If the intellect has agreed to contemplate what God has made, it also agrees to do what God has bid.  Should this be attained by all, then there would be nothing further to desire for the human race than that all people in the whole globe should live together in one city and, already in this world far from every strife, have pleasure in one another, as we hope of the future.”
—Johannes Kepler, from a letter expressing his view of science and society.  Max Casper, Kepler (Dover 1993 ed.), p. 376.

Five years ago this month, Creation-Evolution Headlines began bringing you news and amazing discoveries of science, and explaining how they relate to the creation-evolution controversy.  There are now thousands of stories at your disposal on over two dozen topics, chained together for easy browsing and linked to the original sources.  Most of them come right out of the leading scientific journals.  These five years have been a momentous period, from 9/11 and the war on terror to the publishing of the human genome, the exploration of Mars and Saturn, and much, much more.  Now, with the growing interest in intelligent design, this page can be your daily source for the latest information on important developments around the world.     Readership has doubled each of the last two years.  We know there are prominent people – scientists, educators and publishers – who check CEH regularly.  We also know there are many of you who visit often but have never given us any feedback.  What better time than now, at this 5th Anniversary milestone?  Please write here and tell us your city and occupation, how you came across the service, what you think of it and how you use it.  Obviously this website takes a great deal of volunteer time and effort to maintain.  If Creation-Evolution Headlines has been a help to you, it would be a tremendous encouragement to hear from you.  Your anonymity will be protected, and you will not be put on a mailing list.  Thank you, come back often, and help spread the word about the liveliest origins site on the internet – the one with the easy-to-remember address, CREV.INFO.

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Bullahalloo: The Jerusalem Post reported that a Solomon-era clay seal (bulla) has been found in the Arab dump outside Jerusalem – the first inscription from the First Temple period.  (See 04/17/2005 story.)

Far Out: Cassini just took the best-ever pictures of Saturn’s moons Tethys and Hyperion.  The latter is one of the most bizarre-looking moons yet seen around Saturn (see press release, color mosaic and zoom movie).  It has deep, steep-sided craters coated with dark, smooth material at the bottoms.  One crater is almost the size of the moon itself.  For official images with captions, go to JPL’s Planetary Photojournal, click on Saturn, then the moon of your choice.  The first place to find new Cassini images is on the Raw Images gallery.  The Planetary Society usually posts detailed interpretive guides fairly quickly, and some amateurs beat the pros to the punch by creating mosaics and animations on the Unmanned Spaceflight Forum.
Coming Up:  Scientists await close up images of Dione, October 11, and Rhea, November 26.

Spider Blood Survives 20 Million Years – So They Say    09/30/2005  
EurekAlert announced, “Spider blood found in 20 million year old fossil.”  Science Daily repeated the story.  The articles even tell how the spider died (it was climbing a tree and was struck on the head by fast-flowing sap).  The BBC News said, “Spider is ‘20 million years old.’” At least they put quotes around the date, but they quoted Dr. David Penney of the University of Manchester scratching his beard and saying, “It’s amazing to think that a single piece of amber with a single spider in it can open up a window into what was going on 20 million years ago.”  The date comes from the Miocene deposits in which the amber was found in the Dominican Republic.  Those deposits rank at 20 million years according to the evolutionary dating scheme.

How could blood survive decay for 2000 years, let alone 20 million?  Suggested revision for Penney’s thoughts: “It’s amazing to think that a single piece of amber with a single spider in it does not open minds to the realization that 20 million years is implausible fiction.”
    Let’s remind readers of the way evolutionists reason about fossils and dates.  How do you know this spider is 20 million years old?  Answer: it was found in a 20-million-year-old rock.  How do you know the rocks are 20 million years old?  Answer: because, stupid, it has this 20-million-year-old spider in it!
Next headline on:  Terrestrial Zoology • Fossils • Dating Methods

Can a Robot Build Itself?    09/30/2005  
The news media got a load of Joseph Jacobson’s toy robots that could make copies of themselves.  Ker Than on LiveScience, for instance, called these “biological” robots:

Inspired by biological systems, scientists have developed miniature robots that can self-assemble using parts that float randomly in their environments.  The robots also know when something is amiss and can correct their own mistakes.   (Emphasis added in all quotes.)

But the new robots mark the first time a mechanical system has been created that can self-replicate from random parts using the same principles as biological systems, which assemble structures from disordered building blocks using error correction.
    “We identified two ingredients about the biological process,” Jacobson said.  “One is that it can make these copies from random parts that are distributed throughout the environment, and second is that it can do so with very high fidelity [accuracy].”

One wonders of anti-ID apostle Ker Than lept onto this story during the week of the Dover trial to show that the problem of the origin of life may not be that bad.  He could show pictures of “self-replicating robots,” just like DNA.  The devil is in the details.
    This experiment supports ID and defeats chemical evolution theory in many important ways.  (1) It illustrates the extreme differences in complexity between Jacobson’s simple 2-part, 5-length strings of nonsense and the luxuriously ordered forms of DNA and proteins.  (2) It shows that intelligent guidance is required to make the parts fit together according to rules.  (3) It overlooks the problem of left- and right-handed forms.  (4) It requires a suitable environment for the parts to come together (here, a frictionless surface with ample spare parts).  (5) The error correction derives from the parts themselves.  In the cell, DNA errors are corrected by multiple proofreading machines.  (5) It makes the yield for lengthier strings of more parts appear hopeless.  (6) It demonstrates that no language convention arises by the attractive forces of components.  Jacobson got strings of GGYYG and YGGYY.  What does that spell?  What function or meaning does it convey?  Nothing.
    In living cells, the DNA is a code that specifies parts that have function.  These codes are translated by machines into another code.  Multiple machines and pathways exist to maintain and correct the DNA language.  Any resemblance, therefore, of these so-called “error-correcting robots” to DNA is as superficial as bits (0 and 1) are to an encyclopedia.  Don’t allow such things to be used as propaganda for evolution when they are really strong arguments for intelligent design.  According to Dembski’s no free lunch principle, any semblance of complex information achieved by this “evolutionary” algorithm was only made possible by the insertion of intelligent design on the front end.  Naturalism can permit no such luxury.
Next headline on:  Intelligent Design • Origin of Life

Let’s think this through.  If this theory were correct, 80-ton dinosaurs, fast-running velociraptors, and pterosaurs as large as fighter jets (09/09/2005) were able to live on 10% oxygen, yet mammals could only survive as small rats, and as time went on oxygen levels increased.  So the already big dinosaurs died off and the miniscule mammals grew in size due to the more oxygenated environment?
    According to prior evidence, some mammals were at least medium sized during the time of the dinosaurs (see “This badger ate dinosaurs for breakfast,” 01/12/2005).  The authors note this but simply dismiss it: “Data show a rapid increase from small to medium-sized mammals in the first few million years after the K-T event (Fig. 2).  This size contrast is blurred slightly with the recent discovery of larger Cretaceous mammals, but this trend does not appear to be driven by oxygen.”  Blurred slightly?  It falsifies their basic idea that oxygen drove the development of large placental mammals.  Whatever data they dislike are thus simply discarded as irrelevant.  Many other life forms, such as plants, insects, shellfish and crustaceans, grew to enormous sizes during the supposedly low-oxygen periods.
    Notice how they also placed their trust in the K-T meteor hypothesis: “Whereas a bolide impact at the Cretaceous-Tertiary (K-T) boundary and the ensuing extinction of dinosaurs provided ecological opportunity for the radiation of placental mammals,” la te dah, dum de dum dum, etc.  This is more of the opportunistic theory of evolution: if you clear the ground of big dumb dinosaurs, large mammals will evolve, as if by magic, to fill in the space.  Opportunity is thus the necessary and sufficient cause for the emergence of complete revolutions in body organs, body shapes, decorations, behaviors and capabilities, from bat flight to whale sonar, in hundreds of new kinds of animals.  The Darwinian Density: “Well, they’re here, aren’t they?  Since evolution is a fact, they must have evolved.”
    The researchers didn’t seem to notice that the carbon-isotope measurements contradict direct measurements of oxygen from amber.  According to an article on the USGS website, air trapped in prehistoric amber was claimed to have 30% oxygen in it – not 10%.  Were the “300 analyses by USGS scientists of Cretaceous, Tertiary, and recent-age amber from 16 world sites” wrong?  Or did these researchers forget to cross-check their measurements with the amber data?  How about a little classic lab experimentation?  They could grow mice in different amounts of oxygen and see if that affects body size.  Once they find the magic oxygen formula, they could breed elephant shrews into elephants.
    The hypothesis is based on circumstantial evidence, comparing oxygen with the geologic column, which is itself based on evolutionary assumptions.  One would think that a few more requirements beyond oxygen would be necessary for the “success story” of the mammals.  Why the news sources all repeated this wild idea uncritically is a study in itself.
Footnote:  It turns out that National Geographic, bless its evolved heart, did consider other requirements for mammals to flourish.  After indulging in the myth of “mammalian opportunism,” they quoted Robert Asher of the Berlin Museum of Natural History who, though impressed by the “fascinating correlation” of oxygen levels with mammal size and diversification, thought more had to be involved.  Of all the other “causative factors” he could have listed, he mentioned only the one that Darwinists love most, because it intuitively explains the rise of specified complexity without a Designer.  Listen carefully:

But is global oxygen is the magic bullet that explains the evolution of mammals 50 to 40 million years ago?  “My guess,” Asher said, “would be no. ... Like most other issues, there are a number of causative factors involved, including chance.”

Next headline on:  Dinosaurs • Mammals

This shows more of the trend reported last week (see 09/21/2005).  Notice which camp is always surprised.
Next headline on:  Cosmology

• Nature had two pieces this week, claiming the Dover trial represents Do or Die for Design.  This editorial ended, “Scientific organizations are well aware of this case’s significance, and many have lent public support to the plaintiffs [i.e., the ACLU and the 11 parents suing the school district for allowing alternatives to Darwinism].  A ruling in their favour will be welcomed not just by scientists and teachers but by American parents, whose children need to be protected from an injection of superstition into science teaching.”  (Emphasis added in all quotes; “sic” means “thus in the original”; our usage is intended to point out the assumptions and biases of the source.)
• Nature writer Geoff Brumfiel titled his report, “School board in court over bid to teach intelligent design.”  Even though the school board did not require teaching intelligent design, but only mentioning that an alternative source was available for the students, Brumfiel focused on the testimony of the pro-Darwinists, Ken Miller, Eugenie Scott and Eric Rothschild.  He reported that when Ken Miller was asked about problems with the origin of life, Miller responded, “I would rather say that Darwin was incomplete, not that Darwin was inadequate.”
• Science reporter Constance Holden wrote about “Darwin’s (First) Day in Court.”  She also highlighted Brown U professor Kenneth Miller, describing him in terms of a prize fighter: “Even the flagellum got its moment in the spotlight.  Miller tore into a favorite example used by biochemist and ID proponent Michael Behe....”  She made a short reference to the co-option argument; i.e., that the flagellum resembles a simpler molecular syringe, presumed to be a precursor.
• Kansas University:  Chancellor of KU, Bob Hemenway, wrote a letter to colleagues asking them to hold their ground against the ID movement.  “The United States cannot accept efforts to undermine the teaching of science,” he said, although he hastened to mention that no one is attacking people’s religious beliefs.  Creationism and intelligent design, he said, “are most appropriately taught in religion, philosophy, or sociology class, rather than a science class.”
• Citizen War Invades Museum  The Lawrence Journal-World reported about growing numbers of patrons entering the Sternberg Museum of Natural History angry about the pro-evolution exhibits.  Pro-ID advocate John Calvert claims there is no organized effort, but the museum director says the following scenario is becoming increasingly common: “A person or group will come in and confront one of the guides with rapid-fire questions for which the person is not qualified to respond” (see 09/22/2005 story).  The museum is counterattacking with more evolutionary displays and pamphlets, but Calvert, who thinks the museum is not educating but rather indoctrinating, predicts a backfire: “These exhibits are not going to work,” he said.  “People are going to wind up laughing at them.”

Hey; great idea.  Laughter may be one of the best medicines for chronic Darwinism.  Give it a try after the pepper spray of rapid-fire questions (be nice, of course—see 09/22/2005 commentary).  Let’s get the museum directors, the docents, the scientists, the lawyers and the reporters all laughing and having a good time.  Hire comedian Brad Stine to come into the dinosaur exhibit and give his wacky impressions of Dr. Noah Tall.  Stroking his goatee, gazing into the air, he could say, “Yes, children, this Diplodocus slowly morphed into your parakeet, over millions and millions of years.”  Somebody could hang a sign on the stuffed cow, “Whale Under Construction.”  Hold a karaoke contest of the Evolution Songs.  Find more ideas on the Darwin Day Top Ten (02/13/2004 commentary).
    Face it; evolution is funny.  It’s the craziest thing you ever heard.  “Hydrogen: a light, odorless, colorless gas, that given enough time, turns into people.”  Wah-hoo!  Hey, this could be just the thing: a positive, constructive strategy to heal the cultural rift in society.  It might even be good therapy for the Darwin Party leaders, who take themselves way too seriously.  Visualize Eugenie Scott and Ken Miller at the mike, hamming it up with Gory, gory evolution, 'tis ruthless marching on while the party is cracking up uncontrollably under the Charlie poster with the caption, “O, my sick stomach; I just looked at my eye in the mirror again.”
    One wonders if Hitler would have gotten anywhere if the crowds packed into his beer hall speeches not to be swayed, but for a rollickin’ good time at Amateur Comedy Hour.  Embarrassed at everyone mocking his antics, he might have slinkered away back to a career in art.
Next headline on:  Darwinism • Intelligent Design • Education

1. Messages from Heaven:  Richard Kerr in Science¹ reported on work by Strom et al. in the same issue² that the asteroid belt was the source of the so-called “late heavy bombardment” that is said to have pummeled the early solar system 3.9 billion years ago.  One researcher who had been working on this “problem” for 35 years completely changed his view based on the study.  Strom’s team hypothesized that the gas giants rearranged themselves, and then modeled how impactors might have been flung inward from the asteroid belt as a consequence.  Kerr writes, “Cratering specialists suspect that Strom and his colleagues are on to something, but they say the case remains open.”  Another said they could be right, but “we have to be careful.”
2. Crystal Balls:  A Purdue University press release says “meteorites offer glimpse of the early Earth.”  Purdue scientists measuring the isotopic ratios in Antarctic meteorites think they can deduce the temperature of their formation.  From this, they believe, they can tell whether they formed at the same time Earth formed, or later.  It’s not like reading a book, exactly; one scientist said, “There are still quite a few unanswered questions about the earliest periods of the Earth’s history, and this study only provides one piece of the puzzle.”
3. Treasure Chest:  As if to one-up the previous claim, EurekAlert printed a Florida State story that an “unusual meteorite unlocks treasure trove of solar system secrets.”  The Tagish Lake meteorite that fell in Canada in 2000 led a FSU “geochemist to a breakthrough in understanding the origin of the chemical elements that make up our solar system,” the press release claimed.  What did he find?  An unusual ratio of isotopes of osmium.  From this, he believes he can tell what kind of star produced the element, and when.  His hypothesis, however, flies in the face of earlier suggestions that the element came from dust from a nearby star.  No, the leader of the team says: his findings “reveal that the raw materials from which our solar system was built are preserved in a few exceptional meteorites, from which we can now recover the prehistory of our solar system.”

Several things stand out from stories of this genre.  (1) The new finding contradicts earlier beliefs.  (2) The new finding is put in the context of a vast field of unanswered questions.  (3) Evolution is a given.  (4) The accepted age of the solar system (4.6 billion years) is a given.  (5) Most of the work remains to be done.  (6) The check is in the mail (e.g., from this tiny tidbit of hypothesis, “we can now recover the prehistory of our solar system”).  (7) Once we figure this out for our solar system, we will unlock the keys to other stars and planets, and to the whole universe.  (8) This finding is the greatest thing since primordial soup.
    This is the way evolutionists kid themselves that they are doing science.  They envelop themselves in periodic tables, lab instruments, and equations.  So far so good.  But since the Big Picture of Evolution has already been decided to be fact by decree, every piece of data must be forced into it.
    Working this way requires adding whatever ad hoc elements are needed to keep the story going, as well as ignoring uncomfortable facts.  Dr. Walt Brown, for instance, who has a very different theory for the origin of impactors (see website), said this about Strom’s theory:

Without explaining how asteroids formed in the first place, Kerr and Strom try to explain why asteroids in the main belt were shaken up by moving the giant planets around, and appealing to the extremely weak Yarkovsky effect and planetary resonances.  (The radiometer effect is much stronger, because water molecules are much more massive than photons.)  Showing that the size distribution of MBAs [not accountants, but Main Belt Asteroids] corresponds to the early craters in the inner solar system does not mean that the early impacts came from the asteroid belt.

Each scientist working under evolutionary, naturalistic assumptions is a willing accomplice to this game of self-deception.  Their motive is to contribute a brick for the Temple of Charlie, which produces gratification that one is doing his part to advance the cult.  Whether the cult matches the real history of the universe, well – how could they ever tell?  Of course, you’re only likely to hear the evolutionary side in the media, because they are all part of the cult, too.
Next headline on:  Dating Methods • Solar System

Wait for this story to play out before jumping to conclusions.  If like most early man claims, it will be debunked in time.  Never be swayed by initial claims.  Wait for “the rest of the story.”
Next headline on:  Early Man

Oh good.  Now we can all laugh again as Sagan shows people, cities, spaceships and everything in the zoo and tells us, with all seriousness, “These are some of the things hydrogen atoms do, given fifteen billion years of cosmic evolution.”  Maybe the series should be renamed Cosmics.
Next headline on:  Media • Cosmology • Evolution

• LiveScience.com is posting a strongly anti-ID series by Ker Than:
  • Part 1 claims ID is trying to “drag science into the supernatural.”
  • Part 2 calls ID “the death of science.”  This article was reprinted on MSNBC.
  • Part 3 calls ID “belief posing as theory.”
  • Part 4 looked at the history of court cases that supposedly ruled “creationism” unconstitutional.
• MSNBC reporter Alex Johnson wrote about the trial.  Discovery Institute thought this article was fair-minded enough to reprint on their pro-ID site.
• New York Times printed a story with pictures.
• Wall Street Journal calls the case “Scopes 2005” (but this time, the Darwinists are the ones trying to outlaw their opposition).
• Fox News, along with other major news sources, reported on the trial.
• Lou Dobbs had Eugenie Scott of NCSE and Frank Sherwin of ICR face off for a few minutes, but the short time slot did not allow for much more than a few sound bites.
• Pressbox.co.uk last week tried to make the strange case that “intelligent design is blasphemy.”  They appealed to some religious people who think I.D. is blasphemous to science, and some who thought it is blasphemous to Christianity (because it declines to identify the Designer).
• York Dispatch wrote about the Discovery Institute’s refusal to back Dover.
• Discovery Institute did not approve of Dover’s policy, but nevertheless denounced the “Orwellian” attempts of the ACLU to stifle scientific inquiry.
• EvolutionNews, a media-watch blog of the Discovery Institute, has Jonathan Witt on the scene who is providing blow-by-blow coverage.  John West listed media myths to watch out for.

Saturn’s moon Titan is shrouded in smog that obscures its surface, but scientists have a trick: at certain infrared wavelengths, light travels unhindered through the haze, letting the complex geography be seen clearly.  We’re going to give you some wavelengths to see through the haze of rhetorical smoke that is obscuring the real atmosphere around the intelligent design movement.  The smoke is coming out in billows from certain Darwinistas.  Look at this big lie Ker Than tells, for instance: “Yet no true examples of irreducible complexity have ever been found.”  Are we to just take his word for it?  No elephants have ever been found in his living room, either, despite the smell and the fact he can’t move or see anything, because Big Science ruled that elephants cannot be invoked in explanations.  He follows it up with the old bandwagon gimmick: “The concept is rejected by the majority of the scientific community.”  With this kind of smoke in the air, a well-tuned Baloney Detector is a must for navigating through the media without following the blind into the ditch.  Learn to use well these penetrating wavelengths:

• Science and religion, not science vs. religion:  If you have been told that science and religion are two non-overlapping domains that have nothing to do with each other, you have been sold a bill of goods, and should demand a refund.  Philosophy of science has a long and varied history.  Up until the Darwinian usurpation, it was primarily religious people who did science.  They were the ones who categorized the fields of inquiry, devised the scientific method, founded the branches of science, and were motivated by their philosophy to do scientific work.  The word scientist did not even exist till William Whewell invented it in the 19th century; it was natural philosophy, restricted to the study of tangible, observable natural phenomena.  Scientists were committed to proof by observation, experimentation, and repeatability.  There was no conflict between the pursuit of knowledge (what science means, by definition) and religion.  This is not controversial.^*  Of all religions, in particular, it was the Judeo-Christian worldview that was the patron and best friend of science.  The supposed warfare between science and religion is a myth that was promulgated by anti-religious Darwinists in their efforts to make science a secular replacement for religion.
  ^*For support from disinterested scholars (which is always encouraged here), check out, for instance, the two Teaching Company college-level lecture series on the history of science, where you will find two reputable secular professors making this point emphatically.  You can also read our online book, or the new book by Rodney Stark, For the Glory of God.  Also, notice this line from John Tresch in Science 09/30/2005 in a book review of Making Modern Science: A Historical Survey by Bowler and Morus: “... the book shows that the history of science itself has a rich and varied history--how, for instance, in the 1870s and 1880s the idea of a longstanding ‘war between science and religion’ was invented to bolster budgets in new research universities....”
• Limits of science:  Science cannot know everything, because not everything can be tested in the lab.  History, for instance, is a branch of knowledge that deals with non-repeatable events of the past; consequently, the methods of investigation are different – eyewitness testimony, artifacts, journals, textual criticism, and the like.  This limitation becomes extreme when dealing with prehistory.  Without observers, one can only make inferences that are more or less plausible.  The farther back one goes, the more these inferences overlap heavily with assumptions, presuppositions and philosophical preferences.  In the limit (when considering ultimate origins), evolution and theology are indistinguishable; the story of origins becomes the science of one religion against the science of another religion.  Here, “science” loses all hope of testability and repeatability, and reduces to its core values: honesty, integrity, love of truth, submission to laws of logic, carefulness and other traits that are essentially religious values.  To suppose that Darwinists, who presume that honesty is a mere emergent property of matter in motion, are more capable of it than theists is as arrogant as it is self-refuting.
• Natural, Supernatural and Intelligent Causation:  Much of the smog in the debate comes from the Darwinist straw man habit of calling intelligent design “supernatural” and calling it “giving up on science.”  Penetrate this fog with your light saber and you will see much.  Intelligent design is not based on what we don’t know, but on what we do know.  It is not an appeal to a god-of-the-gaps or theological explanation, but the very approach science uses all the time to discern between intentional and non-intentional effects.  I.D. proponents argue that it is a superior explanation of complex, specified, information-rich phenomena, based on the uniformity of experience, than appeals to chance and blind natural law.
      Not all phenomena have intelligent causes, but ruling them out by definition is an arbitrary and potentially show-stopping limitation on science.  Intelligent causes can be discerned from natural causes through rational analysis of the causal resources available.  But it is an exercise in futility to rule out intelligent causes when an intelligence has, indeed, acted.  When one is trying to make an inference to the best explanation about Mt. Rushmore, for instance, or about an archaeological inscription or stone tool, it is foolish to restrict one’s thinking to natural forces like wind and rain.  The ID takes well-known and fruitful methods of design inference and applies them rigorously to biology – not with theological pronouncements from prophets, but with rigorous mathematical and logical reasoning – the same kind used in forensics, cryptography, archaeology, and even SETI.
      If the Darwinists did not have such a political and emotional stake in defending their religion of naturalism, they would find this perfectly acceptable and reasonable.  In short, ID is not a cop-out answer or escape clause the way the Darwinists portray it: “We can’t figure it out scientifically so God must have done it,” but rather a positive affirmation about something we can know from the uniformity of experience.  Any time we find a language – especially one that can be translated into another language and maintain its meaning – we know that a mind produced it.  To say otherwise in order to maintain one’s philosophical preference is the cop-out.  To promise “the check is in the mail” and “it’s an unsolved problem, but we’ll figure out some day” is the escape clause, and the Darwinists are red-handed guilty.
• Darwinism, R.I.P.  An assumption clouding up much of the reporting is that Darwinism works, or at least that it works better than any other scientific theory (see best-in-field fallacy).  If you have read Creation-Evolution Headlines for any time, you know that Darwinism is positive anti-knowledge (to borrow Colin Patterson’s phrase).  It cannot explain the origin of life, the development of the embryo, speciation, abrupt appearance of new body plans, anything.  It is a dismal failure, a lame, crippled, half-dead horse at the starting line where the rules prohibit the I.D. Seabiscuit from entry.  There is not a single part of evolutionary theory that is not controversial among evolutionists themselves.  The Darwinian method of science has two parts: (1) declare evolution a fact by fiat, and (2) hunt for corroborating evidence (that is, if you feel up to it; none is really necessary, since by #1, evolution is already a fact).  Darwinism has grown into an unwieldy, just-so storytelling empire built on Charlie’s flimsy heuristic (unguided, purposeless natural selection) that is tautological at its root, and fraught with a history of evil fruit.  Darwinists spend their time connecting distant dots of data with pure fiction.  They think that by extrapolating submillimeter changes in beak size they can explain the vast diversity of life, from whales to magnolias.  It’s time to call the Darwinists to accountability after 146 years of failure and open the field to fresh ideas.
• Design vs. non-design exhausts the possibilities.  LiveScience.com mocked anyone who disagrees with Darwinism by posting its “Top 10 Intelligent Designs (or Creation Myths)” with the implication that if alternatives to Darwinism need to be permitted, then we must decide if schools should teach the Norse creation myth, the Egyptian creation myth, the Zoroastrian creation myth, etc., or all the above.  Luring the unwary reader in with nude art was a cheap trick, but they forgot to include the most lurid fable of all – Darwinism.  The display assumes all these creation stories are on a level playing field.  Any reasonable person could rank them in order of plausibility, but that is beside the point.  Even with the historical fact that it was Christian Europe that gave birth to science, not Persia or the Norse or the Egyptians, that is also completely beside the point.  No one in the I.D. movement is asking that a specific religious account of creation be taught as science.  The issue is about design, not the Designer or how he designed – just whether the phenomenon under investigation was, in fact, designed.
      Either life was designed, or it was not.  Those options exhaust the possibilities.  Design can be inferred by the methods of science without making any claims about who did it, or why.  Even the Darwinists like Richard Dawkins admit that life looks designed for a purpose.  Their approach is to explain away the design, and tempt us away from our common sense and logic, to chase a phantom story that in the misty past design just “emerged” (their favorite miracle word) out of disorder.  Should this mythology have sole rights to be heard in science class?  Intelligent causes are known to be the only explanation for certain classes of phenomena capable of scientific investigation.  No one has ever seen a complex information-rich system, like the DNA language and translation factory, complete with error-correcting mechanisms, arise by chance or natural law.  Why should the philosophical naturalists, like snarling Dobermans, keep healthier bloodhounds, with a nose for design, at bay?  Why should science be arbitrarily restricted from unlocking the mystery of life with a key that works?  More ominously, why should philosophical naturalism be established as a de facto religion guised in the sacred name of science?

The Darwinist strategy is to attach the label “scientific” to their beliefs and label their critics “religious.”  In this way, they hope to protect themselves from scrutiny by framing the legitimate controversies about their storytelling empire in terms of religion vs. science.  They arrogate to themselves the euphemism “scientific” and try to pigeonhole anyone who disagrees with their fable with the meaningless and contemptuous label, “people of faith.”  By inference, they assume for themselves the contrasting ribbon, people of reason.
    Since we are immune to bluffing here, after evaluating their rhetoric and performance, we suggest a counter-label to describe the rabid Darwin defenders: People of Froth.  Foaming at the mouth, these merciless warriors emit masses of fearsome-looking, bubbling matter from their lips, making reporters wilt with awe.  But what is froth upon closer inspection, but a mere agglutination of thin, vulnerable membranes enclosing hot air?  Realizing this can inspire the next thing that is needed after confidence in one’s own intellectual weapons: courage.  Fear thou not the course of the wroth; go forth against froth with the force of truth.  Say that five times real fast, then act on it.
Next headline on:  Darwinism and Evolutionary Theory • Intelligent Design • Education

One of the best-attended sessions of that meeting consisted of papers from leading scholars who pondered the daunting challenges of reconstructing alien civilizations – at interstellar distances....
    “The approaches we take as archaeologists in our search for peoples from another time and place may well offer some useful analogy to the search for extraterrestrial intelligence,” suggested archaeologist Paul Wason, one of the participants.  “Our work is conducted without the benefit of direct contact with living beings,” he observed, which is akin to SETI’s attempt to detect intelligence around distant stars.
    But how can analogies help us anticipate contact with extraterrestrials?
    For starters, by providing a case study of Homo sapiens encountering an alien intelligence, Wason explained.  “The meeting of Neanderthals and sapiens may be a good example for analogy—for it was a meeting of two different kinds of consciousness,” he added.
    But be forewarned as we start to draw lessons for SETI from such encounters, Wason urged.  The analogy may be humbling.
    “It may be that in such a comparison of us with ETI, ... we are the Neanderthals,” he said.   (Emphasis added in all quotes.)

“Planned efforts to communicate beyond Earth should force us to step back and look at the big picture,” said Harrison, a professor at the University of California at Davis.  “Deciding what might be important for another civilization forces us to move beyond our pathologically narrow time span and develop a long term perspective.”
    Even if we never make contact, Harrison observed, we might reap significant benefits by pondering these issues now.
    “Determining what we should say and who should say it could be a useful self-study that fosters self-contemplation and encourages consensus,” Harrison noted.  “These deliberations should encourage us to think about what makes us human, where we are going, and how we conceive of our place in the universe.”

Does anyone need further proof that SETI is a religion? (See Michael Crichton’s allegation, 12/27/2003 link).  This psychologist, enamored with dreams and visions of contact with aliens, believes these super-beings will be able to help us answer the big questions of life, questions typically addressed through philosophy or religion.  Not only will they teach us wisdom, but we will learn to bow humbly before their eminence.  Even if they never show up, we can gain wisdom by contemplation of their existence.  Next thing you know, Harrison will have us all repeating some mantra, like seti, seti, seti, to help us meditate.
    Harrison and his fellow believers are converging on Fantasyland from both directions.  From the past, they misinterpret the bones of Neanderthal Man by relegating him to racial inferiority (see 09/23/2005 commentary).  From the future, they expect that beings will have evolved by natural means far beyond us, like gods.  A system that relies on myths and legends, teaches morality (e.g., humility and contemplation), tries to answer the big questions of philosophy, and encourages charitable giving to support the priesthood and infrastructure necessary to support them is indistinguishable from a cult.  SETI has come full circle.  Attempting to replace belief in a Creator God, they have become, to borrow Maxwell’s wordcraft, an enterprise to “curry favour with beings who cannot exist, to compass some petty promotion in nebulous kingdoms of mist.”  (See 08/10/2005 commentary; try re-reading Maxwell’s entire poem with SETI in mind).
Next headline on:  SETI • Early Man • Theology

We also analyze the distribution of splice variants across different classes of genes.  We find that tissue-specific genes have a higher tendency to undergo alternative splicing than ubiquitously expressed genes.  Furthermore, the patterns of alternative splicing are only weakly conserved between orthologous genes in human and mouse.  Our studies reveal extensive modification of the stem cell molecular repertoire by alternative splicing and provide insights into its overall role as a mechanism of generating genomic diversity.   (Emphasis added in all quotes.)

These findings add to the growing realization that the genome contains much more embedded information than mere gene count would suggest (see 09/08/2005 entry).  If the introns themselves (02/18/2005, 02/02/2005) transcribe into RNA regulatory elements, then nothing is wasted, and nothing is junk.  If all parts of the system can be shown to produce function, it becomes harder to claim evolution built this tight ship.  These authors’ weak attempt to produce an “evolutionary argument” did not demonstrate that any heritable, functional advantage derived from mistakes in alternative splicing, but only that it could have.  Did they demonstrate an example of a new function arising from a mistake?  No; they just expressed faith that randomness creates the possibility space for order.  This is a doctrine of pantheism (a religion).
    On the other hand, the high degree of conservation found in ubiquitously-expressed genes and at intron-exon boundaries are anti-evolutionary observations.  To argue evolution out of this data is to rely again on slippery homology vs. analogy arguments (see “Homology for Dummies,” 05/05/2004).  Because such arguments depend on embedded evolutionary assumptions, they are inherently circular.  It is just as logical to conclude that a common Designer built the system around two principles: (1) modular construction, wherein commonly-needed functions are coded similarly between different organisms, and (2) robustness, in which regulatory networks can maintain stability in changing environments.  The design inference has the added advantage of an adequate cause for the high degree of information involved.
    Whatever geneticists continue to uncover about the particulars, the system works.  Somehow, a human genome gives rise to a human, and a mouse genome gives rise to a mouse.  Unless mutations disrupt the program, the mouse will have all the parts in the right places.  It will be covered with the right kind of fur, have the right teeth in the right order, have feet and muscles and eyes and a brain and every organ necessary for its little life.  The molecular processes may seem disorganized to us.  We see that one gene can be alternatively spliced into several products, some which can produce opposite functions.  How does the right one get selected at the right time it is needed?  There are wonderful mysteries here that could be illuminated by a scientist looking for intelligent design.  If the DNA is not the master controller of its own transcription, what is?  What controls the spliceosome? (09/17/2004).  Can protein-protein interactions really be responsible for regulating the splicing, or is there another layer of genetic information directing their interplay?  What do all those short non-coding RNAs do?  How can so many competing processes and such a multiplicity of molecules guarantee a working mouse at the end of the assembly line?  We see only glimpses of how the plethora of processes at the molecular level leads invariably to the right result.  There may be more information and more design operating than we can possibly imagine.
Next headline on:  Genetics

The time has come to discard the evolutionary stories about Neanderthals being some sort of primitive, less-evolved ancestors of Homo sapiens.  In terms of physique, intellectual capacity and every other measure, they fell within the range of variability of modern humans.  They would probably be indistinguishable from Inuits or other stocky-build populations alive today.  Absence of tools or art could be merely a function of materials used.  Some jungle tribes today, for instance, make spears and blowguns that would rarely survive with their bones.  Assuming the hypothesis that Neandertals learned how to use longer-lasting materials from other people, this does not reflect on their intelligence.  Even modern humans learned how to work with different metals over different times and places.  If Neandertals picked up on new ideas that their slightly-different brethren were doing, this further proves their human nature.  They were capable of plagiarism.
    The fable of “Neanderthal Man” as a beetle-browed, stoop-shouldered, brutish human precursor, slowly evolving into today’s businessman has been known now for decades to be incorrect.  That myth served the propaganda of early Darwinists, but did a lot of damage by promoting the dark art of ranking humans on racial scales.  We owe brother Neandertal an apology.  Let us welcome Homo sapiens neanderthalensis, with a big hug and handshake, as peers in the neighborhood cave.
Next headline on:  Early Man

The evolution of complex and physiologically remarkable structures such as the vertebrate eye has long been a focus of intrigue and theorizing by biologists.  In work reported this week in Current Biology, the evolutionary history of a critical eye protein has revealed a previously unrecognized relationship between certain components of vertebrate eyes and those of the more primitive light-sensing systems of invertebrates.  The findings help clarify our conceptual framework for understanding how the vertebrate eye, as we know it, has emerged over evolutionary time....
    Fish, frogs, birds and mammals all experience image-forming vision, thanks to the fact that their eyes all express crystallins and form a lens; however, the vertebrates’ nearest invertebrate relatives, such as sea squirts, have only simple eyes that detect light but are incapable of forming an image.  This has lead to the view that the lens evolved within the vertebrates early in vertebrate evolution, and it raises a long-standing question in evolutionary biology: How could a complex organ with such special physical properties have evolved?   (Emphasis added in all quotes.)

The conservation of the regulatory hierarchy controlling beta-crystallin expression between organisms with and without a lens shows that the evolutionary origin of the lens was based on co-option of pre-existing regulatory circuits controlling the expression of a key structural gene in a primitive light-sensing system.

This strongly suggests that prior to the evolution of the lens, there was a regulatory link between two tiers of genes: those that would later become responsible for controlling lens development, and those that would help give the lens its special physical properties.  This combination of genes appears to have then been co-opted in an early vertebrate during the evolution of its visual system, giving rise to the lens.

Let us hope the highly-complex DNA-snipping protein emerged simultaneously (08/28/2003) to keep the lens from becoming opaque out of the factory, as well as mechanisms for stacking the crystallin cells and making them interlock, and supplying them with nutrients from the edges without blocking the light, rewiring the brain to receive and process the new sensory data, and a dozen other things that would make expression of raw crystallin useless to the unidentified, mythical “early vertebrate” that first decided to co-opt sea squirt technology.

A programmer wrote in and observed, “I can take code that performs the same or similar function and use it in a completely different program.  Sometimes I have to change things a little to make it work, sometimes virtually no changes are required.  That is economy of effort.”  Reusability does not demonstrate common ancestry without assuming it, nor does it explain the origin of the crystallin protein and the genes that regulate its expression.  He continued, “I can take 2 bicycle fenders, hammer them into one and make it into a motorcycle fender, but that doesn’t explain how the bicycle got to be a bicycle or how it got fenders.”

Co-option is just a fancy word for the Tinker Bell theory of evolution.  Evolution is a tinkerer, they tell us.  She cobs existing parts to build new things.  Aside from the gratuitous personification fallacy this commits, the idea requires that Tinker Bell be blind, dumb and indifferent.  In Darwinese, there is no teleology: Tinker Bell is not trying to invent an image-forming lens.  She flits from sea squirt to sea squirt with her mutation wand, zapping various individuals recklessly and carelessly.  It’s a lottery which sea squirt will find some benefit in the damage instead of dying from the genetic bomb.  Remember, no functional advantage, no natural selection – except the negative kind (Yikes! Eliminate this mutation before it kills us!).
    Can we get real?  One girder hanging over the canyon does not make a bridge (05/22/2002 commentary).  There is no smoothly graded sequence of transitional forms.  Whenever an organism is suggested as a primitive ancestor, as in the case of the box jellyfish (see 05/13/2004 entry), closer inspection shows the organism has eyes perfectly suited for its habitat and lifestyle.  Each visual system is too different from those of other organisms, and too complex to imagine having evolved on its own.  So the follow-up question to the EurekAlert Darwinist propaganda celebration is, where are science reporters exercising freedom of the press, freedom of conscience and critical thinking skills?  Keep reading.
Next headline on:  Darwinism and Evolutionary Theory • Mammals • Terrestrial Zoology

The question of whether evolution occurs is separate and different from the question of how evolution occurs.  The evidence is overwhelming that evolution has occurred – that it is a satisfactory explanation for the observations we make about the history, order, and diversity of life....
    Questions or debates about evolutionary mechanism have nothing to do with our confidence in whether evolution occurred.   (Italics in original, bold added.)

No.  Essentially all available data and observations from the natural world support the hypothesis of evolution.  No serious biologist or geologist today doubts whether evolution occurred; debate continues, however, among scientists about the mechanisms by which evolution occurred.

Science deals only with material causes of material phenomena.  Nothing we can observe in nature requires a supernatural designer; we therefore defer to material processes to explain what we see in nature.

This is a golden opportunity for informed visitors.  The Darwin Party has published all their Talking Points, and all that is needed is to formulate good follow-up questions aimed at them.  The Talking Points are so vapid and uninformed, this should be easy.  For instance, look at the way they treat this question: How do you know evolution happened a long time ago?

By examining fossils and comparing them to organisms alive today.  In the Museum exhibits, for example, a short film about Cornell professor Amy McCune shows how she uses fossil fish to study how evolution happened in what is now the Connecticut River Valley around 200 million years ago.  She collects fossils from different layers and compares them to fish alive today and tries to conclude how evolution may have produced the patterns of similarity and difference she observes.

This is a non-answer.  One has to assume evolution and long ages to believe it.  At most, it only demonstrates microevolution, which is not the issue.  The same fossils, layers and comparisons with live fish could be used by a knowledgeable creationist to argue against evolution and long ages and, instead, for a worldwide flood that sent many species into extinction.  The Darwinist answer confirms that evolutionary “science” is merely a storytelling enterprise by ideologues intent on force-fitting fragmentary observations into a preconceived belief system.  The blindness of evolutionists to their own circular reasoning is astounding.  The question was, How do you know evolution happened a long time ago?  The answer was, “Because evolution happened a long time ago.  See these 200-million-year-old fish?”  Surely the Darwinists could do better if better answers were available.
    The talking points provide nothing new (see 09/02/2005 commentary).  Most of them revolve around “science” vs “faith.”  The published guide perpetuates the myth that evolution is a fact of science (even if the mechanism is hotly debated), and anything that doubts naturalistic explanations is ipso facto “religious.”  This is a setup for any logical thinker, because it is another circular argument.  Ask, how can a theory without a mechanism be considered scientific?  How can one call evolution, a hypothesis (their own word) with no agreed-on mechanism, a fact without first assuming it is a fact?  How can one declare what is scientific and what is not with mere definitions?  If I discuss only scientific evidence in rebuttal, how can you assume I have a religious motivation without reading my mind?  How can I know you don’t have an equally philosophical motivation to deny design?  Surely you are not insinuating that a Christian is incapable of reasoning from evidence or caring about the truth, or that materialists are more unbiased, are you?  What if the true answer lies outside natural causes – what if it really was designed?  Wouldn’t that prevent naturalism from ever finding the right answer?  Eventually, the discussion must return to the observable evidence.  That is not where the Darwinians want the discussion to go.  When forced, the museum curator may point to all the exhibits of intelligently-designed organisms on the wall, and say, “See?  There is the evidence, right there.  Look at those peppered moths, for instance.”  Now we can get somewhere.
    In the film The Triumph of Design, Phillip Johnson looks forward to the day when students will respond to the evidence for peppered moths, finch beaks and the other usual Darwinist propaganda fare, with informed follow-up questions like, “Yes, we know about that.  We know the peppered moth story was a fraud, and that it did not really prove anything about macroevolution.  We know about Darwin’s finches, and that the changes to beak size showed no long-term trend; that does not demonstrate macroevolution, either.  Where is the evidence that macroevolution occurred?”  One can sympathize with a teacher’s sudden urge to go to the restroom.
    All this being said, the last thing any reasonable person wants is for a poor, well-meaning docent to end up sobbing in the restroom over an “extremely argumentative or confrontational” visitor.  Want to destroy any chance for progress against Darwinism?  Just be a mean-spirited, dogmatic, unkind, loudmouth disputer trying to make the docent or curator look foolish in front of other people.  For a Christian, who believes in loving one’s neighbor and sharing good news, nothing is uglier, and nothing will backfire faster.  The goal is to encourage discussion, to build bridges to other people – to appeal to their sense of logic and integrity.  Long-shut doors need to be opened so the fresh air and sunshine can come in.  Let the Darwinists be the ones culpable of shutting off discussion.  Let them be the dogmatists.  Let their tactics backfire against the evident congeniality and reasonableness of their opposition.  The firm but gentle pressure of an increasing number of thoughtful, informed visitors will have its healing effect over time.  Many of these docents are volunteers or poorly paid workers just trying to do their job.  (This is true, sometimes for summer hires, or leaders of cave tours who, without any formal training in geology, simply parrot scripts that glibly describe formations as x million years old.)  If such workers are merely repeating what they were told to say, it’s not fair to pin the blame for all of Dogmatic Darwinism on them as individuals.  Yet unwarranted claims should not go unchallenged, either, whether from trained curators or untrained volunteers.  What to do?
    One productive approach might be to speak with the docent alone, before the tour.  Let’s call the docent Linda.  Introduce yourself with a friendly greeting (it must be genuine, not forced), and let her know your point of view.  Reassure her that you are not there to argue; instead, say that both of us know that Darwinism is a controversial subject.  Let Linda know you respect scientific evidence.  Explain that many times evidence can be interpreted in more than one way, and that you just want the scientific evidence to be able to speak for itself as much as possible, and for problems or controversies to be acknowledged.  Ask Linda’s permission to present an alternative explanation for the fossil series, rock layers or whatever.  If she agrees, this takes the pressure off her to talk about it (and possibly misrepresent it) in front of the group.  If you are given the chance, be brief and accurate.  Don’t steal the show.  Hopefully you came prepared with knowledge specific to the display.  If she doesn’t want you to speak, at least she will know that an informed visitor is present, and that awareness may temper her dogmatism.
    Whatever happens, express kindness, appreciation and diplomacy at all times.  Show respect.  Compliment the things that are good about the museum.  Most people are more influenced by the way you say something than what is actually said.  Be real and transparent.  Don’t speak beyond your knowledge, but don’t settle for pat answers, bluffing or evasion, either.  The normal civil manners – waiting one’s turn, not interrupting, not attacking another’s character or motives – these should all be second nature.  If you can communicate an informed, knowledgeable position in a winsome manner, you may find others in the group – maybe even Linda – crowding around you after the tour wanting to hear more, and thanking you for speaking up.  Another unobtrusive way to influence the museum is to write polite but firm statements on response cards about dogmatic exhibits.  Here’s another: infiltrate the ranks.  Sign up to be a museum docent and ask the hard questions to the trainer in the “dealing with creationists” class.  This could neutralize Dogmatic Darwinism before it affects hundreds of visitors.  If the museum retaliates by forbidding non-Darwinists from joining the museum volunteer docent staff and requiring a statement of faith, call the ACLU.  When they decline, well, you have a story for the local newspaper, and perhaps a case for the ADF.  Readers may wish to write in with their own suggestions and experiences.
Next headline on:  Darwinism • Intelligent Design • Bible

More and more structure earlier and earlier – does this sound like evolution or creation?  Evolutionary biology has a Cambrian explosion.  Evolutionary cosmology has a structure explosion.  Creation has abrupt appearance intelligently guided and designed by an adequate cause.  Explosions?  We have no need of that hypothesis.
Next headline on:  Astronomy • Cosmology • Dating Methods

Manna from heaven.  So yet more violence, with the Earth subject to cataclysmic destruction?  Indeed yes, but there is a silver, or rather organic, lining.  It appears that Earth’s position, relatively close to the Sun, was highly precarious.  This was because the light elements, essential for life, were swept by solar radiation far beyond our planet, out to the so-called snow-line.  So no oceans, and life is cancelled?  Yet help was on the way, with a delivery system that via asteroids and comets resupplied Earth with both an ocean and a fertile brew of organic molecules.   (Emphasis added in all quotes.)

The only redeeming quality in his mythoid is an offhand reference to the fact that our earth occupies an unlikely and privileged position.  Let’s offer simple Simon our Comet Cocktail Blaster and see if he thinks he will remain fertile: a teaspoon of polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons (07/21/2005), one microgram each of L-glycine and one of D-glycine, carbonated with HCN in ammonia with water ice.  Delivered inside a rock thrown at 120,000 mph.
Next headline on:  Darwinism and Evolutionary Theory • Solar System • Dumb Ideas

Why should Darwin be mentioned in this article, except as a historical embarrassment?  There is no evolution here.  Heap big iguana is still iguana as much as peewee.  Size is not a “complex trait” in the sense of evolving wings or some new organs; it is just a modification of parts already present.  There is no long-term evolutionary trend here, but rather only oscillations around a mean that reflect climate conditions – otherwise we should see iguanas the size of Godzilla by now.  If natural and sexual selection work against each other, then stasis rules, not evolution.  Charlie won’t get anywhere with slippage on the treadmill (see 03/17/2003 entry).
Next headline on:  Terrestrial Zoology • Darwinism and Evolutionary Theory

Puzzles are good for scientists, and better observations are welcomed like rain in a desert, but scientists also need to learn to think outside the box.  One question never asked is whether these stars really are 200 million years old.
Next headline on:  Stellar Astronomy • Dating Methods

Although a positive relationship between male status and offspring count has been predicted by evolutionary theory and found in animal species and “traditional” human societies, in modern societies, most studies found no or even a negative relationship.   (Emphasis added in all quotes.)

There are so many things wrong with this study, Darwinists should silence these researchers so as not to embarrass the Party.  (1) When you have to use subsamples instead of representative samples to get the results your theory predicted, what does that tell you about your theory?  (2) What kind of bizarre sample is university male employees, anyway?  Perhaps it could be compared to the jungle, so we might grant that possibility.  (3) More offspring is not better.  In the university milieu they might all be gay.  (4) Evolution is not a force.  Suggestion: replace o with a, then it works.  (5) Men in high and prestigious positions don’t have time to have kids.  If their fable were true, why is the country being overrun with low-income workers with big families who grow up to repeat the cycle?  (6) Women don’t marry such men to have kids.  They marry them to divorce them and take their money.  (7) Feminists are going to get mad about this sexist idea, because it will appear to give scientific justification for male ambition.  (8) The argument is self-refuting, because if being a scientist is an example of a high and prestigious position, then these scientists did not come up with their fable to discover a truth, but to pass on their genes.
    That should do for starters.  “Evolutionary explanations” is an oxymoron, like vanilla fudge, rock opera or Microsoft Works.  O, for reporters who would not let the Darwinists get away with unadulterated tripe.  Nobody on a school board is going to read Ethology, but the Darwinists hope their little bugle calls on EurekAlert will make everyone salute as a conditioned response.  Sorry, those days are over.  Since the Baloney Detector went online, the prisoners in the Darwinist concentration camps (i.e., high school biology classes) have seen the outside world, and are no longer afraid of the authority figures behind the Bamboozle Curtain.
Next headline on:  Darwinism and Evolutionary Theory • Dumb Ideas

This system presupposes other systems in place.  If one cell extends a TNT, the other cell has to be prepared to receive it.  When a package arrives, the other cell needs to know what to do with it.  One must also ask how or why, before this system existed, any cell in a community of cells would even venture to send a message outside itself.  Here we have another method of communication (see also 09/14/2005 entry) that allows cells, long thought to be rugged individualists, to be cooperative members of society.
Next headline on:  Cell Biology • Human Body • Amazing Stories

Sorry, chimps were already out there, too (see 09/01/2005 story).  They didn’t evolve into anything like us.  Try again, and this time, let’s see some equations (see 08/22/2005 and 08/19/2005 entries) with the fables.
Next headline on:  Early Man • Dumb Ideas

Odd.  Biology got along just fine without this indispensable foundation for a long time.  In fact, it could be argued that evolution is only a naturalistic facade on a creationist superstructure.  John Ray, Carl Linnaeus, Leeuwenhoek, Pasteur and many others did just fine biologizing without evolution.  Their Christian faith was their motivation to do excellent scientific work.  Had the Nobel prize existed in their day, they certainly would have been among the most distinguished and honored recipients.  Any such lists of authorities are therefore contrived political statements.
    What Elie Wiesel endured under the Nazis is horrendous, but it did not have to make him lose his faith and go haywire over evolution.  The faith of Corrie ten Boom and other Holocaust survivors was their beacon of hope despite experiencing the darkness of human evil, and gave direction and purpose to their lives.  Wiesel has dedicated his life to helping people never forget what happened there.  Why then, instead, does he not point to the roots of that evil – the evolutionary ethics rooted in Darwinism that Haeckel took to Germany and spread like a dark evangelist?  How ironic that he would exalt the very foundation of two political ideologies – Nazism and communism – that have caused more inhumane treatment and death than the world has even seen.  Over 100 million deaths in less than a century can be traced to the actions of evolution-inspired dictators, and that doesn’t begin to describe the suffering of many millions more who survived their lies, tortures, brutalities, deprivations, midnight arrests, hard labor camps, gulags, and associated nightmares.
    We agree with Wiesel that mankind should never forget, but for even stronger reasons.  Our reasons give moral impetus to the debate over evolution today.  One should not presume that Nazism and communism have exhausted the potential evils inherent in Darwinian thinking.  One only has to think of today’s ethical tensions over stem cells, clones, chimeras, abortion, genetically-engineered humans and other controversies to envision horrors that would make Stalin look like a playground bully (see Apologetics Press for a recent example).  Learning from history is an important start.  That’s why we strongly urge readers to learn twentieth century history, and read accounts of those who survived the brutality of Nazi Germany and endured the unspeakable horrors behind the Iron Curtain.  That such atrocities continue to exist in North Korea, Cuba, China and other communist countries is a stern reminder that there is still much to do to combat this evil at its root.  For a scholarly treatment of the Darwin-based teaching on evolutionary ethics between 1859 and 1932 that fed Hitler’s views on racial policy, read From Darwin to Hitler by historian Richard Weikart.  And since many historians omit the Darwinian assumptions and motivations behind Marx, Engels, Lenin and Stalin, it’s vital to review Jerry Bergman’s paper on “The Darwinian foundation of communism” and first-person works like Solzhenitzen’s The Gulag Archipelago and Wurmbrand’s Tortured for Christ.  A tree is known by its fruit and is fed by its root.
    The Kansas school board member rightly said, “I don’t think anything should be taught as dogma.”  The debates over evolution and intelligent design cannot be won by appeals to authority.  Nobel laureates are smart people in their specialties, but that does not make them experts on politics, ethics, education and philosophy.  Look at the dumb things two of them said a couple of years ago (see 08/24/2003); some of their remarks demonstrate that they don’t even know that much about biology, let alone history or logic.  Maybe most of us can’t split an atom or learn how reverse transcription works, but anyone can learn common sense.  How ironic that scientists, supposedly committed to observation and verification by experiment, want us to accept their word on evolution as dogma.
Next headline on:  Darwinism and Evolution • Intelligent Design • Education