Meet Jamie Jensen: What Are They Teaching at Brigham Young University?

Bacterial Resistance to Antibiotics

Rachel Gross’ recent article about evolutionist’s public outreach contains several misconceptions that are, unfortunately, all too common. Perhaps most obvious is the mythological Warfare Thesis that Gross and her evolutionary protagonists heavily rely on. Plumbing the depths of ignorance, Gross writes:

Those who research the topic call this paradigm the “conflict mode” because it pits religion and science against each other, with little room for discussion. And researchers are starting to realize that it does little to illuminate the science of evolution for those who need it most.

“Those who research the topic call this paradigm the ‘conflict mode’”?

Huh?

This is reminiscent of Judge Jones endorsement of Inherit the Wind as a primer for understanding the origins debate, for it is beyond embarrassing. Exactly who are those “who research the topic” to which Gross refers?

Gross is apparently blithely unaware that there are precisely zero such researchers. The “conflict mode” is a long-discarded, failed view of history promoted in Inherit the Wind, a two-dimensional, upside-down rewrite of the 1925 Monkey Trial.

But ever since, evolutionists have latched onto the play, and the mythological history it promotes, in an unabashed display of anti-intellectualism. As Lawrence Principe has explained:

The notion that there exists, and has always existed, a “warfare” or “conflict” between science and religion is so deeply ingrained in public thinking that it usually goes unquestioned. The idea was however largely the creation of two late nineteenth-century authors who confected it for personal and political purposes. Even though no serious historians of science acquiesce in it today, the myth remains powerful, and endlessly repeated, in wider circles

Or as Jeffrey Russell writes:

The reason for promoting both the specific lie about the sphericity of Earth and the general lie that religion and science are in natural and eternal conflict in Western society, is to defend Darwinism. The answer is really only slightly more complicated than that bald statement.

Rachel Gross is, unfortunately, promoting the “general lie” that historians have long since been warning of. Her article is utter nonsense. The worst of junk news.

But it gets worse.

Gross next approvingly quotes Brigham Young University associate professor Jamie Jensen whose goal is to inculcate her students with Epicureanism. “Acceptance is my goal,” says Jensen, referring to her teaching of spontaneous origins in her Biology 101 class at the Mormon institution.

As we have explained many times, this is how evolutionists think. Explaining their anti-scientific, religious beliefs is not enough. You must believe. As Jensen explains:

By the end of Biology 101, they can answer all the questions really well, but they don’t believe a word I say. If they don’t accept it as being real, then they’re not willing to make important decisions based on evolution — like whether or not to vaccinate their child or give them antibiotics.

Whether or not to give their child antibiotics?

As we have discussed many times before, the equating of “evolution” with bacterial resistance to antibiotics is an equivocation and bait-and-switch.

The notion that one must believe in evolution to understand bacterial resistance to antibiotics is beyond absurd.

It not only makes no sense; it masks the monumental empirical contradictions that bacterial antibiotic resistance presents to evolution. As a university life science professor, Jensen is of course well aware of these basic facts of biology.

And she gets paid to teach people’s children?

Religion drives science, and it matters.

Desert Mice Fur Changes Color to Match the Terrain

An Example of Evolution in Every Detail?

About fifteen years ago researchers discovered genetic differences that probably explain the different fur coloring in desert mice populations in New Mexico and Arizona (see papers here and here). Mice populations living on light colored terrain tend to have light colored fur, and those on dark colored terrain tend to have dark colored fur. Blending in with the terrain helps to camouflage the mice, protecting them from predators. And that is, apparently, exactly what the mice did about a thousand years ago when desert lava flows produced the darkened terrain. But that is where the science is overtaken by the dogma. Evolutionists have misappropriated this research work, casting it as a textbook example of evolution, and creating a highly produced video (see above) used to indoctrinate students.

The first problem in casting the dark colored mice as an example of evolution is that their genetic differences are not known to be the result of random mutations. For evolutionists there simply is no question that the genetic differences that are thought to cause the dark fur color arose from random mutations.

Now that may be correct. But it may not be. We simply do not know.

This is not merely a technical objection—in spite of evolutionary theory which called for random mutations to be the source of change, in recent decades directed mutations have been found to be at work in an ever increasing number of cases. For many years evolutionists have ignored and even resisted these findings. Too often I have debated evolutionists who, when I point to this evidence, simply deny it.

So while the genetic differences in those dark mice may well be the result of random mutations, evolutionists do not even give this a second thought. They simply assume from the start, and inform their audience in no uncertain terms, that random mutations are the cause.

This is an example of what philosophers refer to as a “theory-laden observation.” Science can get into trouble when the measurements and observations themselves, rather than being theory-neutral and independent of the theories which explain them, are in fact intertwined with those theories.

This can become circular very quickly, and this desert mouse case is a good example of that. Evolutionists assume the genetic differences arose from random mutations, and then claim the evidence as a powerful confirmation of evolution.

The second problem in casting the dark colored mice as an example of evolution is that the dark coloration may be the result of multiple genetic changes. In one case, four mutations are identified, all of which perhaps are required to bring about the coloration change.

It very well could be that only a lone, single mutation is required. But that is not known.

And if multiple genetic changes are required, then this quickly transitions from an example of what random mutations can do to an example of what random mutations cannot do. If four mutations are required, then we’ve just found yet another hard failure of evolution. But again, the evolutionists give no hint of this interesting question. If everyone had their “burning curiosity,” (as Clarence Darrow put it) then science would have long since come to an end.

The third problem in casting the dark colored mice as an example of evolution is that the coloration is too precise. The dark colored fur appears on the top of the mice, but not their underbelly. This makes sense since the topside is mainly what is exposed to predators. But in the evolution narrative, there is no fitness advantage to such precision. Darkening the entire mouse would, apparently, work just as well.

Small scale adaptation

Everything we’ve talked about so far is an unknown. Evolutionists are proclaiming a slam dunk, case closed, example when in fact there are many unknowns. Some of them could demolish the evolution narrative altogether.

But there is one big known we haven’t yet mentioned. It is that none of this amounts to evolution in the first place. It would be a deceptive equivocation to label fur coloration change via a few mutations as “evolution” when, in fact, this is nothing more than small scale adaptation.

In their “honest moments,” as Stephen J. Gould once put it, even evolutionists admit that random mutation isn’t enough, and that adaptation mechanisms are not enough, to explain the kind of large scale change evolution requires.

Mice changing fur color does not demonstrate how metabolism, the central nervous system, bones, red blood cells, or any other biological wonder could have arisen by evolution’s random mutations coupled with natural selection.

This is an old myth evolutionists have exploited ever since Darwin. Demonstrate biological change, any biological change no matter how trivial, and claim victory. Evolutionist Steve Jones once claimed that the changes observed in viruses contain Darwin’s “entire argument.” That is a gross equivocation and misrepresentation of the science, designed to mislead audiences.

It is a pathetic canard which evolutionists continue to rely on. In the above video, Sean Carroll states that thanks to these mice, “science has an example of evolution, crystal clear, in every detail.” [6:42-48]

It would be difficult to imagine a more absurd misrepresentation. Mice changing color is not a crystal clear “example of evolution … in every detail.” Not even close. Carroll should be ashamed of himself.

Religion drives science, and it matters.

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.

Michael Skinner on Epigenetics: Stage Three Alert

Over the Top Lies

Readers here will know that Darwin’s God has covered the topic of epigenetics extensively for many years now, and so we were interested to read Michael Skinner’s Aeon article on this subject, which appeared last week. Skinner’s piece reminds us of the old maxim that truth passes through three stages. First, it is ridiculed. Second, it is violently opposed. Third, it is accepted as being self-evident. If we can slightly modify these three stages as follows, then we have the history of how evolution has struggled and opposed the scientific findings we now refer to as epigenetics:

1. Reject and persecute
2. Delegitimize and minimize
3. Rename and incorporate

Skinner’s position represents the move, which has been taking place in recent years, into Stage 3 (for example, see here).

Skinner’s Aeon article provides an excellent rundown of findings, both old and new, that confirm and elucidate what evolutionists have aggressively and violently opposed for a century: that epigenetics is not only real, but significant in causing long-term biological change. Natural selection plays no role in this process.

From 18th century observations of plants adapting to hotter temperatures, to Conrad Waddington fruit fly experiments in the 1950s (for more tidbits see here), to more recent observations of a range of species, Skinner provides an accessible summary and makes the inescapable conclusion:

Much as Lamarck suggested, changes in the environment literally alter our biology. And even in the absence of continued exposure, the altered biology, expressed as traits or in the form of disease, is transmitted from one generation to the next.

Much as Lamarck suggested? That is an astonishing admission given how evolutionists have, in the past century, vilified Lamarck and anyone who would dare associate with his ideas. And to this day such resistance continues, but it is waning. Hence evolutionists such as Skinner can broach the truth.

Skinner also comes clean on the problem that evolution’s basic source of biological variation, DNA mutations, is insufficient:

the rate of random DNA sequence mutation turns out to be too slow to explain many of the changes observed. Scientists, well-aware of the issue, have proposed a variety of genetic mechanisms to compensate: genetic drift, in which small groups of individuals undergo dramatic genetic change; or epistasis, in which one set of genes suppress another, to name just two. Yet even with such mechanisms in play, genetic mutation rates for complex organisms such as humans are dramatically lower than the frequency of change for a host of traits, from adjustments in metabolism to resistance to disease.

Mutations are too slow for evolution? Again, this is an astonishing admission. The last time mathematicians reported this inconvenient truth they were told by evolutionists that it didn’t matter because, after all, we all know that evolution is true. Nothing like contradicting the science. Skinner admits that a paradigm shift is needed.

Unfortunately for Skinner and his readers that is where the light ends and smoke begins. Qua evolutionist, Skinner must present this contradictory biology as, somehow, consistent with evolution. The first sign that Skinner will firmly plant himself in the Stage Three lie (Rename and incorporate) is the opening sentence:

The unifying theme for much of modern biology is based on Charles Darwin’s theory of evolution, the process of natural selection by which nature selects the fittest, best-adapted organisms to reproduce, multiply and survive.

Evolution is the unifying theme for much of modern biology? This not so secret handshake is such an over-the-top misrepresentation that it hardly seems worthwhile to dignify it with a rebuttal. Given how evolutionists are consistently surprised by biology, one would hope they at least could stop with this lie. But there it is.

Unfortunately it doesn’t stop there. Skinner’s next Big Lie, and the thesis of his article, is that the long rejected epigenetics will now fit conveniently into evolutionary theory. It was all a big misunderstanding and rather than rejecting epigenetics, we should see it as merely another component in the ever increasingly complex theory called evolution.

This is Stage Three: Rename, recast, retool, reimagine, and incorporate the new idol into our modern-day Epicureanism.

With enough massaging and story-telling evolutionists will forget the contradictions and convince themselves, and their fawning audiences, that the fit is perfect and epigenetics is, in fact, yet more proof of evolution.

There’s only one problem. This is all absurd.

What Skinner and the evolutionists won’t tell you is that all of this makes no sense on their theory. With epigenetics the biological variation evolution needs is not natural. It is not the mere consequence of biophysics—radiation, toxins or other mishaps causing DNA mutations. Rather, it is a biological control system.

It is not simple mistakes, but complex mechanisms.

It is not random, but directed.

It is not slow, but rapid.

It is not a single mutation that is selected, but simultaneous changes across the population.

This is not evolution.

And as Skinner inconveniently realizes, such epigenetics are found across a wide range of species. They are widely conserved and, for evolution, this is yet more bad news. It means the incredible epigenetics mechanisms must have, somehow, arisen very early in the history of evolution.

What the evolutionists will never admit is that epigenetics contradicts evolutionary theory. Not only must such incredibly complex mechanisms have evolved early on, and not only must they have arisen from chance mutation events, and so not only must evolution have created evolution, but they would have persisted in spite of any fitness advantage.

The whole idea behind the evolution mythology is that natural selection saves the day by directing the blind, chance mutations. Setting aside the silliness of this idea which we have discussed many times, the problem with epigenetics is that if they were to arise from chance mutations (and “oh what a big if”), they would not increase the organism’s fitness.

Epigenetics mechanisms are helpful at some future, unknown, time when the environmental challenge finally presents itself. They are useless when they initially arise, and so would not be preserved by evolution’s mythical natural selection.

Of course evolutionists will contrive yet more complex, silly, just-so stories about how epigenetics mechanisms arose from pre existing parts used for other purposes (the ridiculous co-adaptation argument), and about how they just happened to provide some other functions so as to improve fitness.

Skinner’s presentation of how to integrate epigenetics with evolution is entirely gratuitous. He has empirical evidence for the former, and religious dogma for the latter. There is no scientific need for the addition of evolution—it is a multiplied entity and is gratuitous. But Skinner needs it.

These are all the usual lies, which will be trotted out as yet more “facts.” Evolutionists must tell these lies. Otherwise they would have to move beyond Stage Three, and admit the science contradicts the theory.

And that is not going to happen. Old scientists don’t change their minds, they just die.

Religion drives science, and it matters.

Inherit the Wind: Evolution is an Illusion

It’s Where They Wanted To Go

In the original Star Trek pilot entitled “The Cage,” the Enterprise receives a distress signal from a long lost exploration vessel. The signal was transmitted 20 years ago, and the Enterprise responds hoping to find survivors. The landing party arrives at the planet’s surface and, indeed, they find elderly crew members who have carved out a living for themselves on the distant planet. It is a futuristic version of “The Swiss Family Robinson,” but there’s just one problem: It is all an illusion.

The planet has an advanced civilization living underground. They produced an illusion that was exactly what Captain Pike wanted to see. The elderly crew, happily and resourcefully making a life for themselves was exactly what everyone was hoping for (click now on video).

It is the same with evolution’s poster child, Inherit the Wind. Whereas Arthur Miller was worried critics would think he was skewing history for a mere partisan purpose with his brilliant play, The Crucible, [1] Jerome Lawrence and Robert Lee had no such compunction in writing their blatantly false, two-dimensional cartoon version of the 1925 Monkey Trial.

When Miller travelled to Salem he uncovered something profound. The Witch Trial records were eerily parallel to the anti-Communist hysteria of the 1940s. His task was not to contrive a silly fiction, but to reveal a dangerous, and all too real, stain within humanity. False accusations, smears, character assassination, black-balling, secret lists, group-think, and cowardice. It was all there.

Unlike The Crucible, Inherit the Wind fails to uncover in Dayton, Tennessee, an underlying theme or connection to McCarthyism. So Lawrence and Lee did something Miller never did—they constructed a false illusion.

John Scopes becomes a humble and tireless science teacher hauled off to jail by an angry mob of fundamentalists, led by a vitriolic Reverend Jeremiah Brown, for trying to enlighten his science students. In fear for his life he contacts journalist Henry Louis Mencken for help in securing a lawyer. The townspeople march in protest, singing hymns, and the William Jennings Bryan character—a loudmouth glutton—is slayed by the Clarence Darrow protagonist. None of this ever happened.

This is the mythological Warfare Thesis set to script. Inherit the Wind is an enduring and durable tale not because it uncovers an important truth but because it plays to humanity’s weakest tendencies. The script presents a false reality. It is a mythical tale using the 1925 Monkey Trial to gain an aura of realism.

As NT Wright said of Darwin, the reason why Inherit the Wind gets the mileage that it does is because that is where people wanted to go.

As with “The Cage,” the illusion is what people want to believe. Just as the alien civilization produced an illusion that was precisely what Captain Pike would want to see, Inherit the Wind is precisely the Warfare Thesis illusion that evolutionists want to see. Flyover country is full of dangerous, anti-intellectual, fundamentalists who need to be set straight by the likes of Spencer Tracy.

Inherit the Wind, and the broader Warfare Thesis myth, have fueled precisely what Miller helped to expose. Inherit the Wind claims to oppose the dangerous, anti-intellectual, fundamentalism, but, in fact, it reinforced it. Instead of labelling people as communists, they are now labelled as anti-science. Otherwise the scene remains complete with the usual false accusations, character smears, black-balling, secret lists, group-think, and cowardice. It’s all still there.

Evolutionists are the dangerous, anti-intellectual, fundamentalists. The American Bar Association absurdly rates Inherit the Wind as one of the top legal movies of all time.

And the ABA is not simply a lone nut. Legal expert Andrew Cohen not only gave high praise to Inherit the Wind, but ridiculously called it “one of the great trial movies of all time.”

Judge John Jones—exalted as one of Time magazine’s 100 Most Influential People of the Year—unbelievably revealed that he actually wanted to see Inherit the Wind a second time in preparation for the 2005 Dover case, over which he presided, because, after all, the film puts the origins debate into its proper “historical context.”

Proper historical context? You’ve got to be kidding.

What a classic mistrial. Jones had been so indoctrinated by the Warfare Thesis that he actually believed the evolutionary propaganda to be historically accurate. If the perfect crime is the one that is never discovered, the perfect propaganda is the one that is never understood. Jones later reminisced about the trial, unbelievably explaining that “I understood the general theme. I’d seen Inherit the Wind.”  Jones was not educated, he was brainwashed.

It’s where they wanted to go.

1. Arthur Miller, “Why I Wrote ‘The Crucible’,” The New Yorker, Oct 21, 1996.

Debate Debrief: The Two-Prong Canard Demonstrated Within 24 Hours

The Curious Case of Nylonase

Organisms have remarkable adaptation capabilities and evolutionists, ever since Darwin, have insisted that is powerful evidence of evolution. This is a blatant misrepresentation of science—when a heater turns on to warm the room do you think it must have therefore evolved?—and it is being revealed in the findings of epigenetics and directed adaptation. As I recently explained (The New Epigenetic Lie), rather than acknowledge and reckon with these findings, evolutionists have resorted to a two-prong canard: (i) claim that evolution knew it all along and (ii) claim that directed adaptation is simply a mode of evolutionary change. In other words, after resisting and rejecting directed adaptation for a century—and holding back science in the process—evolutionists are now claiming it as their own. Readers may have doubted my reporting. Do evolutionists really commit such a flagrant and bogus misdirection? But that was before last night’s “What’s Behind It All? God, Science, and the Universe” debate.

Within twenty four hours of my explaining the evolutionist’s two-prong canard, evolutionist Denis Lamoureux, in a futile attempt to refute the overwhelming science that Stephen Meyer alluded to regarding the impossibility of the chance origin of a protein-coding gene, gave a live demonstration of the canard. Lamoureux cited nylonase—enzymes that rapidly arose in bacteria, in the last century, and are able to breakdown byproducts of the nylon manufacturing process. Lamoureux made the non scientific claim that such enzymes demonstrate that the chance origin of a protein-coding genes is not a problem. They could have evolved with no problem, after all, we just witnessed it occur with the origin of nylonase.

This is the second prong: “directed adaptation is simply a mode of evolutionary change.” In other words, evolution is directed adaptation writ large.

That is a blatant misdirection.

Unfortunately, many in the audience were fooled by this canard. Evolutionists often make scientific-sounding claims, laden with jargon, and those not familiar with the scientific details are none the wiser.

In the case of nylonase, as with all cases of directed adaptation, the adaptation was in response to the environment. In other words, the environment influenced the adaptation. This is not a case of evolutionary change. The nylonase enzymes did not arise from a random search over sequence space until the right enzymes were luckily found and could be selected for. That would have required eons of time. Instead, cellular structures rapidly formed new enzymes in an evolutionary nano second.

Such adaptation to nylon manufacture byproducts has been repeated in laboratory experiments. In a matter of months bacteria acquire the ability to digest the unforeseen chemical. Researchers speculate that mechanisms responding to environmental stress are involved in inducing adaptive mutations.

That is not evolution. In fact it refutes evolution. Evolution does not have the resources to have created directed adaptation mechanisms. And even if it did, such mechanisms would not have been selected for because they provide no immediate fitness improvement.

And it is not evidence that protein-coding genes can evolve by chance. A new gene, arising within a modern cell responding to an environmental challenge, is not analogous to chance origin. Unfortunately evolutionists have a long history of inappropriately claiming otherwise.

There is still much to learn about directed adaptation. Unfortunately, evolutionists continue to obfuscate the path.

Evolution’s Junk Science at the University of Maine

It’s Not About Science

Thinking about taking CHY 431—Structure and Mechanism in Biological Chemistry next semester at the University of Maine? If so you likely will be fed junk evolutionary science like this page:

The page compares the amino acid sequences from the protein cytochrome c across 38 different species. A few of the residues are conserved across all 38 species. For example, position 10 consistently has the amino acid phenylalanine. And what’s the conclusion?  That “Clearly, evolution selects against any change at these positions.”

Clearly?

Actually this evolutionary reasoning has long since been demonstrated to be false with another, even more highly conserved protein—histone IV. If this was about science then students would at least learn what the observations, rather than the dogma, have to say.

Furthermore, the idea that the cytochrome c proteins from all of these species (from cows and ducks to yeast, fungus and bacteria) are related via common descent means that evolution must have created cytochrome c very early in evolutionary history. Certainly earlier than the advent of the electron transport chain (ETC) for which cytochrome c plays an important role. In other words, random mutations somehow created cytochrome c (a feat which itself has no scientific explanation), and then eons later the protein just happened to fit in with one of the most fantastic inventions in all of biology.

The serendipity is astonishing.

Later the page discusses the cytochrome c sequence positions that are highly variable. Here the student is told that “evolutionary drift randomizes these residues.” This is unfortunately yet more evolutionary dogma. In fact there is no scientific evidence that these residues have been “randomized.” That notion comes from the belief that evolution is true, in spite of the science. It may be true that those positions are neutral with respect to function and so can be “randomized,” but that is hardly obvious. Evolution has a long history of claiming structures are random and useless junk, only later to be corrected by scientific findings of function.

Finally the page compares the evolutionary tree based on the cytochrome c protein sequences with the traditional evolutionary tree and makes the ridiculously false claim that “Such trees tend to agree closely with those constructed by evolutionary biologists using morphological data, and provide independent evidence of common descent.”

In fact such trees often do not agree closely with trees based on morphological data. The differences are so significant that they cannot be explained merely as evolutionary “noise.” Therefore by modus tollens, according to the page’s own logic, the science falsifies common descent. No sense in telling the students about that though.

Religion drives science, and it matters.

Here is Matt Ridley’s Must Read Article on Climate Science

A Most Dangerous Door

One of the standard defenses of evolution—the Epicurean idea that the world arose spontaneously—is that science is a self-correcting, feedback process and, as such, will always lead to the truth. This is such an ignorant claim it is difficult to know where to begin in rebutting it. First of all, at its best science is a process that takes as input a set of observations and produces as output some generalizations, sometimes called models or hypotheses or theories or laws, about how nature works. A scientist might observe the planetary motions in the sky and hypothesize that the planets travel in elliptical orbits about the Sun. Or a scientist might observe the movement of objects and theorize that the product of the mass and acceleration of an object equals the force applied to it. These are valuable theories that condense a vast amount of observations into simple and useful formulas that can predict future events. But for every one of these successes there are hundreds of failures. Sometimes these failures are rooted out only after decades or centuries of contentious debate with proponents who are convinced they’ve got it right. Indeed, there is no guarantee of a timely resolution of scientific failures. There is no guarantee of a resolution, period. Every engineering student knows that feedback loops do not guarantee accuracy—they don’t even guarantee stability.

Even at its best, science is not guaranteed to produce truth because of some real or imagined feedback process. And the story gets worse in practice because of the many nonscientific influences at work. Scientists have religious, philosophical and political biases as much as anyone else, and too often they are under pressure to conform. Bucking the trend doesn’t usually win the funding grant.

Yet the Warfare Thesis, the myth that in its objective search for truth science is opposed by religion, has persisted and has fueled a strong trend of scientism—the view of science as dispassionate truth giver. It was constructed and promoted by evolutionists to frame the debate in their favor, and it worked.

So the idea that evolution is true because science “says so,” and after all science can’t be wrong, continues to enjoy broad traction. It is for these reasons that Matt Ridley’s brilliant article in Quadrant Online is important. Ridley begins:

For much of my life I have been a science writer. That means I eavesdrop on what’s going on in laboratories so I can tell interesting stories. It’s analogous to the way art critics write about art, but with a difference: we “science critics” rarely criticise. If we think a scientific paper is dumb, we just ignore it. There’s too much good stuff coming out of science to waste time knocking the bad stuff. Sure, we occasionally take a swipe at pseudoscience—homeopathy, astrology, claims that genetically modified food causes cancer, and so on. But the great thing about science is that it’s self-correcting. The good drives out the bad, because experiments get replicated and hypotheses put to the test. So a really bad idea cannot survive long in science. Or so I used to think.

Ridley’s main concern is the highly politicized idea of anthropomorphic global warming (AGW):

Now, thanks largely to climate science, I have changed my mind. It turns out bad ideas can persist in science for decades, and surrounded by myrmidons of furious defenders they can turn into intolerant dogmas.

This piece by Ridley is important because it is a cogent and direct challenge to the dominant and damaging ideas of scientism and the Warfare Thesis. And it is an admission that the problem is rather obvious:

This should have been obvious to me. Lysenkoism, a pseudo-biological theory that plants (and people) could be trained to change their heritable natures, helped starve millions and yet persisted for decades in the Soviet Union, reaching its zenith under Nikita Khrushchev. The theory that dietary fat causes obesity and heart disease, based on a couple of terrible studies in the 1950s, became unchallenged orthodoxy and is only now fading slowly.

Ridley has shed the mythology of the objective scientist driven simply by a pursuit for the truth:

Scientists are just as prone as anybody else to “confirmation bias”, the tendency we all have to seek evidence that supports our favoured hypothesis and dismiss evidence that contradicts it—as if we were counsel for the defence.

And Ridley has learned about scientific hegemony:

What went wrong with Lysenko and dietary fat was that in each case a monopoly was established. Lysenko’s opponents were imprisoned or killed. Nina Teicholz’s book The Big Fat Surprise shows in devastating detail how opponents of Ancel Keys’s dietary fat hypothesis were starved of grants and frozen out of the debate by an intolerant consensus backed by vested interests, echoed and amplified by a docile press.

Ridley observes that global warming has now joined this infamous list of dubious yet dangerous sciences:

This is precisely what has happened with the climate debate and it is at risk of damaging the whole reputation of science. The “bad idea” in this case is not that climate changes, nor that human beings influence climate change; but that the impending change is sufficiently dangerous to require urgent policy responses.

Ridley explains how climate science was hijacked by partisans some 15-20 years ago and since then dogma, not data, has controlled the research:

These huge green multinationals, with budgets in the hundreds of millions of dollars, have now systematically infiltrated science, as well as industry and media, with the result that many high-profile climate scientists and the journalists who cover them have become one-sided cheerleaders for alarm, while a hit squad of increasingly vicious bloggers polices the debate to ensure that anybody who steps out of line is punished. They insist on stamping out all mention of the heresy that climate change might not be lethally dangerous. Today’s climate science, as Ian Plimer points out in his chapter in The Facts, is based on a “pre-ordained conclusion, huge bodies of evidence are ignored and analytical procedures are treated as evidence”. Funds are not available to investigate alternative theories. Those who express even the mildest doubts about dangerous climate change are ostracised, accused of being in the pay of fossil-fuel interests or starved of funds; those who take money from green pressure groups and make wildly exaggerated statements are showered with rewards and treated by the media as neutral.

It is not difficult to imagine how this plays out:

Look what happened to a butterfly ecologist named Camille Parmesan when she published a paper on “Climate and Species Range” that blamed climate change for threatening the Edith checkerspot butterfly with extinction in California by driving its range northward. The paper was cited more than 500 times, she was invited to speak at the White House and she was asked to contribute to the IPCC’s third assessment report. Unfortunately, a distinguished ecologist called Jim Steele found fault with her conclusion: there had been more local extinctions in the southern part of the butterfly’s range due to urban development than in the north, so only the statistical averages moved north, not the butterflies. There was no correlated local change in temperature anyway, and the butterflies have since recovered throughout their range. When Steele asked Parmesan for her data, she refused. Parmesan’s paper continues to be cited as evidence of climate change. Steele meanwhile is derided as a “denier”. No wonder a highly sceptical ecologist I know is very reluctant to break cover.

Ridley explains that this abuse of science is justified and enabled by the propagation of a false dichotomy that casts skeptics as dangerous or ignorant extremists:

These scientists and their guardians of the flame repeatedly insist that there are only two ways of thinking about climate change—that it’s real, man-made and dangerous (the right way), or that it’s not happening (the wrong way). But this is a false dichotomy. There is a third possibility: that it’s real, partly man-made and not dangerous. This is the “lukewarmer” school, and I am happy to put myself in this category. Lukewarmers do not think dangerous climate change is impossible; but they think it is unlikely. I find that very few people even know of this. Most ordinary people who do not follow climate debates assume that either it’s not happening or it’s dangerous. This suits those with vested interests in renewable energy, since it implies that the only way you would be against their boondoggles is if you “didn’t believe” in climate change.

And given this false dichotomy, the next step is the vilification of the skeptic in a full-scale demagoguery:

But the commentators ignore all these caveats and babble on about warming of “up to” four degrees (or even more), then castigate as a “denier” anybody who says, as I do, the lower end of the scale looks much more likely given the actual data. This is a deliberate tactic. Following what the psychologist Philip Tetlock called the “psychology of taboo”, there has been a systematic and thorough campaign to rule out the middle ground as heretical: not just wrong, but mistaken, immoral and beyond the pale. That’s what the word denier with its deliberate connotations of Holocaust denial is intended to do. For reasons I do not fully understand, journalists have been shamefully happy to go along with this fundamentally religious project.

And behind all the demagoguery, politics, fallacies and manipulation is just plain old bad nineteenth century science:

Joanne Nova, incidentally, is an example of a new breed of science critic that the climate debate has spawned. With little backing, and facing ostracism for her heresy, this talented science journalist had abandoned any chance of a normal, lucrative career and systematically set out to expose the way the huge financial gravy train that is climate science has distorted the methods of science. In her chapter in The Facts, Nova points out that the entire trillion-dollar industry of climate change policy rests on a single hypothetical assumption, first advanced in 1896, for which to this day there is no evidence. The assumption is that modest warming from carbon dioxide must be trebly amplified by extra water vapour—that as the air warms there will be an increase in absolute humidity providing “a positive feedback”. That assumption led to specific predictions that could be tested. And the tests come back negative again and again. The large positive feedback that can turn a mild warming into a dangerous one just is not there. There is no tropical troposphere hot-spot. Ice cores unambiguously show that temperature can fall while carbon dioxide stays high. Estimates of climate sensitivity, which should be high if positive feedbacks are strong, are instead getting lower and lower. Above all, the temperature has failed to rise as predicted by the models.

Ridley chronicles the long sordid history of manipulating evidence and mindless predictions that, though one after the next turned up false, never mattered and even though they failed ridiculously were used anyway as confirmations of AGW:

Excusing failed predictions is a staple of astrology; it’s the way pseudoscientists argue. In science, as Karl Popper long ago insisted, if you make predictions and they fail, you don’t just make excuses and insist you’re even more right than before.

In the end all of this will ultimately harm science. Its hard won reputation can withstand only so many religious and political intrusions. For Ridley himself, it gets personal:

That complacency has shocked me, and done more than anything else to weaken my long-standing support for science as an institution. … I feel genuinely betrayed by the profession that I have spent so much of my career championing.

But this goes far beyond feels of personal disappointment and betrayal. The consequences are enormous:

None of this would matter if it was just scientific inquiry, though that rarely comes cheap in itself. The big difference is that these scientists who insist that we take their word for it, and who get cross if we don’t, are also asking us to make huge, expensive and risky changes to the world economy and to people’s livelihoods.

Ridley’s article is a must read for anyone who is true to science. But for all of its import, it is only the beginning. Ridley is obviously a discerning man but there has been another misadventure and abuse of science that dwarfs climate science. Virtually everything he points out in this excellent piece could be restated, but to even greater extremes, regarding evolution science.

Ridley was once an AGW proponent who now has pulled himself out of its mire. He has stepped back and now the landscape has become all too clear. It is not that there is no warming, or that carbon dioxide has no effects. That’s hardly the point. The problem is in the misrepresentations of the science, the control of the funding, the publication control and blackballing, the demonization, the false dichotomies, the political intrusions, the dangerous impact on public policy, and so forth. This is not science, it a hijacking of science for nonscientific purposes.

Ridley sees all of this. He sees how it really is, and he doesn’t like what he sees. What Ridley does not yet see is that evolution science is all of this, but on a grander scale. Ridley has opened a door, but he is focusing on the first step. It is a most dangerous door, for behind it are all manner of truths people prefer to avoid.

Religion drives science, and it matters.

Planned Parenthood Launches Counter Attack With Ersatz Apology

Fork Tongue

In this video Cecile Richards, President of Planned Parenthood Federation of America, “personally apologizes for the tone and statements” of “one of our staff members.” That “staff member” happens to be Dr. Deborah Nucatola, Planned Parenthood’s senior director of medical services and those “statements” happen to be about the on-going practice of killing babies before they have a chance to see the light of day, turning the mother’s womb into the most dangerous place in America. But Richards is not apologizing for the mass murder she presides over. After all, she promotes it. In fact, the video is not really an apology at all. It is an attack that is full of lies. Richards states that Planned Parenthood “follows all laws and ethical guidelines,” has as a top priority “the compassionate care that we provide,” and is committed  “to life-saving research.”

Ethical guidelines? Compassionate care? Life-saving research? In fact, Planned Parenthood has failed in its ethics and care. Its work is to end, not save, lives.

The Day the Music Died

We Are Now Without Excuse

In the age of on-line entertainment and instant information it was, perhaps, possible to live without knowing about the carnage going on around us, but the video of evolutionist Deborah Nucatola casually and callously explaining the crushing of innocent babies and harvesting their young bodies leaves us forever without excuse. Between gulps of red wine and bites of salad we learn that “a lot of people want liver” and that “We’ve been very good at getting heart, lung, liver …” We are also told how to play games with the law so the harvesting of human body parts can proceed efficiently:

The Federal Abortion Ban is a law, and laws are up to interpretation. So if I say on day One, I do not intend to do this, what ultimately happens doesn’t matter. … If you maintain enough of a dialogue with the person who’s actually doing the procedures, so they understand what the end-game is, there are little things, changes they can make in their technique to increase your success. … For example, so I had eight cases yesterday. And I knew exactly what we needed, and I kind of looked at the list and I said alright, this 17-weeker has eight lams, and this one—so I knew which were the cases that were probably more likely to yield what we needed, and I made my decisions according to that too, so it’s worth having a huddle at the beginning of the day, and that’s what I do.

That 17-weeker never had a chance—she never even saw the light of day. We now know the unthinkable and our response is telling.

Did we look at each other in horror? Did we stop everything? Were we angry? Were we sad? Did we cry?

No, we shot the messenger.

Surely this is all a false manipulation of the facts by those with nefarious and ulterior motives. After all, as the nightly news points out, the good doctor made it clear that this was not about the profit.

So it’s all good, right?

To avoid the obvious we strain at a gnat, and swallow a camel. We celebrate that thirty pieces of silver was not excessive while innocent babies are murdered in cold blood.

We can try to look the other way but we are a deeply sick society. And now we know it.

Lunch with Dr. Nucatola Fallout—Here Come the Attacks

How Do You Justify Murder?

As predicted, evolutionists are desperately attempting to dismiss and delegitimize a several-hour long video of an evolutionist discussing the routine practice of crushing live babies to murder them in cold blood. Business Insider, for example, leads with an absurd headline labelling the video as “false.” No the video is not false. What is false is the evolutionist’s claims that humanity, and everything else for that matter, arose from a series of random chance events—what their Epicurean forefathers referred to as swerving atoms. And, as William Jennings Bryan foresaw, if the world is nothing but a happenstance accident, then what does it matter if we kill? And kill they do. In our country alone evolutionists have murdered more than 50 million babies. It is Bryan’s worst nightmare come true. Evolutionists have brought us this nightmare, and they will insist that it continues. What we are now seeing is how evolutionists conduct business—lies, more lies, and blackballing and delegitimization of anyone who points it out.

Lunch with Dr. Nucatola

The Killing Fields

Evolutionary thought’s insistence that the world arose spontaneously is our modern-day version of Epicureanism. The idea was then, and continues to be today, motivated by metaphysics, not science. From a scientific perspective the idea is clearly false. That was understood by philosophers of antiquity, but it is understood all the more clearly today. Simply put, modern science has demolished Epicureanism. But ideas die hard, especially ideas that are driven by metaphysical ideas we believe must be true. Overturning Epicureanism and modern day evolutionary thought requires overturning the foundational metaphysics—and that is much more difficult than solving a scientific problem. And so in spite of the science, evolution continues to be a very popular and influential idea. In fact evolution has been tremendously influential in a broad range of political, public policy and social issues. These include wars, holocausts, and abortion. The above video is a good example. It shows evolutionist Deborah Nucatola, Planned Parenthood’s senior director of medical research, explaining how they murder unborn babies and harvest the tissue. Nucatola describes crushing techniques they use to preserve valuable body parts while murdering the baby in cold blood:

We’ve been very good at getting heart, lung, liver, because we know that, so I’m not gonna crush that part, I’m gonna basically crush below, I’m gonna crush above, and I’m gonna see if I can get it all intact.

The level of cruelty is astonishing, yet most likely will go ignored or dismissed by evolutionists. Already the Washington Post has made the absurd suggestion that the almost three hour video may have been doctored in some way. The article concludes:

It’s hard to assess exactly what happened at the lunch with Nucatola.

Hard to assess? Do they also question the holocaust? Do journalists have difficulty determining just exactly what happened in Nazi Germany?

It would be difficult to imagine a more misleading conclusion. An abortionist discussed techniques for murdering babies. How can that possibly be “Hard to assess”?

But this is how evolutionists will frame this event.

Berkeley’s “Understanding Evolution” Website Explains Natural Selection

Secrets Of The Trade

With a small army of evolutionists working on it, and several National Science Foundation grants funding it, the University of California at Berkeley’s “Understanding Evolution” website has a surprising number of errors. One of the more egregious ones is on a page that is intended to clarify the concept of natural selection. It is entitled “Misconceptions about natural selection,” but it begins with what is perhaps the worst of all: “natural selection can produce amazing adaptations.”

While it is true that the species display a wide assortment of amazing adaptations, they have nothing to do with natural selection. Remember the chameleon that changes color? A recent study discovered the incredible mechanism responsible behind it:

Many chameleons, and panther chameleons in particular, have the remarkable ability to exhibit complex and rapid colour changes during social interactions such as male contests or courtship. It is generally interpreted that these changes are due to dispersion/aggregation of pigment-containing organelles within dermal chromatophores. Here, combining microscopy, photometric videography and photonic band-gap modelling, we show that chameleons shift colour through active tuning of a lattice of guanine nanocrystals within a superficial thick layer of dermal iridophores.

Wow—active tuning of a lattice of guanine nanocrystals. Biology students will recognize guanine as one of the four main bases used to form the chemical letters in our DNA. The chameleon forms crystals of guanine to control the reflected light. In an outer layer of skin, the chameleon has guanine nanocrystals in a triangular shape in special light-reflecting cells called chromatophores. Then, in a deeper layer the chromatophores contain brick-shaped guanine nanocrystals. The active control occurs in the outer skin layer. Using some sort of cell signaling, such as hormones, the triangular guanine nanocrystals are excited, altering the crystal spacing and with it the wavelength of the reflected light and so changing color.

It is a fantastic mechanism and, needless to say, natural selection plays no role in it.

What about the origin of this mechanism? Did it evolve via random mutations and natural selection? According to the paper it did. In fact the authors write that they have demonstrated such an incredible feat:

Combining histology, electron microscopy and photometric videography techniques with numerical band-gap modelling, here we show that chameleons have evolved two superimposed populations of iridophores [chromatophores] with different morphologies and functions

Is that true? Does the paper “show that” this incredible active color control mechanism evolved?

No.

In fact this claim is utterly false. The paper shows nothing of the sort. In fact the authors admit they cannot even settle on an “evolutionary scenario.”

They also admit that the mechanism is an evolutionary novelty:

This combination of two functionally different layers of iridophores [chromatophores] constitutes an evolutionary novelty that allows some species of chameleons to combine efficient camouflage and dramatic display, while potentially moderating the thermal consequences of intense solar radiations.

But it gets worse.

Not only do the authors lack a convincing evolutionary scenario for what must be an evolutionary novelty, but they fail to present an explanation for how this fantastic active color control mechanism evolved.

I’m not saying their explanation is weak. I’m not saying it lacks credibility. I’m not saying it is yet another “just-so” story. I’m not saying it is improbable. I’m not saying any of those things for the simple reason that there is no explanation given. Nothing. Nada. What the research does show is some of the details of how this fantastic mechanism works.

Believe it or not, for evolutionists, elucidating structure, mechanism and function equates with demonstrating that it evolved.

Newcomers to evolutionary literature might be nonplussed. How can a research paper unequivocally state that it “shows” X, and then do nothing of the sort? Nothing at all.

In fact this rather strange literary device runs throughout the evolutionary genre. Researchers make utterly unfounded claims of discovering, demonstrating, confirming and proving evolutionary events, and then journalists follow along with popular articles rehearsing the refrain. Evolution is demonstrated yet again.

And not just evolution.

Evolutionists also say that examples such as this are demonstrations of natural selection—demonstrations of natural selection producing amazing adaptations.

This brings us back to the UC Berkeley “Understanding Evolution” website. It abuses science in its utterly unfounded claim that “natural selection can produce amazing adaptations.”

In fact natural selection, even at its best, does not “produce” anything. Natural selection does not and cannot influence the construction of any adaptations, amazing or not. If a mutation occurs which improves differential reproduction, then it propagates into future generations. Natural selection is simply the name given to that process. It selects for survival that which already exists. Natural selection has no role in the mutation event. It does not induce mutations, helpful or otherwise, to occur. According to evolutionary theory every single mutation, leading to every single species, is a random event with respect to need.

Evolutionist: Abortion Can Improve Life and Prevent Harm

Newspeak

So much of our mythology, as George Orwell pointed out, relies on the creative use of language in order to fool ourselves into believing. Evolution is said to “find” biological solutions, as though the evolutionary process is an intelligent agent. The new law that forces consumers to make purchases is called the “affordable” care act. And abortion is said to help people. An article published this week by an abortion “doctor” provides yet more examples of such Orwellian newspeak. She wrote that “Abortion can improve life and prevent harm; pro-choice, to me, does not mean anti-life.” How is it that the killing of innocent babies serves to “improve life and prevent harm”? And if this is not “anti-life,” then what is? Of course it is anti-life, but it is precisely this sort of upside down, euphemistic terminology that allows us to continue in the myth.

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.

Zack Kopplin: There is No Scientific Evidence Against Evolution

A Product of the Warfare Thesis 

Zack Kopplin is the face of rational thought. Kopplin is a bright, energetic young man opposing the forces of anti intellectualism and ignorance that deny science and the fact of evolution, and seek to inject religious beliefs into the public schools. There’s only one problem. While we are delighted to see young people get involved in public policy issues, Kopplin is feverishly promoting precisely what he claims to be opposing.

Kopplin insists that there is no scientific evidence against evolution. While there is room for debate about particular biological evidences and exactly how they bear on the theory of evolution, there simply is no question that there is scientific evidence against evolution. Plenty of it. To deny that would be the height of anti science denialism. Yet this is precisely what evolutionists claim.

Kopplin explains that the church burned people alive for believing the Earth was round and that the Earth rotated the sun. A myth such as this is sure to move audiences, and is red meat for evolutionists, but it is, nonetheless, a myth. Historians call it the Warfare Thesis myth, but evolutionists won’t stop using it.

Not surprisingly Kopplin wants evolution to be taught in the public schools. But evolution is full of religious claims. Kopplin is pushing to have religious beliefs injected into the public schools—precisely what he claims to oppose.

This is the fruit of evolutionary thought.

Darwin’s Finches Continue to Reveal More About Evolutionists Than Evolution

Interbreeding and Hybridization

Forty years ago biologists Peter and Rosemary Grant began an ongoing study of the different finch species on the Galápagos Islands. They gathered valuable data and during drought years they observed the finches adapt to the environmental challenges. In particular, the population of medium ground finches, Geospiza fortis, shifted toward a larger beak. This was because the drought left smaller seeds in scarce supply, and so those G. fortis with smaller beaks died off. These initial observations were followed with detailed studies of the changes that took place at the molecular level. The latest such study, published in February of this year, describes how a particular protein affects the embryonic development of the finch’s beak. All of this makes for a good case study in adaptation. Unfortunately, it also is a good case study in the misrepresentation of science by evolutionists.

The Grant’s observations of how the Galápagos finches adjusted to shifts in the food supply led to four important findings: the adaptation was rapid, preexisting, cyclical and complicated.

First, the finch populations adjusted to food supply changes just as the temperature in a room changes with your setting of the thermometer. Adjust the thermometer upward and the temperature in a room soon rises. Adjust the thermometer downward and the room cools. The one tracks the other. The finches were not randomly searching some design space—a process which would require long periods of time.

In fact, second, the finch populations were not finding any new designs that were not already present. Just as the room temperature varies between the same old values, the G. fortis shifted between preexisting beak shapes and sizes.

So not surprisingly, third, the G. fortis beak design oscillated back and forth along a cyclical trajectory, morphing between preexisting designs, as the weather and food supply oscillated.

Finally, fourth, these beak designs are varied by extremely complex embryonic development mechanisms. The latest paper, for instance, reports on the ALX1 gene which encodes a transcription factor that influences the finch beak shape and size.

What is a transcription factor? It is a protein that binds to special places in the DNA and regulates gene expression. In other words, a transcription factor is a protein that regulates the creation of other proteins. That is a complicated affair, but the story does not end there. The latest paper finds that this gene must have been transferred between species via hybridization events.

All of these four findings are directly opposed to evolutionary theory and expectations. The process is supposed to be slow, not rapid. The process is supposed to construct new designs, not choose from preexisting ones. The process is supposed to continue off in a direction and arrive at new species, not oscillate back and forth. And the process is supposed to arise naturally, from brute, simple events. The process is not supposed to be based on complex, preexisting, mechanisms.

None of this makes any sense on evolution. In fact Darwin was persuaded that the finches were powerful evidence for evolution because they were different species, not mere variants. In other words, for Darwin they were powerful evidence because, he believed, they did not interbreed.

But interbreeding between the finches is precisely what science has been finding. In this case, the adapting beaks are influenced by the hybridization of the ALX1 gene. Precisely the opposite of the premise which led to the celebration of the Galápagos finches as compelling evidence for evolution in the first place.

Nonetheless, evolutionists have consistently misrepresented the story of the Galápagos finches as an ongoing, powerful modern day confirmation of Darwin’s findings and arguments. The Wall Street Journal calls the new finding “a vivid illustration of evolution working,” and Science Daily informs readers that changes in the finches beaks are “all driven by Darwinian selection.” The new paper, meanwhile, begins with the statement that Darwin’s finches “constitute an iconic model for studies of speciation and adaptive evolution.”

I don’t mind if evolution is true, but I do mind defending it, or any scientific theory, with gross misrepresentations of the evidence.

Evolutionists Misrepresent Genetic Code

No Reason?

It would be a full time job to track down, monitor and document the scientific misrepresentations in the evolution literature. From textbooks and articles to websites, videos, popular books and the rest, the evolution literature is a continual stream of exaggerations and misrepresentations of the scientific evidence. Here is an example regarding the genetic code from the Public Broadcasting Service website:

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 descendents, including us.

No reason for this particular genetic code? That is absurd. Thirty years ago it was shown to be an optimal code. Since then studies have shown a variety of unique characteristics, such as error-correction, of the genetic code.

In fact evolutionists have no scientific, credible explanation for how the code spontaneously arose. And yet leading evolutionists misguide people with the nonsensical and laughable claim that the genetic code is powerful evidence of evolution.

Religion drives science and it matters.

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Ed: Final link changed

Top Chemist: “They Just Stare at Me”

“Because it’s a Scary Thing”

Yesterday James Tour, who in 2009 was ranked one of the top 10 chemists in the world, explained that evolutionists do not understand how evolution could have created life. What’s worse, Tour explains that there is a lack of clarity about this scientific fact. In public, evolutionists insist evolution is a fact beyond all reasonable doubt. But in private, they admit there is no such scientific knowledge:

“Let me tell you what goes on in the back rooms of science—with National Academy members, with Nobel Prize winners,” Tour stated. “I have sat with them, and when I get them alone, not in public—because it’s a scary thing, if you say what I just said—I say, ‘Do you understand all of this, where all of this came from, and how this happens?’”

The answer he inevitably receives, Tour explained, is: “no.”

“Every time that I have sat with people who are synthetic chemists, who understand this, they go, ‘Uh-uh. Nope.’” Tour said. “And if they’re afraid to say ‘yes,’ they say nothing. They just stare at me, because they can’t sincerely do it.”

The truth is a scary thing.

Door Number Two: The Existence of Evil is the Most Powerful Argument

It’s All About Religion

In my previous post I discussed David Barash’s op-ed piece in the New York Times reviewing the usual religious beliefs that motivate evolutionary thinking. Barash’s piece is not peculiar, it is standard evolutionary reasoning. For instance, another evolution professor, Jerry Coyne, responded today, in support of Barash’s arguments. Coyne explains that he agrees with Barash “100%” and adds a few additional comments of his own.

First, Coyne echoes Barash’s non scientific claim that evolution explains how the wonders of the biological world evolved spontaneously. Coyne writes:

The argument from complexity. As we all know, evolution dispelled this most powerful argument for God when Darwin showed that “design-like” features could arise from a purely naturalistic process. 

There’s only one problem. That is a lie. What Coyne writes here is not an exaggeration, not a controversial point, not a questionable point, not an unsupported suggestion. There simply is no nice way to put it—this is a bald faced lie, period.

Darwin showed no such thing. That is not my opinion. I’d be delighted to tell you Darwin and the evolutionists have made such a discovery. How cool that would be. But anyone even remotely familiar with Darwin’s work knows that this just didn’t happen. Not even close. Coyne’s claim is just laughable.

But the more important part of Coyne’s response is the religious part. Here, again, he supports Barash fully. Coyne writes:

The existence of evil. This, to me, is the most powerful of Barash’s arguments for incompatibility between science and religion. Theists must perforce explain evil—both “moral” evil (humans doing bad things to other humans) and “natural” evil (diseases like childhood cancer, earthquakes, and other stuff that kills innocent people)—as part of God’s plan. There’s no easy way to reconcile these with a loving and all-powerful god, though the entire discipline of theodicy is devoted to the effort. I haven’t yet seen a successful reconciliation, and theists know, deep in their hearts, that the problem remains. But such “evils” are, as Barash explains, easily understandable in a naturalistic universe: they’re an inevitable result of either evolution, physics, or geology.

No easy way to reconcile the world’s evils with a loving and all-powerful god (Coyne forgot the all-knowing part)? Coyne obviously has strong religious beliefs that drive his thinking. Imagine that you too believed what Coyne believes. Then of course you would be an evolutionist.

This religious theory drives evolutionists such as Coyne to abuse science (as we saw above). But of course there is nothing new here. As we have discussed before, Coyne elaborates on his religious views (that is before he denied them) in his book, Why Evolution is True. It’s all about evil and dysteleology and how this world would never have been intended by any creator or designer.

Should we laugh or should we cry. Evolutionist are so drunk with their own metaphysics they can’t even see it. They are oblivious to their own shtick.

Religion drives science, and it matters.