Question: Should biology teachers be allowed to teach the controversy about evolution?
“Teach it more, and teach it critically.  [That] this is the exceptional area that you can’t criticize, this doctrine of Darwinism – it’s a bad precedent.” – Dr. Scott Minnich, microbiology, Univ. of Idaho
“What’s the loss?  What do we risk?  Just what do we risk if some of the profoundly exciting, deeply perplexing, vexing ideas of biology are presented honestly?”
– Dr. David Berlinski, mathematician, Princeton
[Quotes from the film Icons of Evolution.]

Miller has spent his life trying to imagine the impossible, the origin of life without design.  Actually, he is surprisingly open-minded and frank about the problems.  His 1950-era spark-discharge apparatus is essentially irrelevant to the origin of life since it posited an unrealistic atmosphere, yielded only trace amounts of just a few molecules that had to be protected from destruction, and failed to segregate left- and right-handed products.  Sadly, the diagram of his apparatus has taken on a life of its own in our culture, becoming an icon of evolution that is almost ubiquitous in textbooks and TV documentaries.  Astrobiologists today do not consider the 1950s experiment as plausible, but just a “step in the right direction.”  Will carbon monoxide poison save the icon?  All the same problems are still there.  The results are mixtures of left and right, they could not have been present in significant concentrations, they are much simpler than other required molecules, the monomers would not naturally join into polymers, and even if they did join, there is the problem of the origin of information.  Miller’s team had to assume unique initial conditions (freezing temperature, reducing mantle and meteorites) to save the model from being ruled out of court.  It’s out of court anyway, because salts in the oceans would have dismantled the molecules quickly, if ultraviolet radiation did not beat them to the punch.  The products from Miller’s new-and-improved apparatus are so simple compared to a living cell, they are comparable to child’s alphabet blocks compared to an encyclopedia, yet almost every mention of these types of experiment uses the misleading phrase “they obtained the building blocks of life.”  So what if they get trace amounts of uracil?  It’s just going to sit there or degrade.  It couldn’t care whether it might be the start of something big.  Belief in the origin of life without a Designer is a false hope, a case of the blind are leading the blind from one ditch to another.  What is most fun about this paper is the way Miller debunks the other scenarios.  Whether stork meteorites bearing the baby molecules, or hydrothermal vents cooking primordial soup in the black smoker kitchen, they don’t work.  Nothing works.  Miller Time is over; it’s time to get back to work with eyes open to intelligent design.
Next headline on: Origin of Life.

If their phylogenies are anything like those reported here, they have job security.  There are almost infinite conflicting trees you can draw from the data.  There is no single tree, but rather an orchard or lawn, as Jonathan Wells explains about this one of his ten Icons of Evolution.  They always claim it’s for a good cause: “ Phylogenetic information has proven useful in many ways, such as helping scientists focus biological research; track the origin and spread of diseases; develop new medicines and agrochemical products; conserve species; control invasive species biologically; and restore ecosystems.”  But each one of these areas has been doing fine without help from Darwin.  Judging from the track record of phylogenetic studies so far, and the unapproachable task ahead, their theme song must be The Impossible Dream.  We can think of better ways to spend your tax dollars, like fighting cancer and Alzheimer’s Disease.
Next headline on: Darwinism and Evolutionary Theory.

These results suggest that the barbs form first and later fuse to form a rachis, much like downy feathers are formed before flight feathers when a chicken grows up. Under the general rule of ontogeny repeating phylogeny, downy feather made only of barbs probably appeared before the evolution of feathers with rachides and capable of flight.  However, pinning down the exact moment at which dinosaur scales become chicken feathers is non-realistic.  Just like Rome, feathers are not made in one process.  It took 50 million years for Nature to refine the process, to transform a scale into a flight machine.  There were many, many intermediate stages.  While Darwin’s theory has explained the “why” of evolution, much of the “how” remains to be learned.  Evo-Devo research promises a new level of understanding.

There are so many mistakes in this story, it’s hard to know where to begin.

• False promises.  What the title trumpets, the article fails to provide.
• Obsolete ideas.  Chuong repeats the worn-out phrase “ontogeny repeats phylogeny,” the long-discredited Biogenetic Law of Ernst Haeckel, the fraud.
• Just-so story.  He has no basis for knowing that downy feathers evolved before flight feathers; he just made it up.  Both downy and flight feathers are highly specialized, the former providing insulation (try a down sleeping bag and see), and the latter allowing a pelican to swoop down into the water and pull up a fish.
• Comparing evolution of feathers to the building of Rome.  Rome was built by intelligent design, not evolution.
• Nature as goddess.  “It took 50 million years for Nature to refine the process” – the old personification fallacy again.  A bumbling goddess she is to take so long.  The God of creation did it in a day.
• Long ages.  There is no basis for believing it took 50 million years to evolve feathers.  The first bird is all bird, capable of strong flight. 
• Feathered dinosaurs.  The so-called feathered dinosaurs do not have feathers, only fibrous appendages whose function is not known.
• Magic.  “to transform a scale into a flight machine” – neat trick!  Scales are very, very different from feathers.  They form from different parts of the skin and do not have any of the incredibly fine details of feathers, including their barbules and hooks that allow them to form firm yet lightweight, aerodynamic surfaces.
• Hand-waving.  “There were many, many intermediate stages” but there is no evidence for them.  We thought science was about evidence. 
• Teleology.  If there were many, many intermediates, every one of them would have to provide an advantage to the proto-bird.  Would you want to be covered with stubs of keratin if you couldn’t fly?  Evolutionary theory does not permit any of these intermediates to work ahead toward the goal of fully-formed feathers, because that would be teleology, the spirit Darwin was trying to exorcise from science.
• False prophet.  “Darwin explained the ‘why’ of evolution...”  No, he didn’t.  There is no why in naturalistic philosophy.
• Ignorance.  “much of the ‘how’ remains to be learned.”  Here we are, 143 years after Darwin’s book, and we’re still trying to figure out how this “fact” of evolution works?  If you don’t have how, you don’t have a scientific theory.
• Vaporware.  “Evo-devo promises a new level of understanding.”  Don’t hold your breath.

The bottom line is that this paper explains nothing about the evolution of feathers.  Like every other paper on Darwinism that we report, it just assumes evolution.  This team learned a little about three genes that mess up the formation of feathers on a chicken.  With apologies to Carls Jr fast-food stands, can you find the nuggets (of evolutionary wisdom) on this chicken?
Next headline on: Birds. • Next headline on: Evolutionary Theory.

Fitness in evolution - what is it?  Not fitness in the sense of health, but rather an ability to survive and reproduce, as when the Darwinian theory of evolution was characterized as “survival of the fittest”.

What about the old chestnut – if fitness is defined by survival, and then we say the fittest survive, isn’t this all circular?  Not really.  Suppose we have a population where half the offspring survive to adulthood.  An individual with a new advantageous mutation might have a 51% chance of surviving to adulthood.  Its genotype’s relative fitness is 2% higher than that of the other individuals.  But the individual with this new unique genotype will either survive or it will not: an individual cannot have a survivorship of 51%.  Fitness is an average, or an expected, outcome.

Is an organism’s fitness the same as its adaptation to its environment?  Evolutionary biologists look for adaptations in the phenotypes (morphologies and behaviors) of organisms.  In population genetic studies of fitness, relative fitnesses of organisms’ genotypes can be compared empirically.

Isn’t it the same with all studies of adaptation?  Not exactly.  When studying a phenotype universally seen in a population of organisms, what does it mean to describe the phenotype as causing high fitness or as being an adaptation?  High fitness relative to what?  In these cases, phenotypes typically have to be compared with a range of imagined possible phenotypes, as in optimization theory.

Look carefully at these answers, and read our Baloney Detector entries on equivocation and circular reasoning.  We are assuming that Brookfield’s answers are current and valid representations of what Darwinians believe, being published in Current Biology.  We assume they would receive nods of agreement from Eugenie Scott and Ken Miller.  (If you are an evolutionist reading this, and disagree with Brookfield’s assessment, feel free to write us and clarify what fitness really means.)  Now consider whether he has successfully dispensed with the “old chestnut” that fitness is a circular argument.  Notice how right off the bat, he defines fitness in terms of survival.  How do you know this moose is fit?  Because it survived.  Why did it survive?  Because it is fit.  We seem to be off on the wrong hoof.  Now read and re-read his explanation of why this is not circular, and see if it is clearer than mud.  The percentages are all a smokescreen if fitness has already been defined in terms of survival.  How does the biologist know that a mutation is advantageous unless it causes the bull moose to have a 51% chance (2% higher than his moosemates) of surviving?  But then he says mutations can lower the fitness, and this proves the argument is not circular.  But lower fitness relative to what?  To survival!  Yet if all the individuals in the population have the same survival, they have equal fitness.  Confused?  This is a good sign; it means you are not being swayed by this shell game.
Fitness is such a nebulous term, it can mean anything.  If you’re picturing a bodybuilder in a fitness center when you hear the word fitness, you’ve got it all wrong.  Fitness can be a beer belly, if that gets you the girl.  Fitness can be anything the biologist wants it to be, good, bad or ugly, and if all the population is ugly but cute (like fat elephant seals on the beach), then they’re fit.  To top it off and show how meaningless the word fitness is in evolutionary biology, look at what Brookfield says about adaptation.  How do you know it’s an adaptation if the whole population has the trait, and has a survival ratio?  Adapted relative to what?  High fitness relative to what?  How do the geneticists measure fitness in the genes if they don’t relate to survival, putting them back into the tautology hammerlock?  All he can think of are comparing the observed phenotype to some imagined possible phenotypes.  What are these?  Superman traits, like X-ray vision?  Come on.  If Brookfield thinks he tossed away an old chestnut, the chestnut tree just dropped more on his head.
Next headline on: Darwinism and Evolutionary Theory. • Next dumb story.

This made our “dumb” category instead of “amazing,” because while it’s interesting that DNA has similarities to good music, the comparison is superficial and totally inconsistent with evolutionary presuppositions.  Good music does not happen by chance (unless you like to hear John Cage playing 12 radios at random and calling that music).  How on earth these astrobiologists can find musical structure in DNA and then think that will help them imagine how it evolved without a Composer is beyond comprehension.
Next dumb story.

WWII Plane Flies Again After Entombment in Glacier   10/28/2002
Saturday the 26th, thousands in Middlesboro, Kentucky came to watch a very unusual air show, reports KnoxNews.com.  Glacier Girl, a World War II P-38 Lightning fighter, had spent 55 years locked in ice after its crew crash landed on a Greenland glacier.  In the intervening years it had sunk over 250 feet into the ice.  Creation magazine tells the story of how a salvage crew succeeded in finding the “Lost Squadron” in 1997, dumbfounded at how deep the aircraft had sunk into solid ice in just a few decades’ time.  Knox News also has stories about the restoration work on the plane, a veteran P-38 pilot’s recollections, and a time line from Glacier Girl’s crash landing to its restoration.

Evolutionary geologists claim that glacial ice layers represent annual depositions, and that their ice cores contain records covering many tens of thousands of years.  How can they explain these planes sinking 70 meters in solid ice in just 55 years?  The Answers in Genesis story contains an Addendum, answering the question of whether metal aircraft would naturally sink into the ice, and explains how they would not; all that ice must have accumulated above the aircraft in just 55 years (see footnote 11 especially).  The story of Glacier Girl seems to provide clear evidence that uniformitarian presuppositions can be very wrong.
Next headline on: Dating Methods. • Next amazing story.

When did scientists get into the art of tall tale telling?  This one belongs around a campfire in the Rockies.  Worms and trilobites are already very complex creatures, much more complex than microbial mats.  Trilobites have complex, elaborate, functioning eyes.  Did some microbes just sit around one day saying, “You know, life would be so much more fun if we had eyes and mouths and ate our brothers”?  Wagh!  Bridger, that’s a good-un!
Next dumb story.

The quality and completeness of the fossil record and its credibility as a source of information about the history of life have been debated since before Charles Darwin’s time.  Now, as part of the Paleobiology Database project, a systematic examination is being conducted with some good news so far.

“That’s good news.  It means that this intuitively obvious bias is not as severe as we expected, and the fossil record may be a more reliable source of information than we believed” [Michael] Kowalewski [of Virginia Tech] says.  “In this project, we are not trying to reconstruct the evolutionary history of biodiversity or assess the magnitude of mass extinctions, but to evaluate whether the fossil record can indeed provide reliable data for such studies,” he emphasizes.

Now there’s a great attitude.  Let’s get the facts straight before we try to tell evolutionary stories about it.  The good news, however, must be bad news for the Darwinists.  Charles Darwin was aware of the major and systematic gaps in the fossil record, but hoped they would be filled in by subsequent discoveries.  Since then, other evolutionists have hoped that the gaps were due to the apparent inability of soft-bodied animals to fossilize as easily as those with tough bones and shells; presumably, this would create a systematic bias in the record toward hard bodies (but look at this example of fossilized jellyfish).  It looks like the fossil record is pretty much complete: gaps, Cambrian explosion and all.  Get used to it.
Next headline on: Fossils.

It’s nice on those rare occasions when reporters do our work for us.  Trouble is, nothing will convince these evolutionists that the whole story is gasping for fresh air.
Astrobiology Magazine has a popular-level feature on this subject.
Next headline on: Origin of Life.

The molecular phylogeny of MIPs supports that glycerol transporting in plants was acquired by horizontal gene transfer and functional recruitment of bacterial AQPs.  It is likely that these events were triggered by the absence of a GLP homolog in the common ancestor of plants.  We find that plant NIPs and GLPs share convergent or parallel amino replacements needed to transport glycerol and therefore represent a remarkable example of adaptive evolution at the molecular level.

The paper is pretty confident about it, but the story is mostly bluff.  The relationship does not jump out of the data; it has to be teased out from preconceived notions.  And, they had to invoke the hand-waving acts of horizontal gene transfer, convergent and parallel evolution to get the story to work.  Their phylogenetic tree-building, as usual, was replete with tweak artistry: “As expected, positional identity was difficult to establish for most sites, and a total of 284 positions were excluded from the analyses because of ambiguity...” etc. etc.  You can pick any story you want out of these exercises.  Clearly, however, the common ancestor of glycerol channels was not evident in plants, so they had to sneak it in sideways with horizontal gene transfer.  Their results are inferred from circumstantial, statistical, fuzzy, disparate pieces of data.  It only holds together with the glue of faith in Darwin.  Consider this example (emphasis added):

However, from an evolutionary perspective and according to the phylogenetic tree, NIPs are members of the AQP clade.  Because the horizontal gene transfer involved an AQP, plant NIPs must have acquired the capacity for glycerol transport at a later time by recruitment or exaptation (acquiring a function different from the one for which the protein was selected originally; ref. 33).  The recruitment of an AQP as glycerol transporter requires convergent or parallel replacements at specific amino acid positions.

Re-read that as a disbeliever in evolutionary common ancestry, and does it make any scientific sense?  Does it sound like a “striking example of adaptive evolution at the molecular level”?  If a story only holds together if you already believe in evolution, it cannot be used as evidence for evolution, because it is guilty of circular reasoning.
Next headline on: Plants. • Next headline on: Genes and DNA. • Next headline on: Darwinism and Evolutionary Theory.

For almost 30 years, researchers have asserted that the DNA of humans and chimps is at least 98.5% identical.  Now research reported here last week at the American Society for Human Genetics meeting suggests that the two primate genomes might not be quite as similar after all.  A closer look has uncovered nips and tucks in homologous sections of DNA that weren’t noticed in previous studies.

The results are quite exciting, says Michael Conneally, a human geneticist at Indiana University Medical Center in Indianapolis.  With this research, “we can really find out so much more about evolution,”  he predicts.

It will be interesting to see what facts come to light when the chimpanzee genome is sequenced and laid side by side with the human genome.  There are two lessons learned here.  One is Thumb’s Second Postulate, that an easily-understood, workable falsehood is more useful than a highly complex, incomprehensible truth.  Useful to whom?  A propagandist.  We have heard evolutionists for years using this 98.5% figure as proof that humans are almost identical to apes, the implication being we are closely evolved cousins.  How do we undo 30 years of “useful” damage?  The second is that evolutionists will spin any fact to their advantage.  Are humans 98.% similar to chimpanzees?  Well, this proves we are evolved from apes.  Are humans 5%, 10%, or 20% different than chimpanzees? (exact figure to be determined).  Wonderful; now “we can really find out so much more about evolution”.
Next headline on: Mammals. • Next headline on: Early Man. • Next headline on: Genes and DNA.

This is all so unnecessary.  De Duve and other compromisers are operating on the false assumption that Darwinian evolution (common ancestry from molecules to man) is a demonstrated fact.  He needs to read Creation-Evolution Headlines and see how every point of the story is filled with anomalies, storytelling and logical fallacies.  Raised Catholic, de Duve is doing his best to rescue some tiny vestige of Christian values from the wreckage left by the Darwinian juggernaut, but the juggers are naught impressed.  Whimpering appeasers trying to wear two uniforms anger both sides.  The Darwinists may heap more hostility on a Duane Gish or Phillip Johnson, but they respect them more for standing up for what they believe in and drawing the battle lines clearly, rather than pretending that the Darwinian conquerors have any tidbits to share with johnny-come-lately converts.  (See also next book review below.)
Next headline on: Darwinism and Evolutionary Theory.

Apart from the Bible, no book has had a greater impact on the thinking of Western Man than Darwin’s Origin of Species.  This claim is based not merely on Darwin having demonstrated evolution and founded secular science, but also on the fundamental new concepts that he introduced.  Darwin’s refutation of Aristotle’s fourth cause, teleology, was, according to the philosopher Willard Quine, Darwin’s greatest contribution to philosophy.  Darwin firmly introduced history (‘the time factor’) into science.  In biology, he replaced typological by population thinking and gave chance scientific legitimacy, to mention some of his other contributions.  Most major planks in the Weltanschauung of a modern thinker can be traced back to Darwin.  His role is finally understood, after more than a century of misconceptions and misinterpretations.

When evaluating this book we must remember that Browne is a historian and biographer, not an evolutionist.  This is why she does not feel that it is her job to analyse Darwin’s evolutionary paradigm (his five major theories) or to explain the principle of divergence and how it misled Darwin, or why he ultimately failed to solve the problem of the multiplication of species, which had been his major objective when starting to work on his “species book”, or to try to explain numerous other evolutionary problems that he encountered but left without explanation.  For answers to these questions one will have to turn to other books.

Alas, there still is no satisfactory presentation and analysis of Darwin’s whole evolutionary paradigm.  My One Long Argument (1997) has a short treatment of these problems but, by necessity, does not refer to some of the most recent controversies and findings.  To supplement Browne’s superb treatment of Darwin, the man and his period, we now need a deep analysis of his work.  But this requires a real understanding of evolution, and such an understanding is not very common.

Here we have a remarkable thing.  We have a revolutionary world view introduced that changes everything in Western civilization, but based on what?  Where is the actual evidence to support such a massive shift in philosophy and our view of ourselves and the world?  Mayr claims that Darwin “demonstrated evolution” but all he demonstrated was artificial selection, and then extrapolated that into nature.  The rest was all conjecture, not demonstration.  His “contribution” was the invention of the just-so story, like how an eye might have evolved gradually from a light-sensitive spot.  He had a few Neanderthal skulls, but those turned out to be fully human.  He had some fossils, but was well aware of the major gaps in the fossil record, including the Cambrian explosion, which has only gotten worse with time.  He had finch beaks, but that is just minor variation between interfertile species.  Nowhere is there a clear-cut case of natural selection having produced a new species, and Mayr makes that clear: “why he ultimately failed to solve the problem of the multiplication of species, which had been his major objective....”  Mayr also admits that he fell into the trap of Lamarckism and promoted a view of heredity that subsequently was discredited.  Darwin did some worthwhile experimentation on plants, but in terms of evidence to support the new Weltanschauung (world view), Darwin was a failure.  And what he didn’t know is more profound than what he did know; Darwin knew nothing of the true basis of heredity or development, DNA, molecular machines, and the mind-boggling complexity of the cell.
Notice how all the other gold medals Mayr drapes around Darwin’s neck are not for scientific achievements, but for philosophical shifts aimed at removing God and design from scientific thought: (1) founding secular science, (2) refutation of teleology, (3) the time factor (i.e., long ages and progression from simple to complex, as opposed to abrupt appearance of complex characteristics as would have occurred at creation), (4) replacement of typological thinking (seeing patterns and archetypes in nature) by population thinking, (5) giving chance scientific legitimacy.  In other words, Darwin pulled off a philosophical coup without evidence, while giving the appearance of explaining the evidence with made-up stories.  And now Mayr tells us that 143 years after the publication of the Origin, after world wars fought on the principle of survival of the fittest, after racist eugenics and cutthroat capitalism and the Scopes Trial and Red October and Auschwitz and the Gulag and the Cambodian killing fields and Tiannenmen Square, that we still lack “a deep analysis of his work” and that “a real understanding of evolution ... is not very common.”  How many more such incidents will occur before we get the last word on Darwin?
Perhaps the most egregious part of the saga is Mayr’s reminder that evolution’s biggest marketer was not Darwin’s Bulldog Thomas Huxley, nor Haeckel nor Lyell nor Hooker, but a nominal “Christian” Asa Gray, who abandoned the gospel of Jesus Christ and instead became “tireless in spreading the gospel of evolution.”  Did Asa Gray realize he was spreading a false gospel, promoting secular science, refuting teleology, giving chance scientific legitimacy, and contributing to the marginalization of the faith he claimed to embrace?  Did he realize this was a philosophical coup, not a scientific advance?  Did he know his Bible?  Did he ever read Galatians?
Next headline on: Darwinism and Evolutionary Theory.

Job said, “Ask now the beasts, and they will teach you.”  We may have to change the proverb from “an elephant never forgets” and give seals the honor.  Parents might be able to use the dog story as clout in discussions about their teenagers’ listening habits, or suggest it as a science project (plants can be substituted for dogs with similar results).
Next headline on: Mammals.

Gorovsky’s team believes that in evolutionarily ancient times, cells had to fight against a variety of assaults just as they must today: viruses attacked cells, injecting their DNA to disrupt normal cell functions; and transposons, bits of nomadic genetic material that insert themselves into the cell’s DNA causing havoc.
To survive, cells evolved a correction system that recognized the invading DNA and either eliminated or silenced it.

Unless the DNA library can be transmitted with high fidelity, the genome of any organism would break down in just a few generations.  Creationists see in this a marvelous example of design, but evolutionists are guilty of violating their own principles when speaking in personal terms as seen above.  It’s a technical foul for an evolutionist to say a cell had to fight, or viruses attacked, or injected their DNA to disrupt, or cells evolved a correction system.  Each of these phrases puts personal intent into brainless one-celled organisms, portraying them as more savvy than human beings.  In all fairness, we recognize the colorful language of journalism.  But try translating the story into the dry, impersonal language of materialism and the theory of evolution breaks down.  Tetrahymena couldn’t care less whether its genome gets passed on accurately or not.  When you remove all sense of value judgments (e.g., it’s “good” to survive), and all sense of purposeful intent (e.g., the organism “evolved” this defense mechanism to protect its DNA), why should anything survive or evolve?  Who cares?  Certainly not the cell or the virus!  Notice also the xenophobia: the virus is the bad guy, and the cell is the good guy.  On what basis do they make this value judgment?  Whatever is, is right.  If the virus wreaks havoc (whatever that means – the word implies values again) then havoc just is.  Creationists do not have this problem, because they believe the Creator purposely intended for organisms to survive, and built these mechanisms into them for that purpose.  Biblical creationists even propose that viruses might originally have had a beneficial role that went wrong at the Fall.  Evolutionists, by contrast, commit their own mortal sin of invoking teleology when speaking in personal terms as in this story.  We must challenge this and call it what it is: inconsistency.  Make them stage their drama without actors but only props, and you will have a really boring performance, where nothing happens onstage but decay, and the props don’t care whether you boo or applaud.
Next headline on: The Cell. • Next headline on: Genes and DNA. • Next headline on: Darwinism.