Archive: Evolutionists, Peacocks, Extinctions, Brain, Terrorism, Whales, More
What were evolutionary scientists claiming 23 years ago? Read these CEH archives and see!
Note: Some embedded links may no longer work.
Now on Newsstands: Your Favorite Evolutionists 09/21/2001
…and Marxists, and other heroes… Time-Life has a new publication you may have seen at the supermarket check-out counter, Great Discoveries. It features 24 short photo essays on archaeology, 23 on space, 13 on earth science, and 12 on life sciences.
Many of the stories are unquestionably significant (King Tut, Voyager, Hubble, Leif Ericsson, China’s terra-cotta army), but the book gives overly prominent press to the liberal media’s favorite evolutionists and Darwin stories: Stephen Jay Gould (the Marxist on his noble anti-creationist crusade), Carl Sagan, the Leakey family, Jane Goodall, Stephen Hawking, and Margaret Mead (no mention of how her work has been criticized lately by other anthropologists). To its credit, the book debunks famous hoaxes like Piltdown Man and Java Man, and snubs National Geographic for printing its November 1999 “Piltdown Chicken” story, yet its second feature story, complete with huge color artwork, portrays Caudipteryx as a feathered dinosaur and proof of bird ancestry from dinos (follow our Dino chain links for the dispute about this claim, particularly 11/27/2000). [It said from a report at Science News 12/27/2000 about the top stories of the year, “Researchers found that Caudipteryx, a feathered animal that lived 120 million years ago, may have been a flightless bird, not a bird ancestor (August 19, 158: 119).”]
Other findings that should be problems for evolution are portrayed in the theory’s favor: coelacanth, prehistoric cave art, and various early man fossils now considered questionable (follow the chain links below for recent findings on these and related subjects). Evolution is touted in the usual popular-media way: it’s obvious, and nobody of importance questions it or believes anything else. While Great Discoveries makes for better supermarket fare than the National Enquirer, parents will want to teach young readers about selective reporting (see our Baloney Detector entry on card stacking). Readers will look in vain for any of the great creation scientists to be given prominence.
Peacock Feathers Could Not Evolve 09/20/2001
Darwin is reported to have said, “The sight of a feather in a peacock’s tail, whenever I gaze at it, makes me sick!” Stuart Burgess, writing in the latest (15:2 2001) issue of TJ – the Technical Journal of Creation magazine, argues that Darwin would be sicker if he knew modern discoveries about the complexities of the peacock feather. He analyzes the feathers in detail, including their mathematical curves, thin-film iridescence, barbule details and overall beauty and finds them to contain irreducibly complex structures that could not have evolved by slow, gradual processes. Moreover, he argues that there is no satisfactory explanation of how sexual selection could start or why the peahen should prefer beautiful structures.
The semi-annual journal also contains papers on randomness, science fiction, evolutionary naturalism, a first-hand account of a search for Mokele-mbembe in Cameroon, oil seeps, the fallacy of geocentrism, rapid formation of granite, Lucy, cratering theory, the Oort cloud and much more.
The journal can be ordered through Answers in Genesis and makes for great reading each issue. Selected back issue articles can be read online.
Life After the Next Mass Extinction Prophesied 09/20/2001
Science News (160:11, Sept 15, 2001) has a cover story, “Life on the Edge,” about what kind of creatures would evolve after the next mass extinction. Decorated with fanciful images by Alexis Rockman of roostersaurs and rabbit-roos and other concoctions, it interviews various scientist-prognosticators about the inhabitants of the new creation: will it be a world of weeds and pests? David Jablonski of the University of Chicago concludes, “Attempts to predict evolutionary behavior after mass extinction events can operate in broad generalities, and always with the caveat, expect the unexpected.”
What is this sci-fi speculation gone wild doing in a science news magazine? They don’t know how animals go extinct. They don’t know how species arise. They don’t know how the world will end. But as scientists, they can be the soothsayers, magicians and astrologers of the world. Like Daniel of old, a more reliable source answers these questions, and will be found superior to all the king’s magicians.
Neurobiologists Tinker With Brain Development Switches 09/20/2001
University of Chicago neurobiologists have found a way to tinker with a signalling protein that governs brain development in mice. When they alter its expression during gestation and watch the results, different parts of the brain grow or shrink, or duplicate portions form. Dr. Elizabeth Grove believes this discovery
may provide a clue about how the cerebral cortex changes in evolution. One way that evolution seems to generate more functionally complex brains is by adding new areas to the cortex. “We have had no idea how evolution achieved this kind of change,” said Grove. “So it is exciting to find that you can add a new area by modifying signaling by a single protein.”
As is so common in evolutionary storytelling, the conclusion commits the fallacy of personification. The neurobiologist is treating evolution as some kind of goddess, working to make bigger and better brains by trial and error. We must call foul at these statements and not let them get away with them; it is cheating. In a materialistic universe, nobody is there to direct, guide, or promote any improvements, and nobody cares. The facts of this story illustrate design, not evolution.
God, Prayer and Miracles Enter Science Vocabulary After Terror 09/19/2001
The News and Features section of the prestigious science journal Nature has some strange new vocabulary words in a column entitled “Scientists react to attacks with shock and fears for the future.” The article reports on the feelings of scientists around the world following the terrorist attacks in New York and Washington on September 11. Expressing condolence, one writes, “May God ease your pain and grant you patience.” A German research president fearing the loss of his chief financial officer in the carnage said, “We can only pray that a miracle has happened.”
Why do some people get religion only when bad things happen? The individuals quoted may actually be religious, of course, or the above statements may be mere figures of speech for materialistic scientists trying to show compassion for those who have suffered. But whenever evolutionists borrow Christian words like prayer and God, it’s hypocritical. They should be saying, “Acts of violence are evolutionary adaptations of selfish genes and are a normal part of survival strategies” or “Feelings of grief are mere chemical reactions of neurotransmitters in the brain.” Let evolutionists fly their own Darwin-fish flag up the flagpole and see if people salute it. On the other hand, maybe some scientists, “struggling to comprehend the brutality involved,” are making a new empirical discovery that, like the Bible says, we have a soul and a conscience.
Earth Is a Nuclear Reactor, Produces Variable Magnetic Field 09/19/2001
A scientist at Oak Ridge National Laboratories and a colleague have proposed a radical new mechanism for the production of earth’s magnetic field. Writing in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, they hypothesize that earth’s core is a nuclear reactor. The magnetic field, instead of being produced by fluid motions in the core, results from fission products rising upward and fuel products falling inward. Because this arrangement is subject to frequent and sudden adjustments, it gives rise to magnetic reversals that are documented in the rocks of the crust. They claim this mechanism can maintain itself for geologic time (i.e., the assumed age of the earth, 4.5 billion years).
The earth’s magnetic field has been a problem for uniformitarians for a long time, appearing to be undergoing an exponential decay that could not last for 4.5 billion years. Also, the reversals deduced from crustal rocks have been hard to explain. This new theory is quite different, although sketchy, and it seems to invoke some ad hoc assumptions to make it work. We’ll have to wait and see if it becomes accepted as the new paradigm or collapses from other difficulties.
Whale Ancestor Alleged 09/19/2001
“Everyone will agree that these animals are whales,” says an Ohio paleontologist about a wolf-sized creature that probably only got wet walking across streams, according to a report in Nature. But that may be wishful thinking. Molecular analyses put very different creatures in the ancestral line of whales, and rival teams see the hippopotamus as a more likely candidate.
Because cetaceans are so unlike any land mammal, with their legs as paddles and their nostrils atop their heads, it has been immensely difficult to place them in the evolutionary scheme of things . . . . “Rapid evolutionary change, be it molecular, ecological or anatomical, is extremely difficult to reconstruct, and the speed with which cetaceans took to the water may make their bones an unreliable guide to their ancestry,” he says [evolutionary biologist Ulfur Arnason of the University of Lund in Sweden]. Arnason believes the two camps will remain divided, at least for now. “There’s no point trying to reach some sort of consensus based on compromise. It has often been very difficult to reconcile morphological and molecular opinions,” he says.
Science Magazine also has a report with pictures of reconstructions of two of the specimens. National Geographic, as expected, joined in the celebration of the new fossil, but admits “Despite this evidence that cetaceans (whales, dolphins, and porpoises) evolved from artiodactyls, substantial discrepancies remain, Rose said. “If cetacaeans belong to artiodactyls,” he said, “then similarities in the cranial and dental morphologies of mesonychians and cetaceans must be the result of convergent evolution or must have been lost in artiodactyls. “Well-preserved ankles of the earliest ancient whales are now needed to confirm that the traits seen in the new skeletons are indeed inherited from early artiodactyls and not a result of convergent evolution,” Rose said.
The Nature article is deceitful. The headline gives, and the conclusion takes away. It starts out with
Almost like a whale: Fossils bridge gap between land mammals and whales . . . . Fifty million years ago, two mammals roamed the desert landscapes of what is now Pakistan. They looked a bit like dogs. They were, in fact, land-living, four-legged whales. Their new-found fossils join other famous missing links, such as the primitive bird Archaeopteryx, that show how one group of animals evolved into another.
Then it proceeds to undermine everything it just said. The fossils are not anything like whales except for alleged similarities in ear bones and heel bones (of which neither has anything to do with whale function), and there are other scientists who disagree strongly that this fossil has anything to do with whales. The article glosses over tremendous anatomical differences between the fossil and whales and yet assumes that these formidable evolutionary changes must have occurred rapidly without leaving a trace in the fossil record of hundreds of transitional forms that must have been required. The opening paragraph lies about Archaeopteryx, which is not ancestral to birds (earlier birds are found in the fossil record), and it presents, in confident terms, a flimsy observation that is highly disputed or irrelevant to this serious problem in the evolutionists’ story. For shame, Nature!
The pictures on the Science page also stretch the truth, portraying Rodhocetus as whale-like as possible. What they don’t tell you is that most of the bones are inferred. Just a few fragments were found, and the rest is artistic license (See Creation magazine, Sept-Nov 2001, pp. 10-14.) What the bones show are extinct animals who were perfectly adapted to their own environment, without any desire or pressure to evolve into something else. The crucial features the evolutionists are basing their stories on are just skeletal features – teeth, ear cavities, and foot bones. What about all the other specialized features of whales – sonar, spouts on the top of their heads, the ability to dive deep, and much more, for which there is not a shred of evidence of transitional forms? The only way you can arrange extinct animals into a family tree is with a prior commitment to evolution. This is circular reasoning. Beaver have webbed feet, too; are they evolving into dolphins? The fossil evidence shows a wide assortment of adapted animals that appear abruptly then went extinct. The rest is storytelling. These articles also highlight a reappearing difficulty for evolution, that the genetic/molecular family trees do not match the morphological family trees.
EurekAlert provides an evaluation by an outsider from Johns Hopkins. For a creationist view, read Dr. Duane Gish’s response to claims by evolutionists of whale transitional forms. Though written earlier, the same arguments are applicable here, and the same culprits are involved.
Elaborate Regulator System Found in Bacteria 09/19/2001
A Stanford team, studying the biochemistry in a lowly rod-shaped bacterium, has discovered a regulator that helps switch on the production of tryptophan when demand exceeds supply, reports EurekAlert. The protein, which they named AT, is one member of an elaborate feedback system that senses the need for tryptophan, one of the most complex of the 20 amino acids used in all living cells. The cell can sense the amount of tryptophan-specific Transfer RNA available. If it falls below a certain level, a specific gene turns on formation of AT, which then stops another regulator from slowing down production. Each enzyme binds to specific parts of the assembly line, acting like switches, or like foremen who give orders to speed up or slow down (in the case of protein foremen, they can’t shout orders, so they put a hammerlock on the assembly line workers.)
The researchers called this system “really bizarre” and ask, “Why did B. subtilis evolve such an elaborate and energetically costly mechanism for regulating tryptophan synthesis?”
It takes seven catalytic steps to synthesize tryptophan, making it one of the most expensive amino acids for an organism to produce, requiring large amounts of energy and carbon . . . . Therefore, having an efficient means of regulating the production of tryptophan is important . . . . Evolution apparently provided efficient regulatory mechanisms for these organisms to cope with the need to regulate tryptophan formation.
Charles Yanofsky sees a similarity in the way antibodies work and speculates that AT might be an evolutionary ancestor of the disease-fighting antibodies in humans.
Reading the description of this elaborate factory-control system and then hearing its creation ascribed to blind, mindless evolutionary forces calls to mind the teenager’s slang expression, “Gag me with a spoon.”
PBS Airing Evolution Series – With Trepidation 09/18/2001
Armed with $14 million in funds, Clear Blue Sky Productions, a guild founded and chaired by Microsoft billionaire Paul Allen, is poised to launch its new series Evolution on most Public Broadcasting System affiliates September 24-27. But some are bracing for a public backlash that has already started well before the first episode has aired:
- Access Research Network has a website of articles in response to the series with links to other sites.
- Answers in Genesis website announces “PBS Evolution Assault: Get Your Armor Here!” It will be providing daily responses to the claims made in the series.
- The Discovery Institute has launched a website pbsevolution.com subtitled “PBS’s Evolution: The Magnum Opus of a Dying Theory.” It contains a 152-page viewer’s guide Getting the Facts Straight (downloadable in PDF format) with responses to each episode. It calls the PBS series one-sided advocacy: “It distorts the scientific evidence, ignores scientific disagreements over Darwin’s theory, and misrepresents the theory’s critics.”
- Chuck Colson has called it “falsified history” on his Breakpoint Commentary. He and Nancy Pearcey are coming out with study guides in October for their book How Now Shall We Live? that refute the claims of evolutionists.
- John Mark Reynolds and Josh Gilder describe their face-to-face confrontations with principals Ken Miller and Eugenie Scott at a press conference for the PBS Evolution series, and how they raised uncomfortable questions about the funding, bias, and bad science of the programs.
- Focus on the Family has come out with a critical article in advance of the airing of the series.
In the early 1980’s Carl Sagan’s Cosmos series turned on a generation of viewers to the joys of atheism and blamed Christians for the evils of the world. What will PBS do this time? Most likely it will interview religious leaders who have no problem with evolution, making it seem OK to blend with the Bible. Of course, everything from the first cell to man will be attributed to blind, undirected processes which leave God entirely superfluous. Better tune up your Baloney Detector. Watch out for the usual “proofs” of evolution debunked by Jonathan Wells in Icons of Evolution.
Advice: Don’t deny the evolutionists a hearing. But speak up with scientific and historical evidence to refute their claims. Use episodes like this to teach critical thinking skills. Demand that stations teach all the facts, not indoctrinate viewers with one-sided propaganda campaigns. Creation-Evolution Headlines is your source of timely information from evolutionary bastions themselves – scientific journals, the media, and science digests – with recent findings from all branches of science that contradict what the Darwinists allege.
Print this and hand it out: Ten Questions to ask your biology teacher about evolution.
Permian World Destroyed in Fire and Brimstone 09/18/2001
Japanese scientists have examined rock layers in southern China, and deduce that an asteroid 60 kilometers across killed 95% of species at the end of the Permian era. They base their conclusion on a sudden change in the relative abundances of certain sulfur isotopes in a nickel-rich layer in late Permian limestone. “If a giant meteorite impact vaporized a large area of sulphur-containing rock where it struck the seabed, it would probably have ejected the lighter of sulphur’s two common natural isotopes into the air, changing the isotope ratio of the remaining rocks.” The story is summarized in Nature Science Update.
This story is included for your wonderment, that scientists could weave such a tall tale out of so little data. Here all they found was a difference in sulfur isotopes in some rock, and they figure out the diameter of an asteroid and when it hit. Isn’t science wonderful. Evolutionists might counter that their conclusion is based not on just this finding, but masses of evidence like it. Ever heard of a house of cards?
A man can lie on a bed of nails if the nails are firm, independent, and anchored into a strong board. The nails are like the evidence for a theory, and the ability of the man to rest on the nails is like the trustworthiness of the theory. He will have trouble, though, if the nails are stacked on top of each other, or are made of paper, or are embedded in jello. Evolutionary evidences suffer from all three defects. They are often dependent on one another, they are individually weak, and they are usually embedded in philosophical naturalism. This story is a case in point.
Early Sun a Bright Child 09/18/2001
Science Now says astronomers considering the evolution of our sun have a new problem; it was too bright. German scientists using a supercomputer calculated the early sun was four times brighter and 500 degrees hotter. “Astronomers deduce the mass and age of a young star from its luminosity and surface temperature, on the assumption that young protostars get fainter with age. But if protostars start out brighter than current models predict, their ages may well be underestimated, Wuchterl says.”
Don’t miss that little word assumption. Many assumptions and simplifications go into theories of stellar evolution; there is a great deal that is poorly understood, if at all. Recently, for instance, an explanation for the neutrino deficit was announced that might have far-reaching consequences for particle physics. Also recently, scientists were surprised to entertain thoughts that physical constants might not be so constant. They used to say the early sun was too dim (the young faint sun paradox); now this story claims it’s too bright. None of them were there to say for sure. The First Law of Scientific Progress says, “The advance of science can be measured by the rate at which exceptions to previously held laws accumulate.
Corollaries:
1. Exceptions always outnumber rules.
2. There are always exceptions to established exceptions.
3. By the time one masters the exceptions, no one recalls the rules to which they apply.
Essay 09/17/2001: In the upcoming Sept. 22 issue of World Magazine, Marvin Olasky compares the Christian and Darwinian answers to the evil exemplified in the terrorist attack on New York. He recommends Cornelius Hunter’s 2001 book, Darwin’s God: Evolution and the Problem of Evil, that asserts Darwin and many early evolutionists supported their theory not with scientific evidence but with metaphysical arguments around this issue.
Genes Confirm Family Tree for Fish, Amphibians, Reptiles 09/17/2001
A paper in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences claims that correspondence between the genes and the looks of fish, amphibians and reptiles verifies their common ancestry. By comparing genetic markers, specifically a few sequences that have been apparently inserted and deleted in the genomes of 24 fish, reptiles and amphibian species, they claim to have confirmed the traditional family tree of these creatures. They assert that their results refute other recent studies that found mismatches between molecular phylogeny (family trees based on gene sequences) and family trees based on morphology (external body appearance).
The authors admit that “Discovering the deep branches in the evolution of vertebrates is major challenge for evolutionary biologists” and molecular phylogeny is fraught with uncertainty and error: “The pitfalls of molecular sequences include variations in the rate of evolution of different genes and the large amounts of phylogenetic ‘noise’ that have accumulated from reversible changes over long evolutionary times. In the case of gnathostomes, these problems with sequences are further compounded by the fact that there was a rapid radiation of vertebrates during a very short window of time in the Devonian period.” That last point alone is a major problem for evolutionary theory. But examining just a few look-alike genes from the hundreds of thousands for each of these animals cannot prove relationships one way or the other. If you start with a mental picture of the way you believe things ought to be, you are bound to find pieces that fit your expectations. Actually, the clash between genes and looks is a problem for many parts of the assumed evolutionary tree; see our Sept. 13 story for a recent example concerning insects.
Drug Resistance Caused by Reassortment, Not Mutation 09/17/2001
Writing for the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, Berkeley scientists have proposed a new theory for the emergence of drug resistance by cancer cells. The cells do not evolve resistance by genetic mutations, but rather by reassortment of chromosomes – but only among cells that have non-integer multiples of the normal chromosome count (aneuploid). They note ten observations that contradict the hypothesis that resistance is conferred by Multiple Resistance Genes (MRGs), then show by experiment a their hypothesis produces a much better fit to the observations.
If true, this hypothesis appears to undermine a common claim by Darwinists that evolution is as common as the emergence of drug resistance. First, the recombination involves a loss of function, not a gain in information. Second, the changes in the aneuploid cells cannot be passed on through normal diploid cells, so are not heritable; thus, natural selection would be stymied. See also our Sept 7 and Aug 28 stories on this subject.