More CSC Coverups

As we have seen evolutionists at the California Science Center, in response to the booking of a film that questions evolution, censored the film. To hide this violation of the public trust they constructed a cover-up: The evolutionists said they cancelled the event because of a press release. This lie was in stark contrast to internal emails. One CSC Vice President wrote that the main problem was that the event was sponsored by “an anti-Darwin/creationist group.” And as the CSC Vice President of Communications explained, the CSC Chief Executive Officer instructed his staff to find a false pretense:

Jeff just called and is wondering if they violated an agreement -- like was this supposed to be a private screening or did they say it was a public screening? If they misrepresented the event, then we can cancel them.

Next the evolutionists lied about the press release, claiming it implied the CSC was a sponsor of the event. But the press release said no such thing. In fact it explicitly stated that “The screening is sponsored and hosted by the American Freedom Alliance.”

Next the evolutionists raised the stakes with an even more bold lie. They said there was, in fact, no censorship. After all, were they not originally willing to book the event? Again, internal emails exposed the lie. The booking was accepted only because there was a lack of vigilance. As one CSC Vice President wrote:

This screening event was booked through the Events Dept., and they were unaware of the nature of the groups involved. It has come to Jeff’s attention and he is “working on it.”

Similarly, another evolutionist from the nearby Natural History Museum of Los Angeles County concluded:

Apparently the IMAX was booking events without CSC knowing about all of them, and when they found out they immediately cancelled the event.

Of course there was censorship.

The next evolution lie was about the court case. This was one case where the evolutionists could not fool the judge and lie their way through a trial. They had to settle so they lied about the settlement, saying they were right all along and that the sponsor and the Discovery Institute had not “learned their lesson.”

In fact it was the evolutionists who have not learned their lesson, for this trail of lies was by no means an isolated event. From blatantly misrepresenting science to censorship, blackballing dissenters, ruining careers and misleading judges, lying and flaunting the law is a way of life for evolutionists. It is ironic that Inherit the Wind, a play targeting precisely such misdeeds, is exploited by evolutionists as their poster child.

In this particular case, the evolutionists at CSC had been lying all along. For instance, before the above litany of lies, the evolutionists attempted to manipulate justice by using a phony shell organization. Unlike the publicly-funded CSC, the shell organization, dubbed the CSC Foundation, was private and so escaped public accountability.

In other words, so they can leech off the public the evolutionists funnel the funding through the CSC while their misdeeds are funneled through “the Foundation.”

Without public funding evolution would die a quick death. They must have your tax dollars. But evolution also relies on manipulation. These two are at odds with each other. Taking public funds and perpetrating untruths don’t mix well. So in order for evolutionists to have both their funding and their lies they need a shell game.

Consider, for example, one Christina M. Sion. Ms. Sion is a CSC employee. In fact, not only is Sion a CSC employee, she is a Vice President. That is according to the CSC’s own promotional material, such as this press release, which states:

“We were absolutely thrilled to win the Best Non Profit Event Concept category with our Star Wars themed Discovery Ball. We especially felt so privileged to be in such good company. The events that were showcased this year were nothing less than stellar and it reinforced how sincerely delighted we are to be part of the events industry in LA,” said the California Science Center Vice President of Event Services, Chris Sion. 

And this is also what her email signature shows:

Next consider one Shell Amega. Like Sion, Amega is a CSC employee. In fact, Amega is the CSC Vice President of Communications. At least according to her email signature:

Amega’s status as a CSC employee is also confirmed on any number of web pages, such as this press release, which lists Amega is a CSC press contact.

But when it came time for the evolutionists to give an account of their actions, suddenly Sion and Amega were identified as employees not of the public CSC, but of the private CSC Foundation. And as such, the evolutionists claimed their records were private, not public. How convenient. So evolutionists take the public monies, but they are not accountable.

It was yet another lie the evolutionists used to try to avoid the light of day. It was one lie after another as the evolutionists manipulated justice and violated the public trust. These lies pale in comparison to the lies evolutionists tell everyday about science, but they are lies nonetheless. Oh, what a web we weave.

Religion drives science, and it matters.

Why the CSC Case is Important

Two years ago a group booked the California Science Center’s IMAX theater, in downtown Los Angeles, for a screening of Darwin’s Dilemma, a film that questions evolutionary theory. Furious evolutionists quickly censored the showing and canceled the event.

After being sued for censorship the CSC constructed a cover-up lie. The evolution lie was that there was no censorship. Instead, as the lie contended, the CSC cancelled the event because of a press release. This lie was in stark contrast to internal emails. One CSC Vice President wrote that the main problem was that the event was sponsored by “an anti-Darwin/creationist group.” And as the CSC Vice President of Communications explained, the CSC Chief Executive Officer instructed his staff to find a false pretense:

Jeff just called and is wondering if they violated an agreement -- like was this supposed to be a private screening or did they say it was a public screening? If they misrepresented the event, then we can cancel them.

So first the evolutionists censored the event, and then they lied, in order to cover-up their censorship. Next the evolutionists lied about the press release, claiming it implied the CSC was a sponsor of the event. But the press release said no such thing. In fact it explicitly stated that “The screening is sponsored and hosted by the American Freedom Alliance.”

Next the evolutionists lied to cover-up their cover-ups. This evolution lie was that there was no censorship because, after all, they originally were willing to book the event. Again, internal emails shine a light on the lie. They reveal that the booking was accepted only because there was a lack of vigilance. As one CSC Vice President wrote:

This screening event was booked through the Events Dept., and they were unaware of the nature of the groups involved. It has come to Jeff’s attention and he is “working on it.”

Similarly, another evolutionist from the nearby Natural History Museum of Los Angeles County concluded:

Apparently the IMAX was booking events without CSC knowing about all of them, and when they found out they immediately cancelled the event.

The next evolution lie was about the court case. This was one case where the evolutionists could not fool the judge and lie their way through a trial, so they had to settle. So they lied about the settlement, saying they were right all along and that the sponsor and the Discovery Institute have not “learned their lesson.” So after a long trail of lies the CSC casts judgment on the sponsor, saying they have not “learned their lesson.” Oh, what a web we weave.

Not your garden variety theory

But is this anything more than the sordid tale of a rogue department gone wrong? Were not the usual lines of authority broken and was not this department operating independently of the greater evolution movement? Surely there is plausible deniability and we cannot equate their many lies with evolution itself. Right?

Wrong. Unfortunately, the CSC case is typical. This is evolution in action. The only difference in this case is the evolutionists were found out. To understand why CSC is representative and not a loose cannon, one first must understand evolution itself.

Evolution is not your typical scientific theory that makes predictions for evaluation against empirical findings. If that were the case it would have been dropped long ago as evolution is, if anything, a contra indicator. Practically all of evolution’s fundamental expectations are in the red. Whatever it says, go with the opposite.

Far from an innocent scientific theory, evolution is a metaphysical commitment. For if evolution is wrong then the specter of teleology is raised. Final causes are back in the fight and perhaps design is detectable. All kinds of unthinkables must now be thought and unquestionable truths must now be questioned. For evolutionists that is unacceptable, no matter what the evidence.

So evolution is not common descent, or gradualism, or selection acting on random biological variation, or a dozen other spin offs. In Lakatosian terms, those are all auxiliary hypotheses making up the protective belt that surrounds and shields the theoretical core. And what is that core? Evolution, at its core, is naturalism.

It is not atheism, as often is charged. Nor is it bad science as is equally as often charged. Would that those were evolution, for the problem would be far simpler. But those are both merely consequences. At its core evolution is a metaphysical commitment to naturalism—it must be true.

It is no surprise that evolutionists are so insistent that their idea is a fact. The fact of evolution is at its very core. Evolution was not declared to be a fact after boat loads of evidence endlessly corroborated a theoretically sound idea. That is a fiction. It never happened. Not only is evolution at odds with the data, the declaration of its certainty was at the very beginning.

We can go back to the formalization of neo Darwinism in the twentieth century, or back to Darwin himself, or to Kant, or Hume, or Leibniz, or we can go farther back in antiquity to Lucretius and the Epicureans. Wherever your resting place, you will find metaphysical certainty amidst empirical confusion.

The consequence of all this is, yes, lies. The science is misrepresented to fit the mandate. The philosophy of science is misrepresented to arrive at the predetermined truth. The education and law are twisted and force fit to support the fiction, judges are misled, photographs are altered, data are misinterpreted, and at the National Center for Science “Education,” dissenters are blackballed. All of this to promote the dogma that the world and everything we see must have arisen spontaneously, by itself. For it must have, there is no other option.

Religion drives science, and it matters.

California Science Center to Not Pay $110,000 Settlement; Evolutionary Lies Continue

In the seventeenth century the Roman Catholic theologian Nicholas Malebranche proposed that nature’s evil and inefficiency were not created by god but by natural processes. Simply put, Malebranche said that god preferred to use simple though imprecise natural laws rather than a long sequence of complicated miracles that would be needed to achieve perfection. Malebranche was by no means the first thinker in history to argue for theological naturalism—the belief that god wouldn’t have intended for this world so it must have arisen naturalistically. In ancient Greece the Epicureans believed that randomly swerving atoms created the world. As Lucretius put it:

That in no wise the nature of all things
For us was fashioned by a power divine-
So great the faults it stands encumbered with.

Malebranche, however, marks the rise of theological naturalism in Christianity. Before Malebranche, Rene Descartes and Francis Bacon had both argued for naturalistic explanations, but their reasons were very different. Descartes argued that strictly naturalistic explanations were more useful, but with theological naturalism Malebranche argued they were true. That’s an important difference. Religious beliefs are the most powerful, and evolutionary thinking had its start in the modern science program.

In fact explaining evil and inefficiency was only one of the religious motivations behind evolutionary thought. After Malebranche several other theological itches were scratched. For instance, science was increasingly uncovering nature’s detailed minutia. But god would not, as botanist John Ray argued fifty years after Malebranche, “set his own hand as it were to every work, and immediately do all the meanest and trifling’st things himself drudgingly, without making use of any inferior or subordinate Minister.”

These arguments, from theodicy and infra dignitatem, are only two examples from the complex web of beliefs that underlie and mandate evolution. One way or another something other than divine miracles were needed to explain how the world arose. After Malebranche, Anglicans and Lutherans aggressively promoted evolutionary thinking in geology, cosmology and biology. This theological naturalism movement continues to this day, and helps to explain the otherwise curious actions of evolutionists.

When you believe your ideas are true, rather than merely useful, then the ends justify the means. Hence we see today’s evolutionists misrepresenting science, blackballing dissenters, destroying careers, suppressing debate, manipulating media, education and public policy, and violating laws. All of this because, after all, they’re right.

Consider the case of the California Science Center (CSC), a Smithsonian Institution affiliate. Two years ago a group booked the CSC’s IMAX theater, in downtown Los Angeles, for a screening of Darwin’s Dilemma to be followed by a panel discussing evolution and the scientific evidence.

But Darwin’s Dilemma, featuring interviews of Intelligent Design advocates and evolutionists, is a film that questions evolutionary theory. Since evolution is a religiously-motivated theory that contradicts the science, such scrutiny and uncontrolled discussion could not be allowed. Furious evolutionists quickly censored the showing and canceled the event.

After then being sued for such crude censorship the CSC next constructed a cover-up lie. The evolution lie was that there was no censorship, and that CSC merely cancelled the event because of a press release. This lie was in stark contrast to internal emails. One CSC Vice President wrote that the main problem was that the event was sponsored by “an anti-Darwin/creationist group.”

And the CSC Vice President of Communications explained the origin of the lie. The CSC Chief Executive Officer instructed his staff to find a false pretense:

Jeff just called and is wondering if they violated an agreement -- like was this supposed to be a private screening or did they say it was a public screening? If they misrepresented the event, then we can cancel them.

So first the evolutionists censored the event, and then they lied, in order to cover-up their censorship. Next the evolutionists lied about the press release, claiming it implied the CSC was a sponsor of the event. But of course the press release says no such thing. In fact it explicitly states that “The screening is sponsored and hosted by the American Freedom Alliance.”

Next the evolutionists constructed another lie to cover-up their cover-ups. This evolution lie was that the fact that the CSC originally was willing to book the event proves there was no censorship. Again, internal emails shine a light on the endless trail of lies. They reveal that in truth, the booking was accepted only because there was a lack of vigilance. As one CSC Vice President wrote:

This screening event was booked through the Events Dept., and they were unaware of the nature of the groups involved. It has come to Jeff’s attention and he is “working on it.”

Similarly, another evolutionist from the Natural History Museum of Los Angeles County concluded:

Apparently the IMAX was booking events without CSC knowing about all of them, and when they found out they immediately cancelled the event.

The next evolution lie was about the court case. This was one case where the evolutionists could not fool the judge and lie their way through a trial, so they had to settle. So they lied about the settlement, saying they were right all along and that the sponsor and the Discovery Institute have not “learned their lesson.” Their claim to be right is like a chess player who resigns a game and then claims victory. When you pay the settlement costs, $110,000 in this case, it means you were wrong, not right.

Unfortunately this sort of misadventure is typical for evolutionists. Blackballing, censorship, manipulation, ruining academic and professional careers, lying to judges are all standard operating procedure. This happens all the time, only in this case they were caught. This is what your tax dollars are funding everyday.

To be fair to evolutionists, they believe that, ultimately, they are in the right. To an evolutionist, he believes he is in the right, because he knows evolution is true. If someone’s rights are occasionally trampled, or science sometimes is abused, it is a small price for safeguarding the truth.

This is what religion can do. There is no point to entering into a discussion with evolutionists—they know the truth already. I do not mean this as hyperbole. For I have tried many times to have meaningful discussions with evolutionists and, unfortunately, I have never found an exception. It would be like trying to talk sense into a religious fanatic because, in fact, evolutionists are religious fanatics.

Religion drives science, and it matters.

Brain Components Found in Single-Celled Organisms; Evolutionary Expectations Fail Again

One of the themes of biology is the ubiquity of complexity. From microbes to humans, and everything in between, biology is chocked full of fantastic designs. For evolutionists, these roads lead to the unexpected conclusion of early complexity. If evolution is true, then it somehow produced incredible feats of engineering early on, even before they would have been useful. The DNA code, with its exquisite nuances, must have arisen before those nuances would be helpful. This early complexity is another example of the evolution’s massive serendipity—evolution somehow created designs that would be crucial down the line. One example of this is the human brain, as one science writer explains:

When wondering about the origins of our brain, don't look to Homo sapiens, chimpanzees, fish or even worms. Many key components first appeared in single-celled organisms, long before animals, brains and even nerve cells existed. …

The finding is intriguing on its own, but much more significant when combined with a growing body of evidence that essential brain components evolved in choanoflagellates before multicellular life appeared.

In 2008, Xinjiang Cai of Duke University in Durham, North Carolina, discovered that M. brevicollis has the same calcium channels in its cells as those used by neurons. Then, in 2010, it emerged that M. brevicollis also has several proteins that neurons use to process signals from their neighbours.

And this year, Harold Zakon of the University of Texas at Austin and colleagues discovered that M. brevicollis has the same sodium channels that neurons use to pass electrical signals along their length.

Put together, these findings suggest that choanoflagellate cells have components for each of the three main functions of neurons: carrying electrical signals along their bodies, signalling to their neighbours with neurotransmitters, and receiving those signals. …

"The choanoflagellates have a lot of precursors for things we thought were only present in animals," says Fasshauer. Today, says Zakon, the nervous system seems "unbelievably complex", but evidence from these tiny organisms suggests it was built up from several simple systems, which evolved separately for different reasons. For instance, Fasshauer suspects M. brevicollis uses Munc18/syntaxin1 to secrete chemicals, much like neurons use it to release neurotransmitters.

So an ancient, primitive organism just happened to evolve spontaneously incredibly complex molecular machines that would be crucial components in the exquisite neuron designs in multicellular life. It would be like finding jet engine components in a wagon train. It seems that nothing in biology makes sense in the light of evolution.

Paul Krugman’s Embarrassing Politicization of Evolution

It is practically impossible to stay abreast of the many misconceptions and misrepresentations of evolution in the popular media. Across the political spectrum, in print, radio, TV and the new electronic media, pundits who know little to nothing about evolution hold forth on this debate as though they were experts. Here is one example from this week that is notable for its high source (The New York Times) and extreme naiveté. When The Huffington Post issues a rebuke you know it must be absurd. The writer is Paul Krugman, a New York Times OP-ED columnist. Krugman writes:

Jon Huntsman Jr., a former Utah governor and ambassador to China, isn’t a serious contender for the Republican presidential nomination. And that’s too bad, because Mr. Huntsman has been willing to say the unsayable about the G.O.P. — namely, that it is becoming the “anti-science party.” This is an enormously important development. And it should terrify us.

To see what Mr. Huntsman means, consider recent statements by the two men who actually are serious contenders for the G.O.P. nomination: Rick Perry and Mitt Romney.

Mr. Perry, the governor of Texas, recently made headlines by dismissing evolution as “just a theory,” one that has “got some gaps in it” — an observation that will come as news to the vast majority of biologists.

Mr. Krugman’s concern is that a politician stated that evolution is just a theory and that it has some gaps in it.

In fact, evolution does not explain how mammals arose. Nor does it explain how reptiles, birds, amphibians or fish evolved. It doesn’t explain how species evolved abruptly in many cases. It doesn’t explain how the DNA code evolved or life itself first arose. In fact, evolution cannot even explain how a single protein could have arisen. There are 27 orders of magnitude between evolution’s expectations and reality. And that is going by the evolutionist’s own reckoning (in reality it is 100+ orders of magnitude). Indeed, practically all of evolution’s major predictions have turned out false. Need we say more?

Yes, evolution has gaps. Even evolutionists admit it has gaps. But Mr. Krugman believes otherwise. He thinks evolution’s many gaps would “come as news to the vast majority of biologists.” And he is alarmed that this is a sign of increasing anti-intellectualism.

Yes there is anti-intellectualism afoot, but it is much closer than Mr. Krugman thinks. He is not only ignorant of a rather straightforward topic, but he is ignorant of his ignorance. The result is an embarrassing political rant premised on a profound ignorance. Here is how Rabbi Shmuley Boteach reacted in the Huffington Post:

I am not a scientist. But beginning in about 1990 I started organizing an annual debate at Oxford University on science versus religion where the focus was almost always on evolution and which featured some of the world's greatest evolutionists like Richard Dawkins, who appeared several times, and the late John Maynard-Smith of the University of Sussex, who, at the time, was regarded by many as the greatest living evolutionary theorist. While I moderated the first few debates, I later participated in a debate against Richard Dawkins at Oxford which he later denied ever took place, forcing us to post the full video of the debate online where Dawkins is not only the principal proponent of the science side but actually loses the debate in a student vote at the end. I later debated Dawkins again at the Idea City Convention at the University of Toronto, the video of which is likewise available online.

What I learned from these debates, as well as reading extensively on evolution, is that evolutionists have a tough time defending the theory when challenged in open dialogue. Indeed, David Berlinski, the author of The Devil's Delusion, was, although an agnostic, on the religion side of one of the debates against Dawkins and tore large holes in evolution that Dawkins and Maynard-Smith struggled to address.

This does not mean that evolution is not true or that theory is without merit or evidence. It does, however, corroborate what Governor Perry said. Evolution is a theory.

It is unfortunate that hack journalism is alive and well, and misrepresenting science.

Richard Dawkins New Book for Children and Why His Atheism is not Relevant

In his new book for children, The Magic of Reality, Richard Dawkins laments that many intelligent adults struggle with the idea of evolution. As his Foundation explains:

Could it be, he suggests, that we become “weighted down by misleading familiarity?” He blames the philosophy of essentialism, that of Aristotle and Plato, which asserts that categories are distinct, with clear demarcation between them. The great magic of evolution, he notes, is the manner in which one thing, so very slowly, can become another. Given time, a cell can become an eye, or an elephant, or a man.

Why of course a cell can become an eye, or an elephant, or a man. Isn’t that obvious? And the failure of evolutionists to explain how this actually happens is OK because the problem is too complicated.

You can’t make this stuff up. Here we have a leading evolutionist confused about why intelligent adults don’t march off into the sea with him. Isn’t it obvious that a single cell spontaneously transforms into an elephant?

Professor Dawkins’ atheism is central to his fervency. This should not be a distraction.

Not only is Dawkins’ atheism not a distraction, it is not relevant. For when it comes to evolution (and probably everything else), Dawkins is driven by his theism, not his atheism.

Dawkins’ convictions are not that evolution must be true because god does not exist. Rather, Dawkins’ convictions are that evolution must be true because god never would have designed this world. Like atheists everywhere, Dawkins does not believe in god, but he sure does believe about god, and that’s just as metaphysical.

Dawkins argues that biological structures, such as our eye and the giraffe’s recurrent laryngeal nerve would not have been intended by anyone otherwise capable of creating the world.

“No intelligent designer,” he assures the reader, “would ever have done that.”

That, of course, is not a scientific claim. Richard Dawkins is driven by his metaphysics which he then proceeds to deny.

If evolutionists are correct that no intelligent designer would ever have done that, then, yes, evolution (in one form or another) is a no-brainer. Their claim that evolution is a fact would be secure.

But all of this rests on their non scientific premise. Without the premise, all we are left with is the ludicrous, junk science that cells spontanously transform into elephants.

Was Early Evolution Genetics or Metabolism Based? Composomes, Environmental Patchiness and Other Evolutionary Imaginings

Yet another failed expectation of evolutionary theory is that early evolution doesn’t make sense. In the twentieth century evolutionists expected that life could be shown to arise spontaneously, but even the simplest microbe is immensely complicated. As a recent paper explains:

Once beyond the abiogenic synthesis and accumulation of a variety of complex organic compounds on Earth took place, the conceivable paths toward life’s emergence have been dominated by two fundamentally different views in origin-of-life research: the genetics- or replication-first approach, and the metabolism-first scenario.

In other words, once upon a time a range of organic compounds spontaneously formed and, in spite of obvious dilution processes, just happened to create a cell. Just how this incredible event could have happened is, of course, unknown, and so as usual evolutionists take sides on equally bizarre hypotheses.

Both schools acknowledge that a critical requirement for primitive evolvable systems (in the Darwinian sense) is to solve the problems of information storage and reliable information transmission. Disagreement starts, however, in the way information was first stored.

Yes there is that minor issue of information storage (not to mention information creation). As the paper explains, there are plenty of problems with both the genetics-first and the metabolism-first hypotheses. But of course evolution is a fact, so the evolutionists confidently proceed with the pseodo-science and speculation:

We think that the real question is that of the organization of chemical networks. If (and what a big IF) there can be in the same environment distinct, organizationally different, alternative autocatalytic cycles/networks, as imagined for example by Gánti and Wächtershäuser, then these can also compete with each other and undergo some Darwinian evolution. But, even if such systems exist(-ed), they would in all probability have limited heredity only and thus could not undergo open-ended evolution.

In other words, we have no idea how life could have evolved, but so what, we have “strong reasons to believe.”

We do not know how the transition to digitally encoded information has happened in the originally inanimate world; that is, we do not know where the RNA world might have come from, but there are strong reasons to believe that it had existed.

Of course these “strong reasons” all hinge on the belief that evolution is true. Without the religious fervor the house of cards falls apart. And as usual, the religion leads to junk science, such as this make believe absurdity:

Template-free systems like composomes could only have had the limited role of accumulating prebiotic material and increasing environmental patchiness.

You may wonder why you don’t remember composomes from your high school biology class. That’s because they are a part of the evolutionist’s make believe. Like Flew’s Gardener they are part of the ever-growing evolutionary fiction that evolutionists insist must be a fact.

Religion drives science, and it matters.

Matters of Health: Michael Lynch’s Reminder of Evolution’s Eugenics—Junk Science Matters

Michael Lynch’s recent finding that “novel means” of genetic intervention are required for the future genetic well-being of our species is a bit disturbing. After all, the last time evolutionists imposed “novel means” of genetic intervention we had everything from forced sterilization to institutionalization (read imprisonment). Nonetheless, Lynch informs us that the fundamental requirement for the maintenance of a species’ genetic integrity and long-term viability is that deleterious mutations must be balanced by the removal of such mutations by natural selection. And since Darwin’s dispensation of benevolence—otherwise known as death—is a less effective tool in our modern civilized society, and since our mutation load is unpredictable thus rendering genetic counseling ineffective, the result is that some “novel means” of genetic intervention are needed.

Lynch approvingly references evolutionist and eugenicist Hermann Muller from sixty years ago who “was well aware of the enormous social barriers to solving the mutation-accumulation problem, but he held out hope that ‘a rationally directed guidance of reproduction’ would eventually stabilize the situation.”

A rationally directed guidance of reproduction? This pathetically must have been the inspiration for Dr. Strangelove’s classic parody of the academic’s fantasy:

Muffley: Well, I, I would hate to have to decide...who stays up and...who goes down.

Dr. Strangelove: Well, that would not be necessary, Mr. President. It could easily be accomplished with a computer. And a computer could be set and programmed to accept factors from youth, health, sexual fertility, intelligence, and a cross-section of necessary skills. Of course, it would be absolutely vital that our top government and military men be included to foster and impart the required principles of leadership and tradition. Naturally, they would breed prodigiously, eh? There would be much time, and little to do. Ha, ha. But ah, with the proper breeding techniques and a ratio of say, ten females to each male, I would guess that they could then work their way back to the present Gross National Product within say, twenty years.

Muffley: Wouldn't this nucleus of survivors be so grief-stricken and anguished that they'd, well, envy the dead and not want to go on living?

Dr. Strangelove: When they go down into the mine, everyone would still be alive. There would be no shocking memories, and the prevailing emotion will be one of nostalgia for those left behind, combined with a spirit of bold curiosity for the adventure ahead! [involuntarily gives the Nazi salute and forces it down with his other hand]Ahhh!

Turgidson: Doctor, you mentioned the ratio of ten women to each man. Now, wouldn't that necessitate the abandonment of the so-called monogamous sexual relationship, I mean, as far as men were concerned?

Dr. Strangelove: Regrettably, yes. But it is, you know, a sacrifice required for the future of the human race. I hasten to add that since each man will be required to do prodigious...service along these lines, the women will have to be selected for their sexual characteristics which will have to be of a highly stimulating nature.

Like Kubrick’s classic character Dr. Strangelove, Muller, who once wrote a letter to Joseph Stalin imploring the communist dictator to implement the “conscious control of human biological evolution,” promoted a kindler and gentler eugenics.

Muller wanted Stalin to “guide human biological evolution along socially desirable lines” for human nature was not immutable and given the lofty advances of modern genetics such a program could bestow the gift of genius “upon practically every individual in the population” within just a few generations.

Of course “guidance” would have to be furnished to ensure the proper grouping of the most valuable genes “into as highly superior groupings as possible.”

And what type of man should be consciously selected? Well Charles Darwin, of course, would represent the perfect choice. Of course with Darwin long dead, leading evolutionists of the day would have to do. And if Stalin doubted any of this, Muller assured him that “Considering the enormous results achieved by natural biological evolution in the past, the potential value of a biological method of progression cannot be doubted.”

It is said that the road to hell is paved with good intentions. In the case of evolutionists such as Muller we would have to add a generous layer of junk science. It was this dangerous combination of presumption and ignorance that led to the twentieth century’s eugenics nightmare.

Consider, for example, Sir Francis Galton who was impressed with the work of his half-cousin, a man by the name of Charles Darwin. Galton reasoned that a race of highly-gifted men could be produced by arranged, “judicious” marriages. The notion of eugenics caught on and soon the sick, infirm and botched were targeted as a public enemy.

Blessed are the poor in spirit and the meek, explained Jesus, but that was then. As Nietzsche now explained:

Sick people are the greatest danger for healthy people. …

The invalids are the great danger to humanity: not the evil men, not the “predatory animals.” Those people who are, from the outset, failures, oppressed, broken— they are the ones, the weakest, who most undermine life among human beings, who in the most perilous way poison and question our trust in life, in humanity, in ourselves. Where can we escape it, that downcast glance with which people carry a deep sorrow, that reversed gaze of the man originally born to fail which betrays how such a man speaks to himself—that gaze which is a sigh. “I wish I could be someone else!”— that’s what this glance sighs. “But there is no hope here. I am who I am. How could I detach myself from myself? And yet—I’ve had enough of myself!”. . . On such a ground of contempt for oneself, a truly swampy ground, grows every weed, every poisonous growth, and all of them so small, so hidden, so dishonest, so sweet. Here the worms of angry and resentful feelings swarm; here the air stinks of secrets and duplicity; here are constantly spun the nets of the most malicious conspiracies—the plotting of suffering people against the successful and victorious; here the appearance of the victor is despised. And what dishonesty not to acknowledge this hatred as hatred! …

Take a look into the background of every family, every corporation, every community: everywhere you see the struggle of the sick against the healthy—a quiet struggle, for the most part …

From scientists such as Charles Davenport (Director of the Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory) to elites such as Theodore Roosevelt and Oliver Wendell Holmes, eugenics was well accepted, and all with the best of intentions no doubt. Even Clarence Darrow at one point urged that we “chloroform unfit children.”

Evolutionist Henry Goddard identified a particular family as having inferior genetics on one side, making for a classic case study of good genes versus bad genes. According to this phony evolutionary science, those on the “bad” side were diagnosed as “feeble-minded,” a vague category into which anyone on the wrong side of an evolutionist could be cast. Their penalties included forced sterilization and a life sentence in an institution.

Laws across America and even Supreme Court rulings turned against those who evolutionists pronounced to have the wrong genes. And evolutionist’s such as Goddard enjoyed success and reputation while their victims were mutilated and imprisoned.

Evolution is not just a silly idea advocated by academics. It is junk science at its worst. Religion drives science, and it matters.

A Journalist Gets it Right

Ann Coulter has succeeded where others have routinely failed—in a sentence she has cut to the core of the origins debate:

Intelligent design scientists look at the evidence and develop their theories; Darwinists start with a theory and then rearrange the evidence.

Right or wrong, Intelligent design is an appeal to the evidence. And right or wrong, evolution is an appeal to the convictions. Once again it is empiricism versus rationalism—another round of an age-old debate.

That debate doesn’t progress very far when pundits from George Will to Chris Matthews don’t even understand what it is about. Kudos to one journalist for getting it right.

The Indonesian Mimic Octopus

More octopus mimicry worth watching.

Octopus Swims Like a Flounder

More random mutations at work (no, selection doesn't help, it just kills off the failed designs).

Incredible Examples of Camouflage: Octopus Perfectly Mimics Rocks and Different Plants

Isn't it amazing what those random mutations (yes, they are random with respect to what counts) can do?

Peacefulness, in a Grown Man, That is Not a Good Sign

Evolution is, as Karl Popper once sensed without delving into all the details, a metaphysical research program. That a movement is metaphysical is in itself neither unusual or, in evolution’s case, very interesting. What makes evolution so fascinating, and what Popper did not much explore, is its combination of certainty and denial, of its own metaphysics.

The metaphysics of evolution are most evident not in its explanation of how all of biology has arisen naturalistically, but in its mandate that all of biology must have arisen naturalistically. This is crystal clear in any number of religious claims evolutionists have been making for centuries. Would god have created the mosquito? Of course not, so evolution is the obvious conclusion for evolutionists such as Ken Miller. Or as Stephen Jay Gould explained:

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.

And just what is a “sensible god” according to evolutionists? A sensible god, of course, is altogether like an evolutionist. For centuries evolutionists have been issuing their sophmoric metaphysical truth claims with absolute certainty. Like a five year old talking about Santa Claus, the evolutionist’s banality is exceeded only by his certainty.

The IFF statement

These claims of ultimate truth sometime take the form of an IF AND ONLY IF statement, or its linguistic equivalent, which evolutionists consistently use. The IF AND ONLY IF, or IFF, statement is the underlying logic when evolutionists say that only evolution can explain biology. It is another example of the evolutionist’s reasoning by process of elimination. He is certain his idea is correct because the alternatives are wrong.

The rub is that this logic works only if one possesses knowledge of all the alternatives. This may seem to be a minor technicality but it is the crucial, and often unspoken, weak link in the evolutionary calculus. Here is an example from Darwin:

We cannot believe, that the similar bones in the arm of the monkey, in the fore-leg of the horse, in the wing of the bat, and in the flipper of the seal, are of special use to these animals. We may safely attribute these structures to inheritance.

Here Darwin claims that structures which are of no particular or “special” use to an organism must have been inherited. In other words, inheritance and only inheritance can explain such structures. Let’s breakdown Darwin’s logic:

1. Organisms have structures that are of no special use.
2. Structures that are of no special use are structures whose origin cannot be explained except by inheritance.
3. Organisms have structures whose origin cannot be explained except by inheritance.

Step 2 is unspoken and, more importantly, metaphysical. For in science we cannot know that only one theory can work for the simple reason that we cannot know all the possible theories. It is the equivalent of an IFF statement which is not scientific.

This method of metaphysical reasoning runs all through the evolution genre. Evolutionists consistently claim only their theory can explain what we observe in biology.

Pseudogenes for example are sometimes found to be disabled by identical mutations in cousin species. In typical fashion evolutionist Jerry Coyne concludes they wouldn’t have been designed that way and therefore that “Only evolution and common ancestry can explain these facts.” [Why Evolution is True, 68]

If and only if evolution is true, then we would observe such identical mutations in pseudogenes. Here is another example from Coyne of this non scientific logic:

One of my favorite cases of embryological evidence for evolution is the furry human fetus. We are famously known as “naked apes” because, unlike other primates, we don’t have a thick coat of hair. But in fact for one brief period we do—as embryos. Around sixth months after conception, we become completely covered with a fine, downy coat of hair called lanugo. Lanugo is usually shed about a month before birth, when it’s replaced by the more sparsely distributed hair with which we’re born. ... Now, there’s no need for a human embryo to have a transitory coat of hair. After all, it’s a cozy 98.6 degrees Fahrenheit in the womb. Lanugo can be explained only as a remnant of our primate ancestry: fetal monkeys also develop a coat of hair at about the same stage of development. Their hair, however, doesn’t fall out, but hangs on to become the adult coat. And, like humans, fetal whales also have lanugo, a remnant of when their ancestors lived on land. [Why Evolution is True, 80]

According to Coyne our lanugo can only be explained as a consequence of common ancestry. Evolutionists freely issue these metaphysical edicts as though they are scientific findings we all must acknowledge.

The most celebrated example of this non scientific reasoning comes from one of the twentieth century’s leading evolutionists, Theodosius Dobzhansky, who claimed that “nothing in biology makes sense except in the light of evolution.” Though Dobzhansky did not know the details of how all of biology could have spontaneously evolved, he was certain that it did. For over and over he argued that only evolution could explain the biological world.

Evolution’s denial of itself

In the movie Triage a psychiatrist played by Christopher Lee attempts to help a war photographer played by Colin Farrell. Farrell’s character had witnessed too much of the world’s violence and insanity. He finally withdrew into a subtle form of denial symbolized by his very peaceful naps, one of which he is enjoying when Lee visits him for the first time. Lee quickly perceives Farrell’s massive denialism and lays the groundwork for their next meeting as he walks out the door:

Lee: You know you sleep very peacefully, there’s not a movement, not a wrinkle in your face, just like a baby.
Farrell: That's a good thing isn’t it?
Lee: No. If you were thrashing about and muttering to yourself it would mean a problem is close by. But peacefulness, in a grown man, that is not a good sign.

Denial, particularly in the face of massive contradictions, is a fascinating phenomenon. Between their peaceful naps evolutionists are busy contradicting their denials. They issue their many metaphysical and religious edicts, only to sleep through the consequences, denying they ever did any such thing.

Evolutionists routinely tell me they make no undue metaphysical assumptions. They make various theological claims and conclude their scientifically unlikely idea must be a fact, and then deny the whole thing. No script writer could have dreamt this up.

Consider professor Douglas Theobald who wrote a paper that compares several hypotheses for the early phases of evolutionary history and shows how universal common descent, in one variant or another, is the clear winner. After showing that a comparison of 23 proteins—similar versions of which are found in many species—fit the universal common descent hypothesis far better than the hypothesized alternatives, the paper erroneously states that the results are “very strong empirical evidence” for universal common descent. It was yet another example of the non scientific IFF statement type of logic.

Not surprisingly the paper was an instant hit with evolutionists, celebrated everywhere from journals and popular science magazines to the blogosphere. One science newsletter proclaimed:

First Large-Scale Formal Quantitative Test Confirms Darwin’s Theory of Universal Common Ancestry

Scientific American informed its readers that “The Proof Is in the Proteins: Test Supports Universal Common Ancestor for All Life,” and National Geographic added that:

All Species Evolved From Single Cell, Study Finds
Creationism called “absolutely horrible hypothesis”—statistically speaking.

In his blog PZ Myers, who with his Lutheran background believes god would never have created this world, applauded the big numbers that “support evolutionary theory.” And Nick Matzke, who also believes in the evolutionary metaphysics that god would never have designed what we observe in the biological world, was delighted that the new work debunks creationism.

Of course all of this is false. It is junk science at its worst. I asked Theobald about these problems. I reminded him that one hypothesis comparing well against others does not translate into very strong empirical evidence for the hypothesis. But he disagreed. He assured me that his analysis is fundamentally based on modern, cutting edge statistical methods, and that he firmly stands by his conclusions. Indeed, no scientist or statistician would find them to be controversial, he added.

I explained to him that the problem lies not with the statistical methods. But when comparing such scores a scientist or a statistician would merely claim that the hypothesis with the significantly higher score is the winner of the group. That is entirely different than his high claim that the results constitute very strong empirical evidence for the hypothesis. That conclusion is simply false. The hypothesis may be true, it may not be true, but the study does not provide such powerful empirical evidence for it. Unfortunately, such misinformation fuels the kind of reporting we saw above.

But Theobald continued in his denial. You are simply incorrect, he replied. From a model selection perspective, from a likelihood perspective, and from a Bayesian perspective, empirical evidence can only be evaluated relative to other hypotheses. That’s all we have. No hypothesis can be evaluated in isolation—such an idea is impossible and incoherent. This view is not from evolutionary biology—this is the standard non-frequentist statistical view (and even most frequentists have the same view).

It was another fascinating example of denial of the plain facts. I replied that I was amazed. The lengths to which evolutionists must go is incredible. It is always striking to see the certainty with which evolutionists promote their philosophies and metaphysics. You can see it in the history of evolutionary thought, and today it just keeps on coming. They impose their philosophies, as though they were facts, on the world.

I again explained that when one hypothesis beats out others you cannot make the claims he was making. What you have is very strong evidence that the hypothesis beats out the other hypotheses, period. You do not have very strong evidence for the hypothesis, as you are claiming.

And your appeal to the limitations in your confirmation methods doesn’t change the fact that you are making false claims, and celebrating them as valid findings. The fact that “That’s all we have” hardly justifies the publishing and promotion of misinformation. The fact that “That’s all we have” ought to serve to temper the claims, not exalt them.

But contrastive thinking has been at the heart of evolutionary thought for centuries. From Kant to Darwin, and on up, what has always been rather revealing is how evolutionists have presented their proofs as though they were objective, undeniable findings. It is always a bit shocking to see such bold claims made on such faulty logic.

At this point the evolutionist turned the blame on me. We have, he explained, overwhelming evidence that universal common ancestry beats out competing multiple independent ancestry hypotheses. If you don’t consider that as evidence for universal common ancestry, then you are certainly entitled to that opinion. But the rest of us are not required to believe that your opinion makes any sense. Yours is a strange philosophy, to my mind, and I’m sure to most people who will read your words.

Repeatedly I have found that evolutionists are unable to see the problems and fallacies with their theory. And so when you point out those problems, the evolutionist ultimately can only conclude that the problem lies with you. You are an obstructionist, or biased, or anti science, or something.

Theobald was not being judgmental in any personal way. He threw up his hands and concluded that I am the problem, but his response was genuine, not contrived. It was not mean spirited. Just as Bernoulli proclaimed that anyone who would deny the obvious evolutionary conclusions “must reject all the truths, which we know by induction” so too evolutionists ever since can only understand skepticism as, itself, problematic.

Evolution is a metaphysically-driven tradition and like most such traditions has built-in protections against objective critique. The result, unfortunately, is junk science. In spite of monumental scientific problems, evolution is held to be a fact. If we do not acknowledge this obvious truth we must be obstructionists or biased.

Evolution cannot even explain how a single protein first evolved, let alone the massive biological world that ensued. From biosonar to redwood trees, evolution is left with only just-so stories motivated by the dogma that evolution must be true. That dogma comes from metaphysics, but silly science and metaphysics are not what makes evolution interesting. What is fascinating is the denial.

The Cod’s Unlikely Immune System and Evolutionary “Flexibility”

It’s being called “evolutionary flexibility.” Evolution’s effortless incorporation of the cod’s unusual immune system is yet another example of the near infinite plasticity of Darwin’s idea which, ultimately, could make unlikely alliances between everything from gradualism to saltationism, selection to drift, common descent to independent origin, bad designs to good designs, inefficiency to optimality, and so forth. Evolution is the ultimate big tent coalition where everything, save the truth of course, is allowed and flourishes.

Contrary to that quaint evolutionary expectation of similar designs in similar species, new research finds that the Atlantic cod (Gadus morhua) has an “unusual” immune architecture compared to other vertebrates whose genomes have been analyzed.

Unusual is right. In fact, G. morhua is missing the major histocompatibility complex (MHC) II. That’s right, the highly conserved and crucial MHC II is simply not present in the cod. Like the government which loses billions of dollars from time to time, evolution just happens to lose crucial molecular and cellular components now and then.

Needless to say, losing MHC II is not likely under evolution. Aside from the difficulty in simply losing all those genes (genes related to MHC II were also “lost”), such a loss would have left the cod with a crippled immune system—hardly the sort of adaptive change evolutionists are always talking about.

But true to form evolution can always find an explanation. First the hapless cod somehow lost its MHC II and related genes, but then cleverly compensated for the loss with massive additions to its MHC I. In the end all was well, and evolutionists have more puzzles to work on. As one explained, the finding could “challenge our understanding of the evolution and flexibility of the vertebrate immune system.” If only Ripley were alive today.

Of and About TEs: How Evolutionists Interpret Transposable Elements

TEs love TEs. That is, theological evolutionists love transposable elements. This is because transposable elements—a type of DNA segment—are powerful evidence for common descent. Transposable elements are often what evolutionists, such as Francis Collins, refer to when they say common descent is compelling. For similar transposable elements are found in similar locations in the genomes of similar species. If they have a common ancestor which also had those transposable elements at those locations in its genome, then would we not expect to see precisely what we are seeing: cousin species with similar transposable elements? This evidence certainly is a successful prediction (or retrodiction) of the theory of common descent. But there’s more.

Transposable elements are not merely a successful prediction of common descent, they are a powerful exhibit of dysteleology—the lack of design. We can hardly imagine that god would have installed these not very useful DNA segments at the same place in cousin species.

As theological evolutionists explain, transposable elements are an example where the design hypothesis fails and there really is no other explanation aside from common descent.

The IFF statement

In other words, this is not the usual case of IF theory X is TRUE, then we should observe Y. Instead, this is a case of IF AND ONLY IF theory X is TRUE, then we should observe Y. Not only does common descent explain transposable elements, but only common descent explains transposable elements.

The IF AND ONLY IF statement, also known as an IFF statement, is different from the usual IF statement in some important ways. First, given IF X THEN Y, it is not true that IF Y THEN X. In other words, a successful prediction does not mean the theory is true. That is the fallacy of affirming the consequent. A successful prediction merely means that the theory has passed a test.

Not so with an IFF statement. Given IFF X THEN Y, it is also true that IF Y THEN X. A successful prediction does mean the theory is true.

Another important difference between the IF statement and the IFF statement is that whereas the IF statement is scientific, the IFF statement is metaphysical. That is, in science a theory can produce predictions. If the theory is true, certain observations are expected. The IF statement is simply a statement about the theory and its predictions.

But the IFF statement is not merely a statement about the theory—it is a statement about all possible theories. The IFF statement is a claim that there does not exist any theory aside from X that can explain observation Y. Such claims are not possible within science.

In the case of transposable elements, evolutionists say god would not allow for the pattern of similarities we observe without common descent being true. This is because the transposable element patterns between species make common descent appear to be true. Therefore if god allowed for this pattern of similarities without common descent being true, it would be deceptive. Since god is not deceptive, only common descent can explain transposable elements. IFF common descent, THEN transposable elements.

IFF statements are common in evolutionary thought. The most famous one comes from one of the twentieth century’s leading evolutionists, Theodosius Dobzhansky, who claimed that “nothing in biology makes sense except in the light of evolution.” If it isn’t already obvious, that claim is equivalent to an IFF statement, as the following sequence of equivalent statements demonstrates:

1. Nothing in biology makes sense except in the light of evolution
2. Everything in biology makes sense only in the light of evolution
3. Only evolution can make sense of anything in biology
4. IFF evolution THEN biology

Dobzhansky justified his claim with a series of theological arguments that god would never had intended for this world.

The problem of unconceived alternatives

The history of science is littered with theories that were believed to be true and yet later dropped. In many cases a theory was held to be true not so much because it was convincing but because the alternatives were considered to be impossible. The theory was later dropped not because one of those alternatives became more palatable, but because an entirely different explanation was discovered. In other words, this reasoning by process of elimination is susceptible to unconceived alternatives.

The evolutionist’s many IFF statements are another example of this reasoning by process of elimination. They are certain their idea is correct because the alternatives must be wrong. As Ernst Mayr, another leading evolutionist of the twentieth century, once admitted, evolution achieved its predominance “less by the amount of irrefutable proofs it has been able to present than by the default of all the opposing theories.”

Just common sense

Now all this talk of theological premises, IFF statement and unconceived alternatives may seem unnecessary and irrelevant. Isn’t all this just an asterisk on what is obvious? As one evolutionist commented, yes it is a theological claim, but it is really amounts to common sense.

Transposable elements and their patterns obviously are not designed no matter how many technicalities one can raise against the clear conclusion. There is a theological claim there, but it is hardly important. It is nothing more than a teensie, tiny part of the reasoning.

This sentiment is typical and reminds us of Whitehead’s brilliant advise not to question someone on what he feels he needs to defend, but rather on what he takes for granted. The popular version goes like this: It isn’t what a man doesn’t know that scares me, but what he knows for sure.

Evolutionists know for sure that their idea is a fact. And if all the evidence aligned with their claims then we would join with them. After all, there’s nothing wrong with metaphysics.

The rest of the story

But this the rub. While evolutionists are convinced by evidences such as transposable elements, there are monumental problems with evolution and common descent. As for common descent, biology is full of patterns that, unlike the transposable elements, do not align with the expected pattern.

In fact, if this were about following the evidence, then common descent would have been falsified long ago. Even evolutionists are now admitting the venerable evolutionary tree is falling because the species comparisons are yielding similarities and differences that simply do not match the expectations.

Incredible similarities in distant species and incredible differences in similar species abound. No one knows what kind of pattern may emerge, but it isn’t looking like an evolutionary tree.

So while there are evidences, such as transposable elements, that predominantly support common descent, there are plenty of others that do not. If we want to evaluate common descent we would, like an accountant, tally up the gains and losses—the confirmations and contradictions.

But evolutionists don’t do this. Instead of cooly analyzing the various evidences and their implications, evolutionists are busy making unfounded and undefendable truth claims, and ridiculing those who don’t follow along.

This is where the metaphysics and theology come back to bite us. If we apply theology selectively to the evidence of choice, and conclude common descent must be true, then the rest of the evidence no longer matters. It is relegated to the status of a research problem.

Amazingly, evolutionists often are not even cognizant of contradictory evidences. Over and over they claim that all the evidence unequivocally supports common descent and evolution. That’s just bad science.

Evolution’s track record is that the more we learn about the evidence the more it contradicts evolutionary theory. New evidence is interpreted according to evolution and hailed as new proofs, but as more is learned the proofs turn to questions and finally to contradictions.

Today transposable elements are good evidence for common descent and evolution. Whether they remain that way is difficult to say. But what is clear is that evidences such as transposable elements are counter balanced by monumental problems for both common descent and evolution. And the transposable element evidence does nothing to clear up that conflict.

As it stands, common descent and evolution are not very good scientific theories. The fact that they enjoy the support of certain evidences puts them in the class of blood-letting and the flat earth theory.

Confirmed predictions are not hard to come by in science. The difference is that evolutionists apply religious mandates to the evidence. What is merely a confirmed prediction becomes something far more powerful. Religion drives science, and it matters.