Creationism%20News%20

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Creationism News June 2013 ????? 2013?6?

• Dedicated to David Coppedge who sacrificed his
  career as the Head Systems Administrator for the
  Cassini Spacecraft in JPL to honor the Creator
  of the Universe. He also spent literally
  thousands of hours to make his excellent
  websites.
• The contents of this presentation were taken from
  David Coppedges website http//crev.info. Pray
  for his fast recovery from cancer surgery.
• Pastor Chui
• http//ChristCenterGospel.org
• ckchui1_at_yahoo.com

1/23/2019
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Genetic Dating Can Fool Scientists???????????

• The dates of some human migrations could have
  been much more recent than genetic data
  indicates.  What of even older dates?
• In Archaeological Genetics Its Not All as Old
  as It at First Seems, Science Daily reported on
  work published in Investigative Genetics that
  indicated data on migrations in the Netherlands
  fits recent population movements just as well as
  ancient ones
• These results could be explained by invoking
  movement of ancient, Paleolithic-Neolithic
  humans, similar to that proposed to explain the
  genetic diversity across central entire
  Europe. However the data also fits a model
  involving movement of people within the last 70
  generations of modern Dutch, for which there is a
  wealth of archaeological evidence.

1/23/2019
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Genetic Dating Can Fool Scientists ???????????

• Consequently, patterns of genetic
  diversity which indicate population movement may
  not be as ancient as previously believed, but may
  be attributable to recent events.  The authors
  of the open-access paper cautioned colleagues
  future human population genetic studies pay more
  attention to recent demographic
  history in interpreting genetic clines.  See
  press release from BioMed Central.

1/23/2019
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Genetic Dating Can Fool Scientists ???????????

• Interpretation Run Amok
• It would seem, therefore, that if data from the
  most recent millennia can be misinterpreted, that
  the uncertainties would mount when interpreting
  older data.  Yet paleoanthropologists routinely
  speak confidently about supposed events tens of
  thousands, if not millions, of years ago.  If
  genetic data can be misinterpreted, the same
  pitfalls can occur with other data, such as
  artifacts.
• For example, in When Did Humans Begin Hurling
  Spears?  Science Now pointed out that the answer
  varies from 90,000 to 500,000 evolutionary years
  ago, depending on how one interprets markings on
  bones.

1/23/2019
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Genetic Dating Can Fool Scientists ???????????

• Nature News claims that hominid footprints 1.52
  million years old, probably from Homo
  erectus or Paranthropus, show that the walkers
  were the same size as modern humans, based on
  inferences of stature, body mass and walking
  speed compared with those of modern Kenyan
  barefoot walkers.
• Science News presented a new hypothesis about why
  apes descended from the trees that challenges
  evolutionary theories behind the development of
  our earliest ancestors from tree dwelling
  quadrupeds to upright bipeds capable of walking
  and scrambling.  A paleoanthopologist published
  a novel theory that challenges traditional
  hypotheses which suggest our early forebears
  were forced out of the trees and onto two
  feet when climate change reduced tree cover. 
  Instead, Dr. Isabelle Winder (U of York) thinks
  it was a response to geological changes

1/23/2019
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Genetic Dating Can Fool Scientists ???????????

• The broken, disrupted terrain offered benefits
  for hominins in terms of security and food, but
  it also proved a motivation to improve their
  locomotor skills by climbing, balancing,
  scrambling and moving swiftly over broken ground
  types of movement encouraging a more upright
  gait.
• The research suggests that the hands and arms of
  upright hominins were then left free to develop
  increased manual dexterity and tool use,
  supporting a further key stage in
  the evolutionary story.
• Aside from sounding Lamarckian, this theory begs
  the question of why all the other animals in the
  terrain did not develop upright posture and tool
  use.

1/23/2019
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Genetic Dating Can Fool Scientists ???????????

• Another example borders on the ridiculous.  Rob
  Brooks, in an article posted by Medical Xpress,
  used Arnold Schwarzeneggers biceps as support
  for the notion of a link between male upper-body
  strength and assertion of economic
  self-interest.  (See 5/18/03 story and
  comments).  Brooks unwittingly committed his own
  show of brute force by referring
  to Creation-Evolution Headlines as nutbaggery
  while trying to simultaneously backpeddle from
  the idea that evolutionary forces dictate our
  politics.  The value of this paper is in showing
  how our evolved biology and our contemporary
  politics can interlink in interesting ways,
  creating nuanced individual differences, he
  explained.  Very interesting, indeed.  Any
  predictions from this notion?  Any way to falsify
  it?

1/23/2019
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Genetic Dating Can Fool Scientists ???????????

• Always Room for Doubt
• A few paleoanthropologists are aware of the
  problems of interpreting data.  For
  instance, Nature recently questioned
  whether Australopithecus sediba has anything to
  do with the emergence of the genus Homo.  In
  Hesitation on Human History, William H. Kimbel
  wrote, I do not think that they provide
  compelling evidence that this species is anything
  other than an unusual australopith ape from a
  PliocenePleistocene time period that is already
  populated by a fair number of them.
• Evolutionists Simon E. Fisher and Matt Ridley
  in Science Magazine (Culture, Genes and the
  Human Revolution) first praised the techniques
  available for genetic research before cautioning
  about interpretation

1/23/2019
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Genetic Dating Can Fool Scientists ???????????

• State-of-the-art DNA sequencing is providing ever
  more detailed insights into the genomes of
  humans, extant apes, and even extinct hominins,
  offering unprecedented opportunities to uncover
  the molecular variants that make us human. A
  common assumption is that the emergence of
  behaviorally modern humans after 200,000 years
  ago requiredand followeda specific biological
  change triggered by one or more genetic
  mutations. For example, Klein has argued that the
  dawn of human culture stemmed from a single
  genetic change that fostered the uniquely modern
  ability to adapt to a remarkable range of natural
  and social circumstance. But are evolutionary
  changes in our genome a cause or a consequence of
  cultural innovation?
• Many nuanced accounts of human evolution
  implicitly assume that biological changes must
  precede cultural changes.

1/23/2019
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Genetic Dating Can Fool Scientists ???????????

• This prevailing logic in the field may put the
  cart before the horse. The discovery of any
  genetic mutation that coincided with the human
  revolution must take care to distinguish cause
  from effect. Supposedly momentous changes in our
  genome may sometimes be a consequence of cultural
  innovation. They may be products
  of culture-driven gene evolution.

1/23/2019
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Genetic Dating Can Fool Scientists ???????????

• Fisher and Ridley give the example of lactose
  intolerance as a likely genetic consequence of
  lifestyle choices by early farmers.  They also
  dispute the relevance of the FOXP2 genetic change
  that some paleoanthropologists have suggested
  drove the development of human language.  If,
  for instance, humanized FOXP2 confers more
  sophisticated control of vocal sequences, this
  would most benefit an animal already capable of
  speech, they said.  Alternatively, the spread
  of the relevant changes may have had nothing to
  do with emergence of spoken language, but may
  have conferred selective advantages in another
  domain.  Either way, the interpretation does not
  jump out of the data.  To think science
  (prevailing logic) can be conducted free of
  human subjectivity would, indeed, put Descartes
  before the Horace.

1/23/2019
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Genetic Dating Can Fool Scientists ???????????

• Anyone thinking the evolutionary story just leaps
  out of the data from its own accord needs to
  study philosophy of science.  Data to
  evolutionists are like colorful pebbles and bits
  of glass they use to create a mosaic whose image
  was predetermined by their materialistic world
  view.  Curious, is it not, that to complete their
  project they have to use intelligent design.  Why
  dont they just shake the bits on a table and see
  what emerges since emergence (the Stuff Happens
  Law, 9/15/08) is the theme of their whole story?

1/23/2019
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Genetic Dating Can Fool Scientists ???????????

• Rob Brooks is having a good time at our expense
  flexing his muscle on his blog against
  nutbaggers instead of answering legitimate
  questions.  Come now, Rob, tell us does truth
  evolve?  We left that checkmate challenge hanging
  but he just wants to overturn the table and call
  it a stupid game.  Its more than a game.  Its a
  challenge to his credibility.  Maybe he should
  recognize that tens of thousands of people read
  this website.  Our well-educated and
  sophisticated audience would love to watch if he
  can wield the sword of logic better than the
  mudballs of ridicule.

1/23/2019
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Genetic Dating Can Fool Scientists ???????????

• As for bicep politics, maybe Mr. Brooks would
  like to explain the anti-redistributionism of
  Sarah Palin, Michelle Malkin, Ann Coulter, and
  all the other conservatives not particularly
  known for their upper-body strength.  Or how
  about Nick Vujicic, who has no biceps?  Maybe
  Brooks could entertain the idea that its fat,
  not muscle, that allows men to throw their weight
  around.  Does that explain Rush Limbaughs
  politics?  Oh, but we see Brooks has an escape. 
  Evolution just adds nuance to these
  tendencies.  Any exception to his law of nature
  can just be nuanced away.  Well, then, if theres
  no law of nature, why call the storytelling
  science?  Notions belong in  fabric stores, not
  the lab (10/14/08).

1/23/2019
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Genetic Dating Can Fool Scientists ???????????

• Brooks laughs at his Yoda Complex.  Well, fine. 
  We can all laugh with him.  We all know, at the
  end of the day, its just for show.  Hes an
  entertainer, not a philosopher.  After his daily
  storytelling work on the Darwin Light Magic
  soundstage, he takes off his latex Yoda costume
  and behaves like a normal human being, living as
  if his mental choices matterignoring the
  mutations that the Start Warts script says make
  him what he is.  The fantasy is all CGI, where
  even truth can evolve.  If he insists on
  manipulating the dork side of the farce
  (the self-refuting side of illogic), may the
  farce bewitch him.

1/23/2019
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• Gloria Deo ??????

1/23/2019
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Wonders of the Spliceosome Coming to
Light????????

• The more we learn about a vital molecular machine
  in the nucleus, the spliceosome, the more complex
  and important it seems.
• The spliceosome is a large slicer and dicer
  that takes DNA transcripts (messenger RNA) and
  prepares them for export out of the nucleus,
  where they will be translated into
  proteins.  Science Daily described what molecular
  biologists have learned about this amazing
  multi-function machine

1/23/2019
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Wonders of the Spliceosome Coming to
Light????????

• The process of splicing is carried out by a
  highly complex molecular machine termed the
  spliceosome. Human spliceosomes are built up from
  protein and RNA molecules. They contain some 170
  different proteins and five RNA molecules termed
  small nuclear RNAs (snRNAs). It is currently
  believed that certain snRNAs represent the tools
  with which the spliceosome carries out the
  cutting and joining of RNA sections, turning the
  messenger RNAs precursor (pre-mRNA) into
  mature messenger RNA. The proteins of the
  spliceosome are needed to bring these tools to
  the right place at the right time, and to set
  them into operation. 

1/23/2019
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Wonders of the Spliceosome Coming to
Light????????

• Splicing processes in higher organisms are very
  highly regulated. In fact, differing patterns of
  excision and joining of a given pre-mRNA
  molecule can lead to any one of a selection of
  different mature mRNA molecules all from the
  same gene. This ability to select the mRNA
  product according to need is termed alternative
  splicing, and it is thought to be the most
  important means by which human cells manage to
  produce a vast spectrum of different proteins
  from a relatively restricted number of
  protein-encoding genes.

1/23/2019
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Wonders of the Spliceosome Coming to
Light????????

• So far, weve seen precision tools that arrive at
  precision times to do precision jobs.  Weve seen
  that this multi-part, complex machine, aided by
  multiple other proteins and small RNA molecules,
  is capable of turning a transcribed gene into a
  vast array of protein templates by means of
  alternative splicing.  Years ago, it seemed a
  mystery why genes contained many apparently
  useless regions of code, dubbed introns, that had
  to be cut out of the messenger RNA (see 9/03/2003)
  .  The spliceosomes magic of alternative
  splicing is providing clues.

1/23/2019
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Wonders of the Spliceosome Coming to
Light????????

• The article, based on a press release from
  the Free University of Berlin, used some pithy
  analogies to help readers understand the
  process.  One of the tools was likened to a knife
  in a sheath, that safely moves to the cutting
  site, waits for a start signal, then unsheathes
  itself and goes to work.  The start signal is
  given by another machine with a remarkable
  molecular architecture that enables the knife. 
  But that start-signal machine is held on a short
  leash by another machine, preventing it from
  giving the start signal.  That machine acts like
  a plug in a stopper, the researchers said,
  making sure the start signal is only given at the
  right time.

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Wonders of the Spliceosome Coming to
Light????????

• But then, the researchers found another machine
  that works in tandem with the plug, regulating
  the start signal independently.  The existence
  of two or more different mechanisms to regulate
  the same cellular process underlines
  the importance of the exact timing of this
  process for the overall process of RNA splicing,
  one of the researchers said.
• This information is not just academic.  In
  humans, errors in this control mechanism can lead
  to blindness.  Could this machine have evolved
  by chance?  The article does not mention
  evolution.  It did say, though, that the
  spliceosome has some 170 different proteins. 
  Could chance build just one protein? 

1/23/2019
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Wonders of the Spliceosome Coming to
Light????????

• We in this century are so privileged to get
  glimpses into the inner workings of life at its
  most basic level.  What would Aristotle or Galen,
  Leeuwenhoek or Darwin, thought if they knew that
  machinerycutting tools, stoppers, regulators and
  other moving partsso tiny as to be invisible
  without highly sophisticated human machinerywere
  keeping us alive?  Every second, every minute we
  are being upheld by trillions of machines like
  this that nobody even suspected were possible
  till the age of molecular biology.

1/23/2019
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Wonders of the Spliceosome Coming to
Light????????

• Had Darwin known this, he might never have dared
  to write a story that blind, unguided processes
  could explain life.  Theres an interesting
  novella on that theme that was recently presented
  on ID the Future in audio format, 5 episodes. 
  I, Charles Darwin transports the bearded buddha
  into the 21st century, where he learns about
  these wonders and responds to them.  To encourage
  you to listen, we wont spoil the end of the
  story.

1/23/2019
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• Gloria Deo ??????

1/23/2019
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 Two More Fossils Challenge Evolution????????

• One living fossil and one dead fossil strain the
  credibility of evolutionary dates and mechanisms.
• Cuttlefish melanin  PhysOrg reported on intact
  melanin from the ink sac of a Jurassic-era
  cuttlefish (see also 8/20/02, 5/21/12) .  The
  spectrum of the melanin matches that from a
  living specimen.  The article did not question
  why an organic substance would be expected to
  survive for 160 million years.  It just assumed
  that it did, and launched into a speculation
  Because melanin survives so long, an analysis of
  the melanin from old cancerous tissue
  samples could give researchers a useful tool for
  predicting the spread of melanoma skin cancer in
  humans.

1/23/2019
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 Two More Fossils Challenge Evolution????????

• Israeli frog  The Hula painted frog (no, it does
  not use a Hula-Hoop), feared extinct 60 years
  ago, has been rediscovered in Israel, reported
  the BBC News and National Geographic.  Thought to
  be a casualty of the draining of wetlands in the
  Hula Valley in northern Israel, this
  strange-looking brown amphibian with white spots
  on its belly caused a stir of excitement when a
  frog, a kind of idol of Israel was found alive
  two years ago.  Thirteen more have since been
  seen, leading to estimates of a couple of hundred
  remaining alive.

1/23/2019
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 Two More Fossils Challenge Evolution????????

• Thats good news, but not the only point of
  interest its also a living fossil.  According
  to the evolutionary timeline, members of the
  Latonia group of frogs didnt learn to keep
  evolving.  National Geographic commented, the
  Hula painted frog is considered a rare example of
  a so-called living fossil, an organism that
  has retained the same form over millions of years
  and that has few or no living relatives. 
  The BBC article said, These frogs were once
  widespread throughout Europe for millions of
  years, but all apart from the Hula painted frog
  died out about 15,000 years ago.  That would
  appear to make this frog a member of Lazarus
  taxa, groups thought extinct long ago only to be
  found alive and well today.

1/23/2019
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 Two More Fossils Challenge Evolution????????

• National Geographic erred by claiming that Only
  about a dozen other living fossils are known,
  the most famous of which may be the coelacanth,
  an ancient fish that can trace its ancestry back
  to the days of the dinosaurs.  As explained
  on CMI, Dr. Carl Werner has documented hundreds
  of them.  Not only that, Dr. Werner has
  documented 432 mammal fossils (100 of them
  complete skeletons) in Cretaceous strataalmost
  as many species as dinosaurs.  He has also found
  representatives of modern plants, crustaceans and
  insects in dinosaur rocks, as his
  video explains.  Yet in 60 museums he visited,
  not a single one displayed a complete Cretaceous
  mammal fossil, or any modern animal or plant
  displayed with the dinosaurs.

1/23/2019
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 Two More Fossils Challenge Evolution????????

• We agree with what Dr. Werner said in
  the CMI article
• For example, if a scientist believes in evolution
  and sees fossils that look like modern organisms
  at the dinosaur digs, he/she might invent an
  hypothesis to explain living fossils this way
  Yes I believe that animals have changed greatly
  over time (evolution), but some animals and
  plants were so well adapted to the environment
  that they did not need to change. So I am not
  bothered at all by living fossils. This added
  hypothesis says that some animals did not
  evolve. But if a theory can be so flexible,
  adding hypotheses that predict the opposite of
  your main theory, one could never disprove the
  theory. The theory then becomes unsinkable, and
  an unsinkable theory is not science.

1/23/2019
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• Gloria Deo ??????

1/23/2019
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Do Confusing Branches Add up to a Darwin
Tree???????????????

• Evolutionists routinely try to construct parts of
  Darwins grand tree of life from fossils and
  genes.  Do the parts come together as expected?
• Camels mammals  The genome of a Bactrian
  (two-humped) camel named Mozart was deciphered. 
  According to Science Daily, The DNA code also
  represents a rich resource for addressing
  questions on phylogenetic relationships between
  animals.  So far, though, all the geneticists
  found was 85 similarity to the one-humped
  dromedary camel.  They hope it will clarify
  relationships with llamas and alpacas, too, but
  that work remains to be done.

1/23/2019
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Do Confusing Branches Add up to a Darwin
Tree???????????????

• Zebrafish mermaids  Alongside a photo of a
  lovely lady swimming underwater, Michael Gross
  wrote in Current Biology,  While we humans tend
  to have grandiose ideas about our special
  position in the tree of life, more than 70 of
  our genes have an obvious orthologue in
  zebrafish.  Other than telling sweeping stories
  of evolutionary transitions, Gross only mentioned
  the coelacanth genome and the zebrafish genome as
  data, noting that zebrafish has the largest
  number of unique genes (3,634) not shared with
  any of the others (chicken, mouse, and human). 
  And despite the major changes involved in moving
  from sea to land, he wrote, Arthropods must have
  made the transition at least five times, as
  researchers have concluded from phylogenetic
  trees.

1/23/2019
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Do Confusing Branches Add up to a Darwin
Tree???????????????

• Tree of life is fishy  In Somethingss fishy in
  the tree of life, Science Daily reported on the
  largest comparison of fish genes to date,
  providing data that dramatically increase
  understanding of fish evolution and their
  relationships.  Some assembly required, after
  disassembling previous assumptions and
  proposing relationships nobody would have
  expected
• While some of the findings provide
  new support for previously understood fish
  relationships, others significantly change
  existing ideas. Many different groupings are propo
  sed in this new tree. For example, tunas and
  marlins are both fast-swimming marine fishes with
  large, streamlined bodies, yet they appear on
  very different branches of the tree. Tunas appear
  to be more closely related to the small,
  sedentary seahorses, whereas marlins are close
  relatives of flatfishes, which are
  bottom-dwelling and have distinctive asymmetric
  heads.

1/23/2019
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Do Confusing Branches Add up to a Darwin
Tree???????????????

• Fish Hips  A short article on Science
  Daily tries to explain the fishy origin of our
  hips.  Were related to salamanders, by
  implication it only took a few evolutionary
  steps to convert fins to hips.  Even though
  humans are thought to be very distant on Darwins
  tree, the differences between us and
  them are not as great as they appear  most of
  the key elements necessary for the transformation
  to human hips were actually already present in
  our fish ancestors, the article alleges.  And
  thats because Many of the muscles thought to be
  new in tetrapods evolved from muscles already
  present in lungfish, a Monash University
  evolutionist said.  We also found evidence of a
  new, more simple path by which skeletal
  structures would have evolved.  A picture of an
  axolotl adorns the articlebut thats a
  salamander, not a fish.

1/23/2019
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Do Confusing Branches Add up to a Darwin
Tree???????????????

• Speaking of salamanders, an article
  on PhysOrg alleges that the repeated
  evolution of high foraging rates in spotted
  salamanders shows the invisible finger of
  evolution at work.  Quote from the evolutionary
  spokesman from U of Connecticut Finding
  that adaptive evolution may disguise strong
  ecological effects means that a range of
  ecological predictions are likely to be
  unreliable if we ignore how evolution affects
  biological communities i.e., evolution and
  ecology are so inexorably intertwined, one can
  mask the other.

1/23/2019
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Do Confusing Branches Add up to a Darwin
Tree???????????????

• Snakes alive, and hopeful lizards  A researcher
  with his team at George Washington U has built a
  new evolutionary tree of all lizards and snakes
  around the globe, 4,161 species in all.  While
  there are gaps on some branches of the tree, the
  lead acknowledged, the structure of the tree
  goes a long way toward fully mapping every genus
  and species group.  He thinks he knows what will
  fill the gaps, even though the project is
  preliminary this estimate of the squamate tree
  of life shows us what we do know, and more
  importantly, what we dont know, and will
  hopefully spur even more research on the amazing
  diversity of lizards and snakes.

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Do Confusing Branches Add up to a Darwin
Tree???????????????

• Speaking of lizards, heres a big one.  While
  listening to music from The Doors, Jason Head (U
  of Nebraska) found a six-footer he named after
  Jim Morrison (leader of the rock band, who
  apparently committed suicide).  Thought to have
  lived 40 million years ago, Barbaturex
  morrisoni was larger than many of the mammals it
  munched on.  Head attributed todays paucity of
  large lizards to climate change.  Apparently
  global temperatures and carbon dioxide levels
  were much higher back then, even with human
  smokestacks and automobiles around.  We
  think the warm climate during that period of
  time allowed the evolution of a large body
  size and the ability of plant-eating lizards to
  successfully compete in mammal faunas, he said
  (PhysOrg).  Is he proposing reptile size as a
  function of temperature?  Why, then, were there
  large dinosaurs in the arctic circle?  Why are
  lizards smaller today, to first approximation, in
  hot as well as cold climates?

1/23/2019
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Do Confusing Branches Add up to a Darwin
Tree???????????????

• Ant what they used to be  Hows the ant branch
  coming along?  Science Daily reported on a new
  ant family tree that supposedly Confirms Date of
  Evolutionary Origin and Underscores Importance
  of Neotropics in their emergence.  Data from
  genes and fossils were used to build the largest
  ancestry diagram for ants.  According to the
  phylogenists, the rainforests of the Neotropics
  are both a museum, protecting many of the oldest
  ant groups, and also a cradle that continues to
  generate new species.  In other words, some
  evolve and some dont.  This ant
  tree-of-life confirmed an earlier surprising
  finding that two groups of pale, eyeless,
  subterranean ants, which are unlike most typical
  ants, are the earliest living ancestors of the
  modern ants.  It would seem easier to lose eyes
  than to gain them.

1/23/2019
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Do Confusing Branches Add up to a Darwin
Tree???????????????

• Planting trees in the fast lane  Biologists
  have known for a long time that some creatures
  evolve more quickly than others, begins an
  article on PhysOrg. Exactly why isnt well
  understood, particularly for plants.  A new
  notion is that short plants grow in the
  evolutionary fast lane compared to tall
  plants.  At the U.S. National Evolutionary
  Synthesis Center, researchers estimated the
  average height of 140 families of plants, then
  plotted them against their assumed date of
  emergence in the fossil record to conclude (to
  their surprise) that shorter plants evolved as
  much as five times faster than taller ones.  Why
  would that be?  They surmised that the tips of
  small plants generate more mistakes

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Do Confusing Branches Add up to a Darwin
Tree???????????????

• What puts short plants in the evolutionary fast
  lane? The researchers suspect the difference may
  be driven by genetic changes that accumulate in
  the actively-dividing cells in the tip of the
  plant shoot as it grows. Cells dont copy
  their DNA perfectly each time they divide. In
  animals, most DNA copy mistakes that occur in the
  cells of the animals body cant be
  inheritedtheyre evolutionary dead ends. But
  this isnt the case for plants, where genetic
  changes in any part of the plant could
  potentially get passed on if those cells
  eventually form flowers or other reproductive
  organs.
• For the notion to work, the rate of cell
  division and genome copying in taller plants
  eventually slows down, and changes in DNAthe raw
  material for evolutionaccumulates less
  quickly.  Sounds like a hypothesis in need of
  observation.

1/23/2019
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Do Confusing Branches Add up to a Darwin
Tree???????????????

• Does Darwin need his tree?  As reported here May
  15, the tree of life is a tangled bramble bush,
  according to an article on Science
  Daily.  Astrobiology Magazine went further to
  debunk the notion of a tree of life with a last
  universal common ancestor (LUCA).  But their idea
  of digging down below the tree of life
  threatens to uproot it
• A family tree unites a diverse group of
  individuals that all carry genetic vestiges from
  a single common ancestor at the base of the tree.
  But this organizational structure falls apart if
  genetic information is a communal resource as
  opposed to a family possession.

1/23/2019
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Do Confusing Branches Add up to a Darwin
Tree???????????????

• The article stressed the significance of
  horizontal gene transfer,  Nigel Goldenfield (U
  of Chicago) stated it this way Our perspective
  is that life emerged from a collective state, and
  so it is not at all obvious that there is one
  single organism which was ancestral.  Although
  this refers to the trunk of the tree, the impact
  of the new idea flows upward.  In his
  work,Peter  Gogarten U of Connecticut has
  shown that horizontal gene transfer turns the
  tree of life into a thick bush of branches that
  interweave with each other.  (see also 2/01/07).
  The new ideas of Carl Woese (1/28/10),
  Goldenfield and Gogarten are examples of the
  evolution of evolution, the article suggests
  (see 12/19/07).
• The group is particularly interested in the
  question of how the ability to evolve originally
  developed. The evolution of evolution sounds
  like a chicken-and-egg problem  especially if
  you think, as Goldenfeld does, that life is by
  definition something capable of evolving.

1/23/2019
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Do Confusing Branches Add up to a Darwin
Tree???????????????

• However, evolution can utilize different
  mechanisms to achieve the same goal. Goldenfelds
  team will try to recover some of lifes former
  evolutionary phases by stressing cells and then
  seeing how their genomes rearrange in response.
• It appears, then, that to salvage evolutionary
  theory, astrobiologists must personify evolution
  (evolution can utilize different mechanisms)
  and dispense with Darwins core concept of
  unguided natural selection (to achieve the
  same goal).

1/23/2019
44
45
Do Confusing Branches Add up to a Darwin
Tree???????????????

• Goldenfield, a physicist, tries to see evolution
  in thermodynamics terms in order to come up with
  rules of universal biology.  However it is
  viewed, its clear that evolutionists have a long
  way to go.  He said, We would like to have a
  better understanding of why life exists at all.
• Why does life exist at all?  Because it was
  created.  It didnt just happen.  We can say that
  confidently after showcasing once again the utter
  bankruptcy of evolutionary theory (10/19/10). Did
  you catch that the zebrafish has 3,634 unique
  genes?  Whats the probability of those
  arising without design?

1/23/2019
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46
Do Confusing Branches Add up to a Darwin
Tree???????????????

• After 154 years of Darwin, evolutionists are not
  even sure there is a tree of life.  Creationists
  have the certainty of a life-giving, created tree
  of life in the beginning and at the end.  Dont
  be fooled by the mystical divination of
  modern-day shamans who use mumbo-jumbo like the
  evolution of evolution or the invisible finger
  of evolution to keep their fake tree fable going
  (2/01/07 commentary), who refuse to acknowledge
  the clear evidence for design, and who keep
  promising understanding that never comes.

1/23/2019
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47

• Gloria Deo ??????

1/23/2019
47
48
Evolutionists Strategize to Fight
Creation??????????

• If evolution were a matter of obvious biological
  facts, why would it be necessary to list
  strategies to teach it without exposing it to
  critical thinking?
• Natures editorial for May 15, Science in
  schools, took aim at creationists, and
  the Discovery Institute (not a creationist
  organization, an intelligent design organization)
  in particular, on the occasion of Eugenie Scotts
  retirement (5/09/13) from the National Center for
  Science Education or NCSE (not an education
  organization, but an anti-creationist
  organization).  Beyond the usual talking points
  (e.g., evolution is science, creation is
  religion Kitzmiller the bandwagon argument all
  scientists accept evolution), the editors
  suggested three things scientists could do to
  keep up Eugenies fight against Darwin skeptics.

1/23/2019
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Evolutionists Strategize to Fight
Creation??????????

• 1. Make evolution appear non-atheist.  The
  editors applauded Eugenie Scotts tactical coup
  in removing the words impersonal and
  unsupervised when the US National Association
  of Biology Teachers described natural selection
  that way in a statement.  Its not that Scott
  believed the converse (that natural selection is
  supervised or personal) she just didnt want to
  make evolution a lightning rod for those who
  would use such a statement as evidence that
  Darwinists are atheists.  So she argued that
  theres a false dichotomy between religious
  people, some of whom believe evolution, and
  scientists, some of whom might actually believe
  in some higher power.  Scott (an atheist
  herself) argued that science could not address
  such questions.

1/23/2019
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Evolutionists Strategize to Fight
Creation??????????

• 2. Build coalitions.  This strategy is vague
  enough to allow Darwinists to appear conciliatory
  while insisting their view is uncontested.  They
  can have their say, as long as they all say the
  right things
• Another strategy is to put together coalitions of
  people from diverse backgrounds to
  provide multiple perspectives. Faith-based
  communities can express concerns about one
  religious view being favoured over
  another. Parents can argue for their childrens
  clear thinking and academic futures. Scientists ca
  n talk about the scientific process and
  why accuracy in schools matters, but should
  also participate, where applicable, as parents,
  community members or people of faith.

1/23/2019
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Evolutionists Strategize to Fight
Creation??????????

• 3. Perform outreach.  The third strategy is for
  scientists to get out and interact with the
  public more often.  The articulate ones who can
  explain the evolutionary view should be
  recognized and supported by their institutions
  they should bring the same passion to
  describing the work that is most likely to engage
  the public, perhaps dinosaur evolution. 
  Surprisingly, the editors pointed to Stephen Jay
  Gould as a good example of outreach.  Gould, a
  staunch evolutionist, rankled other evolutionists
  with his frank admissions that the fossils did
  not support Darwinian gradualism.  His theory of
  punctuated equilibria showed that there are
  strong disagreements within the scientific
  community over neo-Darwinism, as the Discovery
  Institute likes to point out.

1/23/2019
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Evolutionists Strategize to Fight
Creation??????????

• The editors made it clear that they are not for
  dialogue or debate.  They ended, With support
  from the NCSE and similar efforts, scientists can
  further not only science education, but science
  itself.
• Oh, they can sound so noble.  They just want to
  further science.  They just want to help the
  children.  Who could possibly be against that? 
  Readers need well-tuned baloney detectors to see
  why this is DODO talk (Darwin-only,
  Darwin-only).  In strategy 2, for instance, we
  have various types of people in their coalition
  giving multiple perspectives on the only
  acceptable viewpoint, the DODO viewpoint.

1/23/2019
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Evolutionists Strategize to Fight
Creation??????????

• The Faith-based communities they have in mind
  are the liberal churches who take
  the DODO position, like the Clergy Letter Project
  people who want to have Darwin Day celebrations
  in their churches.
• The parents they have in mind are
  leftist ACLU supporters who will scream on cue
  that they dont want their kids getting religion
  in science class at the slightest suggestion of
  teaching evolution honestly.  Notice that they
  want parents NOT who support academic freedom,
  but rather clear thinking (that is,
  pure DODO without confusing counter-arguments)
  and academic futures (the red-herring big
  lie that allowing debate about Darwinism might
  compromise their ability to get into college). 

1/23/2019
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Evolutionists Strategize to Fight
Creation??????????

• The scientists they have in mind are
  the DODO evolutionists who still hold to logical
  positivism, that dead philosophy of science that
  claims the scientific process has some kind of
  objective meaning.  The accuracy they want is
  Darwin Party approved DODO talking points.  And
  as long as they stay DODO, its strategic for
  them to play the part of parents, community
  members or people of faith in the manner of Ken
  Miller, the DODO Catholic.

1/23/2019
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55
Evolutionists Strategize to Fight
Creation??????????

• People of faith.  That phrase should be banned
  from the English language.  Everybody is a person
  of faith.  Some have logical faith, and some have
  absurd faith.  Anyone believing life arose by
  chance and became Man the Wise by unguided
  processes belongs in the latter group.  No
  reasonable person should have the kind of faith
  to believe the impossible.  Those are People of
  Fluff.  The worst are the ones that throw
  tantrums when you question their DODO hood the
  People of Froth.

1/23/2019
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Evolutionists Strategize to Fight
Creation??????????

• Hopefully, here at CEH you are learning how to
  read Darwinian rhetoric with your critical
  thinking skills honed.  Their talking points can
  sound grandiose when they just want to help
  people understand why anything less than 100
  pure DODO is unacceptable.  They know that
  letting in honest scientific debate over the
  evidence for Darwinism would be their undoing.

1/23/2019
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• Gloria Deo ??????

1/23/2019
57
58
Mind Your Matters, Evolutionist????,??????

• Several recent articles illustrate the mental
  struggle materialists have with human uniqueness,
  particularly the mind and consciousness.
• The animal continuum  Described as a highly
  influential researcher studying animality (our
  animal nature), Dominique Lestel thinks the
  human-animal divide is a false dichotomy,
  reported Science Daily.  He takes issue with
  Western philosophy that elevates humanness above
  the beasts.  He thinks man needs to reactivate
  his animality and animalize himself anew.  One
  might wonder what college students would do with
  that advice.  Another might ask what other
  animals do research and publish it in Social
  Science Information, a journal of SAGE.

1/23/2019
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59
Mind Your Matters, Evolutionist????,??????

• The consciousness debate goes on  Live
  Science described a panel discussion at the World
  Science Festival in New York between philosophers
  and scientists about consciousness.  Tanya Lewis
  opened with the material angle As you read this
  sentence, the millions of neurons in your brain
  are frantically whispering to each
  other, resulting in the experience of conscious
  awareness.  Her article gave the edge to the
  materialists who believe the brain gives rise to
  conscious phenomena.  Her opening question,
  though, But can modern neuroscience ever hope to
  crack this mysterious phenomenon? led to
  admissions that theyre not there yet.  The
  article led to a lively discussion in the
  comments between monists and dualists (i.e.,
  those who see mind as separate from matter).

1/23/2019
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Mind Your Matters, Evolutionist????,??????

• Is morality mental or natural?  Bob Holmes on New
  Scientist reviewed two books about the origin of
  human morality The Bonobo and the Atheist In
  Search of Humanism Among the Primates by Frans de
  Waal, and How Animals Grieve by Barbara J. King. 
  Both books show that we must be careful when
  studying animals to learn about the origins of
  human traits and behaviours, he said.  He
  thought de Waal was more thoughtful than King,
  but Holmes was inclined to agree (and believes
  most of New Scientists readers will concur) that
  morality is relative, not absolute
• If hes right, then there may be no absolute code
  of right and wrong out there to be discovered.
  Instead, each individuals evolved sense of
  empathy and concern for the group may help shape
  the groups consensus on what kind of behaviour
  is appropriate. In short, says de Waal, morality
  may be something we all have to work out
  together. Its a persuasive argument, and de
  Waals cautious and evidence-based approach is
  one that many New Scientist readers are sure to
  find congenial.

1/23/2019
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Mind Your Matters, Evolutionist????,??????

• Is neuroscience the answer?  Another article
  on New Scientist cast a shadow on materialist
  hopes in neuroscience.  David Robson reviewed two
  more books that challenge the notion that
  neuroscience will ever understand consciousness. 
  The books are, Brainwashed The seductive appeal
  of mindless neuroscience by Sally Satel and Scott
  O. Lilienfeld, and A Skeptics Guide to the Mind
  What neuroscience can and cannot tell us about
  ourselves by Robert A. Burton.  The titles alone
  indicate that the authors arent ready to give
  neuroscience a free pass, and neither does
  Robson
• NO CREVICE of the human experience is safe. Our
  deepest fears and desires, our pasts and our
  futures  all have been revealed, and all in the
  form of colourful images that look like lava
  bubbling under the skull.

1/23/2019
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Mind Your Matters, Evolutionist????,??????

• That, at least, is the popular conception of
  neuroscience  and its worth big money.
  The US and the European Union are throwing
  billions of dollars at two new projects to map
  the human brain. Yet there is also a growing
  anxiety that many of neurosciences findings
  dont stand up to scrutiny. Its not just
  sensational headlines reporting a dark patch in
  a psychopaths brain, there are now serious
  concerns that some of the methods themselves are
  flawed.

1/23/2019
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Mind Your Matters, Evolutionist????,??????

• And that takes the discussion right back to
  philosophy, so long criticized as asking good
  questions but not providing good answers. 
  Neurology is not destiny, Robson says, after
  pointing out some false positives using fMRI
  (functional MRI) and other tools of
  neuroscience.  But Robson is not ready to throw
  out the neuroscience baby with the bathwater.  He
  puts his hope in what neuroscience will learn
  some day.
• Game Theory  Meanwhile, evolutionists continue
  to speak of human mental traits in materialist,
  evolutionary terms.  Michael Taborsky in Current
  Biology continued sounding the ongoing paradigm
  that human cooperation and altruism are a result
  of social evolution Milot and Pelletier
  in Current Biology advanced the idea that human
  beings are still a playground for natural
  selection (but cf. Science Magazines review
  of Paleofantasy and our 3/13/13 entry).  The
  scientific institutions pay little respect to, or
  even notice of, the views of theologians or
  philosophical dualists.

1/23/2019
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Mind Your Matters, Evolutionist????,??????

• If the brain is a window, who is looking through
  it?  If the brain is a computer, who is typing on
  the keyboard and watching the screen?  If
  morality is a dark spot in an fMRI image, who is
  interpreting it?
• God help the disciples of Frans de Waal who think
  they can agree on a consensus for what is
  appropriate as a substitute for morality.  Most
  likely, their consensus will be crushed by
  another culture with better weapons and more
  motivation for power.  What will they say as they
  are dying?  You cant do that.  Thats not
  right!

1/23/2019
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65
Mind Your Matters, Evolutionist????,??????

• Each of the authors above defeats materialism by
  arguing for it.  Who is doing the arguing?  Their
  brains?  Who is deciding who is telling the
  truth?  Someone who doesnt accept that truth is
  real?  Who is deciding who has the best
  arguments, someone who disbelieves in absolute
  morality?  Those who think humans are mere
  animals (though even theologians acknowledge our
  animal natures) would make sense if they left off
  writing books, and concentrated on stuffing
  bananas into their mouths and scratching their
  bottoms.  The moment they try to access the
  realms of the mind and consciousness, they become
  dualists in spite of themselves.  The moment they
  assume truth exists and morality can be judged by
  each of us with sufficient accuracy, they become
  supernaturalists in spite of themselves.  And the
  moment they say humans should do anything (like
  pay attention to their arguments rationally),
  they become theists in spite of themselves.  You
  cant argue for materialism without assuming the
  very thing you want to disprove we are more than
  mere animals we have a soul that is consciously
  aware of absolute truth and morality.

1/23/2019
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66

• Gloria Deo ??????

1/23/2019
66
67
Cambrian Explosion Evolutionists Have No
Answers??????????????

• An intelligent design advocate is publishing a
  book this month that uses the Cambrian Explosion
  as evidence against Darwinism and for I.D.  Two
  major evolutionary paleontologists have also
  published a book about the issue.
• Stephen Meyers new book, Darwins Doubt, is
  officially released next week.  Chapter 4 will
  tell about the uproar caused at the  University
  of Oklahoma in 2009 when Meyer and Wells
  scheduled a panel discussion after a showing of
  Illustras film Darwins Dilemma about the
  Cambrian fossil record.  Darwinists at the
  university attempted a pre-emptive strike by
  issuing announcements that the event was
  religiously motivated.  In the QA, though, the
  universitys professors and museum curators could
  not produce any unambiguous fossil as a credible
  ancestor to any of the Cambrian animals.  Meyers
  book, updated with the latest findings since
  then, examines all the putative fossil ancestors
  and evolutionary exlanations for the Cambrian
  explosion, and assesses the issues relevance to
  the Darwin-ID debate.

1/23/2019
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Cambrian Explosion Evolutionists Have No
Answers??????????????

• Meanwhile, two leading evolutionary
  paleontologists have just come out with a
  pro-evolution book about the sudden appearance of
  virtually all animal phyla at the base of the
  Cambrian.  Written by Douglas Erwin and James
  Valentine, experts on the Cambrian fossil record,
  the new work, The Cambrian Explosion The
  Construction of Animal Biodiversity, was reviewed
  by Christpher J. Lowe (Stanford)
  in Science Magazine this week What Led to
  Metazoas Big Bang? was his suggestive
  headline.  His first paragraph states the problem
  in such a way as to furrow the brows of
  Darwinists and make creationists or ID advocates
  grin, We told you so.

1/23/2019
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Cambrian Explosion Evolutionists Have No
Answers??????????????

• The Ediacaran and Cambrian periods witnessed a
  phase of morphological innovation in animal
  evolution unrivaled in metazoan history, yet the
  proximate causes of this body plan revolution
  remain decidedly murky. The grand puzzle of the
  Cambrian explosion surely must rank as one of the
  most important outstanding mysteries in
  evolutionary biology. Evidence of early
  representatives of all the major animal phyla
  first appear abruptly in the Cambrian(starting
  542 million years ago). This spectacular
  morphological diversity contrasts strongly with
  Precambrian deposits, which have yielded a sparse
  fossil record with small, morphologically
  ambiguous trace fossils or the enigmatic but
  elegant creatures of the Ediacaran
  fauna. Following the Cambrian, despite a rich
  fossil record that documents impressive
  morphological diversification among animals, no
  new body plans have been revealed, leaving
  the Cambrian as the apparent crucible of metazoan
  body plan innovation.

1/23/2019
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Cambrian Explosion Evolutionists Have No
Answers??????????????

• Lowe agrees, then, that it was an explosion, that
  all the animaly phyla appear abruptly, and that
  the few Precambrian fossils (including the
  enigmatic Ediacarans) are not ancestral to the
  Cambrian animals.  So what, then, is the
  evolutionists response to this outstanding
  mystery that Darwin wrote about 154 years ago? 
  Lowe is not helpful to the Darwin side
  The range of hypotheses proposed to explain the
  Cambrian explosion is as diverse and broad as the
  fossils they seek to explain.
• He gives some sample explanations from Erwin and
  Valentines book.  The authors gave a heroic
  attempt to synthesize hypotheses from the
  disparate fields of geology, ecology,
  developmental biology, and genomics, each of
  which has made substantial contributions toward
  unraveling the causes of this key puzzle of
  animal evolution.  But a contribution toward unra
  veling is not the same thing as actually unravelin
  g.

1/23/2019
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Cambrian Explosion Evolutionists Have No
Answers??????????????

• It shouldnt matter that Erwin and Valentine
  decorated their book with nice illustrations.  It
  shouldnt matter how good they are at making
  their prose accessible to non-specialists.  It
  also shouldnt matter that they could state how
  recent modifications to animal phylogeny have
  strongly revised our understanding of early
  animal diversification.  What is the explanation
  for the virtually instantaneous arrival (in
  evolutionary geological terms) of some 40 animal
  body plans, in a period of time Jonathan Wells
  has described in Illustras films as one minute
  on a 24-hour clock, or one step on a football
  field?

1/23/2019
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Cambrian Explosion Evolutionists Have No
Answers??????????????

• After filtering out Lowes words of hope, not
  much remains of factual evidence in his tentative
  solutions
• The authors also review molecular biologys
  substantial contributions to solving the grand
  puzzle of the Cambrian explosion, which have at
  times been at odds with interpretations derived
  from fossil data. Comparative developmental geneti
  c studies and genome sequencing projects from
  diverse metazoan phyla have revealed some of the
  genetic innovations that were likely responsible,
  in part, for the increase in animal complexity.
  These new data may help us reconstruct ancestral
  morphological features of the mysterious stem
  lineages of the Ediacaran, by reconstructing
  ancestral gene complements and by inferring gene
  regulatory networks that have key
  roles in setting up the body plans of extant
  animals. However, our understanding of how to
  relate genomic and developmental regulatory
  complexity to organizational and morphological
  complexity remains in its infancy.

1/23/2019
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Cambrian Explosion Evolutionists Have No
Answers??????????????

• This paragraph consists of little more than
  promissory notes that the infant will grow up,
  despite 154 years of trying.  Identifying
  genetic innovations that were likely
  responsible, in part says nothing about specific
  mutations that could have been selected.  And
  examining gene regulatory networks from extant
  animals can only be of minimal help interpreting
  extinct animals that left no DNA to study.  Its
  just too complex, Lowe seems to be saying.

1/23/2019
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Cambrian Explosion Evolutionists Have No
Answers??????????????

• It seems that Erwin and Valentines solution is
  all futureware.  Multidisciplinary approaches
  will be needed, they say.  Proposing multiple
  causes will be needed, they say.  More
  understanding of the environment, genetics and
  ecology will be important, they say, to explain
  this great evolutionary puzzle.   Somehow,
  these factors provided Ecological opportunities
  for novel morphological innovations that (as
  evolutionists) they believe drove the
  diversification.  In other words, if the
  environment builds it, the body plans will come.
• Lowes last sentences appear to reveal that Erwin
  and Valentine have not explained the Cambrian
  Explosion at all

1/23/2019
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Cambrian Explosion Evolutionists Have No
Answers??????????????

• Erwin and Valentine illuminate clear links
  between seemingly disparate disciplines, and they
  make a compelling case that substantial progress
  toward understanding the origins of animal
  diversity will not be achieved through adding
  isolated gains in individual fields. It is futile
  to hope to explain such a major evolutionary
  event without embracing an interdisciplinary
  approach.
• This implies that there has not been substantial
  progress toward understanding the Cambrian
  Explosion.  The book appears to be a call for all
  good evolutionists to come to the aid of their
  theory.
• Nothing has changed in the 7 years since Charles
  Marshall, the Master of Disaster, took on the
  challenge (4/23/06, see also 9/04/09, 8/05/10). 
  His answer was circular the animals evolved
  because they evolved.  Something gave these
  animals the opportunity to evolve, so they took
  advantage of it.  What kind of answer is that? 
  Why do we pay any attention to these charlatans?

1/23/2019
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Cambrian Explosion Evolutionists Have No
Answers??????????????

• If there was ever a key evidential falsification
  of evolution, this is it.  Too bad for
  evolutionists its not the only one.  Theres
  also the origin of intelligence and morality, the
  origin of consciousness, the origin of species,
  the origin of life, the origin of earth, the
  origin of cosmic structure, the origin of the
  universe, and the origin of anything from
  nothing.  Every one of these is a show-stopper
  for Darwinism, and as we like to repeat, it only
  takes one show-stopper to stop a show.  But who
  wants to watch a show with a master of ceremonies
  who comes out, shrugs his shoulders, and says,
  Stuff Happens?  Put your money on the show with
  the necessary and sufficient cause for the
  amazing biosphere we observe intelligent design.

1/23/2019
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Cambrian Explosion Evolutionists Have No
Answers??????????????

• There are old-earth ID advocates and old-earth
  creationists who can agree on that muchthat the
  Cambrian Explosion falsifies Darwinism.  Thinking
  long and hard enough about the consequences of
  that falsification, though, may lead to other
  questions, like, Why are we trusting in the
  dating methods of these charlatans?  What else
  did they get wrong  Its at least a start of
  more and more honest debate.
• Exercise To illustrate the folly of Marshalls
  explanation for the Cambrian Explosion, take
  something observable in everyday life and come up
  with a silly, obviously-illogical explanation for
  it.  Then, dress it up in the most erudite,
  learned language you can, and see if you can fool
  somebody.  Example hypothesis An opportunity for
  knives, forks and spoons to appear in your
  kitchen drawer arose, so they emerged out of the
  surrounding material.

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• Gloria Deo ??????

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 Is This Primate a Prime Mate????????????????

• The news media jumped onto claims that a tiny
  primate fossil is an ancestor of human beings,
  when it is really an amazing example of
  biological miniaturization.
• A tiny fossil primate from China, classified
  as Archicebus achilles, was announced with
  fanfare by most of the scie