Creation-Evolution Headlines
May 2005
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“Still, some critics claim that science by definition can’t accept design, while others argue that science should keep looking for another explanation in case one is out there.  But we can’t settle questions about reality with definitions, nor does it seem useful to search relentlessly for a non-design explanation of Mount Rushmore.”
Michael Behe, in the New York Times Feb 7.
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Stars: Born of Violence, or Doing Violence to Theories?   05/31/2005
Two stunning images from the giant orbiting telescopes are breeding tales of violence, but the reader can decide if the trauma is building stars and planets, or pummeling theories. 
Space.com tells about the new Spitzer infrared photo of Eta Carina, announcing, “As they destroy the huge cloud that is their home, wildly energetic stars may be triggering the birth of the next generation.”  The idea is that material blasted away by the central star’s ultrasonic winds and ultraviolet radiation clumps in eddies where new stars can form.  Yet Nathan Smith explained that current theory does not explain the apparent synchronized star formation in the Carina Nebula.  Dust and gas will not collapse into stars without becoming concentrated.  Smith invoked a snowplow metaphor to explain how the material might have piled up, then “eventually formed knots where new stars could form.”
    Science1 described observations of the Orion Nebula made by the Chandra X-ray telescope, where X-ray flares emanating from the Trapezium – thousands of times more energetic than anything our sun generates – are making some astronomers imagine birth through violence.  They speculate whether such conditions keep newly-forming planets from spiraling into their host stars, and might also explain the formation of chondrules, melted meteoritic material that has been difficult to explain in our solar system.  Confident claims such as “The results turn back the clock to the infancy of our own sun” are contrasted with mysteries, such as:

  • No one knows the impacts of such giant magnetic short-circuits.
  • ...it stretches current theory, [Eric] Feigelson readily admits.
  • This was a whole category of energy release and physics that we just couldn’t study before.
  • Feigelson thinks this “planetary protection” picture, in a phrase coined by NASA, needs a better theoretical anchor before anyone hops aboard that boat.  “The story is not necessarily persuasive because of the complexities of planet formation, but it’s very tempting,” he says.  “COUP [Chandra Orion Ultradeep Project] gives us much more confidence that our young sun was very magnetically active.  I am not as confident about the other steps in the argument.”
  (Emphasis added in all quotes.)  The article ends noting that, while the data set is rich, the theory is still a work in progress.
    Another surprise was announced by Australian astronomers working at the Keck Observatory: the stellar disk of Andromeda spiral galaxy M31 is apparently three times larger than earlier assumed.  ABC News Australia has the story.  One astronomer said of previous theories of galaxy accretion, “This giant disk discovery will be very hard to reconcile with computer simulations of forming galaxies.”
1Robert Irion, “Turbulent Orion Nebula Shows a Flare for the Dramatic,” Science, Vol 308, Issue 5726, 1249-1250, 27 May 2005, [DOI: 10.1126/science.308.5726.1249].
The pictures are beautiful.  The stories are entertaining.  No human lifetime could watch the whole sequence, so the interpretations are very much model-driven and riddled with difficulties.  Certain ones claim this or that feature supports their pet theory (see Finagle’s Second Law).  Others claim it turns the pet against its owner.
    Evolutionists seem drawn to violence as a creative process.  Though biological evolution is many orders of magnitude more implausible than stellar evolution, it still seems that theories of star and planet formation, though dealing in the hard-science realms of physics and chemistry, still require many ad hoc elements to work.  Note Feigelson’s remark about the “complexities of planet formation” – they are many, and serious.
    Telescopes bring us light from these objects that, though it left long ago, is received in our present.  The light gives us information about color, temperature, wavelengths, magnetic fields, velocities and a few other things that were going on when the photons left the object.  It is “tempting” to “hop aboard the boat” of this or that speculation, but boats without firm planks tend to leak.  A “firm theoretical anchor” makes a leaky boat leak even faster.  Moral: keep the data distinct from the stories.  Collect watertight planks before setting out to sea.  The next publication could well reveal today’s Spanish Armada of blustering hype sinking under the violent onslaught of new observations.
Next headline on:  Astronomy
SETI Researcher Joins NG Imagination Fest    05/31/2005
Space.Com writer Tariq Malik reviewed the National Geographic TV series Extraterrestrial that envisions flying whales, giraffe-like predators and flesh-eating tadpoles on a mythical world undergoing its own evolution.  “Using computer models and armed with basic evolutionary theory, the scientists imagined not only what conditions might exist on their theoretical planets,” writes Malik, “but also how life may interact with the environment to form a thriving ecosystem.” (emphasis added).  SETI researcher Seth Shostak told Space.com he joined the project because “Here was a plan to make aliens that make sense.”
What the Darwinists lack in data, they make up for in imagination.  That makes sense, all right – financially.  It explains why the Darwinists argue that teaching evolution is good for the economy (see 04/29/2005 entry).  It provides jobs for animators and other imagineers.  Malik wins the Stupid Evolution Quote of the Week: “Eyes, for example, have evolved several times on Earth and are likely to pop up on other light-filled worlds, researchers said.”  Apparently, this crowd believes in Popeye as well as Tinkerbell (see 03/11/2005 commentary).
    The sad result of decades of evolutionary indoctrination by movie animators is revealed by Malik’s last line: “A National Geographic-commissioned telephone survey of 1,000 Americans found that 60 percent believe life exists on other worlds.  About 90 percent of those who believe in extraterrestrial life thought the Earth should respond to any communications emanating from an alien planet.”  Yet these true believers usually refuse to listen to or respond to the only Being who is communicating, and has communicated since the beginning (see Hebrews 1).  Only the technology of deception has changed since 700 BC.  Read it and weep: Isaiah 30, especially verse 10.
Next headline on:  SETIMediaEvolutionDumb Stories
Health Beliefs Re-examined    05/30/2005
Scientists continue to find new things that undermine commonly-held beliefs about health and the environment.  For example,
One finding did match common-sense expectations.  An article in Science1 found that youths who watch gun violence are more apt to engage in violent behavior (see also EurekAlert report).
1Bingenheimer et al., “Firearm Violence Exposure and Serious Violent Behavior,” Science, Vol 308, Issue 5726, 1323-1326, 27 May 2005, [DOI: 10.1126/science.1110096].
The point is not that any of these reports are the last word on those subjects, but if scientists cannot get things right about everyday issues regarding our daily habits, how can they presume to tell us about things millions of years ago?
Next headline on:  Health
Darwinists Excuse Prejudice as a Hard-wired, Common-Sense Evolutionary Adaptation    05/27/2005
This week’s Stupid Evolution Quote of the Week comes from an Arizona State evo-psych press release echoed on
News-Medical.net and EurekAlert: “Contrary to what most people believe, the tendency to be prejudiced is a form of common sense, hard-wired into the human brain through evolution as an adaptive response to protect our prehistoric ancestors from danger.”
The authors of the study hasten to add that their hypothesis does not mean we can’t change our prejudices:
People sometimes assume that because we say prejudice has evolved roots we are saying that specific prejudices can’t be changed.  That’s simply not the case,” [Steven] Neuberg [ASU professor of social psychology] says.  “What we think and feel and how we behave is typically the result of complex interactions between biological tendencies and learning experiences.  Evolution may have prepared our minds to be prejudiced, but our environment influences the specific targets of those prejudices and how we act on them.”   (Emphasis added in all quotes.)
Neuberg can’t get off the hook so easily.  If prejudice is an evolved adaptive strategy, then it has no moral implications whatsoever.  Nobody can say that this or that target of our hardwired prejudice is wrong.  Prejudice, if it evolved, is as “good” as eyesight or hearing.  If anything is “wrong” to a consistent Darwinist, it is standing in the path of evolution.  But ironically, their very claim shoots itself in the foot.  If what they were saying was true, then we would have to dismiss their claims as evolutionary adaptive strategies for their own self-protection, and therefore inapplicable to our own interests.
    The press release avoids words with moral connotations, like right or wrong, good or bad: instead, it sidesteps moral implications with words like inappropriate – “One important practical implication of this research is that we may need to create different interventions to reduce inappropriate prejudices against different groups.”  Well, for crying out loud, who decides what is appropriate?  It doesn’t seem very appropriate in a Darwinian world, where might makes right, to deny a bigot his adaptive self-protective strategies.  Isn’t that like trying to stop rams from banging their heads together?  What gives these ivory-tower intellectuals the power to tell their fellow academics that “we may need to create different interventions”?  What does need mean in an amoral world where selfishness rules?  Whatever happens is what evolution does.  If race riots happen, just observe and take notes.  Only those with a foundation for morals can dare to say we should intervene.
    You’ll notice that the news media never question this stuff; they just regurgitate the barf and say, “Well, I’ll be, isn’t evolution interesting.”  No other human enterprise seems so immune from criticism as Darwinian propaganda, even when it is as politically charged as this.  What gives any fallible human, including scientists, the right to claim that human evils are amoral artifacts of evolutionary adaptive strategies?  Is it their superior wisdom?  Is it their empirical evidence?  Is it their philosophical neutrality?  Don’t be conned.  If you get angry at the Darwin Party’s rationalization of everything evil as an evolutionary adaptation, including rape and child abuse, then join the anti-Darwin revolution and help put this foolishness into the dustbin of discredited ideas, where it can take its place beside Bad Marx and Sickman Fraud.
Next headline on:  Darwinism and Evolutionary TheoryDumb Stories
Can the Courts Define Science?    05/27/2005
Last December, the
ACLU and Americans United for Separation of Church and State filed a lawsuit in Pennsylvania against the Dover Area School District that was considering adding intelligent design material to the curriculum.  The lawsuit attempts to define intelligent design as “inherently religious” and therefore unacceptable in science classrooms.  The move appears aimed at censoring books from the Foundation for Thought and Ethics (FTE) which publishes student materials on intelligent design and critiques of evolution.  If these tangible assets at the center of the controversy over the teaching of evolution are ruled inherently religious – even though they teach no religious doctrines but only scientific criticisms of evolutionary theory and design detection methods – then science students would only have pro-naturalistic textbooks available to them.
    The Alliance Defense Fund has filed a motion to intervene on behalf of FTE.  ADF-allied attorney Jeff Mateer remarked, “The ACLU and their allies are using the courts to further the preposterous notion that no other theories [than evolution] on the origins of life are scientific.”
To the liberal left, free speech is the highest ideal, and censorship is arguably the worst crime in the world.  So who are the censors here?  Who are the book-burners here?  Who are the ones for indoctrination, against the open marketplace of ideas, and for stifling debate here?  The very groups that want to defend homosexual advocacy and Islamic religion in public schools, believing that even grade schoolers and kindergartners should be exposed to it, exhibit rank hypocrisy when it comes to anything not on their leftist agenda.
    This is another egregious case of far-left liberals running to the courts to do an end-run around the voice of the people and their elected representatives.  It’s not just critics of Darwinism that should be outraged.  If the courts can define what science is, then Big Science itself should tremble.
    If the ACLU succeeds, we suggest they be consistent.  No more computer science in public schools, because it is a science based on intelligent design.  No more mention of SETI.  No archaeology.  No information theory.  No cryptography.  No forensics.  No mention of molecular machines or cellular networks (see 03/14/2005)  No teaching on DNA as a genetic “code” or “language”.  Since these sciences use design words, which might imply intelligent design, they are inherently religious.  While they’re at it, maybe they should exclude all mention of Kepler, Newton, Herschel, Faraday, Maxwell and any other scientist who was a Christian or creationist (see online book).
    If intelligent design is religious, then so is Darwinian evolution and the philosophical naturalism that underlies it.  The ACLU is not trying to keep science classrooms free of religion.  They just want it free of everyone else’s but theirs.  They want to keep biology classrooms safe for the Cult of Tinkerbell (03/11/2005 commentary), so that Pope Charlie (02/13/2004) won’t get a stomach ache (11/29/2004) when clever students discover problems with his fairy tales.
Next headline on:  PoliticsIntelligent DesignEducation
All You Wanted to Know About Spider Webs, Except Their Evolution   05/25/2005
Each issue of Current Biology contains a Primer on some interesting subject.  The May 24 issue had one about spider webs.1  Fritz Vollrath shared some amazing details about this unique product of the lowly spider, but gave a strange explanation for how the capability to spin strong-as-steel nets evolved.  First, the factoids:
  • Structure...the... common garden spider... has evolved to take out-of-plane loads at optimized deflections.  To be able to do so, this web needs to incorporate into one structure the mechanical properties of very different types of silk: the fairly stiff, radius silk threads and the extremely soft, extensible and sticky capture silk threads, which are fixed on the radii by stringy silk cement.  (Emphasis added in all quotes.)
  • HeritageMost of the hundred or so spider families have web-building members.  Their webs range from two-dimensional sheets to three-dimensional tangles, with members of ten families building the familiar orb web.
  • SignalingThe spider’s web is primarily a trap, mostly for insects; it retains the contacting insect and informs the waiting spider about the location and status of the prey.  Whether it is a static filter or a dynamic net swaying in the wind, the web always relays vibratory signals of considerable complexity.
  • Geometry:  The great ecological diversity of the potential prey is reflected in the great diversity of web designs.  Of these, the orbicular web has attracted special attention because of its ubiquity, pleasing geometry, obvious functionality and, not least, its apparent structural simplicity.
  • TechniqueThe typical spider web ... is the spider’s inherited ‘signature’, which – although unlearned – is modified predictably by the environment.  The web is many times the spider’s size; accordingly, the decision rules guiding the animal’s locomotory and manipulative movements can best be described (and analysed) as orientation behaviour.  Vollrath says that model spider robots can generate digitized spider webs, and show that a “small number of very simple behaviour patterns are sufficient to generate accurately the characteristics of a real spiderweb.”
  • TechnologyThe common garden spider Araneus diadematus, like other orb weavers of the ecribellate families, employs in each bead of its capture threads a microscopic ‘windlass’ mechanism that allows supreme extendibility while absorbing the high kinetic energy of the prey without breaking. Another species “combs out its capture silk to form a loosely twisted, dry rope with a mechanical coil-and-spring that sticks to prey using electrostatic forces.”
  • Materials scienceSpider silk is not a single-protein biopolymer.  In addition to the spidroins, its main protein constituents, the typical spider dragline silk contains many different organic and inorganic components, such as neurotransmitter peptides, glyco-proteins, lipids, sugars, phosphates, calcium, potassium and sulphur....
    Functionally, silks can be viewed as a ‘filled rubber’, in which crystallites provide the strength and a matrix provides the elasticity: in combination, these two components give the silk its toughness.
  • ManufactureAt present we do not know the precise mechanisms by which different silk proteins fold and assemble in the ‘spinning ducts’ of the various and diverse spider glands.  Some initial insights have been gained, however, into the silk pathway of one typical spider silk: the dragline silk produced by the major ampullate glands of the golden silk spider ... Here, as in all other spider silks, the liquid crystalline silk feedstock is prepared by specialist cells in the gland wall and stored in the lumen.  As with most other silks, this precursor silk is then converted into the solid fibre by extrusion through the tubular taper of a duct, where the enormously long ... silk molecules first unfold and are then cross-linked.
        In Nephila, the fibre-forming zone has the shape and function of a hyperbolic extrusion die.  Here a small drop in the pH combined with the elongational flow of the molecules effects the transformation from liquid to solid silk.... the elongational flow helps to define the molecular orientations throughout the duct, and that a combination of solvent (water) extrusion and subsequent acidification helps the process of alignment and folding.  The cuticle of the gland’s duct facilitates the rapid removal of water and provides the proton pump for the acid bath.  In this way the spider uses a liquid crystalline spinning process which, in terms of human engineering, is highly advanced.
In the middle of the primer, Vollrath tackled the specific question, “How are webs thought to have evolved?”
Spider web structures and silks began their co-evolution about 400 million years ago, at first probably as a protein cover to protect the animal’s eggs and young.  Webs then evolved different functions, including acting as a kind of wall-paper for the animal’s burrow and modifying the hole into a simple trap by radiating lines that inform the lurking spider about things beetling around outside.  Even such simple lines expand the animal’s anatomical phenotype many fold by incorporating the body into an extensive silken net.  The aerial webs of the ‘modern’ spiders began to evolve perhaps 200 million years ago and are superb examples of ‘extended anatomy’.  These webs also nicely illustrate the close interaction of material and behaviour which clearly are two separately encoded yet functionally inter-linked character traits.
This seems to say that they evolved because they evolved. 
1Fritz Vollrath, “Spider’s webs,”
Current Biology, Vol 15, R364-R365, 24 May 2005.
This is a prime example of the leaps of faith rampant among Darwinians, who can discuss with apparent wonder the technologies of the animal kingdom – capabilities that dwarf human efforts based on intelligent engineering – then say they just evolved, with utter, implicit, and complete faith in the inspired Word of Charlie, who alone does wonders.  Then they have the audacity to accuse non-Darwinians of relying on faith instead of science.
    Vollrath apparently was not at all aware of nor troubled by the fact that he dodged the question about evolution.  How did the spider web evolve?  It evolved, he said.  Any skill or technology needed was available to the spider with the snap of the evolutionary fingers.  Example: certain spiders “have evolved to produce web fibres that have an aqueous coating, supplied and maintained by hygroscopic compounds to attract the required water molecules from the atmosphere.”  How did the spider find these hygroscopic compounds and incorporate them into the production line?  It evolved.
    That explanation is all-sufficient.  The precise acidity control?  It evolved.  The hyperbolic extrusion die?  It evolved.  The exact recipe of proteins, sugars, phosphates, calcium, sulfur, neurotransmitter peptides and other organic and inorganic ingredients that yielded a substance humans cannot emulate?  It evolved.  The ability to control the solidification and folding at exactly the right time and place?  It evolved.  The ability to sort out tough silks and soft, flexible sticky silks into a radial pattern?  It evolved.  The skill to snare insects, detect their presence, and get to them without getting stuck itself?  It evolved.
    It evolved because it evolved: that is apparently enough intellectual content to satisfy a brainwashed Darwinist.  Some humans build webs, too; the tangled kind, spun by self-deception.  Watch from a safe distance.
Next headline on:  Terrestrial ZoologyAmazing StoriesEvolution
Battlefield Dispatches    05/24/2005
Reports from the evolution wars continue to come in.  Here are more recent stories about the conflicts over the teaching of evolution and intelligent design:
  • The race card:  Fiona Morgan on Salon.com trashes those who try to link Darwin to racism.  The cartoon shows Darwin with a dunce cap sitting in the corner, but Morgan says he is one of the good guys.
  • Anti-modern heartland hicks:  That’s the description Andrew Gumbel gave of anti-evolutionists in L.A. City Beat.
  • Revenge of the Sith:  Atheists organize to fight back, reports Greg Sandoval in the Bakersfield Californian.  A worship service included booing and hissing at a picture of Pat Robertson.
  • Revenge of the Six DaysMSNBC News highlighted the Creation Museum that is taking shape in Kentucky, which will “fire people up” about the Biblical view of origins.  Darwinists are appalled, but admit director Ken Ham is a better communicator than most mainstream scientists.  Jerry Falwell predicts it will become Cincinnati’s #1 tourist attraction.
  • Culture warYahoo News reported that the Kansas school battle is likely to spill over into all 50 states.  Both sides are calling the other side pseudoscience.
  • Sticker shockMSNBC News reported that workers in Cobb County, Georgia, under court order, are removing 34,452 stickers from textbooks that stated evolution was only a theory, not a fact, and should be studied with an open mind.  The ruling is being appealed (see 04/09/2004, 11/23/2004, and 11/08/2004 entries).
  • Soap box:  Stephen Meyer printed his letter that Nature wouldn’t (see 05/19/2005 entry) on the Discovery Institute website.
  • Brazilian infestation:  Alan Leshner, CEO of the AAAS, wrote in the Kansas City Star that the plague of creationism is infecting Brazil.  Denyse O'Leary on Access Research Network quotes a Brazilian who says it isn’t so; the only anti-Darwinists are a small group of second-class citizens with no influence on society.  O'Leary quips, “Leshner is using Brazil’s second class citizens as a bug-a-boo to frighten his fellow science boffins.”
  • Rationale and rationality:  Departing NAS president Bruce Alberts spoke his mind in Science,1 commenting on various topics, including the debate over teaching evolution: “It says we’ve failed as scientists and science educators to convey the nature of science and its values to the American public, despite our world leadership in science and technology... We all fear that this movement toward a biblical interpretation of scientific facts will eventually make us look like some of the countries in the Middle East.  If we’re going to remain a world leader, we’re going to need all the scientific rationality that we can muster.”  (See also 04/27/2005 entry on Alberts.)
  • Declination:  Robert McHenry on Tech Central Station ridiculed ID as “intelligent decline.”  Jonathan Witt on ID the Future responded that the article organizes all the bad arguments against ID in a single, convenient place.  Next day, Mustafa Akyol submitted a rebuttal on Tech Central.
  • Scoping Scopes:  Chuck Colson on Breakpoint tried to clear up misconceptions about a historical event often compared with the Kansas debate: the Scopes Trial of 1925.
  • World leaderWorld Magazine led off with a cover story about the Kansas debate.  Detailing the histrionics in the board room, Timothy Lamer comments, “Lost in the propaganda and facial expressions is just how modest the proposed revisions are.  For all the comparisons to the Scopes trial, the roles in that trial have been reversed 80 years later.  Today, it’s the critics of Darwinism who want to introduce what they see as important scientific evidence into science classrooms and it’s the Darwinists who are fighting to keep out what they see as heresy.”

1Jeffrey Mervis, “Bruce Alberts Interview: Attention, Class: A Departing NAS President Speaks His Mind,” Science, Vol 308, Issue 5725, 1108, 20 May 2005, [DOI: 10.1126/science.308.5725.1108].
Alberts should be ashamed of himself for insinuating that anti-evolution efforts will make America look like a Middle Eastern country.  He put three types of baloney in that sausage.  First, intelligent design is not “a biblical interpretation of scientific facts.”  ID does not rely on any theological position but rather on design detection using established scientific reasoning.  Second, the only Middle Eastern country with a Biblical view is Israel, which has a strong pro-science record and a modernized civilization with political freedom for all.  Why didn’t Alberts point his attack where it belongs, at those unsavory, tyrannical countries with a Koranical interpretation of scientific facts?  Third, evolution has absolutely nothing to do with making a country a scientific world leader.  Darwin, whose only degree was in theology, was an imposter (see 05/02/2003 commentary) who snuck naturalistic philosophy into a scientific tradition that was built on belief in design (see online book).  Of all people, Bruce Alberts, co-editor of The Molecular Biology of the Cell, and one who stated that the biology of the future is the study of molecular machines (see 01/27/2003 and 01/09/2002 entries), should realize that naturalism is hopelessly inadequate to explain the complexities of life.
    The taproot of the culture war is the debate over origins.  What carves the deep divide in our country and the world are the big questions of who we are, where we came from, and what we are here for.  The Darwinists have had free rein for over a century to tell everyone that “science” says we are the end result of a mindless, natural chain of unpredictable events, and therefore have no ultimate purpose.  They claim that the unfathomable designs in the living world and the universe are illusions, mere artifacts of stochastic combinations of chance and natural law.  They claim that our minds, our wisest and most sublime thoughts, our love, and our character are reducible to molecules in motion, and ultimately to particles that emerged out of nothing.  If you think these assumptions should be challenged, join in the biggest and most momentous battle of the century, where the arms are not swords or bullets, but facts – and the ability to wield them with knowledge, wisdom and skill.  Let Creation-Evolution Headlines be part of your armory.
Next headline on:  Darwinism and Evolutionary TheoryIntelligent Design.  • Education
Stem Cell Headlines    05/23/2005
Research on embryonic stem cells is proceeding apace without an ethical anchor, and no clue where it will lead.  News coverage of the debate accelerated with an announcement from South Korea.
  • Match point:  The BBC News and many other news sources published South Korea’s announcement that stem cells matched to the individual have been tailored for the first time.
  • First clone:  The BBC News also announced that the UK had made its first human cloned embryo for harvesting stem cells.  The article quotes a ProLife alliance representative appalled over this; “No matter how it is created,” Josephine Quintavalle said, “a human embryo’s destiny should be to live and not to be turned into human stem cells.”  She also protested the “unsafe and inefficient” practice, and how it might subject women to dangerous fertility drugs in order to collect sufficient eggs.  Proponents agree that embryonic stem cell therapies only exist in theory; one professor said, “We are talking about several years before we are talking about a cell-based therapy that can go back into the patient.”
  • Contradictory resultsScience last week1 tried to clarify contradictory lab results by explaining “red herrings in stem cell research.”  They identified eight factors influencing stem cell plasticity, especially injury to the cells during lab procedure.
  • Korea and Ethics:  Gretchen Vogel in Science2 elaborated on South Korea’s widely-reported advance in the efficiency of deriving stem cells from cloned human embryos.  They got the success rate down from one in 200 to one in 20.  The improved skills of the Korean group nevertheless raise difficult ethical questions,” she says, referring to a Stanford bioethics statement in the same issue that warns, “research proceeds internationally, these issues must be adequately addressed for public confidence to be maintained.”3  Ethic problems include demand among scientists for fresh oocytes from young women, medical complications, long term complications, and chances that renegade doctors will attempt reproductive cloning.
  • Presidential angst:  President Bush said he was “very concerned” about Korea’s rapid advances in stem cell research, and said he would veto any bill loosening restrictions on federal funding for it.  See report on MSNBC News.  Although the research is not “banned” in the United States, federal funding is restricted.  Bush said he worries about a “world in which cloning becomes accepted,” and does not believe taxpayer money should “promote science which destroys life in order to save life.”
  • Political battleMSNBC also reported that a heated debate is brewing between Congress and the President over a bill proposed by a Republican from Delaware and a Democrat from Colorado to ease restrictions on federal funding of stem cell research.  Advocates are emphasizing promised cures “with emotional appeals from celebrity supporters as well as parents who ‘adopted’ their children as embryos,”  the article begins.  Supporters and opponents are deeply divided over whether the embryos are human beings.
  • International tensions:  Nigel Williams in Current Biology4 surveys the international scene, particularly in Europe where the EU has member states that stand “poles apart” on the issue.  He contrasts Switzerland’s liberal policy with Italy’s stern opposition due largely to the Catholic church.
  • International standards:  In Nature May 26,4 Erika Check suggested that nations need to pull together to decide what’s right.  Quoting Arthur Caplan, bioethicist at U. of Pennsylvania, “An international effort to coordinate stem-cell research would lend transparency to the field and ensure it proceeds in an ethical way.” 
  • Insufficient guidelines:  Nathaniel Nelson and Bert Thompson on Apologetics Press examined the NAS guidelines for embryonic stem cell research and found them “largely insufficient in dealing with the ethical stipulations” raised by the technology.

1Quesenberry et al., “Ignoratio Elenchi: Red Herrings in Stem Cell Research,” Science, Vol 308, Issue 5725, 1121-1122, 20 May 2005, [DOI: 10.1126/science.1104432].
2Gretchen Vogel, “Korean Team Speeds Up Creation Of Cloned Human Stem Cells,” Science, Vol 308, Issue 5725, 1096-1097, 20 May 2005, [DOI: 10.1126/science.308.5725.1096].
3Magnus and Cho, “Issues in Oocyte Donation for Stem Cell Research,” Science, published online 19 May 2005, [DOI: 10.1126/science.1114454].
4Erika Check, “Korea's accelerating stem-cell work prompts calls for global ethical rules,” Nature 435, 393 (26 May 2005) | doi: 10.1038/435393a.
Our 02/08/2005 commentary still stands, and now we are in the thick of the ethical morass we knew was coming.  Bioethical voices seem powerless over the lure of money and prestige.  Erika Check quoted Caplan describing ethicists as standing on the sidelines and pouting, “you can’t do this.”  But would international controls help?  The U.N. with its Oil-for-Food scandal showed that international agencies are no guarantors of ethics: they can become the problem, not the solution.  Nor has the U.N. been willing or able to stop human rights violations in rogue nations like North Korea or Sudan.  It is doubtful an international science community would have any power over rogue nations and individuals now that stem cell research is hot.  We have seen that there are researchers within the civilized world with no qualms about trying anything that is possible, even putting human cells into rat brains (see 03/10/2005 entry).  In today’s amoral, selfish research culture, it seems as if the tables have turned: rat cells have invaded the human brain.
Next headline on:  Politics and EthicsCell Biology
Large Individual Differences Seen in Human Genome    05/20/2005
What makes each individual unique?  Nature1 reported a surprising thing about “the” human genome that is becoming apparent as more individuals’ genes are examined.  The first part is not surprising; the last part is:
When the finished sequence of the human genome was unveiled last year, biologists said that it told a story of harmony for the human family.  Every one of us, it turns out, shares 99% of our DNA with all the other people on Earth. But it’s our differences that really fascinate us.  And at last week’s annual genome meeting in Cold Spring Harbor, New York, scientists revealed a wealth of data indicating a surprising conclusion about human diversity – much of it might be explained by large structural differences between individual genomes, not by tiny differences in individual genes.   (Emphasis added in all quotes.)
Some of us have more copies of a gene than others do.  That’s just the beginning, Erika Check reports from the meeting: “we also have varying numbers of deletions, insertions and other major rearrangements in our genomes.”
    Check claims that some of these differences are being acted on by natural selection.  Europeans, for instance, have an inversion not seen in Africans or Asians that is correlated with having more children, “a classic sign that the inversion confers an evolutionary advantage”.  Others at the meeting were also confident that “structural differences are important in human evolution,” and that among sections where there were differing numbers of copies of stretches of DNA, “natural selection is actively working on these genes.”
What’s more, he [Duc-Quang Nguyen, U of Oxford] found that many of these genes belong to groups that seem to help us interact with our environment.  For instance, many work in the immune system, and affect how we fight off disease.  These are exactly the sort of genes that could explain our diversity – why some of us get asthma when exposed to air pollution, or why some of us can eat plenty of cheeseburgers without gaining weight.
    “We knew these variations existed, but this year we’re asking, do they matter?” says Ewan Birney, head of bioinformatics for the European Molecular Biology Laboratory, based in Cambridge, UK.  “The answer seems to be yes.”
    We’re still one human family, of course; but our DNA landscapes are a lot more varied than we had thought.

1Erika Check, “Large genomic differences explain our little quirks,”
Nature 435, 252-253 (19 May 2005) | doi: 10.1038/435252b.
DNA keeps surprising us.  The old picture of a relatively static library occasionally mutating to provide grist for natural selection is out.  Now, we see that even among our own species – all of us being interfertile – there are remarkable differences not in just a DNA letter here or there, but in whole stretches of DNA sometimes 100 base pairs long or more.  What this all means is not clear.  It may be that most of our genomes cannot tolerate much divergence (see 11/26/2004 entry), but a certain fraction can vary quickly to provide robustness against changing environments and diets as people groups migrate into new areas.  If so, thank God for this variability.  Consider the differences in habitat between the frozen tundra, rain forest, the Sahara, grasslands, Asian steppes, forests and coastlands.  The food available, air pressure, climate, insolation and biota can vary considerably.  But even that explanation is simplistic; Americans go on vacation to Iceland, China and the Serengeti, don’t they?  And international marriages usually produce offspring possessing “fitness,” whatever that is (see 10/29/2002 entry, “Fitness for Dummies: Is it Running in Circles?”).
    Darwinists cannot claim they understand this variability any more than anyone else; that is why Check calls this a “surprising conclusion.”  Thankfully, it is still politically correct for her to say, “We’re still one human family, of course.”  But this knowledge through a Darwin filter could feed a new eugenics (compare 04/22/2004 and 10/12/2001 entries).  When Darwinists claim that certain genes are being acted on by natural selection, some individuals are going to appear more fit than others.  Certain gene patterns may be deemed unfit to reproduce.  Don’t think we’ve learned our lesson and are beyond that.  One only has to visualize North Korea (02/11/2005 commentary) to consider how such information could be quickly twisted for evil.  “Diversity” is the politically-correct word now, but “Unity” is potentially just as potent a rallying cry for demagogues.
    Associating a DNA inversion to more fecundity is unwarranted.  There are many more factors than one stretch of DNA entering the picture of reproduction rates.  If that were true, why are Europeans having so few kids, and worrying about their countries being overrun with foreigners?  Africans and Asians seem to be overcrowding their parts of the world just fine without the inversion.  The claim overlooks the many social, moral, religious, pragmatic and economic factors that go into the equation.  Darwinists bluff about selection pressure and genes undergoing active selection when the picture is far too complex to draw such conclusions (see, for instance, 03/28/2005 and 01/17/2005 entries).  They can’t even get one mutation in one gene to correlate well with fitness (see 02/04/2005 and 09/07/2004 entries), let alone large structural variations.  Besides, the genome itself appears to be a pawn in the hands of numerous, complex epigenetic regulatory factors (see 06/03/2004 and 10/27/2004 entries).  The new data about human genomic variability should remain fair game for all honest scientists, especially those outside wearing designer lab coats instead of Darwin-brand straitjackets.
Next headline on:  GeneticsHuman BodyDarwinism and Evolutionary Theory
Neanderthals and Modern Humans May Have Interbred    05/19/2005
They lived together, they morphed into one another, so were members of Homo neanderthalensis really a separate species from Homo sapiens?  Findings announced in Nature1 show a mixture of Neanderthal-like characteristics in modern human skeletons from Romania that led
Science Now to state, “Oldest Europeans were swingers.”  Because new radiocarbon dates of these skeletons put them in the transition period when modern humans were displacing Neanderthals, it is “possible that modern humans have a Neandertal ancestry or that humans and Neandertals may have interbred.”
    The carbon dating is critical to the story.  In the Nature paper, the scientists pretreated several samples with acid and yet worried about contamination.  Results varied from 26,330 years before the present (bp) to 31,500 years bp in six tests.  One tooth yielded ages of 27,370 and 31,500 years, even though it was found in an “excellent state of preservation in general and was therefore selected for dating as well.”  They assumed the younger date was due to contamination.  The team admitted that all the ages determined from the samples lie within “a time period for which a generally agreed calibration curve for the transformation of uncalibrated 14C ages [greater than] 20 kyr bp into calendar time ranges is not yet available.  According to the existing, albeit divergent, 14C records for this period determined in different archives, a shift of the ‘true ages’ by several thousand years towards higher ages might be possible.”
1Wild et al., “Direct dating of Early Upper Palaeolithic human remains from Mladec,” Nature 435, 332-335 (19 May 2005) | doi: 10.1038/nature03585.
These bones reveal population variability among true humans.  If they were capable of interbreeding, they fit the “biological species concept” of a single species.  Neanderthals have long been used for evolutionary propaganda.  The propaganda continues today, in spite of findings like this.  For instance, a TV program on The Science Channel showed brutish Neanderthals happening upon the camp of more modern humans, unable to figure out who the strangers were and what made them so smart.  The story is made up in the imagination of evolutionists committed to a form of evolutionary racism, calling modern humans “us” and Neanderthals “them.”  It is no more legitimate than lumping Watusis and Eskimos into different species.
    The original paper revealed uncertainties in the dating methods not reported by the popular press.  Without Creation-Evolution Headlines, you might not have known that dates on the same tooth differed by 4,130 years, or that there is no calibration curve for the period assumed (for a discussion of problems with radiometric dating, see this article by Carl Wieland).  The dating is driven more by The Tale of Human Evolution than by science.  Since carbon dating loses accuracy rapidly after just a few thousand years, nothing in this story disproves that these were fully human individuals living relatively recently.
Next headline on:  Early ManDating Methods
Christian Woman to Rebuild Iraqi Science   05/19/2005
According to the Christian apologetics ministry
Answers in Action, a woman – a Christian woman – will help rebuild Iraqi science from the ruins of Saddam Hussein’s evil empire:
Ibrahim Jaafari, the prime minister of Iraq, has appointed Bassima Yousef Boutros, a 44 year old biochemist at Salah Eldin University in Erbil, Iraq as the country’s new science & technology minister.  Boutros is a member of the Chaldo Assyrians, a sect of Christians living in Iraq who suffered severe persecution under the previous Baathist regime of Saddam Hussein.
    The Chaldo Assyrian Christians were forbidden to vote, hold public office, were often arrested and imprisoned, & often became the victims of random homicide & other violence from Baathists under the authority of Saddam Hussein.  An estimated 800,000 live in Iraq, & more than 40,000 fled the country under the previous regime.  Since the American military covered Iraq, the Chaldo Assyrian Christians & other minority religious groups in Iraq suffered from terrorist attacks at random, including the bombing of many Chaldo Assyrian churches, which killed scores of men, women, & children.
The story in SciDev.net says, “Boutros has been at the centre of the freedom movement of the ChaldoAssyrians, a sect of Christians living in Iraq who were often persecuted under the country’s previous Baathist regime.  She stood in the Iraqi election as a representative of the ChaldoAssyrian people.”
    This news item was noted by the May 20 Science Magazine feature “Random Samples” – “Boutros told a Christian Web site, Answers in Action, that she would do her best ‘to use science and technology as the basis to build a civilized Iraq.’”
Having women in science is century-old news (they outnumber men in some circles), but a Christian woman, communicating with a Christian website that supports intelligent design?  How can this be?  We all know from the media that ID people don’t understand science and are the enemies of science.  Maybe the Darwin Party should lobby for a return to the good old days in Iraq.  What could be worse for Darwinism than a Christian in science leadership who believes in creation and who (gulp) knows biochemistry?
Next headline on:  Politics
Nature Prints Anti-ID Letters    05/19/2005
The May 19 issue of Nature1 printed seven letters responding to its editorial about the intelligent design movement (see
04/27/2005 entry).  They were all critical of ID.  Not one even tolerated Nature’s suggestion that scientists try to help students integrate their faith with science.  Apparently, last month’s editorial was not sufficiently vicious against ID, says Rob Crowther on Evolution News.  Crowther knows that at least one letter favorable to ID was not printed: the one by Stephen Meyer, interviewed in the April 27 article, who wrote in to correct some misconceptions (see it at Discovery Institute).
1Correspondence, Nature 435, 275 (19 May 2005) | doi: 10.1038/435275a.
OK, since some readers are intimidated when Big Science raises its collective voice against anything, let’s examine this correspondence.  First, we don’t know how many readers wrote responses, and of those, how many were pro vs. con.  Since Nature was born as a pro-Darwin mouthpiece (see 03/04/2004 commentary), it is not surprising the editors would continue the propaganda campaign of associating Charlie with science and anything else with foolishness.  Second, scientists are fallible.  The majority has been wrong before, often strenuously, sometimes for long periods of time.  Third, scientists can be woefully ignorant of issues outside their specialties; in fact, one of the writers (Roy, below) admits it.  This means that a molecular biologist or geneticist may know a lot about a particular molecule or gene but very little about intelligent design theory and the history and philosophy of science except what his liberal Democrat ivory-tower colleagues in academia tell him or her (see 12/02/2004 entry).  They may be oblivious to the fact that their work rests on the shoulders of centuries of creationists and believers in design (see online book).
    What onlookers must do is get past the hot air, bluffing and bandwagon tactics of these selectively-printed letters and evaluate the strength of the arguments.  See if you are impressed with what any of these self-styled Darwin champions have to say:
  • Jerry Coyne (U of Chicago) uses the word science or scientist 17 times in 3 paragraphs, but really means materialism.  Substituting in the correct word makes his whole point fall apart, i.e., “scientists” have no duty to help “religious” people come to terms with “science” – recast as: materialists have no duty to help non-materialists come to terms with materialism.  By perpetuating the either-or fallacy of science vs. religion, Coyne contributes nothing to the discussion.  Remember how Coyne flip-flopped in the 07/05/2002 entry?
  • David Leaf (Western Washington U): this letter is all about politics and strategy for fighting ID.  He thinks high schoolers are too dumb to understand the controversy, because they are “just learning the basics of science” (read: materialism).  He recommends waiting to allow students to think until they have been thoroughly indoctrinated by their junior or senior year of college.  (In the film Icons of Evolution, a high school student takes offense at the suggestion they can’t handle the controversy.  He points out that evolution is taught to kindergartners.  “If we can’t handle it, we shouldn’t be in high school,” he quips.)
  • Chris Miller (Brandeis U): no merit in this letter, either; he just perpetuates the dysteleology argument with a presumably witty remark about Tinkerbell in the kitchen, “Evolution is a short-order cook, not a watchmaker.”  Read the 05/18/2005 entry again, and the 03/11/2005 commentary.
  • Douglas Yu (East Anglia U): perpetuates the non-overlapping magisteria science vs. religion stereotype, making the odd claim that “ID actively undermines the basis of Christianity.”  Presumably Darwinistic materialism does not.  He defines all of Christianity in terms of the advice to doubting Thomas, “Blessed are those who have not seen and yet have believed.”  Talk about a quote out of context (see half truth).  Jesus often urged his disciples to follow the evidence, not engage in blind faith (and especially not human tradition).  Thomas should have followed all the overwhelming prior evidence he had rather than demanding more physical proof.  Jesus meant that future disciples would not have the benefit of his bodily presence.  It does not follow that they had no evidence or should have believed out of ignorance.
  • Rustum Roy (Penn State) equates ID with the ignorance of different cultures or belief systems, and advocates a relax and stay-the-course strategy.  “Ham-fisted efforts will simply alienate much larger numbers of people from the rest of science,” he says, so just treat ID like you would those who are ignorant or illiterate.  Even for scientists, “amazing ignorance” of things outside their specialties does little harm, he argues.  Maybe if they ignore ID it will go away.  What if it doesn’t?  Again, no effort to understand or answer the case for ID was offered.
  • Michael Lynch (Indiana U) pounds the nail about ID being equivalent to intellectual laziness: i.e., just giving up and saying “the Designer made it that way.”  That didn’t seem to be an obstacle for James Joule (see Joule’s own words) and many other great scientists (see also von Braun’s own words); on the contrary, their fascination with God’s design was their motivation to do good science.  Lynch also tries to distance evolution from dependence only on natural selection – interesting admission that Charlie’s famous mechanism is not omnipotent, but then what naturalistic mechanism can produce a wing or an eye? (see 05/15/2005 attempt).  Lastly, he repeats the faulty analogy that evolution is not just a theory, but a fact like respiration or digestion.  Surprisingly, Lynch touts evolution as the most quantitative field in biology, and suggests that teaching evolution will help students gain the mathematical skills necessary to compete in our technical world.  Is this a record for non-sequitur density per paragraph?
  • Dan Graur (U of Houston) embarrassed himself with a senseless rant, equating ID with “flat-Earthers, tea-leaf readers, astrologers, geocentrists and phlogiston theorists” who, like ID (he thinks), “cannot publish their studies in respectable journals.”  This guy is clueless; the egg is on Nature’s face for printing it, unless their intention was to make ID look good by contrast.  Jonathan Wells on Discovery Institute shouldn’t have had to give it the dignity of a response.
So thank you, Nature, for giving us a sample of your best and brightest Darwin defenders taking on intelligent design.  If this collection of ridicule, straw man arguments, loaded words, false dichotomies, big lies, equivocation and pure ignorance of the issues is the best the Darwin Party can offer, then all ID must do is stand back and watch evolutionism implode.  Just don’t let them try to delay the inevitable by letting their illogic and ignorance go unchallenged.
Suggested reading: The Design Revolution by William Dembski.  This 2-PhD mathematician/philosopher answers typical objections to intelligent design, including all those of the above challengers.
Next headline on:  DarwinismIntelligent Design
Time for Titan to Shine    05/18/2005
Fans of
Titan, the large moon of Saturn, are swimming gleefully in scientific reports from Cassini, and it’s only just the beginning: there are at least 39 more orbits planned of this strangest moon in the solar system.  There are too many recent reports to condense into one entry – take your pick:
  • ESA published a full mosaic of all the Huygens Probe descent images
  • The Planetary Society, Universe Today and Astronomy Picture of the Day also described the mosaic.
  • Science News April 30 contributed the fullest account yet of the Huygens Probe findings.
  • EurekAlert compares Titan’s atmosphere with that of Earth.
  • Universe Today does the same.
  • Cassini Imaging released a movie of Titan’s outer atmosphere changing over time, and discussed its complex “anti-greenhouse.”
  • Icarus researchers model Titan’s interior.
  • Artemieva and Lunine, also in Icarus, consider the impact of meteor impacts on the surface.
  • National Geographic highlights the bizarre landscape of Titan.
  • Physics Web talks about the atmosphere and the interaction of atoms and molecules with the magnetic field.
  • Astrobiology Magazine considers the intriguing images of runoff channels from the Huygens cameras.
  • Science printed a special issue on Titan on May 13, with nine articles about the first two flybys:
    • Brooks Hanson provided an overview of science results.
    • Paul Mahaffy summarized the papers in the issue:
    • Radar mapping results.
    • Winds and atmosphere interdisciplinary results.  One quote: “The lifetime of CH4 [methane] in Titan’s atmosphere is only 4 x 107 years, and it requires a surface or interior source if the current inventory is typical of Titan’s long-term history.”
    • Ultraviolet probes of the atmosphere.
    • Mass spectrometer samples of the upper atmosphere.
    • Radio and plasma wave measurements of the cold ionosphere.
    • Magnetosphere measurements on energetic neutral atoms.
    • Magnetic field sensing: no evidence of an internal field detected.
These papers, however, do not even get to the latest findings from the more recent flybys, to say nothing of the Jan. 14 landing of the Huygens probe (see 01/15/2005 and 01/21/2005 entries); first official scientific papers from the landing should appear within the next month or so.  Every scientist agrees that the surface of Titan is young.  Cryovolcanism – eruptions of ice – may be occurring on Titan today, and so may rainstorms of liquid methane.
    Titan is not the only big recent science story at Saturn.  Cassini scientists published 3 papers in Nature May 12 (1, 2, 3) about Phoebe, the outer moon observed at close range on July 11, 2004.  They concluded it was a captured object from the outer solar system with a composition like Pluto.
    The radio science team recently made perfect high-resolution occultation measurements of Saturn and the rings.  Cassini now enters prime ringside observations.  Orbits 6-14 over the next few months make Saturn’s rings the prime targets for all the instruments.  What are they made of?  How small are the particles?  How hard or fluffy are they?  Do individual ring particles rotate?  Will ring spokes be seen again?  It should be bonanza time for ring scientists.  For a preview of coming attractions, the imaging team released a stunning movie of a newly discovered moonlet in the Keeler gap that sets up waves in the rings like a giant rock skipping the surface of a pond.  As for pretty pictures of the Saturn system – well, what can words add to stunners like this?
These are great days for the Cassini team.  Everything has worked so well it is almost scary.  Why are the media giving these discoveries so little press?  This is one of the greatest achievements in history for solar system exploration, but few are hearing about it.  We make these links available for those who have better things to do than listen to daily decadence from the Michael Jackson trial.  Come, sail to the new world.
Next headline on:  Solar System.
Mt. St. Helens: Comeback Kid    05/18/2005
Scientists are amazed at the speed of recovery of Mt. St. Helens, says
National Geographic News and MSNBC News.  Twenty-five years ago this month, the explosion and pyroclastic flow left a scene of gray devastation.  Now, a young forest is already in place.  Spirit Lake, made poisonous by the hot flow, surprised researchers by recovering in six years instead of decades.  Simple models of ecological succession were overturned; the recovery was diverse and complex.  Within months of the blast, some lupines were flowering among the volcanic ash.  “The fact that anything could do that was just phenomenal,” one researcher said.
    Even small, lowly animals turned out to be quite the homesteaders.  NG says, “Not long after the blast, frog, toad, salamander, and newt species traveled several miles of inhospitable ground and moved into the affected habitats.”  The Washington volcano has proved a valuable research laboratory for ecologists.  One said, “I’ve seen it come back to life.  It’s just amazing what Mother Nature can do.”
Mother Nature had nothing to do with it, but that’s beside the point.  Every engineer knows that designing robustness into a system subject to perturbations is a mark of intelligence (see 03/14/2005 entry).
    Mt. St. Helens has also overturned many uniformitarian geological notions.  For a long list, search the word Helens on the ICR website and read this sample by Dr. Steven Austin.
Next headline on:  GeologyPlants and BotanyTerrestrial Zoology
Intelligent Design and the Nature of Science    05/18/2005
John Hanna’s
Associated Press article, “Kansas debate focuses on defining science,” has fingered a basic issue: what is science?  The Darwinists argue that ID by its very nature cannot be scientific.  Rob Crowther on Evolution News counters that Kansas is the only state that does not have a traditional definition of science, such as Science is a systematic method of continuing investigation that uses observation, hypothesis testing, measurement, experimentation, logical argument and theory-building to lead to more adequate explanations of natural phenomena.  Instead, it embeds philosophical naturalism into the definition, by defining science as first and foremost the practice of “seeking natural explanations” for phenomena.
Darwinists, are you interested in maintaining your philosophy, or in finding the truth?  Re-read the quote of the month at the top right of this page.
Next headline on:  Intelligent DesignEducation
Exercise May Reduce Colon Cancer Risk    05/18/2005
Risk of incidence and recurrence of colon cancer appears to be reduced with exercise, according to a report by the American Society of Clinical Oncology reported in
EurekAlert.  Data now supports what was once just a good idea.
Make exercise a part of your routine.  Your body needs it in more ways than one.  This is the best time of year for outdoor strolls, where you can improve both mental and physical health.
Next headline on:  Health
Astrobiology Design Paper  05/18/2005: Guillermo Gonzalez (co-author of The Privileged Planet), has a paper in an upcoming issue of Origins of Life and Evolution of Biospheres, entitled, “Habitable Zones in the Universe.”  The paper is available online.
Next headline on:  CosmologyOrigin of Life

Design Language Gushes Out of Article Describing Cell Quality Control    05/18/2005
Here are the design words found in a press release from
Michigan State describing the editing mechanisms of the cell DNA-to-RNA transcription process: high fidelity, quality control, inner workings, genetic coding, exquisite nanotechnology in living systems, genetic control, blueprint for life, industrial assembly line, conveyor belt, preloading, criteria, backs up to correct the error, sensed and corrected, acceptable level of error required for the speed at which cells must reproduce, elegance of cell creation, fidelity mechanism, tried and true design, and enduring design.  Here are the words in the press release describing the evolution of this system: [null].
    The aspect of transcription that so impressed the researchers was the ability of RNA polymerase (the main transcription machine) to preload bases before need: “Preloading of NTPs [nucleoside triphosphates, the “letters” of RNA code] hints at a previously unknown quality control station to maintain accuracy of RNA synthesis,” the article states (emphasis added in all quotes).  “We’re able to show how an error will be sensed and corrected,” said Team member Zachary Burton.  “The quality control system checks NTP loading several ways.  If it doesn’t match the criteria, it gets booted out.”  Details of the research were published in Molecular Cell.1  Another statement by Burton encapsulated the tone of their study: “RNA polymerase is one of nature’s great designs.


1Gong et al., “Dynamic Error Correction and Regulation of Downstream Bubble Opening by Human RNA Polymerase II,” Molecular Cell, Volume 18, Issue 4, 13 May 2005, Pages 461-470, doi:10.1016/j.molcel.2005.04.011
This is how science should be done.  No useless Darwinspeak, just careful analysis of design when design is evident.  Neither the formal paper nor the press release contained any mention of evolution.  Instead, the language of design was shown to be both useful and appropriate in a purely scientific discussion.
    By the way, the research focused on human RNA polymerase.  The press release was titled, “High fidelity keeps human DNA assembly line humming.”  All that quality control is on your assembly line, keeping you humming.  Need a tune to hum?  Try this.
Next headline on:  Cell BiologyHuman BodyIntelligent Design
Mars Radiation Dosage Makes Life Improbable, Even with Global Flooding    05/18/2005
An upcoming (June) paper in Icarus1 states, “ The biologically damaging solar ultraviolet (UV) radiation (quantified by the DNA-weighted dose) reaches the martian surface in extremely high levels.”  Earth has an ozone layer and global magnetic field to shield out the damaging rays, but Mars has no known atmospheric filter.  “Therefore, the existence of life on Mars, at least at the surface, cannot be considered as probable.”
    The European authors compare the situation with Earth:
All known life forms on Earth share a common feature: their genetic information is coded in a DNA or RNA chain of nucleotides.  When exposed to sufficiently high levels of UV radiation these chains are damaged.  Therefore, organisms must either have UV protection mechanisms or efficient repair processes.   (Emphasis added in all quotes.)
(For a recent study on these repair processes, see this
05/18/2005 story.)  The researchers argue that the only likely place to look for putative Martian life forms would be a meter under the polar ice.  Even there, however, the radiation is only reduced to terrestrial levels, not eliminated.  Error correction would therefore be a prerequisite for Martian life.
    Another paper in the same issue of Icarus2 describes what effect large meteor impacts could have had on underground aquifers.  “Based on the liquefaction limit proposed for Mars (Fig. 2A), we suggest that impacts producing craters with diameters of 100 km or greater may have caused global occurrence of liquefaction and streamflow,” they say.  They estimate there may have been around 1500 such impacts.  Each one could have produced “violent eruption of groundwater” producing catastrophic floods and erosion of outflow channels, assuming “a saturated aquifer of global extent may have been present beneath a few km of frozen ground.”  Impacts could have produced these effects “at great distances from the impact site.”  If a mile-thick aquifer existed under the surface, they estimate that tens of thousands of cubic miles of water could be released from a single large impact.
1Cordoba-Jabonero et al., “Radiative habitable zones in martian polar environments,” Icarus, Volume 175, Issue 2, June 2005, Pages 360-371, doi:10.1016/j.icarus.2004.12.009.
2Wang et al., “Floods on Mars released from groundwater by impact,” Icarus, Volume 175, Issue 2, June 2005, Pages 551-555, doi:10.1016/j.icarus.2004.12.003.
Short-lived water flowing on Mars is not going to help get life going.  In the first place, the mineralogy shows that Mars water was poisonous (see 01/05/2005 entry).  In the second place, if the probability of getting one useful protein by chance is astronomically small (see online book), the chance of getting error-correction mechanisms to emerge in time for life to survive the radiation bath is absurdly, ridiculously out of the question.  We saw that amino acids have a half-life of eight hours in a Martian environment (see 01/28/2005 story).  Do the logic: if error-correcting life is ever found on Mars, it did not arise by chance.
    “Violent eruptions of groundwater” – Hmmmm... did Mars have “fountains of the great deep”?
Next headline on:  MarsPhysicsOrigin of Life
Stegosaur Plates Were for Decoration    05/18/2005
Berkeley scientists are disputing the notion that the rows of plates on the backs of stegosaurs served as heat exchangers.  Instead, they were for show. 
EurekAlert and Science Daily explain that this was probably true of other dinosaur decorations: “The team’s analysis of stegosaur plates lends support to a growing consensus among paleontologists that the weird adornments of many dinosaurs – the horns of triceratops, the helmet-like domes of the pachycephalosaurs, and the crests of the duck-billed hadrosaurs – likely served no function other than to differentiate species, akin to birds’ colorful feather ornamentation.”  If they evolved as decorations, maybe heat exchange was an “exaptation” – i.e., an incidental benefit.  (Some stegosaur-like species have little or no plates.)
    Sexual selection is not a likely explanation, though.  Kevin Padian said, “we don’t see a clear distinction between male and female stegosaurs.  Without sexual dimorphism [physical distinctions between male and female], you have no evidence for sexual selection, so you can’t invoke sexual display as an explanation.”  Neither does defense make sense.  The structures were too flimsy to provide protection; the munch from an allosaur would be “like biting through a sandwich.”  Padian argued for the only explanation left: that the structures were for “elaborate displays for social group recognition,” like bird calls, underscoring the “importance of behavior to evolution.”
The structures would have to be pretty large and elaborate to function for social group recognition.  How many lucky mutations did that take?  A mole or nub on one stegosaur’s back would probably not be enough to get the ball rolling, to make all the others think that it was so attractive, he or she would be the only one getting a mate.  Maybe some things in nature are just for looks and contribute little or nothing to survival of the fittest.  Structures might be amplified by microevolution into extreme forms, but Darwinian theory would have a hard time explaining how they got there in the first place.
Next headline on:  DinosaursEvolution
Rotary Clock Discovered in Bacteria   05/17/2005
What could be more mechanical than a mechanical clock?  A biochemist has discovered one in the simplest of organisms, one-celled cyanobacteria.  Examining the three complex protein components of its circadian clock, he thinks he has hit on a model that explains its structure and function: it rotates to keep time.  Though it keeps good time, this clock is only about 10 billionths of a meter tall.
    Scientists have known the parts of the cyanobacterial clock.  They are named KaiA, KaiB, and KaiC.  Jimin Wang of the Department of Molecular Biophysics and Biochemistry at Yale, publishing in Structure,1 has found an elegant solution to how the parts interact.  He was inspired by the similarity of these parts to those in ATP synthase (see
04/30/2005 entry), a universal enzyme known as a rotary motor.  Though structurally different, the Kai proteins appear to operate as another rotary motor – this time, a clock.
    We learned last time (see 09/15/2004 entry) that the parts interact in some way in sync with the diurnal cycle, but the mechanism was still a “black box.”  Wang found that the KaiC part, a six-sided hexagonal cylinder, has a central cavity where the KaiA part can fit when it undergoes an “activation” that changes its shape, somewhat like unfolding scissors.  Like a key, it fits into the central shaft and turns.  The KaiB part, like a wing nut, fastens on KaiB at the bottom of the KaiC carousel.  For every 120° turn of the spindle, phosphate groups attach to the outside of the carousel, till KaiC is fully saturated, or phosphorylated.  This apparently happens to multiple Kai complexes during the night.
    How does this keep time?  When unphosphorylated, KaiC affects the expression of genes.  During the night, when complexed with the other two parts, it is repressed from acting, effectively shutting down the cell for the night.  Apparently many of these complexes form and dissociate each cycle.  As the complexes break up in the morning, expression resumes, and the cell wakes up.  When KaiC separates from the other parts, it is destroyed, stopping its repression of genes and stimulating the creation of more KaiC.  “In summary,” he says, “the Kai complexes are a rotary clock for phosphorylation, which sets the destruction pace of the night-dominant Kai complexes and timely releases KaiA.”  The system sets up a day-night oscillation feedback loop that allows the bacterium keep in sync with the time of day.
    Wang shares the surprise that a bacterium could have a clock that persists longer than the cell-division cycle.  This means that the act of cell division does not break the clock:
The discovery of a bacterial clock unexpectedly breaks the paradigm of biological clocks, because rapid cell division and chromosome duplication in bacteria occur within one circadian period (Kondo et al., 1994 and Kondo et al., 1997).  In fact, these cyanobacterial oscillators in individual cells have a strong temporal stability with a correlation time of several months  (Emphasis added in all quotes.)
Wang’s article has elegant diagrams of the parts and how they precisely fit together.  In his model, the KaiC carousel resembles the hexagonal F1 motor of ATP synthase, and the KaiA “key” that fits into the central shaft resembles the camshaft.  KaiB, in turn, acts like the inhibitor in ATP synthase.  “The close relationship between the two systems may well extend beyond their structural similarity,” he suggests in conclusion, “because the rhythmic photosynthesis-dependent ATP generation is an important process under the Kai circadian regulation.”
1Jimin Wang, “Recent Cyanobacterial Kai Protein Structures Suggest a Rotary Clock,” Structure, Volume 13, Issue 5, May 2005, Pages 735-741, doi:10.1016/j.str.2005.02.011.
Need we tell readers what we are about to say?  “There is no mention of evolution in this paper.”  The inverse law of Darwinese stands: the more detailed the discussion of cellular complexity, the less the tendency to mention evolution.
    This is wonderful stuff.  The cell is alive with wheels, gears, motors, monorails, winches, ratchets and clocks.  Paley would be pleased.
Next headline on:  Cell BiologyIntelligent DesignAmazing Stories
New Rodent Discovered in Southeast Asia    05/16/2005
“To find something so distinct in this day and age is just extraordinary,” says Dr. Robert Timmons of a stubby-legged, hairy rodent discovered in Thailand.  “For all we know, this could be the last remaining mammal family left to be discovered.”  It’s not exactly like a squirrel, rat, chinchilla or guinea pig: it belongs in a whole new family.  See story on
EurekAlert and Science Daily.
    The BBC News is celebrating another famous mammal specimen that bamboozled the experts 200 years ago when it was first brought to England: the platypus.  Some thought it was a joke when they first saw a mammal with a duck’s bill and webbed feet.
Update 05/19/2005: a new species of monkey was discovered in Tanzania, reports National Geographic News.  It was all the more surprising to find this 3-foot tall mammal, considering that Tanzania is one of the biologically well-known countries in Africa.  The new primate is called the highland mangabey and lives in the mountains at elevations up to 8,000 ft.
See also the unexpected discovery of a lungless salamander in Korea (see 05/10/2005 entry).  Who knows what other strange animals remain to be discovered in remote parts of the world.  Keep your eyes open for that duck-billed mastodon that might be lurking in an alley in San Francisco.  Maybe Tom Weller’s menagerie of skunkosaurs, wooly turtles and saber-tooth ducks will some day be seen as prophetic, and the Darwinists will marvel at more cases of convergent evolution.
Next headline on:  Mammals
Can Gene Duplication Promote Evolution?   05/15/2005
Imagine you had no mouth but needed to eat.  A hamburger comes flying at you.  When it hits your body, your skin folds around it and pinches off, sealing it inside.  Dozens of 3-armed parts form a geodesic dome around it and carry it to the stomach.  Once delivered, all the parts are recycled for the incoming freedom fries.
    If this sounds bizarre, it’s kind of what really happens in your cells.  Except for specialized channels that accept particular molecules, like water (
12/20/2001 and salt (01/17/2002), a cell has no mouth; it is surrounded by a continuous membrane.  When large nutrients need to get in, the membrane has acceptors on the outside that signal a cascade of events.  The membrane dents inward and envelops the particle.  On the inside, proteins called clathrins form a geodesic structure around the incoming vesicle as the membrane pinches off and seals the contents inside.  Other proteins and enzymes stand at the ready to deliver the nutrient where needed.  This process goes on continually and is called endocytosis.  A press release from the University of Queensland says the cell eats its entire skin every 30 minutes.
    Progress continues to be made understanding clathrin-mediated endocytosis since our 10/07/2003 entry, but the evolutionary origin of this elegant system seems illusory.  UC and Stanford biochemists writing in PNAS1 noted that two forms of clathrin are so different, being coded by different genes, they must have had separate evolutionary histories.  They propose this happened during gene duplication events up to 600 million years ago.
    Andreas Wagner, however, publishing in Molecular Biology and Evolution,2 casts doubt on that method of evolutionary change:
I here estimate the energy cost of changes in gene expression for several thousand genes in the yeast Saccharomyces cerevisiaeA doubling of gene expression, as it occurs in a gene duplication event, is significantly selected against for all genes for which expression data is available.  It carries a median selective disadvantage of s > 10–5, several times greater than the selection coefficient s = 1.47 x 10–7 below which genetic drift dominates a mutant’s fate.  When considered separately, increases in messenger RNA expression or protein expression by more than a factor 2 also have significant energy costs for most genes.  This means that the evolution of transcription and translation rates is not an evolutionarily neutral process.  They are under active selection opposing them.  My estimates are based on genome-scale information of gene expression in the yeast S. cerevisiae as well as information on the energy cost of biosynthesizing amino acids and nucleotides.   (Emphasis added in all quotes.)
Whatever the origin of clathrin, its reputation as a versatile molecule is growing.  In the April 28 issue of Nature,3 three Cambridge biologists wondered what it does when endocytosis is halted during cell division.  They discovered that clathrin has another essential job:
Clathrin has an established function in the generation of vesicles that transfer membrane and proteins around the cell.  The formation of clathrin-coated vesicles occurs continuously in non-dividing cells, but is shut down during mitosis, when clathrin concentrates at the spindle apparatus.  Here, we show that clathrin stabilizes fibres of the mitotic spindle to aid congression of chromosomes.  Clathrin bound to the spindle directly by the amino-terminal domain of clathrin heavy chain.  Depletion of clathrin heavy chain using RNA interference prolonged mitosis; kinetochore fibres were destabilized, leading to defective congression of chromosomes to the metaphase plate and persistent activation of the spindle checkpoint.  Normal mitosis was rescued by clathrin triskelia [complete 3-part clathrin proteins] but not the N-terminal domain of clathrin heavy chain, indicating that stabilization of kinetochore fibres was dependent on the unique structure of clathrin.
This is not just an incidental task for clathrin to do till cell division is over.  “The importance of clathrin for normal mitosis,” they say, “may be relevant to understanding human cancers that involve gene fusions of clathrin heavy chain.”
1Wakeham et al., “Clathrin heavy and light chain isoforms originated by independent mechanisms of gene duplication during chordate evolution,” Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences USA, 10.1073/pnas.0502058102, published online before print May 9, 2005.
2Andreas Wagner, “Energy Constraints on the Evolution of Gene Expression,” Molecular Biology and Evolution, 2005 22(6):1365-1374; doi:10.1093/molbev/msi126.
3Royle et al., “Clathrin is required for the function of the mitotic spindle,” Nature 434, 1152-1157 (28 April 2005) | doi: 10.1038/nature03502.
Gene duplication is one of the mechanisms Darwinists invoke when Natural Selection seems inadequate for a job, and they want to make it seem like there are other tricks in the toolkit of Charlie the Magician.  The abstract of Wagner’s paper seems to make it clear that duplication is not going to help.  If two tools are fighting each other, like front and rear tires spinning in opposite directions, the vehicle is not going anywhere.  Now go back and reread the 10/07/2003 entry about endocytosis and see if you think the Darwin Party has a prayer for explaining it.  Be sure to watch Allison Bruce’s cool video of clathrin making geodesic domes.  How many of you would vote for chance and natural selection producing this geometrical marvel?  Someone other than a Darwinist, who not only has a prayer but a Recipient, should get a hearing.
Next headline on:  Cell BiologyEvolutionary Theory
Heat and Light Emitted in Collisions of Darwin vs ID    05/13/2005
Rhetoric over evolution is increasing in the media largely because of the school board debates in Kansas (see
04/29/2005 entry and previous Education links).  The largely pro-Darwin press seems to be giving a little more coverage to the ID side; the anti-Darwin alternative media are getting more bold about asserting their views.
  • MSNBC News says the Kansas hearings ended on a bitter note.  It gave approximately equal press to both sides, including attacks and counterattacks.
  • CNN host Lou Dobbs led a lively interchange between Michael Ruse, John Morris of ICR and Jonathan Wells and printed the entire transcript
  • NBC Nightline hosted a debate between Michael Ruse and William Dembski.
  • Bryan Leonard, PhD candidate, made a case for teaching the controversy in the Cleveland Plain Dealer.  Rob Crowther on EvolutionNews.com calls it “one of the most compelling presentations of the entire Kansas Board of Education hearings on teaching evolution.”
  • Dr. Philip S. Skell, a member of the National Academy of Sciences, wrote an open letter to the Kansas school board encouraging them to teach the controversy on evolution.  The letter is posted on Discovery Institute News.
  • The Discovery Institute lambasted evolutionary scientists for failing to appear and answer criticisms.
  • John Gibson’s Big Story on Fox News May 6 included Eugenie Scott facing off with Stephen Meyer.  Gibson seemed to lean in the direction of Meyer’s intelligent design position, based on the harder questions he posed to Scott, who tried to justify the evolutionists’ decision to boycott the Kansas hearings.
  • World Magazine published a pro-ID report of the Kansas debate.
  • Agape press writer Jim Brown claims Darwinists are getting desperate to defend a faulty theory.
  • MSNBC News also posted a lengthy and lively interchange between creationist David Bump and cosmic evolutionist Neil deGrasse Tyson, after the latter compared Darwin with Einstein in an interview with science editor Alan Boyle (see MSNBC April 19).  Boyle received a hard-hitting critique from David Bump and printed it in its entirety, along with Tyson’s point-by-point responses.
Part of the reason Darwinism may be getting a harder run for its money, compared to the days of the Scopes Trial, is the internet: blogs and rapid dissemination of news and reader responses.
Tyson is a Darwin demagogue who cannot be trusted.  Look at the propaganda piece he pulled in the TV series Origins (see 09/29/2004 review), a Saganesque phantasmagoria of evolutionary imagery two-thirds animation and one-third irrelevant data.  There, as here in this interchange, he shows himself a bluffing ignoramus about history and biology, more interested in snappy sound bites than truth.  He repeats debunked ideas about Copernicus and Galileo, even when confronted about it.  Remarkably, he preaches Lamarckian ideas, even when confronted about that, too: he said, “Frequent use of organs or appendages, where that use contributes to one’s survival until reproductive years, will reinforce the existence and utility of that feature, as continuous variations of that feature get further tuned for survival.”  Can you trust someone that ignorant about evolutionary theory making TV specials about it?  Frequent use or disuse has nothing to do with natural selection; that’s basic high school Darwinese.  Unless a random mutation brings about some selective advantage, you can use your parts to the ultimate and none of the increased fitness will make it into the progeny.  Tyson also is a naive positivist, reiterating the canard that, despite a century and a half of evolutionary frauds, science has “built-in error correction” that eventually leads to progress.  OK, what will he think when science corrects the errors of Darwinism?  He also lies about Darwin’s theory of inheritance: “You are mistaken if you believe that Darwin’s ideas of inheritance were wrong,” he chides Bump.  What?  Pangenesis was out of style as soon as Darwin published it.
    Alan Boyle, pathetically, doesn’t seem to have enough baloney detecting skill to discern who’s right.  He just seems to be leaning on Tyson’s reputation as a prize-fighter for Darwin.  Bump landed some pretty solid blows, which Tyson tried to dodge with misdirection, hot air, audience baiting and arm-waving.  The Darwinists had better send this champ back to the corner and give him some remedial education before he embarrasses them further.
    All the articles listed above are worth reading.  It is a good sign when journalists stop printing outworn stereotypes from only one side, realizing they will get called on the carpet by readers.  It’s a good sign when the journals can no longer give ID a one-sided brush-off (compare 08/21/2003 with 04/27/2005).  The persistence of anti-Darwinists – some eminently qualified scientists and some informed laymen – no longer cowed into silence, is keeping editors on their toes.  Perhaps a few journalists are beginning to notice themselves the weakness of the ruling Darwin Party’s responses.  The most vocal Darwin advocates themselves are becoming cautious in their rhetoric (see 05/06/2005 entry).
    When ID reaches critical mass, the demise of Darwinism could be quick and relatively painless.  It might even start celebrations, like the fall of the Berlin wall.  It will become chic to ridicule Charlie and uncool to wear the Darwin Fish logo.  Editors will remark, “I never really did believe that stuff, anyway.”  The hard-core Darwinists will be forced to support their ideas with real empirical work (see 08/20/2003) instead of bluffing from a position of usurped authority and pilfered prestige (see 05/02/2003 commentary).  Like welfare queens put on a work-for-food program, accountability will be their undoing (see 12/22/2003 commentary).  The culture need not worry at the collapse of such a large institutionalized paradigm.  Good science with all its desirable fruits will prosper – yea, flourish – within the new Reformation (see 08/19/2003 commentary).
Next headline on:  Intelligent DesignDarwinismEducation
Stanford Student Debate: Is Intelligent Design Science?    05/13/2005
Michael Behe, author of Darwin’s Black Box, spoke recently at Stanford.  This led two students to publish reviews, one pro and the other con, about intelligent design in the
Stanford Review.  Tristan Abbey asked, “Are Darwinists Chickens?” for their reluctance to allow critical scrutiny of their theory.  Paul Laddis tried to debunk irreducible complexity in his rebuttal, “The Dogmatists’ New Clothes.”
It’s good to see students engage the controversy when so many Darwinists don’t even want to debate this issue (see 04/29/2005 and 04/27/2005 entries).  Paul Laddis, despite his valiant attempt at overcoming irreducible complexity with the co-option argument, fails to mention that there is irreducible complexity everywhere, not just with the bacterial flagellum.  Like Scott Minnich emphasizes in the film Unlocking the Mystery of Life, Darwinists need to address not only the parts that are similar between different structures, but the assembly instructions, which are even more complex.  You cannot invoke co-option endlessly; Minnich says, “You can only carry that argument so far” until you wind up borrowing parts from nothing.  Laddis starts with a complex protein: stop