Human technology cannot compete with many of the skills found in the animal kingdom.  If you are an evolutionist like Francis Crick, you have to exercise transcendental meditation to avoid mental stress.  He said (see citation by Dembski), “Biologists must constantly keep in mind that what they see was not designed, but rather evolved.”
Next headline on: Ocean Dwellers. • Next headline on: Mammals. • Next amazing story.

It is not evolution if the genetic information was already present.  What Darwinian evolution needs to explain is the origin of genetic information.  Mutations do not provide it; where is an example?  If antibiotic resistance is the showpiece, and is such a flop, why should we watch the rest of the show?
    For more information on the loss of information caused by genetic mutations, that may in some cases cause “antibiotic resistance,” the reader is referred to the book Icons of Evolution by Jonathan Wells, and the film of the same name, and also Lee Spetner’s book Not By Chance!.  For a quick analogy, consider a man with no hands.  He would be “resistant to handcuffing” (which might be a benefit if the police were trying to restrain him), but would anyone claim this “loss of information” would make him better able to survive in the wild?
Next headline on: The Cell. • Next headline on: Genes and DNA. • Next headline on: Darwinism and Evolutionary Theory.

Planetary evolution theories have been taking a beating lately.  Actually, all theories including the word evolution have been taking a beating lately.
Next headline on: Stars.

The alarm bell went off.  Do you understand the ramifications of this article?  It’s amazing how evolutionists never seem to worry about their beliefs despite the most damaging findings.  Here are two worms that look nearly identical, yet their genomes have more differences than those between humans and mice!  Blaxter admits one conclusion with “a resounding no:” whether one can use patterns of genetic changes to describe the physical differences between two species.  This means that similar genomes can produce vastly different products, and different genomes can produce nearly identical products.  How, then, can genomes be used for any kind of evolutionary evidence?
    Comparative genomics was supposed to be the most clear and compelling confirmation of common ancestry of all living things.  As this and other articles have shown, however (follow the Chain Links on “Genes and DNA,”) that there are no clear answers, and there are lots of surprises and unexpected puzzles.  Normally this kind of negative evidence would falsify a theory, but since Darwinism is a Law of the Medes and the Persians that cannot be altered, it will survive; the data must be massaged to fit it.  In this case, the amount of massaging required may alter the morphology beyond recognition.
Next headline on: Genes and DNA. • Next headline on: Darwinism and Evolutionary Theory.

You can’t apply Darwinism to language.  Language is intelligent design.
Next headline on: Early Man. • Next dumb story.

The scientists and the reporter realize that “the relationship between trees and carbon dioxide is a complex one.”  It is not a little presumptuous to build international policy on questionable data, especially when the politicians are internationalist and have a decidedly biased agenda.
Footnote: New Scientist reported 12/02/03 that Russia, citing economic reasons, will not abide by the Kyoto protocol to cut greenhouse gas emissions, and the European Union has announced it cannot meet its emission reduction goals.  These setbacks effectively kill the Kyoto protocol.
Next headline on: Politics and Ethics. • Next headline on: Plants.

Look back 100 years, to 1903.  How important is it now who was Prime Minister of Great Britain in 1903, or President of the United States?  What stands out as really important is that at McGill University, Ernest Rutherford and Frederick Soddy were working out the nature of radioactivity.  This work (of course!) had practical applications, but much more important were its cultural implications.  The understanding of radioactivity allowed physicists to explain how the Sun and Earth’s cores could still be hot after millions of years.  In this way, it removed the last scientific objection [sic] to what many geologists and paleontologists thought was the great age of the Earth and the Sun.  After this, Christians and Jews either had to give up belief in the literal truth of the Bible or resign themselves to intellectual irrelevance.  This was just one step in a sequence of steps from Galileo through Newton and Darwin to the present that, time after time, has weakened the hold of religious dogmatism.  Reading any newspaper nowadays is enough to show you that this work is not yet complete.  But it is civilizing work [sic], of which scientists [sic] are able to feel proud.

There are serious flaws and fallacies in the quote above, but, of course, the students at McGill only got to hear the views of the septegenarian sophist (which were not very sophisticated).  They were not allowed to hear any rebuttals.  Why is it that Weinberg and so many other evolutionists feel the need to aim their invective at Christians and Jews, specifically?  Where is the same level of disdain for Muslims, or Hindus, or animists in the jungle?  (Can any “religious dogmatism” exceed that of homicide bombers who blow up women and children on busses believing that is what their god wants them to do?  Or those who worship cow dung, or who eat their enemies?)  On the contrary, the non-Judeo-Christians usually get a free pass.  This bias, in itself, is instructive.  It almost makes you want to join the persecuted group, or at least look into what it is they believe that makes evolutionists so mad.
    Weinberg commits the selective evidence fallacy by saying that radioactivity “removed the last scientific objection” to millions of years, which, of course, are a prerequisite for Darwinian evolution.  (The reader is referred to Chain Links on Dating Methods for corroboration or discombobulation of this claim.)  He also committed the either-or fallacy by assuming one must be consigned to the dunce corner of “intellectual irrelevance” for accepting the “literal” truth of the Bible (which, being interpreted, means any belief that takes the Bible seriously, other than considering it a collection of fables and allegories).  Not a little elitist are the Darwin Party faithful.
    Weinberg’s last three sentences perpetuate the myth of science vs. religion.  He props up the myth with a glittering generality about Galileo and Newton (both creationists) and Darwin, as if these three points fall on a straight line pointing away from faith.  (Galileo and Newton would most likely object their placement on this trendline).  Dr. Weinberg, please tell us why it is not a non-sequitur to claim that undermining people’s faith is a civilizing work.  We thought the opposite was true, unless you think cannibals are civilized and the missionaries who bring them the gospel, medicine and human rights are not.
    To Steven Weinberg, all Christians and Jews are “religious dogmatists,” and science is the civilizing work of weakening their hold on society.  Darwinists, according to their own self-appraisals, are never dogmatists.  The recent school board debates about the teaching of evolution prove that.  How can the Darwin Party be considered dogmatic, when they use their connections to prevent the opposition from getting a hearing?  When only Darwin Party members are allowed to be heard, why of course, everyone agrees.  There is no controversy.  The religious dogmatists are those uncivilized radicals outside, behind the soundproof doors.  Yes, their “civilizing work” should make them feel very proud, indeed.

    Weinberg has cause for a little more humility.  In an interview he granted for the book Origins: The Lives and Worlds of Modern Cosmologists (ed. Alan Lightman and Roberta Brawer, Harvard Univ. Press, 1990), he was at a loss for words to explain inflation, the flatness problem, the horizon problem, and other major difficulties with modern cosmology.  In answer to the question, “Do you think that your views about what are the major problems have changed any in the last 10 years?” he replied, “No.  I think that the deeper problems having to do with inflation, what the universe is like on the Planck scale, and quantum cosmology are so far rom any confrontation with experiment that I’ve suspended thinking about them” (p. 464).  Regarding the inevitable question that would come up at his public lectures, “What came before the Big Bang?” Weinberg admitted to the interviewer, “And I spend so many minutes waffling about that, saying, ‘Well, maybe there was no time . . .’ But I share their perplexity” (p. 465).  (It should be pointed out that 13 more years of cosmological work since this 1990 interview have not diminished the perplexity of these problems; follow the Cosmology chain links, such as this June 18 headline.)
    In his popular best seller on the Big Bang, The First Three Minutes (New York: Basic Books, 1977), Weinberg had said, “The more the universe seems comprehensible, the more it also seems pointless.”  He acknowledged to the interviewer that he had received more negative comments about that sentence than about anything else he had ever written.  What did he mean, then?  “I certainly meant roughly what I said, but it didn’t come out exactly as I wanted it.  If you say things are pointless, you have to ask, ‘Well, what point were you looking for?’  And that’s what’s needed, I think, to be explained.  What kind of point would have been there that might have made it not pointless.  That’s what I really would have to explain” (p. 466).  That was his last sentence in the interview.  He left it unexplained.  So Dr. Weinberg, what’s the point?  If you cannot define what a point should be to be considered a point, how can you call the universe pointless?

Wouldn’t it be nice if evolutionists took their own advice?  Yes, Dr. Weinberg, we agree.  We should all “learn something about the history of science.”  We offer for your perusal our online work in progress, The World’s Greatest Creation Scientists, where you can read the words of Kepler, Newton, Boyle, Pascal, Maxwell, Pasteur, Carver, von Braun, and some of the other uncivilized lightweights on the lunatic fringe of the scientific stage.
    Would they were here to have a little roundtable discussion around the turkey dinner about these matters.  It would undoubtedly be a lively interchange.  Weinberg, fortunately for him, can celebrate Thanksgiving without fear of such a possibility.  But to whom will he give thanks?
Next headline on: Darwinism and Evolutionary Theory. • Next headline on: Cosmology.

Planetary scientists already believed that the entire surface of Venus was young, and this new inference is consistent with that belief.  Not much can be inferred from this indirect evidence, but it is interesting.  The article concludes, “If it were possible to examine these lead deposits, from a Venus lander craft, the respective abundances of certain atom types, or isotopes, could give astronomers an estimate for the age of Venus.”  The hellish conditions on the surface make that unlikely anytime soon.  But just imagine hills coated with molten lead.  What a contrast from the good earth!  Before spacecraft explored it, Venus had been considered Earth’s twin.  It almost seems God wanted to show us how good we have it here, compared to the way things could be.
    It bears repeating that the youthful appearance of Venus’ surface came as a big surprise.  As the radar maps began to unfold from the Magellan spacecraft, “a profound puzzle began to emerge,” noted R. Stephen Saunders in The New Solar System (4th ed., 1999, Cambridge Univ. Press, p. 99):

Volcanism dominated the surface.  Lava flows and various kinds of volcanoes were everywhere.  Faults and fractures crisscrossed the landscape.  Wind streaks were abundant.  All of these things were fascinating but not unexpected.  The craters provided the big surprise.  On the Earth, Moon and Mars, craters range from very fresh scars to barely visible, eroded circular ghosts.  However, apparently little erosion had affected the Venusian craters.  They looked as if they had formed recently.
    Further, as mapping proceeded, the craters appeared to be scattered randomly over the surface.  Unlike the Moon or Mars, there were no highly cratered (ancient) regions intermixed with lightly cratered (younger) regions.  All the surface appeared to be about the same age and geologically young.  If we use the lunar chronology and crater densities as a guide, the average surface age of Venus could be no more than about 500 million years.  We were seeing only the last 10 percent of Venus’s geologic history recorded in its surface.  [italics added]

Saunders went on to say that uniformitarianism, the doctrine that “the present is the key to the past,” does not apply to Venus.  “For Venus,” he wrote, “in the opinion of this writer, the catastrophe model will in time be judged more nearly correct than the equilibrium [uniformitarian] model” (Ibid., p. 99].
    There is no reason to use the lunar chronology as a guide (see May 14 headline).  That would be like the blind leading the blind.  The fact is, without a time machine, no one can tell the age of any surface in the solar system.  Inferences are made based on assumptions built on other assumptions, the primary one being the Sacred Parameter that the solar system is 4.6 billion years old (see next headline).  But to believe that, planetary scientists have to imagine ways that Venus awakened out of sleep periodically, so that its surface could be blanketed with fresh material.  The problem is compounded all over the solar system with young-looking phenomena, like Titan’s atmosphere and surface, comets, and Io’s volcanoes (follow the Solar System chain links for many more examples; a partial list can be found at the June 5 headline).  The point about Venus was that the data did not match what they expected to see: an ancient, static surface.  The Magellan data forced them to devise stories to fit their preconceived notions about its age.  We think science should follow the evidence where it leads.  If it looks young, it probably is.
    When interpreting the ages of things, keep this principle in mind: it is easier to tell something is young than that it is old.  For example, some young people have a genetic disease called progeria that makes them look 90 at age 15.  But no one has ever seen a newborn baby that was, in fact, 90 years old.  Calling something millions of years old requires extrapolating present rates into the past by many orders of magnitude: this is the extrapolation fallacy.  The upshot is, the observation-to-assumption ratio is much higher when concluding something is young than claiming it is old.  If the lead frosting on Venus is an active process, it would not have taken that long to produce what is observed.  How could these scientists know that it did not take a few centuries, or decades even?  They throw around this term “millions of years” as if they understand it.  Try to envision a million years in light of all the changes we have observed in the world since the origin of written language.  That requires multiplying the entire period of time we know about (7000 years) 150 times over.  It’s nearly impossible to imagine such a long time interval, let alone have any confidence about anything that occurred during the first 993,000 years.
    Scientists need to discipline their speculations and become more conservative in their age estimates.  Without observational evidence, it is unwarranted to extrapolate present processes orders of magnitude back in time.  The present is not the key to the past, and more and more scientists are saying so (see Nov. 4 headline, for example).
Next headline on: Solar System. • Next headline on: Dating Methods.

Did you notice the alarm about the dates of these samples?  Astonishing...incredible...unbelievable that these fragile meteorite fragments could survive 250 million years.  Isn’t it interesting that the millions of years themselves are never questioned.  The long age of the earth is the Sacred Parameter, the Law of the Medes and the Persians that cannot be changed.  Historical geology is the art of fitting uncooperative data to the Sacred Parameter.
    The moral of this story is: don’t swallow any science report that comes through the news media without a strong dose of antibaloney tonic, especially if the subject relates to evolution or the unobservable past.  The contrast between Richard Kerr’s skeptical analysis and the popular press account is striking.  Sometimes science reporters get it right, but often they do not.  They assume that people want simple answers.  They think people cannot endure the debate and uncertainty that goes on among scientists in the peer-reviewed journals and at science conferences.  So they spoon-feed the public definitive answers that fit into 25-word-or-less sound bites.
    Here’s how it often gets spun.  A reporter asks the scientist about his paper, and he says, “Well, we think that we might have maybe found a little piece of evidence that suggests the intriguing possibility that an asteroidal impact may have, in some way, been connected with what appears to have been a mass extinction that might have occurred at the end of the Permian, which geologists estimate was perhaps 250 million years ago; but many of my colleagues are not convinced and have pointed out some pretty major discrepancies between the evidence and our conclusions, so we still have a lot of work to do.”
The reporter jots all this down and heads back to his typewriter.  Here’s how the headline comes out:
GIANT ASTEROID WIPED OUT MOST LIFE 250 MILLION YEARS AGO.
*Sigh.*  We think our readers can handle the straight dope, so we give it to you like it is and let you decide.
Next headline on: Geology. • Next headline on: Dating Methods

What is becoming of the phrase, “that person has good taste”?
    When we published our “Cannibal Rights” satire recently (see Aug. 28 headline or the humor page), we were stretching to find a topic so outrageous, so beyond belief, it could be used safely in a semi-humorous satire.  There are so many unassailable perversions these days, risky to offend in print either seriously or in jest, that few outrageous topics seemed available.  I’ll have to admit this story caught me by surprise.  Even in a worst-case scenario I thought we had ten years before society reverted to the law of the jungle.  But now, even this bottom-rung abomination, cannibalism, is apparently already at the doorstep.  Guys like this are just entering the notoriety stage.  Then will come the curiosity stage (pedophiles, now that they have a celebrity garnering media sympathy, are rapidly proceeding from here through the next two stages), the victim stage, the advocacy stage, and then the stage of worldwide defense of the practice as normal and “sweet.”  The outlaws will be those who dare to call it wrong.
    What do we do in a crazy mixed-up society?  For one thing, be sure you don’t taste good.  But seriously, understand the connection between ideas and actions.  In Charlie’s World, we arose from nowhere, we end up nowhere, there is Nobody in charge who cares about what we do, and so each individual must be free to explore his own fantasy.  (The alternative platform of the Darwin Party is totalitarianism, in which individual rights must be subjugated to the good of the race.)
    We would acknowledge that distinguished scientific members of the Darwin Party are not personally responsible for what these men did, and would probably deplore it as a great evil.  But on what basis, really?  What is the difference between sexual vice between consenting adults and cannibalism between consenting adults, if personal freedom and self-expression are the highest values in a society that has driven the belief in a law-giving Creator out of the realm of rational consideration?
    We should have known it would come to this.  The Apostle Paul pointed out long ago that rejection of God as Creator does not lead merely to intellectual differences of opinion.  It leads down a slippery slope to a reprobate mind, producing the worst perversions imaginable, with perpetrators who “not only do the same but also approve of those who practice them” (Romans 1:18-35).
    A quatrain by Alexander Pope should be memorized by all who want to understand the accelerating downhill slide of modern culture: “Vice is a monster of so frightul mien, / As to be hated needs but to be seen / Yet seen too oft, familiar with her face, / We first endure, then pity, then embrace.”
Footnote: As an example of how vice feeds on itself, NewsDay.com tells about a polygamist who is jumping on the “gay marriage” bandwagon, claiming “what you do in your own home with consenting adults, you should be allowed to do.”  So where does this line of rationalization stop?  The cannibals were “consenting adults,” too.  What could the polygamist say to the cannibal to tell him, “That’s going too far”?
Next dumb story.

This article is worth investingating, to parse for sound arguments vs. fallacies, misconceptions and admissions.  It is well written and well intentioned (from his viewpoint); he is simply trying to help the cause of science against the forces of prejudice and misunderstanding.  It seems galling to him and his fellow evolutionists that after all these years, the public still doesn’t get it.  (Notice how he mentions the 45% that believe in recent creation, but omits the fact that only a tiny minority, about 10%, accepts the full naturalistic evolutionary story.  Only 15% vote that only Darwinism should be taught, without opposing evidence; for example, see 05/14/2002 headline).  So he urges his fellow biology professors to help move the mainstream back toward where it should be, since “the naturalists are already convinced” (By “naturalists” he could either mean professional biologists or philosophical materialists, but in this case, the distinction is academic.)
    To begin with, the supercilious elitism of evolutionary propagandists is what is “disquieting.”  We’ve seen that attitude a lot here at Creation-Evolution Headlines (see Nov 15, Sept 9, June 25, and Feb. 27 headlines, for recent examples).  Costa admits that the antievolutionists are not always “fringe groups,” but he never seems to want to face, or admit, the fact that many antievolutionsts are scientists with PhDs.  He cannot fathom that any educated, informed, reasonable person would have doubts about Darwinism.  They must be just misinformed, or else they “willfully remain ignorant.”  Costa needs to get off his ivory tower pedestal, read more books, and discuss, face to face, some of the leading antievolutionist scientists and philosophers who argue that it is precisely the “consilience of inductions” that leads away from a Darwinist interpretation of life, and that the “enormous body of evidence” points to intelligent design.  He will quickly learn that many antievolutionists know as much about Darwinism as Michael Ruse, if not more.  For instance, Dr. Dean Kenyon (see film Unlocking the Mystery of Life), and Dr. Richard Lumsden, and Dr. Gary Parker, convinced evolutionists with PhDs, taught Darwinian evolution at the university level with zeal and bluster, until the “enormous weight of evidence” convinced them Darwin’s theory could not be true, and they became creationists.  Costa would do well to investigate these case studies, and many more testimonies from the 600 or more members of the Creation Research Society (all with advanced degrees in science), instead of caricaturing the opposition as uninformed and unenlightened.
    Costa mentions whale evolution, but as we commented in the Nov. 18 headline, where are the 50,000 or so transitional forms that should exist in the series that allegedly transformed a dog-size land animal to a deep-diving submarine behemoth?  He mentions the malaria parasite ostensibly having a remnant chloroplast, but let’s ask a follow-up question: What’s a single-celled organism doing with a coded language and translation system, and a factory of precisely coordinated molecular machines?  That is the question begging for an explanation, and that is a question Charlie could not have imagined in 1859.  However the alleged chloroplast in Plasmodium came about, it is, if anything, an example of devolution, not increase in genetic information.  So what good is it as an example to prop up Charlie?  Has Costa examined all possibilities, like horizontal gene transfer or the degradation of an original free-living organism?  A design scientist would approach this observation not from the assumption that the chloroplast is an evolutionary relic, but that it is there for a purpose.  This approach is just as valid and has often proven more productive in scientific research.
    Costa makes a big thing about Darwin’s analogy from domestic breeding being a good example of Herschellian and Whewellian induction.  It is precisely this point that illustrates the danger of self-deception.  (Costa conveniently overlooks, by the way, the fact that, like many great scientists of history, both John Herschel and William Whewell were Christians and creationists, and that Herschel ridiculed Darwin’s theory as the “law of higgledy-piggledy”.)  For one thing, Herschel and Whewell’s philosophies of science have been superseded by the realizations that scientific theories (1) need to make predictions, and (2) must be falsifiable.  The argument from analogy, as explained in our Baloney Detector, can be a slippery slope to deception when used for proof instead of illustration.  Do you see the flaw in Darwin’s analogical reasoning?  Domestic breeding is intelligent design.  Charlie turned this fact to argue the opposite, that no intelligence was necessary to derive humans, bats, whales, and eagles from bacteria.  That fallacy was bad enough, but he also committed the fallacy of extrapolation, forcing an observation far beyond anything ever observed.  No domestic breeder has ever turned a pigeon into a cat, or a beet into an orchid.  The only examples seen in nature are microevolutionary (see Aug. 20 headline), and it is a monstrous leap beyond the evidence to suggest bacteria can become humans by natural selection.  Another flaw in his argument was the either-or fallacy, in which he assumed that if special creation of each species were discredited, it would bolster unlimited common ancestry of all organisms.  The concept of “fixity of species” may have been believed by some creationists (such as Linnaeus, and that only early in his career), but certainly is not the position of creationists today.  To claim otherwise is a straw man argument.
    The “consilience of inductions” method is risky.  It can be used by anti-Semites to “prove” Jews are responsible for all the evils in the world, or to “prove” Joe Homeless is guilty of murder.  (Lee Strobel, a former legal reporter, has an interesting example of how circumstantial evidence formed an open-and-shut case against an innocent man, in the introduction to The Case for Faith.  Much of the problem was that all the evidence was consistent with the prejudice of the police, the attorneys, and the public.)  If you are not careful, you can amass a consilience of inductions to prove, beyond reasonable doubt, that your bias is justified (see Card Stacking in the Baloney Detector).  If Darwin understood the need for rigor, today’s Darwinists often do not, because they print the measliest tidbits as evidence for their theories (see Nov. 18 headline, for example, and also the Nov. 13 headline, for another of many that could be shown in our back issues).  Science is not supposed to be a society for storytellers with vivid imaginations.  It is not only creationists who call foul at the Darwinist propensity for telling just-so stories.
    Isn’t it ironic, also, that criminal justice, the process Costa parades as an exemplary scientific methodology, is another example of an intelligent design approach to research?  The cop wants to find out if the dead body on the street was due to natural causes or “intelligent” (though malevolent) design, the act of a mind exercising choice and intent to commit murder.  So why not use the same process of design detection in science, and amass as many disparate lines of evidence into “one long argument” that life was designed?  Why should only the Darwinists get their day in court?  If criminal justice had this one-sided approach, government lawyers would have free reign to convict or exonerate anyone according to their whims, by arguing only the evidences that fit their a priori assumptions, without fear of contradictory arguments by well qualified lawyers on the opposing side.  That would not only be unconstitutional, it would be very unDarwinian.  It was Charlie himself who preached, “A fair result can be obtained only by fully stating and balancing the facts and arguments on both sides of each question.”
    With that quote in mind, we have a suggestion.  Teach Darwin to Darwinist Professors.  Darwin was less dogmatic than his disciples (see 09/13/2002 headline).  He boldly set himself up for falsification when he said, “If it could be demonstrated that any complex organ existed which could not possibly have been formed by numerous, successive, slight modifications, my theory would absolutely break down.”  He couldn’t think of any at the time, but that was long before we knew about DNA, Mendelian genetics and molecular machines.  Many feel Darwin’s theory has been falsified on this very point (e.g., the irreducible complexity argument), even ardent evolutionists, not mere high school students or soccer moms, understand the issue (see 08/20/2003 headline).
    So Dear Dr. Costa: your homework assignment is to read Darwin in the light of Year 2003 science instead of 1859 science; and for extra credit, read the two recent books by Cornelius Hunter on the history of Darwinian thought, Darwin’s God and Darwin’s Proof (Brazos Press, 2001 and 2003, respectively).  This will begin a good re-education, and provide a dose of humility for the remediation of elite conceit.  Any time you want to discuss the evidence calmly and rationally, as meek old Charlie would, please be our guest (after first reading all the chain links here on Darwinism and Evolutionary Theory; here’s one and another that might be a tad alarming to the Darwin Party faithful, and oh–don’t forget this one).
Next headline on: Darwinism and Evolutionary Theory. • Next headline on: Education. • Next headline on: Intelligent Design.

Our work addresses the maintenance of phyllotactic pattern.  The challenge now is to elucidate how phyllotactic patterns are generated de novo, and how they change under natural conditions, for example when dicotyledonous plants undergo the transition from decussate [i.e., square, perpendicular] to spiral phyllotaxis.

Things don’t just happen; they require a cause.  Why should a flower or pine cone develop Fibonacci spirals?  This paper is very interesting in trying to elucidate the natural mechanism that would produce such a thing, but admits at the end, “The challenge now is to elucidate how phyllotactic patterns are generated de novo” – in other words (if you will pardon the anthropomorphism), how did the plant originally “decide” to pattern its growth after the Fibonacci sequence?  The scientists here have done a great job helping understand the construction phase, but admit the design phase remains elusive.  We see the crew at work, but where is the architect?  Are nature’s patterns always necessary, due to constraints of packing space or other physical requirements, or is there an intrinsic beauty and order in these patterns that reflects intelligent design?  Understanding the mechanism that generates the pattern begs the question of why there should be a pattern in the first place.
    Neither creationists nor evolutionists would expect a mystical force to be at work building a pine cone.  Clearly, some natural process is following a coded blueprint and carrying out the construction.  This paper does not address the philosophical questions raised by phyllotaxis, but only the mechanistic questions of how it is achieved in one particular plant.  But even that aspect is amazing.  Notice that a series of transportation machines, called influx and efflux carriers, transport the growth hormone (auxin) to the tips of the growing stem.  These carriers didn’t just happen, either; they are exquisite molecular machines constructed by other molecular machines that, in turn, obey instructions from the genetic code.
    Many other carriers are at work in the roots and throughout the plant.  Without them, auxin would just obey the law of gravity.  But the plant has an elaborate transportation and communication network that keeps a complex factory operating 24 x 7, day and night, rain or shine, on schedule, in budget, within spec.  You might recall an earlier story on intraplant communication (see 07/13/2001 headline, “Plants Talk to Themselves in Email”).  This “botanical internet” helps the factory carry out the patterned instructions from the genetic blueprint in ways we still do not understand.  But who wrote the blueprint?  You should never look at an artichoke the same way again.
    Your local botanical garden may have many examples of Fibonacci spirals on display.  Cacti are especially beautiful.  The Huntington Gardens in Arcadia, near Los Angeles, has an incredible display of cacti, as does the Arizona-Sonora Desert Museum near Tucson.  You can also buy small potted cacti with nice spirals at a local nursery and grow them at home.  With these, you’ll have a nice conversation starter that could lead to some deep philosophical discussions.
Next headline on: Plants. • Next amazing story.

It is a myth that vast areas of the West existed in some sort of pristine state, largely unaffected by humans until the 1800s, the research concludes.  In fact, the larger wildlife such as deer, elk or buffalo that were hunted by Native Americans appear to have populations that may have fluctuated greatly, up and down, based on the hunting pressure on them decades or centuries before European settlers ever arrived.

Many people have a vision of very little human influence on the land around the time of the Lewis and Clark expedition.  That wasn’t the case.  The impact of humans, even then, was far greater than most people appreciate.  And as we develop ecological theories and management practices today, we must be careful about what we consider pristine.  With wildlife in the West, it was not in 1806.

Wildlife workers are often badly remunerated, making bribes more attractive.  Conservation policy frequently carries relatively little clout with governments and law-enforcement agencies, and the success of conservation projects can be difficult to gauge.  All of these factors make projects vulnerable to crooked financial practices.

The result is governments and societies that are teetering on the brink of collapse and increasingly unable to reach their goals of agricultural self-sufficiency, even though some of them have millions of farmers and land capable of producing far more than it does.

Political, economic, and... moral.  Give people freedom and money without morals, and will you have utopia?  No, you will have an even more powerful corruption problem.  It is countries where high moral standards and the rule of law are intact where there is the best opportunity for a society to flourish, without the temptation to cut self-serving deals.  In free countries, where people are able to compete in the marketplace based on their abilities, and where their selfish interests are channeled by the requirement to satisfy their customers better than their competitors can, coupled with a moral consensus that values truth and honesty and punishes evil, there is a working recipe for sustainable prosperity.  But prosperity also must be kept in check by a moral standard that sees our place in the world as one of responsible stewardship.  Corruption destroys all these things.
    These articles help explode the “Dancing with Wolves” stereotype, and the white imperialist stereotype.  But it’s fruitless to point fingers here, because all humans are innately selfish and evil.  Any society will express its evil fully unless kept in check by the rule of law and beliefs that encourage honesty and responsibility.  Most often these beliefs are rooted in religion.  The Judeo-Christian tradition, for instance, when followed according to the Bible, teaches honesty, responsibility, compassion and stewardship.  This is not to say that Europe or America have not failed, often miserably, to live up to those standards.  But at least corruption has usually been viewed as an evil that must be punished. 

So despised was corruption in Elizabethan England in the days of the King James Bible, for example, Sir Francis Bacon was humiliated and nearly ruined for taking a bribe.  But in many countries, you would be humiliated for not engaging in this evil practice.  Ask yourself which countries have the most corrupt governments today, where bribery is a way of life cynically accepted as a necessary evil, then check out their environmental record.  Also, dare to ask the politically incorrect question, what is their religious tradition.  At risk of oversimplification, consider that a native east Indian living in America has, on numerous occasions, mentioned in casual conversation to this reporter that bribery and corruption are ubiquitous in India, from the top of the government down to the local constable on the steet.  If you’re thinking ahead that India is primarily Hindu in religious tradition, you need to realize that another religion is dominant, dogmatic, and forceful in India today, at least among the intellectual and political elites who take the bribes: Darwinism.

    These articles are noteworthy in that they come from secular sources not particularly reputed as politically conservative.  The OSU press release pointed out that the problem is not resources.  There are plenty of workers, there is plenty of land, and there is a great potential for productivity, prosperity and self-sufficiency.  It is being destroyed by corruption.  More than any other factor, corruption was correlated with environmental destruction and poverty.  This would have been no surprise to Isaiah or Jeremiah, who understood that “the pleasant places of the wilderness are dried up” because “Their course of life is evil, and their might is not right.”  Solomon, also, knew that “The king establishes the land by justice, But he who receives bribes overthrows it.” (Prov. 29:4).  This theme runs throughout the whole Bible: corruption ruins the land and its people.
    The situation is desperate.  The ecology is crumbling.  Wildlife is being exterminated.  People are starving.  The usual political, economic and scientific remedies – subsidies, education, consultants, scientific studies – are not working.  This calls for drastic measures.  Send missionaries with care packages containing copies of the Bible, the Constitution, and the Bill of Rights.
Next headline on: Politics and Ethics.

For 46 years, Piltdown Man reigned as a human ancestor.  It was the standard by which other bones were judged; paleontologists rejected other evidence if it didn’t fit Piltdown Man and the legend that grew around it.  The fake was in its heyday during the Scopes Trial.  It fooled the brightest minds in the scientific world for a generation.
   On the same page with the BBC’s expose is an ad for their disinformation documentary, “Walking with Cavemen” (see March 19 headline).  Have we learned nothing?  No; actually quite a bit, thank you.  Our knowledge has improved considerably.  We’ve learned that hoaxes no longer need to be hidden as deep, dark secrets; they can now be trumpeted on the airwaves as edutainment.
Next headline on: Movies. • Next headline on: Early Man.

1. Plant polyploidy:  Lie and Wendel agree this subject is poorly understood:

   Recent studies in several plant systems have revealed that allopolyploid genesis under both synthetic and natural conditions often is accompanied by rapid and sometimes evolutionarily conserved epigenetic changes.... It is likely that the evolutionary success [sic] of allopolyploidy is in part attributable to epigenetic phenomena that we are only just beginning to understand.

   (Epigenetic phenomena are “above the genes,” or mechanisms that do not rely on DNA translation alone; they may regulate how DNA gets translated in the first place, which genes get expressed, and how often.)

2. Mitochondrial gene evolution:  Adams and Palmer describe the diversity and complexity of mitochondrial genes.  There appears to be no clear evolutionary pattern of functional transfer to the nucleus:

   The tempo and pattern of mitochondrial gene loss is highly episodic, both across the broad sweep of eukaryotes and within such well-studied groups as angiosperms.  All animals, some plants, and certain other groups of eukaryotes are mired in profound stases in mitochondrial gene content, whereas other lineages have experienced relatively frequent gene loss.

   (“Profound stases” refers to the fact there is almost no change seen over assumed long periods of evolutionary time.)

3. Spacers in Plant Genes:  Alvarez and Wendel examined internal transcribed spacer sequences (ITS) in plant genes for evidences of common ancestry, which are used in a third of phylogenetic studies.  The observations leave them somewhat befuddled:

   Notwithstanding the many important contributions [sic] of ITS sequence data to phylogenetic understanding [sic] and knowledge [sic] of genome relationships, a number of molecular genetic processes impact ITS sequences in ways that may mislead phylogenetic inference.... Despite the near-universal usage of ITS sequence data in plant phylogenetic studies, its complex and unpredictable evolutionary behavior reduce its utility for phylogenetic analysis.

4. Plant DNA and Pseudogene Polymorphisms:  Bailey, Carr, Harris and Hughes warn their colleagues about possible misinterpretations through use of nuclear DNA and pseudogene comparisons.  Though early results seemed to show these regions are homogeneous within individuals, they noted that polymorphisms can exist within one individual that can cloud a phylogenetic interpretation:

   However, both older and more recent studies have found intra-individual nrDNA polymorphism across a range of plant taxa including presumed non-hybrid diploids.  In addition, polymorphic individuals often contain potentially non-functional nrDNA copies (pseudogenes).  These findings suggest that complete concerted evolution should not be assumed when embarking on phylogenetic studies using nrDNA sequences.

   They offer suggestions on how to get around these problems, but caution that “a priori determinations of orthology and paralogy of nrDNA sequences should not be made based on the functionality or lack of functionality of those sequences.”

5. Developmental Genes:  Becker and Theiben examine the phylogeny of MADS-box genes, which code for transcription factors that influence many things: roots, flowers, and fruit.  Most of the genes appear very early, so that they conclude: “These findings reveal that the diversity of MADS-box genes in Arabidopsis [a commonly-studied herb] is rather ancient and representative for other flowering plants.”

6. Morning Glory, Evening Stress:  Durbin et al. studied morning glories for evidence of evolution: “A central goal of evolutionary genetics is to trace the causal pathway between mutations at particular genes and adaptation at the phenotypic level.”  They didn’t seem to find it in the genes for flower color themselves, but rather in the ways they are regulated: “The results of this study show that most species differences in this crucial phenotype are associated with changes in the regulation of gene expression.”

7. Sex Determination:  Kinney, Columbus and Friar studied maize for genes that determine sex, but got mixed results:

   Our results suggest that purifying selection may be acting on Ts2 in the hermaphrodite-flowered B. hirsuta while no evidence of selection was detected at Ts2 in the monoecious/dioecious B. dimorpha.”

8. Nuclear ribosomal DNA sequence polymorphism and hybridization: Andreason and Baldwin checked out checker mallows, a “taxonomically difficult” group of annuals and perennials, for evidence of evolution.  They offer some possible reasons for the “complex patterns of morphological variation putatively stemming from hybridization and polyploidy”:

   Polymorphic sequence patterns in other taxa may be a result of extensive interbreeding within young clades, in keeping with the minimal sequence divergence, largely overlapping geographic distributions and morphology, and ploidy variation in these groups.  Other possible explanations for polymorphic sequences in members of Sidalcea include slow concerted evolution [sic] relative to mutation rates, incomplete lineage sorting, and recent pseudogene formation.

9. Limb Loss:  Now for an animal story.  Whiting, Bauer and Sites examined skinks (legless lizards) in sub-Saharan Africa and concluded evolution goes downward in this group:

   Reconstructions of ancestral states for limb and digital characters show limited support for the reversal or gain of both digits and limbs, but conservative interpretation of the results suggest that limb loss is common, occurring multiple times throughout evolutionary history [sic], and is most likely not reversible.

If Bailey et al. are correct (#4 above), and if polymorphisms are ubiquitous in many more genomes, what will this do?  Phylogenists take gene samples from one individual, and often only one part of an individual.  But what if there are many variations within the individual and between individuals within the same species?  Would that not cloud any tree-building to the point of making it an exercise in futility?  (Not that it wasn’t to begin with.)
    It’s kind of fun to watch Darwinists wrestle the data into their preconceived boxes, but it would seem a better use of their valiant efforts to find a cure for cancer.
Next headline on: Genes and DNA. • Next headline on: Plants. • Next headline on: Darwinism and Evolutionary Theory.

They admit in their conclusion that this is not a complete story of natural selection, because they have not established a connection between the orange light and the fitness of the beetle.  They offer some speculations (emphasis added):

Possible explanations for the adaptive significance of more orange ventral light include: (i) sexual selection, (ii) predation from a nocturnal visual predator such as bats or birds, and (iii) character displacement caused by spectral competition from fireflies or another, now extinct, congeneric beetle.
    In addition to resolving click beetle ecology, several other pertinent questions also remain concerning whether and how natural selection has affected the dorsal polymorphism, the vYG allele, and interspecific color differences among Pyrophorus species.  Studies are also called for to quantify the visual acuity of beetles for different wavelengths of light to test for evidence of coevolution with bioluminescent color.  In conclusion, with the development of ever-more powerful genetic tools, we envision verification of selection at the molecular level as becoming a logical step in testing the adaptive hypothesis for a trait.

Then comes their cute Charlie line (more on that later).  Did you catch what this concluding paragraph says?  All they found was a little bitty variation from greenish-orange to orangy-green, on the bellies of bugs that already exist, and perhaps the specific genetic mutation(s) that code for the color difference.  They don’t know if it has any adaptive significance.  They don’t know if the female likes it  They don’t know if she can even detect the difference.  They don’t know if it makes the beetles more fit.  They don’t know if natural selection has affected the other varieties of click beetles.  They don’t claim to have established a complete case of natural selection.  They admit that molecular testing of the “adaptive hypothesis” (i.e., natural selection) has not been done.  They started and ended with Jamaican click beetles.  Where is the evolution?
    If you don’t think Charlie is the evolutionists’ idol, consider their punch line.  The “young English naturalist” is clearly an allusion to Charlie Darling in his starring role on the Beagle, but the phrase “amusing fondness for beetles” recalls Haldane’s jab at God (for refutation, see 04/26/02 headline).  The association hardly seems coincidental.
Next headline on: Bugs and Crawlers. • Next headline on: Darwinism and Evolutionary Theory. • Next dumb story.

Mammals occupy a wide variety of habitats.  Some, like bats, can fly.  Some, like beavers, spend time on land and in the water.  Some, like whales and dolphins, spend all their time in water.  This does not mean they are related by common ancestry.  Is a beaver halfway toward evolving into an obligate aquatic animal?  Or is it the other way around?  You can make up whatever story you want, but the beaver seems happy doing what it does.  Each mammal is well adapted to its current niche.  Many mammals are now extinct, some of which also lived in aquatic or semi-aquatic habitats.  This proves nothing about common ancestry.
    Another approach is to quantify all the changes that would be required to make a land mammal, like a cow, evolve into a sea creature, like a whale.  David Berlinksi discussed this approach in the Q&A section of the DVD version of the film Icons of Evolution (highly recommended).  He started adding up the changes – skin, tail, lungs, fins, respiration, diet, etc. – and came up with a conservative estimate of 50,000.  Moreover, these changes would have to be coordinated.  A change in lungs for diving deep underwater would have to be associated with a stronger brain case and ability to withstand pressure, and with impermeable skin, etc.  One may quibble about the number, but certainly many, and major, would be the changes from cow to whale.  The question then becomes, is there any fossil evidence for the thousands of transitional forms that must have existed during the estimated 50 million years in which this great transformation allegedly occurred?
    The only examples these evolutionists always trot out are a few extinct semi-aquatic candidates, like Pakicetus and Rodhocetus.  The artist’ reconstruction of Rodhocetus in the article shows a squat long-snouted tan-colored animal with dog-like feet and a wide tail that flips left and right, unlike a whale’s vertically-moving fluke.  Great.  15 mutations down, and only 49,985 to go.  The caption says, “The early whale Rodhocetus probably paddled like an aquatic mole, using its tail as a rudder, rather than wiggling like an otter.”  Notice two things: the word probably, which reminds us one cannot deduce lifestyles from fossils, and the observation that there are aquatic moles with similar lifestyles today.  Are the moles evolving into mini-whales?  How do we know the extinct animals were not perfectly content to stay what they were for eternity?
    The paleontologists got all excited that Rodhocetus might have used its hind feet for swimming.  What’s all the excitement about?  Whales have no hind feet, nor do they swim with them.  The gap between Rodhocetus, Pakicetus or any other candidate transitional form and true whales is huge, yet the article calls Pakicetus the “earliest known whale.”  Given the gap to bone ratio, that is no more plausible than calling Icarus the earliest known bird.
    In a way, it’s admirable that these paleontologists exhibit the power of positive thinking.  Otherwise, playing Darwin detective must be a very depressing job.  But the first step toward recovery for EA (Evolutionists Anonymous) is to admit that they have a problem.
Next headline on: Mammals. • Next headline on: Fossils. • Next headline on: Darwinism.

Read both sides and see if the NCSE criticisms hold up.  We recommend you review our own headlines about complex structures (see Aug. 20 headline) and the RNA World scenario (see 07/11/02 headline), in which the Darwin Party places so much bluffing confidence.  They treat the RNA World as their ace in the hole.  Just don’t ask about the details.
    Keep in mind also that the film attempts to cover a lot of ground in 67 minutes.  This it does admirably well.  It’s always a struggle to decide what must make it in the final print and what gems have to end up on the cutting room floor.  If the point of the film was the voyage of the Beagle, for instance, certainly more stops along the South American Coast should have been included.  The port of call most pertinent to Darwin’s theory, though, widely assented even among evolutionists, was that on the Galápagos Islands.  Pointing out other stops along the way would have only been a time-consuming distraction.  For critics to focus on such a minor shortcoming is a red herring.
    Also, was the film really dismissive about the co-option argument?  Watch it and decide.  What more could have been said?  The treatment of it seems pretty thorough.  The evolutionists claim it was “mockingly simplified,” but provide none of the “signficant evidence” for this “crucial evolutionary mechanism” they allude to, that the film should have mentioned.  But that’s typical of propaganda; make a bold claim, and fail to back it up.  It’s also typical of arguments coming from those in a weak position.  It would seem the NCSE, with all the big-gun scientists at their beck and call, could provide more substance if they had it.
Next headline on: Movies. • Next headline on: Intelligent Design.

Undoubtedly a lot of intelligent design went into the construction of this exhibit, the intention of which is to demonstrate to the kiddies that intelligent design is unnecessary to exhibit superb adaptation.  If this disturbs any precocious children, especially those with web access to Creation-Evolution Headlines, maybe National Geographic can help keep the peace (see Mar. 18 headline).
Next headline on: Darwinism and Evolutionary Theory. • Next headline on: Mammals. • Next dumb story.

Why does SETI get good press for bad science?  Let’s have a debate about this.  There is still only one planet proven to have life, and that is the one under your feet.  Europa might have liquid water under miles of ice; so what?  Water and life are vastly different collocations of chemical elements.  There is no evidence Mars had life: that’s a lie.  The Martian meteorite has been debunked as evidence (see Nov. 15 headline), the Viking experiments have been given purely physical explanations, and even evidence for water is still equivocal (although JPL just published a picture of what looks like a river delta, but that’s fine, we’ll grant the SETI believers all the water they want).
    It must be stressed that without evidence, you have no science.  You have beliefs, myths, and stories.   The only thing they might be correct about is the real estate.  But to claim lots of land means lots of tenants is a royal non-sequitur.
    The two authors deny that intelligent life would look like a Hollywood alien, but they use one to push their beliefs.  If they wanted to do this in the Church of SETI, that would be fine, but they do this in a public planetarium where no one gets to hear an opposing view.
    Their entire case is predicated on the assumption of evolution.  First, they believe chemicals can self-organize into life.  Give an example that does not assume chemical evolution, but demonstrates it (see 07/11/02 headline).  Second, they believe that “evolutionary mechanisms encourage intelligence, particularly among social beings.”  Name one.  (A mechanism, that is, not a social being.)  Mechanisms do not “encourage” anything (a personification fallacy).  If they are natural mechanisms, they only encourage one thing: entropy. Intelligence is as far from entropy as you can get.
    If SETI promoters want to spend money and search through radio waves, that’s fine, as long as it is their money.  But without evidence extraterrestrials exist, it is not science; it’s a belief.  Even if a lucky message does appear someday, it would not prove evolution, either.  It would demonstrate intelligent design. Mr. JO Alien would not be able to explain his origin by evolution.  He could be a liar, too, and Shostak would never be able to know.  “Why, yes, our race also evolved by slow processes of unguided, purposeless natural causes.  (What suckers these earthlings are, Screwtape.)”
Next headline on: SETI. • Next headline on: Origin of Life. • Next dumb story.

Fending off attempts to weaken references to evolution, the Texas State Board of Education last week approved a list of biology textbooks that scientists believe do justice to Darwin’s theories....
    Scientists had been on high alert in response to complaints by advocates of “intelligent design” that pro-Darwin “inaccuracies” appear in books under review in Texas, the nation’s second-largest buyer of textbooks after California.  Shortly before the school board vote, 550 Texas scientists and teachers urged the 15 members to maintain “high standards of science”--and they think the appeal got through.  “The publishers have done a terrific job of holding the line and keeping the creationists at bay,” says Skip Evans of the National Center for Science Education in El Cerrito, California.

Now both sides seem to be happy.  DI officials praised publishers for correcting “a number of embarrassing errors” that overstate the evidence for evolutionary theory.  Scientists, for their part, say the changes pose no problems.  The embryo drawings were old and inaccurate, says Evans.  And whether or not books talk about gill slits is simply a matter of “terminology.”

This exercise should be a slam-dunk for anyone familiar with the issues.  But there are some subtleties, too.  Get good at Baloney Detecting.  You’re going to need it when the NCSE and the press show up at your school board meetings.
Next headline on: Education. • Next headline on: Darwinism. • Next headline on: Intelligent Design.