EVOLUTION ~vs~ CREATION

[Kemosave]

(Citations from this published scientific journal article in response to a Time article found at http://www.reasons.org/resources/apolog ... tion.shtml continued..)

24. Hank Hanegraaff, The FACE That Demonstrates The Farce of Evolution (Nashville, TN: Word Publishing, 1998), pp. 49-57.
25. Henry M. Morris, Scientific Creationism, 2nd Edition (El Cajon, CA: Master Books, 1985), pp. 171-202.
26. Christopher R. C. Paul, "Adequacy, Completeness and the Fossil Record", in The Adequacy of the Fossil Record, Stephen K. Donovan and Christopher R. C. Paul, Editors (New York, NY: John Wiley & Sons, Ltd., 1998), pp. 1-4.
27. Roger Lewin, Principles of Human Evolution (Malden, MS: Blackwell Science, Inc., 1998), pp. 117-118.
28. S. Jones, R. Martin, and D. Pilbeam, "The Primate Fossil Record" in The Cambridge Encyclopedia of Human Evolution, S. Jones, R. Martin, and D. Pilbeam, Editors (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press 1992), pp. 197-198.
29. Gen Suwa et al., "The First Skull of Australopithecus boisei," Nature, 389 (1998), pp. 489-492.
30. Eric Delson, "One Skull Does Not A Species Make," Nature, 389 (1998), pp. 445-446.
31. Roger Lewin, Principles of Human Evolution (Malden, MS: Blackwell Science, Inc., 1998), pp. 298 - 300.
32. Roger Lewin, Principles of Human Evolution (Malden, MS: Blackwell Science, Inc., 1998), pp. 296- 307.
33. Roger Lewin, Principles of Human Evolution (Malden, MS: Blackwell Science, Inc., 1998), p. 306.
34. Bernard Wood, "Evolution of Australopithecines" in The Cambridge Encyclopedia of Human Evolution, S. Jones, R. Martin, and D. Pilbeam, Editors (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press 1992), p. 240.
35. Bernard Wood and Mark Collard, "The Human Genus," Science, 284 (1999), pp. 65-71.
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37. Bernard Wood and Mark Collard, "The Human Genus," Science, 284 (1999), pp. 65-71.
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82. M. Hasegawa, and S. Horai, "Time of the Deepest Root for Polymorphism in Human Mitochondrial DNA," Journal of Molecular Evolution, 32 (1991), p. 37.
83. M. Stoneking, S. T. Sherry, A. J. Redd, and L. Vigilant, "New Approaches to Dating Suggest a Recent Age for the Human mtDNA Ancestor," Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society of London, B Biological Sciences, 337 (1992), pp. 167-175.
84. M. Stoneking, S. T. Sherry, A. J. Redd, and L. Vigilant, "New Approaches to Dating Suggest a Recent Age for the Human mtDNA Ancestor," Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society of London, B Biological Sciences, 337 (1992), pp. 167-175.
85. R. Foley, "The Context of Human Genetic Evolution," Genome Research, 8 (1998), pp. 339-347.
86. Ann Gibbons, "Calibrating the Mitochondrial Clock," Science, 279 (1998), p. 28-29.
87. Hugh Ross and Sam Conner, Facts and Faith, v. 12, n. 1 (1998), pp. 1-2.
88. S. Pääbo, "The Y Chromosome and the Origin of All of Us (Men)," Science, 268 (1995), p. 1141.
89. R.L. Dorit, H. Akashi, and W. Gilbert, "Absence of Polymorphism at the ZFY Locus on the Human Y Chromosome," Science, 268 (1995), p. 1183.
90. M. F. Hammer, "A Recent Common Ancestry for Human Y Chromosomes," Nature, 378 (1995), pp.376-378.
91. R. Foley, "The Context of Human Genetic Evolution," Genome Research, 8 (1998), pp. 339-347.
92. S. A. Tishkoff et al. "Global Patterns of Linkage Disequilibrium at the CD4 Locus and Modern Human Origins," Science, 271 (1996), pp. 1380-1387.
93. J. Fischman, "Evidence Mounts for Our African Origins- and Alternatives," Science, 271 (1996), p. 1364.
94. A. Eyre-Walker, and P. D. Keightley, "High Genomic Deleterious Mutation Rates in Hominids," Nature, 397 (1999), pp. 344-347.
95. Hugh Ross, "Mutations Exceed Expectations," Connections v.1, n. 2 (1999), p. 3.
96. Roger Lewin, Principles of Human Evolution (Malden, MS: Blackwell Science, Inc., 1998), p. 365.
97. Roger Lewin, Principles of Human Evolution (Malden, MS: Blackwell Science, Inc., 1998), p. 365.
98. Christopher Stringer and Robin McKie, African Exodus. The Origins of Modern Humanity (New York, NY: Henry Holt and Company, 1996), pp. 85-114.
99. Christopher Stringer and Robin McKie, African Exodus. The Origins of Modern Humanity (New York, NY: Henry Holt and Company, 1996), pp. 85-89.
100. H. Seidler, et al. "A Comparative Study of Stereolithographically Modeled Skulls of Petralona and Broken Hill: Implications for Future Studies of Middle Pleistocene Hominid Evolution," Journal of Human Evolution, 33 (1997), pp. 691-703.
101. Daniel E. Lieberman, "Sphenoid Shortening and the Evolution of Modern Human Cranial Shape," Nature, 393 (1998), pp. 158-162.
102. J. A. Schwartz, and I. Tattersall, "Significance of Some Previously Unaccompanied Apomorphies in the Nasal Region of Homo neandertalensis," Proceedings of the National Academy of Science USA, 93 (1996) pp.10852-10854.
103. J. T. Laitman, et al., "What the Nose Knows: New Understandings of Neanderthal Upper Respiratory Tract Specializations," Proceedings of the National Academy of Science USA, 93 (1996), pp. 10543-10545.
104. Hugh Ross, "No Tears for Neanderthals," Facts and Faith, v. 10, n. 4 (1996), p. 11.
105. Hugh Ross, The Genesis Question, (Colorado Springs, CO: NavPress, 1998), pp. 112-113.
106. Christopher Stringer and Robin McKie, African Exodus. The Origins of Modern Humanity (New York, NY: Henry Holt and Company, 1996), pp. 94-95.
107. Richard F. McCay et al. "The Hypoglossal Canal and The Origin of Human Vocal Behavior," Proceedings of The National Academy of Sciences USA, 95 (1998), pp. 5417-5419.
108. David DeGusta et al. "Hypoglossal Canal Size and Hominid Speech," Proceedings of The National Academy of Sciences USA, 96 (1999), pp. 1800-1804.
109. Philip Lieberman, "Silver Tongue Neandertals?," Science, 283 (1999), p. 175.
110. M. A. Krings, et al., "Neandertal DNA Sequences and the Origin of Modern Humans," Cell, 90 (1997), pp. 19-30.
111. Hugh Ross, "Neandertal Takes a One-Eighty," Facts and Faith, v. 11, n.3 (1997), pp. 4-5.
112. Hugh Ross, The Genesis Question, (Colorado Springs, CO: NavPress, 1998), pp. 113-114.
113. U. Arnason, et al., "Comparison Between the Complete Mitochondrial DNA Sequences of Homo and the Common Chimpanzee Based on Nonchimeric Sequences," Journal of Molecular Evolution, 42 (1996), pp. 145-52.
114. P. Kahn, and A. Gibbons. 1997. "DNA From an Extinct Human," Science, 277 (1997), pp. 176-178.
115. Kim A. McDonald, "Are Neandertals Losing Their Grip on the Human Family Tree?," The Chronicle of Higher Education, October 16 (1998), pp. A18-A19.
116. Tim D. White et al. "Australopithecus ramidus, A New Species of Early Hominid from Aramis, Ethiopia," Nature, 371 (1994), pp. 306-312.
117. Tim D. White et al. "Australopithecus ramidus, A New Species of Early Hominid from Aramis, Ethiopia," Nature, 375 (1995), p. 88.
118. Henry Gee, "New Hominid Remains Found in Ethiopia," Nature, 373 (1995), p. 272.
119. Meave G. Leakey et al. "New Four-Million-Year-Old Hominid Species from Kanapoli and Allia Bay, Kenya," Nature, 376 (1995), pp. 565-571.
120. Peter Andrews, "Ecological Apes and Ancestors," Nature, 376 (1995), pp. 555-556.
121. Meave G. Leakey et al., "New Specimens and Confirmation of an Early Age for Australopithecus anamensis," Nature, 393 (1998), pp. 62-66.
122. Meave Leakey and Alan Walker, "Early Hominid Fossils from Africa," Scientific American, June (1997), pp. 74-79.
123. Meave Leakey and Alan Walker, "Early Hominid Fossils from Africa," Scientific American, June (1997), pp. 74-79.
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125. Meave Leakey and Alan Walker, "Early Hominid Fossils from Africa," Scientific American, June (1997), pp. 74-79.
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127. Peter Andrews, "Ecological Apes and Ancestors," Nature, 376 (1995), pp. 555-556.
128. B. Bower, "African Fossils Flesh Out Humanity’s Past," Science News, 155 (1999), p. 262.
129. Elizabeth Culotta, "A New Human Ancestor?," Science, 284 (1999), pp. 572-573.
130. Jean de Heinzelin, et al. "Environment and Behavior of 2.5 Million-Year-Old Bouri Hominids," Science, 284 (1999), pp. 625-629 (1999).
131. Berhane Asfaw et al., "Australopithecus garhi: A New Species of Early Hominid from Ethiopia," Science, 284 (1999), pp. 629-635.
132. Bernard Wood and Mark Collard, "The Human Genus," Science, 284 (1999), pp. 65-71.
133. David S. Strait and Fredrick E. Grine, "Cladistics and Early Hominid Phylogeny," Science, 285 (1999), p. 1210.
134. B. Asfaw et al., "Cladistics and Early Hominid Phylogeny: Response," Science, 285(1999), p. 1210.
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Found at http://www.reasons.org/resources/apolog ... tion.shtml

[Panik]

Whys is it ok to teach evolution and the big bang theory to our children in schools but it is not ok to teach creationist theory?

After all, they're both theory's, right?

And it is our tax money, right?

If neither one is a proven fact, then why one is ok but not the other?

because the creationist theory is a concept only helpd by certain religions. Not all religions agree. They all have their own form of creation, so which would you teach? By picking one, you are endorsing one religion over the others, which is basically school sponsored religion. And, there is no basis to ever call creation a "theory". There is nothing in it that could ever be an actuall fact, and even if you could call it fact, then it is only a small part of a complete story, so we are better off teaching what facts we know. The fact is that animals do evolve. This can happen through natural selection, or by forced breeding (like wolves into dogs). There may be small hols in the entire evolution story, but thesse are minor when compared to the creationist story which leaves out every species that we know existed but were never included in the bible. Everything from dinosaurs to neanderthals were left out. Neandertals by the way had religion, buried their dead, and had bigger brains than we do, and they were capable of speach. Seems like there at least should have been a footnote in genesis about them, and the dinosaurs, especially since both the neandertals and the dinosaurs both ruled the earth much longer than humans have.

[Kemosave]

First what is being taught goes way beyond what science actually proves. General evolution hypothesis is not a fact and much of the science on which it "rests" is currently in contradiction to it as I have shown.

To say "There may be small holes in the entire evolution story, but these are minor when compared to the creationist story which leaves out every species that we know existed but were never included in the bible" tells me several things.

First it tells me that you haven't even really read nor properly addressed the information I posted, second it tells me that don't understand the science supporting the general evolutionary models that form your belief system and are unable to qualify same from the perspective of a trained researcher. Third it tells me that you don't understand what the Bible creation account really is. That is obvious from your statement. Fourth you don't understand the most current secular models like "East of Africa" that were developed to deal with the failure of the general evolutionary models and the flood of current information (which by the way more closely resembles the new testable (yes that's right testable) creation models. As a sidenote, I don't believe you really understand microbiology either.

And your examples are lame. Where are the Cogs or the Dats? There is no rich source of intermediate species around us or in the fossil record. Reread the previous posts, which by the way are scientifically qualified and properly cited; not the baloney sandwiches you toss around (ok that was kind of a Robert Blake moment with that joke like when he said "put up a chimney" whatever that means.. lol).

I would say that none of this makes you a "bad" person (not that the evolutionist has any ultimate transcendent basis for "bad"). However, the traditional multi-regional evolutionary hypothesis is losing support as a rapidly ever increasing number of reputable scientists move away from it. And this is great because it will eventually open up a fair playing field again for where true science, based on real testable results and models not supposition and dogma, flourish once again.

[Panik]

kemo, the problem is that you try to make up for the bible's lack of common sense or proof. You are a much smarter man that tne men who wrote it I'm sure. The point is that a literal reading of genesis is a comical theory of the way things got to be, and on top of that, it leaves out 99% of what must have gone on. So even if it were somehow true, it is an incomplete story, much more incomplete that evolution theory. it's not a case of a missing link, but that there is only one link, and the whole rest of the chain is missing. And if you're saying there is a scientific test that can prove creation, then I think you need a sponsor and a few meetings. So, until you find the missing chapters in genesis that deal with the dinosaurs, and the other dozen or so intelligent species that walked on their hind legs before we got here, then I would say of creation, keep it to yourself. As for teaching it in school, I would say that until every other religion agreed with you, then to do so would basically be forcing religion on children with different beliefs. And for a non-christian to be forcefed christianity would be to them, kinda what you would feel like if I taught sunday school at your church.

[Kemosave]

Hi Panik,

Regarding ancient Hebrew, there were a lot less words to work with than in modern English so many words tended to have a lot of meanings. Whole models are built around just the word "day" and the many uses for that word. Syntax, context, and culture are very important when embarking on a Hebrew word study.

We have more knowledge than the ancient Hebrews in Moses day (as an aside notice how day can be used in that manner as well as to suggest a twenty-four hour day even in our language) in many areas, however, a proper understand of the book of Genesis goes far beyond just picking it up, reading it, and thinking you know what it is saying. You have to know what is really says, in context, in the original language and as an educated man who has been around I affirm it synchs right up with the record of nature. I invite you to actually read those posts because it doesn't appear you have yet. You are talking nonsense.

Read that scientific journal article all the way through. Learn something new. Take your time. Peace.

[Kemosave]

Whys is it ok to teach evolution and the big bang theory to our children in schools but it is not ok to teach creationist theory?

After all, they're both theory's, right?

And it is our tax money, right?

If neither one is a proven fact, then why one is ok but not the other?

They do teach creation science in many private schools lonewolf. The current creation models incorporate hard science and testable creation models. I won't go into a whole dissertation on the history of public education here and the role politics and the judicial system play in that as I have already addressed the topic in other posts previously. Sorry.. lol.

But note that it's begun to come full circle among a rapidly increasing number of PhD level scientists in our top universities. Greater numbers dissent from the belief system of naturalistic humanism every quarter based on their new research and increased awareness and understanding and it is starting to have an impact. This is really happening and I gave specific cited examples in my posts. Again much of what we are discussing has already been addressed. But you guys are not actually reading the qualified scientific information in the posts and considering it. That's too bad. It means you are choosing to close your minds.

Me? I evaluate everything. Many of us intellectual oriented Christians started off aethists and evolutionists. The day came when we had progressed to a point in our knowledge and understanding where we realized we had been lied to and looked around for alternatives. It is a common story.

I could give you another real scientific dissertation on evolution but I already have! Do yourselves a favor and read it all ready. I will be back sometime later to debate any questions or challenges you may have with the information. I look forward to it. Peace.

[Panik]

Hi Panik,

Regarding ancient Hebrew, there were a lot less words to work with than in modern English so many words tended to have a lot of meanings. Whole models are built around just the word "day" and the many uses for that word. Syntax, context, and culture are very important when embarking on a Hebrew word study.

We have more knowledge than the ancient Hebrews in Moses day (as an aside notice how day can be used in that manner as well as to suggest a twenty-four hour day even in our language) in many areas, however, a proper understand of the book of Genesis goes far beyond just picking it up, reading it, and thinking you know what it is saying. You have to know what is really says, in context, in the original language and as an educated man who has been around I affirm it synchs right up with the record of nature. I invite you to actually read those posts because it doesn't appear you have yet. You are talking nonsense.

Read that scientific journal article all the way through. Learn something new. Take your time. Peace.

well, I'm reading it, and making dinner. I should get through it soon, but already I see a major problem. They state that Neandertals had no religion or language. I have been reading about this stuff since I was a child. It is damn near scientific gospel (pun intended) that they DID have religios beliefs. They buried their dead with personal belongings and artifacts for the afterlife just as the egyptiasns did in their tombs. As for language, it is also pretty much agreed upon by most that they did posses a language and could produce 14 consanent sounds and a few vowels (if I remember correctly, give or take). So right off they are basing their thesis on something that is uniformly believed to be untrue.

but I'll keep reading, and hit you with some more wrongs later on.

[Kemosave]

Please bring properly supported information with specific cited studies so I can examine them. That's one of the biggest problems I have with what you say Panik and why I don't really take you seriously. You talk a lot but you never prove anything.

Bring the underlying proof (studies, citations, authors) so that I can verify your assertions. Then I can agree or disagree with you based on fact. Not just these empty assertions.

But I'll tell you that the latest studies in human behavior I have here show otherwise to your assertion. I will be happy to dig into that with you and will be sharing, as I typically do this when asked, as well.

But from you I want to see documented evidence so I can carefully examine it and the source of it.

I look forward to that. It will really be the first time you ever have really done that here with me and I thank you for that.

[Panik]

Please bring properly supported information with specific cited studies so I can examine them. That's one of the biggest problems I have with what you say Panik and why I don't really take you seriously. You talk a lot but you never prove anything.

Bring the underlying proof (studies, citations, authors) so that I can verify your assertions. Then I can agree or disagree with you based on fact. Not just these empty assertions.

But I'll tell you that the latest studies in human behavior I have here show otherwise to your assertion. I will be happy to dig into that with you and will be sharing, as I typically do this when asked, as well.

But from you I want to see documented evidence so I can carefully examine it and the source of it.

I look forward to that. It will really be the first time you ever have really done that here with me and I thank you for that.

sorry, I didn't finish reading it, I'll get back to it this weekend. they took away our internet access at work, and home is kinda hectic during the week. As for giving you individual studies, I guess I can, but no disrespect, but I thouight you were educated? I mean I learned this in school. Highschool taught about the neandertals, and there were books to read for reprts then, and the text book itself. Then in college, physical anthropology, more books, and the textbook. Every story in discover or national geographic. I mean literally, there has never been anyone to my knowledge that ever tried to say that Neandertals didn't have religion until you just said it on the net. I'm sure that there are some christian "scholars" that claim this because of their beliefs, but I mean that everything I have ever read in the last 15 years, probably a few dozen separate sources have all agreed that neandertals had religion. they had cerimonial burials. They were the first to do so. They also had a larynx capable of speach. This is common knowlege. It's like asking for a source on the earth being round. I would tell you all sources agree to this. just look for any source that didn't come from church reading I guess. I mean, seriously. Neandertals DREW PICTURES. THEY HAD ARTISTS. Can you really in your heart say that something that buries it's dead with objests for the afterlife and creates art has no spirit? I don't believe in a spirit, but the only thing that sets us apart from the neandertals is the fact that they were killed off. National geographic has repeatedly said that if one were alive today, with a shave and some decent clothes, they would be able to pass for a human. Not a cute one, but they would pass. They were in no way an ape species. They were intelligent, thinking, BELIEVING, beings that behaved exactly like early humans, yet they were not HUMAN. So, I'll look up some sources, but really. On things like this, you should just go to the library, and I bet you that any book on the subject written in the last 20 years will tell you all of this.

[Panik]

any you know what, I really think you're being lazy here. I just typed neandertal in google search, and the very first match is a site that would tell you all of this, with references. let me know if you need more. Really, this is common knowlege stuff here though. It shouldn't be necessary.

http://sapphire.indstate.edu/~ramanank/

[mauh]

after reading all of this BS, it's really amazing to find some intelligent life! Thank you Panik!

[purplecityhello]

really fuck that whole 10 millions years ago shit - what u gonna do tomorrow? not die with my face in a history book BURY ME BLINGED OUT

[Mraka]

what is cooking actually,how are the "creationist" making this wrapping around there ;for .ex. Ohio.
-they are telling all this anti evolution ,with no evidence.
-do not think it is fair,all in all,because as you face it has become your matter ,too.
I do not make the big deal,but what is about the flora and fauna we see changing and adopting?

[Kemosave]

Big updates coming here in the future. Too busy with intensive studies right now. Peace.

[Tyrant]

I THINK WE WENT FROM APE > HUMAN

[Lonewolf]

I THINK WE WENT FROM APE > HUMAN

^ ^ ^ ^ AND WHERE DID THE APE COME FROM?

BUT A MORE PROFOUND QUESTION I ASK - IS, WHERE DID "LIFE" AND "INTELLEGENCE" COME FROM? A BIG BANG?
SO CAN MAYBE SCIENTIFICALLY THEORIZE EVOLUTION, BUT
THE LIFE ESSENCE AND INTELLEGENCE FACTOR ARE BEYOND
CURRENT EVOLUTION EXPLANATIONS.

[Kemosave]

Recently we watched as NASA crashed a very expensive device into a comet hoping to find some biological material (or sign of any). The reason they are doing this is because all attempts to explain life spontaeously arising on early earth end in defeat for them. They are now spending quite a bit of money attempting to find the "seeds of life" which they suggest "must somehow have been deposited on early earth." Well bad news for them on that point but we'll look at that another time. For now, let's take a brief look at why life cannot have spontaneously arose on early earth.

As recently as 2000 naturalists are still trying to lean on the worn out disproven hypothesis that life came together in a primordial "soup" (warm ponds and wet mineral surfaces enriched with life-building molecules). Even under the highly engineered, highly favorable conditions of a laboratory, however, such soups have failed to produce anything remotely
resembling life. At best they produce only a random distribution of the very simplest of life's building blocks.

Life chemistry demands that its nudeotide sugars be "righthanded" (having their hydrogen molecule on one and the same side) and that most of its active amino acids (nineteen of twenty) be "left-handed" (having their hydrogen molecule on the opposite side). Despite decades of research and quantum leaps in technology, lab researchers cannot come dose to lining up molecules with, the correct handedness. Neither can they assemble them in the correct sequence to make life. The futility of expecting a bunch of simple molecules to bring themselves together into a functioning, living organism in just a few million years in the chaotic conditions of early Earth by far exceeds that of expecting a spilled bowl
of alphabet soup to spontaneously generate a poem.

The ratio of certain carbon molecules (specifically, carbon-12 and carbon-13 isotopes) found in ancient rocks reveals more than just the early appearance of life on Earth. That ratio also helps researchers distinguish between inorganic carbon-containing Evolution's Probabilities - 47 molecules (those that form life's critical building blocks, or prebiotic molecules) and similar molecules that result from the decay of once-living organisms (postbiotic molecules). Detailed analysis reveals that even the most ancient carbon-containing molecules are all postbiotic; none are prebiotic. In fact, neither a primordial, prebiotic soup nor a mineral-rich, moist layer ever existed on Earth.

The recently discovered "oxygen-ultraviolet paradox" helps explain why no such soup or substrate existed: The existence of oxygen in the atmosphere and the ocean would guarantee the shutdown of prebiotic chemistry. The absence of oxygen, on the other hand, would allow intense ultraviolet radiation to penetrate Earth's atmosphere and upper ocean layer, also guaranteeing the shutdown of prebiotic chemistry.

Either way, the primordial soup explanation for the origins of life utterly fails. The volcano theories don't help either because early earth's atmosphere was oxidized (bye Stanley Miller experiment). So despite the abundance of life on Earth today, this planet begins to look more and more like a place that was never suitable as a place for life to develop by naturalistic means.

[Kemosave]

Ok I have a few minutes so let me introduce you to the worn out paps theory they are spending so much money on these days.

BECAUSE EARTH CONDITIONS defy any naturalistic origin of life, some researchers have turned their hopes to the skies. Either from elsewhere in this solar system or from more distant precincts of the universe, they suggest, life may have come to this planet.. From that point on, evolution could have done its thing on Earth, jumpstarted by the gift from outer space.

Life from the Red Planet. In recent years a number of news reports surfaced about the possibility of life having once existed on the home of fiction's original little green men: Mars. Martian life in a simple form might have been transported to Earth, some scientists propose, when asteroid and comet impacts on Mars sent Martian rocks hurtling through interplanetary space, with life attached, to land on Earth.

Conjectures about life from Mars have been loudly and widely heralded in the media. Images taken by unmanned Mars explorers show that Mars was once, briefly, both warm and wet, though it never had a precipitation-fed water cycle. With this news, the familiar mantra of naturalists comes into play: "Where there's water, there's life." However, the same factors that rule out Earth as a fortuitous cradle for life also rule out Mars. These factors include the destructive effects of intense bombardment and the oxygenultraviolet paradox, described above.

Theoretical support does exist, however, for the opposite of the
Mars-to-Earth life scenario. The same processes that bring Martian debris to Earth also deliver Earth debris to Mars. About 2 percent of all'the material ejected from Earth's surface into space because of comet or meteor collision inevitably falls on Mars. Over the past nearly 4 billion years, several million kilograms of Earth-life remnants must have been deposited on Mars. It seems only a matter of time before researchers detect - and possibly misconstrue - its presence. Life aboard space rubble. With Mars holding no realistic promise as a source of life, theorists next considered comets and meteorites. Not claiming that life arose on or in comets and meteorites, some researchers have suggested that these kinds of space rubble could serve as taxicabs, carrying prebiotic molecules picked up in interstellar space safely to Earth.

There is, however, an insuperable problem with this suggestion. Because conditions on early Earth would not have permitted any natural pathway for simple prebiotic molecules to assemble into organisms, the meteorites and comets would have had to deliver advanced prebiotics, such as proteins and DNA and RNA molecules. But no trace of such molecules, nor of the complement of amino acids, nucleotides, and sugars necessary for life, has been found in recovered meteorites. Furthermore, using the chemical classes of compounds found in the Murchison meteorite (the
largest recovered meteorite), origin-of-life researcher Robert Shapiro showed that side reactions would effectively prevent any simple prebiotic molecules that might be present from ever spontaneously forming into more complex molecules, such as proteins, PNA (peptide nudeic acid), DNA, or RNA.

Life in particles borne on stellar "wind." With the odds stacked so, heavily against any naturalistic origin-of-life scenario in the environs of this solar system, some researchers are dusting off Fred Hoyle's panspermia proposition from the 1970s. This hypothesis says that life originated somewhere else in the cosmos and came to this solar system on star-generated "wind." All stars manifest radiation pressure - light intense enough to push tiny partides through interstellar space. But light that intense would include enough ultraviolet radiation to kill a microbe in a
matter of just a few days. That's why many scientists have considered
Hoyle's proposition a failure.

Some scientists have suggested that if a microbe were encased inside small dust grains, it might be protected from the radiation. But this proposal also fails. To move a more massive dust grain requires more intense starlight. The ultraviolet and x-ray radiation in such starlight would penetrate the dust grain and kill the microbe inside. Furthermore, the only source of light strong enough to move a dust grain encasing a microbe is a supergiant star. For a variety of reasons, from radiation effects to gravitational effects and more, life cannot possibly arise in the vicinity of, or survive anywhere near, a supergiant star.

At the 2001 Lunar and Planetary Science Conference, Dr. Jay Melosh from the Lunar and Planetary Laboratory and the University of Arizona reported on the feasibility of Earth's capturing an interstellar wandering rock (that is, a piece of an asteroid, comet, or planet). His studies demonstrate that, at best, Earth could capture only a statistically almost impossible amount of the available material per year.

To put it another way, Earth has only one chance in ten thousand of capturing just one interstellar sample at any time in its entire history. Thus the transport of significant pieces of interstellar dirt, let alone life, to Earth is virtually impossible.

The impossibility of transport represents just one of the intractable problems facing the panspermia hypothesis. Another has to do with where "out there" in the cosmos life could naturally arise and survive.

Astronomers can point to no site in the universe suitable for life sustenance, much less origination. They cannot, for example, find a place where all the amino acids are lefthanded and all the nudeotide sugars are right-handed. No soup and no seeding.

[SkoobyDoo]

Just incase ya'll missed the other thread.

15 Answers to Creationist Nonsense
Scientific American
JOHN RENNIE


15 Answers to Creationist Nonsense
Opponents of evolution want to make a place for creationism by tearing down real science, but their arguments don't hold up.

John Rennie is editor in chief of Scientific American.

Image : lAYNE KENNEDY Corbis NAUTILUS SHELL : Designed or evolved?

When Charles Darwin introduced the theory of evolution through natural selection 143 years ago, the scientists of the day argued over it fiercely, but the massing evidence from paleontology, genetics, zoology, molecular biology and other fields gradually established evolution's truth beyond reasonable doubt. Today that battle has been won everywhere -- except in the public imagination.

Embarrassingly, in the 21st century, in the most scientifically advanced nation the world has ever known, creationists can still persuade politicians, judges and ordinary citizens that evolution is a flawed, poorly supported fantasy. They lobby for creationist ideas such as "intelligent design" to be taught as alternatives to evolution in science classrooms. As this article goes to press, the Ohio Board of Education is debating whether to mandate such a change. Some antievolutionists, such as Philip E. Johnson, a law professor at the University of California at Berkeley and author of Darwin on Trial, admit that they intend for intelligent-design theory to serve as a "wedge" for reopening science classrooms to discussions of God.

Besieged teachers and others may increasingly find themselves on the spot to defend evolution and refute creationism. The arguments that creationists use are typically specious and based on misunderstandings of (or outright lies about) evolution, but the number and diversity of the objections can put even well-informed people at a disadvantage.

To help with answering them, the following list rebuts some of the most common "scientific" arguments raised against evolution. It also directs readers to further sources for information and explains why creation science has no place in the classroom.

1. Evolution is only a theory. It is not a fact or a scientific law.

Many people learned in elementary school that a theory falls in the middle of a hierarchy of certainty -- above a mere hypothesis but below a law. Scientists do not use the terms that way, however. According to the National Academy of Sciences (NAS), a scientific theory is "a well-substantiated explanation of some aspect of the natu
Image : PATRICIA J. WYNNE
GALÁPAGOS FINCHES show adaptive beak shapes.
ral world that can incorporate facts, laws, inferences, and tested hypotheses." No amount of validation changes a theory into a law, which is a descriptive generalization about nature. So when scientists talk about the theory of evolution -- or the atomic theory or the theory of relativity, for that matter -- they are not expressing reservations about its truth.

In addition to the theory of evolution, meaning the idea of descent with modification, one may also speak of the fact of evolution. The NAS defines a fact as "an observation that has been repeatedly confirmed and for all practical purposes is accepted as 'true.'" The fossil record and abundant other evidence testify that organisms have evolved through time. Although no one observed those transformations, the indirect evidence is clear, unambiguous and compelling.

All sciences frequently rely on indirect evidence. Physicists cannot see subatomic particles directly, for instance, so they verify their existence by watching for telltale tracks that the particles leave in cloud chambers. The absence of direct observation does not make physicists' conclusions less certain.

2. Natural selection is based on circular reasoning : the fittest are those who survive, and those who survive are deemed fittest.

"Survival of the fittest" is a conversational way to describe natural selection, but a more technical description speaks of differential rates of survival and reproduction. That is, rather than labeling species as more or less fit, one can describe how many offspring they are likely to leave under given circumstances. Drop a fast-breeding pair of small-beaked finches and a slower-breeding pair of large-beaked finches onto an island full of food seeds. Within a few generations the fast breeders may control more of the food resources. Yet if large beaks more easily crush seeds, the advantage may tip to the slow breeders. In a pioneering study of finches on the Galápagos Islands, Peter R. Grant of Princeton University observed these kinds of population shifts in the wild [see his article "Natural Selection and Darwin's Finches"; Scientific American, October 1991].

Image : REPRINTED BY PERMISSION OF WADSWORTH/THOMSON LEARNING FROM BIOLOGY : CONCEPTS AND APPLICATIONS, BY CECIE STARR, © 1991
SKULLS of some hominids predating modern humans (Homo sapiens).

The key is that adaptive fitness can be defined without reference to survival : large beaks are better adapted for crushing seeds, irrespective of whether that trait has survival value under the circumstances.

3. Evolution is unscientific, because it is not testable or falsifiable. It makes claims about events that were not observed and can never be re-created.

This blanket dismissal of evolution ignores important distinctions that divide the field into at least two broad areas : microevolution and macroevolution. Microevolution looks at changes within species over time -- changes that may be preludes to speciation, the origin of new species. Macroevolution studies how taxonomic groups above the level of species change. Its evidence draws frequently from the fossil record and DNA comparisons to reconstruct how various organisms may be related.

These days even most creationists acknowledge that microevolution has been upheld by tests in the laboratory (as in studies of cells, plants and fruit flies) and in the field (as in Grant's studies of evolving beak shapes among Galápagos finches). Natural selection and other mechanisms -- such as chromosomal changes, symbiosis and hybridization -- can drive profound changes in populations over time.

The historical nature of macroevolutionary study involves inference from fossils and DNA rather than direct observation. Yet in the historical sciences (which include astronomy, geology and archaeology, as well as evolutionary biology), hypotheses can still be tested by checking whether they accord with physical evidence and whether they lead to verifiable predictions about future discoveries. For instance, evolution implies that between the earliest-known ancestors of humans (roughly five million years old) and the appearance of anatomically modern humans (about 100,000 years ago), one should find a succession of hominid creatures with features progressively less apelike and more modern, which is indeed what the fossil record shows. But one should not -- and does not -- find modern human fossils embedded in strata from the Jurassic period (144 million years ago). Evolutionary biology routinely makes predictions far more refined and precise than this, and researchers test them constantly.

Evolution could be disproved in other ways, too. If we could document the spontaneous generation of just one complex life-form from inanimate matter, then at least a few creatures seen in the fossil record might have originated this way. If superintelligent aliens appeared and claimed credit for creating life on earth (or even particular species), the purely evolutionary explanation would be cast in doubt. But no one has yet produced such evidence.

It should be noted that the idea of falsifiability as the defining characteristic of science originated with philosopher Karl Popper in the 1930s. More recent elaborations on his thinking have expanded the narrowest interpretation of his principle precisely because it would eliminate too many branches of clearly scientific endeavor.

4. Increasingly, scientists doubt the truth of evolution.

No evidence suggests that evolution is losing adherents. Pick up any issue of a peer-reviewed biological journal and you will find articles that support and extend evolutionary studies or that embrace evolution as a fundamental concept.

Conversely, serious scientific publications disputing evolution are all but nonexistent. In the mid-1990s George W. Gilchrist of the University of Washington surveyed thousands of journals in the primary literature, seeking articles on intelligent design or creation science. Among those hundreds of thousands of scientific reports, he found none. In the past two years, surveys done independently by Barbara Forrest of Southeastern Louisiana University and Lawrence M. Krauss of Case Western Reserve University have been similarly fruitless.

Creationists retort that a closed-minded scientific community rejects their evidence. Yet according to the editors of Nature, Science and other leading journals, few antievolution manuscripts are even submitted. Some antievolution authors have published papers in serious journals. Those papers, however, rarely attack evolution directly or advance creationist arguments; at best, they identify certain evolutionary problems as unsolved and difficult (which no one disputes). In short, creationists are not giving the scientific world good reason to take them seriously.


Image : CLEO VILETT

5. The disagreements among even evolutionary biologists show how little solid science supports evolution.


Evolutionary biologists passionately debate diverse topics : how speciation happens, the rates of evolutionary change, the ancestral relationships of birds and dinosaurs, whether Neandertals were a species apart from modern humans, and much more. These disputes are like those found in all other branches of science. Acceptance of evolution as a factual occurrence and a guiding principle is nonetheless universal in biology.

Unfortunately, dishonest creationists have shown a willingness to take scientists' comments out of context to exaggerate and distort the disagreements. Anyone acquainted with the works of paleontologist Stephen Jay Gould of Harvard University knows that in addition to co-authoring the punctuated-equilibrium model, Gould was one of the most eloquent defenders and articulators of evolution. (Punctuated equilibrium explains patterns in the fossil record by suggesting that most evolutionary changes occur within geologically brief intervals -- which may nonetheless amount to hundreds of generations.) Yet creationists delight in dissecting out phrases from Gould's voluminous prose to make him sound as though he had doubted evolution, and they present punctuated equilibrium as though it allows new species to materialize overnight or birds to be born from reptile eggs.

When confronted with a quotation from a scientific authority that seems to question evolution, insist on seeing the statement in context. Almost invariably, the attack on evolution will prove illusory.

6. If humans descended from monkeys, why are there still monkeys?

This surprisingly common argument reflects several levels of ignorance about evolution. The first mistake is that evolution does not teach that humans descended from monkeys; it states that both have a common ancestor.

The deeper error is that this objection is tantamount to asking, "If children descended from adults, why are there still adults?" New species evolve by splintering off from established ones, when populations of organisms become isolated from the main branch of their family and acquire sufficient differences to remain forever distinct. The parent species may survive indefinitely thereafter, or it may become extinct.

7. Evolution cannot explain how life first appeared on earth.

The origin of life remains very much a mystery, but biochemists have learned about how primitive nucleic acids, amino acids and other building blocks of life could have formed and organized themselves into self-replicating, self-sustaining units, laying the foundation for cellular biochemistry. Astrochemical analyses hint that quantities of these compounds might have originated in space and fallen to earth in comets, a scenario that may solve the problem of how those constituents arose under the conditions that prevailed when our planet was young.

Creationists sometimes try to invalidate all of evolution by pointing to science's current inability to explain the origin of life. But even if life on earth turned out to have a nonevolutionary origin (for instance, if aliens introduced the first cells billions of years ago), evolution since then would be robustly confirmed by countless microevolutionary and macroevolutionary studies.

8. Mathematically, it is inconceivable that anything as complex as a protein, let alone a living cell or a human, could spring up by chance.

Chance plays a part in evolution (for example, in the random mutations that can give rise to new traits), but evolution does not depend on chance to create organisms, proteins or other entities. Quite the opposite : natural selection, the principal known mechanism of evolution, harnesses nonrandom change by preserving "desirable" (adaptive) features and eliminating "undesirable" (nonadaptive) ones. As long as the forces of selection stay constant, natural selection can push evolution in one direction and produce sophisticated structures in surprisingly short times.


Image : CLEO VILETT

As an analogy, consider the 13-letter sequence "TOBEORNOTTOBE." Those hypothetical million monkeys, each pecking out one phrase a second, could take as long as 78,800 years to find it among the 2613 sequences of that length. But in the 1980s Richard Hardison of Glendale College wrote a computer program that generated phrases randomly while preserving the positions of individual letters that happened to be correctly placed (in effect, selecting for phrases more like Hamlet's). On average, the program re-created the phrase in just 336 iterations, less than 90 seconds. Even more amazing, it could reconstruct Shakespeare's entire play in just four and a half days.

9. The Second Law of Thermodynamics says that systems must become more disordered over time. Living cells therefore could not have evolved from inanimate chemicals, and multicellular life could not have evolved from protozoa.

This argument derives from a misunderstanding of the Second Law. If it were valid, mineral crystals and snowflakes would also be impossible, because they, too, are complex structures that form spontaneously from disordered parts.

The Second Law actually states that the total entropy of a closed system (one that no energy or matter leaves or enters) cannot decrease. Entropy is a physical concept often casually described as disorder, but it differs significantly from the conversational use of the word.

More important, however, the Second Law permits parts of a system to decrease in entropy as long as other parts experience an offsetting increase. Thus, our planet as a whole can grow more complex because the sun pours heat and light onto it, and the greater entropy associated with the sun's nuclear fusion more than rebalances the scales. Simple organisms can fuel their rise toward complexity by consuming other forms of life and nonliving materials.

10. Mutations are essential to evolution theory, but mutations can only eliminate traits. They cannot produce new features.


Image : CLEO VILETT
CLOSE-UP of a bacterial flagellum.

On the contrary, biology has catalogued many traits produced by point mutations (changes at precise positions in an organism's DNA)-- bacterial resistance to antibiotics, for example.

Mutations that arise in the homeobox (Hox) family of development-regulating genes in animals can also have complex effects. Hox genes direct where legs, wings, antennae and body segments should grow. In fruit flies, for instance, the mutation called Antennapedia causes legs to sprout where antennae should grow. These abnormal limbs are not functional, but their existence demonstrates that genetic mistakes can produce complex structures, which natural selection can then test for possible uses.

Moreover, molecular biology has discovered mechanisms for genetic change that go beyond point mutations, and these expand the ways in which new traits can appear. Functional modules within genes can be spliced together in novel ways. Whole genes can be accidentally duplicated in an organism's DNA, and the duplicates are free to mutate into genes for new, complex features. Comparisons of the DNA from a wide variety of organisms indicate that this is how the globin family of blood proteins evolved over millions of years.

11. Natural selection might explain microevolution, but it cannot explain the origin of new species and higher orders of life.

Evolutionary biologists have written extensively about how natural selection could produce new species. For instance, in the model called allopatry, developed by Ernst Mayr of Harvard University, if a population of organisms were isolated from the rest of its species by geographical boundaries, it might be subjected to different selective pressures. Changes would accumulate in the isolated population. If those changes became so significant that the splinter group could not or routinely would not breed with the original stock, then the splinter group would be reproductively isolated and on its way toward becoming a new species.

Natural selection is the best studied of the evolutionary mechanisms, but biologists are open to other possibilities as well. Biologists are constantly assessing the potential of unusual genetic mechanisms for causing speciation or for producing complex features in organisms. Lynn Margulis of the University of Massachusetts at Amherst and others have persuasively argued that some cellular organelles, such as the energy-generating mitochondria, evolved through the symbiotic merger of ancient organisms. Thus, science welcomes the possibility of evolution resulting from forces beyond natural selection. Yet those forces must be natural; they cannot be attributed to the actions of mysterious creative intelligences whose existence, in scientific terms, is unproved.

12. Nobody has ever seen a new species evolve.

Speciation is probably fairly rare and in many cases might take centuries. Furthermore, recognizing a new species during a formative stage can be difficult, because biologists sometimes disagree about how best to define a species. The most widely used definition, Mayr's Biological Species Concept, recognizes a species as a distinct community of reproductively isolated populations--sets of organisms that normally do not or cannot breed outside their community. In practice, this standard can be difficult to apply to organisms isolated by distance or terrain or to plants (and, of course, fossils do not breed). Biologists therefore usually use organisms' physical and behavioral traits as clues to their species membership.

Nevertheless, the scientific literature does contain reports of apparent speciation events in plants, insects and worms. In most of these experiments, researchers subjected organisms to various types of selection -- for anatomical differences, mating behaviors, habitat preferences and other traits -- and found that they had created populations of organisms that did not breed with outsiders. For example, William R. Rice of the University of New Mexico and George W. Salt of the University of California at Davis demonstrated that if they sorted a group of fruit flies by their preference for certain environments and bred those flies separately over 35 generations, the resulting flies would refuse to breed with those from a very different environment.

13. Evolutionists cannot point to any transitional fossils -- creatures that are half reptile and half bird, for instance.

Actually, paleontologists know of many detailed examples of fossils intermediate in form between various taxonomic groups. One of the most famous fossils of all time is Archaeopteryx, which combines feathers and skeletal structures peculiar to birds with features of dinosaurs. A flock's worth of other feathered fossil species, some more avian and some less, has also been found. A sequence of fossils spans the evolution of modern horses from the tiny Eohippus. Whales had four-legged ancestors that walked on land, and creatures known as Ambulocetus and Rodhocetus helped to make that transition [see "The Mammals That Conquered the Seas," by Kate Wong; Scientific American, May]. Fossil seashells trace the evolution of various mollusks through millions of years. Perhaps 20 or more hominids (not all of them our ancestors) fill the gap between Lucy the australopithecine and modern humans.

Creationists, though, dismiss these fossil studies. They argue that Archaeopteryx is not a missing link between reptiles and birds -- it is just an extinct bird with reptilian features . They want evolutionists to produce a weird, chimeric monster that cannot be classified as belonging to any known group. Even if a creationist does accept a fossil as transitional between two species, he or she may then insist on seeing other fossils intermediate between it and the first two. These frustrating requests can proceed ad infinitum and place an unreasonable burden on the always incomplete fossil record.

Nevertheless, evolutionists can cite further supportive evidence from molecular biology. All organisms share most of the same genes, but as evolution predicts, the structures of these genes and their products diverge among species, in keeping with their evolutionary relationships. Geneticists speak of the "molecular clock" that records the passage of time. These molecular data also show how various organisms are transitional within evolution.

14. Living things have fantastically intricate features--at the anatomical, cellular and molecular levels--that could not function if they were any less complex or sophisticated. The only prudent conclusion is that they are the products of intelligent design, not evolution.

This "argument from design" is the backbone of most recent attacks on evolution, but it is also one of the oldest. In 1802 theologian William Paley wrote that if one finds a pocket watch in a field, the most reasonable conclusion is that someone dropped it, not that natural forces created it there. By analogy, Paley argued, the complex structures of living things must be the handiwork of direct, divine invention. Darwin wrote On the Origin of Species as an answer to Paley: he explained how natural forces of selection, acting on inherited features, could gradually shape the evolution of ornate organic structures.

Generations of creationists have tried to counter Darwin by citing the example of the eye as a structure that could not have evolved. The eye's ability to provide vision depends on the perfect arrangement of its parts, these critics say. Natural selection could thus never favor the transitional forms needed during the eye's evolution -- what good is half an eye? Anticipating this criticism, Darwin suggested that even "incomplete" eyes might confer benefits (such as helping creatures orient toward light) and thereby survive for further evolutionary refinement. Biology has vindicated Darwin : researchers have identified primitive eyes and light-sensing organs throughout the animal kingdom and have even tracked the evolutionary history of eyes through comparative genetics. (It now appears that in various families of organisms, eyes have evolved independently.)

Today's intelligent-design advocates are more sophisticated than their predecessors, but their arguments and goals are not fundamentally different. They criticize evolution by trying to demonstrate that it could not account for life as we know it and then insist that the only tenable alternative is that life was designed by an unidentified intelligence.

15. Recent discoveries prove that even at the microscopic level, life has a quality of complexity that could not have come about through evolution.

"Irreducible complexity" is the battle cry of Michael J. Behe of Lehigh University, author of Darwin's Black Box: The Biochemical Challenge to Evolution. As a household example of irreducible complexity, Behe chooses the mousetrap -- a machine that could not function if any of its pieces were missing and whose pieces have no value except as parts of the whole. What is true of the mousetrap, he says, is even truer of the bacterial flagellum, a whiplike cellular organelle used for propulsion that operates like an outboard motor. The proteins that make up a flagellum are uncannily arranged into motor components, a universal joint and other structures like those that a human engineer might specify. The possibility that this intricate array could have arisen through evolutionary modification is virtually nil, Behe argues, and that bespeaks intelligent design. He makes similar points about the blood's clotting mechanism and other molecular systems.

Yet evolutionary biologists have answers to these objections. First, there exist flagellae with forms simpler than the one that Behe cites, so it is not necessary for all those components to be present for a flagellum to work. The sophisticated components of this flagellum all have precedents elsewhere in nature, as described by Kenneth R. Miller of Brown University and others. In fact, the entire flagellum assembly is extremely similar to an organelle that Yersinia pestis, the bubonic plague bacterium, uses to inject toxins into cells.

The key is that the flagellum's component structures, which Behe suggests have no value apart from their role in propulsion, can serve multiple functions that would have helped favor their evolution. The final evolution of the flagellum might then have involved only the novel recombination of sophisticated parts that initially evolved for other purposes. Similarly, the blood-clotting system seems to involve the modification and elaboration of proteins that were originally used in digestion, according to studies by Russell F. Doolittle of the University of California at San Diego. So some of the complexity that Behe calls proof of intelligent design is not irreducible at all.

Complexity of a different kind -- "specified complexity" -- is the cornerstone of the intelligent-design arguments of William A. Dembski of Baylor University in his books The Design Inference and No Free Lunch. Essentially his argument is that living things are complex in a way that undirected, random processes could never produce. The only logical conclusion, Dembski asserts, in an echo of Paley 200 years ago, is that some superhuman intelligence created and shaped life.

Dembski's argument contains several holes. It is wrong to insinuate that the field of explanations consists only of random processes or designing intelligences. Researchers into nonlinear systems and cellular automata at the Santa Fe Institute and elsewhere have demonstrated that simple, undirected processes can yield extraordinarily complex patterns. Some of the complexity seen in organisms may therefore emerge through natural phenomena that we as yet barely understand. But that is far different from saying that the complexity could not have arisen naturally.

"Creation science" is a contradiction in terms. A central tenet of modern science is methodological naturalism -- it seeks to explain the universe purely in terms of observed or testable natural mechanisms. Thus, physics describes the atomic nucleus with specific concepts governing matter and energy, and it tests those descriptions
A broadcast version of this article will air June 26 on National Geographic Today, a program on the National Geographic Channel. Please check your local listings
experimentally. Physicists introduce new particles, such as quarks, to flesh out their theories only when data show that the previous descriptions cannot adequately explain observed phenomena. The new particles do not have arbitrary properties, moreover -- their definitions are tightly constrained, because the new particles must fit within the existing framework of physics.

In contrast, intelligent-design theorists invoke shadowy entities that conveniently have whatever unconstrained abilities are needed to solve the mystery at hand. Rather than expanding scientific inquiry, such answers shut it down. (How does one disprove the existence of omnipotent intelligences?)

Intelligent design offers few answers. For instance, when and how did a designing intelligence intervene in life's history? By creating the first DNA? The first cell? The first human? Was every species designed, or just a few early ones? Proponents of intelligent-design theory frequently decline to be pinned down on these points. They do not even make real attempts to reconcile their disparate ideas about intelligent design. Instead they pursue argument by exclusion -- that is, they belittle evolutionary explanations as far-fetched or incomplete and then imply that only design-based alternatives remain.

Logically, this is misleading: even if one naturalistic explanation is flawed, it does not mean that all are. Moreover, it does not make one intelligent-design theory more reasonable than another. Listeners are essentially left to fill in the blanks for themselves, and some will undoubtedly do so by substituting their religious beliefs for scientific ideas.

Time and again, science has shown that methodological naturalism can push back ignorance, finding increasingly detailed and informative answers to mysteries that once seemed impenetrable: the nature of light, the causes of disease, how the brain works. Evolution is doing the same with the riddle of how the living world took shape. Creationism, by any name, adds nothing of intellectual value to the effort.

[Guage12]

a homie that last long ass post was BS, do you really belive all this complexity can come from nothing or a big bang?????!!!!!! evolution violates the 4th law of thermodynamics which is something like order can't come from disorder. all in all evolution doesn't stack up. all yall niggaz need to stop denying theres a God

[Mraka]

yeah sure,but thats because I never*ve seen santa claus.yu did u lucky!

[Kemosave]

That has been around for three years now and is easily rebutted. I'll have a rebuttal written up soon. Peace.

[Kemosave]

Rennie--> When Charles Darwin introduced the theory of evolution through natural selection 143 years ago, the scientists of the day argued over it fiercely, but the massing evidence from paleontology, genetics, zoology, molecular biology and other fields gradually established evolution's truth beyond reasonable doubt. Today that battle has been won everywhere -- except in the public imagination.

Kemo posts a reply--> This is pure wishful thinking on Renne’s part. John Rennie is a journalist and magazine editor of a magazine that supports a naturalist (e.g. Darwinian) position. He is not a PhD scientist. He is; however, a member of The Council for Media Integrity whose job is to serve as a watchdog regarding a balanced portrayal of science in the medias. While this association may sound like a legitimate group of noble individuals concerned about scientific truth, the fact is, it is nothing more than a group of people committed to furthering evolutionary theory and propagating their bias in the media bias. One of the members of that committee is John Rennie, who, since 1994, has served as editor of Scientific American. In the July 2002, issue of that journal, Mr. Rennie.who is supposed to be monitoring unfounded claims and misinformation about science penned an article titled “15 Ways to Expose Creationist Nonsense” (2002). The title alone speaks volumes concerning Mr. Rennie’s biased views.

The truth is that as knowledge has increased greatly in the past decade, Darwinism has fallen into more trouble than ever before; its very “proofs” backfiring as they are dismantled by a prestigious and rapidly growing number of dissenting scientists (both secular and non-secular). Darwinism has never been in doubt during my lifetime as it is right now and by scientists all over the world (secular and non-secular).

Darwinist dogma is anti-scientific in that it begins with the premise that “nothing in biology makes sense except in the light of evolution” [Dobzhansky’s Maximum]. Darwinists spend all their time trying to force science to justify their theory instead of simply going where the evidence leads them. And it gets them in a lot of trouble (as we shall see shortly) with scientists that are more interested in discovering truth than deceitfully attempting to force results to fit the theory (not fact) of general evolution. A person who rejects Dobzhansky’s claim is a better biologist than one who accepts it uncritically. Distorting the evidence to fit with a theory is the exact opposite of science and exactly what Dobzhansky encourages scientists to do and what many have chosen to do.

Rennie--> Embarrassingly, in the 21st century, in the most scientifically advanced nation the world has ever known, creationists can still persuade politicians, judges and ordinary citizens that evolution is a flawed, poorly supported fantasy. They lobby for creationist ideas such as "intelligent design" to be taught as alternatives to evolution in science classrooms. As this article goes to press, the Ohio Board of Education is debating whether to mandate such a change. Some antievolutionists, such as Philip E. Johnson, a law professor at the University of California at Berkeley and author of Darwin on Trial, admit that they intend for intelligent-design theory to serve as a "wedge" for reopening science classrooms to discussions of God.

Kemo posts a reply--> Pure dogma. What is embarrassing is that holding a theory that claims as much as this one does accountable to open scholarly review is considered a negative. The Theory of general evolution has many unconscionable great flaws that are just glossed over while the theory’s proponents pretend their evidence (which is under attack like never before by secular and non-secular scientists world-wide exactly because of the many great problems) is adequate and everyone should be ashamed for wanting to point out the many faults with it. We live in an open society where true science is never dogmatic but instead follows the evidence of eyes and ears wherever it may lead. They want a closed society where their pet theory doesn’t have to answer to reality and criticism. But the Darwinists are very paranoid now as the Design Revolution takes hold and uncovers the way Darwinian evidence has been constructed and presented in accordance with the Dobzhansky Maximum. Also it is important to note that Darwinists cry “religious” whenever it is convenient to fend off any criticism that uncovers problems with their theory. And Rennie says this knowing, and I quote him, “science owes a debt to the historical nurturing that it received at the hands of Christianity and the West.”

Rennie--> Besieged teachers and others may increasingly find themselves on the spot to defend evolution and refute creationism. The arguments that creationists use are typically specious and based on misunderstandings of (or outright lies about) evolution, but the number and diversity of the objections can put even well-informed people at a disadvantage.

Kemo--> We are way past the days of the Scopes Trial. Today agnostic science teachers are dismissed merely for sharing scholarly research with their students that empirically shows flaws with Darwinism. Teachers goose step to the beat, even if it means violating their own conscience, understanding of the truth and what it takes to be a good science teacher [e.g. critical and logical thinking] or they are persecuted. The huge and growing body of evidence that is forcing Darwinism to be rethought is completely suppressed in the classroom today. A science teacher today in K – 12th must only parrot the “adopted” curriculum even when they know for sure based on empirical scholarly evidence that it is not true or face the consequences. They withhold information from their students. And when they know that something is not true and teach it anyway they have to lie or suffer the consequences.

Seriously, the teachers that are besieged are the ones that dare to point out any of the many problems with the general evolutionary theory. And these are just the secular teachers. Lord help them if they believe in God. Remember there are testable creation models that go head-to-head with the Darwinian ones. Remember that statements of the type above, in the creation-evolution controversy, attempt to shape and control what is permitted on the playing field in advance of any discussion or weighing of evidence. This metaphysic is pervasive and insists that nothing regarding it can be criticized for any reason. The fallibleness and tentativeness that are supposed to be part of science find no place in the naturalistic metaphysic that under girds Darwinism.

Rennie--> To help with answering them, the following list rebuts some of the most common "scientific" arguments raised against evolution. It also directs readers to further sources for information and explains why creation science has no place in the classroom.

Kemo--> Yes let’s get started qualifying these assertions.

1. Evolution is only a theory. It is not a fact or a scientific law.

Rennie--> Many people learned in elementary school that a theory falls in the middle of a hierarchy of certainty -- above a mere hypothesis but below a law. Scientists do not use the terms that way, however. According to the National Academy of Sciences (NAS), a scientific theory is "a well-substantiated explanation of some aspect of the natural world that can incorporate facts, laws, inferences, and tested hypotheses." No amount of validation changes a theory into a law, which is a descriptive generalization about nature. So when scientists talk about the theory of evolution -- or the atomic theory or the theory of relativity, for that matter -- they are not expressing reservations about its truth.

Kemo--> “Science is the search for the truth,” wrote chemist Linus Pauling, winner of two Nobel prizes. Bruce Alberts, current president of the U.S. National Academy of Sciences (NAS) agreed saying in May of 2000 that “Science is basically the search of truth.” According to a 1998 booklet on science teaching issued by the NAS “it is the nature of science to test and retest explanations against the natural world.” Theories that survive repeated testing may be tentatively regarded as true statements about the world. But if there is persistent conflict between theory and evidence, the former must yield to the latter. Testing theories against the evidence never ends. The NAS correctly states that “all scientific knowledge is, in principle, subject to change as new evidence becomes available.” It doesn’t matter how long a theory has been held, or how many scientists currently believe in it. If contradictory evidence turns up, the theory must be reevaluated or even abandoned. Otherwise it is not really science but myth. Quick example: Chemist Robert Shapiro wrote a book criticizing several aspects of research on the origin of life that Darwinists had put forth as “not expressing reservations about its truth.” “We have reached a situation,” he wrote, “where a theory has been accepted as fact by some, and contrary evidence is shunted aside.” He concluded that this is “mythology rather than science.” And that is where we are today, a place where a whole lot of Darwinian mythology is being misrepresented as the most strenuous fact (even the ridiculous). And it doesn’t deserve to be. Honestly philosophical problems aside, many more open definitions exist in a wide range of scholarly publications that do not match up with Rennie’s attempt at a redefinition.

Rennie--> In addition to the theory of evolution, meaning the idea of descent with modification, one may also speak of the fact of evolution. The NAS defines a fact as "an observation that has been repeatedly confirmed and for all practical purposes is accepted as 'true.'" The fossil record and abundant other evidence testify that organisms have evolved through time. Although no one observed those transformations, the indirect evidence is clear, unambiguous and compelling.

Kemo--> Again, he’s attempting to redefine what a fact is so he can claim that which isn’t a fact to be a fact. It’s rather shameless and exactly what you would expect from someone who doesn’t believe in God but holds instead to the law of the jungle as their final authority. Now the logic that a theory disputed by some of the top scientists in the world is a fact because some other top scientists want it to be true is scientifically unsound and lacks integrity. This NAS quote is out of context with the other NAS quotes that show “it is the nature of science to test and retest explanations against the natural world.” If there is persistent conflict between theory and evidence, the former must yield to the latter. Testing theories against the evidence never ends. The NAS correctly states that “all scientific knowledge is, in principle, subject to change as new evidence becomes available.” It doesn’t matter how long a theory has been held, or how many scientists currently believe in it. If contradictory evidence turns up, the theory must be reevaluated or even abandoned. Otherwise it is not really science but myth.

The “fossil record and abundant other evidence” that “testify organisms have evolved through time” remark would be purposely deceitful if anyone but someone who had undergone a Darwinian lobotomy made it. When Darwinists respond to critics they sometimes claim that “evolution” simply mean change over time or descent with modification. Nobody doubts that descent with modification occurs in the course of ordinary biological reproduction. The question is whether descent with modification accounts for the origin of new species (in fact every species). But Darwinian evolution claims much much more. In particular, it claims that descent with modification explains the origin and diversification of all living things. Like all other scientific theories, Darwinian evolution must be continually compared with new evidence. If it does not fit the evidence, it must be reevaluated or abandoned: otherwise it is not science but myth.

Now Darwin knew, and scientists have recently confirmed, that the early fossil record turns the evolutionary tree of life upside down. When Darwin wrote ‘The Origin of the Species,’ the oldest known fossils were from a geographical period known as the Cambrian, named after rocks in Cambria, Wales. But the Cambrian fossil pattern didn’t fit Darwin’s theory. Instead of starting with one or a few species that diverged gradually over millions of years into families, then orders, then classes, they phyla, the Cambrian starts with the abrupt appearance of many fully formed phyla and classes of animals. The highest levels of the biological hierarchy appear right from the start.

Since that time, further exploration has turned up many fossil beds older than the Cambrian. As a result, many paleontologists are now convinced that the major groups of animals did appear abruptly in the early Cambrian. Older than three billion year old sediments contain fossilized single-celled organisms. Sediments only slightly younger contain “stromatolites’ which are layered mats of photosynthetic bacteria. But Precambrian fossils consist only of single celled organisms until just before the Cambrian. Edicaran fossils are no out either. The now well-documented Precambrian fossil record does not provide anything like the long history of gradual divergence required by Darwin’s theory. Paleontologists James valentine, Stanley Awramik, Philip Signor, and Peter Sadler state, “the single most spectacular phenomenon evident in the fossil record is the abrupt appearance and diversification of many living and extinct phyla” near the beginning of the Cambrian. These phyla appear fully formed and fully functional without any intermediaries to account for them. All attempts to salvage Darwin’s theory in the face of this empirical evidence have met with failure. Their recent attempts to account for the sudden appearance of advanced life on planet earth being fully formed and fully functional without predicted precursors are fatally flawed. Yet they continue to perform their victory dance for each other as if they had “solved” the riddle seeking to make the myths true. As for the “abundant other evidence,” all I have seen to date has serious problems including: Origin of life evidences, homology in vertebrate limbs, Haceckel’s embryos, Archaeopteryx, peppered moths, Darwin’s finches (which we shall address shortly since it is brought up), four winged fruit flies, fossil horses and directed evolution evidences, and any attempt to connect humans to hominids or primates, etc..

Furthermore, a fact normally is defined as an actual occurrence or something that has real existence. A theory is a plausible principle or body of principles supported by at least some facts intended to explain various phenomena. But when Darwinists talk it really means what I wish to be a fact is a fact or you cannot submit Darwinian evidences and conclusions to non-Darwinist criticism. Many scientists (secular and non-secular) say, “Ridiculous! Let the examination continue.” And that is exactly what everyone should all be saying.

Rennie--> All sciences frequently rely on indirect evidence. Physicists cannot see subatomic particles directly, for instance, so they verify their existence by watching for telltale tracks that the particles leave in cloud chambers. The absence of direct observation does not make physicists' conclusions less certain.

Kemo--> Now think about this for a minute. Evolutionists dogmatically assert that evolution is a fact, yet admit that it: (a) is based upon non-provable assumptions that are “not capable of experimental verification”; (b) bases its conclusions upon answers that are “largely conjectural”; (c) is faced with evidence “adverse” to the available facts; (d) is built upon “watered down” facts; and (e) has both historical and causal aspects that “are far from completely known.” Little wonder Dr. Kerkut stated concerning the theory of evolution: “The evidence that supports it is not sufficiently strong to allow us to consider it anything more than a working hypothesis” (1960, p. 157). I could offer manifold examples, across the entire rante of the history of evolution from historical to modern, from those IN the evolutionary camp attesting to general evolution as only a theory that may have happened. What a far cry from the assessments of Gould, Rennie, and their colleagues in the modern general evolutionary camp who have attempted to redefine what a fact is so they can claim the word in defense of their flawed theory.

Furthermore, the comparison he makes between general evolutionary theory and atomic theory is weak. Direct testable observations for the existence of subatomic particles (smaller than an atom) are much sounder than the speculation that surrounds general evolutionary theory. Take the electron for example. An electron is a subatomic particle with a negative charge and very small mass. Robert Andrews Millikan (1868 – 1953) received the Nobel Prize in Physics in 1923 for determining the charge of an electron by performing an experiment which is now known as the Millikan Oil Drop Experiment.

Ionized oil drops were suspended in an electric field to measure their charge to mass ratio. The masses of the oil drops were found by measuring the drops’ behavior in the absence of any electric field. The charge on each oil drop was an integer multiple of the same value, 1.59 X 10 to the -19 C. Using Thompson’s data for qe/mer the mass of an electron was determined. The charge of an electron (qe) 1.60 X 10 to the -19 C. The mass of an electron (me) is 9.11 X 10 to the -31 kg.

Looked like this:

[img]http://www.realreasons.org/images/issue1/oil.jpg[/img]
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[img]http://www.realreasons.org/images/issue1/oil3.jpg[/img]
[img]http://www.realreasons.org/images/issue1/oil4.jpg[/img]
[img]http://www.realreasons.org/images/issue1/oil5.jpg[/img]

Note: If some reason img's are turned off on this site you can simply do an internet search on Millikan's oil drop experiment.

The results of this repeatable experiment are far sounder than say the Stanley-Miller experiment for example. Trying to say that the quality of evidence for all life having arisen from a single cell is of the same quality of evidence for the atom is just not right or scientific. They are two different things entirely with the evidence for the atom being far sounder in every respect.

2. Natural selection is based on circular reasoning: the fittest are those who survive, and those who survive are deemed fittest.

Rennie--> "Survival of the fittest" is a conversational way to describe natural selection, but a more technical description speaks of differential rates of survival and reproduction. That is, rather than labeling species as more or less fit, one can describe how many offspring they are likely to leave under given circumstances. Drop a fast-breeding pair of small-beaked finches and a slower-breeding pair of large-beaked finches onto an island full of food seeds. Within a few generations the fast breeders may control more of the food resources. Yet if large beaks more easily crush seeds, the advantage may tip to the slow breeders. In a pioneering study of finches on the Galápagos Islands, Peter R. Grant of Princeton University observed these kinds of population shifts in the wild [see his article "Natural Selection and Darwin's Finches"; Scientific American, October 1991].

The key is that adaptive fitness can be defined without reference to survival : large beaks are better adapted for crushing seeds, irrespective of whether that trait has survival value under the circumstances.

Kemo--> General evolution by natural selection is, in essence, strictly analogous to problem solving by trial and error, and it led to the immense claim that all the design in the biosphere is ultimately the fortuitous outcome of an entirely blind random processes; a giant lottery.

All sorts of prestigious scientists and mathematicians over the years have complained that the numbers, biological pathways, and observations do not add up. Information theorist Hubert Yockey argues that the information needed to begin life could not have developed by chance; he suggests that life be considered a given, like matter or energy. Leading mathematicians declare "There is a considerable gap in the neo-Darwinian theory of evolution, and we believe this gap to be of such a nature that it cannot be bridged with the current conception of biology."

What is brought forward may be summed up as follows: Natural Selection is incompetent to account for the incipient stages of useful structures. That it does not harmonize with the co-existence of closely similar structures of diverse origin. From Mivart to Margulis, there have always been well-informed, respected scientists who have found Darwinism to be inadequate. Apparently, either the questions first raised by Mivart have gone unanswered, or some people have not been satisfied by the answers they received.

And Darwin knew that his theory of gradual evolution by natural selection carried a heavy burden when he stated, "If it could be demonstrated that any complex organ existed which could not possibly have been formed by numerous, successive, slight modifications, my theory would absolutely break down." Irreducible complex systems do exactly that. An irreducibly complex system cannot be produced directly (that is, by continuously improving the initial function, which continues to work by the same mechanism) by slight, successive modifications of a precursor system, because any precursor to an irreducibly complex system that is missing a part is by definition nonfunctional. Since natural selection can only choose systems that are already working, then if a biological system cannot be produced gradually it would have to arise as an integrated unit, in one fell swoop, for natural selection to have anything to act on.

The hypothesis, to be precise, that natural selection (in combination with mutation) is an innovative evolutionary process capable of producing new kinds of organs and organisms despite much evidence to the contrary? This article uses Darwin's finches as an example so let's examine that.

While the Beagle was in the Galipagos, Darwin collected specimens of the local wildlife, including some finches. Thirteen species of finches existed. (A fourteenth species on another island four hundred miles northeast of the Galiphgos.) The finches differ mainly in the size and shape of their beaks, and it is thought that they descended from birds that arrived from the mainland in the distant past.

In Darwin's theory, a single species turns into several varieties, then into several different species, through the action of natural selection. Since the beaks of the Galipagos finches are adapted to the different foods they eat, it seems reasonable to suppose that the various species are a result of natural selection. In fact, they seem like such a good example of Darwinian evolution that they are now known as "Darwin's finches. Truly though he only made passing mention of them and only identified six of them as finches.

It wasn't until the rise of neo-Darwinism in the 1930s that the Galipagos finches were elevated to their current prominence. Although they were first called "Darwin's finches" by Percy Lowe in 1936, it was ornithologist Lack who popularized the name a decade later. Lack's 1947 book, Danuin's Finches, summarized the evidence correlating variations in finch beaks with different food sources, and argued that the beaks were adaptations caused by natural selection. In other words, it was Lack more than Darwin who imputed evolutionary significance to the finches.

Ironically, it was also Lack who did more than anyone else to popularize the myth that the finches had been instrumental in shaping Darwin's thinking. Darwin's meager contribution to our knowledge of them grew with each re-telling of the story. According to Sulloway, "Darwin was increasingly given credit after 1947 for finches he never saw and for observations and insights about them he never made." In the most extreme form of the legend, Darwin is said to have "collected species and observed behavioral traits, such as the remarkable tool-using habit of the woodpecker finch, that were not even known in his lifetime."

Although Sulloway exploded the legend almost twenty years ago, many modern biology textbooks still claim that the Galipagos finches inspired Darwin with the idea of evolution. Gould and Keeton's Biological Science (1996) informs students that the finches "played a major role in leading Darwin to fmmulate his theory of evolution by natural selection." According to Raven and Johnson's Biology (1999), "the correspondence between the beaks of the 13 finch species and their food source immediately suggested to Darwin that evolution had shaped them." And George Johnson's Biology: Visualizing Lfe (1998) maintains that "Darwin attributed the differences in bill size and feeding habits among these finches to evolution that occurred after their ancestor migrated to the Gallpagos Islands." Johnson's textbook even tells students to "imagine themselves in Darwin's place" and "write journal pages that Darwin could have written."

Seriously though, as far as Charles Darwin's contribution is concerned, the "Darwin" in Darwin's finches is largely mythical. It wasn't until almost a century after Darwin that they assumed their present status.

If Darwin's theory is correct, then the ancestral finches that colonized the Galipagos in the distant past presumably scattered to the various islands, where they were exposed to different environmental conditions. Birds on different islands encountered differences in food supply, leading to natural selection on their eating apparatus-their beaks. Theoretically, this process could have led over time to the beak differences that now characterize thirteen separate species.

This is a plausible scenario, but the evidence that Lack cited for it was indirect. Differences in finch beaks are correlated with different food sources, and the birds are scattered among the various islands (though it is not the case that each island has its own species). The pattern seems to fit Darwin's theory, yet the case would be much stronger if there were some direct evidence for the process. One sort of evidence could be genetic. But apart from knowing that finch beaks are highly heritable and that the beak of a finch is very likely to resemble the beaks of its biological parents we know nothing about the genetics of finch beaks. Chromosome studies show no differences among the Galapagos finches, and the DNA studies that have been used to construct molecular phylogenies relied on genes unrelated to beak shape.

Another sort of direct evidence would be observations of natural selection in the wild. This evidence has been supplied by the husband-and-wife team of Peter and Rosemary Grant, who went to the Galipagos in the 1970s to observe evolution in action. The Grants made their first trip to the Galipagos in 1973. With the help of several other biologists, the Grants set about catching and banding finches on seven of the islands. Each finch was carefully measured for body weight, the lengths of its wings, legs and toes, and the length, width, and depth of its beak. There was variation among the finches in all these features, especially the beaks.

By 1975 the Grants and their colleagues had focused their attention on one of the smaller islands, Daphne Major. Its small size made Daphne Major an ideal natural laboratory where they were able to band and measure every individual in one particular species, the medium ground finch. The biologists even recorded matings, and banded and observed the offspring. They also kept track of rainfall, and how many seeds were produced by the island's plant species.

During the early 1970s Daphne Major received regular rainfall that supported an abundant food supply and a large finch population. In normal rainy seasons, such as that of 1976, the island received about 5 inches of rain; but in 1977 only about an inch fell. The 1977 drought caused a severe reduction in the availability of seeds, and the island's population of medium ground finches declined to about 15 percent of its former size. The Grants and their colleagues observed that survivors of the drought tended to have slightly larger bodies and slightly larger beaks. They also noted that the supply of small seeds was drastically reduced that year. They concluded that natural selection had strongly favored those birds capable of cracking the tough, large seeds that remained.

As a result of the drought, the average beak depth of medium ground finches increased about 5 percent. (Beak depth is the distance between the top and bottom of the beak at its base.) This amounted to a difference of about half a millimeter-the thickness of a human thumbnail. This may not seem like much, but for the finches on Daphne Major in 1977 it meant the difference between life and death.

It was also a dramatic example of natural selection in the wild. The story of the Grants' research was recounted in Jonathan
Weiner's 1994 book, The Beak of the Finch, which called the observed change in beak depth "the best and most detailed
demonstration to date ,of the power of Darwin's process." Because of this, according to Weiner, the beak of the finch is "an icon of evolution." The Grants and their colleagues realized at the time that natural selection might oscillate between dry and wet years, making beaks larger one year and smaller the next. But if beak depth were to continue increasing, then something very interesting might happen. The various species of Darwin's finches are distinguished mainly by differences in their beaks. The Grants reasoned that if natural selection can produce changes in beaks, perhaps it could also explain the origin of species among Darwin's finches.

In Scientific American in 1991, Peter Grant explained how this could happen, at least in theory. Calling the increase in beak depth during severe drought a "selection event," Grant estimated the number of such events required to transform the medium ground finch into another species: "The number is surprisingly small:

"About 20 selection events would have sufficed. If droughts occur once a decade, on average, repeated directional selection at this rate with no selection in between droughts would transform one species into another within 200 years. Even if the estimate is off by a factor of 10, the 2,000 years required for speciation is still very little time in relation to the hundreds of thousands of years the finches have been in the archipelago."

Grant's extrapolation depends, of course, on the assumption that increases in beak size are cumulative from one drought to the next. But the Grants and their colleagues knew that this is not the case. When the rains returned People who live on the west coast of North or South America know that every few years they can expect an El Nijio; a disturbance in winter weather patterns caused by unusually warm air over the Pacific Ocean. In the winter of 1982-1983, an El Nijio brought heavy rains to the Galipagos Islands, over ten times more than normal, and fifty times more than fell during the drought. Plant life exploded, and so did the finch population. After the 1982-1983 El Nijio, with food once again plentiful, the average beak size in medium ground finches returned to its previous value. In 1987 Peter Grant and his graduate student, Lisle Gibbs, reported in Nature that they had observed "a reversal in the direction of selection" due to the change in climate. "Large adult size is favored when food is scarce," they wrote, "because the supply of small and soft seeds is depleted first, and are the only those birds with large bills can crack open the remaining large and hard seeds. In contrast, small adult size is favored in years following very wet conditions, possibly because the food supply is dominated by small soft seeds."

So the evolutionary change that the Grants and their colleagues had observed during the drought of 1977 was reversed by Darwin's Finches and the heavy rains of 1983. "Selection had flipped," wrote Weiner. "The birds took a giant step backward, after their giant step forward." As Peter Grant wrote in 1991, "the population, subjected to natural selection, is oscillating back and forth" with every shift in climate. By itself, however, oscillating selection cannot produce any net change in Darwin's finches, no matter how long it continues.

If Darwinian evolution requires that one population diverge into two, the opposite would be for two previously separate populations to merge into one. Yet this may now be happening to several species of Darwin's finches. At least half of the finch species on the Galipagos are known to hybridize, though they do so infrequently. In the years following the 1982-1983 El Nijio, the Grants and their colleagues noticed that several finch species on one island were producing hybrids that not only thrived, but also reproduced successfully. In fact, the hybrids did better than the species that produced them. The Grants noted that this process, if unchecked, "should lead to fusion of the species into one population." This would not happen overnight: Extrapolating the observed frequency of hybridization, the Grants estimated that it would take one hundred to two hundred years for these species to merge completely.

So if we extrapolate from processes observed in the present, we obtain two contradictory predictions: unchecked selection for larger beaks could produce speciation in two hundred to two thousand years, while unchecked hybridization could produce the opposite of speciation in one hundred to two hundred years. Clearly, the tendency to diverge is more than offset by the tendency to merge. Of course, the fluctuating climate of the Galipagos means that both process is likely to continue indefinitely, and the Grants concluded that "over the long term there should be a selection-hybridization balance." According to Weiner it seems that a "vast, invisible pendulum [is] swinging back and forth in Darwin's islands, an oscillation with two phases," in which the finches "are perpetually being forced slightly apart and drifting back together again.

So Darwin's finches may not be merging or diverging, but merely oscillating back and forth. Their success at hybridizing, however, this raises the question about whether they are separate species at all. Fourteen species, or six? It turns out that most of the fourteen species of Darwin's finches, or at least most of the thirteen living on the Galipagos Islands-remain distinct primarily because of mating behavior. Evidence suggests that the birds choose their mates on the basis of beak morphology and song pattern. The former is inherited, while the latter is learned by young birds from their parents.

But one might expect that true species would be separated by more than beak morphology and song pattern. In human populations, race is inherited and language is learned-just as, in finches, beaks are inherited and songs are learned. Yet human populations that are separated by race and language are unquestionably part of the same species, even though such differences may make interbreeding uncommon.

Writing in Science in 1992, the Grants noted that the superior fitness of hybrids among populations of Darwin's finches "calls into question their designation as species." The following year, Peter Grant acknowledged that if species were strictly defined by inability to interbreed then "we would recognize only two species of Darwin's finch on Daphne," instead of the usual four. "The three populations of ground finches on Genovesa would "similarly be reduced to one species," Grant continued. "At the extreme, six species would be recognized in place of the current, and additional study might necessitate yet further reduction." In other words, Darwin's finches may not be fourteen separate species. Perhaps they are in the process of becoming species.

But then we would expect their tendency to diverge through natural selection to be greater than their tendency to merge through hybridization, and this is not what the evidence shows. Perhaps the Galipagos finches used to be separate species and
are now in the process of becoming fewer. But then they demonstrate the opposite of Darwinian evolution, which occurs when one species divides into separate species. The increase in average beak size in several species Galipagos finches after a severe drought returned to normal after the drought ended evidence for natural selection in the wild. In this limited sense, the finches provide evidence for Darwin's theory. As examples of the origin of species by natural selection, however, Darwin's finches leave a lot to be desired though this hasn't stopped some people from using them as examples anyway. But the only way they can do this is by exaggerating the evidence.

Thanks to years of careful research by the Grants and their colleagues, we know quite a lot about natural selection and breeding patterns in Darwin's finches. And the available evidence is clear. First, selection oscillates with climatic fluctuations, and does not exhibit long-term evolutionary change. Second, the superior fitness of hybrids means that several species of Galipagos finches might be in the process of merging rather than diverging.

The Grants' excellent field work provided us with a good demonstration of natural selection in the wild-far better than Kettlewell's peppered moths. If the Grants had stopped there, their work might stand as an example of science at its best. Yet they have tried to make more of their work than the evidence warrants. In articles published in 1996 and 1998, the Grantsvdeclared that the Darwinian theory of the origin of species "fits the facts of Darwin's Finch evolution on the Galipagos Islands," and that "the driving force" is natural selection. This claim was echoed by Mark Ridley in his 1996 college textbook, Evolution. Like the Grants, Ridley extrapolated the increase in beak size after the 1977 drought to estimate the time it would take to produce a new species. This "illustrates how we can extrapolate from natural selection operating within a species to explain the diversification of the finches from a single common ancestor." Ridley concluded: "Arguments of this kind are common in the theory of evolution." Indeed. But arguments of this kind exaggerate the truth. And this exaggeration seems to characterize many claims for Darwin's theory. Evidence for change in peppered moths is claimed as evidence for natural selection even though the selective agent has not been demonstrated. And evidence for oscillating natural selection in finch beaks is claimed as evidence for the origin of finches in the first place. Apparently, some Darwinists are prone to make inflated claims for rather meager evidence.

Does the National Academy of Sciences endorse "arguments of this kind" that exaggerate the evidence? A 1999 booklet published by the National Academy describes Darwin's finches as "a particularly compelling example" of the origin of species. The booklet goes on to explain how the Grants and their colleagues I showed "that a single year of drought on the islands can drive evolutionary changes in the finches," and that "if droughts occur about once every 10 years on the islands, a new species of finch might arise in only about 200 years." That's it. Rather than confuse the reader by mentioning that selection was reversed after the drought, producing no long-term evolutionary change, the booklet simply omits this awkward fact. Like a stock promoter who claims a stock might double in value in twenty years because it increased 5 percent in 1998, but doesn't mention that it decreased 5 percent in 1999, the booklet misleads the public by concealing a crucial part of the evidence. Truth is it seems to just resolve to the place it started eventually showing zero net gain for general evolutionary theory.

I could go on and on pointing out empirical evidence against this evidence; however, it is enough to say that this Darwinist evidence is not truth-seeking. It makes one wonder how much evidence there really is for Darwin's theory.

3. Evolution is unscientific, because it is not testable or falsifiable. It makes claims about events that were not observed and can never be re-created.

Rennie--> This blanket dismissal of evolution ignores important distinctions that divide the field into at least two broad areas: microevolution and macroevolution. Microevolution looks at changes within species over time -- changes that may be preludes to speciation, the origin of new species. Macroevolution studies how taxonomic groups above the level of species change. Its evidence draws frequently from the fossil record and DNA comparisons to reconstruct how various organisms may be related.

These days even most creationists acknowledge that microevolution has been upheld by tests in the laboratory (as in studies of cells, plants and fruit flies) and in the field (as in Grant's studies of evolving beak shapes among Galápagos finches). Natural selection and other mechanisms -- such as chromosomal changes, symbiosis and hybridization -- can drive profound changes in populations over time.

Kemo--> Biological general evolution (e.g. macroevolution) is the theory that all living things are modified descendants of a common ancestor that lived in the distant past. No one I know doubts that descent with modification occurs in the course of ordinary biological reproduction (e.g. microevolution). The question is whether descent with modification accounts for the origin of NEW species, in fact EVERY species. Darwinian evolution claims that descent with modification explains the origin and diversification of ALL living things. And this is where the theory falls down forcing them to hide behind stone walls and redefined words.

Knowledgeable, well-respected evolutionists have gone on record as stating that the General Theory of Evolution is neither testable nor falsifiable. For a concept to qualify as a scientific theory it must be supported by events, processes, or properties that can be observed, and the theory must be useful in predicting the outcome of future natural phenomena or laboratory experiments. In addition, the theory must be capable of falsification. That is, it must be possible to conceive of some experiment, the failure of which would disprove the theory. It is on the basis of such criteria that most evolutionists insist that the concept of creation be denied respectability as a potential scientific explanation of origins.

And science is not just the making of observations. It is also the making of inferences on the basis of observations within the framework of a theory. Unfortunately, in today’s scientific paradigm (especially where evolution is concerned), theories actually overrule the data. In his 2000 book, Science and Its Limits, philosopher Del Ratzsch noted that this primacy over data has had enormous implications for the practice of science, the end result being that the ultimate “court of appeal” has moved away from the actual data and toward the “informed consensus” of scientists. As he put it: “Pieces of observational data are extremely important…. [T]here is still room for disagreement among scientists over relative weights of values, over exactly when to deal with recalcitrant data, and over theory and evidence. But such disagreements often take place within the context of a broad background agreement concerning the major presuppositions of the discipline in question. This broad background of agreement is usually neither at issue nor at risk. It has a protected status…. Thus, objective empirical data have substantial and sometimes decisive influence on individual theories, but they have a more muted impact on the larger-scale structure of the scientific picture of reality” (p. 71).

All truly scientifically testable models (and there are many creation and evolutionary models) can be examined scientifically to see where the data best fits. It is poor science and poor education, to restrict instruction solely to the evolution ones. When evolutionists like Mr. Rennie attempt to depict evolution as the only legitimate scientific model, they no longer are speaking in the context of scientific truth. Either they do not know what the data actually reveal, or they deliberately are attempting to deceive. Evolution fails to answer far more questions than it purports to answer, and a creation model such as an RTB model certainly has as much (and often more) to offer as an alternative.

I’ve already addressed the finch beaks which simply oscillate depending on environmental conditions always returning to normal and how attempting to try to extrapolate this to all life comes from a single celled organism in the face of contrary scientific evidence and theories is ridiculous. Some mechanisms like natural selection deserve a lot more attention than this post provides and those discussions are very technical and very deep using a vocabulary this audience may have never even seen before. So let’s pick one that’s easy to discuss and explain it briefly.
The latest research (especially three-partner symbiosis examples) points to purposeful, intricate design rather than to mindless process. Here’s why, Symbiotic relationships pose such a challenge to Darwin's theory, since they have animals and plants of different species cooperating for the benefit of both. For example, the dodo bird ate the seeds and leaves of a plant called calvaria major. The bird benefited from having the plant as a food source, but the plant benefited from the bird's gizzard scratching its seeds as they passed through its digestive system. When the bird became extinct, the plant nearly disappeared as well, because only if its seeds are scratched can they germinate and then grow into a mature plant.

This type of relationship is found in plants and animals. Evolutionists call it coadaptation, but they have yet to come up with a plausible explanation of how this relationship could have evolved in stages.
How can plants that need certain animals to survive have existed before those animals appeared in the first place? And how do animals that need other animals to survive arrive without the other creature already being there?

An example of beneficial symbiosis (called mutualism) is between algae and the fungus of lichens. While fungi provide vital protection and moisture to algae, the algae nourish the fungi with photosynthetic nutrients that keep them alive. As a biology textbook puts it: "Neither population could exist without the other, and hence the size of each is determined by that of the other" (Mary Clark, Contemporary Biology, 1973, p. 519).

So which came first, the alga or the fungus? Since neither could exist without the other, according to evolution for both to survive they had to evolve independently of each other, yet appear at exactly the same time and with precisely the right functions.

How could two completely different species evolve separately from distinct ancestors, yet depend on each other to exist? Frankly, the idea that this relationship evolved stretches the imagination beyond the breaking point. And there are many examples of this.

Examples of cleaning symbiosis are found in the animal kingdom. In Egypt the Egyptian plover hops right into the open mouth of the Nile crocodile to remove parasites. After the job is done, whether the crocodile is hungry or not the bird always leaves unscathed.

How could such diverse animals, which normally have a predator-victim relationship, become partners in a cleanup operation? If these procedures evolved, as evolutionists contend must have happened, how many birds would have been eaten alive before the crocodile decided it was in his interest to let one clean its mouth, then proceed to let it escape? In contrast, how many birds would have continued picking crocodile teeth when they saw some of their feathery cousins eaten alive by crocodiles? They certainly are instinctively aware that better and safer ways of getting a meal are available to them. There are many examples of how different animals cooperate that simply have no common ancestor for these two separate organisms.

I think I will spend a minute just introducing another mechanism in everyday language. We can discuss all of this much further if there is interest. According to modern neo-Darwinism, genes consisting of DNA are the carriers of hereditary information; information encoded in DNA sequences directs the development of the organism; and new variations originate as mutations, or accidental changes in the DNA.

Now some DNA mutations have no effect, and most others are harmful. Occasionally, however, a rare mutation comes along that is beneficial. According to new-Darwinism, beneficial DNA mutations, though not needed for limited modifications within a species, provide the raw materials necessary for large-scale evolution.

But biochemical mutations cannot explain the large scale changes in organisms that we see in the history of life. Unless a mutation affects morphology, the shape of an organism, it cannot provide raw materials for morphological evolution which is exactly what that paragraph is claiming.

Let me explain. We’ll start at... how about with Thomas Hunt Morgan who studied spontaneous changes in individual genes that he called mutations. By the 1930’s many geneticists believed that the sort of mutations Morgan studied were the source of new variations needed for evolution. In 1937, Theodosius Dobzhansky made this a fundamental tenet of neo-Darwinism when he wrote that “mutations and chromosomal changes.. constantly and unremittingly supply the raw materials for evolution.” In the 1940’s microbiologists showed that DNA carries hereditary information, and in 1953 James Watson and Francis Crick explained how the molecular structure of DNA might determine and transmit hereditable traits. Morgan’s mutations were attributed to molecular accidents, and the picture seemed complete. In 1970, molecular biologist Jacques Monod announced that “the mechanism of Darwinism is at last securely founded.”

But it is not true. Because we now know that DNA mutations are “neutral” and have no effect at all. The vast majority of the rest are harmful. In the struggle for existence, natural selection would be expected to ignore the former and eliminate the latter. Only those rare mutations which benefit the organism would be favored by natural selection, and thus provide raw materials for evolution.

The fruitfly evidence given goes no where. Sure they discovered dozens of mutations that affect development at various stages and produce a variety of malformations (like the four winged fruit fly whose second pair of wings don’t work and make it less likely to survive in the wild). But they did not turn up a single morphological mutation that would benefit a fly in the wild. Same applies to the tiny worm studies and the zebrafish and all the other studies to date. So far, no morphological mutations that would be beneficial in nature have been found.

This is why they cite indirect evidence usually. See they can only assume that genetic differences are the cause of morphological differences. If I take you into homology you will see that there are many cases in which similarities and differences in genes are not correlated with similarities and differences in morphology. Obviously it is reasonable to question the neo-Darwinian claim that genetic mutations for raw materials for large-scale evolution occur. If you persevere through the fierce resistance of neo-Darwinists you will discover that you are not alone and that the problem is bigger than imagined. According to many biologists in the past and present, genes are not as important as neo-Darwinists try to make them out to be. Neo-Darwinian genetics have never resolved the paradox of genomic equivalence and it is a fact that scientists in other countries are much more critical of neo-Darwinian doctrine than in America. We can go into mechanisms in much more detail later as time permits. It gets deep.

Rennie--> The historical nature of macroevolutionary study involves inference from fossils and DNA rather than direct observation. Yet in the historical sciences (which include astronomy, geology and archaeology, as well as evolutionary biology), hypotheses can still be tested by checking whether they accord with physical evidence and whether they lead to verifiable predictions about future discoveries. For instance, evolution implies that between the earliest-known ancestors of humans (roughly five million years old) and the appearance of anatomically modern humans (about 100,000 years ago), one should find a succession of hominid creatures with features progressively less apelike and more modern, which is indeed what the fossil record shows. But one should not -- and does not -- find modern human fossils embedded in strata from the Jurassic period (144 million years ago). Evolutionary biology routinely makes predictions far more refined and precise than this, and researchers test them constantly.

Kemo--> Nope. Peppered moth experiments were flawed, the oscillating natural selection observed in Darwin’s finches produces no long-term evolution, rare beneficial DNA mutations occurring at the biochemical level are offset by a host of unfavorable and neutral ones and furthermore drug resistance viruses are crippled in other ways afterwards and are quickly overtaken by the originals when put back with the parent virus, the widely advertised morphological mutations in four-winged fruit flies produce cripples, not raw materials for evolution, the fossil record shows a sudden explosion of fully formed fully functional life which all attempts to explain (except the old earth testable creation model which predicts this sixth period event) just don’t work (especially the recent Darwinian attempts), etc..

With that said, the fossil evidence is open to many interpretations because individual specimens can be reconstructed in a variety of ways, and because the fossil record cannot establish ancestor-descendent relationships (One anthropologist has compared the task of “proving” evolution from fossil remains to that of reconstructing the plot of War and Peace with 13 randomly selected pages).

Recently, National Geographic magazine commissioned four artists to reconstruct a female figure from casts of seven fossil bones thought to be from the same species as skull 1470. One artist drew a creature whose forehead is missing and whose jaws look vaguely like those of a beaked dinosaur. Another drew a good looking modern woman with unusually long arms. A third drew a scrawny female with arms like a gorilla and a face like a werewolf. A fourth drew a figure covered with body hair and climbing a tree with beat eyes that glare from under a heavy gorilla like brow. A single set of fossil bones can be reconstructed in a variety of ways. Someone looking for an intermediate form to plug into an ape-to-human sequence could pick whichever drawing seems best to them (the strongly pro-Darwin magazine buried the revealing drawings on an unnumbered page among the advertisements at the back of the magazine).

Henry Gee, Chief Science Writer for Nature states, “No fossil is buried with its birth certificate. The intervals of time that separate fossils are so huge that we cannot say anything definite about their possible connection through ancestry and descent.” He points out that all evidence for human evolution “can be fitted into a small box.” Thus the conventional picture of human evolution as lines of ancestry and descent is “a completely human invention created after the fact, shaped to accord with human prejudices.” Gee concludes, “To take a line of fossils and claim they represent a lineage is not a scientific hypothesis that can be tested by an assertion that carries the same validity as a bedtime story: amusing, perhaps even instructive, but not scientific.”

The failure of homology to substantiate evolutionary claims has not been as widely publicized as have the problems in paleontology. Comparative embryology is a less glamorous pursuit than the biology of dinosaurs. Nonetheless, it fits into the general theme that advances in knowledge are not making it easier to reduce nature to the Darwinian Paradigm. The same homologous resemblance which serves to link all the members of one class together into a natural group also serves to distinguish that class unambiguously from all other classes. Similarly, the same hierarchic pattern which may be explained in terms of a theory of common descent, also, by its very nature, implies the existence of deep divisions in the order of nature. The same facts of comparative anatomy which proclaim unity also proclaim division; while resemblance suggests evolution, division, especially where it appears profound, is counter-evidence against the whole notion of transmutation.

The failure to give a plausible evolutionary explanation for the origin of life casts a number of shadows over the whole field of evolutionary speculation. It represents yet another case of a discontinuity where a lack of empirical evidence of intermediates coincides with great difficulty in providing a plausible hypothetical sequence of transitional forms. It therefore tends to reinforce the possibility that the discontinuities of nature may be much more fundamental than merely the artificial result of random sampling that evolution implies.

Moreover, the seemingly intractable difficulty of explaining how a living system could have gradually arisen as a result of known chemical and physical processes has turned into a very big challenge for general evolutionists. They are farther from ever and growing farther every day as the improbability grows. They continue to claim success dogmatically despite all evidence to the contrary of course driving even more prestigious scientists away from their position as they discover through their own research that it takes more than a position to show that something is true. The obvious possibility that factors as yet undefined by science may have played a role is a concession, of course, the thin end of a very dangerous wedge for once it is conceded that one evolutionary event has involved novel and unknown processes and has been more than a matter of chance and selection then the whole framework of Darwinian evolution is threatened. An obvious extrapolation is suggested - may not these unidentified processes have been involved in other problematical areas of evolution? On the whole, the new biochemical picture has not had the effect that evolutionary theorists might have hoped. It has not blurred the distinction between living and non-living objects.

... evolution implies that between the earliest-known ancestors of humans (roughly five million years old) and the appearance of anatomically modern humans (about 100,000 years ago), one should find a succession of hominid creatures with features progressively less apelike and more modern, which is indeed what the fossil record shows.
However, the fact that evolutionists can place creatures that lived in the past in an order to suit their theory does not demonstrate that those living things actually underwent such a process of evolution. That opinion is shared by Nature magazine editor Henry Gee, one of John Rennie's fellow evolutionists. In his book In Search of Deep Time, (1999) Gee points out that all the evidence for human evolution "between about 10 and 5 million years ago-several thousand generations of living creatures-can be fitted into a small box." He concludes that conventional theories of the origin and development of human beings are "a completely human invention created after the fact, shaped to accord with human prejudices", and adds:
To take a line of fossils and claim that they represent a lineage is not a scientific hypothesis that can be tested, but an assertion that carries the same validity as a bedtime story-amusing, perhaps even instructive, but not scientific.

Recently, Gee also made a very important comment on the new skull fossil found in Chad (Sahelanthropus tchadensis) and its implications for the theory of evolution. According to Gee, "Whatever the outcome, the skull shows, once and for all, that the old idea of a 'missing link' is bunk". He also explains that the there is no evidence for the idea of human evolution in the fossil record; It is simply a projection created according to evolutionist assumptions:

Furthermore, Two related studies recently reported by an international team from Stanford University, University of California at Berkeley, and Oxford University add to the growing weight of evidence supporting a recent origin of humanity that is in line with the biblical date.

Numerous Y chromosome sequence studies have already demonstrated a recent origin of humanity. This technique assumes a common ancestor for all human males and that the DNA sequence differences in the Y chromosome result from mutations. Knowing the mutation rate allows an estimate of the time when humanity originated. Y chromosome analysis is a particularly “clean” technique since: 1) long stretches of the Y chromosome do not recombine; 2) the Y chromosome displays single-parent inheritance; and 3) it is thought that the Y chromosome undergoes relatively rapid mutational change. In spite of these strengths, this technique is still in its “infancy” with much room to become more robust.
Enter the two new studies. The research teams identified new sequence variations in the Y chromosome. This finding allowed them to expand the region of the Y chromosome available for defining human origins. With a larger sample size and longer sequence along the Y chromosome available for analysis, the two teams measured humanity’s origin to occur around 50,000 years ago. Moreover, they noted what appears to be a rapid and substantial growth in the number of human sub-populations (based on Y chromosome “types”) and a significant population expansion around 28,000 years ago consistent with Genesis 10 and 11.

It is exciting that as the Y chromosomal methodologies become sounder, they reflect consistency with the results of earlier studies and with the biblical account of humanity’s origin and spread around the world.
The closer one examines John Rennie's words, the more evolutionist frustrations become apparent.

Now let’s look at the assertion that “Evolutionary biology routinely makes predictions far more refined and precise than this, and researchers test them constantly.”

Wherever life arises, by far the biggest problem is the unfeasibility of generating, without supernatural input, the required degree of complexity. A wide gulf separates an aqueous solution of a few amino acids from the simplest living cell. Years ago, molecular biophysicist Harold Morowitz calculated the size of this gulf. If one were to take the simplest living cell and break every chemical bond within it, he said, the odds that the cell would reassemble under ideal natural conditions would be one chance in a number so big that to write it out would take thousands of pages.

In light of such a number, the time scale issue becomes completely irrelevant. What does it matter if every possible planet in the universe has been around for 10 seconds, 10 billion years, or 10 quadrillion years? Even if all the matter in the visible universe were converted into the building blocks of life, and even if, by some unknown means, assembly of these building blocks proceeded randomly once every microsecond for the entire age of the universe, the odds would improve by a barely perceptible fraction.

One might think that naturalists would be hopelessly discouraged by Morowitz's odds. But that is not the case. They have searched for ways to bring the odds more in favor of their belief that life arose naturally on Earth and probably on other planets as well.

Response 1 : sequencing flexibility. Naturalists typically counter Morowitz's odds by pointing out that not every amino acid and nucleotide must be strictly sequenced for life molecules to function. They are right about that, and their observation does improve the odds a bit. However, the odds go the other way when one learns that Morowitz treated all the amino acids as bioadve (participants in life chemistry). In fact, only twenty of the more than eighty naturally occurring amino acids are bioactive, and of that twenty, only the l

[Kemosave]

only the left-handed ones enter in. Furthermore, Morowitz assumed totally favorable conditions and totally constructive chemical processes. Under natural circumstances, destructive chemical processes operate at least as frequently as constructive ones. Thus the odds for the assembly of the simplest living entity actually grow worse as more details are figured into the calculation.

Response 2: simplicity. Some scientists suggest that the. simplest living entity 3.5 billion years ago may have been far simpler than the simplest organism of today. If they are right, that would change Morowitz's calculations. The difficulty here is that conditions on Earth 3.5 billion years ago were insufficiently different from conditions today to support such a hypothesis. In astronomical terms, conditions are similar enough that one would expect spontaneous generation of life to continue today if it occurred then, and evidence of that is not seen. But the simplicity (or rather, reduced complexity) of early organisms presents another problem. Organisms below a certain level of complexity cannot survive independently. Complete genome sequences of the oldest and simplest independent life Evolution's forms appearing in the fossil record - life forms 3.5 billion years old - contain between fourteen hundred and nineteen hundred gene products (genes describing the assembly sequence of functional protein~). It seems early organisms were not, and could not have been, as simple as some scientists have suggested.

Response 3: multitalented RNA. A few papers recently published in the journal Science discuss what seemed, at first glance, a possible way around some of the complexities of life's origin. Provided is a brief review of the background to explain the researchers’ hopes - and disappointments. Molecules responsible for life chemistry cannot function by themselves. DNA (molecules that hold the blueprints for constructing life molecules), proteins (molecules that follow portions of the blueprints in building and repairing life molecules), and RNA (molecules that carry the blueprints from the DNA to specific proteins) are all interdependent. Thus, for life to originate mechanistically, all three kinds of molecules must emerge spontaneously and simultaneously from inorganic compounds. Even the most optimistic of researchers agree that the chance appearance of these incredibly complex molecules of exactly the right type and number at exactly the same time and place lies beyond the realm of natural possibility.

A ray of hope that this complexity barrier could be overcome came from an experiment performed in 1987. It demonstrated that one kind of RNA can act as an enzyme or catalyst (an agent to facilitate a chemical process). That is, this RNA molecule appeared to perform the functions of a protein, at least to a limited degree. This finding led to some leaps of faith. Because researchers already assumed that RNA can come together under prebiotic conditions more easily than DNA or proteins can, some wondered whether a primitive RNA molecule, capable of functioning as a protein and as DNA, evolved by natural means out of a primordial soup. In time, it was proposed, this "primitive" RNA specialized, evolving into the three kinds of molecules now recognized as RNA, DNA, and proteins.

Newer discoveries showed still more protein-like capabilities of RNA molecules. A research group presented evidence that a certain RNA molecule could stimulate two amino acids to join together with a peptide bond (the kind of chemical bond formed in protein. A second research team observed another RNA molecule both making and breaking the bonds that join amino acids. Though these capabilities, plus the ones observed earlier, add up to only a tiny fraction of all the functions proteins perform, several origin-of-life theorists proposed that no proteins were necessary for the first life forms.

These new findings and hypotheses may seem to streamline the origin of life by natural processes, but a closer look at the realities say they do not. Even if a single primordial molecule could perform all the functions of modem DNA, RNA, and proteins, such a molecule would be no less complex in its information content (that is, its built-in "knowledge" of what to do) than the sum of modem DNA, RNA, and proteins. In other words, the task of assembling such an incredibly versatile molecule is no easier than assembling the three different kinds of molecules. The information content of the three is simply concentrated into one enormously complex molecule. Even Leslie Orgel, a leading proponent of an RNA origin of life, admits, "You have to get an awful lot of things right, and nothing wrong."

Another catch in these arguments is the false notion that RNA assembles more easily than do proteins or DNA. For twenty years researchers and texts taught that RNA had been synthesized in a lab under prebiotic conditions. Robert Shapiro exposed this myth at a meeting of the International Society for the Study of the Origin of Life held at Berkeley, California, in 1986. Shapiro traced all references to RNA synthesis back to one ambiguous paper published in 1967. He went on to demonstrate that the synthesis of RNA under prebiotic conditions is essentially impossible. Shapiro later published his case against RNA self-synthesis in the journal Origins of Life and Evolution of the Biosphere, and it is a case that remains unchallenged to this day. Additional problems put the self-assembly of both Earth life and extraterrestrial life in doubt. One is RNA survivability. The various naturalistic hypotheses for life's origin demand that RNA and its components hold together for many millions of years. At warm temperatures RNA sequences come apart like beads on a broken string. At the time of life's origin, Earth's surface was hot - roughly between 80" and 90" C (176" and 194" F), without any cold spots. The RNA nucleotides themselves (the beads) decompose at warm temperatures in a just few years or even, according to some results, in a few weeks. Even at cool temperatures, problems exist.

Outside the protection afforded by a cell membrane (composed of two layers of complex fatty molecules with a bunch of specialized proteins sandwiched in between), no environment provides sufficient stability and protection for RNA molecules and their bases. In other words, RNA molecules cannot survive outside cell membranes, while cell membranes cannot be constructed without RNA. Both must come together simultaneously. With such observations, the RNA response to Morowitz's odds appears completely inadequate. The life span of the universe, much less the life span of any particular planet in the universe, is far too short to have permitted life to arise on its own anywhere at all.

Rennie--> Evolution could be disproved in other ways, too. If we could document the spontaneous generation of just one complex life-form from inanimate matter, then at least a few creatures seen in the fossil record might have originated this way. If super intelligent aliens appeared and claimed credit for creating life on earth (or even particular species), the purely evolutionary explanation would be cast in doubt. But no one has yet produced such evidence.

Kemo--> This is exactly what occurred. They call it the Cambrian explosion. All Darwinian attempts to explain it just don’t work though they mislead the public by claiming all sorts of very improbable things to explain the sudden appearance of fully formed fully functional life without anywhere near anything that is adequate precursor for it.

Furthermore, a calculation of the probability for there existing just one naturally occurring planet anywhere in the observable universe with the capacity to support physical life is outlined in various scientific research and is too lengthy to actually post here. That probability is less than 1 chance in (the number 1 followed by 174 zeros). To put that number in perspective, the entire universe contains far less protons and neutrons. These statistics have driven some scientists to abandon the premise that E.T. requires an Earthlike home. They have begun to speculate about other locations, called "exotic life sites," where life might exist in the universe.

This exotic-life-site hypothesis, like the other, appears to be an interesting yet ultimately hitless suggestion for how intelligent life might exist elsewhere in the universe. The bottom line is that, if E.T. has a home, it must be a planet like Earth orbiting a star like the sun in a galaxy like the Milky Way. And that possibility, as ongoing research shows, seems less possible as each year passes. In fact, the number of known characteristics that must be fine-tuned for physical life has more than tripled since 1995. Meanwhile, the probability for finding a planet, or other heavenly body, anywhere in the universe with the capacity to support life has shrunk by a much greater proportion. They, of course, ignore all this evidence best they can as scientists don’t get wealthy and famous stating the truth that our planet appears to be a privileged one (regarding our universe).

Just an educational note regarding a definition of biological life, living systems such as human beings are made up of cells (roughly 3 trillion cells for a typical adult male for example), each containing all the characteristics of life. These cells in turn are made up of atoms with about as many atoms in a cell as there are cells in a human being. Individual atoms are not alive, and the dividing line between living and dead matter (biologically speaking) appears to be somewhere between a cell and an atom.

It should be noted that the idea of falsifiability as the defining characteristic of science originated with philosopher Karl Popper in the 1930s. More recent elaborations on his thinking have expanded the narrowest interpretation of his principle precisely because it would eliminate too many branches of clearly scientific endeavor.

Kemo--> Like good dictators, Darwinists only like “tools” which serve their theory. The rest they wish to discard. The truth is that most theories end up not being true and falsifiability is intricately a part of the process of helping to determine which ones are not.

4. Increasingly, scientists doubt the truth of evolution.

Rennie--> No evidence suggests that evolution is losing adherents. Pick up any issue of a peer-reviewed biological journal and you will find articles that support and extend evolutionary studies or that embrace evolution as a fundamental concept.

Conversely, serious scientific publications disputing evolution are all but nonexistent. In the mid-1990s George W. Gilchrist of the University of Washington surveyed thousands of journals in the primary literature, seeking articles on intelligent design or creation science. Among those hundreds of thousands of scientific reports, he found none. In the past two years, surveys done independently by Barbara Forrest of Southeastern Louisiana University and Lawrence M. Krauss of Case Western Reserve University have been similarly fruitless.

Creationists retort that a closed-minded scientific community rejects their evidence. Yet according to the editors of Nature, Science and other leading journals, few antievolution manuscripts are even submitted. Some antievolution authors have published papers in serious journals. Those papers, however, rarely attack evolution directly or advance creationist arguments; at best, they identify certain evolutionary problems as unsolved and difficult (which no one disputes). In short, creationists are not giving the scientific world good reason to take them seriously.

Kemo--> Hogwash. What is true is that in the current oppressive culture in America today for scientists, if you are not already established and want to be taken seriously then you have to “come out” as a Darwinist. Refusal to do so could very well affect your career choices and expose you to career persecution. Of course peer reviewed biological journals have articles that continue the false premises of Darwinian evolution but they also have articles that go in the opposite direction. And the number and importance of those articles are growing... I remember I once saw a “peer reviewed scholarly article” in Nature that consisted of an entire page of someone literally screaming “Darwin is true! Why can’t you accept it? Accept the truth!” basically over and over. No substance whatsoever. I can only surmise this person had to do this to either keep their position or position them for promotion. Totally baseless and without merit, the article said nothing of substance and was a waste of paper.

The truth is that in Rennie's view, scientific authorities whose works are quoted are always evolutionists, but that "dishonest creationists" try to portray these people as being opponents of evolution. However, the truth of the matter is very different. Creationists do not try to portray the evolutionist authorities from whom they take extracts as being opposed to evolution. Stephen Jay Gould, Alan Feduccia or Henry Gee… and manifold others; nobody claims such scientists are opposed to evolution. Yet these and many other similar supporters of evolution have seen and spoken about the deficiencies in the theory of evolution. Nothing could be more natural than for their comments on such matters to be taking into account.

The reason for the great number of such quotations is that the theory of evolution is a mass of speculation. Since there is no concrete evidence for the theory, evolutionists engage in speculation on just about every aspect of it. Since that speculation does not conform to the available facts, gaps keep emerging, and various scientists report on the fact. This is the reason of why we have so many quotes doubting evolution in a committed Darwinist establishment.

Organizations like RTB collect and review scholarly scientific articles from all over the world and they report that both the number and importance of scholarly articles that do not support Darwinism is growing rapidly. That would be from the 1960’s up till today. So that statement is just false. Also what they are omitting to tell you is that there are testable creation models and panels of PhD researchers and scientists that believe in them who publish all sorts of articles every year.

5. The disagreements among even evolutionary biologists show how little solid science supports evolution.

Rennie--> Evolutionary biologists passionately debate diverse topics : how speciation happens, the rates of evolutionary change, the ancestral relationships of birds and dinosaurs, whether Neanderthals were a species apart from modern humans, and much more. These disputes are like those found in all other branches of science. Acceptance of evolution as a factual occurrence and a guiding principle is nonetheless universal in biology.

Unfortunately, dishonest creationists have shown a willingness to take scientists' comments out of context to exaggerate and distort the disagreements. Anyone acquainted with the works of paleontologist Stephen Jay Gould of Harvard University knows that in addition to co-authoring the punctuated-equilibrium model, Gould was one of the most eloquent defenders and articulators of evolution. (Punctuated equilibrium explains patterns in the fossil record by suggesting that most evolutionary changes occur within geologically brief intervals -- which may nonetheless amount to hundreds of generations.) Yet creationists delight in dissecting out phrases from Gould's voluminous prose to make him sound as though he had doubted evolution, and they present punctuated equilibrium as though it allows new species to materialize overnight or birds to be born from reptile eggs.

When confronted with a quotation from a scientific authority that seems to question evolution, insist on seeing the statement in context. Almost invariably, the attack on evolution will prove illusory.

Kemo--> I admit that certain groups of creationists over the years have done what is being asserted. However; many honest scientists who believe the record of nature aligns with whatever creation model they hold to sincerely engage Darwinists in an honest search for truth and in good faith. The reason this is the type of dogmatic propaganda that we often see is that it seeks to paint all creationists as the same so as to bolster their position. This is very unscientific. It is deceitful. Scientists of all faiths and positions worldwide currently debate diverse topics as they should. The last statement is false as well. Certainly some creationists (I’m thinking of backwoods Arkansas young earther types here) have engaged in this but there are just as many scholarly scientists who happen to believe the record of nature matches up with a particular testable creation model that do not. They engage on research and there is nothing illusory about the conclusions real science reaches when it empirically does not support Darwinian Theory. This false assertion is consistent with the organizations primarily Darwinist in nature that all seem to indicate that there is not the slightest bit of evidence showing that general evolutionary theory has ever been wrong on any point whatsoever. And when that assertion is made by scientists and educators who know better it is a very deliberate and deceitful untruth. Just the opposite is true. In fact, I have already presented the results of some very prestigious PhD scientists’ primary research from organizations like Caltech, for example, that show just the opposite is true.

And what is not illusory, unfortunately, are the unethical lengths some evolutionists and their fans will go to misrepresent the evidence. They practice exactly what they accuse some others of practicing. That last assertion is simply another false assertion.

6. If humans descended from monkeys, why are there still monkeys?

Rennie--> This surprisingly common argument reflects several levels of ignorance about evolution. The first mistake is that evolution does not teach that humans descended from monkeys; it states that both have a common ancestor.

The deeper error is that this objection is tantamount to asking, "If children descended from adults, why are there still adults?" New species evolve by splintering off from established ones, when populations of organisms become isolated from the main branch of their family and acquire sufficient differences to remain forever distinct. The parent species may survive indefinitely thereafter, or it may become extinct.

Kemo--> Obviously, nobody holding to a testable creation model that I respect and people I even don’t respect quite frankly use this as an argument. It’s clearly a straw-man argument, and I think in a sense it’s designed to belittle the intellectual quality that is coming from the many researchers and scientists when it comes to genuine criticisms from a scientific perspective of biological evolution.

7. Evolution cannot explain how life first appeared on earth.

Rennie--> The origin of life remains very much a mystery, but biochemists have learned about how primitive nucleic acids, amino acids and other building blocks of life could have formed and organized themselves into self-replicating, self-sustaining units, laying the foundation for cellular biochemistry. Astrochemical analyses hint that quantities of these compounds might have originated in space and fallen to earth in comets, a scenario that may solve the problem of how those constituents arose under the conditions that prevailed when our planet was young.

Creationists sometimes try to invalidate all of evolution by pointing to science's current inability to explain the origin of life. But even if life on earth turned out to have a nonevolutionary origin (for instance, if aliens introduced the first cells billions of years ago), evolution since then would be robustly confirmed by countless microevolutionary and macroevolutionary studies.

Kemo--> This makes sense if you have had your Darwin lobotomy and are looking through your Darwinian rose colored glasses. In other words, the origin of life is only a mystery when you try to account for it in purely Darwinian terms. The rest of the statement is incorrect. Many scholarly books and articles have been written in the past several years by a host of scientists and researchers showing exactly how life could not have formed and organized themselves into self-replicating, self-sustaining units by purely Darwinian processes. The subject matter is highly technical, however.

Contrary to what Rennie claims, the question of how "primitive nucleic acids, amino acids and other building blocks of life" emerged in the primitive atmosphere on earth is a terrible dilemma for evolutionists. They used to think the problem had been resolved in the primordial atmosphere experiments yet scientists finally realized that the primordial atmosphere was not based on methane-ammonia and that it contained large amounts of oxygen, for which reason it emerged that it was impossible for even the simplest organic molecules, such as amino acids, to be synthesized. Seriously, even if we did that simple building blocks such as nucleic acids or amino acids did somehow synthesize in the primitive atmosphere (or had come from outer space, as Rennie claimed after the above lines), that hypothesis still does not benefit the theory of evolution in any way. The problem is one of how these simple organic compounds came to turn into a living cell of incredible complexity and containing genetic information? Contrary to Rennie's claim, organic molecules have never been observed to "organize themselves" and turn into self-reproducing, living organisms. No observation, experiment or even theoretical study has ever been performed that might suggest that could ever happen. But there is a lot of data to the contrary, however.

Now let me explain something further, forms of life existed within 100 million years of the Earth's surface cooling. But life goes back even further in time than that. The ratio of certain carbon molecules - specifically, carbon- 12 to carbon- 13 - found in ancient rocks indicates that life abounded on Earth as early as 3.86 billion years ago. Thus, primitive life appeared on Earth within a time window no wider than 40 million years. While 40 million years might seem a long time to most people, naturalists consider it hopelessly minuscule. And new findings suggest that the time window was even narrower. The era between 3.86 and 3.5 billion years ago held grave dangers for life, including bombardment by asteroids (some huge enough to be called small planets) and comets. The intense bombardment that prevailed from 4.3 to 3.9 billion years ago gradually subsided between 3.9 and 3.5 billion years ago, but astronomers calculate that at least thirty catastrophic impacts must have occurred during the latter period. In other words, life sprang up on Earth (and then sprang up again) in what could be called geologic "instants" -periods of 10 million years or less between impacts.

Some optimistic researchers initially suggested that the bombardment could have contributed to life's origins. Glossing over the destructive effects of the collisions, they proposed that this bombardment might have delivered concentrated doses of biochemical building blocks from extraterrestrial sources. Further research argues against this idea. Though some comets, meteorites, and interplanetary dust particles do carry simple hydrocarbons (molecules containing two of life's key elements) and even a few amino acids, they carry far too few to make a difference. Nor are the amino acids all oriented left-handed as life requires. A slight excess of left-handed over right-handed amino acids in a few meteorites has been proved to have arisen from terrestrial biological contamination. In fact, with every helpful molecule would have come several more unhelpful ones - useless molecules that would have gotten in the way of the needed ones. The conclusion one must draw is that bombardment from space destroyed the fragile web of life on Earth repeatedly and that life repeatedly reappeared within a time frame much too short to make room for evolutionary processes even if they could show that life arose spontaneously or was deposited here (which they can not).

Furthermore, the maximum number of unique proteins or tries available for the assembly of the first cell on Earth would have been fewer than 1045 proteins. The mass of the water of hydration for a protein ranges between 10% and 20% of the mass of the protein. Earth contains 1.4x1024 grams of water. This amount of water could hydrate 1.4x1025 grams of protein at 10% hydration. The mass of 1045 proteins, each composed of 100 amino acid residues, is more than 1.6x1025 grams and would have less than a 10% hydration resulting in a thick sludge filling all bodies of water.

A collection of 1045 proteins could form [[1045]10]/10! or more than 10443 combinations of 10 proteins. If every combination of 10 proteins formed were to exist for only 1 second, fewer than 1061 combinations would exist in 3 billion years. The probability of assembling a specific combination of 10 proteins in 3 billion years would be 1 chance in 10382. No protein could be eliminated prior to assembling into every possible combination with 9 other proteins, a total of more than 10399 combinations. The random elimination of proteins to make way for new proteins could remove a necessary, functional protein just as readily as a non-functional protein. Therefore, the maximum number of unique proteins or tries available for the naturalistic assembly of the first cell on Earth was fewer than 1045 proteins.

The probability of naturalistically assembling an integrated, functional, complex enzyme of 100 amino acid residues from an equimolar collection of biological amino acids is about 1 chance in 1065 per try. [3.] The probability of finding 1 of the 10 functional, complex enzymes among 1045 proteins composed of only L- isomer, biological amino acids would be 10x~1/1065 per try x1045 tries or about 1 chance in 1019. The probability of finding all 10 functional, complex enzymes for the first cell within such a collection of 1045 proteins would be 1 chance in [[1020]10]/10! or less than 1 chance in 10193.

Two functional proteins would be unlikely to recognize each other when they bumped together. Nothing would confine the two proteins to the immediate vicinity as they waited for a third functional protein to come along. Similarly, two functional proteins would be unlikely to recognize the third. Nothing would confine the three proteins to the immediate vicinity as they waited for the fourth. And so on up to the tenth.

The best overall probability of ever assembling 10 integrated, functional, complex enzymes for the first cell would be the probability of finding all 10 functional, complex enzymes for the first cell within a collection of 1045 proteins, which is less than 1 chance in 10193, multiplied by the probability of ever assembling a specific combination of 10 proteins, which is 1 chance in 10382. The product of the two probabilities is less than 1 chance in 10575. The improbability of this event is vaguely comprehended when compared to the probability of randomly selecting a specific proton out of the universe, which is better than 1 chance in 1080 per try. The naturalistic assembly of the first cell on Earth or any place else in the entire universe is an extremely irrational scientific hypothesis.

The probability of the naturalistic assembly of any first cell is far worse. A collection of 1045 proteins available for assembly into a first cell would not be composed of only L- isomer, biological amino acid residues. The residues would include D- isomers and non-biological amino acids. Sparking experiments in a vessel containing hydrogen, methane, ammonia and water produce a racemic mixture of amino acids. If 10% of the amino acids are glycine, 90% of the amino acids are in either a D- or L- isomer. The probability of a 100 amino acid residue protein incorporating only L- isomers is 1 chance in 290 or 1 chance in 1027.

Sparking experiments produce biological and non-biological amino acids in a ratio of 2:1. The probability of a 100 amino acid residue protein incorporating only biological amino acids is (2/3)100 or less than 1 chance in 1017.

The probability of naturalistically assembling a protein composed of 100 amino acid residues, each residue an L- isomer of a biological amino acid, is 1 chance in 1027 multiplied by less than 1 chance in 1017 or less than 1 chance in 1044. The approximate number of proteins composed of only L- isomer, biological amino acid residues within a collection of 1045 proteins would be about ten (10). At best, complex enzymes, which could function within any first cell, would be extremely few and far between.

The naturalistic generation of reducing sugars produces D- and L- isomers. Only the D- isomer of deoxyribose is incorporated into DNA. The probability of incorporating 1000 molecules of deoxyribose as only the D- isomer is 1 chance in 21000 or 1 chance in 10300. Reducing sugars are chemically reactive and bond to polypeptides far more readily than do amino acids. Chemically bonding a reducing sugar to a polypeptide ends polymerization.

The probability of the naturalistic assembly of any first cell containing only 10 different types of integrated, functional, complex enzymes, is essentially zero whether on Earth, in the solar system, in our galaxy or in any other location within the universe. No scientific explanation exists for the naturalistic assembly of any first cell. The search for life on Mars, on Europa or on planets located in other solar systems is a waste of taxpayer’s money. The naturalistic assembly or evolution of any first cell is an extremely irrational scientific hypothesis.

8. Mathematically, it is inconceivable that anything as complex as a protein, let alone a living cell or a human, could spring up by chance.

Rennie--> Chance plays a part in evolution (for example, in the random mutations that can give rise to new traits), but evolution does not depend on chance to create organisms, proteins or other entities. Quite the opposite : natural selection, the principal known mechanism of evolution, harnesses nonrandom change by preserving "desirable" (adaptive) features and eliminating "undesirable" (nonadaptive) ones. As long as the forces of selection stay constant, natural selection can push evolution in one direction and produce sophisticated structures in surprisingly short times.

As an analogy, consider the 13-letter sequence "TOBEORNOTTOBE." Those hypothetical million monkeys, each pecking out one phrase a second, could take as long as 78,800 years to find it among the 2613 sequences of that length. But in the 1980s Richard Hardison of Glendale College wrote a computer program that generated phrases randomly while preserving the positions of individual letters that happened to be correctly placed (in effect, selecting for phrases more like Hamlet's). On average, the program re-created the phrase in just 336 iterations, less than 90 seconds. Even more amazing, it could reconstruct Shakespeare's entire play in just four and a half days.

Kemo--> Natural Selection is not a conscious mechanism. If it is therefore to select a chance change, this has to provide the organism with an effective advantage. Yet many complex organs in living things provide no advantage at all unless they are fully formed. It is therefore impossible for natural selection to make the near infinite number of selections that would need to be made in the hopelessly short time period available.
But let’s address modern research regarding mutation; specifically "environmentally-directed mutation." Australian molecular biologist (and skeptic) Michael Denton believe that directed evolution drives another nail in the coffin of neo-Darwinian evolutionary theory.
In late 1988 two papers by respected scientists appeared, one in Nature and one in Genetics, papers which threatened to undermine the dogma of purely chance mutations in the blind process of neo-Darwinian evolution. Cairns and Hall independently showed that a strain of the human gut bacterium E. coli can significantly increase the incidence of adaptive mutations in response to the stress of a previously unusable food source. The motivation for these studies was not religious; rather, it came from the strength of the directed-mutation phenomenon observed by many researchers. Such observations are not readily discussed in the literature apparently because of researchers' bias toward chance.
In particular, John Cairns' work at Harvard with cancer-causing mutations made him suspect that more than spontaneous mutations were involved. Cairns suggests that some mechanism for an organism's "testing a phenotype before adopting a new genotype" is in operation. He surmises that this amazing mechanism has simply evolved.

The first objection to these studies was that they promoted Lamarckism, i.e. the erroneous notion that organisms pass on superficially acquired characteristics to their progeny. This criticism was leveled by geneticists Levin (quoted in Moffat9) and Strickberger. Hall's reply (again, according to Moffat) is that the issue has to do with a shifting mutation rate, not with acquired characteristics. Other charges have been raised, some about the "unrepresentative" nature of the specific bacterial strains and specific kinds of mutations used in both Cairns' and Hall's studies, but these have been answered in Hall's newest paper.

Hall distinguishes two levels of environmentally-directed mutations. "Cairnsian mutations" are those that "occur more often when they are advantageous than neutral." This level is called by Shapiro the "weak form of the directed mutation hypothesis." The second level, called the "strong form" (also Shapiro), is still under study. It asks whether cells can actually "choose" or specifically retain advantageous mutations. The "weak form" is well established; the "strong form" is being contended, sometimes hotly, because of its non-random nature.
Hall's paper discusses three theoretical mechanisms by which directed mutations may occur. A fourth molecular mechanism was published a month after Hall's paper by Shapiro and Leach.11 The latter paper addresses recent antagonistic findings by Lenskil7 and Mittler,8 suggesting that these findings do not exclude environ mental direction in certain steps of the molecular process.

A yet more recent--and more mellow--antagonism to Hall's latest paper comes from molecular biologist Stahl. He acknowledges that those alleging Lamarckism are overstating the case. He concludes, however, that although the environment can influence the mutation rate, it is of no major consequence for neo-Darwinian evolution. He suggests that the accident v. design controversy is a non-issue trumped up by non-scientific journalists.

Hall, acting the role of the dedicated, unbiased researcher, is unemotional about the impact and ramifications that a shifting mutation rate will bring to other branches of biology. He says, "If it does turn out that Cairnsian mutations are common, we will face the challenge of trying to estimate how much adaptive variation in natural populations derives from random mutations and how much from selectively driven mutations."
Others are more direct in asserting that molecular taxonomy (classification) is in serious trouble if genes can be variably affected by the environment. Already, distinguishing analogy from homology, i.e. distinguishing parallel evolution (e.g. mimicry) from direct inheritance of characters between taxonomic groups, is one of the shakiest conceptual aspects of evolutionary theory.

Despite the initial response of disdainful skepticism, the "weak form" of environmentally-directed mutation has been given grudging acceptance. In the literature, the controversy is slowing from a boil to a simmer. Beneath the surface, though, evolutionary theorists still fear the "strong form" of directed mutation. Hall reminds his peers, "We should be cautious ... about rejecting the notion of 'directed' mutations simply because it makes us more comfortable to do so."

Directed mutation may yet be found in higher organisms, possibly within the next five years. If or when the "strong" hypothesis is confirmed, this phenomenon will disturb the basic mechanism of natural selection which is central to neo-Darwinian evolution. And there are many evidential challenges like this to Darwinian Theory currently in progress.

Now Rennie tries to cover up a gaping hole in the theory of evolution, and employs the same trick as those of Richard Dawkins. The example he gives is that the phrase 'TOBEORNOTTOBE' was formed by a computer using the selection method in 336 goes. The computer that came up with 'TOBEORNOTTOBE' was programmed to do so. The ultimate result was predetermined from the start. The program places letters into 13 blank spaces at random, but it selects a letter when it moves into its pre-ordained position. In other words, it knows that the first letter is T before 'TOBEORNOTTOBE' comes into being, selects T when one appears in that position, and leaves it there.

In short, there is a predetermined plan and a selection mechanism working consciously according to this plan. However, the theory of evolution maintains that living things emerged with no predetermined plan and by an unconscious selection mechanism. Therefore, Rennie's argument is, at least, ridiculous. I would love to see Roger Penrose comment on this. The shreds of that argument would never be put back together.

9. The Second Law of Thermodynamics says that systems must become more disordered over time. Living cells therefore could not have evolved from inanimate chemicals, and multicellular life could not have evolved from protozoa.

Rennie--> This argument derives from a misunderstanding of the Second Law. If it were valid, mineral crystals and snowflakes would also be impossible, because they, too, are complex structures that form spontaneously from disordered parts.

The Second Law actually states that the total entropy of a closed system (one that no energy or matter leaves or enters) cannot decrease. Entropy is a physical concept often casually described as disorder, but it differs significantly from the conversational use of the word.

More important, however, the Second Law permits parts of a system to decrease in entropy as long as other parts experience an offsetting increase. Thus, our planet as a whole can grow more complex because the sun pours heat and light onto it, and the greater entropy associated with the sun's nuclear fusion more than rebalances the scales. Simple organisms can fuel their rise toward complexity by consuming other forms of life and nonliving materials.

Kemo--> Nonsense. The second law of thermodynamics is quite accurate. Everything in this world that works, works by permanently increasing entropy globally, because that’s what happens when heat flows. Everything happens because heat flows. If the Second Law really says that snowflakes cannot occur naturally, then the first snowfall disproves the Second Law. If, on the other hand, the Second Law doesn’t say that it is impossible for snowflakes to occur naturally, it proves that evolutionists are the ones who don’t understand the Second Law. Snowflakes obey the Second Law. To see why, just "follow the heat." If you follow the heat flow, you will see why snowflakes form. Entropy increases every step of the way.

But there is one more thing you need to know before we can follow the heat flow. There is heat flow which is associated with the change of phase between solid and liquid, and between liquid and gas. Suppose you take a pan of water, stick a thermometer in it, and chill it well below freezing. Then put the pan of water over a constant flame. Since the size of the flame doesn’t vary, the amount of heat transferred to the pan is constant (neglecting the loss to the air around it). As the flame adds heat to the pan of ice at a constant rate, observe the thermometer reading. The temperature increases at a constant rate up to 32 degrees F (0 degrees C). Then something unexpected happens. The temperature remains at 32 degrees despite the fact that heat is still being added. That is because it takes heat to melt ice. Ice at 32 degrees turns into water at 32 degrees. The 32-degree water has absorbed heat from the 32-degree ice, and has more kinetic energy. The temperature of the ice and water in the pan will remain at 32 degrees until all the ice melts. Then, the temperature of the water will increase at a constant rate as more heat is added. When the temperature reaches 212 degrees F (100 degrees C), it levels off again. The 212-degree water turns into 212 degree steam. Again, it takes heat to cause this change of phase. Once all the water boils away, the temperature of the steam increases as more heat is added.

Theoretically, you could do the experiment in reverse, but it is difficult to do in practice. If you could figure out a way to gather up 400-degree steam, and suck heat out of it at a constant rate, its temperature would decrease at a constant rate until it got down to 212 degrees. Then it would remain 212 degrees as it condensed into water. After all the steam condensed, the temperature of the water would decrease constantly to 32 degrees, then remain there as long as water was freezing. After all the water freezes, the temperature would continue to decrease steadily from 32 degrees down to absolute zero (if you had some way of continuing to suck heat out of it). Now, at last, you know everything you need to know to understand why snowflakes form.

The Sun is much, much hotter than the ocean. Therefore, heat flows from the Sun into the ocean because temperature difference causes heat to flow. As this happens, entropy increases because the heat is more evenly distributed between the Sun and the ocean. Some of the water molecules near the surface of the ocean absorb enough heat to change phase. Those molecules turn into warm water vapor, cooling the sea and warming the air. Entropy increases as heat flows from the warm water to the colder air.

Wind blows the water vapor high into the atmosphere, where heat flows from the warm water vapor into the cold surrounding air. As it does this, the water vapor condenses to water droplets giving up even more heat. If the surrounding air is cold enough, the water droplets will give up still more heat by changing from the liquid phase to solid phase (i.e., snow). Heat has flowed from the warm surface of the sea high up into the cold atmosphere, increasing the entropy by more evenly distributing the heat. The air in the upper atmosphere radiates the heat (which it acquired from the water vapor as it condensed and froze) into space, which is even colder than the atmosphere. Heat is now more evenly distributed between the upper atmosphere and space, increasing entropy. When the snowflakes fall on warm ground, heat will flow from the ground into the snow, causing it to melt. Entropy of the ground and the (melted) snow increases as heat flows from the cold snow to the warm earth.

Every step in the snowflake life-cycle obeys the laws of thermodynamics. Heat is neither created nor destroyed. Heat flows from a hot place to a cold place. Heat becomes less well organized because it is more evenly distributed throughout the universe as cool places warm up, and warm places cool down. Snowflakes don’t violate the laws of thermodynamics. There is nothing miraculous about it.

Mineral crystals form for the same reason snow crystals form. Heat is released as minerals in solution form solid crystals, equalizing the temperature all around, increasing entropy.

So, evolutionists who claim that snowflakes and mineral crystals decrease entropy, proving evolution can happen, are wrong on two counts. First, they are wrong because entropy of the crystal and the environment around the crystal actually increases, in accordance with the Second Law. Second, the formation of crystals has absolutely nothing to do with the origin of life, or the information in the DNA molecule. And the Second Law of thermodynamics really does explain why life, and DNA molecules, cannot form spontaneously.

John Rennie's claim regarding open systems is also a classic evolutionist error. Yes, entropy may decrease in open systems that receive energy from the outside, but specific mechanisms are needed to make the energy functional. For instance, a car needs an engine, a transmission system, and related control mechanisms to convert the energy in oil to work. Without such an energy conversion system, the car will not be able to use the energy stored in oil.

The same thing applies in the case of life as well. It is true that life derives its energy from the sun. However, solar energy can only be converted into chemical energy by the incredibly complex energy conversion systems in living things (such as photosynthesis in plants and the digestive systems of humans and animals). Without an energy conversion system, the sun is nothing but a source of destructive energy that burns, parches, or melts.

10. Mutations are essential to evolution theory, but mutations can only eliminate traits. They cannot produce new features.

Rennie--> On the contrary, biology has catalogued many traits produced by point mutations (changes at precise positions in an organism's DNA)-- bacterial resistance to antibiotics, for example.

Mutations that arise in the homeobox (Hox) family of development-regulating genes in animals can also have complex effects. Hox genes direct where legs, wings, antennae and body segments should grow. In fruit flies, for instance, the mutation called Antennapedia causes legs to sprout where antennae should grow. These abnormal limbs are not functional, but their existence demonstrates that genetic mistakes can produce complex structures, which natural selection can then test for possible uses.

Moreover, molecular biology has discovered mechanisms for genetic change that go beyond point mutations, and these expand the ways in which new traits can appear. Functional modules within genes can be spliced together in novel ways. Whole genes can be accidentally duplicated in an organism's DNA, and the duplicates are free to mutate into genes for new, complex features. Comparisons of the DNA from a wide variety of organisms indicate that this is how the globin family of blood proteins evolved over millions of years.

Kemo--> Mutations do not result in new information! And this is what evolution is all about. Mutations in bacteria, for example, may result in antibiotic resistance. But in the end, the resistant microorganisms are still the same species of microorganisms they were before the mutations occurred. Alan Hayward correctly noted: “...mutations do not appear to bring progressive changes. Genes seem to be built so as to allow changes to occur within certain narrow limits, and to prevent those limits from being crossed. To oversimplify a little: mutations very easily produce new varieties within a species, and might occasionally produce a new (though similar) species, but—despite enormous efforts by experimenters and breeders—mutations seem unable to produce entirely new forms of life” (1985, p. 55).

In the end, after mutations have occurred, no macroevolution has taken place. None! [For a discussion of the concept of mutations and microbial antibiotic resistance, see Harrub and Thompson, 2002.]

Elsewhere, we have dealt with the concept of Hox genes, which Mr. Rennie also mentioned (see Harrub and Thompson, 2002), and so we will not deal with that subject again here in any great length. Simply put, Hox genes are pieces of DNA that either promote or inhibit other genes, which, in turn, play a role in the development of a particular organism. For instance, in the fruit fly there is a Hox gene that promotes wing development. And so, during the early stages of the fruit fly’s development, this gene signals the manufacture of wing structures. Scientists have been able to use this information to produce flies without wing, or even flies with two sets of wings. And, Hox genes even can result in already-existing information being switched on in the wrong place. But let’s not lose sight of the forest for the trees. Producing a two-winged fly, or adding a pair of legs to the head of an animal, is a far cry from explaining how plants, animals, and bacteria all descended from a nonliving source.

Hox genes themselves do not produce the information that results in such complex structures as legs, wings, antennae, or body segments (to use Mr. Rennie’s examples). Hox genes do not act in a “biological vacuum.” They rely on many other genes and proteins as valuable pieces of the overall outcome. For instance, a light switch is great for turning on a light—but only if you have the necessary wires and bulb in place “downstream” from that switch. Without those, the switch is nothing more than, well, a switch. Hox genes, like light switches, are reliant on certain postcursors (other genes that already are present). Hox genes cannot do everything “by themselves.” Keep in mind there is a well-balanced feedback mechanism in place inside every living cell. If more proteins are needed, genes are “turned on” so that those proteins can be produced. When genes mutate, this delicate balance of proteins is affected adversely, causing the production of either too much or too little of these much-needed proteins.

Just because a Hox gene can alter the development of some structure, that does not mean necessarily that all of the items necessary for that structure will be present in the newly mutated animal. For instance wings, legs, or eyes may be transplanted to various regions of the body. But experiments have shown that the muscles and nerves necessary for those structures to function normally are not routinely manufactured. So while a non-flying animal might possess a mutated Hox gene, and thus develop wings, the muscles needed for those wings to function would not necessarily be present—thereby making this new structure worthless. Hox genes are not the “magic bullet” that Mr. Rennie and his evolutionist colleagues make them out to be.

11. Natural selection might explain microevolution, but it cannot explain the origin of new species and higher orders of life.

Rennie--> Evolutionary biologists have written extensively about how natural selection could produce new species. For instance, in the model called allopatry, developed by Ernst Mayr of Harvard University, if a population of organisms were isolated from the rest of its species by geographical boundaries, it might be subjected to different selective pressures. Changes would accumulate in the isolated population. If those changes became so significant that the splinter group could not or routinely would not breed with the original stock, then the splinter group would be reproductively isolated and on its way toward becoming a new species.

Natural selection is the best studied of the evolutionary mechanisms, but biologists are open to other possibilities as well. Biologists are constantly assessing the potential of unusual genetic mechanisms for causing speciation or for producing complex features in organisms. Lynn Margulis of the University of Massachusetts at Amherst and others have persuasively argued that some cellular organelles, such as the energy-generating mitochondria, evolved through the symbiotic merger of ancient organisms. Thus, science welcomes the possibility of evolution resulting from forces beyond natural selection. Yet those forces must be natural; they cannot be attributed to the actions of mysterious creative intelligences whose existence, in scientific terms, is unproved.

Kemo--> Ironically, just the opposite is true. Many secular biologists now question whether descent through modification (natural selection working on random genetic variations or mutations) could ever have produced anywhere near the amount of change required to account for the diverse body plans and organs animals exhibit. For greater detail on this question visit: http://www.apologeticspress.org/articles/2575

12. Nobody has ever seen a new species evolve.

Rennie--> Speciation is probably fairly rare and in many cases might take centuries. Furthermore, recognizing a new species during a formative stage can be difficult, because biologists sometimes disagree about how best to define a species. The most widely used definition, Mayr's Biological Species Concept, recognizes a species as a distinct community of reproductively isolated populations--sets of organisms that normally do not or cannot breed outside their community. In practice, this standard can be difficult to apply to organisms isolated by distance or terrain or to plants (and, of course, fossils do not breed). Biologists therefore usually use organisms' physical and behavioral traits as clues to their species membership.

Nevertheless, the scientific literature does contain reports of apparent speciation events in plants, insects and worms. In most of these experiments, researchers subjected organisms to various types of selection -- for anatomical differences, mating behaviors, habitat preferences and other traits -- and found that they had created populations of organisms that did not breed with outsiders. For example, William R. Rice of the University of New Mexico and George W. Salt of the University of California at Davis demonstrated that if they sorted a group of fruit flies by their preference for certain environments and bred those flies separately over 35 generations, the resulting flies would refuse to breed with those from a very different environment.

Kemo--> Creationists freely acknowledge that speciation does occur. But strangely (in light of Mr. Rennie’s accusation), it has been the evolutionists themselves who have made the type of accusation of which he has accused creationists. Colin Patterson once remarked:

No one has ever produced a species by mechanisms of natural selection. No one has ever gotten near it and most of the current argument in neo-Darwinism is about this question: how a species originates. And it is there that natural selection seems to be fading out, and chance mechanisms of one sort of another are being invoked (1982).

Evolutionist Gordon Ratray Taylor wrote: “In all the thousands of fly-breeding experiments carried out all over the world for more than fifty years, a distinct new species has never been seen to emerge...” (1983, p. 34). Why didn’t Mr. Rennie include some of these statements in his examples?

13. Evolutionists cannot point to any transitional fossils -- creatures that are half reptile and half bird, for instance.

Rennie--> Actually, paleontologists know of many detailed examples of fossils intermediate in form between various taxonomic groups. One of the most famous fossils of all time is Archaeopteryx, which combines feathers and skeletal structures peculiar to birds with features of dinosaurs. A flock's worth of other feathered fossil species, some more avian and some less, has also been found. A sequence of fossils spans the evolution of modern horses from the tiny Eohippus. Whales had four-legged ancestors that walked on land, and creatures known as Ambulocetus and Rodhocetus helped to make that transition [see "The Mammals That Conquered the Seas," by Kate Wong; Scientific American, May]. Fossil seashells trace the evolution of various mollusks through millions of years. Perhaps 20 or more hominids (not all of them our ancestors) fill the gap between Lucy the australopithecine and modern humans.

Creationists, though, dismiss these fossil studies. They argue that Archaeopteryx is not a missing link between reptiles and birds -- it is just an extinct bird with reptilian features . They want evolutionists to produce a weird, chimeric monster that cannot be classified as belonging to any known group. Even if a creationist does accept a fossil as transitional between two species, he or she may then insist on seeing other fossils intermediate between it and the first two. These frustrating requests can proceed ad infinitum and place an unreasonable burden on the always incomplete fossil record.

Nevertheless, evolutionists can cite further supportive evidence from molecular biology. All organisms share most of the same genes, but as evolution predicts, the structures of these genes and their products diverge among species, in keeping with their evolutionary relationships. Geneticists speak of the "molecular clock" that records the passage of time. These molecular data also show how various organisms are transitional within evolution.

Kemo--> Why does he center only on creationists’ statements in this regard, instead of quoting someone like Ernst Mayr, who admitted: “Nothing has more impressed the paleontologists than the discontinuous nature of the fossil record. This is the reason so many of them were supporters of saltational theories of evolution” (2001, p. 163). Why not quote George Gaylord Simpson:

This regular absence of transitional forms is not confined to mammals, but is an almost universal phenomenon, as has long been noted by paleontologists. It is true of almost all orders of all classes of animals, both vertebrate and invertebrate. A fortiori, it is also true of the classes, and of the major animal phyla, and it is apparently also true of analogous categories of plants (1944, p. 105, emp. added).

Or why not quote University of Oklahoma paleontologist Dave Kitts?

Despite the bright promise that paleontology provides a means of “seeing” evolution, it has presented some nasty difficulties for evolutionists, the most notorious of which is the presence of “gaps” in the fossil record. Evolution requires intermediate forms between species and paleontology does not provide them…. (1974, 28:467, emp. added).

Stephen Jay Gould (whom we are not misquoting here) lamented:

Paleontologists have paid an exorbitant price for Darwin’s argument. We fancy ourselves as the only true students of life's history, yet to preserve our favored account of evolution by natural selection, we view our data as so bad that we never see the very process we profess to study (1977a, 86[5]:14).

Why single out the creationist for your unbridled scorn, Mr. Rennie, when your evolutionist cohorts are making even bolder statements than they are?

And archaeopteryx is considered by paleonornonthologists, people who study the fossil record of birds, to be a true bird. It belongs to the group archeornathenise so it’s not necessarily a transitional form, it’s the first true bird that appears in the fossil record and I would point out that there’s nothing in the fossil record prior to this to suggest the appearance of anything resembling a bird transition. Now this whole argument that birds evolved from dinosaurs or share common ancestry with dinosaurs again is problematic because all the transitional forms that supposedly link birds to dinosaurs appear after the appearance of archaeopteryx, many times on the order of 50 million years to that extent. One of the best sites for these particular specimens is a site in China, the Laoning province of China where the site is located. That site dates now at about 124 million years ago whereas archaeopteryx shows up at about 155 million years ago in the fossil record. And so you’re seeing transitional forms appear subsequent to the appearance of the first true member of the first true bird. So this would be problematic. So how else can we explain these forms that seem to be transitional forms? And I would argue perhaps convergence would be a way to explain them, given that both birds and these archaeoraptor-type dinosaurs are bipedal organisms. Biomechanics says they’re going to have very similar types of anatomical systems and when you actually look at the details of the footprints and the details of the foot structure you see superficial resemblance between these dinosaur, so-called “dinosaur-bird intermediates”, and the foot structure of true birds, suggesting that what’s happening here is convergence, not a true evolutionary relationship.

In fact, the fossil record does not demonstrate a sequence of transitional fossils for any species. As Newsweek reporter Jerry Adler accurately noted: “In the fossil record, missing links are the rule: the story of life is as disjointed as a silent newsreel, in which species succeed one another as abruptly as Balkan prime ministers. The more scientists have searched for the transitional forms between species, the more they have been frustrated.... Evidence from fossils now points overwhelmingly away from the classical Darwinism which most Americans learned in high school: that new species evolve out of existing ones by the gradual accumulation of small changes, each of which helps the organism survive and compete in the environment.”

The horse series that John Rennie portrayed as an important proof of evolution is actually a terrible blunder on his part. That is because the horse series that makes up a so-called evolutionary process from Eohippus to the present-day horse (Equus) has actually been accepted as erroneous by a great many evolutionist authorities. For example, evolutionist science writer Gordon R. Taylor acknowledged that "… the line from Eohippus to Equus is very erratic. It is alleged to show a continual increase in size, but the truth is that some variants were smaller than Eohippus, not larger. Specimens from different sources can be brought together in a convincing-looking sequence, but there is no evidence that these were actually ranged in this order in time."

Rennie also includes the scenario concerning the evolution of whales as an example of proven evolution. Yet that, too, is nothing more than evolutionist speculation. There are great morphological differences between the land mammal Ambulocetus and such archaic whales as Rodhocetus, the alleged descendant of the former.

Regarding Molluscs; These shelled creatures that make up the phylum Mollusca are divided into eight separate classes, and all of these emerged suddenly in the Cambrian Period, just like most living phyla and classes. Even the determinedly evolutionist Encyclopedia Britannica accepts that there is no fossil evidence for the evolution of molluscs in the words: "The fossil record gives little clue as to how the molluscs originated and how the eight classes differentiated in Precambrian times. The evolutionary pathway must thus be largely inferred from comparative anatomy and development."

I dealt with hominids extensively in earlier posts. I will be happy to get into detailed discussions about them and the false assertion that men developed from primates along with the impact this false belief has had on history; however, I don’t want to make this post THAT long. It’s long enough already.

I will say that recent molecular discoveries have produced results totally at odds with the 150-year-old evolutionary family tree. According to a 1999 article by French biologists Hervé Philippe and Patrick Forterre, "with more and more sequences available, it turned out that most protein phylogenies contradict each other as well as the rRNA tree." Neither the comparisons that have been made of proteins, nor those of rRNAs or of genes, confirm the premises of the theory of evolution. Carl Woese, a biologist from the University of Illinois, admits that;

“No consistent organismal phylogeny has emerged from the many individual protein phylogenies so far produced. Phylogenetic incongruities can be seen everywhere in the universal tree, from its root to the major branchings within and among the various (groups) to the makeup of the primary groupings themselves.”

The fact that results of molecular comparisons are not in favor of, but rather opposed to, the theory of evolution is also admitted in an article called "Is it Time to Uproot the Tree of Life?" published in Science in 1999. This article by Elizabeth Pennisi states that the genetic analyses and comparisons carried out by Darwinist biologists in order to shed light on the "tree of life" actually yielded directly opposite results, and goes on to say that "new data are muddying the evolutionary picture" In short, molecular comparisons between living things all work against the theory of evolution, in total contrast to what John Rennie claims.

14. Living things have fantastic

[Kemosave]

14. Living things have fantastically intricate features--at the anatomical, cellular and molecular levels--that could not function if they were any less complex or sophisticated. The only prudent conclusion is that they are the products of intelligent design, not evolution.

Rennie--> This "argument from design" is the backbone of most recent attacks on evolution, but it is also one of the oldest. In 1802 theologian William Paley wrote that if one finds a pocket watch in a field, the most reasonable conclusion is that someone dropped it, not that natural forces created it there. By analogy, Paley argued, the complex structures of living things must be the handiwork of direct, divine invention. Darwin wrote On the Origin of Species as an answer to Paley: he explained how natural forces of selection, acting on inherited features, could gradually shape the evolution of ornate organic structures.

Generations of creationists have tried to counter Darwin by citing the example of the eye as a structure that could not have evolved. The eye's ability to provide vision depends on the perfect arrangement of its parts, these critics say. Natural selection could thus never favor the transitional forms needed during the eye's evolution -- what good is half an eye? Anticipating this criticism, Darwin suggested that even "incomplete" eyes might confer benefits (such as helping creatures orient toward light) and thereby survive for further evolutionary refinement. Biology has vindicated Darwin : researchers have identified primitive eyes and light-sensing organs throughout the animal kingdom and have even tracked the evolutionary history of eyes through comparative genetics. (It now appears that in various families of organisms, eyes have evolved independently.)

Today's intelligent-design advocates are more sophisticated than their predecessors, but their arguments and goals are not fundamentally different. They criticize evolution by trying to demonstrate that it could not account for life as we know it and then insist that the only tenable alternative is that life was designed by an unidentified intelligence.

Kemo--> This argument is leveled at the modern-day Intelligent Design movement.

First just because an argument is old doesn’t mean it necessarily lacks validity. And, the main challenge to the Watchmaker Argument that has been popularized and has William Paley’s name associated with it (he’s not the sole person to argue from design) was basically Hume’s Challenge. And his challenge in essence was that this is a poor analogy and because it’s a poor analogy the conclusion isn’t very sound. A watch and a living organism clearly are very different from one another. And the more similar items are when you do analogical reasoning, the more sound your conclusion, the more dissimilar the more uncertain your conclusion.

Well, Paley and Hume don’t have the level of understanding that we have today when it comes to the intricacy of the cell’s chemistry. And there are a number of discoveries that have been made in recent years that actually revitalize and reinvigorate the Watchmaker Argument. And, one thing that I would point out are molecular motors that are found inside living systems. These are protein ensembles that literally are functioning as motors, that literally have the components of man-made machines. The bacteria flaggellar system has a rotor, a stator, a bushing, a universal joint. There’s the F1-F0 ATPase and the closely allied V1-V0 ATPase, both rotary motors. There’s DNA translocating system that’s part of the bacteriafage Phi-29 that’s also a rotary motor of a different sort, again having man-made components.

And the list is growing as we apply x-ray defraction methods and other methods to make atomic level measurements on the structures of these very complex systems. Now, these are literally motors, and these reinvigorate the Watchmaker Argument. They satisfy Hume’s Challenge to Paley’s argument. And so when we encounter motors inside the living system just as we would encounter a motor on the side of the road, at least it’s rational to entertain the idea that there must be an Intelligent Designer. Or there must be supernatural going on here or possibly a creator. At least that question is a rational question to ask in light of that data, it’s not a “God-of-the-gaps” reasoning, it’s actually a conclusion that’s based on data that’s emerging from biochemistry and biophysics.

Mr. Rennie attempts to undermine the origin and design of the eye by suggesting that “incomplete” eyes might confer benefit. However, R.L. Gregory noted:

The problem of how eyes have developed has presented a major challenge to the Darwinian theory of evolution by Natural Selection. We can make many entirely useless experimental models when designing a new instrument, but this was impossible for Natural Selection, for each step must confer some advantage upon its owner, to be selected and transmitted through the generations. But what use is a half-made lens? What use is a lens giving an image, if there is no nervous system to interpret the information? How could a visual nervous system come about before there was an eye to give it information? In evolution there can be no master plan, no looking ahead to form structures which, though useless now, will come to have importance when other structures are sufficiently developed. And yet the human eye and brain have come about through slow painful trial and error (1972, p. 25).

As long ago as 1949, Sir Arthur Keith of Great Britain acknowledged the problem of any attempt to explain the complexity of the eye.

What are we to say, then, about such a complicated and efficient instrument as the human eye? If it had been made of wood, brass, and glass, it would have been said to have been planned for a purpose, but because it has been “evolved,” is made up of living tissues, and came into existence without a preliminary “blueprint,” it is not purposive. Are not my critics, by the use of a verbal quibble, seeking a sophist’s escape from a real difficulty? Would it not be more honest to say that the finer purposive adaptations we see in plants and animals remain as yet, unexplained? The eye has been evolved; that much is quite certain; the living vital forces which have molded it are probably still at work, but as yet we have not isolated them. I could as easily believe the theory of the Trinity as one which maintains that living, developing protoplasm, by mere throws of chance, brought the human eye into existence (p. 238, emp. added).

Did you catch the statement that the eye “came into existence without a preliminary blueprint,” and “has been evolved; that much is quite certain”? In other words, assume what you are supposed to set out to prove, and then go on from there. In philosophy, that sleight-of-hand trick is known as the fallacy of “begging the question.” And evolutionists should know better, shouldn’t they Mr. Rennie?

Rennie suggested that “researchers have identified primitive eyes and light-sensing organs throughout the animal kingdom and have even tracked the evolutionary history of eyes through comparative genetics. It now appears that in various families of organisms, eyes have evolved independently.” But there are two things wrong with such an assessment. First, as Sarfati has pointed out:

This overlooks the incredible complexity of even the simplest light-sensitive spot. Second, it’s fallacious to argue that 51% vision would necessarily have a strong enough selective advantage over 50% to overcome the effects of genetic drift’s tendency to eliminate even beneficial mutations.

Second, as Sarfati went on to note:

Rennie contradicts himself here. If the evolutionary history of eyes has been tracked though comparative genetics how is it that eyes have supposedly evolved independently? Actually, evolutionists recognize that eyes must have arisen independently at least 30 times because there is no evolutionary pattern to explain the origin of eyes from a common ancestor. What this really means is that since eyes cannot be related by common ancestor, then since they are here, and only materialistic explanations are allowed, hey presto, there’s proof that they evolved independently! (2002a).

Evolutionist Frank Salisbury admitted: “Even something as complex as the eye has appeared several times; for example, in the squid, the vertebrates, and the arthropods. It’s bad enough accounting for the origin of such things once, but the thought of producing them several times according to the modern synthetic theory makes my head swim” (1971, p. 338, emp. added). So now we are to believe that this magical development of the eye occurred not just once, but several times in different organisms.

Additionally Mr. Rennie neglected a major problem with his theory regarding the origin of the eye. According to evolutionists, the eye has evolved to the pinnacle at which we now find it. Yet, the trilobite, an index fossil that evolutionists claim is 450 million years old, possessed an even more complex eye (with a dual lens system) than anything seen in nature today. And even the evolutionists know this to be true. Writing in Science News, Lisa Shawver wrote that trilobites possessed “the most sophisticated eye lenses ever produced by nature” (1974, 105:72, emp. added). Indeed they did! Trilobites possessed a lens system known in ophthalmology as an “optical doublet.” But in order to make such a lens system function properly, it is necessary to have what is known as a “refracting interface” between the two lenses. And that is exactly what the trilobites—which evolutionists believe is one of the first living things on the Earth, and which is an index fossil for the Cambrian period)—do indeed possess! The acknowledged worldwide expert on the trilobites, Riccardo Levi-Setti of the University of Chicago, literally “wrote the book” on these creatures. In his volume, Trilobites, he said:

In fact, this optical doublet is a device so typically associated with human invention that its discovery in trilobites comes as something of a shock. The realization that trilobites developed and used such devices half a billion years ago makes the shock even greater. And a final discovery—that the refracting interface between the two lens elements in a trilobite’s eye was designed in accordance with optical constructions worked out by Descartes and Huygens in the mid-seventeenth century—borders on sheer science fiction…. The design of the trilobite’s eye lens could well qualify for a patent disclosure (1993, pp. 57,58, emp. added).

Niles Eldredge, paleontologist of the American Museum of Natural History (and a scientist who devoted a portion of his doctoral dissertation to the trilobite’s eye), remarked:

These lenses—technically termed aspherical, aplanatic lenses—optimize both light collecting and image formation better than any lens ever conceived. We can be justifiably amazed that these trilobites, very early in the history of life on Earth, hit upon the best possible lens design that optical physics has ever been able to formulate (as quoted in Ellis, 2001, p. 49, emp. added).

“Justifiably amazed?” What an understatement. Darwin once said that it made him turn “cold” to think of something as complex as an eye evolving. With that in mind, Ian Taylor observed: “If Darwin turned cold at the thought of the human eye at the end of the evolutionary cycle, what, one wonders, would he have thought of the trilobite eye near the beginning?” (1984, p. 169, emp. added).

15. Recent discoveries prove that even at the microscopic level, life has a quality of complexity that could not have come about through evolution.

Rennie--> "Irreducible complexity" is the battle cry of Michael J. Behe of Lehigh University, author of Darwin's Black Box: The Biochemical Challenge to Evolution. As a household example of irreducible complexity, Behe chooses the mousetrap -- a machine that could not function if any of its pieces were missing and whose pieces have no value except as parts of the whole. What is true of the mousetrap, he says, is even truer of the bacterial flagellum, a whiplike cellular organelle used for propulsion that operates like an outboard motor. The proteins that make up a flagellum are uncannily arranged into motor components, a universal joint and other structures like those that a human engineer might specify. The possibility that this intricate array could have arisen through evolutionary modification is virtually nil, Behe argues, and that bespeaks intelligent design. He makes similar points about the blood's clotting mechanism and other molecular systems.

Yet evolutionary biologists have answers to these objections. First, there exist flagellae with forms simpler than the one that Behe cites, so it is not necessary for all those components to be present for a flagellum to work. The sophisticated components of this flagellum all have precedents elsewhere in nature, as described by Kenneth R. Miller of Brown University and others. In fact, the entire flagellum assembly is extremely similar to an organelle that Yersinia pestis, the bubonic plague bacterium, uses to inject toxins into cells.

The key is that the flagellum's component structures, which Behe suggests have no value apart from their role in propulsion, can serve multiple functions that would have helped favor their evolution. The final evolution of the flagellum might then have involved only the novel recombination of sophisticated parts that initially evolved for other purposes. Similarly, the blood-clotting system seems to involve the modification and elaboration of proteins that were originally used in digestion, according to studies by Russell F. Doolittle of the University of California at San Diego. So some of the complexity that Behe calls proof of intelligent design is not irreducible at all.

Complexity of a different kind -- "specified complexity" -- is the cornerstone of the intelligent-design arguments of William A. Dembski of Baylor University in his books The Design Inference and No Free Lunch. Essentially his argument is that living things are complex in a way that undirected, random processes could never produce. The only logical conclusion, Dembski asserts, in an echo of Paley 200 years ago, is that some superhuman intelligence created and shaped life.

Dembski's argument contains several holes. It is wrong to insinuate that the field of explanations consists only of random processes or designing intelligences. Researchers into nonlinear systems and cellular automata at the Santa Fe Institute and elsewhere have demonstrated that simple, undirected processes can yield extraordinarily complex patterns. Some of the complexity seen in organisms may therefore emerge through natural phenomena that we as yet barely understand. But that is far different from saying that the complexity could not have arisen naturally.

"Creation science" is a contradiction in terms. A central tenet of modern science is methodological naturalism -- it seeks to explain the universe purely in terms of observed or testable natural mechanisms. Thus, physics describes the atomic nucleus with specific concepts governing matter and energy, and it tests those descriptions
A broadcast version of this article will air June 26 on National Geographic Today, a program on the National Geographic Channel. Please check your local listings
experimentally. Physicists introduce new particles, such as quarks, to flesh out their theories only when data show that the previous descriptions cannot adequately explain observed phenomena. The new particles do not have arbitrary properties, moreover -- their definitions are tightly constrained, because the new particles must fit within the existing framework of physics.

In contrast, intelligent-design theorists invoke shadowy entities that conveniently have whatever unconstrained abilities are needed to solve the mystery at hand. Rather than expanding scientific inquiry, such answers shut it down. (How does one disprove the existence of omnipotent intelligences?)

Intelligent design offers few answers. For instance, when and how did a designing intelligence intervene in life's history? By creating the first DNA? The first cell? The first human? Was every species designed, or just a few early ones? Proponents of intelligent-design theory frequently decline to be pinned down on these points. They do not even make real attempts to reconcile their disparate ideas about intelligent design. Instead they pursue argument by exclusion -- that is, they belittle evolutionary explanations as far-fetched or incomplete and then imply that only design-based alternatives remain.

Logically, this is misleading: even if one naturalistic explanation is flawed, it does not mean that all are. Moreover, it does not make one intelligent-design theory more reasonable than another. Listeners are essentially left to fill in the blanks for themselves, and some will undoubtedly do so by substituting their religious beliefs for scientific ideas.

Time and again, science has shown that methodological naturalism can push back ignorance, finding increasingly detailed and informative answers to mysteries that once seemed impenetrable: the nature of light, the causes of disease, how the brain works. Evolution is doing the same with the riddle of how the living world took shape. Creationism, by any name, adds nothing of intellectual value to the effort.[/quote]

Kemo--> A very fine new book titled “The Design Revolution” by William Dembski addresses these criticisms elegantly and to get a historical feel read Michael Behe’s “Darwin’s Black Box” which introduces the reader to some of the irreducible complexities and the many wildly unlikely steps necessary to account for even the simplest examples that kick started the latest round of debates and scientific inquiry. Darwinists are finding that as dissenting scientists bring real science to bear against these types of assertions that they must engage in these types of ad hominem attacks on those secular scientists who dare to present real science. But we would rather they engage the evidence honestly. Despite all their blustering and fronting, it is not going well for them.

This whole idea of defining science in such narrow terms that we only allow natural cause explanations to explain the physical and material universe falls down when discussing singularity beginning to the universe, a dramatic appearance of very complex life forms at the origin of life event here on Earth, the recent origin of humanity, for example, things like the Cambrian explosion, these have supernatural overtones to them. These have supernatural fingerprints, or potentially supernatural fingerprints and we should allow the scientific method to interrogate that as a possible explanation because if we don’t, science now becomes an enterprise where we’re never going to discover truth. We’re only going to discover possible, hopefully plausible, natural cause explanations. But if there actually is a supernatural explanation to our reality, science is going to be impotent to ever discover that. And so by allowing science to probe the supernatural where it seems appropriate I think we give science the greatest power and the greatest capacity to fully discover what is truth. So many scientists are uncomfortable with methodological naturalism. It’s simply a philosophical presupposition that is brought to bear that, in my opinion, is largely indefensible when you get down to the nitty-gritty details.

Well, I’m tired of typing my own comments and pasting relevant information. If you want to deal with any SINGLE issue like the brain or whatever, I’ll be glad to answer.

For more information regarding number 15: visit http://www.apologeticspress.org/articles/2575

Seriously, maybe next time a single question rather than 15 sweeping assertions from a magazine editor could be posted? I mean making a simple sweeping assertion is easy. Anyone can do that. Answering them fully; however, takes a whole lot more effort. I’ve just scratched the surface here. Peace.

[Mraka]

so what does this rubbish help ?
where is the point.what you hold up high here was around quite some time and good for nothing all the time.long years upperclass "scientists" went around and new nothing,so darwin came and knocked most of them out of their boots.do not tell us bible says or I tell you world is created of pancake untill you believe it.you are just one of those who would like to make us believe that the earth is a plate,like clerics did before.
you have no answer and thats is a fact.

[Kemosave]

It is obvious to me that you don't know what you are talking about. That is not your problem; however, your real problem is that you choose to maintain your ignorance in the face of fact. And that only hurts you.