“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.

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.”

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

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:  SETI • Media • Evolution • Dumb Stories

• Shower power:  Drinking more and showering less may not help conserve water, say Australian scientists reported by EurekAlert. 
• Sun bath:  We were always warned to keep out of the midday sun to avoid cancer, right?  Science Daily talks about Manchester scientists saying we need that midday sun exposure for Vitamin D production.  All in moderation, of course; skin cancer is still a risk.
• Bone appetit:  Contrary to earlier beliefs, exercise to reduce fat does not hurt your bones, says EurekAlert.  It can even increase bone mass in senior citizens.
• Zitgeist:  Mineral oil doesn’t give you zits, says another article on EurekAlert – unless it’s the industrial grade stuff.
• Schism:  Not as many people are schizophrenic as previously thought, says EurekAlert.  Now you need another excuse.

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

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 Theory • Dumb Stories

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:  Politics • Intelligent Design • Education

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 Zoology • Amazing Stories • Evolution

• 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 Days:  MSNBC 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 war:  Yahoo 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 shock:  MSNBC 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 leader:  World 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.”

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 Theory • Intelligent Design.  • Education

• 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 results:  Science 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 battle:  MSNBC 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.

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 Ethics • Cell Biology

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:  Genetics • Human Body • Darwinism and Evolutionary Theory

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 Man • Dating Methods

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.

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

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:  Darwinism • Intelligent Design

• 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 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.

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:  Geology • Plants and Botany • Terrestrial Zoology

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 Design • Education

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

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.”

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 Biology • Human Body • Intelligent Design

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:  Mars • Physics • Origin of Life

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:  Dinosaurs • Evolution

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.)

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 Biology • Intelligent Design • Amazing Stories

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

I here estimate the energy cost of changes in gene expression for several thousand genes in the yeast Saccharomyces cerevisiae.  A 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.)

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.

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 Biology • Evolutionary Theory

• 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.

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 Design • Darwinism • Education

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