Cosmology at the Outer Limits   06/30/2008    
June 30, 2008 — Those who think cosmology could not get any weirder than it already is (01/15/2008) may want to take note of recent pronouncements by the gurus of universal physics.  Physics teachers in particular may feel an obligation to state Bob Berman’s disclaimer (10/06/2004) before class: viz, “Warning: The following contains contemporary cosmology.  Reading it can produce disorientation and confusion.  Nobody knows what’s going on and nothing you read here is likely to be true.”

1. Questioning sacred Q.M.:  The development of Quantum Mechanics in the 1920s and 1930s was one of the iconic scientific revolutions that is hailed as one of the greatest achievements in physics.  It had far-reaching consequences for science, philosophy and even religion.  Numerous books have stated that it undermined determinism once for all.  The uncertainty principle was embedded in the very core of fundamental physics, we were told.  Einstein struggled in vain to find “hidden variables” that would explain the apparent indeterminacy of QM behavior.  QM has an impressive record in technology, providing the basis for lasers, Josephson junctions in computers, quantum cryptography and much, much more.
       How, then, could Nature News dare to state on May 15, “why quantum mechanics might be wrong”?  Sure enough, an alternative hidden-variables theory called Bohmian mechanics is vying for attention.  One of its promoters feels he can test his predictions against those of QM with observations of the cosmic background radiation.  At stake is not the huge body of evidence and mathematics behind QM’s success, but the Copenhagen Interpretation – the leading explanation of quantum mechanics that had almost reached the status of accepted truth.  The contest is just beginning.  Bohmian mechanics is the underdog.  Stay tuned.
2. Time travel:  In QM, we were taught that observing a quantum event collapses the wave function and gives “classical” reality to alternative outcomes.  The textbook illustration is Schrödinger’s thought experiment of a quantum cat in a box being both dead and alive until an observer peeks in and gives reality to one of the two states.  The Copenhagen Interpretation of QM has led many to teach that observation creates reality.  Now, however, Nature News just reported a “breakthrough experiment” in which researchers pulled back a Schrödinger-Cat type of phenomenon from the brink of classical reality back to a state of quantum indeterminacy.
       What does this mean?  For one thing, it means that “our understanding of how classical reality emerges may be naive.”  One British physicist said, “It tells us that we really can’t assume that measurements create reality, because it is possible to erase the effects of a measurement and start again.”  Reactions to the paper are mixed.  An Australian physicist commented on the experiment, “The quantum world has become more tangible, and the nature of reality even more mysterious.”  Nature whimsically subtitled sections of the article with the concepts of reincarnation and time travel.
3. Fractals fracture assumptions:  An article in New Scientist Space offered up a weird conjecture: is our universe arranged in a fractal pattern?  The question is not without empirical evidence.  “A new study of nearly a million galaxies suggests it is,” the article began, “though there are no well-accepted theories to explain why that would be so.”  Critics are saying the pattern is an optical illusion.  “A lot is at stake,” the article continued, “and the matter distribution has become a source of impassioned debate between those who say the distribution is smooth and homogeneous and those who say it is hierarchically structured and clumpy, like a fractal.”  Smooth-and-homogeneous has been the assumption underlying essentially all cosmological models for the past few decades.
       Looking for patterns in the Sloan Digital Sky Survey of 800,000 galaxies and 100,000 quasars, two Russian cosmologists claim the data show a fractal pattern out to 100,000 light-years at least.  A fractal model of the universe will be hard to sell to traditional cosmologists.  “Many cosmologists find fault with their analysis, largely because a fractal matter distribution out to such huge scales undermines the standard model of cosmology,” the article said.  “According to the accepted story of cosmic evolution, there simply hasn’t been enough time since the big bang nearly 14 billion years ago for gravity to build up such large structures.”  Moreover, it would “leave cosmologists without a working model, like acrobats without a net.”
       Much of the case for smooth-and-homogeneous is based on patterns in the cosmic microwave background (CMB).  The article revealed some problems with how that was established.  Cosmologists may have missed a fractal pattern, if there is one, by projecting the 3D CMB map onto a 2D surface.  Measurements of distant radio galaxies to probe homogeneity are also too uncertain to rule out alternatives, the article said.
       The implications for dating the universe and for big bang cosmology if the fractal interpretation were to become accepted could hardly be overstated – to say nothing of how this would affect scientists’ confidence in being able to understand the universe and make progress in their scientific explanations.  The traditionalists are wagering a case of wine that the apparent fractal pattern is not real.
4. Question time:  Time always runs forward, right?  The second law of thermodynamics dictates that Humpty Dumpty will never be put back together by the forces of physics.  Your coffee will never unstir itself, and you will grow older, not younger.  Not so fast, argued Sean M. Carroll in Scientific American last month.  “One of the most basic facts of life is that the future looks different from the past,“ he began.  “But on a grand cosmological scale, they may look the same.”  This could only mean that for those parts of the universe where time moves forward, an equal number could have clocks that run backward.  Why?  Because the laws of physics don’t care which way time runs – they work equally well regardless.  Entropy, furthermore, remains a puzzling concept.  Why should things move toward disorder instead of becoming more orderly over time?
       Carroll repeated his criticism of inflationary cosmology mentioned in our “Paper View” segment from 05/11/2006 (see also 04/18/2008).  He also reiterated the problem that for the universe to be in its current state of low entropy now, the entropy at the beginning would have had to be inconceivably low.  He criticized inflation as an assumption impersonating an explanation: “Inflation does not, by itself, explain why the early universe has a low entropy; it simply assumes it from the start.”  Nor does the once-popular proposal for an eternally oscillating universe get around the entropy problem.
       Along with Jennifer Chen, a colleague from the University of Chicago, Sean Carroll has instead proposed a time-symmetric universe.  The parts of the universe in which time runs forward are balanced by regions where time runs backward.  “Entropy can increase without limit through the creation of new baby universes.”  The jury is still out on this model, however, because “Cosmologists have contemplated the idea of baby universes for many years, but we do not understand the birthing process.”  Goo-gol, this is getting too weird.  Time out.  On second thought, would a time-out act the same in a domain where time flows backward?  Growing younger till you become a romantic thought in your parents’ minds sounds kind of cool.

It’s sad that Carroll has retreated into the darkness after asking such good questions back in 05/11/2006.  He could have been heaven-bound by now by logically thinking through the evidence from fine-tuning for a Creator, but is now wallowing in his intellectual vomit.  A mind is a terrible thing to waste.
    If you have been led down the primrose path in your education to believe that science is all about discovering the truth and making steady progress toward understanding reality, get real.  No one can properly reason about reality without the preconditions for intelligibility provided by guidance from an eternal, timeless, omniscient, omnipotent and righteous source.  Fortunately, that has been revealed to us by the only One who knows what is real.  Come to the light.
Next headline on:  Cosmology • Physics • Dating Methods

Yellow Journalism Invades Science   06/28/2008    
June 28, 2008 — James Kerian, a mechanical engineer, has a colorful term for science reporting these days: “yellow science.”  Writing for the Wall Street Journal June 25, he accused scientists of the same kind of sensationalism that disgraced journalism in the days of William Randolph Hearst.
    The occasion for Kerian’s criticism was reporting about man-made global warming, but the accusations apply in other areas where scientists make pronouncements beyond what is warranted by the evidence.  “Just as it is far easier to publish stories without verifying the sources; so is it much more convenient to practice yellow science than the real thing,” he said.  “It takes far more courage, perseverance, and perspiration to develop formulas, make predictions, and risk being proved wrong than to look at historical data and muse about observed similarities.”  He rebuked those who say “the debate is over” and make appeals to scientific consensus.
    The public needs to be aware of the flaws of yellow science.  He advised, “one does not need an advanced degree in natural science to understand that whatever follows the phrase ‘most experts agree’ or ‘no one can measure the exact effect but’ is not real science.  In fact, if there is no possible way that a statement can realistically be tested, it probably fails to meet the standards for any professional community and is of no real use to the public.”

Kerian has a simplistic view of science; he suggested that there is one scientific method, and that falsification is the criterion for testing.  These standards have been analyzed and criticized by philosophers in the 20th century.  Nevertheless, his label “yellow science” is apropos.  Many have noted the same dogmatism and fear-mongering used by evolutionists as by propagandists of man-made global warming.  The same spirit of absolute trust in “what scientists say” is a common flaw.
Next headline on:  Media

This flat-line trend is all the more surprising in light of the vigorous dogmatic-Darwinism campaign waged in the media, the schools and the scientific institutions.  Why is evolutionary propaganda so ineffective?  Evolutionists probably attribute much of the poll result to the inability of Bible-thumping fundamentalists to understand science.  Maybe, instead, a lot of adults view the dogmatic Darwinists as a bunch of unattractive ideologues without common sense (04/13/2008).
    This is not an issue of science, but of world views.  The same facts are accessible to both camps.  The Apostle Paul said that God’s divine nature and omnipotence are clearly seen in the creation (Romans 1).  What each individual faces is the science of Christian theism, incorporating the observations within a view of purposeful design, or the science of Darwinian naturalistic religion, incorporating the observations into a picture of chance, purposelessness and meaningless death.  The choice is clear.  Paul is appealing, but Darwin’s appeal is appalling.
Next headline on:  Evolution • Bible and Theology

So why is avian taxonomy suddenly in such a state of upheaval?  The precise evolutionary relationships between major groups of birds have long been contentious because they underwent an explosive radiation event sometime between 65 million and 100 million years ago.  Nearly all of the major avian groups arose within just a few million years -- a very short period of evolutionary time.  As a result, those groups of birds, such as parrots, doves and owls, that are united by distinct morphological characteristics seem to have appeared suddenly because there are few, or no, known evolutionary intermediates that provide clues to their deeper relationships with other avian groups.

This entry falls in the category of “Everything you know is wrong.”  Throw out the field guide and forget everything your teacher told you about how birds evolved.  Now we know “the truth” about bird evolution.  Evolutionists play this game every once in awhile to look busy.  It provides job security.  You need the evolutionist to interpret the world for you lest you be misled by your senses and common sense.
    Evolutionary theory is looking more and more like divination (cf. 06/12/2008).  The mystery religion of understanding the deep relationships in Darwin’s mythical tree requires faith in the professionals.  Ordinary bird-watchers should not try this at home.  It requires the skill of the duly possessed shaman who alone has the power to conjure up the image of Charlie in the crystal ball of the genes. 
Next headline on:  Birds • Genetics • Evolution

Not Another Tetrapod Missing Link   06/25/2008    
June 25, 2008 — Fossils don’t contain light bulbs, but almost every time a new one is found, scientists claim it sheds light on evolution.  The BBC News kept that tradition going with this line, “Scientists say a fossil of a four-legged fish sheds new light on the process of evolution.”  What, exactly, was found?  Whatever Ventastega curonica was, it would be hard to claim it helped shed any light on evolution, because according to the article, it was an “evolutionary dead end.”
    A close look at the article reveals other evolutionary conundrums.  Ventastega was placed after Tiktaalik, but was more primitive.  The BBC News article also said, “Scientists once believed that these early amphibious animals descended in a linear fashion, but this discovery instead confirms these creatures diversified into different branches along the way.”  The animal is made up of a curious mosaic of features.  It would have looked something like an alligator, they said, but allegedly had fishy features like a tail fin and gills.  Interesting, also, is the fact that this fish-o-gator from Latvia was found in sand.  Somehow these sediments, said to be 365 million years old, had not solidified into rock.
    Since popular news reports tend to exaggerate, a look at the original paper in Nature¹ might shed light on the wattage of this fossil.  The Editor’s Summary in the June 26 issue said it “resembles a simple intermediate between Tiktaalik and Acanthostega, with the skull shape of an early tetrapod, but proportions more closely resembling a fish.”  Sounds promising so far.  The next sentence, however, undermined the missing-link story in a one-two punch: “But the picture is more complicated than that, due to the unexpected morphological diversity of early tetrapods, and the fact that their initial diversification was earlier than had been thought.”
    On to the original paper.  Ahlberg et al opened by claiming that the long-mysterious fish-to-tetrapod gap has been beginning to close, and that their fossil narrows it further.  But then they said that the paucity of complete fossils makes it hard to fill in the gap.  Even after the highly-publicized find of Tiktaalik, “Acanthostega and Ichthyostega are still the only Devonian tetrapods known from near-complete skeletons,” they said, adding: “We know less about the fish–tetrapod transition than the taxic diversity suggests.”
    The fossils are not new discoveries.  They had been collected between 1970 and 2001.  In addition, the fossil did not declare itself a transitional form.  This deduction was done with software.  The team plugged various traits they deemed significant into tree-building algorithms.  Though they got consistent results with different permutations, the interpretations were not straightforward.  The fossil contained both “primitive” and “derived” (evolved) features.  The paper suggested that the authors were puzzled about where to fit the pieces from Ventastega and other specimens.
    They ended by saying it was “tempting to interpret Ventastega as a straightforward evolutionary intermediate” (i.e., missing link).  “However, this simple picture should be approached with a degree of caution.”  Why?  Because it contains trait combinations that are substantially different from alleged earlier fossils.  “At a minimum this demonstrates the presence of considerable morphological diversification among the earliest tetrapods,” they said, ending on a positive note that this fossil and Tiktaalik fit expectations of what a transitional form “at a particular point in the phylogeny” should look like.
    All the paper’s caution was cast to the wind by the popular press.  Science Daily, with artwork to prove it, trumpeted, “New Fossils Of Extremely Primitive 4-Legged Creatures Close The Gap Between Fish And Land Animals.”  National Geographic News admitted that the diversity of the Devonian tetrapods was surprising, but nevertheless labeled them as “Fishy Ancestors of Humans”.  Only on page 2 was some caution sprinkled in: “So researchers have a rough idea of the major evolutionary changes that took place but still have their work cut out for them when it comes to filling in the gaps.”
    Shaun Doyle critiqued the claims being made about this fossil in an article on Creation Ministries International.

Probably this was just Jennifer Clack’s latest attempt to one-up Neil Shubin’s fish-a-pod after the press gushed on him without shame or restraint (04/06/2006) and made him a celebrity (01/16/2008).  Clack had been the darling of PBS till this rival muscled in.  Remember her sermonette on 04/06/2006 that one skeleton is unlikely to unlock the key to understanding of evolution, and that the concept of missing links, though having a powerful grasp on the imagination, contains unfounded notions of evolutionary progress?
    Does anyone really believe a fish-o-gator (or whatever it was) from Latvia decided to swim over to Canada where the evolving conditions were better?  We could make up a better case for an evolutionary sequence with living fish and amphibians than these ideologues can with fragmentary fossils that their worldview demands be placed into ancient epochs without observers.  When the Darwin story collapses, sociologists will use these phylogenetic rivalries to “shed light” on how scientists can deceive themselves into seeing what they want to see.
Next headline on:  Marine Biology • Fossils • Evolution

The bacterial flagellum, powered by a motor that generates 1400 pN-nm of torque, can rotate at a frequency of greater than 100 Hz.  EpsE [the clutch protein] disabled this powerful biological motor when associated with a flagellar basal body and, in a manner similar to that of a clutch, disengaged the drive train from the power sourcee (fig.  S5B).  Clutch control of flagellar function has distinct advantages over transcriptional control of flagellar gene expression for regulating motility.  Some bacteria, such as E. coli and B. subtilis, have many flagella per cell.  The flagellum is an elaborate, durable, energetically expensive, molecular machine and simply turning off de novo flagellum synthesis does not necessarily arrest motility.  Once flagellar gene expression is inactivated, multiple rounds of cell division may be required to segregate preexisting flagella to extinction in daughter cells.  In contrast, the clutch requires the synthesis of only a single protein to inhibit motility.  Furthermore, if biofilm formation is prematurely aborted, flagella once disabled by the clutch might be reactivated, allowing cells to bypass fresh investment in flagellar synthesis.  Whereas flagellum expression and assembly are complex and slow, clutch control is simple, rapid, and potentially reversible.

This is another of many instances of one of the best-established laws in nature: evolutionary storytelling is inversely proportional to observational detail.  A good scientific law needs a popular name.  Write in with your suggestion.
Next headline on:  Cell Biology • Intelligent Design • Amazing Facts

We need bright, young, curious kids to go into science with a design mentality.  This is another area ripe for intelligent design research.
    Discovering a physical mechanism for how patterns form in a developing embryo will not explain it away.  Does deciphering Morse Code lead to a conclusion the code evolved?  No; it opens up new avenues to understand purposeful communication.  Design-theoretic research that unlocks the mystery of animal patterning will only reinforce the design principles that make possible a peacock’s tail, a tiger’s stripes, a giraffe’s tile patterns and the spots on your dog Spot.  Evolutionists have nothing to offer but fables.
    The insights that could be gained from this budding branch of genetics and developmental biology could be huge.  Once we understand the design principles behind animal patterning, many spinoffs come to mind.  Doctors may be able to monitor and control the migration of cancer cells, for instance.  Nanotech engineers may be able to mimic the push-and-pull actions of proteins to assemble microscopic machines.  Computer scientists may be able to apply the principles in fuzzy-logic applications.
    Get your kids off the junk food of entertainment and onto substantive matters.  Inspire them to become ID-motivated scientists.  They might be able to improve the lives of millions.
Next headline on:  Genetics • Terrestrial Zoology • Mammals • Intelligent Design • Biomimetics

Love Your Heart: Look at Nature   06/22/2008    
June 22, 2008 — Heart patients can get instant relief from stress by simply looking out at nature through a window, reported Science Daily.  It worked better if the patient looked at the real thing, not just a picture on TV.
    In a study funded by the National Science Foundation, scientists tested the heart rates of patients who looked at nature out a window, natural scenes on a plasma screen, or a blank wall.  A psychologist at the University of Washington who participated in the study said,

We are losing direct experiences with nature.  Instead, more and more we’re experiencing nature represented technologically through television and other media.  Children grow up watching Discovery Channel and Animal Planet.  That’s probably better than nothing.  But as a species we need interaction with actual nature for our physical and psychological well-being.

Watching TV programs about animals and nature is worse than nothing if it preaches the usual evolutionary sermon.  Get outside and see what God made: go on a Creation Safari.
Next headline on:  Health • Media

1. Origin of life:  “First, I have to agree with the ID crowd that there are some very big (and frankly exciting) questions that should keep evolutionists humble,” like the origin of life.  He admitted that scientists are “in the dark” about this question.  He rejected, though, the idea that biologists can ignore it and start after life began:

   Still, I think it is disingenuous to argue that the origin of life is irrelevant to evolution.  It is no less relevant than the Big Bang is to physics or cosmology.  Evolution should be able to explain, in theory at least, all the way back to the very first organism that could replicate itself through biological or chemical processes.  And to understand that organism fully, we would simply have to know what came before it.  And right now we are nowhere close.  I believe a material explanation will be found, but that confidence comes from my faith that science is up to the task of explaining, in purely material or naturalistic terms, the whole history of life.  My faith is well founded, but it is still faith.

2. Complexity of the cell:  Another valid point made by neo-creationists is that life is far more complex than Darwin could have imagined.  Slack again expressed faith that natural explanations will be found, “But scientists still have much to learn about the process of evolution if they are to fully explain the phenomenon.”  He even allowed for major surprises – like finding “compelling evidence for a designer,” though he doubted that would happen. 
3. Inner knowledge:  Another observation that Slack has trouble computing into his materialism is the fact that so many people find creation obvious.  “Millions of people believe they directly experience the reality of a Creator every day, and to them it seems like nonsense to insist that He does not exist,” he noted.  “Unless they are lying, God’s existence is to them an observable fact.”
       He admitted that he can’t deny his own “psychological empiricism.”  No amount of persuasion by cognitive neuroscientists, for instance, that neurotransmitters give him the illusion of free will could make him doubt that he really loves his children.  Material explanations may look good on paper, but “I have too much respect for my own experience.” He did not elaborate on whether reason itself could be reducible to physics and chemistry.
4. Blind faith:  The most striking point of agreement he saved for last.  Are evolutionists the unbiased, white-lab-coat objective empiricists seeking knowledge and finding evolution to be the clearest explanation?  No; many are blind followers, just like the ID people claim.  He has empirical evidence for this.

   A few years ago I covered a conference of the American Atheists in Las Vegas.  I met dozens of people there who were dead sure that evolutionary theory was correct though they didn’t know a thing about adaptive radiation, genetic drift, or even plain old natural selection.  They came to their Darwinism via a commitment to naturalism and atheism not through the study of science.  They’re still correct when they say evolution happens.  But I’m afraid they’re wrong to call themselves skeptics unencumbered by ideology.  Many of them are best described as zealots.

   Not that he is against zeal, but Slack says “its coincidence with a theory proves nothing about that theory’s explanatory power.”
5. Demarcation:  On an unlisted point in his conclusion, Slack conceded that “Looking for evidence of design in the natural world isn’t itself unscientific” – it would even be “big and fascinating news.”  He thinks, however, that a designer would be necessarily “supernatural” (assuming he knows how to define “natural”).¹

It was unusual of the dogmatic Darwiniacs to allow one of theirs to say something deferential about their most despised enemies.  We appreciate the gesture, but it’s not enough.  We demand complete and unconditional surrender.  They have no ground to stand on empirically, philosophically or ethically.  False humility and crocodile tears are a ruse (as in Michael Ruse).  The Darwiniacs took scientific institutions through deceit and manipulation, so until and unless they relinquish power, they are still at the top of the Most Wanted Ideologues.
    A key part of the neo-creationist strategy must be a protracted siege.  No longer will we allow them to raid theistic presuppositions under cover of darkness.  Since they cannot grow their own self-consistent presuppositions within their worldview castle, they will eventually starve or demand our help, which we will only grant provided they acquiesce all power and confess their sins.  Don’t expect that anytime soon.  It will be a long siege.  Freedom, scientific integrity, honesty and self-consistent rationality are worth waiting for.
Next headline on:  Education • Evolution • Origin of Life • Politics and Ethics • Bible and Theology • Intelligent Design

Use the Search Bar with keywords "Vitamin D" and sunlight for a half dozen previous articles on this subject.
    One thing not stated in the article is the remarkable correlation between the energy of sunlight reaching the earth and the chemistry of proteins and enzymes that are activated with this energy.  The lower energy of light from red dwarf stars might not be sufficient for biological reactions, while the light from hot blue stars would produce too much ionizing radiation.
    This is one of many “Goldilocks” parameters of physics and astronomy that is just right for our health.  The correspondence of astronomy with biology, that permits sentient beings to make scientific discoveries, is silent witness of intelligent design.  Expose yourself to that light.
Next headline on:  Health • Physics • Stars • Intelligent Design

Hopes Die for Enceladus Longevity   06/19/2008    
June 19, 2008 — Ever since Enceladus, the little 300-mile-across moon of Saturn was found in 2005 to be erupting out its south pole, scientists have tried to explain how it could be possible.  They have looked high and low for an energy source to power the geysers of the little moon dubbed “Cold Faithful” for billions of years.  There have been no answers yet, and none seem to be forthcoming.
    An article on Space.com says this little moon should be frozen solid.  All they can give as a plausible length of time for geysering activity is 30 million years.  That is less than 1% the assumed age of the solar system (4.6 billion years).  The geysers put out 5.8 gigawatts of heat.  Neither tidal heating nor radioactive decay are sufficient to produce that kind of energy output, given Enceladus’ size and the nature of its orbit.
    James Roberts (UC Santa Cruz) lamented, “There is no possible combination of parameters that allow for a thermally stable ocean” under the icy crust.  Researchers trying to keep this little moon hot for billions of years are resorting to ad hoc scenarios like imagining prior episodes of eccentric orbits.  Such historical, unrepeatable events are not observable.  They also do not explain why neighboring moons, though larger, show no activity – like Mimas, though it is subject to more tidal stress than Enceladus.

The consensus old age of the solar system has been falsified.  They just won’t admit it.  How much longer do you want them to tweak their models to keep Enceladus hot?  Remember, they have to do it with Io and Neptune and Uranus and Pluto also.  Numerous phenomena in our solar system mandate an age limit far shorter than 4.6 billion years.  Long ages are no longer necessary for planet formation or for any other geological feature.  The only one who wants them is Charlie, and he doesn’t count.
    So many requirements of evolution have been falsified, the superstructure of evolutionary theory floats disconnected from the ground of evidence, supported by the hot air of its defenders.  They can’t keep it up forever.
Next headline on:  Solar System • Dating Methods • Physics

This seed lay buried in a fortress in the hot Judean desert for two thousand years and was still alive.  It has been growing now for two years into a healthy, green plant.  Can you imagine Herod the Great with all his wise men designing a machine that could be unpacked and made to work after two millennia?  If so, you’re probably thinking of a simple machine like a lever.  Try a miniaturized robot that reads codes, can grow and draw up nutrients from the desert and produce sweet fruit, then duplicate itself.  Amazing.  If all the king’s horses and all the king’s men couldn’t pull off a trick like that using intelligent design, don’t expect blind evolution to do it.
Next headline on:  Plants • Bible • Amazing Facts

We’ll just ignore that little evolutionary fable with an expression of disgust and move right along.  Facial expression is one of many unique traits among humans who were created like animals in many ways but with special features to express an inner spirit made in the image of God: intellect, emotions, will, love, personality, and faith.  To communicate our rationality, we needed a voice apparatus appropriate for the sophisticated nuances of human language.  For combined spiritual and physical intimacy, we needed skin instead of hair.  For face-to-face communication and stewardship, we needed upright posture.  For work, we needed hands with opposable thumbs.  None of these is quite the window of the spirit as a person’s unique countenance.
    We have the most versatile bodies and faces in nature appropriate for accountable souls.  Think of the importance of facial expressions in comedy sitcoms, vocal solos, plays and movies; visualize the clown or mime using faces to get a laugh.  Perhaps you have taken a silly family photo with everyone making funny faces.  Even humor is a gift of God.  Chimpanzees and dogs and parrots can seem to comprehend fun, but try to tell them a joke, and no comprendo.  Human laughter and a hearty smile is a joy of life that only spirits operating physical equipment can fully understand and appreciate.
    We have more equipment than needed to just eat and survive because we have a special role in God’s creation: to be His stewards, to love Him, and to love one another.  Facial expression is an intrinsic part of our unique ability to relate to one another visually and verbally.  That we each have unique faces and combinations of facial muscles fits the description of humans being unique individuals with a special role in the world.  Look at one penguin and you’ve seen them all.  Same for prairie dogs, antelope, honeybees, wildebeest, flamingos and any other wild social animal.  Though specialists can tell them apart, other primates have limited diversity and expressivity on their faces.  They can curl their lips into funny ways, and bare their teeth and scream, but have you ever seen a chimpanzee with an expression of altruistic love, faith, thoughtful contemplation, solemnity, gratitude or inner joy?
    The variety of human faces, though, is astonishing: just look at the faces of any crowd on the street or in a public event.  And the number of expressions you can contort your face into in front of a mirror is equally astonishing.  We often remember a face when we cannot remember a name.  We can pick easily out faces we know from hundreds of strangers in a yearbook.  Faces are put on “Wanted” posters.   We normally take pictures of ourselves that emphasize our faces.  Magazines and newspapers (except for certain kinds) concentrate on the faces of people in the news.  We normally take pictures of people to emphasize their faces.  This makes sense if we are individual created souls distinct from the animals.  It makes no sense in evolutionary terms, or else you would see extreme facial diversity and expressivity all over the animal kingdom.  What other animal invented FaceBook?  The face is the interface for rational and emotional communication.  “Face it, we’re all different” said the Nature News article.  Yes indeed, Nature, face up to it.  We can make faces because He made our faces.  Go smile at someone and start a spiritual communication.
Next headline on:  Human Body • Amazing Facts

Big Dino Site Found in Utah   06/17/2008    
June 17, 2008 — A big dinosaur fossil quarry has been found in Utah near Hanksville, reported the Associated Press (see copy on PhysOrg).  The Bureau of Land Management says it may be comparable to the Dinosaur National Monument site and other well-known quarries in the region.  Apparently feeling a need to appeal to the MTV generation, a National Geographic article mentioned it contains “big sexy dinosaurs.”
    No new species were identified, but the 50 x 200 yard mass burial contains clams and large petrified tree trunks in addition to sauropods, two carnivores and a stegosaur.  The bones were found in a sandstone channel of an ancient river, the article says, and the preservation is excellent.

These animals were sure dumb to keep wandering into floods that would bury them alive.  The trees were dumb, too.  Scientists, of course, have it all figured out.
Next headline on:  Dinosaurs • Fossils

TRiC, like all chaperonins, consists of a double-ringed structure that gives it a barrel shape.  One ring opens to admit the raw protein into the inner recesses of the folding machine, then closes tightly while, inside the chaperonin “black box,” the mysteries of molecular origami unfold—or, more correctly, fold.  Upon completion of the folding, the ring at the other end opens up to push out the finished product.
    “It is really like a nanomachine.  It closes off, the protein is trapped inside and something—we don’t understand what—happens inside this chamber, and the protein comes out folded,” Frydman said.  “It is a very complex mechanism.”

This science project needs evolutionary theory like a fly needs a swatter.  Tell us, Charlie, how the protein machinery that codes, transcribes, translates and folds proteins originated without the machinery to do it.  We want scientific facts, not stories.
    Magic tricks intrigue us, not because we think real magic is happening, but because we want to know how the trick is done.  TRiC is inspiring Frydman and her colleagues to reverse-engineer the implicit design of this complex black box and put their findings to practical use for improving human health and well being.  Isn’t that what science is all about?
    Surely no one from Darwin’s day through the 1950s could have imagined that the secrets of life would depend on complex, precision machinery, with moving parts, made out of molecules, manufactured to spec from coded instructions.  Enough reports like this one, and Darwinism itself will be interred in a black box: coffin-shaped and nailed shut, so the folding of rigor mortis inside won’t gross anyone out.
Next headline on:  Cell Biology • Intelligent Design • Amazing Facts

Did you catch the point of this story?  Decades of human intelligent planning and engineering and experience have gone into producing a monstrosity of big iron that is just now getting up to the capability of keeping up with one operation of your brain, vision.  The man-made machine occupies a room of metal, wires, and sophisticated circuitry that requires electricity, artificial cooling and a team of system administrators, to say nothing of programmers, to operate.
    Your brain, by contrast, occupies only three pounds of soft tissue.  It is self-contained on a mobile platform.  And it’s doing a lot more than processing vision.  It is keeping tabs on trillions of cells, running your heart, lungs, digestive tract, spleen, pancreas, liver, glands, immune system and dozens of other systems in the background without your conscious control, responding to hearing, smell, taste, touch, balance, temperature and kinesthetic senses, searching through memories, thinking, imagining, feeling and much more.  All this occurs in a compact space of only 1350 cc.  You don’t have to plug it in.  You don’t have to keep it in a refrigerated room.  You can take it skiing or out to the desert, and you can even swim with it.  And it runs on hamburgers and water!
    This article should be standing in awe of the brain, but it’s all about glorifying man for building his own paltry excuse for a computer.  Inside their own skulls is the most astonishing supercomputer in the known universe!  Where is the praise to the Creator that should be due for His gift of such a powerful and multi-functional machine?  On the contrary, the common mythology of our day is that brains evolved by chance over millions of years of undirected, random processes.
    Learn to see the real take-home lesson in science news.  The important lesson is not always the hyped one.
Next headline on:  Human Body • Amazing Facts

Divining the CMB   06/12/2008    
June 12, 2008 — What do you see in this pattern?  Look very closely.  The Cosmic Microwave Background (CMB) is a faint glow of electromagnetic radiation that pervades the universe.  What it means is a matter of intense and sometimes bizarre speculation by cosmologists.
    The spectrum of the CMB matches almost perfectly that of an ideal radiator, or blackbody, with a peak temperature of 2.7° Kelvin (graph)  The spectrum is so smooth that it took years of analysis of the COBE satellite data to find any variations – inhomogeneities or anisotropies, as they are called.  In 2001, the Wilkinson Microwave Anisotropy Probe teased out the variations to the highest resolution ever measured for a blackbody (picture).  In the maps, the colors exaggerate the variations.  They are exceedingly faint – on the order of 18 microkelvins, or parts per 100,000.  They can be compared to tiny ripples on a calm sea.  What does this imply?  Does it shed light on the origin and nature of the universe?
    Cosmologists advertise that the discovery of the CMB by Penzias and Wilson in 1965 (for which they received the Nobel Prize) was a confirmation of the Big Bang theory.  It represents the cosmic afterglow of the primeval fireball, they said.  Though such a glow had been predicted by George Gamow, Ralph Alpher and Robert Herman, the predicted value (28K) was higher than the measured value.  Moreover, finding the spectrum to be so extremely smooth exacerbated the “lumpiness problem” in cosmology: if the universe began from a uniform explosion, where did the lumps come from?  The universe is made up of lumpy aggregates of matter like galaxies and clusters of galaxies with near vacuums of empty space between them.  The discovery of inhomogeneities, therefore, was latched onto quickly as an explanation: these tiny ripples grew into gravitational attractors for material that coalesced into the lumps.  The discovery of the inhomogeneities won George Smoot the Nobel Prize in 2006.
    Today, cosmologists continue to probe the CMB for clues to even grander visions.  Here’s what some recent reports are claiming are visible in maps of the CMB that, to a layman, would look as meaningless as modern art.

1. Donuts:  The universe might be donut shaped.  That’s what Nature News reported May 28, complete with a drawing.  “Mmm... Universe,” teased the caption.  “Calculations show it really might be shaped like the snack favourite.”  How does one salivate over visions of donuts while looking at a CMB map?  The vision lies in missing long wavelengths, which some cosmologists interpret as indicating the universe might be finite but non-spherical.  Of the possible wrap-around shapes, a 3-torus seems to match the WMAP data best, they think.  Yum.
2. Treasure:  The BBC News reported in March that the WMAP data constitutes a “treasure trove” of information about the universe – not only its age and early history, but its fate.  A group from Oxford University believes that they see the faint glow of neutrinos in the map.  Dr. Joanna Dunkley said, “We see patterns in light, light that has been travelling for billions of years, affected in the early infancy of the Universe by whatever the Universe was composed of at that point.”
       This is more fun than an amusement park fortune-teller.  Dr. Dunkley now sees “an impression of conditions billions of years ago” by inferring from the amount of helium today a “sea of neutrinos” that must have been given off early on by nuclear reactions, assuming it was built inside stars.  Most neutrinos pass right through the earth without stopping.  Very few are detected in the very few detectors built to look for them.  There they are, right on the WMAP plot, staring us in the face.  Don’t you see?
       Dr. Dunkley also sees fog, but it clears up in her crystal ball.  The dissipating fog reveals secrets about the first stars.  “We basically have the first evidence that how the first stars switched on was a long, drawn-out process that took half a billion years,” she said.  “We weren’t able to see that before.”  Some of us are wondering how she sees it now.
3. The Land Before Time:  The familiar WMAP plot showed up in a story on the BBC News that suggested other universes are betraying their presence in the data.  The possible observation of a slight asymmetry in the CMB from one direction to the other could clue us in that we inherited a structure from a parent universe, says a Caltech group.  The fluctuations in the CMB are telling us that “new universes could be created spontaneously from apparently empty space.”  If so, “From inside the parent universe, the event would be surprisingly unspectacular.”  It’s just one of those ordinary things – everything from nothing, bubbling off in a flash from a previous universe that cannot be observed.
       Sean Carroll (Caltech), who proposed the second idea, wants to convince his colleagues to think big.  “We’re trained to say there was no time before the Big Bang, when we should say that we don’t know whether there was anything – or if there was, what it was.”  Why say anything, then?
       Carroll admits that we don’t know if universes can bud off from pre-existing ones.  But if ours did, he thinks it would explain why time flows forward instead of backward in our universe.  “Much work remains to be done on the theory:” the BBC said; “the researchers’ first priority will be to calculate the odds of a new universe appearing from a previous one.”

The know-nothings (02/22/2008 commentary) seem to know an awful lot (emphasis on awful).  They have a lot to say about things they admit they can’t say.  Did it occur to any of them that science was meant to be restricted to phenomena that are observable, testable and repeatable?  Yes; tell us about the odds of getting a new universe from a previous one.  Tell us all about it.  Do a demo in the lab.  Tell us about the infinite regress while you’re at it, and why there was something instead of nothing.
    Today, we no longer need a calf liver, pendulum or water witch to play around with divination.  We have trendier things with which the Babble-onions, Chaldeans and sooth-slayers can respectably practice their ancient Craft.  The only thing they seem unable to divine is the Divine Nature (Romans 1).  Odd; most of us lacking the divination tools can see it clearly all over the place.
Next headline on:  Cosmology • Physics • Dumb Ideas

This is the science of intelligent design (ID) at work (05/18/2005).  No mention of the E-word evolution was heard in these labs (cf. 06/17/2002).  The researchers were hot on the heels of major discoveries about how biological machines achieve phenomenal accuracy.  And at what do they achieve phenomenal accuracy?  the translation of coded information (12/17/2007).  Information is a very ID-friendly word.  Evolutionists speak very little about information.  What can they say?  that material particles subject to various non-intelligent forces built the most accurate code-storage and translation mechanisms known in nature?  How long would it take Lenski to evolve that? (see next story).  Let’s take off the Darwin leg irons and propel science full speed into the Information Age.
Next headline on:  Cell Biology • Genetics • Intelligent Design • Amazing Facts

It’s a good thing Dr. Behe quickly dispelled the significance of this experiment.  It saves us a lot of work having to trudge through the overhyped claims in the paper.  Basically, the E. coli already had the machinery to digest citrate, but just lacked a gateway to get the nutrient inside, which was not that improbable a hurdle for a couple of mutations to permit.  This accomplishment is orders of magnitude simpler than the kind of luck required to build the machinery in the first place.  It’s like blindly pushing and finding a weakness in a fence.  This is all the longest-running lab experiment in evolution was able to accomplish in 20 years of trying, with almost 40,000 generations.  Are you impressed?  If you can tell a lawyer is lying when his lips are moving, you can tell an evolutionist is lying when the reporters go wild about how Darwin has been vindicated. 
Next headline on:  Cell Biology • Evolution

The Andes: Pop-Up Mountains   06/10/2008    
June 10, 2008 — The majestic Andes of South America did not rise smoothly and gradually, a team of geologists reported in Science.¹  Instead, long periods of stasis for tens of millions of years were punctuated by rapid periods of uplift.  It sounds as if punctuated equilibria theory has been stolen from evolutionary biology and applied to geology.  They say the Andes – the second largest mountain chain in the world – could have risen over 2 km in about a million years.
    The authors explain this erratic motion by saying, “Periodic punctuated surface uplift of mountain belts probably reflects the rapid removal of unstable, dense lower lithosphere after long-term thickening of the crust and lithospheric mantle.”  It had “long been thought” that shortening and thickening of continental crust gave rise to mountains, they said.  Now, however, they think that measurements of surface isotopes show that the two processes don’t seem to work together so should be worked out separately.
    The international team measured various factors – amount of erosion, outgassing from volcanoes, isotope ratios in clays and carbonates, and sediment thicknesses.  They took into account “paleo-elevation data” tying each stratum’s position in the geologic column in relation to its elevation.  They plugged the values into models in an attempt to infer the history of the mountain range.  Other assumptions, such as climate history and behavior of the upper mantle, were included.
    Richard A. Kerr summarized the paper in the same issue of Science,² titling his article, “The Andes popped up by losing their deep-seated rocky load.”  One problem he noted about the pop-up theory is that crustal compression doesn’t happen that fast.  The team explained it by suggesting that a section of “ballast” under the mountains might have fallen away into the mantle, allowing the rapid rise above.  “The timing and style of volcanism in the central Andes suggest that the mantle lithosphere fell away suddenly--as a huge drop dripping off the crust or as a layer peeling away--just when the isotopic data indicate a punctuated uplift,” he said.
    Other geologists are not convinced.  One, for instance, thinks that the rise of the mountains alters the climate and can give false paleo-elevation data.  Some wish to rely more on models; some wish to give more weight to field data.  For a popular write-up of the new theory, see Science Daily, which begins, “Mountains may experience a ‘growth spurt’ that can double their heights in as little as two to four million years--several times faster than the prevailing tectonic theory suggests.”

What is the take-home lesson of this article?  That scientists recognized their past sins of omission and have now come clean?  That science is progressing toward a true understanding of the history of the earth?  If so, we have a piece of Jurassic mantle on the auction block.
    Geological models like this are a hopeless hodgepodge of assumption, presumption, paradigm, social pressure, tradition, arbitrary classification and motivation, mixed in with a little bit of data as seasoning.  Step back and look at how geologists do this kind of work.  Is it reasonable to think that some isotope ratios in groundwater, or some measurements of volcanic gases, are going to tell you what happened 40 million years ago hundreds of kilometers below a mountain chain, where no human could ever go, to a time in the past no human has ever seen?  Will a model on a computer, with inputs from field work mixed in with assumptions, provide a reliable account of processes at work in a massive mountain range spanning the length of a continent over millions of years? (see 02/05/2008 about climate models).  How could they ever know?  There is no possible way to rerun the millions of years to find out.  How could they be sure the model does not omit one or more crucial parameters that might dramatically alter the conclusions?
    If you still trust the geologists’ story, consider that these scientists just upset their predecessors’ apple cart.  They said it had “long been thought” that the Andes rose up gradually.  Now we are supposed to “know” that was wrong, and we should accept the pop-up theory.  What assurance does anyone have that someone a decade from now will not overturn this paper?  It happens.  In the years of reporting at this site, for instance, we have seen geologists change their story dramatically about the Grand Canyon.  In 2000, geologists were considering it might be less than a million years old.  That was a drastic change from earlier estimates, carved into National Park signs as The Truth, that the canyon was 70 million years old.  Later, The Truth was down to 5 million years.  Now, in the last few months, they have been revising the date upward again; first to 17 million, now to 55 million or more (03/05/2008, 04/10/2008).  Reality has been buried in these conceptual sediments.  The only clue visible to a casual observer is that, when it comes to the true history of the earth, geologists are clueless.
    Understand the difference between observational geology and historical geology.  If a geologist can help Exxon find oil, or help you decide if your property is stable enough to build a house on, that’s great.  Thank goodness there are people trained in the observational skills and mechanics of rocks and soils and minerals to figure these things out.  There are quite a few geological skills one can learn in the university that are very useful.  We can watch geological processes, like volcanoes and earthquakes and floods, and make reasonable inferences from them about how certain formations came about.  Some processes can be studied with experiments in flumes and shake tables.  Even then, however, nature surprises us.  The eruption of Mt. St. Helens overthrew several major assumptions about the speed and power of geological processes.  A flume experiment recently challenged a long belief about how mudstones form (see 12/14/2007).  We can’t even be sure of things we can see in real time; how much less about processes in past mythical millions of years?
    To the extent geology can help us organize our experience, and give us a measure of explanation, prediction, and control, it is useful.  Notice the operative word is “useful,” not true.  Historical geology, though, is wedded to belief systems about an unseen past.  It is useless except, perhaps, as entertainment.  Its belief systems are not derived from science.  They are imposed on science.  Historian of geology Martin Rudwick said,

Even at the opening of its “heroic age” [ca. 1790-1830], geology was recognized as belonging to an altogether new kind of science, which posed problems of a kind that had never arisen before.  It was the first science to be concerned with the reconstruction of the past development of the natural world, rather than the description and analysis of its present condition.  The tools of the other sciences were therefore inadequate.  The processes that shaped the world in the past were beyond either experiment or simple observation.  Observation revealed only their end-products; experimental results would only be applied to them analogically.  Somehow the past had to be interpreted in terms of the present.  The main conceptual tool in that task was, and is, the principle of uniformity.
—Martin J.S. Rudwick, “The Principle of Uniformity,” History of Science, vol. 1 (1962), p.82; cited by Terry Mortensen, Ph.D., The Great Turning Point (Master Books, 2004), p. 229.

From philosopher and scientist William Whewell in 1840 to David Raup in 1983, observers have pointed out that geology is a different kind of science.  It cannot test and repeat things like you can with pendulums and space flight.  Historical geology is profoundly theory-laden.  Data are interpreted according to popular models and prevailing ideas.  Rare is the maverick willing to think outside the box.
    Mortensen documents in his book that Lyell and other 19th-century geologists effectively commandeered and institutionalized a certain approach to geology, uniformitarianism, that has ever since been beating its head against contrary evidence (05/22/2003, 03/31/2007).  The millions-of-years mentality has become uncritically-accepted dogma.  The standard geological column has been ensconced as a monument to Lyell and Hutton, like the temples of the ancient Greeks (read the telling quotes by Stephen J. Gould and Derek Ager in an article by CSM in England, Lyell’s country).  Long ages and uniform processes are accepted before the data are even examined.  Geologists are not discovering these vast expanses of time.  They are making measurements in the present, and offering them as votive sacrifices to the paradigm.  Historical geologists may make modifications to the temple, add new rooms and change the artwork, but it would take a religious conversion to make them change temples.
Next headline on:  Geology • Dating Methods

In fact, men’s breasts are a good lesson in the higgledy-piggledy way that evolution works.  Natural selection chooses for and against body parts, but there is no master plan that aims for the perfect creature.  Men have boobs, women get facial hair, and we all stand in front of the mirror asking, “Why?”
    Each person is, in fact, a Rube Goldberg sort of organism pieced together by biology and made up of good parts, bad parts and parts that are inconsequential.

Some day these evolutionary explanations are going to sound so stupid, students will shake their heads in disbelief that smart people could have believed such things.  Let’s hasten the day.  Did it occur to Ms. Small that Rube Goldberg designed his comical devices by intelligent design, not by chance?  As kludgy as they looked, they were quite effective.  How much more effective are her eyes, hands and brain?  It seems highly inconsiderate for her to employ them with finesse and then call them hodgepodges of bad parts.
    These scientists have convinced themselves that there is no master plan.  Nothing in reality was designed.  Everything is the result of happenstance.  Parts emerge from the void.  New neurons appear in unthinking cells, without any foreknowledge that some day scientists will employ them to think rationally.  From the growing garage of various parts that emerged from the void, Tinker Bell, the goddess of evolution, sets to work, cobbling brains and breasts and everything else, and presto – here we are.  How on earth can Meredith Small and her friends have any standards of rationality to know this is true?  How can she have any standard of ethics to call parts good or bad?  How can a cognitive “I” emerge from this mess to ask “Why?” or any other question, and believe itself capable of finding an answer, let alone comprehending it?
    If this mythology gives some comfort to the evolutionist, well, it’s a free country.  We would like to just tug on their garment and say, ahem; by thinking, you are refuting your story.  Yes indeed: stand in front of the mirror and ask, “Why?”  Why do Meredith Small and Richard Emes and Seth Grant believe they are in touch with reality?  Why do they claim an ontology that grounds an epistemology?
    Think, and think that your thinking matters, and you are now dealing in concepts.  Concepts are not physical.  Thought is not reducible to neurons, proteins and genes.  Thought can employ material objects; it can even tinker with them and be influenced by them.  But the moment you employ concepts, you cannot look in the mirror and see the image of Tinker Bell.  You see the image of God.  Whether you see or understand His Master Plan is debatable.  But by thinking, you acknowledge that one exists. 
Next headline on:  Human Body • Evolution • Dumb Ideas

1. Blind reasoning:  It is questionable “whether particular human cognitive traits, such as language or human reasoning, can be seen as adaptations.”
2. Tunnel vision:  Evolutionary psychologists tend to see everything in selectionist terms.  “The main problem with evolutionary psychology is that it usually does not consider alternative explanations but takes the assumption of adaptation through natural selection as given.”
3. Blind zeal:  Enthusiasm by the proponents of evolutionary psychology outruns their science.  “Evolutionary psychologists often argue for their proposals with a zest and enthusiasm that seems to convey the message that we can only understand the human mind if we consider our evolutionary history.”
4. Blind speculation:  The inability to find evidence for that history renders evolutionary psychology little more than storytelling.  For example, they say that human language evolved because of a functional demand in social groups.  Richardson, however, claims “we simply lack the historical evidence for a reconstruction of the evolution of human cognition.”

Richardson rightly suggests that paleontologists are unlikely to unearth the evidence that can inform us about the social structure of our ancestral communities.  I think one can go a step further.  Even if we would be able to muster the evidence needed for an evolutionary psychological analysis of human cognition, it would not tell us anything about our cognitive mechanisms.  The study of evolution is concerned with a historical reconstruction of traits.  It does not, and cannot, address the mechanisms that are involved in the human brain.  Those fall within the domains of neuroscience and cognitive psychology.  In that sense, evolutionary psychology will never succeed, because it attempts to explain mechanisms by appealing to the history of these mechanisms.  To use the author’s words, “We might as well explain the structure of orchids in terms of their beauty.”

This is great.  Evolutionists are getting bold enough to criticize evolutionary psychologists in a pro-evolutionary science journal.  Progress is being made.
    Now, all we have to do is point out to these people that the evolutionary biologists commit the same errors: assuming that adaptation implies evolution, refusing to consider alternative explanations, propounding their faith with zest and enthusiasm instead of evidence, telling stories about an inaccessible history, and disguising speculation as results.  What’s the difference?
    If the evolutionists continue to work up the nerve to falsify each other, the whole Darwin castle might implode without an attack from outside.  Future archaeologists can study the ruins and help students learn from history that bad ideas eventually collapse from within.  Maybe the Darwin Bicentennial will turn out to be a moment of silence.
Next headline on:  Darwin and Evolutionary Theory • Human Body • Early Man

Alien Messages via Neutrinos   06/06/2008    
June 6, 2008 — Three scientists are suggesting that SETI researchers comb neutrinos for alien messages.  Nothing natural could produce high-energy neutrinos, they said in Science,¹ so aliens may use their cosmic accelerators to send neutrino packets across the intergalactic internet.  They suggested watching for them in the neutrino detector at the South Pole.

Let’s strive to understand this reasoning.  The three scientists believe we could reasonably infer the existence of intelligent design in subatomic particles, which carry no information, due strictly to their physical characteristics.  But finding a coded language in DNA and calling that intelligent design would undoubtedly be criticized as a religious argument.  They think that high-energy neutrinos could only be produced by non-natural intelligent causes.  They probably believe DNA, however, with its sophisticated language transcription and translation systems, was produced by natural causes.
    This must be valid scientific reasoning, because Science said so.  The practical outcome would be that these scientists would think it worth the money to sift through signatures of ghostly particles at the South Pole to infer design, but not to advance the design inference from DNA into a reasoned investigation whether a Designer capable of creating the most densely-packed and information-rich structures in the universe might have also communicated with humans in more accessible ways.
Next headline on:  SETI • Intelligent Design • Physics

It is wonderfully inspiring to hear about nature’s incredible designs.  Most articles, though, toss a fly in the ointment by speculating about evolution.  The Science News article, for instance, claimed that “birds, beetles, butterflies and plenty of other creatures evolved cutting-edge optical systems long before modern technology did.”  Later, it said, “The animals’ devices come from millions of years of evolutionary trial and error”.  Puke attack.
    Darwinists, stop stealing the light show.  This is intelligent design science from start to finish.  Design detection, reverse engineering and biomimetics all stem from the premise that the universe, earth and life show evidence of intelligent design.  This is not religious.  If you call it religion, we will return the favor and accuse the Darwinists of believing in mythical millions of years, magical mutations and voodoo selection.
Next headline on:  Terrestrial Zoology • Birds • Biomimetics • Physics • Amazing Facts • Intelligent Design • Evolution • Dumb Ideas

We now know that honeybees have a variety of impressive cognitive skills and an amazing learning ability.  Owing to the small brain size of the subjects, the study of honeybee learning has a good tradition of deconstructing seemingly complex phenomena, and explaining them in terms of simple processes.  This provides an ideal perspective to study the mechanisms of social learning, too.  The mixed-species colonies of Acc [Asian] and Aml [European] have paved a new way to study communication and learning between individuals of different species, which will be helpful in understanding the neural mechanisms of the striking dance language of honeybees.

Wouldn’t a simpler and more economical explanation be that these species were not separated by millions of years?  Why is that never considered?  Why this insistence on “conserved” traits over millions of years of a fluid process like evolution?  You’d almost think scientists are deaf sometimes.  They dance, and they waggle, they wiggle and they waffle, but they communicate little.  Their followers thus fly off in all directions except the one that can provide nourishment.
Next headline on:  Terrestrial Zoology • Dating Methods • Evolution • Amazing Facts

An Evaluation of Evolution as an Explanatory Device   06/03/2008    
June 3, 2008 — It is very common for scientists to claim this or that phenomenon “evolved.”  How well do such statements qualify as scientific explanations?  How much scientific heavy lifting is done by merely stating that things are the way they are because they evolved that way?  The following recent examples can be considered representative of the evolutionary explanations to be found in scientific literature in any given week.

1. Let’s be fair in our explanations:  An article in Science Daily claims once again that fairness evolved (cf. 04/23/2008).  Because certain brain areas light up while making ethical choices, and because children exhibit an emotional response when sensing unfairness, Steven Quartz (Caltech) stated that, “The fact that the brain has such a robust response to unfairness suggests that sensing unfairness is a basic evolved capacity.”  Quartz did not specify what sort of random mutations in neurons would be able to generate an ethical sense where one did not exist before.
2. Disappearing evolution:  Another story on Science Daily actually used negative evidence to support evolution.  “Robyn Crook from the City University of New York reports that Nautilus, the ancient living ancestors of modern cephalopods, have both long and short-term memory, despite lacking the brain structures that modern cephalopods evolved for long-term memory.”  The article did not explain what the peculiar phrase “ancient living ancestors” means, but it probably did not refer to living great-great-great-great-grandparents millions of years old.  The title clarified it somewhat: “Living Fossils Have Long- And Short-term Memory Despite Lacking Brain Structures Of Modern Cephalopods.”  Living fossils are evolutionary conundrums (10/14/2004).
       In other words, we have living representatives of a long-lost lineage of sea creatures thought to have lived 450 to 150 million years ago.  Pavlov-like experiments show that these living specimens have both long-term and short-term memories.  According to the evolutionary timeline, Nautilus never received the brain upgrades that squid and octopi developed for this ability.  It was surprising, therefore, to see them performing so well on memory tests.  “Nautilus has both short and long term memory, just like modern cephalopods, despite lacking the same brain structures.”
       Wouldn’t this observation falsify the belief that the brain upgrades evolved?  Neither the article nor the scientists thought so for a minute.  They declared the Nautilus to be ideally suited to discover the “evolutionary pathways that led to the development of the complex coleoid [soft bodied cephalopod] brains.”
3. Magnetic personalities:  Birds and a number of other vertebrates, including fish, amphibians and mammals, have precision magnetic sense organs for navigation.  James L. Gould, an evolutionary biologist at Princeton, sought to explore this phenomenon in an article in Current Biology.¹  His surprising answer is that this improbable sense evolved independently multiple times.  He commented on an earlier paper that suggested “a more specialized light-dependent compass has evolved at least twice to supplement and at least partially replace what would seem to have been a perfectly good magnetite-based strategy.”
       Subsequent statements had the flavor of just-so storytelling: “Quite probably the magnetite (the densest substance synthesized biologically) was originally just a weight to pull the front of the bacterium down; subsequent evolution may then have led to the aligned chain, which is much more effective.”  Again, later, he said, “The same organs are also used by these sharks and rays to detect the electrical activity of hidden prey; presumably it is from this sensory occupation that the direction-finding ability evolved.”
       And finally, evolution was evoked again as the explanation in spite of negative evidence: “Although the newt’s light-dependent compass appears separately evolved, its operation and its interaction with the magnetite-based map system seems very similar to the picture emerging in birds.”  Evolution even provided the paradigm for future research: “Perhaps too it will lead to a more informed understanding of the separate evolution of these two fascinating systems, and the way they conspire to enhance the mystique of animal homing and migration.”  To view evolution as conspiring to do anything would seem to be a violation of Darwin’s principles of natural selection acting on random variations.
4. Batting average:  In another article in Current Biology,² Michael Dickson of Caltech, discussing bat flight, used the E-word right off the bat: “Active flight has evolved within just four taxa in the history of life: insects, pterosaurs, birds and bats.”  The fact that a highly improbable, complex system of organs and behaviors exists in unrelated lineages was no problem for the evolutionary angle: “Because of the multiple origins of flight, wings have long served as textbook examples of evolutionary homology and convergence.”
       The spectre of just-so storytelling reappeared at the end of his article: “bats and moths are engaged in a deadly evolutionary arms race for command of the night sky,” he said.  “It is intriguing to note that these creatures are nevertheless united by the laws of physics.”  He gave evolutionary explanations without batting an eye.
5. For the love of beetles:  Bouncing off J. B. S. Haldane’s memorable quip about the creator having an “inordinate fondness for beetles,” (but see 04/26/2002), Florian Maderspacher wrote in Current Biology about beetle evolution.³  “Beetles are an amazing example of an evolutionary radiation” she wrote.  This presumes that diversity is a measure of the strength of evolutionary explanations, as opposed to other possible inferences.  She bluffed that the evolutionary explanation is “known” despite the conundrum of how humans and insects, presumably on vastly different branches of the evolutionary tree, share numerous genes:

   It has been known that insects in general, and especially the lineage leading to Drosophila, have undergone accelerated evolution, and this was confirmed when a molecular phylogeny was constructed using the newly available data from Tribolium.  Overall, Tribolium shares more genes with humans than the Dipterans do.  Tribolium researchers will surely be tempted to use this finding to argue that their organism is ‘more ancestral’, ‘more representative’ or simply ‘less weird’ than Drosophila.

   A full evolutionary explanation remained on back order.  “Of course, expression patterns and regulatory relationships can differ considerably between Tribolium and Drosophila, but to what extent such differences are due to evolutionary drift or reflect an adaptation of the patterning system to the short- versus long-germ mode of development is not clear at present.”  In fact, she ended by casting doubt on the explanatory power of evolutionary theory altogether: “The genome might thus help to focus on the species itself as a product of evolution, whose traces can be read from the genome,” she said, deferring the answer to the future.  “Only much further work – now able to draw on the resource of the Tribolium genome sequence – will reveal whether the genome holds an explanation for why evolution was so fond of beetles.”
       This sounds as if Haldane’s lateral swipe at creationists for failing to explain why a creator would be so fond of beetles could be tossed right back to the evolutionary biologists.

As most scientists know, how one defines “scientific” is a complex and heavily debated topic, and one should be cautious in making ex cathedra statements about it.  The degree to which our results can be generalized remains to be seen.

It should be clear that evolution is a modern secularist form of cultural mythology.  Evolution serves the same function as the Greek gods did in explanations about phenomena the ancient Greeks did not understand.  In fact, philosopher Willard van Orman Quine in 1951 stated as much by analyzing how scientists explain recalcitrant data (e.g., 10/29/2004).  In his influential paper Two Dogmas of Empiricism, he asserted that Homer’s gods and modern causal references serve the same explanatory function.  It’s not that Quine believed the Greek gods provided an equally good explanation; “But in point of epistemological footing the physical objects and the gods differ only in degree and not in kind,” he asserted.  “Both sorts of entities enter our conception only as cultural posits.  The myth of physical objects is epistemologically superior to most in that it has proved more efficacious than other myths as a device for working a manageable structure into the flux of experience.”  A workable device, however, is not synonymous with a truthful or established explanation.
    More radically, Bas van Fraasen has argued that a scientific explanation is nothing more than an answer to a “why” question.  Why are old pictures all black and white? cartoon character Calvin asks Dad.  The answer is that the pictures were taken in color, but the world was black and white then.  This is just as good a scientific answer as any other, van Fraasen seems to be saying in his theory of constructive empiricism.  What this implies is that scientific explanations are essentially worthless as true statements about reality.  If the explanation is useful, if it gives the culture good vibes, if it shuts Calvin up for the time being, then it’s a “scientific” explanation.  Science is not in the business of providing true explanations as long as it provides some value in classification, prediction and control.
    If so, why should the evolutionary biologists be the only players in the game?  Lots of people have answers to why-questions.  The animists have their answers.  The Hindus have theirs.  Muslims have theirs.  Jews and Christians have theirs.  Why do evolutionary biologists occupy the guru chair in modern culture?  The postmodern social construction theorists (now fading away) would say that the Big Science community is the dominant social force only because of the sheer exercise of power.  There is nothing epistemically stronger in their approach than that of any other social group.
    These and other anti-realist positions created a backlash among scientists that erupted in the “science wars” of the late 1990s.  Alan Sokal, at the height of the conflict, pulled a creative hoax against the postmodernists that caused them great embarrassment.  Scientists took this as a vindication of scientific realism, but how much it really did so is a matter of debate.  Embarrassing one’s opponent does not necessarily prove one’s case.  We have little sympathy with postmodernism and deconstruction in these commentaries.  Nevertheless, even Sokal knows that one can only defend a modest form of scientific realism in this post-Quine, post-Kuhn, post-Feyerabend era.  He tried to do this in a short paper with Jean Bricmont called Defense of Modest Scientific Realism.  The perceptive reader will see, however, these champions of normal science “help themselves” to concepts like honesty, truth and rationality that have no foundation in physicalist assumptions.
    Therein lies the crux of the problem.  Evolutionists help themselves to unwarranted concepts.  Believing the world to be an undirected maze of particles and forces, they nevertheless help themselves to concepts of truth, explanation, justification, empiricism and honesty.  Such things cannot and could not evolve from particles.  Such things only make sense if they are true, universal, necessary and certain.  They only make sense if one starts with the presupposition that these things flow from an all-wise, righteous, all-powerful Creator who is real.  His “I am” is the starting point for all other claims that “this is.”
    Those with the Judeo-Christian worldview have a foundation for scientific explanations because they believe the Creator endowed us with senses that are in touch with reality – a reality He created, and has made known to us both in general and special revelation.  It is devilishly hard to make the claim otherwise.  How can an evolutionist, consistent with his worldview, have any confidence that his sensations, which pass through multiple layers of processing on the way from input to the brain, bear any trustworthy connection with nature “out there” as it really is?  Sokal says there are only one or a few “non-crazy” explanations, but that is a judgment call.  Whom is he calling crazy?  How can he judge craziness without standards of rationality that require non-naturalistic presuppositions?  How can he do that without implicitly plagiarizing the Ten Commandments?
    If we slapped the hand of the evolutionist every time he helped himself to the table of philosophy of realism without paying the price of adequate presuppositions (in the right denominations), he would either have to starve or become a Christian.  Only then could he have the right to taste the empirical data, digest it as science, grow and be nourished as a scientist and feel satisfied with the experience.
    Switching metaphors, science needs an intelligently-designed form of purifying selection.  No more hybrids should be bred from Christian presuppositions wedded to naturalistic explanations.  Forcing evolutionists to argue consistent with their presuppositions will lead to their extinction.  Then, evolutionary explanations will take their place in the dustbin of history along with Homer’s gods and the DODO.*
Next headline on:  Evolutionary Theory • Human Body • Marine Biology • Birds • Terrestrial Zoology

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*Darwin-only, Darwin-only.

1. PhysOrg reported that geneticists at the University of Nottingham have created capsules that can coax bacteria to transfer their genetic information.  The title is “Life, but not as we know it?”
2. PNAS reported that scientists at UC Santa Barbara have “rationally engineered” an aminoacyl transfer-RNA synthetase by altering its “information transfer” abilities.  Though they mentioned “copious sequence and structural information” present in the natural enzyme, they believe evolution built the information: “This role for tRNA may persist as a relic of primordial cells in which the evolution of the genetic code was driven by RNA-catalyzed amino acid–RNA pairing.”
3. Robert Deyes on Access Research Network commented on a paper in Nature Biotechnology where researchers coaxed a bacterium to play tic-tac-toe.
4. Craig Venter was interviewed on Ted Talks claiming he is just 18 months away from genetically engineering bacteria to make gasoline from carbon dioxide.

Would an unbiased alien be able to discriminate between a genetically-engineered bacterium and a natural one?
    Intelligent design makes the claim that purposeful design is distinguishable from non-design using the ordinary methods of science.  On what basis can evolutionists claim that the above examples were produced by intelligent design, but the genetic code and genetic information themselves are non-designed products of non-intelligent processes acting on matter subject to natural laws?  Consider two possible responses.
    One common argument evolutionists make is that human intelligent design is something we are familiar with, but the kind of Designer ID proponents infer is necessarily supernatural, and therefore outside of science.  The appeal to intelligent design in the genetic code, therefore, is a religious explanation.  Religion and science cannot mix.  ID, therefore, must be excluded from all scientific explanations.  But, pray tell, what is the difference in method?  If our unbiased alien inferred from the evidence, having never seen a human engineer, that an intelligent agent of some sort had designed a bacterium to play tic-tac-toe, what changes when the alien applies the same reasoning to the DNA code?  Dembski’s explanatory filter (see diagram on Evolution News) does not ask the question, “Who is the designer?”  It only asks whether design can be discriminated from chance and natural law.
    If the evolutionist agrees so far, but then persists in insisting that there is a difference between a human designer and a “supernatural” Designer (e.g., God), then explore the distinction between natural and supernatural.  Ask him if human reason is natural.  The evolutionist must believe the answer is yes.  In fact, he might explain that there is no difference in principle between what a human does altering bacteria for its purposes and what a parasite does altering a host for its purposes.  Some roundworms, for instance, alter the behavior of their insect hosts, making them climb onto the top of the leaves (which they would normally not do), where they can be spotted by birds, which are the next hosts in their life cycle.  That’s all humans are doing, he says; we alter bacteria for our purposes to make gasoline and improve our crops.  Humans are natural parasites on other organisms.
    But there are substantive differences between these cases.  The parasite cannot survive without its hosts.  Humans, on the other hand, did just fine for thousands of years before genetic engineering was invented.  What human being needs a bacterium to play tic-tac-toe?  Getting gasoline from bacteria would be nice, but we got our gas via drilling for a century, and we could get by without gas-powered transportation if need be.
    The comeback argument is actually much stronger.  If the evolutionist compares human engineering to parasite engineering and says there is no difference in principle, because humans and bacteria are products of evolution, the game is over.  He has just destroyed reason.  Human engineering is no longer intelligent design.  The words intelligent and design become meaningless.  All human activity is reduced to the deterministic or contingent activity of natural forces.  This includes reason.
    When the evolutionist uses reason, therefore, to argue against intelligent design, he refutes his own case.  Reason reduced to natural forces ceases to be reason.  Reason depends on concepts that go beyond nature into realms of rationality and the laws of logic.  Concepts are not physical.  They may revolve around physical things as their subjects, like how to design a computer.  Concepts may be communicated by physical things like voices and radios.  But the concepts themselves are independent of the physical mechanisms by which they are communicated.*  Reason reaches beyond nature for truths that are universal, timeless, necessary, and certain.  The evolutionist who appeals to reason, therefore, is a supernaturalist in spite of himself.  Think about it.
Next headline on:  Genetics • Evolution • Intelligent Design

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*Look what happens when a blind process tries to generate conceptual information: see funny story in the Seattle Times.

Somewhere in the murky past, between four and seven million years ago, a hungry common ancestor of today’s primates, including humans, did something novel.  While temporarily standing on its rear feet to reach a piece of fruit, this protohominid spotted another juicy morsel in a nearby shrub and began shuffling toward it instead of dropping on all fours, crawling to the shrub and standing again.
    A number of reasons have been proposed for the development of bipedal behavior, or walking on two feet, and now researchers from the University of Washington and Johns Hopkins University have developed a mathematical model that suggests shuffling emerged as a precursor to walking as a way of saving metabolic energy.

If a creationist were to make this kind of blunder, or tell this kind of just-so story, he or she would be condemned as an ignoramus.  Yet evolutionists get away with violating their own theoretical principles time and again and are only rarely called on the carpet for it (05/31/2004).  Why?  Because in support of their worldview (naturalism), facts don’t matter (see Fairfax’s Law in the Baloney Detector).  All’s fair in love for Darwin and war against creationism.  That’s why Darwin himself slipped back toward Lamarckism in his later years when stubborn facts hampered his ability to market natural selection.
    A political cartoon by Mike Shelton illustrates unequal standards.  It applies just as well if relabeled with a Darwinist donkey and a creationist elephant.  Evolutionists will scream and preach about honesty when criticizing a creationist position, but then will lie shamelessly in their own work and call it science.  They will even lie while calling their critics liars, and hypocritically call creationists hypocrites (see Evolution News).
    You can almost hear in advance the charges that would come from the pro-Darwin blogs about our pointing out this little inconsistency in their latest just-so story.  Let a creationist be caught in some inconsistency, and the sparks would fly: You creationists are such hypocrites; you Bible-thumping fundamentalists with your narrow religious agenda show that you just don’t understand science.  Let an evolutionist be caught in an inconsistency, and the response will be either (1) ignoring the criticism, or (2) rationalization, like Well, you know what I meant, and we all know that a foolish consistency is the hobgoblin of little minds. 
Next headline on:  Evolutionary Theory • Early Man • Dumb Ideas