[Darwin’s] whole argument began with a being which already possessed reproductive powers.  This is the creature the evolution of which a truly comprehensive theory of evolution must give some account.  Darwin himself was well aware that he had not produced such an account.  It now seems to me that the findings of more than fifty years of DNA research have provided materials for a new and enormously powerful argument to design.
—Antony Flew, former atheist, in an interview in Philosophia Christi (Winter 2004).

Steve, you know better (see 11/05/2004 entry).  Stop grandstanding to dupe the gullible news media.  This appears to be a naked ploy to arouse funding for another Titan mission: Benner said, “We need to go back, with a lander that can survive for weeks, not minutes.”  We should go back, all right, but to learn more about an intriguing geology and atmosphere, not to prop up a dying theory.  Why didn’t you tell Nature that you cannot fathom a chemical basis for life that does not use DNA and proteins?  Why not explain why water is unique for life? (see 12/30/2003 entry).  Why not tell them that the problems with your naturalistic origin of life studies are almost bad enough to make you contemplate becoming a creationist?
Next headline on:  Origin of Life • Dumb Stories

• A Newsweek article by Jerry Adler began by asking, “How did life, in its infinite complexity, come to be?  A controversial new theory called ‘intelligent design’ asserts a supernatural agent was at work.”  In “Doubting Darwin,” Adler gives good coverage to both sides, though ending with the suggestion that theistic evolution would result in fewer conflicts.
• Diane Carroll in the Kansas City Star was certainly not partial to the intelligent-design side, but gave its spokespersons substantial coverage.  The main Darwinist objections she cited were in the “hidden agenda” category.
• David Klinghoffer, writing an op-ed in the Wall Street Journal, decried the branding of Stephen Meyer as a heretic after his ID paper was published in a peer-reviewed journal (see 09/24/2004 entry).  He characterized the uproar not as science vs. religion, but “an instance of one religion persecuting a rival, demanding loyalty from anyone who enters one of its churches--like the National Museum of Natural History.”
• Josh Kelley in The Arizona Republic actually gave most of his coverage to the intelligent design side, including Walt Brown, a young-earth creationist with a PhD involved in rewriting the state science standards.  Biochemist Michael Behe, who coined the phrase “irreducible complexity,” actually got the last word for a change.

Big ships turn slowly.  While none of these articles endorses ID or gives Darwinism the interrogation it deserves, it does hint at a slight temperature change that can have big El Niño consequences later.  At least more and more reporters are listening to ID arguments and not dismissing them out of hand.  Here are some suggestions reporters should consider for their next articles:

• Design science has an illustrious history.  Most of the great scientists of history were religious people, like Newton, Boyle and Maxwell, who believed the universe was created.  Their religious beliefs didn’t hinder science, but, on the contrary, advanced it.
• The pure atheistic, naturalistic brand of science is relatively new.  The trend to discount Genesis dates primarily from the 18th century, but the overtly anti-religious, materialistic brand of science was championed by the likes of Huxley and Haeckel in the late 19th century to early 20th century.  These Darwin bulldogs knew nothing of modern genetics and biochemistry.
• Design is already an accepted part of several sciences, including archaeology, cryptography, information theory, criminology and SETI, yet is not dismissed there as being religiously motivated.  These examples prove that design detection can legitimately be part of scientific investigation, and that design explanations can be valid, without knowing the designer or his/her/its motives (especially in the case of SETI).  They also demonstrate that a design conclusion is not a cop-out, but can be a valid inference based on evidence.
• The controversies within Darwinism are deep and profound; they cannot merely be characterized as nitpicking about the mechanism while accepting the “fact” of evolution.  Is a fact without a mechanism really a fact at all?
• The evidence from microbiology has been trending steadily toward a design inference and away from a Darwinian inference.  We know things about genetics that Darwin and all the early evolutionists could not possibly have known.  These and other evidences, like the Cambrian explosion and the anthropic principle, pose new and severe challenges to the belief that life arose without a Designer (see 01/28/2005 entry).

The points above are rarely mentioned in secular news reports about the intelligent design vs. Darwinism controversy.  It’s time to give them more prominence.
Next headline on:  Education • Darwinism • Intelligent Design.

We owe an apology to our readers.  We have been repeating earlier reports that ATP synthase runs at 6,000 rpm.  That’s like insulting the Ferrari company by watching one moving slowly in a parking lot and claiming it is rated at 10 mph.  We’re sorry for not giving proper credit to the Designer of this high-performance marvel.  Eat your heart out, Charlie.
Next headline on:  Cell Biology • Amazing Stories

1. Mars:  Dr. Ehrenfreund agreed that the Martian Meteorite that sparked the modern astrobiology movement did not contain signs of life.  It was useful in retrospect for arousing interest in astrobiology, she said, but the consensus of scientists is that the alleged biogenic markers were produced by purely physical processes.
2. Water:  The primary source of water in our oceans was probably not comets, she agreed, but outgassing or water-rich planetesimals from 2-3 AU (see 03/02/2002 entry).
3. Chirality:  She agreed that polypeptides have to be 100% one-handed to function, and suggested that maybe adsorption on minerals provided the sorting of otherwise mixed-handed molecules; she conceded, however, that minerals are often heterogeneous.
4. Dilution:  The concentration of amino acids in meteorites is exceedingly low; they would have been hopelessly diluted if a meteorite landed in the oceans.
5. Fellowship:  She admitted that molecules delivered from space would have to collect somehow in small areas where they could “meet” one another.  She suggested small basins or rock layers, but failed to explain how a rapidly-moving meteorite could protect its precious cargo, or how the molecules, once delivered, could be protected from the same UV radiation that her experiments showed were rapidly destructive.
6. Real vs. Virtual:  She agreed with Benner (see 11/05/2004 entry) that ribose is very unstable in all conditions, and so are phosphates, the essential backbones of nucleic acids.  This forced her to suggest that the biomolecules with which we are familiar were not involved in the origin of life, and that astrobiologists must seek simpler, more stable, more abundant, more primitive building blocks to get life started.  Even PNA, a popular alternative to RNA, is already fairly “evolved” and therefore unlikely to be the first, she said.  What these more primitive, more abundant molecules must have been to produce something that could be considered alive, she did not specify.
7. Takeover:  When confronted with Benner’s argument that you cannot invoke so many ad hoc “genetic takeovers” in an origin-of-life scenario, she dismissed it by claiming Benner is a theorist, not an experimentalist.  (Yet Benner’s team had tried hundreds of alternatives to ribose, and all the popular alternatives to RNA, and said they don’t work.)

Astrobiology is a totally bogus science built on the assumptions of Darwinism and naturalistic philosophy.  Its only bright side is to motivate more experimental work in chemistry, physics, geology and astronomy – which is good, but assumes no other motive would do so.  And its track record is abysmal.  Of the biomolecules we know, Dr. Ehrenfreund said, “I wouldn’t really fix on this modern biochemistry thing, and on one component [like ribose or RNA]; we have done that for 50 years, and we didn’t succeed to go any step further with that; so I think you have to think a little bit in a new way.”  So 50 years after Stanley Miller proudly announced the formation of amino acids in a laboratory flask, we now know all that was irrelevant hype.  Today, the wizards of chemistry are into visualization.  They ask us to envision hypothetical simpler entities, yet to be discovered, that might self-organize into self-reproducing machines.
    So what do you think?  Is the “useful lie” tactic the only way to get funding for science?  (see 05/02/2003 entry).  The Miller experiment used it.  The Mars Meteorite used it.  Both are now defunct.  Is astrobiology a welfare program for scientists who ought to be studying the real world, not hypothetical sci-fi landscapes where primitive molecules “get together” and start living?  What if Wall Street acted this way?  Would you continue patronizing a financial adviser who, after 50 years, admits that you have lost money on every investment he tried, and said that now you need to think of new, unspecified, unknown, untested investments?
Next headline on:  Origin of Life

Michael Ruse, a preeminent authority on Darwinian evolutionary thought and a leading participant in the ongoing debate, uncovers surprising similarities between evolutionist and creationist thinking.  Exploring the underlying philosophical commitments of evolutionists, he reveals that those most hostile to religion are just as evangelical as their fundamentalist opponents.  But more crucially, and reaching beyond the biblical issues at stake, he demonstrates that these two diametrically opposed ideologies have, since the Enlightenment, engaged in a struggle for the privilege of defining human origins, moral values, and the nature of reality.

Maybe that’s what hanging around Phillip Johnson for too long does to a hardened Darwinist.  To his credit, Michael Ruse has been open-minded enough to debate his opponents publicly numerous times (see 07/19/2002 entry) and appear on the air and at conferences with them.  Perhaps Ruse is realizing that such friendly and intelligent folk can’t be as wicked and ignorant as Richard Dawkins said they were.  Maybe also he is cringing at the weak arguments being foisted by his side (see 09/03/2002 entry, for example).  It seems he is starting to take Dawkins’ attacks against his new friends personally, and trying to find some middle ground.  Ruse seems in a mental tug-of-war between Charlie and Phil.  Is this part of a slow-motion Damascus experience? (see 06/12/2003 entry).  Write in if you know more about this book.
Next headline on:  Darwinism

For a case study on how to spin-doctor a bad situation, read the UC Riverside press release.  You’d expect lies from National Geographic, of course: “Scientists Fill Blanks on Bat Family Tree.”  They just don’t tell you what they filled it with: imagination.
    In debates with evolutionists, creationist Dr. Duane Gish, author of Evolution: The Fossils Say No, often taunted the opponent by showing a picture of the earliest known fossil bat, which was clearly 100% bat.  He would emphasize that there were no transitional forms between a mouse-sized mammal and a flying bat.  Dr. Gish has earned a grin for Science to say the same thing.
    Both papers suggest that bats appeared because new food sources arose.  Presumably, a wealth of new insects, fruits, flowers and small mammals was like a shopping mall without customers, so the customers “emerged” somehow to fill all the wonderful new ecological niches.  Maybe this is the “If you build it they will come” theory of evolution.  We think, rather, that if Charlie has been up to bat for 140 years and is still striking out, it’s time to retire.
    Bats are exceptional examples of incredible creatures that defy evolution.  Some of their technical feats are illustrated in the Moody Institute of Science classic Dust or Destiny, which shows them navigating through jail bars in total darkness by echo-location.  They can swoop up an insect in their wings during their agile, acrobatic flights, and detect texture, shape and movement with sonar.  Despite their scary appearance, bats are our allies, ridding the air of excess insects.  Bats are among four totally separate groups of animals capable of flight – reptiles (pterosaurs), insects, birds and mammals – each different, yet thoroughly capable from first appearance on earth, just as the Bible creation account says.
Next headline on:  Fossils • Mammals • Darwinism and Evolutionary Theory

• Ben MacArthur, a bone and joint researcher at University of Southampton, reminded Nature that science without dissent is in danger of dogmatism.  He said that science, which has become the “orthodox worldview of the industrialized world,” has become a court from which there is no appeal, and in so doing, has become the mirror image of medieval religious intolerance:

  As you note in your Editorial, “Where theology matters” (Nature 432, 657; 2004), this is perhaps most clearly seen in medical research.  It is often presented as being carried out purely to relieve pain and maximize personal autonomy.  Yet most religious traditions would disagree with these aims, suggesting that well-being additionally depends upon other, ‘spiritual’, factors such as expressions of love and fulfilment of purpose.
      Critical dissent has played a central role in advancing scientific understanding, and the right to dissent should be held in high esteem by scientists.  In the past this dissent has primarily been by thinking scientists against the religious establishment.  It seems ironic that these roles have now been reversed, with much dissent coming from thinking religious communities against the scientific establishment.
      Like it or not, such dissent should be accepted, perhaps even embraced, since it may provide a means to a more balanced view of the place of science in society.   (Emphasis added in all quotes.)

  Did he have in mind the intelligent design scientists and the creationists as the dissenters that should be embraced?  The context seems to demand it.
• Stephen McSorley of the University of Connecticut Health Center gave Nature some advice about claiming the moral high ground.  In a tone of righteous indignation, he writes that it’s not just theologians who are morally troubled: on the contrary, the shoe is on the other foot:

  Your Editorial “Where theology matters” (Nature 432, 657; 2004) fails to mention that it is scientists, not theologians, who are out of step with society.  The seemingly important ethical question, “Why [should society] be denied a medical advance just because some of its members find it morally troubling?”, is disingenuous.
      I question the assumption that only a small minority are troubled by the ethics of medical research.  In the United States, scientists who believe that “all scientifically sound lines of research should be pursued simultaneously” are in the minority.  Although US polls reveal a large majority in support of stem-cell research for therapeutic purposes, they also indicate broad support for President Bush’s stance on federal funding restrictions.  Scientific progress within strict ethical limitations seems to be the majority opinion.
      Thankfully, we live in a democracy where public policy is decided by elected representatives, not a scientific oligarchy.  A better question is why certain individuals should be allowed to pursue a line of research when most members of our society find it morally troubling.

Medical professionals may be the awakening giant among allies in the revolution against Darwinism and the naturalistic, secularistic Big Science oligarchy.  Highly intelligent, well trained and compassionate, doctors have no use for a philosophy that glorifies selfishness and survival of the fittest, even though the Darwin Party tries to wiggle its way into the medical schools (see 06/25/2003 entry).  Medical doctors have devoted their lives to the unselfish care of the unfit: the weak, the sick, the poor and needy, unlike followers of eastern religions that have viewed the suffering as better off left alone to work out their karma.^*  Western doctors understand morals, love and purpose.  If you are a medical professional, follow the lead of these two bold letter-writers, and voice your opinion.  All that is needed for out-of-touch, dogmatic, disingenuous scientific oligarchies to triumph is for good doctors to say nothing.
Next headline on:  Politics and Ethics
^*Mother Theresa, recall, was from the Western Christian tradition, not a product of Buddhist or Hinduist philosophy; that is one reason her example in the slums of Calcutta stood out so starkly against the status quo.  William Carey’s epic story provides another good example of the contrast between the two religious traditions regarding ethics, science, compassion, and “following one’s own path” vs. obeying the Word of God.

Maybe it didn’t evolve; did you ever consider that possibility?
    With all our lab technology we still cannot understand how a brainless, eyeless plant managed to invent an exquisite, functioning trap.  Actually, the question these scientists investigated (the fast action) is one of the simplest aspects of this wonderful organism.  How does the plant keep from springing its traps when only one trigger hair is touched?  (This keeps it from responding unnecessarily to wind-blown particles.)  How does the signal get propagated at the cellular level?  How does it maintain the curvature of the leaves?  How did trigger hairs form at just the right positions?  How do the spines along the trap edges grow and overlap, to form a secure prison the fly can’t wiggle out of?  How does the trap close even more tightly after the prey is captured, so as to squeeze the juice out of the bug?  How does a plant digest animal tissue, and why does it need to, when it can apparently survive without it?  How does the trap know to stay closed until digestion is finished, and how does it reopen like new?  Where are the transitional forms for this amazing plant?  How can evolutionists believe it arose by chance?
    The Venus flytrap makes a wonderful object lesson for the family.  Pick one up at the nursery and let your kids experiment with it.  It’s a good way to have them learn to ask questions, try to figure out how things work, and develop a sense of wonder about natural phenomena.  Follow it up with a showing of the Moody Institute of Science classic The Prior Claim, a fun film that shows the plant in action.  It also shows a “simpler” plant – a fungus – that has a microscopic trap that is so fast, you can’t see the action even if you avoid blinking.  One moment the bug is outside, and within a split second it’s inside.  Amazing.  There are wonders everywhere that almost seem designed to create headaches for unbelievers.
Next headline on:  Plants • Amazing Stories

Molecular biology studies the cause-and-effect relationships among microscopic processes initiated by individual molecules within a cell and observes their macroscopic phenotypic effects on cells and organisms.  These studies provide a wealth of information about the underlying networks and pathways responsible for the basic functionality and robustness of biological systems.  At the same time, these studies create exciting opportunities for the development of quantitative and predictive models that connect the mechanism to its phenotype then examine various modular structures and the range of their dynamical behavior.  The use of such models enables a deeper understanding of the design principles underlying biological organization and makes their reverse engineering and manipulation both possible and tractable.  The heat shock response presents an interesting mechanism where such an endeavor is possible.  Using a model of heat shock, we extract the design motifs in the system and justify their existence in terms of various performance objectives.  We also offer a modular decomposition that parallels that of traditional engineering control architectures.   (Emphasis added in all quotes.)

However, to understand the operational principles of a certain machine, to repair it, or to optimize its performance, it is often necessary to consider a modular decomposition of the machine itself.  Such a decomposition does not necessarily require stripping the machine down to the component level but rather identifying its submodules with their predefined functionalities.  A particularly successful such modular decomposition has been extensively used in the field of control and dynamical systems, where components of a system are classified in terms of their role with respect to the regulation objective.  Similar decompositions exist in computer science, for example, because modularity is a basic principle of good programming.

Big Science went ballistic when Stephen Meyer published an ID paper in a minor journal (see 09/24/2004 entry), claiming it was a mistake to let such material pass peer review.  Well, ID scientists should print this paper and wave it in the face of Eugenie Scott and Ken Miller and all the other Darwin Party hacks who claim ID is illegitimate in science.  Here again – and this is one of many examples we have reported (see 01/01/2005 and 12/20/2004 for recent examples) – ID is not only detectable in biological phenomena, but ID itself is the most fruitful approach to doing science.  This is abundantly evident in this paper, written by authors completely outside the “intelligent design movement” and published in a leading secular journal.  Most likely unintentionally, they have underscored what the ID movement has been saying all along: regardless of one’s religious beliefs (or lack of them), a reasonable inquirer into a phenomenon can detect design, and the design approach is productive for science.  It’s the same approach used by Faraday, Mendel, Kepler, Carver and most of the other great scientists of history.  Only the Darwin Party welfare bums have a problem with it.  (See 12/22/2003 entry; contrast it with the one that follows it.)
Next headline on:  Cell Biology • Intelligent Design

We’ll leave it to others to debate whether the Shroud of Turin dates from the time of Christ or not.  Even if so, whether it was the burial shroud of Christ is a separate question.  Suffice it to say that adherents on both sides had their experts, but experts are only human.  Scientific results don’t exist in a vacuum.  Fallible humans must interpret them.
Next headline on:  Bible and Theology • Dating Methods

So George Washington Carver was right about the humble peanut: it is delicious and nutritious.  And they bring good luck.  That’s why JPL scientists always pass the peanuts just before every important spacecraft maneuver.
    You already knew these things, so what are you waiting for?  Your mind, your body and your spirit need Creation Safaris.  Look at what you missed just this past weekend – and it only took 2.5 hours.  Life is too short to be a couch potato.
Next headline on:  Health

And you thought the animators on PBS and the Discovery Channel had whale and hippo evolution all figured out.  From what missing links did hippos get their antibiotic sunscreen sweat? (see 05/25/2004 entry).
Next headline on:  Mammals • Darwinism

When the ancestors of robber crabs first walked out of their watery environment to live on land, their sensory equipment needed a makeover.  The olfactory receptors on the antennae of marine crabs detect soluble, water-loving molecules.  A landlubbing crab must zero in on molecules that waft through the air.   (Emphasis added in all quotes.)

The prize is a week-long series of lectures by George C. Williams (see 05/31/2004 entry) on how not to tell Darwinian just-so stories, followed by a friendly visit with Phillip Johnson – in a courtroom.
Next headline on:  Darwinism • Dumb Stories

• Senator Rick Santorum (R., Pennsylvania) in The Morning Call advocated a balanced approach to teaching evolution.
• Brian Fahling in The Union Leader took up the charge to defend Georgia’s “critical thinking” stickers (see 01/13/2005 entry).
• Neal McCluskey, writing for the Cato Institute, argued that the Georgia case is a reason for vouchers.  The “one-size-fits-all” method of teaching means someone will always be offended: “Why is it acceptable to force them [Christians] to use their tax dollars to teach their children something to which they strenuously object, but unacceptable to place a sticker on textbooks that asks other people to consider, even for a moment, beliefs contrary to their own?”  The answer, he thinks, is privatization.  Get government out of education and let the parents exercise consumer choice.
• John Whitehead, Constitutional attorney, writing for Accuracy in Academia, agreed with Phillip Johnson that “It’s the Darwinists who are religious dogmatists.”
• Jeff Gardner wrote a scathing rebuke of PBS in the Albuquerque Tribune, after New Mexico affiliate station KNME pulled the intelligent-design film Unlocking the Mystery of Life from its schedule after first agreeing to air it, under pressure from scientists and the ACLU.  He mercilessly castigated “the rabidly anti-Christian voices that squeak like greaseless wheels in the so-called science community” for this act of “censorship,” and decided PBS is not only wrong, but irrelevant in today’s TV market.

Want to take part in one of the biggest revolutions of modern times?  Take up the pen, not the sword, and let your eloquence help bring down the idol of King Charlie the Usurper, where it can join its mates in the fantasyland section of StalinWorld.
Next headline on:  Intelligent Design • Darwinism • Education

Think about this when you eat spinach.  You are consuming a supreme example of nanoscale engineering.  A can of spinach may not help you punch Brutus to kingdom come, but might help you appreciate the King who came.
Next headline on:  Plants • Amazing Stories

Yongsoon Shin and colleagues at the Department of Energy lab have converted wood to mineral, achieving in days what it takes nature millions of years to do in such places as the Gingko Petrified Forest, an hour up the Columbia River.  There, trees likely felled in a cataclysmic eruption and, buried without oxygen beneath lava, leached out their woody compounds and sponged up the soil’s minerals over the eons. (Emphasis added.)

A million years is an awful, awful, awful long time.  Think about everything that has transpired since the first record of human civilization: all the wars, natural disasters, climate changes, environmental and population shifts.  Now multiply that thought by a hundred – that is less than one million years, let alone 10 million or a hundred million.  Don’t you think in all that time, with all the volcanoes going off and continents drifting around, all the weathering and erosion, all the pressure and temperature changes, nature couldn’t figure out how to petrify wood a little faster, if we can do it in less than a week?  Why do you think this article claims it took millions of years?  Evidence?  ... or maybe another reason?
Next headline on:  Plants • Dating Methods

Wow – truth is stranger than fiction.  What a strange and imaginative world!  And think, all this is just from one small location on a sphere bigger than Mercury.  It looks like our prediction won: no thick deposits of hydrocarbon precipitates were described, only water-ice geology with thin coatings of dirty snows that are easily washed off.  Before gloating, we would need to know how deep the flat lakebeds are.  Our opponents also need to come up with a plausible source for the methane.
    Truth is also better than speculation.  Results will continue to be announced as time goes on.  It will be interesting to see what complex chemicals were detected from the surface.  The analysis will take some time.  Don’t expect the chemical evolutionists to be vindicated, even if they try to draw a happy Charlie face in the mud of this dynamic scene of frigid sterility.
Next headline on:  Solar System

Wow, those early birds must have evolved from dinosaurs pretty fast.  This seems to require a dramatically accelerated rate of lucky mutations per year.  Beware, Charlie: gambling is addictive.
Next headline on:  Birds • Dinosaurs

Clearly, this is only one datum point, for one particular age and one particular mass.  Nonetheless, there are wide potential ramifications.  If this is a fair reflection of the theoretical models, then analyses of the luminosity distribution of low-mass stars and brown dwarfs in young clusters may be systematically underestimating their masses.  In consequence, the turnover in the mass function would be exaggerated (that is, there would be more brown dwarfs than currently estimated), but a lower-mass cut-off might lie at higher masses, because the supposed objects of 1-2 Jupiter masses might in fact exceed 15–20 Jupiter masses (0.015–0.02 solar masses).   (Emphasis added in all quotes.)

There could well be planets around other stars, but it’s one thing to find an exoplanet.  It’s another thing to find a privileged exoplanet.
Next headline on:  Stellar Astronomy

In their studies of ratcheting of the two ribosomal subunits between the pre- and posttranslocation states, Frank and Agrawal (2000) observed a reciprocal expansion and contraction in the diameter of the upstream and downstream tunnels, suggesting that these two features may alternately grab and release the mRNA during translocation of mRNA.  This dynamic behavior in the downstream tunnel could also be related to its helicase function.
  (Emphasis added in all quotes.)

The inescapable presence of secondary structure within mRNA coding sequences must have been one of the first problems encountered in the transition from an RNA world to a protein world and may have resulted in coupling of ribosomal helicase activity with the fundamental mechanics of translocation.

Again, we see an elaborate system, with only a wave of the Darwinian hand to explain it.  It is a cardinal sin of evolutionists that they merely assume evolution can solve any problem the realities of chemistry, physics and the environment throw at life.  They invoke hypothetical lucky mutations, never observed, that somehow appeared at the right time and place to produce irreducibly complex structures like ribosome helicase.
    Take off the funky Darwin glasses and what do you see?  Evidence of exquisite, effective design.  The authors take note that this helicase activity is very efficient and works rapidly: “The ability of the ribosome to unwind a long, highly stable helix shows that it is a highly processive helicase, capable of successive disruption of many base pairs without dissociation from the mRNA.”  Materialists decry miracles, yet they want us to believe nature solved this problem so exquisitely all by itself.  Come, let us reason together.
Next headline on:  The Cell • Genetics and DNA • Amazing Stories

King Solomon had some pretty good ones:

• A joyful heart is good medicine (17:22)
• A wise man is strong (24:5)
• The glory of young men is their strength (18:40)
• A tranquil heart is life to the body (14:30)
• Pleasant words are a honeycomb, sweet to the soul and healing to the bones (16:24)
• Who has woe?  Who has sorrow? ... Those who linger long over wine (23:29-30)
• Bright eyes gladden the heart; good news puts fat on the bones (15:30)
• Eat honey for it is good, and the honeycomb which is sweet to your taste; so shall knowledge of wisdom be to your soul. (24:13-14)

A proverb a day is good advice, but not all pithy sayings in Reader’s Digest or elsewhere are wise.  Pith without fruit is substance without nutrition.  Pick your proverbs with discernment.  The advantage of Solomon’s proverbs over Choi’s is that this wisest of kings gave attention not merely to physical health, but, more importantly, to spiritual health.  Notice how they are related.
Next headline on:  Health • Bible

So “The Human Genome” may be a myth.  Perhaps DNA storage is more dynamic than we expected.  The story does not establish any connection to evolution by natural selection except by assuming evolution and its commonly-accepted time scale.  Notice this non-sequitur: at the end, Donnelly says, “If such inversions are common, then there isn’t just one version of the human genome... this shows natural selection is still acting on us.”  Come again?  We’re here, we have differences, therefore we evolved?  Get a grip, Pete.
Next headline on:  Human Body • Evolutionary Theory

Pack a healthy lunch in a day pack and drive off with a group of friends to a trail head in God’s great outdoors – why, that’s the recipe for Creation Safaris.  Doesn’t this picture look healthy?  How about an encore?  Here’s proof that more is better.  It doesn’t have to be all strenuous, though.  Relaxation can be healthy, too.
Next headline on:  Health

How many generations of water lilies had to drown till the right combination of lucky heritable mutations came along?  The simplest things about plants and animals are sometimes just as noteworthy as the dazzling ones.
Next headline on:  Botany • Amazing stories

October 1997: to enrich the Cassini-Huygens mission with a human message to potential extra-terrestrial populations, and to leave trace of our humanity to the unknown, 4 original musics [sic] composed by French musicians Julien Civange and Louis Haéri are placed on board Huygens....
    The Music will reach Titan on January 14 2005 after a 7 year and 4 Billion Kilometer Journey.  Never will human signs have traveled and landed so far.
    “Music2Titan reflects a wish to highlight mankind’s existence in the universe through music and to familiarize people with the spatial exodus and possible existence of extra-terrestrial life,” said Julien Civange, producer, musician and initiator of Music2Titan.  “It also serves as a way to offer people hope for the future and to make music travel beyond normal boundaries.”   (Emphasis added in all quotes.)

Good thing nobody was there to listen to this stuff.  Can you believe it?  Here was an opportunity to send a token of man’s greatest art, music and intellectual achievements, and what do the Europeans send?  A dustbin of human depravity (except for the Mona Lisa and Wall Street, perhaps, and whatever these mopheads considered “knowledge”).  Don’t blame the scientists for this folly: most of them probably didn’t even know about it.  At least Carl Sagan had enough taste to outweigh Johnny Be Good with lots of Bach and Beethoven aboard the Voyagers, and Rosetta sent along a language disk of Genesis 1-3 in 1000 languages (see 01/13/2003 entry).
    On second thought, maybe it’s a good thing these recordings were sent to Titan, where they could be drowned out in the howling wind as they freeze into harmless monuments no one will ever hear or see again.  Any extra-terrestrials finding these artifacts on Titan might well debate a stimulating question: did these items arise from chaos, or were they intelligently designed?  Examining the hardware, then the recordings, they might come to mixed conclusions.
Next headline on:  SETI • Dumb Stories

So Charlie couldn’t deliver, and now, 150 years later, we are stuck with teaching his mythoid as fact without being able to subject it to critical analysis (see 01/13/2005 entry).
    The problems with evolutionary theory are mounting.  Now that neo-Darwinism has been falsified (see 11/29/2004 entry), and so many thousands of beneficial mutations would be required to evolve a human brain (see 12/30/2004) that human evolution is falsified, what mechanism is left?  Judge Cooper said it was OK to criticize evolution as to its mechanism, but like a car without an engine, a theory without a mechanism is not a theory at all.  Would this kind of logic work in commerce and relationships?

• I’ve invented a new form of shipping heavy freight.  Now I just need to invent a mechanism to convert power into motion.
• The check is in the mail.  Now we just need a mail system.
• I conceived of a perpetual motion machine, but haven’t figured out a way to overcome the second law of thermodynamics.
• Watch me swim up this waterfall, as soon as I learn how to swim.
• The Nigerian government will give you $10 million dollars; we just need you to send in $10,000 now.
• I’ll buy you dinner, but I have no money.
• I love you; just give me everything you have until I find out how to express my love.

Why don’t we all tell Charlie, Mr. slick used car salesman, that we’re wise to his tricks.  Let’s tell him to stop giving us the runaround, and come back when he has his magic mechanism that can deliver the goods: bald eagles from slime.  Meanwhile, what say we walk over and kick the tires on that Model ID over there.
Next headline on:  Darwinism and Evolutionary Theory • Genetics and DNA

Speaking of predictions, here’s a chance to compare expectations of liberal evolutionists and conservative creationists.  If Titan is old, it should have a layer of hydrocarbon snow half a mile thick (see 04/25/2003 and 10/16/2003 entries).  If young, it should have less than an inch.  Let’s see whose prediction matches the findings.  Let’s also see if the old-agers can account for the replenishment of methane, which should have eroded away long ago if Titan had an atmosphere 4.5 billion years ago.
    You read that prediction here before the descent began.  Well, where are the deposits?  So far, it is unclear they even exist.  The probe landed with a thud on a surface comparable to wet sand or clay.  Is this the top of half a mile of hydrocarbon snow?  Or is it an icy bedrock somewhat softened by a thin veneer of surface hydrocarbon slush?  Too soon to tell, but keep an eye on that subject.  Remarkably absent was any mention of craters.  The few images released to date show not a single clear impact crater.  Either the surface of this frigid moon has been active for 4.5 billion years, or it is not that old.  Stay tuned.
    At the night-before celebration in Pasadena, Planetary Society president Wes Huntress reminded the audience that every time we have visited a new world, our prior speculations were proved wrong.  This was true at Venus, where scientists envisioned swamps and life, and Mars, where 1960-era astronomers still believed they saw vegetation.  Much of the speculation about Titan (even the day of landing, on The Science Channel special) revolved around the chance for finding life – or at least “prebiotic chemistry similar to that which existed on the Earth at the time life evolved.”  We expect the chemical evolutionists will be sorely disappointed.  For now, though, it’s time to enjoy the salt air of discovery, like sailors leaning over the bow of Columbus’ ship, eyes straining wide open to see the new world, after first hearing, “Land ho!”
Next headline on:  Solar System • Dating Methods

By denigrating evolution, the school board appears to be endorsing the well-known prevailing alternative theory, creationism or variations thereof, even though the sticker does not specifically reference any alternative theories.... While evolution is subject to criticism, particularly with respect to the mechanism by which it occurred, the sticker misleads students regarding the significance and value of evolution in the scientific community.   (Emphasis added in all quotes.)

Dogma?  What religious dogma?  The only religious dogma on display is that of the Judge and the ACLU who get paranoid when they think they sniff someone else’s religion, whether or not any is present.  They are like the drunk who thought the whole world smelled rotten when a practical joker had smeared limburger cheese in his beard.  For the life of them, these attorneys, judges and Darwin-worshippers cannot see the religious dogma is their own.  What is dogma, if not an insistence that other views must be excluded from free inquiry and critical thinking?  This decision is disappointing, because it seemed like a slam-dunk.  Anyone with common sense would agree that controversial ideas should be examined with critical thinking.  It takes the convoluted arguments of Charlie worshippers to explain why their buddha needs special protection from scrutiny.
    The “reverend” Barry Lynn shows his true colors, for any that think his title means anything.  His god (little g) is merely a figment of imagination that has absolutely nothing to do with the naturalistic, mechanistic, directionless universe he assumes he lives in.  Why is he always on the side of the liberal Democrats on every political issue, just like Big Science? (see 12/02/2004 entry).  Connect the dots.  Lynn’s position is not about scientific accuracy or protection of religion, but about naturalistic philosophy, which almost always overlaps with political liberalism and moral relativism.  (See Answers in Genesis editorial from 04/08/2004 on the Cobb County textbook controversy.)
    Here is another case of a single, unelected federal judge (this one a Clinton appointee) trumping the will of the people and their elected representatives.  And notice: he did it not for something they did or said, but for something he thought they might have meant: the wording of the sticker appeared (not in reality, but in suspicion) to be endorsing (start the somber, ominous music) that deep, dark, evil, malicious doctrine of: (shall we utter the word?) creationism!  Aaaaaiiiiiiaaaa!
    So now Emperor Charlie gets to parade naked in front of the crowd, and little boys with eyes open, who wonder why everyone is praising the invisible robes, are forbidden to say anything.  The royal robes cannot be “denigrated,” even indirectly; in fact, it is against the law now to even entertain the thought in your mind that something is wrong with this picture.  The potential effects of this kind of legal reasoning (or lack of it) on the decisions, discussions and even motives of locally-elected officials are chilling.  Parents, students, if you are mad about this, keep the heat on.  Just don’t underestimate the power of Charlie’s thought police and inquisitors.  Dogmatism is all the more reason to turn on the floodlights.
Next headline on:  Darwinism and Evolutionary Theory • Education • Dumb Stories

Often, when we take a picture with a digital or film camera, we are disappointed that many details we remember seeing appear in the image buried in deep shadows or washed out in overexposed regions.  This is because our eyes have a built-in mechanism to adapt to local illumination conditions, while our cameras don’t.  Because of this camera deficiency, robot vision often fails.   (Emphasis added.)

Werner Gitt provides many more gee-whiz statistics about the eye, and other body senses, in a wonderful book, The Wonder of Man.  One square millimeter of retina has 400,000 sensors.  The photoreceptors are so sensitive, a single photon can activate them.  The rods can react in 0.3 seconds, the cones in 0.075 seconds.  Three types of cones, sensitive to different wavelengths, give us complete coverage of the visible light spectrum, with over 300 discernible hues.  Unlike film, which is rated for a particular “speed” or sensitivity, the eye’s photoreceptors are sensitive over 5 powers of 10, or 100,000 to one.  The signals are transmitted on two separate channels then recombined, to avoid the problem of thermal noise.  The optic nerve also filters out noise by sensing the response from multiple rods within a time limit of 0.02 second, and sending the signal along only if there is nearly simultaneous response from four or five rods scattered across the field.
    Rhodopsin, the light-sensing protein, is a large molecule composed of 350 amino acids (see online book).  To avoid saturation of the photoreceptors, muscles move the eyes in constant jerks called saccade's, but the optic nerve and brain automatically compensates for the motion (see 03/29/2002 entry).  The optic nerves cross behind the eyes, and are received by opposite sides of the brain; there, the inverted images are flipped and recombined seamlessly.  The brain even fills in the blanks caused by the holes where the optic nerves leave the retina, by interpolating these “blind spots” with similar pixels from the surrounding field.  Small as they are, the eyes have 120 megapixel resolution and can separate angles of one minute (1') of arc.  What’s more, they can do it in full-motion stereo.  With the help of the iris, eyelid, retina and other mechanisms, we can see everything from dim stars to bright sunlight reflected off snow: a phenomenal range of sensitivity – a factor of 1 million million to one.  And our eyes are not even the sharpest or most sensitive in the animal kingdom.  Need more?  Buy Gitt’s book.  After you enjoy it, hand it to an evolutionist.  Perhaps, though, these days, intentionally giving someone cold shudders would be misconstrued as cruelty (see 07/13/2001 commentary).
Next headline on:  Human Body • Amazing Stories