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A Tale of Two Falsifications of Evolution
September 4, 2011
In diatribes against creationists, evolutionists have long pointed to antibiotic-resistant bacteria as examples of evolution in action. Since antibiotics were unknown before the 1920s, debaters have taunted their creationist opponents with the claim that evolution is such an observable fact, we’re watching it happen right before our very eyes. The force of that argument has been undermined with a new discovery this week that pushes the “evolution” of such resistance way back before human civilization arrived. Another article is claiming that human brain chemistry existed way, way back, “long before animals, brains and even nerve cells existed.”
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Man on a Darwin Mission
September 3, 2011
When you think of helping people in the inner city, do you think of Darwin? Probably what comes to mind are religious missions, government social workers, the Red Cross, the Peace Corps, or UNESCO. David Sloan Wilson, author of Evolution for Everyone, who has spent a lifetime studying evolution, had a “Damascus moment” a few years ago; the idea that Darwinism is so powerful and productive, it can improve people’s lives. Like an apostle, he has taken his faith to the streets of Binghamton, New York.
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Amazing Facts

Adventures in Biomimetics
September 2, 2011
The imitation of nature in engineering has become one of the hottest trends in science. Almost every week, amazing technologies are being advanced the easy way – by observing how living things do it. We all stand to benefit from the design-based science of biomimetics. Here are a few recent examples.
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How the Reporter Evolved Its Silliness
August 23, 2011
When it comes to evolutionary stories, reporters have a knack for propounding the silliest notions about human origins. This tendency is evident in several recent science news stories about early man propounding, with nary a blush, outlandish claims with little evidence – or no evidence whatsoever.
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Living Fossils Rise from the Dead
August 20, 2011
The oxymoron “living fossil” is suggestive. Seeing a plant or animal come to life, when it was only known from fossils, might seem miraculous. Perhaps, though, the phrase was invented to rescue Darwinian theory from the vast ages it requires. Is it credible to believe the time gaps? Here are two recent stories about creatures long thought dead, only to be found doing “Quite well, thank you.”
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Amazing Facts

Hi-Tech Pharmaceutical Plants Are Green
August 19, 2011
In environmental lingo, what could be greener than a tree? And what is more despised by many environmentalists than chemical companies, especially the pharmaceutical and pesticide industries? Maybe we should take a tip from plants. They are not just environmentally friendly, they produce a myriad of complex compounds that are slowly finding their way into healthful products—and evolutionists have no idea how they do it.
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Amazing Facts

Your Rotary Engines Are Arranged in Factories
August 17, 2011
As if ATP synthase was not amazing enough, a team of scientists in Germany now tells us they are arranged in rows with other equipment to optimize performance. From electron micrographs of intact mitochondria, they were able to detect the rotary engines of ATP synthase and other parts of the respiratory chain. Their diagram in an open-source paper in PNAS looks for all the world like a factory.
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Biology

Would Wood Evolve?
August 16, 2011
The woods. We call them by their primary substance: wood. But would wood evolve from plants lacking woody stems? Was there some evolutionary pressure to force plants to grow tall to reach the sun, so that lucky mutations found a way to produce lignin and the other building blocks of wood? What other mutations did the blind evolutionary algorithm have to find to organize the components into trunks for trees? Two discoveries, a fossil and a mechanism, offer evolutionists a way to enhance their woody story.
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Origin of Life Made Easy
August 13, 2011
As anyone knows who has been given directions and told “you can’t miss it,” sounding easy and being easy can be entirely different things. Reporters sometimes make the most difficult step in evolution – the origin of life – look like a cinch through the use of suggestive metaphors, like the commonly-invoked phrase, “building blocks of life.” The directions in their articles usually lead to dead ends at worst, or, at best, baby steps on a long march, most of the route TBD, a TLA (three letter acronym) meaning “to be determined.”
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Biology

Archaic Humans Are One With Us
August 12, 2011
According to the biological species concept, two varieties of anything are considered one species if they can interbreed and produce fertile offspring. Applied to humans, new evidence suggests that Neanderthals and the recently-discovered Denisovans were members of the human species. According to New Scientist, “On the western fringes of Siberia, the Stone Age Denisova cave has surrendered precious treasure: a toe bone that could shed light on early humans’ promiscuous relations with their hominin cousins.” Since one can only be promiscuous within the same species, this puts enormous pressure on evolutionary timelines that assume the Denisovans split from the Neanderthals 300,000 years ago.
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Awards

Playing Fast and Loose with Evolution
August 10, 2011
The word evolution gets used and misused often. Strictly speaking, neo-Darwinian evolution demands that mutations and natural selection operate with no foresight or oversight, no purpose or direction, no impetus toward a desired outcome. In actual practice, scientists and reporters play fast and loose with the term, making it into a designer substitute.
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Biology

Hobbits Were Brain Diseased Modern Humans
August 8, 2011
The discovery of fossils of miniature humans in Indonesia, designated Homo floresiensis but nicknamed Hobbits, was one of the most exciting and controversial announcements of 2004. Since then, interpretations of the fossils have fallen into two camps: those who think the skeletons represent normal humans with the brain-defective disease microcephaly, and those who think they represent evolutionary missing links. A new paper compared skulls of H. floresiensis with those of modern humans, Homo erectus, and humans with microcephaly. The result favors the interpretation that the Hobbits most likely were diseased modern humans.
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Bible and Theology

When Science Gets Political
August 7, 2011
The classic view of the scientist as an unbiased observer of nature was shattered with the development of the atomic bomb. Suddenly, it became apparent to the physicists working out the equations of nuclear fission could not absolve themselves completely of responsibility for the political uses of their research. Yet since the days of the French Academy of Sciences in the 17th century, kings and other rulers have called on natural philosophers to inform their decisions. These days, scientific institutions state political opinions at will. Some recent news items show them inserting their opinions beyond what the data alone might indicate.
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Biology

Cold Dinosaurs Resembled Warm Dinosaurs
August 6, 2011
Cold dinosaurs were just like warm dinosaurs, scientists have found. Species living in the Antarctic, with up to six months of winter darkness, show no major differences in bone structure than those who lived in temperate climates. This was a surprise that falsified earlier studies. Whatever adaptations the high-latitude dinosaurs had did not show up in their bone structure.
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Biology

Poison Rat: Did It Evolve?
August 3, 2011
The African crested rat has a unique way of deterring predators. It licks the bark from a poisonous tree (the same one native hunters use to poison their darts), and licks it onto its fur. Any predator that tries to eat the rat becomes very sick, and quickly learns to keep its distance. This kind of defense has been seen in other animals, but is the first known case of a mammal using a substance from another organism to make itself toxic to predators. Is it a classic case of evolution?
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