Where has Kate McDonald been?  Where has she been getting her information about creationism and intelligent design?  Certainly not here; we have a string of articles from 2000 to the present revealing that severe challenges to “eye evolution” show no signs of abating (see, for instance, as recently as 03/31/2008 and its embedded links to earlier entries; also 07/17/2006, 05/22/2003).  Every time the Darwinists have tried to blind the public by bluffing about the evolution of vision we have poked them right back in the proverbial eye with the facts (e.g., 12/13/2007, 09/29/2006, 09/22/2005).  If McDonald thinks the debate has gotten quiet on the creationist side she’s got fingers in her ears as well as her eyes closed.
    Anyone who thinks this latest manufactured five-stage fictional plot about how eyes evolved has any credibility should notice that the Gustaffson et al paper made the story come apart in the middle.  Our watchful eyes don’t let evolutionists get away with bluffing.
Next headline on:  Marine Biology • Human Body • Intelligent Design • Evolution

1. Ham radio immunity:  What acts like a radio dial, a signal amplifier, and a precision rheostat?  Your immune system, according to Science Daily.  Scientists at St. Jude Children’s Research Hospital described how the cell controls its T cells.  They don’t just use simple on-and-off switching.  “Rather, they possess sophisticated molecular controls that enable them to adjust their function with exquisite precision,” the article says.  “Such subtle adjustment enables T cells to modulate their development and function, including avoiding autoimmunity.”  It’s all done with genes and proteins and other molecules.  How cool is that?  It’s wireless.
2. Dim the lights:  A plant leaf has to deal with a wide range of light, from darkness to overcast to overpowering noonday sun.  To avoid sunburn, reported Science Daily, it has a dimmer switch.  A multi-disciplinary team of scientists identified pigment-binding protein CP29 as the “antenna” (there’s another one of those electronics terms) that squelches the photosynthesis engines when too much light is coming in.  Like a lightning rod, it safely channels the energy down other pathways so that the “light harvesting machinery” is not overwhelmed.  Actually, there is triple redundancy built in, so that no one protein becomes a single point of failure.  The reactions take place in the timescale of a femtosecond (a millionth of a billionth of a second).
       The article explained another reason why scientists are keen to understand how a plant cell does this.  Plants achieve an astonishingly high efficiency – 97% – in the conversion of light energy to chemical energy.  Part of that is due to the chloroplast’s ability to quickly fine-tune the available light, even when clouds are passing overhead.  If electronics engineers could mimic that, energy-hungry humans could have a bright future: “This discovery holds important implications for the future design of artificial photosynthesis systems that could provide the world with a sustainable and secure source of energy.”

Where did the cell earn its electrical engineering degree?  From the University of Chance?
    None of these articles mentioned evolution or had any use for it.  Engineers, come on in.  Science labs are hiring.  There will be a lot of room after the Darwin Party deadbeats move out with their 19th-century hangovers.  Check out the new Biologic Institute that employs the intelligent design approach explicitly, the way the above stories do implicitly.  Bio-logic.  Get it?
Next headline on:  Cell Biology • Plants • Biomimetics • Amazing Facts

Darwinist Intolerance Continues Unabated after Expelled   05/12/2008    
May 12, 2008 — Ben Stein’s documentary Expelled: No Intelligence Allowed has ranked #12 in documentaries after 3 weeks.  It could easily rank much higher after the DVD comes out.  Has the scientific community shown any signs of remorse over their treatment of individuals and groups who question Darwinism, as illustrated in the film?

1. ICR expelled:  On April 24, a week after Expelled hit the theaters, the Texas State Board of Education denied the Institute for Creation Research (ICR) the right to grant graduate degrees in the State.  ICR, a privately-funded organization, had been granting Master’s degrees in California for 27 years.
       It appears that Commissioner Raymund Paredes made his recommendation to deny the authorization after consulting with an undisclosed group of educators in non-public meetings.  It also appears that ICR’s well-known creationist position, not the academic standards of its Graduate School, was the reason for the decision.
       ICR, which had been expecting easy approval based on a positive recommendation from the Site Evaluation Team in December (see ICR press release), considers this a clear case of viewpoint discrimination and an abridgement of their academic freedom.  Their statement includes a 371-page document that had been delivered to the Texas Higher Education Coordinating Board.  Even some of the most liberal supporters of intelligent design, who disapprove of young-earth creationism, have expressed alarm at the decision because of what it portends for any viewpoint deemed to lie outside the scientific consensus.
       Paredes may have been influenced by a negative editorial that appeared in Nature February 28.  The editorial revealed that concerted arm-twisting was going on behind the scenes: “High-powered scientists in Texas are already weighing in, asking board commissioner Raymund Paredes to deny accreditation,” it said, “And there are signs that the board is listening.”  The editorial called ICR’s creationist position “anti-scientific” even though its professors have PhDs from secular institutions.  It even accused the graduate school of dishonesty: “ICR has managed to con its way into the California educational system for decades.  Texas must not succumb as well.”  ICR has always been above board in its dealings with the states of California and Texas.  They never pressured anyone to succumb to anything.  They met all requirements and answered all questions.  This amounts to libel, but ICR was never given an opportunity to respond.
       Naturally, Nature was delighted in its April 30 issue with the denial decision.  They proudly quoted a compliant commissioner, who had learned his talking points well.  “Religious belief is not science,” Paredes said.  “Science and religious belief are surely reconcilable, but they are not the same thing.”
2. Context is key:  Nature took the following swipe at Ben Stein in its featurette Sidelines: Scribbles on the Margins of Science from May 7:

   “Love of God and compassion and empathy leads you to a very glorious place, and science leads you to killing people.”
   Ben Stein, star of anti-evolution movie Expelled, adds his sensible and rational voice to the science-versus-religion debate, during an evangelical webcast.

   Stein’s comment was a summary statement at the end of a long discussion about Nazi science, not science in general.  In the movie, Stein had made it clear he supported true science.  His investigation was about the intolerance of Darwinists, whose leading spokespersons (Richard Dawkins, P. Z. Myers, William Provine, E. O. Wilson) are atheists, toward intelligent design.  This out-of-context quote not only Nature’s complete denial of any culpability for fostering intolerance, but an attempt to tarnish the reputation of the whistleblower.
3. Freedom is slavery:  Scare tactics are often effective for avoiding rational discussion.  A news story in Science took on the difficult task of explaining why it is important to oppose academic freedom legislation.  Reporter Yudhijit Bhattacharjee set the tone of her investigation of Academic Freedom bills with a scary metaphor, “If creationism is a mutating virus, as many educators believe, then its latest guise is legislation to protect ’academic freedom.’”  The scare quotes imply a conspiracy is lurking.  Selling this line is a bit of an uphill battle, though.  She quoted Barbara Forrest, activist against the bill in Florida, saying “It has been difficult to rally opposition.”
       Casey Luskin at Evolution News pointed out that Science quoted no proponents of the bill – only opponents.  Bhattacharjee quoted evolution defender Eugenie Scott, for instance, claiming that Academic Freedom bills are essentially a “permission slip to teach creationism,” though there is nothing of the sort in the wording of the bills to suggest such a thing.  Luskin used it as an illustration of “checkpoints” outlined in Expelled that guarantee the party line goes unchallenged.
       Incidentally, the Academic Freedom bill in Florida, which had looked set to pass earlier, got defeated by procedural derailments rather than debate, reported Robert Crowther for Evolution News.
4. To revile or not to revile:  Science on May 9 printed a pair of letters on the subject of whether to be considerate of creationists.  (It should be noted that Darwinists lump creationism and intelligent design in the same category, despite volumes explaining the differences).  They were responding to an earlier article that told, somewhat sympathetically, the story of one young scientist’s “traumatic” journey from evangelical belief in creationism to evolutionism.
       Craig Stevens (Oklahoma State) could not stomach the sympathy.  “Science magazine is not the place to give even a hint of respectability to those who would deny the fundamental fact of evolution,” he said.  “There is too much at stake, for our children and our society, to give any credence to those promoting unscientific nonsense (creationism or intelligent design) and justifying irrational beliefs under the guise of religion.”
       Andrew Whipple, biologist at Taylor University, had a more conciliatory tone.  Based on his experience with students coming from a Biblical creationist background, he called for humility:

   We within the scientific community must continue to present the demonstrable evidence from the physical realm and clearly express how that evidence supports our current interpretations.  This effort is not served well at all by dogmatic pronouncements such as “Evolution is fact,” even if such statements are accurate.  Furthermore, for members of the scientific community to make theological statements in the name of science is philosophically illegitimate, and destructive in our truth-seeking efforts.  In this short essay, Science has published the only example I have read in the leading scientific literature that takes the time and effort to understand and express what really drives the concerns of the majority of evangelicals, and does so in a manner that respects the integrity of both the scientific endeavor and the integrity of the faith commitments within the evangelical community.
       Allow me to suggest that this serves as a call to us in the sciences to be more humble as we interact with the faith community.  We as scientists ought to be those most keenly aware of the tenuous and ever-changing nature of human knowledge, even as we build on that which has stood the test of time.  We ought to behave as though the faith community poses no threat to the integrity of science, just as the faith community ought to behave as though science poses no threat to the integrity of faith.... Let us all humbly seek for truth as we respect one another’s efforts to do so.

   Even in this conciliatory letter, however, Whipple still implied that evolution is a fact because it has stood the test of time, which implies the dubious proposition that time is a measure of scientific validity (see best-in-field fallacy).  He also drew an either-or distinction between the science community and the faith community.  This fails to identify the faith involved in evolutionary theories.  It also ignores the scientific evidence those with non-evolutionary theories employ in defense of their views.  What may be most noteworthy, however, is his observation that the article was the “only example I have read in the leading scientific literature that takes the time and effort to understand” the concerns of the majority of evangelicals in a respectful tone.
5. Beneath disdain:  CMI published a response to a campaign by the Geological Society of London to fight creationism.  (The quotes are from before the release of Expelled, but it is unlikely the film altered their attitude, based on condescending reviews in other pro-evolution journals.)  In an editorial from the January issue of their magazine Geoscientist, Ted Nield not only conflated Intelligent Design with Young-Earth Creationism, he looked for space in the dungeon below contempt to find words to express the depth of his disdain.  “Are Young Earth Creationists, Intelligent Designers and other adherents of long-exploded ideas even worth the expenditure of our contempt?” he asked.

Poor, lovable old Ben Stein.  Likeable, funny, common-sensical, soft-spoken, unflappable; a kinder, gentler celebrity one could hardly find, but now he has joined the Expelled.  His reputation will be forever tarnished as one of “them.”  All he wanted to do was open up the debate about Darwinism again.  Such an innocent quest.  In his droll, deadpan way, he interviewed the leading lights on both sides (and not a single young-earth creationist, by the way – those who have been so systematically marginalized that the mere mention of them brings a Pavlovian growl).  Ben never raised his voice.  His questions were the innocent, honest questions that a man on the street might ask.  In a country that values academic freedom, what is it about this issue that gets scientists so upset?.
    In each interview, Stein sat there meekly without interrupting.  He gave plenty of time for Dawkins, Myers and Ruse to explain what they meant.  His producers sent them the types of questions that would be asked, paid them for their time, got their permission to use the footage, and followed standard documentary protocol.  For this crime he has been viciously slandered by scientists and the secular media, who show absolutely no sense of remorse for their intolerance.  They continue to illustrate the very point of Expelled: question Darwin and your career is over.  If there is to be any revolution, any pressure to tear down the Berlin Wall that protects Darwinism from honest questions, it won’t be starting on the Darwin side.  If anything, they are building it higher and thicker.
    Are you shocked by this?  That academics, the ones historically the champions of academic freedom, have become some of its most vicious enemies?  That the very ones who should be models of civility and rational discourse turn into sneering, snarling Dobermans at the mere sound of intelligent design?  How could it be, when so many great scientists in history exalted the supreme architect of the universe in their work, and pointed to their admiration for God’s designs as motivation for doing science, that this could happen?  It does happen, and it happens elsewhere, too: the very institutions set up to solve the problem wind up making it worse.  Consider the following parallels.  Recognizing that there are exceptions in each case, charges have been made repeatedly by numerous commentators that the following institutions do the opposite of what they were designed to do.

• Labor unions: Initially motivated to address real issues of worker rights and safety, unions and their bosses are almost synonymous with corruption.  Workers refusing to join become targets of intimidation and physical violence.  States have had to pass Right to Work laws (imagine that!) to protect workers from the very unions that were designed to help them.  The unions, of course, spend their millions from the dues extracted by force from paychecks of common workers to lobby against such legislation, and routinely oppose any attempt to allow workers to designate whether they wish their dues to be spent on lobbying or not.
      To add insult to injury, labor unions pile on so much burden on corporations through exorbitant and unrealistic demands for pensions and benefits (enforced by threats of crippling strikes), they end up killing the goose that lays the golden egg – the employers who create jobs.  The high cost of employment causes companies to go out of business or look overseas.  Who loses?  The laborer.
• The National Education Association has been called the most useless bureaucracy in Washington.  One might think that it exists to help teachers and students.  Instead, like the teachers’ unions, it defends and protects a top-sided bureaucracy bloated with administrators and office workers.  Despite billions spent on education, student-teacher ratios continue to rise, test scores continue to plummet, American students continue to fall behind even many third-world countries, and some teachers have to spend their own money buying textbooks.  Who loses?  Public school students.  Private schools and home schools, without NEA help or government funding, at a fraction of the cost, graduate students that score substantially higher on average.
• The National Endowment for the Arts exists, one would think, to uphold high standards of art appreciation and taste, to reward those with true talent, and to promote expressions of artistic excellence that bring national pride.  How many new Mozarts or Raphaels can you name that thank this institution for their patronage?  By contrast, how many news reports have you heard about “controversial” government-funded displays of a crucifix in urine, or a dung-splattered Madonna, or “artistic” exhibits of pig parts in formaldehyde?
• Racial organizations:  Does any member of an ethnic minority really need an organization to speak for him?  That’s an interesting question itself, because it would certainly backfire if some ethnic groups tried it.  Regardless, certain black commentators (Bill Cosby, Thomas Sowell, Larry Elder, Juan Williams) have been pointing out for years that well-known black organizations and their high-profile leaders actually do more harm than good for black families.  This is because creating an atmosphere of crisis is essential to their ongoing leadership.  Actually solving problems would make them irrelevant.  So while fatherless families, drug abuse and dropout rates never seem to improve, certain high-profile black leaders literally scream about racism in America with half truths, stoking the fires of racist conflict that keep them in the spotlight and create a cycle of self-fulfilling prophecy.  Individuals who succeed and become integrated into the colorless society are accused of abandoning their roots; they are called awful names.  The concentration on black identity works to perpetuate the very segregation that early civil rights leaders worked so hard to eliminate.
• The United Nations is perhaps the most egregious example of an institution becoming its own nemesis.  What was the UN’s founding goal?  World peace: to have nations work out their differences by diplomacy rather than war.  There is arguably no war since its founding that the UN has successfully prevented, and oftentimes, it has made things worse.
      The same goes for its “humanitarian” causes.  The world has known about the Sudan genocide for years; millions have died, and the UN has done worse than nothing: reports of UN workers raping the people they were sent to help have been scandalous.  UN workers also stood idly by or fled during the Rwandan genocide.  The UN was irrelevant in Cambodia, or in Iraq, or in any communist or radical-Islamic country you can name.  The first relief workers on the ground after a disaster are usually privately funded Christian ministries like World Vision, Baptist World Alliance, Christian Freedom International and Gospel for Asia.  The UN is so inefficient with relief, it sends supplies locals cannot use (condoms to families who are starving), or the food rots on the tarmac, or it is delivered into the hands of corrupt dictators instead of the suffering people.  Imagine the craziness of sending relief to the Sudanese government, which uses it to buy weapons to attack Darfur!  Millions of Africans die from malaria but the UN opposes spraying to kill the mosquitos that carry it.  Millions die from AIDS but the UN opposes teaching people about the most effective prevention: abstinence.
      As for diplomacy, UN General Assembly meetings become soap boxes for the most radical countries to denounce the West.  Since there are so many of small-country dictatorships, any voices of reason from democratic countries are often drowned out.  The Security Council can never oppose totalitarian atrocities because one of the worst perpetrators, China, has veto power, as did communist Russia throughout the Cold War.  The UN’s inability to act is legendary.  Regardless of what you think about the Iraq war, President Bush’s coalition waited and waited for the UN to act on its own resolutions which mandated a military response to Saddam Hussein’s violations of UN rules.  Coalition leaders pleaded with the UN to act on its own promises.  The UN did nothing.
      Meanwhile, the magnitude of the scandals at the UN – oil-for-food being one of the worst in history – is breathtaking.  Does anything change?  Kofi Annan brought in Paul Volcker to investigate and propose reforms.  Volcker found that oil-for-food was not unique, but endemic to the UN’s practices.  He proposed sweeping reforms, including opportunities for outside audits.  None of them were passed.  After months of negotiations, the reforms were rejected by a margin of two to one!  Endemic corruption has thus been validated as official UN policy.
      The world is now teetering under the threat of a nuclear Iran and North Korea, but the UN is essentially irrelevant, if not obstructionist in countering the threat.  In sum, the greatest threat to world peace is now arguably the very institution chartered to safeguard it.
      For a depressing report on how bad things are in the UN, read an article by a man who knows, and who tried to fix it: former ambassador John Bolton.  Writing for Imprimis April 2008, he said that any hopes that the UN could offer world peace have been completely dashed – and he gave plenty of stark examples.

Yes, it is possible for institutions to become the worst enemies of the values they were created to protect.  Don’t be surprised to see the defenders of Big Science behaving badly.  When you see haughty, incorrigible, self-interested, dogmatic, irrational, corrupt, sneering hotheads claiming to speak for “science,” remember that other big institutions have called black white and white black.  Other institutions have paid off the torturers with funds designated to help prisoners.  Other institutions have poured gasoline on fires they were sent to quench, and killed the children they were sent to feed.  Is there a common denominator to these reversals of values?  As an exercise, check out how many are led by secular progressives embracing radical leftist ideology.  At a more basic level, try human depravity.  Give any depraved person or group power, and you know what power does.
    Each of the institutions listed above has some honest, hard-working individuals who don’t deserve the blame for what Headquarters is doing.  Some of them decry the abuses but work within the institution either due to lack of alternatives or from sincere hopes to bring reform from within.  A great many of the rank and file probably don’t even know what is going on.  They assume an institution with a nice sounding name is doing its job, and they try to do theirs the best they know how.
    Maybe that’s the point.  The best work is done by individuals.  Science began with individuals.  As an individual, you can make a difference.  As an individual, you can change the world. 
Next headline on:  Darwinism • Intelligent Design • Media • Education • Politics and Ethics

“For 30 years, the late-veneer hypothesis has been the dominant paradigm for understanding Earth’s early history, and our ultimate origins,” Humayun said.  “Now, with our latest research, we’re suggesting that the late-veneer hypothesis may not be the only way of explaining the presence of certain elements in the Earth’s crust and mantle.”

Everything secular astronomers, geologists and evolutionary biologists claim about the history of life on earth is tied into a complex web of belief – a phrase coined by philosopher of science William Van Orman Quine.  In Two Dogmas of Empiricism in 1951 (11 years before Thomas Kuhn brought “paradigm shift” into common parlance), Quine argued that scientists rarely abandon a web of belief in the face of falsifying data.  They absorb the blows by modifying the web of belief in other areas.  So will this announcement begin unraveling the web?  Unlikely.  The spiders are well trained at spinning repairs.
    Some might respond by questioning the relevance of experiments using equipment on the surface to conditions in the real mantle.  But what alternative experiment would a critic propose?  Digging a 300-mile deep hole and running experiments down there?
    The interior of the earth is a good example of a “scientific object” that can only be studied indirectly.  Seismic and gravitational measurements provide first-hand data on the core and mantle, but even that data must be interpreted within models of earth’s interior.  Models are both simplifications and extensions of empirical data; simplifications, because no model can take into account all possible relevant data; and extensions, because models make claims beyond what can be experimentally validated.
    These scientists were bold enough to test a key assumption in the web of belief.  They found it inconsistent.  They concluded, “the distribution of palladium and other siderophile elements in the Earth’s mantle can be explained by means other than millions of years of meteorite bombardment.”  Their results also imply that it didn’t require tens of millions of years for the siderophile elements to fall into the core.  That, in turn, implies what we find on the surface today could be primordial (i.e., present from the beginning).  If so, it has nothing to say about age.
    The ramifications could, indeed, be profound.  This could threaten assumptions about differentiation processes inside other planets and moons throughout the solar system, and, consequently, their ages.  It could undermine a major prop for a key explanatory tool – the so-called “late heavy bombardment” – invoked to map out ages of planetary surfaces and the presence of volatiles on earth (particularly, earth’s oceans and atmosphere).  That, in turn, leaves evolutionists hanging about conditions on the primordial earth for the origin of life.
    Secularists continue to absorb blows in their web of belief from all sides.  They make whatever adjustments to the web are necessary to hold onto their core values of naturalism and scientism.  Creationists, with different core values and a web of belief that does not exclude God, could perk up at this finding.  It’s another strand of empirical evidence that the earth was designed with its elements, atmosphere and oceans intact from the beginning – no long period of differentiation, no ad hoc rescuing device of a late heavy bombardment, and, of course, no primordial soup or special delivery of water by comets.  Some of them might point out, too, that appeals to millions of years are superfluous.
Next headline on:  Geology • Dating Methods • Origin of Life • Solar System

“I believe ... the explosion was driven by the onset of adult-adult interactions,” Marshall said.  “Maybe the evolution of jaws or a large enough gut, or the evolution of something like chitin so they could bite rather than just giving a nasty suck.”

Since no one else exposes the charlatans pretending to be scientists, do your part to get the word out about Creation-Evolution Headlines.  Marshall and the Darwinists have given the same song and dance we refuted two years ago.  Nothing has changed.  They are appealing to miracles, saying that the mere presence of opportunities prompts Evolution (capitalized, because it’s is essentially their deity, a tinkering goddess) to invent eyes, jointed appendages, digestive tracts, lungs, blood and all kinds of sensory organs.  Look at this nonsense: “it may have been something as simple as the evolution of jaws with toothlike projections that allowed the world’s first painful bite.”  Good grief; instant jaws and teeth.  Simple, isn’t it.  Two miracles, special order, coming right up.  Don’t bite; it’s painful all right.
    Another trick they try is to stretch out the timeline to make it sound less explosive.  But in fact, as we pointed out, no matter how long they try to make the Cambrian explosion period, every new animal appears abruptly in the record.  There are no pre-trilobites.  Trilobites appear fully formed with all their complex equipment already functioning.  They were actually more diverse at their first appearance than higher up in the rock layers (see 07/28/2007).  Same for echinoderms, worms, brachiopods, jellyfish, crustaceans, and all the rest.  Paleontologists do not see a progression at all no matter how many millions of years they want to add.  Everything just shows up fully formed from the get go.  Shouldn’t this be told to students?
    The upshot is that evolutionists are deceiving the public.  This one problem falsifies Darwin’s theory, but they tiptoe around and it make up fables to distract readers.  Meanwhile, when not ignoring the creationists entirely (whose view is supported by the fossil record), they harangue them as fundamentalist idiots who are “anti-science.”  No one in the news media takes them to task for this huge deceptive campaign.  Science Daily’s headline that the “Missing ancestors... may not be ‘missing’ after all” is one of the worst big lies ever seen on this subject in recent memory.  Who is being anti-science here?
    Creationists have been hounding the Darwinists about the Cambrian Explosion since the days of Darwin himself, who was well aware of it and called it the biggest objection that could be lodged against his theory.  Well, his disciples have had all this time and the problem has only gotten worse.  Any apologies?  Any show of sorrow?  Any humility?  Any consideration of alternatives?  Never.  When they aren’t dodging the issue, they make up preposterous fables about it.  And they pretend the critics don’t even exist.  Look at the article; there is not one mention of the criticisms of Darwinism.  Talk about a nasty suck.
    Where are you going to get straight talk on the breaking science news except here?  We are glad our readership has been climbing steadily, but there are still millions who need to know what’s going on in the Science Academy since the Darwin Party dictatorship took over.  If you respect real science and the search for truth based on the evidence, please help spread the word.  Our shortcut URL is simply crev.info: CR for creation, EV for evolution, INFO for information from an intelligent source.  That’s redundant on purpose: information always requires an intelligent source.  Deception does not.
Next headline on:  Fossil Record • Evolution

Platypus Genome Surprises Evolutionists   05/09/2008    
May 9, 2008 — Thanks to more efficient sequencing techniques, genomes of more and more animals are coming to light.  The latest is from one of the most unusual animals in nature: the duck-billed platypus of Australia.  The long and short of it: if evolutionists were confused about the phenotype (outward appearance) of this creature, they are just as confused by the genotype (the DNA).
    Nature,¹ which published the genome as its cover story, also printed a news summary with illustrations on its Nature News site.  Other science sites quickly printed articles about it but varied on their spin: New Scientist (“platypus genome is as weird as it looks”); Science Daily (“Platypus Genome Explains Animal’s Peculiar Features; Holds Clues To Evolution Of Mammals”); Live Science (“World’s Strangest Creature?  Part Mammal, Part Reptile”); and National Geographic (“Platypus Genome Reveals Secrets of Mammal Evolution”).  Science Daily began its coverage, “The duck-billed platypus: part bird, part reptile, part mammal – and the genome to prove it.”
    Among the oddities in the genes: the platypus has 52 chromosomes, including 10 sex chromosomes (but its X and Y are not sex chromosomes).  The animal has genes for lactation and egg-laying.  Scientists cannot seem to figure out whether it is closer to reptiles or to mammals.  Its webbed feet, duck bill, venomous spurs, electric sensory organ, fur, egg-laying and beaver tail make it an incongruous mosaic of features.  The first scientists to examine one thought it was a hoax, as if some practical-joking taxidermist sewed a duck bill on a beaver.
    The Nature article, while claiming that this new genome supports evolution, stated clearly that the confusion of traits in the platypus extends right down to the genetic level:

Since its initial description, the platypus has stood out as a species with a blend of reptilian and mammalian features, which is a characteristic that penetrates to the level of the genome sequence.  The density and distribution of repetitive sequence, for example, reflects this fact.  The high frequency of interspersed repeats in the platypus genome, although typical for mammalian genomes, is in contrast with the observed mean microsatellite coverage, which appears more reptilian.  Additionally, the correlation of parent-of-origin-specific expression patterns in regions of reduced interspersed repeats in the platypus suggests that the evolution of imprinting in therians is linked to the accumulation of repetitive elements.

It’s kind of funny to see the Darwinists squirm.  Do they really need to conjure up a mythical tree to hang this wonderful animal on?  Maybe that’s a very misguided quest for a scientist.  Why not just study the living animal and understand how it is put together, so we can learn some practical things that might improve our lives?  Did Galileo have to study the ancestry of the rocks he dropped from the tower?  Did Faraday have to ponder the ancestry of magnetism to build a motor and generator?  Did Carver have to ponder the phylogeny of the peanut to make 300 products with it?  What is this obsession with genealogies?  Are Darwinists in the worldview business perhaps?
    The Apostle Paul cautioned against “foolish disputes, genealogies, contentions, and strivings about the law; for they are unprofitable and useless” (Titus 3:9).  This does not say that scientific research into genomes is useless.  Deciphering genomes helps us understand how organisms function in the present.  Comparisons between animals also illuminates the way genomes produce adult animals that are adapted to various ecological niches.  The useless genealogies begin with questions about who begat whom.  Notice that we only observe live platypi (pardon the Greek).  We do not see them 112 million years ago.  (Fossils exist in the present, not in the past.)  Animals are what they are.  They have what they have.  They do what they do.  They do it well.  That’s about all that can be investigated with any confidence using the limited methods of science.  For information about unobservable prehistories, one needs a different source of information.
Exercise:  Defend or refute the proposition, “God created the platypus to confound evolutionary theories.”  Provide evidence to support your position.
Next headline on:  Mammals • Genetics

This is certainly better than the cartoony representations of Noah in a floating bathtub with elephant and giraffe heads sticking out the top.  The true Ark’s dimensions ranked with those of large ocean liners.  Anything that helps elucidate the actual story instead of mocking it like the BBC show in 2003 (03/10/2003) might help a jaded, secularized public think about Bible history more seriously.  Maybe this limited project will inspire someone to build a full-size model.  That would be a real stunner.  Better start soon; it might take 100 years. 
Next headline on:  Bible the Theology • Education

This story helps underscore the delicate balance in biochemistry and in ecology.  The mutations did not give Yersinia pestis a new function.  They took one away.  In an orderly ecology, this germ would have been harmless.  A motorcycle can usually drive around a park and interact with pedestrians safely.  Imagine what might happen when its brakes fail.
    One question this story does not answer is the problem of evil.  A religious person might be tempted to think this shows God did not create the bubonic plague—it was just a result of mutations to something that might have been originally beneficial.  Even if so, God could have stopped its horrific effects.  The proposal also doesn’t address many other devices in nature that appear designed to bring pain and suffering, like snake and spider venom.
    These are questions for theology, not science, unless you are content with the explanation that “stuff happens” and there is no hope or reason for anything.  If that is your choice, why even do science?  One could not have any assurance that human perception is in touch with reality.  Taking that path abandons all hope of understanding anything.
    If we were left to speculate about reasons for good and evil on our own, we would be no better off.  Speculations are a dime a dozen.  We would have no way of knowing whether Wise Man A has contact with ultimate reality any more than Wise Man B.  A revelation is needed from the only One who knows.  A revelation was provided.  It tells of an omnipotent and righteous Creator who provided a world for sentient beings that was perfect in harmony.  Sin changed it and brought judgment.  We live now in a cursed world in which we will all die, because the wages of sin is death.
    In a real sense, the question “whence plague?” is not far removed from “whence death?” by any means, including old age.  Death was foreign to the original creation.  God’s righteousness requires it.  Who is to stand up to the Judge of the universe and claim that one form of death is unjust over another?  From a human perspective, we walk in a booby-trapped world, not knowing when our time is up.  There is a blessing in this.  The Judge could have instituted capital punishment on mankind instantly.  Instead, He gives us time to experience the blessings of His goodness and the fear of His judgment, and time to make a choice.
    God, being omniscient, knows our frame and knows each person’s allotted time.  He has provided sufficient revelation for each individual to respond to Him (see natural revelation).  For those blessed with the full revelation of the Bible and Christ, the explanation is much richer – which is why the good news needs to be spread to all.  Could we have expected that God would show love to those deserving death?  And what amazing love He demonstrated!  The righteous Judge took our penalty of eternal death on Himself, in sending His Son to die in our place, so that we could be fully reconciled to Him.
    We can enjoy enough of the remnant beauty of the original creation to give Him thanks and worship Him.  Through our limited abilities in science, we can also seek to understand some of the hazards around us and disable them.  We can improve our health and increase our enjoyment in life.  This will only delay physical death, not eliminate it.  But the rest of the story is even better.  Those who take God’s offer on His terms have His promise of a future creation with no pain, suffering, death, and sin.
    A brief outline like this opens up many questions and may leave a skeptic unsatisfied.  Why not make this a project?  Lee Strobel was a hardened atheist legal reporter, till his wife “got religion” and became a Christian.  It almost destroyed his marriage.  He decided to look into the evidence for Christianity so as to refute it.  He applied his skills of legal investigation of evidence to the issues of the trustworthiness of the Bible.  The result changed his life.  The once crabby, selfish, prideful guy now has an infectious smile and enthusiasm that commands attention.  What made this guy so darn happy?
    Lee’s experience led to his three best-selling books, The Case for a Creator, The Case for Christ, and The Case for Faith, in which he interviewed leading theologians and scientists to get answers for skeptics’ questions that could stand up to legal standards of evidence.  Two of these are now available on high-quality documentaries from Illustra Media and Strobel Films.  The third is due for release September 2.  Read these books.  Watch these films.  Like Strobel encourages, “make it a front-burner project” and commit at the outset to follow the evidence wherever it leads.
Next headline on:  Health • Genetics • Theology

How Useful Is Evolution Theory?   05/07/2008    
May 7, 2008 — Is evolution good for anything?  There’s no question it keeps a lot of scientists busy, but has it helped the proverbial man on the street?  Here are two perspectives.
    Michael LePage hit the sales beat for evolution on New Scientist this week:

Evolution is a beautiful theory.  It explains everything from why some birds lose the ability to fly, to the bizarre meandering path of the vagus nerve in our bodies.
    Sure, evolution makes sense of the extraordinary diversity of life on Earth, but can it actually be put to practical use?
    The answer is: it can and it should.

Traditional biology tends to study one gene or protein or process at a time.  Systems biology takes a cue from engineering and treats organisms as complex systems.  Systems biologists, often using computer models, try to understand how genes, proteins, cells, and tissues interact to create complex organisms.  By mapping out, rather than reducing, biological complexity, systems biologists hope to reach a new understanding of the fundamental processes of life, from embryonic development to normal metabolism to the emergence of diseases like cancer.

Evolution has had four billion years to figure out really clever solutions for new materials, new chemistries, new types of molecular machines, even new approaches to computing.  I think by studying living organisms and deducing the mechanisms that underlie these evolutionarily sculpted solutions to complexity, those solutions can be applied to other fields.  A classic example is materials science.  The spectrum of different materials that organisms have evolved to make is enormous.

Sure, evolutionary theory is good – good for nothing.  Its recklessness and death and chance are beautiful.  Just lovely, isn’t it?  Let’s turn loose the systems biologists and biomimetics engineers.  Let’s give them a chance to revolutionize biology and bring wonderful new technologies inspired by nature’s engineering.
    The last thing anyone should hope for is “applied evolution.”  Isn’t that exactly what Darwin’s disciples already tried?  They applied evolution, all right – eugenics, social Darwinism and Darwinian utopian regimes that murdered millions.  Scream and run when you hear a Darwinist wanting to apply evolution!  On what moral basis could LePage argue it will help people?  The ethics of Malthus?  of Marx?
    It might just be that if systems biology becomes the new paradigm, Darwin and his myths will just slip unnoticed into the history books while people enjoy longer, happier lives.  Slowly, without a war, scientists might warm up to the language of intelligent design.  It will be perfectly natural.  They will have been thinking like engineers instead of like selfish genes.  One can even imagine that Darwinian stories will eventually sound so, well, so last-century.
Next headline on:  Darwinism and Evolutionary Theory • Biomimetics

The tree of life generated in ref. 21 was used to identify the phylogenetic relations between the species studied in our analysis and for inferring ancestral metabolic networks along the tree.  This tree includes a relatively large number of species, covering most of the taxonomic groups for which metabolic data are available.  Specifically, this tree was used to measure the distance of each extant and ancestral species to the last universal common ancestors of bacteria and to calculate the species pairwise phylogenetic distances (measured as the sum of distances from the two species to their last common ancestor).

1. Overall, our analysis is applied to a large set of 325 reconstructed bacterial metabolic networks (of which 138 appear on the phylogenetic tree), offering insights concerning the forces that have shaped the modularity of metabolic networks since the dawn of bacterial life.
2. Given the moderate level of this overall correlation, it is instructive to examine a few specific cases, where different phylogenetic-modularity similarity patterns emerge.
3. Obviously, habitat variability may also increase as larger classes are examined, so phylogenetic proximity probably involves both genetic and environmental similarities.
4. Other cases, however, may involve substantial variation among strains of the same species.... Such divergence of modularity scores across closely related strains is likely to occur because of the loss of just very few central reactions, fragmenting the metabolic network and consequently altering modularity scores in a considerable manner.... Clearly, such loss of central reactions that affects major metabolic functions is probably detrimental and hence very rare..... Reassuringly, one may note that such variation in modularity among strains is probably not just a result of varying annotation practices that bias the Kyoto Encyclopedia of Genes and Genomes (KEGG) data....
5. In summary, there is an overall rather marked correlation between network size and modularity, but it mainly arises because of the significantly lower modularity scores of small-sized networks.  Interestingly, no significant correlation was observed between bacterial growth rate and modularity... despite the fact that network size is positively correlated with a faster growth rate....
6. It is instructive to examine some of the outliers marked by an asterisk in Fig. 3a; specifically, a few species of Rickettsia and Borrelia have very small networks but high modularity scores.  Although genetically very remote, these species have a shared lifestyle—they are obligate mammalian pathogens that are transmitted by parasitic insects such as fleas or ticks.  This intricate life cycle requires a rapid and efficient shift between two very different environments, which probably dictated the emergence of niche-specific metabolic subsystems, increasing modularity.  This may be an extreme example of the principle laid out by ref. 19, that environmental diversity promotes network modularity.
7. Interestingly, among the host-associated organisms, endosymbionts have miniscule metabolic networks ... but these networks are slightly more modular than those of commensals and pathogens ... Furthermore, we find that thermophilic bacteria have significantly higher modularity scores than organisms in either mesophilic ... or hyperthermophilic ... environments, and facultative bacteria have lower modularity scores than aerobic bacteria ... (after correcting for multiple hypotheses testing using the Bonferroni correction).  However, the evolutionary forces that have shaped these differences remain unclear.
8. Finally, we note that the genomic fraction of transporters and permeases, which may have been putatively thought to constitute a simple rough correlate of environmental diversity, does not manifest a significant correlation with network modularity.
9. This overall trend, where ancestral modularity scores tend to be higher than those of the descendants, may be attributed to speciation and niche specialization of the organism and to the gradual addition of more peripheral metabolic pathways during evolution.
10. An additional important force that has been assumed to effect the emergence of modularity in metabolic networks is HGT [horizontal gene transfer].  HGT refers to several biological mechanisms by which one organism may transfer genetic material to another organism that is not its descendant and is a major evolutionary force in prokaryotes.

This complex mixture of driving forces reinforces the notion that modularity can be thought of as a product of both the organism’s past evolutionary heritage and its present adaptation to a certain lifestyle and to available niches.  The determination of whether modularity is a converging vs. a genetic trait remains an open challenge.

Every once in awhile we need to take our readers kicking and screaming into the stench of the baloney factory to show them how the Darwin sausage is made.  We know you can only stand it for a few minutes at a time.  This is the garbage that is force-fed to students.  They have no choice; it’s the only thing on the menu.
    We bring you the very best smelly sausage.  This was not cooked up in a corner; it was presented by the National Academy of Sciences, one of the most prestigious scientific societies in the world.  It passed peer review.  No one in the Academy criticized it.  This can be considered representative of the very best the Darwinists have to offer in support of their world view that humans had bacteria ancestors by a chance process with no design.
    There were more rescuing devices in this paper than reasons to believe in evolution.  Even when they assumed evolution and referred to other evolutionary papers, they could only find a modest correlation at best, with whopping outliers and anomalies that had to be explained away.  Worse, they failed to even consider other explanations for the data.  It was DIDO all the way – Darwin in, Darwin out, and DIGO, too: Darwin in, garbage out.  The data were only incidental to the storytelling spree – mere props in the never-ending Darwin drama.
    Did you catch them conjuring up evolutionary “forces”?  We think of forces in science like gravity and electromagnetism, but they redefined the word.  To them, a force is any happenstance that steers the miracle-working potential of evolutionary tinkering.  Did they ever explain how a new environment would generate the necessary random mutations that were supposed to create new, functional metabolic networks?  Never; they merely assumed it would.  Referring to horizontal gene transfer as a source of innovation only pushes the miracle onto another germ.  Playing theoretical hot potato is not a scientific way to explain how complex interactions of highly-specific protein parts came about.  Remember?  They even admitted that tinkering with networks is probably detrimental and extremely rare – but in their view, tinkering is the only available source of innovation.
    At one point they said, “the evolutionary forces that have shaped these differences remain unclear,” but a few paragraphs later they were crowing about “the forces identified here”.  Forces?  What forces?  Let’s see an equation.  There were no forces; just obstacles.  The telephone pole on the sidewalk does not force a bicycle rider to become an airplane pilot.  More likely, it forces him into an opportunity for a concussion.
    Undoubtedly, the Darwin Party Propaganda Mill will add this paper to their mountain of evidence that supports Darwin.  They will argue also that nothing in biology makes sense without evolution.  They will use it to show how much useful science Darwinism is generating.  In truth, the guys in the baloney factory spill their guts and sacrifice their brains into the mix to show their devotion to Charlie.  Maybe that’s why the Good Book warned against eating meat offered to idols.
Next headline on:  Cell Biology • Genetics • Darwinism

The PhysOrg article has a picture of a Neanderthal thinker in a pensive pose.  He’s thinking, “I tell you, I can’t get no respect from evolutionary anthropologists.  One of them, he told me I was crazy.  I told him I wanted a second opinion.  He said, OK, you’re ugly, too.  I bet your mother fed you with a slingshot.  When I was born, he said, the doctor shoulda slapped your mother.  You are the sap in the family tree.  Better watch out for that saber-tooth cat over there – he’s likely to cover you up.  I tell you.  I got a PhD, a muscular physique, a wall covered with hunting trophies and a voice like Pavarotti, but I can’t get no respect.  The government taxed the shirt off my back.  At least I don’t have to worry about pickpockets.”
    How should you read news articles like this?  Sadly, you must ignore them.  Science, a word that used to mean “knowledge,” has abandoned its respect for rigor and restraint.  It has become a playground for storytellers shooting off their gaping mouths to get a moment of fame in the news.  Anything you read today is likely to be overturned next month.
    What does this Brazilian know about Neanderthals and their relationship to the human family tree?  Nothing.  He made it all up.  The article said as much.  “Various species of Homo have been put up for the crown of being our direct ancestor, only to find themselves dismissed by critics as failed branches of the Homo tree.”  So on what basis do they dismiss Neanderthal and promote Homo habilis today?  They could take any random sample of living humans and come up with dozens of theories of who is related to whom.  Undoubtedly some of us would be demoted from the human line.  Certain individuals demote themselves from the subspecies Homo sapiens sapiens by their own folly.
Next headline on:  Early Man • Dumb Ideas

Iapetus Is Losing Its Dry Ice   05/05/2008    
May 5, 2008 — How long can a moon afford to leak?  Iapetus is losing its dry ice (carbon dioxide) through sublimation at a prodigious rate, say scientists in a paper in Icarus this month.¹  “One can see that the long-term stability of CO₂ is problematic.”
    Solving the mystery of the dark side on this mystery moon has been a priority since Voyager days.  After the Sept. 10, 2007 flyby of Iapetus by Cassini (09/13/2007), a strange new theory was proposed: a runaway process makes the ice sublimate and migrate to the bright side or the poles (see Cassini press release from Oct 8, 2007).  This apparently happens to both water ice and carbon dioxide ice (dry ice); see 10/16/2007, bullet 3.
    The new Icarus paper modeled what happens to the carbon dioxide.  Because it is so volatile, it sublimates to gas and starts moving.  The warmth of the dark side makes it leave the leading hemisphere permanently.  It migrates to cold traps at the poles – for awhile.  During Saturn’s 29.5 year orbit, the angle of sunlight shifts.  The carbon dioxide molecules leave one pole and migrate to the other in a series of 350 hops.  Thus, the CO₂ moves from pole to pole each Saturnian year.
    Not all of the gas makes it back.  Palmer and Brown calculated that 12% of it reaches escape velocity and leaves the moon each orbit, never to return.  Yet carbon dioxide was detected in abundance on the surface.  How could any be left after billions of years?  If Iapetus had started with a layer of carbon dioxide ice 5 km thick, they estimated, it could only last for 1.6 billion years.  That’s just about a third of the assumed age of the solar system (4.5 billion years).
    One way to save the old age would be to add in more carbon dioxide over time.  The authors ruled out comets as a source, or vents from the interior, like on Enceladus (02/10/2007).  All they could suggest was that carbon dioxide is continually produced by photolysis of the unknown dark material.  Yet the dark layer is known to be thin, because fresh meteor impacts show bright ice underneath.
    In any case, they think, the carbon dioxide could not be primordial (as old as the moon); “due to the large escape rate of CO2 from the surface, any free CO2 ice found on Iapetus implies active production, such as photochemical generation, liberation during an impact, or by an active vent.”

Do they have any evidence for photochemical generation, liberation during an impact, or active vents?  None whatsoever.  They have been forced into hand-waving to explain away their debt of billions of years.  They thought they could just drop in the Bank of Time again and make another one of their reckless drafts (07/02/2007).  This time, the teller Japheth (the root name of Iapetus) is refusing to heed their song and dance, saying they can’t withdraw any more billions without showing some collateral.
Next headline on:  Solar System • Dating Methods

Van Dokkum speculated on how these small, crowded galaxies formed.  He said, one way could have involved an interaction in the emerging universe between hydrogen gas and dark matter -- an invisible form of matter that accounts for most of the universe’s mass.  Shortly after the Big Bang, the universe contained an uneven landscape of dark matter.  He said that hydrogen gas could have been trapped in puddles of the invisible material which began spinning rapidly in dark matter’s gravitational whirlpool, forming stars at a furious rate.

You gotta love the imagination of some scientists.  Nobody has a clue what dark matter is, or whether it even exists.  This guy has the imaginary stuff forming puddles and whirlpools.  Let him connect his “mysterious unknown stuff” (02/28/2008) with empirical observations before telling us it will make stars form at a furious rate.
    Claims like the ones in this paper should always be taken with a grain of salt.  Many laymen read such things on Science Daily or other popular news sources and have no idea what the astronomers are talking about, let alone what it means.  Something to watch for is the element of surprise.  Why were the astronomers surprised by what they found?  What did they actually find?
    Measurements such as this are extremely difficult to make.  Astronomers are trying to interpret very faint objects near the limit of observability.  It becomes hard to establish where the noise stops and the signal begins.  The team was honest enough in the original paper to list five major sources of error that could invalidate the claims that these galaxies are unusually compact.  To us, each source of error seemed significant.
    Another caution is that observations at cosmological distances are very much tied into the theories employed to make the observations.  What does an infrared blob with a redshift of 2.3 (inferred to represent something at a given distance and age) actually represent?  Why were they focusing on these things instead of other things?  In the 1920s, recall, Edwin Hubble thought that galaxies began as ellipticals and evolved into spirals.  In later years some astronomers reversed the sequence.  Lately astronomers have been finding more structure, more density, and more “maturity” the farther back they look.
    It appears that this team was somewhat eager to substantiate the hierarchical model of galaxy evolution over the monolithic model.  But how do they know there are not other possibilities?  And how do they know other sources of error, unknown to us today, might confuse what they think they saw?  Consider that about 20 years ago, many astronomers were caught off guard by the discovery of gravitational lensing.  The bending of light by intervening galaxies, they realized, can seriously compromise the interpretation of distant objects.  It was something few had ever considered.  No one knows whether another phenomenon might be introducing systematic errors into the observations today.
    That being said, let’s assume they are correct, and that these distant galaxies are in fact more compact than expected.  It is noteworthy that the astronomers were surprised to see tight and dense structures so close to the assumed big bang.  Simplistic models would have predicted otherwise.  Creation astronomers might want to consider how this survey might fit a “top-down” model for galaxy formation.  Humphreys’ “white hole cosmology” predicted, for example, that distant galaxies would appear from earth to be changing rapidly due to gravitational time dilation.  We’ll leave such considerations to those interested.  The lesson for our purposes is that different assumptions allow for different interpretations consistent with the very same empirical observations.  Things are not always what they seem.  Some cosmologists have their scientific method backward.  They work according to the inverted principle, “No observation should be considered legitimate until confirmed by theory.”
    Observation should trump theory in science.  It may not be possible to observe something completely free of bias, but a good first step would be to state one’s biases up front as far as one is aware of them.
Next headline on:  Astronomy • Cosmology

1. Charity an artifact of selfishness:  Omar Eldakar and David Sloan Wilson tried to conjure up altruism out of selfishness in PNAS.¹  Wilson, author of the Evolution for Everyone curriculum (12/21/2005), taught that every behavior, even infanticide, was explainable in evolutionary terms.  Here he takes on sacrificial giving.  “Selfishness is seldom considered a group-beneficial strategy, the two authors began.  “In the typical evolutionary formulation, altruism benefits the group, selfishness undermines altruism, and the purpose of the model is to identify mechanisms, such as kinship or reciprocity, that enable altruism to evolve.”
       Eldakar and Wilson don’t believe that appeals to punishment can explain cooperation.  Punishment costs the punisher as well as the punishee, and experimental games show that individuals quickly stop being generous in the presence of selfish cheaters.  Instead, they invented a new “selfish punisher model” that proposes “behaving selfishly in first-order interactions and altruistically in second-order interactions by punishing other selfish individuals.”    How does it work?  The selfish guy punishes other selfish guys, increasing the pool of cooperators.  The model was reported by Science Daily with the quizzical title, “Selfishness may be altruism’s unexpected ally.”
       This, they propose, causes selfishness to be a self-limiting strategy that sustains altruism in a society.  “This polymorphism can be regarded as a division of labor, or mutualism, in which the benefits obtained by first-order selfishness help to ‘pay’ for second-order altruism.”  Their model keeps selfishness on top where it belongs in the Darwinian ethic: “This behavior might seem hypocritical in moral terms, but it makes sense as an evolutionary strategy,” they said.  They’re really not interested in morality, though.  They just want to model a stable process in a population.  It doesn’t matter whether it is made up of wasps or White Anglo-Saxon Protestants.
       So does this explain why grandma writes a big check to a charity in Africa?  The paper’s mathematics and charts might explain beehive behavior to some extent, and why the Mafia keeps its own cheaters in check, or why civilization needs police departments as “specialized punishers” of bad guys.  But these were only suggested applications of a theoretical model at the end of the paper.  They talked about how punishment could keep cheaters from taking over, but they didn’t say anything about how Darwinism would motivate sacrificial love for strangers.  At best, they visualized a stable society that would allow altruistic individuals to keep from getting stomped on.  How or why any individual would give sacrificially to total strangers was left as an exercise: “We hope that our model stimulates interest in the concept of selfish punishment in both humans and nonhuman species.”.
2. Promised Land:  Jerusalem – the holy city, in the land of promise.  One is drawn to contemplate Moses’ commands to love God and one’s neighbor as oneself, confirmed by Jesus as the greatest commandments.  Today, Darwinian scholars in the land of Israel have other priorities in mind.  Science Daily described how three professors at Hebrew University played games with subjects to figure out the motivations for cooperation and competition.
       The article began, “Phrases such as ‘survival of the fittest’ and ‘every man for himself’ may seem to accentuate the presence of political and social competition in American culture; however, there obviously are similar instances of inter- and intra-group conflict across almost all known organisms.  So what makes competition so prevalent for life and why does it sometimes seem to be preferred over cooperation?”  Don’t look for the S-I-N word here.
       The researchers were surprised that the human subjects preferred to cooperate and leave the competition alone when given a choice.  “It appears, therefore, that participants much preferred avoiding conflict when given the option to strengthen their own group instead,” the article ended.  “But this still leaves behind yet another question of group dynamics: why, if humans prefer cooperation when given that option, are there so many instances of competition shown in everyday life?”  Maybe some things can’t be reduced to formulas and Darwinian games.
3. Mimi vs We Oui:  A Science Daily article had the arresting title, “Decision Making: Is It All ‘Me, Me, Me’?”  The answering is, surprisingly, no.  People don’t always act in their own self interest.  British researchers found that team spirit trumps selfishness even when it costs the individual.
       “Orthodox or classical game predicts that people will act for selfish reasons,” the article said.  This is being challenged by “team reasoning theory,” the idea that individual self-interest is not always foremost in the way people act.  Instead, people often act in the best interest of their team.  This runs counter to the Nash Equilibrium (recall the movie A Beautiful Mind) that based its formula on individual self-interest.
       The researchers were “delighted” that they found a contradiction with orthodox game theory.  “Theories of team reasoning were developed to explain why, in some circumstances, people seem to act not in their individual self-interest but in the interest of their families, companies, departments, or the religious, ethnic, or national groups with which they identify themselves.”  Apparently they did not try to broach this observation in strictly Darwinian terms.
4. Others Esteem:  If a little selfishness is good for Darwin, more should be better.  That’s another faulty inference, reported Science Daily about the opinion of Michael Kernis, psychologist at University of Georgia.  High self-esteem can be fragile and counter-productive.  “People with fragile high self-esteem compensate for their self-doubts by engaging in exaggerated tendencies to defend, protect and enhance their feelings of self-worth,” he said.
       Psychologists are trending away from the self-esteem fad of the 90s (05/12/2003).  “It was once thought that more self-esteem necessarily is better self-esteem,” the article said.  “In recent years, however, high self-esteem per se has come under attack on several fronts, especially in areas such as aggressive behavior.  Also, individuals with high self-esteem sometimes become very unlikable when others or events threaten their egos.”
       Kernis offered a more complex view of self-esteem: “it is now thought that there are multiple forms of high self-esteem, only some of which consistently relate to positive psychological functioning.”  Maybe Darwin can still save face.  Whether it is high self-esteem, low self-esteem or healthy self-esteem, it is still self-esteem.
5. Against just-so psychology:  “Evolutionary psychology has tempted many scientists to indulge in just-so stories....; asserting that our brains are poorly engineered is an equally risky business.”  So Sandra Aamodt wrote in her review of two psychology books for Nature on April 23.²  It’s not that she was about to junk Darwin.  She just was pointing out that the brain and mind are pretty complex things to put into evolutionary terms.  For example, summing up Adam Zeman’s book A Portrait of the Brain (Yale, 2008) and Gary Marcus’s book Kluge: The Haphazard Construction of the Human Mind (Houghton Mifflin, 2008), she criticized reductionism:

   In the final chapter, Zeman grapples with consciousness.  He outlines how brains that are predisposed to tell stories and that attribute actions to agents rather than chance might lead us to believe in an immortal soul.  His own view is that this is “no more than a wonderful fiction”.  (Marcus makes the same point less gently.)  Zeman struggles with science’s failure to find an emotionally satisfying replacement story, conceding that such questions may be more in the realm of art than science.

   An aggressive, Darwinian science department has long sought to take over the arts and humanities (02/11/2008, 12/11/2005), reducing everything to selectionist terms.  What will happen if the Darwinians relinquish something as big as consciousness to the arts?  Aamodt left that crack in the dam unplugged.  And her claim that “Evolutionary psychology has tempted many scientists to indulge in just-so stories” might just tempt the philosophy professor to ask how far back the storytelling goes.
6. Can’t Darwinize the Golden Rule:  Why do so many people follow the Golden Rule instead of the Law of the Jungle?  Prashanth Ak tried to address that conundrum in his book review of Donald Pfaff’s new book, The Neuroscience of Fair Play (Dana Press, 2008), in Science magazine this week.³  He began by summarizing the historical tug-of-war over reductionism:

   Naturalized ethics, the idea that principles of natural science bear on normative ethics, faces two longstanding objections.  The naturalistic fallacy cautions that good, in the moral sense, cannot be defined from natural properties.  Hume warned against deriving an ought (as in how people ought to act) from an is (how people actually act, for instance).  Most of those who seek to naturalize ethics are familiar with these arguments but maintain that scientific findings can have a profound impact on our understanding of morality and ethics.
       The question of whether ethical concepts have innate bases or are acquired has echoes of the nature-versus-nurture question and carries much the same ideological baggage.  Whether it is our natures or our cultures that make us who we are has been central to all sorts of intense debates, on topics including the ideal political system, effective means of teaching, and crime and punishment.  Discussions of the nature of morality exhibit similar polarity, with some boasting of their indifference to neuroscience and others embracing it wholeheartedly.

   In the book, Pfaff tried to make a case that since the Golden Rule is universal, there must be a neurological basis for it.  Remember “Wesley Autrey, who threw himself on top of a stranger in the New York City subway to save the person from being crushed by an oncoming train”?  How does Darwin explain that? (02/22/2004).  Ak summarized Pfaff’s hypothesis in academic gobbledygook:

   Pfaff hypothesizes that such altruism is due to brain mechanisms that override selfpreference and blur the boundaries between the self and the other through a “loss of social information.”  He conjectures that it depends in part on neurobiological mechanisms for fear, supplemented by neurohormonal bases of sexual and parental behaviors, and that departures from altruistic behavior are due to similar neurogenetic bases of antisocial behaviors.  Pfaff suggests that the capacity of a person to behave according to the golden rule depends on a balance--properly, an imbalance--among social behavioral mechanisms in which those producing prosocial actions outweigh those producing antisocial actions.

   Whether or not that was comprehensible, Ak was clearly not satisfied with it.  “Pfaff’s broad-brush treatment of altruism, however, is bound to bother quite a few readers,” he said, adding later: “considerably more sophisticated cognitive mechanisms than those posited in the book are required.”  Any unfinished business?  “the study of possible biological bases of morals.”
7. Old folks:  Also in Science,⁴ Erik Myin reviewed a new book on folk psychology: Daniel Hutto’s Folk Psychological Narratives (MIT, 2008).  Myin seemed downright unsatisfied with traditional evolutionary stories about why humans act so – well, human:

   Traditional explanations of our folk psychological capacities split on whether the crucial mechanism for understanding others is a result of genuinely theorizing about their beliefs and desires (a theory of mind) or of simulating these.  Nevertheless, nearly all researchers in the tradition invoke complex “mindreading” machinery, operating behind the scenes.  Moreover, it is generally assumed that this cognitive machinery has a strong innate component.  The machinery must have been present in our evolutionary precursors, so a common argument goes, or else some of their well-established capacities--e.g., deception, social learning of tool use, social cooperation, the emergence of symbolic language--cannot be accounted for.
       In Folk Psychological Narratives, Dan Hutto presents an alternative conception of folk psychology as well as a thorough critique of its traditional treatment in the cognitive sciences.  Hutto, a philosopher of psychology and professor at the University of Hertfordshire, rejects the idea that our stance toward each other is genuinely “theoretical.”

   Folk psychology – the attempt to explain one another’s actions in terms of their beliefs and reasons – has been viewed as an artifact of neuroscience.  We don’t really read each other’s minds to figure out what people believe and are about to do.  The assumption of psychologists, with their theory of mind, is that such reasonings are epiphenomena of what our neurons are doing.
       Hutto and his reviewer seem to be elevating the status of folk psychology as a genuinely explanatory tool.  We must explain one another in narrative terms instead of trying to develop a physical theory of mind.  Both still work from the premise that humans evolved from pre-human ancestors, but Hutto argues that human language was a prerequisite for folk psychology; it did not exist among tool-using hominids.  Maybe that sets humans genuinely apart from the animals—even to Darwinists like these.
       Regardless of one’s position on folk psychology, Myin pointed out that Darwinian psychology has not achieved explanatory nirvana.  There are still “fundamental debates that have raged in cognitive science through recent decades,” he said.

Prashanth Ak did not answer the “naturalistic fallacy” (defining good by what is natural).  He merely bluffed that he knew about it and still had faith in reductionist science.  If we are only our brains, and those brains evolved ultimately from purposeless matter, then abandon all attempts to define morality, consciousness, or reason itself.
    The reductionist, physicalist, secularist wizards have had a long time to conjure up a mind out of matter.  Maybe if they continue to bump their heads against reality, it will sober up their Darwin-inebriated souls.
    Physicist John Archibald Wheeler passed away recently.  He seems to have been fond of the teaser, “What is matter?  Never mind.  What is mind?  No matter.”
Next headline on:  Early Man • Human Body • Evolution

Astrobiologists Pool Their Ignorance at AbSciCon   05/01/2008    
May 1, 2008 — A big conference on Astrobiology was held in Santa Clara, California last month.  It was the fifth AbSciCon (Astrobiology Science Conference), a bi-annual cross-disciplinary event.  This one pulled together 675 researchers from 28 countries across a variety of disciplines, all interested in life in space.  Naturally, evolution was an overarching theme.  From Edna DeVore’s account on Space.com, the party atmosphere was stimulating: “Astrobiology is alive and well,” the SETI Institute director of Education and Outreach reported.
    Leslie Mullen also summarized some of the highlights for NASA’s Astrobiology Magazine.  Touching on everything from cosmology to biochemistry, there was way too much material to report in a short article.  Origin of life, the Drake equation, habitable zones, SETI, design of Martian rovers, non-human intelligence – such questions brought in views from chemists, astronomers, geologists, engineers, psychologists, cosmologists and even philosophers.  Educators were also present doing workshops on curricular materials to heighten awareness of astrobiology in schools.  Pre-conference summaries of the sessions were made available in PDF files from Astrobiology Journal, 8:2 (April, 2008).
    Not one presentation considered any alternatives to Darwinian evolution unless to dismiss them.  H. Peter Steeves (DePaul U), for instance, quickly disqualified a whole class of creation explanations by expelling them from the definition of science: “how might a basic understanding of philosophy of science help fight against the rising tide of ideologically/politically motivated pseudo-science (e.g., ‘creation science’)?;” (Session 35).
    Some, however, did struggle with problems.  Brandon Carter (Observatory of Paris) said that it has been necessary to revise upward the number of “hard” steps (difficult obstacles) to get intelligent life from two to six.  Paul Davies (Arizona State U) reminded his section that the universe appears fine-tuned for life; astrobiologists cannot just present simplistic answers by considering only crude prerequisites for life (for both summaries, see Session 25).  And Blair Hedges called the Cambrian explosion an “inconvenient truth” in Session 38.  Nevertheless, everyone joined in cheerfully and contributed their piece.  It was in the details where some things didn’t fit well.
    Steven Benner, for instance, presented his old sweet and sour sugar problem (see 11/05/2004).  Astrobiology Magazine showed him sweating in the kitchen after the bombshell went off:

According to Benner, chemists don’t believe that life can emerge from a prebiotic soup.  The Miller-Urey experiments showed that energy plus organics equals tar without evolution.¹  “We put energy in complex chemical systems, we get pavement, not life,” said Benner.  “Do an experiment.  Use some glucose to make a soufflé, and leave it in the oven a little too long.  [You get] asphalt.”
    The RNA world preceded DNA life, but it was not necessarily the first living system.  The big problem is with ribose, the “R” in RNA, which falls apart when heated and forms tar.  So life may have formed with a sugar other than ribose, but in lab tests nothing else works.  However, ribose-borate is a stable mineral, and Benner believes that boron makes an RNA prebiotic world more possible.  Boron is associated with deserts on Earth.  Benner suggested that because Mars had deserts long before Earth did, perhaps life originated there and was somehow transported to Earth (making us, in effect, Martians).

Steven Benner, a chemist with the Foundation for Applied Molecular Evolution, said exobiology is a science without a subject matter.  But that’s nothing new -- Galileo wanted to know whether the Earth circled the sun, but he couldn’t study that directly so he rolled balls down inclined planes to answer the question.  Benner said that we often can’t rely on established science to be a guide.  Lord Kelvin said the Earth and sun could NOT be billions of years old, when Darwin was arguing they were.  “Who are you going to believe?” asked Benner.  “The gentleman who had a temperature scale named after him, or this guy who makes a living studying bird beaks?”  So science is often what we choose to believe.

There were enough SEQOTW nominees in these documents to keep CEH supplied for a year.  If you want to see what’s going on among the Darwin worshipers, browse through the program notes.  Look at all the partying and backslapping and ask yourself how much they really know – especially, about things that relate to their reason for being astrobiologists.  One can only wonder how much richer the discussion might be if scientists, philosophers, theologians and historians outside the Darwin Party were allowed to participate.  Astrobiology is a one-party system, a population losing fitness due to inbred ideas.
    Instead of giving you a tedious analysis of every SEQOTW, a parable will suffice to sum up AbSciCom2008.  He who has ears to hear, let him hear.

HOW NOT TO WORK A PUZZLE

1. Visualize your favorite picture.
2. Invite your friends.  Check their credentials.  If anyone from a “different picture club” tries to sneak in, expel them.
3. Make everyone feel good about the picture.  Reinforcement can be achieved with a few choice sermonettes from respected individuals.
4. Draw a big outline of the picture on the floor.  A gymnasium is good for this step.
5. Open the box and spill out the pieces.
6. Throw away the box top and the instructions.  After all, this is science.  We do it our way.
7. Form teams and pass out the puzzle pieces.  These can be distributed by color, shape, or any other useful scheme.
8. Allow each team to work on their part of the picture.  Rearrangement of small parts is permitted, but not changes to the outline.
9. The rules allow for complaints about how hard the work is.  If anyone complains about the big picture, though, they must be expelled.
10. Every two years, throw a party with booze and croissants and let each team share their experiences.  Throw in a few more choice sermonettes to keep spirits high.
11. Report to the media on the progress being made.
12. Draw up a curriculum and teach the next generation how to work the puzzle.

INTERPRETATION
Note: Mature, well-trained, experienced readers can skip this section.

1. Philosophy of discovery:  Theories do not emerge from raw data.  More often, scientists begin with a picture in mind.  Even deciding what to call “the data” requires a human choice, because not all inputs are relevant to the picture.  Like Benner said, “science is often what we choose to believe.”
2. Sociology of science:  Scientists tend to hang out with people they know and like. 
3. Sociology, cont.:  Science is a human activity, not something that could be done by robots.  It is not purely rational but involves emotions, rhetoric, herd mentality and other non-rational considerations.
4. Kuhnian normal science:  The paradigm determines the research project.  The participants were not assembling to question astrobiology.  They were assembling to affirm it.
5. Underdetermination of theories by data:  There are inevitably many possible explanations for one set of data.  The same puzzle pieces could be fit to a different picture.
6. Naturalism:  Modern science has chosen to restrict itself to “natural causes” (whatever that means; see 05/11/2006).  Today’s scientists have been trained to deplore revelation (natural and/or special), no matter how well validated by empirical evidence, reason or history.
7. Pragmatism:  Nature does not determine the choice of classification scheme; people do.
8. Limits of science:  No one person can master the whole picture, especially one as broad as astrobiology. 
9. Sociology/psychology of science:  Each researcher works under the assumption that his or her little piece will reinforce the paradigm.  Cooperation is ensured by the fear of being expelled as a maverick, or worse, a pseudoscientist.  Since no philosopher of science has successfully defended demarcation criteria for science vs pseudoscience, and since no universal scientific method has been defined, emotional and sociological judgments again come into play to determine who is “in” and who is “out.”
10. Sociology, cont.:  Social activities, though they have nothing to do with the validity of the proposition under study, serve to reinforce the paradigm and draw in more party members.
11. Positivism:  The party celebration attracts reporters and gives them some fun work to do at a nice hotel.  The atmosphere promotes a spirit of progress.  All this activity, all these smart people, and all the erudite PowerPoint slides must mean that productive science was being done, right?  It must be the case since the government is funding the work.
        The system feeds on itself.  Reporters get a share of the booze and croissants, paid for by their bosses, who get better advertising ratings for maintaining a lively science page.  The reporters make friends with some of the scientists and learn from the herd who is hot and who is not.  It is unlikely any reporter will go back to the office and write up a scathing rebuke of the entire philosophical premise underlying the event.  Party organizers will be sure to send the cheerful press releases to Senator Earmark.
    
12. Education:  The paradigm might lose popularity without new blood.  Captive students must be trained and inculcated into the craft before other paradigms capture their attention.  This can be accomplished by making all other paradigms illegal.  Skilled facilitators can create visuals and curricula from the Policies and Procedures Manual of the Paradigm, to inculcate the novitiates into the craft and inoculate the young herd against critical thinkers (12/21/2005).  Successful novitiates are graded on their ability to regurgitate the talking points, meditate on the non-negotiable assumptions and doctrines, sense how to tell the good guys from the bad guys (the creationists), and honor the idol of Our Leader.*

Here and there, inadvertently, some actual science is done.  Benner finds that heating ribose forms asphalt.  Gibson discovers reduced carbon in a meteorite.  Ehrenfreund demonstrates that PAHs are stable in a vacuum.  Some logical reasoning (inductive and deductive) and some worthwhile historical analysis is presented.  Little of this, if any, however, supports the foundational assumption that time, chance, energy and matter has populated the universe with sentient beings (let alone bacteria).
    So let’s score Astrobiology as a science.  It has no evidence for its fundamental belief.  Its scientific activity, some of it legitimate on its own, bears no necessary or sufficient relationship to its propositions.  It provides no practical benefits to its clientele.  Can anyone deny that AbSciCon2008 has all the appearance of a grand, taxpayer-funded make-work boondoggle for eggheads with a big party at the end?  The aliens** think so.

Next headline on:  SETI • Origin of Life • Evolution

---

*Charles Darwin.
**The expelled.