Obama being worshipped by community organizers

Read More

Lotus Glass Repels Water, Dirt, Bacteria

09/23/2009
Sept 23, 2009 — Imagine never having to wash your windows again. That would be a huge boon not only for window washers on skyscrapers, but for astronauts on the space shuttle or space station. It may become a reality, thanks to the lotus plant.

Science Daily reported on work by a company in Atlanta that has developed a transparent coating for glass that renders it impervious to dirt and water. The secret: imitating the surface of a lotus leaf, which “contains innumerable tiny spikes that greatly reduce the area on which water and dirt can attach.”

NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center is taking a keen interest in this technology, because it can “prevent dirt from accumulating on the surfaces of spacesuits, scientific instruments, robotic rovers, solar array panels and other hardware used to gather scientific data or carry out exploratory activities on other objects in the solar system.” The latest work seeks to manufacture the material such that it can withstand the harsh space environment.

For us earthlings, the applications of lotus-leaf surface coatings to everyday objects – eyeglasses, windshields, camera lenses and windows – promises a low-maintenance, clear view through the looking glass. And there’s an extra benefit. The material also repels bacteria. Think of how hospitals could stay more hygienic with lotus-like surfaces on walls, windows and equipment.

For previous stories on the properties of the lotus leaf, see 10/17/2006, 01/18/2005 and 10/27/2004.

This all began when someone looked at lotus leaves in the rain and noticed how the water beads up and runs off, leaving a clean surface. Look around at nature and notice what other technologies have already been designed and could be applied to human needs. (You may want to get an early start if you manufacture windshield wipers.) There’s a bright future in biomimetics, no thanks to Darwin.

Read More

The Descent of Little Green Footballs

And yet another conservative blog smokes out the Darwinist Rage Boy.

This time the attack comes from "Right Wing News".

Read More

Like a Phoenix, Irreducible Complexity Rises Again

A couple of weeks ago, etihwelppA selrahC at LGF 1.0 posted about an article that appeared in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Science (PNAS) entitled “The Reducible Complexity of a Mitochondrial Molecular Machine.” As is usual for selrahC – who is not a scientist, and does not evince any actual knowledge of any scientific field – there was a whole lot of crowing about irreducible complexity “going down in flames.” Yet, this “evidence” for evolution was anything but. And today, Michael Behe, who pioneered irreducible complexity in the microbiological/biochemical fields, observes why this and other articles fail in this regard,

Recently a paper appeared online in the journal Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, entitled "The reducible complexity of a mitochondrial Molecular machine" As you might expect, I was very interested in reading what the authors had to say. Unfortunately, as is all too common on this topic, the claims made in the paper far surpassed the data, and distinctions between such basic ideas as “reducible” versus “irreducible” and “Darwinian” versus “non-Darwinian” were pretty much ignored.

Since PNAS publishes letters to the editor on its website, I wrote in. Alas, it seems that polite comments by a person whose work is the clear target of the paper are not as welcome as one might suppose from reading the journal’s letters-policy announcement (“We wish to provide readers with an opportunity to constructively address a difference of opinion with authors of recent papers. Readers are encouraged to point out potential flaws or discrepancies or to comment on exceptional studies published in the journal. Replication and refutation are cornerstones of scientific progress, and we welcome your comments.”) My letter received a brusque rejection. Below I reproduce the letter for anyone interested in my reaction to the paper. (By the way, it’s not just me. Other scientists whose work is targeted sometimes get the run around on letters to the editor, too. For an amusing / astounding example, see here.)

Call me paranoid, but it seems to me that some top-notch journals are real anxious to be rid of the idea of irreducible complexity. Recall that last year Genetics published a paper purportedly refuting the difficulty of getting multiple required mutations by showing it’s quick and easy in a computer - if one of the mutations is neutral (rather than harmful) and first spreads in the population. Not long before that, PNAS published a paper supposedly refuting irreducible complexity by postulating that the entire flagellum could evolve from a single remarkable prodigy-gene. Not long before that, Science published a paper allegedly refuting irreducible complexity by showing that if an investigator altered a couple amino acid residues in a steroid hormone receptor, the receptor would bind steroids more weakly than the unmutated form. (That one also made the New York Times!) For my responses, see here, here, here, and here. So, arguably picayune, question-begging, and just plain wrong results disputing IC find their way into front-line journals with surprising frequency. Meanwhile, in actual laboratory evolution experiments, genes are broken right and left as bacteria try to outgrow each other.

Well, at least it’s nice to know that my work gives some authors a hook on which to hang results that otherwise would be publishable only in journals with impact factors of -3 or less. But if these are the best “refutations” that leading journals such as PNAS and Science can produce in more than a decade, then the concept of irreducible complexity is in very fine shape indeed.

This is pretty typical, really. Since evolutionism is not science, but is a philosophical predilection, it is very difficult for those who have had their whistles whetted by the thought that finally, this time around, they’ve refuted them doggone creationists to have to backtrack and admit that maybe they were a bit hasty. For them, doing so is, in a sense, a lot like having to recant a dearly held religious doctrine. Remember, this happened with Ida. The supposedly rock-solid evidence of proto-human evolution turned out to be an extinct lemur or some such. The MSM loudly trumped it, and were mimicked by non-science types like selrahC, even as the scientists were quietly backing away from the initial claims as it became apparent that there were too many problems with the data for Ida to retain celebrity status.

When I saw the post at LGF 1.0, the first thing I did was to go to PNAS’ website and print off the actual paper, figuring that the claims being made were not supported by the actual data. I was not disappointed. The data in Lithgow et al. does NOT support the wild-eyed ravings about refuting irreducible complexity. Not even close. I was going to go through the actual science involved and provide a precise demonstration of why the paper in question is scientific junk, but I just noticed that Casey Luskin at the Discovery Institute already did so. Go there and read the details. When I call Lithgow et al. “scientific junk,” I’m not just being pejorative. It actually IS junk. The whole paper is full of speculation, argument from (loose) analogy, and argument using assertions that have not been proven (and hence cannot, by the strict rules of logic, be used as support for their arguments) but are merely assumed a priori. At one point, the authors even say that they are engaging in speculation (their word, not mine) about a key point needed to sustain their argument.

As an aside, I also appreciate the point that Luskin makes that the authors of this paper are forced, once again, to rely upon the use of teleological language in their discussion. No matter how hard evolutionists try to get around it, it seems as if purpose and design keep intruding. This is a point I’ve consistently made for quite a while now – evolutionism can’t get anywhere without making evolution (a process) act teleologically (which presumes an intelligence directing the process to a definite, purposeful end). You see it all the time when evolutionists talk about evolution “designing more complex eyes” and whatnot.

Anywise, back to the article. Essentially, the logic behind this paper can be boiled down to a four-point syllogism:

1) The molecular machines that transport proteins through the mitochondrial membranes are made up of one complex of proteins.

2) In certain species of alpha-proteobacteria (which are assumed, but never demonstrated, to be evolutionary precursors to mitochondria, which were then "captured" by other cells, and became mitochondria), there are proteins with similar structures.

3) The genome that codes for these proteins could possibly have mutated to start coding for the proteins we see in mitochondria, which then could have adopted a new function (i.e. the mitochondrial transmembrane protein transport).

4) Therefore, they did.

That’s it. Behe and Luskin are right – the logic is spurious, and so is the PNAS article. There’s no demonstration that any of the presumptions in the article actually happened. No exhibition of data or evidence that would suggest that these speculations were anything more than that – mere speculations. Similarity of protein structure, I hate to tell them, does not prove, or even necessarily suggest, common descent or origin. They certainly haven’t provided anything to suggest otherwise in this case.

Read More

Picture: LGF sinking

Thanks to StopTheACLU and ChristmasGhost for the picture.

Read More

JoshuaPundit Delinks LGF

Original Article

I don't normally get involved in Blog wars, but I'm going to make an exception here, for various reasons that I'm sure will become clear.

As some of you may have noticed, I delinked Little Green Footballs from Joshuapundit about a week and a half ago. This has been coming for awhile, but it's the only time I've ever purposely delinked a live blog from my list.It's entirely due to the behavior of the self-styled Lizard King, Charles Johnson. And I should have done it a long time ago.

I simply don't like cowards who engage in character assassination, lies and innuendo for their own twisted purposes, especially when in every case, they've been the aggressors.

This started a couple of years ago, when Charles got his panties in a knot and started banning 'fascists' - you know, people like my friends Pam Geller at Atlas and Dymphna and the Baron over at Gates of Vienna who haven't got a fascist bone in their bodies but do take the menace of Islamist jihad seriously. Robert Spencer, the brilliant author and proprietor of JihadWatch was next and it continued from there.

I didn't get very involved back then. Like I said,I'm not a fan of blog wars and Spencer, the Baron and Dymphna and especially Pam ( they have her picture in the dictionary next to the word 'courage') could take care of themselves perfectly well, believe me. So I simply continued to link to and communicate with all the parties. I probably should have dumped Charles back then, but Charles had been helpful to me back when I was starting out, throwing me traffic and I had a lot of respect for his past work. I naively thought that this was simply a personal snit between a few essentially decent people and that it would eventually resolve itself. After all, we were all on the same side, weren't we?

In my naivete, I even went to the trouble of politely e-mailing Charles, expounding on this point of view and suggesting it was time for everybody to talk to one another, iron out the differences and get back to some serious work. I even offered to help as a go-between.

He didn't bother to reply, but knowing what I know now I'm surprised I wasn't his next target.

As time went on, what used to be an important place on the net deteriorated into a fetid swamp with pretty much three creatures inhabiting it - the Lizard King's increasingly vicious attacks on his ever increasing list of personal 'enemies', Christians and 'creationists', links posted by the chosen Lizardoids on the site and Charles' occasional music videos.

Meanwhile , the body count continued - Andrew Bostom, Ann Coulter, David Littman, FOX News, Debbie Schlussel, Diane West, Melanie Phillips, Michele Malkin, Richard Miniter,Rush Limbaugh, Vodkapundit, Israel Matsav, Glenn Beck, Sigmund, Alfred and Carl, Geert Wilders, the Brussells Journal,Snapped Shot, Dr. Rusty at The Jawa report, Tundra Tabloids, Yid With Lid..hell, probably two thirds of the people I link to, any of whom could write and think circles around CJ and eat his intellectual lunch in a New York minute.

They were all smeared as racists and fascists and attacked by The Lizard King with classic leftist tactics - guilt by association, quotes taken out of context, innuendo and when nothing else would serve, outright falsehood. Daily Kos has nothing on Charles in that department.

I'm not sure exactly when I wound up on the enemies list or why, but it doesn't really matter. I'd stopped hanging out there in any serious way a long time ago. My reasoning was that it's his site and if he chooses to turn it into a echo chamber and a place for his personal vendettas, he had that right. I simply moved on.

Last week though, Charles finally crossed the line and went certifiable .

He started out by attacking Pajamas media for headlining a story by Robert Stacy McCain at The Other McCain, calling him a racist and white supremacist and smearing Jim Hoft at Gateway Pundit as - wait for it - ' a borderline illiterate bigot'.

I don't know either of these gentlemen personally except by repute and by what they've written, but I have a pretty good nose for bigots and if I had any doubts on that score, they wouldn't be on my blogroll. Also, I knew that it was Charles talking, I'd seen how he operated in the past and having looked at his 'evidence' on McCain ( and no, I won't link to it) it's the usual rancid melange of lame, nudge nudge wink wink garbage, guilt by association and 'have you stopped luring children into your gingerbread house' nonsense.Frankly, it's embarrassing that anyone would expect it to be taken seriously.

Aside from that, my old pal and Council mate Jimmie Bise Jr. vouches for McCain and that's more than good enough for me.

And Jim Hoft, 'a borderline illiterate bigot'? Was Lizard Boy even in his right mind when he wrote that? Hoft has more class and brilliance in one hand than Charles has in his whole body.

Hoft mostly chose to ignore Johnson. McCain mounted a superb defense in three separate parts that reminded me of nothing so much as Bruce Caton's account of Stonewall Jackson drawing in and humiliating the hapless General Pope at Second Manassas, and I suppose he had to, but frankly he gave this garbage far too much of his valuable attention when there are bigger and more important battles to be fought.

We do, after all, have a country to save.

The rest of the conservative blogosphere proceeded to either delink or be delinked by the Lizard Kingdom, and that's pretty much where things stand.

So why did a once important conservative blog burn all those bridges so gleefully? I have a theory.

Working on the Left side of the street is fairly easy money, especially if you have creds as a past 'conservative' who's Seen The Light. David Brooks,Kathleen Parker, Andrew Sullivan and a number of others come to mind. Blogs like Atrios, Daily Kos and Firedog Lake coordinate their sites with the White House on a daily basis and are essentially paid advertisers.

So I'm pretty much convinced that this was a calculated move by Johnson, although there was certainly a lot of rage and what he perceived as score settling in his mind. He's offended so many people with his anti-Christian rants and vicious behavior that his traffic is down,and his advertising isn't doing as well as it once did. So he's looking for some new sponsors on the Left.

He might just be successful at that, at least in the short run.

Or maybe not.

It's a funny thing...when you turn mad dog on your allies the way Charles has, you may get some short term props from your new friends, but they know you're not really to be trusted and you find yourself having to turn ever more outrageous tricks and become ever more obsequious in order to 'prove' your loyalty. That's not exactly a prescription for self-respect or happiness.

And there's another thing. Charles may have made the ultimate mistake of a wanna be turncoat...bad timing.

If I'm right, the Obama wave has crested and Americans have had a bellyful of what seems to be their flirtation with radicalism every thirty years or so. As they regurgitate it, a certain Mr.Lizard may find himself getting shut out by his new friends as they compete for a much smaller audience and unable to work his way back across the bridges he spitefully burned.

Stacy McCain wrote that Charles would regret what he'd pulled only once, but it would be for the rest of his life.I think that's an extremely astute judgment.

When the Master of the Hermit Kingdom reads this,I'm certain he'll turn purple and dub me a Nazi and racist as well. Yawn.

But I remember what Charles and LGF used to be like a few years ago and overall, it's too bad. He could have been a contender.

But as the Ancient Greeks used to like to say, character is destiny.

Read More

Floppy Wings = Efficient Flight

Original Article

By Michael Torrice

ScienceNOW Daily News
17 September 2009

Next time you're on an airplane, check out the wings. Every bolt and rivet is flush with the surface, creating an extremely smooth shape. The wings of the desert locust are not nearly as sleek: They're covered with ridges and veins, and they twist and deform as they flap. But these features make the insect an efficient flier, albeit at lower speeds, according to a new study.

Biologists and engineers have long known that insect wings are more complex than just flat, rigid flapping plates. But most models of insect flight have treated them this way because scientists needed to simplify their calculations and lacked a detailed picture of how the wings actually work.

To produce a better model, biomechanicist Adrian Thomas of the University of Oxford in the United Kingdom and colleagues came up with a new way to capture wing-shape changes during flight. The team set up four high-speed video cameras around a desert locust (Schistocerca gregaria) and recorded its flapping. Each camera followed more than 100 dots marked on the bug's wings during each stroke. The researchers then used data on how those points moved to create a three-dimensional computer model of the locust. Simulations with the virtual insect closely matched experimental data on real locust wing air flow and forces.

With a validated model, Thomas's team members started erasing wing details. In one simulation, they smoothed out the virtual wings' ridges and camber--the curve from the front of the wing to the back. In a second, they removed the wing's ability to twist as it flaps, effectively making it flat and rigid. These two models were less-efficient fliers than real locusts: The curved, twisting wings of real bugs were about 10% more efficient in producing lift than the camberless wings, and they were 50% more efficient than the flat, rigid model.

In the models of the nontwisting wings, the air flow separates from the wings into vortices that create drag. Locusts avoid these vortices by keeping the angle between the wing and air flow constant. Conserving power by minimizing drag is crucial for desert locusts that sometimes must fly 300 kilometers at a time--orders of magnitude farther than small, battery-powered helicopters can, Thomas says. Engineers trying to design tiny aircrafts "drool" at the insect's endurance, he says.

Previous research has focused more on the forces insect wings produce, says biologist Douglas Altshuler of the University of California, Riverside. "Considering how wing shape affects power cost of flight is really valuable and a good way to focus future research."

Read More

Citation: Charles and "fact-checking"

Charles made an hilarious question that I just couldn't let go by:

"After all, who cares about basic fact checking when there’s an ideology to be promoted?"

Yes, who cares about checking the facts, when there is an ideology to be promoted? Remember Ida? Piltdown Man? Nebraska Man? Lucy? Where was the "fact-checking" then?

Oh, I forgot. That can't be done in such cases because there's an ideology to be promoted.

Read More

LGF being attacked by conservatives

Well, I guess that didn't take long to happen. Having been used in calling everyone in sight as a "creationist" or a "white supremacist", Darwinist rage boy is getting some "love" from other right wing blogs:

The "right wing blogosphere" has noticed. See:

* "Goodbye Little Green Footballs, Hello Powerline."
* "Talkin' Charles Johnson Paranoid Blues."
* "Little Green Footballs' Johnson Sinks Further Into the Abyss."

.

Read More

Evolutionism, Environmentalism, and Cosmic Sympathy

The latest from some right wing nut over at Renew America showing the connexion between evolution, environmentalism, and the resurgence of pagan philosophy,

I'll start with evolutionism, and that by defining my use of the term. When I refer to "evolutionism," I am not referring strictly to the principles of biological evolution — natural selection and what have you — some of which I have no fundamental issue with when speaking of adaptation at the sub-orderial level (i.e. microevolution). Rather, I am referring to the philosophical underpinning that is used to interpret our observations of the material world, and which posits that "change" in the physical world is completely naturalistic, that there is no supernatural, there is no outside Being who created or interferes in the operation of things in this universe. As such, the term "evolutionism" encompasses everything from cosmology to biology (via the unsubstantiated suppositions of macroevolution) and the philosophical hand-waving that is used to support non-theistic arguments in these areas.

Evolutionism starts from essentially the same pagan first principle as did the ancient mythologies — that of the eternal pre-existence of the cosmos as a self-contained (even if not yet in finished form) whole. To the ancients, it was an eternally pre-existent heaven and earth whose pre-existence was never rationally explained, and rarely addressed. Today, it manifests itself as a variety of competing cosmological theories, the most prominent of which are the steady-state theory of Fred Hoyle (which has fallen out of favor) and the more well-known Big Bang theory. Both theories implicitly rest on the premise of eternal pre-existence without an initiatory Creator. The steady state theory suggested that the universe has no beginning and will have no end, and will always appear to us to be the same (on an extremely large cosmological scale, of course, change and greater order are accounted for at lower levels like, say, the galactic). The Big Bang, which has largely supplanted the steady state theory, while appearing to suggest that the universe has a beginning (the singular point from which everything "banged"), nevertheless fails to explain where that point came from — meaning once again the rejection of a Creator and the positing of an eternally pre-existing cosmos in some form or another.

Read the whole thing!

Read More

The Daily Ni**er Shutdown?!!

Yesterday David Drake spoke about a blog which he had found with the name "The Daily Ni**er". I had the chance to see through some of the articles, and it sounded really critical of the Hussein Obango Administration.

This morning I came to David's blog, and tried to enter the "TDN" blog, and this is what I saw:

The Big-Brother-in-Chief is flexing his socialist muscles. Where is the ACLU when we need them?!!

The text therein reads:

This website has been shutdown due to violations of DHS Cyber Security policies and the Office of the President of the United States Cyber Watch Program. This site has been determined to be not in keeping with current policies regarding truthfulness about the Administrations Health Care Reform and has been deemed a threat to National Security by inciting revolt against the policies and procedures of the Office of the President. If you are aware of any other sites that you feel violate the aforementioned policies please click here!

Imagine what would have happened if Bush had closed down a blog for expresing views that contradict him.

Read More

An Honest Admission

"We take the side of science in spite of the patent absurdity of some of its constructs, in spite of its failure to fulfill many of its extravagant promises of health and life, in spite of the tolerance of the scientific community for unsubstantiated just-so stories, because we have a prior commitment, a commitment to materialism.

"It is not that the methods and institutions of science somehow compel us to accept a material explanation of the phenomenal world, but, on the contrary, that we are forced by our a priori adherence to material causes to create an apparatus of investigation and a set of concepts that produce material explanations no matter how counterintuitive, no matter how mystifying to the uninitiated. Moreover, that materialism is an absolute, for we cannot allow a Divine Foot in the door." - Dr. Richard Lewontin

Basically, he is describing the difference between "science" and "scientism" (which he wrongly conflates with science). "Science" is simply a set of investigative principles that is, by its own admission, limited in scope and ability. "Scientism", on the other hand, is a philosophical underpinning which forms the basis of evolutionism, and which refuses to accept the limitations on science that are imposed by the fact that science can only deal with physical evidences. Scientism gets around the limitation by arguing for materialism - the unsubstantiated delusion that since metaphysical and supernatural evidences are outside the strict realm of science (as it presently exists at least) to investigate, that they therefore simply don't exist. It's sort of like saying that all those people who talk about China and show you pictures from there are just raving superstitious morons since you've personally never been there. "Science" knows its limits and accepts them, since it has no stake in doing otherwise. "Scientism" doesn't accept the limits, because of its fanatical need to eliminate the non-material. The former is legitimate investigation, the later is simply a not very well-thought out attempt at justifying atheism.

Read More

Much Ado About Nothing

The latest evo post over at Little Green Footballs is even more clueless about actual science than usual. In this one, Charles Johnson links a hyperventilating screed from the Reuters "science" section about the presence of an amino acid in the tail of a comet,

The amino acid glycine, a fundamental building block of proteins, has been found in a comet for the first time, bolstering the theory that raw ingredients of life arrived on Earth from outer space, scientists said on Monday.

Microscopic traces of glycine were discovered in a sample of particles retrieved from the tail of comet Wild 2 by the NASA spacecraft Stardust deep in the solar system some 242 million miles (390 million km) from Earth, in January 2004....

[snip]

....The latest findings add credence to the notion that extraterrestrial objects such as meteorites and comets may have seeded ancient Earth, and other planets, with the raw materials of life that formed elsewhere in the cosmos.

"The discovery of glycine in a comet supports the idea that the fundamental building blocks of life are prevalent in space, and strengthens the argument that life in the universe may be common rather than rare," said Carl Pilcher, the director of the NASA Astrobiology Institute in California, which co-funded the research.

Glycine and other amino acids have been found in a number of meteorites before, most notably one that landed near the town of Murchison, Australia in 1969, Elsila said.

Even for a mainstream media science article, this one is remarkably clueless about the basic science surrounding this issue. The way the article reads, they found glycine - GLYCINE!!!!! - in the tail of a comet, and poof, this practically proves that earth was seeded by extraterrestrial amino acids and *poof* life appeared!

Frankly, they're just lucky it was glycine they found, and not any other amino acid.

The reason is that glycine - which the article correctly notes is the "simplest" amino acid - is also the only amino acid which does not contain a chiral centre. Now, glycine is relatively simple to produce in nature - Miller-Urey produced it primarily when they did their little "lightning in a bottle of ammonia and methane" trick that the evos usually hold up as evidence that early earth conditions could have produced amino acids, which formed proteins, which formed everything else! (I'm simplifying, of course) There's no reason to think that the input of a little solar energy couldn't have done the same thing with ammonia and methane in the tail of a comet, at least enough to produce the "microscopic traces" of glycine the article mentions.

In fact, as the article also mentions, the Murchison strike in Australia yielded evidence for extraterrestrially-produced amino acid production.

But, the problem with using that as evidence is that a number of amino acids from the Murchison strike were non-biological, and all of them, biological and non-biological alike, were present as racemates - meaning that they were present in both left-handed and right-handed chiralities. Problem is, biologically active proteins incorporate left-handed amino acids exclusively. Yet, there is no chemical reason why a protein would selectively incorporate only one handedness of amino acid into a growing polymer chain. What this means is that any proteins that did somehow manage to overcome all the other things that basically rule out the naturalistic arguments for abiogenesis, like ionising radiation in an "oxygenless early earth atmosphere" (think, no ozone layer) and the Le Chatelier impossibility of performing a condensation reaction with water as a product (such as, you know, amino acid polymerisation to form proteins) in an ocean, would still have incorporated both handedness of amino acids, and have been completely useless as evolution-bearing precursors to life on this earth.

This is why I said that the evos got lucky that only glycine was found in the comet's tail, because any more complex amino acids would - if the evidence from every other extraterrestrial source of amino acids we've found to date is any indication - have been enantiomerically mixed, and would have been useless from an origins-of-life perspective. Being achiral, glycine does not have "handedness", and hence does not present the problem for the requirement of enantiopurity that any other amino acid would.

And let's note - merely finding glycine (ONE amino acid) does not prove anything about any evolutionarily-demanded "seeding" of life on earth. You don't build proteins out of just glycine. You need other amino acids as well - and to date, the scattered few that we're found from off-planet would be useless.

Not only is the science underlying the suppositions of the article faulty, but the article itself is written somewhat deceptive, like they're trying to slip stuff past the undiscerning reader. For instance, having admitted early on that "microscopic traces" of glycine were found in Wolf 1's tail, we are later told,

"The discovery of glycine in a comet supports the idea that the fundamental building blocks of life are prevalent in space, and strengthens the argument that life in the universe may be common rather than rare."

So, they're "microscopic traces", but they're "prevalent in space" and show that life in the universe "may be common." Friends, that's not science, that's wishful thinking. And it's not even supported by scientifically-valid evidence. Find trace amounts of glycine in a comet's tail and assuming from this that life may well be common all across this universe is simply non-sequitur.

Articles like this do nothing to actually "prove" the truth of evolution, or even its likelihood. They only demonstrate the scientific illiteracy of so many of the MSM's "science writers" and those who repeat them ignorant, like Charles Johnson at LGF 1.0.

Read More

Born Alive Protection Act

http://bornalivetruth.org/timeline.php

Read More

Racist Conservatives Deface the Anointed's Holy Face

Read More

Why Would a God of Love Allow Pain in His Universe?

A good friend of mine made me a few very important questions that I would like to answer in here.

I start by the final part of his questions:

Are there answers to what I ask?

Sure there are, and I hope I can give some in here. Those won't be complete nor flawless because only God has all the answers. However, I believe that God has revealed enough of Himself for us to have suficient answers.

The first question reads:

What moved me there [agnosticism] is that I've seen a lot of human suffering and I don't... I can't understand why a loving God would allow this

Depending on who asks this question, it can be very profound and almost leave me a bit tearful. When a sincere heart makes this question (and I know that my friend has one of those hearts), it is heart renting because many times it's a question that they themselves have asked in certain sad moments of their life: "Where was God when my little girl died?" "Where was God when my wife was stolen and beaten by a burglair?" "Where was God during Katrina?" "Where was God when I found out that I had cancer?"

Having that in consideration, I am very careful not to say something that can in anyway minimize what people have gone through. God Alone knows how many people in the world today cry for justice and for cure for something that they feel that they don't deserve.

Let me start by telling a story.

In the movie "Superman III", Clark Kent, in his superman costume, says something that I have never forgotten. The background of the incident is that, after superman left Earth, Lois Lane wrote that "the world doesn't need a savior". However, in his night flyings, superman had the habbit of standing away from Earth and listen to the cry of help coming from all over the globe.

Because of that, he then tells Lois something like this (typing from memory):

You said in your article that the world doesn't need a savior, but when I close my eyes and hear what is going on in the world, I hear them crying for a savior.

When I read that, it really touched me deeply because it says a lot about the world we live today. The world is getting more and more secular, more and more sexualized, more and more materialistic, but ... the inner hunger for justice and comfort still cries out inside the hearts of millions of human beings. Why is that? Why hasn't money, technology, sucess, sex and power filled our souls? Man denies needing help from above, but his cries say otherwise.

The short answer to the question as to why there is pain in the world is that, from the beggining of creation, humans have decided to live as if God doesn't matter.

God made a perfect world, with a perfect enviroment, and had a perfect relationship with us humans. When the moment came for us to make a moral decision (trust in what God had said or follow our desires), we made the wrong decision, and disobeyd Him Who had given us everything. Ever since the sin of Adam, all humans have been born with a fallen nature and thus, inclined to do evil. When we look at the world today, we see it. It doesn't matter how rich I am, how powerful I am, how influential I am; when the moment comes, I will reveal the fallen nature that is in me.

Because of the sin of Adam, God placed a curse on the universe. Ever since then, the world has got worse and worse and worse. It is because of the sin of Adam and the curse placed in the universe, that we see the things we do in the world today. That is why people die, have deseases, fell lonely, get despaired and other things. The sin of Adam had the effect of changing everything God had made for our benefit. These are the bad news.

The Good News are those in which God says that, even after what we have done (murder, lying, stealing, adultery, fornication, etc) He has prepared a Way for us to gain accees to His eternal blissfull future. The Way is not made of stone or wood, but is a Person:

Jesus answered, "I am the way and the truth and the life. No one comes to the Father except through Me" John 14:6

Heaven is restored by the Sacrifice of the Lord Jesus on the cross, and by accepting Him into our lives. By telling God that we have done things we knew He would call sin, and that we are willing to turn away from it by accepting the Lord Jesus, we are translated from the kingdom of darkness into the kingdom of the Messiah.

God's focus is always in the eternal not in the temporal. God has plans for our eternal future, regardless of what happens in here.

If it hadn't been for that solid foundation, my life would be a total mess. Ever since I was younger, i had a feeling that I was "missing the good things" of life because of my life style. I was never a "party animal" nor a womenizer or something like that. Having been born in conservative catholic family, I had the feeling that life was passing by me, and I wasn't enjoying it.

However, after a few years something begun to happen. The people I thought were having so much fun (party, girls, etc) would return with empty lives, shatered dreams, and spiritual bruises that would take years to heal.

I begun to wonder and search for truth and something that really matter beyond our mear temporal existence. If the best the world could give wasn't making people happy, then what would? I wanted Truth not empty "good feelings" (the kind you get when you go to a disco but then are gone the following morning). After much reading and many online debates, I have found that in the Lord Jesus. I now know that my life has a purpose and value, and that whatever condition I am today, it will be over on day. One day there will be universal peace to all those whose sins have been erased by the sacrifice of the Lord Jesus.

Having that in mind, and going back to the original question, we can see thigns from God's perspective: There is pain an suffering in the world, and it is caused by our sin, however God will fix and restored the world to the way it was before Adam sinned.

Now, does this anul the pain we feel? Does it anul the pain we feel when we loose a close member? What about that little girl who, for all her child life, was abused by her dad? Where was God? What about the baby who is born blind? What fault do they have? What sins have they comited? Those are genuine and honest questions that deserve a direct answer.

The answer, once again, is in realizing in what kind of world we are (a fallen world) and taking into consideration that God will undo all the evil we will ever make in this world. God allows certain things to happen because a) those are consequences of the fallen world we live b) those are the consequences of our sin c) He will remove away all the pain and injustice man has ever created.

I know that this answer is not 100% satisfying, but I hope and pray that, a sincere heart can say something like

"Ok, God, the world You have made is in a total mess, but I know that You are Good, and that You have good plans for me. I know that You love me because You have sent Your Son Jesus Christ to pay for my sins. I don't have all the answers, but I have enough answers. I have seen that the best the world can give doesn't make us happy. Our souls cries for something more, and I know You have it."

Read More

Evolutionary Materialism Faces its own Enlightenment

Students of the religious history of Western civilization are well-acquainted with the effect that the so-called “Enlightenment” had upon the religious life in Europe and America. The winds of skepticism, doubt, rationalism, and progress were sweeping the West, causing many to question and reject the traditional religions of their forefathers. To many, this was and is a cause for lamentation. For others, a cause for celebration. Blown in by these winds of change was a revival of the philosophy of materialism – the view that this world is all there is, there are no supernatural powers or gods, the sum total of existence is contained in the material universe around us that we can see, measure, quantitate, and control.

The natural corollary to philosophical materialism was atheism – to reject supernatural underpinnings to existence practically necessitates the rejection of the supernatural, period – with Deism merely being an ungainly compromise. As philosophical materialism began to take hold of the hearts and minds of the upper and educated classes, empiricism became the accepted rule for epistemology. In the 19th century, Huxley, Lamarck, Darwin, and others contributed to the “scienticizing” of materialism – the attempt to give the worldview a more solid basis than merely philosophical arguments by attaching it to “science”, the growing body of knowledge about the world around us gathered by empirical observation and rational experimentation. It seemed natural and obvious that science – based upon empiricism – should fit like a glove on a hand to materialism, which presumed that empirically-derived sensory evidences were all that existed.

The natural effect that this had upon traditional religion was corrosion. After all, the new philosophy was based upon the self-conceit of “rationality” and “free thinking”, while “religion” represented just the opposite, or so the story goes. Granted, much of what passed for Christianity during the period of the Enlightenment – what with its religious wars, appeals to the authority of hierarchy, dogmatic refusal to even entertain the arguments of its antagonists, and so forth – lent itself to a falling away. The sclerotic state-religion edifices built up by centuries of complacent ascendancy came crashing down, and the old assumptions about reality began to pass away. Frankly, a good many people were disillusioned by the failings of organized religion. Materialism, atheism, and evolutionism filled the void left by the collapse of the old worldview.

Yet, the materialists failed to remember that nothing lasts forever.

Religion refused to die. Theism refused to go quietly into the night. The worldview which accepts the supernatural would not yield to that which rejected it and sought to extirpate it from the minds and hearts of men. And thus, today, we see a mightily disconcerted set of atheistic and evolutionary materialists who have fallen into the same traps that religionists did during the Enlightenment, who are being faced by a challenge as gravely serious to their worldview, as materialism was to religion and tradition when it first rose against them.

This re-emergence of a religious perspective and worldview is especially strong in the United States, though it is not confined there. One of the most conspicuous aspects of this challenge is that of the rejection of evolutionism – the rejection of the application of materialistic scientism (a philosophical underpinning that is not to be confused with actual “science”) by those who advocate for creation and intelligent design. However, this is certainly not the only outlet for the growing rejection of materialism. In the schools of philosophy, theism is making a resurgence. In politics, religion continues to strengthen as a factor, despite the proclamations of the “death” of the “religious right” that are issued every so often. Within religion itself, the trend is towards theological conservatism and polarization, as Americans either leave dead, theologically-liberal bodies and join themselves to conservative groups, or else wash themselves of religion altogether (the trends go in both directions, in what seems like but is not a paradox). While we commonly think that American society is increasingly secular and godless, we should note that this godlessness is generating a backlash that has not been without effect, though it sometimes seems to us to be long in coming.

It is perhaps not surprising that the United States is where this happened. Post-revolutionary America was built upon a foundation of liberty in conscience, and never had the hardened encrustation of state-religionism. Since its independence, it has had a freedom of religion that allowed religious dissent to be channeled into other outlets besides the European dichotomy of either submission to the state religion or rejection of religion altogether. In America, the soil was ripe both for religious novelty, but also for the growth and spread of truly Bible-based, primitive Christianity, for the Baptists and the evangelicals and others who had previously existed as small and despised “out-groups” in the European religious framework. This outward-looking and vigorous Christianity provided many influences in American society that helped to hinder the taking root of materialism as fully as it did in Europe and other Western regions, and has helped in the efforts at pushing it back to a greater degree than seen elsewhere.

This has not been without its effect on the fortunes of philosophical materialism. Majorities of Americans – more now than fifty years ago – reject evolutionism as an explanation for the world we see around us, and this trend even seems to be starting to take hold in Europe, as well. More and more people reject the assumptions that are made, but not rationally supported, by atheists and materialists and evolutionists. Indeed, we almost seem to be seeing the emergence of the “Second Religiousness” predicted by Oswald Spengler based upon his observations about the histories of other civilizations that have experienced the rejection of their traditional religious and philosophical bases by the people, only to later see an “Indian summer” return to some sort of religiosity (though not always the traditional old religion) after the society has matured and moved beyond its interlude of skepticism and doubt. That the resurgence of the power and force of religion in the public square is taking place in America first is not surprising – despite the common assumption that America is a “young, frontier” society, there is a good argument to be made that America is actually very old, because America is the culmination of the history, experiences, and trends in the Western world that began in Europe, but were transplanted and perfected on this continent.

The increasingly muscular counter-attacks against atheism, materialism, and evolutionism are proving to be effective in the public square. This is because philosophical materialism, after a century of perceived ascendancy, began to form the same sort of impenetrable, crustose layer on society that state-religionism had imposed centuries earlier. Indeed, we see that the hard core of materialist atheists and evolutionists come off seeming not unlike the hidebound, “anti-reason” bishops and vicars who defended the old regime in Europe. We see the crystallization of an evolutionist “orthodoxy” about which no dissent or discussion is allowed. There is the same refusal on the part of materialists and evolutionists to even consider alternatives to their philosophical worldview. There is the same out-of-hand condemnation of dissent as not merely wrong, but evil and indicative of moral or intellectual failure on the part of the one who does not accept materialistic evolution. Prominent evolutionary scientists form much the same sort of orthodox hierarchy as the cardinals of old, people like Richard Dawkins and Daniel Dennett serving the role of archbishops of “reason” whose purpose is not to rationally defend, but instead to denigrate and disparage. Finally, there is the same inability, or perhaps purposeful refusal, to acknowledge that the criticisms made against the system are legitimate and perhaps even right. Instead, ever-intricate epicycles are introduced to defend evolutionary materialism from the refutation of the system by empirical, scientific evidences. Yet, it has been to no avail, and the influence and propagation of reasoned and reasonable alternatives to humanistic, materialistic evolution – themselves relying upon appeal to science and rationality - have increased in almost direct proportion to the virulence and desperation of the defenders of materialism.

In other words, atheistic materialism is suffering from an Enlightenment of its own, and is falling before it. Atheistic materialism is seeing the undermining of its moral and philosophical authority as an arbiter of truth and wisdom. What is happening to it is the same thing that it did to religionism in previous centuries. People are questioning the system, skeptical of its claims, disobedient to its authority, and unsure that it really is as “rational” and “scientific” as it has claimed for itself. As questions are asked that materialistic evolution will not, or cannot, answer, the assurances that the system is right “because we said so” grow increasingly hollow.

This Enlightenment ought to be encouraged, and indeed, will be in a free and open society – the type of society, unfortunately, that the defenders of materialism, atheism, and evolutionism seem to want to do away with. How can we have free discussion when, for instance, people like Dawkins say that bringing children up in religion is “child abuse” and that they should be taken away from their parents? You can't. All that can be done is to continue to chip away at the system, no matter how hard the defenders of materialist orthodoxy cling to the disintegrating fragments of their worldview's edifice. We need to continue to encourage the doubting of atheism and evolutionism. People need to be presented with the questions that challenge this worldview, and encouraged to ask these questions of themselves. As a mature and thoughtful society, we can no longer take, for instance, the evolutionists' word for it that evolution is “obviously” right. Because it is not. Indeed, there are a number of serious obstacles – both scientific and philosophical – that call evolution into doubt, despite the raving, wild-eyed attempts by its defenders to silence dissent and criticism. People need to see that the “evidences” that evolutionism adduces for itself are based upon circular reasoning and the selective interpretation of the data by filtering it a priori through the lens of the assumed truth of materialism. If the materialists want to make their case, then they need to prove it, not assume it and expect us to do the same. Atheistic materialism needs to learn that the forces of Enlightenment cut both ways. If our society does anything less, we will end up less “enlightened,” more inflexible, and less able to deal with the intellectual winds of the 21st century.

Read More

Some Scientists Are Allowed to Question Darwin

Surprisingly as it may be, there are some scientists who are allowed to question the theory of evolution and remain within the mianstream scientific circles. Of course, the scientists who do attack Darwin have to be careful enough to broadcast their materialistic faith nonetheless.

A good article concerning the "free pass" some materialistas have concerning the theory of evolution has been posted in "Evolution News".
Here is a snap:

We're often told that the evidence for neo-Darwinian evolution -- where unguided natural selection acting on random mutations is the driving force generating the complexity and diversity of life -- is "overwhelming." But hints of dissent from this position can be found throughout the mainstream scientific literature. One article in Trends in Ecology and Evolution last year acknowledged that there exists a "healthy debate concerning the sufficiency of neo-Darwinian theory to explain macroevolution".[1] Likewise, Günter Theißen of the Department of Genetics at Friedrich Schiller University in Jena, Germany recently wrote earlier this year in the journal Theory in Biosciences:

while we already have a quite good understanding of how organisms adapt to the environment, much less is known about the mechanisms behind the origin of evolutionary novelties, a process that is arguably different from adaptation (Wagner 2000). Despite Darwin’s undeniable merits, explaining how the enormous complexity and diversity of living beings on our planet originated remains one of the greatest challenges of biology.[2]

Even more striking criticism of what he called the "dogmatic science" of neo-Darwinian thinking can be found in a 2006 paper by Theißen, also in Theory in Biosciences:

Explaining exactly how the great complexity and diversity of life on earth originated is still an enormous scientific challenge. ... There is the widespread attitude in the scientific community that, despite some problems in detail, textbook accounts on evolution have essentially solved the problem already. In my view, this is not quite correct.[3]

What is most interesting is how these hints of dissent are often accompanied by statements disclaiming any support for intelligent design (ID), seemingly intended to help deflect attacks upon the dissenter. Theißen's 2009 article is quick to protest that "'anti-Darwinians' should not be confused with people, such as creationists, that see Darwin as their opponent,"[2] and his 2006 paper expressly disclaims any support for ID (where Theißen again inappropriately lumps with "creationism"):

There is the opposite view gaining ground mainly outside of scientific circles that living organisms are so complex that they must have been created by an external intelligence – a novel version of creationism known as "Intelligent Design" (ID). A philosophical analysis of whether ID is a scientific hypothesis at all is beyond the scope of this review. In any case, its ability to develop fruitful research programs has remained negligible so far (Raff, 2005). With few exceptions (e.g., see Lönnig, 2004, and references cited therein) biologists do not consider ID helpful in our endeavour to explain life’s complexity and diversity. This does not mean, however, that we already have a complete and satisfactory theory which explains how the complexity and diversity of life originated. Thus the rejection of ID or other varieties of creationism is not based on the comprehensive explanatory power of any existing evolutionary theory, but has to be considered as an epistemological presupposition and heuristic basis of biology as a natural science.[3]

Significantly, Theißen's disclaimer admits that his rejection of ID is "not based on the comprehensive explanatory power of any existing evolutionary theory" but due to an "epistemological presupposition," namely materialism. This calls to mind Scott C. Todd's statement in Nature in 1999 that "[e]ven if all the data point to an intelligent designer, such an hypothesis is excluded from science because it is not naturalistic."[4]

Theißen apparently feels it necessary to announce his rejection of ID and his commitment to material explanations in order for his "anti-Darwinian" ideas to have any hope of gaining traction. Yet his 2006 paper contains a stark lamentation admitting the opposition faced by even materialists who dissent from neo-Darwinism:

It is dangerous to raise attention to the fact that there is no satisfying explanation for macroevolution. One easily becomes a target of orthodox evolutionary biology and a false friend of proponents of non-scientific concepts. According to the former we already know all the relevant principles that explain the complexity and diversity of life on earth; for the latter science and research will never be able to provide a conclusive explanation, simply because complex life does not have a natural origin.[3]

Theißen's admission is telling in that it not only recognizes it is politically "dangerous" for a materialist to question predominant evolutionary thinking (what scientist wants to "becom[e] a target of orthodox evolutionary biology"?), but also that there is even more intense opposition awaiting "friend[s] of proponents of non-scientific concepts" who believe that "complex life does not have a natural origin." If materialists face such dangers, imagine the opposition facing non-materialists seeking to have their views taken seriously in scientific journals.

Read the rest...

Read More

Teleological Evolution and the Clash of Worldviews

An interesting post by Michael Egnor over Evolution News & Views, the Discovery Institute's group blog. He points out the "civil war" that is brewing between atheistic evolutionists and theistic evolutionists (whom he calls "accomodationalists") over the compatibility of science and religion.

We are entering an era in which a substantial and loud minority of atheist scientists and philosophers are claiming that science validates and depends on atheism and materialism. A ferocious fight has broken out in the pro-Darwinist blogosphere over this question: are philosophical naturalism and atheism essential to good science? Some of those on the side of accommodation with religion no doubt are atheists who believe that accommodation of religious beliefs is necessary for tactical reasons; others, such as Ken Miller and Francis Collins, are scientists who are Christians and who see their science as entirely compatible with their theism.

This debate is about whether worship at the materialist/atheist altar is a prerequisite for good science. My sense of it is that the accomodationists have easily gained the upper hand. The atheist insistence that science depends on and validates atheism is historically ignorant and philosophically incoherent.

That theists and open-minded agnostics and atheists on the pro-Darwinist side of this debate are finally engaging the same fundamentalist atheist dogma that intelligent design proponents have engaged for several decades is a good sign. Fundamentalist atheists are of course fighting back ferociously, because they understand, as perhaps the accomodationists don’t, the profound implications of an understanding of the natural world that is not causally closed.

Teleology is obvious in nature. Atheists and materialists intrinsically deny the reality of teleology --Aristotelian final causation-- in nature, yet nothing in the natural world can be understood without reference to teleology. Science is saturated with reference to purpose and goals of natural things. Atheists deny teleology, because acceptance of teleology in nature raises devastating questions about their atheist faith.

Fundamentalist atheists-- secular priests-- fight ferociously to extinguish challenges to their faith, because they understand that to raise the question of teleology in nature is to answer it. Atheism, for good reason, fears questions.

I could have told them that it would eventually come to this. The actual evidences for God's work of creation are all around us in nature, and people can only go for so long in ignoring them before the cognitive dissonance becomes unbearable and people have to deal with them. This is the obvious teleology in nature that Egnor references. It's also why evolutionists so often speak of evolution in teleological terms - e.g., "Evolution developed the ability for bombardier beetles to defend themselves chemically", etc. Evolutionists will unwittingly attribute to evolution independent and intelligent powers of creation - even to the point of approaching a position of atheistic "intelligent design." The reason is because the evidence of design is all around us - they can't get around it, and subconsciously will accede to it, even if consciously they try to deny it.

We need to understand that the issue of origins is not about science, per se. It is about the clash of underlying worldviews. "Evolution" is no more obvious from empirical science than is phlogiston or the aether. Both evolution and creation (as well as Intelligent Design, which really occupies a medial position) rely upon inference from forensic evidences, and hence are based upon subjective interpretation - which gets you right back to worldviews. Science, as it is commonly understood to rely upon empiricism, is completely incompetent to deal with the actual events of our origins, at least until somebody builds a time machine that actually works.

Hence, both creationism and evolutionism are dependent upon faith. This is something that creationists will readily admit, but is something that evolutionists, in their zeal to promote the fiction of the incontestability of evolution, avoid like the plague. Yet, as the article points out, hard-core evolutionists really do approach their belief system in ways that are amazing similar to religion. They have a priesthood of people like Dawkins and PZ Myers to whom they go for consolation and reassurance. They have a set of sacred scriptures which they study to firm themselves up on what they believe. They have a set of orthodox dogmas that can get you in a lot of trouble if you dissent from them. I remember years ago a discussion I had with an evolutionist on some forum somewhere. I had basically argued down every point he made, and destroyed every argument he tried to make for evolution. A few months later, I was doing some ego-googling, and came across another forum where this same fellow had gone shortly thereafter to try to reinforce himself in his evolutionism by confessing his doubts about evolution and seeking absolution for his sin from some other guy who was likely the Darwinian equivalent of a small country parish-priest. Their exchange really seemed for all the world like a confession and reinstatement to faith. It was, frankly, kind of creepy.

But that's just it - evolutionism in not science, it is not synonymous with science, nor is it necessarily always compatible with science. It is a worldview and a belief system.

Read More

Happy 4th of July, USA!

God bless the USA, Israel (and Portugal!) ;-)

Read More

Is It Scientifically Justifiable to Analyze the Evolution of Rape

07/18/2003 - http://www.creationsafaris.com/crev0703.htm

Many people were upset in 2000 when Randy Thornhill and Craig Palmer published a book entitled The Natural History of Rape, because it seemed to rationalize violent behavior as an evolutionary adaptation of the human male psyche, rather than a moral evil. P.C. Chan, a biological anthropologist at Cambridge, expresses his views on that episode in the

July 18 issue of Science.

Chan agrees that Thornhill and Palmer deserved to be criticized, but more on the basis that their work was bad science, not so much that it is improper to analyze human behaviors in terms of evolution. In his book review of a new book edited by Cheryl Brown Travis, Evolution, Gender and Rape (MIT Press, 2003), which takes a decidedly dim view of Thornhill and Palmer’s book, Chan feels the opposition goes overboard and throws out the baby with the bathwater (emphasis added in all quotes):

The failure of Evolution, Gender, and Rape does not lie in its wholly justified critiques of A Natural History of Rape, many of which are thoughtful, excellent, and well written. Rather, having found a legitimate sociobiological target for attack, too many contributors suggest that all efforts to understand any potential for evolved propensities or tendencies in human behavior can now be dismissed--tarred with the “you support rapists” brush. Politics are applied to damn all behavioral biology, even when issues such as power and mate choice can potentially be usefully explored in a biological context. But then, as many of the contributors claim, the biological context does not exist--at least not for humans, though fruit flies are (barely) given the benefit of the doubt. Evolutionary biology sensu Thornhill and Palmer (and probably that of some of the rest of us who work with the evolution of behavior) can be cast off as merely the rewriting of the political and gendered context within which we theorize. This may indeed be valid when it comes to arguments about the “natural history” of rape, but to dismiss all such attempts as belonging to the same class of thinking does a disservice to evolutionary biology in general.

Before this conclusion, Chan made it clear he thinks Thornhill and Palmer were bad guys, guilty of “bad theory, bad analysis, bad history, and bad writing.” And he emphatically answers no to the questions, “is rape a universal ‘male behavior’? Does it need to be examined from an evolutionary perspective?” Similarly, his answer is clearly no to the question, “If a behavior exists, does it by default require a just-so story in order to be understood?” He points out that rape is a behavior of a small minority of males who are usually ostracized, and that contrary to the image of the “predatory Pleistocene male, forcibly mating with unchoosy females,” female choice is a strong force in most populations:

Females do choose. They choose “nice” mates; parental mates; healthy, vigorous, mentally alert mates--be they fruit flies, blackbirds, zebra finches, elephants, or humans. That female choice would exacerbate the violent, unpredictable, political, and thuggish tendencies of the human rapist seems unlikely at best. Female choice is thus central to many of the arguments, both biological and sociological, here. It is a pity that the book does not explore this concept for its feminist contributions.

Against this background, Chan feels much of the new book “fulminates against any attempt to explore human behavior using evolutionary theory.” He agrees that criticisms of some of the “major excesses of evolutionary psychology” are justified. Yet he is concerned that an overreaction will diminish the useful work that some sociobiologists are doing, that can help shed light on human behavior. Describing something is not the same as endorsing it. Books like Evolution, Gender, and Rape undermine legitimate sociobiological work, and “Darwin becomes the class, gender, and societal enemy of the female people.”
P.C. Chan’s book review is entitled, “EVOLUTIONARY PSYCHOLOGY: Reason, Rape, and Angst in Behavioral Studies.”

Female choice? What female choice? A female does not choose to be raped.
Chan is doing quick and vigorous spot-remover work. He wants evolutionary sociobiology to look spotless, free from any stains of sexism, racism, just-so storytelling, and political incorrectness. It’s interesting that Thornhill and Palmer’s book appears to have caused a reaction not just among evangelical Christians and feminists, but scientists who seem to be thinking, “This has gone too far!” A strong current of evolutionists question whether evolutionary sociobiology is valid at all.
Thus Politically Correct Chan, an evolutionary biological anthropologist, needs to work damage control, pronto. Human evolutionary sociobiology is not this dreadful, male-chauvinist, evil thing: why look, we study motherhood and apple pie. (One of his positive-spin examples is “John Bowlby’s ‘environment of adaptedness,’ a description of the dynamic process of interaction that establishes the relationship between mother and infant.”) We’re all for female choice, he says, and for “nice” mates. Don’t tar-and-feather all of us just because a few bad apples do bad work and write a bad book.
Yet the faults of evolutionary sociobiology are not spots to be removed, but the core beliefs comprising its essential fabric. If human behavior is no different in essence than that of fruit flies, blackbirds and elephants, and if we have all evolved from the same slime, two consequences ensue: (1) There is no ground for moral judgments that any behavior is wrong or evil; it is only adaptive or non-adaptive. Theoretically, therefore, rape could be an adaptive behavior for humans in some contexts. (2) There is no basis for knowing anything, because human intellectual analysis is no different in principle from chimpanzee or honeybee sensory stimulus and response. So neither Thornhill, Palmer or Chan can say that their theories about sociobiology are true. A corollary of this is that evolutionary descriptions of behavior are mere just-so storytelling.**
Notably, Chan does not dismiss rape as evil, but only as inconsequential in most populations because of the power of female choice and societal pressure. Then why be sensitive about charges of being tarred with the “you support rapists” brush? The reaction bespeaks an inner voice that says, we all know rape is evil.
The Natural History of Rape should have been a wake-up call to everybody that Darwinian thinking, at least as applied to humans, is dangerous. Thornhill and Palmer may have been culpable for poor scientific analysis and technique, but their core assumptions are no different than those of Chan, E. O. Wilson, and the contributors to Evolution, Gender, and Rape. Without a God on the throne saying Thou shalt not commit adultery and Thou shalt not covet thy neighbor’s wife, or anything that is thy neighbor’s, anything goes. By granting pseudo-scientific rationalization for breaking the Ten Commandments, Darwin* becomes the class, gender, and societal enemy of not just the female people, but all the people.
*Darwin, in the sense of what his evolutionary theory has become, not the man himself.
**There they go again: Science Now just reported that a book on male transsexuals has created a firestorm between evolutionary psychologists, who praise J. Michael Bailey’s The Man Who Would Be Queen, and transsexuals, who say it does not portray them accurately as “women trapped in men’s bodies.” Does anybody deny that the world has gone mad?

Read More

Desert creatures inspire ‘SandBot’

Good article in how scientists are learning from God's Design.

Read More

Homology Does Not Prove Descent

Once again, another in a long chain of "transitional fossils" that supposedly "proves" macroevolution. Fossil Solves Mystery of Dinosaur Finger Evolution,

Bird wings clearly share ancestry with dinosaur "hands" or forelimbs. A school kid can see it in the bones. But paleontologists have long struggled to explain the so-called digit dilemma.

Here's the problem: The most primitive dinosaurs in the famous theropod group (that later included Tyrannosaurus rex) had five "fingers." Later theropods had three, just like the birds that evolved from them. But which digits? The theropod and bird digits failed to match up if you number the digits from 1 to 5 starting with the thumb. Theropods looked like they had digits 1, 2 and 3, while birds have digits 2, 3 and 4.

That mismatch failed to support the widely accepted evolutionary link between dinosaurs and birds.

Now, newly described fossilized hands from a beaked, plant-eating dinosaur, called Limusaurus inextricabilis, reveal a transitional step in the evolution of modern wings from dino digits. The finding could resolve a debate over which fingers ultimately became embedded in the wing.

In case anyone is interested, you can see a photo of the dinosaur's hand.

First, the hand. Look, let's be honest here. The same kind of thinking that leads palaeontologists to reconstruct entire proto-human skeletons on the basis of a couple of bones from an extinct peccary is what leads them to assume the presence of a "vestigial first finger" in L. inextricabilis. The thinking in question is called "wishful thinking", and has led many a palaeontologist down the wrong path with all kinds of other supposed "transitional fossils."

More to the point, however, is the unquestioned assumption that homology implies phylogeny - in other words, because two structures look similar, then they must be related. In this type of case, biologists usually assume that if structures between two creatures look homologous, then this must mean that either one is descended from the other, or they are descended from a common ancestor. By that logic, then this,



and




must be evolutionarily related. After all, they're both tall, they look similar, they have hollowed out spaces in their interiors, creatures live in them, etc.

Ridiculous, of course, but then again, so is this current claim about dinosaur hands as they relate to birds' wings. We don't know which dinosaur fingers evolved into those found in birds' wings, but some of them must have, otherwise our theories won't work anymore. That's called "proving the evidence by the theory", which is the opposite of what science is supposed to be about. The assumption of phylogeny from homology in this case, as with other "transition fossils" (like the much ballyhoed Tiktaalik) is entirely gratuitous. There's no reason for it, other than to make the data fit an a priori assumption about phylogeny. And quite frankly, the claim of "homology" (i.e. that the bones in birds' wings and dinosaur hands are structurally similar) in this case is....imaginative....at best.

Homology does not prove the transitional nature of this fossil, despite the claims of the article. From a strictly empirical viewpoint, homology - at best - can suggest that similar structures may be present in different species to perform similar functions. Homology does NOT disprove special creation, either. God is certainly free to have used similar designs across different species, if He intended. That's not a scientific argument, you say? True. But neither is the a priori assumption that evolution must have taken place, so it's okay to fit the data to the theory, instead of vice versa.

Read More

Fossil Graveyards: the elephant in the living room

Have you ever been in a situation in which you and other people were talking about something, and everyone knew that there was something relating to that subject you and others were not suposed to mention? Evolutionists must feel that way when it comes to fossil graveyards.

Fossil graveyards happen when a large collection of fossils is found in the same place. The weirdness of such places is that sometimes the animals you find in there don't even live in the same habbit.

Another "weird thing" is that sometimes you find many whale fossils buried in such place. How do you fossilize one whale, let alone dozens of others, in the same place?

Everyone realizes that a catastrophic event is at the root of such fossil graveyards. The problem for evolutionists is that the Holy Bible mentions one worldwide catastrophic event that caused the death of the majority of land animals, and the vast majority of humans.

Knowing the Biblical conotations of such graveyard relics, and how a world wide flood totally destroys the mythical "million of years" needed for evolution, atheists and old earthers in general have to try to find another non-world-wide-flood explination. Usually it comes down to "We know it wasn't a major world wide catastrophy, but we don't know what it was!"

See, evolutionists live by faith.

Read More

The Evolution of Tickling

[Just when you thought this theory couldn't get even sillier, we get this gem. Try not to laugh as you read it, ok? This is science!! ]

http://creationsafaris.com/crev200906.htm#20090608a

June 8, 2009 — Observation: orangutans seem to laugh when tickled. Conclusion: humans evolved laughter from our ape past. This is the story being promoted by the science news outlets. “At least 10 million years ago, our ancestors may have been laughing it up over the latest stone-age prank or bout of tickling,” announced Live Science.

New Scientist joined in the laugh fest, saying “Laughter is not uniquely human.... laughter dates back some 10 to 16 million years, to our common ancestor.” Science Daily aped this story, and as did the BBC News and Nature News. National Geographic was tickled with it and even included sound recordings so you could hear the laughter of a bonobo, chimp, gorilla, orangutan and a human child.

Each of these articles was accompanied by pictures of apes making funny faces – something that should have been known since the old Bonzo movies. None of the studies claims, though, that the apes laughed at the shaggy man joke.

National Geographic wins Stupid Evolution Quote of the Week for these punch lines:

But even the most casual listener can tell a human laugh from an ape laugh. Davila Ross points out that human laughter has distinct differences from ape laughter, most likely because humans have evolved much more rapidly than apes during the past five million years.
And at least one great mystery remains: What purpose does ape laughter serve?....
Primates have apparently packed a lot of laughter into the last 10 to 16 million years, but there’s a chance the chuckle originated even earlier: Tickle-induced “laughter” has also been reported in rats.
The idea remains controversial, but it could suggest that our funny bone evolved much closer to the trunk of mammals’ evolutionary tree.

Maybe those squeaks are funnier than people thought. But why stop with mammals? Parakeets seem to tell jokes to each other. Jungles are filled with screeches and whoops that might be interpreted as one big comedy show.

Isn’t The World’s Funniest Animals one of the most popular shows on Animal Planet? Robert Roy Britt extended the possibility of laughter to cats and dogs on MSNBC News but seemed to recognize a limit to interpreting the results: “Just because a bee buzzes, that doesn’t mean it’s laughing at you.”

So this is modern science at work: tickling animals to study the evolution of laughter. Suggestion: don’t try this on grizzly bears.

The storytelling continues (see 11/22/2005). It’s an endless joke at our expense. Don’t be surprised if one of them looks for the laughter gene in bacteria. Maybe these scientists should analyze why common-sensical people are laughing at them for taking themselves seriously.

Read More

Birds Didn’t Evolve from Dinosaurs

Original Link

June 9, 2009 — “The findings add to a growing body of evidence in the past two decades that challenge some of the most widely-held beliefs about animal evolution.” That statement is not being made by creationists, but by science reporters describing work at Oregon State University that cast new doubt on the idea that birds evolved from theropod dinosaurs. The main idea: their leg bones and lungs are too different.

Science Daily’s report has a diagram of the skeleton showing how the fixed femur is tied into the avian lung system. Birds use more oxygen than mammals.

Their flow-through lungs would collapse if the femur moved like it does in mammals, reptiles and dinosaurs. “It’s really strange that no one realized this before,” said Devon Quick, professor of zoology at OSU, speaking of the tie-in of the femur to the bird lung. “The position of the thigh bone and muscles in birds is critical to their lung function, which in turn is what gives them enough lung capacity for flight.”

His colleague John Ruben was equally surprised: “It’s really kind of amazing that after centuries of studying birds and flight we still didn’t understand a basic aspect of bird biology.” The article began, “The conclusions add to other evolving evidence that may finally force many paleontologists to reconsider their long-held belief that modern birds are the direct descendants of ancient, meat-eating dinosaurs.” Key paragraphs put this in context:

“For one thing, birds are found earlier in the fossil record than the dinosaurs they are supposed to have descended from,” Ruben said. “That’s a pretty serious problem, and there are other inconsistencies with the bird-from-dinosaur theories.
“But one of the primary reasons many scientists kept pointing to birds as having descended from dinosaurs was similarities in their lungs,“ Ruben said. “However, theropod dinosaurs had a moving femur and therefore could not have had a lung that worked like that in birds. Their abdominal air sac, if they had one, would have collapsed. That undercuts a critical piece of supporting evidence for the dinosaur-bird link.
“A velociraptor did not just sprout feathers at some point and fly off into the sunset,” Ruben said.

For a claim dinosaurs had air sacs, see the 09/29/2008 entry. The OSU professors are not disbelieving in evolution. Birds and dinosaurs may have had a more distant common ancestor, they said: “It just seems pretty clear now that birds were evolving all along on their own and did not descend directly from the theropod dinosaurs, which lived many millions of years later.”
Oregon State has been at the forefront of challenging the dogma: “OSU research on avian biology and physiology was among the first in the nation to begin calling into question the dinosaur-bird link since the 1990s.” Doubts have also been raised at other institutions. Why has the story persisted? For one, “old theories die hard, Ruben said, especially when it comes to some of the most distinctive and romanticized animal species in world history.” Another reason is museum politics:

“Frankly, there’s a lot of museum politics involved in this, a lot of careers committed to a particular point of view even if new scientific evidence raises questions,” Ruben said. In some museum displays, he said, the birds-descended-from-dinosaurs evolutionary theory has been portrayed as a largely accepted fact, with an asterisk pointing out in small type that “some scientists disagree.”
“Our work at OSU used to be pretty much the only asterisk they were talking about,” Ruben said. “But now there are more asterisks all the time. That’s part of the process of science.”

That being the case, we can expect heated comeback arguments from those committed to the dominant view. Nevertheless, they will have to contend with the problem of evolving a fixed femur from dinosaurs who had a moving one – and in a shorter time than the fossil evidence allows.
The new work was published in the Journal of Morphology and was funded by the National Science Foundation, the article said. This story was also reported by PhysOrg and E! Science News. Time will tell if the other major science reporters pick it up. As of June 10, they did not, but Astrobiology Magazine did.

Sometimes the key to a story is in the asterisks. The OSU professors should be commended for going against a strong current of dogma in their field. Notice how many non-evidential factors producing that dogma were pointed out in the article: careers on the line, museum politics, romanticized notions, and old die-hard theories presented as fact. Those are the same non-evidential factors running rampant throughout King Charles’ domain. He’s the one that needs to go flying off into the sunset – with velocity.
The OSU profs saved their skin, though, by still pinching their incense to Caesar, claiming that the mythical “common ancestor” is just a little further back in the record, and that birds were “evolving in parallel” along with the dinosaurs. That’s all they can do – toss in a few more naturalistic, purposeless, chance miracles to keep the Bearded Buddha shrine operating. Now the museum workers are going to have to figure out what to do with all those feathers (01/21/2009, 07/09/2008, 06/13/2007, 02/08/2006). Maybe they can stick them on the wooly mammoths, as caricatured by Tom Weller in Science Made Stupid, a mandatory lesson on how evolutionary stories are propagated.

Read More