Month-End Close-Out   10/31/2007    
Sometimes the creation-evolution news comes in too fast.  Here’s a baker’s dozen from the October shelf, lest they go stale; time to start a new batch for November.

1. Charity begins at worldview:  David Cyranoski in Nature (450, 24-25, 10/31/2007) investigated why the level of charitable giving in prosperous Japan is a tenth of that in America.  It’s not just due to economic realities, regulatory policies and taxes.  The behavior is consistent from rich to poor, from corporate to private.  The most intractable problem, he wrote, was “a culture in which individuals, rich or not, do not generally donate.”  Cyranoski interviewed a patient advocate and a scientist who are trying to change the culture.  “People think the government is going to do everything for them,” explained a leader of a philanthropic organization in Tokyo.  The author did not delve into possible religious reasons for the disparity between Japanese and American attitudes about charitable giving – Japan is less than 1% Christian, while America is nominally 75% or more – but did refer to societal belief in the collective rather than the individual.  Is this a problem science can fix?
2. Dino adventure:  Alison Abbott in Nature (450, 18-20, 10/31/2007) wrote up an adventure story about attempts to excavate dinosaur bones along the Colville River, Alaska.  The ill-fated expedition was full of troubles, woes, infighting and only partial success, but spoke of this “whole trove of dinosaur fossils – mostly fragmented skulls and bones belonging to hadrosaurs” as quite remarkable, a “home to diverse species of polar dinosaurs.”  Unfossilized bone has reputedly been found in this 200 km bone bed, which displays evidence of a watery catastrophe, says creationist writer Margaret Helder.  Remember the tracks found at the south pole?  (See article on EurekAlert and the 10/18/2007 entry).
3. No room for error:  Biophysicists constructed their own protein loops, reported a team from University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, and found them to be delicate.  Tiny changes in the amino acid order produced large changes in the loops.  Writing in PNAS, they said, “These results suggest that the high-resolution design of protein loops is possible; however, they also highlight how small changes in protein energetics can dramatically perturb the low free energy structure of a protein.”
4. How the sherpas do it:  Tibetans live at high altitude and carry heavy loads with ease in conditions that would quickly exhaust most flatlanders (see 06/17/2005).  How do they do it?  A mostly-American team found that they have more nitric oxide (NO) in their bloodstream, which increases blood flow.  “This suggests that NO production is increased and that metabolic pathways controlling formation of NO products are regulated differently among Tibetans,” they found.  “These findings shift attention from the traditional focus on pulmonary and hematological systems to vascular factors contributing to adaptation to high-altitude hypoxia,” they concluded.  This seems to suggest that a simple change in a regulatory factor, rather than substantive physiological changes, allowed these people to adapt to their unique environment.
5. Spanish tiger tusks:  Large mammal bones in abundance have been found in a “vast fossil hoard” near Granada, Spain, reported the BBC News.  “Giant hyenas, sabretoothed cats, giraffes and zebras lived side by side in Europe 1.8 million years ago.”  About 4,000 fossils have been found so far.  They say this place, near a crossroads of ecological zones, was a hyena den, where hyenas feasted and left the bones.  Must have been some hyenas to feast on mammoths and sabretooth cats.
6. Lava vs meteor:  Chixculub didn’t do in the dinosaurs, Gerta Keller is still arguing.  Despite the nearly weekly matter-of-fact statements about the meteor that made the dinosaurs go extinct, a press release from the Geological Society of America discussed Keller’s view that supervolcanism in India was responsible.  Not only was the impact event too early, it produced one tenth of the deadly gases that came from India’s Deccan traps, she calculated.
7. Dino tracks in China:  Parallel trackways of “raptor” dinosaurs have been found in China, reported Science Daily, suggesting that this species did hunt, or at least hike, in groups.
8. Reptile tracks in Canada:  News@Nature reported a discovery of reptile tracks from Canada claimed to be 315 million years old – “1 million and 3 million years older than the previous find” (and a kilometer lower in the rock strata).
9. Western science:  Science magazine (11/02/2007, Vol. 318. no. 5851, p. 733) gave a portrait of Xu Guangqi, the Renaissance man of China (b. 1562).  He brought science and geometry to the East.  Where did he get it?  From the West.  He learned it from Jesuit missionary Matteo Ricci, and spread its influence across the land.  Xu Guangqi brought calendar reform, improvements to irrigation, and Euclid’s Elements to China, along with other Western ideas.  “For his achievements, he has been compared to Leonardo da Vinci and Francis Bacon” (provided he reference his sources).
10. Eastern stem cells:  China and Australia are collaborating on stem cell research – with adult stem cells, that is: see ScienceScope Oct. 26 in Science.  The $1 million Australia-China Centre for Excellence in Stem Cells will be “using adult mesenchymal stem cells to treat cancer and diseases of the lung and liver,” then combining the research with immunology to “push the field forward,” the paragraph said.
11. Make like a lemur:  We’re all related to flying lemurs, reported National Geographic based on a phylogenetic study in Science (11/02/2007, Vol. 318. no. 5851, pp. 792-794).  Look before you leap.
12. Ringmoons:  More small embedded moonlets have been found in Saturn’s A ring, reported Science Daily.  They seem confined to a narrow belt.  Scientists think they are relatively recent, not related to the initial origin of the rings.  Even so, explaining the apparently youthful age of the entire ring system remains a challenge.
13. Convergent design:  Elaborate tri-cusped molars evolved separately more than once, if a story in National Geographic is credible.  A new species of Jurassic mammal found fossilized in China had the same molars, “very advanced in terms of its tooth structure,” that unrelated mammals also had.““since Pseudotribos robustus belongs to a different and long-lost lineage, it must have evolved the cut-and-grind tooth independently,” the article said matter-of-factly.  “This is an example of a process known as convergent evolution.”  The National Geographic Society partially funded the research that was published in Nature (11/01/2007, 450, 93-97).

These are just a few examples of the dozens of articles that pass before our editorial eyes in an attempt to inform our readers of noteworthy discoveries relating to origins.  Your letters keep this service going.  Write here if you have a comment.
Next headline on:  Fossils • Politics and Ethics • Mammals • Dinosaurs • Cell Biology • Human Body • Solar System

In the past decade, though, the crane population in Uganda has fallen from 50,000 to 20,000, primarily due to witch doctors—also known as traditional healers—who use the animals in folk medicine and poachers who take the birds from their natural habitat....
    The healers crush the eggs with herbs to sell as a “love potion.”  Feathers, claws, and beaks of the cranes are also used in drinks and as decorations for promoting monogamy and affection.
    The crane is also perceived as a good omen that can cast away evil spirits from children.

If you are appalled at both cases, good.  You have not bought into the white science vs. black religion dichotomy, which has been roundly debunked by most historians of science, such as Lawrence M. Principe (Johns Hopkins; see Teaching Company lecture series).  It means you are wise to the either-or fallacy.  It also means that you assume Judeo-Christian morality as a precondition of judging right from wrong.
    Clearly there is plenty of good and bad in both science and religion.  If we can judge between good and bad science, as does James Randi, the skeptics societies and the Ig Nobel Prize judges, we should also be able to judge good and bad religion.  If it is wrong to judge science based on bad examples, it is wrong to judge all religion because of witch doctors who drive beautiful birds extinct based on foolish superstitions.  A little more reflection will reveal that science and religion are not watertight compartments but have many aspects that overlap and reinforce one another.
    If you are an evolutionist, or an atheist, on what basis could you claim that what the witch doctors are doing is bad?  According to Darwinism, primitive peoples and their religious sensations evolved, as did their prey, the cranes.  If the cranes are wiped out by the humans, too bad.  The humans are obviously the fittest.  Evolutionists should actually praise the selfishness of the native people who are trying to improve their reproductive fitness, because selfishness is the ultimate good in Darwinland.  Darwinists believe that even altruism is a byproduct of selfishness.  Decrying the birds’ fate only makes sense if humans have souls, who have an innate sense of true moral categories that should make us care about such things.
    On a scatter plot of case studies in science and religion, we should expect to find clusters of good religion and good science, bad religion and bad science, good religion and bad science, and good science and bad religion.  We can make these judgments only if we presuppose a righteous Creator.  Because Christians and Jews believe in a holy, personal God who called all things He made good, and created man in His image, they alone have a foundation for making sound moral judgments based on God’s holy standard.
    So, Darwin Dogmatists, ease up on your fellow academics who disagree with the reigning paradigm, and hear them out.  Stop judging them until you can define and defend your moral categories, and consistently judge your own actions and beliefs accordingly (including the integrity of science).  This means you will have to acknowledge Judeo-Christian moral standards at the outset.  If not, please explain where your moral categories come from, and why anyone else should feel the way you do.
    Then, let the good scientists and good Jews and Christians join the fight to save the endangered creatures God has put under our stewardship.  Suggested method: win the Ugandans to Christianity, so that they have a basis for sound moral judgment and appreciation for creation.  Then educate them in science and ecology so they will know how best to care for their fellow created things.  Educate them in logic and Bible doctrine so that they will not fall for superstitious myths (II Timothy 2:23-25, Ephesians 4:14-15).  This will heal a fallen society from within so that the population will have an internal motivation to do good, without the need for police and government regulations.
    Halloween is also Reformation Day.  The Protestant Reformation was not just a theological quibble over doctrine.  It was a call to freedom of conscience for each individual to respond to his or her Creator in faith, love and reason – to have personal access to the Word of God in their own language.  Many historians have attributed the rise of science, political liberty, the end of tyranny and slavery, and a plethora of new social institutions based on personal responsibility to that fateful day on October 31, 1517, when Martin Luther, in a one-man crusade of righteous indignation at a moral evil he witnessed (his people enslaved by a foolish superstition), nailed his 95 Theses to the church door in Wittenburg.
    The story is complex, and Luther was far from a perfect man; he also was indebted to brave predecessors such as Jon Hus and John Wycliffe.  Luther’s crusade bore good fruit because he studied God’s word intently, using his God-given reason, instead of acquiescing to the doctrines of mere men, and had the courage and opportunity to open this door of freedom to others.  One of his passions was to get the Word of God into the common language so that individuals could study it for themselves.  Western civilization has benefited immensely since.  (For a summary of the benefits, see this Reformation Society article).  The ending of the movie Martin Luther says, “Luther’s influence extended into economics, politics, education and music, and his translation of the Bible became a foundation stone of the German language.  Today over 540 million people worship in churches inspired by his Reformation.”
    Is this not morally superior to the Halloween haunts of witch doctors who enslave poor people in dark superstitions?  Let’s give the captive people of tribal villages the same opportunity.  Jesus Christ can turn the heart of darkness to everlasting light (I John 1).  When that light illuminates both science and religion, the fusion of good religion and good science is a recipe for whooping cranes and joyful people.

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Exercise:  List leaders in various fields who were products of the Reformation, along with the benefits they brought to humanity.  Examples: J.S. Bach and G.F. Handel (music), William Wilberforce (human rights), Johannes Kepler (astronomy), John Milton (literature), Adam Smith (free market economics), John Adams (political liberty).  Suggested reference: How Christianity Changed the World by Alvin J. Schmidt.

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Next headline on:  Darwinism • Intelligent Design • Politics and Ethics • Theology

Amphioxus Is Green, Like Coral   10/30/2007    
Evolutionists may want to combine their song “It’s a long way from Amphioxus” (02/23/2006) with “It isn’t easy being green.”  Green fluorescent protein (GFP) has been found in the lungfish Amphioxus, according to a press release from Scripps Institution of Oceanography.  Why is this not easy?  Because it’s a long way: “The researchers say amphioxus’ GFPs are very similar to those of corals, an interesting fact since the two animal groups are separated by hundreds of millions of years of evolution.”  Now they are trying to find a function for GFP in the slender, slippery lancelets that allowed them to hold onto an ancient evolutionary innovation for so long.

If you are laughing out loud, good.  It shows you are not completely hypnotized by evolutionary mists and vapors.  How did you like that euphemism they tossed out, as if we weren’t paying attention?  “Interesting fact,” they called it.  Try “devastating falsification.”
    GFP may well have a function in lancelets, but that has nothing to do with helping Charlie weave his fable that they got it from corals.  Finding GFP in lancelets is like finding human genes in a shark – it’s not at all what Charlie would have expected.  Wait a minute – they found that, too (12/26/2006).
Next headline on:  Marine Life • Evolution

Crystal Power Is Not Evolution   10/30/2007    
What would Max Planck think?  The Institute named after him put out a press release, “Evolution in the Nanoworld,” that claims that synthetic molecules can organize themselves by an evolutionary principle of selection:

The automatic molecular assembly and selection steps exhibited by the molecules, which start as random mixtures, demonstrates a fundamental step in the evolution of life.  The organization is activated by instructions which are built-in to the molecules.  During assembly, molecules exhibit active selection: those in incorrect positions move to make room for others which fit properly.  The molecular-level observation of such self-selection gives, for the first time, direct insight into fundamental steps of the biological evolution from inanimate molecules to living entities.

Dr. Mario Ruben’s research team at KIT [Karlsruhe Institute of Technology, a partner in the research] is responsible for designing molecules with built-in instructions, which when read out activate the self-selection process.  He comments: “Spontaneous ordering from random mixtures only occurs when built-in instructions are carefully designed and sufficiently strong to initiate successful self-selection.”

Note: The following commentary should not be perceived as anti-research.  On the contrary: we want a return to rational science that follows the evidence and avoids making preposterous metaphysical claims.  The press release contained an escape clause: “The resulting nanostructures also hold great promise as an efficient avenue to new catalysts, nanotechnologies, and surface applications.”  Great!  Focus on those goals, without the evolutionary nonsense, and you can get positive vibes here.  The evolution-talk has absolutely nothing to do with the nanotechnology.  Like a parasite, it only hangs on and saps the energy.
    OK, what is wrong here?  Making a connection from this research to the origin of life is so far-fetched, it is patently absurd.  ID people and creationists have been pointing out for decades the difference between the biological genetic code and crystallization, but no creationist should be required – the fallacy should be obvious to any thinking person, especially a scientist.  A grade-school child could understand the difference between a snowflake and a book.
    Notice that these researchers are esteemed men at Germany’s highest ranking research institute.  We’re not talking about intellectual slouches here.  This is the degree of absurdity you get in scientific reasoning and explanation when science becomes so entrenched in a materialistic paradigm it is incapable of thinking outside of it.  These guys have chained themselves in Plato’s fun-house, thinking the warped mirrors represent reality.
    Meanwhile, the incorrigible Darwinists at Univ. of Georgia are still at it, according to EurekAlert, thinking abiotic adenine is a step toward the origin of life (see 10/22/2007 entry), and EurekAlert gives them full court press.
    How do you get scientists to stop making absurd claims?  Two suggested therapies: (1) shame, and if that doesn’t work, (2) cut off the funding.  If the mad scientists still won’t change their evil ways, well, then we have Max Planck’s own view on scientific progress.  The renowned physicist, a Christian through his life, once quipped, “A new scientific truth does not triumph by convincing its opponents and making them see the light, but rather because its opponents eventually die, and a new generation grows up that is familiar with it.”  ID needs about 30 more years for the attrition in the Darwin Party to clear the field.  (And the air.)
Next headline on:  Origin of Life • Intelligent Design • Dumb Ideas

Also found in rocks from the same formation and of the same age are footprints of other relatively large animals and fossils of insects and plants, Lucas explained.  There is even a saucer-sized footprint of an unknown vertebrate that suggests larger four-footed beasts lived far earlier than ever before suspected.

Sound familiar?  Larger, advanced creatures living much earlier than previously believed, in exquisitely preserved rock that they just “know” is hundreds of millions of years old.  Sounds like a broken record in more than one sense (09/18/2007 commentary).
Next headline on:  Terrestrial Zoology • Fossils

Book: Intelligent Design Argument Turns Leading Atheist to God   10/29/2007    
“There is a God,” announces a former leading atheist on the cover of his new book.  Antony Flew changed his mind a few years ago partly because of the design argument: the fine-tuning of the universe, according to the blurb on Amazon.com.  New arguments by philosophical theists like Alvin Plantinga and Richard Swinburne also played a large part.  The Amazon description sums up the import of this book: “In one of the biggest religion news stories of the new millennium, the Associated Press announced that Professor Antony Flew, the world’s leading atheist, now believes in God” (see 12/09/2004).
    In an exclusive interview with Benjamin Wiker on To the Source, Antony Flew made it clear that intelligent design was a decisive factor in his change of heart:

Anthony Flew: There were two factors in particular that were decisive.  One was my growing empathy with the insight of Einstein and other noted scientists that there had to be an Intelligence behind the integrated complexity of the physical Universe.  The second was my own insight that the integrated complexity of life itself – which is far more complex than the physical Universe – can only be explained in terms of an Intelligent Source.  I believe that the origin of life and reproduction simply cannot be explained from a biological standpoint despite numerous efforts to do so.  With every passing year, the more that was discovered about the richness and inherent intelligence of life, the less it seemed likely that a chemical soup could magically generate the genetic code.  The difference between life and non-life, it became apparent to me, was ontological and not chemical.  The best confirmation of this radical gulf is Richard Dawkins’ comical effort to argue in The God Delusion that the origin of life can be attributed to a “lucky chance.”  If that’s the best argument you have, then the game is over.  No, I did not hear a Voice.  It was the evidence itself that led me to this conclusion.

It’s good N.T. Wright has added a Christian apologetic to this book.  He made a good impression with his inputs to the new film The Case for Christ (09/16/2007).  Rejection of atheism is only a halfway house; we hope Flew considers the same evidence that convinced Lee Strobel.  Having a sincere friend like Gary Habermas is probably helping.
    The significance of this book is not that everything Flew says will be agreeable to Christians, but that it illustrates the power of the evidence for design.  Antony Flew, an influential atheist for over 50 years, retained enough intellectual integrity to follow the evidence where it leads.  This is especially courageous after publishing the opposite view for so long.  It is extremely rare for someone to retract an opinion after they have published it – not just an error, but a deeply held belief.  The argument for design convinced Dean Kenyon to do so, and now Antony Flew.
    We hope fair-minded atheist readers will take this opportunity to consider the evidence these two men found powerful enough to make them swallow their pride and switch sides.  How about starting with Lee Strobel’s film The Case for a Creator, followed by The Case for Christ.  Drop by these pages regularly, too.
Next headline on:  Intelligent Design • Bible and Theology • Cosmology

  “Our Machiavellian intelligence is not something we can be proud of, but it may be the secret of our success.  If it contributed to the evolution of our large brains and complex cognitive skills, it also contributed to the evolution of our ability to engage in noble spiritual and intellectual activities, including our love and compassion for other people”, Maestripieri said.

His theory also ascribes evolutionary success to those who use sex for power.  Ladies and gentlemen used to despise their fellow humans who acted like brute beasts.  It’s not that people prior to Darwin failed to notice that we share much in common biologically with other creatures.  They just understood that there are superior values to our biological drives, such as self-control, honor, integrity, righteousness, fairness, justice, unselfishness, rationality and common sense.  Brute beasts, lacking these moral and intellectual capacities, were never held responsible for them, but neither were they held up as models for human behavior.  Evolutionary philosophy, by contrast, celebrates our baser nature unconstrained by reason and ethics.  Darwinists only get away with it by borrowing rationality and ethics long enough to dispense with them, a self-refuting position.
    For undermining all vestige of human nobility by ascribing it to monkey antics under mindless evolutionary forces, for excusing bestial behavior as the secret of success but then saying we should be ashamed of it, and for shooting his argument in the foot by assuming the ontological existence of love and nobility, Maestripieri handily wins Stupid Evolution Quote of the Week.  We can’t believe anything you said, professor; you’re just in a mindless, truthless, toothless, ruthless power grab.
Next headline on:  Mammals • Early Man • Darwinism • Dumb Ideas

Fall Colors Have a Function   10/27/2007    
Deciduous trees have an investment decision to make when fall chill sets in: do they send their sunlight-produced nutrients to the roots early, and so risk damage to the leaves from autumn sunlight, or should they spend more energy creating a sunscreen that allows them to produce nutrients longer, and thereby increase food storage in the roots for the upcoming winter?
    The determining factor may be the amount of nitrogen in the soil, claims a press release from the Geological Society of America.  According to research done by a graduate student at University of North Carolina, in nitrogen-poor soils the balance is tipped toward investing in sunscreen.  It takes energy to produce the reddish anthocyanins, but these allow the leaves to work overtime producing nutrients from the impoverished soil.  Trees in more nitrogen-rich soils can simply fade to yellow before falling.
    The student’s advisor remarked, “The rainbow of color we see in the fall is not just for our personal human enjoyment -- rather, it is the trees going on about their lives and trying to survive.”

There are a couple of problems with the advisor’s remark.  First, it ascribes personality and intent to a plant.  The plant has no brain to figure out what to do; rather, it has been pre-programmed with elaborate mechanisms that ensure its survival.  Did the tree figure out how to manufacture anthocyanins?  Did it know in advance that these molecules will allow it to extract more nutrients from the nitrogen-poor soil?  Was it “trying to survive”?  Of course not.  The mechanisms discovered are marks of engineering for robustness.
    The second problem is an either-or fallacy between plant survival and human enjoyment.  These functions are not mutually exclusive.  They also raise interesting philosophical questions.  Why should humans feel enjoyment at the rainbow of color in the fall?  What is the evolutionary advantage to pleasure at a scene that does not produce food or offspring?  Why shouldn’t a human sense alarm at the apparent death of a source of food?
    Actually, the advisor left open the possibility that joy might be a purpose, by saying it is not just for our personal human enjoyment.  But to push the point, she would have had to explain how the pleasure response in humans to apparently useless beauty had adaptive value.  That would not be very romantic, would it?  It would be just another example of evolutionism taking the soul out of life.  If you are an evolutionist feeling good walking through the rainbow of colors in a fall display, maybe you should be surprised by joy.
Next headline on:  Plants • Amazing Facts

Johns Hopkins researchers say they have figured out how human and all animal cells tune in to a key signal, one that literally transmits the instructions that shape their final bodies.  It turns out the cells assemble their own little radio antenna on their surfaces to help them relay the proper signal to the developmental proteins “listening” on the inside of the cell.
    The transmitters are primary cilia, relatively rigid, hairlike “tails” that respond to specialized signals from a host of proteins, including a key family of proteins known as Wnts.  The Wnts in turn trigger a cascade of shape-making decisions that guide cells to take specific shapes, like curved eyelid cells or vibrating hair cells in the ear, and even make sure that arms and legs emerge at the right spots.

Exciting discoveries in the cellular realm continue apace.  Some will remember that cilia were the first examples in Michael Behe’s classic book Darwin’s Black Box of irreducibly complex structures.  That was in 1996; no one knew the half of it back then.
    Is intelligent design a productive scientific theory?  One way to tell is to see if the case gets better with new discoveries.  Darwinism’s proponents have to keep adding patches and hotfixes to the theory to explain away new problems with the fossil record, the tree of life and the complexity of the cell.  The case for Intelligent Design, by contrast, gets stronger with each new finding.  Imagine: a radio antenna on each cell, signalling the inside world about the outside world.  Most signal-relay stations we know about were intelligently designed.
    Signal without recognition is meaningless.  Communication implies a signalling convention (a “coming together” or agreement in advance) that a given signal means or represents something: e.g., that S-O-S means “Send Help!” or, in this case, that Wnt proteins mean “put this arm here.”  The transmitter and receiver can be made of non-sentient materials, but the functional purpose of the system always comes from a mind.  The mind uses the material substances to perform an algorithm that is not itself a product of the materials or the blind forces acting on them.  Thus the analogy in the press release: cilia are just like radio antennas.  Antennas may be composed of mindless matter, but they are marks of a mind behind the intelligent design.
Next headline on:  Cell Biology • Intelligent Design • Amazing Facts

Academic Intolerance:  Ben Stein, the lead in the upcoming documentary Expelled, explained the problem of academic persecution of Darwin doubters to Bill O’Reilly on Fox News Monday night, Oct. 22.  The interview is available on YouTube.
Next headline on:  Media • Education • Darwinism • Intelligent Design

Neanderthals Have Become Like Us   10/25/2007    
The change in attitude about Neanderthals is almost complete.  The formerly brutish missing links were pretty modern after all.  DNA sequencing of Neanderthal remains, along with new fossil discoveries, have made this subgroup of Homo sapiens for all intents and purposes the equivalents of us.  For example:

1. Talk to me bro:  Neanderthals probably spoke languages like modern humans.  A genetic study announced by Science Now¹ claims their FOXP2 gene, implicated in language capacity, was identical to modern man’s.  Some aren’t willing to concede this essential mark of humanness, thinking the similarity might be due to contamination, but Svante Paabo, one of the investigators, thinks not.  One gene doesn’t prove ability to speak, he recognizes.  Still, he was willing to state that “with respect to FOXP2, there’s nothing to say that Neandertals could not speak just like we do.”  Other indications are that they had large brains (larger on average than those of modern man) and lived in groups.
2. Better redhead than deadhead:  Some Neanderthals had red hair and pale skin, a study in Science claimed.  The genetic study hinted that Neanderthal hair and skin color varied as much as that of moderns; this questions the assumption of their being a dark-skinned race recently migrated from Africa.  (See also National Geographic, Science Daily and the BBC News.)
3. We Neanderthal, the cosmopolitan cognoscenti:  Neanderthals have been found farther east.  Nature reported the discovery of Neanderthals in southern Siberia.²  The DNA of fossils fell within the range of European Neanderthals, the international team reported.  “Thus, the geographic range of Neanderthals is likely to have extended at least 2,000 km further to the east than commonly assumed.”  This followed a report on ENews earlier this month about Neanderthal bones found in China.

Morphological traits typical of Neanderthals began to appear in European hominids at least 400,000 years ago and about 150,000 years ago in western Asia.  After their initial appearance, such traits increased in frequency and the extent to which they are expressed until they disappeared shortly after 30,000 years ago.

If you are not so thoroughly brainwashed by evolutionary myths that you can still think rationally about evidence, join the movement to jettison the Neanderthal tale and start over (01/16/2007).  It seems crazy, on the face of it, to assume that Neanderthals lived on this planet at least 120,000 years, if not 370,000 years, without inventing the horse and buggy, rodeos (01/19/2001), ships, drip irrigation and hot air balloons.  Look how quickly their equivalents (us) went from simple farming to conquer sea, air, land, and even space – even with smaller brains!  These people were better hunters, better at playing Survivorman, and probably as intelligent and more agile than we are, yet Darwinians expect us to believe they did nothing but hunt meat for the cave cookout day after day for hundreds of thousands of years.  How do you spell b-e-l-i-e-f?
    It’s time for a complete overthrow of the Neanderthal myth.  In its place, we suggest these three replacement assumptions:

1. Taxonomy:  The Neanderthal classification is a Darwinian fabrication.  The set of Neanderthal traits was completely within the range of human variability.  They are, and were, Homo sapiens sapiens. 
2. Variability:  They lived not that long ago, and may still be among us.  The variability is a continuum, not a distinct cut-off.  It would be like classifying Eskimos or the Nephilim/Rephaim/Emim of Old Testament records as missing links.  We have stated several times that if you took skeletons from living individuals at the extremes of modern variability, they would look like separate species (e.g., 07/22/2007).
3. Chronology:  The entire span of human history fits within thousands of years, not tens or hundreds of thousands.  If it were not so, we would have a right to expect, based on the rapid advance of civilization in recorded history, that these people, who were identical to us, would have developed written language and technology with clear traces in the fossil record.  A corollary is that the Darwin-based dating methods are seriously flawed.

If you were to approach the data with Darwinian glasses off, and these assumptions in mind, without doubt you would find plenty of supporting evidence.  Since Darwinism is now falsified (10/08/2007), let’s do it.
Next headline on:  Early Man • Dating Methods

Evolutionary Science Reporting Battles Creationists   10/24/2007    
If creationism is so discredited as to not warrant any further discussion, some science writers are sure going out of their way to refute it.  Some recent examples:

1. Eye of the Hydra:  Little sea creatures known as hydrae have light-sensitive molecules called opsins, reported Science Daily.  Scientists think the opsin proteins, which exist all over the tiny animals but are concentrated near the gut, help the hydra find its prey.  Todd Oakley, a notable anti-creationist involved in the study, used this as a barb against Darwin doubters:

   Oakley said that anti-evolutionists often argue that mutations, which are essential for evolution, can only eliminate traits and cannot produce new features.  He goes on to say, “Our paper shows that such claims are simply wrong.  We show very clearly that specific mutational changes in a particular duplicated gene (opsin) allowed the new genes to interact with different proteins in new ways.  Today, these different interactions underlie the genetic machinery of vision, which is different in various animal groups.”

   Yet the story begs the question that mutational evolution produced the opsins or led to their function.  A team member illustrated the circular thinking when he inferred, “because we don’t find them in earlier evolving animals like sponges, we can put a date on the evolution of light sensitivity in animals.”  Another problem with the idea that evolution produced it is that it pushes the origin of light sensitivity further back in the evolutionary time frame to 600 million years ago.  See also Live Science.

2. Skull of the St. Bernard:  In a surprising display of misunderstanding of the issues, a University of Manchester press release claimed that artificial selection in St. Bernard dogs refutes creationism.  The skull shape in St. Bernards has changed a little in 120 years since the breed standard was defined.  These changes “evolved purely through the selective considerations of breeders.” But this is, of course, artificial selection – not natural selection.  The press release continues,

   “Creationism is the belief that all living organisms were created according to Genesis in six days by ‘intelligent design’ and rejects the scientific theories of natural selection and evolution.
       “But this research once again demonstrates how selection – whether natural or, in this case, artificially influenced by man – is the fundamental driving force behind the evolution of life on the planet.”

   A quick check of creationist literature would have shown that not even the most literal Biblical creationist believes God created St. Bernards directly.  Creationist books and lectures often include diagrams of all the various dog breeds, from St. Bernards to poodles to Dobermans, as descended from an original dog kind that was probably like a wolf.  Many would include all the wolves, coyotes, dingoes and foxes in the original dog kind.
       In addition, most creationists would admit an extensive amount of natural and artificial selection in the sorting out of traits in dog populations since the creation.  Even in this press release, the dogs started and ended as St. Bernards – one variety within one species – so there was no “origin of species” or variation on the scale Darwin envisaged.
       EurekAlert, a news service of the American Association for the Advancement of Science, reproduced this press release without alteration; so did Science Daily.

3. Brain of the Behe:  Science (Oct. 20) gave Michael Behe 200 words to clarify a point, but then let Sean Carroll have 500 words to trash it.  A complete account is given at Access Research Network by David Tyler.  The lopsided exchange omitted the fact that Behe has written extensive responses to Carroll on his Amazon blog, as noted by Anika Smith at Evolution News, and to many of his other critics, as noted by Robert Crowther on Evolution News.
       Science, by picking and choosing a small portion of Behe’s writing, gave the distinct impression that he was conceding a major point of Darwinism, when in fact Behe proceeded beyond the quoted part to explain why it was irrelevant to evolutionary theory.  Carroll, nonetheless, accused Behe of a “complete disregard of a massive literature surrounding protein interactions crucial to Behe’s entirely unfounded conclusion.”  Carroll did not cite any examples of such literature.

It is appalling to see the low level of intellectual rigor in the typical science press release these days when they deal with matters of creation vs evolution, and the deliberate anti-creationist bias in the journals.  In the typical popular science report, creationism, when mentioned at all, is made into a caricature, a straw man to ridicule and shoot down.  Don’t they realize that refuting an accurate presentation of an opponent’s view is more likely to succeed in the long run?  Maybe they know they cannot.  They use the only weak munitions they have: the pop-guns and spitballs of propaganda.
    We hope our readers appreciate the detail and fairness in these pages.  Links to all the original sources are provided so you can check whether what is represented here is in fact what the evolutionists are claiming.  Much of our reporting comes straight from the original science journals.  While we try to present the news in ways that are thought-provoking and occasionally entertaining, we do not pander to ignorance or bias.  We do not regurgitate the party-line talking points.  We invite the reader to investigate the evidence and evaluate the logic on both sides.  After decades of Darwin-only propaganda in the news media, we hope you find this liberating. 
Next headline on:  Darwinism and Evolution • Intelligent Design • Marine Life • Mammals

The only bright side of this atrocity is providing proof of the Biblical claims of the First Temple.  Muslims show no concern for the sensibilities of other religions but react with violence if any non-Muslim approaches their sacred sites.  In recent years, they dug into the southeast corner of the Temple Mount into soil richly laden with artifacts, to build an underground mosque.  Their level of carefulness and concern was to pile the debris into mounds and toss tons of it over the wall.  Dedicated archaeologists have found bits of precious artifacts among the dirt (10/31/2006, 04/17/2005).
    Who knows what additional treasures lie under the Temple Mount?  Archaeologists reveal amazing things at the periphery, but these are only tantalizing glimpses of artifacts that millions of people would rejoice to see, were it not for the bullying and threats of the “religion of peace” to wage global jihad if they dare to look.  Where is the U.N. in this blatant example of disrespect for priceless relics from antiquity?  Oh, they’re too busy helping the dictators of the world and outlawing righteousness.  What’s unfathomable is why the Israeli government and the IAA have been so silent and appeasing.
    Christians and Jews believe that a Third Temple will someday arise on the Temple Mount.  Some orthodox Jews even have the plans and preparations underway.  Given the volatility of the politics of Jerusalem, one would think this might trigger a kind of apocalypse.
Next headline on:  Bible and Theology • Politics and Ethics

Is Adenine Additive?   10/22/2007    
A paper in PNAS argues that adenine can form in plausible prebiotic conditions.¹  Does this add to the story of chemical evolution leading to life on Earth?
    Some chemists at the University of Georgia explored the chemical steps necessary to form adenine (one of the bases used in DNA).  Adenine has been found in extraterrestrial environments.  They found that ammonia or water can act as a catalyst to get the incipient molecule past some of the energy hurdles of ring formation.  After describing their investigation in detail, they remarked, “Finding a viable, thermodynamically feasible, step-by-step mechanism that can account for the formation of adenine did not prove to be easy.”  Nevertheless, they felt that their success will motivate others to find how the remaining DNA bases could have formed naturally.
    The authors went far beyond merely elucidating the mechanism behind the formation of adenine in meteorites or interstellar space.  They explicitly claimed that it contributes to understanding how life originated:

Our report provides a more detailed understanding of some of the chemical processes involved in chemical evolution, and a partial answer to the fundamental question of molecular biogenesis.  Our investigation should trigger similar explorations of the detailed mechanisms of the abiotic formation of the remaining nucleic acid bases and other biologically relevant molecules.

Did you notice the logical trick?  It is one question to account for the observed extraterrestrial formation of a chemical, but quite another to suggest it is relevant to the origin of life.  This presupposes naturalism—the very question that ought to be up for debate.
    If that is what they wanted to do (prove naturalism) they should have stated their presuppositions and goals objectively, but they didn’t.  They snuck their presuppositions into the paper as if nobody would notice or care.  Well, we care.  We are not going to let them suggest that explaining adenine has anything to do with supporting philosophical naturalism, any more than would explaining water, dust, plasma or the laws of nature.  This is like a Democrat claiming, “We explained the mechanism of voting machines, therefore President Bush stole the election.”  Voters used voting machines, but that has no bearing on the very different question of how they were used.  They might as well explain the chemical pathway of a component of a computer chip as support for the belief that computer software wrote itself.  Adenine is a substrate used in life for coded messages.  Just like understanding the chemistry of paper and ink says nothing about the origin of the message in a book, understanding the chemistry of adenine says nothing about the genetic code.  Is a cathode-ray tube aware that Survivorman is playing through its electrons?  Did the CRT organize itself for this purpose?  Neither does adenine form for the purpose of self-organizing into a living system.
    We must not allow materialists to invoke the chemistry lab as support for their philosophy.  That is called begging the question.  Only by assuming that life is no more than chemistry can they make that connection.
Next headline on:  Origin of Life

“The study shows the unimportance of drift in Linanthus,” says evolutionary biologist Masatoshi Nei of Pennsylvania State University in State College.  “In this sense, [the] finding shakes the ground of the shifting balance theory.”  But he is cautious about making generalizations, given that other studies suggest otherwise: “The relative importance of selection and drift depends on the genes and populations studied.”

So in a 13-year study, these scientists could only point to a little bit of natural selection that might have played a role in the color pattern of two varieties within the same species?  And they expect us to believe that science has proved that humans have bacteria ancestors due to this wondrous mechanism of natural selection?
Next headline on:  Plants • Evolutionary Theory • Genetics

If evolution is progressive, why are all the really big success stories extinct?  Where is all the lush plant life that allowed this behemoth to exist?  Why was the fossil found with fish and leaves?  Why are all the bones found under a 0.5 meter rock layer?  How did a beast this large get fossilized in the first place?  If something this large escaped detection in the fossil record till recently, how can scientists say for sure that we won’t find large Jurassic or Cambrian mammals somewhere?  How did evolution engineer a head at the end of a 56 foot long neck that could one minute nibble the top of a tall tree, then next minute reach down and get a drink without bursting its brains out?   And where was the meat for a carnivore living near the South Pole?  What does this imply about the foliage available for its prey to eat?  What does this say about global warming?  There are just a few questions to think about that never get asked in the evolutionary literature.
Next headline on:  Fossils • Dinosaurs • Amazing Facts

Prominent Biologist Espouses Darwinian Racist Views   10/17/2007    
The history of evolutionary thought includes many aspects modern evolutionists would rather forget, such as racism and eugenics.  Old ideas that blacks are evolutionarily inferior have cropped up again, though, not from some redneck schoolhouse but from the co-discoverer of the DNA structure.  James Watson, outspoken secular humanist, let loose with some comments about racial inferiority that set off a firestorm, reported The Independent (UK).  Watson was promoting his new book Avoid Boring People: Lessons from a Life in Science, which includes this statement:

There is no firm reason to anticipate that the intellectual capacities of peoples geographically separated in their evolution should prove to have evolved identically.  Our wanting to reserve equal powers of reason as some universal heritage of humanity will not be enough to make it so.

Dr Watson told The Sunday Times that he was “inherently gloomy about the prospect of Africa” because “all our social policies are based on the fact that their intelligence is the same as ours – whereas all the testing says not really”.  He said there was a natural desire that all human beings should be equal but “people who have to deal with black employees find this not true”.

Watson’s apology does not go far enough.  The same reporters who hound politicians to apologize for a controversial statement should press Watson to give a full accounting of what he meant to say, and should demand he take complete responsibility for his remarks, not blame his listeners.  His apology sounds like the joke about a brat whose mom tells him, “Did I hear you call your sister stupid?  Tell her you’re sorry!”  He dutifully walks over to Susie and says, “Sis, I’m sorry you’re stupid.”
    Read Watson’s apology carefully, and you see him shifting the blame to others for misquoting or misinterpreting him.  Fine; we all get misunderstood.  Tell us, then, Jim, what you really think about black people and their intelligence, and explain whether you still believe tens of thousands of years of evolution has made some races more intelligent than others.  Tell us whether society should treat all people as equal or not.  Tell us on what evolutionary basis a government should say that people have inalienable human rights.
    Two books should be read by anyone who doubts the influence of Darwinian thinking on racism: The Mismeasure of Man by Stephen Jay Gould, and From Darwin to Hitler by Richard Weikart (info).  Darwinists in past days put a black man in a zoo (article), categorized black people as closer to apes than to Europeans (article), did experiments rigged to show racial superiority of Europeans and males (article), and committed actual genocide in Namibia (article) and Tasmania (article) because of evolution-based racism.  While evolutionists could argue that Darwinism does not imply racism, many evolutionists used alleged primitive peoples as evidence that human evolution was true.
    The “script” that Watson veered from has been modified to expunge those incriminating episodes, but every once in awhile they emerge again, because they are a natural outgrowth of evolutionary beliefs that have different people groups evolving separately for tens of thousands of years or more.
    Biblical creationists, by contrast, believe that all people are of one race – the human race.  We are all one family, descended from one original pair, and related once again through Noah and his offspring just a few thousand years ago.  While abilities (both cognitive, artistic, physical and intellectual) can vary substantially even within one biological family, we are all one race, one family, one blood, and one creation.  We are each individually equally precious in God’s sight and worthy of equal dignity as creatures made in His image.  Choose what kind of worldview you want governing our world.
Next headline on:  Darwinism • Early Man

1. Oh no, a dilemma:  Gene duplication is supposed to be a mother of evolutionary invention.  Some Swedish evolutionary biologists considered a problem with this idea: “Maintaining a duplicated gene by selection for the original function would restrict the freedom to diverge.  (We refer to this problem as Ohno’s dilemma).” Susumi Ohno years ago had considered duplicate genes fodder for innovation (see 01/02/2003).  In this paper, the team modeled a way around the dilemma – but only if– “Before duplication, the original gene has a trace side activity (the innovation) in addition to its original function.”¹  The paper, however, only speculated that new functions might arise: e.g., “New genes might arise during speciation under selection.”  They did not identify any innovations arising by duplication.  “It is suggested that new genetic functions arise when selection is imposed on a minor side function of a preexisting gene,” they summarized, but amplification of an existing function is not innovation of a new function.
       Sean B. Carroll and Chris Todd Hittinger had written the previous week (10/10/2007) in Nature about experiments showing adaptation of a duplicated gene.^1a  Despite getting a favorable write-up on PhysOrg as an example of natural selection in action, the original paper only described a case of subfunctionalization in yeast: that is, one gene with two functions apparently split into two genes with one function in another species.  In this “division of labor,” therefore, no new genetic innovation was added.  The authors also engineered the lab yeast organisms according to their own human measures of what constituted fitness.  This is a form of artificial selection, not natural selection.  Yet Carroll told PhysOrg that they had “retraced the steps of evolution” of the gene.  PhysOrg said that “The work illustrates, at the most basic level, the driving force of evolution.”  Carroll, described as “one of the world’s leading evolutionary biologists,” went even further, extrapolating this one experiment with yeast to all of biology: “This is how new capabilities arise and new functions evolve.  This is what goes on in butterflies and elephants and humans.  It is evolution in action.”  They did not address the problem of getting around Ohno’s Dilemma.
2. Oak joke:  “A tradeoff between growth and reproduction, often inferred from an inverse correlation between these two variables, is a fundamental paradigm of life-history evolution,” began three biologists writing in PNAS.²  Like sports records, paradigms are made to be broken.  “Oak species provide a unique test of this relationship because different species mature acorns either in the year of pollination or in the year after pollination,” they said, so they studied 13 years of data on five oak species.
       So what did evolution have to do with it?  Nothing, they found: the relationship was caused by environmental conditions.  “Thus, contrary to the current consensus, growth and reproduction in these species are apparently largely independent of each other,” they concluded.  “In contrast, tradeoffs between current and future reproduction appear to be much more important in the life-history evolution of these long-lived plants.  We also conclude that a negative correlation does not necessarily imply a causal mechanism and should not be used as the only evidence supporting a tradeoff.”
3. Robust against evolution:  Some British and American scientists studied the effects of pleiotropy (one gene affecting more than one trait) and epistasis (the effect of one gene suppressing another) in plants.  “Although the occurrence of epistasis and pleiotropy is widely accepted at the molecular level, its effect on the adaptive value of fitness-related genes is rarely investigated in plants,” they began.  Yet, “Knowledge of these features of a gene is critical to understand the molecular basis of adaptive evolution.”
       That being so, it’s time to experiment.  Working with Arabidopsis thaliana, the lab plant of choice, they studied a candidate gene, FRI, which is associated with flowering time – a seemingly key fitness gene.  The results?  For one thing, FRI was less associated with fitness than previously thought.  They also found an epistatic relationship with the FLC locus; the variation in FRI, therefore, was not associated with fitness.

   We show that nonfunctional FRI alleles have negative pleiotropic effects on fitness by reducing the numbers of nodes and branches on the inflorescence.  We propose that these antagonistic pleiotropic effects reduce the adaptive value of FRI, and helps explain the maintenance of alternative life history strategies across natural populations of A. thaliana.

   This is not adaptive evolution, therefore, but robustness against evolution.
4. Speed limit:  Three Harvard biologists studied the “mutation speed limit” of proteins and published their results in PNAS.⁴  They showed with models of evolutionary fitness there is a fine line between protein stability and evolvability.  Too unstable or mutable, and a protein can lead to “mutational meltdown” and the extinction of the species. 

   The theory provides a fundamental relation between mutation rate, maximal genome size, and thermodynamic response of proteins to point mutations.  It establishes a universal speed limit on rate of molecular evolution by predicting that populations go extinct (via lethal mutagenesis) when mutation rate exceeds approximately six mutations per essential part of genome per replication for mesophilic organisms and one to two mutations per genome per replication for thermophilic ones.  Several RNA viruses function close to the evolutionary speed limit, whereas error correction mechanisms used by DNA viruses and nonmutant strains of bacteria featuring various genome lengths and mutation rates have brought these organisms universally ~1,000-fold below the natural speed limit.

   The costs of error-correction mechanisms and cell division, however, pose additional constraints on mutational load.  The authors also did not consider effects of epistasis and pleiotropy on their model.  They basically showed that even without those complications, there are limits on how many mutations an organism can endure in its quest to evolve into something more complex.  They felt their theory needs to be considered in computer models of evolution and in origin-of-life scenarios to avoid mutational meltdown and error catastrophe.
5. Natural selection tug-o' war:  Another recent paper in PLoS One by Steven A. Frank (UC Irvine) seems to suggest that evolution works toward the maladaptation of species, not beneficial adaptation.⁵  That’s because “Organisms use a variety of mechanisms to protect themselves against perturbations.”  The robustness of organisms against perturbations (like mutation) shields them from natural selection.  He concluded that “evolutionary dynamics drives systems in the direction of repeated rounds of enhanced robustness and decay.”  Because robustness works against natural selection, selection will tend to drive the organism toward “cheaper designs” and lowered performance: i.e., maladaptation.
       Frank thought that robustness would increase genetic variability over time, because “Reduced sensitivity to inherited mutations slows the rate at which natural selection clears deleterious mutations from the population.”  But considering the previous paper about mutational speed limits, it seems it could also accelerate an organism toward mutational meltdown and extinction.

Links to these articles are included for those who would like to research them further.  From the abstracts, it seems that each team attempted to verify a key component of evolutionary theory, yet found the evidence contrary to established beliefs.  So what else is new?
    In none of these papers did the evolutionists demonstrate that random mutation could actually invent something new and beneficial.  They merely assumed that it could.  But in each case, the powerless mechanism of natural selection was clearly unable to compensate for the accumulating damage of harmful mutations.  At best it could maintain the status quo, thanks to the help of exquisitely-designed proofreading and repair mechanisms.  Natural selection: what a flimsy hope on which to base one’s entire philosophy.
Next headline on:  Darwinism • Genetics • Botany

1. Tropical Titan:  the University of Chicago described Titan as a tropical moon – in its own way.  Despite the -290 degree chill, Titan has an atmosphere saturated with methane that acts like the humidifier and moisturizer for this bizarre world.  At that temperature, in fact, methane is even more volatile than water is on Earth.  EurekAlert even gave the weather forecast: “Morning forecast on Titan calls for widespread methane drizzle off Xanadu.”  See also another EurekAlert article that says the European Southern Observatory shares credit for this discovery.
2. Southern Lakes:  The latest radar swath taken by Cassini across Titan’s southern latitudes revealed some lakes there, too – but fewer, apparently, because it is summertime in the south.  If the mission continues for several more years, scientists are eager to see if the southern lakes grow and the northern lakes dry up as summer shifts northward.  See the JPL press release for a montage of the northern lakes and a shot of the southern lake; see also European Space Agency.
3. Runaway Iapetus:  Preliminary explanations for the black-and-white case of Iapetus are starting to come in after last month’s close flyby (see 09/13/2007).  Some scientists think, according to a JPL press release, that solar heating leads to a process called thermal segregation.  The water ice in the more-absorbent dark material sublimates and re-deposits on the cold white parts – a runaway and irreversible effect.  This may explain why dark material tends to puddle in the bottoms of craters or hang on crater walls facing the equator.  They believe the dark material is only about a foot deep.  Whatever the explanation, the amazing images of Iapetus from the September 10 flyby are sure to occupy scientists for years to come.
4. The Ancient Mountains of Iapetus:  Because the mysterious mountain ridge on Iapetus is heavily cratered, scientists assume it is ancient.  They are ruling out theories that a ring collapsed onto the surface, because it would not explain apparent tectonic features associated with the ridge.  See the JPL press release.
5. Jet Blue:  A lovely limb shot of Enceladus with its geyser plumes colored blue was released in another JPL press release.  Imaging team scientists Jason Spitale and Carolyn Porco were able to line up the plumes with the tiger stripes.  Their results, published in Nature last week,¹ suggest that more hot spots will be found in future flybys.

   ---

   1.  Spitale and Porco, “Association of the jets of Enceladus with the warmest regions on its south-polar fractures,” Nature 449, 695-697 (11 October 2007) | doi:10.1038/nature06217.

Like Jupiter (10/15/2007), Saturn was filled with surprises.  Nothing in the Saturn system requires billions of years; many things require mere thousands.  A lot of needless cerebral horsepower is expended trying to keep apparently young phenomena going for unnecessary eons.  We can enjoy the show without the mythology.
Next headline on:  Solar System

Look at the web page, and you will see another story: increasing numbers of Swedes are converting to Islam.  This means that the Swedish political dunderheads who can’t read their tea leaves had better wake up to the fact that the country will become creationist soon anyway.  They must choose, while there is still time, whether they want peace-loving Christian creationists, who want to reason with them and debate the evidence, or Islamic fascists who will make them convert via a sword at the neck.  Either way, the Church of Darwin cannot survive.  It is obviously not the fittest, because it just imploded (10/08/2007).
    Compare this story with the 09/14/2007 entry, “Some Christian Colleges Love Darwin More than Jesus.”
Next headline on:  Intelligent Design • Education • Politics and Ethics • Bible and Theology

1. Io’s magnetic personality:  Of special interest is Io, the volcanic inner moon of Jupiter.  The spacecraft witnessed a major eruption of a polar volcano seen earlier by the Galileo mission:

   An eruption of the Tvashtar volcano on the satellite Io was caught in the act, allowing the mechanics of the sulfurous plume and the lava temperature to be measured.  Pollution from Io’s volcanoes has even reached the shores of Europa, an icy