System • Physics • Stars

Many scientists contend that the simultaneous reappearance of so many Lazarus taxa indicates that the fossil record from that era can’t be trusted, says [Margaret] Fraiser [U of Michigan–Milwaukee].  Others suggest that the missing creatures simply became so rare that they weren’t captured in the fossil record.  Yet others propose that the creatures survived only in small areas and that their fossils haven’t yet been discovered.

This is not science; it is religion masquerading as science.  They did not even consider the possibility that living fossils falsify long ages and evolutionary theory.  But if they want to play the “absence of evidence is not evidence of absence” game, creationists can, too.  If an evolutionist asks you to show you a Precambrian rabbit or Silurian human, show them this story.  Of course, we know what the Darwin Party would do if they did find a Precambrian rabbit: they would say, “Well, what do you know?  We were wrong!  This rock isn’t Precambrian, it’s Pleistocene!” (cf. 09/19/2007).  Have faith, brother, and you will see miracles: Lazarus species rising from the dead.
Next headline on:  Fossils • Evolution

Active Moons Challenge Old-Age Beliefs   12/03/2007    
Beyond the asteroid belt, where sunlight is weak, small bodies that should be old and cold seem young and active.  Here are some recent papers and reports about some of the moons around the gas giants showing more signs of vitality than expected for bodies assumed to be billions of years old.

• Jupiter’s Io: Astronomers at the Keck Observatory in Hawaii detected a big outburst of the Tvashtar volcano on Io.  Reported in Icarus,^1a, the eruption lasted over a month from April to June 2006.  The temperature extended over 60 square kilometers and emitted 7.7 trillion watts.  The authors noted the activity at Tvashtar seen by the New Horizons spacecraft in February this year (10/15/2007), but could not say if it was a continuation of the eruption they observed.
      Another paper in Icarus found plumes near Pele.^1b  Using the Hubble Space Telescope, a team detected sulfur and sulfur dioxide plumes in February 2003, March 2003 and January 2004.  These plumes showed dramatic variability over a matter of days and weeks.  Additional plumes were detected at other locations.
      Another paper in Icarus recalculated the heat output of Io’s volcanoes downward.²  This somewhat mitigates the problem of explaining the anomalously high temperatures measured, but still shows that, within error, Io’s heat output is right at the edge of what can be explained by theory – 1340K measured, 1300K theoretical.  Even so, getting the hot lava out in a 20-30% liquid crust while keeping the mountains up presents other theoretical problems.  The authors said that it is still possible the lavas are ultramafic (see “Io, Io, It’s Off to Work I Go,” 05/04/2004).  Whether or not the heat output can fit tidal flexing models, “Io has a staggering rate of volcanism,” they said.  “...if the observed heat loss were all provided by mafic lavas, ~500 km³ would have to be erupted each year (Blaney et al., 1995) compared to ~4 km³ per year for the Earth.”
  

  Note this admission: “if there were no efficient means of recycling the crust into the mantle, we would actually see only relatively low temperature silicate volcanism on Io.”  Models of Io’s interior, therefore, include the recycling assumption: “The fact that eruption temperatures in excess of 1100 °C are observed requires that there be an efficient recycling mechanism and that there is limited differentiation between the crust and mantle.”  This requirement comes from the assumption that Io is 4.5 billion years old.

• Jupiter’s Europa:  A paper in Icarus about Europa this month,³ though focused primarily on its magnetic interactions with Jupiter, repeated the well-known evidence of the moon’s youthfulness:

  Galileo measurements of Europa’s gravitational field and modeling show Europa to be a differentiated satellite consisting of a metallic core, a silicate mantle and a water ice–liquid outer shell.  The minimum water ice–liquid outer shell thickness is about 80 km for plausible mantle densities (Anderson et al., 1998).  High resolution data obtained with the Solid State Imaging (SSI) system show evidence of a young and thin, cracked and ruptured ice shell (e.g., [Belton et al., 1996] and [Carr et al., 1998]).  The geological observations imply that warm, convecting material existed at shallow depths within the subsurface at the time of its recent geological deformation.

  A dazzling montage of Europa, reprocessed from Galileo images, was posted on Astronomy Picture of the Day for December 2.
• Saturn’s Titan:  A range of mountains on Saturn’s largest moon Titan was discovered by radar imaging in 2005.  This month in Icarus,⁴ Cassini scientists analyzed this feature which stands out from the rest of the moon’s mostly gentle terrain.  As with the Appalachians on earth, they said “erosion seems to act fast enough (or mountain-building slow enough) to preclude the formation of abundant features taller than a few hundred meters.”  They estimated the age of the range at 20 to 100 million years old maximum – which would be less than 1/40 the assumed age of the moon.  “This is short for planetary geological timescales, and further corroborates the conclusion from the dearth of impact craters [refs] that the surface overall is less than a billion years old.”  These figures should be understood as upper limits.
• Saturn’s Enceladus:  The geyser moon of Saturn got another write-up in Icarus this month.⁵  This time, however, the focus was not on the plumes at the south pole, but on the wrinkles and ridges near the equator.  The ridges appear to be up to 400m high and 3-4 km apart.  This area may lack the tiger stripes and eruptions of the south polar terrain, but has been active recently as well: there are “extensive sets of parallel, north–south trending ridges and troughs occur within the planitiae themselves, and evidence for resurfacing and extensional tectonics abounds.”
      Models of fracturing caused by unstable extension (stretching) of the crust are 2 to 3 times too low to account for the observed ridges.  Perhaps some other process amplified the stretching.  Because Jupiter’s moon Ganymede is more massive, the grooves on that moon are even harder to explain, they said.
      The tremendous range of ages of surface features on Enceladus led the scientists to begin their paper with an obvious but astonishing statement: “Saturn’s moon Enceladus is one of the great enigmas of the outer Solar System.”
• Neptune’s Triton:  One would think the farther out you go from the sun, the colder it gets, and, therefore, the more quiescent.  That is surely not the case at Neptune, which has some of the strongest winds, and for its moon Triton, another aging body sporting a young physique.  “Triton’s geological complexity ranks with Europa and Titan,” said another paper in Icarus this month that claimed the moon Triton has a “negligible surface age.”⁶
      All the impact craters on Triton cluster on the leading hemisphere, suggesting a pummeling from objects in orbit around Neptune.  None of the craters appear to have come from outside the system.  The authors put an upper limit of 50 million years on the heavily cratered leading hemisphere, and 6 million years on the Neptune-facing “cantaloupe terrain” observed by Voyager 2 in 1989.  This would be negligible indeed – about 1/10 of 1% of the assumed age of the solar system.
      The authors considered whether the young-looking terrain was resurfaced because of the cratering or other factors in the past, and ruled them out.  “no matter what, Triton has to have actively resurfaced on a time scale short compared to its age,” they said.  Obviously, “From the perspective of Triton’s thermal history, there is little distinction between a world that remains active for 4.0 billion years and a world that remains active for 4.5 billion years.”  The resurfacing rate on Triton has probably been high for a long time, they judged.  In fact, “Our results push Triton’s surface to even younger, perhaps negligible, ages.  If we accept the hypothesis that most of Triton’s large craters are not heliocentric [i.e., not caused by interlopers from all angles], then the surface may be significantly younger than Europa’s.  The consensus is that Triton’s surface is very young, and therefore is probably geologically active today.”

As if this weren’t enough, there is recent evidence that Pluto, Charon and some of the Kuiper Belt objects and minor planets at the farthest reaches of the solar system also show activity on their surfaces.
    CEH is one of very few websites reporting the latest papers from leading scientific journals with a critical analysis of their evolutionary implications.  TV documentaries and textbooks rarely mention these very serious problems with standard theories of the solar system.  You have just seen that the best planetary scientists in the world, constrained within their chosen billions-of-years mindset, have many questions and few answers.  We hope you find this liberating.
Next headline on:  Solar System • Dating Methods • Physics

Evolutionary paleontologists know that creationists are going to beat them over the head with any discovery of preserved soft tissue and biomolecules, so one has to wonder how hesitant they are to reveal what they find.  Hopefully, the excitement of a such a find, and the value of scientific objectivity, will prevent a cover-up.  Such news would deal a severe blow to the belief these specimens are 65+ million years old, and once confidence in millions of years is shattered, the whole evolutionary tree will be undermined with it.
    Think of how long the Darwin Party has been feeding the public the assumption of long ages.  They know the public is going to find it hard to swallow the line that soft tissue and DNA or proteins could lie undisturbed for tens of millions of years.  With so much at stake, and the cult of Darwin vulnerable to a mass exodus, will they tell the whole truth?  It may take creationist expeditions to do original research in this area to get the facts out.  They will need to provide unimpeachable documentation and technical rigor to rule out any claims of contamination.  Let’s wait and see what the peer-reviewed paper says.  Creationists do not stand to lose face if soft tissue is not found, because it is tenuous stuff (even for burials of known age).  But if it is found, it would be much more plausible to believe it has been preserved for thousands of years, not tens of millions.
    National Geographic, as expected, spun the collagen story into an argument for dinosaurs being related to birds.  But what is the common answer to the question “What does it taste like?” when your friend is offered filet of snake, frog legs or unidentified Chinese mystery meat?  Answer: “It tastes like chicken.”  Undoubtedly, hadrosaur tastes like chicken, too.  That doesn’t mean a chicken is a frog, snake, or hadrosaur.  Similarities do not prove common ancestry, but the fact that our shared biochemistry allows us to consume molecules from a variety of animals indicates common design.
Next headline on:  Dinosaurs • Fossils • Dating Methods

1. Protective sleeve:  One method of getting valid cargo through the membrane gate is to wrap it in a protective sleeve that the gate recognizes.  PhysOrg has an illustration from the work of a team at Purdue showing how this works.  What comes to mind is a personal subway capsule that shuttles you to an escalator that transfers you safely into a shopping mall without any intruders getting past.
2. Electronic gating:  Ions are electrically-charged atoms whose concentration in the cell must be strictly controlled.  Compared to the large molecules of the cell, ions of potassium, chlorine and sodium are tiny.  Special voltage-sensing gates exist just for them.  We reported here on early results from work by Roderick MacKinnon into the structure and function of these ionic gates (see 01/17/2002, 05/29/2002, 05/01/2003, 08/05/2005).
       The November issue of The Scientist describes ongoing discoveries about one of these voltage-gated channels, the Kv potassium channel.  This electronic mechanism contains a pore, a gate and a voltage sensor.  In particular, a key helix protein component called S4 undergoes a conformational change to open the gate for the potassium ion.  People who enjoy exercise may want to reflect that all nerve and muscle activity depends on the proper control of these ions.
3. Nuclear power plant security:  For those wanting to follow up on news about the nucleus, and how it controls the cargo going in and out (see last month’s entry, 11/13/2007, bullet #2), the crew of your nuclear power plant made the cover of Science this week.  Laura Trinkle-Mulcahy and Angus I. Lamond reviewed the latest work to get high-resolution images of the complex structures and functions of the nuclear membrane, especially the gates of the nuclear pore complex (NPC).¹
       Four other articles in the 11/30 issue describe the latest findings about the cell nucleus.  A paper by 3 Vanderbilt University scientists specifically addresses the factors involved in crossing the nuclear envelope through the NPC gates.²  For those wanting more information about the sensing mechanism, their article contained color diagrams of the structures.  The scientists explained how the gates are regulated at multiple levels – a philosophy common in national security and computer security, too.  The “dynamic and diverse” mechanisms control what passes at the gate level, the transport receptor level, and the cargo level.  In computer parlance, this might be analogous to requiring a fingerprint, a secure computer, and secure software before you are allowed to login.
       Another paper in the same issue of Science describes science’s growing realization that the nuclear membrane does far more than let things in and out.³  It is actively involved in cell division, structuring the cytoskeleton, and signaling other processes in the cell.  The nuclear envelope is also connected to the endoplasmic reticulum, a structure essential for post-translational modification of proteins.  The authors did not mention how these elaborate mechanisms might have evolved, except to say twice that they raise “intriguing questions” and “fundamental questions” about “evolutionary relations” between the parts.  The other two papers did not mention evolution at all.
4. ER: emergency room or endoplasmic reticulum:  Speaking of the endoplasmic reticulum (a kind of subway system within the cell), Nature reported studies about the transport channels in that organelle.⁴  “A decisive step in the biosynthesis of many proteins is their partial or complete translocation across the eukaryotic endoplasmic reticulum membrane or the prokaryotic plasma membrane,” began Tom Rapoport (Howard Hughes Medical Institute, Harvard).  “Most of these proteins are translocated through a protein-conducting channel that is formed by a conserved, heterotrimeric membrane-protein complex, the Sec61 or SecY complex.”
       Polypeptides are the pre-protein strings of amino acids emerging from ribosomes, where the translation from RNA occurs.  Getting a wobbly chain of molecules through a pore is somewhat akin to threading a needle.  Depending on what the cargo binds to, it may get in by one of several ways: the ribosome may simply attach to and inject the nascent polypeptide into the channel, an ER chaperone might pump it in by a ratcheting mechanism, or a molecular machine running on ATP might push the polypeptide through.  These are all regulated by a host of assisting proteins that keep in touch through signaling mechanisms.  There’s even a plug that closes the channel after the polypeptide is inside.
       Rapoport provided a diagram of the complicated-looking translocation channel, which is made up of three different protein parts.  He called it conserved (unevolved) between all three kingdoms of life, but did not say anything else about evolution – certainly, not anything about how it arose in the first place.
5. Light sensitive:  Imagine a receptor on a cell membrane that can respond to one photon of light, and send a signal into the interior.  You don’t have to imagine it: it already exists.  Rama Ranganathan in Science described the family of G-protein coupled receptors (GPCR) that “occur in nearly every eukaryotic cell and can sense photons, cations, small molecules, peptides, and proteins.”⁵  How do they do it?  The structures of these receptors are just beginning to come to light, and basic models are being formulated.  Stay tuned.

The evolutionary speculations in Nature provided nothing to the real scientific work in these papers.  They did not help determine the structure, function or dynamics of any of the transport mechanisms.  They were mere after-the-fact pipe dreams about how Charlie might be vindicated with a hefty dose of LSD (Let’s Support Darwin).
    Gene duplication is pitifully incapable of explaining how functional information got into either clathrin-coated endocytosis or nuclear pore transport.  A motorcycle and a diesel train have some similarities, too; they both have wheels that rotate and are powered by fuels that have some similarities (hydrocarbons).  So what?  You can duplicate as many motorcycles as you want, for eternity, and will never get a bullet train.  Even if you allow the duplicate motorcycle unlimited free mutations, will that help?  Try breaking things at random on the motorcycle and see if you make progress toward train technology.  Darwinian evolution is blind, remember.  It has no foresight.  It is not trying to work toward traindom.  Unless each mistake provides some advantage for the here and now, the only likely result is that repeated mutations will leave you stranded on the highway bumming a ride.
    Sorry we had to waste time on evolution.  The focus of this story should be on the amazing mechanisms of the cell, and how modern science is slowly pulling back the cover on the package so we can all, with the fascination of kids at Christmas, look inside and see the words LION-EL.*
Next headline on:  Cell Biology • Evolution • Amazing Facts

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*Lion, Revelation 5; El, Genesis 33:20, short of Elohim, the Creator God.

Wilson Duo Resurrects Darwin’s Taboo   12/01/2007    
Group selection (sociobiology) has long been a taboo subject, but now its time has come.  This is what an article on EurekAlert claims.  E. O. Wilson and David Sloan Wilson are on a new campaign to promote group selection.
    The two Wilsons called for a new consensus on sociobiology in The Quarterly Review of Biology, 136 years after Darwin suggested in 1871 that morality might evolve in groups (The Descent of Man).  A little historical background tells what happened next:

Wilson and Wilson trace much of the confusion in the field to the 1960’s, when most evolutionists rejected “for the good of the group” thinking and insisted that all adaptations must be explained in terms of individual self-interest.  In an even more reductionistic move, genes were called “the fundamental unit of selection,” as if this was an argument against group selection.  Scientific dogma became entrenched in popular culture with the publication of Richard Dawkins’ The Selfish Gene (1976).  Although evidence in favor of group selection began accumulating almost immediately after its rejection, its taboo status prevented a systematic re-evaluation of the field until now.

Based on current theory and evidence, Wilson and Wilson show that natural selection is unequivocally a multilevel process, as Darwin originally envisioned, and that adaptations can evolve at all levels of the biological hierarchy, from genes to ecosystems.  They conclude with a rallying cry that paraphrases Rabbi Hillel: “Selfishness beats altruism within groups.  Altruistic groups beat selfish groups.  Everything else is commentary,” Wilson and Wilson free sociobiology to once again pursue all lines of inquiry within its discipline.

OK, George, get the posse and round up these mavericks.  They’re getting out of line again (05/31/2004).
    Ever since Darwin welcomed imagination and storytelling into science, it has caused a bit of consternation among his disciples.  Sometimes Father Charlie would just make a suggestion here or there without really developing it.  This has allowed all the competing cults to find quotes from The Mosstuh to justify their versions of Darwinism, as if they alone are the faithful ones.
    E. O. Wilson, the former fundamentalist kid turned creation-hating atheist (see New Scientist), loves selfishness so much, he wants to promote it throughout the entire hierarchy of existence.  David Sloan Wilson, the publicist, will be sure to spread this new gospel of selfishness in “Evolution for Everyone” (05/31/2007, 11/01/2005).  Selfishness for Everyone!  Preach it, brother!  If Wilson & Wilson get their way, this will be the rallying cry for Darwin Day 2008.  Greater hate hath no man, than a man exalt himself over his friend.
    Since we now know that the Wilson Boys promote selfishness as the highest good, we can ignore everything they say, can’t we?  After all, they don’t care about what is good, true or beautiful.  They’re just in it for themselves.
Next headline on:  Darwin and Evolution

“Flowering plants today comprise around 400,000 species,” said Pam Soltis.  “So to think that the burst that give [sic] rise to almost all of these plants occurred in less than 5 million years is pretty amazing -- especially when you consider that flowering plants as a group have been around for at least 130 million years.”
   Robert Jansen, professor of integrative biology at The University of Texas at Austin, said the two papers set the stage for all future comparative studies of flowering plants.
    “If you are interested in understanding the evolution of flowering plants, you can’t do that unless you understand their relationships,” he said.
    Botanists predating Darwin have long recognized that flowering plants, which comprise at least 60 percent of all green plant species, diversified abruptly shortly after they appeared.
    “The details, and especially the cause of, this diversification -- Darwin’s “abominable mystery” -- has been a hot topic in botany ever since.
    “One of the reasons why it’s been hard to understand evolutionary relationships among the major groups of flowering plants is because they diversified over such a short time frame,” Jansen said.

Boring.  Same cop-out for 160 years.  They see creation, and call it evolution.  The only mystery here is why they get away with it.
Next headline on:  Plants • Genetics • Darwin and Evolution