Better Late than Never:  Our featured Creation Scientist of the Month for May has finally been added on the right-hand column.  Read the short but interesting article about Douglas Dewar.

How Best to Propagate Darwin’s “Science”   05/31/2007    
Two book reviews recently discussed the problem of “scientific illiteracy” in society, which the authors equated with doubts about Darwinian evolution.

1. Dumb public:  In a review in Science of A Scientist’s Guide to Talking to the Media by Richard Hayes and Daniel Grossman (Rutgers, 2006), Barbara Kline Pope began with an anecdote to illustrate the pitiful state of scientific literacy in America.  She had overheard a lady in a doctor’s office waiting room saying, “Well, I can sort of believe in evolution, but I just can’t see that the big bang really happened.”  Kline was appalled at this example of the “dismal state of scientific literacy.”  She pointed to evolution and the big bang as “some of the most established scientific theories.”  It was not clear, however, what connection these two theories had with the rest of her review, which focused on the theme that “knowledge of basic scientific ideas is necessary for adequate citizen participation in decision-making, preparation for employment, and the practical aspects of daily life.”  How many include the big bang in their job applications, or evolutionary theory in their town hall meetings?
2. Group conundrum:  In Nature, Mark Pagel gave a surprisingly unenthusiastic review of David Sloan Wilson’s Evolution for Everyone: How Darwin’s Theory Can Change the Way We Think About Our Lives (Delacorte Press, 2007; see entry from 11/01/2005).  He left it doubtful this book will convince anyone to become an evolutionist.
       Like the previous review, this one bemoaned why so few people accept Darwin’s theory.  It’s a source of endless frustration to evolutionary biologists that the number of doubters remains high: currently 54% – up from 46% in 1994.  One answer might be that creationists are having more kids.  The other answer, however, is the tack Sloan Wilson prefers: evolutionists just haven’t done a good enough selling job: “if the evidence for darwinian evolution is presented clearly enough and often enough, any reasonable person will come around to the darwinian view.”  But Pagel realizes this will be a hard sell to human-type primates:

   What is there to say?  The usual answer, that we share more than 98% of our genes with chimpanzees, is becoming hackneyed.  It is the strangeness of human behaviour that really puts the darwinian view to the test.  And here there is much to discuss.  We have enormous brains that make us shrewd beyond belief in comparison to other animals, we have the only fully developed symbolic language on the planet, we cooperate with and engage in elaborate task-sharing and reciprocal relations with people we don’t know, we help the elderly, give money to charities, put on matching silly shirts to attend football matches, obediently wait in queues, die for our countries or even sometimes for an idea, and we positively ripple and snort with righteousness and indignation when we think others don’t do some of these things.  We even have a word for this sense of how others ought to behave – morality.  Chimpanzees, and for that matter other animals, aren’t like this.  No wonder the creationists don’t believe the darwinian account.

   Though Pagel called it an “agreeable little book,” he thought Sloan Wilson oversold the group-selectionist view of human sociality.  For every example of evolutionary altruism, Pagel had counter-examples of selfish individualism.  If group selection is so effective, he puzzled, why do bees with much smaller brains do a better job of cooperation than humans, if we have enjoyed such big brains for 3.5 million years?  With the Darwinists themselves still debating whether human altruism can be explained by group selection or individual selection, he considered Sloan Wilson’s approach too optimistic.

But perhaps even Sloan Wilson should not expect to change people’s minds about religion.  If our minds evolved to help us wade through the complexity of social life, to use groups for our own gain, and to help us rebound from ‘the slings and arrows of outrageous fortune’, which set of beliefs, on balance, will be more useful, religious ones (whether true or not) or a belief in natural selection?

A bigger conundrum is raised by Pagel’s quote: how did the evolutionary biologists figure out natural selection’s conspiracy to hide the truth from everyone else?  Maybe they are the ones that are deceived.  How could they tell?  There is no truth in Darwinland.  There is no standard of usefulness, either; i.e., useful to whom?  Is survival even useful?  Whatever useful means, it appears evolutionists aren’t very useful themselves.  Maybe they are just mutants that need to be selected away from the gene pool.  How ironic.  By pushing a useless theory called Darwinism, they won themselves a Darwin Award.
    We need a new category: Evil Evolution Quote of the Week.  The rabid atheist Sam Harris was at it again, as Madelaine Bunting wrote for the Mail&Guardian online.  Lumping Christians and radical Muslims in the same category, Harris pondered, “some propositions are so dangerous that it may even be ethical to kill people for believing them.”  What constitutes an atheistic standard of ethics, he did not say.  Vicki Baker used this quote for a pop quiz on the Dangerous Intersection blog.  It prompted a variety of heated responses.  Apparently, Sam Harris never quite got around to realizing this has already been tried (see 11/30/2005 entry).
Next headline on:  Darwinism and Evolutionary Theory • Education • Dumb Ideas

1. Brownian walk:  Researchers in Science¹ reported that myosin, a molecular “walking” motor used in muscle, harnesses the random force of Brownian motion to keep on track.  Brownian motion is the random shuddering action of small molecules due to thermal motion in the environment.  Like sails in the wind, myosin motors are built in such a way that they can make use of the vector component corresponding to the direction they need to go.  “The leading neck swings unidirectionally forward, whereas the trailing neck, once lifted, undergoes extensive Brownian rotation in all directions before landing on a site ahead of the leading head,” said Shiroguchi and Kinosita.  “The neck-neck joint is essentially free, and the neck motion supports a mechanism where the active swing of the leading neck biases the random motion of the lifted head to let it eventually land on a forward site.”  This way they get a push for free.  The authors did not discuss how this mechanism might have evolved.
2. Gut-level machinery:  Speaking of myosin, did you know it aids digestion?  Your digestive tract is lined with microvilli, tiny projections that vastly increase the surface area of the intestinal membrane that absorbs nutrients.  Now, scientists have found there’s a lot more going on in the tips of these projections.  Science Daily reported on work at Vanderbilt that showed myosin is concentrated in the tips and appears actively involved in shedding membrane material at the tips.  This process of vesicle formation and detachment may inject metabolic enzymes into the passing food material, as well as protect the lining of the intestine from invaders.  It’s all done with motors: myosin 1a, “a protein with the potential to generate force and move cargo around in cells.”  Matthew Tyska figured that there must be a reason these force-generating motors are concentrated in the microvilli, and sure enough, he found them at work: “It’s a little machine that can shed membrane from the tips,” he said.  This could give a whole new dimension to the term bowel movement.  Now his group is seeing if a similar mechanism operates in other cellular projections, like the hair cells of the inner ear.  See also EurekAlert.
3. Clockworks:  A paper in Nature discussed the latest research into the molecular mechanisms behind biological clocks.²  There is not one clock molecule involved, but a host of proteins that form feedback loops in cycles that express and repress certain genes in response to environmental cues.  One of the proteins is even nicknamed CLOCK.  The article payed particular attention to PGC-1-alpha, a protein that appears intimately linked to both the circadian rhythm and metabolism, affecting the production of glucose, fatty acids and haem (iron-containing molecules).  Many questions remain, however.  This is clearly a work in progress.
4. Splice and dice:  Another paper in Nature used the word “machinery” six times, speaking of the spliceosome.³  “A complex macromolecular machinery in the nucleus of eukaryotic cells is responsible for pre-mRNA splicing,” said Blencowe and Khanna.  They described how alternative splicing “is a remarkably efficient mechanism for a cell to increase the structural and functional diversity of its proteins, and it plays many roles in gene regulation” (see 05/20/2007).  The way alternative splicing is controlled is by RNA “riboswitches,” including messenger-RNA transcripts that can regulate their own expression with feedback and feed-forward loops.  These riboswitches can actually change shape in response to cues, and the shape determines how the gene will be expressed.  The authors used the word switch 18 times.
       Earlier, riboswitches were thought to exist only in bacteria and fungi, but now it appears they may be common in higher animals and in plants.  The authors speculated about evolution’s place in this: “It seems plausible that splicing-regulatory riboswitches represent a system that has evolved to coordinately regulate multiple genes in the same biochemical pathway using feedback and, in some cases, feed-forward mechanisms,” they asserted.  “Presumably, the rapid kinetics and energy-saving advantages afforded by bypassing protein-mediated regulation explain why riboswitch aptamers have persisted during evolution and function at many levels of regulation of gene expression.”  Yet this seems to assume what needs to be proved.  They used the presence of these switches, and the advantages they appear to confer, as evidence they evolved, yet provided no details on how that could have occurred by natural selection.  By contrast, the evidence they did provide shows the opposite of evolution: between very distant organisms, like fungi and higher plants, the genes involved are “evolutionarily conserved” (i.e., unevolved).
5. Machine language:  Two scientists publishing in PNAS sounded like factory planners, but were talking about cells.⁴  “Experimental and theoretical studies of proteins, acting as motors, ion pumps, or channels, and enzymes, show that their operation involves functional conformational motions,” they said.  A few sentences later, the machine talk continued: “Generally, a machine is a mechanical device that performs ordered internal motions that are robust against external perturbations.”  They were discussing how molecular machines in the cell, particularly myosin and ATP synthase, are examples of such robustness.  “In conclusion,” they said in the final discussion section, “we have shown that motor proteins possess unique dynamical properties, intrinsically related to their functioning as machines.”  This recalls a line Scott Minnich said in the film Unlocking the Mystery of Life: “It’s not convenient that we give them these [machine] names; it’s truly their function.”
       Part of the title read, “design principles of molecular machines.”  Yet the authors attributed this design to undirected chance processes of evolution in this statement: “Actual proteins with specific architectures allowing robust machine operation may have developed through a natural biological evolution, with the selection favoring such special dynamical properties.”  They ran a simulation of an “evolutionary computer optimization process” and achieved a “artificial elastic network architectures possessing machine-like properties,” but this statement blurs the line between intelligently-selected outcomes and chance.

Complex systems – for example, with many internal nonlinear connections like the integrated circuit modules of digital computers or, perhaps, the central nervous system – may not be easily analysed as devices, no matter how many experimental data are available.  But it seems clear, at least to a physiologist, that productive research is catalysed by assuming that most biological systems are devices.  Thinking today of your biological preparation as a device tells you what experiments to do tomorrow.
    Asking the questions in this way leads to the design of useful experiments that may eventually lead to the device description or equation, if it exists.  If no device description emerges after extensive investigation of a biological system, one can look for other, more subtle descriptions of nature’s machines.

These papers speak for themselves.  Was anybody impressed by the evolutionary storytelling?  Was it useful?  Did it contribute to understanding in any way?  How about, on the other hand, the machine language?  Can you talk machine language without assuming intelligent design?  Where do you think science is headed?  Bye-bye, Charlie.
Next headline on:  Cell Biology • Intelligent Design • Amazing Facts

Given the role of trust in social learning, it is particularly worrying that national surveys reflect a general decline in the extent to which people trust scientists.  To end on a practical note, then, one way to combat resistance to science is to persuade children and adults that the institute of science is, for the most part, worthy of trust.

This interchange provides some good food for thought, but before digesting it, add this antacid: what on earth do Bloom and Weisberg mean by science, anyway?  Sounds like they could use a purpose-driven life instead of a life divorced of purpose.
Next headline on:  Evolution • Bible and Theology • Education

Do-it-yourself agency, he said.  Self-organizing species, they called it.  Do ants have a sense of self?  Do they complain when they get walked on, like people do?  Just a momentary jest; whatever is going on, a lot of information has to be packed into a tiny space in the head of an ant.  The miniature robots know just what to do and do it extremely well (see 09/12/2001).  And what do you know, they say army ants have been doing this for 100 million years without any evolution (05/06/2003, 11/14/2000).  What do you know.
    Notice how in this and the next entry, evolutionists are fond of phrasing their materialistic theory in the personal, active verb form: such-and-such evolved a solution, or color vision, or whatever.  Foul!  The organism did not – and could not – conspire to do such a thing.  Their own presuppositions disallow it.  Don’t let an evolutionist confuse the issues with such personal, teleological language.  Force them to be consistent.  This will poke a hole that will leak all the pneuma out of their theory’s tires.  Simultaneously, their explanations will be seen not as highways, but as potholes, wider than their own bodies.  Flat tires on a highway that is all pothole and no road will get their theory nowhere fast, even if they all join hands and feet in a desperate attempt to keep the road from disappearing.  (As if that would help, anyway; they don’t even know where their road should go.)
Next headline on:  Terrestrial Zoology • Amazing Facts

If there was a 650-nanometer photon around but nobody to see it, would it still be red?  Sometimes we just have to put out the latest evolutionary groaners to let you see otherwise smart people making monkeys of themselves.  Monkey say, better red than deadhead. 
Next headline on:  Mammals • Darwinism • Dumb Ideas

Creation Museum Opens   05/26/2007    
The $27 million Creation Museum in Florence, Kentucky, built by Answers in Genesis, opened to the public on May 26, after years of planning and construction.  It features audio-animatronic dinosaurs, a planetarium, a bookstore, hiking trails and many elaborate exhibits.
    AIG unashamedly presents a Biblical interpretation of origins, science, history and ultimate destiny of man and the universe – within a Genesis timescale.  The entire project was financed by private donations.
    The New York Times printed a surprisingly favorable review of the museum by Edward Rothstein.  His only critical question was as follows:

The other catastrophe, in the museum’s view, is of more recent vintage: the abandonment of the Bible by church figures who began to treat the story of creation as if it were merely metaphorical, and by Enlightenment philosophers, who chipped away at biblical authority.  The ministry believes this is a slippery slope....
    But one problem is that scientific activity presumes that the material world is organized according to unchanging laws, while biblical fundamentalism presumes that those laws are themselves subject to disruption and miracle.  Is not that a slippery slope as well, even affecting these analyses?

The answer to Rothstein, of course, is that the Darwinists believe in miracles, too (see 05/24/2007).  Their miracles are more fantastic and unnatural than anything the Bible ever said.  So pick your miracle-worker: a God who has infinite power and intelligence, or time and chance.  And, for extra consideration, choose the bottom of the slippery slope you would like to live at: a world of hate, sin, strife and evil, or a world that abides by the moral laws of the Divine lawgiver.  Science did pretty well for centuries before atheists co-opted it for their agenda.  Read what Madelaine Bunting wrote recently about the new hate-filled atheists in Mail&Guardian Online.  Want to follow their lead?
    A regular reader who visited on opening day may provide another first-hand account soon.  In the meantime, watch how the media react to this (and media from around the world were on hand to practice their spinning skills).  Some Darwinista organizations, as we said (05/23/2007), are trying to prevent people from going.  AIG said that on opening day a protest group with a rock band set up camp nearby.  Here are the typical spins you are bound to see:

• This is bad science and will make America fall behind the world.
• This museum is brainwashing kids.
• Can’t we all just get along?

Monday evening 5/28, Fox News already interviewed an evolutionist using all three against AIG president Ken Ham.  There is only one word you need to know to respond to Darwiniacs who try to use these ploys.  HYPOCRISY.
Next headline on:  Media • Bible and Theology

Nature, through the trial and error of evolution, has discovered a vast diversity of life from what can only presumed to have been a primordial pool of building blocks.  Inspired by this success, a new Biodesign Institute research team, led by John Chaput, is now trying to mimic the process of Darwinian evolution in the laboratory by evolving new proteins from scratch.  Using new tricks of molecular biology, Chaput and co-workers have evolved several new proteins in a fraction of the 3 billion years it took nature.

Research in the Institute shares a common starting point.  It explores the remarkable structure and function of living systems, which have been honed by thousands of years of evolution and natural selection.  If man could duplicate what nature does routinely, all aspects of society would be transformed....

The Darwin Dogma of Miracles can be summarized: (1) assume evolution, (2) personify Nature, and (3) wave the magic wand of millions of years.  Then, miracles of exquisite design occur by natural law.  (Contradiction intended for ironic, dramatic effect.)
    The Intelligent Design movement should sue for trademark infringement, plagiarism, and copyright violations when Biomimetics credits the Darwin Party.  Design belongs to intelligent minds, not trial-and-error outcomes of blind, impersonal processes.  How many times do we have to educate the Darwinists and reporters that “guided evolution” is a contradiction in terms?  That “artificial selection” is not natural selection, but intelligent design?  When Dr. Chaput has a goal, designs the parameters, and makes a selection with his mind, he is exercising intelligent design by definition.  Darwin has nothing to do with it.  Mother Nature is a fiction, OK?  Give honor to whom honor is due.
    Good grief, the next thing we’ll see the Darwinists doing is offering prayers and sacrifices at the foot of idols of Mother Nature.  At least that would be more sensible than talking this way in a science lab.  Recall a worse example by Francisco Ayala earlier this month (05/10/2007).
Next headline on:  Biomimetics • Intelligent Design • Darwinism • Dumb Ideas

Watch for fireworks in the media when the Creation Museum opens.  Evolutionists can have their lying feathered dinosaur displays (05/06/2004) and their lying early-man displays (03/27/2007, 02/07/2007), often paid for with tax dollars to the tune of tens of millions, but let a little alternative science be displayed and the Darwin Attack Dogs come barking and snarling to scare people from entering.  The contest in the media should be interesting to watch.  How many reporters will dredge up tired old talking points and play the warfare-of-science-and-religion card?  How many will acknowledge the freedom and basic intelligence of people to weigh evidence and make up their own minds?  Anticipate some juicy Stupid Evolution Quotes of the Week.
Next headline on:  Media • Darwinism • Education

Although we don’t want to make a conclusion based on one team’s analysis of one fossil, we agree more scientific rigor is called for.  Notice how Nature was quick to hedge about the meaning of this disillusionment.  The rest of the media that love to display artists’ reconstructions of feathered dinosaurs are strangely silent so far.  We ought to be asking seriously, in the meantime, have we been sold a bill of goods (again) about feathered dinosaurs? (10/10/2005, 05/06/2004).  We have often seen the propensity of the Darwinists to take flights of fancy based on lightweight evidence (cf. 02/08/2006, 09/27/2000).
Next headline on:  Dinosaurs • Fossils • Birds

1. Psychology:  License to sin – What would you think of a scientist who tempted people to sin so that he could observe their actions?  Yet that is what a team did to students, as reported by EurekAlert.  They found that “asking people to think about vice increases their likelihood of giving in.”  This should raise red flags about the ethics and limits of science.
2. Theology: Drosophila philosophy – Believe it or not, an article on EurekAlert asks whether fruit flies have free will.  The article, about a study published on PLoS One, ponders what combination of chance and necessity (and only those ingredients) can explain the fly’s behavior.  Free will vs determinism has long been an issue discussed by theologians and philosophers.  Now, biologists are thinking they can give the definitive word.  Presumably, what applies to fruit flies applies to people as well.
3. Genetic engineering: Age of the chimera – The BBC News reported that the British government has bowed to pressure from scientists and overturned prohibitions against human-animal hybrid experimentation.  An ethicist called this “appalling” and said, “This is a highly controversial and terrifying proposal, which has little justification in science and even less in ethics.  Endorsement by the UK government will elicit horror in Europe and right across the wider world.”
       Proponents advertised hoped-for cures for genetic diseases, and argued it was “an area where these [chimeras] could be used for scientific benefit.”  According to The Guardian (UK), a geneticist said “I’m delighted that common sense has prevailed,” calling the hybrids just “cells on a dish.”
4. Education: Warning signs – The scientific press is sounding an alarm: a Darwin skeptic who was on the Kansas school board is now running unopposed for a post in Washington on the National Association of State Boards of Education.  Science Daily had only negative things to say about this development.  It “has many evolution advocates concerned,” and Ken Miller (Brown U) responded, “any situation that provides an opportunity for the opponents of science education to advance their agenda is a matter of concern.”
       This presupposes the Darwin supporters have no agenda.  It also asserts without proof that candidate Kenneth R. Willard opposes “science education” completely, and that only pro-evolutionists are in favor of science education.  If appointed, Kenneth R. Willard would not even start serving till January 2009.  He said in the Hutchinson News that evolution is not on the agenda of the NASBE, and he does not expect to bring it up.  Nevertheless, activists with Kansas Citizens for Science are urging a write-in campaign to oppose his election on the grounds he is “anti-education.”
5. Education: Litmus Test – Astrobiologist Guillermo Gonzalez, co-author of The Privileged Planet, was denied tenure at Iowa State last week, not because he lacked publications (he exceeded the requirement by 350%), or because his scientific work was substandard (it was acclaimed by peers, see Evolution News), but because he is a “Darwin skeptic” who supports intelligent design.  The news about his tenure denial was widely reported: for more information, see Evolution News and its review of report in Nature on the case.
6. History: Darwin letters opened – Want to read the innermost thoughts of Charles Darwin?  His letters have been posted on the web, announced the BBC News. 
7. Ideology: Biopolitics – Can evolutionary theory bring an end to the clash of ideologies?  Apparently psychologist John Jost (New York U) thinks so.  He is persuading colleagues that human tendencies to embrace various ideologies can be analyzed with equations.  See story on EurekAlert.
8. Propaganda: Anti-evolutionism as anti-science – An article in Science¹ tried to analyze the “childhood origins of adult anti-science behavior.”  Paul Bloom and Deena Skolnick Weisberg considered creationism and resistance to evolutionary theory as examples of anti-scientific attitudes, and portrayed them as childish behaviors that were not properly overcome through education.  Surprisingly, they admitted that common sense contributes to resistance to evolution.
       They ended, “This is the current situation in the United States, with regard to the central tenets of neuroscience and evolutionary biology.  These concepts clash with intuitive beliefs about the immaterial nature of the soul and the purposeful design of humans and other animals, and (in the United States) these beliefs are particularly likely to be endorsed and transmitted by trusted religious and political authorities.”  The idea is that scientists and educators need to be aware of these “anti-science” tendencies in their efforts to teach science – a science that is congruent with materialistic neuroscience and evolution.
       At Access Research Network, David Tyler wrote a lengthy critique of this article from an intelligent design perspective.
9. Emotions: Darwin book redux – Another paper in Science² resembled Darwin’s Book The Expression of Emotion in Man and Animals and even included the 1872 book as a reference.  In “Embodying Emotion,” Paula Niedenthal gave physicalistic interpretations of emotions in people and in animals.  Though she did not refer to evolutionary theory directly, her paper also lacked any reference to anything like a soul or spirit.  She said, “In particular, I discuss insights that have been stimulated by theories of embodied cognition and show how such theories account for the embodiment effects that you and Darwin might have been able to intuit.”
10. Morals: Biological morality – Jonathan Haidt got a full-page press in Science³ for his ideas on moral evolution (see 05/17/2007).  “More research is needed on the collective and religious parts of the moral domain, such as loyalty, authority, and spiritual purity,” he said, but it is clear in his paper that he meant all these things have an evolutionary basis, and zero epistemic authority.
        For instance, he said, “From prokaryotes to eukaryotes, from single-celled organisms to plants and animals, and from individual animals to hives, colonies, and cooperative groups, the simple rules of Darwinian evolution never change, but the complex game of life changes when radically new kinds of players take the field.”  From here he launched into a discussion of the morality exhibited by ants.
        Later, he remarked, “because morality may be as much a product of cultural evolution as genetic evolution, it can change substantially in a generation or two.”  That’s a clear statement of moral relativism.  Throughout his paper, evolution was one of the most prominent and common words.

And so, pray tell, how would they know it is wrong?  Right and wrong are judgments about truths that are immaterial.  If morals emerge from particles in motion, they are not morals at all: they are temporary, arbitrary trends of collectives of objects.  If you base an argument on something arbitrary, you can prove anything – including the idea that materialism is false.  Christian theists, by contrast, can prove something is right or wrong, because their presuppositions include the notion of eternal truths and laws of logic.
    Evolutionism is not a science.  It is a world view.  It is a silly world view that refutes itself, because it cannot generate intangibles like morals and truths by appeals to particles in motion.  Any one of the appeals to “science” that the evolutionist uses to defend its brand of morality, rationality or ideology is a two-edged sword.  Using the same arguments, a skilled debater can turn the tables and tie the Darwinist in intellectual knots.

For instance, moral relativism is a capitulation to the idea that anything goes.  But if anything goes, then calling anything immoral in any context is bad if the majority likes it – such as creationism.  Furthermore, attacking moral relativism itself can be good if the majority so desires – which refutes the idea that morals are relative.  Q.E.D.

You can’t get moral blood out of a materialist turnip.  The same goes for truths, laws of logic, and consciousness.
    Once you understand this, and watch how the radical Darwinists intrude into every area of scholarship, including fundamental issues far beyond biology, you see why the radical Darwinists are a threat: a threat to rationality, to morality, to education, and to civilization itself.  Their own words condemn them.
Next headline on:  Politics and Ethics • Education • Darwinism

1. Cosmology: Dark future – Several sources like Science Now and Space.com commented on the dark future of the universe if cosmic acceleration continues to tear the universe apart.  It’s not just a heat death any more.  Hundreds of billions of years from now, the story goes, galaxies will recede from our horizon, making us feel very alone before we freeze to death.  Christians might find it interesting to compare this eschatology with their own.
2. Astronomy: Venerable star – Is this star really 13.2 billion years old?  That’s what scientists at ESA said (see also National Geographic).  They called a star in our Milky Way a “galactic fossil” and claim it was born not long after the big bang.  The fact that it contains heavy elements means that, according to theory, even earlier stars had to form first, live, die and explode to provide the ingredients.  The dating methods are indirect, naturally.  Stars don’t have birth certificates.  Nobody seemed to question the estimate.
3. Cell biology: Tar babies – Imagine cells that can thrive in gooey asphalt.  That’s what biologists have found in the famed La Brea Tar Pits in Los Angeles, reported EurekAlert.
4. Zoology: Frog pharmacy – Why would God create highly poisonous frogs?  Maybe He didn’t.  An article on National Geographic says that the poison on frog skin, made of alkaloids, comes from mites they eat.  Certain species of frogs seem to have been able to tolerate the alkaloids and shuttle them onto their skin.  The mites pick up the alkaloids from leaf litter.  Some frogs end up tasting bitter, and some are highly poisonous.  The toxicity, therefore, may have been a consequence of a natural concentrating process that did not add any new information to the genome of the frogs or the mites.
       In a related story, National Geographic said that juices in frog skin might provide an ideal bug repellant.  The reporter wrote, “‘frog skin is really a portable pharmacy’ full of chemicals for keeping the amphibians healthy.”
5. Planetary science:  Enceladus friction – a new theory for how Enceladus produces geysers was offered in Nature and echoed in EurekAlert, National Geographic and Space.com.  The idea is that tidal forces open and close the “tiger stripes” or cracks in the southern hemisphere, producing heat like rubbing your hands together.  This might permit a geysering mechanism without water (which, National Geographic lamented, might decrease the odds for life).  The paper did not address how long this mechanism could last, nor why the other nearby moons are not so affected.
6. Genetics: Music of the proteins – Someone at UCLA decided to put proteins to music, reported EurekAlert.  The website allows visitors to download MP3 files and listen to them.  Amino acids were assigned chord values and the sequences were played in tune.  Listeners can judge whether this makes any scientific sense.
7. Climate: Global historic warming – Evidence for a “megadrought” in the 12th century has been deduced from tree rings in the Colorado Plateau, reported EurekAlert.  The U of Arizona researcher was surprised by how deep and long it lasted.  He said it “could be an analogue for what we could expect in a warmer world.”  It is doubtful the American Indians were burning coal and gasoline at the time, so don’t blame them.  Incidentally, prolonged droughts have been suggested as reasons for the decline of the Anasazi.  Their cliffside remains scattered throughout the southwestern United States were left abandoned en masse.
8. Marine biology: Cold treasure trove – Scientists were amazed to find a rich, diverse ecology under Antarctic ice.  The Live Science article was published widely.  Evolutionists thought that harsh environments would produce less biodiversity.  See also the National Geographic report with pictures.
9. Marine biology: – Demise greatly exaggerated – Another Coelacanth was pulled up in Indonesia, reported PhysOrg.  This classic living fossil species that was thought to have gone extinct in the time of the dinosaurs was found alive in 1938.  Since coelacanths live in deep, cold waters, they normally do not survive after capture for more than a couple of hours.  This one lived 17 hours.  Their bony fins, once thought to be evolving into limbs for land travel, are used for swimming: “The powerful predator is highly mobile with limb-like fins, and it gives birth to live young rather than laying eggs.”  The report in National Geographic has a photo of the fish and fisherman.

This shows just a little of the material that must be sifted to bring you Creation-Evolution Headlines daily.  For every article reported, typically several dozen others are examined.  Every once in awhile we need to “clear the desk” to prepare for new stories coming in.  We hope you appreciate this service; write here if you have a comment.
Next headline on:  Cosmology • Astronomy • Solar System • Cell Biology • Terrestrial Zoology • Marine Biology

A textbook human gene encodes a protein using a single reading frame.  Alternative splicing brings some variation to that picture, but the notion of a single reading frame remains.  Although this is true for most of our genes, there are exceptions.  Like viral counterparts, some eukaryotic genes produce structurally unrelated proteins from overlapping reading frames.  The examples are spectacular (G-protein alpha subunit [Gnas1] or INK4a tumor suppressor), but scarce.  The scarcity is anthropogenic in origin: we simply do not believe that dual-coding genes can occur in eukaryotes.  To challenge this assumption, we performed the first genome-wide scan for mammalian genes containing alternative reading frames located out of frame relative to the annotated protein-coding region.  Using a newly developed statistical framework, we identified 40 such genes.  Because our approach is very conservative, this number is likely a significant underestimate, and future studies will identify more alternative reading frame-containing genes with fascinating biology.

Try writing a message that could be read three different ways depending on which letter was the starting point.  It is extremely difficult.  If this turns out to be a common mechanism in genetics, it reveals an astonishing level of intelligent design.  How, and why, would a blind process do such a thing?  Notice how geneticists were not even looking for this amount of complexity because they did not believe it was possible.
    This technique of “data compression” could expand the functional information of the genome significantly.  ARF!  The hunt is on.  Sic the design community on this fascinating puzzle.  They won’t be tied up and muzzled from announcing the return of the Master to biology.
Next headline on:  Genetics • Intelligent Design • Amazing Facts

Science Is for the Birds   05/19/2007    
Birds, with all their variety and functionality, are a never-ending source of study for scientists.  Here are some recent feathery findings:

1. Memory masters:  Scrub jays are like us: they can plan ahead, regardless of mood.  Current Biology did a study that proved these common western birds can cache tomorrow’s breakfast regardless of their motivational state.  The authors said, “The fact that the birds act in favor of a future need as opposed to the current one challenges the hypothesis that this ability is unique to humans.”
2. Lab masters:  A Nevada scientist wrote Science about his backyard experience watching his labrador retriever trying to match wits with a crow.  When the dog would get too close to the crow’s cache, the bird would grab it and move it to a new location.  Watching this “regular ritual of food hiding and searching,” he quipped, “The crow relied on his memory of his stashed food to beat the dog to the prize nearly every time.”
3. Whoops, no sexual selection here:  A “textbook example of sexual selection” has been called into doubt.  Current Biology reported that the longer tails of male barn swallows are not just for attracting mates.  They apparently are “due to naturally selected variation in the aerodynamic optimum for each individual” – in other words, they have a function for the male’s flying behavior.  See also the original paper.
4. Whoops, co-evolution in trouble:  Elisabeth Pennisi in Science described a situation in which co-evolution has apparently stalled out, and is not a simple arms-race kind of story.  Clark’s nutcrackers and the pine cones they feed on are in a more complex situation when the squirrel factor is considered.  “Ecologists have found that, in organisms from birds to bacteria, coevolution is not a sure thing,” she said, describing “nagging inconsistencies” in the observations.
5. Rabbit terror:  National Geographic had a one-page description of South America’s “terror birds,” known only from fossils.  These 7-foot monsters with scary-looking beaks “could have outrun an Olympic sprinter,” the article by Peter Gwin says.  They were likely driven to extinction when a land bridge from North America allowed big cats, dogs and bears to enter their territory  Despite the artist’s illustration of the big bird closing in on a terrified man, Gwin said they likely chased down rabbits (not humans) for food.

What does a 7-foot, 250-pound terror bird say?  (Deep voice) “Polly want a rabbit, NOW!  Humans call them “terror” birds, but who knows; maybe they were as silly as turkeys.  It’s hard to infer behavior from bones.  There are living birds dangerous to man, though; the cassowary can run fast and deliver a disembowelling kick to a human unlucky enough to intrude on its territory.  Thank goodness most birds are cute little things without Alfred Hitchcock conspiracies lurking in their highly intelligent brains.
    Watch the classic nature film Winged Migration to get your passions triggered about birds.  Our feathered friends are an endless source of fascination with their amazing abilities to fly, swim, run, sing, dance, and communicate with a high degree of intelligence.  Think of the tremendous variety between a terror bird and a hummingbird: visualize penguins (09/10/2004), condors, swans, egrets, kiwis, pigeons, toucans, woodpeckers, spoonbills, doves (09/09/2004), albatross, chickadees, birds of paradise, flamingos, ostriches (08/17/2004), swifts (04/29/2007), cormorants (05/24/2004), parrots, majestic eagles, owls, and many more.  Birds have mastered and adorned the sea, the land and the skies.
    Think how many birds add music to the world.  How does a little lightweight critter project its voice over the range of half a mile?  Sing “Listen to the mockingbird” and then do it.  Think; what amazing intelligence lies behind this ability to sing a rapid-fire repertoire of dozens of unique, complex melodies for hours?  Evolutionists are up a tree even with their textbook cases.  Each month it seems they have to scuttle a previous story.  Do a good deed; teach your parrot to say “Charlie was a slacker; birds believe in God.”
Next headline on:  Birds • Evolution • Amazing Facts

Sixty million years ago, on a planet crawling with mammals, one tree dweller rose above the crowd on paper thin wings.  So goes the story of ancestral bats, which, equipped with flight and a sixth sense called echolocation, mastered the night sky and flourished.

Some day we are going to have a good laugh at the Darwinians.  We’re going to collect these kinds of statements and put them with cartoons.  Maybe we could call it the Real Darwin Awards.  Now, if they would just eliminate themselves from the gene pool...
Next headline on:  Mammals • Darwinism • Dumb Ideas

[Jonathan] Haidt shows how evolutionary, neurological and social-psychological insights are being synthesized in support of three principles: 1) Intuitive primacy, which says that human emotions and gut feelings generally drive our moral judgments; 2) Moral thinking if [sic] for social doing, which says that we engage in moral reasoning not to figure out the truth, but to persuade other people of our virtue or to influence them to support us; and 3) Morality binds and builds, which says that morality and gossip were crucial for the evolution of human ultrasociality, which allows humans – but no other primates – to live in large and highly cooperative groups.
    “Putting these three principles together forces us to re-evaluate many of our most cherished notions about ourselves,” says Haidt....
    Haidt argues that human morality is a cultural construction built on top of – and constrained by – a small set of evolved psychological systems....
    “We all start off with the same evolved moral capacities,” says Haidt, “but then we each learn only a subset of the available human virtues and values.  We often end up demonizing people with different political ideologies because of our inability to appreciate the moral motives operating on the other side of a conflict.  We are surrounded by moral conflicts, on the personal level, the national level and the international level.  The recent scientific advances in moral psychology can help explain why these conflicts are so passionate and so intractable.  An understanding of moral psychology can also point to some new ways to bridge these divides, to appeal to hearts and minds on both sides of a conflict.”

If you are a veteran reader of these pages, it’s time for a pop quiz.  The commentaries here should not be doing all the work for you.  Each of you needs to think through these ideas and make sound reasoning part of your skill set in life.  So before we post a response to the article, please go read it, and list on a sheet of paper your own reasons why the ideas expressed are stupid, wicked, or both.  The quiz is open book and open notes.  You can refer to previous commentaries and our Baloney Detector for help.  Come back later for our reactions, or send your responses here.
Next headline on:  Evolution • Politics and Ethics • Dumb Ideas

Urban planners and city citizens should place value on preserving open space near town, accessible to people.  The most biodiverse parks of all are the natural ones.  An urban park with all oaks and grass is better than nothing, but how about trying one with dozens of species of trees and herbaceous plants and a variety of birds and wild animals?  (picture 1, picture 2 picture 3)  See what effect it has on your sense of well-being.  Think of it as a science project.
Next headline on:  Health

In conclusion, we propose a type of mechanism, driven solely by a temperature gradient, which strongly accumulates even small protobiological molecules in semiclosed hydrothermal pore systems.  This setting provides a compelling, dissipative microenvironment to promote the first steps in the molecular evolution of life.

Equally, freshly precipitated mesoscopic mineral grains are subjected to thermal cycling by the convection.  Their catalytic surfaces might generate nucleic acid multimers by thermally triggered periodic condensation and unbinding reactions.  In this context, we note that, in a comparable thermal convection setting, DNA was shown to replicate exponentially by using the, albeit protein-catalyzed, PCR.

Models are OK, and have a long history in science, but the bluffing-to-proof ratio in this paper was beyond the pale.  These authors might be able to defend it by claiming they “said” it was just a simulation in a computer, but nobody scanning the contents would think so.  Few readers are going to look at the Materials and Methods section (usually boring, unless you’re trying to replicate the results).  This paper gave every appearance of being an empirical, laboratory experiment in the real world.  It was all done with software smoke and model mirrors.
    As we saw 12/03/2004, one of the conspirators (Russell) is a master bluffer.  He has a propensity to gloss over major problems and swap out experimental facts for cartoon pictures on a screen.  In his 2004 lecture, he made everything look so simple, so problem-free, life should just pop out of the pore.  If life by the yard is hard, and life by the inch is a cinch, wouldn’t life by the micron be right on?  It’s a foregone conclusion.  The hard part over, little Poregum would just gloriously evolve into us.  Some unbiased, objective scientist he is.  He should read Shapiro’s devastating critique (02/15/2007) of such notions.
    Observational facts have a way of tarring up computer models.  Let us ask a simple question: where are these nucleotides supposed to get their ribose?  Doesn’t Russell and gang know that deep-sea vents are the last place one would expect to find ribose?  It is so difficult to imagine it forming by chance, in fact, that Steven Benner (11/05/2004) had to envision it forming in a desert in the presence of borate.  (Not Borat, mind you – no humans allowed, no matter how perverse.  It’s borate.)  Now, since Benner’s surface model falsifies Russell’s deep-sea model, and vice versa (Russell thinks the surface environment is “disastrous” for life), this one little “problem” we raised is enough to gum up the software and send their little computer instantly into BSOD (blue screen of death, pun intended).  We would continue with more real-world pressure, but as Windows users know, one BSOD is enough to ruin your whole day.
Next headline on:  Origin of Life • Physics • Geology

You see how they do it, don’t you?  Evolution is never subject to any doubt.  Evolution is a fact.  This IS a human ancestor, got that?  Don’t even THINK of anything else.  Now that you are sufficiently brainwashed to follow the tale, uncooperative evidence can be molded to fit.  They just rearrange the plot a little: large brain size evolved a little later in the sequence that led to us.  Never would it enter their pointy-headed pea-brains that this extinct monkey, designated Human Ancestor by the Darwin Party, might be irrelevant to the family line of Beethoven and Einstein.
    True to form, the news lemmings followed the script precisely (10/11/2006 commentary): (1) assume evolution, (2) observe a fact, (3) make up a story to fit the fact into the assumption.  The Darwin Party is so skilled at this fability (01/16/2007 commentary), we need to coin another new word, fogma, to describe it.  Fogma is dogma so thick you can’t see through it unless you’re outside it.  Once surrounded by fogma, it begins to represent all of reality—a shifting, shapeless mass of evolutionary change.  The only thing providing a sense of stability in all the fability is the voice of the Darwin Party announcer speaking through the fogma and interpreting the ever-shifting view.  (It is not politically correct to ask the announcer how he knows this.)
    The Charlie and Tinker Bell Theater uses state-of-the-art fogma machines with Charlie’s secret recipe.  It produces the perfect colloid of mythoids (05/29/2003 commentary).  The stage hands aim the fogma so that it reveals only the things they want the audience to see – the props that fit the script at the right time – and conceals everything else.  Surprises are inserted occasionally to keep the audience awake.  After all, every good work of fiction needs a crisis.  But not to worry; the entire production crew knows how to bring the plot to a proper denouement.
    This works well indoors under controlled conditions.  Take the fogma out into the real world, though, and the sunlight of evidence quickly dissipates it.  The design of the world then stands out in clear relief.
Next headline on:  Early Man • Fossils • Dumb Ideas

Seeds Muscle Their Way into the Soil   05/11/2007    
A biological motor has been found, of all places, on the seeds of wild wheat.  A team of German and Israeli scientists watched wheat seeds and found they could dig themselves into the ground.  How can a dry seed, with no muscles, nerves or circulatory system, accomplish such a feat?  It all becomes clear when you look under the awning.
    You’ve probably seen the long strands attached to the seeds of grasses like wheat and oats.  These are called awns.  They’re not just decorative; they are actively involved in seed dispersal.  Once the seed drops to the ground, with awns still attached, a remarkable mechanism goes into action.  As the humidity rises and falls throughout the day and night, the awns respond by bending or twisting.
    How does the bending take place?  At first, it seemed surprising anything would happen, because the tissues in cross section look uniform under an electron microscope.  The authors, though, found a remarkable feature: a “huge acoustic impedance contrast” in cross section that affects the stiffness of the awn shaft from one side to the other.  In cross section, the shaft resembles the shape of a mushroom with a cap.  The cap portion had twice the Young’s modulus as the stem – a stiffness the equivalent of spruce wood.  As humidity changes, the differential stiffness causes the entire awn to bend.  By analogy, consider how a bimetal strip, like the coil in a thermostat, bends and straightens in response to temperature.  Not only that, “silica tiles stiffen the epidermis and protect the structure as it interacts with the soil.”
    So let’s follow the action in the wild.  The seed, awns and all, falls to the ground.  In real time, it might look like nothing is happening.  The seed, after all, is dead; its tissues are removed from any source of nourishment or internal energy.  A time lapse movie, however, shows the seed appearing to spring back to life.  This time, it’s a robotic life exacting its energy from the air.  The alternate bending and unbending of the awns gives a kind of “muscle” to the seed, propelling it along the ground – and even into the soil!
    This mechanism for seed dispersal has been known for some time.  What’s new is that the scientists found tiny silicified hairs on the outside of the awns that act like a ratchet – they force the motion to go one way.  As a result, when oriented horizontally, the seed will swim like a frog along the ground.  (They actually said this: “The movement is reversible; thus, the humidity cycle causes a periodic movement of the awns, which resembles the swimming stroke of frog legs.”)  When oriented vertically, the seed acts like a power shovel.  The awns open and close like the handles of a post hole digger.  Meanwhile, those silicified hairs latch onto the soil particles, only allowing the seed to go down, not up.  Thus, the seed works its way deeper and deeper into the soil – safely out of the reach of predators, fire and drought.  “This suggests that the dead tissue is analogous to a motor,” they said.  “Fueled by the daily humidity cycle, the awns induce the motility required for seed dispersal.”
    This mechanism is optimized, they said, for the soil environment of the Fertile Crescent, where civilization first began to farm wheat thousands of years ago.  In some kinds of domesticated wheat, the awns are no longer active.  The authors speculated that the length of time since domestication has reduced the function of the awns without removing them entirely.  Because humans now provide the muscle to plow the seeds into the soil, the awns have atrophied.  Apparently “use it or lose it” applies to seed muscle as well as the animal kind.
    In their summary, the authors suggested that humans might gain additional nourishment from wheat – food for thought, that is.  The passive-muscle mechanism in wheat seeds might inspire, among other things, new ways to move weed killers where needed:

The understanding of this seed dispersal mechanism may help in developing new concepts in weed control.  The microscopic mechanism found to provide motility to the seed may also serve as a model in biomimetic materials research.  Indeed, a hydration-dependent bending movement was recently reported in an artificial system consisting of nano-silicon columns embedded in a hydrogel film.  From a mechanistic point of view, we have discovered a device for movement that is composed of passive elements.  Locomotion is provided by a volume containing nonoriented cellulose crystallites that shortens on drying and pulls the awn like a muscle.  The energy source for this active movement is the daily cycle of air humidity.

A passive muscle driven by moisture in the air—amazing.  Could a lowly grass figure out that it needed both a tissue differential with the right acoustic impedance to produce bending at the correct Young’s modulus, at the same time that it needed silicified hairs to act as a ratchet?  Without both, this “frog” would swim in place and get nowhere.  And what contractor laid the silica tiles?  Silicon is not a normal part of plant tissue; it had to be guided into place by epidermal cells while the seed was growing.  The fibrils in the awns, also, need to be arranged exactly right to produce the differential impedance.  The arrangement of all the parts needs to be complete before the mechanism will work.  Think of that – then think about the additional wonder that there are more motors, ratchets and machines at work, on a much smaller scale, inside every cell of the plant.
    It was nice of the authors to spare us any evolutionary just-so stories about how this all came together by chance.  Their only use of the E word was in reference to human history: “The short evolutionary time since domestication (about 10,000 years), probably allowed the complete loss of awns in several domesticated wheat lines, but not the alteration of the awn structure.”  If so, this is a case of devolution, not evolution.  They actually used the word design twice.*  Anyone believing evolution could design this mechanism needs to eat more whole wheat to provide better nourishment to the brain.
    The authors provided a couple of short time-lapse video clips to illustrate the bending action, but the best way to see this is to get a copy of the wonderful Moody Video production called Journey of Life.  The filmmakers made an eye-popping time-lapse sequence of wild oat seeds, which propel themselves by a similar mechanism, but with twisting action instead of bending.  You would swear you were looking at insects crawling along the ground instead of plant seeds.  This and many other ingenious seed-dispersal mechanisms are wonderfully illustrated in this film (also recapped in Part 1 of the trilogy Wonders of God’s Creation).**
    Plants may seem passive, anchored to the ground.  In their own ways, though, they get around like world travelers: crawling, climbing, boating, ballooning, launching, helicoptering, hitchhiking and hunting (e.g., Venus flytrap), surprising us each time with their built-in ingenuity.

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*Anecdote:  One of the authors of the paper works for the Biotechnology Department of the Tel Hai Academic College in Upper Galilee, Israel.  This is in the vicinity where a certain Teacher told some parables about wheat and sowing (e.g., Matthew 13).  He also said, “I tell you the truth, unless a kernel of wheat falls to the ground and dies, it remains only a single seed.  But if it dies, it produces many seeds.” (John 12:24).  He was speaking in reference to the results His impending death would accomplish.

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**Project:  This article and the Moody films suggest a science project for your junior-high or high-school student.  Many video camcorders have a time-lapse function (sometimes called interval timer).  If you already own one, you have the most expensive part of a good science project.  Look for backyard weeds and grasses with awns or other external structures; for instance, the seeds of filaree (Erodium cicurarium) work like little power drills.  Suggest a hypothesis for how the shape of the seed contributes to its dispersal.  Build a terrarium where you can control the cycles of temperature and humidity using electrical timers, and use the camcorder interval timer to record the action.  Show your video clips with your display at the science fair.  This seems like a sure way to attract the attention of the judges – and the envy of the other students.  Better still, a demonstration of biological design might kindle some thoughts about a Designer.
Next headline on:  Plants • Biomimetics • Amazing Facts

Darwin’s greatest contribution to science is that he completed the Copernican Revolution by drawing out for biology the notion of nature as a system of matter in motion governed by natural laws.  With Darwin’s discovery of natural selection, the origin and adaptations of organisms were brought into the realm of science.  The adaptive features of organisms could now be explained, like the phenomena of the inanimate world, as the result of natural processes, without recourse to an Intelligent Designer.  The Copernican and the Darwinian Revolutions may be seen as the two stages of the one Scientific Revolution.  They jointly ushered in the beginning of science in the modern sense of the word: explanation through natural laws.  Darwin’s theory of natural selection accounts for the “design” of organisms, and for their wondrous diversity, as the result of natural processes, the gradual accumulation of spontaneously arisen variations (mutations) sorted out by natural selection.  Which characteristics will be selected depends on which variations happen to be present at a given time in a given place.  This in turn depends on the random process of mutation as well as on the previous history of the organisms.  Mutation and selection have jointly driven the marvelous process that, starting from microscopic organisms, has yielded orchids, birds, and humans.  The theory of evolution conveys chance and necessity, randomness and determinism, jointly enmeshed in the stuff of life.  This was Darwin’s fundamental discovery, that there is a process that is creative, although not conscious.

And this is the conceptual revolution that Darwin completed: the idea that the design of living organisms can be accounted for as the result of natural processes governed by n