Archive: Ethics, Rights, Bird Trees, Stalactites, Cells

Would you know some of these articles are “old news” from 23 years ago if you didn’t see the dates? It appears that evolutionists have not changed much.

Note: some embedded links may no longer work.

Sex Selection: The Next Pandora’s Box?  07/05/2001
A scientific breakthrough called the MicroSort technique, (that’s MicroSort, not MicroSoft – don’t blame Bill Gates) developed by the IVF labs in Fairfax, Virginia, can allegedly guarantee 90% accuracy in sex selection, reports the BBC News. While this is a boon to certain couples who wish to avoid passing on genetic defects associated with sex, it also raises many new ethical questions.

If you build it, they will come. Many couples would pick the sex of their child for various reasons, some good, some merely preference. Some cultures are known to prefer having a boy, especially where the number of children is controlled. (Look what’s happening in India according to National Geographic.) What happens a generation later when you have a population of 75% one sex or the other? Is that fair to the children? There are also concerns that the technique may cause genetic damage. These are very serious times for the scientific establishment to be floundering without an ethical anchor.

Patriots Claim Rights From Creator  07/04/1776
A group of anti-royalists gathered in Philadelphia today to declare publicly that all men are created equal and “are endowed by their Creator with certain inalienable rights . . . ”  This new and radical notion is said to be the basis of a new form of government they are planning.

Aren’t you glad they didn’t say that some men are endowed with superior fitness to ensure their dominance over the weak. As you wave the flag, don’t forget to honor the Creator on whose principles of law, morality and righteousness the founding fathers forged a new nation of free citizens. Our father’s God, to Thee, Author of Liberty, to Thee we sing.  Long may our land be bright with freedom’s holy light; protect us by Thy might, Great God, our King.

Bird Evolutionary Tree Shaken  07/03/2001
A biologist at Penn State has shaken up the bird family tree, putting short squatty grebes as close relatives of long-legged flamingoes. Blair Hedges used both mitochondrial and nuclear gene samples to find close relatives, but was surprised by the non-intuitive results. He claims this shows that features like webbed feet evolved not once but many times, and that evolutionary changes occurred faster than expected.

Does no one have any sense to consider the possibility that the methods and the conclusions are both bunk? These findings ought to point out that either gene sequencing is unreliable, or their assumptions of phylogeny are wrong, or both; but evolutionary biologists get by with anything, no matter how illogical, counter-intuitive, or contradictory to previous evolutionary storytelling, as long as it assumes and promotes evolution.

Duke Biologists Deny Validity of Molecular Classification  07/02/2001
Scientists at Duke University claim to have debunked the method of classifying mammals and other organisms based on mitochondrial DNA sequences. The molecular method claims the platypus is related to the kangaroo, for instance, and that widely disparate animals like hippos and whales had a common ancestor. The Duke scientists analyzed nuclear genes with computer software that supported the older common-sense classification used by paleontologists that groups animals based on morphology (outward structure and anatomical similarities). The article starts by saying, “Classifying kangaroos and platypuses together on the evolutionary family tree is as absurd as adding your neighbors to your own family ancestral line simply because they share your love of the opera, according to scientists at Duke University.”

This article is loaded with circular reasoning. Both sides of this ongoing controversy assume evolution to prove evolutionary relationships and just argue over which method produces a better fit to their preconceived notions of the family tree. It is like arguing over which classification method does better at proving hammers and screwdrivers had a common ancestor: metal content or shape.

Stalactite Calls Carbon Dating Into Question  06/29/2001
Cave divers studying a submerged stalactite in the Bahamas found unexpected “huge peaks” in radiocarbon levels embedded in the limestone, reports the BBC News. The article claims this finding might help improve the accuracy of radiocarbon dating, which is known to be increasingly unreliable for alleged dates older than 16,000 years. But it issues this caution: “Already, it is clear that some ancient items could have been wrongly dated by several thousand years because of the sharp fluctuations in radiocarbon levels revealed in the stalagmite.”

Radiometric dating is riddled with circular reasoning and hidden assumptions. This story just underscores the fact that empirical data do not always support the conventional wisdom. Despite their bluffing about the stalagmite helping improve the accuracy of radiocarbon dating, how do we know that another finding tomorrow wouldn’t introduce another fudge factor? Remember Skinner’s constant: “that number which, when added to, subtracted from, multiplied or divided by the number you got, gives you the number you should have gotten.”

Cells Use Triple Fail-Safe Systems During Division  06/28/2001
During cell division, when millions of DNA base pairs are duplicating, a lot could go wrong and lead to runaway duplication – e.g., cancer. Now, scientists have found at least three mechanisms that drastically reduce the chance of failure, according to Scientific American. Joachim Li at the University of California, San Francisco, said, “We eventually demonstrated that not one or two but at least three distinct controls have to be turned off simultaneously for cells to start replicating again. This is unlikely to happen by accident, so this multilayered protection is virtually fail-safe.  That’s what you want when there is no room for error.”

The remarkable thing is not that errors occur in a world governed by Murphy’s Law, but that they occur so rarely. Consider how many billions of organisms each with trillions of cells reproduce themselves over the ages nearly flawlessly. If it were not for tight security and fail-safe controls, the first generation would never even make it to birth, and natural selection would be helpless.

All we have to do to help thinking people realize evolution is untenable is to just keep reporting stories like this. Unless these controls existed from the start, life could never have survived. It is not just this story but a thousand others that proclaim Intelligent Design.