Fake News From PBS on the DNA Code

Heighten Public (Mis)Understanding

Evolution, according to the highly produced PBS Evolution Project, “determines who lives, who dies, and who passes traits on to the next generation. The process plays a critical role in our daily lives, yet it is one of the most overlooked -- and misunderstood -- concepts ever described. … The Evolution series' goals are to heighten public understanding of evolution and how it works, to dispel common misunderstandings about the process, and to illuminate why it is relevant to all of us.” In other words, the PBS Evolution Project would clear away the ignorance and bring the real news of evolution. And with a long list of evolution luminaries advising the project (including Rodger Bybee, Gerald Carr, John Endler, Paul Ewald, Larry Flammer, Douglas Futuyma, Anne Houde, Les Kaufman, Joseph Levine, David Maddison, Anne Magurran, Justin Marshall, Kenneth Miller, Martin Nickels, Kevin Padian, Diane Paul, David Reznick, Helen Rodd, Chris Schneider, Judy Scotchmoor, Daniel Simberloff, Neil Shubin, Meredith Small, David Wake, and Peter Ward), we would expect nothing less. Here is what they had to say about the DNA code:

Biologically and chemically, there is no reason why this particular genetic code, rather than any of millions or billions of others, should exist, scientists assert. Yet every species on Earth carries a genetic code that is, for all intents and purposes, identical and universal. The only scientific explanation for this situation is that the genetic code was the result of a single historic accident. That is, this code was the one carried by the single ancestor of life and all of its descendants, including us.

There was only one problem: that was fake news. The DNA, or genetic, code was and is, in fact, very special. This was known at the time of the PBS Evolution Project, and since then it has only gotten worse for the evolutionists.

It is the exact opposite of how the evolutionists informed their viewers. They could not have misrepresented the science any more than they did. Because when evolutionists seek to “heighten public understanding,” and “dispel common misunderstandings,” it doesn’t mean teaching science. It means promoting evolution, in spite of the science.

Religion drives science, and it matters.

The BBC on Why Evolution is Fact

A Series of Mistakes That Build Up

Last year science writer Chris Baraniuk wrote an article for the BBC that began with this: “Evolution is one of the greatest theories in all of science.” Baraniuk quoted liberally from several leading evolutionists, such as Steve Jones, Nancy Moran, Richard Lenski, and Chris Stringer, and he discussed the work of several others. The purpose of the article was to explain how we know evolution is a fact, as evolutionists claim. And by “fact,” evolutionists are not trying to apply a nuanced or artful spin to their claim. Quite the opposite, by “fact” evolutionists intend that their idea is beyond all reasonable doubt. Baraniuk well explains the claim:

For scientists, evolution is a fact. We know that life evolved with the same certainty that we know the Earth is roughly spherical, that gravity keeps us on it, and that wasps at a picnic are annoying.

Baraniuk appropriately reflects the certainty of evolutionists.

Baraniuk also makes several other good points. For instance, he doesn’t shy away from the heroic levels of Darwin’s idea. Baraniuk explains that under evolution humans must be descended from worms—an ancestor with more biblical allusions than Wilberforce’s “mushrooms.” Either way, such examples quickly reveal the sheer magnitude of the claim. It is, as Wilberforce winsomely put it, a “most unsuspected cousinship.”

Natural selection as creator

It is all the more unsuspected today given that it is supposed to have occurred by strictly random mutations. Natural selection, in contradistinction to how it often is presented, does nothing to induce these mutations. Selection doesn’t guide the evolutionary process like a Plastik Nature, it merely kills off the lesser designs. Death, in evolutionary theory, becomes the engine of progress and here Baraniuk correctly understands that selection “weeds out” those lesser organisms, but Baraniuk unfortunately also slips in the requisite teleological cover, stating that much of evolution is “driven by natural selection”:

Descent with modification, which is caused by random mutations in genes, ultimately leads to gradual changes and the formation of new species – much of it driven by natural selection, which weeds out those organisms that are less suited to their environments.

But evolution is not “driven by natural selection,” it is driven by random mutations. Their metaphysics require a random creation narrative, but for public consumption—and their own sanity—evolutionists quickly replace chance with natural selection.

Everyone knows that the Epicureans’ randomly swerving atoms—or randomly mutating nucleotides, as evolutionists would have it two thousand years later—do not a world create. Chance doesn’t work. Random mutations do not create millions of species, let alone a single protein. And so not too surprisingly evolutionists fall back on Aristotle’s teleological, goal-oriented, narrative. Natural selection is said to “drive” the evolutionary process. (You can see examples here, here, here, here, here, here, here, here, here, here, here, here, here, here, here, here, here, here, here, here, here, here, here, here, here, here, here, here, here,)

Darwin’s genius, if such banality can be described as genius, was in his formulation of natural selection as a concept that would simultaneously allow for the needed chance while providing the needed direction.

Natural selection was the director. Endless just-so stories have been told since 1859 about how natural selection drives the evolutionary process and its resulting biological wonders, producing X for the purpose of Y. But like the Emperor’s new clothes, it was all a fiction. Natural selection does not “drive” anything. A more accurate image is that of a weed out mechanism. Natural selection, stripped of its teleological gloss, merely kills off the failed or less prolific designs, leaving the more prolific designs as the evolutionary winners.

But stripping natural selection of the smuggled in Aristotelianism leaves the evolutionary process with nothing but those random mutations to create the species. Every organism, every structure, and every metabolic pathway, must have been constructed by an unimaginably long series of strictly random events occurring in an unimaginably high-dimensional design space. The curse of dimensionality, and the rugged, flat, fitness landscape both conspire to make clear what was obvious to the Stoics—this is absurd.

Baraniuk doesn’t understand this and his evolution informers have left him none the wiser. Baraniuk rightly explains that natural selection “weeds out those organisms that are less suited to their environments,” but he then applies the same old teleological gloss when he informs his readers that much of the evolutionary process is “driven by natural selection.”

The creature discovers the creator

An interesting consequence of evolutionary theory is that not only did it create the species, but it created a species which, in turn, discovered evolution. That is, evolution created a biological world including humans who eventually repaid the favor by discovering their chance creator. Baraniuk explains:

Given enough time, these changes mount up and lead to the appearance of new species and new types of organism, one small change at a time. Step by step, worms became fish, fish came onto land and developed four legs, those four-legged animals grew hair and – eventually – some of them started walking around on two legs, called themselves "humans" and discovered evolution.

But this doesn’t make sense. For if humans are the creation of a randomized world of matter and motion, then the result is no better. We are simply the result of a big long chemical experiment where the products have a lower free energy than the reactants. Our minds—which evolutionists will explain as nothing more than an emergent property which deceives us into thinking that our consciousness is something real and distinct from the moving molecules encased in our skulls—would have no knowledge of truth. In fact they would have no knowledge, period. It would be remarkable bit of luck if those moving molecules happened to formulate thoughts corresponding to reality. As Darwin stated in a letter:

But then with me the horrid doubt always arises whether the convictions of man's mind, which has been developed from the mind of the lower animals, are of any value or at all trustworthy. Would any one trust in the convictions of a monkey's mind, if there are any convictions in such a mind?

This is one of the greatest own-goals of all time. Darwin’s point was that we should not trust the conclusion that chance is an insufficient creator. But the Sage of Kent was apparently oblivious that his argument was simultaneously circular and devastating to his own theory. If we are created rather than evolved from the lower animals, then Darwin’s “horrid doubt” is erased and poses no problem for creation. Yet if we are not created but rather evolved, then Darwin’s argument demolishes his own theory. As usual, the evolutionist’s criticism points right back at himself.

The evidence

It’s downhill from there as Baraniuk presents the scientific evidence for this new brand of Epicureanism. For example, Baraniuk’s survey of the fossil evidence, aided and abetted by Steve Jones, is a case study in fallacies. There is the equivocation that “the fossil record makes it clear that life has changed over time,” and the false history, from Steve Jones, that Darwin “knew that [the fossil record] was an irrefutable case that evolution had taken place.” (Darwin mostly apologized for the fossils which clearly showed abrupt appearance). And while Baraniuk correctly explains that the fossil record is characterized by the wrong pattern and so must be viewed as full of gaps:

The fossil record is only so much help here, because it is incomplete. "If you look at most fossil records, what you actually see is one form that lasts quite a long time and then the next bunch of fossils that you've got is quite different from what you had before," says Jones.

Baraniuk nonetheless claims that transitional fossils have more or less filled the gaps (they haven’t).

Baraniuk next presents the mandatory poster-child example of Darwin’s Finches, dramatically misrepresenting the evidence, which shows rapid, directed response to environmental challenges—the opposite of what evolution expects.

Baraniuk then moves on to Richard Lenski’s long-term evolution experiment (LTEE) at Michigan State University, an experiment which for several decades has revealed how little change comes about in laboratory bacteria, E. coli. The biggest observed change was the utilization of citrate in aerobic conditions (normally E. coli utilizes citrate only in anaerobic conditions). That adaptation has been represented as an important example of evolutionary change observed in the laboratory. Unfortunately Baraniuk swallowed it and the result is more pseudoscience.

Baraniuk informs the reader that E. coli cannot digest citrate (false, it cannot digest citrate under certain conditions), and that the observed change represented “a huge leap forward” and “radically new abilities.”

These are ridiculous pseudo science lies.

Evolutionists want so badly for evolution to be true they will pervert science to make their case. Baraniuk also explained that “This would be like humans suddenly developing the ability to eat tree bark.” That is an absurd analogy. E. coli expanding its citrate utilization to include aerobic conditions is nowhere close to humans developing the ability to eat tree bark. Statements such as these reveal an agenda rather than a search for truth.

In fact it is worth mentioning that this same, minor, adaptation has been observed to occur in a matter of weeks (this was not fully appreciated until after Baraniuk’s article). Lenski has tried to dismiss those findings as inconsequential because three weeks were required rather than merely a day or two:

While that’s a lot faster than 15 years, it’s still much longer than typical “direct selections” used by microbiologists where a readily accessible mutation might confer, for example, resistance to an antibiotic after a day or two.

This is an astonishing statement. Lenski did not elaborate on why three weeks versus two days is an important distinction because, well, it isn’t. What these short term experiments suggest is that E. coli can expand its citrate utilization using mechanisms other than evolution’s random mutations. Instead, it looks to be yet another example of directed adaptation—exactly the opposite of what evolution expects. The fact that E. coli can develop aerobic citrate utilization in a matter of weeks rather than years renders Lenski’s LTEE finding a big fat “So what?”

Lenski attempted to cast this LTEE finding as a significant evidence of evolution in action. This is not true simply because the magnitude of the change is tiny (an existing capability was now enabled when it ordinarily would be disabled). Beyond this, the fact that the change can occur in weeks further negates the claim of evolutionary significance. What Lenski and evolutionists should be asking themselves is not “How can we ignore this finding?”, but rather, “How did organisms, such as E. coli in this case, get the ability to respond directly to environmental challenges?” This makes no sense under evolution.

It also confirms another lesson.

Whenever adaptation is observed in a living organism, it should not simply be assumed it is due to the evolutionary concept of random mutations and natural selection. This view has failed repeatedly as so many adaptations have been found to be not due to the action of chance events, but directed mechanisms responding to the environment. This is yet another example of how evolutionary expectations have failed, and failed badly. It is inappropriate to interpret adaptations in living organisms as signs of evolution in action, yet evolutionists continue to do this.

Lost function

One example of change is apparent lost function. These are terrible evidences for evolution because evolution requires new functions to be created. The losing of existing functions does nothing to resolve the basic conundrum that evolutionists struggle with: How could biology’s wonders have evolved? Yet evolutionists, in a sign of how weak the evidence is, consistently resort to these examples of lost function, such as cave animals losing their vision, as one of their key evidences. Not surprisingly, but unfortunately, Baraniuk follows along, aided by Nancy Moran:

"It really shows the process of evolution," says Moran. "It's not all just adaptation and things getting better, there's also this big potential for things to get worse."

This is pathetic. Evolution has failed to show how the species and their many designs could have evolved, yet they claim the loss of such complex functions is evidence for evolution.

Baraniuk’s article is yet another good example of how ludicrous evolution is. Evolution is nothing more than our modern-day Epicureanism, and it is pathetic. Perhaps the best explanation for evolution comes straight from the evolutionist himself:

"That's what evolution is," says Steve Jones of University College London in the UK. "It's a series of mistakes that build up."

Of course what Jones means here is that the evolutionary process is the accumulation of a series of mistakes. That alone reveals the scientific absurdity. And so, a more accurate interpretation of Jones’ statement is the it is not the process of evolution, but the theory of evolution, that is a “series of mistakes that build up.”

So true.

Evolutionist’s Overreach on Eukaryote Evolution Fuels Journalistic Frenzy

Getting Out of Control

Ever wonder who those peer reviewers are who approve of the non scientific evolution papers which claim that the world arose spontaneously? Well now we know one of them is professor James McInerney who has come clean as a reviewer of Thijs Ettema’s latest paper which makes the rather startling claim—with McInerney’s full approval—that complex archaea “bridge the gap” between prokaryotes and eukaryotes and share a common ancestry with eukaryotes. That is quite a claim. What Ettema and co-workers discovered was an archaeal phylum they have named “Lokiarchaeota,” after the mythological Norse deity Loki. The moniker is fitting both because the new microorganism was discovered near Loki’s Castle—an area of active hydrothermal vents in the north-Atlantic—and because Loki is, as Stefanie von Schnurbein explains, “a staggeringly complex, confusing, and ambivalent figure who has been the catalyst of countless unresolved scholarly controversies” much like the controversies surrounding the evolution of eukaryotes. And why is the evolution of eukaryotes so controversial amongst evolutionists? Because the scientific evidence is so contradictory.

With evolution we must believe that the last common eukaryote ancestor was a super ancestor because we continue to find similar genes in otherwise highly disparate, extant eukaryotes. This makes for, as one evolutionist admitted, “The Incredible Expanding Ancestor of Eukaryotes.” That early eukaryote must have had not only the vast majority of the complex DNA replication, RNA splicing and interference, and protein translation machinery, it was also capable of advanced movement and was equipped with versatile energy conversion systems.

The ancestor of today’s eukaryote’s also must have had incredibly complex DNA repair mechanisms. And it probably would have had at least some introns—the intervening regions scattered amongst eukaryotic “genes.”

And that last common eukaryote must have initiated an uncanny evolutionary history where, for example, peculiar and complex designs evolved again and again, independently—a pattern that is inconsistent with the expectations of common descent.

Before the last common ancestor of the eukaryotes evolved, the supposed evolutionary pathways that would be required are equally nonsensical. For instance, the cytoskeletons of prokaryotes and eukaryotes reveal patterns of distinctly different designs rather than an evolutionary pathway.

So it is not surprising that theories of eukaryote evolution can be controversial amongst evolutionists—the data do not support such an idea to begin with. A paper from almost thirty years ago, that admitted “One of the most important omissions in recent evolutionary theory concerns how eukaryotes could emerge and evolve,” remains just as relevant today.

Given the fact that evolutionists have failed to provide anything close to a scientific explanation of how eukaryotes could have spontaneously arisen (yes, evolutionists claim eukaryotes spontaneously arose—in fact they insist this is a fact beyond all reasonable doubt), Ettema’s and McInerney’s claims represent nothing less than a scientific breakthrough of the century.

But alas, and as usual, there was no such breakthrough. What in fact the evolutionists found was that using a highly select, prepared, refined and cleansed set of molecular sequence data, with computer algorithms whose logic assumes evolution is true to begin with, their new Lokiarchaeota species align with the eukaryotes. And so from an evolutionary perspective, there is an important evolutionary relationship with the eukaryotes. In all they found a whopping 3.3% of the Lokiarchaeota proteins to be similar to eukaryotic proteins.

That leads the evolutionists to declare that today’s Lokiarchaeota shares a common ancestry with eukaryotes. From a scientific perspective that is not merely an unsupported conclusion, it is contradictory to a mountain of empirical evidence.

And as usual the evolutionist’s cast their imagined findings in a teleological narrative with its attendant serendipity. Watch for the Aristotelian infinitive form:

This provided the host with a rich genomic “starter-kit” to support the increase in the cellular and genomic complexity that is characteristic of eukaryotes

A starter kit? So evolution created a rich genomic “starter kit” which then enabled, yes, evolution to occur.

This is beyond absurd, and the evolutionist’s non-scientific truth claims have had the usual effect of fueling yellow journalism. One need look no further than the Washington Post, whose headline declares that:

Newly discovered “missing link” shows how humans could evolve from single-celled organisms

Shows how humans could evolve? The Post goes on to explain that the finding is “a major clue on the origins of life.” This isn’t even wrong and is reminiscent of the “Life in a Test Tube” headlines following the much celebrated, and equally meaningless, Miller-Urey experiment.

But can journalists be blamed when evolutionists are feeding them these misrepresentations of science? The article quotes Eugene Koonin, for example, with this bizarre, non-scientific claim:

These findings clinch the case for the origin of eukaryotes from within the archaeal diversity and point to a specific part of the archaeal evolutionary tree where eukaryotes belong.

Clinch the case? This claim is so problematic it is difficult to know where to begin. Religion drives science and it matters.

In Practice, the Origins Debate is Often Misinformed

Strong Beliefs, Weak Knowledge

When it comes to the origins debate, it sometimes seems that everyone is an expert. Consider international business consultant Greg Satell who shared his wisdom yesterday, at the Forbes website, in a piece entitled “How The War On Science Affects Us All.” Satell begins with the centuries-old demarcation problem which attempts to define what is and isn’t science.

On the surface, the term “scientific” seems to be a fairly arbitrary distinction.  After all, both alien hunters and SETI scientists are both engaged in a search for truth, but the difference is that the work of scientists, when properly done, is reproducible and testable and that makes all the difference. Science matters not because of its greater truth, but its lesser solipsism.

So real science is “reproducible and testable.” The army of philosophers working on the demarcation problem can now put down their pens—Satell has solved the problem. No matter that Satell’s finding immediately fails on his own example. Why is the SETI scientist’s radio recording of 3.1415 “reproducible and testable” while the alien hunter’s video recording of a saucer flying overhead is not?

Satell next tells his readers that skeptics doubt evolution because after all, “no one actually saw humans evolve.” Satell gives no references or examples because there are none, at least none from any serious skeptics. This straw man argument tells us more about Satell than about skeptics.

Satell next moves to the topic of the age of the Earth, explaining that “The bible says that the earth is several thousand years old.” Again no reference is given because the Bible doesn’t actually say this. That is one interpretation. And while it may well be correct, it nonetheless is an interpretation. There is no passage that says “the earth is several thousand years old,” and that is an important distinction.

Unfortunately such ignorance, misrepresentation and inaccuracy unusual. Too often the topic of origins is informed by simplistic Warfare Thesis stereotypes and straw men rather than informed judgment. People will always disagree but let’s at least be knowledgeable in our disagreement.

Here’s That Story in the Los Angeles Times about Global Warming

Give Credit Where Credit is Due

Because when the Los Angeles Times runs a piece questioning the A in AGW (anthropogenic, or man-made, global warming), then you know something is wrong:

A new study makes the case that human activity played very little role in the warming of the northeast Pacific Ocean over the past century or so. … Naturally occurring changes in winds, not human-caused climate change, are responsible for most of the warming on land and in the sea along the West Coast of North America over the last century, a study has found. … This latest research shows that similar changes in atmospheric and ocean circulation can drive trends that last a century or longer, overshadowing the effects of human-generated increase in greenhouse gases, the study's authors said.

It is not news that AGW is has its share of scientific challenges. But give credit to the Los Angeles Times for running such a story in the politically-charged environment we are in. We need to let the science speak for itself.

This Book Review of Paul Johnson’s New Book is a Must Read

Another Coat of Bronze

I remember the disappointment when I sat in class one day and listened to the otherwise brilliant professor discuss the “fact” of evolution. The switch from a scientific genius explaining how nature works to metaphysical midget issuing sophomoric truth claims was strange and disheartening. And so it is with the great Paul Johnson’s new book Darwin: Portrait of a Genius, of which Terry Scambray’s review is a must read.

This Journalist Uses Critical Thinking

Evolution Can Even Explain How the Human Eye Evolved

Benjamin Radford writes for the Discovery News and is interested in why people believe things for which there is little or no evidence. He applies critical thinking and scientific methodologies to unusual claims. One of those things that interests Radford is skepticism of evolution. After all, as Radford notes, there is “overwhelming scientific evidence for evolution,” and it is “confirmed by nearly every scientific discipline.” Evolution is all around us, all the time. Evolution is why we need to get a new flu shot every year and, notes Radford, evolution can even explain how the human eye evolved. It is strange that such claims come from a critical thinker such as Radford because, in fact, they are all false.

Consider the evolution of the human eye. Charles Darwin considered the eye to be an “organ of extreme perfection.” Even after writing Origins he confessed it gave him a cold shudder. He needed to focus on his theory’s fine gradations to give himself comfort. But one hundred and thirty four years later, in 1994, evolutionists claimed they had solved the problem. The evolution of the eye was finally understood. It turned out such evolution was no big deal after all. In fact the eye could rather easily evolve.

The only catch to the conclusion was that it was circular. The evolutionists, who believe evolution is a fact, first assumed the evolution of the eye in order to solve the problem of the evolution of the eye.

With evolution taken as a given, whether or not vision systems evolved was no longer in question—they did. The only question was how they have evolved. The 1994 paper explained that although Darwin “anticipated that the eye would become a favorite target for criticism,” the problem “has now almost become a historical curiosity” and “the question is now one of process rate rather than one of principle.” The evolutionists estimated this rate by first assuming that the eye indeed evolved. They wrote:

The evolution of complex structures, however, involves modifications of a large number of separate quantitative characters, and in addition there may be discrete innovations and an unknown number of hidden but necessary phenotypic changes. These complications seem effectively to prevent evolution rate estimates for entire organs and other complex structures. An eye is unique in this respect because the structures necessary for image formation, although there may be several, are all typically quantitative in their nature, and can be treated as local modifications of pre-existing tissues. Taking a patch of pigmented light-sensitive epithelium as the starting point, we avoid the more inaccessible problem of photoreceptor cell evolution. Thus, if the objective is limited to finding the number of generations required for the evolution of an eye’s optical geometry, then the problem becomes solvable.

The problem becomes solvable? The evolutionists skipped the entire evolution of cellular signal transduction and the vision cascade. That would be like saying you have showed how motorcycles evolved although you took the engine, drive train and wheels as your starting point.

The evolutionists then skipped all of the major problems that arise after you have a signal transduction system in place, such as the incredible post processing system and the creation of the machinery to construct the vision system. The problem they ended up solving is sometimes affectionately referred to as a “cartoon” version of the real world problem.

The research, if you can call it that, did not demonstrate that the eye evolved or could have evolved. Yet the paper became a favorite reference for evolutionists wanting to promote evolution. Eye evolution, they insisted, was now known to be straightforward. Here, for instance, is how our tax dollars are used by PBS to promote this abuse of science:

Zoologist Dan-Erik Nilsson demonstrates how the complex human eye could have evolved through natural selection acting on small variations. Starting with a simple patch of light sensitive cells, Nilsson’s model “evolves” until a clear image is produced.

This spreading of false information is not limited to popular presentations. A paper reporting on “highly advanced compound eyes” which are “as advanced as those of many living forms” in early arthropods begins by informing the reader that “theory (i.e., the Nilsson paper) suggests that complex eyes can evolve very rapidly.” This helps them to conclude that those incredible arthropod eyes are “further evidence that the Cambrian explosion involved rapid innovation.”

With the mythological framework in place, the findings could then safely be presented as confirmations of evolution. As the journal’s editor added:

Charles Darwin thought that the eye, which he called an “organ of extreme perfection,” was a serious challenge to evolutionary theory — but he was mistaken. Theory predicts that eyes can evolve with great speed, and now there is support for this prediction from the fossil record.

Support for this prediction? You’ve got to be kidding. A cartoon version of reality, taking the myth of evolution as true, is considered a “prediction” and amazing early complexity in the fossils then becomes a “support for this prediction”?

What the arthropod fossils revealed is an early Cambrian, highly advanced vision system more elaborate than any so far discovered. Its compound eyes have more then 3,000 lenses optimally arranged in the densest and most efficient packing pattern. As the paper explains:

The extremely regular arrangement of lenses seen here exceeds even that in certain modern taxa, such as the horseshoe crab Limulus, in which up to one-third of lenses deviate from hexagonal packing.

All of this is presented to the reader as merely another demonstration of how fantastic designs just happen spontaneously to arise:

The new fossils reveal that some of the earliest arthropods had already acquired visual systems similar to those of living forms, underscoring the speed and magnitude of the evolutionary innovation that occurred during the Cambrian explosion.

Ho-hum, yet more evolutionary innovation. For evolutionists it was just another day in the office. As PZ Myers explained, we already knew that complex animals appear rapidly. After all, that is why they call it the “Cambrian explosion.” Evolutionists have written “whole books on the subject.”

Myers follows this circular reasoning with yet more question begging:

The sudden appearance of complexity is no surprise, either. We know that the fundamental mechanisms of eye function evolved long before the Cambrian, from the molecular evidence;

Of course there is no “molecular evidence” that gives us such knowledge (see here for example). But if you assume evolution is true to begin with, as do evolutionists who analyze the molecular patterns, then Myers’ fictional, question begging, world makes sense.

Myers follows these circular arguments with a more subtle type of fallacy. He explains that these particular findings are no big deal because both this finding and the similar trilobite vision systems require cellular signal transduction, development machines and so forth:

It is also the case that the measure of complexity here is determined by a simple meristic trait, the number of ommatidia. This is not radical. The hard part in the evolution of the compound eye was the development of the signal transduction mechanism, followed by the developmental rules that governed the formation of a regular, repeating structure of the eye. The number of ommatidia is a reflection of the degree of commitment of tissues in the head to eye formation, and is a quantitative difference, not a qualitative one.

Setting aside the usual evolutionary speculation about how easily designs evolve, the problem here is that the cellular signal transduction, development machines and so forth are themselves problems for evolution. Indeed, even the simplest of light detection systems sport such incredible designs for which evolution has no explanation beyond vague speculation.

Next Myers is back to question-begging. In typical fashion he attempts to shore up the evolution position with the usual reference to, yes, the mythical 1994 Nilsson paper:

And finally, there’s nothing in the data from this paper that implies sudden origins; there can’t be. If it takes a few hundred thousand years for a complex eye to evolve from a simple light sensing organ, there is no way to determine that one sample of a set of fossils was the product of millions of years of evolution, or one day of magical creation.

Next is the fallacy of credulity. If you present an evolutionist with the scientific failures of his theory, he will accuse you of basing your skepticism on your own failure to imagine a solution. As Myers puts it:

It’s a logical error and a failure of the imagination to assume that these descriptions are of a population that spontaneously emerged nearly-instantaneously.

Failure of the imagination? Indeed, we just need to do more imagining, that’s the problem.

Finally Myers reiterates the flawed Darwinian argument that whatever abruptness you see in the fossil record is, after all, merely a consequence of all those gaps in the fossils:

Darwin himself explained in great detail how one should not expect fine-grained fossil series, due to the imperfection of the geological record.

When in doubt, doubt the data. Paleontologists agree that the fossil record reveals abrupt appearances, but when convenient evolutionists can always protect their theory with those gaps in the fossil record.

Evolutionary thinking is remarkable. I am reminded of John Earman’s remarks about Hume’s arguments. For it is astonishing how well evolution is treated, given how completely the confection collapses under a little probing. So if Benjamin Radford really is interested in why people believe things for which there is little or no evidence, we have just the topic for him.

USAToday: Evolution is Settled Science and Not a Religious Proposition

The Beauty of Evolution

Truth may be, as Paul Dirac suggested, beautiful, but beauty is not always true. From the celestial spheres of the Greeks to Kepler’s heavenly harmonic tones, our dreams of beauty are often just that—dreams and not reality. But we dream on and today the most beautiful dream is evolution.

Evolution resolves every tension and is the foundation for moving forward. It makes God all the more wise, dignified and sovereign. For creating the laws that do the creating is more sublime and exalted than tinkering and creating thousands of species of beetles, for example.

And evolution protects God from being responsible for this ragged, asymmetric and evil world. This world clearly would not have been intended by any being powerful enough to create it. Also evolution protects God from the infinite regress that Hume warned of.

With those tensions resolved evolution provides for the way forward. Being able to explain our origins is the first step to controlling our origins. As Philip Johnson once observed, explanation is mastery. So man, in his clean white lab coat, is the objective source of truth. Without evolution, science would be impossible, for nature would be rent by the interference of supernatural transcendent powers, as Bultmann explained. With evolution, man takes control of the world.

Evolution is beautiful. It services both our theology and our philosophy—God and man.

Evolution also resolves our culture wars, for it provides a via media between the hostile atheists and the fundamentalist creationists. Evolution does not refute God nor prove God. Science and religion are non-overlapping magisteria and any attempt to combine and unite them shall infallibly injure both, as Baden Powell warned while Darwin worked away on his theory.

And so science has, not surprisingly, played its part. Its lines were written and it read them back perfectly. The conclusion is in and there can be no rational doubt. The empirical evidence overwhelmingly and unambiguously supports evolution. Nothing but natural law is needed to explain the origin of the world. The last piece has been added and the puzzle is complete.

There’s only one problem.

All of this incredible beauty is based on a silly and decidedly unscientific idea which is never spoken out loud: The world arose spontaneously. In reality there is no such empirical support. No overwhelming evidence and no unambiguous proof. Evolution is not a scientific fact, quite the opposite. Beauty does not imply truth.

But such realism is not acceptable in the world today. The beauty and necessity of evolution far outweigh any empirical objections. This can be seen in the steady stream of commentators such as Tom Krattenmaker who play off evolution’s beautiful themes. In his USAToday opinion piece this week, Krattenmaker laments the fact that public opinion polls ask if you believe in evolution.

This faith-laden language regarding such a hard science and proven topic as evolution is, for Krattenmaker, indicative of several underlying problems. There is the willful ignorance of the fundamentalists who believe in that outdated notion that humans were created by God in their present form, the failure of science to engage the public, the misconception that we must choose between evolution or God, the general misunderstanding of the objective scientific method that deals with scientific validity and has no leaps of faith, and the general mistrust of science in our country.

It’s all warfare thesis-positivism-scientism as Krattenmaker displays his ignorance of the history and philosophy of science in general and evolution in particular. No, evolution is not settled science (the only thing scientifically settled about evolution is that it is astronomically unlikely), the fact of evolution is based on metaphysical claims not empirical science, there is no guaranteed, objective scientific method, science certainly does take leaps of faith, and the public’s attitude toward science is usually well founded, with trust where science is on solid ground and mistrust where scientists make unfounded truth claims.

Krattenmaker’s commentary is, unfortunately, typical. Evolution is proclaimed to be a fact and then leveraged to arrive at all manner of unfounded conclusions. Evolution is much more than a scientific theory. It is the modern zeitgeist permeating education, media, law, public policy, public health, politics and environmentalism to name a few.

Religion drives science, and it matters.

Forbes Goes Religious With Dennis Venema

A Defective Gene

Evolution is motivated by strong philosophical and theological premises which overcome the obvious scientific problems and evolutionists never stray too far from their metaphysics. This was demonstrated again this week in John Farrell’s Forbes blog. Farrell interviewed evolution professor Dennis Venema who discussed how the evidence bears on evolution:

Evidence for evolution is everywhere – biogeography, embryology, anatomy, paleontology, and so on …

If you’re an evolutionist, then everything supports evolution. The beauty of evolution is that all of nature supports the theory, regardless of the details. In fact the biogeography evidence is, quite literally as well as figuratively, all over the map. Some evidences from biogeography are, as evolutionist Ernst Mayr once put it in his book What Evolution Is, “almost unbelievable.” He admitted that one example of lizard dispersal is “truly miraculous.”

Yet biogeography has always been a powerful proof text for evolutionists. Why? As usual, it is the religion behind the science that is so powerful. As one textbook explained:

Had all species been created in the places where they now exist, then Amphibian and terrestrial mammals should be as frequent on oceanic islands as on comparable continental areas. Certainly, terrestrial mammals should have been created on these islands as frequently as were bats. [Dodson and Dodson, Evolution: Process and Product, 1976]

After discussing the biogeographical patterns, Jerry Coyne was a bit more blunt when he proclaimed: “Creationism is hard-pressed to explain these patterns.” Coyne has strong religious beliefs, but religious beliefs hardly qualify as science.

Likewise the embryonic evidence has long since been discredited. Non homologous development pathways in similar species make no sense on evolution but once again, it’s all about religion.

As for anatomy, striking differences are found in otherwise similar species and striking similarities are found in otherwise different species—precisely the opposite of evolution’s narrative. But the evidence remains compelling because of the religion.

And again for paleontology. The fossil record reveals rapid explosions of diversity followed by stasis and discontinuities—precisely the opposite of the envisioned evolutionary process. But as evolutionist Ken Miller points out, we all know the fossil species would not have been created.

Over and over, in each category the evidence contradicts evolution from a scientific perspective, but it mandates evolution from a religious perspective. The absurdity is downright laughable. But that is evolution and Venema, true to form, shows that, once again, it’s all about religion:

It’s one thing to explain away biogeographical patterns or claim that anatomical similarities reflect a non-evolutionary “design” pattern – but another thing altogether to attempt to explain away why humans (and other placental mammals) have a defective gene for making egg yolk in the exact spot in our genomes where chickens have the functional version of this gene, and that humans and chimpanzees share a large number of mutations in common in our two inactivated copies.

The argument from dysteleology goes back to antiquity. Darwin refined it showed how it makes evolution true. As Stephen J. Gould put it:

Odd arrangements and funny solutions are the proof of evolution—paths that a sensible God would never tread but that a natural process, constrained by history, follows perforce. No one understood this better than Darwin. Ernst Mayr has shown how Darwin, in defending evolution, consistently turned to organic parts and geographic distributions that make the least sense.

Venema is, first and foremost, a religious fundamentalist. His religion dictates his science. As it was said so long ago, theology is the queen of the sciences. The age-old idea that the world spontaneously arose is of course, from a scientific perspective, absurd. The evolutionist’s insistence that said idea is now a fact beyond any reasonable doubt is beyond absurd—it isn’t even wrong.

But as Paul warned Timothy, “For the time will come when they will not endure sound doctrine, but according to their own desires, because they have itching ears, they will heap up for themselves teachers; and they will turn their ears away from the truth, and be turned aside to fables.”

Religion drives science, and it matters.

The Pew Forum Poll Reveals More Ignorance

When Will They Learn?

Following the recent Harris poll we now have a Pew Forum poll out today on who believes what about evolution, and we can expect another round of reports from the elites on the shocking ignorance that continues to persist in fly-over land. Unlike the Harris poll which asks about belief in Darwin’s theory of evolution and usually runs around 50% for and against, the Pew Forum poll presents participants with the vague and less meaningful choice between “humans and other living things have evolved over time” versus “humans and other living things have existed in their present form since the beginning of time.” Most creationists would have no problem with the first choice and not surprisingly 7% of the people gave up on the false dichotomy. Nonetheless 33% did choose full out stasis, enough to disturb and embarrass science writer Lauren Friedman given the “overwhelming evidence” for evolution. Friedman gets credit, however, for while many writers would not deign to provide any actual reasoning (condescension followed by a quick exit is always safer than trying to explain how it is we know the world arose spontaneously) Friedman at least provides several links to evidence for why “evolution is real.” Let’s have a look at why we are so ignorant.

Friedman begins with this quote from our taxpayer funded Public Broadcasting Service (PBS): “The Darwinian theory of evolution has withstood the test of time and thousands of scientific experiments; nothing has disproved it since Darwin first proposed it more than 150 years ago.”

Thousands of scientific experiments? Actually every major prediction of evolution has turned out to be false. So what does PBS know that has escaped the scientific journals? Nothing actually. The problem is that citing PBS on why evolution is true is a bit like calling the New York Yankees front office to find out if the Yankees are the greatest baseball team.

The PBS site behind Friedman’s link is mainly a grandiose victory lap. And when the site does attempt to show how the science proves evolution it fails badly such as with this discussion of genes:

Genes are the portions of an organism's DNA that carry the code responsible for building that organism in a very specific way. Genes -- and, thus, the traits they code for -- are passed from parent to offspring. From generation to generation, well-understood molecular mechanisms reshuffle, duplicate, and alter genes in a way that produces genetic variation. This variation is the raw material for evolution.

The problem here is that this has not been shown to be true. In fact this is a cartoon version of evolution that even many evolutionists have rejected. And those who have not rejected it have a significant burden of proof. Shuffling, duplicating, mutating and whatever other mechanisms PBS cares to throw into the list simply do not appear capable of providing the needed variation. Even Stephen J. Gould admitted that macroevolution is an unsolved problem. That’s what the science is telling us.

Or again, PBS falters on the question “Is there evidence for evolution?”:

In the 150 years since Darwin proposed the theory of evolution by natural selection, a mountain of evidence has accumulated to support the theory. A greatly expanded fossil record since Darwin's time, the discovery of DNA and the process of genetic replication, an understanding of radioactive decay, observations of natural selection in the wild and in laboratories, and evidence in the genomes of many different organisms, including humans, have all bolstered the validity of the theory of evolution.

This is not a mountain of evidence. It is not even evidence. At least not positive evidence. The fossil record reveals rapid explosions of diversity followed by stasis and discontinuities—precisely the opposite of the envisioned evolutionary process.

DNA is a complex chemical structure that would have been difficult to evolve and the DNA code is not ordinary as evolutionists thought it was, but rather is extremely unique. That presents many problems for evolution, including the conundrum that the DNA code must have evolved rapidly and very early in evolutionary history, long before higher life forms arose which benefit so much from the code’s clever design. How did evolution know to evolve such a special code long before its particulars would be needed?

DNA replication is also a problem for evolution because, while evolutionists had long predicted that such a fundamental process would be conserved across the species, it has been found to have important differences in different species.

Natural selection is also not a very good evidence for evolution, for the simple reason that it is so routinely forfeited by evolutionists. Likewise the “evidence in the genomes” raises several different kinds of problems for evolution. Perhaps most obvious are the identical or near-identical DNA sequences in distant species and the massive differences in highly similar species. Both these findings falsified predictions and were shocking to evolutionists.

Friedman’s other sources for proof of evolution are equally problematic. For instance she cites behavior evidence, but altruistic behavior—such as Mother Teresa helping unrelated people groups in distant lands—is a problem for evolution requiring circuitous explanations. Friedman also cites human genome comparisons where this conclusion is made:

Due to billions of years of evolution, humans share genes with all living organisms. The percentage of genes or DNA that organisms share records their similarities. We share more genes with organisms that are more closely related to us.

Again, this is just plain wrong. For instance, humans are more similar to the orangutan than to the chimpanzee, yet our DNA is closer to the chimpanzee. Or again, we are very distant from the kangaroo, yet the genomes of the two species share profound similarities. As one researcher explained:

There are a few differences, we have a few more of this, a few less of that, but they are the same genes and a lot of them are in the same order. Which really surprised us, we thought they'd be completely scrambled, but they're not, there's great chunks of the human genome which is sitting right there in the kangaroo genome.

The evidence simply does not support evolution—the claim that the most complex things we know of arose spontaneously—unless it is turned upside down and forced to support the theory. And that gets us closer to an understanding of evolution. This becomes more obvious when Friedman cites the leading evolutionist Jerry Coyne who explains that the ostrich must have evolved because its wings are obviously evolutionary leftovers. After all, the ostrich doesn’t fly. True the wings may be used as balancers, but that misses the point:

Wouldn't it be odd if a creator helped an ostrich balance itself by giving it appendages that just happen to look exactly like reduced wings, and which are constructed in exactly the same way as wings used for flying?

Odd? That may or may not be odd, but it certainly is not scientific. There’s no arguing with the evolutionist’s personal religious beliefs, but it is precisely such metaphysical mandates that pervade the evolution literature and prove evolution to be true. From the Epicureans and gnostics to today’s evolutionists, we have always had our own preconceived ideas about origins, regardless of the evidence.

Meanwhile science writers such as Friedman upbraid the ignorant masses:

It's difficult to imagine who could believe such things when faced with the mountain of evidence supporting evolution.

Religion drives science, and it matters.

New Poll: No One Is Buying It

The People Have Spoken

After evolutionist James Shapiro claimed he was misquoted by certain members of the Texas state’s school board textbook review committee, even though he wasn’t misquoted; and that those members made a “completely false statement” about novelty being an unsolved problem for evolutionary theory, even though it was Shapiro who misrepresented novelty as well in hand; and that he was “the victim of skillful misquoting for an anti-science purpose,” even though expecting our public schools to teach accurate science is certainly not “anti-science” and it is evolution which consistently makes the anti-science claim that evolution is a fact; and that those members were “trying to confuse and mislead the public” and were “against freedom of speech in scientific research, honesty in public decision-making, and suitable modern education for the students of Texas,” even though it is evolution that consistently misrepresents science in textbooks and classrooms, and misinforms the public; and that the actions of those members is “counter to the ideals of liberty, democracy and opportunity on which this nation was founded,” even though it is evolutionists who blackball anyone who dares question evolutionary theory and keep lists of those people to ensure their careers are derailed and construct false histories of science to hide their McCarthyism; it is perhaps not too surprising that a new poll finds that Americans don’t really trust scientists.

According to the poll, almost three in five Americans trust the information from scientists only a little or not at all, and that skepticism rises to more than four in five Americans when the information comes from science journalists.

Furthermore, almost four in five Americans think that scientific studies are often or sometimes influenced by political ideology. Note that in this question the Huffington Post reveals its own internal bias as the “ideology” is specifically identified as political, not religious. The dominant influence in evolutionary thought is not even listed in the question.

I suppose it is good that most Americans are resolute and appropriately skeptical of the steady stream of distortions forced upon them. But it is unfortunate that such skepticism is needed in the first place.

Dean Baquet on Journalism’s Challenges

Wow, Just Wow

Dean Baquet told an audience of eager undergraduates last night at Penn State that journalism faces some serious challenges. The managing editor of the New York Times is concerned that “the craft of witnessing and reporting on the truth will die” and that printing accurately is one of the most difficult aspects in journalism right now. Truth? Let’s lower our sights and begin with something a bit more mundane, such as journalistic bias and viewpoint discrimination, which his newspaper once again demonstrated this weekend when it castigated anyone who dares to question that the species spontaneously arose. The problem with such people is they question the science, “often getting down to very technical details.” Thankfully the New York Times has exposed this underhanded ploy.

The problem is that editors such as Baquet don’t even recognize journalistic bias in their own publications, much less do anything about it.

The Atlantic: Inherit the Wind One of the “Great Trial Movies of All Time”

Whig History

Now Andrew Cohen joins Judge John Jones in his approbation of the fictional play and movie, Inherit the Wind. In the hands of evolutionists the Lawrence and Lee script has codified the Warfare Thesis, a myth so useful that evolutionists continue to promote the movie at the cost of their own credibility. For students all of this provides a living example of the age-old anti-intellectual practice of remaking and retelling history to justify today’s lies and discrimination—the sort of thing that the script was originally, and ironically, meant to expose.

Cohen not only gives high praise to Inherit the Wind, absurdly calling it “one of the great trial movies of all time,” he also approvingly cites equally spurious renditions of on-going policy disputes from the New York Times and the Los Angeles Times, reviewed here, here and here.

New York Times: No Fair Talking Science

Theory Protectionism

Motoko Rich’s New York Times piece from this weekend presented a one-sided view of the on-going Texas textbook controversy, but not for lack of material. Rich’s piece, which was decidedly in favor of the belief that the species spontaneously arose, did not give voice to those who doubt that idea. The article quoted several participants in the debate, but none were evolution skeptics. That’s probably because when interviewed, the skeptics didn’t provide the right kind of material—they didn’t fit the template.

Instead they had some reasonable and thoughtful things to say. So instead, the Times cast them as deceptive:

By questioning the science — often getting down to very technical details — the evolution challengers in Texas are following a strategy increasingly deployed by others around the country.

After all, this ploy has been used before:

Four years ago, a conservative bloc on the state school board pushed through amendments to science standards that call for students to “analyze and evaluate” some of the basic principles of evolution. Science educators and advocates worry that this language can be used as a back door for teaching creationism.

And according to Kathy Miller, president of the Texas Freedom Network, appealing to science is a dirty trick:

It is like lipstick on a Trojan horse,” said Ms. Miller of the Texas Freedom Network.

Philosophers call this theory protectionism. If analyzing and evaluating “basic principles,” exploring technical details, and questioning the science are not allowed, then evolution is fully protected.

WFAA Showcases Evolutionary Misinformation

The Many Effects of the Warfare Thesis

Kevin Williamson must be helping out at the local ABC affiliate in Dallas-Ft. Worth, WFAA Channel 8, which when reporting on the Texas textbook controversy this week informed its audience that “Texas law bans the mention of evolution in textbooks.” This level of ignorance would be amusing if it wasn’t so tragic. Evolutionary misinformation has journalists confused even about basic facts:

Next WFAA misinformed its audience that former chairman of the State Board Don McLeroy supports teaching creationism:

After all, McLeroy wants the facts about evolution, that must mean he wants creationism in the classroom. Finally there always is the appeal to science, which leaves no doubt that the biological world spontaneously arose:

Given that federal judge John Jones actually wanted to see Inherit the Wind a second time in preparation for the Dover case because, after all, the film puts the origins debate into its proper “historical context” (Jones later explained that “I understood the general theme. I’d seen Inherit the Wind.”), then perhaps it is not too surprising that journalists also have their heads spinning from evolution’s misinformation.

Evolutionist on Complexity: “To some extent, it just happens”

Who Will Tell the People?

No sooner had we pointed out that while, as Andreas Wagner admitted, we know “very little” about how evolutionary innovations originate and that “Exactly how new traits emerge is a question that has long puzzled evolutionary biologists,” such inconvenient truths are rarely admitted in public, then leading science writer Carl Zimmer, as if on cue, writing for Scientific American on the topic of “how organisms can evolve elaborate structures,” informed his readers that when it comes to complexity “To some extent, it just happens,” and that “intricate systems of proteins can evolve from simpler ones,” and finally that “studies suggest” that random mutations “can fuel the emergence of complexity.”

That incredible sequence of whoppers makes us wonder, why is it that we cannot simply tell the truth about the science? Who will tell the people?

More Warfare Thesis Lies, This Time From CNN

The Battle Continues

When nineteenth century evolutionist Andrew Dickson White constructed a false history of science, casting evolutionists as the latest in a long history of heroic truth seekers who faced religious intolerance and opposition at every turn, he set in motion a powerful genre that would be difficult to stop. From White’s A History of the Warfare of Science with Theology in Christendom to the mythical Inherit the Wind, a fictional account of the famous 1925 Monkey Trial that evolutionists use to indoctrinate students such as Judge Jones, to today’s pundits and even President Obama, the false Warfare Thesis, which pits religion against science, is too powerful and alluring to allow the truth to get in the way. And so it is no surprise that with all the news surrounding the new Pope taking charge, evolutionists would be sure to reinforce and remind everyone of their whig history we are supposed to believe. Enter Florence Davey-Attlee and her recent CNN piece where she wrote, among other things that:

Italian astronomer Giordano Bruno, an Italian philosopher who argued that the universe was infinite, was burned at the stake.

The key to a good lie is to leverage the truth as much as possible. In this instance, we have two truths juxtaposed to make a lie. You see Bruno did argue for an infinite universe, and he was burned at the stake. But those are two distinct and separate facts. The implication is that the Church burned Bruno at the stake because of his scientific investigations about the universe—a perfect example of the Warfare Thesis. And it is a perfect example because it is false, as is the Warfare Thesis. But that doesn’t mean evolutionists won’t teach it.

The Kermit Gosnell Trial is Finishing Up

But the Media is Avoiding it

Ideas have consequences and evolution, the most influential theory in the history of science, has plenty of them. In addition to science, evolution influences such fields as public policy, media, education, history, philosophy, law, medicine and health care. Evolutionary thought is ubiquitous and underlies assumptions that may seem to be completely unrelated to the origin of species. On the other hand the path to evolution is sometimes easier to trace. For example, evolution encourages a reductionist, materialistic view of life. “We hold these truths to be self-evident,” proclaims the Declaration of Independence, “that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness.” But with evolution the Creator is distant and aloof, more like Aristotle’s Unmoved Mover whose main function is simply to initiate motion so we can avoid the problem of an infinite regress. Life just happened to happen. It seems there is no divine spark and consequently life loses an inherent and important property—those God-given unalienable Rights. So not surprisingly it was only a few short decades after Darwin that evolutionists were ramping up the modern eugenics movement. And not long behind was the abortion movement. When I explained the link between evolution and today’s abortion movement evolutionists had two responses. First, they vigorously denied any such link. Second, they vigorously defended abortion. It was another example of an internal contradiction within evolutionary thought which this week is on display in the final phases of the trial of abortionist Kermit Gosnell.

It had all the making of the Trial of the Century. Gruesome and gory murders of innocent babies that are alleged to have been done over many years and with the full knowledge of assistants, peers and even government regulators. The implications are staggering and the trial provided a stream of increasingly shocking daily updates to keep the story alive. It is the kind of trial the media loves. There was only one problem: it was all about abortion.

You may not have heard much about Kermit Gosnell and his murder trial, for the media coverage has been spotty at best. And what coverage there has been has often been more euphemistic than factual. Consider Vivian Yee’s piece for last Sunday’s New York Times which described Gosnell as a doctor charged with killing “viable fetuses.”

For most people what Yee refers to as “viable fetuses” are simply “babies.” But evolutionists use euphemistic terminology to avoid the problem that abortion is a violation of the right to life. In fact the concept of viability is a long-standing attempt to rationalize abortion. Viability refers to the ability of a baby to survive outside the mother’s body. If the baby cannot survive then, so goes the argument, it has no right to life.

You can see the connection with evolution for which death and survival are key. It is natural selection and the survival of the fittest as those that are strong live and participate in evolution, whereas those that are weak die off. Jesus said “Blessed are the meek” but evolution celebrates the strong. As Nietzsche warned, it is the weak “who most undermine life among human beings.” If the baby cannot survive on its own, then it has no right to life.

The Gosnell trial reveals fundamental problems with evolutionary thought. Don’t count on hearing about it on the nightly news.

Alternative Splicing Damage Control Still Underway

They Don’t Realize How Silly This Is

The headline says it all: “Evolution by Splicing.” Evolutionists once believed that the species arose by mutations that altered the nucleotide sequences of protein-coding genes. But these genetic differences between species do not seem to be very significant. Next evolutionists thought perhaps the differing expression levels of the genes did the job. Perhaps it was quantity rather than quality that created the species. But again the expression level differences are not so great. Now evolutionists have a new mechanism, and it is yet another example of evolution’s reliance on complexity, serendipity and misrepresentation.

As we reported recently, new research is showing that similar genes, in different species, are spliced differently. So the resulting protein products tend to differ between species.

You learned in high school biology that a gene consists of a long sequence of nucleotides—small molecules that comprise the DNA double helix. But in the higher species the nucleotides are grouped into building blocks or exons (expressed regions). So while the gene nucleotide sequences do not differ greatly between species, and while the gene expression levels also do not differ greatly between species, the exons that are used can differ. In other words, the building blocks themselves do not differ greatly, but which building blocks are used does differ. So for the same gene, you obtain a different gene product.

So now evolutionists are saying that new species can arise from changes in these building blocks. The process is called alternative splicing. Hence the headling, “Evolution by Splicing.”

But note the trend of ever increasing complexity and serendipity. Like entropy, the complexity and serendipity of evolutionary theory inexorably grows. First, it was mutations that inserted, deleted or altered the individual nucleotides that made up a gene. Next, it was mutations that altered the signals and machinery that govern the gene expression level. And now it is mutations that alter the signals that control the splicing machinery.

At each step in this progression, as evolutionists try to keep pace with the scientific results, the theory relies on increasing levels of pre constructed molecular machinery, instructions and processes. A tremendous infrastructure must be in place in order for evolution to occur.

And of course all of that infrastructure must have evolved. Once again, evolution creates evolution and what headlines, such as “Evolution by Splicing,” do not reveal is the ever increasing and quite frankly incredible levels of complexity and serendipity that evolutionary thought entails.

Unfortunately the disingenuous reporting does not stop there. Consider how Brent Graveley, professor of genetics and developmental biology at the University of Connecticut, portrayed these new findings:

These are very important papers that provide for the first time a large-scale view of the evolution of alternative splicing in vertebrates. They demonstrate how dramatically rapidly alternative splicing evolves, and suggest that it might play a role in speciation.

It would be difficult to imagine a greater misrepresentation of the science. There was nothing in the new results that demonstrates the evolution of alternative splicing, rapidly or otherwise. The misrepresentation relies on the prior, unspoken, assumption that evolution is true—that all of biology arose spontaneously as a consequence of random events such as mutations.

With that non scientific belief as his starting point, the evolutionist then reasons that the differing splicing patterns must have evolved. And since they are found in relatively similar species, those splicing differences must have evolved rapidly. So the evolutionist then arrives at the conclusion that the new findings “demonstrate how dramatically rapidly alternative splicing evolves.”

Is it any surprise then that journalists, in turn, misrepresent the science? Here is how one journalist reported the new findings:

The results suggest that differences in the ways genetic messages are spliced have played a major role in the evolution of fundamental characteristics of species.

It is yet another example of, as I explained in Science’s Blind Spot, how religion drives science. Theology is still queen of the sciences.

Evolutionists Solve Eye Evolution (Again)

Recently we discussed a paper from 2008 in which evolutionists claimed to have solved the long-standing question of how the eye evolved. It is a problem that famously once made Darwin shudder but the evolutionists claimed that now, with our advanced scientific knowledge, “the gap in understanding of the molecular evolution of eye components is all but closed.” That was quite a claim and, not surprisingly, there was no such breakthrough. In fact, the “explanation” that the evolutionists provided was simply that the key cellular signal transduction pathway in our eyes came from a very similar pathway in yeast that senses certain types of signaling chemicals known as pheromones. The evolutionists had no explanation for how the yeast pathway arose in the first place or exactly how it could morph into the animal vision system. It was yet another example of evolution’s trivial, non scientific, solutions that do nothing but generate vacuous headlines. Well evolutionists have done it again. This month they “solved” the problem of eye evolution yet again. Apparently that 2008 solution didn’t take, but this new solution is no better.

You may have seen the Wall Street Journal article from earlier this month proclaiming the new discovery of how vision evolved. The headline read, “A Relief to Darwin: The Eyes Have It.” Or perhaps you saw the press release trumpeting the new “Breakthrough study” that “Pinpoints Evolutionary Origins of Sight.”

The paper itself was no less triumphant. It claimed to reveal “a simple route to animal vision.” But in fact the evolutionists discovered no such thing. It was all yet another abuse of science.

As with the earlier 2008 paper, the new study appeals to yet another signal transduction pathway as the progenitor of later vision systems. This time instead of yeast, the paper appeals to a pathway in placozoa. As with the yeast system, the placozoa system probably detects signaling chemicals.

As usual, the evolutionists “solve” the problem simply by pushing it back in time. The evolution narrative continues to push complexity to earlier stages where it somehow and fortuitously appears. As the evolutionists conclude: “Our results are compatible with the view that the last common neuralian ancestor might have been more complex than generally assumed.”

So the new study makes evolution even more heroic and implausible. What it does not show is precisely what the paper and the articles claim that it shows: how vision evolved.

Evolution is more ludicrous with each passing week. It is a religiously-motivated movement that force-fits scientific findings to its truth. Its unending trail of vacuous discoveries is nothing more than a reflection of the underlying religion. As John Ioannidis has put it, “claimed research findings may often be simply accurate measures of the prevailing bias.” That is a good description of evolutionary science.

Religion drives science and it matters.