Archive: Abiogenesis, Lobsters, Logic, Memory, Physics, Big Dinosaurs, More
Here are more of the stories we were reporting in late November 2001, restored from archives.
Note: some embedded links may no longer work.
Abiogenesis Presented As Matter of Fact by NASA Speaker 11/30/2001
Abiogenesis, the belief that life arose spontaneously from inanimate matter, once thought disproved by Pasteur, is alive and well in NASA. In public lectures at JPL and Pasadena City College entitled “The Search for Earth-Like Planets”, webcast to the world on the JPL Website, Dr. Charles Beichman explained the two-fold thrust of NASA’s Origins program: (1) Where do we come from?, and (2) Are we alone?
Dr. Beichman provided four fundamental ideas that he says have changed scientists’ thinking into optimism that life will be found in space:
- The necessary ingredients of life are widespread in the universe: the laws of physics are the same everywhere, and the elements and molecules common to life are ubiquitous.
- Planets are a common, natural outcome of star formation.
- Life on earth can inhabit harsh environments. So-called “extremophiles” have been found in boiling hot springs and buried in Antarctic ice and around deep sea vents.
- Life can affect a planet on a global scale, allowing us to infer the presence of life by studying the spectra from atmospheric gases on extrasolar planets. (Just this week, the Hubble Space Telescope made the first direct measurement of the atmosphere of a planet around another star.)
By implication, life, which we have not discovered yet, must as common a property in the universe as the planets and ingredients we do see. Dr. Beichman went on to discuss how JPL scientists are involved in detecting extrasolar planets, and some day may be able to image earthlike planets around other stars and characterize the gases in their atmospheres– thereby gaining clues whether life exists around other stars.
These kinds of presentations are so common in NASA circles they are not news, but it bears repeating that abiogenesis should be a highly contested and controversial belief. Yet no one in the audience offered the slightest objection to what was claimed. Is it really possible to get from hydrogen to the Hallelujah Chorus by the continuous operation of undirected natural laws? Or are there major discontinuities, unbridgeable by naturalistic presuppositions? Is life an accident that happened here, and happens all over where you have the ingredients present? If so, then what does that mean for abstract concepts like truth, knowledge, wisdom, and morals?
Dr. Beichman would, of course, regard these questions as off the point, claiming he is not talking about religion, but science; individuals can believe whatever they want, but he is just there to address the scientific matters of evidence, detection techniques, spectra, and molecules. But the clear implication of these kinds of presentations is that life is a natural by-product of unguided, undirected, impersonal, natural forces; God is superfluous, as far as biology is concerned. Any logical person must realize that abiogenesis is deadly to belief in God; at best, it pushes Him off to the beginning as a distant First Cause, uninvolved in a mechanistic universe that evolves of its own accord.
Yet the scientific evidence militates against abiogenesis! Even the simplest life is tremendously more complex than nonliving molecules. The so-called common ingredients of life are no closer to life than scattered Scrabble letters are to an encyclopedia. It’s the way these ingredients are organized into autonomous, growing, reproducing systems that defies all naturalistic explanation; and on this point, astrobiologists are strangely silent.
Dr. Beichman admitted in the Q&A session that chirality (handedness) of molecules might be a biomarker – an indicator of life – yet getting even one single-handed chain of even 10 units by chance is prohibitively improbable, and natural selection can’t help. His Fundamental Idea #3 (Life on earth can inhabit harsh environments), so frequently touted by astrobiologists, begs the question of whether life can form spontaneously in the first place – harsh environment or not. Under the most favorable conditions imaginable, abiogenesis is ruled out of the game by the laws of probability. At every upward step, furthermore, evolution is blocked and tackled by the laws of thermodynamics. And if abiogenesis is true, it renders truth and knowledge meaningless – and that includes science. Remember how PBS said that our noblest enterprises are just sex urges? Surely Dr. Beichman would want his thoughts to be taken more seriously than to be viewed as pawns of selfish genes that for some reason want to propagate themselves endlessly (Why? Who cares?). If we are mere particles in motion, then science is dead; let’s close down the Lab, eat, drink and party, for tomorrow we die.
The bottom line is, abiogenesis should be laughed off the stage. It is ridiculous on scientific, philosophical, and logical grounds. Its implications for theology and morals are like poison. Why do these NASA speakers get away with spouting nonsense, year after year, with nobody calling them on the carpet for it?
Quote: Scepticism.– I shall here write my thoughts without order, and not perhaps in unintentional confusion; that is true order, which will always indicate my object by its very disorder. I should do too much honour to my subject, if I treated it with order, since I want to show that it is incapable of it. – Pascal, Pensées.
Article 11/29/2001: “More Baloney Detecting: How to Draw Boundaries Between Science and Pseudoscience, Part II,” by Michael Shermer, Scientific American. The editor/publisher of Skeptic magazine continues his 10 principles of Baloney Detection he began in Part I last month.
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- Does the preponderance of evidence point to the claimant’s conclusion or to a different one?
The theory of evolution, for example, is proved through a convergence of evidence from a number of independent lines of inquiry. No one fossil, no one piece of biological or paleontological evidence has ‘evolution’ written on it; instead tens of thousands of evidentiary bits add up to a story of the evolution of life. Creationists conveniently ignore this confluence, focusing instead on trivial anomalies or currently unexplained phenomena in the history of life. [emphasis added].
Here Shermer takes the creationists head-on, but his metrics are purely arbitrary and his judgments subjective. If you are a regular reader of Creation-Evolution Headlines, you may have come to the exact opposite conclusion: that evolution is a collection of just-so stories pieced together with the meagerest evidence (example: Jared Diamond’s paper two days ago [scroll down]), while ignoring major and substantive problems: evidential, theoretical, logical and philosophical. Shermer himself “conveniently ignores” the ongoing work of the Creation Research Society, the Institute for Creation Research, the Creation Technical Journal, and other organizations who have been doing scholarly research for decades, not just picking at “trivial anomalies” in evolutionary theory.
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- Is the claimant employing the accepted rules of reason and tools of research, or have these been abandoned in favor of others that lead to the desired conclusion?
Over and over here in these pages, we have shown evolutionists stuffing shreds of evidence into their preconceived notions. Look at the monstrous leap of faith in the Nov 26 story (quote, in commentary), for instance. See more examples evolutionists have used in our Baloney Detector. Add to that the complaint by evolutionists themselves that evolution is untestable and unfalsifiable. So Darwinism fails this criterion, too. (Down to an F-minus already; do we need to go on?) - Is the claimant providing an explanation for the observed phenomena or merely denying the existing explanation?
Shermer calls this a “classic debate strategy” and declares it unacceptable in science, yet his criterion commits two logical fallacies: (a) Shifting the Burden of Proof, in which he asserts that no one has a right to criticize evolution unless he can replace it with something better: This is the classic debate strategy. (b) Best-In-Field Fallacy, in which an evolutionist feels justified in coming up with some just-so story, no matter how weak, rather than no naturalistic explanation at all. This is the stratagem that is unacceptable in science; saying “I don’t know” would be an improvement. In this paragraph, Shermer targets Intelligent Design theory, but knocks down a straw man, and shows that he neither recognizes his own bias nor understands what ID theorists are saying. The reader is referred to Access Research Network’s ID FAQ page, and to articles by William Dembski. - If the claimant proffers a new explanation, does it account for as many phenomena as the old explanation did?
This is usually a good principle in science (such as in heliocentrism over geocentrism), but it does not always apply, especially when the phenomena are not one-time prehistoric events that are not repeatable and testable, such as in big-bang inflation theory and the origin of life.
- Is the claimant employing the accepted rules of reason and tools of research, or have these been abandoned in favor of others that lead to the desired conclusion?
Early Darwinism seemed to account for many things, until critics realized that natural selection was a tautology that was stating the obvious: survivors survive, and the fit are fitter than the unfit. This shows that it is possible for a theory to explain everything and yet really explain nothing at all. A rose is a rose; is it true? Yes. Is it obvious? Yes. Is it useful? No.
The late 20th century’s mushrooming pace of discoveries in biochemistry (DNA, protein structure, molecular motors) are straining the old paradigm to the breaking point. Today, evolutionists are just assuming evolution can account for these things somehow, but failing to explain how they could– things outside the arena of natural selection, and things so improbable they would never happen naturally in a billion universes.
Early modern science (and excellent science at that) was built on a philosophical foundation of intelligent design. Since naturalism has shown itself bankrupt at providing explanations for specified complexity, and even proffers explanations that are contrary to known laws, it is time to re-evaluate the suitability of naturalism as a presupposition for science.
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- Do the claimant’s personal beliefs and biases drive the conclusions, or vice versa?
A logical positivist is someone who sees science as an objective, neutral, unbiased means for arriving at absolute truth. Many modern scientists, unfortunately, do not realize this premise is guilty of the Self-Referential Fallacy. They cannot understand that philosophical naturalism is a belief system, a faith, even a religion. Some admit it partly, but think that somehow science is “better” than any other approach to explaining anything and everything (even the origin of the universe, life and man). But even this is a value judgment not determined empirically; it is merely a preference. Asserting that, “Well, science has given us cell phones and religion hasn’t” commits other fallacies, like extrapolation, equivocation, association, and glittering generalities; it tries to link verifiable physics with untestable, unverifiable stories about the unobservable past. What’s Darwin got to do with it?
- Do the claimant’s personal beliefs and biases drive the conclusions, or vice versa?
The bottom line is that all people are biased, even scientists. Some biases can be mitigated by repeatability, testability, and honest debate. We have shown that Darwinian storytelling survives best in a vacuum insulated from criticism and is inherently untestable.
Shermer adds praise for peer review, as if it reduces bias, but just last week we reported an angry complaint by three scientists in Nature that peer review is like a religious rite, that it is unnecessary, a colossal waste of time, stifling to innovation, intolerant of opinions outside the party line, an obstacle to good scientific work, and cultivator of corruption. We have also shown numerous papers that passed peer review yet claim patently illogical things, perfectly permissible as long as they fit in with Darwinian philosophy.
Now that you have passed this short course in baloney detecting, try your hand at Shermer’s concluding statements. Grade him on objectivity, clear thinking, and integrity:
Yet there is a solution: science deals in fuzzy fractions of certainties and uncertainties, where evolution and big bang cosmology may be assigned a 0.9 probability of being true, and creationism and UFOs a 0.1 probability of being true. In between are borderland claims: we might assign superstring theory a 0.7 and cryonics a 0.2. In all cases, we remain open-minded and flexible, willing to reconsider our assessments as new evidence arises. This is, undeniably, what makes science so fleeting and frustrating to many people; it is, at the same time, what makes science the most glorious product of the human mind.
Let’s continue analyzing Darwinism by Shermer’s criteria.
Navy Looks to Lobster for Smelling Technology 11/29/2001
Lobsters have noses, too; small organs called aesthetacs on the tips of their antennae that sweep through the water. If you have watched lobsters carefully, you may have noticed that the downstroke is faster than the upstroke. There may be a reason for this, and scientists funded by the Office of Naval Research are trying to find out, says EurekAlert. By studying lobsters, the Navy hopes to find better ways to sniff out underwater explosives.
The team built a robotic lobster on a real lobster exoskeleton, but outfitted it with their own steel antennae with electronic sensors and tried to mimic the motion of a live lobster. They found that the twitching motion apparently provides the lobster with a quick high-resolution map of the odor plume coming its way, and the slow upstroke may give it time to analyze the data without disturbing the pattern set up on the sensors. The beginning of the next downstroke resets the sensors, and provides an update on the source of the odor. The report states with admiration, “For a lobster living on the ocean floor, the chemical trails left by prey, predators, mates and competitors must make a confusing tangle – each filament of odor intertwining with the others until discovering the source of any one of them starts to seem as impossible as untangling a ball of liquid yarn. But somehow the lobster does it.”
How many times have we seen human engineers getting their inspiration from designs in nature? Notice how what looks on casual observation like just a nervous twitching by the lobster actually has a very real function. Human robotic engineering is making us aware of the robots all around us that are light-years ahead of us in design.
Scientists Take Motion Pictures of Brain Forming Memories 11/29/2001
Scientists at the University of California, San Diego believe they have found the “Holy Grail” of neurobiology by taking the first motion pictures of the brain forming short-term and long-term memories. Using new imaging techniques that do not damage cells, researchers have been able to watch neurons form temporary synapses (connections) that last about 5-10 minutes, which might reflect the stimuli that produce short-term memory, and permanent connections after four or more stimulations per hour, that might reflect long-term memory. “Once you take an axon and form two new connections, those connections are very stable and there’s no reason to believe they’ll go away,” says Dr. Michael Colicos, one of the team members; “That’s the kind of change one would envision lasting a whole lifetime.” To achieve this imaging, the team created glowing actin filaments that could be watched as they formed bridges to other neurons, and found a new way to stimulate neurons without harming them. The press release includes three videos of the synapses in action. It was a delicate and painstaking task: there are a billion synapses in a cubic centimeter of brain tissue.
This story is truly amazing for its achievement, and it also raises many fascinating speculations about the relationship of our soul to our body. There are many trillions of possible connections of neurons, but can we really reduce the vividness of memory to synapses? Think of your favorite piece of music right now; you can undoubtedly play it back perfectly in your head, and even fast-forward it or embellish it. How many synapses does that require? What tells the brain to find the right synapses, and play it back in the right sequence? Is the soul merely the sum total of brain cells? Or could it be that the synapses act like RAM and a hard drive for a soul that is transcendent of the material? It would seem that inanimate matter can store, but not perceive, in a fashion similar to the way computer memories store the intelligent design of the programmer. Has the Creator given us hi-tech storage devices for the soul? If you think so, why not tell God right now, “Thanks for the memories.”
Physics Still Has Areas of Soft Science 11/28/2001
Many think of physics as hard science, but two recent stories in Nature Science Update indicate we still have much to learn. Regarding quantum mechanics, Phillip Ball writes that Einstein’s “hidden variables” may exist after all. Einstein believe that there were unknown variables that explained weird quantum experiments that appeared to invoke a spooky action at a distance. ow, two physicists at the University of Illinois believe that these hidden variables, whatever they are, cannot be ruled out, and that there may be another layer to reality.
In another story, scientists cannot explain how a large black hole got into a binary system. Object GRS1915+105, at 14 solar masses, is too large to have formed within a close binary relationship. Either their theories about X-ray emission or black hole spin or black hole formation are wrong, or all the above.
Some physicists and popularizers have used the quirkiness of quantum mechanics, especially the Copenhagen Interpretation (which basically allows for contradictory states to be simultaneously true and reality to be dependent on the observer), to promote new-age religion. We need to be honest enough to plead ignorance before jumping to conclusions, as Einstein did, and understand the limitations of science.
Why Were Dinosaurs So Large? 11/27/2001
Jared Diamond tries to find the laws of body size in a paper in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences. In “Dinosaurs, dragons, and dwarfs: The evolution of maximal body size,” he investigates the relation of land area, food availability, and other factors with the body size of the largest animals. He finds a general correlation between land area and body mass of the top species. Some misfits in certain areas and times (too big or small for their habitat) are alleged to evolve to fit over time, but there are anomalies: why did the dinosaurs grow so large? They don’t fit the equation and “remain unexplained.” For summary, see Scientific American.
Anti-creationist Jared Diamond is at it again, adding Darwinist fluff to the scientific journals, but accomplishes nothing. He just observes the obvious, that some animals are big and others aren’t, but fails to find a universal law that relates them to all the environmental variables, and more importantly, fails to come up with a mechanism for how one creature can evolve into another. This paper contains a few interesting observations, but ends up with more questions than answers. Nothing here demonstrates Darwinian evolution any more than an explanation based on biogeographical dispersion after a Noachian flood. There are way too many variables here, and the data are not specific enough to formulate a law of nature; there will always be exceptions. If you have a lot of food, you might grow big; that is not evolution.
How the Deaf Hear Music 11/27/2001
A radiologist at the University of Washington performed brain scans on deaf students and those with normal hearing, according to EurekAlert, and found that the part of the brain that normally only responds to sounds (the auditory cortex) responds when the deaf students felt vibrations on their hands. Apparently, the brain compensates for hearing loss by rewiring itself. Dr. Dean Shibata, who uses functional magnetic resonance imaging to do the research, explains:
The brain is incredibly adaptable. In someone who is deaf, the young brain takes advantage of valuable real estate in the brain by processing vibrations in the part of the brain that would otherwise be used to process sound….
These findings illustrate how altered experience can affect brain organization. It was once thought that brains were just hard-wired at birth, and particular areas of the brain always did one function, no matter what else happened. It turns out that, fortunately, our genes do not directly dictate the wiring of our brains. Our genes do provide a developmental strategy – all the parts of the brain will be used to maximal efficiency.
As a consequence, deaf people can enjoy concerts and even become performers. At the National Technical Institute for the Deaf in Rochester, for instance, audience members are provided with balloons with they touch with their fingertips to feel the vibrations of the music. Dr. Shibata says, “Vibrational information has essentially the same features as sound information – so it makes sense that in the deaf, one modality may replace the other modality in the same processing area of the brain. It’s the nature of the information, not the modality of the information, that seems to be important to the developing brain.”
The adaptability of the human body is amazing. With God’s design, no loss is a total loss. We would like to know the impressions any deaf readers have of music and other vibrational input; can you actually sense the different instruments in the orchestra or band? Please send us your comments (use the Feedback link on the right column).
Why Doesn’t the Octopus Tie Itself in Knots? 11/27/2001
Robot designers would like to know. Boneless and brainless, the lowly octopus is able to maintain control of its eight arms without them getting hopelessly tangled up. According to EurekAlert, the octopus uses completed staff work and distributed processing; the general (brain) gives the orders, and the troops (arms) carry them out. How the octopus does this is under study by researchers funded by the Office of Naval Research.
“But now ask the beasts, and they will teach you; And the birds of the air, and they will tell you; Or speak to the earth, and it will teach you; and the fish of the sea will explain to you. Who among all these does not know that the hand of the LORD has done this, In whose hand is the life of every living thing, and the breath of all mankind?” (Job 12:7-10).
Search for Life Brings in the Funding for NASA 11/26/2001
Bruce Moomaw reports in SpaceDaily.com on a gathering of planetary scientists this month discussing how best to set priorities for NASA’s planetary exploration program. Of the top contenders,
…“‘astrobiology’ received much attention as the main motivator for funding Solar System exploration – a situation that can provoke sharp feelings among scientists dealing with non-astrobiologically focused research.
As a way of attracting support from the general public – and thus funding – the search for life on other worlds has undeniable power. After all, most people find the idea of alien life forms (even primitive ones) far more interesting as a subject than rocks or gases or magnetic phenomena.
As a pacifier for those scientists outside this emphasis, two astrobiologists assured them that astrobiology is a very sweeping term than encompasses many different scientific pursuits.
So, the search for life is the sexy spin for NASA that gets the public interested and the money flowing. They can’t lose, because even if they don’t find it, they just haven’t looked hard enough. And no matter if they never find it: materialistic evolution will be vindicated! Consider this incredible statement of faith: “Conversely, if other worlds turn out to have been habitable for long periods in their history but life did NOT develop there, it will be a strong piece of evidence that life on our own world is the result of a long-shot stroke of pure biochemical chance.” [emphasis added]. Now that’s the kind of believer Las Vegas likes!
Human Embryo Cell Cloned 11/26/2001
They’ve done it, what scientists have dreamed of and ethicists feared: cloned human embryos: “Advanced Cell Technology (ACT) of Worcester, Massachusetts says its intention is not to produce a cloned baby, but to develop a way of obtaining embryonic stem cells matched to patients.” says New Scientist. The private company’s actions are not yet illegal, since it does not receive federal funds, but President Bush has vowed to outlaw any type of human cloning. Some scientists want to differentiate between therapeutic cloning and reproductive cloning, but ethicists are outraged at ACT’s action. One member of the Pro-Life Alliance “reflected the views of many opponents of cloning when he said ACT’s achievement was a ‘milestone in scientific depravity.’” Related articles: Science; Nature calls it a step, not a leap. Later, in their Dec. 6 issue, Nature reported that a member of the editorial board that published the report resigned, feeling that the journal had failed to uphold scientific standards.
For more on the ethical issues involved, see Focus on the Family’s June 1 research paper Human Cloning, and an analysis by Dr. Jonathan Sarfati for Answers in Genesis.
Sunburn Repair Protein Found 11/26/2001
A protein named interleukin-12, a type of cytokine, has been found to be effective in reversing damage caused by the sun’s ultraviolet light. According to Nature Science Update, it appears to work by activating the DNA to edit out mistakes: “The protein appears to stimulate a cellular editing system that snips damaged pieces of DNA out of the sequence,” the report states. Cells with interleukin-12 were actually able to reverse sunburn damage. If IL-12 is this effective, other cytokines may also be involved in DNA repair. “This is probably the tip of the iceberg,” says Kenneth Kraemer of the National Institutes of Health, commenting on the paper in Nature Cell Biology.
How does a cell know how to find mistakes in the code and edit them out? Think of it; your body has debuggers!
Internet Nerds More Likely to Be Church-Goers 11/26/2001
According to Professor Andrew Oswald and Dr Jonathan Gardner from the University of Warwick, UK, the stereotype about unsociable nerds hunched over their Internet computers finding anonymous relationships in chat rooms is wrong. Most typically young and male, Internet surfers are sociable, educated, affluent, more likely to belong to volunteer organizations, and 50% more likely to go to church regularly. This conclusion comes from the 18th British Social Attitudes report, Britain’s most authoritative annual survey of public attitudes.
It’s hard to claim this proves anything, coming as it does from a limited sample, but it’s interesting, and may at least provide another example of the frequent differences between conventional wisdom and reality.
Earth Magnetic Field Reversal Verified 11/26/2001
Using new techniques, Netherlands scientists have verified that the earth’s magnetic field did indeed reverse itself 10 million years ago, claims the Netherlands World Organization for Scientific Research, cites EurekAlert.
The reversal may be factual, but the dating is inferred from evolutionary assumptions. For an alternative view, see this ICR Impact article by Russell Humphreys.