It appears, therefore, that the new hypothesis is no spoiler itself; it is a door of opportunity, a fresh wind taking the story of bird evolution out of the doldrums:

Without such broader knowledge, it is uncertain how essential WAIR was for any extinct members of the theropod lineage, including the earliest birds.  Regardless, this work will continue to stimulate research on flight and its evolution.  The debate over whether flight originated in tree- or ground-living creatures is centuries old.  The WAIR hypothesis has provided a biologically plausible alternative to that rather stale dichotomy.

Caught in the act!  This is an important principle to understand about Darwinism, and why it has become so successful, and why it has taken over the intellectual world.  It no longer matters whether a hypothesis is true or not, but only whether it keeps lazy scientists employed as storytellers.  Evolutionary science has been liberated from repeatability, testability and observability.  The key word is now plausibility, which being translated, means science has become fiction.  After all, any good novel or short story is plausible, isn’t it?  (Since there are no Laws of Plausibility, at least it will be plausible to somebody, especially the storyteller.)
    For Darwinists studying the evolution of birds from dinosaurs, to really do their job rigorously, they would have to identify every beneficial mutation or gene duplication, connect it to an actual functional advantage, and monitor its spread through a population.  They would have to find every transitional fossil, know its date accurately, trace the development of all the flight-related hardware and software in the genes (including feathers, perching feet, hollow bones, avian lungs, specialized organs, modified brain, body size, metabolic rate, specialized muscles and tendons, and behavioral instincts, such as knowing how to take off and land and use thermals), explain how these morphological changes proceed from embryo to adult, and much more.  Clearly, doing all this is impossible.  Moreover, they would need to uncover, by experiment, new natural laws that create increasing levels of complexity and information against the inexorable pressure of entropy.  Even if in some fantasyland they could perform these impossible experiments, they would never know if it matched prehistory without getting into a time machine and watching the whole story unfold.
    This is too hard, so evolutionists changed the rules.  They don’t like doing science the old way, the way Joule and Faraday and Mendel did it.  It’s so much easier to just flop on the sofa and speculate.  When the NSF comes around and wonders how the grant money is being spent, the Darwinist can show the photo album from the last vacation in the Bahamas (see Dec. 03 headline), or show a home-video clip of partridge chicks running up a ramp in the lab, or demonstrate the latest computer games (see May 8 headline) enough to look busy.  And so that Eugenie Scott can brag about all the scientific literature that supports evolution, the Darwinist can have his or her grad student write it up in specialized jargon for Nature or Science or National Geographic, ending with the typical benediction about all the wonderful stories that the latest new twist on the plot opens up.  Look through the Chain Links on “Darwinism and Evolutionary Theory” and check if this is not indeed the situation.
    Calling all Baloney Detectors.  Wake up and smell the coffee.  We’ve been hoodwinked.  All along, Eugenie Scott and the rest of the Darwin Party have been browbeating their critics that they just don’t understand “science” and that to do “science” we must play by “the rules.”  But she didn’t explain that the rules were changed when the Darwin Party came to power.  Old Charlie was clever.  He had a vivid imagination and a gift of gab, and instead of proving his story, he said, “It’s plausible, isn’t it?  Prove me wrong!”  So we took the bait and headed off on an impossible quest, trying to prove a universal negative, instead of calling his bluff and making him prove his story right.  While we were distracted, he rounded up the Starving Storytellers, gave them lab coats and became their patron saint.  They have been in his debt ever since.
    Antievolutionists have been snookered into trying to prove that this or that alleged feathered dinosaur really isn’t an ancestor to birds, or that this or that microevolutionary change cannot be extrapolated endlessly, without realizing that they are trying to beat Hobbes at Calvinball.  As long as the Darwinists are free to make up stories that can never be proved, it’s hopeless to call them on the carpet.  The one who sets the rules controls the game.
    The reason Darwin Party members are so vehement against critics is that their jobs are at stake.  The founding fathers of science declared independence from speculation by framing an unwritten constitution which demanded that scientific results be observable, testable and repeatable.  But later presidents, giving into pressure from special interest groups that found the work too hard, started entitlement programs like the Great Society for Storytellers.  The GSS took over labs, removed the flasks and ammeters, and set up couches surrounding banquet tables filled with “tantalizing speculations” (see Sept. 18 commentary).  Eventually, Big Science became a bloated bureacracy distributing limited grant money to more and more storyteller banquets, while those rugged individualists who still believed in the founding principles of science were being burdened to support the growing welfare state.  Those few who called for fairness were accused of hate speech, and ridiculed as irrational, superstitious obscurantists who simply didn’t understand “science.”
    If people woke up and realized that Darwinists are not pulling their fair share, that real science was subsidizing the Darwinists’ endless quest for a good story, some heads might roll.  Science itself, however, would go on.  The good old science that builds space stations and discovers molecular motors, that explores Mars and digs up dinosaur bones and classifies hummingbirds, would do just fine.  Medicine would still advance, high school science fairs would still be popular, microscopes and telescopes would continue to sell, and discoveries would continue to pour forth.  But if the public demanded accountability, then all the useless, distracting, parasitic welfare programs promoted by the Darwin Party would dry up.  Certain loudmouth bums and welfare queens would be stuck holding up signs saying, Will Tell Stories for Food.
    This should not be taken as a tirade against Darwinists.  We are actually very tolerant of them.  If they want to continue to loaf and watch Charlie’s angles, that’s fine; there are even some creationists who like some episodes.  But teach it in the theater class, not the science class.
Next headline on: Birds. • Next headline on: Dinosaurs. • Next headline on: Darwinism and Evolutionary Theory. • Next dumb story.

1. Redox regulation:  A sensitive chemical balance is maintained between reducing and oxidizing (redox) conditions along the protein’s pathway through the folding factory.  “The redox gradient between the ER and the cytosol seems to be important for intercompartmental signalling, particularly in the integrated response to oxidative stress, in which adaptive responses emanating from different compartments are coordinated.  And redox reactions with opposite electron fluxes must take place in the ER to mediate formation, isomerization and reduction of disulphides.  The wealth of redox assistants allows these fluxes to be separate, and channels electron transport through specific protein–protein interactions.”
2. Location specificity:  “Although most folding factors in the ER are ubiquitously expressed throughout the body, some are tissue-type specific or cell-type specific, and probably fulfil a particular synthetic task....  For example, efficient collagen production requires the expression of hsp47, whereas a tissue-specific protein-disulphide-isomerase-like protein, PDIp, is produced in the pancreas and probably permits the massive secretion of digestive enzymes.”
3. Bridge builders:  Junctions called disulphide bridges are common in protein folds, and these, although weak, are carefully maintained by a host of enzymes called oxidoreductases: “The impressive number of oxidoreductases in the ER suggests that catalysis and regulation of disulphide-bond formation is crucial for folding.  Energywise, in most cases, the contribution of a disulphide bond is hardly more than that of a single hydrogen bond [i.e., quite weak], yet, without disulphide bonds, native conformations are not obtained.  Disulphide bonds cannot force a folding protein into a given conformation: in the sampling of conformations during folding in the ER, native and non-native disulphide cross-links are transiently formed [i.e., correct and incorrect links form and break easily, and must be guided].  Continuous activity of oxidoreductases probably ensures that these covalent links remain flexible until folding is completed.”
4. Correct fold recognition:  Even though a string of amino acids could conceivably fold in large number of ways, like a Rubik’s cube, somehow the chaperones are able to tell a correct (native) fold from an incorrect one.  “Besides providing a unique folding environment, the ER has a crucial quality-control role.  How does it discriminate between native and non-native proteins?  The answer to this question depends primarily on ER chaperones.  When folding or assembly intermediates expose hydrophobic [i.e., water-avoiding] surfaces, unpaired cysteines or immature glycans, ER-resident chaperones or oxidoreductases interact with them, and as a consequence they are retained in the ER or retrieved from the Golgi complex [see 11/12/01 headline].  By forming multimolecular complexes, folding factors in the ER may provide matrices that couple retention to folding and assembly.  Immature proteins may also form aggregates that are excluded from vesicles exiting from the ER” [i.e., such that they are not ejected before they are ready].
5. Fail-safe inspection:  A protein needs to pass multiple layers of monitoring: “All proteins are subjected to a ‘primary’ quality control that monitors their architectural design through ubiquitous folding sensors (Table 1).  ‘Secondary’ quality-control mechanisms rely instead on cell-specific factors and facilitate export of individual proteins or classes of proteins.... the ER is the main test bench where molecules destined for the extracellular space are scrutinized for their potential toxicity.”
6. Feedback regulation:  The ER not only does quality control, but sends messages back to the nucleus to regulate the production of more chaperones: “The reasons for having a quality-control system in the ER are easy to understand where protein folding and function are concerned, especially in multicellular organisms where development relies on the fidelity of protein secretion.  Quality control can also regulate the transport or the activity of certain proteins during differentiation or in response to stress or metabolic requirements.”
7. Waste control:  When a protein cannot be folded after repeated attempts, more assistants are on hand to ensure proper dismantling and recycling: “Mutations or unbalanced subunit synthesis make folding or assembly — and hence exit from the ER — impossible.  To maintain homeostasis [dynamic equilibrium], terminally misfolded molecules are ‘retrotranslocated’ or ‘dislocated’ across the ER membrane to be degraded by cytosolic proteasomes” [organelles equipped to break up badly-folded proteins and recycle their parts].
8. Time limits:  Somehow, the cell knows when a protein has had enough time to shape up or ship out:  “A fascinating problem is how molecules that have not been given the time to fold (and therefore are unfolded) are discriminated from those that have failed to fold after many attempts (misfolded), and must therefore be disposed of.  One way of timing glycoprotein quality control involves the sequential processing of N-glycans and in particular mannose trimming in the ER.  It remains to be seen how substrates are eventually targeted to the retrotranslocation channels, how these are opened, and to what extent proteins must be unfolded to negotiate dislocation.”
9. Workforce regulation:  Like a company’s human resources department that responds to managers’ calls for more workers, the cell keeps track of how many chaperones are available, and sends out “help wanted” ads to the nucleus.  “To maintain the efficiency of quality-control mechanisms in diverse physiological conditions, living cells have evolved regulatory circuits that monitor the levels of available chaperones.  This is true for both the cytosol and the ER, and compartment-specific responses clearly exist that selectively restore optimal levels of the desired folding factors.”
   
10. Emergency squads:  The authors provide two examples of rapid-response traffic control teams: “The accumulation of aberrant proteins in the cytosol triggers the heat-shock response, resulting in de novo synthesis of hsp70 and other cytosolic chaperones.  But if aberrant proteins accumulate in the ER, cells activate a different response, the unfolded protein response (UPR), which leads to the coordinated synthesis of ER-resident chaperones and enzymes.”
    
11. Failure consequences:  The authors give an example of what can go wrong when the system gets swamped, starved, or sent defective parts: “Physiologically, ER stress (a condition in which the folding machinery in the ER cannot cope with its protein load) can be caused by synthesis of mutated or orphan proteins, absence of cofactors (an example being scurvy, in which collagen cannot fold because of the lack of vitamin C), or a drastic increase in otherwise normal cargo proteins.”
12. Unified response to varied inputs:  A variety of signals can lead to the same Unfolded Protein Response (UPR) pathway: “How do the diverse unfolded or misfolded proteins that accumulate in the ER provoke the same pathway?  The unifying concept is that BiP and other primary quality-control factors maintain the stress sensors in the ER in the inactive state, so that chaperone insufficiency triggers UPR whatever the nature of the cargo.”
13. Meltdown regulation:  What happens when the damage is so great, that further operation of the factory would be dangerous?  Three independent controls make sure an orderly shutdown occurs (apoptosis, or cell death: see 04/09/02 headline).  “The mammalian ER sensors, Ire1, PERK and ATF6, guarantee a tripartite response with synergic strategies.  By phosphorylating eIF2alpha, PERK transiently attenuates translation, limiting protein load.  ATF6 drives the transcriptional upregulation of many ER-resident proteins and folding assistants.  Ire1 activates XBP-1, which in turn induces transcription of factors that facilitate ER-associated degradation (ERAD).  The two-step activation of XBP-1 (transcriptionally induced by ATF6 and post-transcriptionally regulated by Ire1) guarantees the proper timing of the UPR [unfolded protein response] attempts to fold proteins precede the decision to degrade them.  If the response fails to clear the ER, apoptosis is induced through several pathways.”  The authors explain that “The UPR is multi-faceted and regulates proteins involved in quality control, ERAD and many aspects of the secretory pathway.”
14. Balancing act:  The quality control mechanisms walk a tightrope, with serious consequences for falling off:  “Quality control must be a balance between retaining and degrading potentially harmful products and not preventing export of biologically active proteins.  CFTR mutants in cystic fibrosis illustrate an overzealous quality control, where biologically active mutants cannot leave the ER.  In this case, relaxing the quality control could cure the patient.  But disease can also originate from defective degradation.  If the rate of synthesis of a protein exceeds the combined rates of folding and degradation, a fraction of it will accumulate intracellularly.”  Misfolded proteins have to make it across the ER membrane in time, and get degraded by the proteasome in time, or else aggregations (aggresomes) can build up inside or outside the ER.  These are implicated in a number of “ER storage diseases.”

If you endured the heavy reading in the above paragraphs, you were undoubtedly rewarded with a sense of how incomprehensibly amazing and mind-boggling a living cell is.  Think of it: all this activity is going on right now in every cell in your body.  The authors describe it in typical scientific jargon, but sprinkled here and there are hints of their own wonder and fascination at how all this quality control works.  Who could help but to be awe-struck at the choreography and efficiency of so many coordinated parts?  No human enterprise comes close.
    Only twice do the authors mention evolution just in passing, and in both cases, they merely assume it rather than explain it.  The first reference almost argues against it: “A certain degree of freedom from quality control is essential for the evolution of proteins.  However, it comes at a price for multicellular organisms.  Indeed, many proteins that cause systemic amyloidosis [clumping, runaway misfolding] ... can adopt more than one conformation and can undergo uncontrolled aggregation outside of the cells.”  This means that mutations have a hard time getting past the guards, and even when they do, the consequences could be catastrophic.  How then, could evolution ever get a beneficial mutation past the controls, without mucking up the whole works or triggering the cell-death alarm?  Don’t look for an explanation from these authors.  If there was ever a need for more examples of irreducible complexity, this is surely a contender.
    This afternoon, after reading this scientific paper, I was sitting in a fast food restaurant eating a hamburger and looking out the window at a sunset.  I paused for a moment to think about how many tiny miracles of sophisticated, coordinated interaction were going on inside my body to make possible the enjoyment of tasting food and seeing a beautiful sky.  If more people knew just a fraction of this information, and really thought about it with any common sense at all, they would be impelled to acknowledge that an all-wise Creator with superior intelligence must exist.  The beauty and balance of all these systems should move us to fear Him and want to know Him.  A big part of the problem in society is that so few individuals have any vague idea of what is required to allow them to do something as routine as eating a hamburger, talking with a friend, or looking at the colors in the sky.
    Scientific papers are difficult for most people to read, requiring understanding of specialized vocabulary and abstract concepts.  O, that more talented people could translate this information into everyday terms, and visualize it for more to see, that it might rekindle their sense of wonder.  Do you have such talent?  Has this article struck a chord with you?  Would you think and pray about how you might make this kind of worship-inducing information accessible to children and adults alike?  Some possibilities come to mind: radio, print, audio-visual media, film, tracts, church bulletins, classroom teaching, educational games and role playing, computer animations... did you get any ideas while reading?  If this kind of amazing information excites you, how could you make it accessible to those in your sphere of influence?  If you have an inspiration, write in and share it.
    Our perception of our lives and the world around us is often far too simplistic.  Science should be, like James Joule said, a worshipful quest.  He felt the study of nature and nature’s laws was “essentially a holy undertaking,” and of “great importance and absolute necessity in the education of youth.”  He said, “After the knowledge of, and obedience to, the will of God, the next aim must be to know something of His attributes of wisdom, power and goodness as evidenced by His handiwork.... It is evident that an acquaintance with natural laws means no less than an acquaintance with the mind of God therein expressed.”  Let’s hear a hearty Amen.  Take a moment to thank God for quality control that keeps your machinery humming.
Next headline on: The Cell and Biochemistry. • Next headline on: Genes and DNA. • Next amazing story.

Gaia theory does not contradict darwinism, rather it extends it to include evolutionary biology and evolutionary geology as a single science [sic].  In Gaia theory, organisms change their material environment as well as adapt to it.  Selection favours the improvers, and the expansion of favourable traits extends local improvement and can make it global.  Inevitably there will be extinctions and losers, winners may gain in the short term, but the only long-term beneficiary is life itself.  Its persistence for over three billion years in spite of numerous catastrophes, internal or external, lends support to the theory.  I have never intended the powerful metaphor ‘the living Earth’ more seriously than the metaphor of ‘the selfish gene’.  I have used it, along with my neologism geophysiology, to draw attention to the similarity between Gaian and physiological regulation.

As the Earth ages, the Sun’s heat ineluctably intensifies; in approximately one billion years the Earth will pass the limit of climatic stability and irreversibly return to inorganic chemistry.  Moreover, as it grows older the Earth system weakens, and before long a large planetesimal impact may throw our planet prematurely into its final hot, dry state.  A few thermophiles in oasis ecosystems might survive, but we could never recapture the abundant life and lush environment we now enjoy.  The Earth system is elderly and we should treat it with respect and care.
    Gaia theory reconciles current thinking in evolutionary biology with that in evolutionary geology  It extends, not contradicts, Darwin’s vision, just as relativity enhances, not denies, Newtonian physics.  The theory is provisional, but provides an intellectual habitat where understanding of the Earth can evolve and grow.  Perhaps its greatest value lies in its metaphor of a living Earth, which reminds us that we are part of it and that human rights are constrained by the needs of our planetary partners.

Well, it’s going to be interesting to see the letters to the editor on this one.  Advice: stay out of the line of fire.  Maybe Nature has had it with Lovelock and Margulis’ incessant whining about how closed-minded establishment scientists are, and acquiesced, “All right already, here’s a forum, give us your best shot,” expecting Lovelock to implode in full public view.  It appears he did.
    What’s funny about Gaia is not just its cute new-age, daisy-holding-hands metaphorical imagery, but the rancor it has generated among its adherents against the reigning Darwin Party.*  Like Simon Conway Morris’s demiurge orchestra-conductor model (see Dec. 7 headline), Gaia is just not mindless enough.  Darwinists hate minds.  They want a blind, aimless, purposeless, impersonal, mechanistic process from eternity to eternity.  Even our minds are supposed to be chemical illusions (see Oct. 3 headline).  Despite Lovelock’s valiant performance, trying to portray Gaia as an act without an actor, he blows it by talking about “the Earth system” being elderly and deserving of our respect.  One does not respect mindless, purposeless, undirected processes.  Darwin Party members in the audience will have a cow when he delivers his soliloquy about his pet theory being an extension to Darwinism comparable to relativity being an extension to Newtonian mechanics.
    Well, Lovelock, you got your fifteen minutes on stage.  Gong.  Next.

---

* For fun reading, look at the nasty things Margulis (and other evolutionists who are not deemed naturalistic enough) have said against the Darwin Party, as quoted in Henry Morris’s December commentary, “Willingly Ignorant,” from ICR.  If you think the Big Science establishment is open to unorthodox views, wait’ll you read these seething quotes.
Next headline on: Darwinism and Evolutionary Theory. • Next dumb story.

The study of early art has been plagued by our desire to see this essentially human skill in a progressive evolutionary context: simple artistic expressions should lead to later, more sophisticated creations.  We imagine that the first artists worked with a small range of materials and techniques, and produced a limited range of representations of the world around them.  As new materials and new techniques were developed, we should see this pattern of evolution in the archaeological record.  Yet for many outlets of artistic expression — cave paintings, textiles, ceramics and musical instruments — the evidence increasingly refuses to fit.  Instead of a gradual evolution of skills, the first modern humans in Europe were in fact astonishingly precocious artists.   (Emphasis added in all quotes.)

Microscopic examination suggests that they may have been reed-voiced instruments, like a modern oboe, and that the finger holes have been chamfered to increase the pneumatic efficiency of the finger seal: simple whistles they are not.  Such evidence of complexity is used to argue that these cannot be the first musical pipes, even though they are the oldest in the archaeological record.

The Victorian idea of progressive evolution has been a very persuasive metaphor for explaining change in the archaeological record, particularly over a time of biological change in the human species.  Yet the archaeological evidence is now forcing us to come up with new timescales for cultural change and innovation.  This is a challenge that makes the smallest finds of archaeology as important as the largest.

While Sinclair’s candor is laudable, it does not go far enough.  The evolutionary metaphor is beyond salvage.  The observations falsify evolution and instead support the creation paradigm, that man was endowed with intelligence and artistic skill from the beginning.  In the Biblical timeline, for instance, metallurgy, farming, ranching and musical instrument making were already advanced by the seventh generation from Adam (see Gen. 4:16-22).  After the flood and Babel, it is certainly plausible that technology took a huge setback, and as post-flood ice ages ensued, generations of humans dispersed into whatever habitats they could find, including caves.  For a Q&A list on creation anthropology, see Answers in Genesis.
    The fact that some human artifacts are found in caves does not mean the artists were primitive.  Some people like living in or visiting caves (even today).  Besides, it could be a selection effect, either that cave environments preserve artifacts better, or that archaeologists are more wont to explore caves than surface terrain.  The dating methods Sinclair trusts are flawed anyway, being built on evolutionary presuppositions, so his whole predicament is a prison in his own mind.  Our enlightened post-Victorian era must now wake up to the realization that progressive evolution was just a persuasive metaphor, and as scientists should know, metaphors bewitch you (see July 4 headline).
Next headline on: Early Man. • Next headline on: Dating Methods.

Darwin was educated not as a biologist, but as a country vicar.  Although he may have read Hutton’s book, it is equally likely that Darwin read one of the standard religious works of his day (now perhaps the most ridiculed book in biology), William Paley’s Natural Theology (1803), which presents Paley’s proof of the existence of God, as well as of Divine creation.  (Emphasis added in all quotes.)

...the eye, the animal to which it belongs, every plant, indeed every organized body which we can see, are only so many out of the possible varieties and combinations of being which the lapse of infinite ages has brought into existence; that the present world is the relict of that variety; millions of other bodily forms and other species having perished, being by the defect of their constitution incapable of preservation, or of continuance by generation.²

Charlie, a plagiarist?  This was interesting, so I looked up Paley’s refutation in his once-honorable, classic treatise that Abler calls “now perhaps the most ridiculed book in biology.”  The venerable theologian offered three rebuttals to the principle now known as natural selection.  (1) His first might be characterized as a straw man argument today; Paley rhetorically asks that if all possible creatures had existed, why do we not see unicorns, centaurs, etc.  Darwinists might reply with their standard common-ancestry claim that natural selection would only build on patterns established early on, rather than from an infinite pool of possible forms.
    (2) The second argument is more interesting and still carries weight today.  It’s the argument from classification.  If nature could produce infinite gradations between forms, why do we find all living things grouped into nested hierarchies of taxa, Paley asks:

But, moreover, the division of organized substances into animals and vegetables, and the distribution and sub-distribution of each into genera and species, which distribution is not an arbitrary act of the mind, but is founded in the order which prevails in external nature, appear to me to contradict the supposition of the present world being the remains of an indefinite variety of existences; of a variety which rejects all plan.  The hypothesis [i.e., natural selection] teaches, that every possible variety of being hath, at one time or other, found its way into existence (by what cause or what manner is not said), and that those which were badly formed, perished: but how or why those which survived should be cast, into regular classes, the hypothesis does not explain; or rather the hypothesis is inconsistent with this phenomenon.  Ibid.,, p. 48.

In other words, why are their large gaps between major kinds?  The problem of gaps between living and extinct phyla was clearly understood long before Darwin.  For an elaboration of this “nested hierarchy” objection to common descent, read The Biotic Message by Walter Remine.
    (3) The third rebuttal is an argument from analogy with machines.  Paley says that no man seeing a variety of machines would think that, out of an assortment of all possible machines that might have arisen from a pool of metal, the remaining forms were “what were left from the accident, as best worth preserving....”  Paley sees no difference between this and inferring natural selection instead of design in living things.  Although this argument from analogy might have been rebuffed in the past, with the retort that living things are not like artificial machines, the discovery of molecular machines in the cell gives the point renewed force today (see Dec. 4 headline and embedded links in the commentary).  Biologists know that protein machines are selected from a near-infinite configuration space, being determined by the sequence of amino acids of which they are composed (see 09/06/2001 headline).  Yet we find these machines already functional in the most primitive life forms and highly conserved throughout the living world.  Natural selection cannot be invoked before the machines of replication existed.  It is time, therefore, to resurrect Paley’s third argument against natural selection and speak it into 21st century terms.
    So two out of three objections Paley raised to selection have not been satisfactorily refuted by Darwinists, without first assuming evolution to be true (circular reasoning).  It looks like Paley anticipated Darwin’s case and ably refuted it in advance.  So if Charlie cannot claim priority for the “discovery” of natural selection (according to popular misconception), maybe it is time to distribute the credit and blame where it is due.  Thanks, Dr. Abler, for enabling us to set the record straight.
Next headline on: Darwinism and Evolutionary Theory.

North Carolinians are justly proud of their famous sons, including Billy Graham, but this prayer must have stunned the crowd at this ostensibly secular celebration.  Mrs. Lotz pulled no punches.  There was no mealy-mouthed reference to some nonsectarian Force, but a distinct, unambiguous statement that Jesus Christ is Lord of creation and our only Savior.  The gospel message was clear and forceful.  No loud ovations were heard from the crowd at the Amen, and the next speaker was introduced without comment.  Such boldness is rare on the American scene today.  Listen to her prayer, if you can find it on replays, where it most likely will be secretly edited out.
    The Wright brothers, by the way, were sons of a minister in the United Brethren church, and as boys, professed faith in Christ.  They said their Christian upbringing was influential throughout their lives.  For their remarkable story, readers are encouraged to get a copy of the Mott Media Sowers Series biography by George Ludwig, They Gave Us Wings, for the family to read on this momentous centennial of human powered flight.  Here is also a short biography on the Answers in Genesis website.
    Speaking of creation, the Wright brothers got much of their technological insights from watching birds.  Admiring gulls and eagles hovering in the air, Orville and Wilbur carefully studied their perfect balance between the forces of lift, drag and gravity.
Next headline on: Birds. • Next headline on: The Bible.

You would think that those sorts of conditions would be pretty hostile to astrobiological theory.  But metaphysical naturalism may be older and more robust than we thought.  Do you guys have any vague conception of how complicated photosynthesis is?  And you want to push it back a billion years, making it magically emerge in brainless bacteria in the midst of a meteor terror war?
    Thank you, Roger, for your winning entry in Stupid Evolution Quote of the Week.
Next headline on: Origin of Life. • Next dumb story.

Models are playthings for theorists.  They may or may not correspond to reality.  Beware of popularizers who speak of models as facts.  Cosmological facts obey Dunlap’s Laws of Physics: (1) Fact is solidified opinion.  (2) Facts may weaken under extreme heat and pressure.  (3) Truth is elastic.
Next headline on: Cosmology.

Keep talking, Dr. Dawkins.  You make the case against atheism better than anyone.  While appealing to rationality and science, your case is built on ridicule, the either-or fallacy, loaded words, association and other tricks of miseducation and non-reason.  How can you attribute so much evil to religion, when we have just had Darwin’s century, and the worst mass murders in history built upon atheistic and Darwinistic beliefs?  We should title this story “The blind The Blind Watchmaker maker.”  Please tell us more about the evolution of transcendent wonder.  Sounds fascinating.
See also 04/23/2003 and 03/18/2002 headlines about Richard Dawkins.
Next dumb story.

The strength of the earth’s magnetic field is one of the longest-measured physical properties of our planet.  It shows a steady decline over the past 150 years.  There is much we still do not understand about planetary magnetic fields.  What causes it?  (The leading dynamo theories are beset with complexities that perplex the experts.)  How big did it get in the past?  (Earth still has the strongest field of any rocky planet, by a large factor.)  Will it reverse and go back up to its former strength?  If it did so in the past, how did life survive the periods when it was weakest?  How long does a reversal take?  There is much we do not know, but one thing is clear from the empirical data: in the present epoch, it is dropping at “an alarming rate” (see Nov 6, March 4, and 11/25/2002 headlines).  Those who believe such a dynamic property can be sustained for 4.6 billion years must add secondary assumptions and subplots to their stories.
Next headline on: Physics. • Next headline on: Dating Methods.

In this life, there are few honors higher than being compared to Daniel, the faithful prophet who withstood the idols – and the lions – of his day without compromise.  Establishment scientists have been ruthless in their attacks on Johnson, but as John Perry cleverly writes, Johnson “continues to befriend the lions even as he declaws them intellectually.”  The Darwinists try to dismiss him as a non-scientist, but they cannot withstand the blows of his logic.  A law expert can be better qualified than a scientist to expose flawed arguments and focus on the basic questions of a case.  Perry’s excellent profile in World is highly recommended reading.  Congratulations to the “courtly combatant,” as Perry calls him, whose steadfast opposition to idolatry, never vituperative but eminently convincing – along with his influential leadership – makes him truly the leading edge of the wedge.
    Will we see Babylon fall in our lifetime?  If so, be prepared for Persia, too.
Next headline on: Intelligent Design.

Vitamin D is a steroid hormone that helps regulate calcium, an element vital not just for strong bones and teeth, but for nerves and the heart as well.  It’s found in very few foods except for salmon and other fatty fish.  Most vitamin D is made when ultraviolet B (UVB) light hits a precursor molecule in the skin.  As 25(OH)D, it then travels through the blood to the kidneys, which turn it into an active metabolite that regulates calcium levels.  Other tissues make this metabolite locally to maintain cell health.

Isn’t it interesting that a precursor protein is just sitting there in the skin waiting for the right wavelength of light from the right kind of star.  Almost makes you think God wanted us to get out of the house once in awhile and explore His awesome creations.  Visit our Photo Gallery for some sources of heavenly sunshine.
Next headline on: Health.

This would be funny if they spent their own money.  For more on evolutionary confusion about mammal origins, see the Dec. 2 headline and the big National Geographic story festival in the March 18 headline.  MSNBC News, as usual, is all agog at this wonderful new discovery and what it tells us about evolution.
    Meanwhile, the Europeans are all flustered trying to drum up interest to join the “Assembling the Tree of Life” bandwagon (see 10/30/2002 headline).  A letter to the editor in the same issue of Science by two UK scientists moans that Europe doesn’t seem to see the connection between evolutionary studies and practical benefits:

Perhaps the best explanation is that AToL is still seen to be about taxonomy, a domain that urgently needs rebranding if it wants to attract funds for big programs such as the Genome Project.   Only when the linkage of the tree of life to conservation, genomics, and DNA-based identification for medicine and ecology is made obvious will the project be put in its proper perspective.  Taxonomic study is fundamental to all areas of science, but as demonstrated by the projects funded by the NSF program, it is only a starting point.  A great deal more needs to be done to move modern evolutionary science to the heart of society’s efforts to understand the living world and make its utilization sustainable and effective.”  (Emphasis added.)

Notice how they conflate evolutionary study with taxonomy.  Taxonomy is good.  Linnaeus, the father of taxonomy, was a creationist.  Evolutionists keep trying to sneak Darwinist religion into “all areas of science” and “utilization” when, in fact, it is useless.
Next headline on: Mammals. • Next headline on: Fossils.

As if to say, Sorry you didn’t get the Olympic gold; here’s a foil-covered chocolate medallion from your friends.  Pearson repeats the common media compromise myth that “though Damadian’s concept was important,” it was the other guys’ work that was essential to MRI.  Will the revisionists succeed in burying the facts?  Only if we let them.  See also the Dec. 3 and Oct. 10 headlines, and the historical documentation on MRI at Fonar Corporation.  Damadian has remarked that in the old days, when he had to fight international corporations from stealing his patent and convince reporters of the priority of his discovery, he was at the mercy of biased reporters.  Now at least he can use the World Wide Web to get the truth out.
Next headline on: Politics.

Antibodies not only protect us from infection, they have been exploited for years in the laboratory — in diagnostic tests, to purify proteins and as the workhorses of cell biology to detect, locate and identify cellular proteins.  Designed by evolution to recognize and bind virtually any molecule that could exist, what more could we ask of them?  Quite a lot, it seems.  To meet the demands of today’s researchers and drug developers, antibodies are being cut down to size, tweaked into new shapes, and manufactured in entirely new ways.

The authors praise the technology of the antibody system, which presumably arose by chance, then say humans, using intelligent design, are making them even better.  Go figure.  Should this quote get the prize, or the one from the end of the entry on Monday? (see Dec. 8 headline).
    Darwinists invariably assume evolution rather than demonstrate it.  They are so blind to their own circular reasoning that to even call them on it produces a quizzical look.  “Designed by evolution,” antibodies protect, detect, and adapt to any molecule that could exist.  What’s so strange about that?
Next headline on: Darwinism and Evolutionary Theory. • Next dumb story.

OK, OK, we won’t press the point.
Next headline on: Mars. • Next dumb story.