Speaking of the National Academy of Sciences, don’t waste your time reading Francisco Ayala’s Darwin-kissy article in PNAS; it’s so full of worn-out talking points, mantras, refuted arguments, creationist-bashing, elitist chutzpah and obsequious Charlie fondling, the editors should be embarrassed.  It’s incredible they couldn’t find something more meaty, better informed, more respectable to print.  Knows he nothing of the issues and debates?  Where has he been all this time?  This drippy eulogy, in the genre of the Science News ecstatic trance, ain’t worth a Lincoln penny – unless it was intended as an experiment in an echo chamber, i.e., Ayala’s skull.  One can only groan over what NAS founders like Agassiz and Joseph Henry would think of what has become of their originally Abe-honest, fair-minded, noble institution. 

Darwin Losing in the Polls   02/12/2009    
Feb 12, 2009 — Many scientists are celebrating Darwin as the greatest scientist in history on his Bicentennial, but public support for his theory is slipping.  A new Zogby poll shows significant erosion over the past few years over the question of whether evolution only should be taught, and a new Gallup poll shows only a minority believe in evolution.
    The results of the Zogby poll are explained on Evolution News with graphs.  The demographics indicate that it is not just church-goers who support academic freedom to teach the strengths and weaknesses of evolutionary theory; a large majority of those calling themselves liberals, college grads and Democrats also responded affirmative to the question, “Would you strongly agree, somewhat agree, somewhat disagree, or strongly disagree that teachers and students should have the academic freedom to discuss both the strengths and weaknesses of evolution as a scientific theory?”  Young adults were among the strongest in agreement.
    In another article, Evolution News pointed out that the Zogby poll shows support for teaching “strengths and weaknesses” of evolution has risen 9 percentage points since a similar poll in 2006.  They said that even after the Dover trial, the public remains unconvinced that the scientific debate over Darwin is over.  “Indeed, support for the Darwinists’ position has dropped significantly while support for teaching the controversy over evolution has risen.”  The original Zogby report has been reprinted on the Discovery Institute website.
    Evolution News commented on Richard Dawkins’s reaction to the poll.  Dawkins called it a “stupid poll” because it “presumes there is scientific evidence against evolution.”  Dawkins does not accept that premise.  He said the Discovery Institute ought to go into the lab and publish such evidence if it is out there.  But as Anika Smith pointed out, whenever Darwin doubters do that, the evolutionists cover it up or prevent them from publishing it in the first place.
    Fox News reported on a separate poll by Gallup that revealed, “Fewer Than 4 in 10 Believe in Evolution.”  The percentages show that this feeling is not limited to the religious; 24% of those described as weekly church attenders said they believe in the theory of evolution, while 39% of all respondents believe it.  See also the British poll reported last week on 02/04/2009).  So on the eve of the Darwin Bicentennial, there is still only a small minority in the public that believe in Darwin’s theory as the explanation for life.  36% responded that they don’t have an opinion one way or the other.

Eugenie Scott, Ken Miller, Richard Dawkins, William Provine and the other Darwin bulldogs need to face up to the fact that 150 years of indoctrination has failed to convince the public of evolutionary naturalism.  They are an elitist minority.  What gives them the right to dictate to the world what the public shall hear?  Is it philosophy of science?  No; one cannot presume their definition of science rules, when no one has ever come up with a satisfactory definition of science.  Is it the evidence?  No; as we document day after day, week after week, month after month, the evidence must be twisted or put off into the future to support the neo-Darwinist position.  Is it religion vs science?  No; Darwinism is just as religious as theism; it is an all-encompassing world view that goes far beyond observation.  Is it naturalism vs supernaturalism?  No; the definitions of nature and natural are as slippery as a greased eel.  Is it the privileged status of scientific institutions?  No; some of the best science has been done outside the institutions and by bucking the consensus.  Surely one needs to be well-trained in mathematical physics to speak credibly on quantum mechanics or nuclear fusion, but Darwinism is not that hard to understand: spontaneous variation (which everyone can see), and survival of the fittest (which is as intuitively obvious as “Boys will be boys”).  When they say this combination of intuitively-obvious statements produced giraffes from bacteria, that is not intuitively obvious.  They know you cannot get from here to there, PhD or not.
    In spite of the public demand for academic freedom, the Darwin elitists continue their biased propaganda.  Darwin 200 website of London’s Natural History Museum, and the Nature Darwin 200 celebrations, for instance, contain only gushy praise for the Bearded Buddha written by Darwin Party operatives, without a hint of dissent.  They completely ignore the criticisms of Darwin’s ideas coming from many directions (even some from within the camp, like the 01/28/2009 and 01/22/2009 entries show).
    If scientists want to get public support for the DODO policy (Darwin-only, Darwin-only), they must deal honestly with the strengths and weaknesses of the theory in open debate.  They must tear down the Berlin Wall (as explained in Expelled) that protects one side from criticism, imprisons the citizenry and punishes those trying to escape.  They must face the strong critiques from intelligent design, the fossil record, the fine-tuning of the universe, epistemology, the logical fallacies in philosophical naturalism, the philosophical critiques of methodological naturalism, and much more.  They cannot just go to a judge in Pennsylvania for a local ruling pushed by the ACLU, and announce the debate is over.  They must stop the persecution and expulsion of well-reasoned alternative viewpoints.  They must stop the Stalinesque indoctrination in the schools.  They must own up to the bitter implications of evolutionary naturalism on society (01/15/2009) and explain why altruistic humans should tolerate destructive ideas.  They cannot act like a religious tribunal.  Science is all about debate, open discussion, and thinking outside the box.  As long as the Darwin-only dictators arrogate to themselves to sole right to speak on such topics, they are going to continue to erode their support.
    The public sees them for what they are: elitist totalitarians who want to dictate not only what you can say, but what you can think.  The ivory-tower Darwin bulldogs need a concentrated and sustained dose of humility.  Let’s celebrate Lincoln, who emancipated slaves, and Darwin, who understood that facts could be adduced for the opposite conclusions to his viewpoint, and therefore promoted balanced debate on both sides of each question (see quote above).  To the Darwinists we ask, why don’t you celebrate Darwin Day by following his advice?  What could possibly go wrong if we all had that spirit?
Next headline on:  Darwin • Politics and Ethics

Darwin’s Wrong Turn in Argentina   02/12/2009    
Feb 12, 2009 — When the Beagle was sailing the coast of Argentina in 1834, it stopped at the mouth of the Santa Cruz River.  25-year-old Charles Darwin, who had been reading Lyell’s Principles of Geology, got out and explored the area on foot as the crew made camp on the cliffs.  Darwin was impressed by the six-mile-wide canyon with its comparatively small river.  He was led from his reading of Lyell to assume that this was another example of the cumulative power of small processes to produce big changes over vast periods of time.
    Geologist Steven Austin recently visited Camp Darwin at the Santa Cruz canyon.  He examined the basalt cliffs and cobbles with a geologist’s eyes and came to a quite different interpretation.  “What I saw at Camp Darwin utterly shocked me,” he said.  “I saw abundant evidence for a colossal flood that must have rapidly performed significant erosion in the valley.”  His results can be found at ICR, where he explains that the nature of the cliffs, the basalt being on one side and not the other, and the large rounded boulders on top of the cliff (some as big as 15 feet in diameter), and other evidences speak clearly of catastrophism, not uniformitarianism.
    This incorrect assumption, he believes, was young Darwin’s first wrong turn that led him to view the world evolving through slow, gradual accumulations of small changes.  Dr. Austin has posted a 10-minute video on YouTube explaining his findings, with footage shot on location where he points to evidences you can see for yourself.

This is a good example of how the glasses through which you view the world can color everything.  Darwin read the world with his Lyell glasses on.  Because those glasses blocked certain wavelengths, he failed to see evidence that was right in front of his nose.  Watch this short video and spread the link to friends today on the Darwin Bicentennial.
Next headline on:  Geology • Darwin • Dating Methods

Can You Have Evolution Without Darwin?   02/11/2009    
Feb 11, 2009 — It might seem crass to diminish the reputation of a historical figure right before his Bicentennial, but it’s happening.  There are some who are trying to chuck Darwin.  In the New York Times, Carl Safina shocked readers with his title, “Darwinism Must Die So That Evolution May Live.”
    Safina was appalled at the religious devotion some people have to Charles Darwin.  We don’t call physics Newtonism, and we don’t call astronomy Copernicanism, he said.  In the same way, we need to ditch the term Darwinism and move attention to the modern theory of evolution.  The focus on Darwin is actually hurting the cause of promoting evolutionary theory, he asserted: “our understanding of how life works since Darwin won’t swim in the public pool of ideas until we kill the cult of Darwinism.  Only when we fully acknowledge the subsequent century and a half of value added can we really appreciate both Darwin’s genius and the fact that evolution is life’s driving force, with or without Darwin.”
    Even pro-Darwinist Robert Roy Britt on Live Science joined in the campaign.  “The terms ‘Darwinian evolution’ and ‘Darwinism’ – used frequently by scientists, teachers and the media – are misleading,” he said.  “Scientists have failed to let Darwin die, even as the theory he birthed grew up, some scientists now say.”  With a play on words, Britt continued: “Evolutionary biology has evolved greatly since Darwin first generated the controversy with the 1859 publication of On the Origin of Species, and some think it’s time to divorce his name from the theory’s name.”  He referred to Carl Safina’s article in the New York Times, but also got support from Eugenie Scott and Glenn Branch of the NCSE, who also favor dropping the term Darwinism as a synonym for evolutionary biology.  They complain that the word Darwinism “fails to convey the full panoply of modern evolutionary biology accurately, and it fosters the inaccurate perception that the field stagnated for 150 years after Darwin’s day.”  Scott and Branch always find ways to criticize the tactics of their enemies, the creationists:  “Compounding the problem of ‘Darwinism’ is the hijacking of the term by creationists to portray evolution as a dangerous ideology – an ‘ism’ – that has no place in the science classroom,” they said, conveniently ignoring the title and thesis of atheist Daniel Dennett’s book, Darwin’s Dangerous Idea and Richard Dawkins’s “honest” admission on camera in the movie Expelled that Darwinism tends to produce atheism – which is the “worst possible thing to say” for Darwin defenders like Eugenie Scott.
    John Hawks is upset at the upsetters.  On his John Hawks Weblog, adorned by artwork of a thoughtful-looking Neanderthal, he took offense at Safina’s calling Darwinism a cult.  “Does this kind of statement remotely help the cause of evolutionary biology, in any way?” he asked (emphasis his).  He agreed that evolutionary biology has moved on since Darwin, but called it “unseemly” to “kill” the dead man.  The critics have obviously not read Darwin, he claimed.  Darwin provided a wealth of detail that continues to guide research today.  Darwin went out on a limb and proposed tests that could falsify his ideas.  That’s good enough to preserve his name and reputation, Hawks ended: “If someone want’s [sic] to call herself a Darwinist, or a neo-Darwinist, or even a crypto-Darwinist, well, that’s just fine by me.”  Robin Lloyd on Live Science reminds us that the guy was only mortal and had his quirks.
    Meanwhile, the religious implications of Darwinism have not escaped the notice of atheists behind a recent billboard campaign to promote their views.  World Net Daily reported on the ads by Freedom From Belief Foundation, such as the stained-glass-decor billboard in West Hollywood, adorned with Charles Darwin’s portrait, proclaiming, “Praise Darwin: Evolve Beyond Belief.”  Opposing Views printed an article by the FFBF about another copy of this billboard posted in Ohio.  Local activist David Russell explained why the “iconic image” of Darwin was central to their atheist campaign: “Darwin not only researched extensively how life evolved through succession, but his work helped shape the modern interpretation of evolutionary theory,” Russell said.  “He almost single-handedly took the world from blind faith of unproven dogma to an enduring theory that has withstood 150 years of scrutiny.”  Other atheists submitted their ideas for slogans appropriate for Darwin Day, like “Honk if you’re evolving,” “Don’t start evolution without me,” and “Nonbelief—the natural selection.”  The battle of the billboards had begun.  Ray Comfort’s Christian ministry raised funds to put a billboard near the Los Angeles airport defining an atheist as “Someone who believes that nothing made everything – a scientific impossibility.”  The billboard, which advertises a new website Pull the Plug on Atheism, also displays Darwin’s portrait.  It seems the Darwin beard has become an icon of a world view that goes far beyond scientific quibbles within biology.  As such, it’s not likely the growth of atheism will get shaved off anytime soon.

This is hilarious.  Our shaming of the Darwin Party and their Blunderful Wizard of Flaws (09/05/2008) is working!  The Darwin Castle is in disarray about what to do with their idol during the uprising (02/01/2007).  The priests still adore Charlie and worship him, but they can’t agree on whether to display the idol or hide it because of bad P.R.
    Eugenie and Glenn, stop blaming the creationists for this.  Darwin worship is rampant throughout the Darwin camp.  Don’t you remember how your former employee Kevin Padian defended Darwin Day last year? (see 02/11/2008).  Darwin represents the standard, the leader, the sacred cause of secular unintelligent design.  It started with Darwin himself.  Oh, he was clever at deflecting it with false humility, but Janet Browne described it in detail in her excellent biography Charles Darwin: The Power of Place (Princeton, 2002; see 10/24/2002 and the footnotes from 02/11/2006).  She exposed how Darwin manipulated the worshipers who made pilgrimages to Down House to get them to feel the numinous awe of his greatness.  Darwin would pretend to be ill, or to need to get back to his studies, accentuating to the visitors how precious was their brief opportunity to kiss his feet.  Emma and the whole family played along with the game.  It was disgusting (see 02/13/2004).  After his death, the Four Musketeers (01/06/2004) and other Darwin Party operatives manipulated politicians to inter Darwin’s remains in Westminster Abbey, a religious building.  His august statue stands like a monumental shrine in the British Natural History Museum, and the Pope Darwin call to worship is making the rounds of museums in America.  It is undeniable, also, that Darwin and his followers have continued to use theological arguments for their viewpoint – i.e., the “God wouldn’t have done it this way” defense, the either-or ploy, “God could not have designed the shape of my nose, so everything must be the result of chance,” or, “since it seems implausible that God would have created all these species separately, therefore humans have bacteria ancestors.”  They even wear little WWDD (What Would Darwin Do?) pins (e.g., WWDD article on Live Science, and What would Darwin think of global warming?, found on Science Daily).
    There has been no shortage of quotes over 150 years exalting and sanctifying Darwin as the Father of a secular religion.  Face it; Darwinism is a cult.  His visage haunts biology.  He’s still Big Daddy to the current crop of cultists (see 07/18/2006).  He has his own “guardians of the flame” (see PhysOrg); should they go unemployed?  What other evolutionary biologist could possibly take Charlie’s place?  William or Julian Huxley?  Bill Hamilton?  J.B.S. Haldane?  John Maynard Smith?  Ha!  Read what Steve Jones thought about these toffs, misanthropes and communists (09/02/2004).  Charlie was the only one decent enough to present at least a facade of likability.
    Evolution without Darwin would be like Buddhism without Buddha.  The Buddha didn’t want his name attached to a religion, either, but how could Buddhism function without the shrines?  Where would the disciples light their incense and make their sacrifices?  What face could replace Darwin to grace the stained-glass billboards of the atheists?  Marx?  Stalin?  Dawkins?  William Provine?  P.Z. Myers?  Eugenie, your own politicos have done this.  They’ve marketed Charlie’s special brand of hallucinogenic incense, and the faithful would experience severe withdrawal without it.  Only Charlie’s blend provides the psychedelic trip of feeling like an intellectually fool-filled atheist.  They depend on the incense to get sufficiently incensed at the creationists.  An evolutionary biology without Charlie’s Story-Inducing Smoke would require facing reality.  It wouldn’t be possible to dream of observed design as only apparent design any other way.
    When the Darwin idol eventually gets dismantled, tree and all (01/22/2009), storytelling will be disqualified (see recent foul on PhysOrg), and openness and honesty will again be required in science (02/09/2009).  It’s OK to grant Charlie a moment of silence (see YouTube; explanation on UD).  Then, please, give the poor old man a final rest by preserving his legacy honorably with his own advice, (spoken in an apparent moment of sobriety), “a fair result can be obtained only by fully stating and balancing the facts and arguments on both sides of each question.”  Celebrate Darwin Day the proper way: as Academic Freedom Day.  Abe Lincoln, also enjoying a Bicentennial, would be glad to know that intellectual slavery has been vanquished, that academia is enjoying a new birth of freedom, and that science of the people, by the people, and for the people, shall not perish from the earth.
Next headline on:  Darwin and Evolution • Media • Theology

1. Kingdom ignorance:  Five scientists from London and Harvard examined the “Bacterial Species Challenge: Making Sense of Genetic and Ecological Diversity.”¹  Here’s how they contextualized their challenge:

   The Bacteria and Archaea are the most genetically diverse superkingdoms of life, and techniques for exploring that diversity are only just becoming widespread.  Taxonomists classify these organisms into species in much the same way as they classify eukaryotes, but differences in their biology—including horizontal gene transfer between distantly related taxa and variable rates of homologous recombination—mean that we still do not understand what a bacterial species is.  This is not merely a semantic question; evolutionary theory should be able to explain why species exist at all levels of the tree of life, and we need to be able to define species for practical applications in industry, agriculture, and medicine.  Recent studies have emphasized the need to combine genetic diversity and distinct ecology in an attempt to define species in a coherent and convincing fashion.  The resulting data may help to discriminate among the many theories of prokaryotic species that have been produced to date.
       The species debate in microbiology is not only about a human desire to catalog bacterial diversity in a consistent manner, but is also a fundamental argument because of what it reveals about our ignorance of how evolutionary forces form, shape, and extinguish bacterial genetic lineages, of the mechanisms of differentiation between subpopulations sharing common descent, and of the process of adaptation to new niches and changing environments.

   They discussed several approaches to the problem, but none was unproblematic.  This indicates that for microbes, which comprise the vast majority of organisms on Earth, and have occupied the majority of the evolutionary timeline, scientists do not even know what constitutes a species – let alone how to describe the origin of species.
2. Selection ignorance:  Elisabeth Pennisi’s essay had a revealing title: “Evolutionary Biology: Agreeing to Disagree.”²  Natural selection is the keystone of Darwin’s hypothesis, but on what does it act – the individual, or the group?  or the gene?  Pennisi investigated the ongoing controversy about kin selection, the idea that selection operates on family groups.  This idea has received mixed acceptance by other Darwinians who favor individual selection (see, for instance, the 09/30/2007, 05/31/2004, and 05/07/2002 entries).
       William Hamilton and J.B.S. Haldane expounded the idea of kin selection in the 1960s to explain social behavior in insects.  How could nature select drones that cannot pass on their genes?  It must act at the group level, they argued.  Darwin himself was “flummoxed” by the phenomenon of social insects, Pennisi said, and worried that this “special difficulty” might topple his theory.  For a solution, he had suggested that selection might operate on families.
       After Hamilton’s work in the 1960s, kin selection became the traditional explanation for eusociality in insects.  Edward O. Wilson was an advocate for the idea in the 1970s but now feels it is ineffective.  “The theory that traditionalists use leads them anywhere they want to go,” he complained.  “To make [a theory] really stand [up], you have to show that that’s the only result that can come from your theory, and they haven’t done that.”  Such comments have made kin selectionists very unhappy.  The situation remains at a standoff.  Pennisi described it as a rift between evolutionary biologists, with both sides agreeing to disagree.
3. Queens and jesters:  How about the pace of evolution?  Do biologists agree about that?  Michael J. Benton described “two ways of viewing evolution” in his essay.³  The “Red Queen” model portrays lots of change occurring under the hood, but little outward sign of progress – like the Alice in Wonderland character who had to keep running just to stay in one place (see 09/07/2006 and 05/16/2004).  The “Court Jester” model says that “evolution, speciation, and extinction rarely happen except in response to unpredictable changes in the physical environment, recalling the capricious behavior of the licensed fool of Medieval times.”  Traditionally, he said, “biologists have tended to think in a Red Queen, Darwinian, intrinsic, biotic factors way, and geologists in a Court Jester, extrinsic, physical factors way.”
       Benton portrayed the relative importance of these models as an unresolved debate that will require further research.  “In the future, the identification of diversification shifts across numerous taxa may provide evidence for the relative importance of the Red Queen and Court Jester worldviews,” he said.  “If the majority of diversification shifts are coordinated, and associated with particular climatic, tectonic, and geographic drivers, then the Court Jester model of macroevolution would prevail.... If, on the other hand, the majority of diversification shifts are unique to particular clades, and not coordinated temporally with others, then the Red Queen worldview might be considered.”  It’s surprising to think that such a basic question remains unresolved; the options seem mutually exclusive.  It is evident there is no clear choice between these “worldviews” after so many decades of evolutionary theorizing and evidence-hunting.  Benton hoped for a compromise: “The realization that the Red Queen and Court Jester models may be scale-dependent, and that evolution may be pluralistic, opens opportunities for dialog.”  It is not clear just how two models based on capricious mechanisms might provide a stronger theory.
       Earlier, Benton had opened with, “A key question about the origin of modern biodiversity is how today’s 10 million species arose from a single ultimate species of microbial life 3500 million years ago (Ma).”  Wasn’t that the very question Charles Darwin had answered?
4. Maladaptive radiation:  Another suggestive title adorned an essay by Gavrilets and Losos: “Adaptive Radiation: Contrasting Theory with Data.”⁴  Adaptive radiation refers to situations where a founder population invades a new habitat, and the descendents radiate into a plethora of diverse species.  Adaptive radiation is often claimed as the explanation for biodiversity in a region, but how solid is the evolutionary theory behind it?  There are good cases, and there are poor cases, the authors said, but, “In almost all cases, more data are needed.  Future progress in our understanding of adaptive radiation will be most successful if theoretical and empirical approaches are integrated, as has happened in other areas of evolutionary biology.”  Presumably they were not referring to the success of the other three stories (above).
       Gavrilets and Losos listed 10 patterns of adaptive radiation, then offered some general conclusions.  Remarkably, all three conclusions bemoaned the lack of evidence and the need for further study: e.g., “The number of adaptive radiations that have been extensively studied from the many different perspectives relevant to our discussions is surprisingly small.  More detailed studies, integrating across a variety of approaches and disciplines, is needed to build a reservoir of case studies from which generalizations can be drawn.”
       They retold the story of Darwin’s surprise at the diversity of Galapagos animals.  Since the voyage of the Beagle, they said, adaptive radiation has astonished scientists and the public alike for 150 years.  “But how exactly radiation occurs, and how it differs among taxa and in different settings, as well as why some lineages radiate and others do not, are still unclear,” they ended.  “Most likely this is because there is no single answer: Lineages vary in manifold ways, various evolutionary factors act simultaneously, similar evolutionary outcomes can be achieved via alternative paths, and the contingencies of place and time play a large role in guiding the evolutionary process.”  And yet contingency and guidance seem poles apart.  What Darwin had tried to do was explain the phenomena of life with reference to “laws of nature,” not contingencies.  150 years later, these authors show, biologists seem to have made little progress.
5. Speciation challenges:  Another paper in the Science special issue on Speciation dealt with “Evidence for Ecological Speciation and Its Alternative,” by Dolph Schluter.⁵  His opening paragraph will suffice to show there is lack of certainty in this subject, too:

   Natural selection commonly drives the origin of species, as Darwin initially claimed.  Mechanisms of speciation by selection fall into two broad categories: ecological and mutation-order.  Under ecological speciation, divergence is driven by divergent natural selection between environments, whereas under mutation-order speciation, divergence occurs when different mutations arise and are fixed in separate populations adapting to similar selection pressures.  Tests of parallel evolution of reproductive isolation, trait-based assortative mating, and reproductive isolation by active selection have demonstrated that ecological speciation is a common means by which new species arise.  Evidence for mutation-order speciation by natural selection is more limited and has been best documented by instances of reproductive isolation resulting from intragenomic conflict.  However, we still have not identified all aspects of selection, and identifying the underlying genes for reproductive isolation remains challenging.

   Schluter did not seem to notice that his statements assume evolution to demonstrate evolution.  He used a bandwagon argument for support: “It took evolutionary biologists nearly 150 years, but at last we can agree with Darwin that the origin of species, ‘that mystery of mysteries’, really does occur by means of natural selection.”  If that is true, the next question seems puzzling: “The main question today is how does selection lead to speciation?”
       The essay explored progress on the species question since Darwin.  For one thing, the whole concept of species has changed, altering what biologists mean by speciation in the first place.  The nature and role of natural selection has been revised several times.  There are still holes in the theory: “At this point, the most glaring deficiency is our knowledge of the impact of selection on genes.”  That seems a pretty major deficiency.  Again, later, he reiterated this point: “The most obvious shortcoming of our current understanding of speciation is that the threads connecting genes and selection are still few.  We have many cases of ecological selection generating reproductive isolation with little knowledge of the genetic changes that allow it.”  What if, as in the 01/28/2009 entry, natural selection theory itself is being called into question?  What would that end of the thread hold onto?
       Nevertheless, Schluter beamed over the prospect that Darwin, if he were alive today, would be pleased.  He would find the discoveries made in the 150 years since “the greatest book ever written” (not the Bible, obviously) “staggering.”  He continued, “Mostly, I expect that he would be chuffed by mounting evidence for the role of natural selection on phenotypic traits in the origin of species.  This is really what On the Origin of Species was all about.”  Problems?  Gaps?  No worries.  There’s plenty of time.  “But we hardly have time to complain.  So many new model systems for speciation are being developed that the filling of major gaps is imminent,” he crowed.  “By the time we reach the bicentennial of the greatest book ever written, I expect that we will have that much more to celebrate.”  When knowledge is put in future tense, it suggest that ignorance is in the present tense.  Ignorance seems hardly a cause for celebration this year.
6. Predictable evolution?  Another paper in the special issue put most of the knowledge in the future.  David L. Stern and Virginie Orgogozo asked, “Is Genetic Evolution Predictable?”⁶  They discussed the idea that mutations cluster around certain “hot-spot genes,” making it somewhat predictable, in theory, which way the genome will go.  That remains to be determined, though, because “further understanding of this predictability requires incorporation of the specific functions and characteristics of genes into evolutionary theory.”  Genes might change, in other words, with no apparent change to the creature or its fitness.
       In the conclusion, they cast some doubt on the thesis.  Seeming patterns may be noise, or due to artificial selection by scientists.  “These emerging patterns in the distribution of mutations causing phenotypic diversity derive, however, from a limited set of data culled from the published literature.  It is possible,” they said further, “that these patterns reflect biases in the way scientists have searched for evolutionarily relevant mutations.”  Resolution of the question will require more research.

Coyne subscribes to one species concept (based on reproductive isolation) and one chief mode of speciation, allopatry.  He and I disagree on this and on other aspects of current evolutionary theory, but this is not the place to entertain technical arguments at the cutting edge of the field.  Still, readers of Coyne’s book will get a fairly conservative version of evolutionary theory, with occasional hints about the many heated discussions that characterize any live science and that eventually fuel its progress toward a better understanding of the natural world.

Coyne admits that the issue goes far beyond science, into philosophy and questions of meaning and morality.  Which is why philosophers have been very helpful in this arena during the past several years.  It is a matter of explaining to the public not just the power but the limits of science.  Coyne is critical, for instance, of much evolutionary psychology and the facile just-so stories that have abounded of late to “explain” all sorts of human behaviors, from rape to depression.  I’m with him on this.  The point is not that aspects of human behavior did not evolve by natural selection, but rather that the usually high standards of behavioral genetics are simply not met by most, though not all, the evolutionary psychology literature.

Coyne and Pigliucci tell us (again) that there is such overwhelming evidence for evolution.  OK, put up or shut up.  They don’t know what a species is, they don’t know what the target of selection is, they don’t know if natural selection is a queen or a jester, they don’t know what adaptive radiation is, they don’t know how speciation operates (the main reason for Darwin’s little storybook), and they can’t connect mutations to any actual benefit to an organism.  Other than those little minor matters, evolution is so supported by such mountains of evidence that only a fool with an agenda could dare question it.
    Colin Patterson of the British Natural History Museum once posed a question to his fellow evolutionary biologists: “Can you tell me anything about evolution, any one thing that is true?”  He got a surprised silence.  He told them, “I had been working on this stuff for twenty years, and there was not one thing I knew about it” (see ARN).  Notice he asked if they knew anything – something they knew was true – not what they thought about it, what they guessed about it, what stories they could tell about it.  Would that more evolutionary biologists would ask that question.  All we see in paper after paper is competing guesses, modified models, controversies, debates, changing definitions, and the inevitable, “future research should be able to shed light on this question.”  The articles above show that basic, fundamental tenets of Darwinism are no more nearer solution than they were to Darwin.  What has increased is not their knowledge, but the sophistication of their ignorance.  Then Pigliucci and Coyne pompously blast away about the “overwhelming evidence” for evolution and how stupid the creationists are.  This is not good salesmanship.
    Are you a good shopper?  Of course you are.  You’ve learned to check the specs, not the hype.  When a salesman comes to you shouting, “Acme Widgets are superior to all the other garbage out there, and the testimonials are so globally unanimous, that only a complete idiot would even look at the competitor’s product, which is produced by evil, wicked, stupid ignoramuses who only want to make a buck out of your gullibility.”  You know that you have to blow off the bluff of the chuff (chuff, n.: a boorish, proud, insensitive fellow) and look at what the product can do.  Evolutionists dare not allow you to do that with their product because the competitor will always win hands down.  That’s why they must have a monopoly in marketing.  The special effects in the evolutionary ads require rigging and selective illumination to highlight the glow and keep other things in the dark.  When you ask to see the goods, you get vaporware on back order.
    Evolutionary biology today is a sad case of what happens with protectionism and totalitarianism in the marketplace of ideas.  To get the good stuff you have to go to the black market, which is really the white market when the black light is turned off, the doors are opened and the sun shines in.
Next headline on:  Darwin and Evolutionary Theory

Evolutionists Hunger for Morality   02/09/2009    
Feb 09, 2009 — Nature is completely sold over to naturalistic evolution, yet cannot escape the question of morality.  Science depends on morality, but it is not clear in their statements that they acknowledge any universal moral standard.  Christian standards of honesty seem to be assumed.  But if everything in biology (including human behavior) emerged by natural selection, then so did morality.  Can one derive honesty, trust, or responsibility by an unguided natural process?

1. Responsibility index:  Nature thought it would be good to devise a “responsibility index” for emerging nations who want to join the science club.¹  To reduce fraud, plagiarism and fabrication of data, the Editorial suggested better investigation, openness about violations, avoidance of discrimination, and other moral motions.
2. History of scientific morality:  In the same issue of Nature,² Jerome Ravetz reviewed a new book by Steven Shapin, The Scientific Life: A Moral History of a Late Modern Vocation (U of Chicago, 2008).  Both author and reviewer had things to say about the honesty of scientists past and present.  Science is supposed to be “the embodiment of objectivity,” Ravetz said.  “In The Scientific Life, historian Steven Shapin asks if contemporary high-tech science is a moral enterprise.  Does objectivity render scientific achievement less personal than that in the humanities, and does the scientist possess any special moral virtue?”  Shapin’s thesis is that civility between scientists is the key.  Ravetz pointed out that there have been some glaring shortcomings of that ideal.  Using the world of finance as a comparison, he had a final reflection: “Had Shapin chosen to study the mathematicians who are employed in the world of finance, he might well have found similar patterns of civilized interaction and similar evidence of individual moral virtues,” he said.  “Yet we now know that the collective endeavour of these other very nice entrepreneurial scientists has resulted in the creation of a mountain of toxic fake securities.”  This “sobering thought” seemed calculated to cast doubt on the value of civility alone to produce a moral fellowship.
3. Robotic morality:  Another interesting book review, in the same issue of Nature,³ discussed whether robots could have morality.  Peter Danielson reviewed Moral Machines: Teaching Robots Right from Wrong by Wallach and Allen (Oxford, 2008).  He believes it is premature to know whether robots will ever be able to make autonomous moral decisions.  Hal, the rogue computer in 2001: A Space Odyssey comes to mind.  He also considered it an open question whether robot morality should be modeled on human morality.  In the meantime, best subject our robots to human oversight.  Words like values, trust and moral agents peppered the review, but it seemed both the authors and the reviewer were begging the question of what constitutes a moral standard.  Danielson spoke of “functional morality,” but even that phrase presupposes a function that is good in some moral sense; otherwise, one could consider Nazi morality “functional.”
4. Spencer’s legacy:  One other book review in Nature⁴ highlighted the problem of deriving morality from evolutionary theory.  Andrew Read reviewed Banquet at Delmonico’s: Great Minds, the Gilded Age, and the Triumph of Evolution in America by Barry Werth (Random House, 2009).  Werth’s book “covers the elite’s battle for ideas during the turbulent years of the 1870s and 1880s,” climaxing in an “eponymous banquet” at a Manhattan restaurant shortly after Darwin’s death, “attended by 200 of the most powerful men in the United States, and celebrated [Herbert] Spencer at the end of what was to be his last US trip.”  That’s a tale for the interested reader.  What concerns morality and evolution was stated here by the reviewer:

   The audience found a new idea only in John Fiske’s speech: he asserted that humans acquired a sense of morality not from God, but from natural selection.  The only speech that might resonate today was Spencer’s own.  Worried about the country’s well-being and health, he railed against the national work ethic, arguing that Americans should spend less time striving for a future good, and more time enjoying what the passing day had to offer.  The idea baffled his audience and was poorly received.

   Early evolutionists were giving a conflicting moral standard, it seems.  Andrew Read summed up that we moderns have no such excuse, because we understand evolution much better now:

   We have yet to fully comprehend the consequences of what Darwin did to humanity’s view of itself.  Werth’s picture of what his ‘great minds of the gilded age’ were thinking, of how far they tried to stretch Darwinian insights, and of the personal and moral lessons they drew, makes a forceful argument that the causes of biological diversity – and humankind’s place within it – really matter.  The fact that many of these thinkers’ conclusions were based on such a poor understanding of evolution also shows why everyone deserves proper schooling in evolutionary biology.  The Victorians had the crippling disadvantage that they did not understand inheritance or units of selection.  Today, humanity has no such excuse.

Evolutionists want it but can’t get it.  They don’t have the “natural resources” for morality.  It must be imported.  An embargo of Christian morality would make them starve.
    They are like bad boys sneaking into the Christian smorgasbord.  While nobody is looking, they come in and pretend they belong.  “I’ll have some responsibility, and oh... that honesty looks delicious.  Give me some of that truth for dessert.”  They slurp up all these healthy values with bad manners, and without a dime in their pockets.
    Letting them get away with this only perpetuates their delinquency.  Tough love requires a gentle but firm manager looking them straight in the eye and demanding, “Sorry, boys, you cannot come in and enjoy the banquet without paying the price.  That would be immoral, now, wouldn’t it?”
Next headline on:  Darwin and Evolutionary Theory • Politics and Ethics • Theology

Panspermia Discounted: Life Had to Start Here   02/08/2009    
Feb 08, 2009 — Some prominent biologists have pointed to a back door on the stage of life’s origin.  They have argued that even if the probability for the first cell was unlikely on Earth, life could have been brought here from space.  Francis Crick promoted this view; so did Fred Hoyle.  Most recently, even the ardent atheist Darwin promoter Richard Dawkins allowed room for this view.  In the movie Expelled, he told a surprised Ben Stein that biologists might be able to detect the presence of intelligent design in Earth-based life as a sign it was brought here by aliens – but he reassured him that it would have had to originate on another world by a Darwinian means.  Is there really a back door entrance for life on Earth?
    Leslie Mullins wrote on this for Space.com.  Her article includes a picture of Louis Pasteur; she described how he had disproved spontaneous generation.  The challenge facing molecules-to-man evolution is to get life started in spite of Pasteur’s Law of Biogenesis (life begets life).  Mullins pointed out that Pasteur and Darwin came to opposite conclusions.  Pasteur had experiments to back up his belief; Darwin’s theory only “implied” something that Pasteur’s results forbade:

Pasteur’s experiments and Darwin’s theory led to opposing conclusions regarding the origin of life on Earth.  Pasteur claimed that his work lent support to the belief that God created life.  Just as life could not arise spontaneously from inanimate matter, the first life on the early Earth could not have arisen without the aid of a divine creator.  Yet Darwin’s theory of life evolving over time implied that the first life on Earth could have evolved naturally from inanimate matter.

Iris and Leslie don’t see why because they haven’t read our online book.  If they were regular readers of CEH, they would be filled with despair trying to keep hope alive that life could arise on this planet (or anywhere in the universe) without a Creator.  The gig is up.  It’s time to face reality.
Next headline on:  Origin of Life

Modeling Solar Cells on Butterflies   02/07/2009    
Feb 07, 2009 — Sunlight is free – if we could just learn how to use it better.  For decades, engineers have been trying to improve the efficiency of solar cells.  Why not look at nature?  Science Daily reported on work going on in China and Japan: “The discovery that butterfly wings have scales that act as tiny solar collectors has led scientists in China and Japan to design a more efficient solar cell that could be used for powering homes, businesses, and other applications in the future.”
    Artificial solar cells struggle to attain 10% efficiency.  The scientists are finding that butterfly wings not only collect light more efficiently, they are easier to work with.  The fabrication process is simpler and faster than other methods, and could be used to manufacture other commercially valuable devices, the researchers say.

Don’t let Charlie take credit for these kinds of stories.  Biomimetics has intelligent-design science written all over it.
    For a feast of biomimetic wonders, see “The 15 Coolest Cases of Biomimicry” at BrainZ.org.  Many of these examples have been reported in our pages.
Next headline on:  Biomimetics • Terrestrial Zoology • Amazing Facts

A Tale of Two Sites: Moby Dog and The Claw   02/06/2009    
Feb 06, 2009 — Discoveries portrayed as major evolutionary missing links were announced this week.  One is a putative transitional form from land animal to whale, and one is a Cambrian trilobite-like creature said to be evolving the first claw.

1. Moby dog:  The current evolutionary scenario for the origin of whales is that they evolved from dog-like hoofed animals that took gradually to water at the seashore.  Another fossil in the theoretical sequence has been found in Pakistan.  The news media, like National Geographic and Live Science, are calling this a “big” find, because it is the most complete skeleton of a protoceratid yet discovered.  National Geographic remarked, “It’s an evolutionary discovery Darwin himself would have been proud of.”
       The discovery by Philip Gingerich and team was published in PLoS One this week.¹  A mostly complete articulated male was found, and a kilometer away, a pregnant female.  The female was most exciting because it indicated the embryo, already with teeth, would have been born head first.  To Gingerich, this indicates that the creature had not yet evolved the tail-first birth pattern in modern whales.  There also appeared to be significant sexual dimorphism.  Gingerich inferred from the legs that it was semi-aquatic, probably hunting in the water with paddling, and returning to the land to sleep.  Another paleontologist said, “These complete limbs are almost exactly intermediate between a seagoing creature and a land animal.”  In many respects, the new creature, dubbed Maiacetus inuus, resembles the already-known protocetid Rodhocetus, but with some differences in the ankle, and minor differences in ratios of some skeletal parts.  A paleontologist at SMU remarked, “It is a missing link of the most informative sort.  Charles Darwin would delight.”
       The paper did not say much about the circumstances of burial other than that the female appeared to be floating belly-up, probably due to buildup of gases during decomposition.  The strata are described as marine marl and shale dated to middle Eocene, 47.5 million years old.  Other “Eocene whales” such as Artiocetus clavis (GSP-UM 3458), Rodhocetus balochistanensis (GSP-UM 3485), Protosiren eothene (GSP-UM 3487), and Makaracetus bidens have been found in the same general area.  The paper says, “The specimens described here were found near the top of the major flooding sequence in the early Lutetian stage of the middle Eocene, calibrated to approximately 47.5 Ma.” 
       Gingerich is convinced these specimens provide information on an important evolutionary transition from land to water for the ancestors of whales.  The “precocial development” of the partially-mineralized teeth in the fetus indicated to him a preparation for life in the water, while the head-first delivery orientation indicated a land-animal life habit.  The sexual dimorphism suggested a limited competition between males.  The slightly shorter legs told him the creature was “a slightly less specialized foot-powered swimmer” than its look-alike Rodhocetus.  The team summarized the importance of the discovery in this paragraph from the paper:

   Discovery of a near-term fetus positioned for head-first delivery provides important evidence that early protocetid whales gave birth on land.  This is consistent with skeletal morphology enabling Maiacetus to support its weight on land and corroborates previous ideas that protocetids were amphibious.  Specimens this complete are virtual ‘Rosetta stones’ providing insight into functional capabilities and life history of extinct animals that cannot be gained any other way.

2. The Claw:  It looks like a trilobite with appendages coming out of its head.  What is it?  Look at the picture at PhysOrg.  They say it shows the “origin of claws.”  Found in Germany, the four-inch-long critter dubbed Schinderhannes bartelsi is said to be 390 million years old.  This fossil was also described as a missing link – a “missing link in the evolution of the front claw of living scorpions and horseshoe crabs.”  It seems to have a head similar to that of the terror of the Burgess Shale, Anomalocaris, even though that animal was thought to be extinct a hundred million years earlier.  As with many trilobites and arthropods, “The eyes are covered in numerous tiny, close-packed, hexagonal lenses.”
       The article describes it further: “The fossil’s head section has large bulbous eyes, a circular mouth opening and a pair of segmented, opposable appendages with spines projecting inward along their length.  The trunk section is made up of 12 segments, each with small appendages, and a long tail spine.  Between the head and trunk, there is a pair of large triangular wing-like limbs – that likely propelled the creature like a swimming penguin, according to [Derek] Briggs” [Yale].  It’s the only known member of its species.  It was found in “a quarry near Bundenbach in Germany, a site that yields spectacularly durable pyrite-preserved fossils.”
       How does this fossil help evolution?  Is it really a missing link?  The original paper in Science made no such claim.  They only used the word evolution once, and nothing about transitions or links.  If anything, they said it indicates stasis and decline of good fossilization opportunities:

   The discovery of Schinderhannes emphasizes the importance of exceptionally preserved deposits (Konservat-Lagerstätten) in revealing the evolutionary history of arthropods.  It shows that features of the giant Cambrian anomalocaridids survived for about 100 million years after the Middle Cambrian.  The Hunsrück Slate also yields examples of Marrellomorpha, a clade well known from the Cambrian and more recently discovered in exceptionally preserved fossil deposits from the Silurian and the Ordovician.  Thus, the rarity of post-Cambrian great-appendage arthropods may be a result in part of the decline of Burgess Shale-type preservation after the Middle Cambrian.

Let’s begin with the second creature.  There are already many weird extinct animals known from the Burgess Shale and other parts of the Cambrian.  One more does not indicate an evolutionary ancestry.  This fossil does not help Darwin for several reasons.  We already know that the Burgess fauna were complex and varied, and we have seen that trilobites showed the most diversity in the lowest layers, and less in the higher (see 07/28/2007).  Another problem is that this critter suggests stasis of Burgess characteristics for 100 million years, according to the evolutionary timeline.  A worse problem is that horseshoe crabs, similar in some respects to this creature, show no evolution from the time of their first appearance in the Ordovician.  They survive today as living fossils (01/28/2008) – no evolution for 350 million years!  None of this fits the slow-and-gradual branching tree of diversity Darwin predicted.  So what do we have here with Schinderhannes?  Another complex creature with elegant compound eyes and a symmetrical body, well suited to its environment, that is now extinct.  That’s all one can say before leaving the realm of natural science and talking worldview.
    For the whale story, the new fossil adds very little to what was already known.  It is not that different from Rodhocetus (notice how the naming of these extinct animals, like Protocetidae, embeds the “whale” stem cetus into the name, begging several questions right there).  Like the pregnant ichthyosaurs, this amazing fossil of a pregnant female indicates rapid burial under flood conditions.  Why should that fact not be the highlight of the story?  It’s not like such conditions were the norm for these animals.  A flood over a vast region, rapid burial, extreme preservation – sounds almost Biblical.  Does it mean evolution?  Why are finds qualifying for the coveted term “missing link” so rare?  There should be thousands upon thousands of finely graded forms throughout the record, not one here and one over there.  The Darwin Tree paradigm has already been falsified, so it’s a waste of time to look for missing links anyway.  The Cambrian explosion falsified it before The Origin was even published, and more Darwinists have been speaking out that the tree was a myth all along (01/22/2009).  There’s no need to discuss this further.  But we shall, for the overkill of it.
    Suppose we knew seals, sea lions, manatees, beaver and otters only from fossils.  Suppose further that clever storytelling geologists managed to put them into a timeline claiming they died tens of millions of years ago.  How many of you would want to bet that a Darwinist storyteller would be able to rig up a complex, plausible-sounding, jargon-laden scientific paper showing an evolutionary progression between them?  The variation between living sea lions (seals, elephant seals, harp seals, big ones, small ones, fat ones, skinny ones) exceeds the variation between Maiacetus and Rodhocetus.  Without soft parts and behavior and habitats available, it would be very tempting for Darwinists to arrange these and other unrelated fossils from around the globe into an ancestral tree.  Is a beaver or sea lion becoming something else, just because it has webbed feet and spends a great deal of time in the water?  Orthogenesis went out of style a hundred years ago.  For Gingerich and his Darwinist friends to believe Maiacetus was on the fast track to whalehood, they have to also believe that otters, beaver, sea lions and manatees decided to resist the evolutionary force and remain happily half-evolved.  What kind of law of nature says that if you are an artiodacytl, you’ll go all the way, but if a dog, you will stop at navy seal?  Or if a rodent, you will leave it to beaver?  Evolutionary theory is so flexible it explains anything.
    The grouping called Artiodactyla contains animals as diverse as pigs, hippos, camels and dog-like animals.  What does such a composite class signify? (see 01/29/2009 entry).  The differences between members of this class are arguably more significant than the traits they share.  Does it indicate that they evolved from a common ancestor?  Could it not equally well illustrate a pattern of nested hierarchies in nature that resists evolutionary theory?  Walter ReMine, in The Biotic Message, theorized that the nested hierarchies do just that: they show a common Designer (one God, not many), but the lack of evolutionary ancestry.  Darwin’s picture is not the only way to look at these patterns – nor is it the best.
    We already know from fossils that the ancient world contained many more species and families of animals than we have today.  Evolutionary sequences are made up by humans, not by the data.  The data just as well describe the Creator’s love of variety.  He designed the basic kinds of animals and allowed them to diversify within limits, after their kind.  Groups of animals share similarities; this does not mean they evolved from one another.  Evolutionists are very choosy about which similarities they want to relate by common ancestry and which they want to explain with hand-waving (see The Convergence Concoction by Brett Miller for many examples).  A worldwide cataclysm sent as judgment on sin left the current postdiluvian world impoverished of its former diversity, yet sufficiently adorned to speak powerfully of intelligent design so that men are without excuse.  The data fit this picture.  We have an eyewitness testimony telling us this is what happened.  If you choose to disbelieve that evidence, then you are not better off, nor more scientifically grounded.  For one thing, you have not gotten rid of miracles – you have multiplied them!  The whole animal kingdom becomes miracle after miracle of accident and happenstance, going against what we know is true about the way laws of nature operate.  For another, you are not engaging in observable, repeatable, verifiable science, but in narrative with a good bit of imagination and worldview preference mixed in.  To top it off, you have to assume Biblical principles (rationality and morality) to do science.  It cannot be done from an evolved monkey brain that reduces to particles (see top right quote by Darwin).  If sensible people forced the Darwinists to be consistent with their own beliefs, they would turn into a caricature of the Three Monkeys: see no science, hear no science, speak no science.
    The supposed evolutionary sequence from dog-like hoofed animal to right whale exists only in the imaginations of Darwinists.  A variety of amazing, complex animals, well adapted to their habitats, has lived on this planet.  We have a subset of them still alive today.  Arranging them into an ancestral sequence is just a game played by certain persons addicted to divination (07/26/2008, 10/09/2008). 
Next headline on:  Fossils • Mammals • Marine Biology • Evolution

Evolution as Efficiency Expert   02/06/2009    
Feb 06, 2009 — Who would have thought that a lowly bacterium is a “master of industrial efficiency”?  That’s what a researcher at the Weizmann Institute of Science called it.  E. coli, the best-studied microbe, “can be thought of as a factory with just one product: itself,” a press release said.  “It exists to make copies of itself, and its business plan is to make them at the lowest possible cost, with the greatest possible efficiency.”
    Dr. Tsvi Tlusty at Weizmann marveled at the efficiency of the machinery in the factory: RNA polymerase, which transcribes DNA into messenger RNA, and ribosomes, which translate the RNA into proteins.  He described with equations the optimum cost of construction of a bacterium.  The model accurately predicted how the bacterium would alter its construction strategies under stress.  Experiments showed that is what happens.
    But then, Dr. Tlusty assigned its origin to chance – the opposite of efficiency: “Evolution, in other words, is a master efficiency expert for living factories, meeting any challenges that arise as production conditions change.”  For personifying a mindless process, for breaking the Darwinist rules against teleology, and for stating self-contradictory nonsense, Tlusty has earned Stupid Evolution Quote of the Week.

The Weizmann Institute is located in Rehovot, Israel, within a triangle formed by ancient cities Gezer, Ashdod and Lydda.  During the Bronze Age, this was a Canaanite area.  In the Iron Age it was Philistine.  Though Joshua passed through here briefly during the Conquest, and Solomon later made Gezer a fortified city, during much of its BC history it was a pagan cultural center on the north-south coastal highway through which Egyptian pharaohs and Mesopotamian conquerors passed.
    Local Canaanite and Philistine priests attributed the wonders around them to their idols.  They believed the wonders around them had emerged through the spirits of natural forces – the storm god Baal and his consort Ashtoreth.  Even Israelites living in the area frequently compromised with the their pagan neighbors and joined in their idolatrous practices.  They worshiped Baal and sacrificed their children to false gods.  They persecuted the prophets of the Lord, who warned them of the evil of refusing to acknowledge their Maker and obey His word.
    History repeats itself.  Today’s apostate Israelites worship Baal-Charlie, the god of natural selection, and sacrifice to Ashtoreth-TinkerBaal, the goddess of sexual selection.  They sacrifice their children to their idols in the public schools.  They practice divination (07/26/2008, 10/09/2008).  They think they are so smart and enlightened as they turn the glory of the Creator of the masterly-designed living things around them into offerings for their chosen idols, not realizing how silly they sound calling Evolution a master efficiency expert with a business plan.  They have polluted this holy land with their pride and foolishness.
    God is not mocked.  Near Rehovot a long time ago, Philistines captured the Ark of the Covenant and placed it in front of their fish-idol Dagon (modern Tiktaalik) in the Temple of Dagon at Ashdod (I Samuel 5).  The priests found their idol fallen over the next morning in obeisance to the Ark, a symbol of the true God, Maker of heaven and Earth.  They set their idol up again, only to find it fallen once again the following morning with its head and hands broken off.  Perhaps there’s a parable here for modern idolaters.  Skip the Weizmann Institute and join the Wise Man institute.  Wise men still seek Him.  Wise men do better science.
Next headline on:  Cell Biology • Bible • Amazing Facts • Evolution • Dumb Conclusions

1. Jaws of steel:  A skull labeled Australopithecus robustus was studied for the force its jaws could generate.  Interpretation: “Early humans had jaws of steel.”  With this title, Science Daily is assuming this skull tells us about our ancestry, even though it is similar to apes and the linkage to human evolution is questionable at best.  Researchers at Arizona State assume this animal’s teeth could really crack a nut.  What does it mean?  “New research ... reveals nut-cracking abilities in our 2.5-million-year-old relatives that enabled them to alter their diet to adapt to changes in food sources in their environment.”  It is not clear that they found any fossil nuts or fossil menus, but one of the researchers knew just what our great-great-grandparents were facing in their own great depression: “These fall-back foods – hard nuts and seeds – were important survival strategies during a period of changing climates and food scarcity.”  Apparently they had not yet evolved the ability to hit the big nuts with a rock and save their teeth.
2. Spongy Cambrian fuse:  Since the time of Darwin, the Cambrian explosion has been one of the biggest problems for the theory of evolution.  All the animal phyla appear abruptly in the fossil record without ancestors, despite over a century of looking for precursors.  This week in Nature,¹ researchers reported traces of a steroid in Precambrian rock in Oman said to be 635 million years old.  They said this chemical (24-isopropylcholestane, or lpc24) is diagnostic of sponges, and must mean that true sponges had evolved 100 million years before the Cambrian explosion.
       Brocks and Butterfield pointed out, though, in the same issue of Nature,² that the claim by the discoverers that the steroids indicate the presence of mature sponges “overlooks the evolutionary nature of biological taxa and the incremental assembly of defining characteristics along (now-extinct) ‘stem lineages’.”  In the evolutionary world view, one cannot assume the existence of mature sponges in rocks 100 million years earlier.  They must have been 100 million years less evolved.  Did the assumed ancestors even have the same characteristics of Cambrian sponges?  No clear evidence of spicules, for instance, has been found in the periods prior to the Cambrian.  “The absence of convincing spicules in the Ediacaran or Cryogenian fossil record implies that the modern poriferan classes were not fully defined until the Cambrian,” they said.  So not only was the original paper vulnerable to charges of question-begging, the criticism by Brocks and Butterfield was similarly theory-laden with Darwinian ideas.  Nevertheless, the news media jumped on the evolutionary interpretation with dramatic headlines like “Oldest Fossil Evidence for Animals Found” (Live Science), “Ancient sponges leave their mark” (BBC News, and “Earliest Evidence for Animal Life Discovered” (Science Daily).
3. Bible food fight:  Last month a theologian at the University of St. Andrews announced that the Biblical diet was unhealthy.  PhysOrg reported him claiming that people living in Bible times did not enjoy a balanced diet, contrary to portrayals of Israel as a land flowing with milk and honey.  This conclusion was based on his comparison of Biblical texts, comparative anthropological evidence, and archaeological finds.  He admitted that Biblical texts were not necessarily intended to give dietary advice, but left unanswered the question whether the land was capable of providing a balanced diet, and even if so, whether the practices of the people matched the precepts of the Old Testament.  Even today, many people do not eat what they know they should.  To what extent modern conceptions of what constitutes a good diet should be imposed on ancient people seems also open to question.  Every so often the modern “food pyramid” gets rearranged.  And some living tribes, like Eskimos, seem to get along fine with diets that contradict modern notions of the balanced diet.  The judgment call in the article, therefore, seems moot on several counts.
4. Tranquil flood:  A report on Science Daily called into question the Black Sea Flood theory for the origin of legends of Noah’s Flood.  Sediment cores on the Danube River were adduced to cast doubt on the Ryan-Pitman hypothesis that was popular a few years ago (04/21/2001, 04/26/2002).  Their questioning suggests additional questions, though.  Did the Ryan-Pitman hypothesis even qualify as an explanation for a Biblical flood that is described in Genesis 6-9 as covering all the high mountains?  And can sediments limited to a small region such as the Danube inform any interpretation of a flood of much vaster extent?  National Geographic interpreted this, anyway, to cast doubt on the Bible: “‘Noah’s Flood’ Not Rooted in Reality, After All?”  The only thing it was casting doubt on was the Ryan-Pitman hypothesis.  In that regard, yes, it could be called a “mythical flood,” but not necessarily a “Nail in Noah’s-Flood Coffin” like National Geographic intimated.
5. Protein evolution:  Pyrrolysine, an amino acid outside the standard 20-amino-acid library of “letters” making up life’s protein code, has been studied in more detail by researchers at Yale.  This uncommon amino acid, found in only 7 microbes, is modified after the protein has been translated in the ribosome.  Science Daily said the research team feels this fact “gave the researchers a molecular handle by being an extreme example of an amino acid that evolved to serve a highly specific need.”  Apparently the microbes have molecular systems that manage this particular amino acid.  To the reporter, this can only mean that “these molecules have evolved to work together.”  Teleology is supposed to be forbidden in Darwinian explanations.
6. Monkey politics:  Some chimpanzees are big and use physical attacks to get their way.  Others are smaller and more docile, grooming others to win favor.  One chimpanzee named Freud in Tanzania was observed to use both strategies.  According to Science Daily, this can only mean one thing: monkeys evolved politics.  The brief article did not mention this as evidence for the origin of human politics, but the lead author is the McKnight Distinguished Professor in the College of Biological Sciences’ department of ecology, evolution and behavior (EEB) at the University of Minnesota.  The human-evolution angle is apparently part of the motivation for the study, because she said, “We plan to study more alpha males to determine if grooming is a common strategy that small-bodied males use to placate rivals or cultivate cooperative alliances.” 
7. Red message:  Some ochre-colored markings were found on a cave wall in Africa said to be 100,000 years old.  This must mean that human culture evolved 70,000 years earlier than thought, reported Michael Balter in Science last week.³  One researcher nearly “fell off his chair” at the suggestion that the simple cross-hatched lines represented deliberate, symbolic designs.  “If so,” Balter commented, “the timeline for the earliest known symbolic behavior must once again be redrawn,” even if scientists don’t know what they symbolized, or even if they were symbols in the first place.  What “If not so”?
8. RNA world lines:  Mexican researchers publishing in PLoS One think they found fossils of the long-lost RNA world in the genetic code.⁴  How did they discern this?  They modeled on a computer the kinds of relationships of purines and pyrimidines in the DNA and RNA in some species of Archaea and bacteria.  “Remarkably,” they remarked, “the scaling properties of the distance series of some codons from the RNA code and most codons from both extended RNA codes turned out to be identical or very close to the scaling properties of codons of the SGC” [standard genetic code].  What does this mean?  “Therefore, we conclude that most current prokaryotes may still contain relics of the primeval RNA World and that both extended RNA codes may well represent two plausible evolutionary paths between the RNA code and the current SGC.”  This, of course, assumes that the RNA World even existed.  They referred to it as a “possible” thing and a “notion.”  The word notion appeared six times in the paper, most notably here: “The notion that present genomes may still retain remnants of their ancestry for more than three billion years has been a subject of controversy.”  Nevertheless, they concluded, “Our results support the notion that evolution did not erase all vestiges typical of the RNA World in today prokaryote genomes, not only in terms of an enrichment of RNY codons, but also revealing the existence of an underlying ancient fractal structure.”  The notion of a fractal structure in DNA played heavily in the paper.
9. Snakes alive:  A giant boa fossil has been discovered in Colombia.  Matthew Huber in Nature took this to mean that “tropical climate in the past was not buffered from global warming.”⁵  He did ask some questions about this inference proposed by discoverers Head et al in the same issue,⁵ namely:

   All that said, these implications are based on a new type of proxy: Head and colleagues’ findings are the result of probably the first study in ‘snake palaeothermometry’, and as such must be viewed with caution.  Is the empirical link between size and temperature really generalizable and accurate?  Could the ability to lose heat be an important limitation for these giant snakes, rendering Head and colleagues’ extrapolations moot?  Can a few vertebrae truly provide accurate estimates of snake size?  Why have similarly giant snakes not been found in other warm intervals?

   The popular press, however, did not hesitate to say that the giant snake fossil is a lesson for humans about global climate change (see National Geographic).

More disturbingly, the results bring into question the usefulness of the standard tool kit for identifying hotspots of changes that are beneficial to organisms.  Convincing demonstration of positive selection now requires both evidence that the changes were not caused by BGC and scrutiny of the impact of the amino-acid changes.

Evidence can be badly misinterpreted, as any lawyer knows.  What do observations mean?  Humans are prone to jumping to conclusions.  Science is supposed to be a more rigorous process of linking causes to effects, in hopes of providing reliable explanations for natural phenomena.  Scientific reasoning usually does a better job than intuition, but it is not infallible.  A lot of questions have been raised about scientific reasoning over the last century.  Radicals have questioned the connection between scientific reasoning and “the real world” as it is “out there” apart from our sensations of it.  Most scientists today help themselves to the concept of “scientific realism” which assumes a connection.  The Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy says, “Scientific realists hold that the characteristic product of successful scientific research is knowledge of largely theory-independent phenomena and that such knowledge is possible (indeed actual) even in those cases in which the relevant phenomena are not, in any non-question-begging sense, observable.”  But how justified is scientific realism?  Scientists may assume it, but on what grounds?  Are they just begging deeper questions, even when they claim something as an “observation”?  Notice the article’s conclusion:

Scientific realism is, by the lights of most of its defenders, the sciences’ own philosophy of science.  Considerations of the significant philosophical challenges which it faces indicate that it can be effectively defended only by the adoption of a metaphilosophical approach which is also closely tied to the science, viz., some version or other of philosophical naturalism.

Metaphysics is unavoidable, therefore.  Can it be minimized?  Science does have a lot of success stories to its credit.  If scientists can fly a spacecraft around Saturn, applying widely varying findings accumulated through years of careful research in disparate fields, they must be doing something right.  There’s a strong link, however, between the successful explanations and phenomena that are observable, testable, and repeatable.  Origin stories are in different domain.  How successful can a theory about a universal common ancestor be if no observer was present?
    Early scientists were scrupulous in cashing out their explanations in empirical evidence.  Darwin came along and relaxed the rules.  In the Origin, he made “one long argument,” employing analogies, using, for instance, artificial selection (a form of intelligent design) as a proxy for natural selection (chance masquerading as law of nature).  He also pieced together widely disconnected snippets of observation into a grand mythical story that merely sounded “plausible.”  There are no laws of plausibility.  How do you test plausibility?  If the intellectual world gets swept off its feet by the apparent plausibility of Darwin’s Myth because it fits with their Victorian values of progress in an age of criticism of establishment religion, does that make it the Truth?
    Darwin got away with substituting hypothesis and narrative for scientific explanation.  He did so, ironically, by helping himself to moral and intellectual concepts not derivable from his universal law of natural selection.  This intellectual coup, achieved more through rhetoric than demonstration, prostituted the noble advance of science that had long sought understanding through rigorous observation and testing.  These articles (above) are examples of that legacy.  Getting science back to its founding principles is as difficult as getting America’s entitlement-minded culture back to the limited government specified in the Constitution.  Without it, though, any justification for reliable inference about the world and its natural history is compromised.
    Letting storytellers in science is like letting hackers on the internet.  When hackers run rampant on the science network, it’s hard to tell what is real anymore.  Only suckers broadcast excited messages that shout, “Send this to everyone you know!”
Next headline on:  Genetics • Fossils • Bible • Evolution • Early Man • Origin of Life • Terrestrial Zoology

Darwin Still Doesn’t Do Well in Polls   02/04/2009    
Feb 04, 2009 — British Darwin defender Richard Dawkins is gnashing his teeth over the latest poll in Britain that shows “More than half of the public believe that the theory of evolution cannot explain the full complexity of life on Earth, and a ‘designer’ must have lent a hand,” according to the UK Guardian and UK Telegraph.  Dawkins said the result indicates a worrying level of scientific ignorance among Britons.  In his words, much of the population is “pig-ignorant” about science.  But what does the poll mean?
    In “The Problem with Evolution Surveys” on Live Science, Robert Roy Britt said the announcement should not worry “those who know evolution to be a solid scientific theory” so much.  Only 10%, he pointed out, subscribe to Biblical creationism and a young earth.  Another 12% subscribe to intelligent design, which Britt called “not a theory” (like evolution is, in his view).  Britt says this means “only 22 percent reject evolution outright.”  From there, Britt went on to discuss the way questions are framed in polls and the complex interplays between science and religion in public opinions.  He also chalked up results to ignorance of what evolution is.  He asserted that “the theory of evolution is one of the most well-supported theories of science, and scientists and most science teachers think it should be taught in science class without religious ideas such as creationism and intelligent design.”
    A different interpretation was offered by Dr. Michael Egnor on Evolution News, an ID blog from the Discovery Institute.  He noted that more people doubt Darwinism than go to church.  The meaning, he said, is obvious: “support for intelligent design extends far beyond the segment of the population that is traditionally religious.”  A similar proportion holds in America.  In addition, he noted how surprising this poll was for the land in which Darwin lived and wrote – the country that honors him as one of their most famous offspring: “After generations of Darwinist indoctrination in public schools, more than half of the British public doubts Darwinism as an adequate explanation for life.”
    Egnor took umbrage at the arrogance of Dawkins calling his fellow-citizens “pig-ignorant” of science.  Dawkins had also tried to distance Darwin’s views from chance.  The Telegraph quoted him as follows:

“Obviously life, which was Darwin’s own subject, is not the result of chance,” he said.
    “Any fool can see that.  Natural selection is the very antithesis of chance.
    “The error is to think that God is the only alternative to chance, and Darwin surely didn’t think that because he himself discovered the most important non-theistic alternative to chance, namely natural selection.”

Polls are interesting but not definitive.  Better to be right than follow a crowd.  Nevertheless, it must remain utterly frustrating to the Darwinists that they cannot sell their ideas to the public after 150 years of nonstop indoctrination.  Why don’t they just admit that doubting Darwinism produces higher fitness?
    We need to understand some oft-used tactics of the Darwin defenders to avoid being deceived.  First, consider the claim by Richard Dawkins that “natural selection is the very antithesis of chance.”  Notice that Dawkins feels impelled to distance Darwin’s theory from chance, because otherwise it would degenerate into the “Stuff Happens” Law – an abandonment of any and all claim to scientific explanation (see 09/15/2008 commentary).  He tries to portray natural selection as a law-like process that guarantees organisms will evolve toward increasing fitness.  (He knows he can’t portray this as progress or he will incur the wrath of fellow Dar-wino Michael Ruse.)  Is it really possible to spin evolution as un-chance?

Let’s imagine a generic law-governed situation, say a set of equally-spaced steel bars that punch downward like hammers from a ceiling onto a concrete floor.  Each bar’s rate and interval can be measured and found to be predictably law-like.  No intelligence seems to be guiding them; they just hammer away mindlessly but regularly.  Now we see that beach balls are scattered around the floor.  Many get popped by the bars, but some are blown this way or that by the wind from the hammering, or by glancing blows.  In a sense, one could say that the beach balls that don’t go extinct are the fittest because they survive.  They have been naturally selected.  This is the only kind of law-like, non-chance behavior Dawkins can appeal to.  If there is no intelligent guidance, nothing interesting is going to happen.  A few balls will outlast the others, but that is it.  Can Dawkins appeal to anything else?  Let’s add the ability of balls to spontaneously vary in shape a little – another element of chance.  Over a period of time, it is observed that there is a slight preponderance of oblong balls accumulating – “survival of the fittest.”  Add another law-like element: a steady wind blows from one direction.  Oblong balls accumulate at the far end of the field (the ones that didn’t get popped).

Is this evolution?  This is no better than bubbles accumulating in an eddy along a stream.  We don’t see any combination of laws of nature and chance producing engineered systems performing a function for a purpose.  Natural selection, therefore, is indistinguishable from chance.  The laws don’t care what the beach balls do, and the beach balls are at the whim of whatever pushes them around at the moment.  The bars and the balls have no mind, no eyes, no care about what happens.  Without a mind directing things toward an outcome, it really is all about chance; chance overrules the law-like elements.  The flaw in evolutionary thinking is to postdict their own teleological minds onto a history of this planet and re-interpret the design they see as the outcome of chance.  They are not being consistent.  If it were really mindless, you would have rocks, but not corn (see next entry).
    Other evolutionary propaganda tactics are evident in these articles, especially Robert Roy Britt’s screed.  This was sad for a guy who used to try to make a pretence of objectivity but is evidently now a hardened Darwiniac.  For one, he and the others associate Darwinism with science.  Associating anything with the magic word “science” grants it an air of respectability, earned or not.  For another, they use the bald assertions of dogmatism (BAD) strategy: “evolution is one of the most well-supported theories of science.”  Why?  “Because I said so!”  Another is equivocation: what do they mean by evolution?  Britt referred to antibiotic resistance as evidence for evolution, something no young-earth creationist would reject.  To extrapolate that into the belief that philosophy came from bacteria is another thing entirely.  Another trick is the either-or fallacy; you are either a Darwin worshiper or you are pig-ignorant of science.  That’s also a case of ridicule.  Dawkins is good at that.  If he were a righteous man, he would be saying, “Come now, and let us reason together.”  We would reply: “Reason, what a capital idea.  Cheerio.  Tell us, Dr. Dawkins, how did reason evolve?  Some tea, perhaps, while you ponder that?”
Next headline on:  Darwin and Evolutionary Theory • Intelligent Design • Bible and Theology • Education

Corn Is Fuel in More Ways than One   02/03/2009    
Feb 03, 2009 — There’s been controversy lately about the diversion of corn crops from food for humans to ethanol for engines.  Why not both?  A new pilot program announced by Fraunhofer-Gesellschaft saves the corn cobs for eating but makes ethanol out of the straw.  If so, this would make the whole plant an energy factory for the human and the car he or she drives.  What’s more, the test facility produces ethanol from the stalks with 30 percent more efficiency, in less than half the time.  One of their secrets is using enzymes to break down the cellulose before the fermentation process begins.  The bio-gas and heat produced can be captured in fuel cells to power homes.

If this invention works as good as the press release, it sounds great; more power to them.  The thing that deserves more praise is the cornstalk.  That wobbly plant blowing in the wind is an energy marvel.  Practically the whole plant can be converted into useful energy.  Think about all the designs that make these energy conversions possible.  All the benefits depend initially on molecular machines that capture the energy of sunlight and convert it into high-energy substances the plant uses to grow and make more machines.  Then, humans or animals can eat parts of the plant, using their machinery to extract that energy for their needs.  The remainder, which used to lie on the ground and decompose via the machinery in insects, bacteria and fungi, can now be utilized to replace oil and natural gas.  This sounds like an all-around benefit.
    If you shine sunlight on a rock, it will capture energy, too – heat energy.  Then it will release it back at night at a rate defined by its thermal inertia.  But that energy is of little use to man, other than for warming your hands at night for a short time; the energy is stored simply as vibration of molecules in the rock.  The high yield of useful energy in corn is achieved because plants contain complex, highly-efficient mechanisms for capturing sunlight, passing ions delicately down prescribed biochemical pathways according to a program that converts the energy into useful forms that can be stored and released for a purpose.  That is why rocks fall down but corn grows up, producing seed and food.
    The scientists may have had corn for dinner the day they thought of their invention.  If so, the corn’s energy went into intelligent design.  This story has a “biomimetics” tag, but it’s really biotechnology.  It’s taking off-the-shelf technology in plants and enzymes and reworking the design to achieve a goal desired by humans.  The scientists were spared the hard work of inventing photosynthesis and enzymes.  All they had to do was adapt existing systems in new ways.  It’s like hitching a plow to an ox, only with more finesse.
Next headline on:  Plants • Biomimetics • Amazing Facts

The Early Bird Gets the Just-So Story   02/03/2009    
Feb 03, 2009 — If a catastrophic world event wiped out the dinosaurs, why did birds survive?  They’re smaller and more delicate, it seems.  National Geographic published a new hypothesis: they out-thought the doomed dinosaurs.  “Birds survived the global catastrophe that wiped out their dinosaur relatives due to superior brainpower, a new study suggests.”
    A couple of seabird skulls alleged to be 55 million years old show a larger and more complex brain, researchers said in the Zoological Journal of the Linnean Society.  This explanation, however, is not alone.  Other reasons why birds survived the extinction include the location hypothesis (that they were distant from the catastrophe), and the coastline hypothesis (that coastal habitats were not as impacted as others).  These hypotheses seem to ignore the dinosaur species living in the same lucky habitats.
    The proponents of the bigger-brain hypothesis noticed that some birds went extinct, so “it wasn’t feathers or warm-bloodedness that gave modern birds a leg up.”  It must have been the bigger brain, they said, even though, pound for pound, a T rex brain would seem much bigger than a hummingbird brain.  Maybe it was the software, not the hardware – though by all accounts, dinosaurs must have had pretty good programming, because they showed a remarkable flexibility and tenacity in a variety of habitats for a long time.  Why the Dodo emerged and Velociraptor perished is just one of those things that happens in evolution.
    National Geographic ended the article with, “As well as providing valuable new evidence for the evolution of birds... the latest study offers an intriguing new theory that will motivate paleontologists to look harder and farther to find more fossils.”  They desperately need more fossils, the lead author said.  “We can only get so close to understanding the brains of the earliest birds with the sample of known species currently available.”

We sincerely hope you enjoyed this bedtime story.  Some day, if you think real hard, you might survive an extinction, too.  You might outlive the bobble-headed professors who teach Darwinist nonsense in academia, oblivious to the fact that it is imploding.
Next headline on:  Birds • Dinosaurs • Dumb Ideas

Titan Methane Age Still a Problem   02/02/2009    
Feb 02, 2009 — “Our new map provides more coverage of Titan’s poles, but even if all of the features we see there were filled with liquid methane, there’s still not enough to sustain the atmosphere for more than 10 million years.”  So said Elizabeth Turtle, lead author of a paper in Geophysical Research Letters,¹ in an article on the Cassini Imaging Team [ISS] website.  She added, “How long Titan’s atmosphere has existed or can continue to exist is still an open question.”  The press release was written up by Space.com and National Geographic.
    A comparison of older and newer images suggests that cloudbursts of liquid methane may occur.  Some of the polar lakes may dry up and others refill as the seasons change.  Cassini is exploring Titan at its equinox.  One goal of another extended mission would be to study seasonal changes until the next solstice in 2017.
    Cassini instruments have difficulty characterizing the lakes.  They could be very shallow.  The Huygens probe landed in 2005 on a flat playa that appeared to have ice boulders that had tumbled out of canyons possibly carved by flash floods.  Scientists in the 1990s had predicted that Titan’s surface might be submerged in a global ocean of liquid ethane and methane; that did not pan out.  Instead, most of the equatorial region of the planet-size moon is blanketed with dunes.  All the low-albedo features, assumed to be lakes, discovered to date have been in the polar regions.
    How is the absence of methane explained?  The press release said, “the new observations suggest that underground methane reservoirs must exist.”  To what extent that conclusion was inferred from the need to keep Titan billions of years old was not stated.  The original paper’s introduction referred to the quandary about methane destruction rates in the atmosphere, but then hid the solution underground:

Photochemical processes acting in the atmosphere convert methane into more complex hydrocarbons, substantial quantities of which may have precipitated from the atmosphere over Titan’s history [Yung et al., 1984; Lorenz and Lunine, 2005].  These processes create Titan’s atmospheric hazes and destroy methane over relatively short timescales, ~10⁷-10⁸ yr [Yung et al., 1984].  Therefore, Titan is hypothesized to have reservoirs of liquid methane to resupply the atmosphere [e.g., Lunine, 1993].  Knowledge of the distribution of liquids on Titan’s surface and clouds in its atmosphere, as well as any changes in either, provides constraints that are essential to furthering our understanding of Titan’s methane cycle, its atmospheric dynamics, its total methane inventory and, thus, the sustainability of its current atmosphere.

The low-albedo features observed by ISS at both poles cover over 600,000 km², almost 1% of Titan’s total surface area; however, even if all of these features are currently liquid-filled, they do not appear to provide enough methane to keep Titan’s atmosphere resupplied for a substantial amount of time [Lorenz et al., 2008].  Thus, although Mitri et al. [2007] have demonstrated that evaporation from lakes covering 0.002–0.02 of the surface could maintain the current methane relative humidity over short timescales, only a relatively small fraction of the liquid reservoirs required to replenish atmospheric methane over geologic timescales currently appears to exist on the surface.

We’ve been bringing up this problem for years.  This latest paper shows that no solution has been forthcoming for over two decades; in fact, the problem has only gotten worse.  The consensus Age of the Solar System (A.S.S.) is 4.6 billion years.  10 million years is 1/450th of that value, and that is the maximum that the empirical evidence permits.  If planetary scientists truly followed the evidence where it leads, as scientists are supposed to do, they would have to conclude Titan is young.  Evidence from Enceladus, Iapetus, Mercury, comets, Mars, the moon and many other bodies that showcase evidence of youth could be adduced for support.  The ramifications of that conclusion would be so far-reaching and unpalatable to the old-age, evolution-inebriated materialistic community, they have to resort to distraction to keep people from thinking about it.  CEH thinks the sidestep is the most interesting part of the dance.
    The comeback argument is that scientists “know” the solar system is old from other lines of evidence, e.g., radiometric dating of meteorites and rock units on Earth, and so forth.  But they don’t “know” these things without making assumptions.  Planetologists used to “know” that planets required billions of years to form from a solar nebula.  That was before the revolution in thinking caused by the discovery of extrasolar planets.  Their properties suggest – some say require – rapid formation to prevent destruction by migration.  Indeed, a whole new “heretical” disk-instability hypothesis proposes that giant planets can form much more rapidly than thought.  When you find a number of bodies in the solar system today with upper-limit ages converging at the recent end of the evolutionary timescale, it becomes increasingly implausible to believe we live at a special epoch when all these phenomena are observable.  It should call into question the timescale itself.
    For reasons philosophical rather than empirical, many in the old paradigm don’t wish to think along those lines.  Others, from years of indoctrination in the paradigm, cannot even begin to think outside the box.  They just chalk up the mysteries as anomalies.  Anomalies are the stuff of which scientific revolutions are made.
Next headline on:  Solar System • Dating Methods • Geology

1. Science News:  The January 31 cover of Science News shouts “Happy Birthday Darwin” against a backdrop of his famous “tree of life” sketch from the Origin.  The website contains a 36-page tribute to Darwin.  Editor-in-Chief Tom Siegfried led off with an opening editorial entitled, “Modern biology owes unpayable debt to Darwin.”  Who is the “greatest practitioner of all time” in sports or the physical sciences?  Siegfried says the question is likely to end in a divided vote.  That was his lead-in to this announcement:

   But then there’s biology.  The greatest biology of all time?  There’s only one answer.  Any other vote invalidates the voter as unqualified.  It’s Darwin.

   He doesn’t tell you just what he thinks about Darwin.  He tells you what you have to think to be considered “qualified” to have an opinion.  Voting for Pasteur, for instance, would not only invalidate your vote; it would disqualify you as a voter.
       Continuing on with the Dobzhansky mantra (12/19/2008), Siegfried added, “No scientist’s birthday warrants more hullabaloo and hoopla.”  On the inside back cover, Siegfried took quotes from Darwin about religion and converted them into an interview.  He asked Darwin questions about atheism, religion, design and God, and picked out quotes guaranteed to make natural theology and intelligent design look bad.  If Darwin is being voted world’s greatest biologist, why would his theological opinions matter?
2. National Geographic:  Another cover story for the Darwin Bicentennial, from National Geographic Magazine (Feb. 2009), teased with the line, “What Darwin Didn’t Know.”  Inside, two lengthy articles discussed Darwin’s original ideas and those of the “Modern Darwins” who have extended them.  If Darwin didn’t know something, it wasn’t his fault – the sciences of genetics and molecular biology hadn’t been invented yet.  Any errors he made were due to his being imprisoned in the 19th century.
       Quasi-religious adulations continued inside with Matt Ridley’s article, “Modern Darwins”  Ridley portrayed today’s Darwinists as precocious children who would make their daddy proud.  Darwin’s core idea of mindless, purposeless, unguided natural selection was presented as unquestionable fact:
   • In 1953, Francis Crick, together with a young American named James Watson, would make a discovery that has led inexorably to the triumphant vindication of almost everything Darwin deduced about evolution.
   • To understand the story of evolution—both its narrative and its mechanism—modern Darwins don’t have to guess.  They consult genetic scripture.
   • Darwin’s greatest idea was that natural selection is largely responsible for the variety of traits one sees among related species.  Now, in the beak of the finch and the fur of the mouse, we can actually see the hand of natural selection at work....
   • Darwin, who assumed that evolution plodded along at a glacially slow rate, observable only in the fossil record, would be equally delighted by another discovery.  In those same Galapagos finches, modern Darwins can watch evolution occur in real time.
   • What better evidence for Darwin’s belief in the commonality of all species than to find the same gene doing the same job in birds and fish, continents apart?
   • In The Origin of Species, Darwin tactfully left unspoken how his theory would extend that commonality to include humankind.  A decade later he confronted the matter head-on in The Descent of Man.  He would be delighted to know that a certain gene, called FOXP2, is critical for the normal development of both speech in people and song in birds.
   • His notion of sexual selection was politely ignored by most Victorian opinion, which was mildly scandalized by the thought of females actively choosing a mate, rather than submitting coyly to the advances of males.... But we now know Darwin was right all along.
   • In one of his flights of fancy, Darwin argued that sexual selection might account for human racial differences.... The jury is still out on that particular idea, but there are hints that Darwin might be at least partly right.... Either way, the explanation leads straight back to Darwin’s two theories—natural and sexual selection.
   • Just as Darwin drew lessons from both fossil armadillos and living rheas and finches, his scientific descendants combine insights from genes with insights from fossils to understand the history of life.
   Could such a man ever make a mistake?  Yes; Ridley said Darwin did not understand inheritance.  Mendel’s work had never reached his attention.  “The monk’s fate was to die years before the significance of his discovery was appreciated,” Ridley lamented.  “But his legacy, like Darwin’s, has never been more alive.”  Darwin scores even when in error.
       The magazine’s celebration began with David Quammen retelling the Darwin adventure tale on the Beagle, followed by a timeline of events and theories by Darwin and the Modern Darwins.  Quammen corrected some misconceptions about the “mythic account” of Darwin’s voyage, and the timing of his conversion to evolutionism.  But in the end, he praised his book to high heaven: “Almost inarguably, it’s the most significant single scientific book ever published.  After 150 years, people still venerate it, people still deplore it, and The Origin of Species continues to exert an extraordinary influence—though, unfortunately, not many people actually read it.”
3. Sacred Cause:  A new book by Adrian Desmond and James Moore, Darwin’s Sacred Cause, elevates Darwin further by claiming he was an abolitionist like his birthday-mate Abraham Lincoln.  The BBC News says that abolition was a driving force behind Darwin’s theory.  This idea might seem surprising to readers aware that Darwin announced in The Descent of Man that it was inevitable the fitter races would eventually exterminate the weaker races.  After all, wasn’t the subtitle of Darwin’s Origin “The Preservation of Favoured Races in the Struggle for Life”?
       An English gentleman, Darwin was clearly repulsed by the cruelty toward slaves he witnessed.  His belief in the common ancestry of all races of mankind stood against the racist views of those who attributed human races to separate origins.  In that respect, Darwin’s unification of humanity is like the Biblical view that all men are descendents of Adam, except that Darwin has mankind arising from apes, and the Bible has mankind falling from grace.  Desmond and Moore seem to omit, though, whether “survival of the fittest” could promote racial equality.  Common ancestry aside, the Haeckels, Brocas and Hitlers to follow certainly ranked the human races by fitness and intelligence – using Darwin’s “law of nature” for support.

Is it possible for the world to go crazy?  If you don’t think so, look at history.  Look at what some ancient civilizations thought about the world, the universe, and life.  Despite great achievements in architecture and technology, they held beliefs that strike us as absurd – yet in their day, those beliefs were intuitively obvious.  Sometimes they were enforced by the state with severe punishment, even the ultimate punishment.  Darwin today serves as a kind of prophet of Marduk who brings enlightenment and explains the world.  You’re not entitled to have opinions about him.  Failure to honor the Marduk of the age, or his prophet, is not only insane, it is a capital crime.
    One method for detecting absurdity is to find self-refuting arguments.  These can never be overturned by more evidence, because they are self-refuting – they are false by definition.  Evolutionary theory is full of them.  (1) Darwin built a law of nature on chance, which is the contradiction to law.  (2) Darwin reasoned that the mind is an evolved artifact of blind accident, undermining the very basis of reason.  And (3) Darwin rendered design an illusion, using his intelligence to design this claim this about his own brain.  In these and other ways, Darwin tricked the world into thinking he had come up with a stunningly elegant unification of biology in alleged “natural” terms, when those very ideas refute themselves.  How could this happen?  One reason is that tautologies are always intuitively obvious.  To say, “Life evolved because natural selection brought them into existence,” sounds perfectly fine, till you realize the sentence conveys no information.  It begs the question it is supposed to answer.  Darwin’s adventure tales, his admittedly detailed observations, his Mosaic visage, and his gift of eloquent rhetoric were all dandy things, but they cannot rescue his doctrines from collapse.  They are self-refuting.  Hullabaloo and hoopla can be fun.  Fantasyland has good fireworks, too.  But no amount of celebration can save a self-refuting belief system.
    Can self-refuting doctrines really fool a world of scientists and smart people?  It happens.  Absurdities have fooled the elite of many a civilization.  We’re only human.  We don’t know everything.  We’re gullible.  For certainty, we need a revelation from the One who knows all things.  Having an anchor in eternal, immutable things is a prerequisite for consistency.  You cannot build a progressive system from the ground up without assuming the very thing you need to prove: that there are absolutes against which one can measure progress.  Even if one could pull oneself up by one’s own bootstraps, the effort would be vain without ground to stand on.  Darwinism is anchored in the quicksand of contingency.  Its aspiration to provide understanding, the opposite of contingency, is doomed.  Lacking an absolute, the hullabaloo and hoopla around Darwin is full of sound and fury, signifying nothing.
Next headline on:  Darwin and Evolutionary Theory • Dumb Ideas