Archive: Membrane Channels, Molecular Machines, Censorship, Cave Art, More
Breakthroughs, controversies, and
scientists acting badly: these are other
reports recovered from January 2002
Note: Some embedded links may no longer work.
Wonders of the Salt Gate 01/17/2002
A paper in Nature 1/17/01 describes for the first time a detailed description of one of the cell’s chloride channels, complex pores in the cell membrane that allow negative ions like Cl– from table salt to pass through, but restrict others. (For a good layman’s summary and illustration, see this news release on the Howard Hughes Medical Institute website.) Thomas Jentsch describes this as another “spectacular breakthrough” by Roderick MacKinnon’s team. He opens with an explanation: “Ion channels are proteins with a seemingly simple task – to allow the passive flow of ions across biological membranes. But this process requires more sophistication than one would imagine.”
The full text of the paper reveals these channels to be “amazingly different” than cation channels (those that allow positively charged ions), and are shown to be exquisite protein complexes with gates composed of negatively-charged tips (that would normally repulse chloride ions) that apparently swing out of the way to let the desired molecules in. The authors explain the importance of these chloride channels:
Potassium, sodium, calcium and chloride ions are used ingeniously by living systems in the performance of fundamental cellular tasks. Through the action of ion pumps, a large fraction of a cell’s metabolic energy is spent establishing transmembrane ion gradients. These gradients, through the action of ion channels, are used to produce electrical signals, activate signal transduction pathways, regulate cell volume, and mediate fluid and electrolyte transport. To carry out these tasks, an ion channel has to be selective, that is, permit only certain ionic species to flow through its pore.
The precise placement of charged ends of amino acids along the pore attracts the chloride ions down the channel, without being so attractive that the ions would bind to them and get stuck. Failure of these channels is implicated in some serious muscle and kidney diseases. Some animals have such a multitude of these effective ion pumps, they can generate a powerful electric shock. Says Jentsch: “On the basis of elegant biophysical studies by Miller and White, who showed that the electric ray Torpedo contains large amounts of a peculiar anion channel, the first voltage-gated Cl– channel was cloned by my group in 1990. We named it ClC-0, as we assumed that it would found a family of Cl– channels. This turned out to be true: CLC channels are found in all kingdoms of life, with humans alone having nine different CLC genes.”
The electric ray can generate 200 volts. On another related front, EurekAlert reported the next day that the UMass scientists have found microbes on the bottom of the sea that generate electricity, and the Navy is interested in harvesting these microorganisms to create living batteries. See the original paper in the Jan 18 Science.
Speaking of protein families, two creationists writing in the TJ Technical Journal 2001 #3 (posted on AIG 16-Jan-02) illustrate how they make a powerful case for design and argue against a naturalistic origin.
Update 03/04/2002: Scientific American posted an interview with MacKinnon about how his team made its discovery, and how the potassium channel works. In passing, he comments, “…the cavity and these helices were just a marvelous arrangement that Mother Nature used to solve this problem, you know, as if a very brilliant engineer did it all. I think that was very satisfying to see.”
Update 12/30/2002: In a new paper in the 12/27/02 issue of Cell, MacKinnon describes how another type of potassium channel acts as a sensitive biological rectifier.
All the statements we made about the wonders of the Water Gate on Dec. 20 apply here, and then some. The cell membrane is covered with these specialized pores that have “selectivity filters” and gates to attract and conduct desired molecules in, but keep unwanted invaders out. All life has them, they are all extremely complex, and without them life could not exist.
Compare the above empirical facts with the stories evolutionists tell about the origin of a living cell. They usually describe some lipid membrane spontaneously assembling through electrostatic or hydrophilic attraction into a seamless bag. Inside are a few RNA nucleotides, amino acids, sugars, and other “building blocks of life” (hopefully without nasty oxygen or killer tar molecules doing their worst). But if the membrane is sealed, without the ability to perform active transport of needed ingredients to the inside or remove unwanted toxins to the outside, the primitive cell becomes a death trap. The molecules inside are all that evolution has to work on, like those old jokes about being trapped in a locked room with Hitler, Stalin, a lawyer and only two bullets. The situation is not going to improve. Even if by some inconceivable magical miracle something wonderful happened inside this infinitesimal subset of primordial soup, it would still be a death trap. Unless the protocell could divide into two identical copies, natural selection, that magic wand of Darwinism, would be powerless.
On the other hand, if the membrane were leaky, osmosis would dictate mindlessly that the leakage would go from higher concentration to lower concentration, the opposite of what a living cell needs. For instance, a cell needs to be able to import precious water when the environment around it is drying up, but osmosis would guarantee the reverse, desiccating the poor cell. For these reasons, the simplistic evolutionary models of primitive membrane formation by spontaneous attraction of molecules are unrealistic. The observations show that all living things, even the most primitive, already have entire families of these sophisticated gates to control what goes in and out of the cell. There are no simple-to-complex intermediates known, and it is unlikely any could even be conceived that would give rise to working active transport without a host of genes and proteins controlling the construction and operation of these highly specialized and effective mechanisms.
MacKinnon’s paper only mentions evolution twice. For example, “Thus, it would appear that evolution of the channel has resulted in partial charges to stabilize a Cl– ion and still permit rapid ionic diffusion rates.” Yet he fails to provide any plausible story how this could have happened by mindless processes; he basically just admits that it is an elegant arrangement. So how would the Intelligent Design (ID) approach explain it? Evolutionists sometimes complain that ID or creationism simply gives up and says “God did it,” but that is a caricature. It is sufficient for science to describe the phenomenon including its information content (including the DNA software and protein construction toolkit) without specifying “who done it” (to use Eugenie Scott’s favorite vulgarism). Strictly speaking, empirical science cannot address the Who question, and for the purposes of a scientific paper like this, it is not necessary to concoct a story of how it evolved, nor stuff the facts into a naturalistic tale of origins. Science did not “grind to a halt” just because these authors omitted an explanation for the origin of chloride channels. On the contrary, it is the belief that there is design (information adapted to function) in the world that has propelled science forward, and continues to do so today. That is why Intelligent Design is good for science. Scientists do well when just uncovering amazing examples of intelligent design like this one. Evolutionary storytelling is forced, incredible, superfluous.
[Note: Roderick MacKinnon won the Nobel Prize in Chemistry the following year, 2003, for his work on membrane channels.]
Public School Enforces Mandatory Islam Course; Casts Christianity in Negative Light 01/15/2002
Many news sources have been reporting the Byron, California school district that started requiring 7th graders to take a three-week course in Islam, including reading the Koran, studying the important figures of the faith, wearing a robe, adopting a Muslim name and role-playing their own Jihad. The textbook for the course, adopted by the California school system, presents Islam in a very positive light, omitting any references to its massacres and mistreatment of women, but casts Christianity in a negative light, highlighting Salem witch trials, crusades and inquisitions in bold type. According to the ASSIST News Service echoed on the American Center for Law and Justice site, a Christian teacher in the district complained that “We could never teach Christianity like this … We can’t even mention the name of Jesus in the public schools, but … they teach Islam as the true religion, and students are taught about Islam and how to pray to Allah.” She was dumbfounded to see that Islam is ‘in’ at the same time the school system requires that she teach evolution in her science class with no reference to creationism or any contrasting viewpoint to Darwin’s theory. The American Center for Law and Justice has written a letter to the California school district demanding they allow students to opt out of the mandatory course. See also the write-ups in the Washington Times and at Pacific Justice Institute. January 16, WorldNetDaily dug up more detail about the Islam curriculum, the angry reaction of some parents, the school’s rebuttals, and the textbook contents, and claims the Byron school incident is nothing unique.
OK, ACLU and People for the American Way, show your honesty, integrity and impartiality. Here is a clear violation of separation of church and state. Show us the same zeal with which you go after Christians who want to pray at a football game or mention creation in a science class. We can’t hear you ….
Learning about Islam would be fine, but this course advocates the religion behind the September 11 attacks while denigrating the faith of America’s founding fathers. Just when you thought you heard everything … According to Jay Sekulow of the ACLJ (not to be confused with the ACLU), “the class requires students to pray ‘in the name of Allah the Compassionate the Merciful,‘ to chant ‘Praise to Allah, Lord of Creation,’ to ‘pretend’ they are Muslims, wear Muslim clothing to school, stage their own Jihad, and select a Muslim name from a list to ‘replace’ their own name.” Won’t junior high students love practicing jihad on one another. What are we trying to do, raise a whole generation of John Walkers, to destroy our country with our own crop of terrorists? Come on, National Center for Science Education, to the rescue! They uttered that horrid phrase “Lord of Creation”! Come on, Americans United for Separation of Church and State: let’s see some consistency here! Come on, ACLU, PAW, NCSE, and all: people might start suspecting your hostility is directed only at Bible-believing Christians, and blow your cover!
If any reader has doubted that there is a massive war of worldviews in our culture, this story should clinch it. We already have the gay activists with free reign, teachers passing out condoms and counseling abortion without parental knowledge, and witches in the schools. What’s next, a class on compassionate cannibalism, complete with an assignment to roast and eat your own arm (or that of a fellow student), or a required course in suicide with homework to kill yourself, or a required course in terrorism with an assignment to blow up a building? What will it take to get Americans up in arms enough to stop this out-of-control education establishment, to realize that all that is required for evil to triumph is for good people to do nothing?
Microbes Fight Each Other in Perpetual Chemical Warfare Games 01/15/2002
A paper on theoretical biology in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences tries to figure out why there are so many different kinds of one-celled organisms. If the environment they live in is the same, why so much diversity? This is called the “paradox of the plankton,” which seems to defy evolutionary logic. Should not the most diverse environments give rise to the most diversity of species?
To study this paradox, three European geneticists used a computer model and game theory to postulate that a modified scissors-paper-rock game (“a spatially explicit game theoretical model with multiply cyclic dominance structures”), seems to suggest that “antibiotic interactions within microbial communities may be very effective in maintaining diversity.” In other words, there is a constant state of chemical warfare going on; one species will invent a toxin that kills off rivals, but finds itself bankrupt from the cost of production, giving an immune species a chance to grow. Meanwhile, a fast-reproducing but not immune species swamps the population by sheer numbers, only to be decimated by the next chemical bomb. Or something like that.
Cute theory, but let’s think this through. Obviously the microbes are not consciously playing war games. The only way “game theory” applies is by coincidence of effects. If kids playing games in the playground generate the same sound waveform as a flock of ducks, then you could claim the two causes are analogous in some way; but if you really believe the ducks are playing dodgeball you’re carrying it too far.
The authors observe that many microorganisms give off toxins, and that biodiversity among microorganisms is high, and yet populations are dynamically stable. So they invent a computer “game” model that produces the same effects between K (killers) R (resistant strains) and S (sensitive strains with high birth rates). They tweak how fast new toxins arise, how much species can share their immunity genes, how resistant the enemy is, and all kinds of parameters: “Depending on the rates of the evolution of novel toxin, resistance systems, and of their transmission between strains relative to the rates of genetic diversification in other traits and of speciation, different interpretations of the model strains are possible.”
It sounds kind of like a game of Calvinball. Putting in generous evolutionary assumptions and preventing any one group from declaring Winner take all!, of course they get their model to work. They wouldn’t publish in PNAS if it were a dismal failure. Does it indicate anything about real life? Does it advance the theory of evolution? You decide.
How Fast Do Genes Mutate? 01/15/2002
Two Arizona State biologists examined a large number of genes from many different mammals to estimate how fast genes mutate. Writing in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, they came up with a result of 2.2 x 10-9 mutations per base pair per year (i.e., a probability of about two mutations per billion years at a given spot on the gene), much smaller than earlier estimates. Also, contradicting a widely held notion, they conclude that mutation rate is largely independent of generation time (number of years between generations), implying that humans and mice genes mutate at the same rate even though mice give birth earlier and more often.
This paper is an example of why you cannot just accept the conclusions without studying how they arrived at them. In the paper, they assume evolution, and employ their assumptions of how long ago different lineages separated as part of their calculations. They also make judgment calls about which genes are best to compare and which are not. They arrive at conclusions that differ with their other evolutionary colleagues. Looking at the size of the tweak space, it’s hard to feel satisfied that anything real has been discovered in their analysis.
Poll: 83% of Public School Students Want Creation Taught: Click Here. [source lost]
Evolution Advocacy Group Targets Churches 01/14/2002
In an effort to help churches understand that evolution isn’t such a bad thing, the National Center for Science Education, an organization whose sole purpose is to “to keep evolution in the science classroom and ‘scientific creationism’ out,” has prepared a Congregational Study Guide for Evolution, based on the PBS TV series Evolution which aired last September across the country. The study guide tries to help pastors and congregations think about each episode with questions like, “Consider some of your favorite hymns and prayers that speak of creation. How might they better reflect an understanding that is informed by, not opposed to, evolution?”
It’s not enough that NCSE has to fight creation science tooth and nail alongside the ACLU in every public school where criticism of Darwin raises its meek head, now they have to send their smart bombs right into the church doors in a pre-emptive strike. The quote above is from Episode Five, the infamous Why Sex? episode that basically taught that any and every sexual escapade you want to commit is justified by evolution. The misnamed National Center for Science Education is not a scientific organization, nor does it care about the quality of science education; it is an advocacy group committed to fighting its declared enemy– Bible believers. (Other “religious” people are no threat to their power base; see Episode Seven What About God?). NCSE has all the trappings of a political action committee.
Here at Creation-Evolution Headlines we scour the top scientific journals for the best possible sources, searching in vain for real evidence for evolution, and reporting their anomalies in their own words, with links to the original papers so you can check the facts for yourself. NCSE and PBS, however, were very selective about their spokesmen on the TV series. They generously quoted Kenneth Miller, who has no problem compartmentalizing his brain into mutually exclusive halves, with mindless, purposeless evolution on one side and divine design on the other, but would not allow one word from critics of evolution, many of whom are not even Christians or religious at all. On top of that, they put happy faces on some of the worst Christian-bashers and creation-bashers, making sure they did not say what they really believe on camera. They ignored the worst criticisms of evolution and the weakest areas of the theory, focusing instead on tales woven out of miniscule data, glued together with computer graphics. Phillip Johnson, speaking of similar “deliberate deception” on the part of the National Academy of Sciences about the real impact of evolution on religion, explains the strategy:
The National Academy’s way of dealing with the religious implications of evolution is akin to the two-platoon system in American football. When the leading figures of evolutionary science feel free to say what they really believe, writers such as Edward O. Wilson, Richard Dawkins, Daniel Dennett, Carl Sagan, Steven Pinker, Stephen Jay Gould, Richard Lewontin and others state the “God is dead” thesis aggressively, invoking the authority of science to silence any theistic protest. That is the offensive platoon, and the National Academy never raises any objection to its promoting this worldview.
At other times, however, the scientific elite has to protect the teaching of the “fact of evolution” from objections by religious conservatives who know what the offensive platoon is saying and who argue that the science educators are insinuating a worldview that goes far beyond the data. When the objectors are too numerous or influential to be ignored, the defensive platoon takes the field. That is when we read those spin-doctored reassurances saying that many scientists are religious (in some sense), that science does not claim to have proved that God does not exist (but merely that he does not affect the natural world), and that science and religion are separate realms which should never be mixed (unless it is the materialists who are doing the mixing). Once the defensive platoon has done its job it leaves the field, and the offensive platoon goes right back to telling the public that science has shown that “God” is permanently out of business. (The Wedge of Truth, IVP 2000, pp. 88-89).
So don’t believe for a minute this slick hype put out with the blessing of an avowed atheist, NCSE head Eugenie Scott, that evolution has a “wonderful consistency” with Christianity. Listen instead one of her spokesmen on Evolution, Daniel Dennett, who described the theory of evolution as a “universal acid” that eats through all traditional beliefs. Pastors, be on your guard! You are being handed a corrosive potion with a sweet smile and instructions, “Here, drink this…it’s good for you.” Did Paul warn the churches in Acts 20 and I Timothy 4 for naught?
The Color of Life on Europa? 01/14/2002
NASA’s Astrobiology Institute is holding out tentative hope that life could exist on or near the surface of Europa, the icy moon of Jupiter thought to have an ocean deep under the crust. They base this on spectra taken by the Galileo Spacecraft that seem to match the biological signature of extremophiles on earth. “…it could be that any number of possible microorganisms that may have evolved on Europa also produce the same sort of IR signature” as bacteria on earth, hopes Brad Dalton who studied the spectra. “I’m as surprised as anyone, and I’m trying very hard to be skeptical,” he adds. “I am not claiming to have found life on Europa. More work needs to be done.”
So eager are astrobiologists to prove we are not alone, that they will go to great lengths to draw hope out of the meagerest data. Remember when all it took to start speculation that Venus had dinosaurs was the presence of a dense cloud cover (hence tropical climate, hence swamps, hence dinosaurs)? Deja vu. Try a little harder to be skeptical.
Another Finch Story 01/14/2002
National Geographic is excited about a finding that pet finches released in Montana and Alabama have adapted to their new environments with changes in body size in just 30 years, showing “evolution on fast forward.” (It was the Galápagos finches that became an icon of evolution in Darwin’s theory. )
Most people think of evolution as a process that takes millions of years, said evolutionary biologist Alexander Badyaev of Auburn University in Alabama, who led the study. But here is an example of real-time evolution in which two populations of finches developed characteristics to match their new environments in just a few decades, he added.
The original paper is in the Jan 11 issue of Science, which also contains this summary by Elizabeth Pennisi.
This classic case of equivocation tries to associate variation (which evolutionists and creationists both accept) with evolution (which only Darwinists accept). Everybody knows there is a lot of variation built into living things: just look at dogs! Finch body size, beak size, egg size etc. are not evolution in the usual Darwinian sense of molecules to man. These are still the same species of finch. When we watch them evolve into mammals, then we will be impressed. Actually, the speed of this adaptation should alarm evolutionists; if “evolution” takes place this quickly (decades instead of millions of years), then where are the billions of transitional forms that we should see in the fossil record?
The authors state, “Thus, the proximate mechanisms that allowed house finch populations to become established in two distinct environments and to respond so rapidly to local selection are not known.” They theorize that females might be able to control hatching order and egg size, but they aren’t sure about that either, and how could a dumb bird care? All this crowing about evolution in the headlines is hardly a feeble chirp in the text of the paper.
Etched Lines in Rocks Show Early Man Used Abstract Reasoning 01/11/2002
Sci News says “Modern Behavior Emerged Earlier Than Previously Thought” based on the finding in a South African cave of regular etched lines in rocks thought to be 77,000 years old, written in ocher by early modern humans. This more than doubles the previously believed piece of evidence suggesting abstract thought, which is estimated at 35,000 years old. According to Nature Science Update, these could be considered the oldest works of art.
The evolutionary anthropologists’ timeline stretches credibility. If anatomically modern humans have existed for 100,000 years or more, fifteen times longer than all recorded history, why did they not develop language and art, cultivate crops, ride horses and build cities in all that time? Instead, human civilization just bursts on the scene fully formed in the Fertile Crescent, with commerce and language and mathematics already established from the beginning. And why didn’t the population bomb hit 90,000 years ago? Something is drastically wrong with the dating methods. Throughout history there have been recluses who lived in caves and made markings; there are some today (hippies). All these findings could be dated more recently using different assumptions. It is only the Darwinist mentality that has to force observations into a primitive-to-complex sequence; the actual evidence suggests the abrupt appearance of human abstract thought and culture. Whether the universe, stars, planets, life, plants, animals, or humans, we see abrupt appearance everywhere. This is not evolution.
Radio Message 01/11/2002: “Teaching the Controversy.” In his weekly broadcast In the Public Square, Phillip Johnson comments on the Education Bill recently passed by Congress:
The most important thing about the Education bill that President Bush recently signed may be something the newspapers aren’t telling you. The Committee Report on the bill contains the substance of an amendment introduced Senator Rick Santorum and passed in the Senate by a bipartisan 91 to 8 majority. The Report says that where controversial subjects such as biological evolution are taught, “the curriculum should help students to understand the full range of scientific views that exist, why such topics may generate controversy, and how scientific discoveries can profoundly affect society.” Despite the panicky efforts of Darwinist science educators to remove this language, the full Congress has said that students should learn both sides of the controversy. The Congress and the President have done their part, so it is up to us to make sure that this new freedom to “teach the controversy” becomes a reality in the classroom.
Galaxies Continue to Puzzle Theorists 01/11/2002
Writing in the Jan 11 Science, Italian astronomer Francesco Bertola gives the current State of the Universe Address, based on a discussions at a recent workshop by the European Space Agency. There are still tensions between dark matter theory and observed distribution of unseen material inferred from the motions of galaxies. Another ongoing “lively debate” among cosmologists is whether galaxies formed in a “monolithic collapse” soon after the big bang, and have been aging peacefully ever since, or whether they formed from “hierarchical merging” of smaller galaxies throughout the lifetime of the universe (i.e., top-down vs bottom-up).
A third controversy concerns the Tully-Fisher relation, which relates galaxy brightness to maximum velocity of rotation. Plots for distant and nearby galaxies have different slopes, and intersect for the most massive galaxies. According to Bertola, “This observation may indicate that the most massive galaxies evolved little during the past 10 billion years. In contrast, the less massive ones seem to have undergone a remarkable loss of luminosity during the same period. Explaining this result constitutes a challenge for different models of galaxy evolution.”
When Edwin Hubble made his famous tuning-fork diagram of galaxies in the 1920’s, astronomers disagreed about which direction on the fork galaxies evolved. Now, 75 years later, with the Hubble Space Telescope and a golden age of instruments, they are still asking the same question. The recent claim by NASA (see the January 8 headline) of a gigantic burst of starbirth and galaxy formation in the early universe lends credibility to the model that they were fully formed at the start, and have been aging ever since, with a few collisions and mergers along the way.
We have been reporting stories that dispute the concept of dark matter, but cosmologists depend on the unknown, invisible stuff, whatever it is. For evolutionists, dark matter plays the role of Skinner’s Constant – that quantity which, when added to, subtracted from, multiplied or divided by the answer you got, gives you the answer you should have gotten.
Cosmogenic Radionuclide Dating Finds Surprises 01/11/2002
Science magazine Jan 11 has a status report on the progress in cosmogenic radionuclide dating. The method takes advantage of the fact that cosmic rays only penetrate about a meter into the rocks, and when they do, some collide with nuclei to produce rare radioactive isotopes. More of these isotopes should accumulate on the surface than at depth. As mountains erode, it should be possible to infer the erosion rate. This technique is in its youth, but has already uncovered some surprises:
- Estimates of erosion rates in some Idaho mountains were 17 times higher than expected (see our June 26 headline) implying that catastrophic events occasionally swamp uniformitarian observations.
- An ice sheet in Kentucky arrived 700,000 years earlier than previously thought.
- Climate appears to have no effect on erosion rates, which is odd, because the process is called “weathering.”
- Cultivation of land appears to increase erosion up to 100-fold.
The technique requires choosing sample sites carefully, and because of the cost, “You don’t have the luxury of trying to test alternative interpretations rigorously,” one researcher says.
Like every other method of dating the unobservable past, this one requires faith in untestable assumptions. You can measure how deep an average cosmic ray can penetrate today, and you can measure the radioactive decay rate of a radionuclide today, and you can measure the amounts of these nuclides in selected sample sites: that’s it – the rest is all inference. No one knows if the cosmic ray flux is constant (see yesterday’s headline about supernovas, which suggests periods of intense bombardment). No one knows the rate of catastrophic events. Even the selection of sites depends on assumptions about which sites are better than others. When they get differences of 1700% between theory and observation, and other surprises, it’s hard to have any confidence at all in any of the other claims.
Supernovas May Have Blasted Life to Extinction, and Helped Life Evolve 01/10/2002
Three astronomers speaking at the annual meeting of the American Astronomical Society believe the earth was nearly sterilized by supernova blasts from the past. According to the University of Texas at Austin (alma mater of one of the researchers), the solar system has been subjected to several nearby supernova explosions. (Johns Hopkins astronomers think they have found a candidate that exploded close to our sun two million years ago.) Mars, with its thinner atmosphere (at least recently) would be unprotected from the sterilizing influence of the blast. Supernovas and strong solar flares could bathe the earth and Mars in gamma rays for extended periods, causing high mutation rates and massive die-offs, but also … “the challenging mutational radiation environment would accelerate the evolution of life.”
Once upon a time, a large army found itself surrounded by enemies with machine guns. The machine gunners mounted a sustained and relentless attack, killing off 99% of the hapless victims. But just by chance, one soldier was hit in a one in a million spot that jolted his genes just so, that when he got married, his wife gave birth to Superbaby. Send us your vote on which tale you like better.
Incidentally, what would a nearby supernova do to all the radiometric clocks?
Is It Against the Law to Find Flaws in Evolution? 01/09/2002
The Minneapolis Star Tribune reported that the Supreme Court declined to hear the case of high school biology teacher and coach Rod LeVake, who was reassigned from teaching biology for saying that he had problems teaching evolution as fact. He did not want to teach creationism or religion in class, but only wanted to mention flaws in the theory of evolution. The ACLJ attorney said, “We’re disappointed. … I don’t think either of the lower courts really understood the case; the district turned it into something it never really was. [LeVake] didn’t want to do much beyond saying there are scientists out there that criticize evolution on scientific grounds, and nothing more. I think the district decided he was a stealth creationist.”
Update 01/15/2001: Answers in Genesis reports that according to a new poll, public school students still want creation taught. In response to the LeVake story, Channel One polled students on which views they wanted taught in science. Just 17% wanted evolution only, 31% wanted creation, and 52% wanted both views taught. That adds up to 83% of public school students wanting creation included in the science classroom.
Stealth creationist – how’s that for loaded words and fear mongering? Are you shocked at this? Teachers in Russia have more freedom to criticize Darwinism now than they do in America. LeVake did not want to bring religion into the science class; he just wanted to present scientific facts that don’t support Darwinism. Such evidence is being published in science journals all the time; read about it here on these pages. esides, the Congress just passed an education bill that encourages schools to present a diversity of views on controversial subjects like evolution, and LeVake is trying to be obedient. But so paranoid are the Darwinists, they cannot allow a calm discussion of the evidence, they have to invoke scare tactics and use raw power to force indoctrination of their view of origins, even when the evidence is against it. “Stealth creationist” – good grief, as if he snuck in from Afghanistan. Sooner or later people are going to realize that if evolution has to be force-fed to students it must be bad medicine. We can only hope Phillip Johnson is right: “If the situation is as I have described it, the intellectual bankruptcy of Darwinism cannot be concealed for very much longer. The Darwinists may delay the day of reckoning for a while by wielding the weapons of power, but more and more people are learning to press the right questions and to refuse to take bluff or evasion for an answer.” (The Wedge of Truth, Inter-Varsity Press 2000, p. 150).
Biology of the Future: Molecular Machines 01/09/2002
With the Human Genome Project a recent memory, the cutting edge now is the Human Proteome: the map of all the proteins and enzymes in the cell, how they fold, how they work, and how they interact. Two large teams of European scientists publishing in Nature have sequenced a third of the proteome of baker’s yeast, which they claim is on the same evolutionary branch as humans. Out of 20,000 proteins they sorted through, they were able to identify 17,000. Most of these have functions that are unknown, and there were many duplicates. So far, they were able to map the interactions of 1400 proteins, and found that proteins are very sociable and interact in many and complex ways.
They also discovered 232 multi-protein complexes and 134 new molecular machines, 98 of which were previously unknown. It appears that simpler machines can combine into more complex ones, and be dismantled for other uses. Said one researcher, “It was a big surprise how social these proteins are … The whole cell is organized in a way we were not prepared for.” Another commented, “It defies the imagination.” The human proteome is estimated to contain at least 30,000 proteins. For the full paper in the Jan 10 Nature, click here (subscription required). See also this summary of their work in EurekAlert.
[2025 Note: The count of genes that code for proteins has been in flux; first, it was reduced to about 20,000. Now, scientists are finding non-coding sections of the genome that are transcribed into functional RNAs and some that are translated into small proteins.]
Another article in the same issue discusses the ongoing investigation of how myosin, a molecular motor, moves. Full text of original paper.
The summary uses the word machine 17 times, yet ascribes all this engineering to evolution. How much longer must we be subjected to an outworn paradigm that is insufficient to produce the effects? Machines do not arise from randomness, especially thousands of them in a brainless yeast cell. Evolutionary theory extrapolates minor observed changes into major engineering feats it is profoundly ill equipped to handle. Some of the most advanced molecular machines are found in the simplest, supposedly most primitive, one-celled organisms. When you ask them how a cell could invent machines without intelligent design, they give evasive answers that they hope to figure it out some day. If they were to be held as accountable as your financial adviser, you would fire them for such lame answers.
For a fascinating yet frustrating look at the “new biology” of molecular machines, read Bruce Alberts“ 1998 paper in Cell, “The Cell as a Collection of Protein Machines: Preparing the Next Generation of Molecular Biologists,” in which he stands in awe of the complexity of protein machines but then ascribes it all to chance (evolution). Alberts, the President of the National Academy of Sciences, begins by saying, “We have always underestimated cells,” and talks about how simple the cell seemed when he was a naive graduate student. Now, he says:
But, as it turns out, we can walk and we can talk because the chemistry that makes life possible is much more elaborate and sophisticated than anything we students had ever considered. Proteins make up most of the dry mass of a cell. But instead of a cell dominated by randomly colliding individual protein molecules, we now know that nearly every major process in a cell is carried out by assemblies of 10 or more protein molecules. And, as it carries out its biological functions, each of these protein assemblies interacts with several other large complexes of proteins. Indeed, the entire cell can be viewed as a factory that contains an elaborate network of interlocking assembly lines, each of which is composed of a set of large protein machines.
He describes proteins that act like motors, assemblers, proofreaders and clocks, and waxes eloquent about the elegance and efficiency of these vanishingly tiny machines: “We have also come to realize that protein assemblies can be enormously complex. … [describing one example, the spliceosome]. As the example of the spliceosome should make clear, the cartoons thus far used to depict protein machines (e.g., Figure 1) vastly underestimate the sophistication of many of these remarkable devices.”
Then he proceeds to speculate on how they might have evolved, thinking DNA transcription seems to be more primitive than replication, but refers to evidence that undercuts his speculation: “However, the argument has certainly been weakened by the unexpected complexity of DNA transcription processes in eukaryotes, which I would have predicted to mimic DNA replication in their elegance and their simplicity.” Alberts concludes that we have a lot to learn and that the future of biology rests in understanding proteins as molecular machines.
So if you want to be on the cutting edge, you need to know this: no longer is the cell to be considered a squishy soup of funny-looking stuff. It is the most complex, efficient, organized automated factory we have ever seen, composed of systems and subsystems and interchangeable parts, working at lightning speed, rarely making an error, its cargo zip-coded and transported on bullet trains, building and recycling thousands of structures continually, powered by proton generators, mastered by a central blueprint library, more complex than a city – yet all this in a package so small, it is invisible to the human eye. Stand amazed and wonder.
Biomimetics Looks to the Crayfish for Robot Ideas 01/09/2002
The science of biomimetics, or the imitation of nature’s designs, has some University of Melbourne scientists studying an Australian crayfish for ideas for new Martian robot rovers. Though impressed with the motion and sensing capabilities of the little animals, especially their “parsimony, that ability to control complex behaviours with an amazingly small amount of brain power.” Biomimetic engineers hope to reverse-engineer some of these capabilities, such as the crayfish’s “feedback system for controlling complex movements that would delight any engineer.” But he attributes these engineering feats to time and chance:
Evolution doesn’t always come up with the best solution from an engineer’s perspective. … Evolution does not necessarily produce an engineer’s solution to an animal’s problem. It simply produces one that works, one that is selected because its features give the individual an edge – even a slight one – over its competitors in the game of survival. Biomimetic researchers also need to be aware that animals carry design features that reflect their evolutionary history as well as responses to their present situation. When we dissect them we may find features and solutions that appear inefficient or counter intuitive. The human appendix is one example of this.
[Note: the appendix has subsequently been shown to be functional and effective as an important part of the immune system, reconstructing gut biota after illness.]
Hey now, let’s think this through. You are impressed enough with this technology to reverse engineer it, yet you attribute it to blind, impersonal, unintelligent forces? Then why not use blind, intelligent forces in your engineering and see if you can improve on it, or come up with something so compact, lightweight, efficient and functional from scratch? And how can you use the phrase “design features” when evolutionists reject the inclusion of intelligent design as a cause? Stick to your own vocabulary: purposeless, undirected, random, pointless. See our Aug. 8 2001 headline for a response to whether the human appendix is an inefficient or counterintuitive device.

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